1938 he began his applied work in economics when he was asked by the Laboratory of the Plywood Trust to solve the problem of distributing raw materials to maximize equipment productivity under quantitative restrictions. This problem proved to be mathematically similar to that of optimizing a sown area or the distribution of transportation flows. Kantorovich solved this by using a kind of functional analysis he called the “method of resolving multipliers.” By 1939 he had published a small book laying out the main ideas and algorithms of linear programming, later advanced independently by Tjalling Koopmans, George Dantzig, and others. Subsequently, Kantorovich combined linear programming with the idea of dynamic programming to advance methods for calculating wholesale prices and transportation tariffs, a norm for the effectiveness of capital investments and depreciation allowances, and other payments. This work, generalized to planning problems on the industrial, regional, or national level, led to his receiving the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1975, the only Soviet economist ever so honored. A full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences from 1960, Kan-torovich received the Lenin Prize and many other honors in Russia and abroad. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Campbell, Robert W. (1961). “Marx, Kantorovich, and Novozhilov: Stoimost versus Reality.” Slavic Review 20 (3): 402-18. Kantorovich, Leonid V. (1965). The Best Use of Economic Resources. Oxford: Pergamon.
(1887-1918), anarchist-terrorist; arrested and executed for a failed attempt on Lenin’s life.
Born into the family of a Jewish teacher in Ukraine, Fanya Kaplan (also known as Feiga Kaplan, Feiga Roitblat, Dora Kaplan) joined a local anarchist terrorist organization during the 1905 Revolution. For her participation in a bomb-making operation in Kiev, she spent ten years in the Nerchinsk penal complex in Siberia. Here she became acquainted with other female terrorists, most notably the Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) Maria Spiridonova and Anastasia Bitsenko. A number of her prison comrades maintain that Kaplan went blind during her early years in Nerchinsk but partially recovered her vision in 1913; one memoirist also noted Kaplan’s deafness. Released by the Provisional Government’s amnesty for political prisoners following the February Revolution of 1917, Kaplan was receiving medical treatment in Ukraine when the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917. Kaplan later stated that she was a supporter not of the Bolshevik-Left SR coalition government, but rather of the Constituent Assembly promoted by the SRs and their leader Victor Chernov. In the spring of 1918 Kaplan returned to Moscow and there visited her former prison comrade, Bitsenko, who, like Spiri-donova, had joined the Left SRs. Kaplan, however, appears to have had nothing to do with the Left SR
KARACHAI
Party and little to do with the SRs. When Lenin was wounded in August 1918, Kaplan’s nervous behavior at the scene led to her arrest, although it subsequently emerged that no one had actually witnessed her role in the shooting. She was executed within days of being apprehended. Bolshevik authorities labeled Kaplan an SR and the attempt on Lenin’s life an SR terrorist conspiracy; SR leaders strongly denied both accusations during their show trial in 1922. See also: ANARCHISM; LENIN, VLADIMIR ILICH; SHOW TRIALS; SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES; TERRORISM
Jansen, Marc. (1982). A Show Trial under Lenin: The Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries, Moscow 1922, tr. Jean Sanders. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Lyandres, Semion. (1989). “The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence.” Slavic Review 48(3):432-48.
The Karachai are a small Turkic nationality of the central North Caucasus. They speak a language from the Kypchak group of the Altaic language family and are closely related to the Balkars. They inhabit high-elevation mountain valleys of the upper Kuban and Teberda river basins, and their pastures once stretched up to the peaks and glaciers of the northern slope of the Great Caucasus mountain range.
Their remote origins can be traced to Kypchak-speaking pastoralist groups such as the Polovt-sians, who may have been forced to take refuge high in the mountains by the Mongol invasions in thirteenth century. At some point before the sixteenth century, the Karachai came under the domination of the princes in Kabarda. The Crimean khanate claimed nominal jurisdiction over much of the northwest Caucasus and, correspondingly, Karachai territories, until its demise in 1782. Conversion to Islam took place gradually, gaining momentum during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A series of military incursions into their territories motivated several Karachai elders to sign a capitulation agreement and nonaggression pact with Russian forces in 1828. Although they were officially considered subjects of the tsar from that moment, various forms of resistance to Russian rule continued until 1864. A Karachai-Cherkess autonomous region was established in 1922 and in 1926 was divided into two distinct units. Karachai territories were occupied by the forces of Nazi Germany between July 1942 and January 1943. While many Karachai men served in the Red Army, others joined bandit and anti-Soviet partisan groups. In the fall of 1943 the Supreme Soviet of the USSR ordered the deportation of the Karachai people for alleged cooperation with the Germans and participation in organized resistance to Soviet power. The Karachai autonomous region was abolished in 1944 and virtually the entire Karachai population was deported to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In 1956 party members and Red Army veterans were allowed to return to their homeland, and in 1957 others were legally given the right to return. In 1957 the joint Karachai-Cherkess autonomous region was reestablished and the mass return of the Karachai was initiated. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Karachai- Cherkess autonomous region became a republic of the Russian Federation.
Traditionally, Karachais subsisted on a combination of agriculture and stock-raising. As late as the first decades of the twentieth century, only one-fourth of all Karachai had adopted a completely stationary lifestyle. The rest of the population seasonally relocated from summer to winter pastures with their herds of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. During the Soviet period, the Karachai remained one of the least urbanized groups: Less than 20 percent lived in cities. Clans were a central component of traditional Karachai social organization. Although some clans and their elders could be recognized as more prominent or senior than others, the Karachai did not have a powerful princely elite or nobility. In the twentieth century the Karachai population grew from about 30,000 to about 100,000. A Karachai literary language was developed and standardized in the 1920s. See also: CAUCASUS; CHERKESS; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wixman, Ronald. (1980). Language Aspects of Ethnic Patterns and Processes in the North Caucasus. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Karakalpaks are a Turkic people who live in Central Asia. Of the nearly 500,000 Karakalpaks, more than 90 percent live in northwestern Uzbekistan, in the Soviet-created Karakalpak Autonomous Republic (KAR). Other Karakalpaks live elsewhere in Uzbekistan, as well as in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, and Afghanistan. Most adhere to Sunni Islam, although Sufi sects have also attracted many followers. They speak a language that is closely related to Kazakh and Kyrgyz.
Most historians trace the Karakalpaks’ origins to Persian and Mongolian peoples living on the steppes of Central Asia and Southern Russia. Their name literally meets “black hatted,” and mention of a tribe thought to be ancestral to today’s Karakalpaks first appears in Russian chronicles (as Chorniye Kolbuki) in 1146. Renowned for their military prowess, this group allied themselves with the Kievan princes in their battles with other Russian princes and tribes of the steppes. In the 1200s some Karakalpaks joined the Mongol Golden Horde, and by the 1500s they enjoyed a short-lived independence. Over time, however, they became subjects of other Central Asian peoples and eventually the Russians, who pushed into Central Asia in the 1800s.
In 1918 they were included with other Central Asian peoples in the Turkistan Autonomous Republic, and in 1925 a Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast was created in the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. This oblast eventually became the KAR, and in 1936 it became part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Under Soviet rule, Karakalpaks were encouraged to move to the KAR, their nominal homeland.
