Trotsky, Leon. (1969). The Permanent Revolution. New York: Pathfinder Press.
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(1853-1881), Russian revolutionary populist, a member of the Executive committee of “Narodnaya Volya” (“People’s Will”), and a direct supervisor of the murder of emperor Alexander II.
Sofia Perovskaya was born in St. Petersburg to a noble family; her father was the governor of St. Petersburg. In 1869 she attended the Alarchin Women’s Courses in St. Petersburg, where she founded the self-education study group. At age seventeen, she left home. From 1871 to 1872 she was one of the organizers of the Tchaikovsky circle. Her remarkable organizational skills and willpower never failed to gain her leading positions in various revolutionary societies. To prepare for “going to the people,” she passed a public teacher’s exam and completed her studies as a doctor’s assistant. In January 1874 she was arrested and detained for several months in the Peter and Paul Fortress and faced the Trial of 193 (1877-1878), but was proven innocent. She joined the populist organization Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) and took part in an unsuccessful armed attempt to free Ippolit Myshkin, who was proven guilty at the Trial of 193. During the summer of 1878 she was once again arrested, and exiled to Olonetskaya province, but on the way there she fled and assumed an illegal status. In June 1879 Perovskaya took part in the Voronezh assembly of Zemlya i Volya, soon after which the organization split into Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) and Cherny Peredel (The Black Repartition). From the autumn of 1879, she was a member of the executive committee of Narodnaya Volya. In November 1879 she took part in the organization of the attempt to blow up the tsar’s train near Moscow. She played the role of the wife of railroad inspector Sukhorukov (Narodnaya Volya member Lev Gartman): The underground tunnel that led to the railroad tracks where the bomb was planted came from his house. By mistake, however, it was the train of the tsar’s entourage that got blown up. During the spring of 1880, Perovskaya took part in another attempt to kill the tsar in Odessa. In the preparation of the successful attempt on March 13, 1881, on the Yekaterininsky channel in St. Petersburg, she headed a watching squad, and after the party leader Andrei Zhelyabov (Perovskaya’s lover) was arrested, she headed the operation until it was completed, having personally drawn the plan of the positions of the grenade throwers and given the signal to attack. Hoping to free her arrested comrades, after the murder Perovskaya did not leave St. Petersburg and was herself arrested. At the trial of pervomartovtsy (participants of the murder of the tsar), Perovskaya was sentenced to death and hanged on April 15, 1881, on the Semenovsky parade ground in St. Petersburg, becoming the first woman in Russia to be executed for a political crime. See also: ALEXANDER II; LAND AND FREEDOM PARTY; PEOPLE’S WILL, THE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Figner, Vera. (1927). Memoirs of a Revolutionist. New York: International Publishers. Footman, David. (1968). Red Prelude: A Life of A.I. Zhelyabov. London: Barrie amp; Rockliff . Venturi, Franco. (1983). Roots of revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The Persian Gulf War of 1990 and 1991 began as the high point of Soviet-American cooperation in the postwar period. However, by late December 1990, a chilling of Soviet-American relations had set in as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sought to play both sides of the conflict, only to have the USSR suffer a major political defeat once the war came to an end.
Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze joined U.S. secretary of state James Baker in severely condemning the Iraqi action, and the United States and USSR jointly supported numerous U.N. Security Council Resolutions demanding an Iraqi withdrawal and imposing sanctions on Iraq for its behavior.
Nonetheless, while supporting the United States (although not committing Soviet forces to battle), Gorbachev also sought to play a mediating role between Iraq and the United States, in part to salvage Moscow’s important economic interests in that country (oil drilling, oil exploration, hydroelectric projects, and grain elevator construction, as well as lucrative arms sales), and in part to bolster his political flank against those on the right of the Soviet
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political spectrum (many of whom were later to stage an abortive coup against him in August 1991), who were complaining that Moscow had “sold out” Iraq, a traditional ally of the USSR and one with which Moscow had been linked by a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation since 1972.
Responding to these pressures, Gorbachev twice sent a senior Soviet Middle East Expert, Yevgeny Primakov, to Iraq to try to mediate on Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait, albeit to no avail. Instead, the Soviet specialists working in Iraq were swiftly taken hostage in advance of the January 15, 1991, United Nations deadline for an Iraqi withdrawal.
In late December 1990, as it became more and more apparent that the U.S.-led coalition would begin its attack against Iraq on January 15, Shevardnadze suddenly resigned as Soviet foreign minister in the face of mounting pressure from Soviet right-wing forces. His replacement, Alexander Bessmertnykh, was far less pro-U.S., and his remarks utilized the old Soviet jargon of “balance of power” rather than Gorbachev’s “balance of interests” terminology. Nonetheless, this did not inhibit the coalition attack on Iraq that took place on January 15 and that thoroughly defeated Saddam Hussein’s forces and drove them out of Kuwait by the end of February 1991. Gorbachev’s behavior during the fighting, as he sought the best possible deal for Hussein from the United States, resembled that of a trial lawyer seeking to plea bargain for his client under increasingly negative conditions. This was particularly evident in his peace plan of February 21, which provided for a lifting of sanctions against Iraq before it had fully withdrawn its troops from Kuwait. The United States, however, neither accepted Gorbachev’s entreaties nor paid much attention to the increasingly hostile warnings of Soviet generals as U.S. troops advanced.
By the time the war ended, Washington had emerged as the dominant power in the Middle East, while the USSR lost much of its influence both in the Middle East and in the world. After the war, the United States consolidated its military position in the Persian Gulf and reinforced its relations with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, while Moscow sat on the diplomatic sidelines.
Given Moscow’s diminished position in the region and in the world as a whole after the Gulf War, Gorbachev tried to salvage the USSR’s prestige to the greatest degree possible. Thus, besides trying to reinforce relations with Iran, he sought to retain a modicum of influence in Iraq by opposing U.N. intervention following the postwar massacres of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by Hussein’s forces. Primakov, whose influence in the Russian government was rising, stated that he believed Hussein “has sufficient potential to give us hope for a positive development of relations with him.”
Nonetheless, Gorbachev’s attempts to protect Hussein availed him little. Less than a year after the end of the Gulf War, the USSR collapsed, and Gorbachev fell from power. See also: IRAQ, RELATIONS WITH; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beschloss, Michael R., and Talbott, Strobe. (1993). At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War. Boston: Little, Brown. Freedman, Robert O. (2001). Russian Policy Toward the Middle East Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Yeltsin Legacy and the Challenge for Putin (Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, no. 33). Seattle: University of Washington: Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies. Nizamedden, Talal. (1999). Russia and the Middle East. New York: St. Martins. Rumer, Eugene. (2000). Dangerous Drift: Russia’s Middle East Policy. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Shaffer, Brenda. (2001). Partners in Need: The Strategic Relationship of Russia and Iran.
