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against the government. That same day, Czar
Nicholas dispatched eight regiments from the
front to Petrograd to restore order, but their
commanding officer, in consultation with the
army's high command, did not enforce the
order, thus marking the end of the czar's gov-
ernment. With the czar powerless and away
from the capital, two different groups moved to
fill the power vacuum that ensued. Later in the
day of March 12, moderate members of the
Duma, who had refused to acknowledge the
czar's order to dissolve, formed a Provisional
Government intended to rule Russia until a con-
stituent assembly could be called to decide its
future government. That same evening, the
workers and socialist leaders formed the Soviet
of Workers' Deputies to represent their interests.
The Soviet had first been formed during the
1905 Revolution, before being shut down by the
government in the final months of 1905. Now
reconstituted, the Soviet was soon renamed the
Petrograd Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Dep-
uties to take into account the influential role of
rank and file soldiers in the revolution. On
March 13 (February 28), the czar's ministers
were arrested. On March 15 (March 2), Nicholas
II abdicated in favor of his brother, Michael, who
in turn abdicated the following day in favor of
the Provisional Government.
from before the time of the Tower of Babel. Soci-
ety would be organized along utopian lines in
rural communes, situated around a cemetery
with a model of the Moscow Kremlin at the cen-
ter. Communal life would be built around a daily
regime of mind control, open diaries, public con-
fession, and the regulation of sexuality. Each
commune would be assigned a specific task of
humanity's broader mission: victory over death,
resurrection of the dead, and the settlement of
outer space. Rejecting both capitalism and social-
ism, Fedorov believed that the perfect classless
society would be realized when humankind con-
quered nature, following which it would devote
its energies to the resurrection of the dead. At
one time or another scholars such as Konstantin
TSIOLKOVSKY , an early pioneer of the Soviet space
program; Vladimir VERNADSKY , a prominent
earth scientist; and Leonid Krasin, an industrial-
ist close to the BOLSHEVIKS were under the sway
of Fedorov's ideas.
Fedorov, Svyatoslav Nikolaevich
(1927- )
eye surgeon
A pioneer in the development of eye surgery,
Fedorov became an international medical celeb-
rity, and in the post-Soviet political environment
has harbored presidential political ambitions.
Fedorov was born in Ukraine to a military father
who was sent to the camps in 1937. Fedorov was
a member of the COMMUNIST PARTY until August
1991. He graduated as a doctor from the Medical
Institute in Rostov-on-Don and became a physi-
cian. He was a professor and corresponding
member of the USSR ACADEMY OF SCIENCES (Rus-
sian Academy of Sciences, from 1991) and the
USSR Academy of Medical Sciences (Russian
Academy of Medical Sciences, from 1991). After
graduation he worked as an ophthalmologist in
various hospitals, and in 1957 he became head
of the clinical department of the branch of the
Gelmgolts Scientific Research Institute of Eye
Diseases, Cheboksari. In 1960 he was the first
eye surgeon to place an artificial crystal in a
patient's eye. The Soviet medical establishment
Fedorov, Nikolai Feodorovich
(1828-1903)
philosopher
A reclusive thinker who never published a book,
Fedorov's ideas about solar energy, space travel,
and labor armies were highly influential in the
first decades of Soviet rule. Little is known about
Fedorov's own life, except that he worked as a
librarian for 25 years at Moscow's Rumiantsev
Museum (later Lenin Library). Fedorov's highly
idiosyncratic ideas combined a belief in the pri-
macy of Russian Orthodoxy and czarism with
great faith in the possibilities of interplanetary
travel. In his vision the future world would be
united by Orthodoxy, czarist rule, and a com-
mon language, which linguists would uncover
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