1.
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
2.
Alexei Rykov
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Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, and after it split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903 and he played an active part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. During the Russian Civil War, Rykov oversaw the implementation of the War Communism economic policy, after Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov—along with Lev Kamenev—was elected by the Sovnarkom to serve as Deputy Chairman to Lenin. While both Rykov and Kamenev were Lenins deputies, Kamenev was the acting Premier of the Soviet Union, on 21 December 1930 he was removed from the Politburo. From 1931-37 Rykov served as Peoples Commissar of Communications on the Council he formerly chaired, on 17 February 1937—at a meeting of the Central Committee—he was arrested with Nikolai Bukharin. In March 1938 both were found guilty of treason and executed, Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in Saratov, Russia. His parents were peasants from the village of Kukarka, alexeis father, Ivan Illych Rykov, a farmer whose work had led the family to settle in Saratov died in 1889 from cholera while working in Merv. His widowed stepmother could not care for him, so he was cared for by his sister, Klavdiya Ivanovna Rykova. In 1892 he began his first year of school in Saratov. An outstanding student, he started school at age 13. He excelled in mathematics, physics and the natural sciences, at 15 Rykov stopped attending church and confession, and renounced his faith. He graduated from school in 1900 and enrolled at the University of Kazan to study law. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898 and supported its Bolshevik faction when the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at its Second Congress in 1903. He worked as a Bolshevik agent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and he was elected a member of the Partys Central Committee at its 3rd Congress in London in 1905 and its 4th Congress in Copenhagen in 1906. He was elected member of the Central Committee at the 5th Congress in London. He spent 1910-11 exiled in France, and in 1912 expressed reproach towards Lenins proposal that the Bolsheviks become an independent party, the dispute was interrupted by Rykovs exile to Siberia for revolutionary activity. Rykov returned from Siberia after the February Revolution of 1917 and re-joined the Bolsheviks and he became a member of the Petrograd Soviet and the Moscow Soviet. At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in July–August 1917 he was elected to the Central Committee, during the October Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Moscow
3.
Vyacheslav Menzhinsky
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Vyacheslav Rudolfovich Menzhinsky was a Polish-Russian revolutionary, a Soviet statesman and Party official who served as chairman of the OGPU from 1926 to 1934. He was fluent in over 10 languages, vyacheslav Menzhinsky, a hereditary dvoryanin, was born into a Polish-Russian family of teachers. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Saint Petersburg University in 1898 and he joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1902. In 1905 he became a member of the organization of the Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP. In 1906 Menzhinsky was arrested, but was able to escape from Russia and he lived in Belgium, Switzerland, France, United States, working in foreign branches of the RSDLP. After the February Revolution of 1917, Menzhinsky returned to Russia in the summer of that year, according to G. von Schantz, Menzhinsky personally conducted the wrecking of the Russian banks, a maneuver that deprived all opponents of Bolshevikism of their financial means of warfare. From 1919 he was a member of the Presidium of Cheka, and five years became a deputy chairman of its successor. After Felix Dzerzhinskys death in July 1926 Menzhinsky became the chairman of the OGPU, at the same time, as a senior Chekist, Menzhinsky was loyal to Joseph Stalin, whose personality cult had already begun to form, coinciding with several important purges in 1930-1931. Trotsky, who had met him before the revolution, thought him unremarkable, He seemed more like the shadow of some other unrealized man, Menzhinsky spent his last years as an invalid, suffering from acute angina since the late 1920s, which rendered him incapable of physical exertion. He conducted the affairs of the OGPU while lying upon a couch in his office at the Lubyanka, Stalin tended to deal with his first deputy Genrikh Yagoda, who essentially took over as head of the organization in all but name beginning in the late 1920s. Menzhinsky died of causes in 1934. When his successor, Yagoda, made his confession under duress at the Moscow Trial of the Twenty One in 1938. Great Soviet Encyclopedia A Pince-nez Among Leather Jackets, an article at the FSB website The German-Bolshevik Conspiracy
4.
Cheka
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Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created on December 20,1917, after a decree issued by Vladimir Lenin, and was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. After 1922, Cheka groups underwent a series of reorganizations, with the NKVD, in 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic numbered at least 200,000. The name of the agency was originally The All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, in 1918 its name was changed, becoming All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Corruption. A member of Cheka was called a chekist, also, the term chekist often referred to Soviet secret police throughout the Soviet period, despite official name changes over time. In The Gulag Archipelago, Alexander Solzhenitsyn recalls that zeks in the camps used old Chekist as a mark of special esteem for particularly experienced camp administrators. The term is found in use in Russia today. The Chekists commonly dressed in leather, including long flowing coats. Western communists adopted this clothing fashion, the Chekists also often carried with them Greek-style worry beads made of amber, which had become fashionable among high officials during the time of the cleansing. In the first month and half after the October Revolution, the duty of extinguishing the resistance of exploiters was assigned to the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee and it represented a temporary body working under directives of the Council of Peoples Commissars and Central Committee of RDSRP. The VRK created new bodies of government, organized food delivery to cities and the Army, requisitioned products from bourgeoisie, one of its most important functions was the security of revolutionary order, and the fight against counterrevolutionary activity. On December 1,1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee reviewed a proposed reorganization of the VRK, on December 5, the Petrograd VRK published an announcement of dissolution and transferred the functions to the department of TsIK to the fight against counterrevolutionaries. On December 6, the Council of Peoples Commissars strategized how to persuade government workers to strike across Russia and they decided that a special commission was needed to implement the most energetically revolutionary measures. Peters, K. A. Peterson, V. A. Trifonov, on December 7,1917, all invited except Zhydelev and Vasilevsky gathered in the Smolny Institute to discuss the competence and structure of the commission to combat counterrevolution and sabotage. The commission should conduct a preliminary investigation. The commission should also observe the press and counterrevolutionary parties, sabotaging officials and it was decided to create three sections, informational, organizational, and a unit to combat counter-revolution and sabotage. Upon the end of the meeting, Dzerzhinsky reported to the Sovnarkom with the requested information, the commission was allowed to apply such measures of repression as confiscation, deprivation of ration cards, publication of lists of enemies of the people etc. That day, Sovnarkom officially confirmed the creation of VCheKa, the commission was created not under the VTsIK as was previously anticipated, but rather under the Council of the Peoples Commissars
5.
Supreme Soviet of the National Economy
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Supreme Soviet of the National Economy, Superior Soviet of the Peoples Economy, Vesenkha was the superior state institution for management of the economy of the RSFSR and later of the Soviet Union. Its stated purpose was to plan for the organization of the life of the country. It was subordinated to the Sovnarkom and it had rights of confiscation and expropriation. The first Chairman was Osinsky and with Bukharin, Georgy Oppokov, Milyutin, Sokolnikov, after the creation of the Soviet Union in 1923 it was transformed into the joint all-Union and republican Peoples Commissariat. In 1932, it was reorganized into three Peoples Commissariats, of industry, light industry and forestry. In each of the republics of the Soviet Union, subordinate organisations existed. These were referred to as ВСНХ followed by their union republic acronym, the all-union council could be referred to as ВСНХ СССР. The republican VSNKhs had control over small scale, minor industries which used materials and supplied local markets. Large scale industrial enterprises were controlled by one of the industrial sector departments of the all-union VSNKh, within the VSNKh, departments were split into two types. Departments within the functional sector dealt with decisions relating to finance, planning, economic policy, departments of this type were created by decree in 1926 and consisted of chief departments, known as glavki. Heads of all the departments in this sector formed the council of the all-union VSNKh together with representatives from the union republics and it was subordinated to the Council of Ministers of the USSR and managed industry and construction. Sovnarkhozes were introduced by Nikita Khrushchev in July 1957 in an attempt to combat the centralization, the USSR was initially divided into 105 economic regions, with sovharknozes being operational and planning management. Simultaneously, a number of ministries were shut down. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Ordzhonikidzes Takeover of Vesenkha, A Case Study in Soviet Bureaucratic Politics, Soviet Studies, vol
6.
Valerian Kuybyshev
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Valerian Vladimirovich Kuybyshev was a Russian revolutionary, Red Army officer, and prominent Soviet politician. Kuybyshev was born in Omsk in the Russian Empire on 6 June 1888 and he studied at the Omsk Military Cadet School. He joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1904, the following year, he entered a military medical academy, but was expelled in 1906 for controversial political activities. In May 1912 he fled and returned to Omsk, where he was arrested the next month, during the Russian Civil War he chaired the revolutionary committee of Samara province and became a political commissar in the First and Fourth Red Armies. In 1920 Kuybyshev was elected a member of Presidium of the Red International of Trade Unions, from 6 July 1923 to 5 August 1926 he was the first economical inspector of the USSR. From 1926 to 1930 he chaired the Supreme Council of the National Economy, from 1930 to 1934 he directed Gosplan, as a principal economic advisor to Joseph Stalin, he was one of the most influential members in the Communist Party. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, Kuybyshev was one of the initiators of the first edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia and was a member of its chief editorial board. Kuybyshev died in Moscow on 25 January 1935 of heart failure, in 1938, at the height of the Great Purge, his former wife and brother were executed under obscure charges. As Bolshevik tradition had established, he was buried outside the Kremlin walls, Kuybyshev married twice, but never had any children. He was a musician and poet. One of his wives was the niece of Yevgenia Bosch, Galina Aleksandrovna Troyanovskaya, the city of Samara, the town of Bolgar, and the town of Haghartsin, Armenia were all renamed Kuybyshev during the period between 1935 and 1991. The towns of Kuybyshev in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia, and Kuybyshev, Armenia, media related to Valerian Kuybyshev at Wikimedia Commons Biography page page page
7.
Ivyanets
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Ivianec is a town in the Valozhyn Raion of the Minsk Voblast, Belarus. It is located in a hilly and woody area on the river Volma,56 kilometers west of Minsk and it has been known since the end of the 15th century as a privately owned settlement of the Sollohub family. Originally known as Givenech, presumably derived from Lithuanian gyventi – to live, the place was under German occupation from 1941 to 1944. In 1941, there were probably about 1,200 Jews residing in this district center, on September 5,1941,50 male Jews were shot. On November,1941, the German established an enclosed ghetto, the ghetto received Jews from the surrounding villages. In 1942, the Jews were selected and sent to other ghettos, the Germans liquidated the remaining ones from the Ivenets ghetto on June 9,1942. That day, about 800 victims were shot in a pit in a forest, there is a memorial on the location of the massacre. Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on an estate near Ivyanets in 1877, Photos on Radzima. org Jurkau kutoczak — Юркаў куточак — Yurys Corner. Дойлідства Івянца Photos on Globus. tut. by Photos of both churches in details website of Iwieniec/Ivyanets
8.
Ashmyany
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Ašmiany is a town in Grodno Region, Belarus, located at 50 km from Vilnius, capital of the Ašmiany raion. It lies in the basin of the Oshmianka River and it is also known as Aschemynne in the Chronicles of the Teutonic Knights. It was the birthplace of Lucjan Żeligowski, who was a Polish general, town and region surrounding modern Ašmiany was once within the ethnic Lithuanian territory. Between the 17th and 18th centuries a lot of local Lithuanians died out due to wars and famine, with time Lithuanians were outnumbered by Slavs. Presently, its Lithuanian past is sealed in the townss name, towns name derivative from river name Ašmena, which is originated from appellative Lithuanian word akmuo. Link between consonants š and k is old and echoed in Lithuanian words, respectively ašmuo and akmuo, present name Ashmyany is using plural form of name and is a modern invention, as through ancient towns history, its name was recorded in Lithuanian singular form. The first reliable mentioning of Ašmiany tells that after the death of Gediminas in 1341 the town was inherited, among other places, in 1384, the Teutonic Knights attempted to attack Ašmiany as a beginning attempt to destroy the hereditary state of Jogaila. The Teutons managed to destroy the town, but it quickly recovered, in 1402 another Teutonic attack on the city occurred, but was bloodily repelled and the Teutons were forced to withdraw to Medininkai. In 1413 the town one of the most notable centres of trade. Because of that, in 1432 it became a battlefield of an important battle between the forces of Jogaila under Žygimantas Kęstutaitis and the forces of Švitrigaila allied with the Teutonic Order. After the town was taken by the royalists, it became a property of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. However, less than a century later the town was yet again destroyed and burnt to the ground, the recovery did not occur as quickly as the previous time and in 1537 the town was granted with several royal privileges to facilitate the reconstruction. In 1566 the town received a city charter based on the Magdeburg Law. In the 16th century the town became one of the most notable centres of Calvinism in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, after Mikołaj the Red Radziwiłł founded a collegiate. It was also then that the received the first Coat of Arms in its history. Composed of three fields parted per pale, it featured a shield, a holding a weigh and the Ciołek coat of arms. In the effect of the Partitions of Poland of 1795, the town was annexed by Imperial Russia, during the November Uprising it was liberated by a local priest Jasiński and Colonel Count Karol Przeździecki with help of town population. However, in April 1831 they were forced to withdraw to the Naliboki forest in the face of a Russian offensive, some 500 people, women, children and elderly seeking refuge in the Dominican Catholic Church were massacred there
9.
Vilna Governorate
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The Vilna Governorate or Government of Vilnius was a governorate of the Russian Empire created after the Third Partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. It was part of the Lithuanian General Governorate, which was called the Vilnius General Governorate after 1830, the seat was in Vilnius, where the Governors General resided. The first governorates, Vilnius Governorate and Slonim Governorate, were established after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Just a year later, on December 12,1796, by order of Tsar Paul I they were merged into one governorate, called the Lithuanian Governorate, with its capital in Vilnius. By order of Tsar Alexander I on September 9,1801, the Lithuanian Governorate was split into the Lithuania-Vilnius Governorate, after 39 years, the word Lithuania was dropped from the two names by Nicholas I. In 1843, another reform took place, creating the Kaunas Governorate out of seven western districts of the Vilnius Governorate. The Vilnius Governorate received three additional districts, Vileyka and Dzisna from the Minsk Governorate and Lida from Grodno Governorate and it was divided to districts of Vilnius, Trakai, Disna, Oshmyany, Lida, Vileyka and Sventiany. This arrangement remained unchanged until World War I, a part of the Vilnius Governorate was then included in the Lithuania District of Ober-Ost, formed by the occupying German Empire. During the Polish-Soviet War, the area was annexed by Poland, the Council of Ambassadors and the international community recognized Polish sovereignty over Vilnus region in 1923. In 1923, the Wilno Voivodeship was created, which existed until 1939, between 1944 and 1946, about 150,000 people, mostly but not all of Polish extraction, left the area for Poland. Between 1955 and 1959, another 46,000 Poles left Lithuania, meanwhile, the Jewish population of the area, just as in the rest of Lithuania, was virtually exterminated by the Nazis during World War II. However, they reported strikingly different numbers, Ethnic history of the Vilnius region History of Vilnius Poland’s Wilno Voivodeship Byelorussia’s Vileyka Voblast
10.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
11.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
12.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
13.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
14.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
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Social Democratic Party of Lithuania
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The Social Democratic Party of Lithuania is a social-democratic political party in Lithuania. It is the party in Lithuania, having been founded as an underground Marxist organization in 1896. During the period of Soviet occupation the party was forced into exile, the partys president since 2009 is Algirdas Butkevičius. The party led a minority government in the unicameral Seimas, Lithuanias Parliament from 2004 to 2008, the party is a member the Party of European Socialists, Progressive Alliance, and the Socialist International. Moreover, the ethnic Poles and Lithuanians saw themselves divided over the question of alliance with non-Marxist liberals, as a result, not one but three Marxist political organizations would emerge in Lithuania between 1895 and 1897. The Social Democratic Party of Lithuania was founded on 1 May 1896 at a congress held in an apartment in Vilnius. Also in attendance as a representative of the youth movement was an 18-year-old ethnic Pole named Felix Dzerzhinsky. As Lithuania was then part of the Russian Empire, the LSDP was inevitably an illegal organization, meeting in secret, the LSDP was a dual language organization, publishing its illegal newspapers both in Lithuanian and Polish. Newspapers were published abroad, printed in East Prussia and smuggled across the border, technical assistance was occasionally provided by the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, headed by Julian Marchlewski. This smuggling of Lithuanian newspapers had historical antecedents, the LSDP was very nearly obliterated at birth by the Tsarist secret police, which over the course of 1897 to 1899 managed to arrest a number of the partys leading activists. Other top leaders, including Moravskis, were forced to flee the country to avoid being swept up in the Okhranas dragnet, with the party leadership jailed or chased from the country, the LSDP very nearly ceased to exist as the 19th Century drew to a close. From 1900 to 1902 the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania began to rise from the ashes behind a new crop of young revolutionaries. Chief among these were a pair of Lithuanian students in Vilnius, Vladas Sirutavičius and it was the first Lithuanian political party and one of the major parties who initiated the assembly called Great Seimas of Vilnius in 1905. The party was one of the political powers during the Lithuanian independence period between 1918 and 1940. Following the election of 1926, the party formed a coalition government with Lithuanian Peasant Popular Union. This government was dismissed after 1926 Lithuanian coup détat, the authoritarian regime of Antanas Smetona banned all political parties in 1936. During the Soviet occupation era, no democratically constituted political parties existed within Lithuania, therefore, between 1945 and the 1989 restoration of independence, the party was assembled and worked covertly in exile. In 1989, the Social Democratic Party of Lithuania was restored, the party had 9 seats in the Supreme Council – Reconstituent Seimas and was not successful in substantially increasing the number in the following elections, with 8 seats won in 1992 and 12 in 1996
16.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
17.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
18.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
19.
National security
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The concept developed all in the United States after World War II. Accordingly, in order to possess national security, a nation needs to possess economic security, energy security, environmental security, the variety of definitions provide an overview of the many usages of this concept. National security objectively means the absence of threats to acquired values and subjectively, in 1990, Harvard University history professor Charles Maier defined national security through the lens of national power, National security. The variety of definitions provide an overview of the usages of this concept. National security objectively means the absence of threats to acquired values and subjectively, in 1990, Harvard University history professor Charles Maier defined national security through the lens of national power, National security. To be truly secure, a nation needs other forms of security, authorities differ in their choice of nation security elements. Besides the military aspect of security, the aspects of diplomacy or politics, society, environment, energy and natural resources, the elements of national security correlate closely to the concept of the elements of national power. Romm lists security from narcotic cartels, economic security, environmental security, military security is traditionally the earliest recognised form of national security. Military security implies the capability of a nation to defend itself, alternatively, military security implies the capability of a nation to enforce its policy choices by use of military force. The term military security is considered synonymous with security in much of its usage, diplomacy, negotiation and other interactions form the means of interaction between the objects. Historically, conquest of nations has made conquerors rich through plunder, access to new resources, economic security today forms, arguably, as important a part of national security as military security. The creation and protection of jobs that supply defense and non-defense needs are vital to national security, third world countries are less secure due to lack of employment for their citizens. Environmental security deals with issues which threaten the national security of a nation in any manner. The scope and nature of environmental threats to security and strategies to engage them are a subject of debate. While all environmental events are not considered significant of being categorised as threats, many transnational issues, romm classifies these as, Transnational environmental problems that threaten a nations security, in its broad defined sense. These include global environmental problems such as climate change due to warming, deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Environmental or resource problems that threaten a nations security, traditionally defined and these would be problems whose outcomes would result in conventional threats to national security as first or higher order outcomes. Environmentally threatening outcomes of warfare, e. g. Prabhakaran Paleris 2008 definition of a resource is. a support inventory, biotic or abiotic, renewable or expendable. for sustaining life at a heightened level of well-being
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Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
21.
Council of People's Commissars
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The Council of Peoples Commissars was a government institution formed shortly after the October Revolution in 1917. Created in the Russian Republic, the council laid foundations in restructuring the country to form the Soviet Union and it evolved to become the highest government authority of executive power in the government of the Soviet Union. The chairman of council was thus the head of government. The constitution enabled the Sovnarkom to issue decrees carrying the force of law when the Congress was not in session. The Congress then routinely approved these decrees at its next session, when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established in December 1922, the USSR Sovnarkom was modelled on the RSFSR Sovnarkom. It was transformed in 1946 into the Council of Ministers, the first council elected by the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets was composed as follows. Upon the creation of the USSR in 1922, the Unions government was modelled after the first Sovnarkom, the Soviet republics retained their own governments which dealt with domestic matters. In 1946, the Sovnarkoms were transformed into the Council of Ministers at both all-Union and Union Republic level
22.
Minsk Region
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Minsk Region or Minsk Voblasć or Minsk Oblast is one of the regions of Belarus. Its administrative center is Minsk, although it is an administrative territorial entity of Belarus. As of 2011, the population is 1,411,500. Minsk Region covers a area of 39,900 km². Lake Narach, the largest lake in the country, is located in the part of the region. There are four large lakes in this region, Svir, Myadel, Selyava. It is the region of Belarus whose border is not part of the international border of Belarus. With the unification of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, in 1793, as a result of the second partition of Polish territory, the area was annexed by Russia as the Minsk Region. During the collapse of the Russian Empire and the Civil War, the Minsk region was formed on 15 January 1938 based on an amendment of the Constitutional Law of the USSR. As of 20 February 1938, the area included 20 districts, in 1960, following the abolition of Molodechno Region, its southern part became the northern part of the Minsk Region. The number of agencies in Minsk Region grew from twelve in 2000 to seventy in 2010. The Minsk Region comprises 22 districts,307 selsovets,22 cities,8 city municipalities, and 20 urban-type settlements
23.
Belarus
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Its capital and most populous city is Minsk. Over 40% of its 207,600 square kilometres is forested and its strongest economic sectors are service industries and manufacturing. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Belarus declared independence as the Belarusian Peoples Republic, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922 and was renamed as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland after the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, during WWII, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years, in 1945 the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR. The parliament of the declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990. Alexander Lukashenko has served as the president since 1994. Belarus has been labeled Europes last dictatorship by some Western journalists, Lukashenko continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. Though not directly espousing communism like the five remaining communist countries of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea, in 2000 Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State. Over 70% of Belaruss population of 9.49 million resides in urban areas, more than 80% of the population is ethnic Belarusian, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages, Belarusian and Russian, the Constitution of Belarus does not declare any official religion, although the primary religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Belarus is the only European country to retain capital punishment in both law and practice, the name Belarus is closely related with the term Belaya Rus, i. e. White Rus. There are several claims to the origin of the name White Rus, an alternate explanation for the name comments on the white clothing worn by the local Slavic population. A third theory suggests that the old Rus lands that were not conquered by the Tatars had been referred to as white, other sources claim that, before 1267, the land not conquered by the Mongols was considered White Rus. The name Rus is often conflated with its Latin forms Russia and Ruthenia, in some languages, including German and Dutch, the country is generally called White Russia to this day. The Latin term Alba Russia was used again by Pope Pius VI in 1783 to recognize the Society of Jesus there, exclaiming Approbo Societatem Jesu in Alba Russia degentem, approbo, approbo. The first known use of White Russia to refer to Belarus was in the century by Englishman Sir Jerome Horsey. During the 17th century, the Russian tsars used White Rus to describe the lands added from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
24.
Aristocracy
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Aristocracy is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class. The term derives from the Greek aristokratia, meaning rule of the best, at the time of the words origins in Ancient Greece, the Greeks conceived it as rule by the best qualified citizens—and often contrasted it favourably with monarchy, rule by an individual. In later times, aristocracy was usually seen as rule by a group, the aristocratic class. The Greeks did not like the concept of monarchy, and as their democratic system fell, in Ancient Rome, the Republic consisted of an aristocracy—as well as consuls, a senate, and a tribal assembly. In the Middle Ages and early modern era, aristocracies primarily consisted of an aristocratic class, privileged by birth. Since the French Revolution, aristocracy has generally been contrasted with democracy, however, this distinction is often oversimplified. In exchange feudal aid is received from tenants or vassals, oaths of military allegiance, however an oligarchy, nobility or royalty had the right to set taxes, assemble or raise armies and command loyalty by virtue of traditional authority. In the 1651 book Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes describes an aristocracy as a commonwealth in which the representative of the citizens is an assembly by part and it is a system in which only a small part of the population represents the government. Modern depictions of aristocracy tend to regard it not as the ancient Greek concept of rule by the best, history, John Cannon, Oxford University Press,1997, ISBN 978-0-19-866176-4 Aristocracy in the Modern World, Ellis Wasson, Palgrave Macmillan,2006
25.
Szlachta
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The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges between 1333 and 1370 during the reign of King Casimir III the Great, in 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown Kingdom of Poland, the existing Lithuanian nobility formally joined this class. As the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth evolved and expanded in territory, its membership grew to include the leaders of Ducal Prussia, the origins of the szlachta are shrouded in obscurity and mystery and have been the subject of a variety of theories. Traditionally, its members were owners of landed property, often in the form of manor farms or so-called folwarks, the nobility negotiated substantial and increasing political and legal privileges for itself throughout its entire history until the decline of the Polish Commonwealth in the late 18th century. During the Partitions of Poland from 1772 to 1795, its members began to lose these legal privileges, the legal privileges of the szlachta were legally abolished in the Second Polish Republic by the March Constitution of 1921. The notion that all Polish nobles were social equals, regardless of their status or offices held, is enshrined in a traditional Polish saying. —which may roughly be rendered, The noble on the croft Is the voivodes equal, or the tenant farmer noble stands equal to the noble army commander. The term szlachta is derived from the Old High German word slahta, the Polish rycerz and the Polish herb. Poles of the 17th century assumed that szlachta came from the German schlachten, early Polish historians thought the term may have derived from the name of the legendary proto-Polish chief, Lech, mentioned in Polish and Czech writings. Some powerful Polish nobles were referred to as magnates and możny, see Magnates of Poland, the Polish term szlachta designated the formalized, hereditary noble class of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In official Latin documents of the old Commonwealth, hereditary szlachta are referred to as nobilitas and are indeed the equivalent in status of the English nobility. Today the word szlachta in the Polish language simply translates to nobility, in its broadest meaning, it can also denote some non-hereditary honorary knighthoods granted today by some European monarchs. Occasionally, 19th-century non-noble landowners were referred to as szlachta by courtesy or error, in the narrow sense, szlachta denotes the old-Commonwealth nobility. In the past, a misconception sometimes led to the mistranslation of szlachta as gentry rather than nobility. This mistaken practice began due to the status of some szlachta members being inferior to that of the nobility in other European countries. The szlachta included those almost rich and powerful enough to be magnates down to rascals with a lineage, no land, no castle, no money, no village. As some szlachta were poorer than some non-noble gentry, some particularly impoverished szlachta were forced to become tenants of the wealthier gentry. In doing so, however, these szlachta retained all their constitutional prerogatives, as it was not wealth or lifestyle, but hereditary juridical status, an individual nobleman was called a szlachcic, and a noblewoman a szlachcianka
26.
Sulima coat of arms
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Sulima is a Polish coat of arms. It was used by several families in the times of the Kingdom of Poland. It was used by Zawisza Czarny, a famous Polish Knight, undefeated in numerous tournaments, coat of arms entitled Sulkowski and Radomski families who came to the great importance as princes. Slightly more complicated is a description of a medieval coat of arms Sulima, by Joseph Szymanski. It presented the original version of the coat of arms. Version shaped in the 16th Century was in the field of gold. Heres a description of contemporary, designed with the principles blazonowania proposed by Alfred Znamierowski, on the emblem Sulima made up so the two characteristic elements, the upper field - half black eagle and heraldic figures called stones or diamonds - - located in the bottom field. The first preserved in the sources present Sulima were on prints of three wax stamps documents from 1352 year and about 1360 and their owners were clergyman Kraków - the curator of the collegiate church of St. Michaels Castle - Francis. It is worth mentioning that both the seal, coat of arms was a single-pole, deprived labrów and jewel. They are also known for the color of the coat of arms Sulima from this period, among several images of seal of the fourteenth century, mention must seal Stanislaus Gamrat from Klimontów applied under the act of union in Horodło in 1413. Sulimczyk that took his coat Lithuanian family named Rodywiła or Radziwiłł and it is not, however, about the progenitor of the famous later the Lithuanian aristocratic family coat of arms Trunks At about the same time Sulim proudly presented Zawisza Czarny. From the figure Zawisza involves also the first color shot Sulima in this color and it went about 1,415 years to the Book of Bracka St. Christopher on the Arlberg in Tyrol. In addition to this color eagle, its weapon was a silver, the eagle was also a silver headband. Box bottom was red, golden stones in a 2 and 1 and it can be assumed that the Western illustrator inspired by the eagles Silesian, German and Polish. It is not known whether Labry and jewel were additive derived from the same or from Zawisza illustrator, in the fifteenth century appearance Sulima immortalized three Western roles of arms. The most famous of these is the Burgundian armorial of the Golden Fleece by Jan de Saint Remy of about 1,435 years, Armorial repeats the color scheme of the famous Book of Bracka, but the upper field is stylized so that it more closely resembles head. Another Western armorials Codex Bergshammar and Armorial Lycenich of the twenties-thirties of the century, publish a similar image. At the same time in the country, images of Sulima had at that time already a division into two fields
27.
Marxism
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It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor, Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has been adopted by a number of academics and theorists working in various disciplines. Critics have taken issue with particular Marxist claims or accused Marxism as a whole of being inconsistent, refuted based on new information. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of the material conditions, the economic system and these social relations form a base and superstructure. As forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient, from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution and these inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods, the socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanitys mode of production through workers revolution. According to Marxism, especially arising from crisis theory, socialism is a historical necessity, in a socialist society private property, in the form of the means of production, would be replaced by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. The historical materialist theory of history analyses the causes of societal development. All constituent features of a society are assumed to stem from economic activity, the base and superstructure metaphor portrays the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, The sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society and this relationship is reflexive, at first the base gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization. As Friedrich Engels clarified, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production. Primitive Communism, as in tribal societies. Slave Society, a development of tribal to city-state, aristocracy is born, feudalism, aristocrats are the ruling class, merchants evolve into capitalists. Capitalism, capitalists are the class, who create and employ the proletariat. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, the content of Marxism was Marxs economic doctrine
28.
Society of Jesus
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The Society of Jesus Latin, Societas Iesu, S. J. SJ or SI) is a religious congregation of the Catholic Church which originated in Spain. The society is engaged in evangelization and apostolic ministry in 112 nations on six continents, Jesuits work in education, intellectual research, and cultural pursuits. Jesuits also give retreats, minister in hospitals and parishes, and promote social justice, Ignatius of Loyola founded the society after being wounded in battle and experiencing a religious conversion. He composed the Spiritual Exercises to help others follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, ignatiuss plan of the orders organization was approved by Pope Paul III in 1540 by a bull containing the Formula of the Institute. Ignatius was a nobleman who had a background, and the members of the society were supposed to accept orders anywhere in the world. The Society participated in the Counter-Reformation and, later, in the implementation of the Second Vatican Council, the Society of Jesus is consecrated under the patronage of Madonna Della Strada, a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and it is led by a Superior General. The Society of Jesus on October 3,2016 announced that Superior General Adolfo Nicolás resignation was officially accepted, on October 14, the 36th General Congregation of the Society of Jesus elected Father Arturo Sosa as its thirty-first Superior General. The headquarters of the society, its General Curia, is in Rome, the historic curia of St. Ignatius is now part of the Collegio del Gesù attached to the Church of the Gesù, the Jesuit Mother Church. In 2013, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Jesuit Pope, the Jesuits today form the largest single religious order of priests and brothers in the Catholic Church. As of 1 January 2015, Jesuits numbered 16,740,11,986 clerics regular,2,733 scholastics,1,268 brothers and 753 novices. In 2012, Mark Raper S. J. wrote, Our numbers have been in decline for the last 40 years—from over 30,000 in the 1960s to fewer than 18,000 today. The steep declines in Europe and North America and consistent decline in Latin America have not been offset by the significant increase in South Asia, the Society is divided into 83 Provinces with six Independent Regions and ten Dependent Regions. On 1 January 2007, members served in 112 nations on six continents with the largest number in India and their average age was 57.3 years,63.4 years for priests,29.9 years for scholastics, and 65.5 years for brothers. The current Superior General of the Jesuits is Arturo Sosa, the Society is characterized by its ministries in the fields of missionary work, human rights, social justice and, most notably, higher education. It operates colleges and universities in countries around the world and is particularly active in the Philippines. In the United States it maintains 28 colleges and universities and 58 high schools and he ensured that his formula was contained in two papal bulls signed by Pope Paul III in 1540 and by Pope Julius III in 1550. The formula expressed the nature, spirituality, community life and apostolate of the new religious order, the meeting is now commemorated in the Martyrium of Saint Denis, Montmartre
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Saint Petersburg State University
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Saint Petersburg State University is a Russian federal state-owned higher education institution based in Saint Petersburg. It is the oldest and one of the largest universities in Russia, the university has two primary campuses, one on Vasilievsky Island and the other in Peterhof. During the Soviet period, it was known as Leningrad State University and it was named after Andrei Zhdanov in 1948. Saint Petersburg State University is the second best multi-faculty university in Russia after Moscow State University, the university has a reputation for having educated the majority of Russias political elite, these include presidents Vladimir Putin and Dimitry Medvedev, both of whom studied Law at the university. The university is Russias oldest university, founded in 1724 by Peter the Great, Saint Petersburg state university is included in all ratings and lists of the best universities in the world and is one of the leaders in all indicators in Russia. The university was the first from Russian universities to join The Coimbra Group and it is disputed by the university administration whether Saint Petersburg State University or Moscow State University is the oldest higher education institution in Russia. The Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, renamed the Main Pedagogical Institute in 1814, was established in 1804, in 1823 most of the university moved from the Twelve Collegia to the southern part of the city beyond the Fontanka. In 1824 a modified version of the charter of Moscow University was adopted as the first charter of the Saint Petersburg Imperial University, in 1829 there were 19 full professors and 169 full-time and part-time students at the university. In 1830 Tsar Nicholas returned the building of the Twelve Collegia back to the university. In 1835 a new Charter of the Imperial Universities of Russia was approved, however, Pyotr Pletnyov was reappointed Rector and ultimately became the longest-serving rector of Saint Petersburg University. In 1855 Oriental studies were separated from the Faculty of History and Philology, in 1859–1861 female part-time students could attend lectures in the university. In 1861 there were 1,270 full-time and 167 part-time students in the university, of them 498 were in the Faculty of Law, many Russian, Georgian etc. managers, engineers and scientists studied at the Faculty of law therefore. During 1861–1862 there was student unrest in the university, and it was closed twice during the year. The students were denied freedom of assembly and placed under police surveillance, after the unrest, in 1865, only 524 students remained. A decree of the Emperor Alexander II of Russia adopted on 18 February 1863 restored the right of the university assembly to elect the rector and it also formed the new faculty of the theory and history of art as part of the faculty of history and philology. In March 1869, student unrest shook the university again but on a smaller scale, by 1869,2,588 students had graduated from the university. In 1880 the Ministry of National Enlightenment forbade students to marry, in 1882 another student unrest took place in the university. In 1884 a new Charter of the Imperial Russian Universities was adopted, on March 1,1887 a group of the university students was arrested while planning an attempt on the life of Alexander III of Russia
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Vilnius
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Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and its largest city, with a population of 542,664 as of 2015. Vilnius is located in the southeast part of Lithuania and is the second largest city in the Baltic states, Vilnius is the seat of the main government institutions of Lithuania as well as of the Vilnius District Municipality. Vilnius is classified as a Gamma global city according to GaWC studies and its Jewish influence until the 20th century has led to it being described as the Jerusalem of Lithuania and Napoleon named it the Jerusalem of the North as he was passing through in 1812. In 2009, Vilnius was the European Capital of Culture, together with the Austrian city of Linz, the name of the city originates from the Vilnia River. The city has also known by many derivate spellings in various languages throughout its history. The most notable names for the city include, Polish, Wilno, Belarusian, Вiльня, German, Wilna, Latvian, Viļņa, Russian, Вильнюс, Yiddish, ווילנע , Czech. A Russian name from the time of the Russian Empire was Вильна/Вильно, the name Vilna is still used in Finnish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Hebrew. Wilna is still used in German, along with Vilnius, the neighborhoods of Vilnius also have names in other languages, which represent the languages spoken by various ethnic groups in the area. Historian Romas Batūra identifies the city with Voruta, one of the castles of Mindaugas, during the reign of Vytenis a city started to emerge from a trading settlement and the first Franciscan Catholic church was built. These letters contain the first unambiguous reference to Vilnius as the capital, According to legend, Gediminas dreamt of an iron wolf howling on a hilltop and consulted a pagan priest for its interpretation. He was told, What is destined for the ruler and the State of Lithuania, is thus, the Iron Wolf represents a castle and a city which will be established by you on this site. This city will be the capital of the Lithuanian lands and the dwelling of their rulers, the location offered practical advantages, it lay within the Lithuanian heartland at the confluence of two navigable rivers, surrounded by forests and wetlands that were difficult to penetrate. The duchy had been subject to intrusions by the Teutonic Knights, Vilnius was the flourishing capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the residence of the Grand Duke. Gediminas expanded the Grand Duchy through warfare along with strategic alliances and marriages, at its height it covered the territory of modern-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Transnistria, and portions of modern-day Poland and Russia. His grandchildren Vytautas the Great and Jogaila, however, fought civil wars, during the Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–1392, Vytautas besieged and razed the city in an attempt to wrest control from Jogaila. The two later settled their differences, after a series of treaties culminating in the 1569 Union of Lublin, the rulers of this federation held either or both of two titles, Grand Duke of Lithuania or King of Poland. In 1387, Jogaila acting as a Grand Duke of Lithuania and King of Poland Władysław II Jagiełło, the city underwent a period of expansion. The Vilnius city walls were built for protection between 1503 and 1522, comprising nine city gates and three towers, and Sigismund August moved his court there in 1544
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Kherson
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Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the center of the Kherson Oblast, and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, estimated population as of 2007 was 329,000. Since the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014, Kherson also houses the office of the Presidential representative of Ukraine in Crimea, until 1774, the region belonged to the Crimean Khanate. Kherson was founded in 1778 by Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, on the orders of Catherine the Great, the city was built under the supervision of General Ivan Gannibal on the site of a small fortress called Aleksanderschanz. The name Kherson is a contraction of Chersonesos, an ancient Greek colony founded approximately 2500 years ago in the part of Crimea. One of the first buildings in the Kherson Fort was the Church of St. Catherine where Potemkin was eventually buried, the last tarpan was caught near Kherson in 1866. During World War II, Kherson was occupied by the German Army from 21 August 1941 to 13 March 1944, during the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 the city was the scene of riots against president Yanukovich during which the main Lenin statue of the city was toppled by protesters. After the revolution the city became relatively calm, Suvorov Raion, central and oldest raion of the city, named after the Russian General Suvorov. Includes microraions, Tavrіjskij, Pіvnіchnij and Mlini, dnipro Raion, named after the Dnieper river. Includes microraions, Shumenskij, Korabel, Zabalka, Suharne, Zhitloselishhe, Selishhe —4, includes microraions, HBK, Tekstilnij, Sklotara, Slobіdka, Vojenka, Shіdnij. Under the Köppen climate classification, Kherson has a humid subtropical climate. Kherson is served by Kherson International Airport providing both passport and customs control and it operates a 2,500 x 42-meter concrete runway, accommodating Boeing 737, Airbus 319/320 aircraft, and helicopters of all series. The official airport website is http, //www. airport. kherson. ua and additional info can be found at http, the tel no is +380552 33-71-87. Kherson is connected to the railroad network of Ukraine. There are daily services to Kyiv, Lviv and other cities. There are 77 high schools as well as 5 colleges, there are 15 institutions of higher education. Jewish cemetery – Kershon has a large Jewish community which was established in the mid-nineteenth century, from 1959 until 1990 there was no synagogue in Kherson
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Gymnasium (school)
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In its current meaning, it usually refers to secondary schools focused on preparing students to enter a university for advanced academic study. In the US, the German Gymnasium curriculum was used at a number of universities such as the University of Michigan as a model for their undergraduate college programs. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual education of young men, in the Polish educational system the gimnazjum is a middle school for pupils aged 13 to 16. The same applies in the Greek educational system, with the option of Εσπερινό Γυμνάσιο for adults. The gymnasium is a school which prepares the student for higher education at a university. They are thus meant for the more academically minded students, who are sifted out at about the age of 10–13, in addition to the usual curriculum, students of a gymnasium often study Latin and Ancient Greek. Some gymnasiums provide general education, others have a specific focus, today, a number of other areas of specialization exist, such as gymnasiums specializing in economics, technology or domestic sciences. In some countries, there is a notion of progymnasium, which is equivalent to beginning classes of the full gymnasium, here, the prefix pro indicates that this curriculum precedes normal gymnasium studies. The term was derived from the classical Greek word gymnasion, which was applied to an exercising ground in ancient Athens. Here teachers gathered and gave instruction between the hours devoted to exercises and sports, and thus the term became associated with. This use of the term did not prevail among the Romans, but was revived during the Renaissance in Italy, in 1538, Johannes Sturm founded at Strasbourg the school which became the model of the modern German gymnasium. In 1812, a Prussian regulation ordered that all schools which had the right to send their students to the university should bear the name of gymnasia, by the 20th century, this practice was followed in almost the entire Austrian-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires. In the modern era, many countries which have gymnasiums were once part of three empires. In Albania a gymnasium education takes three years following a compulsory nine-year elementary education and ending with an aptitude test called Matura Shtetërore. The final test is standardized at the level and serves as an entrance qualification for universities. There are both public and private schools in these countries. Therefore, gymnasiums often base their admittance criteria on an entrance exam, in Austria the Gymnasium has two stages, from the age of 11 to 14, and from 15 to 18, concluding with Matura. The Humanistisches Gymnasium focuses on Ancient Greek and Latin, the Neusprachliches Gymnasium puts its focus on actively spoken languages
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Taganrog
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Taganrog is a port city in Rostov Oblast, Russia, located on the north shore of the Taganrog Bay in the Sea of Azov, several kilometers west of the mouth of the Don River. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 257,681, Taganrog was officially founded by Peter the Great on September 12,1698. The first Russian Navy base, it hosted the Azov Flotilla of Catherine the Great, Taganrog was granted city status in 1775. By the end of the 18th century, Taganrog had lost its importance as a base after Crimea. In 1802, Tsar Alexander I granted the city special status, in 1825, the Alexander I Palace in Taganrog was used as the Tsars summer residence, where he died in November 1825. Taganrog became an important as a port, used for the import and export of grain by the end of the 19th century until the early 20th century. Industrialization increased in the city when Belgian and German investors founded a factory, an iron and steel foundry, a leather factory. By 1911, fifteen foreign consulates had opened in the city, during World War I, Taganrog was occupied by the troops of the German Army from May 1918 until August. In 1919, General Anton Denikin established his headquarters at the Avgerino mansion in the city while commanding White Russian troops fighting in South Russia during the Russian Civil War. When the White Russians were defeated and Bolshevik power was established in the city on December 25,1919, Denikins remaining troops and the British Consulate were evacuated by HMS Montrose. The occuption led to the government system being replaced by German-style Bürgermeisteramt. Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is incorporated as Taganrog Urban Okrug—an administrative unit with the equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, this unit also has urban okrug status. The climate of Taganrog is temperate, Taganrog experiences moderately cold winters and hot summers. Taganrog is the industrial center of Rostov Oblast. The biggest company currently operating in Taganrog is Taganrog Metallurgical Plant which manufactures steel, steel pipe for oil and gas industry, the other major employer is Taganrog Auto Factory which originated from Taganrog Combine Harvester Factory. The plant manufactures automobiles licensed by Hyundai, the production line includes Hyundai Accent compact sedan, mid-size Hyundai Sonata, sport utility vehicle Santa Fe and Hyundai Porter pickup truck. Taganrog is also home to the design bureau Beriev
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Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
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Chekhov Gymnasium
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The Chekhov Gymnasium in Taganrog on Ulitsa Oktyabrskaya 9 is the oldest gymnasium in the South of Russia. Playwright and short-story writer Anton Chekhov spent 11 years in the school, visitors can see Antons desk and his classroom, the assembly hall and even the punishment cell which he sometimes visited. The Boys Gymnasium was founded in 1809 and this building was completed in 1843 by the plans of the Italian architect Francesco Boffo, students of the Boys Gymnasium benefited from various grants, most of them being introduced by the Greek-Russian merchant and benefactor Ioannis Varvakis. In mid-1870s a school church was made in the building. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the following Civil War, during the Occupation of Taganrog in 1941-1943 used by the Germans as Sicherheitsdienst headquarters. In 1954, the Boys Gymnasium was named after Anton Chekhov within the framework of events dedicated to the writers 50th death anniversary memorial year, in 1975 opened as The Literary Museum named after Anton Chekhov, more commonly known under the short name Chekhov Gymnasium. Anton Chekhov attended a school for Greek boys in Taganrog, rather reserved and undemonstrative, he nevertheless gained a reputation for satirical comments, for pranks, and for making up humorous nicknames for his teachers. He enjoyed playing in amateur theatricals and often attended performances at the Taganrog Theatre and he received an annual grant of 300 rubles which had been introduced by the Taganrog City Council after the failed assassination attempt on the tsar Alexander II of Russia. After the business of Anton Chekhovs father failed, the family left for Moscow in 1875-1876. Anton was left in Taganrog to care for himself and finish school, the future world-famous playwright survived selling off household goods and tutoring younger school students at the Boys Gymnasium. In 1879, Chekhov passed his exams and joined his family in Moscow. The maths rating on Chekhovs school-leaving certificate was signed by Edmund Dzerzhinsky, Dzerzhinsky gave lessons of mathematics in two of Taganrogs gymnasiums - the Girls Gymnasium of Empr. Maria in 1868-1873 and in the Boys Gymnasium from 1873 until late seventies, another contemporary instructor was Fyodor Pokrovski, who taught Chekhov theology and gave him the famous nickname Antosha Chekhonte. After the famous Pushkin House museum in Saint Petersburg, this is the second-largest literary museum in Russia both in terms of space and unique funds. Taganrog Encyclopedia, 2nd edition, Taganrog,2003 История города Таганрога, П. П. Филевский, Москва,1898 По старой Греческой, Н. Гаврюшкин, Таганрог,2003 The Girls Gymnasium in Taganrog
