1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
3.
Oblasts of Ukraine
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An oblast, in English referred to as a region, refers to one of Ukraines 24 primary administrative units. Ukraine is a state, thus, the regions do not have much legal scope of competence other than that which is established in the Ukrainian Constitution. Articles 140-146 of Chapter XI of the constitution deal directly with local authorities, oblasts are further subdivided into raions, ranging in number from 11 to 27 per entity. In Ukraine the term Oblast denotes a primary administrative division, under the Russian Empire and into the 1920s, Ukraine was divided between several Governorates. The first oblasts were Vinnytsia Oblast, Kiev Oblast, Odessa Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, between 1935-1938 there existed several newly created and self-governed special border okrugs located along the western border of the Soviet Union in Ukraine and Belarus. Upon liquidation of the okrugs in 1937-38 Kiev, Vinnytsia, Odessa, just before the World War II, the Donetsk Oblast was split into Stalino Oblast and Voroshylovhrad Oblast and the Kirovohrad Oblast was created out of portions of Kiev, Mykolaiv and Odessa oblasts. During World War II Ukraine added eight additional oblasts of the West Ukraine, with the re-establishing of the Soviet power in the state after the war, the administrative division by oblast was resumed adding one more oblast—Zakarpattia. In 1959, Drohobych Oblast was merged with Lviv Oblast, most of Ukraines oblasts are named after their respective administrative centers, which are also the largest and most developed city in a given region. Each region generally consists of one to two million of people, ranging anywhere from as low as 904,000 in Chernivtsi Oblast to 4.4 million in the eastern oblast of Donetsk. Each oblast is subdivided into about 20 raions. The specific text of the constitution refers to the territorial structure is as follows. Each of Ukraines oblasts have their own legislative and executive authority, each region is administered under laws passed by the Ukrainian government and the Constitution of Ukraine. Each region levies its own taxes and, in return, receive a portion of their budget from Kiev, executive power each of the oblasts are exercised by local elected administrations. The heads of local administrations are in turn appointed and dismissed by the President of Ukraine upon nomination by the Cabinet of Ministers, since Ukraine is a unitary state, there is little true political power and weight that these local administrations actually hold. Carrying out their authorities, the heads of local administrations are accountable to the President and are subordinate to higher bodies of executive leadership, legislative power in the oblast governments is exercised by their respective oblast councils, which in turn supervise the activities of local administrations. They also have considerable budgets managed by an oblast council made up of deputies voted into office in regional elections every 4 years. The name of each oblast is an adjective, formed by adding a feminine suffix to the name of respective center city. Poltava is a center of Poltavska oblast, most of them are also sometimes referred to in a feminine noun form, following the convention of traditional regional place names, ending with the suffix -shchyna
4.
Cherkasy Oblast
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Cherkasy Oblast is an oblast of central Ukraine located along the Dnieper River. The administrative center of the oblast is the city of Cherkasy, with 20,900 km², the Cherkasy oblast is the 18th largest oblast of Ukraine, comprising about 3. 5% of the area of the country. The south flowing Dnieper River with the western bank and the plain eastern bank divides the oblast into two unequal parts. The larger western part belongs to the Dnieper Upland, the oblast extends for 245 km from south-west to north-east, and for 150 km from north to south. The geometric centre of the oblast is located near the village Zhuravky of the Horodyshchenskyi Raion, the oblast borders the Kiev Oblast to the north, the Kirovohrad Oblast to the south, the Poltava Oblast to the east, and the Vinnytsia Oblast to the west. The Cherkasy Oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on January 7,1954. The oblasts territory was the cities of Cherkasy, Smila and Uman, their corresponding raions, as well as 30 former raions of the Vinnytsia, Kiev, Kirovohrad. Archaeological discoveries, have shown that people have inhabited the valley of the Dnieper River since the times immemorial, the oldest objects excavated on the territory of the region date back to the Stone Age – the Palaeolithic period. There are a total of 25 cities,34 towns, and 838 villages, the local administration of the oblast is controlled by the Cherkasy Oblast Rada. The governor of the oblast is the Cherkasy Oblast Rada speaker, the current estimated population is 1,335,064. According to the 2001 Ukrainian census, the population is almost equally divided between the urban and rural areas. The demographic situation in this largely agricultural territory is somewhat complicated by population ageing, by ethnic composition, Ukrainians represent the overwhelming majority of the oblasts population. Ethnic Russians are the distant second group of population, and are concentrated mainly in the city of Cherkasy. 0-14 years,13. 4% 15-64 years,69. 1%65 years, while the winter wheat and sugar beets are the main products grown in the oblast, barley, corn, tobacco and hemp are also grown. The industry is concentrated in Cherkasy, the oblasts capital. A chemical industry was developed in the city in late 1960s in addition to building, furniture making. Most of Ukraines oblasts are named after their cities, officially referred to as oblast centers. The name of each oblast is an adjective, formed by adding a feminine suffix to the name of respective center city
5.
Raions of Ukraine
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Raions of Ukraine are second level of administrative division of Ukraine and are primary the most common division of regions of Ukraine. Equivalent type of subdivision are also raions in city. Sometimes these districts are known as rural districts to distinguish them from raions in city or city districts. Raions are one of three types of divisions of regions of Ukraine and second level in the administrative divisions of Ukraine. There are 490 raions in 24 oblasts and the Crimea autonomous republic of Ukraine, the number of raions per region varies between 11 and over 20. The average area of a Ukrainian raion is 1,200 km2, the city municipalities of regional significance have an independent of raion jurisdiction. The number of such cities varies from one region to another, in the list below they are listed separately as well. Each raion consist of urban or rural municipalities that are administrated by their local councils. They are the lowest level of administrative division, some cities of oblast subordination along with the two cities of national significance are also divided in city raions. City raions have their own administration and are subordinated directly to a city. They may contain cities, towns, and villages. Note, region is a term referring to oblasts, the republic. The population recorded in the table is listed in accordance to the latest census taken in the country, asterisk identifies raions with administrative centers located outside of them. Administrative divisions of Ukraine 2001 Ukrainian census, Population Structure Regions of Ukraine and its composition
6.
Ukrainian language
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Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
7.
Cossack Hetmanate
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The Cossack Hetmanate, officially known as the Ruthenian State or Zaporizhian Host, was a Ukrainian Cossack state in Central Ukraine between 1649 and 1764. For other names, please, see section Name, the Hetmanate was founded by the Hetman of Zaporizhian Host Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the Uprising of 1648–57. The official document, which symbolized union between Russia and Ukraine, however, was never preserved and is thought to be fictional. After a failed attempt to break the union with Russia by Ivan Mazepa in 1708, Catherine II of Russia officially abolished the institute of Hetman in 1764 and in 1764-1781 Cossack Hetmanate was incorporated as the Little Russia Governorate headed by Pyotr Rumyantsev. The official name of the Cossack Hetmanate was Zaporizhian Host, the historiographic term Hetmanate or Hetman state were coined in the late 19th century. It derives from the word hetman, the title of the general of the Zaporizhian Army, inhabitants of the Cossack Hetmanate referred to it in Ukrainian as Ukraine or Vkraine. In Muscovite diplomatic correspondence it was called the Little Russian State, in Polish, Ottoman, the Cossack Hetmanate was called the country of Ukraine by the Ottoman Empire. The founder of the Hetmanate, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, declared himself as the ruler of the Ruthenian state to the Polish representative Adam Kysil in February 1649 and he also called the Hetmanate as Ruthenian state in his letter to the Tsar on February 17,1654. His contemporary Metropolitan Sylvestr Kosiv recognized him as the leader and the commander of our land, Şerban he referred to himself as Clementiae divinae Generalis Dux Exercituum Zaporoviensium. He warned them about his intention to resume his military campaign, however, after obtaining an intelligence report of the superior cossack forces, the Polish troops retreated to Zbarazh to set a defense. The forces of Jeremi Wiśniowiecki reinforced the Zbarazh defenders while he took the lead of all Polish forces, Khmelnytsky besieged the city wearing down through series of random attacks and firing at it. The king while rushing to help Wisznewecki was ambushed with his newly gathered forces, Khmelnytsky leaving part of his army with Ivan Cherniata near Zbarazh moved together with İslâm III Giray to intercept the Polish reinforcements and block their way at a river crossing near Zboriv. Caught be some degree of surprise John Casimir started negotiations with the Tatars khan, bringing khan on his side they forced Khmelnytsky to start peace negotiations. Khmelnytsky signed the Treaty of Zboriv in August 1649 and was less than the cossack leader has anticipated from his campaign. As ruler of the Hetmanate, Khmelnytsky engaged in state-building across multiple spheres, in the military, administration, finance, economics, and culture. He invested the Zaporozhian Host under the leadership of its hetman with supreme power in the new Ruthenian state, the Hetmanate used Polish currency, and Polish as an administrative language and a language of command. This is known as the modern Ukrainian language, the treaty also led to the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667. The period in Hetmanate history, known as the Ruin, which lasted from 1657 to 1687, was marked by constant civil wars throughout the state, at the end of Bohdan Khmelnytskys life, his son Yuri Khmelnytsky was elected to be his successor
8.
Hetmans of Ukrainian Cossacks
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Hetman of Zaporizhian Cossacks as a military title was not officially recognized internationally until the creation of the Cossack Hetmanate. With the creation of Registered Cossacks units their leaders were officially referred to as hetmans of His Royal Mercy of Zaporozhian Host, before 1648 and the establishment of Cossack Hetmanate there were numerous regional hetmans across the Dnieper-banks, who usually were starostas or voivodes. According to Mykola Hrushevsky they were not really considered as hetman, among other such starostas were Karpo Maslo from Cherkasy, Yatsko Bilous, Andrushko, and many others. Even Princes Konstanty Ostrogski and Bohdan Hlinski were conducting Cossack raids on Tatar uluses, the commanders of Zaporozhian Host often considered as hetmans in fact carried a title of Kosh Otaman. As from 1572, hetman was the title of commanders of the Registered Cossack Army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. From the 1648 Bohdan Khmelnytsky uprising, Hetman was the title of the head of the Cossack state, Cossack hetmans had very broad powers and acted as supreme military commanders and executive leader. Eventually the official powers of Cossack Hetmans were gradually diminished in the 18th century. Predslav Lyantskoronsky, not an actual hetman, he was a starosta of Khmilnyk Ostap Dashkevych, not an actual hetman and he also saw Cossack interests in the independence of Ukraine from Poland. Dmytro Hunia, leader in Zaporizhia Historians such as Mykola Arkas question legitimacy of the Teterias elections accusing the later in corruption, also some sources claim election of Teteria being taken place in January 1663. The election of Teteria led to the Povoloch Regiment Uprising in 1663, moreover, the political crisis that followed the Pushkar–Barabash Uprising divided the Cossack Hetmanate completely on both bank of Dnieper River. Coincidentally, on January 10,1663 the Tsardom of Muscovy created the new Little Russian Office within its Ambassadorial Office, in 1681 Mehmed IV appointed George Ducas the Hetman of Ukraine, replacing Khmelnytsky. Following the anathema on Mazepa and the election of Ivan Skoropadsky, upon the death of Skoropadsky, the Hetman elections were disrupted and were awarded as a gift and a type of princely titles, first to Moldavian nobleman and later to the Russian Empress favorite. On 5 April 1710 the council of cossacks, veterans of the battle at Poltava, Orlyk waged a guerrilla warfare at the southern borders of the Russian Empire with the support from Ottoman and Swedish empires. In 1675 John III Sobieski awarded the title to some Ostap Hohol, same thing happened in 1683 when John III Sobieski awarded the title to Stefan Kunicki and in 1684 to Andriy Mohyla. Those awards were given during the Great Turkish War, title existed in 1669 to 1683. Petro Doroshenko Yuri Khmelnytsky George Ducas The title existed in 1710-1760
9.
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
10.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
11.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
12.
Tiasmyn River
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The Tiasmyn river is a right tributary of the Dnieper River in Ukraine. The Tiasmyn originates in the central part of the Dnieper hills in the central Ukrainian province of Kirovohrad. From there it flows through the Cherkasy Oblast, where it flows into the Kremenchuk Reservoir. The river forms a U-turn in its central run, not counting the rivers sharp turn, the rivers source and its delta are located only 33 km away from each other. Along the rivers lower section there are important discovery sites of the Bilogrudivka/Chernoles culture near the settlement of Subotiv and these findings represent key late Bronze Age discoveries. Cities and towns located on the river include, Kamianka, Smila, and Chyhyryn
13.
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
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The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 13th century until 1795. The state was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic Baltic tribes from Aukštaitija, the Grand Duchy later expanded to include large portions of the former Kievan Rus and other Slavic lands, including territory of present-day Belarus, parts of Ukraine, Poland and Russia. At its greatest extent in the 15th century, it was the largest state in Europe and it was a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state with great diversity in languages, religion, and cultural heritage. Consolidation of the Lithuanian lands began in the late 12th century, Mindaugas, the first ruler of the Grand Duchy, was crowned as Catholic King of Lithuania in 1253. The pagan state was targeted in the crusade by the Teutonic Knights. The multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state emerged only at the reign of Gediminas. The reign of Vytautas the Great marked both the greatest territorial expansion of the Grand Duchy and the defeat of the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 and it also marked the rise of the Lithuanian nobility. After Vytautass death, Lithuanias relationship with the Kingdom of Poland greatly deteriorated, Lithuanian noblemen, including the Radvila family, attempted to break the personal union with Poland. However, the unsuccessful Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars with the Grand Duchy of Moscow forced the union to remain intact, eventually, the Union of Lublin of 1569 created a new state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In this federation, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania maintained its political distinctiveness and had separate government, laws, army, shortly after, the unitary character of the state was confirmed by adopting the Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations. The newly reformed Commonwealth was invaded by Russia in 1792 and partitioned between the neighbours, with a truncated state remaining only nominally independent, after the Kościuszko Uprising, the territory was partitioned among the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, and Austria in 1795. The Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania name the name of the state as Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Ruthenia and Samogitia. The title of Grand Duchy was consistently applied to Lithuania from the 14th century onward, in the 12th century, Slavic chronicles refer to Lithuania as one of the areas attacked by the Rus. Pagan Lithuanians initially paid tribute to Polotsk, but they grew in strength. The sudden spark of military raids marked consolidation of the Lithuanian lands in Aukštaitija, the Livonian Order and Teutonic Knights, crusading military orders, were established in Riga in 1202 and in Prussia in 1226. The Christian orders posed a significant threat to pagan Baltic tribes, the peace treaty with Galicia–Volhynia of 1219 provides evidence of cooperation between Lithuanians and Samogitians. This treaty lists 21 Lithuanian dukes, including five senior Lithuanian dukes from Aukštaitija, although they had battled in the past, the Lithuanians and the Žemaičiai now faced a common enemy. Likely Živinbudas had the most authority and at least several dukes were from the same families, the formal acknowledgment of common interests and the establishment of a hierarchy among the signatories of the treaty foreshadowed the emergence of the state
14.
Kiev Voivodeship
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The voivodeship was established in 1471 under the order of King Casimir IV Jagiellon soon after the death of Semen Olelkovich. It had replaced the former Principality of Kiev, ruled by Lithuanian-Ruthenian Olelkovich princes and its first administrative center was Kiev, but when the city was given to Imperial Russia in 1667 by Treaty of Andrusovo, the capital moved to Zhytomyr, where it remained until 1793. It was the biggest voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by land area, covering, among others, the governor of the voivodeship was voivode. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth the other two major positions were castellan and bishop. 4, Urzędnicy województw kijowskiego i czernihowskiego XV-XVIII wieku, opracowali Eugeniusz Janas i Witold Kłaczewski, Kórnik, województwo kijowskie w czasach Zygmunta III Wazy, studium osadnictwa i stosunków własności ziemskiej. Napływ szlachty polskiej na Ukrainę 1569–1648, ISBN 83-86951-67-2 The Spatial Structure of the Kiev Voivodeship and its Impact on the Political and Social Life of the Gentry in 1569–1648. Struktura przestrzenna województwa kijowskiego i jej wpływ na życie polityczne i społeczne szlachty w latach 1569–1648, egzulanci w Rzeczypospolitej w ostatnich latach panowania Jana Kazimierza i za panowania Michała Korybuta Wiśniowieckiego. Dzieje rezydencji na dawnych kresach Rzeczypospolitej, boristhenem alias Dzikie Pola. by Joannis Janssonii. Der königlichen Republik Polen Woiwodschaft Kiow das ist die obere Polnische Ukraine oder Klein Polens oestlicher Theil, franz Johann Josef von Reilly 1791 Kiev Voivodeship in the Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine
15.
Crown of the Kingdom of Poland
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The Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, or simply the Crown, is the common name for the historic Late Middle Ages territorial possessions of the King of Poland, including Poland proper. The kingdom has been dated back to c. 966, when Mieszko I and his pagan Slavic realm joined Christian Europe and his oldest son and successor, Prince Bolesław I Chrobry, Duke of Poland, became the first crowned King of Poland in 1025. The creation of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland was a milestone in the evolution of Polish statehood and it represented the concept of the Polish kingdom as distinctly separate from the person of the monarch. A related concept that evolved soon afterward was that of Rzeczpospolita, the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland was also related to other symbols of Poland, such as the capital, the Polish coat of arms and the flag of Poland. The concept of the Crown also had a geographical aspects, particularly related to the indivisibility of the Polish - Crown -territory. It can be seen as a unit of administrative division. Parts formed part at the early Kingdom of Poland, then, at the same time, the Crown also referred to all lands that the Polish state could claim to have the right to rule over, including those that were not within Polish borders. The term distinguishes those territories federated with the Crown Grand Duchy of Lithuania from various fiefdom territories, such as the Duchy of Prussia and the Duchy of Courland. Prior to the 1569 Union of Lublin, Crown territories may be understood as those of Poland proper, inhabited by Poles, with the Union of Lublin, however, most of present-day Ukraine, passed onto Polish administration, thus becoming Crown territory. During that period, a term for a Pole from the Crown territory was koroniarz - or Crownlander in English - derived from Korona - the Crown and this often meant a distinction between persons loyal to the elected King and persons loyal to Polish magnate. Crown lands were divided into two provinces, Lesser Poland and Greater Poland and these were further divided into administrative units known as voivodeships. Royal Prussia included Pomerelia, Chełmno Land, Malbork Voivodeship, Gdańsk, Toruń, Polish historian Henryk Wisner writes that Royal Prussia belonged to the Province of Greater Poland. The towns affected were, Biała, Lubica, Wierzbów, Spiska Sobota, Poprad, Straże, Spiskie Włochy, Nowa Wieś, Spiska Nowa Wieś, Ruszkinowce, Wielka, Spiskie Podgrodzie, Maciejowce, Twarożne. Wenceslaus I sold the Duchy of Siewierz to the Archbishop of Kraków, Zbigniew Cardinal Oleśnicki, after that point it was considered to be associated with the Lesser Poland Province and was the only ecclesiastical duchy in Lesser Poland. In 1641 it became part of the Pomeranian Voivodeship of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Duchy of Livonia was held as a condominium with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia was held as a condominium with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, jan Herburt, Statuta Regni Poloniae, in ordinem alphabeti digesta, Cracoviae 1563. Jan Dąbrowski, Korona Królestwa Polskiego w XIV wieku, studium z dziejów rozwoju polskiej monarchii stanowej, stanisław Szczur, Historia Polski Średniowiecze, Wydawnictwo Literackie 2002, ISBN 83-08-03272-9
16.
Union of Lublin
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The Union of Lublin was signed July 1,1569, in Lublin, Poland, and created a single state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In addition, the autonomy of Royal Prussia was largely abandoned, the Duchy of Livonia, tied to Lithuania in real union since the Union of Grodno, became a Polish–Lithuanian condominium. The Commonwealth was ruled by an elected monarch who carried out the duties of King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. The Union was a stage in the Polish–Lithuanian alliance and personal union. Constituting a crucial event in the history of nations, the Union of Lublin has been viewed quite differently by many historians. Sometimes identified as the moment at which the Szlachta rose to the height of their power, some Lithuanian historians are more critical of the Union, pointing out that it was an effect of domination by Polish nobles. The Polish nobility on the hand were reluctant to offer help to Lithuania without receiving anything in exchange. Still, the Polish and Lithuanian elite strengthened personal bonds and had opportunities to plan their united futures during increased military cooperation in the 1560s, a clear motivation for Sigismund is that he was the last Jagiello and had no children nor brothers who could inherit the throne. So the Union was an attempt to preserve the continuity of his dynastys work since the union of Poland and Lithuania at the marriage of Jadwiga of Poland. The Union was one of the changes required to establish a formal elected monarchy that would simultaneously reign over the two domains. The Sejm met in January,1569, near the Polish town of Lublin, one of the points of contention was the right of Poles to settle and own land in the Grand Duchy. Bratslav and eastern Podolia were also transferred to Poland and these historic lands of Rus comprise over half of modern Ukraine, and were at that time a substantial portion of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanias territory. The Rus nobles there were eager to capitalize on the economic and political opportunities offered by the Polish sphere, the Lithuanians were forced to return to the Sejm under the leadership of Jan Hieronimowicz Chodkiewicz and to continue negotiations, using slightly different tactics than Mikołaj the Red Radziwiłł. Though the Polish szlachta wanted full incorporation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into the Crown, on 28 June 1569, the last objections were overcome, and on 4 July an act was accordingly signed by the King at Lublin Castle. The Union of Lublin was superseded by the Constitution of May 3,1791 from 1791, the status of semi-federal state was restored by the Reciprocal Guarantee of Two Nations. However, the constitution was not fully implemented and the Commonwealth was ended by the late 18th century Partitions of the Commonwealth, with the last one in 1795. After the Union, the Lithuanian nobles had the formal rights as the Polish to rule the lands. However, political advancement in the Catholic-dominated Commonwealth was a different matter, by the late 15th century, the Polish language was already making rapid inroads among the Lithuanian and Rus elites
17.
Magdeburg rights
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Named after the German city of Magdeburg, these town charters were perhaps the most important set of medieval laws in Central Europe thus far. They became the basis for the German town laws developed during many centuries in the Holy Roman Empire, in medieval Poland, Jews were invited along with German merchants to settle in cities as part of the royal city development policy. Jews and Germans were sometimes competitors in those cities, Jews lived under privileges that they carefully negotiated with the king or emperor. They were not subject to city jurisdiction and these privileges guaranteed that they could maintain communal autonomy, live according to their laws, and be subjected directly to the royal jurisdiction in matters concerning Jews and Christians. Other provisions frequently mentioned were a permission to sell meat to Christians, external merchants coming into the city were not allowed to trade on their own, but instead forced to sell the goods they had brought into the city to local traders, if any wished to buy them. Being a member of the Hanseatic League, Magdeburg thus was one of the most important trade cities also, maintaining commerce with the Low countries, the Baltic states, in these lands they were mostly known as German or Teutonic law. The Law of Magdeburg implemented in Poland was different from its original German form and it was combined with a set of civil and criminal laws, and adjusted to include the urban planning popular across Western Europe – which was based on the ancient Roman model. Polish land owners used the location known as settlement with German law across the country usually with no German settlers present. Meanwhile, the people often ignorant of the actual German text. The advantages were not only economic, but also political, members of noble families were able to join the city patriciate usually unchallenged. In the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, the first town to receive the Magdeburg rights was Székesfehérvár in 1237, followed by, towns and cities including Bardejov, Buda, Bratislava and Košice adopted the Southern German Nuremberg town rights, rather than the Magdeburg rights. German town law Kulm law Lübeck law Danzig law
18.
Sigismund III Vasa
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He was the son of King John III of Sweden and his first wife, Catherine Jagellonica of Poland. Elected to the throne of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Sigismund sought to create a union between the Commonwealth and Sweden, and succeeded for a time in 1592. After he had deposed in 1599 from the Swedish throne by his uncle, Charles IX of Sweden. Shortly after his victory over his enemies, Sigismund took advantage of a period of civil unrest in Muscovy and invaded Russia. In 1617 the Polish–Swedish conflict, which had been interrupted by an armistice in 1611, while Sigismunds army was also fighting Ottoman forces in Moldavia, King Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden invaded Sigismunds lands, capturing Riga and seizing almost all of Polish Livonia. Sigismund, who concluded the Truce of Altmark with Sweden in 1629 and his Swedish wars resulted, moreover, in Polands loss of Livonia and in a diminution of the kingdoms international prestige. Sigismund remains a controversial figure in Poland. His long reign coincided with the apex of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealths prestige, power, on the other hand, it was during his reign that the symptoms of decline leading to the Commonwealths eventual demise surfaced. However, the question of whether the Commonwealths decline was caused by Sigismunds decisions or had its roots in historical processes beyond his personal control and he was commemorated in Warsaw with Sigismunds Column, commissioned by his son and successor, Władysław IV. Sigismund was born on 20 June 1566 to Catherine Jagiellon and the Grand Duke John of Finland at Gripsholm and his parents, at the time, were being held prisoner by King Eric XIV, but despite the Protestant domination of Sweden young Sigismund was raised as a Roman Catholic. In 1567 Sigismund and his parents where released from prison, and in 1568 Erik XIV was deposed, from 1568 Sigismund was the crown prince of Sweden. His mother was the daughter of Polish king Sigismund I the Old, in 1587 Sigismund stood for election to the Polish throne after the death of his uncle, King Stephen Bathory. He was supported by his aunt Queen Anna, Hetman Jan Zamoyski and it seemed that the issue of who would be King of Poland had been settled when Maximilian III invaded Poland to claim the crown. Hetman Jan Zamoyski defeated Maximilian at the Battle of Byczyna and took him prisoner, however, at the request of Pope Sixtus V, King Sigismund III released Maximilian, who surrendered his claim to Poland in 1589. King Sigismund also tried to maintain peace with his neighbor by marrying Archduchess Anne Habsburg in 1592. It was always his intention to maintain an alliance with Catholic Austria against the Protestant forces, when his father died King Sigismund III asked the Sejm to be allowed to claim his inheritance as the rightful King of Sweden. When he promised to respect Lutheranism as the religion of Sweden. Sigismund was crowned King of Sweden in 1594 and he appointed his uncle, Duke Charles, to rule as regent on his behalf in Sweden while he remained in Poland, since Sweden and the Commonwealth were only in a personal union, not united in one state
19.
Amsterdam
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Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its status as the capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 851,373 within the city proper,1,351,587 in the urban area, the city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe. Amsterdams name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the citys origin around a dam in the river Amstel, during that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries the city expanded, and many new neighborhoods and suburbs were planned, the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered a world city by the Globalization. The city is also the capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and seven of the worlds 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. In 2012, Amsterdam was ranked the second best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th globally on quality of living for environment, the city was ranked 3rd in innovation by Australian innovation agency 2thinknow in their Innovation Cities Index 2009. The Amsterdam seaport to this day remains the second in the country, famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world, is located in the city center. After the floods of 1170 and 1173, locals near the river Amstel built a bridge over the river, the earliest recorded use of that name is in a document dated October 27,1275, which exempted inhabitants of the village from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V. This allowed the inhabitants of the village of Aemstelredamme to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks, the certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam, Amsterdam is much younger than Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean there was already a settlement then, since reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat. Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306, from the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League
20.
Cossacks
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Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic-speaking people who became known as members of democratic, self-governing, semi-military communities, predominantly located in Ukraine and in Russia. The origins of the first Cossacks are disputed, though the 1710 Constitution of Pylyp Orlyk claimed Khazar origin, the Zaporizhian Sich were a vassal people of Poland–Lithuania during feudal times. Under increasing pressure from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the century the Sich declared an independent Cossack Hetmanate. Afterwards, the Treaty of Pereyaslav brought most of the Ukrainian Cossack state under Russian rule, the Sich with its lands became an autonomous region under the Russian-Polish protectorate. The Don Cossack Host, which had established by the 16th century. Together they began a systematic conquest and colonisation of lands in order to secure the borders on the Volga, the whole of Siberia, and the Yaik, Cossack communities had developed along the latter two rivers well before the arrival of the Don Cossacks. By the 18th century, Cossack hosts in the Russian Empire occupied effective buffer zones on its borders, the expansionist ambitions of the Empire relied on ensuring the loyalty of Cossacks, which caused tension given their traditional exercise of freedom, democratic self-rule, and independence. By the end of the 18th century, Cossack nations had transformed into a special military estate. The government provided only firearms and supplies for them, Cossack service was considered the most rigorous one. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Tsarist regime used Cossacks extensively to perform police service and they also served as border guards on national and internal ethnic borders. During the Russian Civil War, Don and Kuban Cossacks were the first nations to open war against the Bolsheviks. By 1918, Cossacks declared the independence of their nations and formed the independent states, the Ukrainian State, the Don Republic. The Cossack troops formed the core of the anti-Bolshevik White Army. With the victory of the Red Army, the Cossack lands were subjected to Decossackization, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Cossacks made a systematic return to Russia. Many took a part in Post-Soviet conflicts and Yugoslav Wars. In Russias 2010 Population Census, Cossacks have been recognized as an ethnicity, there are Cossack organizations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Poland, and the United States. Max Vasmers etymological dictionary traces the name to the Old East Slavic word козакъ, kozak, the ethnonym Kazakh is from the same Turkic root. In written sources the name is first attested in Codex Cumanicus from the 13th century, in English, Cossack is first attested in 1590
21.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
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Zynoviy Bohdan Khmelnytsky was a Ukrainian Hetman of the Zaporozhian Host of the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He led an uprising against the Commonwealth and its magnates which resulted in the creation of a state led by the Cossacks of Ukraine, in 1654, he concluded the Treaty of Pereyaslav with the Tsardom of Russia. The Khmelnytsky Uprising led to the deaths of an estimated 18,000 -100,000 Jews, although there is no definite proof of the date of Khmelnytskys birth, Ukrainian historian Mykhaylo Maksymovych suggests that it is likely 27 December 1595. As was the custom in the Orthodox Church, he was baptized with one of his middle names—Theodor, the latest biography of Khmelnytsky by Smoliy and Stepankov, however, suggests that it is more likely he was born on 9 November and was baptised on 11 November. Khmelnytsky was probably born in the village of Subotiv, near Chyhyryn in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland at the estate of his father Mykhailo Khmelnytsky, according to the above-mentioned-source, Mykhailo established Chyhyryn and later his own family estates of Subotiv and Novoseltsi. Khmelnytsky identified as a noble, and his fathers status as a deputy Starosta of Chyhyryn helped him to be considered as such by others, during the Uprising, however, Khmelnytsky would stress his mothers Cossack roots and his fathers exploits with the Cossacks of the Sich. Khmelnytskys early education cannot be documented, several historians believe he received his elementary schooling from a church clerk until he was sent to one of Kievs Orthodox fraternity schools. He continued his education in Polish at a Jesuit college, possibly in Jarosław and he completed his schooling by 1617, acquiring a broad knowledge of world history and learning Polish and Latin. Later he learned Turkish, Tatar, and French, unlike many of the other Jesuit students, he did not embrace Roman Catholicism but remained Orthodox. Upon completion of his studies in 1617, Khmelnytsky entered into service with the Cossacks, as early as 1619 he was sent together with his father to Moldavia, when the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth entered into war against the Ottoman Empire. His first military engagement was a tragic one, during the battle of Cecora on 17 September 1620, his father was killed, and young Khmelnytsky, among many others including future hetman Stanisław Koniecpolski, was captured by the Turks. He spent the two years in captivity in Constantinople as a prisoner of an Ottoman Kapudan Pasha. Other sources claim that he spent his slavery in Ottoman Navy on galleys as an oarsman, while there is no concrete evidence as to his return to Ukraine, most historians believe Khmelnytsky either escaped or was ransomed. Sources vary as to his benefactor — his mother, friends, in 1622 he paid 30,000 thalers in ransom for all prisoners of war captured at the Battle of Cecora. Upon return to Subotiv, Khmelnytsky took over operating his fathers estate and he was later promoted to pysar. From 1625, he participated in several sea raids on Constantinople together with Zaporozhian Cossacks, in those raids he earned his title of sotnyk. During this period his mother remarried, to Belarusian noble Vasyl Stavetsky. Within year she gave birth to son, Hryhoriy, later he took his mothers name
22.
Hetman
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Hetman is a political title from Central and Eastern Europe, historically assigned to military commanders. For much of the history of the Principality of Moldavia, the Hetman was the second in rank in the army after the ruling prince, the Hetman was also the highest military officer in Ukraines Hetmanates, the Zaporizhian Host and the Ukrainian State. The title was used by Ukraines Cossacks from the 16th century, hejtman is today the term for the elected governor of a Czech region. One theory derives the word from the Early Modern High German Heubtmann, with Heubt meaning head, hauptmann was a common military title during medieval times, literally meaning captain but functionally corresponding rather to todays general. Moreover, it has suggested that the Czech language may have served as an intermediary. The first Polish title of Grand Crown Hetman dates from 1505, the title of Hetman was given to the leader of the Polish Army and until 1581 the Hetman position existed only during specific campaigns and wars. After that, it became a permanent title, as were all the titles in the Kingdom of Poland, at any given time the Commonwealth had four Hetmans – a Great and Field Hetman for each of both Poland and Lithuania. Hetmans were not paid for their job by the Royal Treasury, Hetmans were the main commanders of the military forces, second only to the monarch in the armys chain of command. The fact that they could not be removed by the monarch made them very independent and this system worked well when a Hetman had great ability and the monarch was weak, but sometimes produced disastrous results in the opposite case. The contrast with states bordering the Commonwealth, where sovereigns could dismiss their army-commanders at any time, was immense, in 1648 the Zaporizhian Host elected a Hetman of their own igniting the Ukrainian struggle for independence. The military reform of 1776 limited the powers of the Hetmans, the Hetman office was abolished after the third partition of Poland in 1795. At the end of the century, the commanders of the Zaporizhian Cossacks were called Koshovyi Otaman or Hetmans. In 1572, the hetman was a commander of the Registered Cossack Army of the Rzeczpospolita too, from 1648, the start of Bohdan Khmelnytskys uprising, a hetman was the head of the whole Ukrainian State — Hetmanshchyna. Although they were elected, Ukrainian Hetmans had very broad powers and acted as heads of the Cossack state, their military commanders. After the split of Ukraine along the Dnieper River by the 1667 Polish-Russian Treaty of Andrusovo, Ukrainian Cossacks became known as Left-bank Cossacks, in the Russian Empire, the office of Cossack Hetman was abolished by Catherine II of Russia in 1764. The last Hetman of the Zaporozhian Army was Kyrylo Rozumovsky, who reigned from 1751 until 1764, the title was revived in Ukraine during the revolution of 1917 to 1920. This regime lasted until late 1918, when it was overthrown by a new Directory of the re-established Ukrainian Peoples Republic, ataman Bulawa Hatman Hetmans sign Media related to Hetmans at Wikimedia Commons Hetman
23.
Chyhyryn Regiment
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The Chyhyryn Regiment was one of the seventeen territorial-administrative subdivisions of the Hetman State. The regiments capital was the city of Chyhyryn, now in the Cherkasy Oblast of central Ukraine, the military units of the regiment were also known as the Hetmans Guard serving as personal guards of the Hetman of Ukraine in 1648–1676. The regiment occupied territory on both sides of the Dnieper River having eleven companies on the Right-bank Ukraine and eight on the Left-bank Ukraine. In the east it bordered the Korsun regiment, on the north of the right-bank the Cherkasy regiment, following the signing of the Treaty of Zboriv in 1649, it consisted of a total of 19 sotnias and had 3,222 registered Cossacks. During the hetmancy of Petro Doroshenko the southern portion of the Right-bank Ukraine became a Turkish protectorate under the administration of Doroshenko with Chyhyryn as its capital, following the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz, Polish authority was reinstated on the territory in 1699
24.
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
25.
Kiev
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Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population in July 2015 was 2,887,974, Kiev is an important industrial, scientific, educational, and cultural centre of Eastern Europe. It is home to many industries, higher education institutions. The city has an infrastructure and highly developed system of public transport. The citys name is said to derive from the name of Kyi, during its history, Kiev, one of the oldest cities in Eastern Europe, passed through several stages of great prominence and relative obscurity. The city probably existed as a centre as early as the 5th century. A Slavic settlement on the trade route between Scandinavia and Constantinople, Kiev was a tributary of the Khazars, until seized by the Varangians in the mid-9th century. Under Varangian rule, the city became a capital of the Kievan Rus, completely destroyed during the Mongol invasion in 1240, the city lost most of its influence for the centuries to come. It was a capital of marginal importance in the outskirts of the territories controlled by its powerful neighbours, first the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by Poland. The city prospered again during the Russian Empires Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, in 1917, after the Ukrainian National Republic declared independence from the Russian Empire, Kiev became its capital. From 1919 Kiev was an important center of the Armed Forces of South Russia and was controlled by the White Army. From 1921 onwards Kiev was a city of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was proclaimed by the Red Army, during World War II, the city again suffered significant damage, but quickly recovered in the post-war years, remaining the third largest city of the Soviet Union. During the countrys transformation to an economy and electoral democracy. Kievs armament-dependent industrial output fell after the Soviet collapse, adversely affecting science, Kiev emerged as the most pro-Western region of Ukraine where parties advocating tighter integration with the European Union dominate during elections. As a prominent city with a history, its English name was subject to gradual evolution. The early English spelling was derived from Old East Slavic form Kyjev, the name is associated with that of Kyi, the legendary eponymous founder of the city. Early English sources use various names, including Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, on one of the oldest English maps of the region, Russiae, Moscoviae et Tartariae published by Ortelius the name of the city is spelled Kiou. On the 1650 map by Guillaume de Beauplan, the name of the city is Kiiow, in the book Travels, by Joseph Marshall, the city is referred to as Kiovia
26.
Free Cossacks
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Free Cossacks were the Ukrainian association volunteer militia units that arose somewhat spontaneously in the spring of 1917. The Free Cossacks were precursors of the Ukrainian national law enforcement organizations such as the National Guard of Ukraine or the Internal Troops of Ukraine, the primary purpose of those militia formations was to provide security and civil order for the local population. The assembly elected Semen Hryzlo the Kosh Otaman, who became the otaman of Kalnyboloto Kurin, under this title, he was delegated to the 2nd All-Ukrainian Military Congress in Kiev in June 1917. Hryzlo was also one of the organizers of the 1st All-Ukrainian Congress of the Free Cossacks that took place on October 3,1917 in the former Cossack capital of Chyhyryn, the congress elected the Hetman of All Ukraine, who became General Pavlo Skoropadskyi. Hryzlo was elected as the General Yesaul, the Free Cossacks units distinguished themselves during the Ukrainian-Soviet War and were disbanded around May and June 1918. Red Cossacks Red Army Ukraine after the Russian Revolution Ukrainian–Soviet War Kozub, an age and a destiny, memoirs. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, TAKSON Publishing House, ISBN1895571170 Free Cossacks at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine
27.
Pavlo Skoropadskyi
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Pavlo Petrovych Skoropadskyi was a Ukrainian aristocrat, military and state leader, decorated Imperial Russian Army and Ukrainian Army general of Cossack heritage. Skoropadsky became a leader in Ukraine following the Russian Revolution of 1917. The father of Pavlo Petro Ivanovych Skoropadsky was a Cavalry Guard Colonel, afterwards he served as a speaker for the Starodub County Council until his death. Pavlos aunt Countess Yelyzaveta Myloradovych was a Ukrainian public activist and she was one of the main sponsors for foundation first Ukrainian scientific institution Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv. Her husband was Count Lev Myloradovych whose mother was from the Kochubey family, the grandfather Ivan also served as a speaker for the Pryluky County and Poltava Governorate councils. He also was known for building the Trostyanets Arboretum, Pavlos father Petro Ivanovych was also a descendant of the Tarnovsky family, while Pavlos mother was a descendant of Miklashewsky and Olsufiev families. Pavlo grew up at his fathers estate in Trostianets, Pryluky County and he attended a gymnasium in Starodub and later graduated from the Page Corps cadet school in Saint Petersburg. In 1893 Skoropadsky graduated from the Page Corps and was assigned as a cornet to the Chevalier Guard regiment where he was put in charge of a squadron, after two years he was assigned a duty of the Regimental adjutant in the same regiment. In December 1897 he was promoted to Poruchik, in 1897 Skoropadsky also married Aleksandra Petrovna Durnovo, a daughter of Pyotr Pavlovich Durnovo, the General Governor of Moscow. Skoropadskys first major assignment was a commander in the 2nd Chita Cossack Regiment of the Trans-Baikal Cossack Host in Chita during the Russo-Japanese War. Later he became an adjutant to the commander of the Russian forces on the Far East General Nikolay Linevich, during the war Skoropadsky was awarded the Georges Weapon and several orders. In December 1905 Tsar Nikolai II made him a Fliegel-Adjutant in a rank of Colonel, on September 4,1910 Colonel Skoropadsky was commissioned as the commander of the 20th Finnish Dragoon Regiment still continuing to be a Fliegel-Adjutant of the H. I. M. Retinue. On April 15,1911 he was reassigned to the Leib-Guard Cavalry Regiment, leib-Guards were the elite Russian military forces assigned for a personal protection of the emperor. On December 6,1912 Skoropadsky was promoted to the Major General of the H. I. M. Retinue. At the start of World War I Skoropadsky was put in charge of the reorganized 1st Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Guard Division as part of the 1st Army commanded by General Paul von Rennenkampf. Skoropadsky already worked for von Rennenkampf during the Russo-Japanese War when the last was commanding Trans-Baikal Cossack Host, on August 6,1914 his regiment distinguished itself in battles near Kraupishken as part of the Russian invasion of East Prussia. Later he was appointed as a commander of the United Cavalry Guard Division which distinguished near Kaushen, General Skoropadsky also commanded the 5th Cavalry Division. On April 2,1916 he was promoted to Lieutenant General and was commissioned the 1st Cavalry Guard Division, from January 22 to July 2,1917 he is in charge of the 34th Army Corps
28.
Hetman of Ukraine
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Hetman of Ukraine is a former historic government office and political institution of Ukraine that is equivalent to a head of state. As a head of state the position was established at first by Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the Cossack Hetmanate in the mid 17th century, during that period the office was electoral. Later in the late 18th century it was liquidated by the Russian government during the expansion of the Russian territory towards the Black Sea coast. The position and title was reestablished in 1918 by the Ukrainian General Pavlo Skoropadsky, the Law on the Provisional State System of Ukraine was announced at the session of the Central Council of Ukraine on April 29,1918 which laid a legal groundwork for the new position. Pavlo Skoropadsky transformed Ukraine into the autocratic Ukrainian State under the protectorate of the Central powers, during his term the Communist Party was prohibited on the territory of Ukraine for the first time. After the uprising led by the Directorate of Ukraine, Pavlo Skoropadsky surrendered the title, transferring the power to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. List of leaders of Ukraine Hetmans of Ukrainian Cossacks Last Hetman
29.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
30.
Wehrmacht
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The Wehrmacht was the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1946. It consisted of the Heer, the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, one of Adolf Hitler’s most overt and audacious moves was to establish the Wehrmacht, a modern armed forces fully capable of offensive use. In December 1941, Hitler designated himself as commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, the Wehrmacht formed the heart of Germany’s politico-military power. In the early part of World War II, Hitlers generals employed the Wehrmacht through innovative combined arms tactics to devastating effect in what was called a Blitzkrieg, the Wehrmachts new military structure, unique combat techniques, newly developed weapons, and unprecedented speed and brutality crushed their opponents. Closely cooperating with the SS, the German armed forces committed war crimes and atrocities. By the time the war ended in Europe in May 1945, only a few of the Wehrmacht’s upper leadership were tried for war crimes, despite evidence suggesting that more were involved in illegal actions. The German term Wehrmacht generically describes any nations armed forces, for example, the Frankfurt Constitution of 1848 designated all German military forces as the German Wehrmacht, consisting of the Seemacht and the Landmacht. In 1919, the term Wehrmacht also appears in Article 47 of the Weimar Constitution, establishing that, from 1919, Germanys national defense force was known as the Reichswehr, a name that was dropped in favor of Wehrmacht on 21 May 1935. In January 1919, after World War I ended with the signing of the armistice of 11 November 1918, in March 1919, the national assembly passed a law founding a 420, 000-strong preliminary army, the Vorläufige Reichswehr. The terms of the Treaty of Versailles were announced in May, the army was limited to one hundred thousand men with an additional fifteen thousand in the navy. The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, submarines, tanks and heavy artillery were forbidden and the air-force was dissolved. A new post-war military, the Reichswehr, was established on 23 March 1921, General conscription was abolished under another mandate of the Versailles treaty. The Reichswehr was limited to 115,000 men, and thus the armed forces, under the leadership of Hans von Seeckt, though Seeckt retired in 1926, the army that went to war in 1939 was largely his creation. Germany was forbidden to have an air-force by the Versailles treaty, nonetheless and these officers saw the role of an air-force as winning air-superiority, tactical and strategic bombing and providing ground support. That the Luftwaffe did not develop a strategic bombing force in the 1930s was not due to a lack of interest, but because of economic limitations. The leadership of the Navy led by Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, officers who believed in submarine warfare led by Admiral Karl Dönitz were in a minority before 1939. By 1922, Germany had begun covertly circumventing the conditions of the Versailles Treaty, a secret collaboration with the Soviet Union began after the treaty of Rapallo. Major-General Otto Hasse traveled to Moscow in 1923 to further negotiate the terms, Germany helped the Soviet Union with industrialization and Soviet officers were to be trained in Germany
31.
Operation Barbarossa
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Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which was launched on Sunday 22 June 1941. In the two leading up to the invasion, the two countries signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Nevertheless, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940, over the course of the operation, about four million Axis personnel invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2, 900-kilometer front, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare. In addition to troops, the Wehrmacht employed some 600,000 motor vehicles, the offensive marked an escalation of the war, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition. Despite their successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow and was pushed back by the Soviet winter counteroffensive. The Red Army repelled the Wehrmachts strongest blows and forced the unprepared Germans into a war of attrition, the Wehrmacht would never again mount a simultaneous offensive along the entire strategic Soviet–Axis front. The failure of the operation drove Hitler to demand further operations of limited scope inside the Soviet Union, such as Case Blue. The failure of Operation Barbarossa proved a point in the fortunes of the Third Reich. Most importantly, the operation opened up the Eastern Front, in more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The German armies captured 5,000,000 Soviet prisoners of war who were not granted protections stipulated in the Geneva Conventions, a majority of them never returned alive. The Nazis deliberately starved 3.1 million of the prisoners to death as part of a Hunger Plan that aimed to reduce the population of Eastern Europe, over a million Soviet Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppen death squads and gassing as part of the Holocaust. On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his commanders that the next war would be purely a war of Weltanschauungen. Totally a peoples war, a racial war, on 23 November, once World War II had already started, Hitler declared that racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe, and with it, the world. The racial policy of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen, Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that Germanys destiny was to turn to the East as it did six hundred years ago. Accordingly, it was stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land with Germanic peoples, under the Generalplan Ost. Likening the Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan, Hitler told Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the Mongolian race threatened Europe. Following the invasion, Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood, German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the partisan struggle. The main guideline policy for German troops was Where theres a partisan, theres a Jew, many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human
32.
Battle of the Dnieper
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The Battle of the Dnieper was a military campaign that took place in 1943 on the Eastern Front of World War II. It was one of the largest operations in World War II, subsequently, Kiev was liberated in the Battle of Kiev. Following the Battle of Kursk, the Wehrmachts Heer and supporting Luftwaffe forces in the southern Soviet Union were on the defensive in the southern Ukraine, on the Soviet side, Joseph Stalin was determined to launch a major offensive in Ukraine. The main thrust of the offensive was in a direction, the northern flank being largely stabilized. The operation begun on 26 August 1943, divisions started to move on a 1, 400-kilometer front that stretched between Smolensk and the Sea of Azov. Overall, the operation would be executed by 36 Combined Arms, four Tank,2,650,000 personnel were brought into the ranks for this massive operation. The operation would use 51,000 guns,2,400 tanks and 2,850 planes, the Dnieper is the third largest river in Europe, second only to the Volga and the Danube. In its lower part, its width can reach three kilometres, and being dammed in several places made it even larger. Moreover, its western shore —the one still to be retaken— was much higher and steeper than the eastern, in addition, the opposite shore was transformed into a vast complex of defenses and fortifications held by the Wehrmacht. Faced with such a situation, the Soviet commanders had two options and this option were supported by Marshal Zhukov and Deputy Chief of Staff A. I. Antonov, who considered the substantial losses after the battle of Kursk. The second option would be to stage an assault without waiting. This option left no time for the German defenders. This second option was backed by I. V, Stalin due to the concern that the German scorched earth policy might devastate this region if the Red Army did not advance fast enough. STAVKA also paid attention to the possible scorched earth activities of German forces with a view to preventing them by a rapid advance. The assault was staged on a 300-kilometer front almost simultaneously, all available means of transport were to be used to transport the attackers to the opposite shore, including small fishing boats and improvised rafts of barrels and trees. The preparation of the equipment was further complicated by the German scorched earth strategy with the total destruction of all boats. The crucial issue would obviously be heavy equipment, without it, the bridgeheads would not stand for long
33.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
34.
Sister city
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In recent times, town twinning has increasingly been used to form strategic international business links between member cities. In the United Kingdom, the twin towns is most commonly used. In mainland Europe, the most commonly used terms are twin towns, partnership towns, partner towns, the European Commission uses the term twinned towns and refers to the process as town twinning. Spain uses the term ciudades hermanadas that means sister cities, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic use Partnerstadt / Miasto Partnerskie / Partnerské město, which translate as Partner Town or City. France uses Ville Jumelée, and Italy has Gemellaggio and Comune gemellato, in the Netherlands, the term is Stedenband. In Greece, the word αδελφοποίηση has been adopted, in Iceland, the terms vinabæir and vinaborgir are used. In the former Soviet Bloc, twin towns and twin cities are used, the Americas, South Asia, and Australasia use the term sister cities or twin cities. In China, the term is 友好城市, sometimes, other government bodies enter into a twinning relationship, such as the agreement between the provinces of Hainan in China and Jeju-do in South Korea. The Douzelage is a twinning association with one town from each of the member states of the European Union. In recent years, the term city diplomacy has gained increased usage and acceptance, particularly as a strand of paradiplomacy and public diplomacy. It is formally used in the workings of the United Cities and Local Governments, the importance of cities developing their own foreign economic policies on trade, foreign investment, tourism and attracting foreign talent has also been highlighted by the World Economic Forum. The earliest known town twinning in Europe was between Paderborn, Germany, and Le Mans, France, in 836, starting in 1905, Keighley in West Yorkshire, England, had a twinning arrangement with French communities Suresnes and Puteaux. The first recorded modern twinning agreement was between Keighley and Poix-du-Nord in Nord, France, in 1920 following the end of the First World War and this was initially referred to as an adoption of the French town, formal twinning charters were not exchanged until 1986. The practice was continued after the Second World War as a way to promote mutual understanding, for example, Coventry twinned with Stalingrad and later with Dresden as an act of peace and reconciliation, all three cities having been heavily bombed during the war. Similarly, in 1947, Bristol Corporation sent five leading citizens on a mission to Hanover. Reading in 1947 was the first British town to form links with an enemy city – Düsseldorf. Since 9 April 1956 Rome and Paris have been exclusively and reciprocally twinned with other, following the motto, Only Paris is worthy of Rome. Within Europe, town twinning is supported by the European Union, the support scheme was established in 1989
35.
Sebastopol, California
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Sebastopol /səˈbæstəpoʊl/ or /səˈbæstəpuːl/ is a city in Sonoma County, California, United States, approximately 52 mi north of San Francisco. It is about a 20-minute drive from the Pacific Ocean, between Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay, and is known for its politics and small-town charm. It was once primarily a plum and apple growing region, wine grapes, however, are now predominant, world-famous horticulturist Luther Burbank had gardens in this fertile region. The city hosts an annual Apple Blossom Festival and Gravenstein Apple Fair, the areas first known inhabitants were the native Coast Miwok and Pomo peoples. The town of Sebastopol formed in the 1850s with a U. S, post Office and as a small trade center for the farmers of the surrounding agricultural region. There is some debate about how the name Sebastopol came into use in Sonoma County, the original name survives in the names of two of the longer-standing downtown businesses, Pinegrove consignment store, and the Pinecone restaurant. Sebastopol became known as the Gravenstein Apple Capital of the World, the apple industry brought a steady rural prosperity to the town. In 1890 the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad connected Sebastopol to the rail network. The town was incorporated in 1902, with schools, churches, hotels, canneries, mills, wineries, the 1906 earthquake reduced most of these early buildings to rubble, but as elsewhere in the county, the town was rebuilt. In the second half of the 20th century, the industry struggled to compete with other apple-producing regions. It is often claimed that Sebastopol was the last town in Northern California to have working railroad trains on Main Street. The tracks were removed in the late 1980s, passenger service had ceased in the 1930s, and regular freight service ended in the late 1970s. This was documented by Analy High School students in a 1979 video Our Train Down Main, the canneries and apple-processing plant are gone from downtown, and vineyards and housing developments have replaced many apple orchards, reducing the demand for freight service. It is often incorrectly stated that the tracks were removed in the 1990s when the downtown area was redesigned with two one-way streets to enhance traffic along Gravenstein Highway. Main Street and Petaluma Avenue were actually designated one-way streets in 1985 in an attempt to deal with the perennial traffic problem. As of 2016 the old station houses the Western County Museum. Sebastopols elevation is 65 to 250 feet above sea level and its downtown is at the intersection of State Route 12 and State Route 116, approximately 9 mi west of U. S. Route 101. The Laguna is an area that is home to many species of wildlife and vegetation
36.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
37.
Administrative divisions of Ukraine
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Ukraine is divided into several levels of territorial entities. On the first level there are 27 regions,24 oblasts, one autonomous republic, since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014, Ukraines control of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol is disputed. It is somewhat complex as beside having several levels of a subdivision, it also has a classification for various populated places. Note, that certain types of subdivision are not mentioned in Constitution of Ukraine. Also, for disambiguation regular raions are sometimes denoted as rural to distinguish them from raions in city, Ukraines administrative divisions are divided as follows, By geographical characteristics the units are divided on regions and places of settlement. By their status they can be administrative-territorial units, self-governed territorial units, by position in the system of administrative division of Ukraine, the units divided into territorial units of prime level, of middle level, and of higher level. Administrative division has changed because some territories are not under the control of the government, for example, Sievierodonetsk has become the new central regional center. Regions, cities, districts are governed by a state administration, Crimea has its own cabinet of ministers, however the state administration is represented by the office of the Presidential Representative of Ukraine. A basic and the lowest level of division is a settlement that is governed by a local council. Cities as a settlement always carry a special status within a region and have their own form of self-administration, city municipalities are governed by a mayor and a city council. Some smaller cities, towns, and rural localities may be under control of city based on larger cities. Towns as well as villages are not controlled by state administration and are self-governed by either a council or a village council within the limits of the Constitution. Village councils may carry a combined jurisdiction which may include several villages, unlike villages, each town council always has a separate jurisdiction which may be part of bigger citys council. Hamlet is a rural locality and is governed by a village council of nearby village. Ukraine is divided into 3 main administrative divisions, oblast, raion, note, settlements such as cities do not necessary constitute the basic level of the Ukrainian administrative territorial system. For that purpose cities are categorized into own three categories that correspond to level of subdivisions. Cities with special status and regional significance beside being divided into districts in city may also include smaller cities, settlements. Please, note that the population size is not the only factor for its status
38.
Cherkasy
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Cherkasy, or Cherkassy, is a city in central Ukraine. It is the capital of the Cherkasy Oblast, as well as the center of the surrounding Cherkasky Raion within the oblast. The city itself is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. It is not to be confused with the Russian city of Cherkassk which is on the Don River to the east, the city is the cultural, educational and industrial center of Cherkasy Oblast and Central Economical Region of Ukraine. Cherkasy has been known since the 13th century and played a role in the history of Ukraine. Cherkasy was the center of Cossacks, citizens took part in Khmelnychchyna and Koliyivschyna, the city is located on the right bank of Dnieper River, about 200 km south of the nations capital, Kiev. The city is divided into 2 boroughs, Sosnivskiy and Pridniprovskiy, the current population of Cherkasy is 287,583. In June 2011, the city celebrated its 725th anniversary, Cherkasy is situated on the high right bank of the Dnipro River, in the middle of the Kremenchuk Reservoir. Relief of the part of the city was influenced by Zamkova mountain. The major part of Cherkasy occurs as lowlands, the city occupies an area of 69 km2. The citys length is 17 km along the Kremenchuk Reservoir, while its widest point is only 8 km, from the north-west, Cherkasy is surrounded by forest. Known as Cherkaskiy Bir, it is the biggest natural pine forest in Ukraine, the climate of Cherkasy is mild continental, with mild winters and warm summers. The average temperature in the city is +7.7 °C, winters are usually cold and snowy, but the last few winters have been rather warm with rare severe frosts. Summers are dry and warm, with highs reaching +35 °C. The ecological situation in the city is quite stable, the cumulative pollution index as of 2008 is 7.56, average with other Ukrainian cities. The main pollutant in the city is Azot plant, so the area is the most polluted. The downtown area is polluted as well, due to high traffic volume. The city itself is mostly clean of nuclear pollution from the Chernobyl disaster, according to the newest data, the number of inhabitants of Cherkasy is 284,479 as of 1 October 2015
Ukraine
Cherkasy Oblast
United States
Media related to Chyhyryn at Wikimedia Commons
