movement, or samizdat, of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s-the dissidents, some of whom were put on trial and served sentences in the labor camps, called in some instances for retaining the basic structure of the soviets. Yet they demanded radical overhaul of the functions of the soviets at all levels of authority as well as elimination of exclusive Communist Party supervision of soviet elections and legislative deliberations. Some reformers called for incorporation of the principle of separation of powers.
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See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; CONGRESS OF PEOPLE’S DEPUTIES; CONSTITUTION OF 1936; CONSTITUTION OF 1977; DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; PRESIDIUM OF SUPREME SOVIET; STATE COMMITTEES
Reshetar, John Stephen, Jr. (1978). The Soviet Polity Government and Politics in the USSR, 2nd ed. New York: Harper amp; Row. Towster, Julian. (1948). Political Power in the U.S.S.R., 1917-1947: The Theory and Structure of Government in the Soviet State. New York: Oxford University Press. Vyshinsky, Andrei Y. (1979). The Law of the Soviet State. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
(1902-1982), high-ranking Communist Party leader.
Mikhail Suslov was a member of the Politburo from 1955 to 1982 and headed the agitation and propaganda department of the Central Committee from 1947 to 1982. An ideologist of the Stalinist school, Suslov was a reactionary and doctrinaire defender of Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. Like many in his generation of party leaders, Suslov had humble origins. He was born into a peasant family in 1902 in the village of Shakhovskoye, within present-day Saratov oblast. From 1918 to 1920 he served as assistant secretary of the Committee of Poor Peasants (Kombed) and organized a Komsomol branch in his village. In 1921 he joined the Communist Party and enrolled in a school for workers in Moscow. He went on to study economics at the Institute of Red Professors and the Plekhanov Economics Institute before entering the party-state apparatus in 1931. Suslov was a ruthless player in the party purges of the Josef Stalin era and rose through the ranks by moving into positions opened up by mass arrests. In 1937 he became a Rostov oblast party committee secretary. Two years later he headed the Stavropol regional party committee, a position he held until 1944. In 1944, as chairman of the Central Committee’s bureau for Lithuanian affairs, he supervised the incorporation of Lithuania into the USSR and the subsequent deportation of thousands of people.
In 1947 Suslov became a secretary of the Central Committee in charge of shaping, protecting, and enforcing official ideology. He also held au1502
Mikhail Suslov, shown here in 1956, headed the Communist Party’s agitation and propaganda department from 1946 until his death in 1982. © BETTMANN/CORBIS thoritative positions in foreign affairs and was noted for his demand for strict adherence to Soviet foreign policy by foreign communist parties. In 1949, at a Cominform meeting in Budapest, he denounced the Yugoslav Communist Party for its independent stance and in 1956 went to Hungary with Anastas Mikoyan and Marshal Grigory Zhukov to supervise the suppression of the Hungarian uprising. Suslov was a shrewd political operator who served three Soviet leaders: Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, and Leonid Brezhnev. Very different from Khrushchev in temperament and outlook, he opposed de-Stalinization and economic reform, but supported him in 1957 against the an-tiparty group. In 1964, however, he turned on his former boss and was instrumental in the removal of Khrushchev and the installation of Brezhnev as first secretary of the Communist Party. Eschewing the limelight, Suslov did not seek the highest party or state positions for himself, but was content to remain chief party theoretician and ideologist.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Deeply conservative, Suslov oversaw the official press and personally scrutinized publications to ensure conformity. According to Fedor Burlatsky (1988), he would also comment on everything written by members of the Central Committee departments. In 1969 he directed the dismissal of the progressive Novy mir editorial board. A hardline supporter of communism, he disliked the company of Westerners. At one Kremlin reception he placed tables between himself and foreign diplomats. Known as the “sea-green incorruptible of the Soviet establishment,” Suslov protested against increasing corruption in the party. In 1982 he died from a stroke that reportedly followed a heated discussion with an individual who was trying to cover up Brezhnev family scandals. See also: AGITPROP; CENTRAL COMMITTEE; COMMITTEES OF THE VILLAGE POOR; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; HUNGARIAN REVOLUTION
Burlatsky, Fedor. (1988). Khrushchev and the First Russian Spring, tr. Daphne Skillen. New York: Scribners. McCauley, Martin. (1997). Who’s Who in Russia since 1900. London: Routledge. Tatu, Michel (1968). Power in the Kremlin: From Khrushchev to Kosygin, tr. Helen Katel. New York: Viking.
ELAINE MACKINNON
portunities provided by a relaxation of tsarist censorship in 1865, the demands of an increasingly literate population, the mass production made possible by the new printing technology, and fast reporting of news by means of the telegraph.
As a seasoned literary critic and aspiring playwright, Suvorin in 1895 started his own theatrical company and installed it in his own theater. He wrote the revealingly personal Diary of A. S. Suvorin (1923), an account of the literary and political life of his time never translated into English.
Suvorin recognized the literary promise of Anton Chekhov when he first published stories in small Russian publications. During their thirteen-year collaboration from 1886 to 1899, Chekhov published major stories and plays with Suvorin. The two became close friends, and that bond eased for Suvorin the tragedies of his own family life. Both his first wife and a son committed suicide, while another son and a daughter died of illnesses. See also: CHEKHOV, ANTON PAVLOVICH; JOURNALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ambler, Effie. (1972). Russian Journalism and Politics: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin, 1861-1881. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Bartol, R. (1974). “Aleksei Suvorin: Russia’s Millionaire Publisher.” Journalism Quarterly 51:411-417.
(1834-1912), publisher, editor, critic, playwright.
Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin was born into a provincial military family and, by becoming a journalist, made his greatest contribution to Russia as publisher and editor of its most influential pre-Revolution conservative daily newspaper, New Times, and as publisher of Chekhov.
First commissioned in the military, Suvorin resigned at age nineteen to concentrate on teaching, journalism, and literature. After working for several Russian newspapers and periodicals over the next fifteen years, he and a partner acquired the faltering St. Petersburg daily, New Times, in 1867. It became the flagship of a financially successful business that came to include book publishing, sales in company bookstores and railway station kiosks, and a school for printers. Suvorin grasped the opENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
SUVOROV, ALEXANDER VASILIEVICH
(1730-1800), generalissimo (1799), prince, field marshal, and count.
Perhaps the greatest Russian military leader of all time, Alexander Suvorov never lost a battle. He is generally credited among the founders of the Russian school of military art. Suvorov entered service in 1748 and first saw conventional combat during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). As a regimental commander from 1763 to 1769, he devised a regulation that became a model for combat training and service practices. As a brigadier and major
