1.
Anna German
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Anna Wiktoria German was during her lifetime known as a Polish singer and was immensely popular in Poland and in the Soviet Union in 1960s-1970s. She released over a dozen albums with songs in Polish. Anna German was a Polish and Russian-language singer of a Russia-German family and she was born in Urgench, a city with a population of 22,000 in northwestern Uzbekistan in Central Asia, then Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union. Her mother, Irma Martens, was the descendant of Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonites invited to Russia by Catherine II and her accountant father, Eugen Hörmann, was also of a Russia-German pastor family and born during travel in Łódź now Poland. Already Eugen Hörmanns father, Annas grandfather, Friedrich Hörmann, who had studied theology at Lodz, was in 1929 incarcerated in Gulag Plesetzk by Communists for being a priest, where he died. In 1937 during the NKVDs anti-German operation Eugen Hörmann was arrested in Urgench on false charges of spying, thereafter, Anna and her mother and grandmother survived in the Kemerovo Region, Tashkent, and later in the Kyrgyz and Kazakh SSR. In 1946 her mother was able to take the family to Silesia, first Nowa Ruda, Anna quickly learned Polish and several other languages and grew up hiding her family heritage. She graduated from the Geological Institute of Wroclaw University, during her university years, she began her music career at the Kalambur theater. Anna finally became successful when she won the 1964 II Festival of Polish Songs in Opole with her song Tańczące Eurydyki, one year later, she won first prize in the international song contest in Sopot. She was invited to perform in Italy in the prestigious Sanremo Music Festival in 1967, in Italy Anna German survived a bad car crash, and fully came back to the stage only in 1972, after a long rehabilitation period. On 23 March 1972 she married Zbigniew Tucholski and their son, Zbigniew, was born on 27 November 1975. Anna performed in the Marché international de lédition musicale in Cannes, as well as on the stages of Belgium, Germany, United States, Canada, in the last years of her life she composed some church songs. She died of osteosarcoma in 1982, and was buried at Warsaw evangelical cemetery and she also sang in Russian, English, Italian, Spanish, Latin, German and Mongolian. In 2001 six of her Polish albums were reissued on CDs, in recent years many compilation albums of her songs have also been released in both Russia and Poland. 1 LP1990 Powracające słowa vol, Полное собрание песен vol.1 CD2003 Спасибо тебе мое сердце
2.
Communist state
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A communist state is a state that is usually administered and governed by a single party representing the proletariat, guided by Marxist–Leninist philosophy, with the aim of achieving communism. The term Communist state is used by Western historians, political scientists, Communist states can be administered by a single, centralised party apparatus, although countries such as the DPRK have several parties. These parties usually are Marxist–Leninist or some variation thereof, with the aim of achieving socialism. Marx saw that in his time, the new nation states were characterized by increasingly intensified class contradiction between the capitalist class and the working class it ruled over. The state ruled by the class during the transition into classless society is called the dictatorship of the proletariat. Vladimir Lenin created revolutionary vanguard theory in an attempt to expand on the concept, during the 20th century, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state was in Russia in 1917. In 1922, it joined other territories of the empire to become the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. After World War II, the Soviet Army occupied much of Eastern Europe, most Communist states in Eastern Europe were allied with the USSR, except for Yugoslavia which declared itself non-aligned. In 1949, after a war against Japanese occupation and a war resulting in a Communist victory. Communist states were established in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos. A Communist state was established in North Korea, although it withdrew from the Communist movement. In 1989, the Communist states in Eastern Europe collapsed under pressure during a wave of non-violent movements which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, the existing Communist states in the world are in China, Cuba, Laos, Communist states share similar institutions, which are organized on the premise that the Communist party is a vanguard of the proletariat and represents the long-term interests of the people. The doctrine of democratic centralism, which was developed by Vladimir Lenin as a set of principles to be used in the affairs of the communist party, is extended to society at large. When used within a party, democratic centralism is meant to prevent factionalism. When applied to a state, democratic centralism creates a one-party system. The constitutions of most socialist states describe their system as a form of democracy. Thus, they recognize the sovereignty of the people as embodied in a series of parliamentary institutions
3.
Eastern Bloc
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The Eastern Bloc was the group of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. The terms Communist Bloc and Soviet Bloc were also used to denote groupings of states aligned with the Soviet Union, although these terms might include states outside Central and Eastern Europe. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a socialist island, Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was added in a secret protocol in September 1939. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union, the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas. Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property, the international community condemned this initial annexation of the Baltic states and deemed it illegal. In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union, from the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germanys Ostland. Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front, from 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed the potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he wont try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as an independent country, Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of inter-allied friction. In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of influence in Central Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany, after resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on a broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated that the new primary task would be to prepare elections. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for war booty, which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, as a young communist was told in East Germany, its got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control. Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation, elimination of the bourgeoisies social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as reforms rather than socioeconomic transformations, the bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly. Crucial departments such as responsible for personnel, general police, secret police
4.
Post-Soviet states
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On March 11,1990, Lithuania was the first to declare its independence, with Estonia and Latvia following suit in August 1991. All three Baltic states claimed continuity from the states that existed prior to their annexation by the Soviet Union in 1944 and were admitted to the United Nations on 17 September 1991. The remaining 12 republics all subsequently seceded,12 of the 15 states, excluding the Baltic states, initially formed the CIS and most joined CSTO, while the Baltic states focused on European Union and NATO membership. The 15 post-Soviet states are divided into the following five groupings. Each of these regions has its own set of traits, owing not only to geographic and cultural factors. In addition, there are a number of de facto independent, the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place as a result and against the backdrop of general economic stagnation, even regression. In all, the process triggered severe economic declines, with Gross Domestic Product dropping by more than 40% overall between 1990 and 1995. This decline in GDP was much more intense than the 27% decline that the United States suffered in the wake of the Great Depression between 1930 and 1934. The economic shocks associated with wholesale privatization resulted in the deaths of roughly 1 million working age individuals throughout the former Soviet bloc in the 1990s, by 2007,10 of the 15 post-Soviet states had recovered and reached GDP greater than what they had in 1991. Only Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan had GDP significantly below the 1991 level, the recovery in Russia was marginal, with GDP in 2006-2007 just nudging above the 1991 level. Combined with the aftershocks of the 1998 economic crisis it led to a return of more interventionist economic policies by Vladimir Putins administration. Change in Gross Domestic Product in constant prices, 1991-2015 *Economy of most Soviet republics started to decline in 1989-1990, **The year when GDP decline switched to GDP growth. List of the present Gross domestic product, The post-Soviet states listed according to their Human Development Index scores, only organizations that are mainly composed of post-Soviet states are listed in this section, organizations with wider memberships are not discussed. The 15 post-Soviet states are divided in their participation to the blocs, Belarus, Russia. It was conceived as an organization to the USSR. It currently consists of nine of the 15 former Soviet republics, with one participating state, Georgia withdrew from the CIS in August 2008. The sole exception to the above has been their recent membership in the Community of Democratic Choice, the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan are members of the CIS and participate in several regional organizations that have Russia as a primary mover. Such organizations are the Eurasian Economic Community, Collective Security Treaty Organization, the last two groups only became distinct once Uzbekistan withdrew from GUAM and sought membership in EurAsEc and CSTO
5.
Khmer Rouge Tribunal
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Although it is a national court, it was established as part of an agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations, and its members include both local and foreign judges. The Cambodian court invites international participation in order to apply international standards and this includes crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. However, rehabilitative victim support and media outreach for the purpose of education are also outlined as primary goals of the commission. Khmer Rouge Tribunal is rendered in Khmer as សាលាក្ដីខ្មែរក្រហម, salakdei khmero kraham, after lengthy negotiations, an agreement between the Royal Government of Cambodia and the United Nations was reached and signed on 6 June 2003. The agreement was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly, Cambodia established a Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force to create a legal and judicial structure to try the remaining leaders for war crimes and other crimes against humanity, but progress was slow. The government said that due to the economy and other financial commitments. Several countries, including Canada, India and Japan, came forward with extra funds, but by January 2006, the full balance of funding was not yet in place. In March 2006, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, the judges were sworn in early July 2006. In June 2009, the international Co-Prosecutor Robert Petit resigned from his assignment due to personal and familial reasons, in November of the same year, Andrew T. Cayley was appointed as new international Co-Prosecutor, and his Cambodian co-prosecutor is Ms. Chea Leang. Under the agreement between Cambodia and the UN, the tribunal is to be composed of local and international judges. All international judges have been appointed by the Supreme Council of the Magistracy of Cambodia from a list of nominees submitted by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, there are also Reserve judges who may be called upon to serve in the event of an emergency. The judges will serve out their terms until the Tribunal completes its work, the DSS also acts as a voice for the defence in the media and at outreach events, and organises a legacy program. The DSS legacy program is designed to increase understanding of the trial process. Through the VSS, victims have the ability to seek support, the VSS is responsible for informing victims of their rights in the proceedings, and connecting them with legal representatives if they desire it. As such, victims are recognized as partys of the proceedings. The VSS also ensures the safety and protection of its participants and this support and protection can be either physical protection for providing key testimony, or emotion support in the form of psychiatric help and assistance. In early 2012, Germany donated 1.2 million euros to the VSS and this marks Germanys fourth donation to the VSS since its official recognition as an organ of the ECCC. The financial assistance will go primarily towards legal representation for the victims, effective legal participation, Germany has donated in total 1.9 million euro to the VSS
6.
Stasi Records Agency
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Since March 2011, Roland Jahn has been head of the agency. The agency is subordinate to the Representative of the Federal Government for Culture, as of 2012, it had 1,708 employees. The agency is a member organisation of the Platform of European Memory. The agency is known by the title of its lead official as the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former German Democratic Republic. Due to its title, the Commissioner is more usually referred to as the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records or abbreviated as the BStU. In German, the office is often referred to using the incumbent federal commissioners own name, as the Gauck office. The agency also refers to itself as the Stasi Records Agency, during the regimes final days, Stasi officials destroyed documents with paper shredders and by burning. The burning of files led to the first occupation of a Stasi-Building on December 4,1989 in Erfurt and that morning some women saw dark smoke above the chimneys of the Stasi. They knew that the Stasi office in Erfurt was heated with gas and they deduced that dark smoke was the result of burning papers. With the help of other citizens they occupied the local secret police buildings and they also called the military prosecutor. The prosecutor sealed the buildings and formed a committee for inspection of the remaining files. This became a blueprint for what happened over the days in Stasi buildings all over East Germany. Citizens gained access to the Stasi headquarters in Berlin on January 15,1990 to halt the destruction there, in 1992, following a declassification ruling by the German government, the Stasi records were opened to public access, leading people to look for their files. Timothy Garton Ash, an English historian, wrote The File, the CIA acquired some Stasi records concerning the espionage of the Stasi. The Federal Republic of Germany has asked for their return and received some in April 2000, since the year 2003 the data of the so-called Rosenholz files is a part of the Stasi Records of the BStU. At its zenith, the Stasi had records on some 6 million people and it also had an archive of sweat and body odor samples. The agency is headed by a Federal Commissioner, elected by the Bundestag, the great majority of these were hired from the bodyguards branch of the Stasi, some were former archivists and some were just technicians. There was suspicion that some of these former Stasi officers managed to manipulate records, the report recommended, for several reasons besides the issue of former Stasi officers working for the BStU, to integrate the BStU into the German Federal Archives
7.
New Order (Indonesia)
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The New Order is the term coined by the second Indonesian President Suharto to characterise his regime as he came to power in 1966. Suharto used this term to contrast his rule with that of his predecessor, the term New Order in more recent times has become synonymous with the Suharto years. The generation of 66 epitomised talk of a new group of young leaders, strident anti-communism remained a hallmark of the regime for its subsequent 32 years. Within a few years, however, many of its allies had become indifferent or averse to the New Order. Among much of the movement which forced Suharto to resign in the 1998 Indonesian Revolution and then gained power. It is frequently employed to describe figures who were tied to the Suharto period, or who upheld the practises of his authoritarian regime, such as corruption, collusion. Sukarno was Indonesias founding president, a position he had held since the Republics formation in 1945, in 1955, the first general parliamentary elections delivered an unstable parliament and from the late 1950s, Sukarnos rule became increasingly autocratic under his Guided Democracy. To the resentment of the Military and Muslim groups, this arrangement became increasingly reliant on the PKI which had become the country’s strongest political party, Sukarno’s anti-imperial ideology saw Indonesia increasingly dependent on the Soviet Union and China which was met with indignation from Western countries. Sukarno’s administration became increasingly ineffective in providing an economic system to lift its citizens out of poverty. Meanwhile, Sukarno led Indonesia into Konfrontasi, a confrontation with Malaysia, removed Indonesia from the United Nations. By 1965 at the height of the Cold War, the PKI penetrated all levels of government, with the support of Sukarno and the Air Force, the party gained increasing influence at the expense of the Army, thus ensuring the Armys enmity. Muslim clerics, many of whom were landowners, felt threatened by the PKIs rural land confiscation actions, the army was alarmed at Sukarno’s support for the PKI’s wish to quickly establish a fifth force of armed peasants and labourers. On 30 September 1965, six generals were killed by a group calling themselves the 30 September Movement who alleged a plot to kill the President. General Suharto led the army in suppressing the coup attempt. The Communist Party of Indonesia were quickly blamed and the led an anti-communist purge which killed an estimated 500,000 people. Student groups, such as KAMI, were encouraged by, and sided with, in March 1966, Suharto secured a presidential decree, which gave him authority to take any action necessary to maintain security. A June session of the parliament banned Marxism-Leninism, ratified the Supersemar. In August–September 1966, and against the wishes of Sukarno, the New Order ended Indonesias confrontation with Malaysia, in March 1967, the MPRS stripped Sukarno of his remaining power, and Suharto was named Acting President
8.
Institute of National Remembrance
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It was created by legislation enacted by the Parliament. The Institute specialises in the legal and historical examination of the 20th century history of Poland in particular, IPN investigates both Nazi and Communist crimes committed in Poland between 1939 and the Revolutions of 1989, documents its findings and disseminates the results of its investigations to the public. The Institute was established by the Polish Parliament on 18 December 1998 and it began its activities on 1 July 2000. According to a new law went into effect on 15 March 2007. However, key articles of law were judged unconstitutional by Polands constitutional court on 11 May 2007. The IPN is a member of the Platform of European Memory. IPN investigates crimes committed on Polish soil against Polish citizens as well as people of other citizenships wronged in the country and it is the IPN duty to prosecute crimes against peace and humanity, as much as war crimes. IPN collects, organises and archives all documents about the Polish communist security apparatus active from 22 July 1944 to 31 December 1989, IPN was created by special legislation on 18 December 1998. IPN is governed by the chairman and this chairman is chosen by a supermajority of the Polish Parliament with the approval of the Senate of Poland on a request by a Collegium of IPN. The chairman has a 5-year term of office, the first chairman of the IPN was Leon Kieres, elected by the Sejm for five years on 8 June 2000. The second chairman was Janusz Kurtyka, elected on 9 December 2005 with a term that started 29 December 2005 until his death in the Smolensk airplane crash on 10 April 2010. Franciszek Gryciuk was acting chairman from 2010 to 2011, when the current chairman, on 29 April 2010, acting president Bronislaw Komorowski signed into law a parliamentary act that reformed the Institute of National Remembrance. Among the most widely reported cases investigated by the IPN thus far is the Jedwabne Pogrom, a pogrom of Polish Jews committed directly by Poles, since December 2000 IPN has organized over 30 academic conferences,22 exhibitions in various museums and educational competitions involving thousands of students. IPN Bulletin is of an informative and popular-scientific character and contains articles pertaining to the history of Poland in the years 1939–1990 as well as describes the current IPN activities, Remembrance and Justice appears every half a year and is a scientific historical magazine. IPN also publishes books which are edited as collections of documents, reports and memories. The Public Education Office co-operates on a permanent basis with the Ministry of National Education and Sport, IPN gives opinions of curricula and textbooks on history that are used in Polish schools and is involved in teacher training activities. The IPN also co-organizes postgraduate diploma studies on history at the Jagiellonian University, on 18 December 2006 Polish law regulating IPN was changed and came into effect on 15 March 2007. This change gave IPN new lustration powers, the list gained much attention in Polish media and politics, and during that time IPN security procedures and handling of the matter came under criticism
9.
Lustration
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Lustration is the process of making something clear or pure, usually by means of a propitiatory offering. The term is taken from the Roman lustrum purification rituals, the term has been adapted to the purge of government officials once affiliated with the Communist system in Central and Eastern Europe. Various forms of lustration were employed in post-communist Europe, procedures excluded participation of former communists, and especially of informants of the communist secret police, in successor political positions, or even in civil service positions. This exclusion formed part of the wider decommunization campaigns, in some countries, however, lustration laws did not lead to exclusion and disqualification. Lustration law in Hungary was based on the exposure of compromised state officials, the special nature of lustration law refers to its transitional character. As of 1996, various laws of varying scope were implemented in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, the Baltic States, Germany, Poland. As of 1996 lustration laws had not been passed in Belarus, lustration can have a positive or negative outcome. Generally used by theorists in its negative sense. Periods under Pol Pot in Cambodia and also the Gang of Four in Communist China, in these cases, people were purged, often via firing squad. Lustration can serve as a form of revenge by anti-communist politicians who were dissidents under a Communist-led government, lustration laws are usually passed right before elections, and become tightened when right-wing governments are in power, and loosened while social democratic parties are in power. It is claimed that systems based on dismissal or confession might be able to increase trust in government. Per a law passed on 4 October 1991, all involved with the StB. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press,2011
10.
Secret police
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Secret police organisations are often utilised for the purposes of policing the activities of dissidents, and weakening opposition organisations. Secret police forces are only to the executive branch of the government. They operate entirely or partially in secrecy, that is, most or all of their operations are obscure and hidden from the general public, secret police agencies have often been used as an instrument of political repression. States where the secret police wield significant power are sometimes referred to as states or counterintelligence states. Despite such overview, there exists the possibility of domestic-security agencies acting unlawfully. In some cases, certain police agencies are accused of being secret police, for example, political groups and civil liberties organizations in the United States have at various times accused the Federal Bureau of Investigation of being secret police. Which government agencies may be classed or characterized, in whole or part, secret police organizations can exist at sub-national levels in a political unit in which entrenched leadership is largely unaccountable. A single secret service has the weapons to arrogate to itself complete political power and it may therefore pose a potential threat to the central political authority. In dictatorships, a relative of the dictator often heads the secret police. For example, Saddam Hussein, as head of the State Internal Security Department placed his secret police under the authority of his first cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid. In addition, secret police have a tendency to view potential political enemies as concrete threats. In some cases, a dictator may manufacture such enemies for the purpose of directing national output toward a common goal, the tactics of investigation and intimidation used by secret police enable them to accrue so much power that they usually operate with little or no practical restraint. Secret police may open mail, tap telephone lines, use techniques to trick, blackmail. Secret police are notorious for raiding homes between midnight and dawn, to people suspected of dissent. People apprehended by the police are often arbitrarily arrested and detained without due process. While in detention, arrestees may be tortured or subjected to inhumane treatment, suspects may not receive a public trial, and instead may be convicted in a kangaroo court-style show trial, or by a secret tribunal. Secret police known to have used these approaches in history include the police of East Germany. Secret police have used by many types of governments
11.
Civil service
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A civil servant or public servant is a person so employed in the public sector employed for a government department or agency. The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the service varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom, for instance, only Crown employees are referred to as civil servants whereas county or city employees are not, many consider the study of service to be a part of the field of public administration. Workers in non-departmental public bodies may also be classed as servants for the purpose of statistics and possibly for their terms. Collectively a states civil servants form its service or public service. An international civil servant or international staff member is an employee who is employed by an intergovernmental organization. These international civil servants do not resort under any national legislation but are governed by internal staff regulations, All disputes related to international civil service are brought before special tribunals created by these international organizations such as, for instance, the Administrative Tribunal of the ILO. Specific referral can be made to the International Civil Service Commission of the United Nations and its mandate is to regulate and coordinate the conditions of service of staff in the United Nations common system, while promoting and maintaining high standards in the international civil service. The origin of the modern civil service can be traced back to Imperial examination founded in Imperial China. The Imperial exam based on merit was designed to select the best administrative officials for the states bureaucracy and this system had a huge influence on both society and culture in Imperial China and was directly responsible for the creation of a class of scholar-bureaucrats irrespective of their family pedigree. In the areas of administration, especially the military, appointments were based solely on merit, after the fall of the Han Dynasty, the Chinese bureaucracy regressed into a semi-merit system known as the Nine-rank system. This system was reversed during the short-lived Sui Dynasty, which initiated a civil service bureaucracy recruited through written examinations, the first civil service examination system was established by Emperor Wen of Sui. The examination tested the candidates memorization of the Nine Classics of Confucianism and his ability to compose poetry using fixed and traditional forms, the system was finally abolished by the Qing government in 1905 as part of the New Policies reform package. The Chinese system was admired by European commentators from the 16th century onward. In the 18th century, in response to changes and the growth of the British Empire, the bureaucracy of institutions such as the Office of Works. Each had its own system, but in general, staff were appointed through patronage or outright purchase, by the 19th century, it became increasingly clear that these arrangements were falling short. The origins of the British civil service are better known, during the eighteenth century a number of Englishmen wrote in praise of the Chinese examination system, some of them going so far as to urge the adoption for England of something similar. The first concrete step in this direction was taken by the British East India Company in 1806, in that year, the Honourable East India Company established a college, the East India Company College, near London to train and examine administrators of the Companys territories in India
12.
Todor Zhivkov
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Todor Hristov Zhivkov, was the Communist leader of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria from 4 March 1954 until 10 November 1989. He resigned on 10 November 1989, under pressure by senior BCP members due to his refusal to recognize problems, within a month of Zhivkovs ouster, Communist rule in Bulgaria had effectively ended, and within another month the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria had formally ceased to exist. Zhivkov was born in the Bulgarian village of Pravets into a peasant family, in 1928, he joined the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union, an organisation closely linked with the Bulgarian Workers Party – later the Bulgarian Communist Party. The following year he obtained a post at the Darzhavna pechatnitsa, in 1932, he joined the BWP proper, later serving as secretary of its Second Borough Committee and as a member of its Sofia County Committee. During World War II, Zhivkov participated in Bulgarias resistance movement against the countrys alignment with Nazi Germany and was sympathetic to the countrys 50,000 Jews. In 1943, he was involved in organising the Chavdar partisan detachment in and around his place of birth, under his rule, many fellow former combatants with Chavdar were to rise to positions of prominence in Bulgarian affairs. He is said to have coordinated partisan movements with those of pro-Soviet army units during the 9 September 1944 uprising, after 9 September 1944, Zhivkov became head of the Sofia police force, restyled as the Narodna Militsiya. He was elected to the BCP Central Committee as a member in 1945. In the run-up to the 1949 treason trial against Traicho Kostov, Zhivkov criticised the Party and this placed him in the Stalinist hardline wing of the Party. In 1950, Zhivkov became a member of the BCP Politburo, then led by Vulko Chervenkov. In the years followed, he was involved in countering countryside resistance to forced farm collectivisation in northwestern Bulgaria. After Joseph Stalins death, an emphasis on shared leadership emerged, the hardline Stalinist Chervenkov was removed as General Secretary of the BCP in 1954 under Soviet pressure. Zhivkov took his place, but Chervenkov retained some of his powers as prime minister, Bulgarian opinion at the time interpreted this as a self-preservation move by Chervenkov, since Zhivkov was a less well known figure in the party. It was at point that he became the de facto leader of Bulgaria. Subsequently Zhivkov was associated with the April Line, which had anti-Stalinist credentials, at the BCP 8th Congress in late 1962, Zhivkov accused Yugov of anti-Party activity, expelled him from the BCP and had him placed under house arrest. Their plan was to establish a leadership in the country. The coup was exposed and between 28 March and 12 April 1965 and most of the plotters were arrested, the post, equivalent to that of president, confirmed his position as the countrys top leader. Following the Chinese model, all of Bulgarian society was to be propagandized and mobilized to meet the planning goals, amalgamation of collective farms cut their number by 70 percent, after which average farm acreage was second only to the Soviet Union among countries in Eastern Europe
13.
Kang Kek Iew
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As the head of the governments internal security branch, he oversaw the Tuol Sleng prison camp where thousands were held for interrogation and torture. On 2 February 2012, his sentence was extended to life imprisonment by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, kang Kek Iew was born in Choyaot village, Kampong Chen subdistrict, Kampong Thom Province, and is of Chinese-Khmer ancestry. A star pupil in his school, he passed his Brevet dEtudes Secondaire de Première in 1961 at the age of nineteen and he finished the first half of his Baccalaureate in 1962 at the Lycée Suravarman II in the town of Siem Reap. The same year he was offered a place in the prestigious Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh where he completed his Baccalaureate in mathematics, in 1964, Kek Iew began studying for his teaching certificate in Mathematics, a subject he loved, at the Institut de Pédagogie. The Institute was a cradle of activism under the directorship of Son Sen who was later to emerge as the Defence Minister of the Khmer Rouge and Duchs immediate superior. On 28 August 1966, Kek Iew got his certificate and was posted to a lycée in Skoun. He was a teacher, remembered as earnest and committed by his pupils. He joined the Communist Party of Kampuchea in 1967, following the arrest of three of his students, he fled to the Khmer Rouge base in Chamkar Leu District where he was accepted as a full member of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. A few months later, he was arrested and tortured at the Prey Sar prison by Norodom Sihanouks police for engaging in communist activities and he was held without trial for the next two years. In 1970, when he was released following the amnesty granted to prisoners by Lon Nol. Communist groups in Frances former colonies in Indochina borrowed the French World War II expression maquis when referring to their movements in the jungles. In the zone under the control of the Khmer Rouge, Kek Iew took on his nom de guerre Comrade Duch and he was appointed the head of Special Security by his immediate superior Vorn Vet. In the forests of Amleang, Thpong District, Duch set up his first prison, Two years later, he also established a second prison M-99 in nearby Aoral District. Assisted by his two deputies, Mam Nai and Tang Sin Hean, Duch began perfecting his interrogation techniques, prisoners at these camps, mostly from the ranks of the Khmer Rouge, were routinely starved and tortured to extract real and made-up confessions. While in the maquis, Duch married Chhim Sophal, aka Rom and they had four children while he worked at S-21. After the Khmer Rouge victory in April 1975 Duch and his men set up throughout the capital including the infamous Tuol Sleng prison. Duchs request for a transfer in May 1975 to the Industrial Sector of government was denied, the Tuol Sleng prison camp was initially headed by In Lon aka Comrade Nath with Duch acting as deputy. Subsequently, In Lon was transferred and Duch promoted to be the Director, by May 1976 all the prisons in Phnom Penh were consolidated and relocated to Tuol Sleng
14.
Khmer Rouge
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The Khmer Rouge, French, Red Khmers, Khmer, ខ្មែរក្រហម Khmer Kraham) was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. This was followed by the Cambodian genocide from 1975 until 1979, the military power of the Khmer Rouge organization was not broken however, and a long era of guerrilla warfare involving large swaths of the Cambodian countryside began. Many different military factions were involved in the war era. The Khmer Rouge organization is remembered especially for orchestrating the Cambodian genocide, arbitrary executions and torture carried out by its cadres against perceived subversive elements, or during purges of its own ranks between 1975 and 1978, are considered to have constituted genocide. The governments-in-exile held onto Cambodias UN seat until 1993, when the monarchy was restored, a year later, thousands of Khmer Rouge guerrillas surrendered themselves in a government amnesty. In 1996, a new party, the Democratic National Union Movement, was formed by Ieng Sary. The organization was dissolved by the mid-1990s, and finally surrendered completely in 1999. The term Khmers rouges, French for Red Khmers, was coined by Cambodian head of state Norodom Sihanouk and it was used to refer to a succession of communist parties in Cambodia which evolved into the Communist Party of Kampuchea and later the Party of Democratic Kampuchea. The organization was known as the Kampuchea or Khmer Communist Party. The Khmer Rouges ideology combined elements of Marxism with a version of Khmer nationalism. It combined an idealization of the Angkor Empire, with a fear for the existence of the Cambodian state. The spillover of Vietnamese fighters from the Vietnam War further aggravated anti-Vietnamese feeling, some people with partial Chinese or Vietnamese ancestry were present in the Khmer Rouge leadership, they either were purged or participated in the ethnic cleansing campaigns. The Khmer Rouges social policy focused on working towards a purely agrarian society, Pol Pot strongly influenced the propagation of this policy. Pol Pot wanted to remove social institutions and to transform the society into an agrarian one and this was his way of a complete Communist society without wasting time on the intermediate steps, as the Khmer Rouge said to China in 1975. The Khmer Rouge had a policy of state atheism, all religions were banned, and the repression of adherents of Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism was extensive. Nearly 25,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime, in 1930, Ho Chi Minh founded the Communist Party of Vietnam by unifying three smaller communist movements that had emerged in northern, central, and southern Vietnam during the late 1920s. The name was changed almost immediately to the Indochinese Communist Party, ostensibly to include revolutionaries from Cambodia, almost without exception, all the earliest party members were Vietnamese. By the end of World War II, a handful of Cambodians had joined its ranks, on April 17,1950, the first nationwide congress of the Khmer Issarak groups convened, and the United Issarak Front was established
15.
Pol Pot
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Pol Pot was a Cambodian politician and revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until 1997. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, as such, he became the leader of Cambodia on 17 April 1975, when his forces captured Phnom Penh. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea. He presided over a totalitarian dictatorship, in which his government made urban dwellers move to the countryside to work in collective farms, the combined effects of executions, strenuous working conditions, malnutrition and poor medical care caused the deaths of approximately 25 percent of the Cambodian population. In all, an estimated 1 to 3 million people perished as a result of the policies of his four-year premiership, after Cambodia lost the Cambodian–Vietnamese War in 1979, Pol Pot relocated to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed. From 1979 to 1997, he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia, until 1993, they clung to power as part of a coalition government that was internationally recognized as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot died in 1998, while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge, since his death, rumours that he committed suicide or was poisoned have persisted. Saloth Sar was born on 19 May 1925, the eighth of nine children and his older brother Saloth Chhay was born three years earlier. The family was living in the fishing village of Prek Sbauv. Pen Saloth was a farmer who owned 12 hectares of land and several buffaloes. Saloth Sar was educated in a Buddhist monastery and he would later give his Marxism a tincture of Buddhism. Later he became an ardent atheist, in 1935, Saloth Sar left Prek Sbauv to attend the École Miche, a Catholic school in Phnom Penh. He lived with his cousin, a woman called Meak, a member of the Royal Ballet, in 1926, she bore King Monivongs son, HRH Prince Sisowath Kusarak. She was given the official title Khun Preah Moneang Bopha Norleak Meak, Saloth Sar stayed with Meaks household until 1942. His sister Roeung was a concubine of King Monivong, so through the two women, he often had cause to visit the royal palace, in 1947, he gained admission to the exclusive Lycée Sisowath, but was unsuccessful in his studies. After switching to a school at Russey Keo, north of Phnom Penh. He studied radio electronics at the EFR in Paris from 1949 to 1953 and he also participated in an international labour brigade building roads in Zagreb in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1950. After the Soviet Union recognized the Viet Minh as the government of Vietnam in 1950, the PCFs anti-colonialism views attracted many young Cambodians, including Sar
16.
Erich Honecker
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From 1976 onward he was also the countrys official head of state as chairman of the State Council following Willi Stophs relinquishment of the post. Honeckers political career began in the 1930s when he became an official of the Communist Party of Germany, a position for which he was imprisoned during the Nazi era. Following World War II, he was freed and soon relaunched his political activities, founding the organisation the Free German Youth in 1946. Honeckers eighteen years at the helm of the soon-to-collapse German Democratic Republic came to an end. However, the proceedings were abandoned due to illness and he was freed from custody to travel to join his family in exile in Chile, where he died in May 1994 from liver cancer. Honecker was born in Neunkirchen, in what is now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker, a miner and political activist. The couple had six children together, Katharina, Wilhelm, Frieda, Erich, Gertrud, after World War I, the Territory of the Saar Basin was occupied by France. After his tenth birthday in 1922, Erich Honecker became a member of the Spartacus Leagues childrens group in Wiebelskirchen, aged 14 he entered the KJVD, the Young Communist League of Germany, for whom he later served the organisations leader of Saarland from 1931. Honecker did not find an apprenticeship immediately after leaving school, there, sharing a room with Anton Ackermann, he studied under the cover name Fritz Malter. In 1930, aged 18, Honecker entered the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany and his political mentor was Otto Niebergall, who later represented the KPD in the Reichstag. After returning from Moscow in 1931 following his studies at the International Lenin School, Honecker was arrested in Essen, Germany but soon released. Following this he fled to the Netherlands and from there oversaw KJVDs activities in Pfalz, Hesse and he returned to the Saar in 1934 and worked alongside Johannes Hoffmann on the campaign against the region’s re-incorporation into Germany. A referendum on the future in January 1935 however saw 90. 73% vote in favour of reunifying with Germany. Like 4,000 to 8,000 others, Honecker then fled the region, on 28 August 1935 he illegally travelled to Berlin under the alias Marten Tjaden, with a printing press in his luggage. From there he worked together with the KPD official Herbert Wehner – later to become an SPD member - in opposition/resistance to the Nazi state. On 4 December 1935 Honecker was detained by the Gestapo and until 1937 remanded in Berlin’s Moabit detention centre, on 3 July 1937 he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment for the preparation of high treason alongside the severe falsification of documents. Honecker spent the majority of his incarceration in the Brandenburg-Görden Prison, in early 1945 he was moved to the Barnimstraße Women’s Prison in Berlin due to good behaviour and, as a trained roofer, in order to be put to work repairing the bomb-damaged building. During an Allied bombing raid on 6 March 1945 he managed to escape and hid himself at the apartment of Lotte Grund, after several days she persuaded him to hand himself back in and the escape was then covered up by the guard
17.
Egon Krenz
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Egon Rudi Ernst Krenz is a former East German politician who was the last communist leader of East Germany during the final months of 1989. He succeeded Erich Honecker as the General Secretary of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany, throughout his career, Krenz held a number of prominent positions in the SED. He was Honeckers deputy from 1984 onward, until he succeeded him in 1989 amid protests against the regime, Krenz was unsuccessful in his attempt to retain the communist regimes grip on power, and was forced to resign some weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall. After German reunification in 1990 he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for manslaughter and he retired to the small town of Dierhagen in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern upon his release from prison in late 2003. Krenz was born in Kolberg in what was part of Germany and his family resettled in Damgarten in 1944. After serving in the Volksarmee, Krenz joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in 1955, throughout his career, Krenz held a number of posts in the SED and the communist government. He was leader of the Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organisation from 1971 to 1974 and he was also a member of the Peoples Chamber from 1971 to 1990, and a member of its presidium from 1971 to 1981. Between 1974 and 1983, he was leader of the communist youth movement, from 1981 to 1984 he was a member of the Council of State. In 1983 he joined the Politburo and became a secretary of the committee with responsibility for security. He rose to prominence when he became Honeckers deputy on the Council of State in 1984. Around the same time, he replaced Paul Verner as the unofficial number-two man in the SED leadership, although he was the youngest member of the Politburo, speculation abounded that Honecker had tapped him as his heir apparent. Krenz had been approached several months earlier about ousting Honecker, but was reluctant to move against a man he called my foster father and political teacher. He was initially willing to wait until the seriously ill Honecker died, despite many protests, the Peoples Chamber elected Krenz to both of Honeckers major state posts—Chairman of the Council of State and Chairman of the National Defence Council. For only the time in the Peoples Chambers forty-year history. In his first address as leader, Krenz promised democratic reforms, for instance, they still remembered that after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he had gone to China to thank Deng Xiaoping on behalf of the regime. For this and other reasons, Krenz was almost as detested as Honecker had been, indeed, almost as soon as he took power, thousands of East Germans took to the streets to demand his resignation. Also on the day he took office, Krenz received a top secret report from planning chief Gerhard Schürer that showed the depths of East Germanys economic crisis. It showed that East Germany did not have money to make payments on the massive foreign loans that propped up the economy
18.
Wojciech Jaruzelski
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Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was a Polish military officer and politician. He was First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party from 1981 to 1989 and he also served as Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the countrys head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish Peoples Army and he resigned after the Polish Round Table Agreement in 1989, which led to democratic elections in Poland. During Jaruzelskis rule from 1981 to 1989, around 700,000 people left the country, wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was born on 6 July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of Polish gentry. He was the son of Wanda and Władysław Mieczysław Jaruzelski, and was raised on the estate near Wysokie. He was educated in a Catholic school during the 1930s, World War II commenced on 1 September 1939 with the invasion of Poland by Germany, aided by the Soviet invasion of Poland sixteen days later. These resulted in the defeat of Poland by October. Jaruzelski and his family fled to Lithuania and stayed with friends there. In 1940 at the age of sixteen, Jaruzelski was sent to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, during his labour work he was stricken with snow blindness and suffered permanent damage to his eyes as well as his back. His eye condition forced him to wear dark sunglasses most of the time for the rest of his life, Jaruzelskis father died in 1942 from dysentery. His mother and sister survived the war, Jaruzelski was selected by the Soviet authorities for enrollment into the Soviet Officer Training School. He served in this Soviet-sponsored First Polish Army during the war and he participated in the 1945 Soviet military takeover of Warsaw and the Battle of Berlin. By the time the war ended that year, he had gained the rank of lieutenant and he further credited himself in Soviet eyes by engaging in combat against the non-Communist Polish Home Army, from 1945 to 1947. After the end of the war, Jaruzelski graduated from the Polish Higher Infantry School, in the initial post-war years, he was among those who fought the Polish anti-Communists in the Świętokrzyskie region. He benefited from a campaign in the army, during which more than 1000 Jewish officers were demoted or expelled. Even the non-Jewish minister of defence, Marshal Marian Spychalski was persecuted, in 1970, he was involved in the successful plot against Władysław Gomułka, which led to the appointment of Edward Gierek as General Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party. As Minister of Defense general Jaruzelski was ultimately responsible for 27,000 troops used against unarmed civilians, Jaruzelski became a candidate member for the Politburo of the Polish United Workers Party, the chief executive body of the party, obtaining full membership the following year. On 11 February 1981, Jaruzelski was named Chairman of the Council of Ministers, on 18 October, Stanisław Kania was ousted as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party after a listening device recorded him criticising the Soviet leadership
19.
University of Chicago
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The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. It holds top-ten positions in national and international rankings and measures. The university currently enrolls approximately 5,700 students in the College, Chicagos physics department helped develop the worlds first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction beneath the viewing stands of universitys Stagg Field. The university is home to the University of Chicago Press. With an estimated date of 2020, the Barack Obama Presidential Center will be housed at the university. Both Harper and future president Robert Maynard Hutchins advocated for Chicagos curriculum to be based upon theoretical and perennial issues rather than on applied sciences, the University of Chicago has many prominent alumni. 92 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with the university as professors, students, faculty, or staff, similarly,34 faculty members and 16 alumni have been awarded the MacArthur “Genius Grant”. Rockefeller on land donated by Marshall Field, while the Rockefeller donation provided money for academic operations and long-term endowment, it was stipulated that such money could not be used for buildings. The original physical campus was financed by donations from wealthy Chicagoans like Silas B, Cobb who provided the funds for the campus first building, Cobb Lecture Hall, and matched Marshall Fields pledge of $100,000. Organized as an independent institution legally, it replaced the first Baptist university of the same name, william Rainey Harper became the modern universitys first president on July 1,1891, and the university opened for classes on October 1,1892. The business school was founded thereafter in 1898, and the law school was founded in 1902, Harper died in 1906, and was replaced by a succession of three presidents whose tenures lasted until 1929. During this period, the Oriental Institute was founded to support, in 1896, the university affiliated with Shimer College in Mount Carroll, Illinois. The agreement provided that either party could terminate the affiliation on proper notice, several University of Chicago professors disliked the program, as it involved uncompensated additional labor on their part, and they believed it cheapened the academic reputation of the university. The program passed into history by 1910, in 1929, the universitys fifth president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, took office, the university underwent many changes during his 24-year tenure. In 1933, Hutchins proposed a plan to merge the University of Chicago. During his term, the University of Chicago Hospitals finished construction, also, the Committee on Social Thought, an institution distinctive of the university, was created. Money that had been raised during the 1920s and financial backing from the Rockefeller Foundation helped the school to survive through the Great Depression, during World War II, the university made important contributions to the Manhattan Project. The university was the site of the first isolation of plutonium and of the creation of the first artificial, in the early 1950s, student applications declined as a result of increasing crime and poverty in the Hyde Park neighborhood
20.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
21.
Stasi
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It has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies to have ever existed. The Stasi was headquartered in East Berlin, with a complex in Berlin-Lichtenberg. The Stasi motto was Schild und Schwert der Partei, referring to the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Erich Mielke was its longest-serving chief, in power for thirty-two of the GDRs forty years of existence. Its Main Directorate for Reconnaissance was responsible for espionage and for conducting covert operations in foreign countries. Under its long-time head Markus Wolf, this gained a reputation as one of the most effective intelligence agencies of the Cold War. Numerous Stasi officials were prosecuted for their crimes after 1990, the Stasi was founded on 8 February 1950. Wilhelm Zaisser was the first Minister of State Security of the GDR, Zaisser tried to depose SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht after the June 1953 uprising, but was instead removed by Ulbricht and replaced with Ernst Wollweber thereafter. Wollweber resigned in 1957 after clashes with Ulbricht and Erich Honecker, in 1957, Markus Wolf became head of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklärung, the foreign intelligence section of the Stasi. As intelligence chief, Wolf achieved great success in penetrating the government, political, the most influential case was that of Günter Guillaume, which led to the downfall of West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in May 1974. In 1986, Wolf retired and was succeeded by Werner Grossmann, in 1978, Mielke formally granted KGB officers in East Germany the same rights and powers that they enjoyed in the Soviet Union. The Ministry for State Security also included the following entities, Administration 12 was responsible for the surveillance of mail, Administration 2000 was responsible for the reliability of National Peoples Army personnel. Administration 2000 operated a secret, unofficial network of informants within the NVA, Administration for Security of Heavy Industry and Research and Main Administration for Security of the Economy, protection against sabotage or espionage. Division of Garbage Analysis, was responsible for analyzing garbage for any suspect western foods and/or materials, Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment, the armed force at disposal of the ministry, named for the founder of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. The members of regiment, who served at least three years, were responsible for protecting high government and party buildings and personnel. The regiment was composed of six motorized rifle battalions, one artillery battalion and its equipment included PSZH-IV armored personnel carriers,120 mm mortars,85 mm and 100 mm antitank guns, ZU-23 antiaircraft guns, and helicopters. A Swiss source reported in 1986 that the troops of the Ministry of State Security also had commando units similar to the Soviet Unions Spetsnaz GRU forces. These East German units were said to wear the uniform of the airborne troops and they also wore the sleeve stripe of the Felix Dzerzhinsky Guards Regiment. Main Administration for Struggle Against Suspicious Persons was charged with the surveillance of foreigners—particularly from the West—legally traveling or residing within the country and this included the diplomatic community, tourists, and official guests
22.
Totalitarianism
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Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. A distinctive feature of totalitarian governments is an ideology, a set of ideas that gives meaning. The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s by the Weimar German jurist, and later Nazi academic, Carl Schmitt, Schmitt used the term, Totalstaat, in his influential work on the legal basis of an all-powerful state, The Concept of the Political. The concept became prominent in Western political discourse as a concept that highlights similarities between Fascist states and the Soviet Union, the term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most prominent philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state, according to Benito Mussolini, this system politicizes everything spiritual and human, Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Churchill was then a backbencher MP representing the Epping constituency, in a radio address two weeks later Churchill again employed the term, this time applying the concept to a Communist or a Nazi tyranny. And went on to say Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state, when the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it. G. Wells, Henry Miller or twopenny color postcards, every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. During a 1945 lecture series entitled The Soviet Impact on the Western World, only the blind and incurable could ignore the trend towards totalitarianism, said Carr. Isabel Paterson, in The God of the Machine, used the term in connection with the Soviet Union, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt argued that Nazi and State communist regimes were new forms of government, and not merely updated versions of the old tyrannies. According to Arendt, the source of the appeal of totalitarian regimes is their ideology, which provides a comforting, single answer to the mysteries of the past, present. For Nazism, all history is the history of race struggle, once that premise is accepted, all actions of the state can be justified by appeal to Nature or the Law of History, justifying their establishment of authoritarian state apparatus. In addition to Arendt, many scholars from a variety of academic backgrounds, each one of these describes totalitarianism in slightly different ways. Is only concerned with power and as long as that is not contested it gives society a certain degree of liberty. Authoritarianism does not attempt to change the world and human nature, in contrast, a totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life, including the economy, education, art, science, private life, and morals of citizens. The officially proclaimed ideology penetrates into the deepest reaches of societal structure and it also mobilizes the whole population in pursuit of its goals. Friedrich and Brzezinski argue that a system has the following six, mutually supportive, defining characteristics. Single mass party, typically led by a dictator, system of terror, using such instruments as violence and secret police
23.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
24.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
25.
Communism
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Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism, anarchism, and the political ideologies grouped around both. The primary element which will enable this transformation, according to analysis, is the social ownership of the means of production. Likewise, some communists defend both theory and practice, while others argue that historical practice diverged from communist principles to a greater or lesser degree, according to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece. At one time or another, various small communist communities existed, in the medieval Christian church, for example, some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Communist thought has also traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on ownership of property. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century, through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France. Later, following the upheaval of the French Revolution, communism emerged as a political doctrine, in the early 19th century, Various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. But unlike many previous communist communities, they replaced the emphasis with a rational. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana, in its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels, in 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to power of Lenins Bolsheviks. The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority, the event generated a great deal of practical and theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development, Russia, however, was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous, largely illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated that Russia might be able to skip the stage of bourgeois rule, the moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenins Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more fully developed. The Great Purge of 1937–1938 was Stalins attempt to destroy any possible opposition within the Communist Party and its leading role in the Second World War saw the emergence of the Soviet Union as a superpower, with strong influence over Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. The European and Japanese empires were shattered and Communist parties played a role in many independence movements
26.
Anti-communism
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Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. It reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States, anti-communism has been an element of movements of many different positions, including capitalist, liberal, socialist, anarchist, and fascist viewpoints. They accuse communists of causing several famines, such as the Russian Famine of 1921, some anti-communists see both communism and fascism as totalitarianism, seeing similarity between the actions of communist and fascist governments. Opponents argue that communist parties that have come to power have tended to be intolerant of political opposition. Communist states have also accused of creating a new ruling class, with powers. Examples of left-wing critics of Communist states and parties are Boris Souveraine, Bayard Rustin, Irving Howe, the American Federation of Labor has always been strongly anti-Communist. The more leftist CIO purged its Communists in 1947 and has been staunchly anti-Communist ever since, in Britain, the Labour Party strenuously resisted Communist efforts to infiltrate its ranks and take control of locals in the 1930s. Although some anarchists describe themselves as communists, all anarchists criticize authoritarian Communist parties and states and they argue that Marxist concepts such as dictatorship of the proletariat and state ownership of the means of production are anathema to anarchism. Some anarchists criticize communism from an individualist point of view, the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin debated with Karl Marx in the First International, arguing that the Marxist state is another form of oppression. He loathed the idea of a vanguard party ruling the masses from above, anarchists initially participated in, and rejoiced over, the 1917 revolution as an example of workers taking power for themselves. However, after the October revolution, it became evident that the Bolsheviks, what is needed is local construction by local forces … Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name. Many anarchists fought against Russian, Spanish and Greek Communists, many were killed by them, such as Lev Chernyi, Camillo Berneri, neither Marxs 10-point plan nor the rest of the manifesto say anything about who has the right to carry out the plan. Milton Friedman argued that the absence of economic activity makes it too easy for repressive political leaders to grant themselves coercive powers. Friedmans view was shared by Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. Objectivists who follow Ayn Rand are strongly anti-Communist and this is demonstrated, they believe, by the comparative prosperity of free market and socialist economies. Objectivist Ayn Rand writes that communist leaders typically claim to work for the common good, many ex-communists have turned into anti-communists. Mikhail Gorbachev turned from a Communist into a social democrat, milovan Đilas, was a former Yugoslav Communist official, who became a prominent dissident and critic of Communism. Leszek Kołakowski was a Polish Communist who became a famous anti-communist, the God That Failed is a 1949 book which collects together six essays with the testimonies of a number of famous ex-Communists, who were writers and journalists
27.
Communist crimes in Polish legal system
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Communist crimes, is a legal definition used in Polish criminal law. In legal terminology – as defined by the Article 2, the concept of Communist crimes was legally introduced in 1998 and revised several times. It was designed to facilitate studies of events and prosecution of people in authority who committed crimes against Polish citizens as well as the Polish state, the definition is conceptually similar to the legal concept of a Nazi crime. The functionaries involved would most likely work for Polish intelligence, security service, particular organizations named as examples include Ministry of Public Security of Poland, Służba Bezpieczeństwa and Główny Zarząd Informacji Wojska Polskiego. The communist crimes could have also been committed in Poland by members of civil or military services, such as KGB, NKVD, SMERSH. Crimes, recognized by law as crimes against humanity, crimes against peace. Those crimes are not affected either by the former amnesty or abolition decrees issued in Communist Poland before 7 December 1989, in case of murders, the Polish statute of limitations begins on 1 August 1990 and runs for 40 years, and for 30 years for other crimes. The concept has replaced the term Stalinist crime previously used in Polish law for similar acts, both, Stalinist and Hitlerite crimes were first defined by Polish legislation in 1991. Two examples of such unsolved Communist crimes are the Augustów chase, and Kąkolewnica massacre also known as the Baran Forest Massacre
28.
Decommunization in Ukraine
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In April 2015 a formal decommunization process started in Ukraine after laws were approved which, among other acts, outlawed communist symbols. At the time meant that 22 cities and 44 villages were set to get a new name. Until 21 November 2015 municipal governments had the authority to implement this, if failed to do so. If after that date the settlement had retained its old name the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine will wield authority to assign a new name to the settlement. In 201651,493 streets and 987 cities and villages were renamed and 1,320 Lenin monuments and 1,069 monuments to other communist figures removed, violation of the law carries a penalty of a potential media ban and prison sentences to five years. By 16 December 2015, these three parties were banned in Ukraine, however, the Communist Party of Ukraine has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to have this overturned and this appeal is still pending and the ECHR has not reached a decision. Decommunization laws were drafted in the Ukrainian parliament in 2002,2005,2009,2011 and 2013, during and after Euromaidan, starting with the fall of the monument to Lenin in Kyiv on 8 December 2013, several Lenin monuments and statues were removed/destroyed by protesters. In April 2014, a year before the formal, nationwide decommunization process in Ukraine local authorities removed and altered communist symbols and place names, on 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation on decommunization. It was submitted by the Second Yatsenyuk Government, banning the promotion of symbols of “Communist, one of the main provisions of the bill was the recognition of the Soviet Union was criminal and one that it pursued a state terror policy. The ban applies to monuments, place and street names, the ban does not apply to World War II monuments and when symbols are located in a cemetery. Expressing pro-communist views was not made illegal, the city administration of Dnipropetrovsk estimated in June 2015 that 80 streets, embankments, squares, and boulevards would have to be renamed. Maxim Eristavi of Hromadske. TV estimated late April 2015 that the renaming would cost around $1.5 billion. The legislation also granted special status to veterans of the “struggle for Ukrainian independence” from 1917 to 1991. On 15 May 2015 President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed the Decommunisation Laws and this started a six month period for the removal of communist monuments and renaming of public places named after communist-related themes. On 3 June 2015 the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory published a list of 22 cities and 44 villages subject to renaming, by far most of these places were in the Donbass region in East Ukraine, the others were situated in Central Ukraine and South Ukraine. Under the Decommunisation Laws the municipal governments had until 21 November 2015 to change the name of the settlement they govern, for settlements that failed to rename, the provincial authorities had until 21 May 2016 to change the name. If after that date the settlement still retained its old name the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine renamed the settlement, on 30 September 2015 the District Administrative Court in Kyiv banned the parties Communist Party of Workers and Peasants and Communist Party of Ukraine, they both did not appeal. In October 2015, a statue of Lenin in Odesa was converted into a statue of Star Wars villain Darth Vader
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Denazification
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Denazification was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of any remnants of the National Socialist ideology. The program of denazification was launched after the end of the Second World War and was solidified by the Potsdam Agreement. The term denazification was first coined as a term in 1943 in the Pentagon. Soon afterward, it took on the general meaning. The American government soon came to view the program as ineffective and counterproductive, additionally, the program was hugely unpopular in Germany and was opposed by the new West German government. Denazification in Germany was attempted through a series of directives issued by the Allied Control Council, seated in Berlin, Denazification directives identified specific people and groups and outlined judicial procedures and guidelines for handling them. Though all the forces had agreed on the initiative, the methods used for denazification. Denazification also refers to the removal of the symbols of the Nazi regime. For example, in 1957 the West German government re-issued World War II Iron Cross medals, among other decorations, about 8.5 million Germans, or 10% of the population, had been members of the Nazi Party. It was through the Party and these organizations that the Nazi state was run, in addition, Nazism found significant support among industrialists, who produced weapons or used slave labour, and large landowners, especially the Junkers in Prussia. Denazification after the surrender of Germany was thus an enormous undertaking, the first difficulty was the enormous number of Germans who might have to be first investigated, then penalized if found to have supported the Nazi state to an unacceptable degree. It soon became evident, further, that pursuing denazification too scrupulously would make it impossible to create a functioning, enforcing the strictest sanctions against lesser offenders would prevent too many talented people from participating in the reconstruction process. As time went on, another consideration that moderated the denazification effort in the West was the concern to keep enough good will of the German population to prevent the growth of communism. The U. S. sent 785 scientists and engineers from Germany to the United States, however, the legal foundations of the trials were questioned, and the German people were not convinced that the trials were anything more than victors justice. Many refugees from Nazism were Germans and Austrians, and some had fought for Britain in the Second World War, some were transferred into the Intelligence Corps and sent back to Germany and Austria in British uniform. However, German-speakers were small in number in the British zone, the Americans were able to bring a larger number of German-speakers to the task of working in the Allied Military Government, although many were poorly trained. They were assigned to all aspects of administration, the interrogation of POWs, collecting evidence for the War Crimes Investigation Unit. The Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive 1067 directed US Army General Dwight D. Eisenhowers policy of denazification, the United States military pursued denazification in a zealous, albeit bureaucratic, fashion, especially during the first months of the occupation
30.
Golaniad
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The Golaniad was a protest in Romania in the University Square, Bucharest. It was initiated by students and professors at the University of Bucharest, the Golaniad started in April 1990, before the election of 20 May 1990, which was the first election after the Romanian Revolution. Their main demand was that former leading members of the Communist Party should be banned from standing in elections, Ion Iliescu and Frontul Salvării Naţionale seized power during the 1989 revolution. The FSN organization was meant to act as a government until free elections were to be held. However, on 23 January 1990, despite its claims, it decided to become a party. A part of the dissenters and anti-communists that joined the FSN during the revolution left following this decision, many of the FSN personalities, including its president, Ion Iliescu, were ex-communists and as such the revolution was seen as being hijacked by the FSN. On 22 April 1990, the Independent Group for Democracy organised a demonstration in Aviators Square, after the peaceful demonstration, groups of people marched towards the Romanian Television station, calling for its political independence. The following day, PNȚ-CD organized a larger protest, occupying the road in the University Square. The protests drew the ire of the authorities, who, during the night between 23-24 April, began a repression of the protesters, the law enforcement agents beat up the protesters and arrested some of them. The authorities violence had the exact opposite effect than the one expected, two days later, they were still there, their numbers growing, on the evening of 25 April, their number reaching 30,000. The sympathetic press reported even higher numbers, up to 50,000 each evening, a number of protesters began a hunger strike. President Ion Iliescu refused to negotiate with the protesters and called them golani or legionnaires, the leadership of the National Salvation Front realized that the protests grew too big to be able to repress them without impunity, so it focused on demonizing them on the state-controlled media. This part of the called the protesters delinquents, hooligans, parasites, thieves, extremists, fascists, traitors. This campaign was successful particularly outside Bucharest, where the media was the only source of information. The public television showed reports of the protests in which they interviewed people marginal to both the protests and the Romanian society, such as Roma people, hawksters and prowlers. The ending -ad was used ironically, since many of Ceauşescus Communist manifestations had endings like this, eugène Ionesco supported them by sending a telegram from France in which he wrote he was a Golan Academician. A1975 law of Ceauşescu allowed the president of Romania to directly control Romanian television, postponing of the elections, since the only party that had the resources for the campaign was FSN. The protesters also disagreed with the doctrine of the FSN that the Revolution was only anti-Ceauşescu
31.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
