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Spinal Flute
(1916). During World War I, his anti-
war poetry gained him many admirers. Maya-
kovsky was in his element during the early years
of the Soviet regime, supplying brilliant captions
to cartoons and posters, contributing to Soviet
commercial advertising in the 1920s, and writing
politically engaged poems that celebrated the
October Revolution. He was the leader of the Left
Front in Art (LEF) and his poems “150,000,000”
(1920) and “Vladimir Ilich Lenin” (1924) glorified
the deeds of the
BOLSHEVIKS
. His plays,
Mystery-
Bouffe
(1918),
Bed Bug
(1929), and
The Bath House
(1930), drew on traditional dramatic themes,
with a new presentation. He traveled widely but
gradually lost faith in the revolution and the
party; together with misfortune in love, this drove
him to suicide. He shot himself in Moscow and a
new myth began to surround him as the greatest
poet of the revolution, a myth that was greatly
supported by the government, which sought to
present him as an exemplar of socialist realism. In
the
STALIN
era he was lionized as a leading poet of
proletarian culture, and his name was given to
prominent streets, squares, and theaters.
Peter. Mazepa turned to a stronger rival of
Peter's, the Swedish king Charles XII. As King
Charles continued to press his advantage over
Russia in the early stages of the Great Northern
War, he found an ally in Mazepa. In 1708, King
Charles chose to move his armies into Ukraine,
where he hoped to join forces with Mazepa's
Cossacks before continuing his attack against
Peter's armies. However, Mazepa was only able
to deliver about between 2,000 and 3,000 Cos-
sack troops to a Swedish army of about 25,000
soldiers. Mazepa fought with Charles XII at the
Battle of
POLTAVA
of July 1709, which ended in a
decisive Russian victory. Defeated, Mazepa
joined Charles XII in seeking safety in Ottoman
territory to the south, where he died soon after.
Medvedev, Roi and Zhores
Aleksandrovich
(1925-
)
scholars
Twin brothers, Roi and Zhores Medvedev, played
an important role in the intellectual history of
the
BREZHNEV
and
GORBACHEV
eras. The two
brothers were born in 1925 in Tbilisi, Georgia;
their father was a Red Army commissar who
perished in the
GULAG
labor camps. Roi, a histo-
rian, studied philosophy at Leningrad University
and later worked as a researcher for the USSR
ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
. Zhores graduated from
the Moscow Agricultural Academy and became
known as a biologist and gerontologist. By the
late 1960s they were both raising important and
taboo questions within their fields in works cir-
culated through the unofficial
samizdat
network.
Zhores's work criticized the
LYSENKO
regime in
Soviet science under
STALIN
; he also wrote a
remarkable study of Soviet mail censorship. He
was arrested in 1970 and sent to a psychiatric
hospital in Kaluga, but after strong protests from
the international scientific community organized
by his brother, he was released after two weeks.
Zhores emigrated in 1973, settling in London,
but still kept in close touch with his brother and
Soviet affairs, writing an early biographical study
of Yuri
ANDROPOV
. In the meantime Roi had been
expelled from the
COMMUNIST PARTY
in 1969 after
Mazepa, Ivan Stepanovich
(1639?-1709)
Cossack leader
A leader of the Ukrainian
COSSACKS
, Mazepa
found himself entangled in the politics of the
Great Northern War (1700-25) between Swe-
den and an emerging Russia, led by czar
PETER I
.
Mazepa had been elected hetman, or leader, of
the Ukrainian Cossacks in 1687. During his
tenure as hetman, Mazepa built churches and
promoted the spread of education. He also
sought to promote the interests of the more priv-
ileged Cossacks at the expense of rank-and-file
Cossacks and the peasants living in Cossack
lands. Nevertheless, it was his desire to reassert
Cossack independence, compromised since the
extension of Muscovite rule over Ukraine in
1654, which led to Mazepa's undoing. Having
already conducted unsuccessful secret negotia-
tions with the Polish king Stanislaw Leszczy
'
nski
in 1705 in the hope of gaining an ally against
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