prophets, fear of God, and virtue. The table gives phonetic and, where appropriate, grammatical characteristics of the letter symbols in their dual function as letters and numbers. It uses both Greek and Slavic terms-the latter having the metaphorical symmetry of vowel-soul and consonant-body-and may contain some hidden meanings or utility for divination. An anonymous explanatory introduction is close to the likewise anonymous “Outline of Grammar,” both possibly by Kuritsyn. They promote the sovereignty of the literate mind and treat letters as God’s redemptive gift to humanity and the source of wisdom, science, memory, and predictive powers. Not strictly heretical, but akin to Jewish wisdom literature, these works sat on the humanist fringe of the acceptable in Muscovy.
Kuritsyn also may have composed, redacted, or simply conveyed from Moldavia the underlying text of the Slavic “Tale of Dracula.” This string of semi-folklorish anecdotes about the “evil genius” Wallachian voevoda Vlad the Impaler recounts the just and unjust beastly reprisals of this self-styled “great sovereign” without moral commentary- except in the description of his purported apostasy to Catholicism. Implicitly “Dracula” teaches that despots must be humored and envoys trained and smart.
Kuritsyn probably died around 1501. In 1502 or 1503 Ivan III reportedly knew “which heresy Fyodor Kuritsyn held,” and in 1504 allowed Fyo-dor’s brother, the diplomat-jurist state secretary Ivan Volk, to be burned as a heretic or apostate. Fyodor’s son Afanasy was also a state secretary. See also: IVAN III; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Taube, Moshe. (1995). “The ‘Poem on the Soul’ in the Laodicean Epistle and the Literature of the Judaizers.” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 19:671-685.
(1848-1925), adjutant general, minister of war, commander during the Russo-Japanese War, colonial administrator, and author.
Born in Sheshurino, Pskov Province, in 1848 to a retired officer with liberal inclinations, Alexei Kuropatkin received a superb military education, graduating from the Paul Junker Academy in 1866 and the Nicholas Academy of the General Staff in 1874. Much of Kuropatkin’s career was linked to the empire’s eastern frontier. Beginning as an infantry subaltern in Central Asia, he saw active duty during the conquest of Turkestan (1866-1871, 1875-1877, 1879-1883) and the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). Kuropatkin’s close association with the flamboyant White General Mikhail Dim-itriyevich Skobelev, earned him a misleading reputation as a decisive commander in combat (a deception Kuropatkin actively promoted by writing popular campaign histories). Kuropatkin was best suited for administration and intelligence, and he enjoyed a rapid rise in the military bureaucracy, including posts in the army’s Main Staff (1878-1879, 1883-1890), head of the Trans-Caspian Oblast (1890-1898), and minister of war (1898- 1904).
Kuropatkin assumed command of the ministry in a climate of strategic vulnerability, as growing German military power combined with a weakening economy. Accordingly, his top priority was to strengthen the empire’s western defenses against the Central Powers. However, Nicholas II’s adventures on the Pacific drew him back to the East, albeit reluctantly. Well aware of the threat posed by Japan’s modern armed forces, Kuropatkin opposed the Russian emperor’s increasingly aggressive course in Manchuria. Nevertheless, he loyally resigned his post as minister to command Russia’s land forces in East Asia when Japan attacked in 1904. Insecurity and indecision hobbled his performance in the field. Reluctant to risk his troops in a decisive contest, Kuropatkin chose instead to order retreats whenever the outcome of a clash seemed in doubt. As a result, while he never lost a
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major battle, his repeated pullbacks fatally corroded Russian morale, and constituted one of the leading reasons for tsarist defeat in 1905.
After the war, Kuropatkin published prolifi-cally in an effort to restore his tarnished reputation. During World War I, he returned to the colors on the northwestern front in 1915, but his leadership proved to be equally undistinguished. In July 1916 Nicholas II reassigned him as Turkestan’s governor-general, where he suppressed a major nationalist rebellion later that year. Although he was relieved of his post and even briefly arrested by the Provisional Government in early 1917, Kuropatkin avoided the postrevolutionary fate of many other prominent servants of the autocracy. He spent his remaining years as a schoolteacher in his native Sheshurino until his death of natural causes on January 26, 1925. Kuropatkin does not figure prominently in the pantheon of great Russian generals, but his many published and unpublished writings reveal one of the more perceptive minds of the tsarist military. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; SKOBELEV, MIKHAIL DIMITRIYEVICH; TURKESTAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kuropatkin, Aleksei N. (1909). The Russian Army and the Japanese War, tr. A. B. Lindsay. 2 vols. New York: E. P. Dutton. Romanov, Boris A. (1952). Russia in Manchuria, tr. Susan Wilbur Jones. Ann Arbor, MI: Edwards Press. Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David H. (2001). Toward the Rising Sun: Russian Ideologies of Empire and the Path to War with Japan. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
The Battle of Kursk (July 5-August 23, 1943) resulted in the Soviet defeat of the German Army’s last major offensive in the East and initiated an unbroken series of Red Army victories culminating in the destruction of Hitler’s Third Reich. The battle consisted of Operation Zitadelle, (Citadel), the German Army’s summer offensive to destroy Red Army forces defending the Kursk salient, and the Red Army’s Operations Kutuzov and Rumyantsev against German forces defending along the flanks of the Kursk salient. More than seven thousand Soviet and three thousand German tanks and self-propelled guns took part in this titanic battle, making it the largest armored engagement in the war.
The defensive phase of the battle began on July 5, 1943, when the 9th Army of Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge’s Army Group Center and the 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group South launched concentric assaults against the northern and southern flanks of the Kursk salient. In seven days of heavy fighting, the 13th and 70th Armies and 2nd Tank Army of General K. K. Rokossovsky’s Central Front fought three German panzer corps to a virtual standstill in the Ponyri and Samodurovka regions, seven miles deep into the Soviet defenses. To the south, during the same period, three panzer corps penetrated ten to twenty miles through the defenses of the Voronezh Front’s 6th and 7th Guards and 69th Armies, as well as the dug in 1st Tank Army, before engaging the Steppe Front’s counterattacking 5th Guards Army and 5th Guard Tank Armies in the Prokhorovka region. Worn down by constant Soviet assaults against their flanks, the German assault faltered on the plains west of Prokhorovka. Concerned about the deteriorating situation in Italy and a new Red Army offensive to the north, Hitler ended the offensive on July 13.
The day before, the Red Army commenced its summer offensive by launching Operation Kutu-zov, massive assaults by five Western and Bryansk Front armies against German Second Panzer Army defending the Orel salient. Red Army forces, soon joined by the 3rd Guards and 4th Tank Armies and most of the Central Front, penetrated German defenses around Orel within days and began a steady advance, which compelled German forces to abandon the Orel salient by August 23. On August 5, three weeks after halting German forces at Prokhorovka, the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts commenced Operation Rumyantsev, a massive offensive by ten armies toward Belgorod and Kharkov. Spearheaded by the 1st and 5th Guards Tank Armies and soon reinforced by three additional armies, for the first time in the war the advancing forces defeated counterattacks by German operational reserves, and captured Kharkov on August 23.
The defeat of Hitler’s last summer offensive at Kursk marked the beginning of the Red Army sumKURSK SUBMARINE DISASTER mer-fall campaign, which by late September collapsed the entire German front from Velikie Luki to the Black Sea and propelled Red Army forces forward to the Dnieper River. After Kursk the only unresolved questions regarded the duration and final cost of Red Army victory. See also: WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
