Johann Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow (sic, Hamburg 1710), while the best-known is Albert Lortzing’s Tsar and Carpenter (Leipzig 1837). Lortz-ing’s comic opera exploits the sojourn of Peter I in the Netherlands disguised as a carpenter’s appren1109
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tice. Because of its depiction of a tsar from the Romanov dynasty, it did not reach the Russian stage until 1908. See also: GLINKA, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH; MIGHTY HANDFUL; MUSIC; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS; RIMSKY- KORSAKOV, NIKOLAI ANDREYEVICH; TCHAIKOVSKY, PETER ILYICH; THEATER
Buckler, Julie A. (2000). The Literary Lorgnette: Attending Opera in Imperial Russia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Campbell, Stuart, ed. (1994). Russians on Russian Music, 1830-1880: An Anthology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Campbell, Stuart, ed. (2003). Russians on Russian Music, 1880-1917: An Anthology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Morrison, Simon Alexander. (2002). Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press. Sadie, Stanley, ed. (1992). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London: Macmillan. Taruskin, Richard. (1993). Opera and Drama in Russia: As Preached and Practiced in the 1860s, 2nd ed. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Taruskin, Richard. (1997). Defining Russia Musically. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ALBRECHT GAUB
“Operation Barbarossa” was the name given by the Germans to their invasion of the Soviet Union, starting June 22, 1941. The operation was named after the medieval Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa, whom legend claimed would return to restore Germany’s greatness.
In the last half of 1941 Germany and its allies conquered the Baltic states, Belarus, almost all of Ukraine, and western Russia. They surrounded Leningrad and advanced to the gates of Moscow. The Red Army lost millions of soldiers and thousands of tanks and aircraft as it reeled back from the German onslaught. Nevertheless the Soviet government was able to evacuate entire factories from threatened areas to Siberia and Central Asia. It was able to raise and arm new armies to face the Germans and finally halt their advance. Helped by Germany’s ruthless policy in conquered Slavic areas, the Soviet government was able to rally the population against the invader. By December 1941 the Red Army was able to mount a successful coun-teroffensive against the overextended Germans.
The initial German attack in 1941 involved three million troops and three thousand tanks but nevertheless achieved strategic surprise, catching the Soviet air force on the ground and most troops far from their operational areas. In spite of the unmistakable signs of a military build-up along the border, German reconnaissance flights over the western Soviet Union, and warnings from sources as diverse as communist spies and the British government, the Soviet government refused to mobilize for war. It preferred to avoid any action that might spark an accidental conflict, and this inaction proved disastrous once the war began.
In the first months of the war German armored spearheads sliced through the unprepared, disorganized Red Army, encircling entire armies near Minsk, Kiev, and Viazma. The German success came at a great price, though. Casualties mounted, and supply lines became more tenuous as they lengthened. Soviet resistance stiffened as the Red Army deployed new tanks (T-34 and KV-1) and artillery (Katyusha rockets) that were technically much better than their German counterparts. Soviet reinforcements also poured in from the Far East after the Soviet spy Richard Sorge reported that Japan planned to move south against the United States and Great Britain rather than attack Siberia. A final factor in the USSR’s survival was the weather. Optimistic German planners expected to complete the conquest of Russia before the onset of the autumn rains. The delay in the start of the invasion due to the Balkans campaign, the unknown depth of the Red Army’s reserves, and its unexpectedly strong resistance meant that the German army faced winter in the field without suitable clothing or equipment.
It also faced a Soviet population mobilized for resistance. Soviet propaganda publicized German atrocities against the civil population and lauded the suicidal bravery of pilots who crashed their planes into German bombers and of foot soldiers who died blowing up enemy tanks. Restrictions against the Orthodox Church were loosened, and church leaders joined party leaders in defiantly calling for a Holy War (the name of a popular song) against the foe. While the Soviet Union suffered enormous damage in 1941, it was not defeated.
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See also: GERMANY, RELATIONS WITH; SORGE, RICHARD; WORLD WAR II
Erickson, John. (1999). The Road to Stalingrad. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Glantz, David, and House, Jonathan. (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Tsar Ivan IV’s personal domain between 1565 and 1572, and by extension the domestic policy of that period.
The term oprichnina (from oprich, “separate”) denoted a part of something, usually specific land-holdings of a prince or a prince’s widow. Ivan IV (the Terrible, or Grozny) established his Oprichnina after he unexpectedly left Moscow in December 1564. He settled at Alexandrovskaya sloboda, a hunting lodge northeast of Moscow, which became the Oprichnina’s capital. Ivan IV accused his old court of treason and demanded the right to punish his enemies. He divided the territory of his realm, his court, and the administration into two: the Oprichnina under the tsar’s personal control; and the Zemshchina (from zemlya, “land”), officially under the rule of those boyars who stayed in Moscow.
The servitors were divided between the Zem-shchina and the Oprichnina courts on the basis of personal loyalty to the tsar, but the courts were largely drawn from the same elite clans. The Oprichnina court was headed by Alexei and Fyodor Basmanov-Pleshcheev, Prince Afanasy Vyazemsky, and the Caucasian Prince Mikhail Cherkassky, brother-in-law of Ivan IV. They were succeeded in around 1570 by the high-ranking cavalrymen Malyuta Skuratov-Belsky and Vasily Gryaznoy. The Oprichnina army initially consisted of one thousand men; later its numbers increased five- to sixfold. Most of them came from the central part of the country, although there were also many non-Muscovites (Western mercenaries, Tatar and Caucasian servitors) in the Oprichnina. Both the leading Muscovite merchants (the Stroganovs) and the English Muscovy Company also sought admission to the Oprichnina. To maintain the Oprichnina army, the tsar included in his domain prosperous peasant and urban communities in the north, household lands in various parts of the country (mostly in its central districts), mid-sized and small districts with numerous conditional landholdings, and some quarters of Moscow. The northern lands produced revenues and marketable commodities (furs, salt), the household lands provided the Oprichnina with various supplies, and the regions with conditional landholdings supplied servitors for the Oprichnina army. The territory of the Oprichnina was never stable, and eventually included sections of Novgorod. The authorities deported non-Oprichnina servitors from the Oprichnina lands and granted their estates to the oprichniki (members of the Oprichnina), but the extent of these forced resettlements remains unclear.
The Oprichnina affected various local communities in different ways. The Zemshchina territories bore the heavy financial burden of funding the organization and actions of the Oprichnina; some Zemshchina communities were pillaged and devastated. In early 1570, the tsar and his oprichniki sacked Novgorod, where they slaughtered from three thousand to fifteen thousand people. At the same time, the lower-ranking inhabitants of Moscow escaped Ivan’s disgrace and forced resettlements. For taxpayers in the remote north, the establishment of the Oprichnina mostly meant a change of payee.
The tsar sought to maintain a close relationship with the clergy by expanding the tax privileges of important dioceses and monasteries and including some of them in the Oprichnina. In exchange, he demanded that the metropolitan not intervene in the Oprichnina and abolished the metropolitan’s traditional right to intercede on behalf of the disgraced. The Oprichnina’s victims included Metropolitan Philip Kolychev, who openly criticized the Oprichnina (deposed 1568, killed 1569) and Archbishop Pimen of Novgorod, the tsar’s former close ally (deposed and exiled 1570).
The Oprichnina policy was a peculiar combination of bloody terror and acts of public reconciliation. The social
