George to Vice Admiral L. P. Geiden, the commander of the Russian squadron, and promoted Lazarev to rear admiral. The Azov was granted the Ensign of St. George, which in accordance with tradition would be handed down, over the generations, to other vessels bearing the same name. The Russian squadron recovered from the battle and repaired its ships at Malta. During the Russo-Turkish War of
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1828 to 1829, Geiden took command of Rear Admiral Peter Rikord’s squadron from Kronstadt. The Russian fleet now numbered eight ships of the line, seven frigates, one corvette, and six brigs. Geiden and Rikord blockaded the Dardanelles and impeded Ottoman-Egyptian operations against the Greeks. After the war’s end, Geiden’s squadron returned to the Baltic. See also: GREECE, RELATIONS WITH; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS
Anderson, Roger Charles (1952). Naval Wars in the Levant, 1559-1853. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Daly, John C. K. (1991). Russian Seapower and the “Eastern Question,” 1827-1841. London: Macmillan. Daly, Robert Welter. (1959). “Russia’s Maritime Past.” In The Soviet Navy, ed. Malcolm G. Saunders. London: Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson. Woodhouse, Christopher Montague. (1965). The Battle of Navarino. London: Hoddler amp; Stoughton.
NAVY See BALTIC FLEET; BLACK SEA FLEET; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST- SOVIET; NORTHERN FLEET; PACIFIC FLEET. Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of independent Kazakhstan.
HULTON/ARCHIVE. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
(b. 1940), Communist Party, Soviet, and Kazakh government official.
Born into a rural family of the Kazakh Large Horde in the Alma-Ata region, Nursultan Abishe-vich Nazarbaev finished technical school in 1960, attended a higher technical school from 1964 to 1967, and married Sara Alpysovna, an agronomist-economist. He joined the Communist Party (CPSU) in 1962, began working in both the Temirtau City Soviet and Party Committee in 1969, and advanced rapidly thereafter. In 1976 he graduated from the external program of the CPSU Central Committee’s Higher Party School, and from 1977 to 1979 he led the Party’s Karaganda Committee. Nazabayev’s abilities as a “pragmatic technocrat,” and the support of such patrons as the Kazakh Party’s powerful first secretary Dinmukhammed Kunayev and Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov and Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov in Moscow ensured his election as a secretary of the Kazakh Central Committee in 1979, to the Soviet Party’s Central Auditing Commission from 1981 to 1986, to chairmanship of the Kazakh SSR’s Council of Ministers in 1984, and to the CPSU Central Committee in March 1986.
In the riots following Kunaev’s ouster in December 1986, Nazarbayev sought to control student demonstrators. Rather than harming his career, his stance won him considerable support among Kazakh nationalists, and loyalty to Mikhail Gorbachev ensured his place on the Soviet Central Committee. Elected to the new Congress of People’s Deputies, he quickly became the Kazakh Party’s first secretary when ethnic riots again broke out in June 1989. From February 1990 he also was chairman of the Kazakh Supreme Soviet, which elected him the Kazakh SSR’s president in April. He joined the Soviet Politburo in that July but, after briefly temporizing during the August 1991 putsch, left the Soviet Party the following September. He presided over the Kazakh Party’s dissolution in Oc1028
NAZI-SOVIET PACT OF 1939
tober, and then won a massive electoral victory on December 1, 1991. As president, Nazarbaev oversaw formation of an independent Republic of Kazakhstan and its entry into the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Despite deep ethnic, religious, and linguistic divisions; continuing economic crisis; Russian neglect; and bitter political disputes within the elite, he maintained Kazakhstan’s unity and position within the CIS. To this end he replaced the parliament with a People’s Assembly in 1995, and a referendum extended his term until 2000. Surprising the opposition by calling new elections, Nazarbaev became virtual president-for-life in January 1999 and, with his family dynasty, dominates a powerful cabinet regime that often constrains, but has not abolished, Kazakh civil liberties. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET
Bremmer, Ian, and Taras, Ray. (1997). New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Olcott, Martha Brill. (1995). The Kazakhs, 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution. Olcott, Martha Brill. (2000). Kazakhstan: Unfilled Promise. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Morozov, Vladimir, ed. (1995). Who’s Who in Russia and the CIS Republics. New York: Henry Holt.
DAVID R. JONES
The Nazi-Soviet Pact is the name given to the Treaty of Non-Aggression signed by Ribbentrop for Germany and Molotov for the USSR on August 23, 1939.
In August 1939, following the failure of attempts to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain and France for mutual assistance and military support to protect the USSR from an invasion by Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union abandoned its attempts to achieve collective security agreements, which was the basis of Maxim Maximovich Litvinov’s foreign policy during the 1930s. Instead, Soviet leaders sought an accommodation with Germany. For German politicians, the dismissal of Litvinov and the appointment of Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov as commissar for foreign affairs on May 3, 1939, was a signal that the USSR was seeking a rapprochement. The traditional interpretation that Molotov was pro-German, and that his appointment was a direct preparation for the pact, has been called into question. It seems more likely that in appointing Molotov, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was prepared to seize any opportunity that presented itself to improve Soviet security.
Diplomatic contact with Germany on economic matters had been maintained during the negotiations with Great Britain and France, and in June and July of 1939, Molotov was not indifferent to initial German approaches for an improvement in political relations. On August 15, the German ambassador proposed that Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, should visit Moscow for direct negotiations with Stalin and Molotov, who in response suggested a non-aggression pact.
Ribbentrop flew to Moscow on August 23, and the Treaty of Nonaggression was signed in a few hours. By its terms the Soviet Union and Germany undertook not to attack each other either alone or in conjunction with other powers and to remain neutral if the other power became involved in a war with a third party. They further agreed not to participate in alliances aimed at the other state and to resolve disputes and conflicts by consultation and arbitration. With Hitler about to attack Poland, the usual provision in treaties of this nature, allowing one signatory to opt out if the other committed aggression against a third party, was missing. The agreement was for a ten-year period, and became active as soon as signed, rather than on ratification.
As significant as the treaty, and more notorious, was the Secret Additional Protocol that was attached to it, in which the signatories established their respective spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. It was agreed that “in the event of a territorial and political rearrangement” in the Baltic states, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia were in the USSR’s sphere of influence and Lithuania in Germany’s. Poland was divided along the rivers Narew, Vistula, and San, placing Ukrainian and Belorussian territories in the Soviet sphere of influence, together with a part of ethnic Poland in Warsaw and Lublin provinces. The question of the maintenance of an independent Poland and its frontiers was left open. In addition, Germany declared itself “disinterested” in Bessarabia.
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USSR foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov (right), German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (left), and Josef Stalin (center) at the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, August 23, 1939. © CORBIS
The treaty denoted the USSR’s retreat into neutrality when Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Great Britain and France declared war. Poland collapsed rapidly, but the USSR delayed until September 17 before invading eastern Poland, although victory was achieved within a week. From November 1939, the territory was
