Gleason, Abott. (1972). European and Muscovite: Ivan Kireevsky and the Origins of Slavophilism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Koyr?, Alexandre. (1929). La philosophie et le probl?me national en Russie au d?but du XIXe si?cle. Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honor? Champion.
Broadsides or broadsheet prints (pl. lubki).
Broadsides first appeared in Russia in the seventeenth century, probably inspired by German woodcuts. Subjects were depicted in a native style. Captions complemented the printed images. The earliest lubki represented saints and other religious figures, but humorous illustrations also circulated that captured the parody spirit of skomorok (minstrel) performances of the era-especially the wacky wordplay of the theatrical entr’actes.
In the 1760s prints began to be made from metal plates, facilitating production of longer texts. Lithographic stone supplanted copper plates, but in turn gave way to cheaper and lighter zinc plates in the second half of the nineteenth century. Pedlars bought the pictures in bulk at fairs or in Moscow and sold them in the countryside. Originally acquired by nobles, the images were taken up by the merchantry, officials, and tradesmen before becoming the province of the peasantry in the nineteenth century, at which point lubok, in its adjectival form, came to mean “shoddy.” It was also in the nineteenth century that the term came to refer to cheap printed booklets aimed at popular audiences.
Lubki depicted historical figures, characters from folklore, contemporary members of the ruling family, festival pastimes, battle scenes, judicial punishments, and hunting and other aspects of everyday life, along with religious subjects. The prints decorated peasant huts, taverns, and the in-sides of lids of trunks used by peasants when they moved to cities or factories to work. The native style of the prints was adapted by Old Believers in the nineteenth century in their manuscript printing. Avant-garde artists in the early twentieth century drew inspiration from the style in their neo-primitivist phase. An “Exhibition of Icons and Lubki” was held in Moscow in 1913. See also: CHAPBOOK LITERATURE; OLD BELIEVERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowlt, John E. (1998). “Art.” In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Literature, ed. Nicholas Rzhevsky. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Brooks, Jeffrey. (1985). When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Farrell, Dianne E. (1991). “Medieval Popular Humor in Russian Eighteenth Century Lubki.” Slavic Review 50:551-565.
The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission on the Struggle Against Counter-Revolution, Sabotage, and Speculation (VCHk, or Cheka) was founded by the Bolsheviks in December 1917. Headed by Felix Dz-erzhinsky, it was responsible for liquidating counterrevolutionary elements and remanding saboteurs and counter-revolutionaries to be tried by the revolutionary-military tribunal. In February 1918 it was authorized to shoot active enemies of the revolution rather than turn them over to the tribunal.
In March 1918 the Cheka established its headquarters in the buildings at 11 and 13 Great Lub-yanka Street in Moscow. Between the 1930s and the beginning of the 1980s, a complex of buildings belonging to the security establishment grew up along Great Lubyanka Street. The building at No. 20 was constructed in 1982 as the headquarters of the KGB (Committee of State Security), now the FSB (Federal Security Bureau), for Moscow and the Moscow area. The famous Lubyanka Internal Prison was situated in the courtyard of what is now the main building of the FSB on Lubyanka Street. Closed in the 1960s, it is at present the site of a dining room, offices, and a warehouse. All its prisoners were transferred to Lefortovo. In the time of mass reprisals, prisoners were regularly shot in the courtyard of the Lubyanka Prison. Automobile engines were run to drown out the noise. Suspects were brutally interrogated in the prison’s basement.
In addition to the FSB headquarters, the buildings on Lubyanka Street also include a museum of the history of the state security agencies. The office of Lavrenty Beria, long-time chief of the Soviet security apparatus, has been kept unchanged and is open to visitors. See also: BERIA, LAVRENTI PAVLOVICH; DZERZHINSKY, FELIX EDMUNDOVICH; GULAG; LEFORTOVO; MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR; PRISONS; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF
A statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky-the first head of the Soviet secret police-looms over Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Following the failed August 1991 coup attempt by Communist Party hard-liners, this statue was torn down. © NOVOSTI/SOVFOTO
LUKASHENKO, ALEXANDER GRIGORIEVICH
Burch, James. (1983). Lubyanka: A Novel. New York: Atheneum.
(b. 1954), president of Belarus.
Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko became president of Belarus on July 10, 1994, when he defeated Prime Minister Vyachaslav Kebich in the country’s first presidential election, running on a platform of anti-corruption and closer relations with Russia. He established a harsh dictatorship as president, amending the constitution to consolidate his authority.
Lukashenko was born in August 1954 in the village of Kopys (Orshanske Rayon, Vitebsk Oblast), but most of his early career was spent in Mahileu region, where he graduated from the Mahileu Teaching Institute (his speciality was history) and the Belarusian Agricultural Academy. From 1975 to 1977, he was a border guard in the Brest area. He then spent five years in the army before returning to Mahileu, and the town of Shklau, where he worked as manager of state and collective farms, and also in a construction materials combine. He was elected to the Belarusian Supreme Soviet in 1990, where he founded a faction called Communists for Democracy. In the early 1990s he chaired a commission investigating corruption.
In April 1995, several months into his presidency, Lukashenko organized a referendum that replaced the country’s state symbols and national flag with others very similar to the Soviet ones and elevated Russian to a state language. A second referendum in November 1996 considerably enhanced the authority of the presidency by reducing the parliament to a rump body of 120 seats (formerly there were 260 deputies), establishing an upper house closely attached to the presidency, and curtailing the authority of the Constitutional Court. Lukashenko then dated his presidency from late 1996 rather than the original election date of July 1994.
By April 1995, Lukashenko had established a community relationship with Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, which went through several stages before being formalized as a Union state in late 1999. Under Vladimir Putin, however, Russia distanced itself from the agreement and in the summer of 2002 threatened to incorporate Belarus into the Russian Federation.
Lukashenko clamped down on opposition movements and imposed tight censorship over the media. His contraventions of human rights in the republic have elicited international concern. See also: BELARUS AND BELARUSIANS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Marples, David R. (1999). Belarus: A Denationalized Nation. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. Zaprudnik, Jan. (1995). Belarus: At a Crossroads in History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
(b. 1930), chair of the USSR Supreme Soviet during the August 1991 coup attempt.
Anatoly Lukyanov studied law at Moscow State University, graduating in 1953. While at the university, he chaired the University Komsomol branch, and Mikhail Gorbachev was deputy chair. Lukyanov joined the Party in 1955 and began a career within the Party apparatus. He was appointed to the Central Committee Secretariat in 1987. By 1988, Lukyanov was named a candidate member of the Politburo and first deputy chair of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
