painting.
The boyars and wealthy merchants of the city also owned landed estates outside the city. Although women generally did not participate in public and political affairs, they did own and manage property, including real estate. Among the best known of them was Marfa Boretskaya, who was one of the wealthiest individuals in Novgorod on the eve of its loss of independence. On those provincial estates, peasants and nonagricultural workers engaged in farming, animal husbandry, fishing, hunting, iron and salt manufacture, beekeeping, and related activities. Although it was not uncommon for the region’s unfavorable agricultural conditions to produce poor harvests, which occasionally caused famine conditions, the produce from these estates was usually not only sufficient to feed and supply the population of the city and its hinterlands, but was cycled into the city’s commercial network. After Ivan III subjugated Novgorod, he confiscated the landed estates and arrested or exiled the boyars and merchants who had owned them. He seized landed properties belonging to the archbishop and monasteries as well. See also: BIRCHBARK CHARTERS; KIEVAN RUS; NOVGOROD, ARCHBISHIOP OF; NOVGOROD JUDICIAL CHARTER; POSADNIK; ROUTE TO GREEKS; RURIKID DYNASTY; VIKINGS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Birnbaum, Henrik. (1981). Lord Novgorod the Great: Essays in the History and Culture of a Medieval City- State, Part I: Historical Background. Columbus, OH: Slavica. Dejevsky, N. J. (1977). “Novgorod: The Origins of a Russian Town.” In European Towns: Their Archaeology and Early History, ed. M. W. Barley. London: Council for British Archaeology by Academic Press. Karger, Mikhail K. (1975). Novgorod: Architectural Monuments, 11th-17th Centuries. Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers. Langer, Lawrence N. (1976). “The Medieval Russian Town.” In The City in Russian History, ed. Michael Hamm. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Michell, Robert and Forbes, Nevill, trs. (1914). The Chronicle of Novgorod 1016-1471.London: Royal Historical Society. Raba, Joel. (1967). “Novgorod in the Fifteenth Century: A Re-examination.” Canadian Slavic Studies 1:348-364. Thompson, Michael W. (1967). Novgorod the Great. New York: Praeger.
(1744-1818), writer, journalist, satirist, publisher, and social worker.
Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov was a prominent writer, journalist, publisher, and social worker who began the vogue of the satirical magazine. Catherine II’s efforts to proliferate ideas of the Enlightenment had injected new vigor in Russian writers in the early 1760s. Hoping to demonstrate to the West that Russia was not a despotic state, she established a “commission for the compilation of a new code of laws” in 1767 and published “instructions” for the commission in major European languages-a treatise entitled Nakaz dlya komissii po sochineniyu novogo ulozheniya. She also began the publication in early 1769 of a satirical weekly modeled on the English Spectator entitled All Sorts and Sundries (Vsyakaya vsyachina) and urged intellectuals to follow her example. For a brief period, all editors were freed from preliminary censorship.
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An enthusiastic believer in the Enlightenment, Nikolai Novikov accepted the challenge and published a succession of successful journals-Truten (The Drone, 1769-1770), Pustomelya (The Tattler) in 1770, Zhivopisets (The Painter) in 1772, and others. Novikov became a pioneer in the journalistic movement in the 1770s and 1780s, and the works of prose appearing in his journals amounted to both a new literary phenomenon for Russian culture and a new form for the expression of public opinion. He took Catherine’s “instructions” seriously and cultivated works that delved deeply into questions of political life and social phenomena that formerly lay within the sole jurisdiction of the tsarist bureaucracy-topics that could be considered before only in secret and with official approval. In addition to editing and publishing four periodicals and a historical dictionary, The Library of Old Russian Authors (1772-1775) in thirty volumes, Novikov also took over the Moscow University Press in 1778. His publishing houses operated first in St. Petersburg and then in Moscow, offering a prodigious quantity of books designed to spread Enlightenment ideas at a modest price. Novikov dedicated himself and his fortune to the advancement of elementary education as well, publishing textbooks and even the first Russian magazine for children.
Novikov can be viewed as a tragic figure in Russian history. Abruptly in 1774 Catherine II blocked publication of his journals because of their sharp attacks on serious social injustice. By imperial order she stopped further books from being produced. In 1791 she closed his printing presses. Regarding education as her own bailiwick, she was probably irked by Novikov’s successful activities. Novikov’s association with the Freemasons also alienated her. A middle-of-the-road theorist rather than a purist, Novikov was sometimes caught in a paradox between his keen appreciation of European Enlightenment and his high regard for the ancient Russian virtues. Freemasonry seemed to offer a way out of the paradox to a firm moral standpoint.
Catherine II, however, had always opposed secret societies, which had been outlawed in 1782 (although Freemasonry had been exempted). Her predecessor Peter III, whom she had skillfully dethroned, had been favorably disposed towards Freemasonry. Equally, her political rival and personal enemy, the Grand Duke Paul, was a prominent Freemason. Further, since the break with England, Russian Freemasonry had come under the influence of German Freemasonry, of which Frederick the Great, the archenemy of Catherine, was a dominant figure. To Catherine, it must have seemed that everyone she disliked intensely was a Freemason.
Novikov was arrested but never tried and was sentenced by imperial decree to detention in the fortress of Schl?sselburg for fifteen years. He was released when Paul became emperor in 1796, but retired from public life in disillusionment to study mysticism. He never could engage fully in Moscow’s literary world again. See also: CATHERINE II; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF; JOURNALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jones, W. Gareth. (1984). Nikolay Novikov, Enlightener of Russia. New York: Cambridge University Press. Levitt, Marcus C. (1995). Early Modern Russian Writers: Late Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Detroit: Gale Research.
On June 1, 1962, in response to a sharp increase in the price of butter and meat, a strike erupted at the Novocherkassk Electric-Locomotive Works, which employed 13,000 workers. The stoppage immediately spread to neighboring industrial enterprises. Efforts of the local authorities to halt the strike proved fruitless. So alarmed was the central government headed by Nikita Khrushchev that six of the top party leaders were sent to deal with the situation. Although a negotiated settlement was not ruled out, several thousand troops, as well as tank units, were deployed.
The following day, thousands of workers marched into town to present their demands for price rollbacks and wage increases. During the confrontation between the strikers and the government forces, shooting broke out that resulted in twenty-four deaths and several score serious injuries. Hundreds were arrested, and a series of trials followed. Seven strikers were condemned to death, and many more were imprisoned for long terms. The regime effectively covered up what had occurred. Outside the USSR, little was known about the events until
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn devoted several pages to them in The Gulag Archipelago. In the last years of the Gorbachev era, information was published in Soviet media for the first time.
The Novocherkassk events, which became known as “Bloody Saturday,” contributed to the demise of the USSR. Never daring to raise food prices again, the leadership was compelled to subsidize agriculture even more heavily, thus severely unbalancing the economy. Moreover, as information about the massacre of strikers became known, the legitimacy of what has long been proclaimed “the workers’ state” was decidedly undermined. See also: KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH; SOLZHEN-ITSYN, ALEXANDER ISAYEVICH
Baron, Samuel H. (2001). Bloody Saturday in the Soviet Union: Novocherkassk, 1962. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kozlov, Vladimir A. (2002). Mass Uprisings in the USSR. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
