BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hakobian, Levon. (1998). Music of the Soviet Age, 1917-1987. Stockholm: Melos Music Literature. Maes, Francis. (2002). A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schwarz, Boris. (1983). Music and Musical Life in the Soviet Union, 1917-1981. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Starr, S. Frederick. (1994). Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1991. New York: Limelight Ed. Stites, Richard. (1992). Russian Popular Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Taruskin, Richard. (1997). Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
MUSKETEERS See STRELTSY.
On March 20, 1915, the Russian Army Headquarters announced the execution of Sergei A. Myasoe-dov, a gendarme officer, for espionage only days after his arrest and hasty conviction by military court. The event was a major scandal in the press and is significant for a number of reasons. First, it occurred in the midst of a series of Russian losses on the German section of the front, losses that marked the beginning of what would become known as the Russian Great Retreat that led Russia out of all the Polish provinces and parts of what are now Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Myasoedov, who had plenty of enemies in the army command, security services, and elsewhere, was likely set up as a convenient scapegoat for the extensive Russian losses at the front. After his execution, a wave of arrests targeted anyone who had been associated with him.
If the execution was meant to calm public opinion, it probably had the opposite effect. A series of raids, arrests, and deportations led by the unofficial head of the domestic military counterintelligence service, Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch Bruyevich, and especially the hysterical accusations of spying that the Army Chief of Staff Nikolai Yanushkevich leveled against Jews, Germans, and foreigners in the front zones added to what became a wave of popular spy mania that became a constant and important feature of domestic politics for the rest of the war.
Only two months after the arrest of Myasoe-dov, Moscow erupted into one of the largest riots in Russian history-directed against Germans and foreigners. The scandal also undermined the position of the minister of war, Vladimir A. Sukhom-linov, who had been a close associate of Myasoedov. In fact, the entire episode may also have been part of political intrigues to try to undermine Sukhom-linov, who was forced to resign in June 1915 under a cloud of rumors of his own treasonous acts. Perhaps most importantly, the scandal lent credence to rumors of treason among members of the Russian elite. Such rumors continued to grow through the rest of the war, and came to center on the empress Alexandra, Rasputin, and various individuals with German names in the Russian court, government, and army command. These rumors did a great deal to undermine respect for the monarchy and contributed to the idea that the monarchy stood in the way of an effective war effort-in short, that it would be a patriotic act to overthrow the monarchy. See also: FEBRUARY REVOLUTION; OCTOBER REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Katkov, George. (1967). Russia, 1917: The February Revolution. London: Longman.
A mountainous region at the eastern end of the Armenian plateau in the south Caucasus and originally part of the Artsakh province of historic Armenia, the Nagorno-Karabakh (“Mountainous Karabakh”) region kept its autonomy following the loss of Armenian statehood in the eleventh century. Its right to self-government was formally recognized from 1603 onward by the Persian shahs, giving it a special place in Armenian history.
Nagorno-Karabakh was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1806, following the first Russo-Persian war. While this meant the dissolution of the region’s autonomy, Russia was able to portray itself as the savior of Christians in the region, facilitating Russia’s full occupation of the eastern Transcaucasus by 1828.
During the tsarist era, Nagorno-Karabakh was made part of the Elisavetbol province, which included the plains of Karabakh to the east, linking the region to the economy as well as history of the Azeri population and giving it a special place in the development of modern Azerbaijani culture. Following the withdrawal of Russian troops from the southern Caucasus during World War I and the proclamation of independence by Azerbaijan and Armenia in 1918, the two republics fought over the region, which was then considered a disputed territory by the League of Nations. Great Britain, briefly in charge of the region following the defeat of Turkey, facilitated its incorporation in Azerbaijan. Following the Sovietization of the two republics, Nagorno-Karabakh was made part of Azerbaijan as the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh (NKAO, 4,800 square kilometers), despite the wishes of its majority Armenian population.
While the NKAO enjoyed relative stability until 1988-the Soviets placed an army base in Stepanakert, the capital of the region-there were intermittent protests by Armenians against Azerbaijani policies of cultural, economic, and ethnic discrimination. Armenians continued to consider the inclusion of the region in Azerbaijan as an unjust concession to Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijanis considered the special status an unfair concession to Armenians.
According to the last Soviet census taken in 1989, NKAO had a population of 182,000, of which 140,000 were Armenian and 40,000 Azeris.
In 1988, following glasnost and perestroika, Soviet Armenians joined NKAO Armenians in de989
NAGRODSKAYA, EVDOKIA APOLLONOVNA
manding the unification of the region with Armenia, leading to pogroms against Armenians in Azerbaijan and the expulsion of about 170,000 Azeris from Armenia and of 300,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan in 1989 and 1990. Following the declaration of independence of Azerbaijan from the USSR in 1991, NKAO declared its own independence from Azerbaijan, while Azerbaijan dissolved the autonomous status of the region. The Azerbaijani decision in 1991 to use military means and blockades to force the region into submission led to a war from 1992 to 1994 that ultimately involved Armenia. Azerbaijan lost the NKAO as well as seven Azeri-populated provinces around the region. The conflict created close to 400,000 Armenian and 700,000 Azeri refugees and internally displaced persons, including those evicted from their homes in both republics.
A cease-fire mediated in 1994 has been maintained since. But negotiations, including those conducted by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, have failed to resolve the problem of the future status of the region. Russia, suspected by Azerbaijanis as the party responsible for the conflict and the lack of progress in its resolution, has been involved in the negotiations both as a major regional actor and as a member and subsequently co-chair of the Minsk Group. See also: ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coppetiers, Bruno, ed. (1996). Contested Borders in the Caucasus. Brussels: VUB Press. Cornell, Svante. (2001). Small Nations and Great Powers. Surrey, UK: Curzon. Croissant, Michael P. (1998). The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict. Westport, CT: Praeger. Hunter, Shireen. (1994). The Transcaucasus in Transition: Nation-Building and Conflict. Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies.
(1866-1930), fiction writer.
Evdokia Apollonovna Nagrodskaya was a remarkably candid and avant-garde fiction writer in turn-of-the- century Russia. She was the daughter of Avdotia Yakovlevna Panayeva (1819-1893), a journalist, prominent salon hostess, and mistress of the poet Nikolai Alexeyevich Nekrasov (1821-1877), a coworker of Evdokia’s father, Apol- lon Golovachev, who worked for the “thick journal” Sovremennik. Thus raised in an intellectual environment, Nagrodskaya wrote poetry and several novels, including The White Colonnade (Belaya Kolonnada) in 1900, The Bronze Door (Bronzovaya dver) in 1911, Evil Spirits (Zlye dukhi) in 1916, and The River of Times (Reka vremen) in 1924.
Nagrodskaya is best known, however, for her novel The Wrath of Dionysus (Gnev Dionisa), which became a
