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Wanderers
A group of artists whose aesthetic values domi-
nated Russian painting between the 1870s and
the 1890s. Known as the Peredvizhniki (Wan-
derers), they derived their name from the Society
for Traveling Art Exhibitions (Tovarishchestvo
peredvizhnikh khudozhestvennykh vystavok),
which they formed in 1870. But the roots of the
movement go back to 1863, when 13 artists
resigned from the St. Petersburg Academy of
Arts, protesting the topic that had been assigned
for the yearly competition, “The Entrance of
Odin into Valhalla,” calling instead for art that
reflected Russian reality. Strongly influenced by
the populist political ideas of the time (see
POP
-
ULISM
), the artists believed that art should have a
social purpose and show realistic paintings, and
that it should be brought to the people in the
provinces through traveling exhibitions. Implied
in the dictum to represent Russian reality was a
criticism of the Russian social order that was
expressed by the artists in varying degrees of
openness. As a formal society, the Wanderers
also sought to provide its members the facilities
for exhibiting and selling their work. Among the
founding members of the society were Ivan
Kramskoi, its original leader, Vasilii Perov, Niko-
lai
GE
, Grigorii Miasoedov, Ivan Shishkin, and
Aleksei Savrasov. Ilia
REPIN
, Russia's most promi-
nent realist painter, joined a year later and out-
lived most of his colleagues. By the 1890s, the
MIR ISKUSSTVA
(World of Art) movement was
establishing its hegemony over the arts. The
Wanderers soon lost all influence, even though
their society nominally existed until the 1920s,
and some of its representatives like Repin lived
until the 1930s. The Wanderers found a strong
patron in the Moscow businessman and art col-
lector, P. M. Tretiakov (1832-98), founder of the
Tretiakov Gallery, where many of their works
are still displayed.
Warsaw Pact
A military alliance of European Communist
nations headquartered in Moscow, the Warsaw
Pact was signed on May 14, 1955, in Warsaw,
Poland, as a Soviet response to the rearmament
of West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany)
and its admission to the U.S.-led military alliance,
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Formally called the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship,
Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, the pact's
original members were Albania, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, East Germany (German Demo-
cratic Republic), Hungary, Poland, Romania, and
the Soviet Union. In 1961, at the height of Nikita
KHRUSHCHEV
's de-Stalinization campaign, Albania
broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet
Union and in 1968 officially withdrew from the
pact. Yugoslavia, although Communist-ruled,
was never a member. Politically, the pact was an
extension of Soviet power in the region; militar-
ily the supreme commander was from the Soviet
army. The pact's only military action came in
1968 when members' forces invaded a member
country, Czechoslovakia, to suppress the reform-
ist movement led by Alexander Dubcek and
install a pro-Soviet government. Despite Soviet
hegemony, Romania refused to participate in the
invasion, though it remained a member of the
pact. Another military action against a Warsaw
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