The post-Soviet period found most Karakalpaks desperately poor, living in an environmentally devastated area adjacent to the rapidly shrinking Aral Sea. Serious health problems such as hepatitis, typhoid, and cancer are widespread. Despite their nomadic traditions, their economy is dominated by agriculture, especially cotton production, which has suffered due to water shortages, soil erosion, and environmental damage. Because of lack of investment in the region, the KAR’s relations with the central Uzbek government have been strained. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; UZBEKISTAN AND UZBEKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hanks, Reuel. (2000). “A Separate Peace? Karakalpak Nationalism and Devolution in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan.” Europe-Asia Studies 52: 939-53.
In the Karakhan Manifesto of 1919, the Soviet government offered to annul the unequal treaties imposed on China by Imperial Russia. The declaration, signed by Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Lev M. Karakhan , included rights of extraterritoriality for Russians in China, economic concessions, and Russia’s share of the Boxer rebellion indemnity. Though dated July 25, 1919, it was not actually published for another month. Civil war prevented its delivery to China, but the Beijing authorities soon learned its substance.
Controversy arose because the document was prepared in two versions. One variant contained the statement that “the Soviet Government returns to the Chinese people, without any compensation, the Chinese Eastern Railway [CER]. . . .” The version published in Moscow in August 1919 did not include this provision, but the copy that was delivered to Chinese diplomats in February 1920 did incorporate the offer to return the CER. However, a Soviet proposal on September 27, 1920, for a Sino-Russian agreement made no mention of returning the Chinese Eastern Railway, but requested a new agreement for its joint administration by the two nations. All subsequent Soviet reprintings of the Karakhan Manifesto omit the offer to return the CER, while a Chinese reprinting of the document in 1924 included the offer. The existence of two versions manifests the ambiguity in Soviet policy toward the Far East in 1919 and 1920, arising from the unpredictable course of the civil war and foreign intervention. Thereafter, the consolidation of Bolshevik power in Siberia, combined with continuing instability in China, led Moscow to seek some degree of control over the economically and strategically important CER. See also: CHINA, RELATIONS WITH; CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; RAILWAYS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Degras, Jane, ed. (1951). Soviet Documents on Foreign Policy, Vol. 1: 1917-1924. London: Oxford University Press.
Leong, Sow-theng. (1976). Sino-Soviet Diplomatic Relations, 1917-1926. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii.
(1766-1826), writer, historian, and journalist.
Born in the Simbirsk province and educated in Moscow, Nikolai Karamzin served only briefly in the military before retiring to devote himself to intellectual pursuits. In 1789 he undertook a journey to western Europe, visiting several luminaries, including Immanuel Kant, on his way. Reaching Paris in the spring of 1790, he witnessed history in the making. He described his trip in his Letters of a Russian Traveler, published upon his return in 1790 in a series of journals he founded himself. The Letters display an urbane, westernized individual in command of several languages and behavioral codes and are meant to signal Russia’s coming of age. They demonstrate a keen interest in history, but primarily as a collection of anecdotes.
The short stories Karamzin wrote in the 1790s exerted tremendous influence on the development of nineteenth-century fiction. Karamzin’s main purpose in literature and journalism was to promote a culture of politeness. History became one of the main themes of his works, which grappled with the paradoxes of modernity: The systematic debunking of myths, inspired by a commitment to reason, clashed with a need to mythologize the past to throw into relief the moral and intellectual emancipation enabled by the Enlightenment.
Karamzin elaborated a new political stance while editing the Messenger of Europe in 1802 and 1803. A professed realist, he argued for a strong central government, whose legitimacy would lie in balancing conflicting interests and preventing the emergence of evil. Karamzin grew disenchanted with Napoleon, who had first seemed to bring forth peace and stability, but his infatuation with consolidated political power endured.
In October 1803, Karamzin became official historiographer to Tsar Alexander I. He uncovered many yet unknown sources on Russian history, including some that subsequently perished in the Moscow fire of 1812. In 1811 Karamzin submitted his Memoir on Ancient and New Russia, which contained a biting critique of the policies of Alexander I, but vindicated autocracy and serfdom. The Memoir signaled Karamzin’s turn away from an Enlightenment-inspired universalist notion of history and affirmed the distinctness of Russia’s historical path.
In 1818 Karamzin published the first eight volumes of his History of the Russian State, an instant bestseller. The History consists of two parts: a naive-sounding account of events, close in style to the Chronicles, with minimal narratorial intrusions and an apparent lack of overriding critical principle; and extensive footnotes, which display considerable skepticism in the handling of sources and sometimes contradict the main narrative. The narrative rests on the notion that the course of events is vindicated by their outcome-the consolidation of the Russian autocratic state-but it lets stories speak for themselves.
Due to this narrative and political stance, the immediate reception of the History was mostly negative. Yet after the publication of three more volumes from 1821 to 1824, which included a condemnation of the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the reception began to shift (the last volume was published posthumously in 1829). Alexander Pushkin called the History “the heroic deed of an honest man,” and Karamzin’s stance of moral independence came to the foreground. The History continued to be read in the nineteenth century, primarily as a storehouse of patriotic historical tales. It fell into disfavor during Soviet times, yet met an intense period of renewed interest in the perestroika years as part of an exhumation of national history. See also: ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF; HISTORIOGRAPHY; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Black, J.L., ed. (1975). Essays on Karamzin: Russian Man-of-Letters, Political Thinker, Historian, 1766-1826. The Hague: Mouton. Wachtel, Andrew Baruch. (1994). An Obsession with History: Russian Writers Confront the Past. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
(b. 1957), prime minister of the Russian Federation.
Kasyanov graduated from the Moscow Automobile and Road Institute and worked for the State
Construction Committee and Gosplan, State Planning Committee, from 1981 to 1990. He moved to the economics ministry, and in 1993 Boris Fyodorov brought him to the Finance Ministry to take charge of negotiations over Russia’s foreign debts. Fluent in English, Kasyanov became deputy finance minister in 1995 and finance minister in May 1999. In January 2000 he was appointed first deputy prime minister under prime minister and acting president Vladimir Putin. Katyanov, praised by Putin as a “strong coordinator, ” was named prime minister of the government in May 2000, winning easy confirmation from the State Duma in a vote of 325 to 55. The calm, gravel- voiced Kasyanov was seen as a figure with close ties to Boris Yeltsin’s inner cir-cle-the owners of large financial industrial groups.
Despite repeated rumors of his impending dismissal, Kasyanov was still in office in mid-2003. He oversaw cautious but substantial reforms in taxation and the legal system, but liberals criticized him for failing to tackle the “natural monopolies” of gas, electricity, and railways. This led to some embarrassing criticism from members of his own administration, such as economy minister German Gref and presidential economic advisor Andrei Il-larionov, not to mention public admonition from President Putin in spring 2003 for failing to deliver more rapid economic growth. In Russia’s super-presidential system, the job of prime minister is a notoriously difficult one. Although the
