Prut
The Prut is a 953 km long river in Eastern Europe. In part of its course it forms Romania's border with Ukraine; the Pruth was known in Scythian Porata, Hierasus or Gerasius. It originates in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine; the Prut flows southeast joining the Danube river near Giurgiulești, east of Galați. Between 1918 and 1939, the river was in Poland and in Greater Romania. Prior to World War I, it served as a border between the Russian Empire. After World War II, the river once again demarcated a border, this time between Romania and the Soviet Union. Nowadays, for a length of 695 km, it forms the border between Moldova, it has a hydrographic basin of 27,500 km2, of which 10,990 km2 are in Romania and 7,790 km2 in Moldova. The largest city along its banks is Ukraine; the Stânca-Costești Dam, operated jointly by Moldova and Romania, is built on the Pruth. There is a Hydro-Electric Station in Snyatyn. Ships travel from the river's mouth to the port city of Leova. Herodotus lists the Pruth, under the name of Porata or Pyretus, as being among the five rivers flowing through the Scythian country which swell the Danube.
Takes a start from a spring on the slopes of Hoverla, flows into the Danube near the village of Giurgiulesti. Prigirlovaya part of the basin is marshy; the length of 967 km, the area of the basin - 27,5 thousand km². Average water consumption at the city of Leova is 69.2 m³ / s. The slope of the river varies from 100 m / km to 0.05 m / km. In the upper reaches it has a mountainous character, with a steep right bank, sometimes the cross-sectional profile of the channel has the form of a ridge. Near the city of Yaremche is the waterfall of Probiy. Spring floods, summer rain floods, high winter runoff. Sliced from January to February until the beginning of March. In the second volume of the Ottoman-Bulgarian chronicles of Iman "Jagfar Tarihi" the Prut River is referred to as Burat, and in the Byzantine treatise of Constantine Porphyrogennetos "On the management of the empire" it is mentioned as the Brut river or as Burat. The Prut river basin on the hydrograph map of Ukraine The upper current in Ukraine is lower - on the border of Moldova with Romania.
The origins are located on the Carpathian massif near Mount Hoverli. The river flows to the north, after it returns to the northeast, closer to Kolomyia, to the south-east. Having reached the border between Moldova and Romania, it returns more to the south-east, to the south. Falls into the Danube 3 km west of the city of Reni; the rod is navigable from the city of Leovo. On the Prut is a reservoir of Kostešti-Stikka and HPP. Sniatyn HPP is the only hydroelectric power plant on the Prut within Ukraine. Cities: Yaremche, Snyatin, Novoselytsia, Ungheni; the following towns are situated along the river Prut, from source to mouth: Deliatyn, Kolomyia, Chernivtsi, Darabani, Ungheni, Leova and Cahul The following rivers are tributaries to the river Prut: Left: Turka, Sovytsia, Rynhach, Larga, Lopatnic, Racovăț, Camenca, Delia, Nârnova, Lăpușna, Sărata, Larga Right: Pistynka, Cheremosh, Herța, Cornești, Isnovăț, Rădăuți, Volovăț, Badu, Bașeu, Berza Veche, Râioasa, Soloneț, Jijia, Cozmești, Bohotin, Moșna, Pruteț, Horincea, Stoeneasa, Chineja During the Russo-Turkish War of 1710–1711, on 19 July 1711 Russian forces divided among Peter the Great's army on the west bank and Boris Sheremetev's army on the east bank of the Pruth and allied with Dimitrie Cantemir, the ruler of Moldova, met with the Ottoman army led by Grand Vizier Baltaci Mehmed Pasha.
The Turks and Crimean Tatars attacked first against Sheremetev, who retreated to the other side to join Peter the Great. Afterwards the Russian army set up a defensive camp between Stănilești and the river, completely surrounded by the Ottoman army. Negotiations started on 21 July 1711 and the Treaty of the Prut was signed on 23 July 1711. After this treaty, Dimitrie Cantemir had to go in exile at Moscow; this treaty means the end of local dynasties of kings and inauguration of Greek rulers from the Fanar Qunarter of Istanbul (Phanariotes. A bit more than a century in 1821, the Greek Nationalist leader Alexander Ypsilantis crossed the Prut river at Sculeni, with the intention of touching off a rebellion in the Danubian Principalities. Though the Wallachian uprising failed - due to irreconcilable differences between Ypsilantis and his Wallachian ally Tudor Vladimirescu - it did touch off the Greek War of Independence, leading to the Kingdom of Greece gaining independence ten years later. In the Principalities it led to the end of the aforementioned Greek Phanariote rule, indirectly to increasing self-government and to the independence of Romania several decades later.
In Greek history, Ypsilantis' crossing of the Prut is an important historical event, commemorated in a famous painting displayed at Athens. Sydir Vorobkevych: Within that Prut Valley. Within that Prut Valley a c
Rostov Oblast
Rostov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia, located in the Southern Federal District. The oblast has an area of 100,800 square kilometers and a population of 4,277,976, making it the sixth most populous federal subject in Russia, its administrative center is the city of Rostov-on-Don, which became the administrative center of the Southern Federal District in 2002. Rostov Oblast borders Ukraine and Volgograd and Voronezh Oblasts in the north and Stavropol Krais in the south, the Republic of Kalmykia in the east, it is within the Russian Southern Federal District. The Don River, one of Europe's largest rivers, flows through the oblast for part of its course. Lakes cover only 0.4% of the oblast's area. It was formed in 1937 out of the Azov-Black Sea Krai. Population: 4,277,976 . Vital statistics for 2012Births: 49 715 Deaths: 59 376 Total fertility rate:2009 - 1.38 | 2010 - 1.38 | 2011 - 1.39 | 2012 - 1.51 | 2013 - 1.52 | 2014 - 1.61 | 2015 - 1.63 | 2016 - 1.60 Ethnic groups: Residents identified themselves as belonging to 157 different ethnic groups, including twenty-seven of more than two thousand persons each.
The most important ethnicities are the 3,795,607 ethnic Russians. Other important groups are the 35,902 Turks. There were 76,498 people belonging to other ethno-cultural groupings. 76,735 people were registered from administrative databases, could not declare an ethnicity. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group. According to a 2012 survey 49.5% of the population of Rostov Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church, 6% are unaffiliated generic Christians, 1% are either Orthodox Christian believers who don't belong to church or are members of other Orthodox bodies, 1% are Muslims, 1% are adherents of the Slavic native faith movement. In addition, 26% of the population declares to be "spiritual but not religious", 12% is atheist, 3.5% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question. The Ascension Cathedral is the largest Russian Orthodox church in Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, Russia, it used to be one of the largest churches of the Russian Empire and the main church of the Don Host Province.
The five-domed building, which stands 75 meters tall, is a notable example of the Russian Neo-Byzantine architecture. It was erected between 1904 on the site of an earlier church; the first church on the site was built to Luigi Rusca's designs. It collapsed in 1846. A replacement church collapsed 17 years later. Church of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin ― one of the oldest churches in Rostov-on-Don. For a considerable period of time Intercession Church served as the principal church not only for the fortress of St. Dimitry of Rostov, but for people of local settlements. Since the end of the 18th century Church of Intercession had been considered to be a cathedral; the status changed in 1822, when Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the decree of the Holy Synod was declared cathedral. The region is 8057 of objects of archaeological heritage of Federal importance; these include lower-Gnilovskaya a settlement and a necropolis, fragments of the walls of the Genoese fortress of the 14th century, the archaeological Museum-reserve "Tanais", many burial Mounds and necropolises.
Since 2002, in the Rostov region are the country's only racing on tractors "bison-Track-Show". In a unique competition brings together machine operators of agricultural enterprises of Russia and abroad. In the past the race on tractors have become a real sports holiday of workers of agriculture. Rostov academic drama theatre named after Maxim Gorky. Rostov State Musical Theater; the theater opened in September 1999, is the successor to the 1919 Rostov Musical Comedy Theater, one of the best operetta theaters in the Soviet Union. The theater has two stages as well as a music and entertainment center, hosts about 300 performances and concerts annually, as well as various forums and festivals, its repertoire encompasses both musical traditions, as well as experiments in the field of contemporary art. Rostov state puppet theatre. Rostov regional academic youth theatre. Taganrog Theatre; the Taganrog Theater was established in 1827 by governor Alexander Dunaev. The theater was subsidized by the Taganrog's City Council since 1828, its first director was Alexander Gor.
The first group of Russian drama artists was directed by Perovsky and toured around the region, giving performances in Rostov on Don, Bahmut. The repertoire consisted of dramas and vaudevilles. In 1874, the Taganrog Municipality acquired the theater building by the purchase of its stocks. Don theatre of drama and Comedy V. F. Komissarzhevskaya Novocherkassk. Shakhty drama theatre, Shakhty. Novoshakhtinskiy drama theatre, Novoshakhtinsk. Rostov Regional Museum of Local History. Rostov Regional Museum of Fine Arts. Museum of Contemporary Art at Dmitrovskaya. Museum of Russian-Armenian Friendship. Museum of North Caucasus Railway; the first museum of history of North Caucasus Railway opened on 4 November 1960 in a Community Center of railwaymen at Rostov-Glavny station. Permanent exposition includes: information boards about famous North Caucasus railwaymen, model
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II. Following the Vistula–Oder Offensive of January–February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km east of Berlin. On 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz; the first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici. When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights and Halbe. On 20 April 1945, Hitler's birthday, the 1st Belorussian Front led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, advancing from the east and north, started shelling Berlin's city centre, while Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front broke through Army Group Centre and advanced towards the southern suburbs of Berlin.
On 23 April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganised Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained Volkssturm and Hitler Youth members. Over the course of the next week, the Red Army took the entire city. Before the battle was over and several of his followers killed themselves; the city's garrison surrendered on 2 May but fighting continued to the north-west and south-west of the city until the end of the war in Europe on 8 May as some German units fought westward so that they could surrender to the Western Allies rather than to the Soviets. Starting on 12 January 1945, the Red Army began the Vistula–Oder Offensive across the Narew River. On the fourth day, the Red Army broke out and started moving west, up to 30 to 40 km per day, taking East Prussia and Poznań, drawing up on a line 60 km east of Berlin along the Oder River; the newly created Army Group Vistula, under the command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, attempted a counter-attack, but this had failed by 24 February.
The Red Army drove on to Pomerania, clearing the right bank of the Oder River, thereby reaching into Silesia. In the south the Siege of Budapest raged. Three German divisions' attempts to relieve the encircled Hungarian capital city failed, Budapest fell to the Soviets on 13 February. Adolf Hitler insisted on a counter-attack to recapture the Drau-Danube triangle; the goal was to secure the oil region of Nagykanizsa and regain the Danube River for future operations, but the depleted German forces had been given an impossible task. By 16 March, the German Lake Balaton Offensive had failed, a counter-attack by the Red Army took back in 24 hours everything the Germans had taken ten days to gain. On 30 March, the Soviets entered Austria. Between June and September 1944, the Wehrmacht had lost more than a million men, it lacked the fuel and armaments needed to operate effectively. On 12 April 1945, who had earlier decided to remain in the city against the wishes of his advisers, heard the news that the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.
This raised false hopes in the Führerbunker that there might yet be a falling out among the Allies and that Berlin would be saved at the last moment, as had happened once before when Berlin was threatened. No plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation; the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Berlin and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the Soviet sphere of influence after the war, envisioning excessive friendly fire if both armies attempted to occupy the city at once. The major Western Allied contribution to the battle was the bombing of Berlin during 1945. During 1945 the United States Army Air Forces launched large daytime raids on Berlin and for 36 nights in succession, scores of RAF Mosquitos bombed the German capital, ending on the night of 20/21 April 1945 just before the Soviets entered the city; the Soviet offensive into central Germany, what became East Germany, had two objectives.
Stalin did not believe the Western Allies would hand over territory occupied by them in the post-war Soviet zone, so he began the offensive on a broad front and moved to meet the Western Allies as far west as possible. But the overriding objective was to capture Berlin; the two goals were complementary because possession of the zone could not be won unless Berlin were taken. Another consideration was that Berlin itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and the German atomic bomb programme. On 6 March, Hitler appointed Lieutenant General Helmuth Reymann commander of the Berlin Defence Area, replacing Lieutenant General Bruno Ritter von Hauenschild. On 20 March, General Gotthard Heinrici was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula replacing Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Heinrici was one of the best defensive tacticians in the German army, he started to lay defensive plans. Heinrici assessed that the main Soviet thrust would be made over the Oder River and along the main east-west Autobahn.
He decided not to try to defend the banks of the Oder with anything more than a light skirmishing screen. Instead, Heinrici arranged for engineers
Volgograd
Volgograd Tsaritsyn, 1589–1925, Stalingrad, 1925–1961, is an industrial city and the administrative centre of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. The city lies on the western bank of the Volga River; the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II was one of the largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. Known locally as the "Hero City", it is home to The Motherland Calls, an 85 meter statue dedicated to the heroes of the battle; the city has many tourist attractions, such as museums, sandy beaches, a self-propelled floating church. Its population was 1,021,215 at the 2010 Census, growing from 1,011,417 in the 2002 Census. Although the city may have originated in 1555, documented evidence of Tsaritsyn at the confluence of the Tsaritsa and Volga rivers dates only from 1589. Grigori Zasekin established the fortress Sary Su as part of the defences of the unstable southern border of the Tsardom of Russia; the structure stood above the mouth of the Tsaritsa River on the right bank. It soon became the nucleus of a trading settlement.
In 1607 the fortress garrison rebelled against the troops of Tsar Vasili Shuisky for six months. In 1608 the city acquired St. John the Baptist. At the beginning of the 17th century, the garrison consisted of 350 to 400 people. In 1670 troops of Stepan Razin captured the fortress. In 1708 the insurgent Cossack Kondraty Bulavin held the fortress. In 1717 in the Kuban pogrom, raiders from the Kuban under the command of the Crimean Tatar Bakhti Gerai blockaded the town and enslaved thousands in the area. In August 1774 Yemelyan Pugachev unsuccessfully attempted to storm the city. In 1691 Moscow established a customs-post at Tsaritsyn. In 1708 Tsaritsyn was assigned to the Kazan Governorate. According to the census in 1720, the city had a population of 408 people. In 1773 the city became a district town. From 1779 it belonged to the Saratov Viceroyalty. In 1780 the city came under the newly-established Saratov Governorate. In the 19th century Tsaritsyn became commercial center; the population expanded increasing from fewer than 3,000 people in 1807 to about 84,000 in 1900.
The first railway reached the town in 1862. The first theatre opened in 1872, the first cinema in 1907. In 1913 Tsaritsyn got its first tram-line, the city's first electric lights were installed in the city center. During the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923, Tsaritsyn came under Soviet control from November 1917. In 1918 White troops under the Ataman of the Don Cossack Host, Pyotr Krasnov, besieged Tsaritsyn; the Reds repulsed three assaults by the Whites. However, in June 1919 the White Armed Forces of South Russia under the command of General Denikin captured Tsaritsyn, which they held until January 1920; the fighting from July 1918 to January 1920 became known as the Battle for Tsaritsyn. The city was renamed Stalingrad after Joseph Stalin on April 10, 1925; this was to recognize the city and Stalin's role in its defense against the Whites between 1918 and 1920. In 1931, the German settlement-colony Old Sarepta became a district of Stalingrad. Renamed Krasnoarmeysky Rayon, it became the largest area of the city.
The first institute was opened in 1930. A year the Stalingrad Industrial Pedagogical Institute, now Volgograd State Pedagogical University, was opened. Under Stalin, the city became a center of heavy industry and transshipment by river. During World War II, German and Axis forces attacked the city, in 1942 it became the site of one of the pivotal battles of the war; the Battle of Stalingrad had the greatest casualty figures of any single battle in the history of warfare. The battle became a titanic struggle between Hitler and Stalin as both saw it of great propaganda value, each keenly aware of the namesake of the city, each poured hundreds of thousands of men into the battle; the battle began on August 23, 1942, on the same day, the city suffered heavy aerial bombardment that reduced most of it to rubble. By September, the fighting reached the city center; the fighting was of unprecedented intensity. By early November, the German forces controlled 90 percent of the city and had cornered the Soviets in two narrow pockets, but they were unable to eliminate the last pockets of Soviet resistance before Soviet forces launched a huge counterattack on November 19.
This led to the encirclement of the German Sixth Army and other Axis units. On January 31, 1943 the Sixth Army's commander, Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, by February 2, with the elimination of straggling German troops, the Battle of Stalingrad was over. In 1945 the Soviet Union awarded Stalingrad the title Hero City for its resistance. Great Britain's King George VI awarded the citizens of Stalingrad the jeweled "Sword of Stalingrad" in recognition of their bravery. A number of cities around the world established sister and twinning links in the spirit of solidarity or reconciliation. One of the first "sister city" projects was that established during World War II between Stalingrad and Coventry in the United Kingdom – both suffered extensive devastation from aerial bombardment. On 10 November 1961, Nikita Khrushchev's administration changed the name of the city to Volg
Łódź
Łódź is the third-largest city in Poland and a former industrial hub. Located in the central part of the country, it has a population of 687,702, it is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, is 120 kilometres south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of canting, as it depicts a boat, which alludes to the city's name. Łódź was once a small settlement that first appeared in written records in around 1332. In the early 15th century it was granted city rights, but remained a rather small and insubstantial town, it was the property of Kuyavian bishops and clergy until the end of the 18th century, when Łódź was annexed by Prussia as a result of the second partition of Poland. Following the collapse of the independent Duchy of Warsaw, the city became part of Congress Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire, it was that Łódź experienced rapid growth in the cloth industry and in population due to the inflow of migrants, most notably Germans and Jews. Since the industrialization of the area, the city has struggled with many difficulties such as multinationalism and social inequality, which were vividly documented in the novel The Promised Land written by Polish Nobel Prize-winning author Władysław Reymont.
The contrasts reflected on the architecture of the city, where luxurious mansions coexisted with redbrick factories and old tenement houses. After Poland regained its independence in 1918, Łódź grew to be one of the largest Polish cities and one of the most multicultural and industrial centers in Europe; the interbellum period saw rapid development in healthcare. After the invasion of Poland in 1939, the German Army captured the city and renamed it Litzmannstadt in honour of the German general Karl Litzmann, victorious near the area during World War I; the city's large Jewish population was forced into a walled zone known as the Łódź Ghetto, from which they were sent to German concentration and extermination camps. Following the occupation of the city by the Soviet Army, Łódź, which sustained insignificant damage during the war, became part of the newly established Polish People's Republic. After years of prosperity during the socialist era, Łódź experienced decline after the fall of communism throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
The city is internationally known for its National Film School, a cradle for the most renowned Polish actors and directors, including Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski, in 2017 was inducted into the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and named UNESCO City of Film. Łódź first appears in the written record in a 1332 document giving the village of Łodzia to the bishops of Włocławek. In 1423 King Władysław II Jagiełło granted city rights to the village of Łódź. From until the 18th century the town remained a small settlement on a trade route between the provinces of Masovia and Silesia. In the 16th century the town had fewer than 800 inhabitants working on the surrounding grain farms. With the second partition of Poland in 1793, Łódź became part of the Kingdom of Prussia's province of South Prussia, was known in German as Lodsch. In 1798 the Prussians nationalised the town, it lost its status as a town of the bishops of Kuyavia. In 1806 Łódź joined the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw and in 1810 it had 190 inhabitants.
After the 1815 Congress of Vienna treaty it became part of the Congress Kingdom of Poland, a client state of the Russian Empire. In the 1815 treaty, it was planned to renew the dilapidated town and with the 1816 decree by the Czar a number of German immigrants received territory deeds for them to clear the land and to build factories and housing. In 1820 Stanisław Staszic aided in changing the small town into a modern industrial centre; the immigrants came to the Promised Land from all over Europe. They arrived from Saxony and Bohemia, but from countries as far away as Portugal, England and Ireland; the first cotton mill opened in 1825, 14 years the first steam-powered factory in both Poland and the Russian Empire commenced operations. In 1839, over 78% of the population was German, German schools and churches were established. A constant influx of workers and craftsmen from all over Europe transformed Łódź into the main textile production centre of the mighty Russian Empire spanning from East-Central Europe all the way to Alaska.
Three groups dominated the city's population and contributed the most to the city's development: Poles and Jews, who started to arrive from 1848. Many of the Łódź craftspeople were weavers from Lower Silesia. In 1850, Russia abolished the customs barrier between Congress Poland and Russia proper and therefore industry in Łódź could now develop with a huge Russian market not far away; the city became the second-largest city of Congress Poland. In 1865 the first railroad line opened, soon the city had rail links with Warsaw and Białystok. One of the most important industrialists of Łódź was Karl Wilhelm Scheibler. In 1852 he came to Łódź and with Julius Schwarz together started buying property and building several factories. Scheibler bought out Schwarz's share and thus became sole owner of a large business. After he died in 1881 his widow and other members of the family decided to pay homage to his memory by erecting a chapel, intended as a mausoleum with family crypt, in the Lutheran part of the Łódź cemetery on ulica Ogrodowa.
Between 1823 and 1873, the city's population doubled every ten years. The years 1870–1890 marked the pe
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U. S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U. S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, the Truman Doctrine of 1947, ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars; the conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The capitalist West was led by the United States, a federal republic with a two-party presidential system, as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were liberal democratic with a free press and independent organizations, but were economically and politically entwined with a network of banana republics and other authoritarian regimes, most of which were the Western Bloc's former colonies.
Some major Cold War frontlines such as Indochina and the Congo were still Western colonies in 1947. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a totalitarian leader with different titles over time, a small committee called the Politburo; the Party controlled the state, the press, the military, the economy, many organizations throughout the Second World, including the Warsaw Pact and other satellites, funded communist parties around the world, sometimes in competition with communist China following the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. The two worlds were fighting for dominance in low-developed regions known as the Third World. In time, a neutral bloc arose in these regions with the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought good relations with both sides. Notwithstanding isolated incidents of air-to-air dogfights and shoot-downs, the two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat. However, both were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war.
Each side had a nuclear strategy that discouraged an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker—the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, their deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, technological competitions such as the Space Race; the first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The USSR consolidated its control over the states of the Eastern Bloc, while the United States began a strategy of global containment to challenge Soviet power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Western Europe and creating the NATO alliance; the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the conflict expanded.
The USSR and the US competed for influence in Latin America and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. The Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the two sides came to nuclear war. Meanwhile, an international peace movement took root and grew among citizens around the world, first in Japan from 1954, when people became concerned about nuclear weapons testing, but soon in Europe and the US; the peace movement, in particular the anti-nuclear movement, gained pace and popularity from the late 1950s and early 1960s, continued to grow through the'70s and'80s with large protest marches and various non-parliamentary activism opposing war and calling for global nuclear disarmament. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while US allies France, demonstrated greater independence of action.
The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, which ended with the defeat of the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, prompting further adjustments. By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, ushering in a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979; the early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises, both in 1983. The United States increased diplomatic and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was suffering from economic stag
Vistula
The Vistula is the longest and largest river in Poland and the 9th longest river in Europe, at 1,047 kilometres in length. The drainage basin area of the Vistula is 193,960 km2; the remainder is in Belarus and Slovakia. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in the south of Poland, 1,220 meters above sea level in the Silesian Beskids, where it begins with the White Little Vistula and the Black Little Vistula, it flows over the biggest cities including Kraków, Warsaw, Płock, Włocławek, Toruń, Bydgoszcz, Świecie, Grudziądz, Tczew and Gdańsk. It empties into the Vistula Lagoon or directly into the Gdańsk Bay of the Baltic Sea with a delta and several branches; the name was first recorded by Pliny in AD 77 in his Natural History. Mela names the river Vistula, Pliny uses Vistla; the root of the name Vistula is Indo-European *u̯eis-'to ooze, flow slowly' and is found in many European rivernames. The diminutive endings -ila, -ula, were used in many Indo-European languages, including Latin. In writing about the Vistula River and its peoples, Ptolemy uses the Greek spelling Ouistoula.
Other ancient sources spell it Istula. Ammianus Marcellinus refers to the Bisula. Jordanes uses Viscla. 12th-century Polish chronicler Wincenty Kadłubek Latinised the rivername as Vandalus, a form influenced by Lithuanian vanduõ'water', while Jan Długosz in his Annales seu cronicae incliti regni Poloniae called the Vistula'white waters' referring to the White Little Vistula: "a nationibus orientalibus Polonis vicinis, ob aquae candorem Alba aqua... nominatur." Over the course of history the river possessed several names in different languages such as Low German: Wießel, Dutch: Wijsel, Yiddish: ווייסל Yiddish pronunciation: and Russian: Висла. The Vistula river is formed in the southern Silesian Voivodeship of Poland from two sources, the Czarna Wisełka at an altitude of 1,107 m and the Biała Wisełka at an altitude of 1,080 m on the western slope of Barania Góra in the Silesian Beskids; the Vistula can be divided into three parts: upper, from its sources to Sandomierz. The Vistula river basin covers 194,424 square kilometres.
In addition, the majority of its river basin is 100 to 200 m above sea level. The highest point of the river basin is at 2,655 metres. One of the features of the river basin of the Vistula is its asymmetry—in great measure resulting from the tilting direction of the Central European Lowland toward the northwest, the direction of the flow of glacial waters, considerable predisposition of its older base; the asymmetry of the river basin is 73–27%. The most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch, which ended around 10,000 BC, is called the Vistulian glaciation or Weichselian glaciation in regard to north-central Europe; the river forms. The delta starts around Biała Góra near Sztum, about 50 km from the mouth, where the river Nogat splits off; the Nogat starts separately as a river named Alte Nogat south of Marienwerder, but further north it picks up water from a crosslink with the Vistula, becomes a distributary of the Vistula, flowing away northeast into the Vistula Lagoon with a small delta.
The Nogat formed part of the border between interwar Poland. The other channel of the Vistula below this point is sometimes called the Leniwka. Various causes have caused many severe floods of the Vistula down the centuries. Land in the area was sometimes depopulated by severe flooding, had to be resettled. See for a reconstruction map of the delta area as it was around year 1300: note much more water in the area, the west end of the Vistula Lagoon was bigger, nearly continuous with the Drausen See; as with some aggrading rivers, the lower Vistula has been subject to channel changing. Near the sea, the Vistula was diverted sideways by coastal sand as a result of longshore drift and split into an east-flowing branch and a west-flowing branch; until the 14th century, the Elbing Vistula was the bigger. 1242: The Stara Wisła cut an outlet to the sea through the barrier near Mikoszewo where the Vistula Cut is now. 1371: The Danzig Vistula became bigger than the Elbing Vistula. 1540 and 1543: Huge floods depopulated the delta area, afterwards the land was resettled by Mennonite Germans, economic development followed.
1553: By a plan made by Da
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