HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 124

in Moscow, the son of a wealthy Greek tobacco
merchant who lost his tobacco plantations in
Uzbekistan at the time of the Russian Revolu-
tion. Early on, he developed a passion for col-
lecting, beginning with rare stamps, icons,
porcelain, and silver. He first worked at the
Greek embassy in Moscow before moving on to
the Canadian embassy, where his modest salary
was paid in foreign currency, which enabled him
to enlarge his collection. In the post- STALIN years
he met Vladimir Tatlin, Aleksandr RODCHENKO ,
and other surviving leaders of the remarkable
avant-garde movement that had flourished
between 1910 and 1925. Over time he found
and contacted over 100 members of the avant-
garde, and by the mid-1960s he had amassed a
collection of almost 2,000 avant-garde works.
During the KHRUSHCHEV years he counted on the
support of powerful politicians like the minister
of culture, Ekaterina FURTSEVA , but after 1964 he
came into more frequent conflict with a govern-
ment that now realized the true value of his col-
lection. Considered a speculator by the KGB, he
was forced to leave the Soviet Union in 1978
and leave behind a large part of his collection as
a form of payment for his exit visa. Costakis set-
tled in Athens and lent his surviving collection
for exhibits in the United States, England, and
Western Europe that further opened the eyes of
the West to the achievements and depth of the
Russian avant-garde.

French, had maneuvered the Sultan to grant the
French certain privileges to Catholics in the Holy
Land. Czar NICHOLAS I , who had long seen Russia
as the protector of Christians in the region, now
demanded a Russian protectorate over all Ortho-
dox subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Great
Britain and France, already nervous about the
extension of Russian influence over the Ottoman
Empire, sided with Turkey. Confident of British
and French support, Turkey declared war on
Russia in October 1853. The destruction of the
Turkish flotilla at Sinop by Russian naval forces
led by Admiral Pavel NAKHIMOV threatened to tilt
the balance of this RUSSO - TURKISH WAR in favor of
the Russians, and Great Britain and France
declared war on Russia in March 1854.
The war, the first major European conflict for
Russia since its victory in the Napoleonic Wars,
proved to be disastrous for Russia. Although
Russian soldiers fought heroically, their com-
manders generally proved incompetent. The
centerpiece of the war was the yearlong siege of
the fortress city of SEVASTOPOL on the Crimean
Peninsula, which began in September 1854.
After one year of steady bombardment the Allies
overran Russian defenses and captured the city.
The prospect of further military defeats, the
death of Nicholas I in 1855, and the threat of
active Austrian intervention against Russia con-
vinced the new czar, ALEXANDER II , to sue for
peace. The ensuing Treaty of Paris, signed in
March 1856, laid down harsh terms for Russia.
Russia was prohibited from rebuilding both its
Black Sea fleet and the fortress of Sevastopol. It
surrendered all claim to a protectorate over
Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire, as
well as the territory of southern Bessarabia and
its protectorate over Wallachia and Moldavia,
the core principalities of the future Kingdom of
Romania. Russia's defeat in the Crimean War is
generally credited with providing the necessary
motivation for the GREAT REFORMS implemented
by Alexander II, especially the abolition of SERF -
DOM , which was seen as the symbol and cause of
Russia's competitive backwardness in relation to
Great Britain and France. It is also credited with

Crimean War (1853-1856)
A war fought by Russia against an alliance of
Great Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire, and
Piedmont-Sardinia. The roots of the war lay in
several long-term mid-19th-century conflicts:
the weakness of the Ottoman Empire, Russia's
policy of championing the interests of the Otto-
man Empire's Slavic subjects, and the overall
conflict between Russian and British interests in
Asia. The issue that triggered the war, however,
was a dispute over which Christian power was to
control the holy places in Ottoman-ruled Pales-
tine. By 1853 Napoleon III, emperor of the