1.
Turkmenistan
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Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. In medieval times, Merv was one of the cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the movement in Central Asia. In 1924, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, Turkmenistan possesses the worlds fourth largest reserves of natural gas resources. Most of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert, since 1993, citizens have received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge. Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov until his death in 2006, Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007. According to Human Rights Watch, Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries, after suspending the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution. Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia, part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population. In the 10th century, the name Turkmen was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam, There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan. Turkmen soldiers in the service of the played a important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan. In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire, in the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups. The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, by the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro. Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period, in the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that groups dispersal by the Uzbek rulers. According to Paul R. Spickard, Prior to the Russian conquest, Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century. From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk, the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates, in 1916 the Russian Empires participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia. In 1924 the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia, by the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life. The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people, during the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
3.
Vehicle registration plate
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A vehicle registration plate, also known as a number plate or a license plate, is metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle or trailer for official identification purposes. The registration identifier is a numeric or alphanumeric ID that uniquely identifies the owner within the issuing regions database. The first two letters indicate the state to which the vehicle is registered, the next two digit numbers are the sequential number of a district. Due to heavy volume of vehicle registration, the numbers were given to the RTO offices of registration as well, the third part indicates the year of registration of the vehicle and is a 4 digit number unique to each plate. In some countries, the identifier is unique within the entire country, whether the identifier is associated with a vehicle or a person also varies by issuing agency. In the vast majority of jurisdictions, the government holds a monopoly on the manufacturing of vehicle registration plates for that jurisdiction. Thus, it is illegal for private citizens to make and affix their own plates. Alternately, the government will merely assign plate numbers, and it is the owners responsibility to find an approved private supplier to make a plate with that number. In some jurisdictions, plates will be assigned to that particular vehicle for its lifetime. If the vehicle is destroyed or exported to a different country. Other jurisdictions follow a policy, meaning that when a vehicle is sold the seller removes the current plate from the vehicle. Buyers must either obtain new plates or attach plates they already hold, as well as register their vehicles under the buyers name, a person who sells a car and then purchases a new one can apply to have the old plates put onto the new car. One who sells a car and does not buy a new one may, depending on the laws involved, have to turn the old plates in or destroy them. Some jurisdictions permit the registration of the vehicle with personal plates, in some jurisdictions, plates require periodic replacement, often associated with a design change of the plate itself. Vehicle owners may or may not have the option to keep their original plate number, alternately, or additionally, vehicle owners have to replace a small decal on the plate or use a decal on the windshield to indicate the expiration date of the vehicle registration. Plates are usually fixed directly to a vehicle or to a frame that is fixed to the vehicle. Sometimes, the plate frames contain advertisements inserted by the service centre or the dealership from which the vehicle was purchased. Vehicle owners can also purchase customized frames to replace the original frames, in some jurisdictions licence plate frames are illegal
4.
Turkmen language
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Turkmen has vowel harmony, is agglutinative, and has no grammatical gender. Written Turkmen today is based on the Teke dialect, the other dialects are Nohurly, Ýomud, Änewli, Hasarly, Nerezim, Gökleň, Salyr, Saryk, Ärsary and Çowdur. The Teke dialect is referred to as Chagatai, but like all Turkmen dialects it reflects only a limited influence from classical Chagatai. Officially, Turkmen is rendered in the “Täze Elipbiý”, or “New Alphabet”, however, the old Soviet Cyrillic alphabet is still in wide use. Before 1929, Turkmen was written in an Arabic alphabet, in 1929–1938 a Latin alphabet replaced it, and then the Cyrillic alphabet was used from 1938 to 1991. In 1991, the current Latin alphabet was introduced, although the transition to it has been rather slow and it used to use some unusual letters, such as the pound, dollar, yen, and cent signs, but these were replaced by more conventional letter symbols. The following phonemes are present in the Turkmen language, Turkmen contains both short and long vowels, doubling the duration of sound for a short vowel is generally how its long vowel counterpart is pronounced. Turkmen employs vowel harmony, a principle that is common in fellow Turkic languages, vowels and their sounds are as follows, For purposes of vowel harmony the central vowel is considered back. Turkmen consonant phonemes, Note that с and з are actually used for and, not, like other Turkic languages, Turkmen is characterized by vowel harmony. In general, words of native origin consist either entirely of front vowels or entirely of back vowels, prefixes and suffixes reflect this harmony, taking different forms depending on the word to which they are attached. The infinitive form of a verb determines whether it will follow a front vowel harmony or back vowel harmony, words of foreign origin, mainly Russian, Persian, or Arabic, do not follow vowel harmony. Verbs are conjugated for singular and plural number and first, second, There are 11 verb tenses, present comprehensive, present perfect, future certain, future indefinite, conditional, past definite, obligatory, imperative, and intentional. There are two types of verbs in Turkmen, distinguished by their forms, those ending in the suffix -mak. -Mak verbs follow back vowel harmony, whereas -mek verbs follow front vowel harmony, evidentiality is determined by four markers, roughly, -dY -Yp-dYr -dYr-mY-näm -mYş Some independent particles may be said to convey evidentiality, one such word is the particle eken. Aman become sick-EV-COP Aman is sick, compare 1 with 2. a and 2. b,2. a. Maral Ashgabat-ABL come-EV-COP Maral came from Ashgabat, Ben you-GEN cookie-pl-2sPOSS-ACC eat-3spast Ben ate your cookies. The speaker saw Ben eat the cookies, Ben told the speaker that he ate the cookies. Ben you-GEN cookie-pl-2sPOSS-ACC eat-EV-COP Ben ate your cookies, the speaker heard from someone else that Ben ate the cookies
5.
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
6.
Romanization of Russian
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Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin alphabet. Scientific transliteration, also known as the International Scholarly System, is a system that has used in linguistics since the 19th century. It is based on the Czech alphabet and formed the basis of the GOST, OST8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as a standard of the COMECON. GOST7. 79-2000 System of Standards on Information, Librarianship and it is the official standard of both Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO stadards for travel documents and it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, ISO/R9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization. It covers Russian and seven other Slavic languages, ISO9,1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO. It is based on its predecessor ISO/R9,1968, which it deprecates, for Russian, the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, which was based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products, American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975. The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, British Standard 2979,1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, and a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975. The BGN/PCGN system is relatively intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce, the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947. In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, in 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was also abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST52535. 1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports, in 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST52535. 1-2006. The standard was abandoned in 2013, finally in 2013, Order No.320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force. It states that all names in the passports must be transliterated using the ICAO system. This system differs from the GOST52535. 1-2006 system in two things, ц is transliterated into ts, ъ is transliterated into ie, Scholarly ¹ Some archaic letters are transcribed in different ways
7.
Capital city
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A capital city is the municipality exercising primary status in a country, state, province, or other region, usually as its seat of government. A capital is typically a city that encompasses the offices and meeting places of its respective government. In some jurisdictions, including countries, the different branches of government are located in different settlements. In some cases, a distinction is made between the capital and the seat of government, which is in another place. The word capital derives from the Latin caput, meaning head, in several English-speaking states, the terms county town, county seat, and borough seat are also used in lower subdivisions. In unitary states, subnational capitals are known as administrative centres. The capital is often, but not necessarily, the largest city of its constituent, historically, the major economic centre of a state or region often becomes the focal point of political power, and becomes a capital through conquest or federation. Examples are Ancient Babylon, Abbasid Baghdad, Ancient Athens, Rome, Constantinople, Changan, Ancient Cusco, Madrid, Paris, London, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo, Vienna, and Berlin. Some of these cities are or were also religious centres, e. g. Constantinople, Rome, Jerusalem, Ancient Babylon, Moscow, Belgrade, Paris, and Peking. A capital city that is also the economic, cultural. The convergence of political and economic or cultural power is by no means universal, traditional capitals may be economically eclipsed by provincial rivals, e. g. Nanking by Shanghai, Quebec City by Montreal, and numerous US state capitals. The decline of a dynasty or culture could also mean the extinction of its city, as occurred at Babylon. Although many capitals are defined by constitution or legislation, many long-time capitals have no legal designation as such, for example Bern, Edinburgh, Lisbon, London, Paris, are located in or near them. In Canada, there is a capital, while the ten provinces. The states of such countries as Mexico, Brazil, and Australia all have capital cities, for example, the six state capitals of Australia are Adelaide, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. In Australia, the capital cities is regularly used, to refer to the aforementioned state capitals plus the federal capital Canberra and Darwin. Abu Dhabi is the city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. In unitary states which consist of multiple constituent countries, such as the United Kingdom or the Kingdom of Denmark, the national capitals of Germany and Russia, the Stadtstaat of Berlin and the Federal City of Moscow, are also constituent states of both countries in their own right
8.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
9.
Karakum Desert
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The Karakum Desert, also spelled Kara-Kum and Gara-Gum, is a desert in Central Asia. Its name means Black Sand in Turkic languages, in reference to the soil that lies beneath the sandy surface of much of the desert. It occupies about 70 percent, or 350,000 km², the population is sparse, with an average of one person per 6.5 km². Rainfall is also sparse, ranging from 70 to 150 mm per year, covering much of present-day Turkmenistan, the Karakum Desert lies east of the Caspian Sea, with the Aral Sea to the north and the Amu Darya river and the Kyzyl Kum desert to the northeast. In modern times, with the shrinking of the Aral Sea, although the level of the Aral Sea has fluctuated over its existence, the most recent level drop was caused by the former Soviet Union building massive irrigation projects in the region. Although the North Aral Sea is currently rising, the South Aral Sea is still dropping, the sands of the Aral Karakum are made up of a salt-marsh consisting of finely-dispersed evaporites and remnants of alkaline mineral deposits, washed into the basin from irrigated fields. The dust blown on a full east-west airstream carry pesticide residues that have found in the blood of penguins in Antarctica. Aral dust has also found in the glaciers of Greenland, the forests of Norway. The Karakum Desert is home to the Darvaza Gas Crater, 40°15′08. 40″N 58°26′23. 10″E The area has significant oil and natural gas deposits. To the south the Murghab and Tejen rivers flow out of the Hindu Kush Mountains, flow west, the desert is crossed by the second largest irrigation canal in the world, the Kara Kum Canal, which brings water from the Amu Darya to southern regions of the desert. Construction on the canal was started in 1954 and completed in 1958 and it is 1,375 km in length, and carries 13-20 km³ of water annually. Leakages from the canal have created lakes and ponds along the canal, within the Karakum are the Uly Balkan, a mountain range in which archaeologists have found human remains dating back to the Stone Age. The oases of Mary and Tejen are noted for cotton growing, the desert is crossed by the Trans-Caspian Railway. Kyzylkum Desert List of deserts by area Gonur Depe site in the Karakum Desert photos and about the Karakum Desert TravelBlog Darvasa Craters, Entrance to Hell
10.
Kopet Dag
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The highest peak of the range in Turkmenistan is southwest of the capital Ashgabat and stands at 2,940 metres. The highest Iranian summit is Mount Quchan with 3,191 metres, the word kopet or in Persian koppeh means pile or heap, and the word dag or dagh means mountain in Turkic. So Kopet Dagh or Koppeh Dagh could be defined as the mountain that is piled or heaped, geologically, the Kopet Dag Range is made chiefly of Lower Cretaceous sedimentary rocks with a smaller portion of Jurassic rocks in the southeastern parts. The mountains were formed in the Miocene and the Pliocene during the Alpine orogeny and this collision folded the entire rocks that had been deposited in this geosyncline or basin from the Jurassic to the Miocene and formed the Kopet Dag Mountains. The Kopet Dag Range is a characterized by foothills, dry and sandy slopes, mountain plateaus. The Kopet Dag is undergoing transformation, and is subject to severe earthquakes. Earthquakes exceeding seven on the Richter scale have been recorded, the most western foothills of the Kopetdag mountains are known as the Kyurendag Ridge. The foothills of the Kopet-Dag near Ashgabat are the site of the remains of the ancient Parthian city of Nisa and this mountain range has a ski resort, officially opened by the former president of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov. Despite the lack of snow in the Kopet Dag mountains, Niyazov was determined to build a resort there
11.
Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
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Initially, on 7 August 1921, it was established as the Turkmen Oblast of the Turkestan ASSR before being made, on 13 May 1925, a separate republic of the USSR as the Turkmen SSR. Since then the borders of the Turkmenia were unchanged, on 22 August 1990, Turkmenia declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. On 27 October 1991, it became independent and Turkmen SSR was renamed to Turkmenistan, geographically, Turkmenia was bordered between Iran, Afghanistan to the south, Caspian Sea to the west, Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the east. Russian attempts to encroach upon Turkmen territory began in earnest in the part of the nineteenth century. Of all the Central Asian peoples, the Turkmen put up the stiffest resistance against Russian expansion, in 1869 the Russian Empire established a foothold in present-day Turkmenistan with the foundation of the Caspian Sea port of Krasnovodsk. From there and other points, they marched on and subdued the Khiva Khanate in 1873, in 1881 the Russians under General Mikhail Skobelev besieged and captured Geok Tepe, one of the last Turkmen strongholds, northwest of Ashgabat. With the Turkmen defeat, the annexation of what is present-day Turkmenistan met with only weak resistance, later the same year, the Russians signed an agreement with the Persians and established what essentially remains the current border between Turkmenistan and Iran. In 1897 a similar agreement was signed between the Russians and Afghans, in the 1880s, a railroad was built from Krasnovodsk to Ashgabat and later extended to Tashkent. Urban areas began to develop along the railway, because the Turkmen generally were indifferent to the advent of Soviet rule in 1917, little revolutionary activity occurred in the region in the years that followed. Their armed resistance to Soviet rule was part of the larger Basmachi Revolt throughout Central Asia from the 1920s into the early 1930s, which included most of the future USSR dependencies. Although Soviet sources describe this struggle as a chapter in the republics history, it is clear that opposition was fierce. Significant numbers of Russians and other Slavs, as well as groups from various nationalities mainly from the Caucasus, modest industrial capabilities were developed, and limited exploitation of Turkmenistans natural resources was initiated. Under Soviet rule, all religious beliefs were attacked by the communist authorities as superstition, most religious schooling and religious observance were banned, and the vast majority of mosques were closed. An official Muslim Board of Central Asia with a headquarters in Tashkent was established during World War II to supervise the Islam faith in Central Asia, for the most part, the Muslim Board functioned as an instrument of propaganda whose activities did little to enhance the Muslim cause. Atheist indoctrination stifled religious development and contributed to the isolation of the Turkmen from the international Muslim community, beginning in the 1930s, Moscow kept the republic under firm control. The nationalities policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fostered the development of a Turkmen political elite, Slavs, both in Moscow and Turkmenia, closely supervised the national cadre of government officials and bureaucrats, generally, the Turkmen leadership staunchly supported Soviet policies. Foreigners and even most Soviet citizens couldnt visit the area, most Turkmen couldnt leave the republic either. The republic found itself rather unprepared for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, by a unanimous vote of its Supreme Soviet, Turkmenistan declared its sovereignty in August 1990
12.
1948 Ashgabat earthquake
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The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake occurred on 6 October with a surface wave magnitude of 7.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X. The shock occurred in Turkmenistan near Ashgabat, due to censorship by the Turkmen government, the event was not widely reported in the USSRs media. Historians tend to agree that the ban on reporting the extent of the casualties, the earthquake struck at 2,17 in the morning on 6 October 1948. The epicenter of the earthquake was located near the village of Gara-Gaudan,25 kilometers southwest of Ashgabat. The earthquake caused damage in Ashgabat and nearby villages, where almost all brick buildings collapsed, concrete structures were heavily damaged. Damage and casualties occurred in Darreh Gaz, Iran, surface rupture was observed northwest and southeast of Ashgabat. Media sources vary on the number of the casualties, from 10,000 to 110,000, according to memoirs of survivors, the citys infrastructure was badly damaged, with the exception of water pipes. Electricity was restored six days after the earthquake, the railway station began functioning on the third day. This earthquake killed future Turkmen president Saparmurat Niyazovs mother Gurbansoltan Eje, aid to victims, as well as restoration of basic needs and infrastructure, was provided by the Soviet Army. List of earthquakes in 1948 List of earthquakes in Iran
13.
Karakum Canal
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The Karakum Canal in Turkmenistan is one of the largest irrigation and water supply canals in the world. The canal opened up new tracts of land to agriculture, especially to cotton monoculture heavily promoted by the Soviet Union. The canal is also a factor leading to the Aral Sea environmental disaster. The current Karakum Canal was not the first major attempt to bring the Amu-Darya water to the Karakums, in the early 1950s, construction began on the Main Turkmen Canal, which would start at a much more northerly location, and run southwest toward Krasnovodsk. The canal would have used around 25 percent of the Amu-Daryas water, the works were abandoned after the death of Joseph Stalin, the current Karakum Canal route being chosen instead. Reservoirs such as Hanhowuz Reservoir were created to regulate it
14.
Amu Darya
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The Amu Darya, also called the Amu River and historically known by its Latin name, Oxus, is a major river in Central Asia. It is formed by the junction of the Vakhsh and Panj rivers, at Qaleh-ye Panjeh in Afghanistan, in ancient times, the river was regarded as the boundary between Greater Iran and Turan. In classical antiquity, the river was known as the Ōxus in Latin and Ὦξος Ôxos in Greek—a clear derivative of Vakhsh, in Vedic Sanskrit, the river is also referred to as Vakṣu. The Avestan texts too refer to the River as Yakhsha/Vakhsha, in Middle Persian sources of the Sassanid period the river is known as Wehrōd. The name Amu is said to have come from the city of Āmul, in modern Turkmenistan. Medieval Arabic and Muslim sources call the river Jayhoun which is derived from Gihon, however, this name is no longer used. Hara and to the river of Gozan (that is to say, the Amu. the Gozan River is the River Balkh, i. e. the Oxus or the Amu Darya. and were brought into Halah, and Habor, and Hara, and to the river Gozan. The rivers total length is 2,400 kilometres and its drainage basin totals 534,739 square kilometres in area, the river is navigable for over 1,450 kilometres. All of the water comes from the mountains in the south where annual precipitation can be over 1,000 mm. An ice cave at the end of the Wakhjir valley, in the Wakhan Corridor, in the Pamir Mountains, a glacier turns into the Wakhan River and joins the Pamir River about 50 kilometres downstream. Therefore, the Chelab stream may be considered the true source or parent stream of the Oxus. The Panj River forms the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan and it flows west to Ishkashim where it turns north and then north-west through the Pamirs passing the Tajikistan–Afghanistan Friendship Bridge. It subsequently forms the border of Afghanistan and Uzbekistan for about 200 kilometres, passing Termez and it delineates the border of Afghanistan and Turkmenistan for another 100 kilometres before it flows into Turkmenistan at Atamurat. As the Amudarya, it flows across Turkmenistan south to north, passing Türkmenabat, use of water from the Amu Darya for irrigation has been a major contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea since the late 1950s. Historical records state that in different periods, the river flowed into the Aral Sea, into the Caspian Sea, about 1,385,045 square kilometres of land is drained by the Amu Darya into the Aral Sea endorheic basin. This includes most of Tajikistan, the southwest corner of Kyrgyzstan, the northeast corner of Afghanistan, part of the Amu Daryas drainage divide in Tajikistan forms that countrys border with China and Pakistan. About 61% of the lies within Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Of the area drained by the Amu Darya, only about 200,000 square kilometres actively contribute water to the river and this is because many of the rivers major tributaries have been diverted, and much of the rivers drainage is dominated by outlying desert and steppe
15.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
16.
Parthian Empire
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The Parthian Empire, also known as the Arsacid Empire, was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran and Iraq. Mithridates I of Parthia greatly expanded the empire by seizing Media and Mesopotamia from the Seleucids, at its height, the Parthian Empire stretched from the northern reaches of the Euphrates, in what is now central-eastern Turkey, to eastern Iran. The empire, located on the Silk Road trade route between the Roman Empire in the Mediterranean Basin and the Han Empire of China, became a center of trade and commerce. The Parthians largely adopted the art, architecture, religious beliefs, and royal insignia of their culturally heterogeneous empire, which encompassed Persian, Hellenistic, and regional cultures. For about the first half of its existence, the Arsacid court adopted elements of Greek culture, the court did appoint a small number of satraps, largely outside Iran, but these satrapies were smaller and less powerful than the Achaemenid potentates. With the expansion of Arsacid power, the seat of government shifted from Nisa to Ctesiphon along the Tigris. The earliest enemies of the Parthians were the Seleucids in the west, however, as Parthia expanded westward, they came into conflict with the Kingdom of Armenia, and eventually the late Roman Republic. Rome and Parthia competed with other to establish the kings of Armenia as their subordinate clients. The Parthians soundly defeated Marcus Licinius Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC, however, Mark Antony led a counterattack against Parthia, although his successes were generally achieved in his absence, under the leadership of his lieutenant Ventidius. Also, various Roman emperors or their appointed generals invaded Mesopotamia in the course of the several Roman-Parthian Wars which ensued during the few centuries. The Romans captured the cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon on multiple occasions during these conflicts, native Parthian sources, written in Parthian, Greek and other languages, are scarce when compared to Sassanid and even earlier Achaemenid sources. These include mainly Greek and Roman histories, but also Chinese histories, Parthian artwork is viewed by historians as a valid source for understanding aspects of society and culture that are otherwise absent in textual sources. The Parni most likely spoke an eastern Iranian language, in contrast to the northwestern Iranian language spoken at the time in Parthia, the latter was a northeastern province, first under the Achaemenid, and then the Seleucid empires. Why the Arsacid court retroactively chose 247 BC as the first year of the Arsacid era is uncertain, Bivar concludes that this was the year the Seleucids lost control of Parthia to Andragoras, the appointed satrap who rebelled against them. Hence, Arsaces I backdated his regnal years to the moment when Seleucid control over Parthia ceased, however, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis asserts that this was simply the year Arsaces was made chief of the Parni tribe. It is unclear who immediately succeeded Arsaces I, Bivar and Katouzian affirm that it was his brother Tiridates I of Parthia, who in turn was succeeded by his son Arsaces II of Parthia in 211 BC. Yet Curtis and Brosius state that Arsaces II was the successor of Arsaces I, with Curtis claiming the succession took place in 211 BC. Bivar insists that 138 BC, the last regnal year of Mithridates I, is the first precisely established regnal date of Parthian history, due to these and other discrepancies, Bivar outlines two distinct royal chronologies accepted by historians
17.
Arsaces I of Parthia
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Arsaces I was the founder of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia, and after whom all 30+ monarchs of the Arsacid empire officially named themselves. A celebrated descent from antiquity begins with Arsaces, Arsaces or Ashk has also given name to the city of Ashkabad. The dates of Arsaces birth and death are unknown, as is his real name, most scholars now believe that Arsaces was a chief of the Parni, a Dahae tribe who conquered Parthia shortly before Diodotus’ revolt. It should be noted, however, that there is no agreement among classical sources regarding his origins, in contrast, the circumstances of Arsaces ascent to power are relatively well known. Around 250 BC, Andragoras, the governor of the Seleucid province of Parthia, proclaimed his independence from the Seleucid monarchs, at about the same time, Arsaces was elected leader of the Parni, an eastern Iranian tribe. With the Parni, Arsaces seized Astauene, i. e. northern Parthia, Andragoras was killed during his attempts to recover it, which left the Parni in control over the rest of Parthia as well. A recovery expedition by the Seleucids under Seleucus II did not succeed, and Arsaces, the line of succession is unclear, since his successors adopted the name Arsaces as well, making it difficult to distinguish them from the founder of the dynasty. From legend and secondary accounts, it seems that—at least from 246 BC onwards—Arsaces brother Tiridates I either ruled in Arsaces name or co-ruled with him. Then, after 211 BC, when another Arsaces is seen on coinage, either the brother ruled as Arsaces II, other combinations, e. g. that Tiridates killed his brother, have also been suggested. Arsaces issued coins from silver drachmas to copper dikhakloi, all issues bear some similarity in style to the Seleucid pieces of the same time, although the headdress on the Parthian coinage is notably different. The commonest inscription is ΑΡΣΑΚΟΥ ΑΥΤΟΚΡΑΤΟΡΟΣ, translating as Arsaces the Autocrat, however there are many variations on this
18.
Nisa, Turkmenistan
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Nisa was an ancient city, located near modern-day Bagir village,18 km southwest of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Nisa is described by some as the first seat of government of the Parthians. Excavations at Nisa have revealed substantial buildings, mausoleums and shrines, many inscribed documents, many Hellenistic art works have been uncovered, as well as a large number of ivory rhytons, the outer rims decorated with Iranian subjects or classical mythological scenes. Nisa was later renamed Mithradatkirt by Mithridates I of Parthia, Nisa was totally destroyed by an earthquake, which occurred during the first decade BC. The fortress at Nisa was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2007, history of Turkmenistan Annotated Parthia Bibliography. Archaeological Missions in Nisa Nissa Fortress, Ayan Tourism & Travel Company Historical site Nisa, State Committee of Turkmenistan for Tourism and Sport
19.
Silk Road
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While the term is of modern coinage, the Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative trade in silk carried out along its length, beginning during the Han dynasty. The Han dynasty expanded Central Asian sections of the routes around 114 BCE, largely through missions and explorations of the Chinese imperial envoy. The Chinese took great interest in the safety of their trade products, though silk was certainly the major trade item exported from China, many other goods were traded, as well as religions, syncretic philosophies, and various technologies. Diseases, most notably plague, also spread along the Silk Routes, in addition to economic trade, the Silk Road was a route for cultural trade among the civilizations along its network. The main traders during antiquity included the Chinese, Arabs, Turkmens, Indians, Persians, Somalis, Greeks, Syrians, Romans, Georgians, Armenians, Bactrians, in June 2014, UNESCO designated the Changan-Tianshan corridor of the Silk Road as a World Heritage Site. The Silk Road derives its name from the lucrative Eurasian silk and horse trade, the German terms Seidenstraße and Seidenstraßen were coined by Ferdinand von Richthofen, who made seven expeditions to China from 1868 to 1872. The term Silk Route is also used, although the term was coined in the 19th century, it did not gain widespread acceptance in academia or popularity among the public until the 20th century. The first book entitled The Silk Road was by Swedish geographer Sven Hedin in 1938, the fall of the Soviet Union and Iron Curtain in 1989 led to a surge of public and academic interest in Silk Road sites and studies in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Use of the term Silk Road is not without its detractors and he notes that traditional authors discussing East-West trade such as Marco Polo and Edward Gibbon never labelled any route as a silk one in particular. From the 2nd millennium BCE, nephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand, some remnants of what was probably Chinese silk dating from 1070 BCE have been found in Ancient Egypt. The Great Oasis cities of Central Asia played a role in the effective functioning of the Silk Road trade. This style is reflected in the rectangular belt plaques made of gold and bronze, with other versions in jade. The tomb of a Scythian prince near Stuttgart, Germany, dated to the 6th century BCE, was excavated and found to have not only Greek bronzes but also Chinese silks. Scythians accompanied the Assyrian Esarhaddon on his invasion of Egypt, soghdian Scythian merchants played a vital role in later periods in the development of the Silk Road. By the time of Herodotus, the Royal Road of the Persian Empire ran some 2,857 km from the city of Susa on the Karun to the port of Smyrna on the Aegean Sea. It was maintained and protected by the Achaemenid Empire and had postal stations, by having fresh horses and riders ready at each relay, royal couriers could carry messages the entire distance in nine days, while normal travellers took about three months. The next major step in the development of the Silk Road was the expansion of the Greek empire of Alexander the Great into Central Asia and this later became a major staging point on the northern Silk Route. They continued to expand eastward, especially during the reign of Euthydemus, there are indications that he may have led expeditions as far as Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan, leading to the first known contacts between [China and the West around 200 BCE
20.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
21.
Battle of Geok Tepe
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For Lomakins defeat at the same place in 1879 see Battle of Geok Tepe The Battle of Geok Tepe in 1881 was the main event in the 1880/81 Russian campaign to conquer the Tekke Turkomans. Its effect was to give the Russian Empire control over most of what is now Turkmenistan, Skobelev marched from the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea and spent most of the summer and fall building up supplies north of the Kopet Dagh mountains. In December he marched southwest, besieged Geok Tepe for a month and he was accused of excessive slaughter after the battle. The battle is also called Denghil-Tepe or Dangil Teppe, sources are inconsistent, but Denghil-Tepe seems to have been the name of the fort and also the name of a small hill or tumulus in the northwest corner of the fort. Geok Tepe seems to refer to the area, the modern town, a nearby village. Skrine says that fort enclosed a square mile or more, with mud walls 18 feet thick and 10 feet high on the inside, the area was part of the Akhal Oasis where streams coming down from the Kopet Dagh support irrigation agriculture. It was inhabited by the Tekke tribe of Turkomans, after Lomakins defeat in 1879 Russia began to plan for a new campaign. The basic problem was moving up supplies since Akhal was an oasis surrounded by several hundred miles of semi-desert, in March 1880 Mikhail Skobelev was put in charge of the Trans-Caspian region. He adopted Lazarevs original plan of a slow and massive advance, instead of Khoja Kale he chose a base at Bami on the north side of the Kopet Dagh. At some point he decided to take Geok Tepe by siege rather than storm and he arrived at Chikislyar in May, advanced up the Atrek and Sumbar Rivers and by June 11 he occupied Bami. The build-up was slow, partly due to the shortage of camels, in July he made a reconnaissance in force to examine Geok Tepe. By the first half of December he had men and supplies. On 27 December Aleksey Kuropatkin arrived with 5 companies, having made a march across the desert from Khiva. By the end of the month Skobelev had 4020 infantry,750 cavalry as well as artillery, rockets, several machine guns, about 40000 Tekkes were thought to be in the area. On 4–8 January the first parallel was built about 700 yards from the fort, to protect this a detachment was sent to capture a small redoubt to the north and General Petrushevich was killed after rushing through the gate. The Tekkes made sorties on the 9th, 11th and 16th and these were largely successful, but cost many Turkoman lives. The camp was moved north to make it easier to deal with sorties. The Russians only had enough men to hold a line in the southeast corner
22.
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
23.
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
24.
Mensheviks
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The dispute originated at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization. Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress, Lenins formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the partys organizations, whereas Martovs only stated that he should work under the guidance of a party organization. Martovs proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates and that was also the reason behind the naming of the factions. Despite the outcome of the congress, the years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regular Social Democrats. In 1906, at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, on the other hand, numerous disagreements about alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately, both believed that the working class had to contribute to this revolution. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, the Mensheviks came to argue for predominantly legal methods and trade union work, while the Bolsheviks favoured armed violence. Some Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined legal opposition organisations, after a while, Lenins patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 he called these Mensheviks liquidationists. The Menshevik faction split further in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, most Mensheviks opposed the war, but a vocal minority supported it in terms of national defense. They called for a revolution and transfer of all power to the Soviets. In March–April 1917, the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government, from then on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917. With Mensheviks and Bolsheviks diverging, Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from exile in Europe, others, like Alexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks. A significant number, including Leon Trotsky and Adolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group called Mezhraiontsy, a small but influential group of social democrats associated with Maxim Gorkys newspaper Novaya Zhizn refused to join either party. The Mensheviks got just 3. 3% of the national vote,41. 7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus. In Georgia about 75% voted for them, the right wing of the Menshevik party supported actions against the Bolsheviks, while the left wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing Russian Civil War. However, Martovs leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the wing of the party, resulting in their press being sometimes banned. The Mensheviks opposed war communism, and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme, during World War I, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called Menshevik-Internationalists. They were active around the newspaper Novaya Zhizn and took part in the Mezhraiontsy formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with the Menshevik majority that supported continued war with Germany, the Mensheviks-Internationalists became the hub of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party
25.
Social Revolutionaries
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The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or Party of Socialists Revolutionaries was a major political party in early 20th century Russia and a key player in the Russian Revolution. Its general ideology was revolutionary socialism of democratic socialist and agrarian socialist forms, after the February Revolution of 1917, it shared power with other liberal and democratic socialist forces within the Russian Provisional Government. The SRs soon split into pro-Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik factions, the partys ideology was built upon the philosophical foundation of Russias narodnik–Populist movement of the 1860s-70s and its worldview developed primarily by Alexander Herzen and Pyotr Lavrov. Their main innovation was a dialogue with Marxism and integration of some of the key Marxist concepts into their thinking. The intention was to widen the concept of the people so that it encompassed all elements in society that opposed the Tsarist regime, as primary party theorist emerged Victor Chernov, the editor of the first party organ, Revolutsionnaya Rossiya. Later party periodicals included Znamia Truda, Delo Naroda, and Volia Naroda, Party leaders included Gershuni, Breshkovsky, AA Argunov, ND Avksentiev, MR Gots, Mark Natanson, NI Rakitnikov, Vadim Rudnev, NS Rusanov, IA Rubanovich, and Boris Savinkov. Nevertheless, Chernov considered the proletariat as vanguard, and the peasantry as the body of the revolutionary army. The party played a role in the Revolution of 1905. In this period, party membership declined, and most of its leaders emigrated from Russia. A distinctive feature of party tactics until about 1909 was its reliance on assassinations of individual government officials. These tactics were inherited from SRs predecessor in the Populist movement, Peoples Will and they were intended to embolden the masses and intimidate the Tsarist government into political concessions. The SR Combat Organization, responsible for assassinating government officials, was led by Gershuni. Azef became the new leader of the SRCO, and continued working for both the SRCO and the Okhrana, simultaneously orchestrating terrorist acts and betraying his comrades, Boris Savinkov ran many of the actual operations, notably the assassination attempt on Admiral Fyodor Dubasov. Terrorism was controversial for the party from the beginning, however, at its Second Congress in Imatra in 1906, the controversy over terrorism was one of the main reasons for the defection of the SR Maximalists on the left and the Popular Socialists on the right. The Maximalists endorsed not only attacks on political and government targets but also economic terror, to Maximalists, this seemed like the Social-Democrats distinction between bourgeois-democratic and proletarian-socialist stages of revolution. Maximalism stood for immediate socialist revolution, meanwhile, the Popular Socialists disagreed with the partys proposal to socialise the land and instead wanted to nationalise it. In late 1908, a Russian narodnik and amateur spy hunter Vladimir Burtsev suggested that Azef might be a police spy, the partys Central Committee was outraged and set up a tribunal to try Burtsev for slander. At the trial, Azef was confronted with evidence and was lying, he fled
26.
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
27.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
28.
Transcaspian Government
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The Transcaspian Government was a Menshevik-Socialist Revolutionary coalition set up by the Railway workers of the Trans-Caspian Railway in 1918. Autonomous sentiments were developing amongst the local Turkmen population, with the formation of the Turkmen National Army in February 1918, however this sparked off two days of rioting. The Tashkent Soviet dispatched some Red Guards led by V. Frolov and a Cheka contingent who arrived on 24 June and disarmed the Turkmen Cavalry Squadron, which was the core of the TNA. Frolov declared martial law and personally shot the five members of a delegation of railwaymen that had tried to present a petition to him and he proceeded to Kizyl-Arvat to continue restoring Bolshevik control but local railway workers had heard of the events and armed themselves. Frolov and a number of his bodyguards were shot and the remainder disarmed, on 14 July 1918 The Ashkhabad Executive Committee was founded by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries following their successful revolt against the Bolsheviks of Tashkent. This committee took the name of the Trans Caspian Provisional Government in November 1918, British opinion of these forces was less than complimentary. This team stopped the Transcaspian forces being completely overrun by the Bolsheviks, Malleson then sent an Anglo Indian unit to assist in what became referred to as the Malleson mission. The combined Anglo-Indian and Transcaspian force then went on to engage the Bolsheviks. The Government was largely in a weak position and it had no economy, and was existing on the money it had gained from the soviets when it took over. The main economy was based on cotton, however it had no means to export this and it largely sought funds from the British, which it did not get, even for food the British military had used and promised to pay for. On the night of 20 September 1918, under the leadership of Fyodor Funtikov, in December 1918 there was a crisis in the Transcaspian Government. The Government felt it could not control the capital, and asked help from the British who helped by sending troops there, however the Government was fragile, Mallesons opinion being that they had at best a tenuous grip on their forces and people. In addition, Malleson had promised funds and not delivered them, the people started protesting and the Committee resigned. It was replaced by another committee, which was appointed by Teague-Jones, the New committee gradually eventually came under the influence of Denikins Southern White Russian army, and his men came to bolster the force. However, when the British withdrew in 1919, the Bolsheviks went on the offensive, by 1920 the Tashkent Soviet had regained control of the area and the Transcaspian Government was no longer
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Wilfrid Malleson
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Sir Wilfrid Malleson, KCIE CB was a major-general in the British Indian Army who led a mission to Turkestan during the Russian Civil War. Malleson was commissioned into the Royal Artillery in 1886, in 1904 he transferred to the Indian Army and accompanied Sir Louis William Daneon on his mission to Kabul, Afghanistan, 1904–1905. He was posted to British East Africa, where he was appointed Inspector General of Communications and he participated in the Battle of Salaita and the Battle of Latema Nek. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in August 1916 and he then led the British Military Mission to Turkestan between 16 July 1918 –5 April 1919, aiming to block possible German-Turkish thrusts towards India and Afghanistan. He led the Malleson Mission an effort to curtail German and Turkish influence in the area, Malleson was forced to withdraw in April 1919 however. Later he participated in the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919 and he was involved in military intelligence, running a spy network from Meshed in north-eastern Iran against the Russians during this period. For his services, Malleson was knighted as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire on 1 January 1920 and he retired from the Indian Army on 30 October 1920. Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War
30.
Tashkent Soviet
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The Tashkent Soviet was a public organisation set up in Tashkent during the Russian Revolution. The Tashkent Soviet was established on 2 March 1917 at a meeting which consisted of thirty five workers from the Central Asian Railway. It was headed by a technician by the name of I. I, the following day there was a meeting in the local Duma which set up an Executive Committee of Public Organisations to manage the sociopolitical and economic life of the city. Only two Central Asians were involved in committee, the lawyers Faizullah Khojaev and Tashpolad Narbutabekov. Despite this failure to actively involve the majority population, many Central Asians had high hopes for the post-tsarist era, the poet Sirajiddin Makhdum Sidqi published poems of popular verse to popularise the revolution. Veterans of the Jadid resistance to the draft in 1916 such as Kojaev, at the same time, when some Central Asian workers set up a Muslim branch of the Social Democratic Party, the Tashkent Soviet did not welcome them. The Tashkent Soviet fought the Transcaspian Government, who were assisted variously by the British Malleson Mission, the Tashkent Soviet succeeded after the British had withdrawn and Mikhail Frunze had arrived
31.
Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was an autonomous republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic located in Soviet Central Asia. During the Russian Empire, the Turkestan ASSRs territory was governed as Turkestan Krai, the Emirate of Bukhara, from 1905, Pan-Turkist ideologues like Ismail Gasprinski aimed to suppress differences among the peoples who spoke Turkic languages, uniting them into one government. This idea was supported by Vladimir Lenin, and after the Russian Revolution of 1917, but in February 1918, the Islamic Council and the Council of Intelligentsia met in Kokand city and declared a rival Turkestan Autonomous Republic, battling Bolshevik forces until the 1920s. The latter group won, as national delimitation in Central Asia began in 1924, upon dissolution, the Turkestan ASSR was split into Turkmen SSR, Uzbek SSR with the Tajik ASSR, Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast, and Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast. Chairmen of the Council of Peoples Commissars Uzbekistan at worldstatesmen. org, accessed 23 July 2009
32.
Richter magnitude scale
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The Richter magnitude scale assigns a magnitude number to quantify the size of an earthquake. As measured with a seismometer, an earthquake that registers 5.0 on the Richter scale has a shaking amplitude 10 times greater than an earthquake that registered 4.0 at the same distance. This means that, for instance, an earthquake of magnitude 5 releases 31.6 times as energy as an earthquake of magnitude 4. In the United States, the Richter scale was succeeded in the 1970s by the moment magnitude scale, the moment magnitude scale is now the scale used by the United States Geological Survey to estimate magnitudes for all modern large earthquakes. Richter derived his earthquake-magnitude scale from the apparent magnitude scale used to measure the brightness of stars and that fixed measure was chosen to avoid negative values for magnitude, given that the slightest earthquakes that could be recorded and located at the time were around magnitude 3.0. The Richter magnitude scale itself has no limit, and contemporary seismometers can register, record. M L was not designed to be applied to data with distances to the hypocenter of the earthquake that were greater than 600 km. Later, to express the size of earthquakes around the planet, Gutenberg and Richter developed a surface wave magnitude scale and these are types of waves that are recorded at teleseismic distances. The two scales were adjusted such that they were consistent with the M L scale and that adjustment succeeded better with the M s scale than with the M b scale. Each scale saturates when the earthquake is greater than magnitude 8.0, because of this, researchers in the 1970s developed the moment magnitude scale. The older magnitude-scales were superseded by methods for calculating the seismic moment, about the origins of the Richter magnitude scale, C. F. Richter said, I found a paper by Professor K. Wadati of Japan in which he compared large earthquakes by plotting the maximum ground motion against distance to the epicenter. I tried a similar procedure for our stations, but the range between the largest and smallest magnitudes seemed unmanageably large, dr. Beno Gutenberg then made the natural suggestion to plot the amplitudes logarithmically. I was lucky, because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil, the particular instrument used would become saturated by strong earthquakes and unable to record high values. The scale was replaced in the 1970s by the moment magnitude scale, for earthquakes adequately measured by the Richter scale, anything above 5 is classified as a risk by the USGS. Several scales have historically described as the Richter scale, especially the local magnitude M L. In addition, the body wave magnitude, m b, a couple of new techniques to measure magnitude are in the development stage by seismologists. All magnitude scales have been designed to give similar results
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Saparmurat Niyazov
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Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov was a Turkmen politician who served as the leader of Turkmenistan from 1985 until his death in 2006. He was First Secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party from 1985 until 1991, Turkmen media referred to him using the title His Excellency Saparmurat Türkmenbaşy, President of Turkmenistan and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers. His self-given title Türkmenbaşy, meaning Head of the Turkmen, referred to his position as the founder, Niyazov was born on 19 February 1940 in Gypjak, just outside Ashgabat in the Turkmen SSR. He was a member of the influential Tekke tribe, the other members of his family were killed in the 1948 Ashgabat earthquake that caused extreme damage and a high number of casualties the city. His mother Gurbansoltan Eje was part of the Cult of personality later and he grew up in a Soviet orphanage before the state put him in the custody of a distant relative. After finishing school in 1959, he worked as an instructor in the Turkmen trade-union exploratory committee and he then studied at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute, where in 1967 he received a diploma as an electrical engineer. After graduating, he went to study in Russia, but was expelled a few years later for academic failure, in 1962 Niyazov started his political career, becoming a member of the Communist Party. He quickly rose through the ranks, becoming First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR in 1985 and he gained this post after Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had removed his predecessor, Muhammetnazar Gapurov, following a cotton-related scandal. Under Niyazov, the Turkmen Communist Party had a reputation as one of the most hardline, on January 13,1990, Niyazov became Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR, the supreme legislative body in the republic. The post was equivalent to that of president, Niyazov supported the Soviet coup attempt of 1991. However, after the coup collapsed, he set about separating Turkmenistan from the dying Soviet Union, the Turkmen Supreme Soviet declared Turkmenistan independent and appointed Niyazov as the countrys first president on October 27,1991. On June 21,1992 the Turkmenistani presidential election of 1992 saw Niyazov - the sole candidate - chosen as the countrys first popularly elected president, a year later he declared himself Türkmenbaşy - Leader of all Turkmen. In 1994 a plebiscite extended Niyazovs term to 2002 so he could oversee a 10-year development plan, the official results showed that 99. 9% of voters approved this proposal. On December 28,1999, Parliament declared Niyazov President for Life, Niyazov and his Russian-Jewish wife, Muza, had a son and a daughter. Niyazov became president at the transition of Turkmenistan from a Soviet republic to an independent state, there was outside concern about press freedom and to a lesser extent religious rights of minority religious groups. He also took part in creating new holidays with a specific Turkmen nature and introduced a new Latin-based Turkmen alphabet to replace Russian Cyrillic. The Latin Turkmen alphabet consists of, Aa, Bb, Çç, Dd, Ee, Ää, Ff, Gg, Hh, Ii, Jj, Žž, Kk, Ll, Mm, Nn, Ňň, Oo, Öö, Pp, Rr, Ss, Şş, Tt, Uu, Üü, Ww, Yy, Ýý, Zz. Niyazov became a substitute for the left by the downfall of the communist system, with his image replacing those of Marx
34.
Guinness World Records
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The book itself holds a world record, as the best-selling copyrighted book of all time. As of the 2017 edition, it is now in its 63rd year of publication, the international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he involved in an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe. That evening at Castlebridge House, he realised that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europes fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must be numerous other questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland and abroad and he realised then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beavers idea became reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended University friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, the twin brothers were commissioned to compile what became The Guinness Book of Records in August 1954. A thousand copies were printed and given away, after the founding of The Guinness Book of Records at 107 Fleet Street, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British best seller lists by Christmas. The following year, it launched in the US, and sold 70,000 copies, since then, Guinness World Records has become a household name and the global leader in world records. Because the book became a hit, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years, Ross McWhirter was assassinated by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975. Following Ross assassination, the feature in the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot, Guinness Superlatives Limited was formed in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades, and, under their management, the group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment. Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002, with offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records global headquarters remain in London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida, US. Recent editions have focused on record feats by person competitors, many records also relate to the youngest person who achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, being Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness database, as well as new records. The majority of records are no longer listed in the book or on the website. For those unable to wait the 4–6 weeks for a reply, the Guinness Book of Records is the worlds most sold copyrighted book, earning it an entry within its own pages
35.
Marble
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Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite. Geologists use the marble to refer to metamorphosed limestone, however. Marble is commonly used for sculpture and as a building material and this stem is also the basis for the English word marmoreal, meaning marble-like. In Hungarian it is called márvány, Marble is a rock resulting from metamorphism of sedimentary carbonate rocks, most commonly limestone or dolomite rock. Metamorphism causes variable recrystallization of the carbonate mineral grains. The resulting marble rock is composed of an interlocking mosaic of carbonate crystals. Primary sedimentary textures and structures of the carbonate rock have typically been modified or destroyed. Pure white marble is the result of metamorphism of a very pure limestone or dolomite protolith, green coloration is often due to serpentine resulting from originally magnesium-rich limestone or dolostone with silica impurities. These various impurities have been mobilized and recrystallized by the intense pressure, examples of historically notable marble varieties and locations, White marble has been prized for its use in sculptures since classical times. This preference has to do with its softness, which made it easier to carve, relative isotropy and homogeneity, construction marble is a stone which is composed of calcite, dolomite or serpentine which is capable of taking a polish. More generally in construction, specifically the dimension stone trade, the marble is used for any crystalline calcitic rock useful as building stone. For example, Tennessee marble is really a dense granular fossiliferous gray to pink to maroon Ordovician limestone that geologists call the Holston Formation. Ashgabat, the city of Turkmenistan, was recorded in the 2013 Guinness Book of Records as having the worlds highest concentration of white marble buildings. According to the United States Geological Survey, U. S. domestic marble production in 2006 was 46,400 tons valued at about $18.1 million, compared to 72,300 tons valued at $18.9 million in 2005. Crushed marble production in 2006 was 11.8 million tons valued at $116 million, of which 6.5 million tons was finely ground calcium carbonate and the rest was construction aggregate. For comparison,2005 crushed marble production was 7.76 million tons valued at $58.7 million, of which 4.8 million tons was finely ground calcium carbonate, U. S. dimension marble demand is about 1.3 million tons. The DSAN World Demand for Marble Index has shown a growth of 12% annually for the 2000–2006 period, the largest dimension marble application is tile. In 1998, marble production was dominated by 4 countries that accounted for almost half of production of marble
36.
Transcaspian Oblast
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Transcaspian Oblast, or Transcaspia, was the section of Russian Empire and early Soviet Russia to the east of the Caspian Sea during the second half of the 19th century until 1924. Part of Russian Turkestan, Transcaspian Oblast corresponds roughly to the territory of present-day Turkmenistan, Transcaspia was conquered by Russia in 1879-1885, in a series of campaigns led by Generals Lomakin, Skobelev, and Annenkov. Until 1898 Transcaspia was part of the Governor-Generalship of Caucasus administered from Tiflis and these abuses were fully exposed by the Pahlen Report of 1908-10. During the revolutionary period of 1917-19 parts of Transcaspia were briefly occupied by British Indian forces from Meshed, the oblast was one of the last centres of Basmachi resistance to Bolshevik rule, with the last of the rebellious Turkmen fleeing across the border to Afghanistan and Iran in 1922-23. As of 1897,382,487 people populated the oblast, turkmens constituted the majority of the population. Significant minorities consisted of Kazakhs and Russians
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Athens, Greece[citation needed]
Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States[56]
Ankara, Turkey[57]
Astana, Kazakhstan[58]
Kiev, Ukraine[59][60]
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Askabad". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 762.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "
