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Rasputin (b. 1937). In their works these and
other writers evoked rural life, often writing with
nostalgia about a world that they felt was disap-
pearing under the onslaught of industrialization
and agricultural collectivization. It was this sense
of regret about the lost past in contrast to the cel-
ebration of industrialization or collectivism
found in socialist realist novels that provided a
slightly subversive subtext to the village prose
movement. Among the classic works of the vil-
lage movement is Rasputin's
Farewell to Matyora
(1976) Vasili Shukshin's untimely death in 1974
deprived the village prose movement of one of
its leading members. By the mid-1980s, the
leading representatives of the village prose
movement had moved from the original rural
settings of their works to more aggressively anti-
urban themes. With the flowering political open-
ness of the
GORBACHEV
years (1985-91), the
village prose movement began to fragment, as
many of its exemplars took more open political
stands. With a few exceptions, they more com-
monly adopted conservative nationalist posi-
tions, which in some cases opened into thinly
disguised anti-Semitism.
Roman Catholics, Jewish Khazars, and Byzantine
Orthodox delegates, but was ultimately over-
whelmed by the splendor and mystery of the
Byzantine rite and chose Orthodox Christianity.
As part of the negotiations that preceded his con-
version, Vladimir campaigned in Byzantine terri-
tories in the Crimea and demanded the hand of
the Byzantine emperor's sister, Anna Porphyro-
genita. The emperor in turn demanded Vladi-
mir's conversion to Christianity before agreeing
to the marriage in 988. After his conversion,
Vladimir ordered the destruction of most pagan
works of art. In the latter part of his rule, Vlad-
imir was concerned with the threat posed by the
steppe-dwelling Pechenegs, whom he was still
fighting at the time of his death. His death in 1015
triggered another struggle for succession among
his many sons, with Yaroslav, latter known as
“the Wise,” emerging victorious in 1019 and lead-
ing Kievan Rus to its apogee during his reign.
Vlasov, Andrei Andreevich
(1900-1946)
general
Organizer of the anti-Soviet Russian Liberation
Army, Vlasov was the highest-ranking officer to
defect to the Germans during World War II. A
peasant by birth, Vlasov joined the Red Army in
1919. He served as a military adviser to Chinese
leader Chiang Kai-shek in 1938-39. During the
German invasion of the USSR, Vlasov distin-
guished himself in the defense of Kiev (August
1941) and Moscow (December 1941), and was
promoted to lieutenant general in January 1942.
Disillusioned with the army's high command, he
refused to escape from
SEVASTOPOL
in the Crimea
and was captured by the Germans when the city
fell in May 1942. Although he quickly proposed
the formation of an anti-Stalin army, the Ger-
mans preferred for him to confine himself to
propaganda broadcasts. Hitler, in particular, was
resistant to the idea of a Russian anti-Stalin
army, and in October 1943, he ordered the
transfer of all national units, including Russian,
to the western front. The order was never fully
implemented by some German commanders,
Vladimir I (the Great)
(unknown-1015)
ruler
Best known as the ruler whose baptism in
A
.
D
.
988 made Orthodox Christianity the official reli-
gion of
KIEVAN RUS
and hence of Russia, Vladimir
was the illegitimate son of Sviatoslav I, prince of
Kiev. His birth date is unknown, but around 970
he was sent by his father to rule over the city of
Novgorod, where he remained a decade. After his
father's death in 972 and the accession of his half
brother Yaropolk to the throne of Kiev, Vladimir
was forced to flee to Scandinavia. He became
prince of Kiev in 978 but had to fend off chal-
lenges to his rule from his father's legitimate chil-
dren, Yaropolk and Oleg. Raised a pagan, he had
many wives and was reputed to have had about
800 concubines in three different palaces. The tra-
ditional account of his conversion to Christianity
states that Vladimir received Bolgar Muslims,
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