Party had also assumed a monopoly on all elite positions, so that one had to be a member of the CPSU to hold many jobs. That had not been true during the times of Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. This change was another sign of the degeneration of the service state under Brezhnev.
When Gorbachev delivered the coup de grace to the Soviet service state, no one wept. The service state was a major Russian “contribution” to the human experience. Whether there ever will be a fourth service class revolution remains to be seen. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; ECONOMY, TSARIST; INDUSTRIALIZATION; MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH; SERFDOM
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Hellie, Richard. (1971). Enserfment and Military Change in Muscovy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hellie, Richard. (1987). “What Happened? How Did He Get Away with It? Ivan Groznyi’s Paranoia and the Problem of Institutional Restraints.” Russian History 14:199-224. Hellie, Richard. (2002). “The Role of the State in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy.” In Modernizing Muscovy, ed. J. T. Kotilaine and Marshall T. Poe. Leiden: Brill. Kliuchevskii, V. O. (1960). A History of Russia. 5 vols., tr. C. J. Hogarth. New York: Russell amp; Russell. Swianiewicz, Stanislaw. (1965). Forced Labor and Economic Development: An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization. London: Oxford University Press. Tucker, Robert C. (1990). Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941. New York: Norton. Voslensky, Michael. (1984). Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, tr. Eric Mosbacher. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
City and naval base on the southwestern tip of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine.
With its excellent harbors and anchorages, Sevastopol has an advantageous location from which to conduct operations in the Black Sea. The city stands on the southern shore of Sevastopol Bay and has a population of 390,000-75 percent Russian and 20 percent Ukrainian. The site of ancient settlements, modern Sevastopol was founded by Prince Grigory Potemkin in 1783 after the conquest of the Crimean Khanate. Admiral F.F. Mekenzy, commander of the newly created Black Sea Fleet, placed a naval station there, and in 1784 the settlement was named Sevastopol.
In 1804 Alexander I’s government declared Sevastopol the primary naval base of the Black Sea Fleet. The naval base and the city grew significantly during the second quarter of the nineteenth century when Admiral Mikhail Lazarev served as fleet commander. By 1844 the city had a population of more than forty thousand, making it the largest city in Crimea. Sevastopol became the major base for fitting out and repairing warships. Its defenses grew in extent and quality.
In 1853 Admiral Pavel Nakhimov’s squadron sailed from there to Sinope, where it annihilated a
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Turkish squadron. During the Crimean War, Anglo-French forces besieged Sevastopol. The defense was immortalized by Leo Tolstoy, one of the defenders, in his Sevastopol Tales. Sevastopol fell to the Anglo-French forces in September 1855.
Following the Crimean War, Sevastopol suffered decline, because the peace treaty denied Russia the right to maintain a fleet in the Black Sea. With the remilitarization of the Black Sea after 1870 Sevastopol regained its importance as a naval base for a modern ironclad fleet.
Sevastopol was associated with rebellion, mutiny, and civil war. In 1830 government restrictions to combat a cholera epidemic set off a revolt among sailors and civilians. In June 1905 the battleship Potemkin sailed from Sevastopol on its way to mutiny over bad meat. During the Russian civil war Sevastopol was the headquarters of Baron Peter Wrangel’s White Army. The Red Army under Mikhail Frunze stormed Crimea in October 1920, and Wrangel evacuated his army to Istanbul.
During World War II Sevastopol was the site of an eight-month siege by German and Rumanian forces under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and fell in July 1942. On May 9, 1944, the Soviet Fourth Ukrainian Front under the command of Marshal Fyodor Tolbukhin liberated the city.
Following the end of the existence of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and Ukraine entered into negotiations over Sevastopol. During the early twenty-first century the city is a special region within Ukraine, not under the government of Crimea, and the Russian and Ukrainian navies share the naval base. See also: BLACK SEA FLEET; CRIMEA; CRIMEAN WAR; UKRAINE AND UKRAINIANS; WHITE ARMY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Curtiss, John Shelton. (1979). Russia’s Crimean War. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tolstoy, Leo. (1961). Sebastopol. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
feasible, leaving the country without a perspective plan for the first time in three decades. In one of his many reorganizations, Khrushchev substituted a Seven-Year Plan to run from 1959 to 1965. It included his new priorities for a much larger chemical industry, more housing, substitution of oil and gas for coal in the production of electricity and for powering the railroads, and more emphasis on agriculture, especially in the eastern areas.
Planned targets for 1965 were ambitious, and some were even raised in October 1961. Despite considerable growth of housing construction, meat production, and consumer durables, fulfillment was not achieved in many areas. Khrushchev had grand hopes for the chemical industry and agriculture, but the targets for mineral fertilizers, synthetic fibers, and the grain harvest were all missed. Civilian investment rates fell, and national income (defined in Marxist concepts) was underfulfilled by four to seven percent. Gross production volume of producers goods did exceed the long-term plan, with an index (1959 = 100) of 196 achieved versus 185-188 planned, while consumer goods fell below it, 160 actual versus 162-165 planned.
The shortfalls can perhaps be explained by the strain of increased expenditures on space and military ventures in these years and the complexity of planning for more tasks. The continual sovnarkhoz (regional economic council) reorganizations, which put considerable strain on Gosplan to coordinate supplies, probably also had a negative impact on overall results. See also: FIVE-YEAR PLANS; GOSPLAN
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Nove, Alec. (1969). An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. London: Allen Lane.
Following the rise of Nikita Khrushchev to primacy among the leaders of the Soviet Union, the sixth five-year plan (1956-1960) was abandoned as in1374
The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) involved nearly every European state and was watershed in world history. It arose as a result of the Anglo-French colonial rivalry and because of the growing might of Prussia in central Europe, which threatened the interests of Austria, France, and Russia. The outENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
come ensured that England became the dominant power in North America, and the war consolidated the growing power and prestige of Frederick the Great’s Prussia. For this, he could thank Russia and its bizarre participation in the war. Internally, Russian actions in the Seven Years’ War also brought about a palace coup and the subsequent rule of Catherine II.
Prussia had emerged as a potential European power by the middle of the eighteenth century. Under Frederick II (r. 1740-1786), Prussian policies became increasingly ambitious. Frederick wanted to consolidate his power and territories gained at the expense of Austria during the 1840s. Austria, for its part, desired a return of territories such as Silesia. Russia and France also worried over Prussian power and potential incursions near their respective borders. When war broke out between France and England over their North American territories, Prussia signed an alliance with England in January 1756. The alliance brought a rapprochement between France and Austria. By the
