Russia Flashcards
Agents Provocateurs
Agents who infiltrate opposition movements with the deliberate aim of stirring up trouble so as to expose the ringleaders.
Pobedonostsev
Tsar Nicholas II tutor.
Strong conservative
Rejected the ideas of representative government, trial by jury and the free press.
Amazons
A special corps of female soldiers recruited by Kerensky.
Anarchy
Absence of government or authority, leading to disorder.
Accommodationism
The idea that the Bolsheviks should accept the situation that followed the February Revolution in 1917 and co-operate with the Provision Government.
Agrarian economy
The system in which food is produced on the land by arable and diary farming and then traded.
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
A gathering of representatives from all the soviets formed in Russia between February and October 1917.
American Relief Association. ARA
A body formed by Herbert Hoover (a future President of the USA. 1929-33) to provide food and medical supplies to post-First world war Europe.
Authoritarian characteristics
A dominant ideology that justifies a system of state terror being imposed.
Autonomy
National self government
Bi-cameral
A parliament made up of two chambers or houses, an upper and a lower.
Blat
A system that operates through bribes favours and connections.
Bosphorus
The narrow waterway linking the Black Sea with the Dardanelles.
Bottom-up Approach
Historical analysis of what was happening at the grass-roots level of society.
Bourgeoisie
The owners of capital, the boss class, who exploited the workers but who would be overthrown by them in the revolution to come.
Buffer state
An area that lies between two states and so provides a form of protection for each against the other
Cadres
Party members who were sent into factories and to construction sites to spy and report back on managers and workers.
Capital
The essential finance resources that provides the means for investment and expansion. No economy can grow without it.
Capitalism
The predominant economic system in Europe and the USA, based on private ownership and the making of profits - condemned by Marxists as involving the exploitation of the poor by the rich.
Capitalist methods of finance
The system in which the owners of private capital (money) increase their wealth by making loans on which interest has to be paid later by the borrower.
Capitalists
Russia’s financiers and industrialists.
Catechism
The primer used for instructing the people in the essential points of the Christian faith.
Central Committee
The decission-making body of the Bolshevik Party.
Centralisation
The concentration of political and economic power at the centre.
Cheka
The letters of the word stood for the Russian words for ‘All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Fighting Counter-revolution, Sabotage and Speculation’ - the secret police.
Chimera
A powerful but ultimately meaningless myth.
Collectivisation
The abolition of private property and the forcing of the peasants to live and work in communes.
Comintern
Short of the Communist International, a body set up in March 1919 to organise world wide revolution.
Commissars
Russian for Monisters; Lenin chose the word because he said, ‘it reeks of blood’.
Commissar for foreign affairs
Equivalent to foreign secretary in Britain.
Camisa the nationalities
Minister responsible for liaising with the non-Russian national minorities.
Commissar of Enlightenment
Equivalent to an arts Minister.
Committee system
A process in which the deputies of the third Duma formed various committees to discuss and advise on particular issues.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
The new name adopted by the Bolshevik party in 1919.
Co-operative
Group of workers or farmers working together on their own enterprise.
Council of People’s Commissars
The cabinet of ministers responsible for creating government policies.
CPGB
The Communist Party of Great Britain, formed in 1920, disbanded in 1991.
Counter-revolution
A term used by the Bolsheviks to cover any action of which they disapproved by branding it as a reactionary and opposed to progress.
‘dark masses’
The term used in court and government circles to signify the fear and content they felt towards the peasants were made up 4/5 of the population.
Decreed against Terrorist Acts, 1934
Gave the NKVD limitless powers in pursuing enemies of the state of the party.
‘Delivered the votes’
To use one’s control of the party machine to gain majority support in key events.
Dialectic
The shaping force of history that, according to Marx, leads in every historical period to a violent struggle between the exploiting and the exploited classes of the day.
Dictatorship of the proletariat
The last but one stage of history, in which the victorious workers would hunt down and destroy all the surviving reactionaries.
Diktat
A settlement imposed on a weaker nation by a stronger.
Discourse
A Marxist term relating to the prevailing ideas and culture within a society.
‘Dual authority’
Lenin coined this term to describe the uneasy alliance and balance of power between the provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet.
Economism
Putting the improvement of the workers’ conditions before the needs of the revolution.
Emancipation decree of 1861
The reform that abolished serfdom - a Russian form of slavery in which the landowner had total control over the peasants who lived and worked on his land.
Emigrant internationalists
Russian revolutionaries living in exile.
Émigrés
Those who fled from Russia after the revolution, either out of fear or from a desire to plan a counter strike against the Bolsheviks.
Factionalism
The forming within the party of groups with a particular grievance. Lenin used the term to brand as disloyal those Bolsheviks who opposed his policies.
Fait accompli
An established situation that cannot be changed.
Finance capital
Lenin’s term for the resources used by stronger countries to exploit weaker ones. By investing heavily in another country, a stronger power made that country dependent on it. It was a form of imperialism.
‘German woman’
The term used by anti-tsarist to suggest that Alexandra was spying for Germany.
Glasnost
Russian for ‘openness’, used as a description of the reforming policies adopted by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Gosplan
From 1921 on, the new name for Vesenkha, the government’s economic planning agency.
Grain procurements
In force collections of fixed quotas of grain from the peasants.
Great spurt
The spread of industry and the increase in production that occurred in Russia in the late 1890s.
Greens
Largely made up of groups from the National minorities; the best known of the Green leaders was Nestor Makhon.
Gulag
The vast system of prisons and labour camps that spread across the USSR during the purges.
Indemnities
Payment of war costs demanded by the victors from the defeated.
Industrialisation
Stalin’s crash program for revolutionising the USSR’s productive economy by concentrating on the output of heavy goods such as iron and steel.
Intelligentsia
The group in society distinguished by their intellectual or creative abilities, EG writers, artists, composers, teachers. Is czarist times, a cross-section of the educated and more enlightened members of the Russian society who wanted to see their nation adopt progressive changes along western lines.
Interior Minister
Equivalent to Britain’s Home Secretary.
International revolutionaries
Marxists who were willing to sacrifice national interest in the cause of the worldwide rising of the workers.
International women’s day
A demonstration organised by socialist groups to demand female equality: 23rd of February 1917
Izvestiya
‘The Times’, one of the USSR’s official government newspapers
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth.
Kremlin
The former tsarist fortress in Moscow that became the centre of Soviet government.
Kulaks
Bolshevik term for the class of the rich, exploiting peasants. The notion was largely a myth. Rather than being a class of exploiters, the kulaks were simply the more efficient farmers, who were marginally more prosperous.
Labourists
The name adopted by the SRs, who as a party officially boycotted the elections to the first Duma.
‘Left communists’
Bolsheviks who were convinced that their first task was to consolidate the October Revolution by driving the German in imperialist armies from Russia. The term was later used to describe party members who opposed the NEP.
Left-liberal circles
Westerners who were generally sympathetic towards Stalin and the USSR.
Left Social Revolutionaries
The faction of the SRs who wanted to continue the policy of terrorism inherited from ‘the people’s will’.
Legislative Duma
Parliament with lawmaking powers.
Liberal ideas
Notions that called for the limitations on the power of rulers and greater freedom for the people.
Marxism – Leninism
The notion that Marx’s theory of class war as interpreted by Lenin was an unchallengeable accurate piece of scientific analysis.
May Day (labour day)
Usually reckoned as 1 May, traditionally regarded as a special day for honouring the workers and the achievements of socialism.
Mir
The traditional village community
Modern industrial state
A nation whose economic development enables it to compete on equal terms with other advanced economies. This invariably means having a strong industrial base and sufficient capital to undertake progressive social reforms.
National insurance
A system of providing workers with state benefits, such as unemployment pay and medical treatment, in return for regular contributions to a central fund.
National minority governments
A number of Russia’s ethnic peoples exploited the provisional government’s difficulties by setting up their own governments and claiming independence of central control.
Neopatriarchal
A new form of male domination.
Neotraditionalism
A return to customary, established ways of doing things.
Neomen
Those who stood to gain from the free trading permitted under the new economic policy: the rich peasants, the retailers, the traders, and the small-scale manufacturers.
Nepotism
A system in which positions are gained through family connections rather than on merit.
Nomenclature
The Soviet establishment – a privileged elite of officials who ran the party machine.
Non-determinist approach
Rejection of the idea that history follows a fixed, inevitable course.
Non-partisan
Politically neutral, belonging to no party.
October deserters
Bolsheviks who in October 1917, believing that the party was not yet strong enough, had advised against a Bolshevik rising.
OGPU
Succeeded the Cheka as the state security force. In turn it became NKVD and then the KGB.
Okhrana
The tsarist secret police, the special task was to hunt down subversives who challenged the Tsarist regime.
Operation Barbarossa
German codename for the invasion of the Soviet Union, launched without formal warning by Hitler on 22nd of June 1941.
Orgburo
Short for Organisation Bureau responsible for putting the Communist parties policies into practice.
Packets
Privileges and special benefits
Parliamentary bourgeois republic
Lenin’s contemptuous term for the provisional government, which he dismissed as an unrepresentative mockery that had simply replaced the feudal control of the tsar with the bourgeois control of the old Douma.
Party card
The official CPSU document granting membership and guaranteeing privileges to the holder. It was a prized possession in Soviet Russia
Party democracy
Trotsky was not pressing for democracy in the full sense of all party members having to say. His aim was to condemn the centralising power from which Stalin had gained such benefit.
Patronage
The power to appoint individuals to official posts in the party and the government.
People’s Will
This group of SRs represented the most extreme element in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Petrograd
For patriotic reasons, the German name of the capital, St Petersburg, was changed to the Russian form Petrograd in 1914
Pogroms
Fierce persecutions of the Jews, which often involved wounding or killing them and destroying their property.
Politburo
Short for political bureau, the inner Cabinet of the ruling Central committee of the CPSU.
Political activists
Those who believed necessary change could be achieved only through direct action
Political commissars
Party workers whose function was to accompany officers the Red Army permanently and report on their conduct. No military order carried final authority unless a commissar countersigned it.
Political expediency
Refers to the pursuing of a course of action with the primary aim of gaining a political advantage.
Political subversives
The SDs and SRs, as described by their opponents.
Populists (Narodniks)
From the Russian word for ‘the people’.
Pragmatic
An approach in which policies are modified according to circumstance rather than in keeping with a fixed theory.
Pravda
Russian for ‘truth’, the title one of the USSRs official government newspapers.
Pre parliament
A body drawn from a variety of parties, to fill the interim before the Constituent Assembly came into being
Private enterprise
Economic activity organised by individuals or companies, not the government.
Progressists
A party of businessmen who favoured moderate reform.
Progressives
Those in Parliamentary government for Russia.
Proletariat
The exploited industrial workers, who, according to Marx, which triumph in the last great class struggle.
Proletkult
Proletarian culture
Quasi religious faith
A conviction so powerful that has the intensity of religious belief.
Radicalisation
A movement towards more sweeping revolutionary ideas
Reactionary
Resistance to any form of progressive change
Read guards
Despite the Bolshevik legend that these were the crack forces of the revolution, the red guards, some 10,000 in number, largely made up of elderly men recruiting from the workers in the factories.
Revolution from below
CPSU claim that the 1917 revolution had been a genuine rising of the people rather than a power grab by the Bolsheviks.
Revolutionary socialism
The takeover of the state by the peasants and the workers.
Right communists
Party members who wanted the NEP to continue.
Right social revolutionaries
The more moderate members, who believed in revolution as the ultimate goal but were prepared to work with other parties to improve the conditions of the workers and peasants.
Rightists
Not a single party: they represented a range of conservative views from the right of centre to the extreme reaction.
Rural crisis
The problem of land shortage and over population in the countryside produced by a huge increase in the number of people living in Russia in the late 19th century
Ryutin group
The followers of MN Ryutin, the Right Communist you had published an attack on Stalin, describing him as ‘the evil genius had brought the revolution to the verge of destruction’
Second revolution
Stalin is enforced modernisation of the Soviet economy
‘Secret report’
Krushchev’s astounding revelation concerning Stalin’s crimes against the party. Although they were officially described a secret, the details as soon known worldwide.
