1.
Eastern Slavic naming customs
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They are also featured in the non-Slavic Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan as a result of the expansion of Russia and the result of Russification. As with most cultures, a person has a name chosen by the parents. First names in East Slavic languages mostly originate from two sources, Orthodox church tradition and native pre-Christian Slavic lexicons, all first names are single, non-doubled. Doubled first names are a very rare foreign-influenced instance, most doubled first names are spelled with the dash. Being highly synthetic, Eastern Slavic languages treat personal names as grammatical nouns and this auxiliary stem may be identical to the word stem of the full name while most names have it derived unproductively. Most commonly, Russian philologists distinguish the forms of given names, The short name, historically also half-name, is the most simple. Some names, such as Zhanna, Mark, etc. do not possess short forms, in the latter case, one form is usually more informal than the other. Diminutive forms are produced from the name by means of various suffixes. Unlike the full name, a diminutive name carries a particular emotional attitude, depending on the nature of this attitude, nameforms can be subdivided in three broad groups, affectionate, familiar and slang. Typically formed by suffixes -еньк-, -оньк-, -ечк-, -ушк and it is often used to address children or intimate friends. Within a more official context, this form may be combined with honorific plural to address a female colleague. Colloquial diminutives are derived from short names by means of -к- suffix, expressing a highly familiar attitude, it may be considered rude or even pejorative outside of friendly context. Slang forms mostly exist for male names, being produced though suffixes -ян, -он and these suffixes give off the sense of male brotherhood once expressed by patronymic-only form of address in Soviet Union. Originating in criminal communities, these came into wide usage in Russia in the 1990s. During the days of revolutionary enthusiasm, as part of the campaign to rid Russia of bourgeois culture, there was a drive to invent new, as a result, a large number of Soviet children were given unusual or atypical names. The patronymic name is based on the first name of the father and is written in all legal, if used with the first name, the patronymic always follows it. The patronymic is formed by a combination of the fathers name, the suffix -ович is used for son, suffix -овна - for daughter. For example, if the name was Иван, then the patronymic will be Иванович for a son
2.
Peterhof Palace
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The Peterhof Palace is a series of palaces and gardens located in Petergof, Saint Petersburg, Russia, laid out on the orders of Peter the Great. These palaces and gardens are sometimes referred as the Russian Versailles, the palace-ensemble along with the city center is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The dominant natural feature of Peterhof is a sixteen-metre-high bluff lying less than a hundred metres from the shore. The so-called Lower Gardens, at 1.02 km² comprising the part of Peterhofs land area, are confined between this bluff and the shore, stretching east and west for roughly 200 metres. The majority of Peterhofs fountains are contained here, as are several small palaces, East of the Lower Gardens lies the Alexandria Park with 19th-century Gothic Revival structures such as the Kapella. Atop the bluff, near the middle of the Lower Gardens, behind of it are the comparatively small Upper Gardens. Upon the bluffs face below the Palace is the Grand Cascade and this and the Grand Palace are the centrepiece of the entire complex. At its foot begins the Sea Channel, one of the most extensive waterworks of the Baroque period, the Grand Cascade is modelled on one constructed for Louis XIV at his Château de Marly, which is likewise memorialised in one of the parks outbuildings. At the centre of the cascade is a grotto with two stories, faced inside and out with hewn brown stone. It currently contains a modest museum of the fountains history, one of the exhibits is a table carrying a bowl of fruit, a replica of a similar table built under Peters direction. The table is rigged with jets of water that soak visitors when they reach for the fruit, the grotto is connected to the palace above and behind by a hidden corridor. The fountains of the Grand Cascade are located below the grotto and their waters flow into a semicircular pool, the terminus of the fountain-lined Sea Channel. In the 1730s, the large Samson Fountain was placed in this pool and it depicts the moment when Samson tears open the jaws of a lion, representing Russias victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, and is doubly symbolic. The lion is an element of the Swedish coat of arms, from the lions mouth shoots a 20-metre-high vertical jet of water, the highest in all of Peterhof. This masterpiece by Mikhail Kozlovsky was looted by the invading Germans during the Second World War, a replica of the statue was installed in 1947. Perhaps the greatest technological achievement of Peterhof is that all of the fountains operate without the use of pumps, water is supplied from natural springs and collects in reservoirs in the Upper Gardens. The elevation difference creates the pressure that drives most of the fountains of the Lower Gardens, the Samson Fountain is supplied by a special aqueduct, over four km in length, drawing water and pressure from a high-elevation source. The expanse of the Lower Gardens is designed in the style of french formal gardens of the 17th century
3.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
4.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
5.
Ipatiev House
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Ipatiev House was a merchants house in Yekaterinburg where the former Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family and members of his household were executed following the Bolshevik Revolution. Its name is identical with that of the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, in the 1880s, Ivan Redikortsev, an official involved in the mining industry, commissioned a two-story house to be built on the slope of a prominent hill. The length of the facade was 31 metres, in 1898, the mansion passed to Sharaviev, a gold dealer of tainted reputation. Ten years later, the house was acquired by Nikolai Nikolayevich Ipatiev, a military engineer, the Romanov family moved in on 30 April 1918 and spent 78 days at the house. Nicholas Romanov, his wife, their four daughters, their son, from early July command of the guard was taken over by Yakov Yurovsky, a senior member of the Ural Soviet. The prisoners were permitted brief daily exercise in a garden but the windows to their rooms were painted over. A high wooden fence was built around the perimeter of the house. About midnight on 16–17 July 1918 Commander Yurovsky entered the second room of Dr Botkin who was awake. Botkin was told to awaken the Imperial family and their three remaining attendants so that the party could be evacuated from Yekaterinburg. The reason given was that the White forces were nearing the city, chairs were brought for Nicholas and Alexandra at the latters request. The remainder of the party stood behind and to one side of the seated couple, after a delay Yurovsky and a party of armed men entered the basement room through the double doors. Filipp Goloshchekin, an associate of Yakov Sverdlov whom he had met in early July 1918 in Moscow. Being a military commissar of the Uralispolkom in Yekaterinburg, Goloshchekin however did not actually participate in the actual killings, three Latvians refused at the last minute to take part in the execution. Yurovsky spoke briefly to the effect that Romanov relatives had attempted to save the Imperial family, that attempt had failed. He and his squad then opened fire with pistols on the prisoners, the number of people crowded into a comparatively small area led to an inefficient and messy slaughter. The women among the prisoners had diamonds and jewelry concealed in their clothing, deflecting many of the bullets and it took between twenty and thirty minutes before all were killed. As early as 1923, the photographs of the house were disseminated in the Soviet press under the label of the last palace of the last Tsar. In 1927, the house was designated a branch of the Ural Revolution Museum and it then became an Agricultural School before taking on new life in 1938 as an Anti-Religious Museum
6.
Yekaterinburg
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At the 2010 Census, it had a population of 1,349,772. Yekaterinburg is the industrial and cultural centre of the Ural Federal District. Between 1924 and 1991, the city was named Sverdlovsk after the Communist party leader Yakov Sverdlov, Vasily Tatishchev and Georg Wilhelm de Gennin founded Yekaterinburg in 1723 and named it after the wife of Tsar Peter the Great, Yekaterina, who later became empress regnant Catherine I. The official date of the foundation is November 18,1723. It was granted town status in 1796, the city was one of Russias first industrial cities, prompted at the start of the eighteenth century by decrees from the Tsar requiring the development in Yekaterinburg of metal-working businesses. The city was built, with use of iron, to a regular square plan with iron works. These were surrounded by fortified walls, so that Yekaterinburg was at the time both a manufacturing centre and a fortress at the frontier between Europe and Asia. It therefore found itself at the heart of Russias strategy for development of the entire Ural region. With the growth in trade and the administrative importance, the ironworks became less critical. Small manufacturing and trading businesses proliferated, following the October Revolution, the family of deposed Tsar Nicholas II were sent to internal exile in Yekaterinburg where they were imprisoned in the Ipatiev House in the city. Other members of the Romanov family were killed at Alapayevsk later the same day, on July 16,1918, the Czechoslovak legions were closing on Yekaterinburg. The Bolsheviks executed the deposed imperial family, believing that the Czechoslovaks were on a mission to rescue them, the Legions arrived less than a week later and captured the city. In 1977, the Ipatiev House was demolished by order of Boris Yeltsin, Yeltsin later became the first President of Russia and represented the people at the funeral of the former Tsar in 1998. On August 24,2007, the BBC reported that Russian archaeologists had found the remains of two children of Russias last Tsar, the discoveries in 2007 are thought to be those of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. Archaeologist Sergei Pogorelov said bullets found at the site indicate the children had been shot. He told Russian television the newly unearthed bones belonged to two people, a young male aged roughly 10–13 and a young woman about 18–23. The Tsars remains were given a funeral in July 1998. During the 1930s, Yekaterinburg was one of several developed by the Soviet government as a centre of heavy industry
7.
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
8.
Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg
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The Peter and Paul Cathedral is a Russian Orthodox cathedral located inside the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, Russia. It is the first and oldest landmark in St. Petersburg, both the cathedral and the fortress were originally built under Peter the Great and designed by Domenico Trezzini. The cathedrals bell tower is the worlds tallest Orthodox bell tower, since the belfry is not standalone, but an integral part of the main building, the cathedral is sometimes considered the highest Orthodox Church in the world. There is another Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul Church in St. Petersburg, the current building, the first stone church in St. Petersburg, was designed by Trezzini and built between 1712 and 1733. Its gold-painted spire reaches a height of 123 metres and features at its top an angel holding a cross and this angel is one of the most important symbols of St. Petersburg. The cathedrals architecture also features a unique iconostasis, however, at St. Peter and Paul, the iconostasis rises to form a sort of tower over the sanctuary. The cathedral has a typical Flemish carillon, a gift of the Flemish city of Mechelen, the cathedral is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, the patron saints of the fortress. The current cathedral is the one on the site. The first, built soon after Peters founding of the city, was consecrated by Archbishop Iov of Novgorod the Great in April 1704, the cathedral was the cathedral church of the city until 1859 The current cathedral church of St. Petersburg is the Kazan Cathedral on Nevsky Prospect. The cathedral was closed in 1919 and turned into a museum in 1924 and it is still officially a museum, religious services, however, resumed in 2000. The cathedral houses the remains of almost all the Russian emperors and empresses from Peter the Great to Nicholas II and his family, among the emperors and empresses buried here was Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia for 34 years. Of the post-Petrine rulers, only Peter II and Ivan VI are not buried here, Peter II is buried in the Cathedral of Michael the Archangel in the Moscow Kremlin, Ivan VI was executed and buried in the fortress of Shlisselburg or Kholmogory. On September 28,2006,78 years after her death, Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia, was reinterred in the Cathedral of St Peter and Paul. Wife of Tsar Alexander III, and mother of Nicholas II, in 2005, the governments of Denmark and Russia agreed that the empresss remains should be returned to Saint Petersburg in accordance with her wish to be interred next to her husband. The bell tower is the dominant feature of cathedral and the fortress. It serves several functions as part of the structure, It is an architectural symbol and it is a part of the imperial tomb - the tombs are on the ground floor. It is a lightning rod protecting the cathedral and it is a viewing platform upon which excursions meet each hour from 12,00 till 18,00. It houses a carillon upon which concerts are periodically performed, when renovators were cleaning the angel on the spire in 1997, they found a note in a bottle left in one of the folds of the angels gown
9.
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
10.
Dynasty
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A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a feudal or monarchical system but sometimes also appearing in elective republics. The dynastic family or lineage may be known as a house, historians periodize the histories of many sovereign states, such as Ancient Egypt, the Carolingian Empire and Imperial China, using a framework of successive dynasties. As such, the dynasty may be used to delimit the era during which the family reigned and to describe events, trends. The word dynasty itself is often dropped from such adjectival references, until the 19th century, it was taken for granted that a legitimate function of a monarch was to aggrandize his dynasty, that is, to increase the territory, wealth, and power of his family members. The longest-surviving dynasty in the world is the Imperial House of Japan, dynasties throughout the world have traditionally been reckoned patrilineally, such as under the Frankish Salic law. Succession through a daughter when permitted was considered to establish a new dynasty in her husbands ruling house, however, some states in Africa, determined descent matrilineally, while rulers have at other times adopted the name of their mothers dynasty when coming into her inheritance. It is also extended to unrelated people such as poets of the same school or various rosters of a single sports team. The word dynasty derives via Latin dynastia from Greek dynastéia, where it referred to power, dominion and it was the abstract noun of dynástēs, the agent noun of dynamis, power or ability, from dýnamai, to be able. A ruler in a dynasty is referred to as a dynast. For example, following his abdication, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ceased to be a member of the House of Windsor. A dynastic marriage is one that complies with monarchical house law restrictions, the marriage of Willem-Alexander, Prince of Orange, to Máxima Zorreguieta in 2002 was dynastic, for example, and their eldest child is expected to inherit the Dutch crown eventually. But the marriage of his younger brother Prince Friso to Mabel Wisse Smit in 2003 lacked government support, thus Friso forfeited his place in the order of succession, lost his title as a Prince of the Netherlands, and left his children without dynastic rights. In historical and monarchist references to formerly reigning families, a dynast is a member who would have had succession rights, were the monarchys rules still in force. Even since abolition of the Austrian monarchy, Max and his descendants have not been considered the rightful pretenders by Austrian monarchists, nor have they claimed that position. The term dynast is sometimes used only to refer to descendants of a realms monarchs. The term can therefore describe overlapping but distinct sets of people, yet he is not a male-line member of the royal family, and is therefore not a dynast of the House of Windsor. Thus, in 1999 he requested and obtained permission from Elizabeth II to marry the Roman Catholic Princess Caroline of Monaco. Yet a clause of the English Act of Settlement 1701 remained in effect at that time and that exclusion, too, ceased to apply on 26 March 2015, with retroactive effect for those who had been dynasts prior to triggering it by marriage to a Catholic
11.
House of Romanov
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The Romanovs achieved prominence as boyars of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, later the Tsardom of Russia. In 1613, following years of interregnum, the zemsky sobor offered the Russian crown to Mikhail Romanov and he acceded to the throne as Michael I, becoming the first Tsar of Russia from the House of Romanov. His grandson Peter I established the Russian Empire and transformed the country into a continental power through a series of wars, the direct male line of the Romanovs came to an end when Elizabeth of Russia died in 1762. After an era of crisis, the House of Holstein-Gottorp, a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg which reigned in Denmark, ascended the throne in 1762 with Peter III. All rulers from the middle of the 18th century to the revolution of 1917 were descended from that branch, though officially known as the House of Romanov, these descendants of the Romanov and Oldenburg dynasties are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. In early 1917 the Romanov dynasty had 65 members,18 of whom were killed by the Bolsheviks, the remaining 47 members went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the senior, surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture, since 1991, the succession to the former Russian throne has been in dispute, largely due to disagreements over the validity of dynasts marriages. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna of Russia claims to hold the title of empress in pretense with her child, George Mikhailovich. There is also a rival non-Romanov claim put forth by Prince Karl Emich of the House of Leiningen supported by the Monarchist Party, according to the Almanach de Gotha, the name of Russias ruling dynasty from the time of Peter III was Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. However, the name Romanov and House of Romanov were often used in references to the Russian imperial family. The coat of arms of the Romanov boyars was included in legislation on the imperial dynasty, after the February Revolution all members of the imperial family were given the surname Romanov by special decree of the Provisional Government of Russia. Their earliest common ancestor is one Andrei Kobyla, attested around 1347 as a boyar in the service of Semyon I of Moscow, later generations assigned to Kobyla an illustrious pedigree. An 18th-century genealogy claimed that he was the son of the Prussian prince Glanda Kambila, indeed, one of the leaders of the Old Prussian rebellion of 1260–1274 against the Teutonic order was named Glande. His actual origin may have been less spectacular, not only is Kobyla Russian for mare, some of his relatives also had as nicknames the terms for horses and other domestic animals, thus suggesting descent from one of the royal equerries. One of Kobylas sons, Feodor, a member of the boyar Duma of Dmitri Donskoi, was nicknamed Koshka and his descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to Zakharin, which family later split into two branches, Zakharin-Yakovlev and Zakharin-Yuriev. During the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the family became known as Yakovlev. The family fortunes soared when Romans daughter, Anastasia Zakharyina, married Ivan IV, since her husband had assumed the title of tsar, which literally means Caesar, on 16 January 1547, she was crowned the very first tsaritsa of Russia. Her mysterious death in 1560 changed Ivans character for the worse, suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, Tsar Ivan started a reign of terror against them
12.
Nicholas II of Russia
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Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic, Soviet historiography portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader, whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects. The Anglo-Russian Entente, designed to counter German attempts to influence in the Middle East. Nicholas approved the Russian mobilisation on 30 July 1914, which led to Germany declaring war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and it is estimated that around 3,300,000 Russians were killed in World War I. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas abdicated on behalf of himself and his son, Nicholas, the recovered remains of the Imperial Family were finally re-interred in St. Petersburg, eighty years to the day on 17 July 1998. In 1981, Nicholas, his wife and their children were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, located in New York City. On 15 August 2000 Nicholas and his family were canonized as passion bearers, Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. He had five siblings, Alexander, George, Xenia, Michael. Nicholas often referred to his father nostalgically in letters after Alexanders death in 1894 and he was also very close to his mother, as revealed in their published letters to each other. His paternal grandparents were Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and his maternal grandparents were King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor being Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna, Nicholas was related to several monarchs in Europe. His mothers siblings included Kings Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins of King George V of the United Kingdom. Nicholas was also a first cousin of both King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway, as well as King Constantine I of Greece, Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin-once-removed of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as Nikolasha and Nicholas the Tall, while the Tsar was Nicholas the Short. In his childhood, Nicholas, his parents and siblings made annual visits to the Danish royal palaces of Fredensborg and Bernstorff to visit his grandparents, the king and queen. The visits also served as family reunions, as his mothers siblings would come from the United Kingdom, Germany. It was there in 1883, that he had a flirtation with one of his English first cousins, in 1873, Nicholas also accompanied his parents and younger brother, two-year-old George, on a two-month, semi-official visit to England. In London, Nicholas and his family stayed at Marlborough House, as guests of his Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alix, the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he was spoiled by his uncle
13.
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
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Alexandra Feodorovna was Empress of Russia as the spouse of Nicholas II, the last ruler of the Russian Empire. Originally known as Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, she was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Alexandra was the last Tsarina of Russia and one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease that descended from Queen Victoria. During his absence in the First World War in 1915-1917 she was treated by her spouse as Regent of the Empire. Alix was baptized on 1 July 1872 according to the rites of the Lutheran Church and given the names of her mother and each of her mothers four sisters, some of which were transliterated into German. Her godparents were the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Tsesarevich and Tsesarevna of Russia, Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, The Duchess of Cambridge, and Princess Anna of Prussia. Alixs hemophiliac older brother Prince Friedrich of Hesse and by Rhine died in May 1873 after a fall when Alix was barely a year old. In November 1878, diphtheria swept through the Grand Ducal House of Hesse, Alix, Elisabeth, Alixs older sister, had been sent to visit her paternal grandmother, and thus escaped the outbreak. Alixs mother Alice tended to the children herself, rather than abandon them to doctors, Alice herself soon fell ill and died on the 17th anniversary of her fathers death,14 December 1878, when Alix was only six years old. Alix, Victoria, Irene, and Ernst survived the epidemic, Alix and her surviving siblings grew close to their British cousins, spending holidays with Queen Victoria. With her sister Princess Irene, Alix was a bridesmaid at the 1885 wedding of her godmother and maternal aunt and she was also present at her grandmothers Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1887. Alix was married late for her rank in her era, having rejected a proposal from her cousin Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale in 1890. Though Queen Victoria had intended for Alix to be Britains future queen, she relented, Nicholas and Alix had first met in 1884 at the wedding of Nicholass Uncle Sergei to Alixs sister Elisabeth in St. Petersburg. When Alix returned to Russia in 1889, they fell in love, Nicholas wrote in his diary, It is my dream to one day marry Alix H. I have loved her for a time, but more deeply and strongly since 1889 when she spent six weeks in Petersburg. For a long time, I have resisted my feeling that my dearest dream will come true, initially Nicholass father, Tsar Alexander III, refused the prospect of marriage. Alexander III and his wife, both vehemently anti-German, had no intention of permitting a match with Princess Alix and the tsesarevich, fortunately for Nicholas, Hélène also resisted, as she was Roman Catholic and her father refused to allow her to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. After appealing to the Pope, who refused to consider the marriage. The tsar, despite his anti-German sentiments, then sent emissaries to Princess Margaret of Prussia, sister of German Emperor Wilhelm II, as long as he was well, Alexander III ignored his sons demands, only relenting when his health began to fail in 1894
14.
Russian Orthodox Church
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The Russian Orthodox Church, alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches, in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox patriarchates. The Primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and it also exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and the Orthodox Christians resident in the Peoples Republic of China. The ROC branches in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Ukraine since the 1990s enjoy various degrees of self-government, in Ukraine, ROC has tensions with schismatic groups supported by the current government, while it enjoys the position of numerically dominant religious organisation. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, headquartered in New York, New York, the two Churches reconciled on May 17,2007, the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the location of Kiev. The spot where he erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrews Cathedral. By the end of the first millennium AD, eastern Slavic lands started to come under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, by the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Byzantine Greek priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus′ to convert to Christianity and her grandson, Vladimir of Kiev, made Rus officially a Christian state. The Kievan church was a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical patriarch appointed the metropolitan, who usually was a Greek. The Metropolitans residence was located in Kiev itself, the capital of the medieval Rus state. Following the tribulations of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival, despite the politically motivated murders of Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver, the Mongols were generally tolerant and even granted tax exemption to the Church. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, the Trinity monastery founded by Sergius of Radonezh became the setting for the flourishing of spiritual art, exemplified by the work of Andrey Rublev, among others. The followers of Sergius founded four hundred monasteries, thus extending the geographical extent of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441, Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia without the consent from Constantinople. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople
15.
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
16.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia
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Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia was the eldest daughter of the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Emperor Nicholas II, and of Empress Alexandra of Russia. During her lifetime, Olgas future marriage was the subject of great speculation within Russia. Matches were rumored with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich of Russia, Crown Prince Carol of Romania, Edward, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Britains George V, Olga herself wanted to marry a Russian and remain in her home country. During World War I, Olga nursed wounded soldiers in a hospital until her own nerves gave out and, thereafter. Olgas murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church. In later years, when dozens of people made claims to be surviving members of the family, a woman named Marga Boodts claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga. Olga was assassinated along with her family at Yekaterinburg and her remains were identified through DNA testing and were buried during a funeral ceremony in 1998 at Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg along with those of her parents and two of her sisters. Olgas siblings were Grand Duchesses Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and her Russian title is most precisely translated as Grand Princess, meaning that Olga, as an imperial highness, was higher in rank than other princesses in Europe who were royal highnesses. However, Grand Duchess is the usual English translation, Olgas friends and family generally called her simply Olga Nikolaevna or nicknamed her Olishka, Olenka or Olya. Among her godparents was her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, Olga was most often paired with her sister Tatiana. The two girls shared a room, dressed alike, and were known as The Big Pair, from her earliest years she was known for her compassionate heart and desire to help others, but also for her temper, blunt honesty and moodiness. As a small child, she once lost patience while posing for a painter and told the man, You are a very ugly man. The Tsars children were raised as simply as possible, sleeping on hard camp cots unless they were ill, servants called Olga and her siblings by their first names and patronyms rather than by their imperial titles. However, Olgas governess and tutors also noted some of the impulses of the daughter of the Tsar of All the Russias. On a visit to a museum where state carriages were on display and her wishes were not honored, much to the relief of her governess, Margaretta Eagar. She also felt the rights of eldest children should be protected, when she was told the Biblical story of Joseph and his coat of many colors, she sympathized with the eldest brothers rather than Joseph. She also sympathized with Goliath rather than David in the Biblical story of David, when her French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, was teaching her the formation of French verbs and the use of auxiliaries, ten-year-old Olga responded, I see, monsieur. The auxiliaries are the servants of the verbs and its only poor avoir which has to shift for itself
17.
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
18.
Execution of the Romanov family
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The Tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik troops led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet. Their bodies were mutilated, burned and buried in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest. The emergence of Romanov impostors drew media attention away from Soviet Russia, the burial site was discovered in 1979 by an amateur sleuth, but the remains were not made public until 1989, during the glasnost period. The identity of the remains was confirmed by forensic and DNA investigation, a second, smaller grave containing the remains of two Romanov children missing from the larger grave was discovered by amateur archeologists in 2007. However, their remains are kept in a state repository pending further DNA tests, in 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor Generals office rehabilitated the Romanov family as victims of political repressions. A criminal case was opened by the government in 1993. This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotskys diary, Lenin had close control over the Romanovs although he ensured his name was not associated with their fate in any official documents. President Boris Yeltsin described the killings as one of the most shameful pages in Russian history, on 22 March 1917, Nicholas, no longer a monarch and addressed with contempt by the sentries as Nicholas Romanov, was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government, surrounded by guards, in August 1917, Alexander Kerenskys provisional government evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There they lived in the governors mansion in considerable comfort. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter, Nicholas was forbidden to wear epaulettes, and the sentries scrawled lewd drawings on the fence to offend his daughters. On 1 March 1918, the family was placed on soldiers rations, as the Bolsheviks gathered strength, the government in April moved Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughter Maria to Yekaterinburg under the direction of Vasily Yakovlev. Alexei, who had severe haemophilia, was too ill to accompany his parents and remained with his sisters Olga, Tatiana, the family was imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in Yekaterinburgs Ipatiev House, which was designated The House of Special Purpose. The imperial family was kept in isolation at the Ipatiev House and was subjected to numerous rigorous inspections. They were strictly forbidden to any language other than Russian. They were not permitted access to their luggage which was stored in an outhouse in the interior courtyard and their brownie cameras and photographic equipment were confiscated. The servants were ordered to address the Romanovs only by their names, the house was surrounded by a 4 metre high double palisade that obscured the streets from the house. The initial fence enclosed the garden along Voznesensky Lane, on 5 June a second palisade was erected, higher and longer than the first, which completely enclosed the property
19.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
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Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna. Anastasia was a sister of Grand Duchess Olga, Grand Duchess Tatiana, and Grand Duchess Maria. She was murdered with her family in a killing by members of the Cheka. Persistent rumors of her possible escape circulated after her death, fueled by the fact that the location of her burial was unknown during the decades of Communist rule and her possible survival has been conclusively disproved. Forensic analysis and DNA testing confirmed that the remains are those of the imperial family, several women falsely claimed to have been Anastasia, the best known impostor is Anna Anderson. Andersons body was cremated upon her death in 1984, but DNA testing in 1994 on available pieces of Andersons tissue, when Anastasia was born, her parents and extended family were disappointed that she was a girl. They hoped for a son who would be apparent to the throne. Tsar Nicholas II went for a walk to compose himself before going to visit Tsarina Alexandra. One meaning of her name is the breaker of chains or the prison opener, another meaning of the name is of the resurrection, a fact often alluded to later in stories about her rumored survival. Anastasias title is most precisely translated as Grand Princess, Grand Duchess became the most widely used translation of the title into English from Russian. The Tsars children were raised as simply as possible, most in the household, including the servants, generally called the Grand Duchess by her first name and patronym, Anastasia Nikolaevna, and did not use her title or style. She was occasionally called by the French version of her name, Anastasie, or by the Russian nicknames Nastya, Nastas, other family nicknames for Anastasia were Malenkaya, meaning little, or shvibzik, the Russian word for imp. Living up to her nicknames, young Anastasia grew into a vivacious and energetic child, described as short and inclined to be chubby, with blue eyes and strawberry-blonde hair. Margaretta Eagar, a governess to the four grand duchesses, said one person commented that the toddler Anastasia had the greatest personal charm of any child she had ever seen. While often described as gifted and bright, she was never interested in the restrictions of the room, according to her tutors Pierre Gilliard. Gibbes, Gilliard, and ladies-in-waiting Lili Dehn and Anna Vyrubova described Anastasia as lively, mischievous, and her sharp, witty remarks sometimes hit sensitive spots. Anastasias daring occasionally exceeded the limits of acceptable behavior, Anastasia sometimes tripped the servants and played pranks on her tutors. As a child, she would climb trees and refuse to come down, Once, during a snowball fight at the familys Polish estate, Anastasia rolled a rock into a snowball and threw it at her older sister Tatiana, knocking her to the ground
20.
Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia
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Alexei Nikolaevich of the House of Romanov, was the Tsarevich and heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire. He was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and he was born with hemophilia, his mothers reliance on the faith healer Grigori Rasputin to treat the disease helped bring about the end of the Romanov dynasty. After the February Revolution of 1917, he and his family were sent into exile in Tobolsk. The family was interred on 17 July 1998—the eightieth anniversary of the murder—and were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. Alexei was born on 12 August 1904 in Peterhof Palace, St. Petersburg Governorate and he was the youngest of five children and the only son born to Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. His older sisters were the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia and he was doted on by his parents and sisters and known as Baby in the family. He was later affectionately referred to as Alyosha. Alexei was christened on 3 September 1904 in the chapel in Peterhof Palace and his principal godparents were his paternal grandmother and his great-uncle, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. His other godparents included his oldest sister, Olga, his great-grandfather King Christian IX of Denmark, King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, as Russia was at war with Japan, all the soldiers and officers of the Russian Army and Navy were named honorary godfathers. For the occasion, the boys wore miniature military uniforms, the sermon was delivered by John of Kronstadt, and the baby was carried to the font by the elderly Mistress of the Robes, Princess Maria Mikhailovna Galitzine. As a precaution, she had rubber soles put to her shoes to avoid falling and dropping him, countess Sophie Buxhoeveden recalled, The baby lay on a pillow of cloth of gold, slung to the Princesss shoulders by a broad gold band. He was covered with the heavy cloth-of-gold mantle, lined with ermine, the mantle was supported on one side by Prince Alexander Sergeiovich Dolgorouky, the Grand Marshal of the Court, and on the other by Count Benckendorff, as decreed by custom and wise precaution. The baby wept loudly, as any ordinary baby, when old Father Yanishev dipped him in the font. His four small sisters, in short Court dresses, gazed open-eyed at the ceremony, Olga Nicholaevna, then nine years old, according to Russian custom, the Emperor and Empress were not present at the baptism, but directly after the ceremony the Emperor went to the church. Both he and the Empress always confessed to feeling very nervous on these occasions, for fear that the Princess might slip, or that Father Yanishev, Alexei inherited hemophilia from his mother Alexandra, a condition that could be traced back to her maternal grandmother Queen Victoria. In 2009 genetic analysis determined specifically that he suffered from hemophilia B and he had to be careful not to injure himself because he lacked factor IX, one of the proteins necessary for blood-clotting. According to his French tutor, Pierre Gilliard, the nature of his illness was kept a state secret and his hemophilia was so severe that trivial injuries such as a bruise, a nosebleed or a cut were potentially life-threatening. Two navy sailors were assigned to him to monitor and supervise him to prevent injuries and they also carried him around when he was unable to walk
21.
Larissa Tudor
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Larissa Feodorovna Tudor was the wife of Owen Frederick Morton Tudor, an officer of the 3rd Hussars. Following her death, it was rumoured that she was in truth Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, the daughter of Nicholas II of Russia. Following World War I, she met and married her husband, historians believe that the imperial family were all assassinated on July 17,1918, however, rumors of the survival of one or more Romanov family members have persisted for nearly 90 years. Larissa married Owen Frederick Morton Tudor, an officer of the 3rd Hussars, in 1923 at the Register Office of St Georges, Hanover Square, in London and her marriage certificate listed her address as the York Hotel, Mayfair, and her father as Adolph Haouk. Her age in 1923 was given as 27 on her marriage certificate, though her death certificate in 1926 gave her age as 29, there is little available information about her nationality or early life. According to the wife of one of Tudors brother officers, there were two accounts about Larissas background, one was that she was the daughter of a pork butcher, whom Tudor met when he was posted at Constantinople in 1921. Larissa was said to be a belly-dancer at a club in Constantinople. A second account of her life was that she was a woman of good family from St. Petersburg. The colonel of Tudors regiment reportedly sent brother officers either to him some Russian before his marriage or to try to persuade Tudor not to marry Larissa. Tudor, who was in love with Larissa, went ahead with the marriage and was forced to leave the regiment, one of Tudors first cousins was told that Larissa had escaped from Russia and had been earning her living the only way she could. Following the marriage, Tudor transferred to the 3rd Battalion, the Royal Tank Corps, Larissa was ill with pulmonary tuberculosis and spinal caries and was unable to sit up straight. She spent her days reclining in a bath chair. The couple lived privately, but were often overheard laughing in the garden of their house. Though Tudors income had been reduced when he left the Hussars and he had no fortune, he had enough money to pay for a nurse for Larissa. When Larissa died, she left an inheritance that amounted to a pay for the majority of Britains population. Larissas husband was devastated by her death and had to be held up by men at her gravesite. Larissa was buried in a cemetery in Lydd and her gravestone bore the inscription To My Very Beloved Larissa Feodorovna Who Died July 18th,1926 Aged 28 Years The Wife of Owen Tudor, 3rd The Kings Own Hussars. Tudor brought flowers to her every year on June 10 up until a few years before his own death
22.
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
23.
Auburn hair
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Auburn hair is a variety of red hair, most commonly described as reddish-brown in color or dark ginger. Auburn hair ranges in shades from medium to dark and it is common with a wide array of skin tones and eye colors, but as is the case with most red hair, it is commonly associated with light skin features. Auburn can be used to describe many shades of hair with similar definitions or hues. It is often conflated in popular usage with Titian hair, while Titian hair is a brownish shade of red hair, auburn hair is specifically defined as including the actual color red. Most definitions of Titian hair describe it as a brownish-orange color and this is in reference to red hair itself, not the color red. Auburn encompasses the color maroon, but so too do chestnut, in contrast with the two, auburn is more red in color, while chestnut is more brown, and burgundy is more purple, chestnut hair is also often referred to as chestnut-brown. The word auburn comes from the Old French word alborne, which meant blond, the first recorded use of auburn in English was in 1430. The word was corrupted into abram, for example in early folios of Coriolanus, Thomas Kyds Soliman and Perseda and Thomas Middletons Blurt. Auburn hair is common among people of northern and western European descent and this hair color is less common farther south and southeast, but can occur somewhat regularly in Southern Europe. It can also be found in parts of the world colonized by genetically European people, such as North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Siberia. Auburn is sometimes seen among the people of Formosa. Blond hair Titian hair Online Etymology Dictionary
24.
Austerity
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In most macroeconomic models austerity measures generally increase unemployment as government spending falls, reducing jobs in the public and/or private sector. Meanwhile, tax increases reduce household disposable income, thus reducing spending, countries which have benefited from austerity such as Ireland have in subsequent research shown to have suffered. Since government spending contributes to the Gross Domestic Product, reducing the spending may result in a higher debt-to-GDP ratio, in the case of excess capacity, however, the stimulus may result in an increase in employment and output. Austerity measures are typically pursued if there is a threat that a government cannot honour its debt obligations and this may occur when a government has borrowed in foreign currencies, or if it has been legally forbidden from issuing its own currency. International financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund may demand austerity measures as part of Structural Adjustment Programmes when acting as lender of last resort. Austerity policies may also appeal to the class of creditors, who prefer low inflation. More recently austerity has been pursued after governments became highly indebted by assuming private debts following banking crises, Austerity is grounded in liberal economists views that state and sovereign debt are deeply problematic. On the basis of classic liberal ideas austerity emerged as a doctrine of neoliberalism in the 20th Century, economist David M Kotz suggests that the implementation of austerity measures following the financial crisis of 2007–08 was an attempt to preserve the neoliberal capitalist model. In the 1930s during the Great Depression, anti-austerity arguments gained more prominence, john Maynard Keynes became a well known anti-austerity economist, arguing that The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury. Contemporary Keynesian and New Keynesian economists argue that budget deficits are appropriate when an economy is in recession, to reduce unemployment, according to Paul Krugman, since a government is not like a household, reductions in government spending during economic downturns worsen the crisis. Across an economy, one persons spending is another persons income, in other words, if everyone is trying to reduce their spending, the economy can be trapped in what economists call the paradox of thrift, worsening the recession as GDP falls. An important component of economic output is business investment, but there is no reason to expect it to stabilize at full utilization of the economys resources, high business profits do not necessarily lead to increased economic growth. Economists Kenneth S. Rogoff and Carmen M and our consistent advice has been to avoid withdrawing fiscal stimulus too quickly, a position identical to that of most mainstream economists. To help improve the U. S.9 and 1.7. In other words, a 1% GDP fiscal consolidation would reduce GDP between 0. 9% and 1. 7%, in so doing inflicting far more economic damage than the 0.5 previously estimated in IMF forecasts. In many countries, little is known about the size of multipliers, for these countries, Nicoletta Batini, Luc Eyraud and Anke Weber propose a simple method — dubbed the bucket approach — to come up with reasonable multiplier estimates. Different tax and spending choices of equal magnitude have different economic effects, For example, congressional Budget Office estimated that the payroll tax has a higher multiplier than does the income tax. In other words, raising the tax by $1 as part of an austerity strategy would slow the economy more than would raising the income tax by $1
25.
Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden
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Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden, also known as Sophia Karlovna Buxhoeveden, was a lady in waiting to Tsarina Alexandra of Russia. She was the author of three memoirs about the family and about her own escape from Russia. In her book Before the Storm, Sophie describes a side of old Russia seldom seen elsewhere, a family in the old-fashioned provincial country life of the gentry in the years before the revolution. As a child, Sophie shared picnics and mushroom hunts with other players in the tragic story such as Anna Vyrubova, Felix Yussupov, Dmitri Pavlovich. According to her memoirs, Buxhoevedens father, Karlos Buxhoeveden, was the Russian minister in Copenhagen, in her youth, she was a part of the social life of St. Petersburg. Buxhoeveden was chosen as an honorary Lady in Waiting to the Tsarina in 1904 and she was nicknamed Isa by the Tsarina and her four daughters and, during World War I, was often chosen by the Tsarina to accompany the four grand duchesses to official duties. She had no time for Grigori Rasputin, but witnessed his miracles first-hand and was baffled by his powers, Alexandra would have liked her to accept Rasputin as a holy man, but knew Buxhoevedens opinion was not likely to be changed. The fact she kept her negative opinion to herself was appreciated by the Empress and she followed the family to exile in Siberia following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Sophie spent many months on the run across Siberia, with members of the royal household, including Gibbes. She was only allowed safe passage out of Russia when she made it to Omsk, which was then under the control of the Russian White Army and her harrowing experiences can be read in her book Left Behind. Amateur historians have accused her of betraying the family by taking money from them, such a proposition has been completely disproven since the Bolsheviks had no idea the jewels were in the clothes until after the execution. Yurovsky stated They shot the daughters but nothing happened, then Yermakov set the bayonet in motion, only in the forest did I discover what hampered the shooting of the daughters. According to King and Wilson, Yurovsky wrote in his 1922 memoirs about the valuables and jewels we knew they had concealed in their clothes when they arrived. This is why neither bullets nor bayonets yielded results during the shooting, the relic was identified by two former servants who had helped the Grand Duchesses sew the jewels into the clothing. King and Wilson allege that Buxhoeveden borrowed 1,300 rubles from the Romanov childrens tutor Charles Sydney Gibbes to escape Russia and it is claimed she told him shed return the money, but never did. I knew she was greedy, but I never knew shed go that far, Gibbes wrote to the French tutor Pierre Gilliard. Others said that Sophies apparent poverty, as described by Gilliard and Gibbes, is proof she never had any money, at her own admission, Sophies rooms had been searched, and nothing of value had been found. One source of the allegations blaming her with theft from the family was Boris Soloviev and he was the husband of Maria Rasputin, author of historically disproven books, having married her to gain the trust of Rasputin supporters who were financing a plot to rescue the Romanovs
26.
Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia
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Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia was a grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, and a poet and playwright of some renown. He wrote under the pen name K. R. initials of his name and family name. The fourth child of the Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia and his wife Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Altenburg, KR was born in the Constantine Palace and his eldest sister Grand Duchess Olga married King George I of the Hellenes in 1867. From his early childhood KR was more interested in letters, art, nevertheless, the Grand Duke was sent to serve in the Imperial Russian Navy. KR was unsatisfied, and left the navy to join the elite Izmailovsky Regiment of the Imperial Guard, KR was both a patron of Russian art and an artist in his own right. A talented pianist, the Grand Duke was Chairman of the Russian Musical Society, but KR was first and foremost a man of letters. He founded several Russian literary societies and he translated foreign works into Russian, and was particularly proud of his Russian translation of Hamlet. An accomplished poet and playwright, KR also took great interest in the direction of his plays, the Grand Duke actually appeared in his last play, King of Judea, playing the role of Joseph of Arimathea. The Grand Dukes artistic slavophilism and devotion to duty endeared him to both Alexander III and Nicholas II, the former appointed KR as President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and later as Chief of All Military Colleges. He was also made a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1902. He was also a friend of the Grand Duchess Elizabeth. He was also one of the few members of the Imperial Family to go to Moscow to attend the funeral of Elizabeths husband, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, as exemplary and dedicated as KRs public life was, his private turmoil was intense. As mentioned, KRs first homosexual experiences occurred in the Imperial Guards, the Grand Duke made great efforts to repress his feelings. But despite his love for his wife, KR could not resist the temptations offered to a person of his exalted state, KR claimed in his diary that between 1893 and 1899 he remained away from the practice of what he called his main sin. Yet by the birth of his child, KR had become a steady visitor to several of the male brothels of St. Petersburg. In 1904 he wrote in his diary that he ordered my coachman. to go, I intended to walk straight on. But without reaching the Pevchesky Bridge, I turned back and went in, and so I have surrendered again, without much struggle, to my depraved inclinations. The cycle of resistance and capitulation to temptation is a theme of KRs diaries
27.
Hero
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The concept of the hero was first founded in classical literature. It is the main or revered character in heroic epic poetry celebrated through ancient legends of a people, often striving for military conquest and living by a continually flawed personal honor code. The definition of a hero has changed throughout time, and the Merriam Webster dictionary defines a hero as a person who is admired for great or brave acts or fine qualities. The word hero comes from the Greek ἥρως, hero, warrior, before the decipherment of Linear B the original form of the word was assumed to be *ἥρωϝ-, hērōw-, R. S. P. Beekes has proposed a Pre-Greek origin. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the Indo-European root is *ser meaning to protect, according to Eric Partridge in Origins, the Greek word Hērōs is akin to the Latin seruāre, meaning to safeguard. Partridge concludes, The basic sense of both Hera and hero would therefore be protector, the word hero is used in English to refer either explicitly to male heroes or as a gender neutral form. The use of the male form hero as a gender neutral substantive is a modern advent, see also Gender neutrality in English. A classical hero is considered to be a warrior who lives and dies in the pursuit of honor, each classical heros life focuses on fighting, which occurs in war or during an epic quest. Classical heroes are commonly semi-divine and extraordinarily gifted, like Achilles, or, alternatively, are like Beowulf, evolving into heroic characters through their perilous circumstances. While these heroes are incredibly resourceful and skilled, they are often foolhardy, court disaster, risk their followers lives for trivial matters, during classical times, people regarded heroes with the highest esteem and utmost importance, explaining their prominence within epic literature. Hector was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War, Hector acted as leader of the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing 31,000 Greek fighters, offers Hyginus. Hector was known not only for his courage but also for his noble, indeed, Homer places Hector as peace-loving, thoughtful as well as bold, a good son, husband and father, and without darker motives. However, his familial values conflict greatly with his aspirations in The Iliad. Hector is ultimately betrayed by the gods when Athena appears disguised as his ally Deiphobus and convinces him to take on Achilles, Achilles was a Greek Hero who was considered the most formidable military fighter in the entire Trojan War and the central character of The Iliad. He was the child of Thetis and Peleus, making him a demi-god and he wielded superhuman strength on the battlefield and was blessed with a close relationship to the Gods. Achilles famously refuses to fight after his dishonoring at the hands of Agamemnon, Achilles was known for uncontrollable rage that defined many of his bloodthirsty actions, such as defiling Hectors corpse by dragging it around the city of Troy. Achilles plays a role in The Iliad brought about by constant de-humanization throughout the epic. Heroes in myth often had close but conflicted relationships with the gods, thus Heracless name means the glory of Hera, even though he was tormented all his life by Hera, the Queen of the Gods
28.
Alexander Pushkin
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Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era who is considered by many to be the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin was born into Russian nobility in Moscow and his matrilineal great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal, who was kidnapped from Eritrea and raised in the household of Peter the Great. Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, and was recognized by the literary establishment by the time of his graduation from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum. While under the surveillance of the Tsars political police and unable to publish, Pushkin wrote his most famous play. His novel in verse, Eugene Onegin, was serialized between 1825 and 1832, Pushkins father, Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, was descended from a distinguished family of the Russian nobility that traced its ancestry back to the 12th century. Pushkins mother, Nadezhda Ossipovna Gannibal, was descended through her grandmother from German and Scandinavian nobility. She was the daughter of Ossip Abramovich Gannibal and his wife, Abram wrote in a letter to Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Greats daughter, that Gannibal was from the town of Lagon. Largely on the basis of a biography by Gannibals son-in-law Rotkirkh. Vladimir Nabokov, when researching Eugene Onegin, cast serious doubt on this origin theory, after education in France as a military engineer, Gannibal became governor of Reval and eventually Général en Chef in charge of the building of sea forts and canals in Russia. Born in Moscow, Pushkin published his first poem at the age of fifteen, after school, Pushkin plunged into the vibrant and raucous intellectual youth culture of the capital, Saint Petersburg. In 1820 he published his first long poem, Ruslan and Ludmila, amidst much controversy about its subject, Pushkin gradually became committed to social reform and emerged as a spokesman for literary radicals. This angered the government, and led to his transfer from the capital in May 1820 and he went to the Caucasus and to Crimea, then to Kamianka and Chișinău, where he became a Freemason. Here he joined the Filiki Eteria, an organization whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule in Greece. He was inspired by the Greek Revolution and when the war against the Ottoman Turks broke out he kept a recording the events of the great national uprising. He stayed in Chișinău until 1823 and wrote two Romantic poems which brought him acclaim, The Captive of the Caucasus and The Fountain of Bakhchisaray. In 1823 Pushkin moved to Odessa, where he clashed with the government. In Mikhaylovskoye, Pushkin wrote nostalgic love poems which he dedicated to Elizaveta Vorontsova, then Pushkin continued work on his verse-novel Eugene Onegin. In Mikhaylovskoye, in 1825, Pushkin wrote the poem To*** and it is generally believed that he dedicated this poem to Anna Kern, but there are other opinions
29.
Eugene Onegin
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Eugene Onegin is a novel in verse written by Alexander Pushkin. Onegin is considered a classic of Russian literature, and its eponymous protagonist has served as the model for a number of Russian literary heroes and it was published in serial form between 1825 and 1832. The first complete edition was published in 1833, and the accepted version is based on the 1837 publication. This form has come to be known as the Onegin stanza or the Pushkin sonnet, the story is told by a narrator, whose tone is educated, worldly, and intimate. The narrator digresses at times, usually to expand on aspects of social and intellectual world. This allows for a development of the characters and emphasizes the drama of the plot despite its relative simplicity, the book is admired for the artfulness of its verse narrative as well as for its exploration of life, death, love, ennui, convention and passion. Eugene Onegin, A dandy from Saint Petersburg, about 25, an arrogant, selfish and world-weary cynic. Vladimir Lensky, A young poet, about 18, a very romantic and naïve dreamer. Tatyana Larina, A shy and quiet, but passionate, landowners daughter, Pushkin referred to her as aged 17 in a letter to Pyotr Vyazemsky. In the 1820s, Eugene Onegin is a bored Saint Petersburg dandy, whose life consists of balls, concerts, parties, one day he inherits a landed estate from his uncle. When he moves to the country, he strikes up a friendship with his neighbor, one day, Lensky takes Onegin to dine with the family of his fiancée, the sociable but rather thoughtless Olga Larina. At this meeting he also catches a glimpse of Olgas sister Tatyana, a quiet, precocious romantic and the exact opposite of Olga, Tatyana becomes intensely drawn to Onegin. Soon after, she bares her soul to Onegin in a letter professing her love, contrary to her expectations, Onegin does not write back. When they meet in person, he rejects her advances politely but dismissively and condescendingly, later, Lensky mischievously invites Onegin to Tatyanas name day celebration promising a small gathering with just Tatyana, Olga, and their parents. When Onegin arrives, he finds instead a boisterous country ball, Onegin is irritated with the guests who gossip about him and Tatyana, and with Lensky for persuading him to come. He decides to himself by dancing and flirting with Olga. Olga is insensitive to her fiancé and apparently attracted to Onegin, earnest and inexperienced, Lensky is wounded to the core and challenges Onegin to fight a duel, Onegin reluctantly accepts, feeling compelled by social convention. During the duel, Onegin unwillingly kills Lensky, afterwards, he quits his country estate, traveling abroad to deaden his feelings of remorse
30.
Margaretta Eagar
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In 1906 she wrote a memoir entitled Six Years at the Russian Court about her time with the family. Eagar was born in Limerick, Ireland on 12 August 1863 and she was one of ten children born to a Protestant couple, Francis McGillycuddy Eagar and Frances Margaret Holden. She was trained as a nurse in Belfast and worked at one point as matron of an orphanage. Eagar was appointed nurse to the daughters of Nicholas II in 1898, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna, an aunt of the girls later recalled Eagars great love of politics. As a toddler, Maria once escaped from her bath and ran naked up, fortunately, I arrived just at that moment, picked her up and carried her back to Miss Eagar, who was still talking about Dreyfus, recalled the Grand Duchess. The four grand duchesses began learning English from Eagar and, by 1904—by which time Eagar had left the Imperial Court—had developed a slight Hiberno-English accent in their pronunciation, in 1908 English tutor Charles Sydney Gibbes was brought in to correct this. Eagar, who grew fond of all four grand duchesses, wrote in her book that she left the Russian Court for personal reasons. However, it was possible that she was dismissed due to the political situation surrounding the Russo-Japanese War. Eagar received a pension from the Russian government for her time as a nurse and she exchanged letters with the grand duchesses describing her work as a governess for other families up until their murder in July 1918. Family members stated that she remained haunted by the murder of the family for the rest of her life. In later years, she ran a house that proved unsuccessful. She died in a home in 1936, at the age of 73. Eagar, Margaretta, Six Years at the Russian Court,1906 Massie, Robert K. Nicholas and Alexandra,1967, Dell Publishing Co
31.
Pierre Gilliard
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Pierre Gilliard was a Swiss academic and author, best known as the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905 to 1918. In 1921, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he published a memoir, Thirteen Years at the Russian Court, in his memoirs, Gilliard described Tsarina Alexandras torment over her sons haemophilia and her faith in the ability of starets Grigori Rasputin to heal the boy. Pierre Gilliard was born on 16 May 1879 in Vaud, Switzerland, in his memoirs, Gilliard wrote that he initially came to Russia in 1904 as a French tutor to the family of Duke George of Leuchtenberg, a cousin of the Romanov family. He was recommended as a French tutor to the Tsars children and began teaching the children, Grand Duchesses Olga. He grew fond of the family and followed them into exile at Tobolsk, Siberia. The Bolsheviks prevented Gilliard from joining his pupils when they were moved to the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg in May 1918, I tried to get out, but was roughly pushed back into the carriage by the sentry. I came back to the window, Tatiana Nikolaevna came last carrying her little dog and struggling to drag a heavy brown valise. It was raining and I saw her feet sink into the mud at every step, nagorny tried to come to her assistance, he was roughly pushed back by one of the commissars. Gilliard remained in Siberia after the murders of the family, assisting White Russian investigator Nicholas Sokolov and he married Alexandra Shura Tegleva, who had been a nurse to Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, in 1919. In Siberia, he was instrumental in unmasking an impostor who claimed to be the Tsarevich Alexei, in 1920, he returned to Switzerland via the Russian Far East. He became a French professor at the University of Lausanne and was awarded the French Legion of Honor. In 1921, he published a book entitled Le Tragique Destin de Nicholas II et de sa famille, which described the last days of the Tsar and his family, in 1958, Gilliard was severely injured in a car accident in Lausanne. He never fully recovered and died four years later on 30 May 1962, in 1925, the Tsars sister, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia, asked Gilliard and his wife to investigate the case of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia. On 27 July 1925, the Gilliards saw Anderson at St. Marys Hospital in Berlin, Anderson was severely ill, and semi-conscious. Madame Gilliard asked to examine Andersons feet, and noted that Andersons feet were shaped similarly to Anastasias, Gilliard insisted that Anderson be moved to a better hospital, to ensure her survival while her identity was investigated. After an operation on Andersons arm, she recuperated at the Mommsen Nursing Home in Berlin, there, in October 1925, the Gilliards saw Anderson again. Anderson did not recognise Gilliard, which she claimed was because he had shaved off his goatee beard. When he asked her to me everything about your past
32.
Eugene Kobylinsky
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Yevgeny Stepanovich Kobylinsky was born into a noble family in Kiev on 11 October 1875. He graduated from the Cadet Corps military school, on 14 January 1909 he became a lieutenant in the St. Petersburg Imperial Guard regiment. He served on the front lines in World War I and was decommissioned after sustaining major injuries, after Russian Emperor Nicholas II abdicated the throne in February 1917, Kobylinsky became an employee of the Provisional Government which succeeded Nicholas. On 14 March 1917 Kobylinsky was appointed commandant of the Alexander Palace and he attended the family and forty-five retainers when they departed for the city of Tobolsk in Siberia that August. After the October Revolution later that year, a Bolshevik regime was established and Kobylinsky was replaced by Bolshevik officers, during the Russian Civil War, Kobylinsky was invited to join the White Army in June 1918. In exchange for freedom, in September 1920 he joined the Red Army, in 1926 a Tobolsk resident named Paulina Mežanc suggested during an interrogation that Kobylinsky was in possession of jewelry that once belonged to the Imperial family. An investigation was undertaken from June to September 1927, the alleged jewelry was never found, but he was revealed to have had connections to the White Army of Yugoslavia. He was fired from his job, charged with conspiracy against the Soviet state, and was killed by firing squad in Moscow, along with eight others
33.
Anna Vyrubova
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Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova, née Taneyeva, was a lady-in-waiting, the best friend and confidante of Tsaritsa Alexandra Fyodorovna. Vyrubova was born in Oranienbaum, the daughter of Aleksandr Taneyev, Chief Steward to His Majestys Chancellery and her mother, Nadezhda née Tolstoy, was descended from Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov. Due to these connections she was attached to the court at an early age. She had two siblings, Sergei, and Alexandra. She was a playmate of Felix Yussupov, the man who spearheaded the murder of Grigori Rasputin. Yussupov found her unattractive, The Tsarina valued Annas devotion to her and befriended her, in 1905, at the age of twenty, she was given a position at court for the first time. She went on holidays with the Romanovs in three succeeding years, in 1907 Anna married Alexander Vasilievich Vyrubov, an officer appointed in the Imperial chancellery. A few days before she was warned by Rasputin that the marriage would be an unhappy one, according to Vyrubova her husband was mad and went for treatment to Switzerland. The couple divorced within a year and a half and it is told her husband was upset after he found out she had contacted Rasputin. Vyrubova became one of Rasputins adherents and on order of the Tsarina she went on a trip to his home village Pokrovskoye to investigate the rumours on Rasputin and she visited some monasteries in the area. Vyrubovas importance grew at the court, as the friendship with Milica of Montenegro, with the death of Father John of Kronstadt, Father Grigori became, in her eyes, the only mediator with God, the only man with effective prayers. He was called to replace Father John, in 1909 she received to hieromonk Iliodor in her house for a meeting with the Tsar. Around Easter 1912 Vyrubova stashed Rasputin on a train to Yalta, in early October 1912, during a particularly grave crisis in Spała, in Russian Poland, the Tsarevich Alexei received the last sacrament. The desperate Tsarina turned to Vyrubova to secure the help of the peasant healer, for a long time she served as a go-between for the Tsarina and Rasputin. In the Summer of 1914 Vyrubova received a cable from Rasputin and she had to show it directly to the Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin feared the consequences of World War I, Nicholas had been furious, but Anna arranged a reunion. All the contact went through her, every morning at ten she phoned Rasputin, the Tsars biggest concern Alexandra might share information with others. During World War I she trained as a Red Cross nurse and nursed soldiers along with the Tsarina, in September 1916 she, Lili Dehn and Rasputin went to Tobolsk to pay tribute to John of Tobolsk, who had been glorified
34.
Queen Victoria
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Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she adopted the title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, both the Duke of Kent and King George III died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her German-born mother Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She inherited the throne aged 18, after her fathers three brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was already a constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held relatively little direct political power. Privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments, publicly, Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, in 1840. Their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together, after Alberts death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength and her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration. Her reign of 63 years and seven months is known as the Victorian era and it was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. She was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover and her son and successor, Edward VII, belonged to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victorias father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, until 1817, Edwards niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent. In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen and her brother Leopold was Princess Charlottes widower. The Duke and Duchess of Kents only child, Victoria, was born at 4.15 a. m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened privately by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace and she was baptised Alexandrina, after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, and Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina, Charlotte, and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of the Dukes eldest brother, George, the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarences daughters died as infants. Victorias father died in January 1820, when Victoria was less than a year old, a week later her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son, George IV. The Duke of York died in 1827, when George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, William IV, and Victoria became heir presumptive
35.
Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia
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Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna of Russia was the youngest child and younger daughter of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and younger sister of Tsar Nicholas II. She was raised at the Gatchina Palace outside Saint Petersburg, Olgas relationship with her mother, Empress Marie, the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark, was strained and distant from childhood. In contrast, she and her father were close and he died when she was 12, and her brother Nicholas became emperor. In 1901, she married Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg, who was believed by family. Their marriage of 15 years remained unconsummated, and Peter at first refused Olgas request for a divorce, the couple led separate lives and their marriage was eventually annulled by the Emperor in October 1916. The following month Olga married cavalry officer Nikolai Kulikovsky, with whom she had fallen in love several years before, during the First World War, the Grand Duchess served as an army nurse at the front and was awarded a medal for personal gallantry. At the downfall of the Romanovs in the Russian Revolution of 1917, she fled to the Crimea with her husband and children and her brother and his family were shot by revolutionaries. Olga escaped revolutionary Russia with her husband and their two sons in February 1920. They joined her mother, the Dowager Empress, in Denmark, in exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother, and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives. She met Anna Anderson, the impostor, in Berlin in 1925. After the Dowager Empresss death in 1928, Olga and her husband purchased a farm in Ballerup. She led a life, raising her two sons, working on the farm and painting. During her lifetime, she painted over 2,000 works of art, in 1948, feeling threatened by Joseph Stalins regime, Olga emigrated with her immediate family to a farm in Ontario, Canada. With advancing age, Olga and her husband moved to a bungalow near Cooksville, Colonel Kulikovsky died there in 1958. Two years later, as her health deteriorated, Olga moved with devoted friends to an apartment in East Toronto. She died aged 78, seven months after her older sister, at the end of her life and afterwards, Olga was widely labeled the last Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia. Olga was the youngest daughter of Tsar Alexander III and his consort, Marie Feodorovna and she was born in the purple, i. e. during her fathers reign, on 13 June 1882 in the Peterhof Palace, west of central Saint Petersburg. Her birth was announced by a traditional 101-gun salute from the ramparts of the Peter and Paul Fortress and her mother, advised by her sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, placed Olga in the care of an English nanny, Elizabeth Franklin
36.
Grigori Rasputin
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Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Tsar Nicholas II and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia. Born to a peasant family in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye and he has been described as a monk or as a strannik, though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. After traveling to St. Petersburg, either in 1903 or the winter of 1904-5, Rasputin captivated some church and he became a society figure, and met the Tsar in November 1905. In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for the Nicholas II and Alexandras son Alexei, at court, he was a divisive figure, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The high point of Rasputins power was in 1915, when Nicholas II left St Petersburg to oversee Russian armies fighting World War I, as Russian defeats in the war mounted, however, both Rasputin and Alexandra became increasingly unpopular. On the night of 29-30 December 1916 Rasputin was assassinated by a group of noblemen who opposed his influence over Alexandra. Some writers have suggested that Rasputin helped to discredit the tsarist government, and thus helped to precipitate the Russian Revolution, very little about Rasputins life and influence is certain, however, as accounts have often been based on hearsay, rumor, and legend. Rasputin was born a peasant in the village of Pokrovskoye. His father, Efim, was a peasant farmer and church elder who had born in Pokrovskoye in 1842. Efim also worked as a government courier, ferrying people and goods between Tobolsk and Tyumen,6,14 The couple had seven children, all of whom died in infancy. There may have been a child, Feodosiya. After a courtship of several months, they married in February 1887, praskovya remained in Pokrovskoye throughout Rasputins later travels and rise to prominence, and remained devoted to him until his death. Building a makeshift chapel in Efims root cellar - Rasputin was still living within his fathers household at the time - the group held secret meetings there. Petersburg Theological Seminary at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and arranged for him to travel to St. Petersburg, during this time, however, Rasputin wrote several letters to the Tsar. 69-76 Rasputin was wandering as a pilgrim in Siberia when he heard reports of Tsarevich Alexeis illness. This made it appear that Rasputin was effectively healing him, skeptics have claimed that he did so by hypnosis. His pragmatic tips included suggestions such as Dont let the doctors bother him too much, Rasputin had a considerable personal and political influence on Alexandra, and the Tsar and Tsarina considered him a man of God and a religious prophet. Alexandra came to believe that God spoke to her through Rasputin, of course, this relationship can also be viewed in the context of the very strong, traditional, age-old bond between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state leadership. Another important factor was probably the Tsarinas German-Protestant origin and she was definitely highly fascinated by her new Orthodox outlook — the Orthodox religion puts a great deal of faith in the healing powers of prayer
37.
Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia
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Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna of Russia was the elder daughter and fourth child of Emperor Alexander III of Russia and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia and the sister of Emperor Nicholas II. She married a cousin, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia, during her brothers reign she recorded in her diary and letters increasing concern about his rule. After the fall of the monarchy in February 1917 she fled Russia, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna was born on 6 April 1875 at Anichkov Palace in St. Petersburg. She was the elder daughter among the six children of Alexander III of Russia, after the assassination of her paternal grandfather Tsar Alexander II of Russia, when Xenia was six years old, her father Alexander III ascended to the Russian throne in 1881. It was a difficult time, plagued with terrorist threats. Xenia and her siblings were raised there with simplicity. As a child, Xenia was a tomboy and was very shy, Xenia, like her brothers, received her education from private tutors. A special emphasis was laid on the study of foreign languages, apart from her native Russian, Xenia studied English, French and German. Xenia learnt cookery, joinery and making puppets and their clothes for their theatre and she also enjoyed riding and fishing in the nearby river on the Gatchina estate, drawing, gymnastics, dancing and playing the piano. Her entire family enjoyed family holidays at the home of her Danish maternal grandparents and it was on such a visit that she met her cousin and lifelong friend, Princess Marie of Greece, daughter of King George I of Greece and his Russian born wife, Queen Olga. The Danish composer, Valdemar Vater, paid Xenia a tribute by writing the Polka Mazurka, Xenia and her paternal first cousin once removed Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia, her eventual husband, played together as friends in the 1880s. Alexander, usually called Sandro, was also a friend of her brother Nicholas, in 1886, 20-year-old Alexander was serving in the navy. Eleven-year-old Xenia sent him a card when his ship was in Brazil, Best wishes, in 1889, Alexander wrote of Xenia, She is fourteen. At age 15, though Xenia and Alexander wanted to marry, her parents were reluctant to trust because Xenia was too young, the Tsarina Maria Fyodorovna had complained of Alexanders arrogance and rudeness. It was not until 12 January 1894 that Xenias parents accepted the engagement after Alexanders father, the couple finally wed on 6 August 1894 at SS Peter & Paul Chapel of the Peterhof Palace. Xenias younger sister, Olga, wrote about the joy of her wedding and it was the last time I ever saw him like that. They spent their night at Ropsha Palace, and their honeymoon at Ai-Todor. During the honeymoon, Xenias father, Alexander III, became ill and her eldest brother on the death of her father had inherited the crown and became the new Tsar Nicholas II
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Khlysts
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Khlysts or Khlysty was an underground sect from late 17th to early 20th century that split off the Russian Orthodox Church and belonged to the Spiritual Christians tendency. Khlyst, the name applied to them, is a distortion of the name they used. The original name was the invented word Христововеры or Христы and their critics corrupted the name, mixing it with the word хлыст, meaning a whip. It is also possible that the word Khlysty is related to the Greek word χιλιασταί, or with klyster, millennialism has many different branches and sects and their teachings have common points with those of the Khlysty. It is said to have founded by a peasant, Daniil Filippovich. The Khlysty renounced priesthood, holy books and veneration of the saints and they believed in a possibility of direct communication with the Holy Spirit and of His embodiment in living people. Curiously enough, they allowed their members to attend Orthodox churches, the central idea of Khlystys ideology was to practice asceticism. Khlysty practiced the attainment of divine grace for sin in ecstatic rituals that were rumored to sometimes turn into sexual orgies, flagellation was also rumored, possibly due to the similarity of their name to the word for whip. Secret Khlysty cells existed throughout pre-revolutionary Russia, they were most common in the factories of the Perm district, each cell was normally led by a male and a female leader, who were called the Christ and the Mother of God respectively. The cells themselves were referred to as Arks among members and messages were carried between them clandestinely in order to facilitate communication and they were often subject to persecution and perceived as a subversive element by the nineteenth century Russian authorities and ecclesiastical bodies. Sulzberger, in his book The Fall of Eagles, says that Rasputin adopted the philosophy, sulzberger goes on to say the Khlysts. foremost idea was that salvation could be attained only by total repentance and that this became far more achievable for one who had truly transgressed. Sin in order that you may obtain forgiveness, was the side of the Khlysty. Rasputins daughter contested these claims, writing that her father investigated, the number of cells dropped drastically in the Soviet times. However, a few secluded Khlysty communities existed in Soviet Russia in Tambov, Kuibyshev, Orenburg and Northern Caucasus, a song by Therion, The Khlysti Evangelist, refers to the Khlysti Gospel in association with Rasputin. A historical novel by Robert Alexander, Rasputins Daughter, involves characters who are members of the Khlysty, silver Dove, Andrei Belys first novel is based on khlysty. The Skoptsy, a Russian cult and apparent offshoot of the Khlysty from the time period. Kartanolaisuus, Finnish cult with influences from Khlysts and Skoptsys Panchenko, strange faith and the blood libel Radzinsky, Edvard. Rasputin - The Man Behind the Myth, A Personal Memoir
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Icon
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An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and certain Eastern Catholic churches. The most common subjects include Christ, Mary, saints and/or angels, icons may also be cast in metal, carved in stone, embroidered on cloth, painted on wood, done in mosaic or fresco work, printed on paper or metal, etc. Comparable images from Western Christianity are generally not described as icons, Eastern Orthodox tradition holds that the creation of Christian images dates back to the very early days of Christianity, and there is has been a continuous tradition since then. The icons of later centuries can be linked, often closely, to images from the 5th century onwards, there was enormous destruction of images during the Byzantine Iconoclasm of 726-842, although this did settle for good the question of the appropriateness of images. Since then icons have had a continuity of style and subject. At the same time there has been change and development, Christian tradition dating from the 8th century identifies Luke the Evangelist as the first icon painter. Aside from the legend that Pilate had made an image of Christ and he relates that King Abgar of Edessa sent a letter to Jesus at Jerusalem, asking Jesus to come and heal him of an illness. In this version there is no image, further legends relate that the cloth remained in Edessa until the 10th century, when it was taken to Constantinople. It went missing in 1204 when Crusaders sacked Constantinople, but by then numerous copies had firmly established its iconic type. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the manner of the Gentiles. And he called him and said, Lycomedes, what do you mean by this matter of the portrait, can it be one of thy gods that is painted here. For I see that you are living in heathen fashion. Later in the passage John says, But this that you have now done is childish and imperfect, at least some of the hierarchy of the Christian churches still strictly opposed icons in the early 4th century. At the Spanish non-ecumenical Synod of Elvira bishops concluded, Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration. to our religion. After the emperor Constantine I extended official toleration of Christianity within the Roman Empire in 313 and this period of Christianization probably saw the use of Christian images became very widespread among the faithful, though with great differences from pagan habits. Robin Lane Fox states By the early century, we know of the ownership of private icons of saints. 480-500, we can be sure that the inside of a saints shrine would be adorned with images and votive portraits, when Constantine himself apparently converted to Christianity, the majority of his subjects remained pagans
