To Russian peasants, black repartition (cherny pere-del) meant the long-anticipated seizure and redistribution of all nonpeasant lands (those held by the gentry, townspeople, the Crown, etc.) by and among the peasants who lived near them. Most peasants desired such a land settlement and exercised it whenever government power weakened, giving them the opportunity. Examples of black repartitions abound in the revolutions of 1905-1906 and especially in 1917-1918. Peasants placed so much priority on seizure of land and permanent expulsion of nonpeasants from the countryside that they often destroyed valuable farm equipment, animals, and buildings in the process.
The term was also claimed by a short-lived Russian Populist revolutionary group, Land and Freedom, the first Populist group, which appeared in the wake of the 1873-1874 Going to the People movement. In October 1879 it foundered on doctrinal issues and broke into two groups. The larger one, called People’s Will, focused on a revolutionary terror campaign to bring down the autocracy and spark a socialist revolution. The smaller group, Black Repartition, preferred a path of gradualism
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and propaganda to develop a revolutionary consciousness among the people. Just as hostile to the autocracy as People’s Will, Black Repartition did not think that a terror campaign could succeed, because merely changing political institutions (if that were possible) would mean nothing without an accompanying social revolution.
Black Repartition’s doubts were proved right when the People’s Will terror campaign, culminating in the assassination of Emperor Alexander II on March 1 1881, led not to a revolution but instead to popular revulsion toward and severe police repression of all revolutionary groups. These included Black Repartition, which fell apart in Russia as most of its members were arrested and its printing press seized. By the autumn of 1881, Black Repartition had ceased to exist in Russia. Only a few leaders (Georgy Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, and Pavel Ax-elrod) escaped abroad to Switzerland. There Black Repartition’s leaders turned from doctrinaire populism to Marxist socialism and formed the first Russian Marxist organization, Emancipation of Labor.
Neither Black Repartition nor Emancipation of Labor had significant influence over the small revolutionary movement inside of Russia in the 1880s, though Emancipation of Labor participated as the Russian representatives to the socialist Second International. Isolated in Switzerland, Black Repartition was ill-equipped to build the revolutionary consciousness among workers that they had deemed essential to a real revolution. Their leaders were important, however, in the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party at the turn of the century. See also: LAND AND FREEDOM PARTY; MARXISM; PEASANT ECONOMY; PEOPLE’S WILL, THE; SECOND ECONOMY; TERRORISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barron, Samuel H. (1963). Plekhanov: The Father of Russian Marxism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Haimson, Leopold H. (1955). The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Naimark, Norman. (1983). Terrorists and Social Democrats. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Venturi, Franco. (1960). Roots of Revolution. New York: Grosset amp; Dunlap.
The Black Sea Fleet came into being in 1783, when naval units were formed in the Bay of Akhtiar (and from 1784 at Sevastopol) to serve in the Sea of Azov and in wars against Turkey. During the Crimean War (1853-1856) it fought several naval battles, and its sailors were deployed on land in the defense of Sevastopol. The Paris Peace Conference in 1856 allowed Russia to have naval units in the Black Sea, a right expanded by the 1871 London Conference. At the start of World War I, the Black Sea Fleet consisted of five battleships, two cruisers, seventeen destroyers, and a number of auxiliary vessels; during the conflict it engaged in several actions against the Germans and Turks.
The fleet also became a center of revolutionary activity. In 1904 socialist cells were organized among its sailors, and this led to the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin the following year. In December 1917 Bolsheviks and other factions were active among the sailors. In May 1920 units that had sided with the Bolsheviks were organized as the Black Sea and Azov naval units, both of which took part in the fighting against Peter Wrangel’s White forces. The Tenth Party Congress in 1921 decided to form a fleet in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov using two repaired destroyers and five escort vessels. Over the years these were substantially reinforced by the addition of larger ships and naval aviation. On January 11, 1935, the Council of People’s Commissars combined the Azov and Black Sea units to form a new Black Sea Fleet. The Great Terror took a heavy toll among naval officers, and all of the fleet’s commanders were purged. In January 1938, I. S. Iumashev was appointed commander, only to be replaced by F. S. Oktiabrsky in August 1939.
At the start of World War II the fleet had one battleship, six cruisers, seventeen destroyers, and numerous cutters, minelayers, mine sweepers, torpedo boats, and auxiliary vessels. It also had 625 aircraft. The Luftwaffe, operating with little opposition in the early days of the war, destroyed many Soviet ships and port facilities, but nonetheless the Black Sea Fleet managed to evacuate Odessa and Sevastopol. Overall, however, the performance of the Red Army in the Crimea in 1941 and 1942 was a succession of defeats at the hands of an outnumbered and outgunned enemy. During October and November 1941, Vice Admiral G. I. Levchenko commanded the defense of the Crimea, but in December he was arrested and sentenced to ten years
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(later released). When German forces advanced into the Caucasus, the Black Sea Fleet landed troops behind their lines at Novorossiysk, an inconclusive battle glorified when Leonid Brezhnev was in power because of his participation as a political officer. In 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad and retreat from the Caucasus, the navy conducted another landing at Kerch, which also failed. In May 1943 Oktiabrsky was replaced by L. A. Vladimirsky, but he was reinstated in March 1944 and continued as commander until November 1948. In 1944 and 1945, the Black Sea Fleet and the Danube Flotilla supported the Red Army’s offensive opera tions in southeastern Europe.
Beginning in the 1950s, the Black Sea Fleet began to receive new ships and was a major component of the Soviet advance into the Mediterranean and the third world, but its buildup was marred by an explosion on the Novorossiysk in October 1955, the greatest peacetime disaster in the history of the Soviet Navy, which cost the commander in chief of the Navy, Admiral N. G. Kuznetsov, his job. The buildup, which even included the introduction of aircraft carriers, continued until the breakup of the Soviet Union. After 1991 both Russia and Ukraine claimed ownership of the fleet. An agreement on May 28, 1997, gave Russia the more modern ships and a twenty-year lease on the Sevastopol naval base. The Black Sea Fleet is now a shadow of its once-proud self, decaying along with other Russian military assets. See also: CRIMEAN WAR; POTEMKIN MUTINY; PURGES, THE GREAT; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Felgenhauer, Tony. (1999). Ukraine, Russia and the Black Sea Fleet Accords. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs Case Study. Available at «www .wws.princeton.edu/~cases/papers/ukraine.html». Nekrasov, George. (1992). North of Gallipoli: The Black Sea Fleet at War, 1914-1917. New York: Columbia University Press.
Blat, common slang in Soviet times, comes from an older Russian expression, blatnoy zhargon, “thieves’ talk”, which accompanied misdemeanors. For example, an industrial tolkach (“pusher” or expediter) might use blat to obtain a necessary part or material without a planned allocation order (naryad). This could be better than waiting for essential supplies through formal channels, because the monthly and yearly plans had deadlines for fulfillment. One way of accommodating a friendly pusher would be to declare perfectly good output “rejects,” which could be legally sold without an allocation order. Use of blat would be more likely if the receiving enterprise were producing a low-priority consumer good. A citizen might also employ blat to secure a larger apartment in a favorable location.
