1.
Yekaterinburg
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At the 2010 Census, it had a population of 1,349,772. Yekaterinburg is the industrial and cultural centre of the Ural Federal District. Between 1924 and 1991, the city was named Sverdlovsk after the Communist party leader Yakov Sverdlov, Vasily Tatishchev and Georg Wilhelm de Gennin founded Yekaterinburg in 1723 and named it after the wife of Tsar Peter the Great, Yekaterina, who later became empress regnant Catherine I. The official date of the foundation is November 18,1723. It was granted town status in 1796, the city was one of Russias first industrial cities, prompted at the start of the eighteenth century by decrees from the Tsar requiring the development in Yekaterinburg of metal-working businesses. The city was built, with use of iron, to a regular square plan with iron works. These were surrounded by fortified walls, so that Yekaterinburg was at the time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It therefore found itself at the heart of Russias strategy for development of the entire Ural region. With the growth in trade and the administrative importance, the ironworks became less critical. Small manufacturing and trading businesses proliferated, following the October Revolution, the family of deposed Tsar Nicholas II were sent to internal exile in Yekaterinburg where they were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House in the city. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk later the same day, on July 16,1918, the Czechoslovak legions were closing on Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks executed the deposed imperial family, believing that the Czechoslovaks were on a mission to rescue them, the Legions arrived less than a week later and captured the city. In 1977, the Ipatiev House was demolished by order of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin later became the first President of Russia and represented the people at the funeral of the former Tsar in 1998. On August 24,2007, the BBC reported that Russian archaeologists had found the remains of two children of Russias last Tsar, the discoveries in 2007 are thought to be those of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. Archaeologist Sergei Pogorelov said bullets found at the site indicate the children had been shot. He told Russian television the newly unearthed bones belonged to two people, a young male aged roughly 10–13 and a young woman about 18–23. The Tsars remains were given a funeral in July 1998. During the 1930s, Yekaterinburg was one of several developed by the Soviet government as a centre of heavy industry
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Projection screen
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A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be installed, as in a movie theater, painted on the wall. As in a room or other non-dedicated viewing space. Another popular type of portable screens are inflatable screens for movie screening. Flat or curved screens may be used depending on the used to project the image. Screens can be designed for front or back projection, the more common being front projection systems. In commercial movie theaters, the screen is a surface that may be either aluminized or a white surface with small glass beads. The screen also has hundreds of small, evenly spaced holes to allow air to and from the speakers and subwoofer, rigid wall-mounted screens maintain their geometry perfectly just like the big movie screens, which makes them suitable for applications that demand exact reproduction of image geometry. Such screens are used in home theaters, along with the pull-down screens. Pull-down screens are used in spaces where a permanently installed screen would require too much space. These commonly use painted fabric that is rolled in the case when not used. Fixed-frame screens provide the greatest level of tension on the screens surface. They are often used in theater and professional environments where the screen does not need to be recessed into the case. Electric screens can be mounted, ceiling mounted or ceiling recessed. These are often larger screens, though electric screens are available for theater use as well. Electric screens are similar to pull-down screens, but instead of the screen being pulled down manually, switchable projection screens can be switched between opaque and clear. In the opaque state, projected image on the screen can be viewed from both sides and it is very good for advertising on store windows. Mobile screens usually use either a pull-down screen on a free stand and these can be used when it is impossible or impractical to mount the screen to a wall or a ceiling
3.
20th Century Fox
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Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation is an American film studio currently owned by 21st Century Fox. It is one of the Big Six major American film studios and is located in the Century City area of Los Angeles, the studio was formerly owned by News Corporation. 20th Century Fox is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2015, 20th Century Fox celebrated its 80th anniversary as a studio. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, the studios biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn, at first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called Fox-20th Century, even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck, the new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31,1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President, Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Foxs longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. The company established a training school. The contracts included an option for renewal for as long as seven years. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have founded in 1915. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary, however, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915. The companys films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their credits as well as its opening fanfare. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studios leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple, favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO, while Zanuck went off for eighteen months war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studios—indeed the industrys—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable, in 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Foxs output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like The Razors Edge, Wilson, Gentlemans Agreement, The Snake Pit, Boomerang, and Pinky, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams Leave Her to Heaven, starring Gene Tierney and they also made the 1958 film version of South Pacific
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Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
5.
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
6.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26,1991. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and that evening at 7,32, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. Previously, from August to December, all the individual republics, the week before the unions formal dissolution,11 republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR also signalled the end of the Cold War, on the other hand, only the Baltic states have joined NATO and the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11,1985, Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo. His initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, the reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23,1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members. He kept the power ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and this liberalisation, however, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union. Under Gorbachevs leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, in May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism. Prices of vodka, wine, and beer were raised in order to make these drinks more expensive and a disincentive to consumers, unlike most forms of rationing intended to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachevs plan also included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, however, Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition as did the last Tsar. The disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev. Alcohol production migrated to the market, or through moonshining as some made bathtub vodka with homegrown potatoes. The purpose of these reforms, however, was to prop up the centrally planned economy, unlike later reforms. The latter, disparaged as Mr Nyet in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs, gromyko was relegated to the largely ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an old thinker. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring younger, at the next Central Committee meeting on October 15, Tikhonov retired from the Politburo and Talyzin became a candidate. Finally, on December 23,1985, Gorbachev appointed Yeltsin First Secretary of the Moscow Communist Party replacing Viktor Grishin, Gorbachev continued to press for greater liberalization. The CTAG Helsinki-86 was founded in July 1986 in the Latvian port town of Liepāja by three workers, Linards Grantiņš, Raimonds Bitenieks, and Mārtiņš Bariss and its name refers to the human-rights statements of the Helsinki Accords
7.
House of Fools (film)
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House of Fools is a 2002 Russian film by Andrei Konchalovsky about psychiatric patients and combatants during the First Chechen War. It stars Julia Vysotskaya and Sultan Islamov and features a number of appearances by Bryan Adams. Distinctly anti-war, unbiased and controversial in Russia, House of Fools is a blend of black comedy, touching drama, horrific warfare. The film tells the story of a hospital in the Russian republic of Ingushetia on the border with war-torn republic of Chechnya in 1996. With the medical staff vanishing to apparently find help, the patients are left to their own endeavors. Zhanna, a woman, lives in the belief that the pop star Bryan Adams is her fiancé. Zhanna is sort of the ad hoc keeper of peace, happiness and control of the others, blissfully unaware of the terror of the war, the patients stick it out in the hospital. Their guests include a group of Chechen rebels, one of whom, Ahmed, at this point Zhanna falls in love with Ahmed. She goes back to the House where, with the help of her fellow residents, from this point on Zhanna prepares for and expects to be swept away by Ahmed. Her hopes do not come to fruition and Ahmed and Zhanna part ways, Zhanna returns to the House in order to resume her life there. The two films even share similarities in their conclusion, with a taking refuge from the insanity of war in the asylum when it returns to normal. House of Fools at the Internet Movie Database House of Fools at AllMovie House of Fools at Variety
8.
Night Watch (2004 film)
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Night Watch is a 2004 Russian urban fantasy supernatural thriller film written and directed by Timur Bekmambetov. It is loosely based on the novel The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, in the prologue, which is set in medieval times, the audience is introduced to humans with special powers called The Others. The Others are divided into two camps, with each Other either allied with the forces of Light or the forces of Darkness, Geser, the Lord of the Light, realized that the two forces would eventually annihilate each other. He stopped the battle and offered a truce to the forces of Darkness and this agreement maintained balance for centuries to come. In modern-day Moscow, Anton Gorodetsky visits a witch named Daria and asks her to cast a spell to return his wife to him, just as the spell is about to be completed, two figures burst in and restrain Daria, preventing her from completing the spell. When they notice that Anton is able to see them, they realize that he is an Other, twelve years later, Anton has become a member of the Night Watch and is working with the same team. On Antons request, Kostya, his neighbor, takes him to see his father, the father does this reluctantly, and then tells Kostya that members of the Night Watch only drink blood when they hunt vampires like themselves. A twelve-year-old boy, Yegor, hears The Call, a call by a vampire who intends to feed on him. Anton tracks Yegor, being able to hear the call as he gets closer to Yegor, on the way he sees a blond woman that terrifies him. Realizing she is under a curse, Anton uses an ultraviolet flashlight to see if she is a vampire. Two vampires are about to feed on Yegor when Anton arrives, a member of the Day Watch arrives and reveals that the Day Watch is aware of the murder of one of their Dark members. Anton is healed by Geser, who notes that he could have solved things more easily by entering into the Gloom—a shadow world only accessible by the Others. It is now clear that the virgin, now reborn, will soon die, Geser gives Anton an assistant, a stuffed owl named Olga. Anton laughs and refuses, until he sees Geser throw Olga out the window, whereupon she turns into a living owl, at Antons apartment, the owl arrives and shape shifts into a woman. Kostya arrives and says he knows that Anton killed the vampire Dark Other, Anton and Olga track Yegor to his home, where they must enter the Gloom, as Yegor is there hiding from the female vampire. The Gloom almost consumes Yegor, but a sacrifice from Anton satisfies it enough for them to escape. Emerging from the Gloom, Anton sees a photo of Yegor and his mother, the Night Watch members, Tiger and Bear, stay behind to protect Yegor, but as soon as they are distracted, the boy escapes and follows the call of the female vampire. During this time, Zavulon is seen working on a prediction in which he is fighting with someone
9.
Brother (1997 film)
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Brother is a 1997 Russian crime film directed by Aleksei Balabanov. The film stars Sergei Bodrov Jr. as Danila Bagrov, a young Russian ex-conscript, the character of Danila is considered by many in Russia to be an icon of the early post-Soviet period. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, after its release on VHS in June 1997, Brother unexpectedly became one of the most commercially successful Russian films released in the 1990s and quickly became a cult film throughout Russia. Due to the popularity and fan demand, a sequel. Brother 2 is notable for having a higher budget, more emphasis on action sequences. In the autumn of 1997, Danila Bagrov returns to his hometown of Priozersk following his demobilization from the Russian Army after the First Chechen War. Before he reaches home, he ends up in a fight with security guards, after he accidentally walks onto the set of a music video for the band Nautilus Pompilius. After Danila rejects a job offer from the chief of the local militsiya and his mother insists that he travels to St. Petersburg to seek out his successful older brother Viktor, whom his mother is confident will help him make a living. Danila travels to the city, but his attempts to contact with Viktor are unsuccessful. Danila knocks the thug unconscious and takes a revolver from his pocket, unbeknown to their mother, Viktor is an accomplished hitman who goes by the street name Tatar but is growing too independent and is starting to irritate his mob boss Roundhead. His latest target is Chechen, a Chechen mafia boss who was released from prison. Roundhead, who is unhappy with the amount of money that Viktor demanded for the hit, when Danila finally finds Viktors apartment, he is welcomed by Viktor. Although Danila claims that his service was spent at the headquarters as a clerk. First, he asks German to find him a room in a flat in the city center. He then constructs a makeshift silencer out of a soda bottle. Finally, he follows Chechen and, despite the latters security, as Danila makes his exit, Roundheads thugs spot him and chase him. Making his escape, Danila jumps into a tram and, despite being wounded in the abdomen. The tram driver, a woman named Sveta, helps Danila escape, later, despite her marriage to an abusive husband, the two begin an affair
10.
Moscow International Film Festival
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Moscow International Film Festival, is the film festival first held in Moscow in 1935 and became regular since 1959. From its inception to 1959 it was held every year in July. The festival has been held annually since 1995, the festivals top prize is the statue of Saint George slaying the dragon, as represented on the Coat of Arms of Moscow. Nikita Mikhalkov has been the president since 2000. Over the years the Stanislavsky Award—I Believe, in 2012 this prize was awarded to French actress Catherine Deneuve. In 2012 the jury was headed by the Brazilian director Hector Babenco, the Perspectives Jury was chaired by the filmmaker Marina Razbezhkina. The program director of the Festival is Kirill Razlogov, the White Bird Marked with Black 1973 – That Sweet Word, Liberty
11.
Cinema of the Russian Empire
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The Cinema of the Russian Empire roughly spans the period 1907 -1920, during which time a strong infrastructure was created. From the over 2,700 art films created in Russia before 1920, in April 1896, just four months after the first films were shown in Paris, the first cinematic apparatus appeared in Russia. The first films seen in the Russian Empire were via the Lumière brothers, in Moscow, in the same month, the first film was shot in Russia, by Lumière cameraman Camille Cerf, a record of the coronation of Nicholas II at the Kremlin in Moscow. The first permanent cinema was opened in St Petersburg in 1896 at Nevsky Prospect, the first Russian movies were shown in the Moscow Korsh Theatre by artist Vladimir Sashin. After purchasing a Vitagraph projector, Sashin started to short films. Film in Russia became a staple of fairs or rented auditoriums, after the Lumières came representatives from Pathé and Gaumont to open offices, after the turn of the century, to make motion pictures on location for Russian audiences. At the same time as Drankov was making his film, the Moscow cinema entrepreneur Alexander Khanzhonkov began to operate, in 1907, the journal Kino was first published. Kino was the first Russian periodical devoted to the cinema, ladislas Starevich made the first Russian animated film in 1910 - Lucanus Cervus. He continued making animated films until his emigration to France following the 1917 October Revolution and he was decorated by the Tsar for his work in 1911. In 1912, the Khanzhonkov film studio was operational, and Ivan Mozzhukhin had made his first film there, the same year, a German concern filming in Russia introduced the director Yakov Protazanov to the world with its Ukhod Velikovo Startsa, a biographical film about Lev Tolstoy. Detective films were popular, and various forms of melodrama, the arrival of World War I in Russia in 1914 sparked a change. Imports dropped drastically, especially insofar as films from Germany and its allies left the market rapidly, also, the Skobolev Committee was established by the government to oversee the making of newsreel and propaganda films. And then came the Russian Revolution, on top of the ongoing international War, with audiences turning against the Tsar, film producers began turning out, after the February Revolution, a number of films with anti-Tsarist themes. These, along with the retinue of detective films and melodramas. Ironically, the last significant Russian film completed, in 1917, Father Sergius would become the first new film release a year later, in the new country of the Soviets
12.
Ivan Mosjoukine
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Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin, usually billed using the French transliteration Ivan Mosjoukine, was a Russian silent film actor. Ivan Mozzhukhin was born in Kondol, in the Saratov Governorate of the Russian Empire and he inherited this position from his own father — a serf whose children were granted freedom as a gratitude for his service. While all three elder brothers finished seminary, Ivan was sent to the Penza gymnasium for boys and later studied law at the Moscow State University. In 1910, he left academic life to join a troupe of traveling actors from Kiev, with which he toured for a year, gaining experience, upon returning to Moscow, he launched his screen career with the 1911 adaptation of Tolstoys The Kreutzer Sonata. He also starred in A House in Kolomna, Pyotr Chardynin directed drama Do You Remember, opposite the popular Russian ballerina Vera Karalli, Nikolay Stavrogin, The Queen of Spades and other adaptations of Russian classics. At the end of 1919, Mosjoukine arrived in Paris and quickly established himself as one of the top stars of the French silent cinema, handsome, tall, and possessing a powerful screen presence, he won a considerable following as a mysterious and exotic romantic figure. The first film of his French career was also his final Russian film, the group was headed by the renowned director Yakov Protazanov and included Mosjoukines frequent leading lady Natalya Lisenko, whom he married and later divorced. Their ultimate destination was Paris, which became the new capital for most of the former aristocrats and other refugees escaping the civil war. The film was completed and released in Paris in November 1920, Mosjoukines film stardom was assured and during the 1920s, his face with the trademark hypnotic stare appeared on covers of film magazines all over Europe. He wrote the screenplays for most of his vehicles and directed two of them, LEnfant du carnaval, released on 29 August 1921 and Le Brasier ardent. The leading lady in films was the then-Madame Mosjoukine, Nathalie Lissenko. Brasier, in particular, was praised for its innovative and inventive concepts. Styled like a semi-comic Kafkaesque nightmare, the film has him playing a detective known only as Z hired by a husband to follow his adventurous young wife. However, the plot was only the device which Mosjoukine and his assistant director Alexandre Volkoff used to experiment with the perception of reality. Mosjoukine received praise for his acting and display of emotion. When Rudolph Valentino died in August 1926, Hollywood producers began searching for another face or image that might capture some iota of that unique screen presence radiated by The Great Lover. Universals Carl Laemmle, who had employed Valentino as an actor in two 1919-1920 films, found out that Mosjoukine was frequently described by the European press as the Russian Valentino. In February 1927, Mosjoukine received an offer from Laemmle to come to Hollywood as the star of his own vehicle
13.
Yakov Protazanov
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Yakov Alexandrovich Protazanov was a Russian and Soviet film director and screenwriter, and one of the founding fathers of cinema of Russia. He was an Honored Artist of the Russian SFSR and Uzbek SSR, born in the Vinokurov family estate to educated Russian parents, both of whom belonged to the merchantry social class. His father Alexandr Savvich Protazanov came from a generation of merchants and was a hereditary distinguished citizen of Kiev. Alexandr worked with the Shibaev brothers of the family of Old Believers whose father Sidor Shibaev was among the pioneers of the oil industry, yakovs mother Elizaveta Mikhailovna Protazanova was a native Muscovite. She finished the Elizabeth Institute for Noble Maidens and her brother Mikhail Vinokurov was close friends with the Sadovsky theatrical family and made a great impact on Protazanov. In 1900 Yakov graduated from the Moscow Commercial College and started working as a merchant, in 1904 he left Russia and spent several years in France and Italy, self-educating. After his return in 1906 Protazanov joined the Gloria film company in Moscow as a directors assistant and he also met his future wife there — Frida Vasilievna Kennike, who happened to be a sister of one of the Glorias co-founders. In 1910 Gloria became part of the cinema factory headed by Paul Thiemann, Protazanov was finally given a directors chair, although, according to his memories, he took part in basically every filming process, including cinematography, stage property and bookkeeping. His most notable works of that period are The Song of the Prophet Oleg based on Alexander Pushkins poem, in 1914 he joined Joseph N. Ermolieffs film studio where he worked up till his emigration in 1920. In the period between 1911 and 1920 Protazanov directed some 80 features, including The Queen of Spades and Father Sergius, ivan Mozhukhin starred in many of his early films. After the October Revolution he resolved to stay in Europe where he worked at various French- and he returned to Russia in 1923. The following year he produced Aelita based on Alexei Tolstoys novel and it was one of the first science fiction movies to depict a space flight and an alien society. His next film The Tailor from Torzhok was released to a great success and he discovered many talents, such as Igor Ilyinsky, Mikhail Zharov, Anatoli Ktorov, Vera Maretskaya, Yuliya Solntseva, Georgy Millyar, Serafima Birman, Nikolai Batalov and Mikhail Klimov. One of the most popular Russian fairy tale directors Alexander Rou also started as Protazanovs assistant, in 1928 he directed The White Eagle that featured Vsevolod Meyerhold and Vasili Kachalov in the leading roles — one of their rare appearances on the big screen. His last acclaimed feature was a version of Alexander Ostrovskys play Without Dowry in 1937. The cast featured many celebrated actors from the Maly Theatre, during the Great Patriotic War he was evacuated to Tashkent along with some other members of Mosfilm and Lenfilm. Around the same time his health started declining, on his way to Tashkent he suffered a heart-attack and he managed to produce only one more movie — Nasreddin in Bukhara. His only son Georgy was killed in one of the final battles and he spent his last days working on the adaptation of Alexander Ostrovskys comedy play Wolves and Sheep
14.
Father Sergius (film)
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Father Sergius is a 1918 Soviet silent film directed by Yakov Protazanov and Alexandre Volkoff. It is based on the story by Leo Tolstoy. During the reign of Russian Tsar Nicholas I, prince Kasatsky discovers that his fiancée has an affair with the Tsar. He decides to break his engagement and retires to a convent where he tries to reach holiness, Father Sergius at the Internet Movie Database Father Sergius at AllMovie
15.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
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Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
17.
Nicholas II of Russia
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Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic, Soviet historiography portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader, whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects. The Anglo-Russian Entente, designed to counter German attempts to influence in the Middle East. Nicholas approved the Russian mobilisation on 30 July 1914, which led to Germany declaring war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and it is estimated that around 3,300,000 Russians were killed in World War I. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas abdicated on behalf of himself and his son, Nicholas, the recovered remains of the Imperial Family were finally re-interred in St. Petersburg, eighty years to the day on 17 July 1998. In 1981, Nicholas, his wife and their children were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, located in New York City. On 15 August 2000 Nicholas and his family were canonized as passion bearers, Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. He had five siblings, Alexander, George, Xenia, Michael. Nicholas often referred to his father nostalgically in letters after Alexanders death in 1894 and he was also very close to his mother, as revealed in their published letters to each other. His paternal grandparents were Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and his maternal grandparents were King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor being Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna, Nicholas was related to several monarchs in Europe. His mothers siblings included Kings Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins of King George V of the United Kingdom. Nicholas was also a first cousin of both King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway, as well as King Constantine I of Greece, Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin-once-removed of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as Nikolasha and Nicholas the Tall, while the Tsar was Nicholas the Short. In his childhood, Nicholas, his parents and siblings made annual visits to the Danish royal palaces of Fredensborg and Bernstorff to visit his grandparents, the king and queen. The visits also served as family reunions, as his mothers siblings would come from the United Kingdom, Germany. It was there in 1883, that he had a flirtation with one of his English first cousins, in 1873, Nicholas also accompanied his parents and younger brother, two-year-old George, on a two-month, semi-official visit to England. In London, Nicholas and his family stayed at Marlborough House, as guests of his Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alix, the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he was spoiled by his uncle
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Moscow Kremlin
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It is the best known of the kremlins and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. Also within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace, the complex serves as the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation. It had previously used to refer to the government of the Soviet Union. Kremlinology refers to the study of Soviet and Russian politics, the site has been continuously inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples since the 2nd century BC. Vyatichi built a structure on the hill where the Neglinnaya River flowed into the Moskva River. Up to the 14th century, the site was known as the grad of Moscow, the word Kremlin was first recorded in 1331. The grad was greatly extended by Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy in 1156, destroyed by the Mongols in 1237, dmitri Donskoi replaced the oak walls with a strong citadel of white limestone in 1366–1368 on the basic foundations of the current walls, this fortification withstood a siege by Khan Tokhtamysh. Dmitris son Vasily I resumed construction of churches and cloisters in the Kremlin, the newly built Annunciation Cathedral was painted by Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, and Prokhor in 1406. The Chudov Monastery was founded by Dmitris tutor, Metropolitan Alexis, while his widow, Eudoxia and it was during his reign that three extant cathedrals of the Kremlin, the Deposition Church, and the Palace of Facets were constructed. The highest building of the city and Muscovite Russia was the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, built in 1505–08, the Kremlin walls as they now appear were built between 1485 and 1495. Spasskie gates of the wall bear a dedication in Latin praising Petrus Antonius Solarius for the design. After construction of the new walls and churches was complete. The Kremlin was separated from the merchant town by a 30-meter-wide moat. The same tsar also renovated some of his grandfathers palaces, added a new palace and cathedral for his sons, and endowed the Trinity metochion inside the Kremlin. The metochion was administrated by the Trinity Monastery and boasted the graceful tower church of St. Sergius, during the Time of Troubles, the Kremlin was held by the Polish forces for two years, between 21 September 1610 and 26 October 1612. The Kremlins liberation by the army of prince Dmitry Pozharsky. During his reign and that of his son Alexis, the eleven-domed Upper Saviour Cathedral, Armorial Gate, Terem Palace, Amusement Palace, following the death of Alexis, the Kremlin witnessed the Moscow Uprising of 1682, from which czar Peter barely escaped. As a result, both of them disliked the Kremlin, three decades later, Peter abandoned the residence of his forefathers for his new capital, Saint Petersburg
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Alexander Drankov
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Alexander Osipovich Drankov was a Russian photographer, cameraman, film producer, and one of the pioneers of the Russian pre-revolutionary cinematography. The exact date of birth and birthplace of Alexander Drankov are unknown, according to some accounts, he was born in southern parts of Russia in 1886. In the early 20th century, Drankov owned a school in Sevastopol. Later on, he took interest in photography and soon became a professional in this craft, subsequently, Drankov became a press photographer for The Times and Parisian LIllustration and obtained a journalist accreditation at the State Duma. In 1907, Alexander Drankov decided to start his own film-making business and opened A. Drankovs Atelier, Drankov and his team began to shoot newsreels, him and his cameramen being habitual frequenters of every major event in both Saint Petersburg and Moscow until the October Revolution of 1917. Also, he started shooting feature shorts, such as Boris Godunov and this motion picture was never finished, though some of the materials shot for this movie were shown at cinemas in that same 1907 under the title Scenes from a Boyar Life. Drankov’s first ever filming of Leo Tolstoy was a sensational success, the first motion picture produced by Drankov and released into movie theaters was a film called Stenka Razin. The first performance took place on October 15 of 1908, for the first time in Russia, the movie was accompanied by the original sound. The music score was written by a Russian composer Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov for the play by Vasily Goncharov to be staged at the Aquarium Theater. The release of film was also the first case of copyright infringement by a filmmaker in Russian history. Alexander Drankov’s next film was the first Russian comedy called Userdniy denshchik, at the same time, Drankov came up with a new type of movie advertising by publishing postcards with snapshots from his movies and also placing them on posters, which had never been done before. With the onset of Alexander Khanzhonkov’s activities in the movie industry, when Khanzhonkov found out about Drankov’s intentions, he sped up the making of his film and then managed to release it before Drankov was able to finish his competing film. g. Votsareniye Doma Romanovykh and Tryoksotletiye tsarstvovaniya doma Romanovykh, Alexander Drankov was the first one in Russia to start producing crime films, which had only recently come into fashion in France. His serial film called Son’ka – Zolotaya Ruchka was a success in Russia. We know about this period of Drankov’s life from contradictory accounts of his acquaintances and he first tried to make profit by selling jewellery in Kiev, then moved to Yalta and began shooting pornographic films. In 1922, Drankov moved to the United States of America and he is buried in Colma, California. Alexander Drankov at the Internet Movie Database Tercentenary of the Romanov Dynastys Accession on YouTube
20.
Ladislas Starevich
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Władysław Starewicz was a Russian, Polish and French stop-motion animator notable as the author of the first puppet-animated film. He also used dead insects and other animals as protagonists of his films, Władysław Starewicz was born in Moscow, Russia to Polish parents, and had lived in Lithuania which at that time was a part of the Russian Empire. The boy was raised by his grandmother in Kaunas, then the capital of Kaunas Governorate, Starewicz had interests in a number of different areas, by 1910 he was named Director of the Museum of Natural History in Kaunas, Lithuania. There he made four short documentaries for the museum. For the fifth film, Starewicz wished to record the battle of two beetles, but was stymied by the fact that the nocturnal creatures inevitably die whenever the stage lighting was turned on. The result was the short film Lucanus Cervus, apparently the first animated puppet film, in 1911, Starewicz moved to Moscow and began work with the film company of Aleksandr Khanzhonkov. There he made two films, most of them puppet animations using dead animals. But the best-known film of this period, was Mest kinematograficheskogo operatora, some of the films made for Khanzhonkov feature live-action/animation interaction. In some cases, the action consisted of footage of Starewiczs daughter Irina. Particularly worthy of note is Starevichs 41-minute 1913 film The Night Before Christmas, the 1913 film Terrible Vengeance won the Gold Medal at an international festival in Milan in 1914, being just one of five films which won awards among 1005 contestants. During World War I, Starewicz worked for film companies, directing 60 live-action features. After the October Revolution of 1917, the community largely sided with the White Army. After a brief stay, Starewicz and his family fled before the Red Army could capture the Crimea, at this time, Władysław Starewicz changed his name to Ladislas Starevich, as it was easier to pronounce in French. He first stablished with his family in Joinville-le-pont, while he worked as a cameraman and he rapidly returned to make puppet films. He made Le mariage de Babylas, Lépouvantail, Les grenouilles qui demandent un roi ), Amour noir et blanc, La voix du rossignol, there where made the rest of his films. Six weeks after the premiere of The Little Parade, sound was added by Louis Nalpas companny, Starewitch started a collaboration with him, wishing to make a feature full-length film, Le Roman de Renard. All his 20s films are available on DVD, often mentioned as being among his best work, The Tale of the Fox was also his first animated feature. It was entirely made by him and his daughter, Irene, production took place in Fontenay-sous-Bois from 1929–1930
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Stop motion
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Stop motion is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object so that it appears to move on its own. The object is moved in increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a fast sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or clay-mation, not all stop motion requires figures or models, many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation, the term stop motion, related to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen, stop-motion. Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse technique, where photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals. Time lapse is a technique whereby the frequency at which frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When played at speed, time appears to be moving faster. Stop motion animation has a history in film. It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic, in 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop trick technique in the lightning sculpting sequence. In 1907, The Haunted Hotel is a new stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton, segundo de Chomón, from Spain, released El Hotel Eléctrico later that same year, and used similar techniques as the Blackton film. In 1908, A Sculptors Welsh Rarebit Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptors Nightmare, italian animator Roméo Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour-de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in 1912. The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw Starewicz, who animated The Beautiful Lukanida, The Battle of the Stag Beetles, The Ant, one of the earliest clay animation films was Modelling Extraordinary, which impressed audiences in 1912. December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins 54 episodes of Miracles in Mud to the big screen, also in December 1916, the first woman animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay stop motion. She would release her first film in 1917, an adaptation of William Shakespeares Romeo, in the turn of the century, there was another well known animator known as Willis O Brien. His work on The Lost World is well known, but he is most admired for his work on King Kong, oBriens protege and eventual successor in Hollywood was Ray Harryhausen. After learning under OBrien on the film Mighty Joe Young, Harryhausen would go on to create the effects for a string of successful and memorable films over the next three decades. These included The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came from Beneath the Sea, Jason, in a 1940 promotional film, Autolite, an automotive parts supplier, featured stop motion animation of its products marching past Autolite factories to the tune of Franz Schuberts Military March
22.
Aleksandr Khanzhonkov
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Aleksandr Aleksejevich Khanzhonkov was Russias first cinema entrepreneur. He produced Defence of Sevastopol, Russias first feature film, Khanzhonkov was born in the small village Khanzhonkova on the banks of the Seversky Donets River in rural Russia in 1877. In 1911 he founded Russias first cinema factory, a company, whose main financial backer was Ivan Ozerov. During the Russian Revolution, Khanzhonkov left Russia for a while, travelling to Constantinople and Vienna and his career in the Soviet Union ended in 1926, he was forced to abdicate after a corruption scandal struck Proletkino, and never worked in cinema again. Khanzhonkov retired and spent the rest of his life in Yalta, there he survived the Nazi occupation of Crimea in 1941–1944, and died in Yalta on September 26,1945. Aleksandr Khanzhonkov at the Internet Movie Database Biography
23.
Biographical film
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A biographical film, or biopic, is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a person and the central characters real name is used. Because the figures portrayed are actual people, whose actions and characteristics are known to the public, biopic roles are considered some of the most demanding of actors and actresses. Biopic scholars include George F. Custen of the College of Staten Island, Custen, in Bio/Pics, How Hollywood Constructed Public History, regards the genre as having died with the Hollywood studio era, and in particular, Darryl F. Zanuck. On the other hand, Binghams 2010 study Whose Lives Are They Anyway, ellen Cheshires Bio-Pics, a life in pictures examines UK/US films from the 1990s and 2000s. Each chapter reviews key films linked by profession and concludes with further viewing list, christopher Robé has also written on the gender norms that underlie the biopic in his article, Taking Hollywood Back in the 2009 issue of Cinema Journal. The Hurricane is not a documentary but a parable, some biopics purposely stretch the truth. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was based on game show host Chuck Barris widely debunked yet popular memoir of the same name, Kafka incorporated both the life of author Franz Kafka and the surreal aspects of his fiction. The Errol Flynn film They Died with Their Boots On tells the story of Custer but is highly romanticized, casting can be controversial for biographical films. Casting is often a balance between similarity in looks and ability to portray the characteristics of the person, anthony Hopkins felt that he should not have played Richard Nixon in Nixon because of a lack of resemblance between the two. The casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror was objected to because of the American Wayne being cast as the Mongol warlord. Egyptian critics criticized the casting of Louis Gossett, Jr. an African American actor, also, some objected to the casting of Jennifer Lopez in Selena because she is a New York City native of Puerto Rican descent while Selena was Mexican-American. Biographical novel Biography in literature List of biographical films
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Leo Tolstoy
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Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. He first achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. Tolstoys fiction includes dozens of stories and several novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Family Happiness. He also wrote plays and numerous philosophical essays, in the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy also became an advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George. Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate 12 kilometres southwest of Tula, the Tolstoys were a well-known family of old Russian nobility, tracing their ancestry to a mythical Lithuanian noble Indris. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University and his teachers described him as both unable and unwilling to learn. Tolstoy left the university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, in 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about time that he started writing. Others who followed the path were Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed an execution in Paris. Writing in a letter to his friend Vasily Botkin, The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere. Tolstoys concept of non-violence or Ahimsa was bolstered when he read a German version of the Tirukkural and he later instilled the concept in Mahatma Gandhi through his A Letter to a Hindu when young Gandhi corresponded with him seeking his advice. His European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugos newly finished Les Misérables, the similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugos novel and Tolstoys War and Peace indicates this influence. Tolstoys political philosophy was influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
25.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
26.
Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
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Cinema of the Soviet Union
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However, between World War I and the Russian Revolution, the Russian film industry and the infrastructure needed to support it had deteriorated to the point of unworkability. The majority of cinemas had been in the corridor between Moscow and St. Petersburg, and most were out of commission, furthermore, the new government did not have the funds to spare for an extensive reworking of the system of filmmaking. Thus, they opted for project approval and censorship guidelines while leaving what remained of the industry in private hands. It appeared on Soviet screens in 1918, newsreels, as documentaries, were the other major form of earliest Soviet cinema. Still, in 1921, there was not one functioning cinema in Moscow until late in the year, New talent joined the experienced remainder, and an artistic community assembled with the goal of defining Soviet film as something distinct and better from the output of decadent capitalism. Sergei Eisensteins Battleship Potemkin was released to acclaim in 1925. One of the most popular films released in the 1930s was Circus, immediately after the end of the Second World War, color movies such as The Stone Flower, Ballad of Siberia, and The Kuban Kossacks were released. Other notable films from the 1940s include Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, in the late 1950s and early 1960s Soviet cinema produced Ballad of a Soldier, which won the 1961 BAFTA Award for Best Film, and The Cranes Are Flying. Height is considered to be one of the best films of the 1950s, in the 1980s there was a diversification of subject matter. Touchy issues could now be discussed openly, the results were films like Repentance, which dealt with repression in Georgia, and the allegorical science fiction movie Kin-dza-dza. After the death of Stalin, Soviet filmmakers were given a hand to film what they believed audiences wanted to see in their films characters. The industry remained a part of the government and any material that was found politically offensive or undesirable, was removed, edited, reshot. The definition of socialist realism was liberalized to allow development of human characters. Additionally, the degree of relative artistic liberality was changed from administration to administration, examples created by censorship include, The first chapter of the epic film Liberation was filmed 20 years after the subsequent three parts. Sergei Eisensteins Ivan the Terrible Part II was completed in 1945 but was not released until 1958,5 years after Stalins death. Eisensteins Alexander Nevsky was censored before the German invasion of the Soviet Union due to its depiction of a strong Russian leader defying an army of German Teutonic Knights. After the invasion, the film was released for propaganda purposes to considerable critical acclaim, the first Soviet Russian state film organization, the Film Subdepartment of the Peoples Commissariat of Education, was established in 1917. The worlds first state-filmmaking school, the First State School of Cinematography, was established in Moscow in 1919, during the Russian Civil War, agitation trains and ships visited soldiers, workers, and peasants
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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
29.
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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It was established in December 1920, when the Soviets took over control of the short-lived First Republic of Armenia and lasted until 1991. On August 23,1990, it was renamed the Republic of Armenia after its sovereignty was declared and its independence was recognized on 26 December 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the state of the post-Union Republic of Armenia existed until the adoption of the new constitution in 1995, the modern Armenian Hayastan derives from earlier Armenian Hayk’ and Persian -stān. Hayk’ derives from Old Armenian Haykʿ, traditionally derived from a legendary patriarch named Hayk, aram above was considered to be one of his descendants. Officially, the name of the republic was the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic as defined by the 1937 and 1978 constitutions. From 1828 with the Treaty of Turkmenchay to the October Revolution in 1917, Eastern Armenia was part of the Russian Empire, after the October Revolution, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenins government announced that minorities in the empire could pursue a course of self-determination. Following the collapse of the empire, in May 1918 Armenia, a number of Armenians joined the advancing 11th Soviet Red Army. The medieval Armenian capital of Ani, as well as the icon of the Armenian people Mount Ararat, were located in the ceded area. Additionally, Joseph Stalin, then acting Commissar for Nationalities, granted the areas of Nakhchivan, the republic began under the name the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia in 1920. From March 12,1922 to December 5,1936, Armenia was a part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Georgian SSR, the Red Army, which was campaigning in Georgia at the time, returned to suppress the revolt and drove its leaders out of Armenia. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy, Armenians began to enjoy a period of relative stability, life under the Soviet rule proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians received medicine, food, as well as other provisions from the central government, the situation was difficult for the Armenian Apostolic Church, however, which became a regular target of criticism in educational books and in the media and struggled greatly under Communism. After the death of Vladimir Lenin in January 1924, there was a power struggle in the Soviet Union. Armenian society and its economy were changed by Stalin and his fellow Moscow policymakers, in 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved under Stalins orders and the socialist republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were established instead. For the Armenian people, conditions grew worse under Stalins rule, in a period of twenty-five years, Armenia was industrialized and educated under strictly prescribed conditions, and nationalism was harshly suppressed. Stalin took several measures in persecuting the Armenian Church, already weakened by the Armenian Genocide, in the 1920s, the private property of the church was confiscated and priests were harassed. Soviet assaults against the Armenian Church accelerated under Stalin, beginning in 1929, in 1932, Khoren Muradpekyan became known as Khoren I and assumed the title of His Holiness the Catholicos. However, in the late 1930s, the Soviets renewed their attacks against the Church and this culminated in the murder of Khoren in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, and the closing of the Catholicosate of Echmiatsin on August 4,1938
30.
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Georgia, formally the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly known as Soviet Georgia was one of the republics of the Soviet Union from its inception in 1922 to its breakup in 1991. From November 18,1989, the Georgian SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws, geographically, the Georgian SSR was bordered by Turkey to the south-west and the Black Sea to the west. Within the Soviet Union it bordered the Russian SFSR to the north, Armenian SSR to the south, on November 28,1917, after the October Revolution in Russia, there was a Transcaucasian Commissariat established in Tiflis. A moderate, multi-party democratic system led by the Social Democratic Party of Georgia operated in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, but in February 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia. The Socialist Soviet Republic of Georgia was established on February 25,1921, on March 2 of the following year the first constitution of Soviet Georgia was accepted. From March 12,1922 to December 5,1936 it was part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Armenian SSR, in 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved. In 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved and Georgia became the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, lavrentiy Beria became head of the Georgian OGPU and purged Georgia until he was transferred to Moscow in 1938. Reaching the Caucasus oilfields was one of the objectives of Hitlers invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The country contributed almost 700,000 fighters to the Red Army and he abolished their respective autonomous republics. The Georgian SSR was briefly granted some of their territory until 1957, the decentralisation program introduced by Khrushchev in the mid-1950s was soon exploited by Georgian Communist Party officials to build their own regional power base. A thriving pseudo-capitalist shadow economy emerged alongside the official state-owned economy, corruption was at a high level. Among all the republics, Georgia had the highest number of residents with high or special secondary education. Although corruption was hardly unknown in the Soviet Union, it became so widespread, shevardnadze ascended to the post of First Secretary with the blessings of Moscow. He was an effective and able ruler of Georgia from 1972 to 1985, improving the official economy, Soviet power and Georgian nationalism clashed in 1978 when Moscow ordered revision of the constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgias official state language. Bowing to pressure from street demonstrations on April 14,1978. April 14 was established as a Day of the Georgian Language, on April 9,1989, Soviet troops were used to break up a peaceful demonstration at the government building in Tbilisi. Twenty Georgians were killed and hundreds wounded and poisoned, the event radicalised Georgian politics, prompting many - even some Georgian communists - to conclude that independence was preferable to continued Soviet unity. On October 28,1990, democratic elections were held
31.
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the United Nations, although it was legally represented by the All-Union state in its affairs with countries outside of the Soviet Union. From the start, the city of Kharkiv served as the republics capital. However, in 1934, the seat of government was moved to the city of Kyiv. Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe to the north of the Black Sea, bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia, Byelorussia, the Ukrainian SSRs border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Unions western-most border point. According to the Soviet Census of 1989 the republic had a population of 51,706,746 inhabitants, the name Ukraine, derived from the Slavic word kraj, meaning land or border. It was first used to part of the territory of Kievan Rus in the 12th century. The name has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century, after the abdication of the tsar and the start of the process of the destruction of the Russian Empire many people in Ukraine wished to establish a Ukrainian Republic. During a period of war from 1917-23 many factions claiming themselves governments of the newly born republic were formed, each with supporters. The two most prominent of them were the government in Kyiv and the government in Kharkiv, the former being the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and the latter the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This government of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic was founded on 24–25 December 1917, in its publications it names itself either the Republic of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies or the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Soviets. The last session of the government took place in the city of Taganrog, in July 1918 the former members of the government formed the Communist Party of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in Moscow. On 10 March 1919, according to the 3rd Congress of Soviets in Ukraine the name of the state was changed to the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second, during its existence, the Ukrainian SSR was commonly referred to as Ukraine or the Ukraine. On 24 August 1991, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence, since the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine in June 1996, the country became known simply as Ukraine, which is the name used to this day. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, several factions sought to create an independent Ukrainian state, the most popular faction was initially the local Socialist Revolutionary Party that composed the local government together with Federalists and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks boycotted any government initiatives most of the time, instigating several armed riots in order to establish the Soviet power without any intent for consensus, immediately after the October Revolution in Petrograd, Bolsheviks instigated the Kiev Bolshevik Uprising to support the Revolution and secure Kyiv. Due to a lack of support from the local population and anti-revolutionary Central Rada, however. Most moved to Kharkiv and received the support of the eastern Ukrainian cities, later, this move was regarded as a mistake by some of the Peoples Commissars
32.
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Lithuania or Lithuania was a republic of the Soviet Union. It existed from 1940 to 1990, between 1941 and 1944, the German invasion of the Soviet Union caused its de facto dissolution. However, with the retreat of the Germans in 1944–1945, Soviet hegemony was re-established, on 18 May 1989, the Lithuanian SSR declared state sovereignty within its borders during perestroika. On 11 March 1990, the Republic of Lithuania was declared to be re-established as an independent state, Soviet Union itself recognized Lithuanian independence on 6 September 1991. There had been an attempt to establish a Soviet government in Lithuania by the Bolshevik Red Army in 1918–1919. The Lithuanian SSR was first proclaimed on 16 December 1918, by the revolutionary government of Lithuania. The Lithuanian SSR was supported by the Red Army, but it failed to create a de facto government with any support as the Council of Lithuania had successfully done earlier. It has been suggested that the failure to conquer Poland in the Polish–Soviet War prevented the Soviets from invading Lithuania, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, stated that Lithuania was to be included into the German sphere of influence. However soon after World War II began in September 1939, and this was granted in exchange for Lublin and parts of the Warsaw province of Poland, originally ascribed to the Soviet Union, but by that time already occupied by German forces. Following the 1940 Soviet ultimatum to Lithuania and subsequent invasion of 15 June 1940, before doing so, in accordance with the Lithuanian constitution, he turned over his duties on a provisional basis to Prime Minister Antanas Merkys. The day after Smetonas departure, Merkys announced he had deposed Smetona and had taken over the presidency in his own right, on 17 June, at the behest of the Soviets, Merkys appointed a left-wing journalist, Justas Paleckis, as prime minister. Merkys then himself resigned, making Paleckis acting president as well, for all intents and purposes, Lithuania had lost its independence. Paleckis appointed a Communist-dominated peoples government with Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius as prime minister and this government dissolved the Fourth Seimas and announced elections for a Peoples Seimas on 14 July. Voters were selected with a single list provided by the Union of the Working People of Lithuania, on 3 August, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR accepted the petition and admitted the Lithuanian SSR as the 14th republic of the Soviet Union. Lithuania now maintains that since Smetona never resigned, Merkys takeover of the presidency was illegal, Lithuania was subsequently invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in June 1941. With the 1944 Soviet Baltic offensive, Soviet rule was re-established in July 1944, after both Soviet occupations, mass deportation of the Lithuanians into gulags and other forced settlements ensued. The United States refused to recognize the annexation of Lithuania or the other Baltic States, by the Soviet Union, all legal ties of the Soviet Unions sovereignty over the republic were cut as Lithuania declared the restitution of its independence. The Soviet Union claimed that this declaration was illegal, as Lithuania had to follow the process of secession mandated in the Soviet Constitution if it wanted to leave
33.
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic
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To the west it bordered Poland. Within the Soviet Union, it bordered Lithuania and Latvian to the north, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia was declared by the Bolsheviks on 1 January 1919 following the declaration of independence by the Belarusian Democratic Republic in March 1918. In 1922, the BSSR was one of the four founding members of the Soviet Union, together with the Ukrainian SSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, Byelorussia was one of several Soviet republics occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. This non-sovereign country of several million was a UN-founding-member, towards the final years of the Soviet Republics existence, the Supreme Soviet of Byelorussian SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty on 27 July 1990. On 15 August 1991, Stanislau Shushkevich was elected as the countrys first president, ten days later on 25 August 1991, Byelorussian SSR declared its independence and renamed to the Republic of Belarus. The Soviet Union was dissolved four months later on December 26,1991 and this asserted that the territories are all Russian and all the peoples are also Russian, in the case of the Belarusians, they were variants of the Russian people. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the term White Russia caused some confusion as it was also the name of the force that opposed the red Bolsheviks. During the period of the Byelorussian SSR, the term Byelorussia was embraced as part of a national consciousness, in western Belarus under Polish control, Byelorussia became commonly used in the regions of Białystok and Grodno during the interwar period. Upon the establishment of the Byelorussian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1920, in 1936, with the proclamation of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the republic was renamed to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic transposing the second and third words. On August 25,1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR renamed the Soviet republic to the Republic of Belarus, conservative forces in the newly independent Belarus did not support the name change and opposed its inclusion in the 1991 draft of the Constitution of Belarus. Prior to the First World War, Belarusian lands were part of the Russian Empire, during the War, the Russian Western Fronts Great retreat in August/September 1915 ended with the lands of Grodno and most of Vilno guberniyas occupied by Germany. The abdication of the Tsar in light of the February Revolution in Russia in early 1917, as central authority waned, different political and ethnic groups strived for greater self-determination and even secession from the increasingly ineffective Russian Provisional Government. The momentum picked up after the incompetent actions of the 10th Army during the ill-fated Kerensky Offensive during the summer. On 26 November, the committee of workers, peasants and soldiers deputies for the Western Oblast was merged with the Western fronts executive committee. During the autumn 1917/winter of 1918, the Western Oblast was headed by Aleksandr Myasnikyan as head of the Western Oblasts Military Revolutionary Committee, Myasnikyan took over as chair of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Partys committee for Western Oblast and Moisey Kalmanovich as chair of the Obliskomzap. As a result, on 7th of December, when the first All-Belarusian congress convened, a cease-fire was quickly agreed and proper peace negotiations began in December. The German Operation Faustschlag was of immediate success and within 11 days, they were able to make a serious advance eastward, taking over Ukraine, Baltic states and this forced the Obliskomzap to evacuate to Smolensk. The Smolensk guberniya was passed to the Western Oblast, faced with the German demands, the Bolsheviks accepted their terms at the final Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which was signed on 3 March 1918
34.
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Moldavia, officially the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known to as Soviet Moldavia, was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on August 2,1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on June 28 of that year, and parts of the MASSR, an autonomous republic within the Ukrainian SSR. After the Declaration of Sovereignty on June 23,1990 and until 23 May 1991 it was known as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova. From 23 May 1991 until the declaration of independence on 27 August 1991, geographically, the Moldavian SSR was bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. On August 24,1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty, the secret protocol placed the Romanian province of Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. On June 26, four days after France sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was thereafter created following the entrance of Soviet troops on June 28,1940. 90% of the territory of MSSR was on the bank of the river Dniester. As such, the strategically important Black Sea coast and Danube frontage were given to the Ukrainian SSR, considered more reliable than the Moldavian SSR, by the end of World War II the Soviet Union had reconquered all of the lost territories, reestablishing Soviet authority there. On June 22,1941, during the first day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union,10 people were killed in Răzeni by Soviet authorities, a memorial was opened in 2009. The Soviet authorities targeted several socio-economic groups due to their situation, political views. They were deported to or resettled in Siberia and northern Kazakhstan, according to a report by the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, no less than 86,604 people were arrested and deported in 1940-1941 alone. Modern Russian historians put forward a number of 90,000 for the same period. NKVD/MGB also struck at anti-Soviet groups, which were most active in 1944-1952, a de-kulakisation campaign was directed towards the rich Moldavian peasant families, which were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia as well. Religious persecutions during the Soviet occupation targeted numerous priests, after the Soviet occupation, the religious life underwent a persecution similar to the one in Russia between the two World Wars. Other deportation campaigns were directed towards the ethnic Germans and religious minorities, collectivisation was implemented between 1949 and 1950, although earlier attempts were made since 1946. According to Charles King, there is evidence that it was caused by the Soviets and directed towards the largest ethnic group living in the countryside. The main cause was the Soviet requisitioning of large amounts of products, but it was also aggravated by war, the draught of 1946. With the regime of Nikita Khrushchev replacing that of Joseph Stalin, in the 1970s and 1980s Moldavia received substantial investment from the budget of the USSR to develop industrial, scientific facilities, as well as housing
35.
Sergei Eisenstein
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Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein was a Soviet film director and film theorist, a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage. He is noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and October, as well as the historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. Eisenstein was born to a family in Riga, Latvia. His father, Mikhail Osipovich Eisenstein was born to a German Jewish father who had converted to Christianity, Osip Eisenstein, and his mother, Julia Ivanovna Konetskaya, was from a Russian Orthodox family. According to other sources, both of his grandparents were of Baltic German descent. His father was an architect and his mother was the daughter of a prosperous merchant, Julia left Riga the same year as the Russian Revolution of 1905, taking Sergei with her to St. Petersburg. Her son would return at times to see his father, who joined them around 1910, divorce followed and Julia left the family to live in France. Eisenstein was raised as an Orthodox Christian, but became an atheist later on, at the Petrograd Institute of Civil Engineering, Sergei studied architecture and engineering, the profession of his father. In 1918 Sergei left school and joined the Red Army to serve the Bolshevik Revolution and this brought his father to Germany after the defeat of the Tsarist government, and Sergei to Petrograd, Vologda, and Dvinsk. In 1920, Sergei was transferred to a position in Minsk. At this time, he was exposed to Kabuki theatre and studied Japanese, learning some 300 kanji characters and these studies would lead him to travel to Japan. In 1920 Eisenstein moved to Moscow, and began his career in working for Proletkult. His productions there were entitled Gas Masks, Listen Moscow, Eisenstein would then work as a designer for Vsevolod Meyerhold. In 1923 Eisenstein began his career as a theorist, by writing The Montage of Attractions for LEF, Eisensteins first film, Glumovs Diary, was also made in that same year with Dziga Vertov hired initially as an instructor. Strike was Eisensteins first full-length feature film, the Battleship Potemkin was acclaimed critically worldwide. Officially, the trip was supposed to allow Eisenstein and company to learn about sound motion pictures, for Eisenstein, however, it was also an opportunity to see landscapes and cultures outside those found within the Soviet Union. He spent the two years touring and lecturing in Berlin, Zürich, London, and Paris. In 1929, in Switzerland, Eisenstein supervised an educational documentary about abortion directed by Tissé entitled Frauennot - Frauenglück, in late April 1930, Jesse L. Lasky, on behalf of Paramount Pictures, offered Eisenstein the opportunity to make a film in the United States
36.
Battleship Potemkin
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Battleship Potemkin, sometimes rendered as Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 Soviet silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm. It presents a version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers. Battleship Potemkin was named the greatest film of all time at the Brussels Worlds Fair in 1958, the film is set in June 1905, the protagonists of the film are the members of the crew of the Potemkin, a battleship of the Imperial Russian Navys Black Sea Fleet. While the Potemkin is anchored off the island of Tendra, off-duty sailors are sleeping in their bunks, as an officer inspects the quarters, he stumbles and takes out his aggression on a sleeping sailor. The ruckus causes Vakulinchuk to awake, and he gives a speech to the men as they come to, the time has come when we too must speak out. The scene cuts to morning above deck, where sailors are remarking on the quality of the meat for the crew. The meat appears to be rotten and covered in worms, the ships doctor, Smirnov, is called over to inspect the meat by the captain. Rather than worms, the doctor says that the insects are maggots, the sailors further complain about the poor quality of the rations, but the doctor declares the meat edible and ends the discussion. Senior officer Giliarovsky forces the sailors still looking over the meat to leave the area. The crew refuses to eat the borscht, instead choosing bread and water, while cleaning dishes, one of the sailors sees an inscription on a plate, which reads give us this day our daily bread. After considering the meaning of this phrase, the sailor smashes the plate, all those who refuse the meat are judged guilty of insubordination and are brought to the fore-deck where they receive religious last rites. The sailors are obliged to kneel and a cover is thrown over them as a firing squad marches onto the deck. The First Officer gives the order to fire, but in response to Vakulinchuks pleas the sailors in the firing squad lower their rifles, the sailors overwhelm the outnumbered officers and take control of the ship. The officers are thrown overboard, the ships priest is dragged out of hiding, the mutiny is successful but Vakulinchuk, the charismatic leader of the rebels, is killed. The Potemkin arrives at the port of Odessa, Vakulinchuks body is taken ashore and displayed publicly by his companions in a tent with a sign on his chest that says For a spoonful of soup. The sailors gather to make a farewell and praise Vakulinchuk as a hero. The people of Odessa welcome the sailors, but they attract the police, the best-known sequence of the film is set on the Odessa steps, connecting the waterfront with the central city. A detachment of dismounted Cossacks forms a line at the top of the steps, the soldiers halt to fire a volley into the crowd and then continue their impersonal, machine-like advance
37.
1905 Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies and it led to Constitutional Reform including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. According to Sidney Harcave, author of The Russian Revolution of 1905, newly emancipated peasants earned too little, and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. A nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to them, banning strikes. Finally, the educated class fomented and spread radical ideas after a relaxing of discipline in universities allowed a new consciousness to grow among students, vladimir Lenin was a political theorist who also contributed his own ideology of how a revolution would be caused. In his book Imperialism he claimed that driven imperialism and the dependence on overseas markets would be a factor to revolution. This would cause a rivalry between the powers, leading to war. Taken individually, these issues might not have affected the course of Russian history, the government finally recognized these problems, albeit in a shortsighted and narrow-minded way. The minister of interior Plehve stated in 1903 that, after the problem, the most serious ones plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the revolution of 1905, every year, thousands of nobles in debt mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold them to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land and this plan was meant to prevent proletarianisation of the peasants. However, the peasants were not given land to provide for their needs. Their earnings were often so small that they could buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes. By the tenth year of Nicholas IIs reign, their total arrears in payments of taxes and dues was 118 million rubles, masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and sometimes walked hundreds of kilometres to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence and these violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so it created many committees to investigate their causes. The committees concluded that no part of the countryside was prosperous, some parts, although cultivated acreage had increased in the last half century, the increase had not been proportionate to the growth of peasant populations, which had doubled. The investigations revealed many difficulties but could not find solution that were both sensible and acceptable to the government, nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected, European civilization was valued over Asian culture, and Christianity was on the whole considered more progressive and true than other religions
38.
Jump cut
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A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly if at all. This type of edit gives the effect of jumping forwards in time and it is a manipulation of temporal space using the duration of a single shot, and fracturing the duration to move the audience ahead. Jump cuts, in contrast, draw attention to the nature of the film. Continuity editing uses a guideline called the 30 degree rule to avoid jump cuts, the 30 degree rule advises that for consecutive shots to appear seamless, the camera position must vary at least 30 degrees from its previous position. Some schools would call for a change in framing as well, although jump cuts can be created through the editing together of two shots filmed non-continuously, they can also be created by removing a middle section of one continuously filmed shot. Jump cuts can add a sense of speed to the sequence of events, dziga Vertofs avant-garde Russian film Man With a Movie Camera is almost entirely composed of jump cuts. Contemporary use of the cut stems from its appearance in the work of Jean-Luc Godard. In the screen shots to the right, the first image comes from the end of one shot. Recently the jump cut has been used in films like Snatch, by Guy Ritchie and it is frequently used in TV editing, in documentaries produced by Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, for example. It is noticeable in Universal Monsters films and music videos, the jump cut has sometimes served a political use in film. It was also used in Alexander Dovzhenkos Arsenal, where a shot of a characters face cuts closer and closer a total of nine times. In television, Rowan & Martins Laugh-In editor Arthur Schneider won an Emmy Award in 1968 for his use of the jump cut. Jump cutting remained an uncommon TV technique until shows like Homicide, the well-remembered music video for Everybody Have Fun Tonight has a jump cut for virtually every frame. British comedian Russell Kane has produced a series of comic, satirical videos, named Kaneings and these make extensive use of jump cut-style editing. Vernacular use of the jump cut can be used to describe any abrupt or noticeable edit in a film. However, technically many such over-broad usages are incorrect, in particular, a cut between two different subjects is not a true jump cut, no matter how jarring. A match cut may also be abrupt, but the viewer is meant to see the similarity between two scenes with disparate subjects rather than experience the discontinuity between the two shots. A well-known example is found at the end of the Dawn of Man sequence in the film 2001, a primitive hominid discovers the use of a bone as a weapon and throws it into the air
39.
Vsevolod Pudovkin
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Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin was a Russian and Soviet film director, screenwriter and actor who developed influential theories of montage. He was granted the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR in 1948, Vsevolod Pudovkin was born in Penza, Russian Empire into a Russian family, the third of six children. In four years his family moved to Moscow and his father Illarion Epifanovich Pudovkin came from peasants of the Penza Governorate. He worked in companies as a manager and a door-to-door salesman. Vsevolods mother Elizaveta Alexandrovna Pudovkina was a housewife, a student of engineering at Moscow University, Pudovkin saw active duty during World War I, being captured by the Germans. During this time he studied languages and did book illustrations. After the war, he abandoned his professional activity and joined the world of cinema, first as a screenwriter, actor and art director and his first notable work was a comedy short Chess Fever co-directed with Nikolai Shpikovsky. José Raúl Capablanca played a part in it, with a number of other cameos presented. In 1926 he directed which will be considered one of the masterpieces of silent movies, Mother, both movies featured Pudovkins wife Anna Nikolaevna Zemtsova in the main female parts. His first feature was followed by The End of St. Petersburg and this idea would be brought to bear in his next pictures, A Simple Case and The Deserter, works that do not match the quality of earlier work. In 1935 he was awarded the Order of Lenin, after an interruption caused by health concerns, Pudovkin returned to movie making, this time with a number of historical epics, Victory, Minin and Pozharsky and Suvorov. The last two were often praised as some of the best movies based on Russian history, along with the works of Sergei Eisenstein, Pudovkin was awarded a Stalin Prize for both of them in 1941. During World War II he was evacuated to Kazakhstan where he directed several patriotic war movies and he also played a small part in the Ivan the Terrible movie. With the end of war he returned to Moscow and continued his work at the Mosfilm studio, making biographical and war movies. In 1947 he was awarded another Stalin Prize for his work on Admiral Nakhimov, and in 1950 — his second Order of Lenin and his last work was The Return of Vasili Bortnikov. Vsevolod Pudovkin died on June 30,1953 in Jūrmala, Latvian SSR after a heart attack and he was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. One of the streets in Moscow is named after Pudovkin, Film Technique and Film Acting Grove Press. Mother DVD extras, Las Orígenes del Cine, Suevia Films Spain, Vsevolod Pudovkin at the Internet Movie Database Vsevolod Pudovkin at Find a Grave The silent revolutionary, Jonathan Jones on the work of Vsevolod Pudovkin, at Guardian Unlimited Islands
40.
Dziga Vertov
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Dziga Vertov was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director, as well as a cinema theorist. His filming practices and theories influenced the cinéma vérité style of documentary movie-making and the Dziga Vertov Group, in the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, critics voted Vertovs Man with a Movie Camera the 8th best film ever made. Vertovs brothers Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman were also noted filmmakers, as was his wife, Vertov was born David Abelevich Kaufman into a family of Jewish lineage in Białystok, Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire. He Russified his Jewish name David and patronymic Abelevich to Denis Arkadievich at some point after 1918, Vertov studied music at Białystok Conservatory until his family fled from the invading German Army to Moscow in 1915. The Kaufmans soon settled in Petrograd, where Vertov began writing poetry, science fiction, in 1916-1917 Vertov was studying medicine at the Psychoneurological Institute in Saint Petersburg and experimenting with sound collages in his free time. He eventually adopted the name Dziga Vertov, which translates loosely from Ukrainian as spinning top. Vertov is known for early writings, mainly while still in school, that focus on the individual versus the perceptive nature of the camera lens. Vertov is also known for quotes on perception, and its ineffability, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, at the age of 22, Vertov began editing for Kino-Nedelya, which first came out in June 1918. While working for Kino-Nedelya he met his wife, the film director and editor, Elizaveta Svilova. She began collaborating with Vertov, beginning as his editor but becoming assistant and co-director in subsequent films, such as Man with a Movie Camera, and Three Songs About Lenin. Some of the cars on the agit-trains were equipped with actors for live performances or printing presses, Vertovs had equipment to shoot, develop, edit, and project film. The trains went to battlefronts on agitation-propaganda missions intended primarily to bolster the morale of the troops, in 1919, Vertov compiled newsreel footage for his documentary Anniversary of the Revolution, in 1921 he compiled History of the Civil War. Vertovs interest in machinery led to a curiosity about the basis of cinema. In 1922, the year that Nanook of the North was released, the series took its title from the official government newspaper Pravda. The Kino-Pravda group began its work in a basement in the centre of Moscow Vertov explained and he called it damp and dark. There was a floor and holes one stumbled into at every turn. Dziga said, This dampness prevented our reels of lovingly edited film from sticking together properly, rusted our scissors, before dawn- damp, cold, teeth chattering- I wrap comrade Svilova in a third jacket. The episodes of Kino-Pravda usually did not include reenactments or stagings, the cinematography is simple, functional, unelaborate—perhaps a result of Vertovs disinterest in both beauty and the grandeur of fiction
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Man with a Movie Camera
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Man with a Movie Camera – is an experimental 1929 silent documentary film, with no story and no actors, by Soviet-Russian director Dziga Vertov, edited by his wife Elizaveta Svilova. Vertovs feature film, produced by the film studio VUFKU, presents urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow, from dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have characters, they are the cameramen of the title, the editor. Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its release, the works quick-cut editing, self-reflexivity. The film has an unabashedly avant-garde style, and emphasizes that film can go anywhere, to get footage using a hidden camera, Vertov and his brother Mikhail Kaufman had to distract the subject with something else even louder than the camera filming them. The film also features a few obvious stagings such as the scene of a woman getting out of bed and getting dressed and the shot of chess pieces being swept to the center of the board. The film was criticized for both the stagings and the experimentation, possibly as a result of its directors frequent assailing of fiction film as a new opiate of the masses. Vertov — born David Abelevich Kaufman — was a pioneer in documentary film-making during the late 1920s. He belonged to a movement of filmmakers known as the kinoks, Vertov, along with other kino artists declared it their mission to abolish all non-documentary styles of film-making. This radical approach to movie making led to a dismantling of film industry. Most of Vertovs films were controversial, and the kinok movement was despised by many filmmakers of the time. Vertovs crowning achievement, Man with a Movie Camera, was his response to critics who rejected his previous film, critics had declared that Vertovs overuse of intertitles was inconsistent with the film-making style to which the kinoks subscribed. Working within that context, Vertov dealt with much fear in anticipation of the films release and he requested a warning to be printed in the Soviet central Communist newspaper, Pravda, which spoke directly of the films experimental, controversial nature. Vertov was worried that the film would be destroyed or ignored by the public. This manifesto echoes an earlier one that Vertov wrote in 1922, in which he disavowed popular films he felt were indebted to literature, working within a Marxist ideology, Vertov strove to create a futuristic city that would serve as a commentary on existing ideals in the Soviet world. This artificial city’s purpose was to awaken the Soviet citizen through truth and to bring about understanding. The kino’s aesthetic shined through in his portrayal of electrification, industrialization, and this could also be viewed as early modernism in film. On a technical note, Man with a Movie Cameras usage of double exposure, many of the scenes in the film contain people, which change size or appear underneath other objects
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Socialist realism
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Socialist realism is a style of realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in that country as well as in other socialist countries. Socialist realism is characterized by the depiction of communist values, such as the emancipation of the proletariat. Although related, it should not be confused with social realism, Socialist realism was the predominant form of approved art in the Soviet Union from its development in the early 1920s to its eventual fall from popularity in the late 1960s. While other countries have employed a prescribed canon of art, socialist realism in Soviet Union persisted longer and was more restricted than elsewhere in Europe, Socialist realism was developed by many thousands of artists, across a diverse society, over several decades. Early examples of realism in Russian art include the work of the Peredvizhnikis, while these works do not have the same political connotation, they exhibit the techniques exercised by their successors. After the Bolsheviks took control of Russia on October 25,1917, there had been a short period of artistic exploration in the time between the fall of the Tsar and the rise of the Bolsheviks. In 1917, Russian artists began to return to traditional forms of art. Shortly after the Bolsheviks took control, Anatoly Lunacharsky was appointed as head of Narkompros and this put Lunacharsky in the position of deciding the direction of art in the newly created Soviet state. Lunacharsky created a system of aesthetics based on the body that would become the main component of socialist realism for decades to come. He believed that the sight of a body, intelligent face or friendly smile was essentially life-enhancing. He concluded that art had an effect on the human organism. By depicting the perfect person, Lunacharsky believed art could educate citizens on how to be the perfect Soviets, there were two main groups debating the fate of Soviet art, futurists and traditionalists. Russian Futurists, many of whom had been creating abstract or leftist art before the Bolsheviks, believed communism required a complete rupture from the past and, therefore, traditionalists believed in the importance of realistic representations of everyday life. By 1928, the Soviet government had enough strength and authority to end private enterprises, at this point, although the term socialist realism was not being used, its defining characteristics became the norm. The first time the term socialist realism was officially used was in 1932, the term was settled upon in meetings that included politicians of the highest level, including Stalin himself. Maxim Gorky, a proponent of literary socialist realism, published an article titled Socialist Realism in 1933. During the Congress of 1934 four guidelines were laid out for socialist realism, the work must be, Proletarian, art relevant to the workers and understandable to them. Typical, scenes of life of the people
