stringent. In short, Russia had taken a modest step away from autocracy and toward the creation of a civil society. See also: AUTOCRACY; BLOODY SUNDAY; BOLSHEVISM; CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY; DUMA; LIBERALISM; NICHOLAS II; OCTOBER GENERAL STRIKE OF 1905; OCTOBER MANIFESTO; OCTOBRIST PARTY; WORKERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ascher, Abraham. (1988-92). The Revolution of 1905. 2 vols. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Bushnell, John S. (1985). Mutineers and Repression: Soldiers in the Revolution of 1905-1906. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Emmons, Terence. (1983). The Formation of Political Parties and the First National Elections in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Engelstein, Laura. (1982). Moscow, 1905: Working-Class Organization and Political Conflict. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Harcave, Sidney. (1964). First Blood: The Russian Revolution of 1905. New York: Macmillan. Mehlinger, Howard D. and Thompson, John M. (1972). Count Witte and the Tsarist Government in the 1905 Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sablinsky, Walter. (1976). The Road to Bloody Sunday: Father Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of 1905. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Surh, Gerald D. (1989). 1905 in St. Petersburg: Labor, Society and Revolution. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Verner, Andrew M. (1990). The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
ABRAHAM ASCHER
A summit meeting of U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, on October 11-12, 1986. This second meeting of the two leaders was billed as an “interim summit” and was not carefully prepared and scripted in advance as was customary.
The Reykjavik summit unexpectedly became a remarkable far-reaching exploration of possibilities for drastic reduction or even elimination of nuclear weapons. Gorbachev took the initiative, advancing comprehensive proposals dealing with strategic offensive and defensive weapons. Agreement seemed at hand for reductions of at least 50 percent in strategic offensive arms. When Reagan proposed a subsequent elimination of all strategic ballistic missiles, Gorbachev counterproposed eliminating all strategic nuclear weapons. Reagan then said he would be prepared to eliminate all nuclear weapons-and Gorbachev promptly agreed.
This breathtaking prospect was stymied by disagreement over the issue of strategic defenses. As a condition of his agreement on strategic offensive arms, Gorbachev asked that research on ballistic missile defenses be limited to laboratory testing. Reagan was adamant that nothing be done that would prevent pursuit of his Strategic Defense Ini1288
RIGHT OPPOSITION
tiative (SDI). The meeting ended abruptly, with no agreement reached.
Many saw the failure to reach accord as a spectacular missed opportunity, while others were relieved that what they saw as a near disaster had been averted. Subsequent negotiations built on the tentative areas of agreement explored at Reykjavik and led to agreements eliminating all intermediate-range missiles (the INF Treaty in 1987) and reducing intercontinental missiles (the START I Treaty in 1991). Thus, although the Reykjavik summit ended in disarray, in retrospect the exchanges there constituted a breakthrough in strategic arms control. See also: ARMS CONTROL; STRATEGIC ARMS LIMITATION TREATIES; STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH
Garthoff, Raymond L. (1994). The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Shultz, George P. (1993). Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
RAYMOND L. GARTHOFF
RIGA, TREATY OF (1921) See SOVIET-POLISH WAR.
The Right Opposition, sometimes called Right Deviation, represents a moderate strand of Bolshevism that evolved from the New Economic Policy (NEP). Headed by Nikolai Bukharin, the party’s leading theoretician after Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s death, the Right Opposition also included Alexei Rykov, Mikhail Tomsky, Felix Dzerzhinsky, and A. P. Smirnov. In part reacting against the harsh policies of War Communism, the right urged moderation and cooperation with the peasantry to achieve socialism gradually. It favored industrialization, but at a pace determined by the peasantry, and prioritized the development of light industry over heavy industry.
Until early 1928 the platform of the right coincided with the policies of the Soviet government and the Politburo. This is not surprising given that Rykov was chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom) from 1924 to 1930, and Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, and their then ally Josef Stalin held a majority in the Politburo until 1926. Participating in the struggles for power following Lenin’s death, the right opposed Leon Trotsky and his policies, as well as Grigory Zi-noviev, Lev Kamenev, and eventually the United Opposition. Toward the end of the 1920s, as Stalin increasingly secured control over the party apparatus, Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev were expelled from the Politburo and replaced by Stalin’s handpicked successors, thereby enhancing the position of the right.
Their good fortune changed, however, following the decisive defeat of the Left Opposition at the Fifteenth Party Congress in December 1927. Having supported Bukharin and the right’s position on the cautious implementation of the NEP, Stalin, in 1928, abruptly reversed his position and adopted the rapid industrialization program of the left. He and his new majority in the Politburo then attacked the Right Opposition over various issues including forced grain requisitions, the anti-specialist campaign, and industrial production targets for the First Five- Year Plan. Outnumbered and unable to launch a strong challenge against Stalin, the Right Opposition sought an alliance with Kamenev and Zinoviev, for which the Right Opposition was subsequently denounced at the Central Committee plenum in January 1929.
Under attack politically, Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky signed a statement acknowledging their “errors” that was published in Pravda in November 1929. Nonetheless, Bukharin was removed from the Politburo that same month. The following year Rykov and Tomsky were also expelled from the Politburo. By the end of 1930 the trio was removed from all positions of leadership, and moderates throughout the party were purged; this officially marked the defeat of the Right Opposition. Having already destroyed the Left Opposition, Stalin was now the uncontested leader of the Soviet Union.
The Great Purges of the late 1930s brought further tragedy to the leaders of the defunct Right Opposition. With his arrest imminent, Tomsky committed suicide in 1936. Two years later Bukharin and Rykov were arrested and tried in the infamous show trials of 1938. Despite the fact that they could not possibly have committed the crimes that they were accused of, and that their confessions were clearly secured under torture, both were found guilty and executed.
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See also: BUKHARIN, NIKOLAI IVANOVICH; LEFT OPPOSITION; RYKOV, ALEXEI IVANOVICH; TOMSKY, MIKHAIL PAVLOVICH; UNITED OPPOSITION
Cohen, Stephen, F. (1973). Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938. New York: Oxford University Press. Erlich, Alexander. (1960). The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924-1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Merridale, Catherine. (1990). Moscow Politics and the Rise of Stalin: The Communist Party in The Capital, 1925-32. New York: St. Martin’s Press. to his dismissal as professor) and his opera “The Golden Cockerel” (1907), which was condemed by censorship, because it could be interpreted as criticism of tsarist rule, conributed to his renown and reputation as an artist with political revolutionary leanings. Furthermore, as one of the masters of Russian national music in the nineteenth century, he achieved enormous importance and influence in the cultural history of the Soviet Union, particularly since the cultural changes toward Great Russian patriotism under Stalin. See also: MIGHTY HANDFUL; MUSIC; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS
