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pionship. In 1992 Spassky agreed to play Fischer,
a rematch of their confrontation 20 years earlier.
This was to be Fischer's first appearance after dis-
appearing from the chess world in 1975, when
he refused to defend his crown against Karpov.
The match was held in Yugoslavia, at the time of
the Bosnian War, in contravention of U.N. sanc-
tions. After 30 matches played in Montenegro
and Belgrade, Spassky was again defeated by Fis-
cher.
Petersburg, Speransky was appointed to the
State Council and entrusted by the new czar,
Nicholas I, in 1826 with the monumental task of
codifying Russian laws. By 1833, his staff had
collected and ordered chronologically all the
decrees and acts issued since the previous
Ulozhenie
of 1649, and published them as
The
Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire.
Historians still debate whether Speransky's 1809
reforms were the prelude to constitutional
monarchy in Russia, but they agree that the cod-
ification of laws is his greatest legacy.
Speransky, Count Mikhail
Mikhailovich
(1772-1839)
official
A talented official who briefly rose to a position
of great influence under
ALEXANDER I
, suc-
cumbed to court intrigues in 1812, and returned
under
NICHOLAS I
to compile Russia's first code of
laws in almost two centuries. The son of an
Orthodox priest in Vladimir province, Speransky
was first educated in the local seminary, then at
the prestigious Alexander Nevsky Seminary in
St. Petersburg, where he was soon appointed to
the faculty. Choosing government service over
an academic career, Speransky quickly rose
through the ranks, attaining the status of hered-
itary noble by 1797. By 1807, Alexander I
appointed him deputy minister of justice and
instructed him to prepare a comprehensive plan
to reform government institutions. Speransky's
plan, presented in 1809, preserved the emperor's
sovereign power but provided for three branches
of government that included a State Council
with eight ministries, a network of representa-
tive assemblies albeit without legislative powers,
and the Senate serving as the judicial branch.
Drawing on growing anti-French feeling, conser-
vative opponents led by N. M.
KARAMZIN
suc-
ceeded in tarnishing Speransky and his reforms
with the brush of French subversion. Dismissed
by Alexander in March 1812, he was subse-
quently pardoned and made governor of Penza
(1816). As governor-general of Siberia (1819-22),
Speransky introduced reforms that, although
well intended, increased rather than reduced the
burden on Siberian native peoples. Back in St.
Sputnik
The name given to the artificial satellites launched
by the Soviet Union from 1957 to 1961, derived
from the Russian word for “traveling compan-
ion,” Sputnik captured the imagination of the
world and started the Space Age. Between 1957
and 1961 the Soviet Union launched 10 artificial
satellites that used dogs, laboratories, and
dummy passengers to set the stage for the first
manned space flight, Yuri
GAGARIN
's historic cir-
cling of the earth in April 1961 aboard the space-
craft
Vostok-1.
The groundwork for what became
the Sputnik program, under the direction of its
chief engineer, Sergei
KOROLEV
, had been laid
with the construction of the
BAIKONUR COSMOD
-
ROME
in Kazakhstan in 1955 and the launching
of the first intercontinental ballistic missile in
August 1957.
In September 1957, the Soviet Union
announced its intention of launching its first
artificial satellite. Although the announcement
was dismissed in some circles as another
instance of Soviet propaganda,
Sputnik-1
was
launched on October 4, 1957, triggering a period
of intense scientific competition with the United
States. After more than 4,000 orbits around the
earth,
Sputnik-1
reentered the earth's atmosphere
on January 4, 1958. On November 3, 1957,
Sput-
nik-2
had already been launched, this time with a
dog—Laika—on board. The dog survived for a
week until oxygen supplies ran out, while the
satellite disintegrated in April 1958. The third
Sputnik was launched in May 1958, four months
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