(b. 1929), orientalist, intelligence chief, foreign minister, and prime minister under Boris Yeltsin.
Born in Kiev, Yevgeny Maximovich Primakov grew up in Tbilisi; his father disappeared in the purges. Trained as an Arabist, Primakov worked in broadcasting in the 1950s and then became a Middle East correspondent for Pravda (and perhaps a covert foreign intelligence operative). In the 1970s he assumed academic posts as deputy director of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations (IMEMO), then as director of the Institute of Oriental Studies, and in 1985 as director of IMEMO.
In 1986 Primakov became a candidate member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and a foreign policy advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev. He was chosen in June 1989 to chair the Congress of People’s Deputies, the lower house of the Supreme Soviet formed pursuant to Gorbachev’s new constitution. His party status rose accordingly: full Central Committee member in April 1989 and candidate member of the Politburo in September. He was a leading contributor to the “New Thinking” regarding international cooperation that was identified with Gorbachev.
Primakov condemned the attempted coup by hard-line communists in August 1991; Gorbachev then made him First Deputy Chairman of the KGB and head of foreign intelligence. He was one of the few Gorbachev appointees to be retained in office by Russian President Boris Yeltsin after the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991.
Appointed foreign minister in January 1996, Primakov was a realistic and cool professional. He was a strong defender of Russian national interests, as opposed to the pro-Western stance of his predecessor Andrei Kozyrev, and often manifested pro-Arab sympathies. Espousing a “multipolar” world, he nonetheless avoided direct confrontation with the West and bargained for a Russian presence at NATO as it was expanding eastward. Later he criticized the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia but kept open a Russian role in the Kosovo settlement.
Following the August 1998 economic and political crisis, Primakov emerged as a compromise candidate for prime minister. Overwhelmingly confirmed by the Duma in September, he was the most popular politician in Russia. His model for eco Russian statesman Yevgeny Primakov served Boris Yeltsin as foreign minister, prime minister, and spy master. PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER ZEMLIANICHENKO. AP/WIDE WORLD PHOTOS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. nomic stabilization was President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States.
As prime minister, Primakov soon aroused the jealousy of the ailing Yeltsin and alarmed the president’s family and cronies by investigating corruption. Yeltsin emerged from a long period of torpor and dismissed Primakov in May 1999 in favor of Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin. In reply, Primakov accepted the leadership of the “Fatherland-All Russia” bloc to oppose Yeltsin’s forces in the Duma elections of December 1999, and was a strong contender for the presidency in the elections due the following year. But in August Yeltsin replaced Prime Minister Stepashin with Vladimir Putin, who set up his own party, Unity, and capitalized on the war in Chechnya to forge ahead of Primakov’s people. Primakov withdrew as a presidential contender in order to run for speaker of the new Duma; however, Putin made a deal with the communists to keep Gennady Seleznyov as speaker
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and marginalize Primakov. Those maneuvers notwithstanding, in the March 2000 election Primakov endorsed Putin, who subsequently tapped him for occasional diplomatic missions. In 2001 Primakov retired from the presidency of Fatherland-All Russia as it was preparing to merge with Unity. See also: FATHERLAND-ALL RUSSIA; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; YELTSIN, BORIS NIKOLAYEVICH
Daniels, Robert V. (1999). “Evgenii Primakov: Contender by Chance.” Problems of Post-Communism 46(5): 27-36. Shevtsova, Lilia F. (1999). Yeltsin’s Russia: Myths and Reality. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Simes, Dmitri K. (1999). After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power. New York: Simon amp; Schuster.
The compilation of chronicle entries known as the Povst’ vremennykh lt (PVL) is a fundamental source for the historical study of the vast eastern European and Eurasian lands that include major parts of Ukraine and Belarus, as well as extensive parts of the Russian Federation and Poland. As the single most important source for the study of the early Rus principalities, it contains the bulk of existing written information about the area inhabited by the East Slavs from the ninth to the twelfth century, and has been the subject of many historical, literary, and linguistic analyses. The PVL in various versions appears at the beginning of most extant chronicles compiled from the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries
The PVL may have been compiled initially by Silvestr, the hegumen of St. Michael’s Monastery in Vydobichi, a village near Kiev, in 1116. The attribution to Silvestr is based on a colophon in copies of the so-called Laurentian branch where he declares, “I wrote down this chronicle,” and asks to be remembered in his readers’ prayers (286,1 -286,7). It is possible that Silvestr merely copied or edited an already existing complete work by the Kiev Caves Monastery monk mentioned in the heading (i.e., “The Tale of Bygone Years of a monk of the Feodosy Pechersky Monastery [regarding] from where the Rus lands comes and who first in it began to rule and from where the Rus land became to be”), but it is also possible that this monk merely began the work that Silvestr finished. An interpolation in the title of the sixteenth-century Khleb-nikov copy has led to a popular notion that Nestor was the name of this monk and that he had completed a now-lost first redaction of the complete text. But that interpolation is not reliable evidence, since it may have been the result of a guess by the interpolator, in which case the name of the monk referred to in the title or when he compiled his text is not known. So the simplest explanation is that Silvestr used an earlier (perhaps unfinished) chronicle by an unknown monk of the Caves Monastery along with other sources to compile what is now known as the PVL. Silvestr’s holograph does not exist; the earliest copy dates to more than 260 years later. Therefore, researches have to try to reconstruct what Silvestr wrote on the basis of extant copies that are hundreds of years distant from its presumed date of composition.
There are five main witnesses to the original version of the PVL. The term “main witness,” refers only to those copies that have independent authority to testify about what was in the archetype. Since most copies of the PVL (e.g., those found in the Nikon Chronicle, Voskresenskii Chronicle, etc.) are secondary (i.e., derivative) from the main witnesses, they provide no primary readings in relation to the archetype. The five main witnesses are: 1. Laurentian (RNB, F.IV.2), dated to 1377; 2. Radziwill (BAN, 34. 5. 30), datable to the 1490s; 3. Academy (RGB, MDA 5/182), dated to the 15th century; 4. Hypatian (BAN, 16. 4. 4), dated to c. 1425; 5. Khlebnikov (RNB, F.IV.230), dated to 16th century. In addition, in a few places, the Pogodin Chronicle fills in lacunae in the Khlebnikov copy: 6. Pogodin (RNB, Pogodin 1401), dated to early 17th century.
One can also draw textual evidence from the corresponding passages in the later version of the Novgorod I Chronicle. To date, there are no lithographs or photographic facsimilies of any manuscript of the Novgorod I Chronicle. The three copies of the published version of Novg. I are: 1. Commission (SPb IRI, Arkh. kom. 240), dated to 1450s; 2. Academy (BAN 17.8.36), dated to 1450s;
1.
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3. Tolstoi (RNB, Tolstovoi F.IV.223), dated to 1820s.
One can also utilize certain textual readings from the corresponding passages of Priselkov’s reconstruction of the non-extant Trinity Chronicle.
The stemma, or family tree, shows the genealogical relationship of the manuscript copies.
Although various theories have been proposed for the stages of compilation of the PVL, little agreement has been reached. The sources that the com-piler(s) utilized, however, are generally recognized. The main source to 842 is the Chronicle of Georgius Hamartolu and to 948 the Continuation of Symeon the Logothete. Accounts of the
