ORGNABOR See ADMINISTRATION FOR ORGANIZED RECRUITMENT.
The organizational bureau (or Orgburo) was one of the most important organs in the CPSU after the Politburo. The Orgburo was created in 1919 and had the power to make key decisions about the organizational work of the Party. The key role of the Orgburo was to make all the important decisions of an administrative and personnel nature by supervising the work of local Party committees and organizations and overseeing personnel appointments. For instance, the Orgburo had the power to select and allocate Party cadres. The Orgburo was elected at plenary meetings of the Central Committee. There was a great degree of overlap between the Politburo and the Orgburo with many key Party figures being members of both organs. In its early days Josef V. Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, and Lazar Kaganovich were all Orgburo members. The Politburo often confirmed Orgburo decisions, but it also had the power to veto or rescind them. Nevertheless, the Orgburo was extremely powerful in the 1920s and retained significant scope for autonomous action until its functions, responsibilities, and powers were transferred to the Secretariat in 1952.
Since the declassification of Soviet archives, scholars can now access the protocols of the Communist Party’s Orgburo, the transcripts of many of its meetings, and all of the preparatory documentation. The latter are crucial insofar as they give scholars insight into Party life from the New Economic Policy period until the end of the Stalin era.
ORLOVA, LYUBOV PETROVNA
(1902-1975), film actress.
The most beloved movie actress of the 1930s, Lyubov Petrovna Orlova trained as a singer and dancer in Moscow. She began her career in musical theater in 1926 and made her film debut in 1934. Although she worked with other Soviet directors, Orlova’s personal and professional partnership with Grigory Alexandrov led to her greatest successes on screen. As the star of Alexandrov’s four wildly successful musical comedies-The Jolly Fellows (1934), The Circus (1936), Volga-Volga (1938), and The Shining Path (1940)-Orlova became a household name in the USSR.
Although in her early thirties when she began her movie career, Orlova nonetheless specialized in ingenue parts. She was the role model for a generation of Soviet women. They admired her wholesome good looks, her energy, her cheeriness, her zest for life, and her spunkiness in the face of adversity. She was also said to be Stalin’s favorite actress, not surprising given his love for movie musicals. Interestingly, given Orlova’s importance as the cinematic exemplar of Soviet womanhood, she also played Americans several times in her career. The most famous example was her portrayal in The Circus of Marion Dixon, the entertainer who fled the United States with her mixed-race child, but also worth noting is her role as “Janet Sherwood” in Alexandrov’s Meeting on the Elba (1949).
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In 1950 Orlova was honored as a People’s Artist of the USSR, her nation’s top prize for artistic achievement, but she acted in only a few pictures after that, and died in 1975. In 1983 Orlova’s husband, Grigory Alexandrov, produced a documentary about her life entitled Liubov Orlova. See also: ALEXANDROV, GRIGORY ALEXANDROVICH; MOTION PICTURES
Kenez, Peter. (2001). Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin. London: I. B. Tauris.
(1734-1783), count, prince of the Holy Roman Empire, soldier, statesman, imperial favorite.
Second eldest of five brothers born to a Petrine officer and official, Grigory Orlov had looks, size, and strength. His early years are little known before he won distinction at the battle of Zorndorf in 1758, where he fought the Prussians despite three wounds. He accompanied Count Schwerin and captured Prussian adjutant to St. Petersburg, where both met the “Young Court” of Grand Princess Catherine and Crown Prince Peter Fyodorovich. In the capital Orlov gained repute by an affair with the beautiful mistress of Count Pyotr Shuvalov. By 1760 intimacy with Catherine facilitated promotion to captain of the Izmailovsky Guards and paymaster of the artillery, crucial posts in Catherine’s coup of July 11, 1762. Two months earlier she had secretly delivered their son, Alexei Grigorievich Bo-brinskoi (1762-1813).
The Orlov brothers were liberally rewarded by the new regime. All became counts of the Russian Empire. Grigory became major general, chamberlain, and adjutant general with the Order of Alexander Nevsky, a sword with diamonds, and oversight of the coronation. He figured prominently in the reign as master of ordnance, director general of engineers, chief of cavalry forces, and president of the Office of Trusteeship for Foreign Colonists. Such political connections with Catherine did not bring marriage, however, because of opposition at court and her reluctance. He patronized many individuals and institutions, such as the scientist polymath Lomonosov, the Imperial Free Economic Society, the Legislative Commission of 1767-1768, and projects to reform serfdom. He publicly (and unsuccessfully) invited Jean-Jacques Rousseau to take refuge in Russia. He sat on the new seven-member imperial council established in 1768 to coordinate foreign and military policy in the Russo-Turkish war, where he favored a forward policy, volunteering his brother Alexei to command the Baltic fleet in Mediterranean operations.
This conflict spawned an incursion of bubonic plague culminating in the collapse of Moscow amid riots in late September 1771. Orlov volunteered to head relief efforts, restored order, reinforced an-tiplague efforts, and punished the rioters. Projecting composure in public, Orlov privately doubted success until freezing weather finally arrived. He was triumphantly received by Catherine at Tsarskoye Selo in mid-December with a gold medal and a triumphal arch hailing his bravery.
In 1772 Orlov headed the Russian delegation to negotiate with the Turks at Focsani, but he broke off the talks when his terms were rejected and, learning of his replacement in Catherine’s favor, rushed back to Russia only to be barred from court. From his Gatchina estate he negotiated a settlement: a pension of 150,000 rubles, 100,000 for a house, 10,000 serfs, and the title of prince of the Holy Roman Empire. He kept away from court until May 1773, maintaining cordial relations with Catherine, on whom he bestowed an enormous diamond that she placed in the imperial scepter (and actually paid for). He supported her amid the crisis of Paul’s majority and the Pugachev Revolt. With Potemkin’s emergence as favorite in early 1774, however, Orlov and Catherine had a stormy falling out; he withdrew from public life and traveled abroad.
Upon return to Russia Orlov married his young cousin, Ekaterina Nikolayevna Zinovieva (1758-1781), whom the empress appointed lady-in-waiting and awarded the Order of Saint Catherine. She died of consumption in Lausanne, hastening Orlov’s slide into insanity before death. Orlov’s career advertised the rewards of imperial favor and consolidated the family’s aristocratic eminence. See also: CATHERINE II; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; RUSSO- TURKISH WARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, John T. (1989). Catherine the Great: Life and Legend. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Alexander, John T. (2003). Bubonic Plague in Early Modern Russia: Public Health and Urban Disaster, rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Baran, Thomas. (2002). Russia Reads Rousseau, 1762-1825. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Montefiore, Simon Sebag. (2000). Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Orthodoxy has been an integral part of Russian civilization from the tenth century to the present.
The word Orthodox means right belief, right practice, or right worship. Also referred to as Russian Orthodoxy or Eastern Orthodoxy, all three terms are synonymous in Orthodox self-understanding. Orthodoxy uses the vernacular language of its adherents, but its beliefs and liturgy are independent of the language used. The Russian
