in 1670. Between 1670 and 1683, they worked as preachers and teachers in Kephallenia and in Greek communities of the Ottoman Empire. In 1683 they reached Constantinople, where they preached in the Patriarchal court. Following a Russian request for teachers, they arLEIPZIG, BATTLE OF rived in Moscow in 1685. There they established the first formal educational institution in Russian history, the Slavo-Greco-Latin Academy, and participated in a heated debate known as the Eucharist conflict, principally against Sylvester Medvedev. They taught in the Academy until 1694, when they were removed for attempted flight after a scandal involving one of their relatives. After a brief stint as translators in the Muscovite Printing Office and as tutors of Italian, they were accused of heresy by one of their former students. Between 1698 and 1706, they were transferred to various monasteries, both in Moscow and in other towns, where they continued their authorial activities. In 1706 they were sent to Novgorod and established a school under the supervision of Metropolitan Iov. In 1707 Sophronios was recalled to Moscow to work in a Greek school there. Ioannikios taught in Novgorod until 1716, when he joined his brother in Moscow. After his brother’s death, Sophronios continued his teaching activities until 1723, when he became archimandrite of the Solotsinsky monastery in Ryazan until his death. The two brothers authored or coauthored many polemical (anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant), philosophical, and theological works, sermons, panegyrics, orations, and, most important, textbooks for their students. A large part of these textbooks were adaptations of those used in Jesuit colleges. Through their educational activities, the Leichoudes, though Orthodox, imparted to their students the Jesuit interpretation of Aristotelian philosophy, and the Baroque culture of contemporary Europe. As such, they contributed to the Russian elite’s westernization and its preparedness to accept Peter the Great’s own westernizing reforms. See also: ORTHODOXY; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; SLAVO-GRECO-LATIN ACADEMY; WESTERNIZERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chrissidis, Nikolaos A. (2000). “Creating the New Educated Elite: Learning and Faith in Moscow’s Slavo- Greco-Latin Academy, 1685-1694.” Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, New Haven, CT.
against Napoleon’s army from October 16 to 19, 1813.
Napoleon’s army (approximately 200,000 troops, 747 field guns), concentrated near Leipzig, faced four allied armies, totaling 305,000 troops- 125,000 of them Russian, 90,000 Austrian, 72,000 Prussians, 18,000 Swedes-and 1,385 field guns. The battle took place on a plain near Leipzig on October 16, mainly on the grounds of the Bohemian army (133,000 men, commanded by the Austrian field marshal Karl Schwarzenberg), which approached the city from the south. Napoleon tried to defeat the coalition armies one by one. He concentrated 122,000 men against the Bohemian army, and 50,000 under the command of marshal Michel Ney against the Silesian army (60,000 men, commanded by the Prussian general Gebhardt Bl?cher), attacking from the north.
The opposing sides’ positions did not suffer much change by the end of the day. Casualties turned out to be relatively even (30,000 each), but the allies’ casualties were compensated with the arrival of the North army (58,000 men, commanded by Karl-Juhan Bernadotte) and the Polish army (54,000 men, commanded by Russian general Leonty Bennigsen) on October 17. Meanwhile, Napoleon’s army received a mere 25,000 men as a reinforcement.
On the morning of October 18, the allies attacked Napoleon’s positions. As a result of a fierce battle, they gained no significant territorial advantage. The allies, however, sent only 200,000 men to battle, while 100,000 more were kept in reserve. The French, meanwhile, had nearly exhausted their ammunition. On the night of October 18, Napoleon’s armies were drawn back to Leipzig, and began their retreat in the morning. In the middle of the day on October 19, the allies entered Leipzig.
Napoleon’s losses at Leipzig amounted to 100,000 men killed, wounded, and taken captive, and 325 field guns. The allies lost approximately 80,000 men, of them 38,000 Russians. The allied victory at Leipzig led to the cleansing of the territories of Germany and Holland of Napoleon’s forces. See also: NAPOLEON I
LEIPZIG, BATTLE OF
The “Battle of Nations” near Leipzig between allied Russian, Prussian, Austrian, and Swedish armies
Nafziger, George F. (1996). Napoleon at Leipzig: the Battle of Nations, 1813. Chicago, IL: Emperor’s Press.
Smith, Digby George. (2001). 1813, Leipzig: Napoleon and the Battle of the Nations. London: Greenhill Books; Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books.
The Lena Goldfields Massacre of April 4, 1912, shook Russian society and rekindled the revolutionary and workers’ movements after the post-1905 repression. The shooting occurred during a strike at the gold fields on the upper branches of the Lena River to the northeast of Lake Baikal. The Lena Goldfields Company, owned by prominent Russian and British investors, had recently established a monopoly of the region’s mines, which produced most of Russia’s gold. Individuals of the highest government rank held managerial positions in the company. The fact that Russia’s currency was on the gold standard further enhanced the company’s significance. Especially after the joint shocks of the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution of 1905, the ruble’s health in association with renewed economic expansion vitally concerned the imperial government. When the strike broke out during late February 1912 in protest of generally poor conditions, the government and company officials in St. Petersburg naturally wished to limit the strike. These hopes were frustrated by a group of employees and workers, political exiles with past socialist and strike experience, who provided careful advice to the strikers. Consequently, the workers avoided overstepping the boundaries of legal strike activity. Company officials refused to meet the main strike demands, including a shorter workday and higher pay. Workers, whose patience had been tried by repeated company violations of the work contract and existing labor laws, as confirmed by the chief mining inspector and the governor of Irkutsk province, refused to end the strike without real concessions.
Working closely with company officials, the government sent a company of soldiers to join the small contingent already on duty near the mines and finally, after all negotiations failed, decided to break the five-week impasse by arresting the strike leaders. This ill-advised action carried out on April 3 only strengthened the workers’ resolve. On April 4, a large crowd of unarmed miners headed for the administration building to petition for the release of the leaders. Alarmed by the sudden appearance of four thousand workers, police and army officers ordered the soldiers to open fire. Roughly five hundred workers were shot, about half mortally. Subsequently, the official government investigative commission under Senator Sergei Manukhin blamed the company and high government officials both for the conditions that underlay the strike and for the shooting.
The shooting unleashed a firestorm of protest against the government and the company, including in the press and in the State Duma. Especially damaging were accusations of collusion between state and company officials aimed at using force to end the peaceful strike. Even groups normally supportive of the government levied a barrage of criticism. On a scale not seen since 1905, strikes broke out all over Russia and did not cease until the outbreak of World War I. The revolutionary parties also swung into action with leaflets and demonstrations. The oppositionist movement found its cause inadvertently aided when Minister of the Interior Nikolai Makarov asserted to the State Duma about the shooting: “Thus it has always been and thus it will always be.” This phrase, which caused an additional firestorm of protest, seemed to symbolize the government’s stance toward laboring Russia. Spurred by the shooting and the government’s attitude, revolutionary activities again plagued the tsarist regime, now permanently stamped as perpetrator of the Lena Goldfields Massacre. See also: OCTOBER REVOLUTION; REVOLUTION OF 1905; WORKERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Melancon, Michael. (1993). “The Ninth Circle: The Lena Goldfield Workers and the Massacre of 4 April 1912.” Slavic Review 53(3):766-795. Melancon, Michael. (2002). “Unexpected Consensus: Russian Society and the Lena Massacre, April 1912.” Revolutionary Russia 15(2):1-52.
Lend-lease was a system of U.S. assistance to the Allies in World War II. It was based on a bill of March, 11,
