prime minister has to be approved by the State Duma, once in office he answers only to the president, and has no independent power beyond that which he can accumulate through skillful administration and discreet political maneuvering. See also: GOSPLAN; PUTIN, VLADIMIR VLADIMIROVICH assistant professor of philosophy at Moscow University. In 1851 he became editor of the daily Moskovskie Vedomosti (Moscow News), and in 1856 he also became editor of the journal Russky Vestnik (Russian Messenger).
Katkov changed his political preferences several times during his life. In the 1830s he shared the ideas of the Russian liberal and radical intelligentsia and was close to the Russian literary critic Vissarion Be-linsky, radical thinker Alexander Herzen, and the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. In the early 1840s Katkov broke his connections with the radical intelligentsia, instead becoming an admirer of the British political system. During his early journalistic career, he supported the liberal reforms of Tsar Alexander II and wrote about the necessity of transforming the Russian autocracy into a constitutional monarchy.
The Polish uprising had a great impact on the changing of Katkov’s political views from liberalism to Russian nationalism and chauvinism. He published a number of articles favoring reactionary domestic policies and aggressive pan-Slavic foreign policies for Russia. The historian Karel Durman wrote, “Katkov claimed to be the watchdog of the autocracy and this claim was widely recognized.” As one of the closest advisors of Tsar Alexander III, Katkov had a great impact on Russian policies. According to the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod Constantine Pobedonostsev, “there were ministries where not a single important action was undertaken without Katkov’s participation.” Durman points out that in no other country could a mere publicist standing outside the official power structure exercise such an influence as had Katkov in Russia. See also: ALEXANDER II; ALEXANDER III; INTELLIGENTSIA; JOURNALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Shevtsova, Lilia. (2003). Putin’s Russia. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
(1818-1887), Russian journalist and publicist.
The son of a minor civil servant, Mikhail Niki-forovich Katkov graduated from Moscow University in 1838 and attended lectures at Berlin University in 1840-1841. From 1845 to 1850 Katkov was an
Durman, Karel. (1988). The Time of the Thunderer. Mikhail Katkov, Russian Nationalist Extremism and the Failure of the Bismarckian System, 1871-1887. New York: Columbia University Press. Katz, Martin. (1966). Mikhail N. Katkov. A Political Biography 1818-1887. Paris: Mouton amp; Co.
Katyn Forest, a wooded area near the village of Gneizdovo outside the Russian city of Smolensk,
was the scene in early 1940 of a wholesale killing by the Soviet NKVD (Narodny Komissariat Vnu-trennykh Del), or secret police, of 4,143 Polish servicemen, mostly Polish Army officers. These victims, who had been incarcerated in the Kozielsk Soviet concentration camp, constituted only part of the genocide perpetrated against Poles by the NKVD in 1939 and 1940.
The Poles fell as POWs into Soviet hands just after the Soviet Red Army occupied the eastern half of Poland under the terms of two notorious Molo-tov-Ribbentrop pacts: the Nazi-Soviet agreements signed between the USSR and Nazi Germany in August and September 1939. The crime, committed on Stalin’s personal orders at the opening of World War II, is often referred to as the Katyn Massacre or the Katyn Forest Massacre.
The incident was not spoken of for sixty years. Even such Western leaders as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill placed little or no credence in reports of the crime at the time, despite the fact that informed Poles had provided proof. For his part, Churchill urged exiled Polish officials such as Vladislav Siko-rski to keep the incident quiet lest the news upset the East-West alliance of the Soviet and Western powers fighting Nazi Germany.
These first deaths came after one of the most notorious of several repressions by the Stalin regime against Poles. In 1939, notes Robert Conquest, besides the 440,000 Polish civilians sent to Soviet concentration camps as a result of the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland beginning in September, the Soviets took 200,000 POWs during the Red Army’s campaign in Poland. Most of these officers and enlisted men of the Polish Army wound up in camps at Kozielsk, Starobelsk, and Os-tachkov. Of these, only forty-eight were ever seen alive again. Later Stalin promised Polish officials that the Soviet government would “look into” the disappearance of these men. But Soviet officials refused to discuss the matter whenever it was again raised.
With the coming of World War II, that is, the war between Germany and the USSR after June 21, 1941, the German Army swept into eastern Poland. In 1943 the Germans, as occupiers of Poland, came across the Polish corpses at Katyn. They duly publicized their grim discovery to a skeptical world press, blamed the Soviets for the terror, and shared their find with a neutral European medical commission based in Switzerland. The members of this commission were convinced that the mass graves were the result of Soviet genocide, but they voiced their findings discreetly, sometimes refusing even to give an opinion.
In 1944, when the Red Army retook the Katyn area from the Wehrmacht, Soviet forces exhumed the Polish dead. Again they blamed the Nazis. Many people throughout the world supported the Soviet line.
It was not until near the end of communist rule in Russia in 1989 with the unfurling of the new policy of glasnost (openness) in the USSR, that partial admission of the crime was acknowledged in Russia and elsewhere. Later, after the demise of communist rule in Russia, two further sites were found where Poles, including Jews, were executed. The number of victims of the killings at all three sites totaled 25,700. See also: SOVIET-POLISH WAR; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARI-ONOVICH; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Conquest, Robert. (1990). The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press. Crozier, Brian. (1999). The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing. Crozier, Brian. (2000). “Remembering Katyn.” «http:// www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/digest/002/ crozier.html».
(1818-1882), Russian general (of Austrian ancestry) who became governor-general (viceroy) of Turkestan following its conquest.
Konstantin Petrovich Kaufman’s fame came as the ruler of Russia’s new colony in Central Asia. His previous military experience had scarcely prepared him for his career as creator of colonial Turkestan. He trained as a military engineer and served for fifteen years in the Russian army fighting the mountain tribes in the Caucasus. His achievements during his service there called him to the attention of a fellow officer, General Dimitri Milyutin. When Milyutin became minister of war in the 1860s, he needed a trustworthy, experienced officer to govern Turkestan. Kaufman was his choice.
KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS
At the time Kaufman received his appointment in 1867, the conquest of Turkestan had only begun. He became commander of the Russian frontier forces there and had authority to decide on military action along the borders of his territory. When neighboring Turkish principalities began hostile military action against Russia, or when further conquests appeared feasible, Kaufman assumed command of his troops for war. By the end of his rule, Russia’s borders enclosed much of Central Asia to the borders of the Chinese Empire. Only Khiva and Bukhara remained nominally independent khanates under Russian control. Turkestan’s borders with Persia (Iran) and Afghanistan were for many years a subject of dispute with Great Britain, which claimed a sphere of domination there.
Kaufman had charge of a vast territory far removed from European Russia. Its peoples practiced the Muslim religion and spoke Turkic or Persian languages. It so closely resembled a colony, like those of the overseas possessions of European empires, that he took example from their colonial policies to launch a Russian civilizing mission in Turkestan. He ended slavery, introduced secular (nonreligious) education, promoted the scientific study of Turkestan’s various peoples (even sending an artist, Vasily Vereshchagin, to paint their portraits), encouraged
