were permitted to enroll in the preparatory division, where, in addition to various subjects taught in Russian, they also studied their native tongues. The Russian conquest of Daghestan and plans to expand further into Central Asia made the Lazarev Institute even more necessary. In 1872, following the Three-Emperors’ League, Russia was once again free to pursue an aggressive policy involving the Eastern Question. The State divided the institution into two educational sections. The first served as a gymnasium, while the second devoted itself to a three-year course in the languages (Armenian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Georgian), history, and culture of Transcaucasia.
The Lazarev Institute had its own printing press and, beginning in 1833, published important works in thirteen languages. It also published two journals, Papers in Oriental Studies (1899-1917) and the Emin Ethnographical Anthology (six issues). Its library had some forty thousand books in 1913.
Following the Bolshevik Revolution, on March 14, 1919, the Council of the People’s Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) renamed the Institute the Armenian Institute and, soon after, the Southwest Asian Institute. In 1920 it was renamed the Central Institute of Living Oriental Languages. A year later it was renamed the Moscow Oriental Institute. In October 1921, a section of the Institute was administered by Soviet Armenia and became a showcase devoted to Armenian workers and peasants. By the 1930s the Institute lost its students to the more prestigious foreign language divisions in Moscow and Leningrad. Its library collection was transferred to the Lenin Library of Moscow. In the last four decades of the USSR, the building of the Institute was home to the permanent delegation of Soviet Armenia to the Supreme Soviet. Following the demise of the USSR, the building of the Institute became the Armenian embassy in Russia. See also: ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; EDUCATION; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
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Bournoutian, George. (1998). Russia and the Armenians of Transcaucasia, 1797-1889: A Documentary Record. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press. Bournoutian, George. (2001). Armenians and Russia, 1626-1796: A Documentary Record. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Press.
See OSORINA, YULIANYA USTINOVNA.
Already annoyed by American privateer interference with Anglo-Russian maritime trade in the 1770s, Catherine the Great was even more frustrated by British countermeasures that intercepted and confiscated neutral shipping suspected of aiding the rebellious American colonies. In March 1780 she issued a Declaration of Armed Neutrality that became the basic doctrine of maritime law regarding neutral rights at sea during war. It defined, simply and clearly, the rights of neutral vessels, contraband (goods directly supportive of a military program), and the conditions and restrictions of an embargo, and overall defended the rights of neutrals (the flag covers the cargo) against seizure and condemnation of nonmilitary goods. Having already established herself in the forefront of enlightened rulers, Catherine invited the other nations of Europe to join Russia in arming merchant vessels against American or British transgression of these rights. Because of the crippling of American commerce, most of the infractions were by the British.
Coming at this stage in the War for Independence, the Russian declaration boosted American morale and inspired the Continental Congress to dispatch Francis Dana to St. Petersburg to secure more formal recognition and support. Although Russia had little in the way of naval power to back up the declaration, it encouraged France and other countries to aid the American cause. Britain reluctantly stood by while a few French and Dutch ships under the Russian flag entered American ports, bringing valuable supplies to the hard-pressed colonies. Even more supplies entered the United States via the West Indies with the help of a Russian adventurer, Fyodor Karzhavin. The military effect was minimal, however, because the neutral European states hesitated about making commitments because of fear of British retaliation. By 1781, however, the United Provinces (the Netherlands), Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and Prussia had all joined the league.
The league was remembered in the United States, somewhat erroneously, as a mark of Russian friendship and sympathy, and bolstered Anglophobia in the two countries. More generally, it affirmed a cardinal principle of maritime law that continues in effect in the early twenty-first century. Indirectly, it also led to a considerable expansion of Russian-American trade from the 1780s through the first half of the nineteenth century. See also: CATHERINE II; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolkhovitinov, Nikolai N. (1975). The Beginnings of Russian-American Relations, 1775-1815. New Haven: Yale University Press. Madariaga, Isabel de. (1963).Britain, Russia and the Armed Neutrality of 1780. London: Macmillan. Saul, Norman E. (1991). Distant Friends: The United States and Russia, 1763-1867. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Formed by the victorious powers in 1919, the League of Nations was designed to enforce the Treaty of Versailles and the other peace agreements that concluded World War I. It was intended to replace secret deals and war, as means for settling international disputes, with open diplomacy and peaceful mediation. Its charter also provided a mechanism for its members to take collective action against aggression.
Soviet Russia and Weimar Germany initially were not members of the League. At the time of the League’s founding, the Western powers had invaded Russia in support of the anticommunist side in the Russian civil war. The Bolshevik regime was hostile to the League, denouncing it as an anti-Soviet, counterrevolutionary conspiracy of the imperialist powers. Throughout the 1920s, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs Georgy Chicherin aligned the USSR with Weimar Germany, the other outcast power, against Britain, France, and the
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League. German adherence to the Locarno Accords with Britain and France in 1925, and Germany’s admission to the League in 1926, dealt a blow to Chicherin’s policy. This Germanophile, Anglo-phobe, anti-League view was not shared by Deputy Commissar of Foreign Affairs Maxim Litvinov, who advocated a more balanced policy, including cooperation with the League. Moreover, the USSR participated in the Genoa Conference in 1922 and several League-sponsored economic and arms control forums later in the decade.
Chicherin’s retirement because of ill health, his replacement as foreign commissar by Litvinov, and, most importantly, the rise to power of Adolf Hitler in Germany served to reorient Moscow’s policy. The Third Reich now replaced the British Empire as the main potential enemy in Soviet thinking. In December 1933 the Politburo adopted the new Collective Security line in foreign policy, whereby the USSR sought to build an alliance of anti-Nazi powers to prevent or, if necessary, defeat German aggression. An important part of this strategy was the attempt to revive the collective security mechanism of the League. To this end, the Soviet Union joined the League in 1934, and Litvinov became the most eloquent proponent of League sanctions against German aggression. Soviet leaders also hoped that League membership would afford Russia some protection against Japanese expansionism in the Far East. Unfortunately, the League had already failed to take meaningful action against Japanese aggression in Manchuria in 1931, and it later failed to act against the Italian attack on Ethiopia in 1935. Soviet collective security policy in the League and in bilateral diplomacy faltered against the resolution of Britain and France to appease Hitler.
When Stalin could not persuade the Western powers to ally with the USSR, even in the wake of the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, he abandoned the collective security line and signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler on August 23, 1939. Subsequent Soviet territorial demands on Finland led to the Winter War of 1939-1940 and to the expulsion of the USSR from the League as an aggressor. However, Hitler’s attack on Russia in 1941 accomplished what Litvinov’s diplomacy could not, creating an alliance with Britain and the United States. The USSR thus became in 1945 a founding member of the United Nations, the organization that replaced the League of Nations after World War II. See also: CHICHERIN, GEORGY VASILIEVICH; LITVINOV, MAXIM MAXIMOVICH; NAZI-SOVIET PACT OF 1939; UNITED NATIONS; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
