important export, particularly from the perspective of Russian state interests. England, a major exporter of metals in this period, appears to have provided mine-deficient Russia with substantial quantities of iron, copper, and lead for use in weapons manufacture. These exports were supplemented by armaments of all kinds. Exports of gold and silver went primarily to the Russian treasury, largely for the purpose of minting the country’s currency. Russian commodities handled by the Russia Company revolved heavily around products needed in the construction, outfitting, and refurbishing of ships (i.e., tar, hemp, flax, cordage, and timber). The key commodity for the Russia Company was cordage (ropes), which it produced on site in Russia. The English navy and shipping industry and other trading companies were important customers for Russian cordage. Besides cordage, the company also traded in fine Russian leather (yufti), tallow, and potash. Russian caviar, already a renowned delicacy in the sixteenth century, was shipped by the company to Italian ports and the Ottoman Empire. According to traditionally accepted views, The Russia Company’s considerable success in Russia in the second half of the sixteenth century was followed by decline to near oblivion by the beginning of the seventeenth century, largely as a result of strong Dutch competition in the Russian market. A comprehensive reexamination of company activities, however, challenges this long-held view, providing evidence of a substantial English presence and trade in Russia into the 1640s, Dutch activities notwithstanding. According to this revised view, the company’s very success in an atmosphere of growing Russian merchant opposition to foreign competition accounts for the abrogation of the company’s trade privileges in Russia in 1646 and its expulsion from the country in 1649, events that brought to an end a historic century of Anglo-Russian trade and relations. See also: CAVIAR; FOREIGN TRADE; MERCHANTS; TRADE ROUTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baron, Samuel H. (1980). “The Muscovy Company, the Muscovite Merchants and the Problem of Reciprocity in Russian Foreign Trade.” Forschungen zur os-teuropa?schen Geschichte 27:133-155. Phipps, Geraldine M. (1983). Sir John Merrick, English Merchant-Diplomat in Seventeenth Century Russia. Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners. Salomon Arel, Maria. (1999). “Masters in Their Own House: The Russian Merchant Elite and Complaints against the English in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century,” Slavonic and East European Review 77:401-47. Willan, Thomas S. (1956). The Early History of the Russia Company, 1553-1603. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Better known for its persecution of other writers than for its own literary efforts, the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (Rossysskaya as-sotsiatsia proletarskikh pisatelei-RAPP) played a major role in the politicization of the arts in the Soviet Union. RAPP’s members argued that Soviet literature needed to be proletarian literature (i.e.,
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literature written for, though not necessarily by, members of the working class); all other literature was perceived as anti-Soviet. Therefore RAPP’s leaders claimed that the Communist Party should assist RAPP in establishing the dominance of proletarian literature in the Soviet Union. RAPP reached the height of its power during the Cultural Revolution (1928-1932), and it is often viewed as the epitome of the radical artistic movements that characterized this tumultuous period.
The group, founded in 1922, was known variously as the Octobrists, Young-Guardists, or VAPP (the All-Union Association of Proletarian Writers) until May 1928, when it changed its name to RAPP. Its early membership, drawn mostly from the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) and Proletkult (Proletarian Culture) movement, was disappointed with the Party’s retreat from the radical policies of the civil war period, and wished to bring a militant spirit to the “cultural front.” They issued violent diatribes against non-proletarian writers, particularly the so-called fellow travelers, writers with a sympathetic, but ambivalent, attitude towards the Bolshevik cause.
RAPP’s early petitions for party support led to the Central Committee’s highly ambiguous June 1925 resolution “On the Policy of the Party in the Area of Belles Lettres,” which recognized the importance of proletarian literature, but also called for tolerance of the fellow travelers. This was seen as a relative defeat for RAPP, and the group’s claims were muted over the next two years. In 1927, however, RAPP’s willingness to connect literary debates with ongoing party factional struggles won it the backing of the Stalinist faction of the Central Committee. This backing, which included financial subsidies, allowed RAPP to gain control over major literary journals, to gain influence within the Federation of Soviet Writers, and to expand its membership. By extending political categories of deviation to the arts, RAPP helped to create the crisis atmosphere and militant spirit that facilitated Stalin’s rise to power.
RAPP now championed a poorly developed literary style dubbed “psychological realism” and continued to demand that literature be made accessible to working-class readers. Over the next four years, RAPP used its new powers to continue its campaign against any writer or critic who refused to follow its lead. Many of RAPP’s targets, who included Boris Pilniak, Yevgeny Zamiatin, and Alexei Tolstoy, found it difficult to publish their work under these conditions, and some were fired from their jobs or even arrested; Vladimir Mayakovsky’s 1930 suicide was due in part to RAPP’s persecution. RAPP also became a mass movement during this period, its membership growing to ten thousand, as it promised to mentor worker-writers who were expected to create the literature of the future.
Although RAPP was the best-known proletarian artistic group of the Cultural Revolution, its tactics and ideas were adopted by similar groups in fields such as music, architecture, and the plastic arts. RAPP had local branches throughout Russia and affiliated organizations in each Union Republic. There was also a sister peasant organization (the All-Russian Society of Peasant Writers, or VOKP). RAPP’s most important leaders included the critic Leopold Averbakh, the playwright Vladimir Kir-shon, and the novelists Alexander Fadeyev, Fyodor Panferov, and Yuri Libidiensky.
By 1931, RAPP’s inability to produce the promised new cadres of working-class writers, continued persecution of many pro-Soviet authors, and claims to autonomy from the Central Committee led to its fall from favor with the party leadership. The Central Committee’s April 1932 resolution “On the Restructuring of Literary-Artistic Organizations” ordered RAPP’s dissolution. Its eventual replacement, the Union of Soviet Writers, was more inclusive and acknowledged its subordination to the Party. Without the complete politicization of literature spearheaded by RAPP, however, the powerful new Writers’ Union was unthinkable. See also: CULTURAL REVOLUTION; UNION OF SOVIET WRITERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Edward J. (1953). The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928-1932. New York: Columbia University Press. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1978). “Cultural Revolution as Class War.” In Cultural Revolution in Russia, ed. Sheila Fitz-patrick. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kemp-Welch, A. (1991). Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 1928-1939. London: Macmillan. Maguire, Robert A. (1987). Red Virgin Soil: Soviet Literature in the 1920s, rev. ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
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The Russian Federal Securities Commission was created in 1996 to oversee registration of equity shares issued by Russian private enterprises.
Although the stock market existed in Russia prior to mass privatization of state enterprises, the volume and significance of stock exchange transactions increased many times as a result the rapid privatization that began in 1992. It therefore became necessary for the Russian government to develop the institutional structure necessary for a stock market and private equity ownership to work efficiently and lawfully. Among other things, this requires a public registry of stock-share ownership. This had not been required prior to 1996, and Russian enterprises maintained their own registries, a situation that was conducive to fraud, misrepresentation, and difficulty of access. The 1996 Federal Securities Law mandated that companies place stock registries with an independent organization, and created the Russian Federal Securities Commission to resolve custody disputes and settlements in accordance with international practice.
The Federal Securities Commission was also charged with coordinating the activities of the several agencies
