merely serving as an ex post facto rationalization for observed planning decisions. See also: BUREAUCRACY, ECONOMIC; MARKET SOCIALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergson, Abram. (1961). The Real National Income of Soviet Russia since 1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bergson, Abram. (1964). The Economics of Soviet Planning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
(1737-1812), Orthodox metropolitan of Moscow.
Born the son of a church sexton in the village of Chasnikovo near Moscow, Peter Levshin (the future Metropolitan Platon) attended the Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow before taking monastic vows at the St. Sergius-Holy Trinity Lavra in 1758. He adopted the name Platon and within three years had become rector of the Lavra seminary.
Platon’s eloquence and learning attracted Empress Catherine II (r. 1762-1796), who in 1763 appointed him tutor to her son and heir, Paul. Platon’s lectures for the tsarevich were published in 1765 under the title Orthodox Teaching; or, a Short Course in Christian Theology. Translated into German and English, this work earned Platon an international reputation as an Orthodox thinker.
In 1766 Platon became a member of the Holy Synod, the ruling council of the Russian Orthodox Church. Consecrated archbishop of Tver in 1770,
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he was appointed archbishop of Moscow in 1775, a post he retained for the rest of his life. Platon proved to be an effective administrator. Immediately upon taking office, he revamped the ecclesiastical bureaucracy by issuing new rules for clerical superintendents. He also worked to improve the education and material living standards of the secular clergy. In his effort to create an enlightened clergy, Platon added modern foreign languages, medicine, history, and geography to the seminary curriculum. In recognition of his achievements, Catherine promoted him to the rank of metropolitan in 1787.
By then, however, Platon’s relationship to the empress had begun to deteriorate. In 1785 Catherine II had ordered him to investigate Nikolai Novikov (1744-1816), a Freemason and prominent publisher. To her dismay, Platon declared Novikov an exemplary Christian. Despite Platon’s finding, Catherine had Novikov arrested a few years later in 1792. That same year, she granted Platon permission to enter a partial retirement by moving to Bethany, his monastic retreat on the grounds of the Holy Trinity Lavra.
During the reign of Emperor Paul (r. 1796-1801), Platon negotiated the return to the state church of some Old Believers (religious dissenters who had broken with the Orthodox Church because they rejected the liturgical innovations of Patriarch Nikon [r. 1652-1658]). The Old Believers accepting this compromise, known as the yedinoverie, or union, agreed to recognize the legitimacy and authority of the state church in exchange for the right to follow pre-Nikonian rituals and practices. As an ecumenical effort by the Russian Orthodox Church, the union failed to win over many adherents.
Platon died in 1812, shortly after hearing of Napoleon Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow. An excellent administrator and inspired preacher, he did not use his position to voice social criticism. Instead, he sought to make the church more effective in a limited ecclesiastical sphere through education and regulation. Platon’s collected works, which include his autobiography and a short history of the Russian Orthodox Church, fill twenty volumes. See also: NIKON, PATRIARCH; OLD BELIEVERS; ORTHODOXY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Papmehl, K. A. (1983). Metropolitan Platon of Moscow (Petr Levshin, 1737-1812): The Enlightened Prelate, Scholar, and Educator. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners.
(1860-1933), Russian historian.
Born in Chernigov, Sergei Platonov graduated from a private gymnasium in St. Petersburg (1878) and the Department of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University (1882). His tutor was Konstantin Bestuzhev- Ryumin, who recommended that he be allowed to remain at the university in order to “prepare to be a professor.” Platonov was influenced also by the works of Vasily Klyuchevsky. He belonged to the “St. Petersburg school” of Russian historiography, which paid special attention to the study and publication of historical sources. In 1888 Platonov defended his master’s thesis on the topic of Old Russian Legends and Tales About the Seventeenth- Century Time of Troubles as a Historical Source (published in the same year and honored with the Uvarov Award of the Academy of Sci ences). Despite not yet having earned a doctorate, in 1889 Platonov headed the Department of Russian History of St. Petersburg University. In 1899 Platonov defended his doctorate thesis by present ing a monograph, Studies in the History of the Trou bles in the Muscovite State in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. This work was Platonov’s masterpiece, based on a scrupulous analysis of sources. Platonov sought to “show, with facts, how . . . a modern state was being formed.” The main purpose of the “political mishaps and social ten sion” of the early seventeenth century was, ac cording to Platonov, the replacement of the boyar aristocracy with the nobility. He defined the Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible, which became one of the initial causes of the Time of Troubles, not as the “whim of a timid tyrant,” but as a thought-out system of actions aimed at destroying the “ap panage aristocracy.” Platonov was also one of the first to show that one of the aspects of the Time of Troubles was the tension between the nobility and the serfs over land and freedom.
Platonov earned wide acclaim through the repeatedly republished Lectures on Russian History (1899) and the Russian History Textbook For Middle School (in two parts, 1909-1910). From 1900 to
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1905, Platonov was the dean of the History and Philology Department of St. Petersburg University, and from 1903 to 1916 he served as the director of the Women’s Pedagogical Institute.
Despite his negative opinions of the October Revolution, Platonov continued to work actively in several scholarly institutions. From 1918 to 1923, he was the head of the Petrograd branch of the Main Directorate of Archival Affairs. From 1918 he served as the chairman of the Archaeographical Commission of the Academy of Sciences. In 1920 Platonov was elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences. Platonov worked in the Academy of Sciences as the director of the Pushkin House (1925-1928) and the Library of the Academy of Sciences (1925- 1929). The peak of his academic career was his election as the head (academic secretary) of the Department of Humanities and a member of the presidium of the Academy of Sciences in March 1929.
During the 1920s Platonov published biographies of Boris Godunov (1921), Ivan the Terrible (1923), and Peter the Great (1926) and the monographs The Past of the Russian North (1923) and Muscovy and the West in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1925). Platonov opposed the nihilist views on history before the Russian revolution and the purely negative depiction of the actions of Russian tsars.
From 1929 to 1931 Platonov was the central figure of the so-called Academic Affair. The formal explanation for the persecution of scholars was the presence of political documents, including the act of resignation of Nicholas II, in the Library of the Academy of Science. The real motive of the Soviet regime in the Academic Affair was to bring the Academy under its control. In November 1929 the Politburo decided to release Platonov from all positions that he held. On January 12, 1930, Platonov was arrested. He was accused of being a member of the International Union of Struggle Toward the Rebirth of Free Russia, a monarchist organization fabricated by the prosecutors. According to the OGPU (secret police), the purpose of this fictional organization was to overthrow the Soviet regime and establish a constitutional monarchy; Platonov was the supposed future prime minister.
While in custody Platonov was expelled from the Academy of Sciences. In August 1931 he was sentenced by the OGPU to five years of exile and deported, with his two daughters, to Samara. He died in Samara. See also: ACADEMY OF SCIENCES; PUSHKIN HOUSE
