Nicholas V. (1984). A History of Russia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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(1626-1686), renowned Russian artist.
Simon Ushakov has been called the last great master of Russian painting. At the age of twenty-two (1648) he was appointed court painter and entrusted with the state icon painting studios in the Armory Palace. He not only painted icons, but made signs, did jewelers’ work, embroidered, and even designed coins. In addition, he became an expert on fortifications, mapmaking, and engraving. As the head of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov’s (r. 1645 -1676) workshop, he painted several portraits of the tsar and the royal family. The tsar had a profound interest in western European culture and hired foreign actors and musicians to perform at court. Western architecture also held the ruler’s interest, so it is understandable why Ushakov’s westernized icon style became the most acceptable form in court circles.
Ushakov became involved in theoretical art discussions. He wrote “Words to the Lovers of Icons,” which advanced his views on painting with an emphasis on naturalism. The idealization of the saints’ faces in his icons led others to refer to him as a Slavic Raphael. The colors Ushakov favored included rose pink, olive green, pale lilac, occasionally sky blue, and shades of tans and brown. Western influence can be seen not only in the saints’ lifelike faces but also in the use of classical architecture, as well as landscapes and scenery borrowed from German paintings and etchings.
One of themes that Ushakov painted frequently was the Mandilion (Spas Nerukotvorny or “The Savior Painted without Use of Human Hands”). Even though he continued to use egg tempera, rather than the new oil painting broadly adopted in the West, he nevertheless abandoned the traditional two-dimensional, bright-colored style that emphasized intense inner spirituality. Instead he prettified the faces, creating images that in many ways resembled the Madonnas painted by the Italian Renaissance master, Raphael. A mixed style characterizes Ushakov’s work at this time. His style became the official Orthodox style, copied by many contemporary Russian icon painters.
Ushakov’s most famous and revolutionary icon is the Vladimir Mother of God and the Planting and Spreading of the Tree of the Russian State, painted in 1668. This is a blatantly political icon. A huge rosebush symbolizes the Muscovite state; within it is a
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
representation of the most venerated icon in Russia, the Vladimir Mother of God. Christ appears at the very top, directing his angels to spread his sheltering cloak. The rosebush springs out of the Kremlin; Metropolitan Peter and Grand Duke Ivan Danilovic water it. The tsarist family appears near the planting, while within the spreading branches are medallions depicting Russia’s secular and ecclesiastical princes and her most famous saints.
With his mixed technique Ushakov had a very strong impact on the development of icon painting in Russia. Among his pupils who became famous icon painters were Georgy Zinoviev, Ivan Maxi-mov, and Mkhail Malyutin. After Ushakov’s time, the traditional style that had preceded him survived, but progressive artists adapted his more Western style up to the twentieth century. See also: ARCHITECTURE; ICONS
Onasch, Konrad. (1963). Icons. London: Faber and Faber. Hamilton, George H. (1990). The Art and Architecture of Russia.. London: Penguin Group.
A. DEAN MCKENZIE
USSR See UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS.
(1908-1984), marshal of the Soviet Union; Soviet minister of defense; member of the Politburo, leader of wartime production in the Soviet Union during World War II; Hero of the Soviet Union.
Dmitry Ustinov was born in Samara before the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1922, at the age of fourteen, he volunteered for service in the Red Army. In 1923 he was demobilized and attended a poly-technical institute in Makarev and then began to work in defense industry. A member of the emerging Soviet technical intelligentsia, he joined the Communist Party in 1927, graduated from the Military Mechanical Institute in 1934, and joined the Scientific-Technical Institute for Naval Artillery the same year. In 1937 he began work as a design engineer at the Bolshevik defense industry complex in Leningrad and in 1938 became the plant director. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union
he was appointed people’s commissar of armaments. In this capacity he played a leading role in organizing production of Soviet defense industries and was a leading member of Stalin’s war cabinet, the State Committee of Defense. In 1944 he was promoted to the military rank of colonel-general. In the postwar period Ustinov continued his leadership of Soviet defense industries down to 1957. He held the posts of deputy chairman of the Council Mnisters and first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1957 to 1965. From 1965 to 1976 he served in the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, where he directed the activities of research institutions, design bureaus, and enterprises. Ustinov was a candidate member of the Politburo in 1976 and a Full Member from 1976 until his death in 1984. In April 1976 he was appointed minister of defense. During his tenure as minister, the Soviet Union began its ill-fated intervention in Afghanistan. See also: BREZHNEV, LEONID ILICH; MILITARY, SOVIET AND POST-SOVIET; STATE DEFENSE COMMITTEE; WAR ECONOMY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barber, John, and Harrison, Mark. (1999). The Soviet Defence-Industry Complex from Stalin to Khrushchev. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Gelman, Harry. (1984). The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of D?tente. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Spielmann, Karl F. (1978). Analyzing Soviet Strategic Arms Decisions. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Ustinov, Dmitry. (1983). Serving the Country and the Communist Cause. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
(1786-1855), minister of education (1833-1849) and Academy of Sciences president (1818-1855).
Sergei Uvarov was the longest-tenured and most influential minister of education and Academy of Sciences president in Imperial Russian history. From 1810 to 1821, he also served as superintendent of the St. Petersburg Educational District. Indeed, Uvarov spent his entire life involved with the arts and sciences. He published poetry in his teens; actively participated in the literary quarrels of his day; authored two dozen essays on literary and
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historical topics; and in retirement, completed the work for a doctorate in classical studies.
As a statesman, from the 1810s Uvarov acted upon a certainty that Russia was in its youth and developing into a West European-style nation. He was determined, however, that the process of maturation would occur without European-style revolutions and that the educational system would provide the map for following this special path. He gave his system a slogan, “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” (Pravoslavie, Samoderzhavie, Narodnost). This tripartite formula offered a simple, accessible, patriotic affirmation of native values and an antidote against revolutionary ideas. Devotion to the Russian Orthodox Church would offset modern materialism. Autocracy would provide stability with patriarchal but progressive tsarist leadership. The concept of nationality promoted an indigenous attempt to answer the problems of modern development, a quest, though, that was to be defined and guided by the state, not the narod, or people.
Uvarov believed that raising the Russian educational system to a level of excellence was the sine qua non for the empire’s progress toward maturity. He transformed the Academy of Sciences from a shambles into a world- renowned center of learning. Uvarov created two first-rate universities, St. Petersburg (1819) and St. Vladimir’s (1833) and brought the others to a golden age. He reformed the gymnasia by introducing the classical curriculum and the study of Russian grammar, history, and literature. He patronized a new emphasis on technology and
