The April 1991 law creating the office of president of the Russian Federation also created a Security Council, succeeding the security council created by Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1990 and presumably modeled after the National Security Council in the United States. Formally established by a March 1992 law, the Security Council was chaired by the president and met once per month, with a staff of about two hundred and half a dozen commissions working at its direction. Since 1993 its membership has varied, at the discretion of the president, from seven officials in 1996 to more than twenty-five since 2000, when it included the prime minister and the heads of the “power ministries” (defense, foreign affairs, interior, emergencies, Federal Border Service, and Federal Security Service) plus the justice minister, the procurator-general, the heads of the two houses of parliament, and the governors of the seven federal districts created by President Vladimir Putin.
Back in 1992 the Security Council was supervised by State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, and its first secretary was the industrialist Yuri Skokov. It was seen as a conservative counter-balance to the liberal foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev. Some speculated that it might become a new Politburo, well-insulated from democratic accountability. In practice the council never became a decision-making forum, but merely provided analysis and advice to the president. It was supposed to exercise a coordinating role and enforce and extend presidential control, but in practice the ministries of defense and foreign affairs jealously guarded their autonomy. The council was periodically tasked with drawing up guidelines or concepts for Russian foreign policy, but these did not have much
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
influence on actual decision-making. And far from being a springboard for ambitious politicians, it was more a tool for Boris Yeltsin to balance rival figures.
Skokov was replaced as secretary in June 1993 by a former Soviet general, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, and then in October 1993 by a Yeltsin crony, Oleg Lobov. In June 1996 Alexander Lebed was appointed secretary, in return for his support of Yeltsin in the second round of the presidential election. Lebed was assigned to end the war in Chechnya, and much to everyone’s surprise he succeeded, signing a peace accord and withdrawing Russian troops. Concerned about Lebed’s growing popularity, Yeltsin created a separate Defense Council in July and fired Lebed in October, accusing him of plotting a military coup. Lebed was replaced by the anodyne politician Ivan Rybkin, with the controversial oligarch Boris Berezovsky as his deputy, in charge of reconstructing Chechnya. (Berezovsky quit in November 1997.)
From March to September 1998, the Security Council was headed by an academic, Andrei Kokoshin. He was replaced by a KGB general, Nikolai Boryuzha, who in turn was followed in March 1999 by Vladimir Putin, who was simultaneously head of the Federal Security Service (FSB). In November 1999 Putin was replaced at the council by his deputy at the FSB, Sergei Ivanov. In March 2001 Ivanov became defense minister, and the former interior minister, Vladimir Rushailo, became Security Council secretary.
During Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the Security Council became slightly more visible as a forum through which he tried to press forward with military reforms obstinately resisted by the generals. The new National Security Concept drawn up by the council in 2000 stressed internal threats, such as Chechen terrorism, over traditional security concerns, such as nuclear deterrence. See also: POLITBURO; PRESIDENCY; PRESIDENTIAL COUNCIL
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adams, Jan. S. (1996). “The Russian National Security Council.” Problems of Post-Communism 43(1):35-42. Derleth, J. William. (1996). “The Evolution of the Russian Polity: The Case of the Security Council.” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 29(1):43-58.
The Serapion Brothers were a group of poets and writers who insisted on the political autonomy of the artist and the affirmation of imagination and creative art. They argued that in order to remain authentic, the writer’s voice needed freedom from all social or political constraints. They denounced the use of literature for utilitarian purposes and never adopted a specific model of literary production.
The Serapion Brothers began meeting in 1921 at the Petrograd House of Arts at the suggestion of Viktor Shklovsky. The group, which eventually included Konstantin Fedin, Ilya Gruzdev, Vsevolod Ivanov, Veniamin Kaverin, Lev Lunts, Nikolai Nikitin, Elizaveta Polonskaya, Vladimir Pozner, Mikhail Slonimsky, Nikolai Tikhonov, and Mikhail Zoshchenko, adopted its name after a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Shklovsky occasionally participated, and Maxim Gorky supported members with material assistance and help in publishing their work. The group met weekly to read and discuss one another’s work, focusing on the refinement of the craft of writing and leaving each member to develop his or her own message, sometimes engaging in heated debates about the purpose or meaning of literature.
The closest the Brotherhood came to publishing a manifesto was Lev Lunts’s “Why We are the Serapion Brothers” (Pochemu my Serapionovy Bratya, 1922), in which he proclaimed that “Art is real, like life itself. And, like life itself, it is without goal and without meaning: It exists because it cannot help but exist.” This statement of the group’s purpose sparked a sharp debate with Marxist critics who insisted on the utilitarian use of literature for common ideological purposes. Lunts, however, stressed the autonomy of literature from political purposes or control and, simultaneously, the preservation of diverse ideological positions within the brotherhood. The one collective work the group published, the First Almanac (Serapionovy Brat’ia. Al’mankh pervy, 1922) demonstrates this wide range of style and philosophy. Throughout the 1920s they promoted a nonpolitical approach to literature, tolerance, and friendship, and their connections continued after the group’s dissolution in 1929. See also: CULTURAL REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hickey, Martha Weitzel. (1999). “Recovering the Author’s Part: The Serapion Brothers in Petrograd.” Russian Review 58(1):103-123.
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Kern, Gary, and Collins, Christopher, eds. (1975). The Serapion Brothers: A Critical Anthology. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
From the first days of the initial Serb uprising in 1804 (against the tyranny of the Janissaries, military units that had evolved from being the elite troops of the Ottoman Empire into semi-independent occupiers) until 1878 (when Belgrade obtained complete independence from the Porte at the Congress of Berlin), relations with Serbia were central to Russia’s foreign policy. However, as Serbia pursued both independence from Istanbul and expansion of the state to include all Serb lands (Bosnia, Hercegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Vojvodina), Russia often found itself drawn into Serbian foreign affairs as Belgrade came to depend upon (and use) Russian support for its own ends. This led to a relationship that offered Serbia the greatest advantages as St. Petersburg became captive to two critical forces: 1) the emergence of Panslavism, a movement that stressed the solidarity of the Slavic peoples ostensibly under Russian leadership, and 2) the Eastern Question, the increasing vacuum in southeastern Europe brought about by the rapid decay of the once great Ottoman Empire, which presented an inviting target of opportunity for the great powers.
The romantic image of Orthodox Christians fighting the Muslim Turks for freedom continuously vexed St. Petersburg. On the one hand, advisers generally supported a policy of moderation in the region and a concentration on domestic needs. However, Panslavists, who had a powerful effect upon Russian public opinion, attacked the notion of passivity toward their Christian and Slavic brethren who, they claimed, were suffering at the hands of either the Turks or the Habsburgs.
