Herlihy, Patricia. (1979-1980). “Greek Merchants in Odessa in the Nineteenth Century.” Eucharisterion: Essays Presented to Omeljan Pritsak on His Sixtieth Birthday by his Colleagues and Students. Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3-4(1):399-420. Herlihy, Patricia. (1989). “The Greek Community in Odessa, 1861-1917.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7:235-252. Prousis, Theophilus C. (1994). Russian Society and the Greek Revolution. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Rostovtzeff, Michael I. (1922). Iranians and Greeks in South Russia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
PATRICIA HERLIHY
Green Movement is the term used to describe peasant resistance to the Bolshevik government during the Russian Civil War.
The first rebellions against the Bolshevik government began in 1918 and increased with frequency and intensity through the civil war period. In 1918 and 1919 peasant rebellions were poorly organized and localized affairs, easily suppressed by small punitive expeditions. In 1920, however, after the defeat of the White armies, the Bolsheviks faced large, well-organized peasant insurgent movements in Tambov, the Volga and Urals regions, Ukraine, and Siberia. The causes of the rebellions were similar. After the failure of Committees of the Rural Poor to bring a reliable government to the countryside, the Bolshevik regime relied on armed detachments to procure grain and recruits, and to stop the black market in food and consumer goods. The depredations of these detachments, the only representatives of the Soviet government that most peasants saw, became increasingly severe as war communism ground down the Russian economy. By 1920, many peasants had little grain left, even as communist food supply organizations made greater demands on them. Large numbers of young men-deserters and draft- dodgers from the Red Army-hid in villages and the surrounding countryside from armed detachments sent to gather them.
The Soviet-Polish war, beginning in August 1920, increased the demands on peasants for food and recruits, and stripped the provinces of trained, motivated troops. This allowed peasant uprisings that were initially limited to a small area to grow, with armed bands finding willing recruits from the mass of deserters and draft-dodgers. By early 1921 much of the countryside was unsafe even for large Red Army detachments.
The Green Movement of 1920 and 1921 was qualitatively different from the peasant rebellions the communist government had faced in 1918 or 1919. While many peasant insurgents fought in small independent bands, Alexander Antonov’s Insurgent Army in Tambov and Nestor Makhno’s forces in Ukraine were organized militias whose members had military training. Enjoying strong support from political organizations (often made up of local SRs [Socialist Revolutionists], Anarchists, or even former Bolsheviks), they established an underground government that provided food, horses, and excellent intelligence to the insurgents, and terrorized local communists and their supporters. They were much harder to defeat.
By February 1921 the communist government suspended grain procurements in much of Russia and Ukraine, and in March, at the Tenth Party Congress, private trade in grain was legalized. The end of the Soviet-Polish war in March also freed elite armed forces to turn against the insurgents. In the summer of 1921 hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers, backed by airplanes, armored cars, and artillery, attacked the insurgent forces. In their wake followed the Cheka, who eliminated support for the insurgents by holding family members
GRIBOEDOV, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH
hostage, making villages collectively responsible for guerilla attacks, shooting suspected supporters of the insurgents, and sending thousands more to concentration camps. Facing drought and terror, and with the abolition of forced grain procurement and military conscription, support for the Green Movement collapsed by September 1921. A few leaders, such as Makhno, slipped across the border, but most were hunted down and killed, such as Antonov, who died in a shootout in June 1922. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; COMMITTEES OF THE VILLAGE POOR; SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES; WAR COMMUNISM
Brovkin, Vladimir, ed. (1997). The Bolsheviks in Russian Society. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Figes, Orlando. (1989). Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-1921. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malet, Michael. (1982). Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War. London: Macmillan. Radkey, Oliver. (1976). The Unknown Civil War in Soviet Russia. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
A. DELANO DUGARM
(1795-1829), dramatist and diplomat.
Alexander Griboedov is best known as the author of Woe from Wit (Gore ot uma). The first Russian comedy of manners, the play was written in 1823, but not published until 1833 because of censorship.
Born in Moscow as the son of a military officer, Griboedov showed talent at an early age in a number of areas. He was admitted to Moscow University at the age of eleven. By the age of sixteen he had graduated in literature, law, mathematics, and natural sciences. He also had a gift for music. The Napoleonic invasion prevented him from pursuing a doctorate. He served in the military from 1812 to 1816. After the war he entered the civil service in the ministry of foreign affairs. In 1818 he was sent to Persia (Iran) as secretary to the Russian mission. There Griboedov added Arabic and Persian to the long list of foreign languages he had mastered (French, German, Italian, and English). In 1821 he transferred to service in the Caucasus, but took a leave of absence in St. Petersburg and Moscow from February 1823 to May 1825 to write Woe from Wit. Although Griboedov was back in the Caucasus by December of 1825, he was nevertheless summoned under arrest for his alleged involvement in the abortive Decembrist uprising of that time. After extensive interrogations, however, he was cleared of suspicion and returned to his diplomatic post. Griboedov negotiated the peace treaty of 1828 that ended the Russo-Persian War. As a reward for his wits, he was appointed Russian minister in Tehran in 1828, where-in ironic mockery of his own play’s title-he was murdered in January 1829 by religious fanatics who attacked the Russian embassy. The twentieth-century novelist Yuri Tynianov wrote about Griboedov’s death in Death and Diplomacy in Persia (1938).
Woe from Wit, composed in rhymed verse, is a seminal work in Russian culture. Many lines from the play have entered everyday Russian speech as quotations or aphorisms. Its hero, Chatsky, is the prototype of the so- called superfluous man, who criticizes social and political conditions in his country but does nothing to bring about a change. In addition to the gap between generations, the concept of service is a key theme. In a monolithic country with minimal private enterprise, a man’s career choices were either civil or military. Griboedov mocks as shallow and morally irresponsible the character Famusov, who says in the play: “For me, whether it is business matters or not, my custom is, once it’s signed, the burden is off my shoulders.” As for military service, the hero Chatsky prefers to serve the cause and not specific personalities. He says to Famusov: “I should be pleased to serve, but worming oneself into one’s favor is sickening” (Sluzhit’ by rad, prisluzhivat’sia toshno). Famusov rejects such serious loyalty to a higher cause, reminiscing fondly of his uncle who stumbled and hurt himself while in court. When Catherine the Great showed amusement, the uncle deliberately fell again as a way to please her. Here Griboedov appears to counter the poet Gavryl Romanovich Derzhavin’s ode to Catherine (“Felitsa”), written in 1789, in which Catherine is praised as someone who treats subordinates respectfully. The play contains an extensive gallery of satirical portraits that continue to hold relevance to contemporary audiences in Russia and around the world. See also: THEATER
GRISHIN, VIKTOR DMITRIEVICH
Tynianov, Iurii Nikolaevich. (1975). Death and Diplomacy in Persia, 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Hyperion.
Reddaway, Peter. (1972). Uncensored Russia: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union. New York: American Heritage Press.
(1907-1987), leading Soviet human rights activist.
