influence although the highest position he held was Acting Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs from 1859 to 1861 -“acting” because Alexander II supposed that he was a radical. He was dismissed as deputy minister as soon as the peasant reform of 1861 was safely enacted.
In the distinctive political culture of autocratic Russia, Milyutin demonstrated consummate skill and cunning as a politician. None of the core concepts of the legislation of 1861 was his handiwork. He was, however, able to persuade influential persons with access to the emperor, such as the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna, to adopt and promote these concepts. He was able, in a series of memoranda written for the Minister of Internal Affairs Sergei Lanskoy, to persuade the emperor to turn away from his confidants who opposed the emerging reform and to exclude the elected representatives of the nobility from the legislative process. And, as chairman of the Economic Section of the Editorial Commission, a body with ostensibly ancillary functions, he was able to mobilize a fractious group of functionaries and “experts” and lead them in compiling the legislation enacted in 1861.
Almost simultaneously he served as chairman of the Commission on Provincial and District Institutions. In that capacity he drafted the legislation establishing the zemstvo, an institution which enabled elected representatives to play a role in local affairs, such as education and public health. The reform was also significant because the regime abandoned the principle of soslovnost, or status based on membership in one of the hereditary estates of the realm, which had been the lodestone of government policy for centuries. To be sure, the landed nobility, yesterday’s serfholders, were guaranteed a predominant role, since there were property qualifications for the bodies that elected zemstvo delegates.
Concerning the “western region” (Eastern Poland), Milyutin rewrote the legislation of February 19 so that ex-serfs received their allotments of land gratis and landless peasants were awarded land, often land expropriated from the Catholic Church. He wished to bind the peasants, largely Orthodox Christians, to the regime and detach them from the Roman Catholic nobles, who had risen in arms against it.
Milyutin was well aware of the shortcomings of the reform legislation he produced. He counted on the autocracy to continue its reform course and eliminate these shortcomings. His expectations were not realized. It is the paradox and perhaps the tragedy of Milyutin that, despite his reputation as a “liberal,” he saw the autocracy as the essential instrument to produce a prosperous, modern, and law-governed Russia. See also: EMANCIPATION ACT; MILYUTIN, DMITRY ALEX-EYEVICH; PEASANTRY; SERFDOM; ZEMSTVO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Field, Daniel. (1976). The End of Serfdom: Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia, 1856-1861. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1982). In the Vanguard of Reform: Russia’s Enlightened Bureaucrats, 1825-1861. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. Zakharova, Larissa. (1994). “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861-1874 in Russia.” In Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855-1881, eds. B. Eklof, J. Bushnell, and L. G. Za-kharova. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mingrelians call themselves Margali (plural Mar-galepi) and are Georgian Orthodox. Mingrelian (like Georgian, Svan, and Laz) is a South Caucasian (Kartvelian) language; only Mingrelian and Laz, jointly known as Zan, are mutually intelligible.
The ancient Zan continuum along the Black Sea’s eastern coast from Abkhazia to Rize was broken by Georgian speakers fleeing the Arab emirate (655-1122) in Georgia’s modern capital Tiflis, so that Georgian-speaking provinces (Guria and Ajaria) now divide Mingrelia (western Georgian lowlands bounded by Abkhazia, Svanetia, Lechkhumi, Imere-tia, Guria, and the Black Sea) from Lazistan (northeastern Turkey). The Dadianis ruled post- Mongol Mingrelia (capital Zugdidi), which came under Russian protection in 1803, although internal affairs remained in local hands until 1857. Traditional home economy resembled that of neighboring Abkhazia.
A late-nineteenth-century attempt to introduce a Mingrelian prayer book and language primer using Cyrillic characters failed; it was interpreted as a move to undermine the Georgian national movement’s goal of consolidating all Kartvelian speakers. In the 1926 Soviet census, 242,990 declared Min-grelian nationality, a further 40,000 claiming Min-grelian as their mother tongue. This possibility (and thus these data) subsequently disappeared; since around 1930, all Kartvelian speakers have officially been categorized as “Georgians.” Today Mingrelians may number over one million, though fewer speak Mingrelian. Some publishing in Mingrelian (with Georgian characters), especially of regional newspapers and journals, was promoted by the leading local politician, Ishak Zhvania (subsequently denounced as a separatist), from the late 1920s to 1938, after which only Georgian, the language in which most Mingrelians are educated, was allowed (occasional scholarly works apart). While some Mingrelian publishing has restarted since Georgian independence, Mingrelian has never been formally taught. Stalin’s police chief, Lavrenti Beria, and Georgia’s first post-Soviet president, Zviad Gamsakhur-dia, were Mingrelians. The civil war that followed Gamsakhurdia’s overthrow (1992) mostly affected Mingrelia, where Zviadist sympathizers were concentrated; even after Gamsakhurdia’s death (1993), local discontent with the central authorities fostered at least two attempted coups, reinforcing longstanding Georgian fears of separatism in the area. See also: ABKHAZIANS; CAUCASUS; GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS; SVANS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hewitt, George. (1995). “Yet a third consideration of V?lker, Sprachen und Kulturen des s?dlichen Kaukasus.” Central Asian Survey 14(2):285- 310.
(d. 1616), organizer, fundraiser, and treasurer of the second national liberation army of 1611-1612.
Kuzma Minin was elected as an elder of the townspeople of Nizhny Novgorod in September 1611, when Moscow was still occupied by the Poles. After the disintegration of the first national liberation army, Minin began to raise funds for the organization of a new militia. Its nucleus was provided by the garrison of Nizhny Novgorod and neighboring Volga towns, together with some refugee servicemen from the Smolensk region. At the request of Prince Dmitry Pozharsky, the military commander of the new army, Minin became its official treasurer. When the militia was based at Yaroslavl, in the spring of 1612, Minin was an important member of the provisional government headed by Pozharsky. After the liberation of Moscow in October 1612, Minin, together with Pozharsky and Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy, played a major role in convening the Assembly of the Land, which elected Mikhail Romanov tsar in January 1613. On the day after Mikhail’s coronation, Minin was appointed to the rank of dumny dvoryanin within the council of bo-yars; he died shortly afterwards. Along with Pozharsky, Minin became a Russian national hero who served as a patriotic inspiration in later wars. In early Soviet historiography, his merchant status led him to be viewed as a representative of bourgeois reaction against revolutionary democratic elements such as cossacks and peasants. By the late 1930s he was again seen as a patriot, and his relatively humble social origin made him particularly acceptable as a popular hero during World War II. See also: ASSEMBLY OF LAND; POZHARSKY, DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH; TIME OF TROUBLES; COSSACKS; MERCHANTS; PEASANTRY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunning, Chester L. (2001). Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Perrie, Maureen. (2002). Pretenders and Popular Monar-chism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles, paperback ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Skrynnikov, Ruslan G. (1988). The Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604-1618, ed. and tr. Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
The industrial ministries of the Soviet Union were intermediate bodies that dealt directly with production enterprises. They played a key role in resource allocation and were directly responsible for the implementation of state industrial policy as developed and adopted by the Communist Party. In fact, ministers had two lines of responsibilities: one to the Council of Ministers, and the other, more important in the long run, to the Party’s Central Committee. The most important ministers were members of Politburo. The ministries negotiated output targets and input limits with Gosplan, which was responsible for fulfilling the directives of the party and the Council of
