R

racism This word, current from the era of NAZISM onward, was originally coined to denote a relatively systematic ideological position founded on belief in racial inequality and racial determinism. Today it is effectively synonymous with “racialism,” and thus covers a broader range of prejudiced attitudes and discriminatory actions less dependent on attempts at formal intellectual justification. Granted the ethnic complexities of the European peoples and the scale of their impact on other regions of the world, it is not surprising that ideas about racial differentiation should have formed an important strand in their history and should have embraced notions about racial hierarchy too. Europe's record of slavery and colonial IMPERIALISM, for example, reveals many unquestioned assumptions about the white race's superiority over the peoples of Africa and Asia. Yet, even aside from contexts of “color,” racism has also influenced the conduct of ethnic rivalries within the continent itself. Racial discourse pervaded the modern manifestations of ANTISEMITISM, and was almost invariably present whenever NATIONALISM shifted from liberal to illiberal forms. The latter versions became commoner when, partly under the influence of POSITIVISM and SOCIAL DARWINISM, the emphasis in debate on racial differences moved from cultural to more immutable biological factors. In the later nineteenth century such “scientific” racism was grafted into the movement of PAN-SLAVISM, and even more deeply into PAN-GERMANISM. Although the myth of “Aryan” primeval greatness and future destiny also affected other varieties of racist belief (e.g. Anglo-Saxonism, or Celticism), it was this Teutonic-Nordic brand that made greatest historical impact. At the ideological level, its course can best be charted through the work of Arthur de Gobineau in the 1850s, to that of Houston Stewart Chamberlain in the 1890s, and on to HITLER'S Mein Kampf in the 1920s. The NEW ORDER that Nazism aspired to build was deeply dependent on placing all the peoples of Europe in a racial hierarchy. Just as Hitler celebrated the “Aryan” elite of the SCHUTZSTAFFEL (SS) at one end, so at the other he envisaged massive culling of the Slavic hordes and total genocidal slaughter of the European JEWS (see also FINAL SOLUTION). After 1945 the horrors symbolized by the name of Auschwitz helped to marginalize any intellectual respectability that racism might still have possessed. At the popular level, however, they did more to alter the ways in which racialist attitudes were typically expressed than they did to bring an end to such phenomena. Antisemitism, for example, has continued as a recurrent feature of the European scene. Moreover, towards the end of the twentieth century, talk of so-called ETHNIC CLEANSING surrounded some of the worst atrocities in Bosnia's civil war, and, as the new millennium began, an even more general tide of Islamophobic sentiment was also being given racial expression in the face of increasing MUSLIM settlement by migrants (see MIGRATION) coming from such regions as Turkey, North Africa, and Pakistan.

Radetzky, Josef Wenzel, Count (1766–1858), Austrian Field Marshal (1836–58). Radetzky learned his trade in campaigns against the Ottomans (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) before serving in the NAPOLEONIC WARS at the Battles of MARENGO, WAGRAM, and LEIPZIG. Having been appointed commander-in-chief in Italy in 1831, he led Austrian operations during the conflicts that followed the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. He brilliantly out-fought his opponents, defeating the Piedmontese forces of CHARLES ALBERT at CUSTOZZA and NOVARA before going on to occupy Venice. His victories, which helped to avert the insurrectionary threats to the HABSBURG EMPIRE, were famously commemorated in the Radetzky March composed by Johann Strauss the Elder.

Radical Party (France) During modern times many groupings have adopted the term “radical” (derived from the Latin radix, or “root”) to express their commitment to thoroughgoing reform, but the principal usage has related to the French Radical Party. It was first organized in 1870s, and remained influential through most of the period of the THIRD REPUBLIC. Winning support among the lower middle classes and the peasantry, the Radicals saw themselves as embodying the traditions of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 and as standing for the defense of republican institutions. Though genuinely “radical” in some regards (e.g. in their ANTICLERICALISM), they generally tended to tread a centrist path. In 1905 the creation of a united socialist party (see SOCIALISM), the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière, ended the notion of a single republican movement, and posed problems for the Radicals as to how far they should cooperate with the left. In the years before 1914 the Radicals were a powerful force, frequently represented in cabinet. However, during and after WORLD WAR I the party lost something of its identity and was outsmarted by the right, though it did help to form the CARTEL DES GAUCHES government of HERRIOT (1924). The failure of the Cartel left the party further divided between those favoring centrist measures and those keen to build bridges with the socialists. In 1936, largely for fear of electoral losses, Radicals joined the POPULAR FRONT, and in 1938 dominated the government of DALADIER. Though the party recovered some of its influence under the FOURTH REPUBLIC, it became a marginal force in the FIFTH REPUBLIC, largely because its electoral base had disappeared with the economic transformation of France.

railways (see under COMMUNICATIONS)

Rákosi, Mátyás (1892–1971), General Secretary of the Communist Party in HUNGARY (1945–56), and Prime Minister (1952–3). Having been a commissar of the short-lived Soviet republic led in 1919 by Béla KUN, he fled to Moscow before returning to Hungary in 1924. His aim of reinvigorating COMMUNISM amongst his fellow-Magyars was frustrated by the fact that, until he was sent back to the Soviet Union in 1940, he spent most of his time as a political prisoner of HORTHY'S regime. He came home again in 1944, and as Communist Party chief he planned the seizure of power secured in 1948. As Hungary's effective head thereafter, he followed STALIN'S dicates with such brutality that, after 1953, the new leaders of the Soviet Union sought to strengthen the position of his more popular rival, Imre Nagy. Rákosi's masters at the Kremlin secured his final return to Moscow shortly before the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956 that he had unintentionally done so much to provoke.

Ralliement (1890–8). Movement aimed at reconciliation between French CATHOLICISM and the THIRD REPUBLIC. It was launched by Pope LEO XIII primarily to counter the ANTICLERICALISM that characterized the policies of the republican majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and as a means of obtaining French support in the context of the KULTURKAMPF within Germany and of similarly strained relations between church and state within newly-united ITALY. It was inaugurated when Archbishop Lavigerie of Algiers proposed a toast to the republic at a dinner for naval officers. However, most Catholics, including the bishops, rejected Leo's call, and candidates supporting the Ralliement fared badly in the elections of 1893 and 1898. The DREYFUS AFFAIR further damaged the movement by polarizing attitudes between left and right.

Rapallo, Treaties of

[1] 1920. An agreement made in November 1920 between Italy and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (see YUGOSLAVIA) aimed at resolving their territorial disputes along the Adriatic coast. It confirmed the Italian hold on ISTRIA, as well as Yugoslav possession of Dalmatia. As for the port of FIUME (now Rijeka), the treaty envisaged a compromise by which it would be designated as a “free city.” However, by 1922 the Italians were effectively in control of Fiume, and its special status was formally abandoned in 1924.

[2] 1922. A pact made in April 1922 between Germany and Soviet Russia. At an epoch when these countries were still virtual outcasts from the rest of the post-1918 international system, this treaty dismayed the other European powers. It provided for the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two signatory states and for their abandonment of all REPARATIONS claims against each other. Their pact also offered the benefits of mutual economic cooperation, and was supplemented by a further commercial agreement in 1925.

ras Collective term for the local party bosses involved in Italian FASCISM, who took this name from the Ethiopian chieftains that had defeated Italy's forces at Adowa in 1896. The ras emerged in 1919 amid nationalist frustration and social turmoil, and built up large spheres of local influence. Given money and arms by landowners and industrialists, these bosses recruited provincial armies (see SQUADRISTI) to attack socialists and break up strikes. MUSSOLINI had considerable difficulty in controlling the corrupt and ambitious ras, but exploited their support in putting pressure on the liberal state. After the MARCH ON ROME, he turned the squadristi into a fascist militia. This helped to curb the local chiefs, as did the appointment of Roberto Farinacci as party chairman in 1925. Though the latter had himself been one of the most violent members of the ras and was always feared by Mussolini, Farinacci made progress in purging the movement's wayward elements. During WORLD WAR II it was, however, the ras of the Fascist Grand Council who participated in the Duce's eventual overthrow (July 1943), while also hoping to maintain Italy's military involvement in the AXIS.

Rasputin, Grigori (1871–1916), Russian mystic and “holy man” who exercised an undue influence over the imperial family. Born into a peasant family at Pokrovskoye (Siberia), he was alleged to have developed supernatural powers during his adolescence. As an 18-year-old, he stayed for three months in a monastery, though he never entered religious orders, despite being later called “the Mad Monk.” Much of his early adulthood was spent wandering Russia, with his family in tow, extending his reputation as a mystic, hypnotist, and healer. On that basis he was invited into the imperial court to tend Alexis, the hemophiliac heir to NICHOLAS II. From 1911 onwards, Rasputin interfered increasingly in politics and had a particular hold over the Tsarina. Deeply disliked in wider court circles, he also incurred the particular displeasure of the Orthodox Church (see ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY). His fondness for drink and his sexual promiscuity became notorious. In World War I, he was alleged to be in the pay of the Germans, and was assassinated in bizarre circumstances in 1916. His close association with the imperial family undoubtedly contributed to the weakening of Romanov authority (see RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917).

Rathenau, Walter (1867–1922), German industrialist and foreign minister (February–June 1922). Head of AEG, the electronics firm founded by his father, he came to national prominence in August 1914 when FALKENHAYN, then Minister of War, put him in charge of organizing raw materials. Given Rathenau's Jewish background, the choice was surprising. However, it was also inspired, for he undertook his responsibilities brilliantly, requisitioning natural resources and developing synthetic alternatives and thus averting some of the effects of the British blockade during WORLD WAR I. As foreign minister under the WEIMAR REPUBLIC this essentially liberal nationalist was especially concerned with REPARATIONS. He relieved domestic inflationary pressure by paying these in kind rather than in gold. He also negotiated the RAPALLO TREATY with the Soviet Union. This agreement, which involved the mutual renunciation of future reparations claims, put Germany in a stronger position to resist Franco-British pressure. He was assassinated by nationalists of the extreme right, who falsely claimed that his diplomatic settlement with Moscow provided evidence of a Jewish-communist conspiracy.

realism (see NATURALISM)

Realpolitik German term best translated as “the politics of realism,” which refers to a hard-headed pursuit of aims in which considerations of morality or sentiment are marginalized and where the ends readily justify the means, including use of force if necessary. The word was coined in the early 1850s by a journalist critical of the impractical idealism exhibited by so many of his fellow-liberals during the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. In the later nineteenth century this broadly Machiavellian concept became primarily associated with foreign policy, and most particularly with the diplomacy of BISMARCK.

RedArmy This was established by the BOLSHEVIKS in 1918 to replace the hastily improvised Red Brigades, or workers' militia. The latter had secured a successful outcome from the REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, but proved no match for the Germans nor for the reactionary “Whites” at the start of the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR. The Red Army was ruthlessly organized by TROTSKY, who included many former tsarist officers while also ensuring that all commanders were overseen by political commissars. It was thus a branch of the Party as well as a combat force. After victory in the Civil War and the jettisoning of Trotsky's notion of “permanent revolution,” the military was scaled down, though all men remained subject to conscription. In the mid-1930s many senior and middle-ranking soldiers became victims of the GREAT PURGES. That was, however, also the period when the Red Army started to resemble a professional fighting unit: officer ranks (abolished in 1918) were re-established; tank corps created; new technology introduced; and tactics overhauled. Yet constant political meddling especially by STALIN, combined with a belief that wars were won less through equipment than through ideological motivation, meant that the SOVIET UNION was badly caught out both in the RUSSO-FINNISH WAR of 1939–40 and by Germany's Operation BARBAROSSA in 1941. Rapid reforms were introduced: the air arm became independent; command structures were simplified; and a general headquarters (Stavka) was established under the minister of defense, thus dispensing with a commander-in-chief. Improvisation remained a constant feature of the Red Army during WORLD WAR II, as did mass production of weaponry. There were also huge reserves of manpower, which enabled the USSR to survive the deaths of some 10 million of its soldiers, and the wounding or capture of an even larger number. Many who fell into German hands were deserters who feared their own commanders more than they did the Nazis, thus suggesting their leaders' failure to promote revolutionary values. The Red Army was officially renamed in 1944 as the Soviet Army, so as to emphasize its professionalization, but the earlier label survived in popular usage. Through most of the COLD WAR it remained the largest army in the world, though eventually overtaken by its post-1949 Chinese counterpart. In eastern Europe it was pivotal to the suppression of anti-Soviet movements: as manifested in East Germany (1953), the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956, and the PRAGUE SPRING of 1968. In 1979 it invaded Afghanistan, which quickly became “the USSR's own Vietnam.” During the later 1980s GORBACHEV'S efforts to reduce military spending proved unpopular with army leaders, some of whom were involved in the failed coup of 1991 that sought to reverse communism's collapse. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the army was reorganized, and much of its equipment was handed over to the SUCCESSION STATES. However, a revival of Russian military power was subsequently prioritized by PUTIN.

Red Brigades Term used originally by the Russian BOLSHEVIKS for the workers' militia that preceded the establishment of the RED ARMY. It is now more commonly encountered as denoting the Brigate Rosse (BR), which formed the most notable of the far-left organizations promoting TERRORISM in Italy during the 1970s and 1980s. The BR (founded by Renato Curcio and Margherita Cagol, students at Trento University) attracted some 400 activists, whose para-Marxism, developed in the aftermath of the STUDENT REVOLTS of 1968, urged that the liberal-capitalist state was beyond reform and that the Communist Party (see COMMUNISM) was incapable of revolution. Enjoying a small following among workers in the industrial north, and part-financed by Eastern bloc states, the BRs were highly organized and chose their targets with care, usually magistrates, representatives of big business, and politicians. Their most spectacular assassination was that of a former premier, the Christian Democrat MORO, in 1978. Like the BAADER–MEINHOFF GROUP, they hoped that such murders and kidnappings would plunge the state into crisis and detach it from NATO. Yet the public was repelled, as was the Communist Party which rallied behind the institutions of the Republic. During the 1980s, the Red Brigades remained active, but suffered a number of reverses at the hands of the intelligence services, while their violence was eclipsed by that perpetrated by far-right groups and organized crime syndicates (see MAFIA). That liberal democracy survived in Italy during these so-called anni di piombo (“years of lead,” with bullets flying) was a notable achievement.

Red Cross, International Committee of the (ICRC) Organization founded at Geneva in 1863 by Henri Dunant (1828–1910), a Swiss philanthropist whose concern for “succoring the wounded” had been strengthened by the work of Florence NIGHTINGALE in the CRIMEAN WAR and by the carnage that he himself had witnessed after the battle of Solferino in the FRANCO-AUSTRIAN WAR of 1859. The work of the ICRC (whose membership, originally drawn from a select group of Dunant's fellow-countrymen, would thereafter remain entirely Swiss) was soon complemented by parallel efforts from cognate national societies. Such was the combination that became informally known as the International Red Cross. Its main emblem involved a simple reversal of the colors found on the Swiss flag (with an alternative Red Crescent eventually approved for use by Muslim countries, and a Red Crystal for Israel). The ICRC's history is closely associated with that of the GENEVA CONVENTIONS, the first of which Dunant helped to formulate in 1864. These developed into a series of international agreements (the most recent dating from 1977) about the protection due in times of WARFARE to non-combatants, including those who had ceased to fight after becoming prisoners. In that context, the ICRC assumed principal responsibility for the neutral, impartial, and expert monitoring of these Geneva accords. In WORLD WAR II, for example, it established a central agency for information about prisoners of war, provided parcels for those held captive, made inspection visits, and negotiated many transfers of the sick and wounded. During that conflict the ICRC's effectiveness was often limited by the fact that certain belligerents (most notably the Soviet Union and Japan) had not subscribed to the current version of the Conventions, as well as by the undue politicization of some of the national Red Cross committees with whom its various delegations had to collaborate. The latter point was particularly significant in the case of Germany, where HITLER denied access to his system of CONCENTRATION CAMPS while also seeking elsewhere to exploit the Red Cross for his own purposes (see KATYN MASSACRE). The ICRC won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1917, and again in 1944. By the early twenty-first century, when over 180 countries were affiliated to the humanitarian venture originally launched by Dunant, it was still using Geneva as the headquarters for its global operations.

Reichstag Fire Arson attack that severely damaged the German parliament building on February 27, 1933. HITLER'S new regime prosecuted a mentally disturbed Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe for the crime. Although he was executed, three others (including the Bulgarian DIMITROV) were acquitted. There remains strong suspicion that some leading promoters of NAZISM were complicit in the blaze. It certainly gave Hitler a pretext for demanding emergency powers from HINDENBURG, and for presenting the event as further evidence of the “Red Peril” facing Germany. The fire made a dramatic contribution to the context within which the Nazis completed their campaigning for the Reichstag elections of 5 March, before forcing through the ENABLING ACT and accelerating processes of GLEICHSCHALTUNG.

Reinsurance Treaty Agreement made in June 1887 between Germany and Russia, reflecting BISMARCK'S secret diplomacy designed to keep France isolated. The German chancellor's policy had resulted in a series of compacts, among them the DUAL ALLIANCE (1879), the THREE EMPERORS' LEAGUE (as eventually formalized in 1881), and the TRIPLE ALLIANCE (1882). When Austro-Russian tensions over the BALKANS prevented renewal of the Three Emperors' League in 1887, Bismarck negotiated a separate agreement with Tsar ALEXANDER III, known as the Reinsurance Treaty. It stipulated that either empire would remain neutral if the other became involved in war with a third party, although this condition would not operate if Germany attacked France or Russia declared war on Austria-Hungary. To entice Alexander into this bargain, Germany recognized Russian interests in BULGARIA. It was largely Bismarck's powers of persuasion that secured this deal and, with his fall from office in 1890, his successor CAPRIVI chose not to renew the arrangement. The ensuing FRANCO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE of 1892 signaled the development of two rival blocs and contributed to the tensions that preceded WORLD WAR I.

reparations Monetary or other compensation often demanded from a losing side in war. For instance, after the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR the FRANKFURT TREATY of May 1871 required France to pay Germany an indemnity of 5 billion gold francs over a five-year period. Similarly, at BREST-LITOVSK in March 1918, Russia agreed to recompense the CENTRAL POWERS. However, it was the reparations demanded of Germany in 1919 which are most frequently recalled, as many historians believe that these destabilized the international economy and undermined the WEIMAR REPUBLIC. At the end of WORLD WAR I, the Allies asserted their entitlement to “compensation for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allied and Associated Powers and to their property.” In the event, the VERSAILLES TREATY did not fix a precise penalty, but simply specified the categories of payment – to cover, for example, material damage and war pensions. The job of calculating a figure was given over to the newly-established Reparations Commission, which reported in May 1921 setting a target of 132,000 million gold marks. Although 66 percent of that total was immediately postponed, until German's ability to pay had been determined, reparations became part of the notion of a “dictated peace” and attracted international criticism, most influentially from the economist John Maynard KEYNES. He argued that the figure was vastly excessive, and that the strains placed on Germany would disrupt the international economy. Undoubtedly reparations hampered wider reconstruction as they became ensnared in the question of war debts. While fighting, all the Allies had borrowed money from one another and most importantly from Britain and the USA. To the annoyance of the Washington administration, which had not signed the Versailles Treaty and which viewed the financial penalties as morally dubious, the other Allies sought to repay war debts through reparations, even though this procedure exacerbated their balance of payments difficulties. When Germany defaulted on payment in 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the RUHR, thus precipitating hyperinflation and a political crisis within the WEIMAR REPUBLIC. The situation was defused by the DAWES PLAN of 1924 which stabilized the German currency and extended the repayment schedule. The new system worked well until the GREAT DEPRESSION[2] sparked by the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The swift recall of loans by the USA affected Germany's ability to pay. Accordingly, the YOUNG PLAN of 1929–30 reduced the total of reparations, but the worsening economic climate meant that in 1932 they were scrapped altogether. Historians have since been divided over their impact. Contrary to what Keynes argued, it has been suggested that Germany was capable of meeting the sums, especially after 1924, but chose not to, investing elsewhere instead. Whatever the case, it is telling that at the end of WORLD WAR II reparations were demanded from her not in the shape of money but in the form of industrial machinery, largely to be handed over to the USSR. Only Japan and Germany's other AXIS partners were required to pay cash sums, on a relatively modest scale.

republicanism (see under MONARCHISM)

resistance This term is most frequently encountered by historians within the context of WORLD WAR II. There it chiefly denotes (in contradistinction to COLLABORATION) the attempts made to resist authority under conditions of foreign occupation, whether imposed by the forces of the AXIS or by those of the SOVIET UNION. However, it may also be applied to the less frequent efforts made for example by some Germans and Italians to frustrate the war aims espoused by their own dictators. In its predominant sense, resistance signaled refusal to accept military defeat and entailed rejection of the occupier. These sentiments were shared by many in occupied Europe, yet it did not necessarily follow that resistance was quick to emerge. To embark upon it was a brave decision, especially in the early stages of the war, when any kind of defiance often seemed futile.

Several variables influenced the emergence of resistance: government, time, place, and tradition. These factors were evident within the Greater Germany that HITLER was building, and where resistance was slowest to evolve. Here, in Austria, Sudetenland, Memelland, and Eupen-Malmédy for instance, much of the population identified itself as ethnically German and welcomed the Nazis as liberators. Within Germany itself, Hitler had almost entirely eliminated dissent since coming to power in 1933. Resistance would only come to light towards the end of the war, when all seemed lost and, even then, most of it was a fragmented affair undertaken by students and the churches. However, it also found expression among certain senior soldiers who had once worked with Hitler, and who therefore came under the least suspicion, for instance those involved in the abortive JULY PLOT of 1944 to assassinate the Führer.

Resistance was also slow to establish itself in northern Europe where the governments of Holland, Denmark and Norway, were permitted a large measure of self-rule. Rejection of the Nazis' satraps, for instance QUISLING, came easily, yet the relative liberties permitted by the occupier undermined early attempts at protest. Only as the material deprivations of the war worsened, and the Nazis increasingly interfered in daily life, especially in the round-up of JEWS, did resistance mobilize. The French case is particularly interesting. It might have been thought that resistance would have been strongest and quickest to evolve in the northern zone occupied by the Germans. Yet this was the area directly patrolled by the Wehrmacht and other branches of the German security services, with the result that resistance found greatest expression in the southern zone even before its own eventual occupation in 1942. That said, many resisters in the latter region had difficulty in shaking off a loyalty to Marshal PÉTAIN who was widely viewed as a supreme patriot and humane soldier.

Resistance began most quickly in those countries immediately subject to Nazi and Soviet barbarity, most obviously Poland. Partisan groups were forming throughout the 1939 Polish campaign, becoming part of the underground army, the Union for Armed Struggle, which later enjoyed close links with SIKORSKI'S government-in-exile in London. This development owed something to the existing tradition of protest within Poland which dated back to the partitions of the eighteenth century. Historians have also shown how, at a local level, similar traditions often informed resistance behavior elsewhere, for instance in the Cévennes region of France which had experienced the persecution of the Huguenots by Louis XIV.

Resistance activity took several forms. In the popular imagination, it is most commonly associated with military action, yet this was only really true of those countries with existing patterns of violent protest, notably Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Within western Europe, this form of resistance was less evident, partly because of the dangers involved and partly because of German reprisals directed at the civilian population. Military activity increased as Europe's communists, freed from the moral dilemmas of the NAZI–SOVIET PACT, began to coordinate activities, and as the Allies supplied greater weaponry in preparation for the NORMANDY LANDINGS. Other forms of resistance included industrial action, commonplace in Belgium, and in Italy before the collapse of MUSSOLINI; the setting up of secret networks to ferry intelligence and to enable the escape of Allied airmen shot down over occupied Europe; the publication of clandestine newspapers, vital given the stranglehold which the Nazis enjoyed over the media, though BBC broadcasts to Europe did much to encourage internal dissent; and acts of “passive” resistance, for instance chalking V signs on the wall, being rude to German soldiers, and reading prohibited books and pamphlets. The manner in which Jews and others faced the Nazi and Soviet labor camps – the refusal to sacrifice their beliefs before the barbarity of Hitlerism and Stalinism – has also been deemed an additional form of “passive” or “spiritual” resistance. Often resistance activity was ambivalent. To retain their cover, resisters had sometimes to join the wider population in collaborating with the enemy. Few people welcomed the Germans or Soviets, while many frequently engaged in silent or passive protest. Yet ultimately it was difficult to avoid the presence of the occupier and the pressure to cooperate in some way.

Owing to their need to maintain secrecy and to the ambiguities of conduct involved, it is difficult to establish the number of resisters in any one country. It seems clear, though, that participants came from all walks of life. Resistance organizations often sprang out of existing networks of friends and colleagues, for instance old soldiers' associations and hunting clubs in the case of Norway. Within Axis-controlled Europe communist resisters were also in evidence, though after the war they deliberately exaggerated their importance. As already observed, a good deal depended on their response to the Nazi–Soviet pact. In Greece and Yugoslavia, communists rarely listened to Moscow and were quick to mobilize. In France, the Communist Party was hopelessly Stalinist, and did not agitate until after June 1941, though there were those who broke ranks to act on an individual basis. Additionally, historians are increasingly acknowledging the role of women (see GENDER). After the war, female resisters frequently retreated into civilian life and their contribution, especially to passive resistance, was conveniently ignored.

Although in France DE GAULLE facilitated a large measure of unity among resisters, most partisan groups were internally divided. Personal rivalries, demands of secrecy, ideological battles, gender conflicts, and fear of communist infiltration all stymied the emergence of united movements. This has led historians to question the overall significance of resistance. Admittedly, within the military domain, it accomplished little, always excepting Yugoslavia and Greece. This was understood by the Allied planners of D-Day who were reluctant to give resisters any sizeable role in such a critical operation, though after the Normandy landings greater care was taken to integrate partisan groups, especially in the liberation of southern France. However, historians have laid a greater stress on the moral role of resistance. This allowed Europeans, regardless of rank or status, to keep alive a dignity and sense of hope at one of the darkest epochs in the history of their continent.

Restoration (see under VIENNA CONGRESS; MONARCHISM)

Revolutions of 1830–2 These disrupted the relative calm enjoyed by “Restoration Europe” since the fall of NAPOLEON I. Disorders began in France where, against a backdrop of widespread economic discontent, the reactionary CHARLES X invited trouble by publishing the Four Ordinances, which dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, called new elections, reduced the franchise, and curtailed press freedom. On July 27, 1830 barricades appeared in Paris, and by August 2 Charles had abdicated. While radicals pressed for a republic, conservatives and moderates rallied behind Louis Philippe, Duke of Orléans. His so-called JULY MONARCHY quickly dismantled many of the reactionary policies of the previous Restoration regime, even though only moderate enlargement of the franchise was permitted. Paris now became the example for others to follow. On August 25 a Brussels performance of Auber's opera La Muette de Portici was the trigger for a rebellion of French-speaking Catholic Walloons against the Dutch Protestant hegemony hitherto operative within the United Kingdom of the NETHERLANDS. Crowds assembled and occupied key government buildings, to be joined by ARTISANS who, as in France, were feeling the pinch of a generalized economic downturn. With the failure of Dutch troops to recapture Brussels, the great powers of Britain, France, and Prussia agreed in late 1830 to the creation of an independent BELGIUM. Such success for NATIONALISM was not repeated in POLAND. There, from Warsaw in November, students and cadet officers launched an armed insurrection against the foreign and autocratic dominance of Tsar NICHOLAS I. They were soon joined by large sections of Polish society and the majority of the army. Power drifted into the hands of radical nationalists who, in January 1831, voted union with Lithuania and the end of tsarist governance. This spurred Russian military intervention. Though the bravery of the Poles' campaign of guerrilla warfare won public sympathy in Britain and France, no effective foreign assistance was forthcoming and in September 1831 Warsaw was recaptured. The gains of the revolution were overthrown and a brutal policy of RUSSIFICATION ensued. By contrast, the GERMAN CONFEDERATION was relatively untroubled by revolution. The states most affected were Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, HANOVER, and SAXONY. In each instance a constitution was promised and order restored, but only in Brunswick was there a change of ruler. In 1832 METTERNICH was particularly instrumental in ensuring that Austria (see HABSBURG EMPIRE) and PRUSSIA would together compel the confederal assembly to pass the so-called Six Acts, limiting the influence of press and parliament in a manner contrary to the aspirations of LIBERALISM. The Vienna regime also reacted to risings that occurred during late 1830 and early 1831 in central Italy, spreading from Modena, Parma, and Bologna into the Romagna and the PAPAL STATES. These were led by nationalists aiming to end Austrian rule within the peninsula. They hoped that France might come to their aid, yet Louis Philippe resisted embroilment in Italian revolutionary politics which he mistrusted as combining republican and Bonapartist (see BONAPARTISM) features. Thus by early 1832 Austria had re-established order with relative ease. The failure of the risings of 1830–2 to change the status quo in Italy and Germany has led some historians to write off the events as a mere dress rehearsal for the far more serious business involved in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. That is, however, too dismissive. The map agreed by the VIENNA CONGRESS had been redrawn in the case of Belgium, and the elder line of the Bourbon dynasty had once again been overthrown in France (see LEGITIMISM; ORLEANISM). Moreover, the reactionary consensus proclaimed especially between Russia, Austria, and Prussia in 1815 was confirmed as being riddled not only with self-interest but also with self-doubt. Though nationalists and liberals were generally disappointed by the immediate outcomes, the events of 1830–2 suggested that the CONSERVATISM of Restoration Europe was likely to remain under constant challenge.

Revolutions of 1848–9 These were the most momentous of nineteenth-century Europe's many insurrections, exceeding in scope the series of risings that had occurred at the beginning of the preceding decade (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2). Though the 1847 civil war of the Swiss Sonderbund is occasionally included within the process, most historians treat these revolutions as beginning in Palermo, Sicily, where in mid-January 1848 a patriotic rebellion spread to Naples forcing the king of the TWO SICILIES to concede a constitution. Far more serious was the revolutionary eruption in Paris on February 22, when a reformist banqueting campaign turned into a popular rising and led to the erection of barricades. Louis Philippe's abdication on the 24th marked the end of the JULY MONARCHY, and the SECOND REPUBLIC was proclaimed two days later. As the epicenter of European affairs and the wellspring of progressive ideas, Paris inspired others to follow. On March 3 KOSSUTH demanded a constitution for HUNGARY; and next day crowds clashed with the authorities in Munich. Similar disturbances in Vienna on the 13th prompted the resignation of METTERNICH, the arch-representative of CONSERVATISM in and beyond the HABSBURG EMPIRE. Mass demonstrations ensued in Budapest on the 15th, Kraków on the 17th, and Berlin and Milan on the 18th. On the 22nd Venice declared itself independent of Austrian control. By April, the only regions remaining largely unaffected were those towards the European periphery: the Iberian peninsula; Scandinavia; the Russian and Ottoman empires; the NETHERLANDS and BELGIUM which had previously separated amid the upheavals of 1830; and Britain, where, even for the Chartist movement, the spring of 1848 marked the collapse rather than the regeneration of its campaign of mass demonstration in favor of widened franchise.

Four traits characterized the early stages of the revolutions. First, the uprisings spread at astonishing speed, with news of events being carried by telegraph and railway (see COMMUNICATIONS). Second, the outbreaks were mainly short-lived. The authorities rapidly made concessions, usually promising some form of constitution and thus calming much of the initial violence. Such was the case in PIEDMONT-SARDINIA, where CHARLES ALBERT also saw an opportunity to advance claims on Austrian-controlled Lombardy; in Vienna, where the feeble-minded FERDINAND I remarked, “Tell the people I agree to everything”; and, in Berlin, where FREDERICK WILLIAM IV announced his intention of reforming the GERMAN CONFEDERATION under Prussia's leadership, and emulated his counterparts by pledging a constitution. Third, the revolts were largely urban-based and concentrated in the capital cities, although there were also some sporadic peasant outbursts, notably in southern Italy, Silesia, Baden, and Hungary. Fourth, the demonstrations were well organized, with ARTISANS as well as bourgeoisie to the fore, and were often accompanied by spontaneous scenes of popular celebration: the planting of liberty trees and declarations of fraternity. Not for nothing were the revolutions described as “the Springtime of the Peoples.” The many nationalities within the Habsburg lands seemed briefly at peace with one another, as Czechs and Germans collaborated on the Prague “National Committee” and Romanians and Hungarians initially buried their differences. As LAMARTINE put it, the revolutionaries were making the “sweetest of dreams.” However, this should not obscure the violence of the demonstrations and the attacks that artisans launched against power-driven machinery, notably in the Rhineland.

The revolutions are frequently contextualized within the wider social and economic forces that were overtaking Europe. POPULATION growth put pressure on RURAL SOCIETY, reducing the size of average smallholdings and forcing peasants into MIGRATION towards the cities which were feeling the early effects of INDUSTRIALIZATION and urban squalor (see also URBANIZATION). Social tensions had been exacerbated by the failure of the potato crop in 1845–6, the staple diet for many peasants in Poland, the Netherlands, parts of Germany, and northern France, as well as in IRELAND where the worst famine seized hold. Moreover, the cereal harvest of 1846 had been disastrous. The upshot was an uncontrollable inflation in food prices, which consumed the meager surplus wealth of artisans. Such handworkers were forced to curtail their spending on manufactured goods, effectively putting themselves out of a job. Urban–rural tensions, bankruptcies, unemployment, and food riots ensued. It did not help that all this coincided with a more general cyclical slump in business, part of an emerging pattern associated with the early stages of industrialization.

Although the worst of the downturn was over by early 1848, bourgeois revolutionary elements used the economic crisis to boost support for LIBERALISM and NATIONALISM. Their demands were generally modest: the granting of constitutions that would enshrine parliamentary elections and basic civil liberties, and the promotion of national unity. These middle-class activists were generally prepared to live with MONARCHISM. The nationalists congregated in the FRANKFURT PARLIAMENT increasingly looked to Prussia under the HOHENZOLLERN DYNASTY to realize their goal of GERMAN UNIFICATION. Even in Hungary, keen to untie itself from Austria, there was an initial willingness to acknowledge Ferdinand's sovereignty. To be sure, republicanism did make headway in Italy, notably in Rome under GARIBALDI and MAZZINI, whereas the regime of MANIN proclaimed in Venice owed more to the former Republic of Saint Mark than it did to any French-inspired model.

Confronted with a swirl of protests, governments lost their self-assuredness, and must take some responsibility for allowing revolution to take hold so easily. In this respect, it should be remembered that Europe's ruling dynasties were closely interrelated and still mindful of LOUIS XVI'S execution. Despite Lamartine's reassurances that France had no territorial designs, many rulers agreed with Metternich's gloomy assessment that Europe was reliving 1791–2 and that the TERROR and BONAPARTISM were sure to follow. This was the fear of those German princes who lacked the military resources to withstand the protests and who became exiled in London. It has been speculated that if, early on, governments had shown a greater willingness to use force then the revolutions would have evaporated and, in some areas, might not have happened at all. In Prussia, for example, General von Prittwitz, military commander of Berlin, bemoaned his king's timidity. Recently, however, historians have doubted whether loss of nerve by the ruling elites was so crucial. The loyalty of troops was questionable, and in the one case where formidable force was deployed, during RADETZKY'S defense of Milan, the insurgents still enjoyed some success.

Whatever the case, from summer 1848 onwards governments recovered their composure. In France universal male suffrage in the hands of the peasants resulted in a conservative Chamber which closed the national workshops and supported the repression of the Paris workers in the JUNE DAYS. When the Second Republic's definitive constitution appeared in November, it carried a conservative potential that was amply confirmed by the presidential polls of December. These brought victory to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (who at the end of 1852 would convert himself into Emperor NAPOLEON III). In the German lands uprisings in Baden and Cologne were suppressed in September, and in November General Wrangel's army entered Berlin. In April 1849 an increasingly confident Frederick William rejected the imperial crown offered him by the Frankfurt assembly; in May–June Prussian troops restored order in BAVARIA, SAXONY, WÜRTTEMBERG, and Baden; and in August several revolutionaries were tried and executed. In the Habsburg empire, Ferdinand's flight from Vienna in April 1848 had allowed the army to regroup, permitting WINDISCHGRLSQUÄTZ to snuff out an insurrection in Prague. In July of that year, Charles Albert's army was routed at CUSTOZZA (and would be resisted again at NOVARA in February 1849 when the Piedmontese resumed their fight). Vienna remained a volatile and dangerous place but in the final week of September 1848 troops retook the capital; shortly afterwards the fragile Ferdinand abdicated in favor of FRANCIS JOSEPH I. The new emperor had little patience with the recently-elected Austrian Reichstag which he dissolved in February 1849. Further afield, his troops enjoyed successes in Transylvania and across the Italian peninsula, notably in Venetia, Tuscany, and the Two Sicilies, while the crushing of the Roman republic was left to the French. The Hungarian revolution, ably led by Kossuth, proved a tougher nut to crack, though this was eventually broken in August 1849 with the assistance of Russian troops.

The steadying of nerve on the part of Austria and Prussia, plus Russia's willingness to reprise its role as “the gendarme of Europe,” played an important part in quelling the revolutions in central and southern Europe. Yet other factors were also operative. Ethnic tensions dissipated revolutionary ambitions. Kossuth had to deal not only with Vienna but also with Serb and Romanian nationalists hostile to the Magyars. To Habsburg delight, the Croatian contingents of the Austrian army under JELAČIĆ proved especially zealous in their willingness to contain events in Prague and Budapest. Matters might have been different if middle-class revolutionary leaders had consolidated a mass following. Yet in Prussia the creation of the first all-German Workers' Association to promote the concerns of artisans spread anxiety, while in France liberals such as Lamartine were relieved at the crushing of the June Days. Crucially, the revolutionaries failed to comprehend the concerns of a peasantry that remained suspicious of the urban upheavals. In France, the imposition of a 45-centime property tax alienated the countryside. Within the Habsburg lands, the regime's early abolition of the remnants of SERFDOM (outside of Hungary) sapped much of the support for revolution that might have otherwise developed in rural areas. Marxist historians occasionally argue that radical and socialist revolutionaries should have reached out to the industrial WORKING CLASS, but such a proletariat had scarcely developed as yet in significant numbers outside of limited areas.

When in November 1850 the OLMÜTZ AGREEMENT restored the German Confederation under Habsburg presidency, it seemed as though the revolutions of 1848 had barely happened. Only in France had a new regime survived, and even this was now rapidly mutating into the imperial rather than republican brand of Bonapartism. Most of the constitutions debated or promised elsewhere had come to nothing. However, the Piedmontese Statuto remained in force, and the revolutions also brought tangible gain through the destruction of feudalism in the non-Hungarian parts of the Habsburg empire, and in East Prussia and southern Germany. More broadly still, a subtler change was afoot. Though the early 1850s were indeed a period of reaction, often influenced by the Catholic church (see CATHOLICISM), many post-1848 conservatives embodied attitudes that were different from those of their predecessors. Though they valued the forces of repression, they increasingly understood the need to be more supple and imaginative in responding to progressive ideas and to social and economic discontent. Such lessons were perhaps most keenly felt by BISMARCK, whose eventual achievement of German unification under Prussian leadership was inseparable from his belief that change would come better from above than from below.

Revolutions of 1989–91 These upheavals, whose most central events occurred during the bicentenary of “1789,” overthrew the hegemony of COMMUNISM across eastern Europe. They impacted directly on the SOVIET UNION, and on eight other states: ALBANIA, BULGARIA, CZECHOSLOVAKIA, the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (GDR), HUNGARY, POLAND, ROMANIA, and YUGOSLAVIA. Though such geographic breadth has encouraged comparison with the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9, those earlier disorders were generally more violent and yet also less successful than the transformation which unfolded around 1989–91 (see also Maps 11 and 12).

In the years immediately following WORLD WAR II, STALIN had sought to extend Moscow's dominance across all the areas just listed. His efforts helped to set a context for the four decades of division between East and West that characterized COLD WAR Europe. Due mainly to certain limitations in the range of RED ARMY control, such expansion of communist rule turned out to be less monolithic than Stalin had intended. Most notably, by the end of the 1940s the TITO regime was asserting for Yugoslavia a model of Marxism that became increasingly divergent from the Kremlin one. At that same epoch, however, Stalin was locking the remaining seven states into the COMECON trading bloc as partners of the USSR, and in 1955 KHRUSHCHEV used this same grouping as the basis for the military WARSAW PACT. Even though disagreements with Moscow triggered Albania's exclusion from both organizations in the course of the 1960s, that country continued to promote its own distinctive brand of Marxist ideology. Thus the crisis of governance that climaxed towards the end of the 1980s remained directly relevant to all the states where communist regimes had developed since the later 1940s.

During the intervening decades resentment against Soviet authority had not been entirely limited to the Yugoslav and Albanian cases. Elsewhere, the GDR's regime under ULBRICHT had in June 1953 crushed a workers' rising centered on East Berlin. During autumn 1956 a series of Poznań demonstrations that unsuccessfully challenged the Kremlin's hold over Poland became swiftly overshadowed by the still more dramatic launching (and rapid brutal repression) of the HUNGARIAN RISING. By 1968 the main focus of dissent had shifted to Czechoslovakia, where the efforts of the so-called PRAGUE SPRING to liberalize communism proved abortive in the face of Soviet-controlled invasion by Warsaw Pact forces. Though these eruptions were as yet effectively contained, they sprang not only from circumstances specific to each case but also from more general faultlines running through Moscow's “satellite” system. In most of the relevant countries this enjoyed, at best, only limited popular support. Its weaknesses, which became increasingly evident during the course of the 1970s and 1980s, included the survival of NATIONALISM as a recurrent source of anti-Russian feeling; the ongoing hostility to Soviet-style schemes of agrarian reorganization in countries where RURAL SOCIETY remained strongly influenced by traditional peasant values; and, particularly wherever CATHOLICISM retained its hold, the persistence of religious beliefs hostile to Marxist materialism. Even so, if the system had proved more capable of supplying those material advantages that it constantly promised, then its chances of overcoming such difficulties would have been significantly better. Instead, after 25 years of solid growth, the eastern European economies were very badly affected by the sharp downturn caused by the OIL CRISES of the 1970s. Whereas that experience helped to jolt capitalist rivals into hastening “post- industrial” forms of innovation, the communist bloc lacked such flexibility of response. Consequently, it found itself retreating towards zero rates of growth while also incurring rising quantities of external debt. Under late-twentieth-century conditions of COMMUNICATIONS, no amount of state propaganda could entirely conceal the fact that the capitalist West continued to offer standards of living generally far superior to those experienced in the communist East.

By the end of the 1970s signs of dissent were again clearly evident in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, yet most markedly of all in Poland. The 1978 papal election of JOHN PAUL II, previously Archbishop of Kraków, gave encouragement to anti-government feeling which, early in the 1980s, became manifest via a mass-based movement of workers' opposition known as SOLIDARITY. Its constant harassment of the JARUZELSKI regime might have proved less effective had it not also coincided with a crisis of Soviet leadership. The final years of BREZHNEV'S rule down to 1982 witnessed not only the USSR's debilitating embroilment in an Afghan war but also severe stagnation in other aspects of policy-making. Matters drifted further under the brief administrations of his two similarly ailing successors, ANDROPOV and CHERNENKO. Though the transfer of power to GORBACHEV in 1985 offered the prospect of more dynamic governance and of long-overdue reforms, it was his policies that then served, unintentionally, to hasten rather than postpone or prevent the collapse of communist authority in eastern Europe. The more strongly he insisted on glasnost (“openness”), the more apparent became the daunting scale of the perestroika (“restructuring”) also needed. Thus Gorbachev increasingly alienated both the traditional hardliners and those who had begun to realize that his continuing loyalty to communism might itself constitute another real barrier to appropriate reform. He also showed himself increasingly disinclined to dictate to the satellite states any single model of adaptation, while also refusing to guarantee Soviet support for any of their communist regimes that resisted perestroika altogether. In the Polish case, by December 1988 such attitudes from Moscow had prompted Jaruzelski as head of state to accept that at least a qualified form of free elections must be held the following June. The outcome was a sweeping victory for Solidarity in all the seats that were fully contestable, and the appointment of Tadeusz Mazowiecki as an anti-communist premier.

Meanwhile, in mid-1988, the modernizers within the Hungarian regime had ousted KÁDÁR from a leadership held since 1956. They were soon offering the prospect of freely contested elections, and by October 1989 had moved as far as formally dissolving the Communist Party in its existing form. Equally momentous was their decision to open the border with Austria: while Hungarians themselves already enjoyed some freedom of travel, it was East Germans who benefited most from a relaxation of frontier controls that offered them a route for major exodus towards the West. Now faced with mass demonstrations in Berlin and Leipzig and still lacking Soviet support, the hitherto intransigent HONECKER was forced to relinquish his authority over the GDR. Those in government who did cling on to power sought to extricate themselves from disaster by relaxing the transit controls along the BERLIN WALL – only to discover that they had unwittingly given the signal for the start of its actual dismantlement by crowds of protesters. The scenes at the Brandenburg Gate on the night of November 9 became the central symbol of the European revolutions of 1989, and accelerated the startling “domino effect” already evident. Within hours ZHIVKOV, dominant in Bulgaria since 1954, had been ousted. In Czechoslovakia too dissidents were now returning to the streets, and not even the brutality of the riot police in Prague on November 17 (when some 500 demonstrators were wounded) could contain the tide of revolt that brought the anti-communist playwright HAVEL to the presidency during December. By the end of that month, but under bloodier circumstances, even the Romanian dictatorship had been overthrown. After more than 100 protesters were killed in Timişoara, CEAUŞESCU still seemed confident enough in his own leadership to summon a pro-government rally in Bucharest on December 21. When things turned sour, a pitched battle ensued in which his heavily-armed riot police (the Securitate) killed more than a thousand demonstrators. The army, however, refrained from reinforcing such repression, and by Christmas Day the rebels had succeeded in seizing and summarily executing both the dictator and his equally despised wife.

In the course of 1990 this whole transformation was progressively consolidated, especially through the holding of predominantly free elections. The early entrenchment of post-communist regimes was most evident in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia (which in 1993 split, peacefully, into two states). In Bulgaria and Romania, however, elements from the old regime were for a time rather more successful in retaining some influence by means of simply rebranding themselves. As for the GDR, this was in meltdown – and all the more so when the polls of March 1990 indicated solid support for CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY and when currency union with the Bonn regime became increasingly imperative as a means of averting financial collapse. By July there was growing acceptance, both domestic and international, of the need for the GERMAN REUNIFICATION that was then formally proclaimed three months later. The official ending of the Warsaw Pact in February 1991 further confirmed the collapse of the satellite system, and Moscow's recognition of the independence of the BALTIC STATES during that same year presaged an even wider fragmentation of the USSR itself. There the military coup launched in August against Gorbachev, though it failed, marked the point at which YELTSIN (leader of the Russian part of the Soviet Federation) emerged as the main focus of authority. By the end of the year Gorbachev had resigned and the USSR had been dissolved. Within the SUCCESSION STATE of Russia under Yeltsin, the Communist Party was now banned. Changes were also afoot in the two remaining cases, where the overthrow of Soviet control had not needed to feature as a central issue. In Albania the promises of liberalization conceded in 1990 eventually produced the free elections of March 1992 and a victory for the anti-communist Democratic Party. For the Yugoslavs, however, much of the thrust of the upheaval had less to do with attaining representative government than with maneuvering for ethnic advantage under circumstances where rival separatist ambitions were now unleashed. Here, as in the USSR, state socialism collapsed in tandem with the breakdown of the previous federal structures (see FEDERALISM[1]). Yet Yugoslavia's fragmentation involved the additional feature of an extensive civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1995 and devastated much of BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA in particular.

By the early 1990s the frontier-map of the former USSR and of much of central-eastern Europe looked far more complex, and indeed more vulnerable to dispute, than it had in 1989. Furthermore, across the whole region of previous communist hegemony, each country was confronted by conditions of “transformational crisis” as communist ideology, centralized state planning, and familiar trading patterns were now disrupted by the new and often painful challenges associated with the prospect of political, economic, and social “Westernization.”

Rexists Members of the Belgian fascist party, “Rex,” founded in the 1930s by Léon Degrelle (1906–94). It drew its name from the Christus Rex (Christ the King) publishing house at Louvain owned by the Association of Belgian Catholic Youth Movements. Pitched at a Catholic membership (see also CATHOLICISM), it embodied a formulaic blend of authoritarian and nationalist ideals typical of FASCISM. Although Rex won 21 parliamentary seats in 1936, Degrelle's attempt to propel himself into power by a “March on Brussels” in October was a failure. Following condemnation of the movement by the church the following year, membership hemorrhaged to more moderate Catholic parties such as the Union Catholique Belge. Unsurprisingly, the remaining Rexists welcomed the arrival of the Wehrmacht in 1940. Degrelle himself eventually fought in the Waffen-SS (see SCHUTZSTAFFEL), before taking refuge in Spain under FRANCO'S protection and associating with various neo-Nazi movements.

Reynaud, Paul (1878–1966), Prime Minister of the French THIRD REPUBLIC during the German invasion of his country early in WORLD WAR II. A lawyer by training, Reynaud was elected deputy for the Basses-Alpes in 1919, and became minister of finance in 1930, the year in which he joined the right-leaning Alliance Démocratique. A maverick politician, he was in 1934 an early supporter of DE GAULLE'S views on military strategy. In 1938 Reynaud was minister first of justice and then of finance in the DALADIER government, in which latter capacity he undid the ambitious social program of BLUM'S POPULAR FRONT. Marked by his opposition to the MUNICH AGREEMENT, Reynaud became in March 1940 both prime minister and foreign minister, but struggled to maintain cabinet discipline during the battle for France. On 18 May he made WEYGAND commander-in-chief in place of GAMELIN and appointed PÉTAIN as his deputy. The hope was that these two heroes of World War I would bolster morale. They did the exact opposite, working for an armistice with HITLER. On June 16, 1940 a dejected Reynaud resigned. Arrested by the VICHY REGIME, he was accused at the RIOM TRIALS of having failed to prepare adequately for war, yet he turned the tables on his accusers. After 1945 he published his memoirs and resumed his political career, occupying ministerial office in the FOURTH REPUBLIC. In 1958 he assisted de Gaulle in the establishment of the FIFTH REPUBLIC, although four years later he opposed the General's reforms of the presidency.

Rhine, Confederation of the (see CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE)

Rhineland crisis One of the limitations placed upon Germany by the 1919 VERSAILLES TREATY was demilitarization of the strategically important Rhineland region, as well as its occupation by British and French troops for fifteen years. Though the LOCARNO TREATIES of 1925 reconfirmed demilitarization, the occupying forces had departed by 1930. In March 1936 HITLER took advantage of the divisions between France, Britain, and Italy over Abyssinia (see ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR) to remilitarize this zone. He claimed that the Franco-Soviet pact of May 1935 had rendered worthless the Locarno accords. It has since been speculated that Anglo-French armed intervention at this point might have prevented a later and more generalized conflict. In the event, the Allies chose not to act. The British cabinet considered that the Rhineland was in Germany's own “back garden,” having also decided a year earlier that the continued demilitarization was not strategically important. France was caught off-guard in that it was being administered by the stopgap administration of Albert Sarraut, while its High Command regarded the Rhineland as irretrievable and preferred to rely on the defensive MAGINOT LINE. The failure to respond to this flagrant breach of the 1919 settlement (see also APPEASEMENT), coming hard on the heels of German rearmament and conscription, further emboldened Hitler who, in January 1937, renounced the Versailles Treaty.

Ribbentrop, Joachim von (1893–1946), German Foreign Minister (1938–45). In 1933, a year after entering the Nazi party (see NAZISM), this well-connected former wine salesman became an advisor to HITLER on external affairs, often favoring policies at odds with the more cautious ones generally coming from the foreign ministry. From October 1936 until February 1938 Ribbentrop served as an unimpressive ambassador in London. His subsequent ministerial appointment at the WILHELMSTRASSE, replacing Constantin von Neurath, was a signal of acceleration in Hitler's planning for territorial expansion. In August 1939 Ribbentrop concluded with MOLOTOV the NAZI–SOVIET PACT, and in September 1940 an important tripartite agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan (see also AXIS). As war increasingly overshadowed diplomacy, his influence as foreign minister waned. In the NUREMBERG TRIALS Ribbentrop was found guilty of conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and subsequently executed.

Ricasoli, Bettino (1809–80), Prime Minister of Italy (1861–2, 1866–7). His career illustrates the importance of noble families in the processes of ITALIAN UNIFICATION. Ricasoli was a liberal Tuscan aristocrat who supported moderate NATIONALISM and admired VICTOR EMMANUEL II. In April 1859 he took charge of the provisional government of Tuscany following the overthrow of Grand Duke Leopold II. In this capacity, he negotiated the union with the Kingdom of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA which was approved in a plebiscite of 1860. Known as “the iron baron,” he became premier of newly-united Italy on CAVOUR'S death in 1861. Ricasoli pursued a number of reconciliatory measures, permitting MAZZINI to return from exile, integrating GARIBALDI'S Red Shirts into the regular army, and attempting a rapprochement with Pope PIUS IX. However, his decision to extend more liberal religious legislation throughout much of the peninsula led to alarmist fears from conservative Catholics. Political intrigue led to his resignation in 1862. On resuming the premiership in 1866, he refused NAPOLEON III'S disingenuous offer to hand over Venetia in return for Italy relinquishing its ties with Prussia. Once again, he attempted a policy of reconciliation with the papacy. When this ran into parliamentary opposition, he resigned and returned to his estate vineyards, establishing in 1874 the blending rules for Chianti Classico.

Riga, Treaty of (see under RUSSO-POLISH WAR)

Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Declaration of the Statement of fundamental values produced by the National Assembly on August 26, 1789 at the start of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Intended as a precursor to the drafting of a new constitution, itself part of a wider process of national reform and regeneration, the Declaration set out to articulate the principles that underpinned the transfer from an ANCIEN REGIME based upon ABSOLUTISM, hierarchy, and privilege to one founded upon individual rights, equality, and liberty. Article 3 made clear the basis of the new governmental order by affirming that sovereignty emanated from the nation, not the monarch. Election would accordingly be the mechanism for the expression of national sovereignty. Liberty, property, security, and freedom from oppression (the last being left ill-defined) were listed as rights inherent in each person. Equality was not a right as such, though all men were equal in rights. Specific individual entitlements included freedom of religion and expression of opinion, freedom from arbitrary arrest, and equality before the law. The Declaration, particularly in its philosophy of natural law and social contract, reflected the predominant discourse of the ENLIGHTENMENT. LOUIS XVI initially refused to approve the document, but did so in the aftermath of the OCTOBER DAYS. Its principles were intended to have universal applicability and, even more than those already proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence (1776), they remained an inspiration for liberalism and, where necessary, for revolutionary action. The Declaration was much later incorporated into the constitution of the FIFTH REPUBLIC.

Riom Trials (1940–2) These were mounted by the authoritarian VICHY REGIME against those alleged to have been responsible for the collapse of France in the face of HITLER'S invasion early in WORLD WAR II. The administration was eager to exact revenge on the leading politicians of the THIRD REPUBLIC, especially those of the POPULAR FRONT, by channeling towards them the public anger stemming from the defeat of June 1940. A special court was therefore established at Riom, near to Vichy itself. Those in the dock included the politicians REYNAUD, BLUM, and DALADIER, together with General GAMELIN. They faced charges not for starting the war, but for having failed to prepare France sufficiently. The accused, notably Blum and Daladier, easily turned the tables on prosecution lawyers ill-equipped for the task at hand. By spring 1942, the trial was an embarrassment. The Germans were especially angry that the defendants had not been indicted for initiating the war. Eventually the process was suspended, and in April 1943 the Germans took Blum and Daladier into custody. The collapse of the trials provided further proof to French public opinion that Vichy was not in control of its own destiny.

Risorgimento Though broadly synonymous with ITALIAN UNIFICATION, this word highlights particularly the senses in which “resurgence” or “resurrection” involved cultural as well as political objectives. Having begun to flourish in a literary context during the eighteenth century, the concept then became closely associated with the cause of NATIONALISM, and particularly after 1847 when CAVOUR gave his propagandist newspaper the title Il Risorgimento. Later, “liberal” Italy would create a myth of Risorgimento in which he and other protagonists (most notably GARIBALDI, MAZZINI, and VICTOR EMMANUEL II) were misleadingly believed to have worked as one. Though many historians and politicians, especially within Italy, continue to revere the Risorgimento, the movement arguably produced only a premature form of unification that encouraged abuse of state power and aggressive nationalism, especially under FASCISM. Tellingly, MUSSOLINI frequently referred to the task of having still to complete such “resurgence.”

Rivoli, Battle of The concluding victory (January 14, 1797) in a series of successes achieved during the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS by the so-called Army of Italy over the Austrians and Piedmontese. These gave France control of much of northern Italy and established the military reputation of the Army's newly-appointed commander, the future NAPOLEON I. The Austrian general, Alvinczy, had divided his forces, thus enabling Napoleon to concentrate his own men and beat the enemy in detail. Masséna's troops, which had arrived at the battlefield by a series of forced marches, played the key part in the engagement. Victory at Rivoli and the subsequent occupation of Mantua allowed Napoleon to advance across the Alps towards Vienna. This threat, together with a measure of French success in Germany, led on to eventual Austrian acceptance of the Treaty of CAMPO FORMIO in October.

Robespierre, Maximilien François Marie Isidore de (1758–94), political leader during the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. The eldest of five children, he was effectively orphaned when his mother died in childbirth and his father left home. After completing his education at the elite Louis-le-Grand in Paris, Robespierre entered legal practice in his native Arras, establishing a reputation as the poor man's lawyer. On the eve of the Revolution, he communicated to LOUIS XVI his hopes for the reform not just of French institutions but of morals and even human nature itself. Elected to the ESTATES GENERAL as one of eight deputies from Artois, he became prominent among the JACOBINS. He distinguished himself as an ardent supporter of liberty and opponent of the abuse of power, thereby establishing the reputation for incorruptibility that would underpin his political career. Robespierre's oft-repeated warnings concerning the dangers of resort to war, unpopular before April 1792, subsequently appeared prescient when the French military effort faltered (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS). His careful cultivation of support among the Paris commune ensured his election to the CONVENTION in September. He immediately pushed for the king's execution, and then helped to orchestrate the popular insurrection that expelled the GIRONDINS in May–June 1793. By this stage, the plight of France was desperate, faced as it was by external and internal enemies. Elected to the COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY in July, Robespierre played a crucial role in formulating and defending the policies of centralization and the organized use of violence that characterized the government of the TERROR. He detested the excesses of the more radical revolutionaries, in particular their pursuit of DECHRISTIANIZATION[2]. He was equally opposed to demands from those on the right for an end to the Terror as it became clear in the spring of 1794 that France was now winning the war. Accordingly he used the guillotine to purge his opponents, the adherents of Hébert and DANTON. Public opinion was disconcerted at the removal of hitherto popular heroes. The strains of work told upon Robespierre's health and he probably suffered a nervous collapse, fatefully withdrawing from the Assembly and the Committee. His reappearance in the Convention on July 26 (see also THERMIDOR) was marked by a rambling speech calling for a final purge of traitors. Fearing for their lives, his enemies banded against him. The following day he was arrested, despite a botched attempt at suicide, and executed on July 28. His legacy was ambiguous. For many he was a bloodthirsty monster. And though his calls for an end to inequality earned him popular support, he set out no concrete program to achieve this.

Röhm, Ernst (1887–1934), head of HITLER'S stormtroopers, generally known as the SA (see STURMABTEILUNG). Son of a Bavarian bureaucrat, Röhm joined the army and fought courageously in WORLD WAR I. A fierce nationalist, he wholeheartedly opposed the VERSAILLES TREATY and became a member of the FREIKORPS, taking part in several plots against the fledgling WEIMAR REPUBLIC. Drawn to Hitler's rhetoric, he was one of the earliest supporters of NAZISM. He participated in the 1923 Munich BEER HALL PUTSCH, for which he served a short prison sentence. Back in civilian life, he worked as a travelling salesman and as a military instructor in Bolivia, before returning to Germany in 1930 and taking charge of the SA. His thugs did much to create a sense of general crisis, fighting communists on the streets and facilitating Hitler's takeover of power. Though grateful to Röhm, the new German leader was troubled by the SA's radicalism and was conscious that his generals did not want the movement to be incorporated into the regular army. Röhm's overt homosexuality also caused embarrassment. Unable to negotiate with the SA chief, Hitler came to the conclusion that he had to be eliminated. Röhm was shot on July 2, 1934, two days after his main associates had been murdered in the so-called NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES. In acting thus, Hitler's regime demonstrated the ruthlessness that would become its hallmark.

Roman question (see under PAPAL STATES)

Romania A country whose borders include a Black Sea coastline running between the frontiers with BULGARIA to the south and UKRAINE to the north. Its broadly Latin ethnicity is reflected in the Eastern Romance form of its main language. During the sixteenth century Romanian territory, centered on the DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES of MOLDAVIA and Wallachia, came under Ottoman rule. By the mid-nineteenth century such control by Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) was rapidly weakening, and Russia's influence was conversely growing. The Paris Treaty of 1856, which concluded the CRIMEAN WAR, provided international confirmation that each of the principalities should continue to enjoy autonomous status within the sultan's empire. However, in 1862 under the leading influence of CUZA, they declared their union as independent Romania. Formal recognition by the great powers then followed at the BERLIN CONGRESS in 1878, and three years later the unitary princedom proclaimed itself a kingdom. The new state was weakened from the outset by internal tensions, with its governing class of landowners regularly (and most notoriously in 1907) undertaking brutal suppression of peasant-based campaigns for agrarian reform. In 1913, as a result of involvement in the second of the BALKAN WARS, Romania gained the southern Dobrudja from Bulgaria, thus enlarging its control over the mouth of the Danube (see DANUBE QUESTION). Despite earlier alliances with Germany and Austria-Hungary (see HABSBURG EMPIRE), the country remained neutral during the first part of WORLD WAR I. In 1916, however, it declared war on the CENTRAL POWERS, hoping to seize TRANSYLVANIA from HUNGARY. The upshot was Romania's rapid humiliation in the face of invasion by German and Bulgarian forces. In November 1918 it re-entered the fray during the very last hours of the war, thus becoming, formally at least, one of the victors.

At the PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT, Romania benefited greatly from the Allied policy of strengthening it as part of a bulwark against the spread of COMMUNISM (see also RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917). The gains more than doubled its territory, and included Transylvania, Bessarabia, and northern BUKOVINA. This achievement of “Greater Romania” served chiefly to confront the government with more ethnic complexities than it was capable of handling. It proved increasingly insensitive to the legitimate complaints of its minorities (nearly 30 percent of the population), and by the end of the 1920s right-wing nationalists (see NATIONALISM) were firmly in the ascendant. Romania now produced its own version of FASCISM, in the form of the IRON GUARD movement led by CODREANU. This had an uneasy relationship with the more conservative authoritarianism favored by King CAROL II (who ruled from 1930 to 1940) and his army chief and eventual prime minister, ANTONESCU. In 1940 the latter began to disband the increasingly unruly movement, while also forcing Carol's abdication and imposing a military dictatorship. By then Romanian security was deeply imperiled due to the growing ambitions of HITLER and STALIN alike. The secret protocol to the NAZI–SOVIET PACT of 1939 had offered the latter a free hand in the seizure of Bessarabia, which the SOVIET UNION then compelled Antonescu to concede in June 1940. During this opening phase of WORLD WAR II, the Romanian regime was already lending support to the German military effort, particularly through oil supplies. Then, in June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation BARBAROSSA against the USSR, Antonescu brought his people formally into the conflict on the Führer's side. Once the fortunes of war on the Eastern Front turned against the Germans, whose disastrous defeat at the battle of STALINGRAD involved Romanian contingents too, Antonescu's dictatorship had little future. It ended in August 1944, when his country was falling under RED ARMY occupation. By turning against the Germans in the final phase of war, the Romanians were able to limit their territorial losses (confirmed in the PARIS TREATIES of 1947) to southern Dobrudja, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina.

With Romania now in the sphere of Soviet control, its development under COMMUNISM became inseparable from the careers of GHEORGIU-DEJ, Party leader from 1945 to 1965, and of his protégé CEAUŞESCU who thereafter dominated the political scene until the end of 1989. The former secured complete abolition of the monarchy in December 1947, followed by inauguration of a People's Republic. This duly entered COMECON in 1949 and signed the WARSAW PACT in 1955. One major achievement of Gheorghiu-Dej's single-party dictatorship was to negotiate, in 1958, Soviet agreement to a withdrawal of the Red Army from Romanian territory. His regime also managed to introduce a greater measure of industrialization than the Kremlin leaders had in mind for an economy whose strongly agrarian emphasis they wanted to preserve. Under Ceauşescu there were even clearer signs of policy divergence between Bucharest and Moscow (exemplified in Romania's non-participation in the Soviet-led 1968 invasion of CZECHOSLOVAKIA). For a time these won him plaudits in (and investments from) the West, where the growing brutality of his Securitate secret police was all too readily overlooked. However, in the later 1980s, when GORBACHEV was setting a new reformist agenda for the USSR and its allies, Ceauşescu's complete contempt both for this and for any other significant form of liberalization became plainer to all. Not least, the neo-Stalinist dictator gravely underestimated his unpopularity among Romanians themselves. As communist authority rapidly weakened throughout eastern Europe in the opening phase of the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, Ceauşescu was clearly ill-prepared for the mass rising that caused his overthrow and, swiftly thereafter, his summary execution on December 25, 1989.

Romania's transition to “post-communism” proved particularly difficult. The leading figure of the new era was Ion Iliescu (president, 1990–6, 2000–4), a former Party stalwart subsequently rebranded as a Social Democrat. Political opponents were still roughly treated amidst charges and counter-charges of grave corruption, and the rights of ethnic minorities (most notably Magyars and gypsies) continued to be regularly violated. Nonetheless, there was also evidence of the country's improving capacity to effect democratic and peaceful shifts of power. By the early twenty-first century the increasingly privatized economy of Romania (with a current population of around 22 million) remained in a fragile and unstable condition. Involvement in the processes of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION was also progressing more slowly than was generally the case with former satellites of the USSR. However, having already been admitted to NATO in 2004, Romania succeeded in achieving membership of the European Union three years later.

Romanov dynasty (see under RUSSIA; and, in chronological order, CATHERINE II, PAUL I, ALEXANDER I, NICHOLAS I, ALEXANDER II, ALEXANDER III, NICHOLAS II)

romanticism A movement in philosophy, politics, literature, and the arts that was particularly important from the late eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth. It developed as a series of largely spontaneous expressions of a shared sensibility that had native roots in a large number of countries. Like the ENLIGHTENMENT, it was often concerned to question the habits of life and thought, society and government, that had become entrenched in ANCIEN REGIME Europe. On the other hand, it firmly rejected the excessive rationalism to which the philosophes were so frequently prone. According to the romantics, there was more to nature than desiccating analysis alone could reveal. Thus they reveled in stressing differentiation rather than regularity, in evoking heart and soul, in exploring the transcendental and the unconscious, in responding to the promptings of passion and intuition, and in championing the revelatory qualities of the emotive and imaginative faculties. Among the most towering representatives were the literary polymaths Goethe and Pushkin. Others who strongly exemplified aspects of the romanticist spirit were Scott, Manzoni, Byron (see also PHILHELLENISM), Hugo, and Baudelaire amongst imaginative writers; Kant in philosophy, as well as Michelet and Carlyle in historiography; the painters Goya, Friedrich, Turner, and Delacroix; and Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Chopin, Wagner, and Verdi from the sphere of musical composition. As for the politics of romanticism, these proved incapable of reduction to any single approach. In so far as the movement nurtured nostalgic yearnings for the past (and perhaps most strongly for the medieval epoch), it could become allied to reactionary CONSERVATISM. Yet, equally, its celebration of individualistic self-fulfillment could prove deeply influential in the emergence of LIBERALISM. It was possible, for example, to describe the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 in terms of a blissful dawn (as Wordsworth, the quintessential English romantic poet, originally did), or, by contrast, to perceive it (especially after the TERROR) as the destructive rupture of an organic continuity with the past. Similarly, romanticism's concern for diversity, whilst it might well encourage a cosmopolitan empathy towards other cultures, could also promote, especially in an era of rising nationalistic tensions (see NATIONALISM), a far narrower arrogance about the unique worth of one's own people. Thus, Herder as the embodiment of the former position and Fichte as the incarnation of the latter have equal entitlement to be counted amongst the German romantics. In eastern Europe especially, the movement became strongly associated with POPULISM. Moreover, even the socialist thought (see SOCIALISM; UTOPIAN SOCIALISM) of the earlier nineteenth century, despite its primary debt to rationalistic models, owed something to the romanticist aspiration to create, or indeed re-create, a sense of organic wholeness, harmony, and belonging. Romanticism in the arena of public affairs reached its high-point (and most clearly its liberal apogee) amidst the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9, in which such representative figures as LAMARTINE, MICKIEWICZ, and MAZZINI became embroiled. Thereafter the romantic sensibility, though certainly surviving into the later-nineteenth century, lost ground to the cult of POSITIVISM in social science and philosophy, and to the related growth of realism and NATURALISM across the literary and artistic domains.

Rome, Treaties of Agreements central to the development of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION. They were signed by THE SIX on March 25, 1957 and came into operation on January 1, 1958. Largely the outcome of the MESSINA CONFERENCE, the two Rome treaties established EURATOM (the European Atomic Energy Commission) and the much more important European Economic Community (EEC). These bodies henceforth formed, together with the EUROPEAN COAL AND STEEL COMMUNITY (ECSC) launched in 1952, what became known as the European Community (EC). Under the EEC treaty, the signatories agreed to abolish all custom duties and quotas among the Six within a 12-year period. A shared external tariff would apply to states outside this arrangement. The Six further agreed to cooperate on settlements concerning international trade, and the free movement of workers, capital, and products within the Community's overall borders. They also looked ahead to devising a COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY (CAP). Collectively these arrangements were soon called “the Common Market.” To oversee the implementation of the EEC treaty, the Six established a series of bodies which largely mirrored those already created by the ECSC, and which became fused together through the so-called Merger Treaty of 1965. There were four key institutions: the Commission, an executive body entrusted with initiating legislation; the Council of Ministers, which possessed decision-making powers on all Community matters; the EUROPEAN COURT[1] of Justice, which ruled on Community as distinct from national law; and the Assembly of the European Communities, which eventually became the European Parliament. Each body was to be manned by officials and representatives from all of the Six. The treaty also cited improved living standards for workers, a shared transport policy, the expansion of industries, the provision of aid to the developing world, and the promotion of international “peace and liberty.” It envisaged, moreover, “an ever closer union” of European peoples, and indeed specified the mechanisms for assessing further membership bids. By the early 1960s the EEC had constructed the crucial platform for future integration, though a substantially unified internal market would have to await the SINGLE EUROPEAN ACT and the MAASTRICHT TREATY operative from 1987 and 1993 respectively.

Rome Statute Foundation document of the International Criminal Court (ICC) finalized in July 1998 at a diplomatic conference organized by the UNITED NATIONS. Formation of such a permanent tribunal had been one of the longer-term aspirations voiced by some planners of the NUREMBERG TRIALS. However, little further progress was possible during the COLD WAR decades. Circumstances changed in the early 1990s, not least because of well-publicized atrocities amidst civil war in former YUGOSLAVIA, and in Rwanda too. To deal with these specific situations the UN improvised in 1993–4 two ad hoc international criminal tribunals (see HAGUE TRIBUNALS). Against that background, new impetus was given to the case for locating a more permanent body at The Hague. The resulting ICC was inaugurated in 2002, after 60 state-ratifications of its Rome Statute. The Court's subsequent development proved increasingly impressive, despite being badly handicapped until early 2009 by hostility from the administration of US President George W.Bush.

Rommel, Erwin (1891–1944), German general whose tactical shrewdness in WORLD WAR II was widely recognized by both sides. After advising on the militaristic training of the HITLER YOUTH, Rommel became in 1937 the chief of the Führer's security unit. In 1940 he participated in the invasion of France, and took command of the Afrika Korps the following year. He was promoted to Field Marshal in mid-1942, at the height of his success in Egypt against the British. Thereafter his desert campaign faltered, and HITLER recalled him to Germany in March 1943. Having prepared the Nazi takeover of northern Italy, Rommel was then transferred to organize the Atlantic coastal defenses. Shortly after the NORMANDY LANDINGS in 1944, he was severely wounded. Having become increasingly convinced of Germany's inability to win the war, Rommel showed sympathy towards the JULY PLOT. When this failed, he was betrayed and given the choice between suicide and trial for treason. By settling secretly for the former, he was able to protect his family and receive a state funeral.

Roon, Albrecht Theodor Emil, Graf von (1803– 79), soldier, Minister of War (1859–73), and Field Marshal (1873–9) who was responsible, with MOLTKE, for military reform in PRUSSIA. Born near Kolberg in Pomerania, Roon followed his father into the army. In 1858, having warned that Prussian forces were inadequate for the tasks they faced, he was appointed by the regent (the future WILLIAM I) to head a commission of investigation. As minister of war he then implemented, with BISMARCK'S support, a series of changes that created a large long-service conscript army with the Landwehr (militia) as a reliable reserve. Thus he helped forge the instrument that brought victory in the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN and FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WARS.

Rothschild family (see under BANKING)

Ruhr occupation Occupation of German industrial area on the Ruhr between 1923 and 1925.When Germany defaulted on REPARATIONS in 1923, the VERSAILLES TREATY of 1919 was invoked to justify this response. French and Belgian troops moved into the Ruhr region to exact payment by force. For the WEIMAR REPUBLIC, this was a sign that Paris was determined on the break-up of Germany, a fear heightened by French support of Rhineland separatists. In truth, France had no major designs on German territory, but was driven by financial concerns and a desire to show its determination to uphold the Versailles terms fully. The passive resistance advocated by Berlin crumbled in the face of military intervention, and Germany suffered severe inflation and constitutional crisis. This prompted the DAWES PLAN of 1924 which regularized future payments and encouraged a Franco-Belgian withdrawal in 1925. Most historians agree, however, that the occupation was a mistake. The same outcome could have been reached by diplomacy; the expedition exposed the weakness of the franc; international goodwill towards Paris was lost, especially on the part of the USA; and Britain became convinced that France was intent on preventing even a prudent measure of German postwar recovery. Within the Weimar Republic itself, the event hardened criticisms of the regime, strengthening the far right in particular.

rural society Towards the close of the eighteenth century at least four-fifths of Europeans lived in the countryside and generally subsisted upon income related to work on the land. Since then, however, the proportion thus constituting “rural society” has been in constant decline. In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this whole agrarian-based sector was exposed to major forces of change. These included growth in overall POPULATION, rising URBANIZATION and INDUSTRIALIZATION, improvements in COMMUNICATIONS, new technical developments, and more intense foreign and overseas competition. However, their impact was mediated by a range of further factors, among which the size of peasant landholdings, the security and nature of tenure, and conditions of access to markets constituted some of the most significant. This meant that change, while affecting the whole of rural Europe, proved quite variable in the nature and pace of its operation.

By the end of the Ancien Regime three main zones of agricultural organization and rural social structure (see also CLASS) were already broadly discernible. The first covered Britain, most of the Low Countries, and parts of northern Italy. There the term “peasant” was wholly inadequate to describe the variety of groupings involved. They ranged from landless day laborers (a majority), through small cottagers and subsistence farmers, to the surplus producers. This last category included smallholders able to feed themselves and their families in normal years but vulnerable to intermittent harvest failure, prosperous yeomen, large tenants (generally with secure leases), and landowning farmers. Although the rural poor were plentiful in this region, there was a core of wealthy individuals committed to agricultural improvement and large-scale commercial profit. The second zone comprised most of the rest of western Europe, and was typified by France. Across this region too rural society contained a wide range of types. But, although there were prosperous farmers (e.g. the wheat producers of the Beauce and the Beauvais), the region tended to be dominated by smallholding subsistence producers. After the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 had abolished seigneurialism at home via the AUGUST DECREES, the application of these was eventually extended to foreign areas (especially Rhenish Germany and Belgium) occupied during the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS and NAPOLEONIC WARS. The owner-occupier was liberated from dues, though the tenant farmer often found that the landlord raised his rent when the dues ceased to be paid, and in this respect it can be argued that the Revolution preserved the smallholder a little longer. The final zone ranged eastwards beyond the river Elbe. Here there was much less variety within rural society, which was dominated by large estates owned by nobles and farmed by serf labor (see ARISTOCRACY; SERFDOM).

The early nineteenth century was a difficult time for the majority of rural inhabitants. The rising prices of agricultural products since the mid-eighteenth century had reinforced the longstanding movement in western Europe towards the enclosure of common lands, a practice which generally worked against the interests of smallholders. Such producers were also hit especially hard by the slump that followed the ending of the Napoleonic Wars and precipitated resistance to LAISSEZ-FAIRE policies. Many poorer families survived only because they combined laboring on the land with work in the industrial processes – especially textile manufacture – which were located in the countryside, although production in this sector of the rural economy also fell. However, the mid-nineteenth century saw a return to relative prosperity in agriculture. The rising population, and especially growing urban demand, brought higher food prices (though the trend with respect to wheat went in an opposite direction in England). Output increased quite markedly. Greater use of root crops allowed the exploitation of hitherto marginal areas; crop rotation avoided the need to leave fields fallow; the importation of guano from Peru and of nitrates and phosphates from Chile in the 1840s, together with the introduction of man-made fertilizers, heightened production; and so too did gradual improvements to mechanization. Additionally, there was a trend towards increased specialization, accentuating regional differences. Thus wine production became a specialty of the French Midi and of parts of Italy; Sicily and Spain became major grain producers; the demand for meat products stimulated the rearing of cattle in Britain and pigs in Denmark; while in northern Europe crops such as sugar-beet, rape, and hops were cultivated for industrial use. Higher output, coupled with improvements to communications (especially railways which permitted the transportation of bulk products from areas of plenty to those of dearth), brought an end to the generalized subsistence crises which had routinely afflicted Ancien Regime Europe: that of 1816–17 was probably the last. The drive towards more commercial farming, characteristic of western Europe, also played a part in the ending of serfdom farther east. However, not all elements within rural society benefited equally from higher agricultural prices and output. In western Europe especially, those best placed to exploit market opportunities were the larger surplus producers; since subsistence farmers and laborers fared less well, the result was an increased stratification of rural society as the gap between rich and poor widened. In the case of eastern Europe, the abolition of serfdom proved to be a similarly mixed blessing. The typical Prussian peasant gained a farm only one-half or two-thirds the size of his former holding, and, if disaster struck, he was likely to have forfeited the protection and assistance of his lord (see JUNKERS). The new dispensation might also have deprived him of previous grazing rights and of access to cheap fuel from woodland. Former serfs in Hungary and the Austrian parts of the HABSBURG EMPIRE, emancipated after the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9, were constrained to compensate their ex-masters for lost labor services. Like their counterparts in Prussia, many of the emancipated serfs found their situation increasingly unsustainable and, if once forced to sell up, they then swelled the ranks of the low-paid day laborers. In Russia too, serfs did not gain hugely from the liberation edict of 1861. This was partly because of the extent to which they remained effectively under the thumb of their previous owners, some of whom did try to work their estates more efficiently on the Prussian model even while others continued profligately to sell off land. More significantly, however, the peasants themselves had little inclination or opportunity to farm in a commercial manner; and they frequently exchanged control by lords for control by the MIR, which prevented mobility and sustained outmoded methods of production.

If the middle decades of the nineteenth century were years of prosperity for some elements of rural society, the first of the GREAT DEPRESSIONS between 1873 and 1896 witnessed a generalized crisis for the agricultural sector. This was challenged by the importation of cheaper foodstuffs from North and South America, as well as Australia – made feasible by the development of railways, steamships, refrigeration, and canning technology. One response was to modernize European production via rural cooperatives, as formed in Franche-Comté, the Netherlands, Denmark, and parts of Germany. However, this option was not open to all, and for many the alternative was MIGRATION. This was not a new phenomenon. Seasonal displacement as the poor travelled in search of work was a longstanding characteristic of rural society, but increasingly they made a one-way journey to the towns in search of work, or charity, or the possibility of eking out a living from crime and prostitution. Emigration overseas also gathered pace, with 28 million Europeans leaving between 1871 and 1891 compared to 1.5 million between 1800 and 1845 (though up to one-quarter may have returned). These were flows that ceased only with WORLD WAR I. Meanwhile, attempts at mobilizing the discontented rural poor into political movements, especially SOCIALISM, met with little success, as evidenced by the failure of POPULISM in Russia and of ANARCHISM'S efforts to recruit among the landless laborers of the Po valley and of western Andalusia in the late nineteenth century. In contrast, however, the 1920s and 1930s would witness the emergence of some peasant parties (e.g. the Croatian one) that offered more fertile potential for political cultivation within the context of FASCISM or proto-fascism.

Although the changes affecting rural society in the nineteenth century were undoubtedly significant, those of the twentieth century would prove altogether more momentous. In Russia, many descendants of the emancipated serfs flocked to the towns in the wake of the STOLYPIN reforms of 1906–7. After the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, LENIN hoped that those who had still remained in the countryside tending their privately-owned plots would now modernize. As that prospect faded, STALIN embarked upon agrarian COLLECTIVIZATION as an allegedly essential complement to accelerated industrialization. This proved disastrous to the rural economy of the SOVIET UNION, even if it also added around 20 million displaced peasants to the urban labor force during the 1930s. After WORLD WAR II and the spread of COMMUNISM, the new regimes in eastern Europe were eventually required to adopt much the same approach. At first, large estates were sequestrated and handed over to peasants, in the hope that this might secure the loyalty of those who had recently proved so susceptible to the blandishments of NATIONALISM and FASCISM and who might otherwise seek now to revive right-wing aspirations. Whole classes of landed gentry and large farmers thus disappeared in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and East Prussia. However, collectivization of agriculture followed within a few years, and those who tried to resist it faced arrest, deportation, or financial coercion. By the 1960s, except for the cases of Yugoslavia and of Poland (where collectivized production was abandoned under GOMULKA), most farmland was no longer under private ownership. The rapid industrialization and urbanization implied by the managed economy led to a sharp decline in the proportion of the population living and working in the countryside throughout eastern Europe, apart from Albania. Even the post-communist period, following the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91, has witnessed only a partial reinstatement of traditional “peasant” landholding.

In twentieth-century western Europe the proportion of rural population also declined, though for largely different reasons. There the agrarian community was already significantly smaller than its eastern equivalent by 1900. At that point, the estimated numbers of those engaged in agriculture amounted perhaps to barely one-tenth of overall population in Britain, to between a quarter and a third in Belgium and the Netherlands, and to between a third and a half in France, Ireland, and Scandinavia: all of this stood in contrast to around four-fifths in Russia, Romania, and Bulgaria. The scale of the agrarian workforce in western Europe was then further reduced due to falling agricultural prices from 1925 onward, and because of the related introduction of more intensive mechanization. Many small family farms were proving to be uneconomic by the 1950s. Although British production remained dominated by medium-to-large commercial operators, around 40 percent of farming units in France and 64 percent in Italy were judged to be already non-viable at the start of that decade. The new and better-paid employment opportunities that were opening up in towns and cities, first within industry and subsequently across a rapidly-enlarging “service” sector, further stimulated flight from the land. Anxieties about the maintenance of a satisfactory urban–rural balance and of traditional popular culture in the countryside contributed to the emergence of ENVIRONMENTALISM in the 1960s. They also led to protective legislation, such as the West German Agricultural Law (1955) and the French Loi d'Orientation (1960). Such concerns were similarly reflected in the COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY (CAP) operative from the early 1960s across the European Community (see also EUROPEAN INTEGRATION), which sought to protect farmers by price subsidies and import tariffs.

Costly though such initiatives were to the taxpayer, they failed to halt the retreat from the land. For instance, France's 4 million independent farmers in 1945 had been reduced to only 1.5 million at the start of the 1980s. Thus the CAP was substantially revised in 2003. As the demographic and economic significance of the countryside has lessened, so too has general awareness of the realities of agriculture and stock-rearing. For example, regular contact with farm animals, which even at the start of the twentieth century was still a routine part of everyday life for most Europeans, has now dwindled. Yet there has also been a countervailing insistence on the wholesomeness of rural life, evidenced by irenic proposals echoing earlier calls for “garden cities” where each inhabitant would enjoy the benefits of direct contact with the soil, in response to the rampant industrial urbanization that had allegedly destroyed previous forms of sociability. By the opening of the twenty-first century a new relationship between town and country was rapidly forming. The wider ownership of motor cars, telephones, televisions, satellite dishes, and internet connections had brought urban lifestyles to those living in the countryside. Increasing numbers of rural inhabitants were commuting to earn their living in towns, or moving from their “village” to work in one of the greenfield sites colonized by private industry, or running enterprises and services simply from their home-based and electronically-equipped “cottage” offices. Thus it was even becoming questionable whether, at least in the most densely populated regions of western Europe, a distinctly rural society now survived in any traditional sense at all.

Russia The most extensive and populous European country, with vast territories also extending eastwards beyond the Ural mountains to the Pacific seaboard of northern Asia. Its modern history contains three main phases. The first covers a continuation of tsarist rule (as initially established by the Romanov dynasty in 1613) down to the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917; the second encompasses the communist era (which is treated chiefly via a separate entry on the SOVIET UNION); and the third relates to the post-communist development of the so-called Russian Federation over the years since 1991.

By the late eighteenth century the Romanov domains, originally based on the expansion of the principality of Muscovy, formed a multi-national but Slav-dominated empire ranging from the Baltic to the Pacific. Its mode of rule from St Petersburg was essentially autocratic, backed by a regular standing army as well as a privileged nobility (see also ABSOLUTISM; ARISTOCRACY). Further support stemmed from the Orthodox Church (see ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY), with its subservience to state authority. Under CATHERINE II (r.1762–96) Romanov gains in Europe included territory newly won from the Ottomans (see RUSSO-TURKISH WARS), as well as the lion's share of dissolved POLAND. During the tsardom of her son PAUL I (r.1796–1801) Russia participated briefly in the Second Coalition against revolutionary France (see FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS; NAPOLEONIC WARS). From 1805 to 1807 ALEXANDER I (r.1801–25) resumed this challenge in the context of the Third and Fourth Coalitions, but after French successes at the battles of AUSTERLITZ and Friedland he settled in the Treaties of TILSIT for a compromise peace. This required Russian participation in NAPOLEON I'S so-called CONTINENTAL SYSTEM. It was Alexander's eventual withdrawal from this that triggered Bonaparte's invasion of Russia, launched and repulsed in 1812 (see MOSCOW, RETREAT FROM). Thereafter the tsarist regime was fully involved in the Sixth Coalition whose victory at LEIPZIG in October 1813 prepared the way for the final stages of Napoleon's downfall. Alexander's attendance at the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15 enabled him to urge the case for a HOLY ALLIANCE; more importantly, his presence also helped to confirm Russia's status as the leading continental power alongside the similarly conservative HABSBURG EMPIRE.

Reactionary autocracy prevailed during the rest of Alexander's reign and throughout that of his successor, NICHOLAS I (r.1825–55). The latter began by crushing the DECEMBRIST CONSPIRACY against his succession, and the same ruthlessness marked his response to the Polish revolt of 1830–1 (see also REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2). The policy of suppressing disruptive NATIONALISM was again apparent when, towards the end of the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 which did not carry into Russia itself, tsarist forces assisted Austria in quelling the Magyar rebellion. Altogether less successful was Nicholas's decision of 1853 to challenge the Ottoman sultanate's treatment of its Orthodox subjects. This became the immediate cause of the CRIMEAN WAR, during which he was succeeded by his son, ALEXANDER II (r.1855–81). Russia's military failure in the face of Anglo-French intervention left the new tsar little choice other than to sue for peace on unfavorable terms. The end of that conflict, which had starkly exposed the administrative and technological backwardness of the Romanov regime, became Alexander's cue for the introduction of a reformist program. Its centerpiece was the emancipation statute of March 3, 1861, which sought to remove from the still overwhelmingly RURAL SOCIETY of Russia the practices of SERFDOM that had been fortified there in the eighteenth century even while being progressively abandoned further west. This reform nonetheless left the peasantry over-burdened by redemption dues. Alexander's modernizing efforts also extended, with varying success, to the military, legal, and fiscal systems and to the reorganization of district government (see ZEMSTVA). Yet most of the reformist enthusiasm of the “tsar liberator” failed to outlast the 1860s, during which he suppressed a further Polish insurrection and was soon imposing RUSSIFICATION across his multi-national empire. Within the intelligentsia, however, the earlier concessions had intensified ongoing debates about the best strategy for further change. Here Westernizers confronted SLAVOPHILES. The latter placed their reliance not on imported models but on native strengths springing from the social solidarity attributed to the traditions of the peasant commune and the Orthodox faith. This emphasis was then translated increasingly into POPULISM, and sometimes even into the endorsement of TERRORISM. Alexander's retreat into reaction made him the target of assassination attempts, one of which eventually dispatched him in 1881.

Under his son, ALEXANDER III (r.1881–94), policies of repression and Russification became still more emphatic, as did xenophobic POGROMS associated with official ANTISEMITISM. Despite the frustration that Russia had previously encountered at the 1878 BERLIN CONGRESS, the new tsar also continued the efforts to support the Slavic peoples of the BALKANS against Ottoman rule (see also PAN-SLAVISM). This strained the THREE EMPERORS' LEAGUE, which Alexander III had inherited from his father as a diplomatic link with both Austria and the new GERMAN EMPIRE. By the end of his reign he had replaced it with the FRANCO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE. This also encouraged Parisian bankers to supply the tsarist empire with sorely-needed foreign investment, since, in the sphere of INDUSTRIALIZATION if hardly elsewhere, Alexander had become an enthusiast for modernity. As finance minister from 1892 to 1903, WITTE served both him and his successor NICHOLAS II (r.1894–1917) in a state-directed campaign to underpin Russian power with heavy industry, and with such projects as the Trans-Siberian Railway. Although by the turn of the century four-fifths of the empire's overall population of some 125 million was still classed as peasantry, this industrial progress was also hastening large-scale URBANIZATION focused especially on St Petersburg, Moscow, and the regions around Tula and Rostov. These processes (which by 1914 would make Russia the world's fifth largest industrial producer) gave enhanced organizational opportunities to dissidents bent upon strengthening proletarian SOCIALISM, and – as things turned out – particularly to those inspired by local adaptations of the radical COMMUNISM originally formulated in a more western context by MARX and ENGELS.

War and revolution dominated the final phase of the tsarist era. The disastrous RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR of 1904–5 brought defeat on land, and soon at sea as well. While in progress, it also triggered the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905. Though this failed to oust Nicholas, he was forced to concede the introduction of the DUMA. Yet this was allowed to develop little real authority even under the premiership of STOLYPIN, who held such a parliamentary body largely in contempt. His own ministerial efforts at agrarian reform were abruptly terminated by assassination in 1911. Meanwhile, tsarist foreign policy had become reliant on broadening the Franco-Russian link so as to develop, from 1907, a TRIPLE ENTENTE that involved Britain too. Within the increasingly unstable Balkan context, Nicholas's priority was to protect the interests of SERBIA and the southern Slavs against not only Turkey but Austria and Germany as well. Following the BALKAN WARS of 1912–13 and the JULY CRISIS of 1914, this orientation brought Russia into WORLD WAR I as an enemy of the so-called CENTRAL POWERS. The victories that might have eased the chronic ills of political stagnation and social discontent were not forthcoming. Particularly after Nicholas himself assumed direct supreme command over his forces in 1915, a series of defeats brought his personal authority into ever greater peril. In March 1917 the tsar was forced to abdicate, and in November, after seven months of revolutionary confusion, KERENSKY'S Provisional Government was overthrown by LENIN. Under the slogan “All power to the SOVIETS,” his regime sought rapidly to consolidate communist hegemony in its BOLSHEVIK form, and to extricate Russia from the war (see also BREST-LITOVSK).

During the seventy years or so of Soviet rule (which began with the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR of 1917–21), loyalty to CLASS rather than attachment to nationhood officially prevailed. But for Russians the reality was more complex, in a system that had inherited most of the tsarist imperial territory and where they themselves were numerically so predominant over other ethnic groupings. Not even the much-vaunted FEDERALISM of the constitution that formally created the Soviet Union (otherwise known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR) at the end of 1922 could redress such imbalance of influence. Nor did transfer of the central government to Moscow serve other than to reinforce a distinctive Russian hegemony. Even though Lenin was soon succeeded by the Georgian-born STALIN, the latter's three decades of brutal Soviet dictatorship witnessed no more concessions to the other domestic nationalities than those that ultimately served the Muscovite Kremlin's own centralizing agenda. Between 1941 and 1945 the conflict with Nazi Germany was often called in Soviet propaganda the “Great Patriotic War,” not least with a view to mitigating huge suffering by appeals to recall proudly the historic Russian deeds of 1812. Moreover, once eventual victory in WORLD WAR II gave the USSR the opportunity to enlarge its territory and to create a broader “satellite” bloc across much of eastern Europe, the geopolitical outcome resembled in many ways the aspirations of later-nineteenth-century Russian Pan-Slavism.

When the European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 not only challenged the communist order and reversed the expansionism of the 1940s but even dissolved the structures of the Soviet Union too, a state of Russia (itself still internally federated) survived into the new era. The successor government took over from the USSR a permanent seat on the Security Council of the UNITED NATIONS, and headed the formation of a loosely-knit COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES that covered most of the old imperial territories. However, the newly-liberated BALTIC STATES refused to join this CIS; and, even within it, such countries as UKRAINE and BELARUS could now negotiate with Moscow as internationally-recognized sovereign entities. There would also be continuing problems with CHECHNYA on the European side of the Caucasus, as well as with seceded Georgia beyond. The difficulties that Russia itself faced both in domestic and in foreign policy during the first decade of transition to post-communist circumstances can be traced by reference to the career of YELTSIN, marked by an increasingly eccentric conduct of affairs that ended at the turn of the millennium. He was succeeded by PUTIN whose practice of “directed DEMOCRACY,” whether as president or prime minister, gave him a genuinely popular base upon which to develop more consistent policies of national recovery. By 2010 the Russian Federation still contained a population of more than 140 million. It also continued to possess a formidable nuclear arsenal, as well as to exercise sovereignty over a huge expanse of Eurasian territory (comprising more than one-eighth of the global land surface) whose resources of scarce minerals, petroleum, and natural gas remained as yet under-explored. Thus, for all its deep-seated social and political problems, it had endured into the early twenty-first century as a major force in world affairs.

Russian Civil War (1917–21). A multi-sided conflict in which, following the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, the BOLSHEVIKS confronted their many enemies. The latter included dispossessed elements of the upper and middle classes; political opponents in the shape of the MENSHEVIKS and the SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARY PARTY; national minorities who, with the break-up of the Russian empire, demanded independence; certain Allied military contingents (from France, Britain, Japan, and the USA), together with some German and Czech ones; and, most crucially, the White forces still battling for the tsarist cause. The chaos was exacerbated by the general breakdown of law and order and by the actions of peasants who seized lands they believed to be rightly theirs. The Civil War was fought on several fronts: in the south and the Caucasus where the Cossacks under General Krasnov, backed by the Germans, declared an independent state; in the Ukraine where, in the aftermath of BREST-LITOVSK, the Germans installed a puppet regime; in the Baltic where Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Finland sought independence; and in Siberia where the Whites enlisted the support of Czech prisoners of war. The course of the fighting had three main phases. The first lasted from the Bolshevik takeover in late 1917, when the forces of counter-revolution began to coalesce, to the close of WORLD WAR I when the Allies intervened particularly with respect to matters of supply. It was during the second period (November 1918–November 1919) that the conflict became most intense, with the Whites nearly seizing Petrograd and other key cities. The final phase (November 1919–March 1921) saw the Bolsheviks emerging supreme. On one level, they were able to clamp down on their many internal enemies (e.g. by crushing the KRONSTADT RISING). On another, they extracted themselves from the campaigns against Poles (see RUSSO-POLISH WAR) and Finns. Though independence was granted to the BALTIC STATES, Georgia and the Ukraine were reclaimed. Most critically, the Whites were overcome. Bolshevik victory is usually credited to TROTSKY'S reorganization of the RED ARMY, yet other factors also counted. The Bolsheviks always possessed greater resources of manpower than their opponents; they also commanded the cities and railways, and resorted to the ruthless policies of WAR COMMUNISM. The Whites had to cope with exposed supply lines, were overly reliant on foreign support, and suffered more than the Reds from internal divisions and their unpopularity with many of Russia's ethnic minorities (e.g. among victims of the WHITE TERROR in the Ukraine). It is thought that, overall, the fighting and the war-related famine and disease cost the lives of between 7 and 10 million people. Though the Bolsheviks emerged victorious, the civil war exposed the brutality at the heart of LENIN'S regime.

Russian Revolution of 1905 This upheaval was prompted principally by two factors. The first was the RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR of 1904–5 which severely humiliated the tsarist regime. The second was social unrest not only among the peasantry but also in the rapidly growing industrial workforce, especially those elements concentrated in St Petersburg. They toiled in appalling conditions and increasingly resorted to illegal strike action. In January 1905 some 100,000 workers, led by Father Gapon, marched through the capital to the Winter Palace with a petition outlining a series of demands. These included improved salaries, better living conditions, a reduction in the working day, an end to the war, and the introduction of universal male suffrage. Some protestors had taken their families with them in the mistaken belief that their demands would be taken seriously. In the event, troops panicked, opened fire, and killed up to a thousand demonstrators, including many women and children. The violence of this “Bloody Sunday” produced a rash of strikes across Russia. Several areas saw the establishment of SOVIETS, as attempts at local democracy led by BOLSHEVIKS, MENSHEVIKS, and members of the SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARY PARTY. In June sailors from the battleship Potemkin mutinied at Odessa, although ultimately the military remained loyal to the tsar (a loyalty not repeated in the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917). In the course of 1905 NICHOLAS II agreed minor concessions. However, when faced in the autumn by a general strike, he was prompted to issue the OCTOBER MANIFESTO promising a wider range of political freedoms, most notably the inauguration of a parliamentary DUMA. The manifesto took some of the sting out of the protests, assuaging the moderate KADETS; it also bought time to enable the forces of counter-revolution to be marshaled. The following year saw widespread reprisals against the revolutionaries. Although the tsar quickly reneged on many of his earlier concessions, it has been argued that the Revolution of 1905 placed Russia on a potentially reformist path that was unfortunately destroyed by the outbreak of World War I. Others consider that 1905, and its aftermath, revealed the unwillingness of the tsarist autocracy to sustain fundamental changes, thus rendering inevitable a further revolutionary challenge to its authority.

Russian Revolutions of 1917 Two uprisings that achieved, first, the overthrow of tsarist rule and, second, the establishment by LENIN of a BOLSHEVIK regime committed to COMMUNISM. They are usually identified as the February and October Revolutions, due to their timing within the “old style” Julian calendar that was abandoned early in 1918 when Russia “advanced” its dates by a fortnight to align with the “new style” Gregorian one generally used elsewhere (and in the present text). According to the orthodoxy that developed in the SOVIET UNION, these revolutions had followed the historical determinism articulated by MARX and had been the expression of the popular will. For their part, western commentators generally acknowledged the spontaneous character of the earlier uprising while viewing the Bolshevik takeover as a cynical piece of factional opportunism. Even before the dissolution of the USSR, these arguments – long reinforced by the ideological confrontations of the COLD WAR – had begun to lose something of their bitterness. However, they have retained much of their complexity, as the focus has shifted from high politics to an investigation of popular attitudes on the ground where there prevailed a genuine revolutionary frame of mind on the part of both the workers and the peasantry, a mood that existed largely independently of the main political parties.

The long-term origins of these events clearly relate to the particular political, economic, and social circumstances of RUSSIA under Romanov rule. Though less backward than sometimes portrayed, the country possessed an industrial and agricultural base that was incapable of sustaining an ambitious foreign policy. Defeat in the CRIMEAN WAR had prompted the reforms of ALEXANDER II, which were then accelerated by WITTE in the 1890s. Yet the speed of change proved insufficient, as illustrated by the RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR. This led to the unsuccessful RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905, and to a turbulent period of half-hearted reform associated principally with STOLYPIN. Between 1914 and 1917 WORLD WAR I placed intolerable strains on tsarist infrastructures. Russia mobilized a far larger proportion of its population than did the other belligerents, which meant that huge numbers were exposed to the horrors of war. Military difficulties were compounded by a series of strategic blunders, many due to the supreme command actively assumed by Tsar NICHOLAS II himself, as well as by shortages of equipment resulting from poor distribution rather than inefficient production. The home front faced its own share of problems characterized by a growing scarcity of foodstuffs and fuel, and a rampant inflation which negated any increase in earnings. Liberal opposition, chiefly the KADETS and Octobrists gathered in the parliamentary DUMA, despaired at the general conduct of affairs which was dominated by petty squabbles, ministerial instability, and the interference of RASPUTIN. By January 1917 plans were afoot to force Nicholas's abdication, though these were not designed to provoke an insurrection. The more revolutionary elements – the Bolsheviks, the MENSHEVIKS and the SOCIAL REVOLUTIONARY PARTY (the SRs) – eagerly watched events, while being poorly prepared for what was about to unfold.

On March 8, 1917 riots broke out in Petrograd, and within 24 hours the crowd had swollen to around 100,000 and much of the city was on strike. It has since been speculated that, had the tsar been in the capital, a personal appeal might have calmed matters, yet his reputation and that of his family was by now at a low ebb. On March 10–11 his troops ignored orders to break up the demonstrations, and the Duma defied his attempts to dissolve it. Influenced by SR propaganda and disillusioned by the conduct of the war, peasant conscripts identified with the protestors. This was a key difference from 1905, when the army had remained predominantly loyal to the crown and had effectively scuppered that earlier insurrection. The Duma now proceeded to institute a Provisional Government headed by Prince Lvov, while the Bolsheviks reconvened the Petrograd SOVIET of workers' deputies (abandoned since 1905). So emerged a dual authority that exacerbated the sense of crisis. This was heightened further when, on March 15, the tsar conceded his own abdication.

In sharing power with the Petrograd Soviet, the liberal-republican Provisional Government was always at a disadvantage. First, it regarded itself as a stop-gap administration holding the fort until elections for a Constituent Assembly later that year. One counter-factual speculation suggests that, had those polls been brought forward to June, the Bolsheviks (then still a minority within the Petrograd Soviet) would have been outmaneuvered. There may be something to this argument, though it ignores the fact that both the SRs and the Mensheviks were already at loggerheads, especially over the conduct of the war, even while sharing a belief that they remained powerless to prevent a bourgeois revolution. Second, the Provisional Government was increasingly unpopular. After pledging the democratization of local government and the granting of civil liberties, it was unable to deliver on the social reforms for which the peasants in particular were clamoring. During the agonized debates on land reform they simply took matters into their own hands and appropriated noble estates. Third, the Provisional Government suffered from its continued involvement in the war. In June KERENSKY, the newly-appointed socialist minister of war, initiated a fresh offensive that proved a spectacular failure, causing 400,000 casualties and severe shortages on the home front. Fourth, the government was badly placed to defend itself. The hated tsarist police had been broken up in March, while the army, itself now full of Soviets, was wholly unreliable. The general expectation was that any successful coup would come from the right not the left, especially after Lenin (who had returned from exile in mid-April) failed in a putsch during the so-called “July Days” and was forced to flee to Finland. The anticipated conservative backlash came early in September when General KORNILOV was encouraged to seize Petrograd and disband its Soviet. Though his plot was foiled, the government (now under Kerensky's premiership) took the fateful decision of distributing guns among the city's workers. They now remained armed, as well as hungry and disaffected, while conservatives and liberals were ever more divided and disempowered.

Against this backdrop, the Bolsheviks grew in strength. Back in March, the party had been directionless, with many of its leaders still in exile and its energies constantly dissipated through internal divisions. But Lenin's arrival from Switzerland on April 16 (conveyed through Germany in a special train authorized by the Kaiser in the hope that the Bolshevik leader's presence in Petrograd would promote Russian defeatism) had reinvigorated the sense of purpose. On the next day he asserted his authority through what became known as the “April theses,” contained in a speech asserting that Russia was already passing through the bourgeois stage of revolution and must now hasten towards one centered on the proletariat (see WORKING CLASS). Lenin's command of propaganda and talents for organization, began to transform the Bolsheviks' fortunes. Notwithstanding the prematurity of his attempted July coup, by autumn the increasingly precarious state of the Provisional Government after the Kornilov affair had emboldened him to make another bid for power. Though he had difficulty in persuading some colleagues that the time was ripe to act, Lenin returned to the capital in late October and launched his takeover on November 6–7, when Red Guards, skillfully directed by TROTSKY, occupied key strategic positions throughout Petrograd. The Winter Palace, housing the government, was stormed; Kerensky took flight; and the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets swiftly entrusted the Bolsheviks with the creation of an administration. Though the Mensheviks and moderate SRs opposed this move, they were ill-placed to resist and believed that Lenin's coup would be short-lived. However, over the course of the next month the Bolsheviks, spreading their leader's slogan of “Peace, land, and bread,” swiftly asserted themselves in Petrograd and other key cities. When the elections for the much delayed Constituent Assembly went ahead in December but produced an overwhelming SR majority, Lenin simply dissolved that body at its opening session in January 1918. The consolidation of a Bolshevik monopoly of power was further assisted by withdrawal from the war, as eventually settled by the Treaty of BREST-LITOVSK two months later. Lenin also hoped that his cause would be aided by communist revolution elsewhere (see also GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918–19; KUN). However, when international assistance failed to materialize, he persisted in prosecuting the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR with every instrument to hand (see CHEKA; KRONSTADT UPRISING; WAR COMMUMISM).

Whereas the first revolution of 1917 had been spontaneous, the second was stage-managed by Lenin whose force of personality and intellect proved critical. He was also greatly assisted by the fact that, over the intervening months, state structures had all but disappeared. Any well-organized group might have stepped into that vacuum. Yet it is questionable whether any rival one would have possessed the degree of self-belief, determination, and ruthlessness that characterized the Bolshevik approach to the seizure and application of power. The Soviet Communist Party's achievement was to build a new state and a new society, which survived for seventy years and were long admired by much of the European left. Yet the revolution's triumph and consolidation came at an extraordinary cost in human life, especially during the era of STALIN'S dominance.

Russification Denotes attempts to impose distinctly Russian forms of language, law, and religion (see ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY) on the other cultures present within the multi-national tsarist empire. In the eighteenth century a process of Russification was initiated under CATHERINE II, but this policy became far more aggressive during the second half of the nineteenth century. Such factors as defeat in the CRIMEAN WAR, the abolition of SERFDOM, the 1863 revolt in POLAND, and the attainment of GERMAN UNIFICATION strengthened belief that the empire's security depended on it becoming more emphatically Russian. Such thinking was reinforced after the assassination of ALEXANDER II in 1881. His successor, ALEXANDER III, was encouraged by POBEDONOSTSEV, chief procurator of the Holy Synod, to pursue tough cultural measures. Poles and Catholics were banned from administrative positions in the western borderlands; the Russian language was given official predominance; conscription was extended to all national minorities; anti-Jewish discrimination was tightened (see ANTISEMITISM; POGROMS); and closer control was imposed on school and university teaching. Russification often equated to a form of persecution, yet its success remains debatable as local and religious identities remained strong. State officials were also divided as to how far to press the process, since the NATIONALISM with which it was associated was often distrusted as an alien and even subversive ideology. Later, albeit in adapted form, the urge to “Russify” continued to express itself from time to time in the attempts of the Moscow Kremlin to enhance its centralized control over the multi-national SOVIET UNION.

Russo-Finnish War This conflict of 1939–40, also known as the “Winter War,” resulted from the arrangements agreed in the NAZI–SOVIET PACT. For his part, STALIN feared that FINLAND offered the Germans an easy invasion route, with Leningrad lying close to the Finnish border. For their part, the Finns, who had gained their independence from Russia in 1917, were rightly distrustful of the SOVIET UNION. Through the Nazi–Soviet Pact, Finland was deemed part of the Soviet area of influence. Once WORLD WAR II had begun, Moscow soon contrived a border incident to justify an invasion (November 30, 1939). The Soviet forces massively outnumbered their enemy. However, stiff Finnish resistance, combined with the RED ARMY'S communication problems and its failure to prepare adequately for a winter conflict, ensured the invasion did not go to plan. Internationally, Soviet actions were condemned. The USSR was expelled from the LEAGUE OF NATIONS, which urged its members to help Finland. Although Sweden provided supplies and France and Britain contemplated more direct military involvement, the Finns soon realized that substantial foreign intervention would never materialize. On March 12, 1940 they signed the treaty of Moscow ceding Karelia and Petsamo to the Soviets. Stalin, who by then had gained the upper hand, seems to have settled for the early termination of a war which had cost him 200,000 men so that he might now turn to other matters. In 1941, in what amounted to a renewal of the contest, the Finns supported HITLER in Operation BARBAROSSA, and thereby reclaimed territories earlier surrendered to the USSR. In 1944 the Soviets revenged themselves by launching a massive invasion and by forcing an armistice on September 9. This re-established the 1940 border, though Finland's earlier resistance discouraged Stalin from total occupation.

Russo-Japanese War Conflict of 1904–5, which arose from a clash of imperial interests in Manchuria and Korea, and resulted in victory for Japan – the first time in the modern era that a European great power had been defeated by an Asian one. Tsar NICHOLAS II had calculated that this eastern rival would not dare resist Russian encroachments, and opposed Japanese plans to parcel up Manchuria and Korea. Yet he had underestimated the modernization of the Japanese military, pursued apace since the Meiji restoration of 1868. On February 6, 1904 Japan broke off diplomatic relations, and two days later attacked the Russian fleet moored at Port Arthur. There was also land fighting that presaged WORLD WAR I in its resort to barbed wire, machine guns, and artillery. The Japanese gained the upper hand both in that sphere of conflict and at sea, capturing Port Arthur on January 2, 1905 and winning a decisive naval victory in the Tsushima Straits on May 27–28. Peace was brokered by US President Roosevelt at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on September 5 that year. For Japan, victory signaled its emergence as a world power, and it would go on to develop its imperial ambitions in the Far East, starting with Korea which was annexed in 1910. Meanwhile, the military humiliation of the tsarist regime had contributed to the outbreak of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1905.

Russo-Polish War Erupting in 1919 in the aftermath of WORLD WAR I, this pitted the BOLSHEVIKS against the restored state of POLAND, and lasted until 1921. Led by PIŁSUDSKI, the Poles were keen to reclaim their historic territories in Byelorussia (see BELARUS) and western UKRAINE – a bid to which France was more sympathetic than Britain. Fighting broke out in February 1919, and in April Piłsudski cemented an alliance of convenience with the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petlyura. By early May, their joint forces had reached deep into the Ukraine, capturing the capital Kiev. For their part, the Bolsheviks were eager not only to re-establish control over former tsarist possessions, but also to crush a Polish NATIONALISM which, coupled with intense CATHOLICISM, constituted an obstacle to the spread of revolutionary COMMUNISM. The RED ARMY thus launched a fierce counter-offensive and by August 1919 had reached the outskirts of Warsaw, prompting fears that LENIN intended to seize the whole of Poland, and even invade Germany. Western leaders anxiously dispatched the French general, Maxime Weygand, to establish a mission charged with the training and deployment of Polish forces. In mid-August 1920 the Poles achieved the so-called “miracle of the Vistula” by breaking through the thinly-stretched Red Army lines A ceasefire ensued in October, and the Treaty of Riga was eventually signed on March 18, 1921. This agreed a Russo-Polish border well to the east of the CURZON LINE which the Allies had previously favored. Though both sides claimed victory in the Russo-Polish War, the Soviets were affronted by the new territorial arrangements and indeed overturned them at the outset of WORLD WAR II. It is speculated that, had the Red Army truly won the Russo-Polish war, communism might well have spread to Germany, despite the earlier failure of the SPARTACIST RISING, and that the VERSAILLES TREATY would have been shattered. It has also been suggested that the KATYN MASSACRE of 1940 was STALIN'S revenge for Soviet defeat at Warsaw in 1920.

Russo-Turkish Wars A sequence of conflicts dated 1787–92, 1806–12, 1828–9, 1853–6, and 1877–8. These involved RUSSIA'S challenge to the waning power of Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE), and thus formed part of the history of the EASTERN QUESTION as focused on the BALKANS and the Black Sea region. The northern coast of the latter, from the Dniester river through the Crimea and on to the Caucasus, fell to the tsarist regime in the first of these wars. The second ended with the Ottoman cession of Bessarabia through the 1812 BUCHAREST TREATY, while the third was bound up with Russia's successful contribution to the GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. The fourth conflict was similarly inseparable from the Russo-Turkish tensions that helped to trigger the CRIMEAN WAR, though here the Anglo-French armed intervention eventually worked to the advantage of the sultanate in the Paris Treaty of 1856. The fifth war reflected the growing influence of Slav NATIONALISM in the Balkans. It originated from the anti-Ottoman rising of 1875 in BOSNIA that spread into SERBIA and BULGARIA, and even more immediately from the ferocity of the Turkish response thereto. The campaign in defense of fellow-Slavs launched by Tsar ALEXANDER II in April 1877 enabled Russia to impose the Treaty of San Stefano on the Turks eleven months later, and thus briefly to reverse its losses of 1856. However, the fears of the other great powers, particularly concerning the enlargement of Bulgaria as a potential Russian satellite, led to a substantial revision of this agreement at the BERLIN CONGRESS held in June–July 1878.

Ruthenes Also known as Ruthenians or as Carpartho-Rusyns, this Slavic population (of around one million overall) is now located chiefly in the Transcarpathian region of western UKRAINE, but with some further spread most notably into SLOVAKIA and POLAND. Ruthene consciousness of a distinct national identity (see NATIONALISM) grew during the nineteenth century, initially within the wider context of PAN-SLAVISM and of opposition to rule by the HABSBURG EMPIRE. At the end of World War I a majority of Ruthenes became inhabitants of the new CZECHOSLOVAKIA, while most of the remainder obtained citizenship in restored Poland. Following World War II, STALIN annexed the main Ruthenian region to the Soviet Ukraine, and attempted to crush any separatist aspirations by firmly designating as Ukrainians most of the Ruthenes within his Eastern bloc. After the disintegration of the SOVIET UNION their nationalist discontent continued as one of the problems facing the newly-independent Ukrainian regime in particular.