1.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
2.
Soviet Army
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It had 2.4 million men under its service during the Cold War. At the end of World War II the Red Army had over 500 rifle divisions and their experience of war gave the Soviets such faith in tank forces that the infantry force was cut by two-thirds. The Tank Corps of the war period were converted to tank divisions. MRDs had three motorized rifle regiments and a regiment, for a total of ten motor rifle battalions and six tank battalions. The Land Forces Chief Command was created for the first time in March 1946, four years later it was disbanded, only to be formed again in 1955. In March 1964 the Chief Command was again disbanded but recreated in November 1967, the personnel strength of the Ground Forces was reduced from 9.8 million to 2.4 million. Elsewhere, they may have assisted the NKVD in suppressing resistance in Western Ukraine. Soviet troops, including the 39th Army, remained at Port Arthur, control was then handed over to the new Chinese communist government. Soviet Army forces on USSR territory were apportioned among military districts, there were 32 of them in 1945. Sixteen districts remained from the mid-1970s to the end of the USSR, yet, the greatest Soviet Army concentration was in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, which suppressed the anti-Soviet Uprising of 1953 in East Germany. East European Groups of Forces were the Northern Group of Forces in Poland, and the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary, in 1958, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Romania. The Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia was established after Warsaw Pact intervention against the Prague Spring of 1968. In 1969, at the east end of the Soviet Union, the Sino-Soviet border conflict, prompted establishment of a 16th military district, in 1979, the Soviet Union entered Afghanistan, to support its Communist government, provoking a 10-year Afghan mujahideen guerrilla resistance. Throughout the Cold War, Western intelligence estimates calculated that the Soviet strength remained ca.2.8 million to ca.5.3 million men, by the middle of the 1980s the Ground Forces contained about 210 divisions. About three-quarters were motor rifle divisions and the tank divisions. There were also a number of artillery divisions, separate artillery brigades, engineer formations. However, only relatively few formations were fully war ready, three readiness categories, A, B, and V, after the first three letters of the Cyrillic alphabet, were in force. The Category A divisions were certified combat-ready and were fully equipped, B and V divisions were lower-readiness, 50–75% and 10–33% respectively
3.
Order of Victory
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The Order of Victory was the highest military decoration awarded for World War II service in the Soviet Union, and one of the rarest orders in the world. In its history, it has been awarded twenty times to twelve Soviet leaders and five foreign leaders, king Michael of Romania is the last living recipient. The order was proposed by Colonel N. S. Neyelov, the original name that Colonel Neyelov suggested was Order for Faithfulness to the Homeland, however, it was given its present name around October of that year. On October 25,1943, artist A. I, Kuznetsov, who was already the designer of many Soviet orders, presented his first sketch to Stalin. The sketch of a medallion with portraits of Lenin and Stalin was not approved by the Supreme Commander. Instead, Stalin wanted a design with the Spasskaya Tower in the centre, Kuznetsov returned four days later with several new sketches, of which Stalin chose one entitled Victory. He asked Kuznetsov to slightly alter the design, and on the 5th of November a prototype was finally approved, the order was officially adopted on November 8,1943, and was first awarded to Georgy Zhukov, Alexandr Vasilevsky, and Joseph Stalin. The order was bestowed to top commanders of the Allied forces. Every order was presented during World War II, except for the controversial 1978 award to Leonid Brezhnev, brezhnevs award was revoked posthumously in 1989 for not meeting the requirements for the award. Like other orders awarded by Communist nations, the Order of Victory could be awarded more than once to the same individual, in total, the order was presented twenty times to seventeen people. Unlike all other Soviet orders, the Order of Victory had no number on it. After a holder of the Order of Victory died, the award was to be back to the state. Most of awards are now preserved by the Diamond Fund in the Moscow Kremlin, notable exceptions are Dwight D. Eisenhowers Order of Victory, which is on display at the Dwight D. The Order is made out of platinum in the form of a star with rays between the arms, measuring 72 mm in diameter. The star is studded with 174 diamonds weighing a total of 16 carats, while the arms of the star are made out of synthetic rubies. In the center of the star is a medallion, with the Moscow Kremlin wall, the Spasskaya Tower. The laurel and oak are bound with a red banner, the sky in the background is inlaid with blue enamel. Against the sky, the letters appear in gold centered on the top of the medallion
4.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
5.
Grodno
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Grodno or Hrodna is a city in western Belarus. It is located on the Neman close to the borders of Poland and it is the capital of Grodno Region and Grodno District. In Belarusian, the city is referred to as Го́радня or Гаро́дня. In Latin it was known as Grodna, in Polish as Grodno, the Lithuanian name of the city is Gardinas. The modern city of Grodno originated as a fortress and a fortified trading outpost maintained by the Rurikid princes on the border with the lands of the Baltic tribal union of the Yotvingians. The first reference to Grodno dates to 1005, the official foundation year is 1127. Along with Navahrudak, Grodno was regarded as the city on the western borderlands of Black Ruthenia. The border region neighboured the original Lithuania and it was often attacked by various invaders, especially the Teutonic Knights. In the 1240–1250s the Grodno area, as well as the most of Black Ruthenia, was controlled by princes of Lithuanian origin to form the Baltic state—Grand Duchy of Lithuania—on these territories, after the Prussian uprisings a large population of Old Prussians moved to the region. The famous Lithuanian Grand Duke Vytautas was the prince of Grodno from 1376 to 1392, since 1413, Grodno had been the administrative center of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship. To aid the reconstruction of trade and commerce, the grand dukes allowed the creation of a Jewish commune in 1389 and it was one of the first Jewish communities in the grand duchy. In 1441 the city received its charter, based on the Magdeburg Law, the city was the site of two battles, Battle of Grodno and Battle of Grodno during the Great Northern War. After the First Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Grodno became the capital of the short-lived Grodno Voivodeship in 1793, as an important centre of trade, commerce, and culture, Grodno remained one of the places where the Sejms were held. Also, the Old and New Castles were often visited by the Commonwealth monarchs including famous Stephen Báthory of Poland who made a royal residence here, in 1793 the last Sejm in the history of the Commonwealth occurred at Grodno. Two years afterwards, in 1795, Russia obtained the city in the Third Partition of Poland and it was in the New Castle on November 25 of that year that the last Polish king and Lithuanian grand duke Stanisław August Poniatowski abdicated. In the Russian Empire, the city continued to serve its role as a seat of Grodno Governorate since 1801, the industrial activities, started in the late 18th century by Antoni Tyzenhaus, continued to develop. Count Aleksander Bisping was arrested and imprisoned here during the January Uprising before his exile to Ufa, after the outbreak of World War I, Grodno was occupied by Germany and ceded by Bolshevist Russia under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918. After the war the German government permitted a state to be set up there
6.
Imperial Russian Army
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The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the early 1850s, the Russian army consisted of more than 900,000 regular soldiers, the last living veteran of the Russian Imperial Army was the Ukrainian supercentenarian Mikhail Krichevsky, who died in 2008. Russian tsars before Peter maintained professional hereditary musketeer corps, known as streltsy and these were originally raised by Tsar Ivan IV, originally an effective force, they had become highly unreliable and undisciplined. In times of war the forces were augmented by peasants. There were different kinds of regiments, such as regulars, dragoons, in 1631, the Russians created two regular regiments in Moscow. During the Russo-Polish War of 1632–1634, six regular regiments, one reiter regiment. Initially, they recruited children of the boyars and streltsy, volunteers, Cossacks. After the war with Poland, all of the regiments were disbanded, during another Russo-Polish War, they were created again and became a principal force of the Russian army. Often, regular and dragoon regiments were manned with datochniye lyudi for lifelong military service, reiters were manned with small or landless gentry and boyars children and were paid with money for their service. More than a half of the officers were representatives from the gentry. In times of peace, some of the regiments were usually disbanded, in 1681, there were 33 regular regiments and 25 dragoon and reiter regiments. In the late 17th century, regiments of the new type represented more than a half of the Russian Army, Conscription in Russia was introduced by Peter I of Russia in December 1699, though reports say Peters father also used it. Conscription of peasants and townspeople was based on system, per settlement. Initially it was based on the number of households, later it was based on the population numbers, the term of service in the 18th century was for life. In 1793 it was reduced to 25 years, in 1834, it was reduced to 20 years plus five years in the reserve, and in 1855 to 12 years plus three years in the reserve. The history of the Russian army in this era was linked to the name of Russian General Alexander Suvorov, considered one of a few great generals in history who never lost a battle. From 1777 to 1783 Suvorov served in the Crimea and in the Caucasus, becoming a lieutenant-general in 1780, from 1787 to 1791 he again fought the Turks during the Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792 and won many victories. Suvorovs leadership also played a key role in a Russian victory over the Poles during the Kościuszko Uprising, furthermore, many lower-level officers were poorly trained and had difficulty getting their men to perform the sometimes complex manoeuvres required in a battle
7.
Military academies in Russia
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Russia has a number of military academies of different specialties. This article primarily lists institutions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation rather than those of the Soviet Armed Forces, Russian institutions called academy are post-graduate professional military schools for experienced, commissioned officers who have the equivalent of a bachelors degree. Upon graduation, officers receive the equivalent of a degree and, if trained in military leadership are appointed as battalion commanders or higher from Lt. Colonel. Graduates with non-command training are appointed to staff positions equivalent to Major or Lt. Colonel. Commissioned officers can study on the Kandidat Nauk level, equivalent to a Ph. D. degree and this research-oriented degree is required for faculty positions in military schools and defense research institutes. There also are a number of officer commissioning schools for various services known as Higher Military Schools or Institutes, as of 2010, a major reorganization of Russian military officer education, spanning the range from General Staff Academy to officer commissioning school, was underway. It has been the senior Russian professional school for officers in their late 30s, the best and the brightest senior commissioned officers of all forces are selected to attend this most prestigious of all Soviet military academies. Students are admitted to the Academy in the ranks of lieutenant colonel, colonel, most are colonels or newly promoted generals. The precedence and grouping of these academies are drawn from Michael Holms site, in 1918 the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow was established as the academy of the General Staff, which became the RKKA Military Academy in 1921. It is named after Mikhail Frunze then USSR Minister of Defense in mid-1920s and it is roughly the equivalent of the US armys Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas or the British armys Staff College, Camberley. Officers in their late twenties up to thirty-two years at the rank of Captain or Major enter if they pass the entry examinations. In the 1930s, higher academic courses were added to the Frunze curriculum as a training program for previous graduates. Later on, this became the basis for the Voroshilov General Staff Academy. The Military Educational and Scientific Center has been the site of a number of Russian-Western joint military activities, including an IISS conference in February 2001, as of 2004, the commander was Colonel General Vladimir I. The Lenin Military-Political Academy specialized in training officers for the Soviet Armed Forces. Malinovsky Military Armored Forces Academy was established in 1932 in Moscow as the J. V, stalin Academy of the WPRA Mechanization and Motorization Program. It was named after Marshal Rodion Malinovsky in 1967 and its mission was to train Soviet and Warsaw Pact commanders, staff officers, and engineers for armored and mechanized units. The best-qualified graduates were selected for the operations division of the General Staff
8.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
