On June 16, authorities allowed the burial of Vakulenchuk, but refused sailors’ demand for amnesty. That day, the Potemkin shelled Odessa with its six-inch guns. On June 17, mutiny broke out on the battleship Georgi Pobedonosets and other
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ships of the Black Sea Fleet. However, by June 19 this mutiny was put down.
On June 18 the Potemkin set out from Odessa to the Romanian port of Constanza, where sailors’ request for supplies was refused. The ship left the port the following day, but returned on June 25, after failing to secure supplies in Feodosia. The sailors surrendered the ship to Romanian authorities and were granted safe passage to the country’s western borders.
The Potemkin mutiny was a spontaneous event, which broke the plans by socialist organizations in the Black Sea Fleet for a more organized rebellion. However, it tapped into widespread disaffection on the part of the Russian people over their conditions during the reign of Nicholas II. The mutineers found sympathy among the people of Odessa. While the mutiny was crushed, it, together with other events in the 1905 Russian Revolution, provided an important impetus to constitutional reforms that marked the last years of the Russian Empire. See also: BLACK SEA FLEET; REVOLUTION OF 1905
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ascher, Abraham. (1988). The Revolution of 1905. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hough, Richard. (1961). The Potemkin Mutiny. New York: Pantheon Books. Matushenko, Afansky. (2002). “The Revolt on the Armoured Cruiser Potemkin.” «http://www.marxist .com/History/potemkin.html».
The Potsdam Conference was the last of the wartime summits among the Big Three allied leaders. It met from July 17 through August 2, 1945, in Potsdam, a historic suburb of Berlin. Representing the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain respectively were Harry Truman, Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill (who was replaced midway by Clement Atlee as a result of elections that brought Labor to power). Germany had surrendered in May; the war with Japan continued. The purpose of the Potsdam meeting was the implementation of the agreements reached at Yalta. The atmosphere at Potsdam was often acrimonious, presaging the imminent Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West. In the months leading up to Potsdam, Stalin took an increasingly hard line on issues regarding Soviet control in Eastern Europe, provoking the new American president and the British prime minister to harden their own stance toward the Soviet leader.
Two issues were particularly contentious: Poland’s western boundaries with Germany and German reparations. When Soviet forces liberated Polish territory, Stalin, without consulting his allies, transferred to Polish administration all of the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse (western branch) Rivers. While Britain and the United States were prepared to compensate Poland for its territorial losses in the east, they were unwilling to agree to such a substantial land transfer made unilaterally. They would have preferred the Oder-Neisse (eastern branch) River boundary. The larger territory gave Poland the historic city of Breslau and the rich industrial area of Silesia. Reluctantly, the British and Americans accepted Stalin’s fait accompli, but with the proviso that the final boundary demarcation would be determined by a German peace treaty.
Reparations was another unresolved problem. The Soviet Union demanded a sum viewed by the Western powers as economically impossible. Abandoning the effort to agree on a specific sum, the conferees agreed to take reparations from each power’s zone of occupation. Stalin sought, with only limited success, additional German resources from the British and American zones. Agreements reached at Potsdam provided for: Transference of authority in Germany to the military commanders in their respective zones of occupation and to a four-power Allied Control Council for matters affecting Germany as a whole. Creation of a Council of Foreign Ministers to prepare peace treaties for Italy, Bulgaria, Finland, Hungary, and Romania and ultimately Germany. Denazification, demilitarization, democratization, and decentralization of Germany. Transference of Koenigsberg and adjacent area to the Soviet Union.
Just prior to the conference, Truman was informed of the successful test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico. On July 24 he gave a brief account of the weapon to Stalin. Stalin reaffirmed his commitment to declare war on Japan in mid-August.
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While the conference was in session, the leaders of Britain, China, and the United States issued a proclamation offering Japan the choice between immediate unconditional surrender or destruction.
Though the facade of allied unity was affirmed in the final communiqu?, the Potsdam Conference marked the end of Europe’s wartime alliance. See also: TEHERAN CONFERENCE; WORLD WAR II; YALTA CONFERENCE
Feis, Herbert. (1960). Between War and Peace: The Potsdam Conference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Gormly, James L. (1990). From Potsdam to the Cold War: Big Three Diplomacy, 1945-1947. Wilmington, DE: SR Books. McNeil, William H. (1953). America, Britain and Russia: Their Cooperation and Conflict, 1941-1946. London: Oxford University Press. Wheeler-Bennett, John W., and Nicholls, Anthony. (1972). The Semblance of Peace: The Political Settlement after the Second World War. London: Macmillan.
POZHARSKY, DMITRY MIKHAILOVICH
(1578-1642), military leader of the second national liberation army of 1611-1612.
Prince Dmitry Mikhailovich Pozharsky belonged to the Starodub princes, a relatively minor clan. He came to prominence as a military commander during the reign of Vasily Shuisky. While recovering from wounds sustained during service in the first national liberation army of 1611, Pozharsky was invited to lead the new militia, which was being organized by Kuzma Minin at Nizhny Novgorod. In March 1612 he led an army from Nizhny to Yaroslavl, where he remained for four months as head of a provisional government that made military and political preparations for the liberation of Moscow from the Poles. The capital was still besieged by Cossacks under Ivan Zarutsky, who supported the claim to the throne of tsarevich Ivan, the infant son of the Second False Dmitry and Marina Mniszech; others, including Prince Dmitry Trubetskoy, swore allegiance to a Third False Dmitry who had appeared in Pskov. Pozharsky himself, perhaps to neutralize the threat from the Swedes who had occupied Novgorod, seemed to favor the Swedish prince Charles Philip. Pozharsky left Yaroslavl only after Zarutsky and Trubetskoy had renounced their candidates for the throne. Following Zarutsky’s flight from the encampments surrounding Moscow, Pozharsky and Trubetskoy liberated the capital in October 1612 and headed the provisional government, which convened the Assembly of the Land that elected Michael Romanov as tsar in January 1613. Pozharsky was made a boyar on the day of Michael’s coronation, and he performed a number of relatively minor military and administrative roles during Michael’s reign. Along with Minin, Pozharsky was subsequently regarded as a national hero and served as a patriotic inspiration in later wars. See also: ASSEMBLY OF THE LAND; COSSACKS; MININ, KUZMA; ROMANOV, MIKHAIL FYODOROVICH; TIME OF TROUBLES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunning, Chester L. (2001). Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Perrie, Maureen. (2002). Pretenders and Popular Monar-chism in Early Modern Russia: The False Tsars of the Time of Troubles, paperback ed. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Skrynnikov, Ruslan G. (1988). The Time of Troubles: Russia in Crisis, 1604-1618, ed. and tr. Hugh F. Graham. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
Pravda (the name means “truth” in Russian) was first issued on May 5, 1912, in St. Petersburg by the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Party. Its aim was to publicize labor activism and expose working conditions in Russian factories. The editors published many letters and articles from ordinary workers, their primary
