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(The Story of Football) (1973). Less is known
about the youngest brother, Petr, who trained as
an engineer. As mainstays of Spartak, the
Starostin brothers personally suffered from the
animosity of Lavrenty
BERIA
, the secret police
chief and ardent follower of Dinamo Tbilisi, an
opposing team. From 1939, hoping to weaken
the dominant Spartak teams, he sought the arrest
of the Starostin brothers on the charge that Spar-
tak was running a “bourgeois” professional oper-
ation because its players were paid stipends.
Repeatedly thwarted, he finally succeeded in
1942, and the Starostins were sent off to various
labor camps, where they survived thanks to the
protection of sympathetic guards who knew their
identities. Only in 1955 were they allowed to
return to Moscow, but the true nature of their
long absence from Spartak was not publicly dis-
cussed until 1989.
attention of the czar. In April 1906 he was
appointed minister of the interior and, three
months later, chairman of the Council of Minis-
ters (prime minister). As prime minister, Stolypin
continued the twin policies of repression and
reform of land ownership that had characterized
his earlier work. He did not hesitate to take
unpopular measures, such as dissolving the first
two popularly elected
DUMA
s in July 1906 and
June 1907, followed by a suspension of the 1906
constitution and the construction of a new elec-
toral system that was less representative but
more stable. On the other hand, he tried to
implement substantial land reform by encourag-
ing peasants to leave the village communes and
establish their own farms. Through the creation
of the Peasant Land Bank, peasants could borrow
money to buy land. Stolypin's government also
encouraged the large migration of peasants from
overpopulated European Russia to lands in
Siberia and Central Asia. Stolypin was less suc-
cessful at navigating the opposition of the court
and bureaucracy to his broader plans to intro-
duce reforms in other fields such as education,
taxation, and local government. By the time of
his untimely death, he was losing the support of
the czar himself. On September 1, 1911, in the
presence of the czar, he was assassinated by a
Socialist Revolutionary double agent at the Kiev
Opera House. Although scholars remain divided
over the true impact and viability of his land
reforms, post-Communist Russia has witnessed
renewed interest in his work.
Stolypin, Petr Arkadievich
(1862-1911)
statesman
Together with Sergei
WITTE
, Stolypin stands out
as one of the few able and innovative conserva-
tive czarist politicians in the final decades of the
Russian Empire. Stolypin's family belonged to
Russia's landed nobility. In 1885, he joined the
Ministry of State Domains. As district marshal of
the nobility in Kovno province (1889) and gov-
ernor of Grodno province (1902) in Russia's
multiethnic western borderlands, his duties
brought him in contact with Great Russian, Pol-
ish, Lithuanian, and Jewish populations. Here
he began to develop the ideas that would char-
acterize his later career in politics: a belief that
individual and not communal peasant land
ownership was more productive and more con-
ducive toward political stability in the country-
side. In 1903 Stolypin was appointed governor of
Saratov province, a region that later witnessed
particularly severe peasant disturbances during
the 1905 Revolution. As governor, his willing-
ness to use extreme measures, such as hangings,
in suppressing rural rebellions gave birth to the
term “Stolypin neckties” and brought him to the
Stravinsky, Igor Feodorovich
(1882-1971)
composer, pianist, and conductor
Stravinsky is widely considered to be the most
influential composer of the 20th century. He was
born in the town of Oranienbaum (now
Lomonosov), near St. Petersburg. His father was
a prominent opera bass, and Stravinsky grew up
in a home exposed to the leading musical, the-
atrical, and literary figures of the day. Although
trained in piano and musical theory from an
early age, Stravinsky did not see a future in
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