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mordant criticism of Soviet bureaucracy. His next
film,
Agonia
(
Agony
), was finished in 1975 but not
released until 1985 as one of the opening salvos
of the era of cultural glasnost (openness). In it, he
treated the politically sensitive topics of
RASPUTIN
,
NICHOLAS II
and
ALEXANDRA
, and the last years
before the revolution in a highly unorthodox (for
Soviet times) but artistically compelling way. The
film was a major hit and brought Klimov inter-
national recognition. His other major film from
this period was
Come and See
(1985), a brutally
realistic account of life in Nazi-occupied Belarus.
His wife, Larissa Shepitko, was also an accom-
plished filmmaker who died with some of her
crew in an automobile accident while filming
Farewell to Matyora,
based on Valentin Rasputin's
story from 1976. Klimov completed the film and
supplemented it with a short sequel,
Larissa,
a lov-
ing tribute to her memory. Klimov's broader con-
tributions to Soviet film and Soviet cultural life
came after May 1986, when the historic Congress
of the Filmmakers Union unanimously elected
him general secretary of the Filmmakers Union.
In Soviet terms this practically made him the head
of the Soviet film industry. With decision-making
power wrested away from bureaucrats and given
to filmmakers themselves, Klimov released all the
films that had been shelved for the previous 30
years (literally hundreds, including all his own
films), thus inaugurating a period when film was
once again the most vital Soviet art.
under the great historian Sergei Soloviev, whom
he would eventually succeed as professor and
lecturer. In 1871 he published his thesis on the
historiographical value of the Ancient Russians'
Saints Lives. While still a student Kliuchevsky
taught in different Moscow educational venues,
and when Soloviev died suddenly of cancer in
1879 at a relatively young age, Kliuchevsky was
the surprise choice to replace him at Moscow
University. Slow to publish, Kliuchevsky first
made his reputation as a brilliant lecturer, and
his lectures drew large numbers of students as
well as public figures. Kliuchevsky was conser-
vative by nature and had little interest in the
world beyond Moscow. The underlying theme of
his work was the development of Russians into a
nation, a theme best expounded in his well-
known
The Course of Russian History,
a five-vol-
ume opus based on Kliuchevsky's lectures at
various institutions. He saw Russia as a European
nation, and drawing from popular historians
such as Jules Michelet, Kliuchevsky emphasized
the role of the Russian people in the making of
its history. In addition to
The Course of Russian His-
tory,
he published a work on the Boyar Council
that defended the advisory role of this parlia-
mentary body within the context of Russian
autocracy.
In later years, his reputation drew him some-
what reluctantly and briefly into the world of
politics. He participated in the
ZEMSTVO
constitu-
tional movement in the years before the 1905
Revolution. In 1905 he was called to help draft
the proposal for a consultative
DUMA
, or parlia-
ment, known as the August Manifesto, but with-
drew when the reform was unsuccessful. In the
half-decade before his death, a conflict with the
rector of Moscow University led to his gradual
retirement from all positions of importance. Kli-
uchevsky's influence endured long after his
death through the work of the generation of his-
torians whom he trained. In the years before
World War II, the most prominent Russian histo-
rians of the era from the liberal Pavel
MILIUKOV
to
the Marxist Mikhail Pokrovsky had all studied
under Kliuchevsky.
Kliuchevsky, Vasili Osipovich
(1814-1911)
historian
One of the most influential Russian historians,
Kliuchevsky is considered to have set the tone
for 19th-century Russian historiography. He was
born in the provincial town of Penza, the son of
a village priest. Educated in a seminary, Kli-
uchevsky possessed intellectual talents that
opened doors that would have been closed to
most people of his social background, and he was
able to enroll in Moscow University, Russia's
most prestigious university. There he studied
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