1.
1905 Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies and it led to Constitutional Reform including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. According to Sidney Harcave, author of The Russian Revolution of 1905, newly emancipated peasants earned too little, and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. A nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to them, banning strikes. Finally, the educated class fomented and spread radical ideas after a relaxing of discipline in universities allowed a new consciousness to grow among students, vladimir Lenin was a political theorist who also contributed his own ideology of how a revolution would be caused. In his book Imperialism he claimed that driven imperialism and the dependence on overseas markets would be a factor to revolution. This would cause a rivalry between the powers, leading to war. Taken individually, these issues might not have affected the course of Russian history, the government finally recognized these problems, albeit in a shortsighted and narrow-minded way. The minister of interior Plehve stated in 1903 that, after the problem, the most serious ones plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the revolution of 1905, every year, thousands of nobles in debt mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold them to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land and this plan was meant to prevent proletarianisation of the peasants. However, the peasants were not given land to provide for their needs. Their earnings were often so small that they could buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes. By the tenth year of Nicholas IIs reign, their total arrears in payments of taxes and dues was 118 million rubles, masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and sometimes walked hundreds of kilometres to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence and these violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so it created many committees to investigate their causes. The committees concluded that no part of the countryside was prosperous, some parts, although cultivated acreage had increased in the last half century, the increase had not been proportionate to the growth of peasant populations, which had doubled. The investigations revealed many difficulties but could not find solution that were both sensible and acceptable to the government, nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected, European civilization was valued over Asian culture, and Christianity was on the whole considered more progressive and true than other religions
2.
Georgy Gapon
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Father Georgiy Apollonovich Gapon was a Russian Orthodox priest and a popular working class leader before the Russian Revolution of 1905. After he was discovered to be an informant, Gapon was murdered by members of Socialist Revolutionary Party. Georgiy Apollonovich Gapon was born 17 February 1870, in the village of Beliki, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine and he was the oldest son of a Cossack father and mother who hailed from the local peasantry. Gapons father, Apollon Fedorovich Gapon, had formal education and served as an elected village elder. His mother was illiterate but religiously devout and actively raised her son in the norms, in his final year at this school, Gapon was first exposed to the radical philosophical teachings of Lev Tolstoy through one of his instructors, a devoted follower of the Russian writer. This instructor, I. M. Tregubov, regarded Gapon as one of the top students at the school, serious and intelligent in demeanor and diligent and curious in his studies. Following his graduation from the Lower Ecclesiastical School, Gapon was admitted to Poltava Seminary, Gapon was influenced by the Tolstoyan emphasis on working with the poor and with its philosophical criticism with the formalistic and hierarchical practices of the official church. This brought him conflict with certain seminary officials, who threatened to rescind his educational stipend. Gapon met this threat by himself rejecting further aid and seeking to pay for his own education through work as a private tutor. Gapon fell ill from typhus, which incapacitated him for a time, making it impossible to earn a living as a tutor and continue his studies effectively. He decided to abandon plans for career as a priest, seeking instead to attend Tomsk University to become a physician and his plans were short-circuited, however, when the seminary issued him a less-than-perfect grade for behavior, thereby effectively barring his path to further university education. At the age of 23 Gapon took a job in Poltava as a zemstvo statistician and it was in this capacity that he met the daughter of a local merchant in a house in which he was giving private lessons. The family objected to a marriage due to Gapons limited employment horizons, however. He made an appeal to Bishop Ilarion of Poltava, apologizing for past behavior, the bishop was moved by the appeal and interceded with the family, winning the couple permission to marry. Gapons services were innovative and informal and his church grew in size, negatively affecting other more formalistic local churches. Nevertheless, Gapon continued to enjoy the support of the bishop in his position and was satisfied with his station in life. Gapon and his wife had two children in rapid succession, but his wife fell ill following the 1898 birth of the second child and she died not long afterward and Gapon decided to leave Poltava to make a new life in the capital city of Saint Petersburg. Gapon placed 16th of 67 applicants and was awarded a scholarship reserved for the top prospects at the school
3.
Narva Triumphal Arch
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The Narva Triumphal Arch was erected in the vast Narva Square, Saint Petersburg, in 1814 to commemorate the Russian victory over Napoleon. The wooden structure was constructed on the Narva highway with the purpose of greeting the soldiers who were returning from abroad after their victory over Napoleon, the architect of the original Narva Arch was Giacomo Quarenghi. Between 1827 and 1834 Vasily Stasov redesigned and rebuilt the gate in stone, a similar gate, also by Stasov, was erected on the road leading to Moscow. A sculptor Vasily Demut-Malinovsky was responsible for the sculptural decor. As has been conventional since Imperial Roman times, sculptures of Fame offering laurel wreaths fill the spandrels of the central arch, the main entablature breaks boldly forward over paired Composite columns that flank the opening and support colossal sculptures. Nike, the Goddess of Victory surmounts the arch, in a triumphal car drawn by six horses, sculpted by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg, neither the arch nor the Russian Admiralty were protected from artillery bombardments during the Siege of Leningrad. The arch was restored in 1951, a small military museum was opened in the upper part of the arch in 1989. At the beginning of 21st century the gate was capitally restored, Narva Triumphal Arch - History from Saint Petersburg. com Photos and other data on the gate
4.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
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Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
6.
Emperor of All Russia
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Emperor of All Russia, Empress of All Russia was the title of the ruler of the Russian Empire from 1721 to 1917. It was created in connection with the victory in the Great Northern War, the suffix of All Russia was transformed from the previous version of All Rus. Article 1 of the Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire stated that Emperor of All Russia is an autocratic, to obey his supreme authority, not only out of fear but out of conscience as well, God himself commands. The article points to the fact that Russia had an unrestricted monarchy, the full title of the emperor in the 20th century, The title of the Emperor of All Russia was introduced to Peter the Great. On November 2,1721 Peter I accepted the title, since then the Russian State was referred to as the Russian Empire
7.
Nicholas II of Russia
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Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic, Soviet historiography portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader, whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects. The Anglo-Russian Entente, designed to counter German attempts to influence in the Middle East. Nicholas approved the Russian mobilisation on 30 July 1914, which led to Germany declaring war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and it is estimated that around 3,300,000 Russians were killed in World War I. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas abdicated on behalf of himself and his son, Nicholas, the recovered remains of the Imperial Family were finally re-interred in St. Petersburg, eighty years to the day on 17 July 1998. In 1981, Nicholas, his wife and their children were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, located in New York City. On 15 August 2000 Nicholas and his family were canonized as passion bearers, Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. He had five siblings, Alexander, George, Xenia, Michael. Nicholas often referred to his father nostalgically in letters after Alexanders death in 1894 and he was also very close to his mother, as revealed in their published letters to each other. His paternal grandparents were Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and his maternal grandparents were King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor being Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna, Nicholas was related to several monarchs in Europe. His mothers siblings included Kings Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins of King George V of the United Kingdom. Nicholas was also a first cousin of both King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway, as well as King Constantine I of Greece, Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin-once-removed of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as Nikolasha and Nicholas the Tall, while the Tsar was Nicholas the Short. In his childhood, Nicholas, his parents and siblings made annual visits to the Danish royal palaces of Fredensborg and Bernstorff to visit his grandparents, the king and queen. The visits also served as family reunions, as his mothers siblings would come from the United Kingdom, Germany. It was there in 1883, that he had a flirtation with one of his English first cousins, in 1873, Nicholas also accompanied his parents and younger brother, two-year-old George, on a two-month, semi-official visit to England. In London, Nicholas and his family stayed at Marlborough House, as guests of his Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alix, the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he was spoiled by his uncle
8.
Parliament
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In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative, elected body of government. Generally a modern parliament has three functions, representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government, historically, parliaments included various kinds of deliberative, consultative, and judicial assemblies. The term is derived from Anglo-Norman parlement, from the verb parler talk, the meaning evolved over time, originally any discussion, conversation, or negotiation, through various kinds of deliberative or judicial groups, often summoned by the monarch. By 1400, it had come to mean in Britain specifically the British supreme legislature, various parliaments are claimed to be the oldest in the world, under varying definitions. The Sicilian Parliament, whose first assembly was convened in 1097, the Icelandic Althing, year 930, but only including the main chiefs. Since ancient times, when societies were tribal, there were councils or a headman whose decisions were assessed by village elders, some scholars suggest that in ancient Mesopotamia there was a primitive democratic government where the kings were assessed by council. The same has been said about ancient India, where some form of deliberative assemblies existed, however, these claims are not accepted by most scholars, who see these forms of government as oligarchies. Ancient Athens was the cradle of democracy, the Athenian assembly was the most important institution, and every citizen could take part in the discussions. However, Athenian democracy was not representative, but rather direct, the Roman Senate controlled money, administration, and the details of foreign policy. Some Muslim scholars argue that the Islamic shura is analogous to the parliament, however, others highlight what they consider fundamental differences between the shura system and the parliamentary system. England has long had a tradition of a body of men who would assist, under the Anglo-Saxon kings, there was an advisory council, the Witenagemot. The name derives from the Old English ƿitena ȝemōt, or witena gemōt, the first recorded act of a witenagemot was the law code issued by King Æthelberht of Kent ca. 600, the earliest document which survives in sustained Old English prose, however, the Witan, along with the folkmoots, is an important ancestor of the modern English parliament. As part of the Norman Conquest of England, the new king, William I, did away with the Witenagemot, membership of the Curia was largely restricted to the tenants in chief, the few nobles who rented great estates directly from the king, along with ecclesiastics. William brought to England the feudal system of his native Normandy and this is the original body from which the Parliament, the higher courts of law, and the Privy Council and Cabinet descend. Of these, the legislature is formally the High Court of Parliament, only the executive government is no longer conducted in a royal court. Most historians date the emergence of a parliament with some degree of power to which the throne had to defer no later than the rule of Edward I, like previous kings, Edward called leading nobles and church leaders to discuss government matters, especially finance. A meeting in 1295 became known as the Model Parliament because it set the pattern for later Parliaments, in 1307, Edward I agreed not to collect certain taxes without the consent of the realm
9.
Demonstration (protest)
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Actions such as blockades and sit-ins may also be referred to as demonstrations. Demonstrations can be nonviolent or violent, or can begin as nonviolent, sometimes riot police or other forms of law enforcement become involved. In some cases this may be in order to try to prevent the protest from taking place at all, in other cases it may be to prevent clashes between rival groups, or to prevent a demonstration from spreading and turning into a riot. Demonstrations are a form of activism, usually taking the form of a gathering of people in a rally or walking in a march. Thus, the opinion is demonstrated to be significant by gathering in a associated with that opinion. Demonstrations can be used to show a viewpoint regarding a public issue, a demonstration is usually considered more successful if more people participate. There are many types of demonstrations, including a variety of elements and these may include, Marches, in which a parade demonstrate while moving along a set route. Rallies, in which people gather to listen to speakers or musicians, picketing, in which people surround an area. Nudity, in which they protest naked - here the antagonist may give in before the demonstration happens to avoid embarrassment, Demonstrations are sometimes spontaneous gatherings, but are also utilized as a tactical choice by movements. They often form part of a campaign of nonviolent resistance. Demonstrations are usually physical gatherings, but virtual or online demonstrations are certainly possible, topics of demonstrations often deal with political, economic, and social issues. Clashes between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators may turn violent, government-organized demonstrations are demonstrations which are organized by a government. The Islamic Republic of Iran, the Peoples Republic of China, Republic of Cuba, sometimes the date or location chosen for the demonstration is of historical or cultural significance, such as the anniversary of some event that is relevant to the topic of the demonstration. Locations are also chosen because of some relevance to the issue at hand. Protest marches and demonstrations are a nonviolent tactic. They are thus one tactic available to proponents of strategic nonviolence, some demonstrations and protests can turn, at least partially, into riots or mob violence against objects such as automobiles and businesses, bystanders and the police. Police and military authorities often use force or less-lethal weapons, such as tasers, rubber bullets, pepper spray. Sometimes violent situations are caused by the preemptive or offensive use of weapons which can provoke, destabilize
10.
Arrest
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Police and various other bodies have powers of arrest. The word arrest is Anglo-Norman in origin, derived from the French word arrêt meaning to stop or stay, lexicologically, the meaning of the word arrest is given in various dictionaries depending upon the circumstances in which word is used. There are numerous terms for being arrested throughout the world. In British slang terminology, the term nicked is often synonymous with being arrested, and nick can also refer to a station. In the United States and France the term collared is sometimes used, the term lifted is also heard on occasion. According to Indian law, no formality is needed during the procedure of arrest, the arrest can be made by a citizen, a police officer or a Magistrate. The person must then appear in court on the date provided on the citation, prior to the court date, the prosecution will decide whether to file formal criminal charges against the individual. When the accused appears in court, they will be advised if formal criminal charges have been filed, if charges are filed, they will be asked to plead guilty or not guilty at the initial court hearing, which is referred to as the arraignment. When a person is arrested for a crime, in California for example. The accused will be advised of the amount, which is based upon a bail schedule that is established on an annual basis by the judges in each county. When law enforcement agents believe to have cause to arrest a person for a serious crime. The accused will have their mug shot taken and be held in a station or jail pending their ability to post bail. If the accused cannot post bail, they appear at their arraignment where the judge will determine if the bail set by the schedule should be raised, lowered. Also, in states, the prosecution has 48 hours to decide whether or not to file formal charges against the accused. For example, in California, if no charges are filed within the 48-hour period. If formal charges are filed, the accused will be asked to appear at their arraignment, at the arraignment, the accused will be asked to plead guilty or not guilty, and the judge will set a bail amount for the accused. In 2010, the FBI estimated that law enforcement agencies made 13,120,947 arrests. Of those persons arrested,74. 5% were male and 69.4 percent of all persons arrested were white,28.0 percent were black, Arrests under English law fall into two general categories—with and without a warrant—and then into more specific subcategories
11.
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
12.
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
13.
Imperial Guard (Russia)
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The Russian Imperial Guard, officially known as the Leib Guard were military units serving as personal guards of the Emperor of Russia. Peter the Great founded the first such units following the Prussian practice in the 1690s, the Imperial Guard subsequently increased in size and diversity to become an elite corps of all branches within the Imperial Army rather than Household troops in direct attendance on the Tsar. Numerous links were maintained with the Imperial family and the bulk of the regiments of the Imperial Guard were stationed in. The final composition of the Russian Imperial Guard at the beginning of 1914 was, Headquarters, St. Headquarters, St. Headquarters, St. Headquarters, St. Headquarters, St. Headquarters, Warsaw, Poland. 1st Brigade, Life-Guards Lithuania Regiment, Emperor of Austrias Life-Guards Kexholm Regiment 2nd Brigade, following the abolition of the rank of Major in 1884, most grades below VII shifted one position upwards, effectively returning to those of the Old Guards. Imperial Guard Table of Ranks Russian military ranks Toy army of Peter I Russian Imperial Guard During the Napoleonic Wars THE RUSSIAN ARMY,1914 by Mark Conrad,2001
14.
Winter Palace
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The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian monarchs. Today, the restored palace forms part of a complex of housing the Hermitage Museum. The storming of the palace in 1917 as depicted in Soviet paintings, the palace was constructed on a monumental scale that was intended to reflect the might and power of Imperial Russia. From the palace, the Tsar ruled over 22,400,000 square kilometers and it was designed by many architects, most notably Bartolomeo Rastrelli, in what came to be known as the Elizabethan Baroque style. The green-and-white palace has the shape of a rectangle. The Winter Palace has been calculated to contain 1,786 doors,1,945 windows,1,500 rooms and 117 staircases. Following the February Revolution of 1917, the palace was for a time the seat of the Russian Provisional Government. Later that same year, the palace was stormed by a detachment of Red Army soldiers, on a less glorious note, the month-long looting of the palaces wine cellars during this troubled period led to what has been described as the greatest hangover in history. This policy was manifested in bricks and mortar by the creation of a new city, Saint Petersburg, in 1703. The Tsar intended that his new city would be designed in a Flemish renaissance style, later known as Petrine Baroque, and this was the style he selected for his new palace in the city. The first Royal residence on the site had been a log cabin then known as the Domik Petra I, built in 1704. In 1711 it was transported to the Petrovskaya Embankment, where it still stands, with the site cleared, the Tsar then embarked on the building of a larger house between 1711 and 1712. This house, today referred to as the first Winter Palace, was designed by Domenico Trezzini, the 18th century was a period of great development in European royal architecture, as the need for a fortified residence gradually lessened. This process, which had begun in the late 16th century, accelerated, one of the earliest and most notable examples was Louis XIVs Versailles. Largely completed by 1710, Versailles—with its size and splendour—heightened rivalry amongst the sovereigns of Europe, Peter the Great of Russia, keen to promote all western concepts, wished to have a modern palace like his fellow sovereigns. However, unlike some of his successors, Peter I never aspired to rival Versailles, the first Winter Palace was a modest building of two main floors under a slate roof. It seems that Peter soon tired of the first palace, for in 1721 and it was here that Peter the Great died in 1725. The Winter Palace was not the palace in the unfinished city, or even the most splendid, as Peter had ordered his nobles to construct residences
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Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
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Emancipation reform of 1861
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The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. The reform effectively abolished serfdom throughout the Russian Empire, the 1861 Emancipation Manifesto proclaimed the emancipation of the serfs on private estates and of the domestic serfs. By this edict more than 23 million people received their liberty, serfs gained the full rights of free citizens, including rights to marry without having to gain consent, to own property and to own a business. The Manifesto prescribed that peasants would be able to buy the land from the landlords, household serfs were the least affected, they gained only their freedom and no land. In Georgia the emancipation took place later, in 1864, the serfs were emancipated in 1861, following a speech given by Tsar Alexander II on 30 March 1856. State owned serfs, i. e. the serfs living on Imperial lands, were emancipated later in 1866 and they comprised an estimated 38% of the population. As well as having obligations to the state, they also were obliged to the landowner, by the mid-nineteenth century, less than half of Russian peasants were serfs. The rural population lived in households, gathered as villages, run by a mir —isolated, conservative, largely self-sufficient, Imperial Russia had around 20 million dvory, forty percent of them containing six to ten people. Intensely insular, the mir assembly, the skhod, appointed an elder, peasants within a mir shared land and resources. The fields were divided among the families as nadel —a complex of strip plots, the strips were periodically redistributed within the villages to produce level economic conditions. The peasants were duty-bound to make payments in labor and goods. It has been estimated that landowners took at least one third of income, the need for urgent reform was well understood in 19th-century Russia. Much support for it emanated from universities, authors and other intellectual circles, various projects of emancipation reforms were prepared by Mikhail Speransky, Nikolay Mordvinov, and Pavel Kiselyov. However, conservative or reactionary nobility thwarted their efforts, in Western guberniyas serfdom was abolished early in the century. In Congress Poland, serfdom had been abolished before it became Russian, Serfdom was abolished in the Governorate of Estonia in 1816, in Courland in 1817, and in Livonia in 1819. In 1797, Paul I of Russia decreed that corvee labor was limited to 3 days a week, but his law was not enforced. Beginning in 1801, Alexander I of Russia appointed a committee to study possible emancipation and my intention is to abolish serfdom. You can yourself understand that the present order of owning souls cannot remain unchanged and it is better to abolish serfdom from above, than to wait for that time when it starts to abolish itself from below
17.
Alexander II of Russia
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Alexander II was the Emperor of Russia from 2 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881. He was also the King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Finland, Alexanders most significant reform as emperor was emancipation of Russias serfs in 1861, for which he is known as Alexander the Liberator. In foreign policy, Alexander sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, despite his otherwise pacifist foreign policy, he fought a brief war with Turkey in 1877–78, pursued further expansion into Siberia and the Caucasus, and conquered Turkestan. Although disappointed by the results of the Congress of Berlin in 1878, among his greatest domestic challenges was an uprising in Poland in 1863, to which he responded by stripping that land of its separate constitution and incorporating it directly into Russia. Alexander was proposing additional parliamentary reforms to counter the rise of nascent revolutionary, born in Moscow, Alexander Nikolaevich was the eldest son of Nicholas I of Russia and of Charlotte of Prussia. Personal and official censorship was rife, criticism of the authorities was regarded as a serious offence, aleksandrs alleged lack of interest in military affairs resulted from his reaction to the effects of the unsavoury Crimean War of 1853-1856 on his own family and on the whole country. Unusually for the time, the young Alexander was taken on a tour of Russia. He also visited many prominent Western European countries in 1838 and 1839, as Tsesarevich, Alexander became the first Romanov heir to visit Siberia. Alexander II succeeded to the throne upon the death of his father in 1855, the first year of his reign was devoted to the prosecution of the Crimean War and, after the fall of Sevastopol, to negotiations for peace led by his trusted counsellor Prince Alexander Gorchakov. The country had exhausted and humiliated by the war. Bribe-taking, theft and corruption were everywhere, in 1867 he sold Alaska to the United States for $7.2 million after recognising the great difficulty of defending it against the United Kingdom or the former British colony of Canada. After Alexander became emperor in 1855, he maintained a generally liberal course, despite this, he was a target for numerous assassination attempts. On 13 March 1881, members of the Narodnaya Volya party killed him with a bomb and this step had been followed by one even more significant. The hint was taken, in all provinces where serfdom existed, the emancipation was not merely a humanitarian question capable of being solved instantaneously by imperial ukase. It contained very complicated problems, deeply affecting the economic, social and political future of the nation, the emperor gave his support to the latter project, and the Russian peasantry became one of the last groups of peasants in Europe to shake off serfdom. The architects of the manifesto were Alexanders brother Konstantin, Yakov Rostovtsev. On 3 March 1861, six years after his accession, the law was signed and published. The changes included universal military conscription, introduced for all classes on 1 January 1874
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Peasant
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A peasant is a member of a traditional class of farmers, either laborers or owners of small farms, especially in the Middle Ages under feudalism, or more generally, in any pre-industrial society. In Europe, peasants were divided into three classes according to their status, slave, serf, and free tenant. Peasants either hold title to land in fee simple, or hold land by any of several forms of tenure, among them socage, quit-rent, leasehold. The implication of the term is that the peasant is uneducated, ignorant, the word peasant is also commonly used in a non-pejorative sense as a collective noun for the rural population in the poor and under-developed countries of the world. The word peasant is derived from the 15th century French word païsant, meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, Peasants typically made up the majority of the agricultural labour force in a pre-industrial society. The majority of the people in the Middle Ages were peasants, more generally, the word peasant is sometimes used to refer pejoratively to those considered to be lower class, perhaps defined by poorer education and/or a lower income. The open field system of agriculture dominated most of northern Europe during medieval times, under this system, peasants lived on a manor presided over by a lord or a bishop of the church. Peasants paid rent or labor services to the lord in exchange for their right to cultivate the land, fallowed land, pastures, forests, and wasteland were held in common. The open field system required cooperation among the peasants of the manor and it was gradually replaced by individual ownership and management of land. This process happened in a pronounced and truncated way in Eastern Europe. Lacking any catalysts for change in the 14th century, Eastern European peasants largely continued upon the original medieval path until the 18th and 19th centuries, even before emancipation in 1861, serfdom was on the wane in Russia. The proportion of serfs within the empire had decreased from 45-50 percent at the end of the eighteenth century. In Germany, peasants continued to center their lives in the well into the 19th century. They belonged to a body and helped to manage the community resources. In the East they had the status of serfs bound permanently to parcels of land, a peasant is called a Bauer in German and Bur in Low German. In most of Germany, farming was handled by tenant farmers who paid rents, Peasant leaders supervised the fields and ditches and grazing rights, maintained public order and morals, and supported a village court which handled minor offenses. Inside the family the patriarch made all the decisions, and tried to arrange marriages for his children. Much of the communal life centered on church services and holy days
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Working class
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The working class are the people employed for wages, especially in manual-labour occupations and in skilled, industrial work. Working-class occupations include blue-collar jobs, some jobs, and most service-work jobs. As with many terms describing social class, working class is defined and used in different ways. The most general definition, used by Marxists and socialists, is that the class includes all those who have nothing to sell but their labor-power. When used non-academically in the United States, however, it refers to a section of society dependent on physical labor. For certain types of science, as well as scientific or journalistic political analysis, for example. Working-class occupations are then categorized into four groups, Unskilled laborers, artisans, outworkers, a common alternative, sometimes used in sociology, is to define class by income levels. The cut-off between working class and middle class here might mean the line where a population has discretionary income, some researchers have suggested that working-class status should be defined subjectively as self-identification with the working-class group. This subjective approach allows people, rather than researchers, to define their own social class, in feudal Europe, the working class as such did not exist in large numbers. Instead, most people were part of the class, a group made up of different professions, trades. A lawyer, craftsman and peasant were all considered to be part of the social unit. Similar hierarchies existed outside Europe in other pre-industrial societies, the social position of these laboring classes was viewed as ordained by natural law and common religious belief. This social position was contested, particularly by peasants, for example during the German Peasants War, wealthy members of these societies created ideologies which blamed many of the problems of working-class people on their morals and ethics. In The Making of the English Working Class, E. P, starting around 1917, a number of countries became ruled ostensibly in the interests of the working class. Since then, four major states have turned towards semi-market-based governance. Other states of this sort have either collapsed, or never achieved significant levels of industrialization or large working classes, since 1960, large-scale proletarianisation and enclosure of commons has occurred in the third world, generating new working classes. Additionally, countries such as India have been slowly undergoing social change, karl Marx defined the working class or proletariat as individuals who sell their labour power for wages and who do not own the means of production. He argued that they were responsible for creating the wealth of a society and he asserted that the working class physically build bridges, craft furniture, grow food, and nurse children, but do not own land, or factories
20.
Working time
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Working time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week, many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays, and a maximum number of working hours per week. Working time may vary person to person, often depending on location, culture, lifestyle choice. For example, someone who is supporting children and paying a large mortgage will need to work hours to meet basic costs of living than someone of the same earning power without children. Because fewer people than ever are having children, choosing part time work is becoming more popular, standard working hours refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. If an employee needs to work overtime, the employer will need to pay overtime payments to employees as required in the law. Generally speaking, standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 40 to 44 hours per week, maximum working hours refers to the maximum working hours of an employee. The employee cannot work more than the level specified in the working hours law. Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week. Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours, subsequent studies in the 1970s examined the Machiguenga of the Upper Amazon and the Kayapo of northern Brazil. Popular perception is still aligned with the old consensus that hunter-gatherers worked far in excess of modern humans forty-hour week. Peasants and farm laborers moved from areas to work in urban factories. Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was an incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as long as twelve to sixteen hours per day, recent articles supporting a four-day week have argued that reduced work hours would increase consumption and invigorate the economy. However, other state that consumption would decrease. Other arguments for the week include improvements to workers level of education. Reduced hours also save money on day care costs and transportation and these benefits increase workforce productivity on a per-hour basis. The workweek, in most of the world, dropped steadily. The limitation of working hours is also proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the decline continued at a faster pace in Europe, for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000
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Strike action
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Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances, Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. In most countries, strike actions were made illegal, as factory owners had far more power than workers. Most Western countries partially legalized striking in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Notable examples are the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard or 1981 Warning Strike, official publications have typically used the more neutral words work stoppage or industrial dispute. The first historically certain account of action was towards the end of the 20th dynasty. The artisans of the Royal Necropolis at Deir el-Medina walked off their jobs because they had not been paid, the Egyptian authorities raised the wages. An early predecessor of the strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome. In the Outline Of History, H. G. Wells characterized this event as the strike of the plebeians, the plebeians seem to have invented the strike. The strike action became a feature of the political landscape with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, large numbers of people were members of the working class, they lived in cities. By the 1830s, when the Chartist movement was at its peak, in 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into the first modern general strike. Instead of being a spontaneous uprising of the masses, the strike was politically motivated and was driven by an agenda to win concessions. Probably as much as half of the industrial work force were on strike at its peak – over 500,000 men. The local leadership marshalled a growing working class tradition to organize their followers to mount an articulate challenge to the capitalist. Friedrich Engels, an observer in London at the time, wrote, by its numbers, this class has become the most powerful in England, the English proletarian is only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this awareness were the disturbances of last summer. Karl Marx has condemned the theory of Proudhon criminalizing strike action in his work The Poverty of Philosophy, in 1937 there were 4,740 strikes in the United States. This was the greatest strike wave in American labor history, the number of major strikes and lockouts in the U. S. fell by 97% from 381 in 1970 to 187 in 1980 to only 11 in 2010
22.
Underclass
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The underclass is the segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the class has a long tradition in the social sciences. However, the term, underclass, was popularized during the last half of the 20th century, first by social scientists of American poverty. The underclass concept has been a point of controversy among social scientists, definitions and explanations of the underclass, as well as proposed solutions for managing or fixing the underclass problem have been highly debated. Gunnar Myrdal is generally credited as the first proponent of the term underclass, writing in the early 1960s on economic inequality in the U. S. The specific concept of an underclass in the U. S. underwent several transformations during the decades following Myrdals introduction of the term, the definitions vary by which particular dimensions of this group are highlighted. A few popular descriptions of the underclass are considered as follows, erik Olin Wright defines the underclass as a category of social agents who are economically oppressed but not consistently exploited within a given class system. The underclass occupies the lowest possible rung on a class ladder, unlike the working class, which is routinely exploited for their labor power, the underclass, generally speaking, do not hold the labor power worthy of exploitation. This quote partly concerns the spaces and locations for the underclass, the underclass generally occupies specific zones in the city. Thus, the notion of an underclass is popular in Urban Sociology, the term, underclass, and the phrase, urban underclass, are, for the most part, used interchangeably. Studies concerning the post-civil rights African American ghetto often include a discussion of the urban underclass, many writings concerning the underclass, particularly in the U. S. are urban-focused. William Julius Wilsons books, The Declining Significance of Race and The Truly Disadvantaged, are accounts of the black urban underclass. Wilson defines the underclass as a population at the very bottom of the social ladder plagued by poor education. He generally limits his discussion to those trapped in the ghetto in the American rust belt. Elijah Andersons, Streetwise, employs ethnographic methods to study a gentrifying neighborhood, The Village, bordering a black ghetto, Northton, essentially they can be seen as victims of the economic and social system. They make up the unemployed, the underskilled, and the poorly educated, many are intelligent, but they are demoralized by racism and the wall of social resistance facing them. In this context they lose perspective and lack an outlook and sensibility that would allow them to negotiate the wider system of employment, Lawrence M. Mead defines the underclass as a group that is poor and behaviorally deficient. He describes the underclass as dysfunctional, much of the urban underclass is made up of street hustlers, welfare families, drug addicts, and former mental patients
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Okhrana
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Formed to combat political terrorism and left-wing revolutionary activity, the Okhrana operated offices throughout the Russian Empire and satellite agencies in a number of foreign nations. It was concerned primarily with monitoring the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad, including Paris, the task was performed by multiple methods, including covert operations, undercover agents, and perlustration—reading of private correspondence. Even the Foreign Agency served this purpose, the Okhrana was notorious for its agents provocateurs, including Dr. Jacob Zhitomirsky, Yevno Azef, Roman Malinovsky and Dmitry Bogrov. The Okhrana tried to compromise the labour movement by creating police-run trade unions, other controversial activities included alleged fabrication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and fabrication of the antisemitic Beilis trial. Suspects captured by the Okhrana were passed to the Russian judicial system, the Okhrana never received more than 10% of the police budget, the most it ever received being five million rubles in 1914. Its street address, Fontanka,16, was known in the Russian Empire. The position of Chief of Gendarmes was merged with the Minister, still, these measures did not prevent the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881. The Imperial Gendarmerie still operated as security police in the rest of the country through their Gubernial, the rise of the socialist movements called for the integration of security forces. Since 1898, the Special Section of the Department of Police succeeded the Gendarmes in gaining information from domestic and foreign agents, perhaps most paradoxical of all was the Okhrana’s collaboration with revolutionary organizations. Sudeykin and his colleague, a revolutionary-turned-police-informant named Sergey Degayev, passed drafts of the publication through Okhrana censors before printing and this episode marked the beginning of the Okhrana’s efforts to surreptitiously observe, but also influence and undermine, revolutionary movements. To this end, Zubatov created the Moscow Mechanical Production Workers’ Mutual Aid Society in May 1901, after Zubatov was made head of the Special Section in 1902, he expanded his trade unions from Moscow to St. Petersburg and Southern Russia. Although the police-run unions continued to operate after Zubatov’s ousting, without Okhrana funding, Petersburg and were fired upon by Imperial soldiers. K. Plehve on July 15,1904, for over twenty years, the Okhrana had focused on interfering with the activities of relatively small, and distinct, revolutionary groups. The Revolution of 1905, characterized by seemingly spontaneous marches and strikes, not only did the Okhrana lack the capacity to prevent the mass movements of 1905, or even to contain them once they began, the Okhrana’s misguided attempts may even have worsened the unrest. D. F. Trepov, the Assistant Minister of the Interior in charge of police affairs, in October of that year, Trepov again attempted a violent repression of the revolution only to call off the effort for lack of manpower. Since these attempts at repression never reached fruition, they served to aggravate the already enraged Russian populace. Durnovo in late-October ushered in a period of even more repression of the Revolution. Indicative of this new period is the head of the St. Petersburg Special Section, gerasimov’s, strike on the St. Petersburg Soviet
24.
Kirov Plant
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The Kirov Plant, Kirov Factory or Leningrad Kirov Plant is a major Russian machine-building manufacturing plant in St. Petersburg, Russia. It was established in 1789, then moved to its present site in 1801 as a foundry for cannonballs, the Kirov Plant is sometimes confused with another Leningrad heavy weapons manufactory, Factory No.185. In 1868 it was purchased by Nikolay Putilov and named the Putilov Company and it boomed during the industrialization of the 1890s, with the work force quadrupling in a decade, reaching 12,400 in 1900. The factory traditionally produced goods for the Russian government and railway products accounted for more than half of its total output, starting in 1900 it also produced artillery, eventually becoming a major supplier of it to the Imperial Russian Army alongside the state arsenals. By 1917 it grew into a giant enterprise that was by far the largest in the city of St. Petersburg, in February 1917 strikes at the factory contributed to setting in motion the chain of events which led to the February Revolution. After the October Revolution it was renamed Red Putilovite Plant, famous for its manufacture of the first Soviet tractors, Fordzon-Putilovets, the Putilov Plant was famous because of its revolutionary traditions. In the wake of Sergey Kirovs 1934 assassination, the plant was renamed Kirov Factory No.100, in World War II, the KV-1 tank was manufactured here. Starting around 2004 the Dartz T-98 Kombat luxury armored vehicle, somewhat reminiscent of the AM General Hummer, has constructed at the Kirov site
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Russo-Japanese War
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The Russo-Japanese War was fought between the Russian Empire and the Empire of Japan over rival imperial ambitions in Manchuria and Korea. The major theatres of operations were the Liaodong Peninsula and Mukden in Southern Manchuria and the seas around Korea, Japan, Russia sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for their navy and for maritime trade. Vladivostok was operational only during the summer, whereas Port Arthur, since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan feared Russian encroachment on its sphere of influence. Russia had demonstrated an expansionist policy in the Siberian Far East from the reign of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century, through threat of Russian expansion, Japan offered to recognize Russian dominance in Manchuria in exchange for recognition of Korea as being within the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia refused and demanded Korea north of the 39th parallel to be a buffer zone between Russia and Japan. The Japanese government perceived a Russian threat to its strategic interests, after negotiations broke down in 1904, the Japanese Navy opened hostilities by attacking the Russian Eastern Fleet at Port Arthur, China, in a surprise attack. The war concluded with the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by US President Theodore Roosevelt, the complete victory of the Japanese military surprised world observers. The consequences transformed the balance of power in East Asia, resulting in a reassessment of Japans recent entry onto the world stage and it was the first major military victory in the modern era of an Asian power over a European one. Scholars continue to debate the historical significance of the war, after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Meiji government endeavored to assimilate Western ideas, technological advances and ways of warfare. By the late 19th century, Japan had transformed itself into an industrial state. The Japanese wanted to be recognized as equal with the Western powers, the Meiji restoration had always been intended to make Japan a modernized state, not a Westernized one, and Japan was always an imperialist power, looking towards overseas expansionism. By the 1890s it had extended its realm across Central Asia to Afghanistan, the Russian Empire stretched from Poland in the west to the Kamchatka Peninsula in the east. With its construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to the port of Vladivostok, in the Tsushima incident of 1861 Russia had directly assaulted Japanese territory. Between the Meiji Restoration and its participation in World War I, the first war Japan fought was the First Sino-Japanese War, fought in 1894 and 1895. The war revolved around the issue of control and influence over Korea under the rule of the Joseon dynasty, from the 1880s onward, there had been vigorous competition for influence in Korea between China and Japan. The Korean court was prone to factionalism, and was divided by a reformist faction that was pro-Japanese. In 1884, a coup attempt was put down by Chinese troops. A peasant rebellion led by the Tonghak religious movement led to a request by the Korean government for the Qing dynasty to send in troops to stabilize the country
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Universal suffrage
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The concept of universal suffrage, also known as general suffrage or common suffrage, consists of the right to vote of all except a small number of adult citizens. As minors are excluded, the concept is frequently described as universal adult suffrage. Many countries make an exception for small numbers of adults that are considered incapable of voting. Other countries also exclude people convicted of crimes or people in jail. In some countries, including the United States, it is very difficult, in any case, where universal suffrage exists, the right to vote is not restricted by race, sex, belief, wealth, or social status. The term active suffrage is sometimes used for the right to vote, passive suffrage for the right to run for office, the equivalent term when talking about both genders would then be universal full suffrage, or full universal suffrage. Greece recognized full male suffrage in 1830 and France and Switzerland have continuously done so since the 1848 Revolution, the German Empire implemented full male suffrage in 1871. In 1893, the self-governing colony New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant active universal suffrage by giving women the right to vote and it did not grant universal full suffrage until 1919. In 1902 Australia become the first country to grant full suffrage for women, however, universal suffrage was not implemented, as aboriginals didnt get the right to vote until 1962. It also elected the worlds first female members of parliament the following year, in most countries, universal suffrage followed about a generation after universal male suffrage. Notable exceptions in Europe were France, where women could not vote until 1944, Greece and it is worth noting that countries that took a long time to adopt womens suffrage had previously often been pioneers in granting universal male suffrage. In the first modern democracies, governments restricted the vote to those with property and wealth, in some jurisdictions, other restrictions existed, such as requiring voters to practice a given religion. In all modern democracies, the number of people who could vote has increased progressively with time, in the 19th century in Europe, Great Britain and North America, there were movements advocating universal suffrage. The democratic movement of the late 19th century, unifying liberals and social democrats, particularly in northern Europe, used the slogan Equal, the concept of universal suffrage requires the right to vote to be granted to all its residents. All countries, however, do not allow certain categories of citizens to vote, saudi Arabia was the last major country that did not allow women to vote, but admitted women both to voting and candidacy in the 2015 municipal elections. France, under the 1793 Jacobin constitution, was the first major country to enact suffrage for all adult males, the Second French Republic did institute adult male suffrage after the revolution of 1848. In 1867, Germany enacted suffrage for all adult males, in the United States following the American Civil War, slaves were freed and granted rights of citizens, including suffrage for adult males. Several European nations that had enacted universal suffrage had their legal process, or their status as an independent nation, interrupted during
27.
Prikaz
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Prikaz was an administrative, judicial, territorial, and executive offices earlier in Muscovy and Russia of 15th-18th centuries. The term is usually implies ministry, office or department, in modern Russian prikaz literally means an order. Most of Prikazes were subordinated to the Boyar Duma, some of them were subordinated to the Tayny Prikaz, or Privy Prikaz that answered directly to Tsar. The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia had his own Prikazes, there was a large number of specialized Prikazes. The standard form of such complaint included the words Slave of God, in some cases new orders bore the name of this person. From 1512 on Prikaz was starting to be used as a name of constant offices, the classification of the various Prikazes is a very difficult task. In fact, each major historian tries to build their own system of classification, major variants include Prikazes of a territory, of a class of population, or of an area of affairs. Another method of classification is to rank Prikazes by subordination, the Prikazes were abolished by Peter the Great and replaced, beginning in 1717, with administrative organs known as collegiate. This process took a long time, the Siberian Prikaz, for example, was restored in 1730. At the beginning of the 18th century Peter the Great even established some new Prikazes, the system was only fully eliminated Catherine the Great in 1755. Dyak, clerk Podyachy, clerk assistant List of Russian foreign ministers State administration in Russia 16th-17th centuries, in Russian
28.
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
29.
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
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Socialist Revolutionary Party
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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
31.
Tsarskoye Selo
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Tsarskoye Selo was the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located 24 kilometers south from the center of Saint Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin, Tsarskoye Selo forms one of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments. During the Soviet times it was known as Detskoye Selo, in the 17th century, the estate belonged to a Swedish noble. Its original Finnish name is translated as a higher ground. Max Vasmer, on the hand, derives this toponym from the Finnish word for island, saari. By the 18th-century at the latest, it was called Tsarskoye Selo, in 1708, Peter the Great gave the estate to his wife, the future Empress Catherine I, as a present. She founded the Blagoveschensky church there in 1724, and changed the name of the settlement to Blagoveschenskoye and it was Catherine I who started to develop the place as a royal country residence. Her daughter, Empress Elizabeth and her architect Bartolomeo Rastrelli were largely responsible for the building of the Catherine Palace, later Empress Catherine II of Russia and her architect Charles Cameron extended the palace building that is now known as the Cameron Gallery. Currently, there are two palaces, the baroque Catherine Palace with the adjacent Catherine Park and the neoclassical Alexander Palace with the adjacent Alexander Park. The landscape Alexander Park has several Chinoiserie structures, notably the Chinese Village, by the end of the 18th century, Tsarskoye Selo became a popular place of summer residence among the nobility. The guards regiments were stationed to the south of Tsarskoye Selo, the five-domed neoclassical Ascension Cathedral, designed by Cameron, is the chief monument of that area. The Royal Forestry School, perhaps the first such school in Russia, was founded in Tsarskoye Selo in 1803, it was moved to Saint Petersburg in 1811, in 1808, Sophia and Tsarskoye Selo merged and became one town. In 1811, Alexander I opened the celebrated Lyceum next door to the Catherine Palace, among the first students of the Lyceum who graduated in 1817 were Aleksandr Pushkin and Alexander Gorchakov. Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin also graduated from the Lyceum, the literary traditions of Tsarskoye Selo were continued in the 20th century by such notable poets as Anna Akhmatova and Innokenty Annensky. The town escaped the 19th century industrialization, although it was between Tsarskoye Selo and St. Petersburg that the first Russian railway was built in 1837 and it was also known for its powerful government radio station that was set up here in 1917. In the spring of 1917, Emperor Nicholas II was held under arrest in his favourite residence, the Alexander Palace. In 1918, Tsarskoye Selo was renamed by the Bolsheviks into Detskoye Selo and in 1937 it was renamed again to the town of Pushkin, thus commemorating the centenary of the poets death. On September 17,1941, the Germans occupied the town of Pushkin, destroying and plundering many historical monuments, buildings and other cultural artifacts, the Red Army liberated the town on January 24,1944
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Icon
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An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and certain Eastern Catholic churches. The most common subjects include Christ, Mary, saints and/or angels, icons may also be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. Comparable images from Western Christianity are generally not described as icons, Eastern Orthodox tradition holds that the creation of Christian images dates back to the very early days of Christianity, and there is has been a continuous tradition since then. The icons of later centuries can be linked, often closely, to images from the 5th century onwards, there was enormous destruction of images during the Byzantine Iconoclasm of 726-842, although this did settle for good the question of the appropriateness of images. Since then icons have had a continuity of style and subject. At the same time there has been change and development, Christian tradition dating from the 8th century identifies Luke the Evangelist as the first icon painter. Aside from the legend that Pilate had made an image of Christ and he relates that King Abgar of Edessa sent a letter to Jesus at Jerusalem, asking Jesus to come and heal him of an illness. In this version there is no image, further legends relate that the cloth remained in Edessa until the 10th century, when it was taken to Constantinople. It went missing in 1204 when Crusaders sacked Constantinople, but by then numerous copies had firmly established its iconic type. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the manner of the Gentiles. And he called him and said, Lycomedes, what do you mean by this matter of the portrait, can it be one of thy gods that is painted here. For I see that you are living in heathen fashion. Later in the passage John says, But this that you have now done is childish and imperfect, at least some of the hierarchy of the Christian churches still strictly opposed icons in the early 4th century. At the Spanish non-ecumenical Synod of Elvira bishops concluded, Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration. to our religion. After the emperor Constantine I extended official toleration of Christianity within the Roman Empire in 313 and this period of Christianization probably saw the use of Christian images became very widespread among the faithful, though with great differences from pagan habits. Robin Lane Fox states By the early century, we know of the ownership of private icons of saints. 480-500, we can be sure that the inside of a saints shrine would be adorned with images and votive portraits, when Constantine himself apparently converted to Christianity, the majority of his subjects remained pagans
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God Save the Tsar!
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God Save the Tsar. was the national anthem of the former Russian Empire. The song was chosen from a competition held in 1833 and was first performed on 18 December 1833, the composer was violinist Alexei Lvov, and the lyrics were by the court poet Vasily Zhukovsky. It was the anthem until the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which Workers Marseillaise was adopted as the new national anthem until the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government. During the Soviet era, authorities altered Tchaikovskys music, substituting other patriotic melodies, such as the Glory chorus from Mikhail Glinkas opera A Life for the Tsar, charles Gounod uses the theme in his Fantaisie sur lHymne National Russe. William Waltons score for the 1970 film Three Sisters, based on Chekhovs play, is dominated by the theme, in 1842, English author Henry Chorley wrote God, the Omnipotent. Set to Lvovs tune and published in 19th- and 20th-century hymnals as the Russian Hymn. S, maurice Jarres score for the film 1965 film Doctor Zhivago uses this song in several tracks, most notably in the Overture. Russian Anthem Museum ) ) National Anthem Info Brandenburg Historica 2014, military Music and Tradition in Imperial Russia, 1700-1917. „God Save the Tsar. “ in the House of the Union
34.
Nevsky Prospect
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Nevsky Prospect is the main street in the city of St. Petersburg, Russia. The feverish life of the avenue was described by Nikolai Gogol in his story Nevsky Prospekt, fyodor Dostoevsky often employed the Nevksy Prospekt as a setting within his works, such as Crime and Punishment and The Double, A Petersburg Poem. During the early Soviet years the name of Nevsky Prospect was changed, following the demise of Proletkult the name was changed again, this time to Avenue of the 25th of October, alluding to the day of the October Revolution. The Nevsky today functions as the main thoroughfare in Saint Petersburg, the majority of the citys shopping and nightlife are located on or right off the Nevsky Prospekt. The street is served by the stations Admiralteyskaya, Nevsky Prospekt, Gostiny Dvor, Mayakovskaya, Ploshchad Vosstaniya, list of upscale shopping districts Media related to Nevsky Prospekt at Wikimedia Commons
35.
Leon Trotsky
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Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and he was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union from exile, on Stalins orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent. Trotskys ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union and his parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna. The family was of Jewish origin, the language they spoke at home was Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Trotskys younger sister, Olga, who grew up to be a Bolshevik. Many anti-Communists, anti-semites, and anti-Trotskyists have noted Trotskys original surname, some authors, notably Robert Service, have also claimed that Trotskys childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an apparent attempt to emphasize Trotskys Jewish origins but, contrary to Services claims and he says that it is highly improbable that the family was Jewish, as they did not speak Yiddish, the common language among eastern European Jews. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotskys childhood name was Lyova, when Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated in a Jewish school. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial governments policy of Russification. As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a cosmopolitan port city. This environment contributed to the development of the young mans international outlook, although Trotsky said in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently. Trotsky became involved in activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he initially opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism later that year by his future first wife, instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name Lvov, he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, in January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested
36.
Looting
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The term is also used in a broader sense to describe egregious instances of theft and embezzlement, such as the plundering of private or public assets by governments. The proceeds of all these activities can be described as booty, loot, plunder, spoils, looting by a victorious army during war has been common practice throughout recorded history. For foot soldiers, it was viewed as a way to supplement their meagre income and was part of the celebration of victory. To rob them of their wealth, in other pre-modern societies, objects made of precious metals were the preferred target of war looting, largely because of their easy portability. In many cases looting was an opportunity to obtain treasures that otherwise would not have been obtainable, since the 18th century, works of art have increasingly become a popular target. In the 1930s and even more so during World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in large scale and organized looting of art, looting, combined with poor military discipline, has occasionally been an armys downfall. In other cases, for example the Wahhabi sack of Karbala, not all looters in wartime are conquerors, the looting of Vistula Land by its retreating defenders in 1915 was among the factors sapping the loyalty of Poland in World War I. Local civilians can also take advantage of a breakdown of order to loot public and private property, the novel War and Peace describes widespread looting by Moscows citizens before Napoleons troops enter the town, and looting by French troops elsewhere. Looting can also refer to antiquities formerly removed from countries by outsiders, other examples include the obelisks of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, in the, Pharaoh Ptolemy IX. In the aftermath of the Second World War Soviet forces systematically plundered the Soviet occupation zone of Germany and they sent valuable industrial equipment, infrastructure and whole factories to the Soviet Union. Especially during natural disasters, some find themselves forced to take what is not theirs in order to survive. How to respond to this, and where the line between unnecessary looting and necessary scavenging lies, is often a dilemma for governments, in other cases, looting may be tolerated or even encouraged by governments for political or other reasons. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 explicitly prohibits the looting of property during wartime. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 obliges military forces not only to avoid destruction of enemy property, theoretically, to prevent such looting, unclaimed property is moved to the custody of the Custodian of Enemy Property, to be handled until the return to its owner. Around the same time of the Hyksos invasion and occupation of Egypt, in Genesis 15,14, the despoliation is an act of justifiable vengeance upon the oppressors of Israel. Yet in Exodus, God uses the plagues as an act of mercy to bring a knowledge of himself to Israel, Pharaoh, the Egyptians, and to the ends of the earth. See Hyksos Iconoclasm and Genesis 13,2 and Genesis 15,14 and Exodus 12,36 Following the death of Valentinian III in 455, in 870 AD, the Byzantine city of Melite was captured by the Aghlabids under Sawāda Ibn Muḥammad. The city was destroyed, its churches looted and its population massacred, marble from the citys churches was used to build the castle of Sousse
37.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
38.
Leo Tolstoy
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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Tolstoys fiction includes dozens of stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays, in the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy also became an advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres southwest of Tula, the Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, tracing their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University and his teachers described him as both unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, in 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about time that he started writing. Others who followed the path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed an execution in Paris. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. Tolstoys concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural and he later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice. His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugos newly finished Les Misérables, the similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugos novel and Tolstoys War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoys political philosophy was influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
39.
Boyar
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The rank has lived on as a surname in Russia, Ukraine and Romania, and also in Finland, where it is spelled Pajari. Also known as bolyar, the various names in other languages include Bulgarian, боляр or болярин, Ukrainian, буй or боярин, Russian, боя́рин. Multiple different derivation theories of the word have been suggested by scholars and linguists, such as it having possible roots from old Turkic, bai and är. Another possible etymology of the term it may come from the Romanian word boi, the title entered Old Russian as быля. It was probably transformed through boilar or bilyar to bolyar and bolyarin, a member of the nobility during the First Bulgarian Empire was called a boila, while in the Second Bulgarian Empire, the corresponding title became bolyar or bolyarin. Bolyar, as well as its predecessor, boila, was a hereditary title, the Bulgarian bolyars were divided into veliki and malki. Presently in Bulgaria, the word bolyari is used as a nickname for the inhabitants of Veliko Tarnovo—once the capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire. In medieval Serbia, the rank of the Boyars was equivalent to the rank of the Baron, meaning free warrior, with the rule of the Ottoman Empire after 1450, the Ottoman as well as the Austro-Hungarian terms exchanged the Serbian one. Today, it is a term representing the aristocracy. Boyars 9th - 13th centuries, wielded power through their military support of the Kievan princes. Power and prestige of many of them, however, soon came to depend almost completely on service to the state, family history of service and, to a lesser extent, land ownership. Boyars of Kievan Rus were visually similar to knights, but after the Mongol invasion. The boyars occupied the highest state offices and, through a council and they received extensive grants of land and, as members of the Boyars Duma, were the major legislators of Kievan Rus. After the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, the boyars from central and southern parts of Kievan Rus were incorporated into Lithuanian, during the 14th and 15th centuries, the boyars of Moscow had considerable influence that continued from the Muscovy period. However, starting with the reign of Ivan III, the boyars were starting to lose that influence to the tsars in Russia. Because of Ivan III’s expansionist policies, administrative changes were needed in order to ease the burden of governing Muscovy, the face of provincial rule disappeared. What is interesting about the boyars is their implied duties, because boyars were not constitutionally instituted, much of their powers and duties came from agreements signed between princes. Agreements, such as one between Ivan III and Mikhail Borisovich in 1484 showed how allegiances needed to be earned and secured, instead of the grand prince personally overseeing his lands, he had to rely on his lieutenants and close advisors to oversee day-to-day operations
40.
Dmitri Shostakovich
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Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Russian pianist and composer of the Soviet period. He is regarded as one of the composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. A polystylist, Shostakovich developed a voice, combining a variety of different musical techniques into his works. Shostakovichs orchestral works include 15 symphonies and six concerti and his chamber output includes 15 string quartets, a piano quintet, two piano trios, and two pieces for string octet. His solo piano works include two sonatas, an set of preludes, and a later set of 24 preludes and fugues. Born at Podolskaya street in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Shostakovich was the second of three children of Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich and Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, Shostakovichs paternal grandfather, originally surnamed Szostakowicz, was of Polish Roman Catholic descent, but his immediate forebears came from Siberia. When his term of exile ended, Szostakowicz decided to remain in Siberia and he eventually became a successful banker in Irkutsk and raised a large family. His son, Dmitri Boleslavovich Shostakovich, the father, was born in exile in Narim in 1875 and studied physics and mathematics in Saint Petersburg University. He then went to work as an engineer under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Bureau of Weights, in 1903 he married another Siberian transplant to the capital, Sofiya Vasilievna Kokoulina, one of six children born to a Russian Siberian native. Their son, Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, displayed significant musical talent after he began lessons with his mother at the age of nine. In 1918 he wrote a march in memory of two leaders of the Kadet party, murdered by Bolshevik sailors. In 1919, at the age of thirteen, he was allowed to enter the Petrograd Conservatory, then headed by Alexander Glazunov, Shostakovich also attended Alexander Ossovskys history of music classes. Steinberg tried to guide Shostakovich in the path of the great Russian composers and he also suffered for his perceived lack of political zeal, and initially failed his exam in Marxist methodology in 1926. His first major achievement was the First Symphony, written as his graduation piece at the age of nineteen. After graduation, Shostakovich initially embarked on a career as concert pianist and composer. He nevertheless won a mention at the First International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in 1927. He explained the disappointment at the competition to suffering from appendicitis and he later had his appendix removed in April 1927
41.
Symphony No. 11 (Shostakovich)
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The Symphony No.11 in G minor by Dmitri Shostakovich was written in 1957 and premiered, by the USSR Symphony Orchestra under Natan Rakhlin, on 30 October 1957. The subtitle of the symphony refers to the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the symphony was conceived as a popular piece and proved an instant success in Russia—his greatest, in fact, since the Leningrad Symphony fifteen years earlier. The works popular success, as well as its earning him a Lenin Prize in April 1958, stalins subjective attitude to certain works of art and the very adverse influence exercised on Stalin by Molotov, Malenkov and Beria. The symphony has four movements played without break, and lasts one hour. Adagio The first movement is cold, quiet, and somewhat menacing, with transparent strings and this is underscored with brass calls, also as though from a great distance. Allegro The second movement, referring to the events of the Bloody Sunday and this first section is busy and constantly moves forward. It builds to two steep climaxes, then recedes into a deep, frozen calm in the piccolo and flute melodies. Another full orchestra build-up launches into a march, in a burst from the snare drum like gunfire and fugal strings. This breaks out into a section of relentless strings, and trombone and tuba glissandos procure a nauseating sound underneath the panic. Then comes a section of mechanical, heavily repetitive snare drum, bass drum, timpani, numbness sets in with a section reminiscent of the first movement. Adagio The third movement is a lament on the violence, based on the funeral march You Fell as Victims. Toward the end, there is one more outbreak, where material from the movement is represented. Allegro non troppo The finale begins with a march, which reaches a violent climax, followed by a return to the quietness of the opening of the symphony, introducing a haunting cor anglais melody. After the extended solo, the bass clarinet returns to the violence. The march builds to a climax with snare drum and chimes in which the rings out in a resilient G minor. In the end, neither party wins, as the last full measure is a sustained G natural. The Eleventh is sometimes dubbed a film score without the film, Some of these songs date back to the 19th century, others to the year 1905. Shostakovich does not merely quote these songs, he integrates them into the symphonic fabric within the bounds of his compositional style and this use of pseudo-folk material was a marked departure from his usual technique
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Maxim Gorky
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Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was also a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire. Gorkys most famous works were The Lower Depths, Twenty-six Men and he had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs. Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement and he publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanovs Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia, in 1932, he returned to Russia on Joseph Stalins personal invitation and died there in June 1936. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod and he was brought up by his grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs, as a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида. He began using the pseudonym Gorky in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ, the name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorkys first book Очерки и рассказы in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity. Gorkys reputation grew as a literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russias social, political. By 1899, he was associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth, in his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou and he publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press, in 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy, from 1900 to 1905, Gorkys writings became more optimistic
