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were established on a fairly consistent basis dur-
ing the Soviet period and in the decade after the
end of the Soviet Union. In the first revolution-
ary decade after 1917, nine more
zapovedniki
were established, in such provinces as Astrakhan,
Cheliabinsk, Krasnodar, Voronezh, and Samara.
Even during the height of the Soviet industrial-
ization campaign and in the middle of propa-
ganda campaigns promoting triumphing over
nature, 16
zapovedniki
were established between
1928 and 1945. Thirty more were added in the
years between 1946 and 1985. The pace acceler-
ated during the
GORBACHEV
years (1985-1991),
with the creation of 15 more
zapovedniki.
Some of
the largest
zapovedniki,
such as the Great Arctic
Zapovednik
and the 9-million-acre Komandorsky
Zapovednik
in the Kamchatka Peninsula, were
created after 1992, during which time 21 new
preserves were established. Since 1983, the
zapovedniki
have been supplemented by a net-
work of national parks. From 1983 to 1996, 32
national parks covering about 19 million acres of
land in the Russian Federation have been cre-
ated. In size the parks range from the 11,800
acres of the Orlovskoe Polesie National Park in
Orel province to the south of Moscow to the 4.7-
million-acre Yugyd Va National Park, located in
the Komi Republic, 1,200 miles to the northeast
of Moscow.
her motives, acquitted her, to the dismay of the
government. The verdict was widely seen as an
indictment of autocracy. In 1879, when Land
and Liberty split into two factions over the fur-
ther use of terrorism, Zasulich joined the faction
that had renounced terrorism, G. V.
PLEKHANOV
's
Black Repartition (Chernyi Peredel). The other
faction,
PEOPLE
'
S WILL
(Narodnaia Volia), went
on to mastermind the assassination of Alexander
II in March 1881. In 1883, four years after flee-
ing Russia for Switzerland, Zasulich joined
Plekhanov and other revolutionary émigrés in
founding the first Russian Marxist organization,
Liberation of Labor (Osvobozhdenie truda).
Although she wrote extensively, her main con-
tribution to the movement was her moral lead-
ership, in addition to the heroic mantle she had
gained through her early activism. As the Social
Democratic Party began to fragment into its two
main factions, Menshevik and Bolshevik, she
tried unsuccessfully to serve as a conciliator. After
the 1903 Congress of the Russian Social Demo-
cratic Labor Party (RSDLP) that resulted in the
formation of the
BOLSHEVIK
and Menshevik fac-
tions, she sided with the Menzheviks. Zasulich
returned to Russia in 1905 but ceased to be polit-
ically active. During World War I, she supported
the defensive position and later opposed the Bol-
shevik revolution.
Zasulich, Vera Ivanovna
(1849-1919)
revolutionary
A populist revolutionary who later advocated
Marxism, Zasulich made her mark on the revo-
lutionary movement through a spectacular act of
political violence. In January 1878, she shot and
wounded the St. Petersburg governor, General F.
F. Trepov, in retaliation for his illegal order to
flog a revolutionary who had been imprisoned
six months earlier. Although the revolutionary
organization Land and Liberty had made plans
to avenge the deed by assassinating Trepov,
Zasulich took matters into her own hands.
Under the provisions of the
GREAT REFORMS
insti-
tuted by
ALEXANDER II
, Zasulich was tried by a
jury that, impressed by the apparent altruism of
zemskii sobor
(pl.
zemskie sobory
)
A term generally translated as “assembly of the
land,” an assembly of representatives of various
segments of Muscovite society that was called to
decide on important matters of state. Initially its
members were appointed, but over time they
came to be elected. The first formal Zemskii
Sobor, composed of titled aristocrats and gentry,
convened in 1549 during the reign of
IVAN IV
“the Terrible,” followed by others in 1566 and
1575, to deal with issues such as the czar's pro-
posed reforms or the Livonian War that occupied
most of his reign. The Zemskii Sobor of 1584
confirmed
FEODOR I
, Ivan's son, as czar. In 1598,
another assembly of the land was called by Patri-
arch Iov to elect a successor to Feodor I, who had
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