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May 1918. In London and Paris he unsuccess-
fully lobbied for Allied support for a democratic
Russian government. From Paris he edited the
newspaper
Dni
(
Days
), a critic of both commu-
nism and Nazism. In 1940, on the eve of the
German occupation, he moved to the United
States and settled in Stanford, California. He
edited a three-volume collection of documents
on the Provisional Government and rewrote his
memoirs, published as
The Kerensky Memoirs: Rus-
sia and History's Turning Point
(1965). He died of
cancer in New York City in 1970.
hunger and neglect in a village near Novgorod.
Unlike his fellow Futurist Mayakovsky, Khleb-
nikov wrote works that were too esoteric to
establish a wide popular following during his
lifetime. Beginning with a five-volume edition of
his collected works, published in Leningrad in
1928-33, his posthumous reputation soared,
and he is nowadays considered the greatest Rus-
sian Futurist poet.
Khmelnitsky, Bogdan Mikhailovich
(1595?-1657)
Cossack leader
A Cossack leader in Ukraine whose rebellion
against Poland led to the controversial agreement
of Pereiaslavl that brought the Ukraine under
Russian rule. Khmelnitsky was the son of a minor
nobleman in Chigirin district in the Ukraine. He
received a fine education at a Jesuit college in
Lvov, where he learned several languages. As a
soldier in the Polish army, he fought the Turks in
1620 and the Russians in the 1630s. In 1645 he
traveled to France as a Polish emissary to discuss
the possible use of Cossack troops in the French
campaigns against Spain. In 1647, Khmelnitsky
became unhappy with his service with the Poles
and was briefly arrested for planning an uprising
against the king of Poland. In 1648, he started the
rebellion in the Ukraine for which he is known,
leading the Zaporozhian
COSSACKS
, who recog-
nized him as their chief (hetman). After initial
successes against the Poles, most of the Ukraine
joined his rebellion. An armistice with the Polish
government followed, during which he began
negotiations with the Russians about the possi-
ble annexation of the Ukraine. After another
round of battles with the Poles, Czar
ALEKSEI
MIKHAILOVICH
called an assembly of the land (
ZEM
-
SKII SOBOR
), which agreed to declare war on
Poland and strive for the annexation of Ukraine.
In January 1654, Khmelnitskii and his Cossack
followers pledged loyalty to the czar at Pereiaslavl.
Two months later the czar announced his inten-
tion to grant Ukraine broad privileges of auton-
omy. In the years that followed, Khmelnitsky
Khlebnikov, Velimir Vladimirovich
(1885-1922)
poet
One of the leading and most inventive represen-
tatives of Russian
FUTURISM
, Khlebnikov was
born near the Caspian Sea port of
ASTRAKHAN
.
His father was a scientist, and he studied at
Kazan University in 1903, and later at St. Peters-
burg University (1908-11). His first poems were
published in 1908, and he soon became known
for his brilliant verbal experiments that influ-
enced many of his contemporaries from
GUMILEV
to
MAYAKOVSKY
. A central figure in the Futurist
movement, Khlebnikov took part in many of its
“happenings” across Russia. Unlike many of his
Futurist colleagues, Khlebnikov shunned the
spotlight, preferring instead to work on utopian
projects for global and cosmic reform. He
adopted a style that was half-serious, half-naive,
and enjoyed calling himself “president of the
globe.” Apart from his love for grammatical
experiments, Khlebnikov introduced influential
primitive, archaic, and exotic elements in his
poetry, evident in works like
Lesnaia Deva,
Shaman I Venera, Truba Gul-Mully
(all from 1921)
and
Zangezi
(1922). He identified with revolu-
tion in a general, not political, sense. In his own
life he became a homeless vagrant, showing
complete disregard not only for any career pos-
sibilities but also for any type of settlement that
would restrict his life. Information about his
final years is sketchy, but it appears he died of
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