found near the origins of modern cultivated species. Until 1935 he organized expeditions to remote corners of the world in order to collect, catalog, and preserve specimens of plant biodiversity. In the Soviet Union Vavilov was a powerful advocate and organizer of scientific institutions, and he tirelessly promoted research in genetics and plant breeding as a means of improving Soviet agriculture. Vavilov was director of the Institute of Applied Botany (1924- 1929), a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, director of the All-Union Institute of Plant Breeding (1930- 1940) and the Institute of Genetics (1933-1940), president and vice-president of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences (1929-1938), and president of the All-Union Geographical Society (1931-1940).
Vavilov’s increasingly vocal and uncompromising opposition to the falsification of genetic science propagated by Trofim Lysenko and his followers culminated in his arrest in 1940. His death sentence was commuted to a twenty-year prison term in 1942; he died of malnutrition in a Saratov prison one year later. Vavilov is considered a founding father in contemporary studies of plant biodiversity. He left an important legacy as one of the great Russian scientific and intellectual figures of the early twentieth century.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Graham, Loren R. (1993). Science in Russia and the Soviet Union. New York: Cambridge University Press.
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Krementsov, Nikolai. (1997). Stalinist Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Popovskii, Mark Aleksandrovich. (1984). The Vavilov Affair. Hamdon, CT: Archon Books.
VECHE
The veche was a popular assembly in medieval Russian towns from the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. Veches became particularly active at the turn of the twelfth century, before falling into decline except in the towns of Novgorod, Pskov, and Viatka. At times, the veche in Novgorod participated in selecting or dismissing the posadniks (mayors) and tysiatskiis (thousandmen). Originally, one tysiatskii was head of the town militia but over time, several were chosen and became judicial and civil officials. The veche also chose the archbishop, and the heads of the major monasteries. It also tried cases, ratified treaties, and addressed other public matters. Meetings sometimes turned violent. In Imperial and Soviet historiography, the veche was often used as an example to demonstrate whether Russia had any democratic tradition or had always been autocratic.
The veche remains an enigmatic phenomenon. The word is rooted in the words ve and veshchati, the latter meaning: to pontificate, play the oracle, or to lay down the law. However, medieval chroniclers used the term not only to mean popular assemblies, but also to speak of crowds or mobs. Primary sources are often silent as to the origin or demise of the veche, the scope of its authority, its specific membership, or the rules and procedures governing its activities.
Primary sources indicate that, at least in the cities of Novgorod and Pskov, the veche may have had a broad social base. In the case of the veche that confirmed the Novgorod Judicial Charter in 1471, its members included the Archbishop-elect, the posadniks, the tysiatskiis, the boyars, the zhi-tye liudi (the ranking or middle class citizens), the merchants, the chernye liudi (lit. black men, referring to the lower class or tax-paying citizens), and “all the five ends (boroughs), and all Sovereign Novgorod the Great.” Other documents show veches of narrower membership. For example, a 1439 treaty signed between Novgorod and the Livonian city of Kolyvan (Tallinn) lists only the posadniks and tysiatskiis as being members of the veche. A commercial document signed the same
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VEKHI
year between Novgorod and the German merchants lists only one posadnik, one tysiatskii, and “all Lord Novgorod the Great” as constituting the veche. The different composition of these veches indicate that there probably was no set membership, or that veches were perhaps more democratic when the entire city needed to reach consensus, as when the city’s Judicial Charter needed ratification, but were smaller and more oligarchic (or republican rather than democratic) in nature when the entire city did not need to ratify a decision, such as with commercial treaties or peace treaties.
Valentin Lavrentivich Ianin and other scholars argue that Novgorod’s government was oligarchic rather than republican in nature, and that the veche had no real power. They argue that it was an oligarchy of landowners who wielded real power in the city. Some argue it is these landowners who are referred to in the Rigan chronicle as the three-hundred golden-girdled men and made up the Council of Lords (Soviet gospod) that ran day-today government in Novgorod. However, the Rigan chronicle is the only such reference to the three-hundred golden-girdled-men, and Russian sources mention neither the Council nor the three hundred. The veche lasted longest in Pskov, and was disbanded by Grand Prince Basil III in 1510, when he brought that city under the direct rule of Moscow. See also: GRAND PRINCE; KIEVAN RUS; MUSCOVY; NOVGOROD THE GREAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Birnbaum, Henrik. (1981). Lord Novgorod the Great: Essays on the History and Culture of a Medieval City. Los Angeles: Slavica Publishers. Ianin, Valentin Lavrentevich. (1990). “The Archaeology of Novgorod.” Scientific American 262(3):84-91. Tikhomirov, Mikhail Nikolaevich. (1959). The Towns of Ancient Rus, tr. Y. Sdovnikov. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House.
VEKHI
Vekhi (“Landmarks” or “Signposts”), a collection of seven essays published in 1909, ran through five editions and elicited two hundred published rejoinders in two years. Historian Mikhail Gershenzon proposed the volume reappraising the Russian intelligentsia, wrote the introduction, and edited the book. Pyotr Struve selected the contributors, five of whom had contributed to a 1902 volume, Problems of Idealism, and had attended the 1903 Schaffhausen Conference that laid the foundation for the Union of National Liberation. Himself a founder of the Constitutional Democratic (Cadet) Party in 1905, Struve had served in the Second Duma in 1907, then went on to edit the journal Russian Thought. In his essay he argued that the intelligentsia, because it had coalesced in the 1840s under the impact of atheistic socialism, owed its identity to standing apart from the government. Thus, when the government agreed to restructure along constitutional lines in 1905, the intelligentsia proved incapable of acting constructively toward the masses within the new framework.
Bogdan Kistyakovsky discussed the intelligentsia’s failure to develop a legal consciousness. Their insufficient respect for law as an ordering force kept courts of law from attaining the respect required in a modern society. Alexander Izgoyev (who, like Gershenzon, had not contributed to the 1902 anti-positivist volume) depicted contemporary university students as morally relativist, content merely to embrace the interests of the long-suffering people. Russian students compared very unfavorably to their French, German, and British counterparts, lacking application and even a sense of fair play. Nikolai Berdyayev, considering the intelligentsia’s philosophical position, found utilitarian values had crowded out any interest in pursuing truth. Sergei Bulgakov showed how the intelligentsia had undertaken a heroic struggle for socialism and progress but lost sight of post-Reformation Europe’s gains with respect to individual rights and personal freedom.
For Semen Frank, as for Gershenzon and Struve, the intelligentsia’s failure of leadership in the 1905 revolution warranted a reappraisal of their fundamental assumptions. His essay emphasized the nihilistic sources of the intelligentsia’s utilitarianism: material progress, national education, always viewed as a means to another end. Moreover, he saw Russian Marxists as obsessed by a populist drive to perfect society through redistribution and faulted them for their penchant for dividing all humanity into friends and enemies. Gershenzon asserted, in the book’s most controversial sentence, that “so far from dreaming of union with the people we ought to fear the people . . . and bless this government which, with its prisons and bayonets, still protects us from the people’s fury.”
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