1.
Agriculture in the Soviet Union
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Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union, a number of food taxes were introduced in the early Soviet period despite the Decree on Land that immediately followed the October Revolution. The forced collectivization and class war against kulaks under Stalinism greatly disrupted farm output in the 1920s and 1930s, despite immense land resources, extensive farm machinery and agrochemical industries, and a large rural workforce, Soviet agriculture was relatively unproductive. Output was hampered in many areas by the climate and poor worker productivity, however, Soviet farm performance was not uniformly bad. The 1976–1980 five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and 1978 saw a record harvest, conditions were best in the temperate chernozem belt stretching from Ukraine through southern Russia into the east, spanning the extreme southern portions of Siberia. In addition to cereals, cotton, sugar beets, potatoes, grains were mostly produced by the sovkhozes and kolkhozes, but vegetables and herbs often came from private plots. Thus Soviet agriculture was off to a stressful internecine start even after war was pushed to a bloody conclusion. Both grain production, and the number of farm animals rose above pre-civil war levels by early 1931, at the same time, individual farming and khutirs were liquidated through class discrimination identifying such elements as kulaks. In the Soviet propaganda kulaks were portrayed as counterrevolutionaries and organizers of anti-Soviet protests, in Ukraine the Turkic name korkulu was adopted, which meant dangerous. The word itself is foreign to Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia, struggle with kulaks in Ukraine was taking place more intensely than anywhere else in the Soviet Union. Coincidentally with the start of First pyatiletka, a new commissariat of the Soviet Union was created, Stalins revolution is often regarded as one of the factors which led to the severe Soviet famine of 1932–33, better known in Ukraine as the Holodomor. Official Soviet sources blamed the famine on counterrevolutionary efforts by the Kulaks, a plausible alternative explanation, supported by some historians, is that the famine occurred at least in part due to poor weather conditions and low harvests. The famine started in Ukraine in the winter of 1931 and despite the lack of any official reports the spread by word of mouth rapidly. During that time restrictions on travel were set by authorities. Only next year in 1932-33 the famine spread outside of Ukraine to agricultural regions of Russia and Kazakhstan, the famine led to the introduction of the internal passport system, due to the unmanageable flow of migrants to the cities. The famine finally ended in 1933, after a successful harvest, during the Second Five-Year plan Stalin came up with another famous slogan in 1935, Life has become better, life has become more cheerful. In 1936, due to a poor harvest, fears of another famine led to famously long breadlines, however, no such famine occurred, and these fears proved largely unfounded. During the Second Five-Year Plan, under the policy of cultural revolution, citing Siegelbaums Stakhanovism in her book Everyday Stalinism, Fitzpatrick wrote
2.
Agriculture in the Russian Empire
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Agriculture in the Russian Empire throughout the 19th-20th centuries represented a major world force yet it lagged behind other developed countries. Russia was amongst the largest exporters of agricultural produce, especially wheat, the Russian peasant was colloquially called krestyanin, female form of this word is krestyanka, plural - krestyane. Muzhik is plain traditional word that means just man, and in more civil language it can mean plain man, the black-earth belt stretched in a broad band north-east from the Romanian border to include the Ukraine, Central Agricultural Region, Middle Volga, south-west Urals and south-western Siberia. This expanse, together with the zone of the Kuban in the North Caucasus. They relied on imports from the regions to make up the deficiency of cereals. Rye and oats were the traditional grains, before the Emancipation of the serfs in 1861 wheat was mainly grown on the demesnes of the landlords of the grain-surplus areas, and mainly for export abroad. But during the 20th century wheat progressively replaced rye as the grain crop. Row and industrial crops were more remunerative than grain, or at worst provided their cultivators with extra income or consumables and their cultivation spread steadily during the late 19th and earlier 20th centuries, and they were increasingly grown as part of improved crop-rotations. By 1917 most vegetables and industrial crops were grown by the peasants, by this time sugar-beet was the only culture to be grown mainly on large estates. These cultures require much more work than grain, before the mechanization of agriculture potatoes needed 64 man-days of labour a year per desyatin, flax or cotton up to 110 man-days, sugar-beet as much as 180. This compared with only 30 and 23 man-days a year for winter, by 1910, Russian wheat constituted 36. 4% of the total world export of wheat. At the same time, agricultural efficiency was lower in comparison with developed countries. Further development was arrested by the historical events of the period, revolts, World War I. In most of Slavonic Russia the peasants practised the open field system, the fields lay beyond the villages houses and gardens. Here the peasants grew the extensive cereal cultures and, to a limited but increasing extent, row, the crops were protected from livestock by temporary fencing. After the harvest the peasants opened the land to let their animals graze on the stubble, each household held its arable land as a number of strips scattered throughout the fields. The strips were periodically redistributed by the mir so as to maintain equality among the households, the strips were supposed to be the length a horse-and-plough team could travel without pausing for breath. In the Central Agricultural Region they were normally 80 sazhen long and 3-4 sazhen wide, in the Central Industrial Region strips 70–100 feet long, the number of strips for each household varied from region to region
3.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
4.
Livestock
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Livestock are domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber, and labor. The term is used to refer solely to those raised for food. In recent years, some organizations have also raised livestock to promote the survival of rare breeds, animal husbandry practices have varied widely across cultures and time periods. Originally, livestock were not confined by fences or enclosures, but these practices have largely shifted to intensive animal farming and these practices increase yield of the various commercial outputs, but have led to increased concerns about animal welfare and environmental impact. Livestock production continues to play an economic and cultural role in numerous rural communities. Livestock as a word was first used between 1650 and 1660, as a merger between the live and stock. Older English sources, such as the King James Version of the Bible, the word cattle is derived from Old North French catel, which meant all kinds of movable personal property, including livestock, which was differentiated from immovable real estate. In later English, sometimes smaller livestock such as chickens and pigs were referred to as small cattle, today, the modern meaning of cattle, without a modifier, usually refers to domesticated bovines, but sometimes livestock refers only to this subgroup. Legal definition United States federal legislation sometimes more narrowly defines the term to make specified agricultural commodities either eligible or ineligible for a program or activity, for example, the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999 defines livestock only as cattle, swine, and sheep. Animal-rearing originated during the transition to settled farming communities from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Animals are domesticated when their breeding and living conditions are controlled by humans, over time, the collective behaviour, lifecycle and physiology of livestock have changed radically. Many modern farm animals are unsuited to life in the wild, dogs were domesticated in East Asia about 15,000 years ago. Goats and sheep were domesticated around 8000 BC in Asia, swine or pigs were domesticated by 7000 BC in the Middle East and China. The earliest evidence of horse domestication dates to around 4000 BC, the term livestock is nebulous and may be defined narrowly or broadly. Broadly, livestock refers to any breed or population of animal kept by humans for a useful and this can mean domestic animals, semidomestic animals, or captive wild animals. Semidomesticated refers to animals which are only lightly domesticated or of disputed status and these populations may also be in the process of domestication. Some people may use the term livestock to refer to only used for red meat. Livestock are used by humans for a variety of purposes, many of which have an economic value, Livestock products include, Meat A useful form of dietary protein and energy, meat is the edible tissue of the animal carcass
5.
Fertilizer
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A fertilizer or fertiliser is any material of natural or synthetic origin that is applied to soils or to plant tissues to supply one or more plant nutrients essential to the growth of plants. Fertilizers enhance the growth of plants and this goal is met in two ways, the traditional one being additives that provide nutrients. The second mode by which some fertilizers act is to enhance the effectiveness of the soil by modifying its water retention and aeration and this article, like many on fertilizers, emphasises the nutritional aspect. The nutrients required for plant life are classified according to the elements. Instead compounds containing these elements are the basis of fertilizers, the macronutrients are consumed in larger quantities and are present in plant tissue in quantities from 0. 15% to 6. 0% on a dry matter basis. Plants are made up of four elements, hydrogen, oxygen, carbon. Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are widely available as water and carbon dioxide, although nitrogen makes up most of the atmosphere, it is in a form that is unavailable to plants. Nitrogen is the most important fertilizer since nitrogen is present in proteins, DNA, to be nutritious to plants, nitrogen must be made available in a fixed form. Only some bacteria and their host plants can fix atmospheric nitrogen by converting it to ammonia, phosphate is required for the production of DNA and ATP, the main energy carrier in cells, as well as certain lipids. Micronutrients are consumed in quantities and are present in plant tissue on the order of parts-per-million, ranging from 0.15 to 400 ppm DM. These elements are present at the active sites of enzymes that carry out the plants metabolism. Because these elements enable catalysts their impact far exceeds their weight percentage, Fertilizers are classified in several ways. They are classified according to whether they provide a single nutrient, multinutrient fertilizers provide two or more nutrients, for example N and P. Fertilizers are also sometimes classified as inorganic versus organic. Inorganic fertilizers exclude carbon-containing materials except ureas, organic fertilizers are usually plant- or animal-derived matter. Inorganic are sometimes called synthetic fertilizers since various chemical treatments are required for their manufacture, the main nitrogen-based straight fertilizer is ammonia or its solutions. Ammonium nitrate is widely used. Urea is another source of nitrogen, having the advantage that it is solid and non-explosive, unlike ammonia and ammonium nitrate. A few percent of the fertilizer market has been met by calcium ammonium nitrate
6.
Corporate farming
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CropLife International is an international trade association of agrobusiness companies founded in 2001. It was previously known as Global Crop Protection Federation and started out as International Group of National Associations of Manufacturers of Agrochemical Products in 1967 and its members include the worlds largest agricultural biotechnology and agricultural pesticide businesses namely BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp. In 1967, the International Group of National Associations of Manufacturers of Agrochemical Products was founded, in November 1996, GIFAP was renamed to Global Crop Protection Federation. On 7 November 2001, GCPF was renamed to CropLife International, as of 2015 CropLife International´s member list includes the following 8 companies, BASF, Bayer CropScience, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, FMC Corp. As of 2015 CropLife International is a global network operating in all 5 global regions, the network divides itself into the two fields of plant biotechnology and crop protection, i. e. pesticides. The pesticide associations include 11 regional CropLife associations and the European Crop Protection Association, Israel Crop Protection Association and Japan Crop Protection Association
7.
Family farm
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A family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family, it is sometimes considered to be an estate passed down by inheritance. It contrasts with farms operated as collectives, trusts, non-family corporations or in other institutionalised forms, the concept or definition does not easily translate across languages or cultures, as there are substantial differences in the agricultural traditions and histories between countries. Thus, in the United States, a farm can be of any size, while in Brazil. At least 500 million of the worlds 570 million farms are managed by families, the disparity of definitions reflects national and geographical differences in cultures, rural land tenure, and rural economies, as well as the different purposes for which definitions are coined. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines a farm as one that relies primarily on family members for labour. In some usages, family farm implies that the remains within the ownership of a family over a number of generations. Being special-purpose definitions, the found in laws or regulations may differ substantially from commonly understood meanings of family farm. The complete definition can be found in the US Code of Federal Regulations 7 CFR1943.4. The basis of the latifundia in Spain and Sicily was the ager publicus that fell to the dispensation of the state through Romes policy of war in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD. In the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the largely self-sufficient villa-system of the latifundia remained among the few centres of a fragmented Europe. Manorialism died slowly and piecemeal, along with its most vivid feature in the landscape and it outlasted serfdom as it outlasted feudalism, primarily an economic organization, it could maintain a warrior, but it could equally well maintain a capitalist landlord. It could be self-sufficient, yield produce for the market, or it could yield a money rent, the last feudal dues in France were abolished at the French Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany, the Rittergut manors of Junkers remained until World War II, the common law of the leasehold estate relation evolved in medieval England. That law still retains many archaic terms and principles pertinent to a social order. Under the tenant system, a farm may be worked by the family over many generations. In much of Europe, serfdom was abolished only in the period, in Western Europe after the French Revolution. In the inheritance system known as Salic patrimony refers to this clan-based possession of real estate property, terra salica could not be sold or otherwise disposed, it was not alienable. Historical prevalence of the Germanic system of independent estates or Höfe resulted in dispersed settlement structure, the estate as a whole is referred to by the collective Gehöft, the corresponding Slavic concept being Khutor
8.
Combine harvester
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The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from its three separate operations comprising harvesting—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn, sorghum, soybeans, flax, sunflowers, and canola. Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labour saving inventions, Scottish inventor Patrick Bell invented the reaper in 1826. The combine was invented in the United States by Hiram Moore in 1834, early versions were pulled by horse, mule or ox teams. In 1835, Moore built a version and by 1839. By 1860, combine harvesters with a cutting, or swathe, australian Hugh Victor McKay produced a commercially successful combine harvester in 1885, the Sunshine Harvester. Combines, some of them large, were drawn by mule or horse teams. Later, steam power was used, and George Stockton Berry integrated the combine with an engine using straw to heat the boiler. At the turn of the century, horse drawn combines were starting to be used on the American plains. In 1911, the Holt Manufacturing Company of California produced a self-propelled harvester, in Australia in 1923, the patented Sunshine Auto Header was one of the first center-feeding self-propelled harvesters. In 1923 in Kansas, the Baldwin brothers and their Gleaner Manufacturing Company patented a self-propelled harvester that included several other improvements in grain handling. Both the Gleaner and the Sunshine used Fordson engines, early Gleaners used the entire Fordson chassis, in 1929 Alfredo Rotania of Argentina patented a self-propelled harvester. International Harvester started making horse-pulled combines in 1915, at the time horse powered binders and stand alone threshing machines were more common. In the 1920s Case Corporation and John Deere made combines and these were starting to be pulled with a second engine aboard the combine to power its workings. The world economic collapse in the 1930s stopped farm equipment purchases thus people largely retained the older method of harvesting, a few farms did invest and used Caterpillar tractors to move the outfits. Tractor-drawn combines became common after World War II as many began to use tractors. An example was the All-Crop Harvester series and these combines used a shaker to separate the grain from the chaff and straw-walkers to eject the straw while retaining the grain
9.
Rostov Oblast
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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 its administrative center is the city of Rostov-on-Don, which also became the administrative center of the Southern Federal District in 2002. Rostov Oblast borders Ukraine and also Volgograd and Voronezh Oblasts in the north, Krasnodar and Stavropol Krais in the south, and it is within the Russian Southern Federal District. The Don River, one of Europes largest rivers, flows through the oblast for part of its course, lakes cover only 0. 4% of the oblasts area. The most important ethnicities are the 3,795,607 ethnic Russians, the 77,802 ethnic Ukrainians, the 110,727 ethnic Armenians. Other important groups are the 35,902 Turks,16,493 Belarusians ),13,948 Tatars,17,961 Azeris,11,449 Chechens,16,657 Roma,11,597 Koreans, and 8,296 Georgians. There were also 76,498 people belonging to other ethno-cultural groupings,76,735 people were registered from administrative databases, and 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 official survey 49. In addition, 26% of the population declares to be spiritual but not religious, 12% is atheist, major industries of Rostov Oblast are agriculture, agricultural industry, food processing, heavy industry, coal and automobile manufacture. Областной закон №19-ЗС от29 мая1996 г, Областного закона №442-ЗС от23 ноября2015 г. «О поправках к Уставу Ростовской области», Вступил в силу6 июня1996 г. Опубликован, Наше время, №98–99,6 июня1996 г, Областной Закон №30-ЗС от10 октября1996 г. Вступил в силу с момента опубликования, Опубликован, Наше время, №196,31 октября1996 г. Official website of Rostov Oblast Russian South
10.
Collectivization in the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union enforced the collectivization of its agricultural sector between 1928 and 1940 during the ascendancy of Joseph Stalin. It began during and was part of the first five-year plan, the policy aimed to consolidate individual landholdings and labour into collective farms, mainly kolkhozy and sovkhozy. Planners regarded collectivization as the solution to the crisis of agricultural distribution that had developed from 1927 and this problem became more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program. In the early 1930s over 91% of agricultural land became collectivized as rural households entered collective farms with their land, livestock, the sweeping collectivization often involved tremendous human and social costs. After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, peasants gained control of half of the land they had previously cultivated. The Stolypin agricultural reforms between 1905 and 1914 gave incentives for the creation of large farms, but these ended during World War I, the Russian Provisional Government accomplished little during the difficult World War I months, though Russian leaders continued to promise redistribution. Peasants began to turn against the Provisional Government and organized themselves into land committees, when the Russian Civil War ended, the economy changed with the New Economic Policy and specifically, the policy of prodnalog or food tax. This new policy was designed to re-build morale among embittered farmers, the pre-existing communes, which periodically redistributed land, did little to encourage improvement in technique, and formed a source of power beyond the control of the Soviet government. Although the income gap between wealthy and poor farmers did grow under the NEP, it remained small. Clearly identifying this group was difficult, though, since only about 1% of the peasantry employed laborers, the small shares of most of the peasants resulted in food shortages in the cities. Although grain had nearly returned to production levels, the large estates which had produced it for urban markets had been divided up. Not interested in acquiring money to purchase overpriced manufactured goods, the peasants chose to consume their produce rather than sell it, as a result, city dwellers only saw half the grain that had been available before the war. Before the revolution, peasants controlled only 2,100,000 km² divided into 16 million holdings, producing 50% of the food grown in Russia and consuming 60% of total food production. After the revolution, the peasants controlled 3,140,000 km² divided into 25 million holdings, producing 85% of the food, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had never been happy with private agriculture and saw collectivization as the best remedy for the problem. Lenin claimed Small-scale production gives birth to capitalism and the bourgeoisie constantly, daily, hourly, with elemental force and this demand for more grain resulted in the reintroduction of requisitioning which was resisted in rural areas. In 1928 there was a 2-million-ton shortfall in grains purchased by the Soviet Union from neighbouring markets, Stalin claimed the grain had been produced but was being hoarded by kulaks. Instead of raising the price, the Politburo adopted a measure to requisition 2.5 million tons of grain. In 1929, especially after the introduction of the Ural-Siberian Method of grain procurement, also, massive hoarding and illegal transfers of grain took place
11.
Mikhail Gorbachev
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Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman. He was the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union, having been General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991 and he was the countrys head of state from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family and he graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party, in 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, following the brief interregna of Andropov and Chernenko, before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in Western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level. Gorbachevs policies of glasnost and perestroika and his reorientation of Soviet strategic aims contributed to the end of the Cold War. He was awarded the Otto Hahn Peace Medal in 1989, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990 and this was Gorbachevs third attempt to establish a political party, having started the Social Democratic Party of Russia in 2001 and the Union of Social Democrats in 2007. Gorbachev was born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, into a mixed Russian-Ukrainian family of migrants from Voronezh, as a child, Gorbachev experienced the Soviet famine of 1932–1933. He recalled in a memoir that In that terrible year nearly half the population of my village, Privolnoye, starved to death. Both of his grandfathers were arrested on charges in the 1930s. His father was a combine harvester operator and World War II veteran and his mother, Maria Panteleyevna Gorbacheva, was a kolkhoz worker. He was brought up mainly by his Ukrainian maternal grandparents, in his teens, he operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law, in 1967 he qualified as an agricultural economist via a correspondence masters degree at the Stavropol Institute of Agriculture. While at the university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and soon very active within the party. Gorbachev met his wife, Raisa Titarenko, daughter of a Ukrainian railway engineer. They married in September 1953 and moved to Stavropol upon graduation and she gave birth to their only child, daughter Irina Mikhailovna Virganskaya, in 1957. Raisa Gorbacheva died of leukemia in 1999, Gorbachev has two granddaughters and one great granddaughter. Gorbachev attended the important twenty-second Party Congress in October 1961, where Nikita Khrushchev announced a plan to surpass the U. S. in per capita production within twenty years, Gorbachev rose in the Communist League hierarchy and worked his way up through territorial leagues of the party
12.
Kolkhoz
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A kolkhoz was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz, the 1920s were characterized by spontaneous emergence of collective farms, under influence of traveling propaganda workers. Initially a collective farm resembled a version of the traditional Russian commune, the generic farming association, the association for joint cultivation of land. This gradual shift to farming in the first 15 years after the October Revolution was turned into a violent stampede during the forced collectivization campaign that began in 1928. The word is a contraction of коллекти́вное хозя́йство, suggesting collective ownership, on the other hand, sovkhoz is a contraction of советское хозяйство, suggesting state ownership. As a collective farm, a kolkhoz was legally organized as a production cooperative, the Standard Charter of a kolkhoz, which since the early 1930s had the force of law in the USSR, is a model of cooperative principles in print. It speaks of the kolkhoz as a form of agricultural cooperative of peasants that voluntarily unite for the purpose of joint agricultural production based on collective labor. Importantly, remuneration had always been in proportion to labor and not from residual profits, implying that members were treated as employees and they imposed detailed work programs and nominated their preferred managerial candidates. Since the mid-1930s, the kolkhozes had been in effect an offshoot of the state sector, nevertheless, in locations with particularly good land or if it happened to have capable management, some kolkhozes accumulated substantial sums of money in their bank accounts. Subsequently, numerous kolkhozes were formally nationalized by changing their status to sovkhozes, essentially, his administration recognized their status as hired hands rather than authentic cooperative members. The guaranteed wage provision was incorporated in the 1969 version of the Standard Charter, the question of internal organization was important in the new kolkhozes. The most basic measure was to divide the workforce into a number of groups, generally known as brigades, by July 1929 it was already normal practice for the large kolkhoz of 200-400 households to be divided into temporary or permanent work units of 15-30 households. The brigade was headed by a brigade leader and this was usually a local man. After the kolkhoz amalgamations of 1950 the territorial successor of the old village kolkhoz was the complex brigade, brigades could be subdivided into smaller units called zvenos for carrying out some or all of their tasks. See collectivisation in the USSR and agriculture in the Soviet Union for general discussion of Soviet agriculture. In a kolkhoz, a member, called a kolkhoznik, received a share of the product and profit according to the number of days worked. In practice, most kolkhozy did not pay their members in cash at all. In 1946,30 percent of kolkhozy paid no cash for labor at all,10.6 paid no grain, in addition the kolkhoz was required to sell its grain crop and other products to the State at fixed prices
13.
Vladimir Putin
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician. Putin is the current President of the Russian Federation, holding the office since 7 May 2012 and he was Prime Minister from 1999 to 2000, President from 2000 to 2008, and again Prime Minister from 2008 to 2012. During his second term as Prime Minister, he was the Chairman of the ruling United Russia Party, born in Leningrad, Putin studied German in high school and speaks the language fluently. He studied Law at the Saint Petersburg State University, graduating in 1975, Putin was a KGB Foreign Intelligence Officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before retiring in 1991 to enter politics in Saint Petersburg. He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsins administration, rising quickly through the ranks and becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999, when Yeltsin resigned. Putin won the subsequent 2000 Presidential election by a 53% to 30% margin, thus avoiding a runoff with his Communist Party of the Russian Federation opponent and he was re-elected President in 2004 with 72% of the vote. During Putins first presidency, the Russian economy grew for eight straight years, the growth was a result of the 2000s commodities boom, high oil prices, and prudent economic and fiscal policies. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third presidential term in 2008. The 2008 Presidential election was won by Dmitry Medvedev, who appointed Putin Prime Minister, in September 2011, after presidential terms were extended from four to six years, Putin announced he would seek a third term as president. He won the March 2012 Presidential election with 64% of the vote, under Putins leadership, Russia has scored poorly on both the Democracy index and the Corruption index. Putin has enjoyed high approval ratings during his career. In 2007, he was the Time Person of the Year, in 2015, he was #1 on the Times Most Influential People List. Forbes ranked him the Worlds Most Powerful Individual every year from 2013 to 2016, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, the youngest of three children of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin and Maria Ivanovna Putina. His birth was preceded by the death of two brothers, Viktor and Albert, born in the mid-1930s, Albert died in infancy and Viktor died of diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad. Putins mother was a worker and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy. Early in World War II, his father served in the battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the army and was severely wounded in 1942. On 1 September 1960, Putin started at School No.193 at Baskov Lane and he was one of a few in the class of approximately 45 pupils who was not yet a member of the Young Pioneer organization
14.
Fedyakovo, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast
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The village church is that of Transfiguration of the Lord. The village is located near the intersection of the Russian highway M-7, a railway runs by the village as well. In the early 1980s, the construction of Gorky Nuclear District Heating Plant was started, unlike a conventional nuclear power plant, the facility was meant not to generate electricity, but simply to heat water for heating apartment blocks throughout Nizhny Novgorods Upper City. In the years since the abandonment of the project, the building has been disused, or used by local entrepreneurs for a variety of purposes. In the 2000s, the convenient location made the Fedyakovo the site of another major construction project. MEGA, the IKEA-owned Russian mall developer, chose the site for its first mall in Nizhny Novgorod metropolitan area, open in October 2006, the megamall, anchored by an IKEA store and an Auchan hypermarket, has become one the regions premier retail facilities. The arrangements in effect since August 1,2007, provide free shuttle buses to the center from the following areas. 270, from Avtozavodsky District of Nizhny Novgorod, via Shcherbinki No,271, from Verkhniye Pechyory of Nizhny Novgorod. Official website of MEGA in Fedyakovo
15.
Nizhny Novgorod
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Nizhny Novgorod, colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is a city in the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Volga Federal District in Russia. From 1932 to 1990, it was known as Gorky, after the writer Maxim Gorky, the city is an important economic, transportation, scientific, educational and cultural center in Russia and the vast Volga-Vyatka economic region, and is the main center of river tourism in Russia. In the historical part of the city there are a number of universities, theaters, museums. Nizhny Novgorod is located about 400 km east of Moscow, where the Oka empties into the Volga, the city was founded in 1221 by Prince Yuri II of Vladimir. In 1612 Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky organized an army for the liberation of Moscow from the Poles, in 1817 Nizhny Novgorod became a great trade center of the Russian Empire. In 1896 at a fair, an All-Russia Exhibition was organized, during the Soviet period, the city turned into an important industrial center. In particular, the Gorky Automobile Plant was constructed in this period, then the city was given the nickname Russian Detroit. During the World War II Gorky became the biggest provider of equipment to the front. Due to this, the Luftwaffe constantly bombed the city from the air, the majority of the German bombs fell in the area of the Gorky Automobile Plant. Although almost all the sites of plant were completely destroyed. After the war, Gorky became a city and remained one until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990. At that time the city was renamed Nizhny Novgorod once again, in 1985 the metro was opened. In 2016 Vladimir Putin opened the new 70th Anniversary of Victory Plant which is part of the Almaz-Antey Air, the Kremlin – the main center of the city – contains the main government agencies of the city and the Volga Federal District. Originally the name was just Novgorod, but to distinguish it from the other, older and well-known Novgorod to the west and this land was named lower because it is situated downstream, especially from the point of view of other Russian cities such as Moscow, Vladimir and Murom. Later it was transformed into the name of the city that literally means Lower Newtown. Later a major stronghold for border protection, Nizhny Novgorod fortress took advantage of a moat formed by the two rivers. With the agreement of the Mongol Khan, Nizhny Novgorod was incorporated into the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality in 1264, after 86 years its importance further increased when the seat of the powerful Suzdal Principality was moved here from Gorodets in 1350. Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich sought to make his capital a rival worthy of Moscow, he built a stone citadel, the earliest extant manuscript of the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Laurentian Codex, was written for him by the local monk Laurentius in 1377
16.
Inflation
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In economics, inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time resulting in a loss of value of currency. When the price rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods. Consequently, inflation reflects a reduction in the power per unit of money – a loss of real value in the medium of exchange. A chief measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index, usually the consumer price index. The opposite of inflation is deflation, Inflation affects economies in various positive and negative ways. Economists generally believe that high rates of inflation and hyperinflation are caused by a growth of the money supply. However, money supply growth does not necessarily cause inflation, some economists maintain that under the conditions of a liquidity trap, large monetary injections are like pushing on a string. Views on which factors determine low to moderate rates of inflation are more varied, low or moderate inflation may be attributed to fluctuations in real demand for goods and services, or changes in available supplies such as during scarcities. However, the view is that a long sustained period of inflation is caused by money supply growing faster than the rate of economic growth. Today, most economists favor a low and steady rate of inflation, the task of keeping the rate of inflation low and stable is usually given to monetary authorities. Rapid increases in quantity of the money or in the money supply have occurred in many different societies throughout history. By diluting the gold with other metals, the government could issue more coins without also needing to increase the amount of used to make them. When the cost of each coin is lowered in this way and this practice would increase the money supply but at the same time the relative value of each coin would be lowered. As the relative value of the coins becomes lower, consumers would need to give more coins in exchange for the same goods and these goods and services would experience a price increase as the value of each coin is reduced. Song Dynasty China introduced the practice of printing paper money in order to create fiat currency, during the Mongol Yuan Dynasty, the government spent a great deal of money fighting costly wars, and reacted by printing more money, leading to inflation. Fearing the inflation that plagued the Yuan dynasty, the Ming Dynasty initially rejected the use of paper money, historically, large infusions of gold or silver into an economy also led to inflation. This was largely caused by the influx of gold and silver from the New World into Habsburg Spain. The silver spread throughout a previously cash-starved Europe and caused widespread inflation, demographic factors also contributed to upward pressure on prices, with European population growth after depopulation caused by the Black Death pandemic
17.
Consumer Price Index
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A consumer price index measures changes in the price level of market basket of consumer goods and services purchased by households. The CPI is a statistical estimate constructed using the prices of a sample of items whose prices are collected periodically. It is one of several price indices calculated by most national statistical agencies, the annual percentage change in a CPI is used as a measure of inflation. A CPI can be used to index the real value of wages, salaries, pensions, for regulating prices, in most countries, the CPI is, along with the population census one of the most closely watched national economic statistics. Basic types of data that are needed to construct the CPI, price data, the price data are collected for a sample of goods and services from a sample of sales outlets in a sample of locations for a sample of times. The weighting data are estimates of the shares of the different types of expenditure in the total expenditure covered by the index, therefore, the sampling variance cannot be calculated. In any case, an estimate is required in most of the purposes for which the index is used. These indices compare prices each month with prices in the price-reference month and it takes time to assemble and process the information used for weighting which, in addition to household expenditure surveys, may include trade and tax data. Ideally, the weights would relate to the composition of expenditure during the time between the month and the current month. There is a large technical economics literature on index formulae which would approximate this, such an index would show how consumer expenditure would have to move to compensate for price changes so as to allow consumers to maintain a constant standard of living. Approximations can only be computed retrospectively, whereas the index has to appear monthly and, preferably, the coverage of the index may be limited. Saving and investment are always excluded, though the prices paid for services provided by financial intermediaries may be included along with insurance. The index reference period, usually called the year, often differs both from the weight-reference period and the price reference period. This is just a matter of rescaling the whole time-series to make the value for the index reference-period equal to 100. Current Item Price = Base Year Price × Current CPI Base Year CPI or CPI2 CPI1 = Price 2 Price 1 Where 1 is usually the comparison year, alternatively, the CPI can be performed as CPI = updated cost base period cost ×100. The updated cost is divided by that of the initial year, many but not all price indices are weighted averages using weights that sum to 1 or 100. Example, The prices of 85,000 items from 22,000 stores, and 35,000 rental units are added together and averaged. They are weighted this way, Housing,41. 4%, Food and Beverage,17. 4%, Transport,17. 0%, Medical Care,6. 9%, Other,6. 9%, Apparel,6. 0%, Entertainment,4. 4%
18.
European Russia
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Russia is not proportionately populated between the smaller western portion of the country that is considered part of Europe, and the larger eastern portion that is part of Asia. European Russia contains about 77% of the population in an area comprising almost 4 million km2. This territory makes up 38% of Europe and its eastern border is defined by the Ural Mountains and in the south, it is defined by the border with Kazakhstan. This area includes Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two largest cities in Russia, the eastern portion of Russia, mostly Siberia, is part of Asia and makes up more than 75% of the territory with 22% of the countrys population at 2.5 persons per km2. The term “European Russia” was used in the Russian Empire to refer to traditional East Slavic territories under Russian control, including what is now Belarus, administrative districts do not exactly line up with European Russia, but they are decent approximations, depending on exactly how Europe is defined. There are two trends, one to use administrative divisions north of the terminus of the Ural River. Similarly, the imaginary line if straight, could include parts of very sparsely populated Northwestern Federal District
19.
Grain
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Grains are small, hard, dry seeds, with or without attached hulls or fruit layers, harvested for human or animal consumption. Agronomists also call the plants producing such seeds grain crops, the two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals such as wheat and rye, and legumes such as beans and soybeans. Because of the ubiquity of grain as a source, the term grain is often used to describe something small. After being harvested, dry grains are more durable than other foods, such as starchy fruits. Thus, major global commodity markets exist for canola, maize, rice, soybeans, wheat, in botany, grains and cereals are synonymous with caryopses, the fruits of the grass family. In agronomy and commerce, seeds or fruits from other plant families are called if they resemble caryopses. For example, amaranth is sold as grain amaranth, and amaranth products may be described as whole grains, the pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Andes had grain-based food systems but, at the higher elevations, none of the grains was a cereal. All three grains native to the Andes are broad-leafed plants rather than such as corn, rice. All cereal crops are members of the grass family, cereal grains contain a substantial amount of starch, a carbohydrate that provides dietary energy. As is the case all other whole plant foods, pulses also contain carbohydrate. Vegetable oils provide dietary energy and some essential fatty acids and they are also used as fuel or lubricants. Those who handle grain at grain facilities may encounter numerous occupational hazards, risks include grain entrapment, where workers are submerged in the grain and unable to remove themselves, explosions caused by fine particles of grain dust, and falls
20.
Wheat
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Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region but now cultivated worldwide. In 2016, world production of wheat was 749 million tonnes, making it the second most-produced cereal after maize, since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has tripled and is expected to grow further through the middle of the 21st Century. This grain is grown on land area than any other commercial food. World trade in wheat is greater than for all other crops combined, globally, wheat is the leading source of vegetal protein in human food, having a protein content of about 13%, which is relatively high compared to other major cereals and staple foods. The archaeological record suggests that wheat was first cultivated in the regions of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. In a small part of the population, gluten – the major part of wheat protein – can trigger coeliac disease, non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, gluten ataxia. Cultivation and repeated harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the creation of domestic strains, in domesticated wheat, grains are larger, and the seeds remain attached to the ear by a toughened rachis during harvesting. In wild strains, a more fragile rachis allows the ear to easily shatter, as the traits that improve wheat as a food source also involve the loss of the plants natural seed dispersal mechanisms, highly domesticated strains of wheat cannot survive in the wild. Cultivation of wheat began to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent after about 8000 BCE, jared Diamond traces the spread of cultivated emmer wheat starting in the Fertile Crescent sometime before 8800 BCE. Archaeological analysis of wild emmer indicates that it was first cultivated in the southern Levant with finds dating back as far as 9600 BCE, Genetic analysis of wild einkorn wheat suggests that it was first grown in the Karacadag Mountains in southeastern Turkey. Dated archeological remains of wheat in settlement sites near this region, including those at Abu Hureyra in Syria. With the anomalous exception of two grains from Iraq ed-Dubb, the earliest carbon-14 date for einkorn wheat remains at Abu Hureyra is 7800 to 7500 years BCE. Remains of harvested emmer from several sites near the Karacadag Range have been dated to between 8600 and 8400 BCE, that is, in the Neolithic period and these remains were dated by Willem van Zeist and his assistant Johanna Bakker-Heeres to 8800 BCE. They also concluded that the settlers of Tell Aswad did not develop this form of emmer themselves, the cultivation of emmer reached Greece, Cyprus and India by 6500 BCE, Egypt shortly after 6000 BCE, and Germany and Spain by 5000 BCE. The early Egyptians were developers of bread and the use of the oven, by 3000 BCE, wheat had reached the British Isles and Scandinavia. A millennium later it reached China, the oldest evidence for hexaploid wheat has been confirmed through DNA analysis of wheat seeds, dating to around 6400-6200 BCE, recovered from Çatalhöyük. The first identifiable bread wheat with sufficient gluten for yeasted breads has been identified using DNA analysis in samples from a dating to approximately 1350 BCE at Assiros in Macedonia. From Asia, wheat continued to spread throughout Europe, in the British Isles, wheat straw was used for roofing in the Bronze Age, and was in common use until the late 19th century
21.
Harvest
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Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, on smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-intensive activity of the growing season. On large mechanized farms, harvesting utilizes the most expensive and sophisticated farm machinery, the term harvesting in general usage may include immediate postharvest handling, including cleaning, sorting, packing, and cooling. Harvest, a noun, came from the Old English word hærfest, meaning autumn, harvest-time, the harvest came to also mean the activity of reaping, gathering, and storing grain and other grown products during the autumn, and also the grain and other grown products themselves. Harvest was also verbified, To harvest means to reap, gather, people who harvest and equipment that harvests are harvesters, while they do it, they are harvesting. In history, crop failures and subsequent famines have triggered human migration, rural exodus, over years, unsustainable farming of land degrades soil fertility and diminishes crop yield. With a steadily growing population and local overpopulation, even slightly diminishing yields are already the equivalent to a partial harvest failure. Fortunately, fertilizers obviate the need for regeneration in the first place. Harvesting commonly refers to grain and produce, but also has other uses, the term harvest is also used in reference to harvesting grapes for wine. Within the context of irrigation, water harvesting refers to the collection, instead of harvest, the term exploit is also used, as in exploiting fisheries or water resources. Energy harvesting is the process of capturing and storing energy that would otherwise go unexploited, body harvesting, or cadaver harvesting, is the process of collecting and preparing cadavers for anatomical study. In a similar sense, organ harvesting is the removal of tissues or organs from a donor for purposes of transplanting. Harvesting or Domestic Harvesting in Canada refers to hunting, fishing, and plant gathering by First Nations, Métis, for example, in the Gwichin Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement, Harvesting means gathering, hunting, trapping or fishing. Similarly, in the Tlicho Land Claim and Self Government Agreement, Harvesting means, in relation to wildlife, hunting, trapping or fishing and, in relation to plants or trees, combine Harvester Harvest Harvest festival Overharvesting Threshing Winnowing
22.
Maize
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Maize, also known as corn, is a large grain plant first domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The six major types of corn are dent corn, flint corn, pod corn, popcorn, flour corn, the leafy stalk of the plant produces separate pollen and ovuliferous inflorescences or ears, which are fruits, yielding kernels or seeds. Maize kernels are used in cooking as a starch. Most historians believe maize was domesticated in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, recent research modified this view somewhat, scholars now indicate the adjacent Balsas River Valley of south-central Mexico as the center of domestication. The Olmec and Mayans cultivated maize in numerous varieties throughout Mesoamerica, cooked and its believed that beginning about 2500 BC, the crop spread through much of the Americas. The region developed a network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. Nevertheless, recent data indicates that the spread of maize took place even earlier, according to Piperno, A large corpus of data indicates that it was dispersed into lower Central America by 7600 BP and had moved into the inter-Andean valleys of Colombia between 7000 and 6000 BP. Since then, even earlier dates have been published, the study also demonstrated that the oldest surviving maize types are those of the Mexican highlands. Later, maize spread from this region over the Americas along two major paths and this is consistent with a model based on the archaeological record suggesting that maize diversified in the highlands of Mexico before spreading to the lowlands. Before they were domesticated, maize plants only grew small,25 millimetres long corn cobs, Maize is the most widely grown grain crop throughout the Americas, with 361 million metric tons grown in the United States in 2014. Approximately 40% of the crop—130 million tons—is used for corn ethanol, genetically modified maize made up 85% of the maize planted in the United States in 2009. After the arrival of Europeans in 1492, Spanish settlers consumed maize and explorers and traders carried it back to Europe, Spanish settlers far preferred wheat bread to maize, cassava, or potatoes. Maize flour could not be substituted for wheat for bread, since in Christian belief only wheat could undergo transubstantiation. At another level, Spaniards worried that by eating indigenous foods, which they did not consider nutritious, that not only would they weaken, despite these worries, Spaniards did consume maize and archeological evidence from Florida sites indicate they cultivated it as well. Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates and it was cultivated in Spain just a few decades after Columbuss voyages and then spread to Italy, West Africa and elsewhere. The word maize derives from the Spanish form of the indigenous Taíno word for the plant and it is known by other names around the world. The word corn outside North America, Australia, and New Zealand refers to any cereal crop, in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, corn primarily means maize, this usage started as a shortening of Indian corn. Indian corn primarily means maize, but can more specifically to multicolored flint corn used for decoration
23.
Sunflower
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Helianthus or sunflowers L. /ˌhiːliˈænθəs/ is a genus of plants comprising about 70 species in the family Asteraceae. The genus is one of many in the Asteraceae that are known as sunflowers, except for three species in South America, all Helianthus species are native to North America. The common name, sunflower, typically refers to the annual species Helianthus annuus, or the common sunflower. This and other species, notably Jerusalem artichoke, are cultivated in regions as food crops. The largest sunflower field is located in Tuscany, Italy, the domesticated sunflower, H. annuus, is the most familiar species. Perennial sunflower species are not as popular for gardens due to their tendency to spread rapidly and become invasive. Whorled sunflowers, H. verticillatus, were listed as a species in 2014 when the U. S. Fish. The primary threats are industrial forestry and pine plantations in Alabama, Georgia and they grow to 1.8 m and are primarily found in woodlands, adjacent to creeks and moist, prairie-like areas. Sunflowers are usually annual or perennial plants that grow to a height of 300 centimetres or more. They bear one or more wide, terminal capitula, with yellow ray florets at the outside. Several ornamental cultivars of Helianthus annuus have red-colored ray florets, all of them stem from a single original mutant, during growth, sunflowers tilt during the day to face the sun, but stop once they begin blooming. This tracking of the sun in young sunflower heads is called heliotropism, by the time they are mature, sunflowers generally face east. The rough and hairy stem is branched in the part in wild plants but is usually unbranched in domesticated cultivars. The petiolate leaves are dentate and often sticky, the lower leaves are opposite, ovate or often heart-shaped. They are distinguished technically by the fact that the ray florets are sterile, some species also have additional shorter scales in the pappus, and there is one species that lacks a pappus entirely. Another technical feature that distinguishes the genus more reliably, but requires a microscope to see, is the presence of a prominent, sunflowers are especially well known for their symmetry based on Fibonacci numbers and the Golden angle. There is quite a bit of variability among the species that make up the bulk of the species in the genus. Some have most or all of the leaves in a rosette at the base of the plant
24.
Oat
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The oat, sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name. While oats are suitable for consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats. The wild ancestor of Avena sativa and the related minor crop. Genetic evidence shows the forms of A. sterilis grew in the Fertile Crescent of the Near East. Domesticated oats appear relatively late, and far from the Near East, oats, like rye, are usually considered a secondary crop, i. e. derived from a weed of the primary cereal domesticates wheat and barley. As these cereals spread westwards into cooler, wetter areas, this may have favored the oat weed component, oats are best grown in temperate regions. Oats are a plant, and can be planted either in autumn or in the spring. Oats have numerous uses in foods, most commonly, they are rolled or crushed into oatmeal, oatmeal is chiefly eaten as porridge, but may also be used in a variety of baked goods, such as oatcakes, oatmeal cookies and oat bread. Oats are also an ingredient in many cold cereals, in particular muesli, historical attitudes towards oats have varied. Oat bread was first manufactured in Britain, where the first oat bread factory was established in 1899, in Scotland, they were, and still are, held in high esteem, as a mainstay of the national diet. In Scotland, a dish was made by soaking the husks from oats for a week, so the fine, floury part of the meal remained as sediment to be strained off, boiled and eaten. Oats are also used there as a thickener in soups. Oats are also used as feed for horses when extra carbohydrates. The oat hull may be crushed for the horse to easily digest the grain. They may be given alone or as part of a food pellet. Cattle are also fed oats, either whole or ground into a coarse flour using a mill, burr mill. Winter oats may be grown as a groundcover and ploughed under in the spring as a green fertilizer. They also can be used for pasture, they can be grazed a while, then allowed to head out for grain production, Oat straw is prized by cattle and horse producers as bedding, due to its soft, relatively dust-free, and absorbent nature
25.
Cabernet Sauvignon
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Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the worlds most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canadas Okanagan Valley to Lebanons Beqaa Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon became internationally recognized through its prominence in Bordeaux wines where it is blended with Merlot. For most of the 20th century, it was the worlds most widely planted red wine grape until it was surpassed by Merlot in the 1990s. Familiarity and ease of pronunciation have helped to sell Cabernet Sauvignon wines to consumers and its widespread popularity has also contributed to criticism of the grape as a colonizer that takes over wine regions at the expense of native grape varieties. The classic profile of Cabernet Sauvignon tends to be full-bodied wines with high tannins, in more moderate climates the blackcurrant notes are often seen with black cherry and black olive notes while in very hot climates the currant flavors can veer towards the over-ripe and jammy side. In parts of Australia, particularly the Coonawarra wine region of South Australia, for many years, the origin of Cabernet Sauvignon was not clearly understood and many myths and conjectures surrounded it. The word Sauvignon is believed to be derived from the French sauvage meaning wild, until recently the grape was rumored to have ancient origins, perhaps even being the Biturica grape used to make ancient Roman wine and referenced by Pliny the Elder. This belief was widely held in the 18th century, when the grape was known as Petite Vidure or Bidure. There was also belief that Vidure was a reference to the wood of the vine. Another theory was that the grapevine originated in the Rioja region of Spain, the first estates known to have actively grown the variety were Château Mouton and Château dArmailhac in Pauillac. The grapes true origins were discovered in 1996 with the use of DNA typing at the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, by a team led by Dr. Carole Meredith. The DNA evidence determined that Cabernet Sauvignon was the offspring of Cabernet franc, in 2016 scientists at the UC Davis announced they had sequenced a draft of the whole genome of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape, the first genome of a commercial wine-producing grape to be sequenced. While not as prolific in mutating as Pinot noir, nor as widely used in production of offspring, in 1961, a cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache produced the French wine grape Marselan. Cygne blanc is a seedling of Cabernet Sauvignon that was discovered in 1989 growing in a garden in Swan Valley. Cabernet blanc is a crossing of Cabernet Sauvignon and a hybrid grape variety that was discovered in Switzerland in the late 20th century. In 1977 a vine producing bronze grapes was found in the vineyards of Cleggett Wines in Australia and they propagated this mutant, registered it under the name of Malian, and sold pale red wines under that name. In 1991 one of the Bronze Cabernet vines started producing white grapes, Cleggett registered this White Cabernet under the name of Shalistin
26.
Taman Peninsula
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The Taman Peninsula, a peninsula in the present-day Krasnodar Krai of Russia, borders on the north with the Sea of Azov, on the west with the Strait of Kerch and on the south with the Black Sea. The area has evolved over the past two millennia from a chain of islands into todays peninsula, in ancient times the Pontic Greek colonies of Hermonassa and Phanagoria stood on the peninsula, as did the later city of Tmutarakan. The Maeotae and Sindi settled in the area from ancient times, in the classical period it became part of the Bosporan kingdom, its inhabitants included Sarmatians, Greeks, Anatolian settlers from Pontus, and Jews. In the 4th century CE the area fell to the Huns, it was later the capital of Great Bulgaria, following the breakup of the Khazar Khaganate in c. 969, the formed part of a Khazar Jewish successor state under a ruler named David. By the late 980s it came largely into the possession of the Kievan Rus, the Mongols seized the area in 1239 and it became a possession of Genoa, along with Gazaria in Crimea, in 1419. For most of the 15th century the Guizolfi family, founded by the Genoese Jew Simeone de Guizolfi, the rulership of the region by Jewish consuls, commissioners or princes has sparked much debate over the extent to which Khazar Judaism survived in southern Russia during this period. The Khanate of Crimea seized the Taman Peninsula in 1483, either It fell to the Ottoman Empire in 1783. In 1791, during the Russo-Turkish War, it passed into the control of the Russian Empire, Russia ceded it back to the Ottomans in 1792. It finally passed to Russia in 1828. }For much of the succeeding century, the largest settlement was the Cossack town of Taman, succeeded by the port town of Temryuk in modern times. Mikhail Lermontov describes the town of Taman in his novel, A Hero of Our Time, the peninsula contains small mud volcanoes and deposits of natural gas and petroleum. The German Wehrmacht and the Romanian Army occupied the Taman Peninsula in 1942, the story of the motion picture Cross of Iron revolves around conflicts that arise within the leadership of a Wehrmacht regiment during the German retreat from the Kuban bridgehead
27.
Krasnodar Krai
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Krasnodar Krai is a federal subject of Russia, located in the Southern Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Krasnodar and it had a population of 5,226,647. The krai is sometimes referred to as Kuban, a term describing a region of southern Russia. The Republic of Adygea is completely encircled by the krai territory, the krais Taman Peninsula is situated between the Sea of Azov in the north and the Black Sea in the south. In the west, the Kerch Strait separates the krai from the Crimean Peninsula, at its widest extent, the krai stretches for 327 kilometers from north to south and for 360 kilometers from east to west. The krai is split into two parts by the Kuban River, which gave its name to this entire geographic region. The northern part is a zone which shares continental climate patterns. The height of the mountains exceeds 3,000 meters, with Mount Tsakhvoa being the highest at 3,346 meters, Mount Fisht, at 2,867 meters, is the Great Caucasus westernmost peak with a glacier. The Black Sea coast stretches from the Kerch Strait to Adler and is shielded by Caucasus Mountains from the northern winds. Numerous small mountain rivers flow in the areas, often creating picturesque waterfalls. Lake Abrau, located in the region of Abrau-Dyurso, is the largest lake in the northeastern Caucasus region. Lake Ritsa is considered to be one of the most picturesque lakes in the region, in 631, Kubrat was founded on the Kuban State and the Great Bulgar Khans dynasty began. The territory of Krasnodar Region from the 8th to the 10th centuries was part of the Khazars, after the defeat of the Khazar Khanate in 965 Kievan prince Svyatoslav conquered the area, it came under the rule of Kievan Rus, and it then formed the Tmutarakan principality. Later, due to the claims of Byzantium at the end of the 11th century. In that period of history, Russian Circassians first appeared under the name Kasogs, for example, Rededi Prince Kasozhsky was mentioned in The Tale of Igors Campaign. In 1243-1438 the current territory of the Kuban was part of the Golden Horde, after the collapse of the latter, parts of Kuban were held under the Crimean Khanate, Circassia, and the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the region. The Tsardom of Russia began to challenge the protectorate of the Ottoman Empire in the area during the Russian-Turkish wars, in April 1783, by decree of Catherine II, right-bank Kuban and Taman Peninsula were annexed to the Russian Empire. During the campaign for control of the North Caucasus to Russia in 1829 pushed the Ottoman Empire, border was marked on the Black Sea coast
28.
Korochansky District
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Korochansky District is an administrative district, one of the twenty-one in Belgorod Oblast, Russia. As a municipal division, it is incorporated as Korochansky Municipal District and it is located in the center of the oblast. The area of the district is 1,417 square kilometers and its administrative center is the town of Korocha. The population of Korocha accounts for 15. 2% of the total population. Закон №248 от15 декабря2008 г, «Об административно-территориальном устройстве Белгородской области», в ред. Закона №213 от4 июля2013 г, «О внесении изменения в Закон Белгородской области Об административно-территориальном устройстве Белгородской области». Вступил в силу по истечении10 дней со дня официального опубликования за исключением положений, Опубликован, Белгородские известия, №219-220,19 декабря2008 г. Постановление №П/21-21-4 от8 ноября2007 г, «О перечнях населённых пунктов Белгородской области», в ред. Постановления №П/47-25-5 от28 мая2015 г, «О внесении изменения в Постановление Белгородской областной Думы от8 ноября2007 г. №П/21-21-4 О перечнях населённых пунктов Белгородской области», Опубликован, Сборник нормативных правовых актов Белгородской области, №116, ноябрь2007 г. Закон №159 от20 декабря2004 г, «Об установлении границ муниципальных образований и наделении их статусом городского, сельского поселения, городского округа, муниципального района», в ред. Закона №244 от4 декабря2013 г, Вступил в силу по истечении10 дней со дня официального опубликования. Опубликован, Белгородские известия, №218–220,24 декабря2004 г
29.
Belgorod Oblast
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Belgorod Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Belgorod, at the turn of the 17th century, a solid line of military fortifications was built in the area, stretching for almost 800 kilometers. Ukrainian Cossacks, who moved here because of the nobility and the tax burden, were in charge of the line defenses, even more Cossacks moved to the area during the Khmelnytsky Uprising and the internecine wars in the Cossack Hetmanate. Belgorod became the military and administrative center, after originating as an outpost on the borders of Russia. Following the Battle of Poltava, Peter I granted to soldiers of Greater Belgorod the regiment flag, from 1708 to 1727, the territory of the modern Belgorod Oblast was part of Kiev and Azov Governorates. In 1727, Belgorod Governorate was established from parts of Kiev Governorate and this territory was much greater than that of today, and the governorate incorporated territories of modern Kursk, Oryol, and parts of Bryansk and Kharkiv Oblasts. The coat of arms of the then-Governorate is still used by the modern Belgorod Oblast, in 1775–1779, the territory of Belgorod Governorate was abolished and divided between the newly formed governorates and vice-royalties. The city of Belgorod and the area around it became a part of Kursk Vice-Royalty, during the 19th century and up until 1928 the territory of modern Belgorod Oblast remained part of Kursk and Voronezh Governorates. After the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in April 1918, the current administrative-territorial boundaries of Belgorod Oblast were formed by the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on January 6,1954. The oblast was formed from several districts of Kursk and Voronezh Oblasts, in 2007, the city of Belgorod received the honorary title of the City of Military Glory. Belgorod Oblast is part of the Central Black Earth economic region and it borders with Luhansk, Kharkiv, and Sumy Oblasts of Ukraine in the south and west, Kursk Oblast in the north and northwest, and Voronezh Oblast in the east. The total length of its borders is about 1,150 kilometers, the area of the oblast is 27,100 square kilometers, the oblast stretches for about 190 kilometers from north to south and for about 270 kilometers from east to west. The highest point is 277 meters above sea level, in Prokhorovsky District, the lowest point is located at the bottom of the Oskol and Seversky Donets River valleys. The climate of Belgorod Oblast is temperate continental with a mild winter with some snowfall. Average annual air temperature varies from +5.4 °C to +6.7 °C, the coldest month is January and the frost-free period is 155–160 days, with an average of 1800 hours of sunshine. Over 40% of known iron ore reserves of Russia are concentrated in the oblast, deposits are confined to the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly area. There are also occurrences of gold, graphite, and other rare metals. Geographical features make the oblast likely to have deposits of platinum, hydrocarbons, rivers, lakes, and marshes occupy about 1% of the oblasts territory
30.
Federal budget of Russia
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The Federal budget of Russia is the leading element of the Budget system of Russia. The federal budget is a state financial plan for the fiscal year. In 2016, the Russian budget deficit reaches to $21Bln and it was expected to rise to the amount of $21.7 billion in the year. 2016 budgets revenues estimated to be 13.7 trillion rubles or 17. 5% of GDP, Budget deficit thus is 2.35 trillion rubles or 3% of GDP. The federal budget is developed in accordance with the provisions of the annual message of the President of the Russian Federation. The federal budget is considered the State Duma in three readings, at first reading, the basic parameters of the budget are adopted. According to the Budget Code, during the first reading of the State Duma has the right to increase revenues, the State Duma can reject the draft budget. In this case, a commission in conjunction with the government. In the second reading of the State Duma approves the budget section by section, following the adoption of the State Duma the federal budget, the law goes to the Federation Council, the upper house of the parliament, and then signed into law by the President. Difficulties in implementing fiscal reforms aimed at raising government revenues and a dependence on short-term borrowing to finance budget deficits led to a financial crisis in 1998. Russia ran a surplus from 2001 to 2008 when a financial crisis occurred. The government’s anti-crisis package in 2008 and 2009 amounted to about 6. 7% of GDP, in recent years, the highest rate of increased fiscal revenues associated with the production and export of mineral resources. In particular, the 2008 federal budget of Russia was formed on 50% oil and gas revenues
31.
Seed
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A seed is an embryonic plant enclosed in a protective outer covering. The formation of the seed is part of the process of reproduction in seed plants, Seeds are the product of the ripened ovule, after fertilization by pollen and some growth within the mother plant. The embryo is developed from the zygote and the coat from the integuments of the ovule. Seed plants now dominate biological niches on land, from forests to both in hot and cold climates. The term seed also has a meaning that antedates the above—anything that can be sown, e. g. seed potatoes. In the case of sunflower and corn seeds, what is sown is the seed enclosed in a shell or husk, many structures commonly referred to as seeds are actually dry fruits. Plants producing berries are called baccate, sunflower seeds are sometimes sold commercially while still enclosed within the hard wall of the fruit, which must be split open to reach the seed. Different groups of plants have other modifications, the stone fruits have a hardened fruit layer fused to. Nuts are the one-seeded, hard-shelled fruit of plants with an indehiscent seed. Seeds are produced in several related groups of plants, and their manner of production distinguishes the angiosperms from the gymnosperms, angiosperm seeds are produced in a hard or fleshy structure called a fruit that encloses the seeds, hence the name. Some fruits have layers of hard and fleshy material. In gymnosperms, no special structure develops to enclose the seeds, however, the seeds do become covered by the cone scales as they develop in some species of conifer. Seed production in natural plant populations varies widely from year-to-year in response to weather variables, insects and diseases, over a 20-year period, for example, forests composed of loblolly pine and shortleaf pine produced from 0 to nearly 5 million sound pine seeds per hectare. Over this period, there were six bumper, five poor, and nine good seed crops, right after fertilization, the zygote is mostly inactive, but the primary endosperm divides rapidly to form the endosperm tissue. This tissue becomes the food the young plant will consume until the roots have developed after germination, after fertilization the ovules develop into the seeds. The ovule consists of a number of components, The funicle or seed stalk which attaches the ovule to the placenta and hence ovary or fruit wall, the nucellus, the remnant of the megasporangium and main region of the ovule where the megagametophyte develops. The micropyle, a pore or opening in the apex of the integument of the ovule where the pollen tube usually enters during the process of fertilization. The chalaza, the base of the ovule opposite the micropyle, the shape of the ovules as they develop often affects the final shape of the seeds
32.
Banking in Russia
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See Gosbank As part of Mikhail Gorbachevs perestroika program, other banks were formed, including, Promstroybank, Zhilstoybank, Agrobank, Vneshekonombank, and Sberbank. Sberbank continues to this day as one of Russias largest banks, retaining senior ex-Gosbank personnel, the modern Russia inherited the banking system of the Soviet Union, with a few big state banks. After more than 15 years of reforms in Russia, there are now 1183 financial institutions with 3286 regional branches, beginning in early October 2008, several Russian banks failed due to liquidity issues related to US credit derivatives. Russian bank Globex barred customers from withdrawing money from their accounts October 15,2008, in June 2013 Elvira Nabiullina was appointed to the chairman of the Central Bank of Russia. In an interview with television channel Channel one she said Russia’s Central Bank has no blacklists of banks subject to license revocation and she added that the Central Bank will not warn any bank about such measures. She said As a matter of fact, no one knows who might be the next, moreover, it would be wrong to do that. I know not a single country worldwide where the banks would warn about license revocation. At the end of 2008, there were 119 million bank cards in circulation in Russia. S, president Barack Obama announced sanctions on Rossiya Bank. International payment systems Visa Inc. and MasterCard suddenly stopped service of credit cards issued by the Rossiya Bank, non-cash transactions of SMP Bank and Sobinbank were also frozen. Many Russian residents turned to national banks operations although they still have no doubt in reliability of foreign financial institutions
33.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
34.
Food industry of Russia
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The food industry of Russia is a branch of industry in Russia. The average monthly wage in the food and tobacco -16982 rubles / month, in 2003 the volume of production in the food industry was 987 billion rubles. Company Confectionery Sladburg since 2005 - has been producing confectionery, of Novokuznetsk confectionery Confectionery Altai In 2008, Russia produced 1.14 billion decaliters. Novorossiysk region is one of the main centers of Russia. Local agro produce and tablespoons Sparkling wine, in the municipality of Novorossiysk work wineries Abrau-Dyurso and Myskhako. In 2009, Russia exported vodka in the amount of 121 million dollars and it produces 130,000 bottles of the drink per hour. JSC Water Company old source - the manufacturer of soft drinks, Plant Pepsi - the largest in the Russian plant of PepsiCo, provides consumer products from Perm to Beijing a. In 2008 at the opening of the first factory in Russia, the estimated production capacity of the plant after a new line of 25 million units per year. Sverdlovsk bottler Tonus - a major manufacturer of juice, mineral. In Russia there are about 80 tobacco companies, leading companies tobacco industry, ABC Russia, Inc. Unimilk - Russian Food Company, one of the leaders of the dairy market. Hlebomakaronny Sverdlovsk Plant - the first in Sverdlovsk Region industrial baking company, yekaterinburg fat factory - a company, a member of the top five producers of fatty foods in Russia. The product range - different names for sunflower oil, margarine, ketchup, mayonnaise, mustard, yekaterinburg Meat - the oldest company in its industry, based in 1939 y, produces all kinds of items of meat products. Bryukhovetsky Krolik - largest producer of meat and rabbit in Russia. Food Factory Good taste - produces a variety of sausages and meat finished products, poultry Sverdlovsk - a major producer of poultry meat and eggs. OAO Miassky meat from 1893 - production of oils and fats, meat, seafood OAO Bread
35.
Fishing industry in Russia
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The coastline of the Russian Federation is the fourth longest in the world after the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, and Indonesia. According to the FAO, in 2005 the Russian fishing industry harvested 3,190,946 tonnes of fish from wild fisheries and this made Russia the ninth leading producer of fish, with 2.3 percent of the world total. Fisheries management is regulated by Russian federal laws and this definition has been challenged and is under review. The Law on Fisheries requires that total allowable catch levels are set for fishery stocks and it defines these levels as the “scientifically justified annual catch of aquatic biological resources of particular species in a fishing area”. However, the Law on Fisheries then goes on to state that industrial fisheries are not necessarily required to base their catch on TAC, the Law does not explain this further, but calls for the federal government to issue a special TAC setting statute. Pacific salmon is the stock that will probably not have TAC. The Law on Fisheries also gives a definition of a unit area. The compiling of lists of fishing unit areas is delegated to the regional authorities, the Law on Fisheries has gaps and its application is criticized by parliamentarians and stakeholders. It may be expected that in the years at least two new federal laws, On Coastal Fisheries and On Aquaculture, will be considered by Russian legislators. Apart from TAC settings, fisheries are regulated by the so-called Fishing Rules. These rules are set separately for different geographical regions, the Fishing Rules specify seasonal closures, closed areas, restrictions on specific gears such as retricting mesh sizes, minimum catch sizes, and restricted levels of allowable bycatch. Fisheries management has been changing since Soviet times, and further changes are likely, the government has mismanaged the fisheries, with frequent restructuring of the institutions responsible for fishery management and control. Starting in 1992, the authority has been reorganized at least five times. The head of the authority was replaced seven times. The issues involved in regulating fishing capacity were never really recognized, however, consistent fishery policies are starting to be developed now. The extreme bureaucracy involved for a vessel to make a port call. Instead, the seafood is just directly exported, unprocessed, similarly, there are many bureaucratic difficulties in developing aquaculture. Getting a licence to use water and the necessary sanitary certificates is very time consuming, although it does guarantee environmental, there is no legally adopted term in Russia for artisanal fisheries
36.
Economy of Russia
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Russia has an upper-middle income mixed economy with state ownership in strategic areas of the economy. Market reforms in the 1990s privatized much of Russian industry and agriculture, with exceptions to this privatization occurring in the energy. Russias vast geography is an important determinant of its economic activity, the World Bank estimates the total value of Russias natural resources at $75 trillion US dollars. Russia relies on energy revenues to drive most of its growth, Russia has an abundance of oil, natural gas and precious metals, which make up a major share of Russias exports. As of 2012 the oil-and-gas sector accounted for 16% of GDP, 52% of federal budget revenues, the value of Russian arms exports totalled $15.7 billion in 2013—second only to the US. Top military exports from Russia include combat aircraft, air systems, ships. In 2015, the Russian economy was the sixth largest in the world by PPP, between 2000 and 2012 Russias energy exports fueled a rapid growth in living standards, with real disposable income rising by 160%. In dollar-denominated terms this amounted to a more than increase in disposable incomes since 2000. In the same period, unemployment and poverty more than halved and this growth was a combined result of the 2000s commodities boom, high oil prices, as well as prudent economic and fiscal policies. However, these gains have been distributed unevenly, as the 110 wealthiest individuals were found in a report by Credit Suisse to own 35% of all assets held by Russian households. Poor governance means that Russia also has the second-largest volume of illicit money outflows, since 2008 Forbes has repeatedly named Moscow the billionaire capital of the world. The Russian economy risked going into recession from early 2014, mainly due to falling oil prices, the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, and the subsequent capital flight. While in 2014 GDP growth remained positive at 0. 6%, however, the World Bank and the IMF estimated that Russias economy will begin to recover by 2017. In January 2016, the US company Bloomberg rated Russias economy as the 12th most innovative in the world, up from 14th in January 2015, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin has said that Russia needs to reduce geopolitical tensions to improve its economic conditions. By the 1970s the Soviet Union entered the Era of Stagnation, the complex demands of the modern economy and inflexible administration overwhelmed and constrained the central planners. The volume of decisions facing planners in Moscow became overwhelming, from 1975 to 1985, corruption and data fiddling became common practice among bureaucracy to report satisfied targets and quotas thus entrenching the crisis. Since 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to address economic problems by moving towards a market-oriented socialist economy, gorbachevs policies had failed to rejuvenate the Soviet economy, though. Instead, Perestroika set off a process of political and economic disintegration, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia had undergone a radical transformation, moving from a centrally planned economy to a globally integrated market economy
37.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
38.
Economy of Afghanistan
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The recent improvement is also due to dramatic improvements in agricultural production and the end of a four-year drought in most of the country. The government of Afghanistan claims that the country holds up to $3 trillion in untapped mineral deposits. However, due to the conflicts, it one of the least developed countries in the world. The nations GDP stands at about $34 billion with a rate of $19.85 billion. About 35% of its population is unemployed and 36% live below the poverty line, suffering from shortages of housing, clean drinking water. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in Eurasia, historically, there has been a lack of information and reliable statistics about Afghanistans economy. In the early modern period under the rule of kings Abdur Rahman Khan and Habibullah Khan and this slowed the long-term development of Afghanistan during that period. An emphasis was placed on the manufacture of weapons and other military materiel and this process was in the hands of a small number of western experts invited to Kabul by the Afghan kings. Otherwise, it was not possible for outsiders, particularly westerners, the country began facing severe economic hardships during the 1970s when neighboring Pakistan, under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, began closing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossings. This move resulted in Afghanistan increasing political and economic ties with its northern neighbor, the 1979 Soviet invasion and ensuing civil war destroyed much of the countrys limited infrastructure, and disrupted normal patterns of economic activity. Eventually, Afghanistan went from an economy to a centrally planned economy up until 2002 when it was replaced by a free market economy. Gross domestic product has fallen substantially since the 1980s due to disruption of trade and transport as well as loss of labor, continuing internal strife severely hampered domestic efforts to rebuild the nation or provide ways for the international community to help. According to the International Monetary Fund, the Afghan economy grew 20% in the year ending in March 2004. The growth is attributed to international aid and to the end of droughts, an estimated $4.4 billion of aid entered the nation from 2002 to 2004. A GDP of $4 billion in fiscal year 2003 was recalculated by the IMF to $6.1 billion, mean graduate pay was $0.56 per man-hour in 2010. The Afghan economy has always been agricultural, despite the fact that only 12% of its land is arable. Agriculture production is constrained by an almost total dependence on erratic winter snows, as of 2007, the countrys fruit and nut exports were at $113 million per year, but according to an estimate could grow to more than $800 million per year in 10 years given sufficient investment. Afghanistan is known for producing some of the finest fruits and vegetables, especially pomegranates, apricots, grapes, melons, several provinces in the north of the country are famous for pistachio cultivation but the area currently lacks proper marketing and processing plants
39.
Agriculture in Armenia
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Armenia has 2.1 million hectares of agricultural land, 72% of the countrys land area. Most of this, however, is mountain pastures, and cultivable land is 480,000 hectares, in 2006, 46% of the work force was employed in agriculture, and agriculture contributed 21% of the countrys GDP. In 1991 Armenia imported about 65 percent of its food, in 1990 Armenia became the first Soviet republic to pass a land privatization law, and from that time Armenian farmland shifted into the private sector at a faster rate than in any other republic. However, the rapidity and disorganization of land led to disputes. Especially problematic were allocation of rights and distribution of basic materials. Related enterprises such as processing and hothouse operations often remained in state hands. Swift and decisive privatization quickly eliminated the collective and state farms, already by 1992 privatization of the state and collective farms had put 63% of cultivated fields, 80% of orchards, and 91% of vineyards in the hands of family farmers. The privatization program yielded an immediate 15% increase in agricultural output between 1990 and 1991. Agricultural growth continued unabated, and by 2006 gross agricultural output had increased by 75% compared with its level in 1990 and this growth record has not been matched by any of the CIS countries, putting Armenia in a unique position of stellar agricultural performer in CIS. In 1993 the government ended restrictions on the transfer of private land, at the end of 1993, an estimated 300,000 small farms were operating. In that year, harvests were bountiful despite the high cost of input, agriculture is carried out mainly in the valleys and mountainsides of Armenias uneven terrain, with the highest mountain pastures used for livestock grazing. Fertile volcanic soil allows cultivation of wheat and barley as well as pasturage for sheep, goats, Armenia also produces peaches, walnuts, and quince, and its cognac enjoys a worldwide reputation. Irrigation is required by most crops, and the building of canals, by the 1960s, arable land had been extended by 20 percent, compared with pre-Soviet times. Most farms had electricity by the early 1960s, and machinery was commonplace, in the Soviet era, women made up most of the agricultural work force, a large percentage of the younger men had responded to the Soviet industrialization campaign by migrating to urban centers. In 1989 farms were operating about 13,400 tractors and 1,900 combines, agricultural production is heavily biased toward crops, which in 2006 accounted for 64% of gross agricultural output. The principal agricultural products are grains, potatoes, vegetables, grapes, and fruits. In 2006, Armenia produced 212,500 tons of grain,539,500 tons of potatoes,915,000 tons of vegetables and melons,286,000 tons of fruits, and 201,400 tons of grapes. Livestock production in 2006 reached 66,800 tons of meat,620,000 tons of milk and this article incorporates public domain material from the Library of Congress Country Studies website http, //lcweb2. loc. gov/frd/cs/
