1.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
2.
Tiananmen Square
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Tiananmen Square is a city square in the centre of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen located to its north, separating it from the Forbidden City. The square contains the Monument to the Peoples Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong. Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the Peoples Republic of China in the square on October 1,1949, Tiananmen Square is within the top ten largest city squares in the world. It has great significance as it was the site of several important events in Chinese history. Outside China, the square is best known for the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Tiananmen, a gate in the wall of the Imperial City, was built in 1415 during the Ming dynasty. In the 17th century, fighting between Li Zichengs rebel forces and the forces of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty caused heavy damage to, or even destroyed, Tiananmen Square was designed and built in 1651, and has since been enlarged by four times its original size in the 1950s. Near the centre of the square stood the Great Ming Gate, the gate to the Imperial City, renamed Great Qing Gate during the Qing dynasty. This gate had a status as the Gate of the Nation. It normally remained closed, except when the Emperor passed through, commoner traffic was diverted to side gates at the western and eastern ends of the square, respectively. Because of this diversion in traffic, a marketplace, called Chess Grid Streets, was developed in the big. In 1860, during the Second Opium War, when British and French troops invaded Beijing, they pitched camp near the gate and briefly considered burning down the gate and they decided ultimately to spare the Forbidden City and instead burn down the Old Summer Palace. When the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance besieged Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, they damaged the office complexes. After the Boxer Rebellion ended, the became a space for the foreign powers to assemble their military forces. In 1954, the Gate of China was demolished, allowing for the enlargement of the square, in November 1958, a major expansion of Tiananmen Square started, which was completed after only 11 months, in August 1959. This followed the vision of Mao Zedong to make the square the largest and most spectacular in the world, in that process, a large number of residential buildings and other structures have been demolished. On its southern edge, the Monument to the Peoples Heroes has been erected, the year after Maos death in 1976, a mausoleum was built near the site of the former Gate of China, on the main north-south axis of the square. In connection with this project, the square was further increased in size to become fully rectangular, the urban context of the square was altered in the 1990s with the construction of National Grand Theatre in its vicinity and the expansion of the National Museum. Used as a meeting place since its creation, its flatness is contrasted by the 38-metre high Monument to the Peoples Heroes
3.
Lin Biao
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Lin Biao was a Marshal of the Peoples Republic of China who was pivotal in the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeast China. Lin was the general who commanded the decisive Liaoshen and Pingjin Campaigns, in which he co-led the Manchurian Field Army to victory and he crossed the Yangtze River in 1949, decisively defeated the Kuomintang and took control of the coastal provinces in Southeast China. He ranked third among the Ten Marshals, Zhu De and Peng Dehuai were considered senior to Lin, and Lin ranked directly ahead of He Long and Liu Bocheng. Lin abstained from taking a role in politics after the civil war ceased in 1949. He led a section of the civil bureaucracy as one of the co-serving Deputy Vice Premiers of the Peoples Republic of China from 1954 onwards. Lin became more active in politics when named one of the co-serving Vice Chairmen of the Communist Party of China in 1958 and he held the three responsibilities of Vice Premier, Vice Chairman and Minister of National Defense from 1959 onwards. Lin died on September 13,1971 when a Hawker Siddeley Trident he was crashed in Öndörkhaan of Mongolia. The exact events of this Lin Biao incident have been a source of speculation ever since, the Chinese governments official explanation is that Lin and his family attempted to flee following a botched coup against Mao. Others have argued that they fled out of fear they would be purged, following Lins death, he was officially condemned as a traitor by the Communist Party. Since the late 1970s Lin and Maos wife Jiang Qing have been labeled the two major forces of the Cultural Revolution, receiving official blame from the Chinese government. Lin Biao was the son of a merchant family in Huanggang. His name at birth was Lin Yurong, Lins father opened a small handicrafts factory in the mid-late 1910s, but was forced to close the factory due to heavy taxes imposed by local militarists. After closing the factory, Lins father worked as a purser aboard a river steamship, Lin entered primary school in 1917, but moved to Shanghai in 1919 to continue his education. As a child, Lin was much interested in participating in student movements than in pursuing his formal education. Lin joined an organization of the Communist Youth League before he graduated high school in 1925. Later in 1925 he participated in the May Thirtieth Movement and enrolled in the newly established Whampoa Military Academy in Guangzhou, as a young cadet, Lin admired the personality of Chiang Kai-shek, who was then the Principal of the Academy. At Whampoa, Lin also studied under Premier Zhou Enlai, who was eight years older than Lin, Lin had no contact with Zhou after their time in Whampoa, until they met again in Yanan in the late 1930s. Lins relationship with Zhou was never close, but they rarely opposed each other directly
4.
Great Hall of the People
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The Great Hall of the People is a state building located at the western edge of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It is used for legislative and ceremonial activities by the Peoples Republic of China government and it is also the meeting place of the National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which, since 1982, has occurred once every five years. The Great Hall of the People is also an attraction in the city frequented by tourists visiting the capital. The Great Hall of the People was designed by Zhang Bo and it was opened in September 1959, and was one of the Ten Great Constructions completed for the 10th Anniversary of the PRC. The structure was built in 10 months by construction workers and volunteers, the building covers 171,801 square metres of floor space, it is 356 metres in length and 206.5 metres in width. The centre peaks at 46.5 metres, at the eaves of the main gate hangs the national emblem of the PRC. The Great Hall of the People consists of three sections, the central section principally includes the Great Auditorium, the Main Auditorium, the Congress Hall, the Central Hall, the Golden Hall and other main halls. The northern section consists of the State Banquet Hall, the Salute State Guest Hall, the North Hall, the East Hall, the southern part is the office building of the Standing Committee of the Peoples Congress of China. Each province, special administrative region, autonomous region of China has its own hall in the Great Hall, such as Beijing Hall, Hong Kong Hall, each hall has the unique characteristics of the province and is furnished according to the local style. The Great Auditorium, with volume of 90,000 cubic metres, government leaders make their speeches, and the representatives do much of their business. It can simultaneously seat 10,000 representatives, the ceiling is decorated with a galaxy of lights, with a large red star is at the centre of the ceiling, and a pattern of a water waves nearby represents the people. Its facilities equipped with audio-visual and other systems adaptable to a variety of meeting types and sizes, a simultaneous interpretation system is also provided with a language booth. The State Banquet Hall with an area of 7,000 square meters can entertain 7,000 guests, the Great Hall of the People is the political hub of Beijing and home of the National Peoples Congress. The Communist Party of China also holds its National Congress every five years in the Great Hall of the People, the Great Hall has been used for meetings with foreign dignitaries on state or working visits, as well as large anniversary celebrations attended by top leaders. The Great Hall has been used for the funerals and memorial services for several top leaders. Former President Liu Shaoqi was purged during the Cultural Revolution and died in the ensuing struggles and he was posthumously rehabilitated after 1978. In 1982 Liu was granted a funeral held at the Great Hall. The Great Hall also held the funerals of General Secretary Hu Yaobang in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square protests, mao Zedongs funeral ceremony was not held at the Great Hall, it was held at Tiananmen Square
5.
Mao Zedong
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His Marxist–Leninist theories, military strategies, and political policies are collectively known as Maoism or Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Mao adopted Marxism–Leninism while working at Peking University and became a member of the Communist Party of China. On October 1,1949, Mao proclaimed the foundation of the Peoples Republic of China, in the following years Mao solidified his control through land reform campaigns against landlords, and perceived enemies of the state he termed as counter-revolutionaries. In 1957, he launched the Great Leap Forward campaign that aimed to rapidly transform Chinas economy from an economy to an industrial one. The campaign contributed to a famine, whose death toll is estimated at between 15 and 45 million. In 1972, Mao welcomed American President Richard Nixon in Beijing, signalling a policy of opening China, Mao suffered a series of heart attacks in 1976, and died in September, aged 82. He was succeeded as Paramount leader by Hua Guofeng, who was sidelined and replaced by Deng. A controversial figure, Mao is regarded as one of the most important individuals in modern world history, Mao Zedong was born on December 26,1893 in Shaoshan village, Hunan Province, China. His father, Mao Yichang, was an impoverished peasant who had become one of the wealthiest farmers in Shaoshan. Growing up in rural Hunan, Mao Zedong described his father as a stern disciplinarian, Maos mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout Buddhist who tried to temper her husbands strict attitude. Zedong too became a Buddhist, but abandoned this faith in his mid-teenage years, at age 8, Mao was sent to Shaoshan Primary School. At age 13, Mao finished primary education, and his father united him in a marriage to the 17-year-old Luo Yigu. Mao refused to recognise her as his wife, becoming a critic of arranged marriage. Luo was locally disgraced and died in 1910, interested in history, Mao was inspired by the military prowess and nationalistic fervour of George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte. The famine spread to Shaoshan, where starving peasants seized his fathers grain and he disapproved of their actions as morally wrong, but claimed sympathy for their situation. At age 16, Mao moved to a primary school in nearby Dongshan. In 1911, Mao began middle school in Changsha, Revolutionary sentiment was strong in the city, where there was widespread animosity towards Emperor Puyis absolute monarchy and many were advocating republicanism. The republicans figurehead was Sun Yat-sen, an American-educated Christian who led the Tongmenghui society, in Changsha, Mao was influenced by Suns newspaper, The Peoples Independence, and called for Sun to become president in a school essay
6.
Ho Chi Minh
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He was a key figure in the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the Peoples Army of Vietnam and the Việt Cộng during the Vietnam War. After the war, Saigon, the capital of the Republic of Vietnam, was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City. Ho Chi Minh was born Nguyễn Sinh Cung, in 1890 in the village of Hoàng Trù, from 1895, he grew up in his father Nguyễn Sinh Sắc s village of Làng Sen, Kim Liên, Nam Đàn, Nghệ An Province. He had three siblings, his sister Bạch Liên, a clerk in the French Army, his brother Nguyễn Sinh Khiêm, a geomancer and traditional herbalist, as a young child, Cung studied with his father before more formal classes with a scholar named Vuong Thuc Do. Cung quickly mastered Chinese writing, a prerequisite for any study of Confucianism. In addition to his studious endeavors, he was fond of adventure, following Confucian tradition, at the age of 10, his father gave him a new name, Nguyễn Tất Thành. Thànhs father was a Confucian scholar and teacher, and later a magistrate in the small remote district of Binh Khe. This exposed Thành to rebellion at an age and seemed to be the norm for the province where Thành came of age. The province was known for its resistance to foreign rule, in deference to his father, Thành received a French education, attended lycée in Huế, the alma mater of his later disciples, Phạm Văn Đồng and Võ Nguyên Giáp and his later enemy, Ngô Đình Diệm. Previously, it was believed that Thành was involved in a demonstration of poor peasants in Huế in May 1908. However, a document from the Centre des archives dOutre-mer in France shows that he was admitted to Collège Quốc học on August 8,1908, which was several months after the anti-corvée demonstration. The exaggeration of revolutionary credentials was common among Vietnamese communist leaders and he chose to leave school in order to find a chance to go abroad. Thành worked as a helper on a French steamer, the Amirale de Latouche-Tréville, while using the alias Văn Ba. The steamer departed on 5 June 1911 and arrived in Marseille, the ship then left for Le Havre and Dunkirk, returning to Marseille in mid-September. There he applied for the French Colonial Administrative School but his application was rejected, instead, he decided to begin traveling the world by working on ships and visited many countries from 1911 to 1917. In 1912, while working as the cooks helper on a ship, from 1912–13, he may have lived in New York City and Boston, where he claimed to have worked as a baker at the Parker House Hotel. Inquiries to the Parker House management revealed no records of his ever having worked there, among a series of menial jobs, he claimed to have worked for a wealthy family in Brooklyn between 1917–18, and for General Motors as a line manager. At various points between 1913 and 1919, Thành claimed to have lived in West Ealing, and later in Crouch End and he reportedly worked as either a chef or dish washer at the Drayton Court Hotel in West Ealing
7.
Kim Il-sung
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Kim Il-sung was the supreme leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as North Korea, for 46 years, from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and he was also the leader of the Workers Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994. Coming to power after the overthrow of Japanese rule in 1945, he authorized the invasion of South Korea in 1950, a cease-fire in the Korean War was signed on 27 July 1953. Under his leadership, North Korea became a workers state with a publicly owned planned economy. It had close political and economic relations with the Soviet Union, by the 1960s and 1970s, North Korea enjoyed a relatively high standard of living, outperforming the South, which was riddled with political instability and economic crises. Despite this, the country still received massive funds, subsidies, during this period, the DPRK also remained critical of capitalism and the United States, seizing the American ship USS Pueblo in 1968. A cult of personality around Kim Il-sung came to domestic politics. His birthday is a holiday in North Korea and is called the Day of the Sun. Controversy surrounds Kims life before the founding of North Korea, with some sources labeling him an impostor, several sources indicate that the name Kim Il-sung had previously been used by a prominent early leader of the Korean resistance, Kim Kyung-cheon. The Soviet officer Grigory Mekler, who worked with Kim during the Soviet occupation, however, historian Andrei Lankov has argued that this is unlikely to be true. Several witnesses knew Kim before and after his time in the Soviet Union, including his superior, Zhou Baozhong, historian Bruce Cumings pointed out that Japanese officers from the Kwantung Army have attested to his fame as a resistance figure. Historians generally accept that, while Kims exploits were exaggerated by the personality cult that was built around him, Kims family is said to have originated from Jeonju, North Jeolla Province. His great-grandfather, Kim Ung-u, settled in Mangyong-dae in 1860, Kim is reported to have been born in the small village of Mangyungbong near Pyongyang on 15 April 1912. Born to Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, who gave him the name Kim Sŏng-ju, according to Kim, his family was not very poor, but was always a step away from poverty. According to the version, Kim’s family participated in anti-Japanese activities. Like most Korean families, they resented the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, another view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria, as many Koreans had at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kims parents, especially Kims mother Kang Ban Suk and their exact involvement — whether their cause was missionary, nationalist, or both — is unclear nevertheless. Still, Japanese repression of opposition was brutal, resulting in the arrest and this repression forced many Korean families to flee Korea and settle in Manchuria
8.
Nikita Khrushchev
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Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, Khrushchevs party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the border between Russia and Ukraine. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar, with the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalins purges, and approved thousands of arrests, in 1938, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalins close advisers, in the power struggle triggered by Stalins death in 1953, Khrushchev, after several years, emerged victorious. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the Secret Speech, denouncing Stalins purges and his domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchevs rule saw the most tense years of the Cold War, flaws in Khrushchevs policies eroded his popularity and emboldened potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed the premier in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the fate of previous losers of Soviet power struggles, and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow. His lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970, Khrushchev died in 1971 of heart disease. Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894, in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russias Kursk Oblast and his parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Ksenia Khrushcheva, were poor peasants of Russian origin, and had a daughter two years Nikitas junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, and laboring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, Kalinovka was a peasant village, Khrushchevs teacher, Lydia Shevchenko, later stated that she had never seen a village as poor as Kalinovka had been. Nikita worked as a herdsboy from an early age and he was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village parochial school and part under Shevchenkos tutelage in Kalinovkas state school. She urged Nikita to seek education, but family finances did not permit this. In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka, fourteen-year-old Nikita followed later that year, while Ksenia Khrushcheva and her daughter came after
9.
Zhou Enlai
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Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the Peoples Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and was instrumental in the Communist Partys rise to power, and later in consolidating its control, forming foreign policy, a skilled and able diplomat, Zhou served as the Chinese foreign minister from 1949 to 1958. He helped devise policies regarding the disputes with the U. S. Taiwan. Zhou survived the purges of other top officials during the Cultural Revolution, while Mao dedicated most of his later years to political struggle and ideological work, Zhou was the main driving force behind the affairs of state during much of the Cultural Revolution. His attempts at mitigating the Red Guards damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him popular in the Cultural Revolutions later stages. As Mao Zedongs health began to decline in 1971 and 1972, Zhous health was also failing, however, and he died eight months before Mao on 8 January 1976. The massive public outpouring of grief in Beijing turned to anger towards the Gang of Four, although succeeded by Hua Guofeng, it was Deng Xiaoping, Zhous ally, who was able to outmaneuver the Gang of Four politically and eventually take Maos place as paramount leader by 1978. Zhou Enlai was born in Huaian, Jiangsu province on 5 March 1898, the Zhou family was originally from Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. During the late Qing dynasty, Shaoxing was famous as the home of such as Zhous. To move up the ladder in civil service, the men in these often had to be transferred. Even after the move, however, the continued to view Shaoxing as its ancestral home. Zhous grandfather, Zhou Panlong, and his granduncle, Zhou Junang, were the first members of the family to move to Huaian, Panlong apparently passed the provincial examinations, and Zhou Enlai later claimed that Panlong served as magistrate governing Huaian county. Zhous father, Zhou Yineng, was the second of Zhou Panlongs four sons, Zhous birth mother, surnamed Wan, was the daughter of a prominent Jiangsu official. Like many others, the fortunes of Zhous large family of scholar-officials were decimated by a great economic recession that China suffered in the late 19th century. Zhou Yineng had a reputation for honesty, gentleness, intelligence and concern for others and he was unsuccessful in his personal life, and drifted across China doing various occupations, working in Beijing, Shandong, Anhui, Shenyang, Inner Mongolia and Sichuan. Zhou Enlai later remembered his father as being away from home. Soon after birth, Zhou Enlai was adopted by his fathers youngest brother, Zhou Yigan, apparently the adoption was arranged because the family feared Yigan would die without an heir. Zhou Yigan died soon after the adoption, and Zhou Enlai was raised by Yigans widow, madame Chen was also from a scholarly family and received a traditional literary education
10.
Andrei Gromyko
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Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet communist politician during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s Western pundits called him Mr. Nyet or Grim Grom, Gromykos political career started in 1939 with his employment at the Peoples Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. In 1943 Gromyko became the Soviet ambassador to the United States, upon his return to the Soviet Union he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952, Gromyko played a direct role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in his role as the Soviet Foreign Minister. Gromyko helped negotiate arms limitations treaties such as the ABM Treaty, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, under Leonid Brezhnevs leadership Gromyko helped build the policy of détente between the US and the USSR. He supported Mikhail Gorbachevs candidacy for General Secretary in 1985, Gromyko lost his office as foreign minister when Gorbachev became General Secretary, and was instead appointed to the largely ceremonial office of head of state. Gromyko retired from life in 1988 and died the following year in Moscow. Gromyko was born to a poor semi-peasant, semi-worker family in the Belarusian village of Staryya Gramyki, Gromykos father, Andrei Matveyevich, worked as a seasonal worker in a local factory. Andrei Matveyevich was not an educated man, having only attended four years of school. He had fought in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Gromykos mother, Olga Yevgenyevna, came from a poor peasant family in the neighbouring city of Zhelezniki. She attended school only for a period of time as. Gromyko grew up near the town of Vetka where most of the inhabitants were devoted Old Believers in the Russian Orthodox Church. Gromykos own village was also religious, but Gromyko started doubting the supernatural at a very early age. His first dialog on the subject was with his grandmother Marfa, then you will understand all this much better. According to Gromyko, Other adults said basically the same thing when talking about religion, Gromykos neighbour at the time, Mikhail Sjeljutov, was a freethinker and introduced Gromyko to new non-religious ideas and told Gromyko that scientists were beginning to doubt the existence of God. From the age of nine, after the Bolshevik revolution, Gromyko started reading atheist propaganda in flyers, at the age of thirteen Gromyko became a member of the Komsomol and held anti-religious speeches in the village with his friends as well as promoting Communist values. The news that Germany had attacked the Russian Empire in August 1914 came without warning to the local population and this was the first time, as Gromyko notes, that he felt love for his country
11.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
12.
Soong Ching-ling
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Soong Ching-ling was the second wife of Sun Yat-sen, one of the leaders of the 1911 revolution that established the Republic of China, and was often referred to as Madame Sun Yat-sen. She was a member of the Soong family and, together with her siblings and she has become known as the mother of modern China. During the Cultural Revolution, however, she was heavily criticized, Soong survived the Cultural Revolution, but appeared less frequently after 1976. As the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress from 1976 to 1978, during her final illness in May 1981, she was given the special title of Honorary President of the Peoples Republic of China. Soong Ching-ling was born to businessman and missionary Charlie Soong in Chuansha, Pudong, Shanghai and she graduated from McTyeire School for Girls in Shanghai, and Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, United States. Like her sisters, she spoke fluent English due to being educated in English for most of her life, Soong married Sun Yat-sen, leader of Chinas 1911 revolution and founder of the Kuomintang, on 25 October 1915, even though her parents greatly opposed the match. After Suns death in 1925, she was elected to the KMT Central Executive Committee, however, she left China for Moscow after the expulsion of the Communists from the KMT in 1927, accusing the KMT of betraying her husbands legacy. Her younger sister, May-ling, married Chiang Kai-shek shortly afterward and she resided afterwards in Shanghai until July 1937, when the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out. Following the outbreak of hostilities, she moved first to Hong Kong, then to Chongqing, in 1939, she founded the China Defense League, which raised funds and sought supplies primarily for the Chinese Communist controlled areas of northern China. In 1946, the League was renamed the China Welfare fund, continuing to seek funds, during the Chinese Civil War, Soong permanently broke with her family and supported the Communists. In 1948, she became chairwoman of the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang. On 1 October, she was a guest at the ceremony in Tiananmen Square marking the birth of the new Peoples Republic of China, the Nationalist government issued an order for her arrest, but this was soon mooted by the swift military victory of the Communists. The KMT fled from mainland China to Taiwan soon after this, Soong was held in great esteem by the victorious Communists, who reckoned her as a link between their movement and Suns earlier movement. In April 1951, it was announced that she had awarded the Stalin Peace Prize for 1950. In 1950, Soong became chairman of the Chinese Peoples Relief Administration and her China Welfare Fund was reorganized as the China Welfare Institute and began publishing the magazine China Reconstructs, now published as China Today. In 1953, a collection of her writings, Struggle for New China, was published, in 1953 Soong served on the committees preparing for elections to the new National Peoples Congress and the drafting of the 1954 constitution. Soong was elected a Shanghai deputy to the first NPC, which adopted the constitution at its first meeting in September 1954 and she was elected one of 14 vice-chairmen of the NPCs standing committee, chaired by Liu Shaoqi. In December of the year, she was elected a vice-chairman of the CPPCC, which became a consultative body
Albania (Mehmet Shehu)
Bulgaria (Dimitar Ganev)
Czechoslovakia (Antonín Novotný)
East Germany (Hermann Matern)
Hungary (István Dobi)
North Korea (Kim Il-sung)
Mongolia (Yumjaagiin Tsedenbal)
Poland (Aleksander Zawadzki)
Romania (Emil Bodnăraș)
Soviet Union (Nikita Khrushchev)
North Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh)
