expelled her from the Writers’ Union. In 1949, her son Lev was arrested again and exiled to Siberia. In a desperate and futile effort to secure his release, Akhmatova wrote a number of poems in praise of Stalin. She later requested the exclusion of these poems from her collected work.
After Stalin’s death, Akhmatova was slowly “rehabilitated.” Publication of her work, including her essays and translations, resumed. She received international recognition, including an honorary degree from Oxford in 1965. She died on March 5, 1966, and is remembered as one of Russia’s most revered poets. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; GUMILEV, LEV NIKO-LAYEVICH; GUMILEV, NIKOLAI STEPANOVICH; INTELLIGENTSIA; MANDELSHTAM, OSIP EMILIEVICH; PURGES, THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna. (1973). Poems of Akhmatova: Izbrannye Stikhi, ed. and tr. Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward. Boston: Little, Brown. Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna. (1990). The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, tr. Judith Hemschemeyer, ed. Roberta Reeder. Somerville, MA: Zephyr. Amert, Susan. (1992). In a Shattered Mirror: The Later Poetry of Anna Akhmatova. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ketchian, Sonia. (1985). “Akhmatova, Anna Andreevna.” In Handbook of Russian Literature, ed. Victor Terras. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Leiter, Sharon. (1983). Akhmatova’s Petersburg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
(1923-1991), chief of the Soviet General Staff and first deputy minister of defense (1984-1988) and national security advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev (1988-1991).
Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev played a key role in ending the Cold War and the negotiation of key arms control agreements: the INF (Inter-Mediate Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty (1987) and the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) Treaty (1990) between NATO and Warsaw Treaty Organization member states. He also oversaw the Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan. According to Admiral William Crowe, his American counterpart, “He was a communist, a patriot and a soldier.” Dedicated to the rejuvenation of the Soviet system, Akhromeyev found that perestroika had unleashed deep conflicts within the USSR and undermined the system’s legitimacy. After playing a part in the unsuccessful coup of August 1991, he committed suicide in his Kremlin office.
Born in 1923, Akhromeyev belonged to that cohort upon whom the burden of World War II fell most heavily. The war shaped both his career as a professional soldier and his understanding of the external threat to the Soviet regime. He enrolled in a naval school in Leningrad in 1940 and was in that city when the German invasion began. He served as an officer of naval infantry in 1942 at Stalingrad and fought with the Red Army from the Volga to Berlin. Akhromeyev advanced during the war to battalion command and joined the Communist Party in 1943.
In the postwar years Akhromeyev rose to prominence in the Soviet Armed Forces and General Staff. In 1952 he graduated from the Military Academy of the Armor Forces. In 1967 he graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff. Thereafter, he held senior staff positions and served as head of a main directorate of the General Staff from 1974 to 1977 and then as first deputy chief of the General Staff from 1979 to 1984. As Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov’s deputy, Akhromeyev sought to recast the Soviet Armed Forces to meet the challenge of the revolution in military affairs, which involved the application of automated troop control, electronic warfare, and precision strikes to modern combined arms combat. See also: AFGHANISTAN, RELATIONS WITH; ARMS CONTROL; AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; COLD WAR; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Herspring, Dale. (1990). The Soviet High Command, 1964-1989: Politics and Personalities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kipp, Jacob W., Bruce W. Menning, David M. Glantz, and Graham H. Turbiville, Jr. “Marshal Akhromeev’s Post-INF World” Journal of Soviet Military Studies 1(2):167-187. Odom, William E. (1998). The Collapse of the Soviet Military. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press Zisk, Kimberly Marten. (1993). Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955-1991. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
(1812-1878), celebrated Azerbaijani author, playwright, philosopher, and founder of modern literary criticism, who acquired fame primarily as the writer of European-inspired plays in the Azeri-Turkish language.
Akhundov was born in Shaki (Nukha), Azerbaijan, and initially was tutored for the Islamic clergy by his uncle Haji Alaksar. However, as a young man he gained an appreciation for the arts, especially literature. An encounter with famed Azerbaijani lyricist and philosopher Mirza Shafi Vazeh in 1832 is said to have profoundly influenced his career as a writer. In 1834, he relocated to Tbilisi, Georgia, where he worked as a translator in the Chancellery of the Viceroy of the Caucasus. Here he was further influenced in his social and political views through his acquaintance with exiled Russian intellectuals, including Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky.
Akhundov’s first published work was entitled “Oriental Poem” (1837), inspired by the death of famous Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin. However, his first significant literary activity emerged in the 1850s, through a series of comedies that satirized the flaws and absurdities of contemporary society, largely born of ignorance and superstition. These comedies were highly praised in international literary circles, and Akhun-dov was affectionately dubbed “The Tatar Moliere.” In 1859 Akhundov published his famous novel The Deceived Stars, thus laying the groundwork for realistic prose, providing models for a new genre in Azeri and Iranian literature.
In his later work, such as Three Letters of the Indian Prince Kamal al Dovleh to His Friend, Iranian Prince Jalal al Dovleh, Akhundov’s writing evolved
AKKERMAN, CONVENTION OF
from benign satire to acerbic social commentary. At this stage, he demonstrated the typical leanings of the nineteenth-century intelligentsia toward the Enlightenment movement and its associated principles of education, political reform, and secularism. Akhundov’s secular views, a by-product of his agnostic beliefs, stemmed from disillusionment with his earlier studies in theology. He perceived Islam’s hold on all facets of society as an obstruction to learning. Although assaulting traditional institutions was seemingly his stock in trade, his biting satires were usually leavened with a message of optimism for the future. According to Tadeusz Swi-etochowski, noted scholar of Russian history, Akhundov believed that “the purpose of dramatic art was to improve peoples’ morals” and that the “theater was the appropriate vehicle for conveying the message to a largely illiterate public.” See also: AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS; ENLIGHTENMENT, IMPACT OF
Azeri Literature. (2003). “Mirza Faith Ali Akhundov.” «http://literature.azner.org/literature/makhundov/ makhundov.en.htm». Swietockhowski, Tadeusz. (1995). Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. New York: Columbia University Press. Swietockhowski, Tadeusz, and Collins, Brian. (1999). Historical Dictionary of Azerbaijan. New York: Scarecrow Press. agreed to negotiations beginning in July 1826 at Akkerman on the Dniester estuary.
On October 7, 1826, the two sides agreed to the Akkerman Convention, the terms of which affirmed and extended the conditions of the earlier Bucharest Treaty. Accordingly, Turkey transferred to Russia several settlements on the Caucasus littoral of the Black Sea and agreed to Russian-approved boundaries on the Danube. Within eighteen months, Turkey was to settle claims against it by Russian subjects, permit Russian commercial vessels free use of Turkish territorial waters, and grant Russian merchants unhindered trade in Turkish territory. Within six months, Turkey was to reestablish autonomy within the Danubian principalities, with assurances that the rulers (hospodars) would come only from the local aristocracy and that their replacements would be subject to Russian approval. Strict limitations were imposed on Turkish police forces. Similarly, Serbia reverted to autonomous status within the Ottoman Empire. Alienated provinces were restored to Serbian administration, and all taxes on Serbians were to be combined into a single levy. In long-term perspective, the Akkerman Convention strengthened Russia’s hand in the Balkans, more strongly identified Russia as the protector of Balkan Slavs, and further contributed to Ottoman Turkish decline. See also: BUCHAREST, TREATY OF; SERBIA, RELATIONS WITH; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH
GREGORY TWYMAN
