the Russians refused to accept the Ottoman compromise proposal on the Holy Places on the grounds that it skirted the protection issue. Russia broke relations with Turkey in May and occupied Moldavia and Wallachia in July.
While the Ottomans mobilized, European statesmen sought an exit. Russia’s outright rejection in September of another Ottoman compromise finessing the protection issue, one which the British found reasonable, emboldened the Turks to declare war and attack Russian positions in Wallachia and the eastern Black Sea (October). Admiral Pavel
Encounter between Russians, nineteenth-century engraving. THE ART ARCHIVE/MUSEO DEL RISORGIMENTO ROME/DAGLI ORTI
CRONY CAPITALISM
Nakhimov’s Black Sea squadron destroyed a Turkish supply convoy off Sinope (November 30), and the combined Anglo-French-Turkish fleet entered the Black Sea on January 1, 1854. Russia refused the humiliating allied demand to keep to port, and by early April, Britain and France were at war with Russia.
Russia’s million-man army was larger than that of the allies, but had fewer rifles and deployed 600,000 troops from Finland to Bessarabia as insurance against attacks from the west. Anglo- French fleets and logistics far outclassed Russia’s.
The war operated on several fronts. The Russians crossed the Danube in March and besieged Silistra, only to retreat and evacuate Wallachia and Moldavia in June in the face of Austro-German threats. Anglo-French naval squadrons entered the Baltic and destroyed Russia’s fortifications at Bo-marsund and Sveaborg, but did not harm Kron-stadt. In Transcaucasia, Russian counterattacks and superior tactics led to advances into Eastern Anatolia and the eventual investment of Kars in September 1855.
The key theater was Crimea, where the capture of Sevastopol was the chief Allied goal. Both sides made mistakes. The Russians could have mounted a more energetic defense against Allied landings, while the Allies might have taken Sevastopol before the Russians fortified their defenses with sunken ships and naval ordnance under Admiral Vladimir Kornilov and army engineer Adjutant Ed-uard Totleben. The Allies landed at Evpatoria, defeated the Russians at the Alma River (September 20, 1854), and redeployed south of Sevastopol. The Russian attempt to drive the Allies from Balaklava failed even before the British Light Brigade made its celebrated, ill-fated charge (October 25, 1854). The well-outnumbered allies then tried to besiege Sevastopol and thus exposed themselves to a counterattack at Inkerman on November 5, 1854, which the Russians completely mishandled with their outmoded tactics, negligible staff work, and command rivalries.
Despite a terrible winter, the Allies reinforced and renewed their siege in February 1855. Allied reoccupation of Evpatoria, where the Turks held off a Russian counterattack, and a summer descent on Kerch disrupted the flow of Russian supplies. The death of Nicholas I and accession of Alexander II (March 2) meant little at first. As per imperial wishes, the Russians mounted a hopeless attack on the besiegers’ positions on the Chernaya River (August 16). The constant Allied bombardment and French-led assaults on Sevastopol’s outer defenses led to an orderly evacuation (September 8-9). The Russians in turn captured Kars in Eastern Anatolia (November 26), thereby gaining a bargaining chip. Hostilities soon abated.
Russia lost the war in the Baltic, Crimea, and lower Danube, with the demilitarization of the ?land Islands and the Black Sea and retrocession of southern Bessarabia, but, at the cost of 400,000-500,000 casualties, defended the empire’s integrity from maximal Anglo-Ottoman rollback goals and won the war in the Caucasus and Transcaucasia. The evidence of Russia’s technological and structural inferiority to the West, as well as the massive turnout of peasant serfs expecting emancipation in return for volunteer service, were major catalysts of the Great Reforms under Alexander II. Russia became more like the other great powers, adhering to the demands of cynical self-interest. See also: GREAT BRITAIN, RELATIONS WITH; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; NESSELRODE, KARL ROBERT; SEVASTOPOL; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baumgart, Winfried. (1999). The Crimean War, 1853-1856. London: Arnold. Goldfrank, David. (1994). The Origins of the Crimean War. London: Longman.
Crony capitalism is a term that describes an economic system where people with good connections to the center of power-the “cronies” of the government-manage to place themselves in positions of undue influence over economic policy, thus deriving great personal gains.
In the case of Russia, the term implies that between the president and the country’s business leaders-known as the “oligarchs”-there emerged a tacit understanding. If the oligarchs used their economic power to supply political and financial support for the president, in return they would be allowed to influence for their own benefit the formulation of laws and restrictions on a range of important matters.
A prominent example is that of insider dealings in the process of privatization, which, for example, allowed the transfer of major oil companies into private hands at extremely low prices. Another is the introduction of a system of “authorized banks,” whereby a few select commercial banks were allowed to handle the government’s accounts. Such rights could be abused: for example, by delaying the processing of payments received. Under conditions of high inflation, the real value eventually passed on to the final destination would be greatly diminished. There have also been serious allegations of insider dealings by the cronies in Russian government securities.
The overall consequences for the Russian economy were negative in the extreme. The influence of the so- called crony capitalists over the process of privatization led to such a warped system of property rights that some analysts seriously argued in favor of selective renationalization, to be followed by a second round of “honest” privatization.
Even more important, by allowing the crony capitalists to take over the oil industry for a pittance, the Russian government freely gave up the right to extract rent from the country’s natural resource base. This represented a massive shift of future income streams out of the government’s coffers and into private pockets, with severe implications for the future ability of the state to maintain the provision of public goods. See also: ECONOMY, POST- SOVIET; MAFIA CAPITALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hedlund, Stefan. (1999). Russia’s “Market” Economy. London: UCL Press.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was one of the most serious incidents of the Cold War. Many believed that war might break out between the United States and the Soviet Union over the latter’s basing of nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba.
Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba promising to restore the liberal 1940 constitution but immediately took more radical steps, including an economic agreement in 1960 with the Soviet Union. In turn, the Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, promised in June to defend Cuba with Soviet nuclear arms. In early 1961, the United States broke relations with Havana, and in April it helped thousands of Cuban exiles stage an abortive uprising at the Bay of Pigs.
Khrushchev was convinced that the United States would strike again, this time with American soldiers; and he believed that Castro’s defeat would be a fatal blow to his own leadership. He decided that basing Soviet missiles in Cuba would deter the United States from a strike against the Castro regime. Moreover, so he reasoned, the Cuba-based medium-range missiles would compensate for the USSR’s marked inferiority to America’s ICBM capabilities. Finally, a successful showdown with Washington might improve Moscow’s deteriorating relations with China.
In April 1962, Khrushchev raised the possibility of basing Soviet missiles in Cuba with his defense minister, Rodion Malinovsky. He hoped to deploy the missiles by October and then inform Kennedy after the congressional elections in November. He apparently expected the Americans to accept the deployment of the Soviet missiles as calmly as the Kremlin had accepted the basing of U.S. missiles in Turkey. Foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, when finally consulted, flatly told Khrushchev that Soviet missiles in Cuba would “cause a political explosion” (Taubman) in the United States, but the premier was unmoved. In late April, a Soviet delegation met with Khrushchev before
