After the disastrous Crimean War and the subsequent humiliating Treaty of Paris in 1856, Russia was confronted by conflicting goals: the need to deal with internal problems as well as to restore its influence in the Balkans. When a revolt began in Hercegovina against the Turks in 1875, the lore and lure of Slavic Christians rising up against their Muslim occupiers proved to be intoxicating. Russians immediately volunteered to support the insurrection. General M. G. Chernyayev took command of
1364
the Serbian army, and by 1876 Serbia was at war with the Porte.
The conflict however was disastrous for Serbia. Not only was the country poorly prepared for war, but friction arose between the Russian and Serbian forces as Chernyayev proved to be an inept commander. While events inside Serbia deteriorated, St. Petersburg concluded a series of agreements with Vienna, providing that in the event Russia went to war with the Turks, the Habsburgs would be neutral.
In April 1877, Panslavist pressure forced Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov to join the conflict, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Despite military setbacks, Russia forced the Turks to sign the Treaty of San Stefano. However, Russia’s victory proved to be short-lived as the other great powers quickly blocked St. Petersburg’s designs to obtain primacy in the region through the creation of a “big” Bulgaria. At the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the powers compelled Russia to concede on the issue of an enlarged Bulgarian state, while the Turks were forced to grant complete independence to Serbia (as well as Romania and Greece). However, Russian support for Bulgaria had alienated Belgrade. For the next quarter-century, Serbia distanced itself from Russia. Only the murder of King Alexander Obrenovic in 1903 and the assumption of power by Peter Karadjordjevic led to a reorientation of Serbian policy back to regional cooperation and a reliance on Russia (especially after the Bosnian crisis of 1908-1909, which saw the formal annexation of Bosnia-Hercegovina by Austria-Hungary).
Weakened by the events of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and the Revolution of 1905, Russia could not challenge Vienna in 1908 on behalf of its Serbian client state. Nevertheless, the Bosnian crisis pushed Belgrade and St. Petersburg closer together. The former became solely dependent upon Russia for support among the great powers, while the latter realized that it had to support its Serbian ally in the future lest it lose influence in the region. Russia now sought to foster a regional alliance between Serbia and Bulgaria, an act that led to the formation of a Balkan League and subsequently the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. These wars, the unintended consequence of Russia’s attempt to create a defensive alliance in the region to counter the Habsburgs, further destabilized southeastern Europe and left Russia even more tethered to Belgrade.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
During the days and weeks following the assassination of Habsburg archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, Russia steadfastly backed its sole remaining Balkan ally, a critical factor leading to the outbreak of World War I. In its attempt to support Belgrade against Austro-Hungarian demands, Russia now found itself immersed in a conflict for which it was ill prepared and that would lead to the destruction of the Romanov monarchy. See also: BULGARIA, RELATIONS WITH; MONTENEGRO, RELATIONS WITH; PANSLAVISM; TURKEY, RELATIONS WITH; YUGOSLAVIA, RELATIONS WITH
Glenny, Misha. (2000). The Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. New York: Viking Penguin. Jelavich, Barbara. (1974). St. Petersburg and Moscow: Tsarist and Soviet Foreign Policy, 1814-1974. Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press. Jelavich, Charles, and Jelavich, Barbara. (1977). The Establishment of the Balkan National States, 1804-1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Rossos, Andrew. (1981). Russia and the Balkans: Inter-Balkan Rivalries and Russian Foreign Policy, 1908-1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
RICHARD FRUCHT
The serednyaki, or middle peasants, were peasants whose households in the 1920s had enough land to support their extended family (dvor) and sometimes even the hiring of one of the poorer bednyaki or landless batraki of the neighborhood in busy seasons. In practice, some of the middle peasants lived no differently from the poorer classes; they too had no draft horse (malomoshchnyi) and might likewise hire out a family member in the village community or send him to a nearby city or rural enterprise as wage labor. Many were illiterate. Other members of this intermediate stratum of peasants, however, were prosperous (zazhitochnye or krepkie) and thus close to the richer kulaks who constituted about 5 to 7 percent of the peasantry. These better-off peasants would sell some surplus grain if provided an incentive in the form of manufactured goods, and thus were crucial to the alliance of workers and peasants (smychka) that was supposed
to be the political basis of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of 1921 to 1928.
Although the Marxist-Leninist categories barely fit the complex reality of the Russian countryside, Vladimir Lenin expected the serednyaki to be tolerant of Bolshevik power and policies in the rural areas, and saw them as a temporary ally until such time as the regime could afford to incorporate them into more modern collective farms. There was a danger, however, that industrious middle peasants who prospered would became petty bourgeois allies of the kulaks and thus would oppose Soviet industrialization and the heavy taxes and price discrimination it required. The Marxist-Leninist category of middle peasant, unlike the traditional terms bednyak or kulak, meant little to the peasants themselves. Many other factors besides ownership of productive capital influenced their behavior. Populist students of the peasantry, notably A. V. Chayanov, and later sociologists have challenged this conceptualization of the NEP village as too static.
The schematic class analysis of the Soviet countryside was not merely ideological. Depending on one’s class, one could obtain benefits or avoid penalties. Poor peasants enjoyed tax exemptions and preferential admission to schools and Communist Party organizations; kulaks (along with priests and the bourgeois) were deprived of these and even of the right to vote. Late in the NEP, taxes on middle peasants increased, though not as much as those imposed on the kulaks. Not surprisingly, middle peasants endeavored to be officially identified as poor-for example, by referring to past proletarian occupations. They would sometimes try to hide their prosperity by hiring out some labor or a horse. Nonetheless, when forced requisitioning of grain was reinstated in 1928, the prosperous peasants were affected adversely. “Dekulakization” and collectivization in 1929 to 1931 made it even more important to avoid official identification with the richest peasant stratum. See also: KULAKS; PEASANT ECONOMY; PEASANTRY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. (1991). “The Problem of Class Identity in NEP Society.” In Russia in the Era of NEP, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Alexander Rabinowitch, and Richard Stites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lewin, Moshe. (1968). Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. London: Allen amp; Unwin.
1365
Shanin, Teodor. (1972). The Awkward Class: Political Sociology of Peasantry in a Developing Society, Russia, 1910-1925. London: Oxford University Press.
Serfdom is the name of the condition of a peasant who does not enjoy the rights of a free person, but is not a slave. While the slave is an object of the law, the serf is still a subject of the law. The classic definition of serfdom in the Russian context is given in Jerome Blum’s Lord and Peasant in Russia (pp. 6-8). Thus a serf is a peasant who (1) is bound to the land; or (2) is bound to the person of a lord; and (3) is not directly subject to the state, but is subject to a lord who in turn is subject to the state (such as it may be). Thus a serf bound to the land cannot be moved by any lord, and is supposed to be a “fixture” on that land regardless of who owns or holds the land. But if a serf is bound to the person of a lord, he essentially begins to resemble a slave in that the lord nearly becomes the owner of the serf: the lord can move the serf from one plot of land to another (or even into his household), and may even be able to sell the serf to a third party. The first and second conditions are mutually exclusive, for a serf
