1.
Nikolai Yezhov
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Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin. He was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the most deadly period of Stalins Great Purge and his time in office is known as the Yezhovshchina, a term coined during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s. After presiding over mass arrests and executions during the Great Purge and he was arrested, confessed under torture to a range of anti-Soviet activity, and was executed in 1940. By the beginning of World War II, his status within the Soviet Union became that of a political unperson, Yezhov was born either in Saint Petersburg, according to his official Soviet biography, or in Suwałki Governorate. In a form filled out in 1921, Yezhov claimed some ability to speak Polish and he completed only his elementary education. From 1909 to 1915, he worked as a tailors assistant, from 1915 until 1917, Yezhov served in the Imperial Russian Army. He joined the Bolsheviks on May 5,1917 in Vitebsk, during the Russian Civil War, 1919–1921, he fought in the Red Army. After February 1922, he worked in the system, mostly as a secretary of various regional committees of the Communist Party. In 1927, he was transferred to the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Party where he worked as an instructor, from 1929 to 1930, he was the Deputy Peoples Commissar for Agriculture. In November 1930, he was appointed to the Head of several departments of the Communist Party, department of special affairs, department of personnel and department of industry. In 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, from February 1935 to March 1939, he was also the Chairman of the Central Commission for Party Control. I do not doubt that in his childhood Yezhov amused himself in just such a manner, physically, Yezhov was short in stature, standing five feet, and that, combined with his sadistic personality, led to his nickname The Poison Dwarf or The Bloody Dwarf. Yezhov married the educated and sincere Marxist Antonia Titova in 1919, Yezhov and Feigenburg had an adopted daughter, Natalia, an orphan from a childrens home. After the death of Nikolai Yezhov, Natalia was sent back to an orphanage and was forced to relinquish the Yezhov surname. Subsequently, she was known by the name Natalia Khayutina, the turning point in Yezhovs life was the response by Stalin to the murder of the Bolshevik chief of Leningrad, Sergey Kirov. Stalin used the murder as a pretext for further purges, he chose Yezhov for this task, Yezhov oversaw falsified accusations in the Kirov murder case against opposition leaders Kamenev, Zinoviev and their supporters. Yezhovs success in this led to his further promotion. He became Peoples Commissar for Internal Affairs and a member of the Central Committee on September 26,1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda
2.
Sergo Ordzhonikidze
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Ordzhonikidze, Stalin and Anastas Mikoyan comprised what was jokingly referred to as the Caucasian Clique. Ordzhonikidze was born in present-day Kharagauli, western Georgia, into a Georgian noble family and he became involved in radical politics in 1903 and took part in the Revolution of 1905-1907. He was arrested for smuggling arms in December 1905, but when released on bail after five months he fled to Germany, in 1907 he returned to the Caucasus and settled in Baku, where he worked as a medical assistant while involved with Stalin and others in Bolshevik activity. Historians have come to believe that Ordzhonikidze played a role in the 1907 assassination of Prince Ilia Chavchavadze, in 1907 he was arrested at a May Day demonstration and served 26 days in prison under the pseudonym Kuchishvili. He later spent 18 months in prison in Sukhumi as a result of his 1905 arrest, Ordzhonikidze participated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution on a mission by the Bolshevik party and stayed in Tehran for a time around 1909. Following the establishment of the Longjumeau Party School in 1911, Ordzhonikidze was sent by Lenin to the Russian Empire to help organise an all party conference. He was arrested for being a member of the Social Democratic Party and deported to Siberia and he returned with Stalin to Saint Petersburg in April 1912, but was again apprehended and sentenced to three years hard labour. During the course of the Russian Civil War, he became a commissar for Ukraine, appointed chairman of Kavbiuro, the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party in 1920, he was instrumental in the incorporation of the Caucasus in the nascent Soviet Union. Later, he fought to reduce Georgian autonomy from the Russian SFSR and his brutal treatment of Georgian communists antagonised Lenin who proposed he be expelled from the Communist Party. During the same period, he also aided Mirza Koochak Khan in establishing the short-lived Socialist Republic of Gilan in northern Iran, for a time Ordzhonikidze served for the collegium of the new Cheka. Ordzhonikidze became a member of the Politburo in 1926, but was relieved of his duties the same year. He became a member in 1930. He was appointed Peoples Commissar of Soviet Heavy Industry in 1932, an important role as the Second Five-Year Plan gave priority to the development of heavy industry. However Conquest states that he was dependent on the technical skills and knowledge of his deputy. Conquest reports that he knew the allegations against Pyatakov were false and had Stalin’s assurance that he would not be executed, the depth of Ordzhonikidze’s devotion to Stalin is disputed. Sent to the provinces during the Great Famine he reported correctly that it was a disaster, according to historian Roy Medvedev, Ordzhonikidze also opposed the purges of Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich and Nikolai Yezhov and the arrest of his deputy Pyatakov. However historian Oleg Khlevniuk reports finding no evidence in Soviet archives that Ordzhonikidze disagreed with the Moscow Trials, according to the archives, Ordzhonikidze questioned Pyatakov personally, and was convinced of his guilt. Ordzhonikidze is reported to have suffered an attack in November 1936
3.
Yelninsky District
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Yelninsky District is an administrative and municipal district, one of the twenty-five in Smolensk Oblast, Russia. It is located in the southeast of the oblast, the area of the district is 1,808.15 square kilometers. Its administrative center is the town of Yelnya, the population of Yelnya accounts for 67. 5% of the districts total population. Постановление №261 от30 апреля2008 г, «Об утверждении реестра административно-территориальных единиц и территориальных единиц Смоленской области», в ред. Постановления №464 от27 июня2014 г, «О внесении изменений в реестр административно-территориальных единиц и территориальных единиц Смоленской области». Закон №108-з от20 декабря2004 г, Закона №108-з от23 ноября2011 г. Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Вестник Смоленской областной Думы и Администрации Смоленской области, №13, часть II, стр
4.
Smolensk Governorate
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Smolensk Governorate, together with seven other governorates, was established on December 29,1708, by Tsar Peter the Greats edict. On July 28,1713, Smolensk Governorate was abolished and its territory was divided between Moscow and Riga Governorates, the governorate was re-established in 1726. In 1775, it was included, along parts of Moscow and Belgorod Governorates. The governorate was again restored in 1796, eventually, on January 14,1929, Smolensk Governorate was abolished and its territory was included into Western Oblast. Population by mother tongue according to the Imperial census of 1897, according to the Imperial census of 1897. История Смоленской земли до начала XV столетия
5.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
6.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
7.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
8.
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
9.
Soviet people
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Soviet people or Citizens of the USSR was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a new historical, social and international unity of people. Through the history of the Soviet Union, both doctrine and practice regarding ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population varied over time, minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be socialist by content and national by form, to be used to promote the official aims, the fifth record was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizens ethnicity. The 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union finalized this definition, according to the 2010 Russian Census 27,000 Russians identified themselves as members of the Soviet people. Homo Sovieticus Melting pot New Soviet man Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality Rootless cosmopolitan Russification Zhonghua minzu, the equivalent notion in the Peoples Republic of China Yugoslavs
10.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
11.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
12.
Soviet of the Union
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Until Glasnost and the 1989 elections however, only candidates approved by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were permitted to participate in the elections. As opposed to the Soviet of Nationalities, the Soviet of the Union represented the interests of all of the people of the Soviet Union no matter what their nationality was. The Soviet of the Union had the rights and competence as the Soviet of Nationalities. The legality of action was questionable, since the Soviet Constitution did not allow a republic to unilaterally recall its deputies. However, by time the Soviet government had been rendered more or less impotent. Chairman of the Soviet of the Union 1977 Soviet Constitution 1936 Soviet Constitution
13.
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union
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The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union was the highest legislative body in the Soviet Union and the only one with the power to pass constitutional amendments. It elected the Presidium serving as the head of state of the Soviet Union, formed the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Court. The administrative units of the type would send in the same number of members regardless of their size or population. Under the Soviet constitutions of 1936 and 1977, the Supreme Soviet was imbued with great lawmaking powers, after 1989 it consisted of 542 deputies. The meetings of the body were more frequent, from six to eight months a year. The presidium carried out the operations of the Supreme Soviet when it was not in session. Beside the Supreme Council, in the Soviet Union supreme councils also existed in each of union, the supreme councils of republican level also were headed by their presidiums, but all those councils consisted of one chamber. All republics in the Soviet Union were soviet, yet 15 were of union level, while the other, autonomous republics, were subordinated to the union republics
14.
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
15.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
16.
Politburo
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A politburo /ˈpɒlɪtˌbjʊəroʊ/ or political bureau is the executive committee for a number of Communist Parties. The term politburo in English comes from the Russian Politbyuro, itself a contraction of Politicheskoye Byuro, the Spanish term Politburó is directly loaned from Russian, as is the German Politbüro. Chinese uses a calque, from which the Vietnamese, and Korean terms derive, the first politburo was created in Russia by the Bolshevik Party in 1917 to provide strong and continuous leadership during the Russian Revolution occurring during the same year. The first Politburo had seven members, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, except for Lenin, who died in 1924, Stalin had all the original members of the Politburo executed from 1937–1940. During the 20th century, nations that had a politburo included the USSR, East Germany, Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia and China, today, there are five countries that have a politburo system. In Marxist–Leninist states, the party is seen as the vanguard of the people, in that way, the party officials in the Politburo informally lead the state. Officially, the Party Congress elects a Central Committee which, in turn, elects the Politburo, the Politburo was theoretically answerable to the Central Committee. Under Stalin this model was reversed, and it was the General Secretary who determined the composition of the Politburo and this tendency decreased to some extent after Stalins death, though in practice the Politburo remained a self-perpetuating body whose decisions de facto had the force of law. In Trotskyist parties, the Politburo is a bureau of the Central Committee tasked with making political decisions. It is appointed by the Central Committee from among its members, the post of General Secretary carries far less weight in this model. See, for example, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party
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Peasant
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A peasant is a member of a traditional class of farmers, either laborers or owners of small farms, especially in the Middle Ages under feudalism, or more generally, in any pre-industrial society. In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their status, slave, serf, and free tenant. Peasants either hold title to land in fee simple, or hold land by any of several forms of tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold. The implication of the term is that the peasant is uneducated, ignorant, the word peasant is also commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a collective noun for the rural population in the poor and under-developed countries of the world. The word peasant is derived from the 15th century French word païsant, meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, Peasants typically made up the majority of the agricultural labour force in a pre-industrial society. The majority of the people in the Middle Ages were peasants, more generally, the word peasant is sometimes used to refer pejoratively to those considered to be lower class, perhaps defined by poorer education and/or a lower income. The open field system of agriculture dominated most of northern Europe during medieval times, under this system, peasants lived on a manor presided over by a lord or a bishop of the church. Peasants paid rent or labor services to the lord in exchange for their right to cultivate the land, fallowed land, pastures, forests, and wasteland were held in common. The open field system required cooperation among the peasants of the manor and it was gradually replaced by individual ownership and management of land. This process happened in a pronounced and truncated way in Eastern Europe. Lacking any catalysts for change in the 14th century, Eastern European peasants largely continued upon the original medieval path until the 18th and 19th centuries, even before emancipation in 1861, serfdom was on the wane in Russia. The proportion of serfs within the empire had decreased from 45-50 percent at the end of the eighteenth century. In Germany, peasants continued to center their lives in the well into the 19th century. They belonged to a body and helped to manage the community resources. In the East they had the status of serfs bound permanently to parcels of land, a peasant is called a Bauer in German and Bur in Low German. In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents, Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family the patriarch made all the decisions, and tried to arrange marriages for his children. Much of the communal life centered on church services and holy days
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World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
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Nadezhda Alliluyeva
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Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva was the second wife of Joseph Stalin. She was the youngest child of Russian revolutionary Sergei Alliluyev, a worker, and his wife Olga, a woman of German and Georgian ancestry. Sergei Alliluyev was Russian but had found work and a home in the Caucasus. During Stalins time of exile, the Alliluyev family was a source of assistance and refuge, Nadezhda first met Stalin as a child when her father, Sergei Alliluyev, sheltered him after one of his escapes from Siberian exile during 1911. After the revolution, Nadezhda worked as a code clerk in Lenins office. She eschewed fancy dress, makeup, and other trappings that she felt un-befitting of a proper Bolshevik, the couple married in 1919, when Stalin was already a 41-year-old widower and father of one son, born to his first wife, who died of typhus years earlier. Nadezhda and Joseph had two children together, Vasily, born in 1921, who became a pilot at Stalingrad. According to her friend, Polina Zhemchuzhina, the marriage was strained. While she was friendly with Vasily, she was not close to Svetlana and was stern with both children, after a public spat with Stalin at a party dinner, Nadezhda shot herself in her bedroom. The official announcement was that Nadezhda died from appendicitis, accounts of contemporaries and Stalins letters indicate that he was much disturbed by the event. Svetlana, Nadezhdas daughter, defected to the US in 1967, where she published her autobiography. Alliluyeva was portrayed by Julia Ormond in the 1992 television film Stalin
