excellance. As a result of this fetishization, Communist propaganda officials and journalists were slow to understand and effectively use the media of radio and television. By the 1970s, Soviet means and methods of mass persuasion and mobilization were far inferior to those developed by advertising agencies and governments in the wealthy liberal democracies. See also: CENSORSHIP; IZVESTIYA; JOURNALISM; PRAVDA; THICK JOURNALS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brooks, Jeffrey. (2000). Thank You, Comrade Stalin! Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Hopkins, Mark. (1970). Mass Media in the Soviet Union. New York: Pegasus Books. Kenez, Peter. (1985). The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. McReynolds, Louise. (1991). The News Under Russia’s Old Regime. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
The New Commerce Statute (a translation of the Russian Novotorgovy ustav of April 22, 1667; ustav might also be translated as “regulations”) was the Russian expression of Western mercantilism and was sponsored by boyarin Afanasy Lavrentievich Ordin-Nashchokin (1605-1680), a former governor of Pskov, the westernmost of Russia’s major cities, who in 1667 was head of the Chancellery of Foreign Affairs. The 1667 document was an expansion of the Commerce Statute (or Regulations) of 1653, which introduced a unified tariff schedule while repealing petty transit duties and increasing protectionist duties against foreigners. The 1667 regulations remained in force until replaced by the Customs Statute of 1755.
The 1667 document regulated both internal trade and trade relations with foreigners. In a 1649 petition to the government, the Russian merchants lamented that they could not compete with the foreign merchants, who were forbidden to engage in internal Russian trade (where they had been giving favorable credit terms to local, smaller Russian merchants) and were restricted to the port cities at times when fairs were being held. The foreigners were accused of selling shoddy goods, which was forbidden. Foreigners were forbidden to sell any goods retail in the provinces or in Moscow, or any Russian goods among themselves upon pain of confiscation of the merchandise. Internal customs du1044
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ties of 5 percent were to be collected from Russians on sales of weighed goods (ad valorem sales) and 4 percent from unweighed goods. A duty of 10 percent was to be collected on salt and 15 percent on liquor. Excepting liquor, foreigners had to pay a 6 percent duty on their foreign goods sold to authorized Russian wholesalers. A foreigner had to pay a 10 percent export duty, except when he paid for the goods with gold and silver currency. The export of gold and silver from Muscovy was forbidden. Local officials (acknowledged by Moscow as likely to be corrupt) were ordered repeatedly in the statute not to interfere with commerce. Much paperwork was required to ensure compliance with the 1667 regulations. See also: FOREIGN TRADE; MERCHANTS; ORDIN-NASH-CHOKIN, AFANASY LAVRENTIEVICH.
Hellie, Richard, ed. and tr. (1967). Readings for Introduction to Russian Civilization. Chicago: Syllabus Division, The College, University of Chicago.
quickly established good relations with the San-dinista government. Soviet economic and military aid approached billions of rubles, far less than to Cuba. While offering political, economic, and military support, Moscow sought to limit Nicaragua as an economic and strategic burden. Cuba actively supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and abroad.
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration was backing an armed paramilitary force, the contras, which sought to overthrow the Sandinistas. The United States also aided a right-wing regime in El Salvador besieged by revolutionary forces supposedly encouraged by the Sandinistas. Both U.S. efforts were inconclusive.
Early in 1990 President George Bush and General Secretary Gorbachev began cooperating in the region, as they were in Eastern Europe, to end these conflicts. Central American countries, the United Nations, and the two great powers negotiated a regional settlement. The United States stopped supporting the contras, the Sandinistas agreed to free elections, and the USSR mollified Cuba. Later Ortega was defeated in the elections for the Nicara- guan presidency, and Moscow was no longer an actor on the Central American scene.
NICARAGUA, RELATIONS WITH
The Soviet Union had no diplomatic or economic relations with Nicaragua before the Somozas’ fall in 1979. Contacts were through Communist Party organizations such as the Nicaraguan Socialist Party (PSN), founded in 1937 and illegal until 1979. While not opposing revolutionary violence in principle, the Communists believed that conditions in Nicaragua were not ripe for armed revolt. A member of the Party who had visited the USSR in 1957, Carlos Fonseca Amador, broke with the PSN on this issue. He called for insurrection and founded the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN) in 1961.
The Sandinistas led the revolutionary upheaval that overthrew the Somozas in 1979. They took full control of Nicaragua and ignored the communists (PSN). Unlike other Soviet satellites, the Sandinistas left about half of the economy in private hands, and agriculture was not collectivized. The FSLN leader, Daniel Ortega, lacked the authority in the Council of State that Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev had in the Soviet Politburo.
In spite of the fact that the Sandinistas’ success meant defeat for the local Communists, Moscow See also: CUBA, RELATIONS WITH; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blachman, Morris J.; Leogrande, William; and Sharpe, Kenneth. (1986). Confronting Revolution: Security through Diplomacy in Central America. New York: Pantheon. Blasier, Cole. (1987). The Giant’s Rival: The USSR and Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
(1796-1855), tsar and emperor of Russia from 1825 to 1855.
Nicholas Pavlovich Romanov came to power amid the Decembrist Revolt of 1825 and died during the Crimean War. Between these two events, Nicholas became known throughout his empire and the world as the quintessential autocrat, and his Nicholaevan system as the most oppressive in Europe.
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When Nicholas I was on his deathbed, he spoke his last words to his son, soon to become Alexander II: “I wanted to take everything difficult, everything serious, upon my shoulders and to leave you a peaceful, well- ordered, and happy realm. Providence decreed otherwise. Now I go to pray for Russia and for you all.” Earlier in the day, Nicholas ordered all the Guards regiments to be brought to the Winter Palace to swear allegiance to the new tsar. These words and actions reveal a great deal about Nicholas’s personality and his reign. Nicholas was a tsar obsessed with order and with the military, and his thirty years on the throne earned him a reputation as the Gendarme of Europe. His fear of rebellion and disorder, particularly after the events of his ascension to the throne, would affect him for the remainder of his reign.
Nicholas I was not intended to be tsar, nor was he educated to be one. Born in 1796, Nicholas was the third of Paul I’s four sons. His two elder brothers, Alexander and Constantine, received upbringings worthy of future rulers. In 1800, by contrast, Paul appointed General Matthew I. Lamsdorf to take charge of the education of Nicholas and his younger brother, Mikhail. Lamsdorf believed that education consisted of discipline and military training, and he imposed a strict regimen on his two charges that included regular beatings. Nicholas thus learned to respect the military image his father cultivated and the necessity of order and discipline.
Although Nicholas received schooling in more traditional subjects, he responded only to military science and to military training. In 1814, during the war against Napoleon, he gave up wearing civilian dress and only appeared in his military uniform, a habit he kept. Nicholas also longed during the War of 1812 to see action in the defense of Russia. His brother, Alexander I, wanted him to remain in Russia until the hostilities ended. Nicholas only joined the
