Russian official and government minister whom many view as a symbol of the unresponsiveness of the tsarist regime to the social unrest preceding the Russian Revolution (Russian Revolution of 1917).
Goremykin spent most of his life as a government bureaucrat, attaining successively more responsible positions until his appointment in 1895 as minister of the interior. Chiefly concerned with his own advancement, he showed little initiative in any of his posts, preferring inaction or delay on most policy matters. Forced out of office in 1899, he returned to power briefly in April 1906, when Nicholas II appointed him chairman of the Council of Ministers. The tsar viewed Goremykin as a loyal functionary who would support the throne in dealings with the newly created state Duma, or parliament. Having served his purpose, Goremykin was dismissed in July 1906.
In 1914, when Goremykin was 74 and generally thought to be senile, Nicholas reappointed him chairman of the Council of Ministers, in which he obediently followed the orders of the tsar, then under the influence of Rasputin. Dismissed as chairman in 1916, he fled during the Revolution to the Caucasus, where he died.
Kolchak, Aleksandr Vasilyevich
▪ Russian naval officer
born Nov. 4 [Nov. 16, New Style], 1874, St. Petersburg, Russia
died Feb. 7, 1920, Irkutsk, Siberia
Arctic explorer and naval officer, who was recognized in 1919–20 by the “Whites” as supreme ruler of Russia; after his overthrow he was put to death by the Bolsheviks (Bolshevik).
At the outbreak of World War I, Kolchak was flag captain of the Baltic fleet. By August 1916, as a vice admiral, he was commanding the fleet in the Black Sea. In June 1917, after the February revolution, he resigned under pressure and went to the United States. Next he tried, unsuccessfully, to coordinate White Russian forces in Manchuria. In October 1918 he went to Omsk, where he became war minister in the non-Bolshevik government. On Nov. 18, 1918, a military coup d'état at Omsk brought him absolute power there.
His armies, though at first successful, eventually were routed. When Omsk fell to the Red Army on Nov. 14, 1919, Kolchak transferred his headquarters to Irkutsk, but on Jan. 4, 1920, he was forced to resign when a Socialist Revolutionary–Menshevik group seized power in that city. He placed himself under Allied protection, but the Czechs handed him over to the Irkutsk authorities, from whom he was taken by the Bolsheviks. He was summarily executed and his body thrown into the Angara River.
soviet
▪ Soviet government unit
council that was the primary unit of government in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and that officially performed both legislative and executive functions at the all-union, republic, province, city, district, and village levels.
The soviet first appeared during the St. Petersburg disorders of 1905, when representatives of striking workers acting under socialist leadership formed the Soviet of Workers' Deputies to coordinate revolutionary activities. It was suppressed by the government. Shortly before the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917 and the creation of a Provisional Government, socialist leaders established the Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, composed of one deputy for every 1,000 workers and one for each military company. A majority of the 2,500 deputies were Socialist Revolutionary Party members, claiming to represent peasant interests. This Petrograd Soviet stood as a “second government” opposite the Provisional Government and often challenged the latter's authority. Soviets sprang up in cities and towns across the Russian Empire. Much of their authority and legitimacy in the public eye came from the soviets' role as accurate reflectors of popular wilclass="underline" delegates had no set terms of office, and frequent by-elections gave ample opportunity for quick exertion of influence by the voters.
In June 1917 the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets, composed of delegations from local soviets, convened in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). It elected a central executive committee to be in permanent session, with this committee's presidium at the head of the congress. The second congress met right after the radical Bolshevik faction of the Petrograd Soviet, having gained a majority in this body, had engineered the overthrow of the Provisional Government by the Red Guards and some supporting troops. In protest of this coup (the Russian Revolution of October 1917), most of the non-Bolshevik members of the congress walked out, leaving the Bolsheviks in control; an all-Bolshevik Council of People's Commissars was established as Russia's new government. Soviets across the empire assumed local power, though it took some time for the Bolsheviks to achieve a dominant position in every soviet.
At the fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in 1918, a constitution was drawn up that established the soviet as the formal unit of local and regional government and affirmed the All-Russian Congress of Soviets as the highest body of the state. Later, the 1936 constitution provided for the direct election of a two-chamber Supreme Soviet—the Soviet of the Union, in which membership was based on population, and the Soviet of Nationalities, in which members were elected on a regional basis. Nominally, the deputies and presiding officers of the soviets at all levels were elected by the citizenry, but there was only one candidate for any office in these elections, and the selection of candidates was controlled by the Communist Party.
Anastasia
▪ Russian duchess
Russian in full Anastasiya Nikolayevna
born June 18 [June 5, Old Style], 1901, Peterhof [now Petrodvorets], near St. Petersburg, Russia
died July 16/17, 1918, Yekaterinburg
grand duchess of Russia and the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, last emperor of Russia.
Anastasia was killed with the other members of her immediate family in a cellar where they had been confined by the Bolsheviks following the October Revolution. But after the executions several women outside Russia claimed her identity, making her the subject of periodic popular conjecture and publicity. Each claimed to have survived the execution and managed to escape from Russia, and some claimed to be heir to the Romanov fortune held in Swiss banks. Perhaps the most famous of these claimants was a woman who called herself Anna Anderson (and whom critics alleged to be one Franziska Schanzkowska, a Pole), who married an American history professor, J.E. Manahan, in 1968 and lived her final years in Virginia, U.S., dying in 1984. In the years up to 1970 she sought to be established as the legal heir to the Romanov fortune; but, in that year, West German courts finally rejected her suit and awarded a remaining portion of the imperial fortune to the duchess of Mecklenberg. In the 1990s, genetic tests undertaken on tissues from Anderson and on the exhumed remains of the royal family established no connection between her and the Romanovs and instead supported her identification with Schanzkowska.
The story of a surviving Anastasia provided the germ of a French play, Anastasia, written by Marcelle-Maurette (1909–72) and first produced in 1954. An American film version appeared in 1956, with Ingrid Bergman winning an Academy Award for her title role.
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