1.
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
2.
Arkhangelsk Oblast
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Arkhangelsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. It includes the Arctic archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya, Arkhangelsk Oblast also has administrative jurisdiction over Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Including Nenetsia, Arkhangelsk Oblast has an area of 587,400 km2 and its population was 1,227,626 as of the 2010 Census. The city of Arkhangelsk, with a population of 348,716 as of the 2010 Census, is the center of the oblast. The second largest city is the nearby Severodvinsk, home to Sevmash, Plesetsk Cosmodrome is one of three spaceports in Russia. Arkhangelsk Oblast, which includes Nenets Autonomous Okrug, borders Kirov Oblast, Vologda Oblast, the Republic of Karelia, the Komi Republic, Cape Fligely in Franz Josef Land and Cape Zhelaniya in Novaya Zemlya are both located within Arkhangelsk Oblast. Arkhangelsk Oblast is located on the East European Plain, and most of it represents forested hilly landscape, the north-eastern part belongs to the Timan Ridge, a highland mostly situated east from the oblast. The Nenets Autonomous Okrug is essentially a flat tundra with several hill chains like Pay-Khoy Ridge, the Arctic islands including Novaya Zemlya and Franz Joseph Land are mountainous with glaciers and eternally snow-covered. This region has a distinct population of polar bears associated with the Barents Sea area. Almost all of the area of the Oblast belongs to the basin of the Arctic Ocean, with the rivers being Onega River, Northern Dvina River, Kuloy River, Mezen River. A minor area in the west of the Oblast, most notably the basin of the Ileksa River, drains into the Lake Onega and eventually to the Baltic Sea. A very minor area in Kargopolsky District in the south-west of the Oblast drains into the Kema River which belongs to the basin of the Caspian Sea. The area in the Onega River basin containing the biggest lakes in the oblast, such as Lake Lacha, Lake Kenozero, Lake Undozero, the tundra of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug also contains a number of bigger lakes. The river basin of the Pinega is characteristic of the karst, the White Sea coast within the Oblast is split into the Onega Bay, the Dvina Bay, and the Mezen Bay. Solovetsky Islands, as well as a number of islands, are located in the Onega Bay. The Onega Bay and the Dvina Bay are separated by the Onega Peninsula, the Mezen Bay is separated from the main body of the White Sea by Morzhovets Island. Almost all of the oblast is covered by taiga, the coniferous forest dominated by pine, spruce, large areas in the middle of taiga are devoid of trees and covered by swamps. In the floodplains of the rivers, there are meadows, a number of areas in Arkhangelsk Oblast have been designated as protected natural areas
3.
Wikimedia Commons
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Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, the repository contains over 38 million media files. In July 2013, the number of edits on Commons reached 100,000,000, the project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7,2004. The expression educational is to be according to its broad meaning of providing knowledge. Wikimedia Commons itself does not allow fair use or uploads under non-free licenses, for this reason, Wikimedia Commons always hosts freely licensed media and deletes copyright violations. The default language for Commons is English, but registered users can customize their interface to use any other user interface translations. Many content pages, in particular policy pages and portals, have also translated into various languages. Files on Wikimedia Commons are categorized using MediaWikis category system, in addition, they are often collected on individual topical gallery pages. While the project was proposed to also contain free text files. In 2012, BuzzFeed described Wikimedia Commons as littered with dicks, in 2010, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported Wikimedia Commons to the FBI for hosting sexualized images of children known as lolicon. Wales responded to the backlash from the Commons community by voluntarily relinquishing some site privileges, over time, additional functionality has been developed to interface Wikimedia Commons with the other Wikimedia projects. Specialized uploading tools and scripts such as Commonist have been created to simplify the process of uploading large numbers of files. In order to free content photos uploaded to Flickr, users can participate in a defunct collaborative external review process. The site has three mechanisms for recognizing quality works, one is known as Featured pictures, where works are nominated and other community members vote to accept or reject the nomination. This process began in November 2004, another process known as Quality images began in June 2006, and has a simpler nomination process comparable to Featured pictures. Quality images only accepts works created by Wikimedia users, whereas Featured pictures additionally accepts nominations of works by third parties such as NASA, the three mentioned processes select a slight part from the total number of files. However, Commons collects files of all quality levels, from the most professional level across simple documental, files with specific defects can be tagged for improvement and warning or even proposed for deletion but there exists no process of systematic rating of all files. The site held its inaugural Picture of the Year competition, for 2006, all images that were made a Featured picture during 2006 were eligible, and voted on by eligible Wikimedia users during two rounds of voting
4.
Confluence
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In geography, a confluence is the meeting of two or more bodies of water. The term is used to describe the meeting of tidal or other non-riverine bodies of water. A one-mile portion of the Industrial Canal in New Orleans accommodates the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada is at the confluence of the Niagara River and Lake Ontario. The junction of the Green River and Colorado River forms the heart of Canyonlands National Park in Utahs Canyon Country, the Sangam, near Allahabad, India, where the sacred rivers Ganges and Yamuna meet to create one of the holiest places in Hinduism. The Ohio River is formed by the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, located in Pittsburgh, the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin Rivers in Three Forks, Montana form the confluence of the Missouri River, one of the longest rivers in the United States. Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is at the confluence of the Gombak River and the Klang River. Passau known also as the Dreiflüssestadt, because the Danube River is joined there by the Inn River from the South, manaus, Brazil is on the Rio Negro near its confluence with the Amazon. It is the port and a hub for the regions extensive river system. Osijek, Croatia, is on the bank of the river Drava 25 km upstream of its confluence with the Danube. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia lies at the confluence of the Sava, the Hochelaga Archipelago, including the island and city of Montreal, is located at the confluence of the St. Lawrence River and Ottawa River in Quebec, Canada. Winnipeg, Canada, is at the confluence of the Red River, the area is referred to as The Forks by locals, and has been an important trade location for over 6000 years. The confluence of the rivers Danube and Morava in Devín on the border between Slovakia and Austria, triangle of Three Emperors, former tripoint in Europe. Cairo, Illinois, in the United States, where the Ohio River flows into the Mississippi River, St. Louis, Missouri, is built just south of the confluence of the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. Lyon, France is located on the confluence of the Saône and Rhone rivers, lytton, British Columbia, Canada, is located at the confluence of the muddy Fraser River and the clearer Thompson River. The confluence between the Franklin River and Gordon River in south-western Tasmania The confluence of the Snake and Columbia River at the Tri-Cities of Washington, the confluence of the rivers Pivka and Rak is one of the largest subterranean confluences in Europe. The confluence at Lokoja, Nigeria, where the Niger and Benue rivers merge, the Sudanese capital of Khartoum, located at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile. This merging point is the beginning of the Nile, columbus, Ohio, in the United States is at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers. Luang Prabang in Laos is at the confluence of the Mekong, River Kabul and River Swat at Attock, in Pakistan
5.
Northern Dvina River
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The Northern Dvina is a river in northern Russia flowing through the Vologda Oblast and Arkhangelsk Oblast into the Dvina Bay of the White Sea. Along with the Pechora River to the east, it drains most of Northwest Russia into the Arctic Ocean and it should not be confused with Western Dvina. The principal tributaries of the Northern Dvina are the Vychegda, the Vaga, according to the Max Vasmers Etymological Dictionary, the name of the river has been taken from the Western Dvina River. The toponym Dvina does not stem from a Uralic language, however, possibly it is an Indo-European word which used to mean river or stream. In the Komi language, the river is called Вы́нва / Výnva from vyn power, the length of the Northern Dvina is 744 kilometres. Together with its tributary, the Sukhona, it is 1,302 kilometres long – about as long as the Rhine River in central. The area of its basin is 357,052 square kilometres – about the size of the state of Montana in the United States. The Northern Dvina basin is roughly T-shaped, the 558 kilometres -long Sukhona River flows east and joins the basin of the west-flowing Vychegda River. The combined river flows northwest into the White Sea, which it joins near the city of Archangelsk, looking more closely, the Sukhona flows east and meets the north-flowing Yug River at Veliky Ustyug. The combined stream, now called the Northern Dvina, flows north about 60 km and receives the west-flowing Vychegda at Kotlas, the Sukhona-Vychegda was an important east–west transportation route while the Northern Dvina-Yug was a north–south route. The upper Sukhona is now connected by the Northern Dvina Canal to the Volga–Baltic Waterway, the Sukhona River flows east, eventually north-east, joins the north-flowing Yug River at Veliky Ustyug and acquires the name Northern Dvina. The P157 highway connects Kostroma with Kotlas via Nikolsk and Veliky Ustyug, North of Veliky Ustyg, the highway runs on the left bank of the Northern Dvina. Shortly downstream from the confluence, the Northern Dvina is crossed by the railway connecting Konosha with Kotlas, the Northern Dvina turns northwest and receives a number of smaller rivers such as the Uftyuga and the Nizhnyaya Toyma, both from the northeast. Near the urban settlement of Bereznik, the Vaga River comes in from the south, at this point, the M8 highway which runs from Moscow through Vologda to Arkhangelsk, also enters the region. The Yomtsa or Yemtsa River join from the southeast, with the P1 highway running parallel, the Pinega River, formerly an important river route, joins from the east. Near the mouth of the Pinega, the splits into several channels. The branches rejoin and pass the modern logging town of Novodvinsk, downstream from Novodvinsk, the 900 square kilometres delta begins. In the upstream part of the delta, the port of Arkhangelsk is located
6.
Arkhangelsk
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Arkhangelsk, also known in English as Archangel and Archangelsk, is a city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, in the north of European Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina River near its exit into the White Sea, the city spreads for over 40 kilometers along the banks of the river and numerous islands of its delta. Arkhangelsk was the seaport of medieval and early modern Russia until 1703. A1, 133-kilometer-long railway runs from Arkhangelsk to Moscow via Vologda and Yaroslavl, and air travel is served by the Talagi Airport and a smaller Vaskovo Airport. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 348,783, down from 356,051 recorded in the 2002 Census. The arms of the city display the Archangel Michael in the act of slaying the Devil, legend states that this victory took place near where the city stands, hence its name, and that Michael still stands watch over the city to prevent the Devils return. Vikings knew the area around Arkhangelsk as Bjarmaland, ohthere of Hålogaland told circa 890 of his travels in an area by a river and the White Sea with many buildings. This was probably the later known as Arkhangelsk. According to Snorri Sturluson, Vikings led by Thorir Hund raided this area in 1027, in 1989, an unusually impressive silver treasure was found by the mouth of Dvina, right next to present-day Arkhangelsk. It was probably buried in the beginning of the 12th century, most of the findings comprised a total of 1.6 kilograms of silver, largely in the form of coins. Jewelry and pieces of jewelry come from Russia or neighboring areas, the majority of the coins were German, but the hoard also included a smaller number of Kufan, English, Bohemian, Hungarian, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian coins. It is hard to place this find historically until further research is completed, there are at least two possible interpretations. It may be a treasure belonging to the society outlined by the Norse source material, generally such finds, whether from Scandinavia, the Baltic area, or Russia, are closely tied to well-established agricultural societies with considerable trade activity. Alternatively, like the Russian scientists who published the find in 1992, in the 12th century, the Novgorodians established the Archangel Michael Monastery in the estuary of the Northern Dvina River. Written sources indicate that Kholmogory existed early in the 12th century and it is not known whether the origin of this settlement was Russian, or if it goes back to pre-Russian times. In the center of the town that is there today is a large mound of building remains and river sand. The area of Arkhangelsk came to be important in the rivalry between Norwegian and Russian interests in the northern areas, from Novgorod, the spectrum of Russian interest was extended far north to the Kola Peninsula in the 12th century. However, here Norway enforced taxes and rights to the fur trade, a compromise agreement entered in 1251 was soon broken
7.
Severodvinsk
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Severodvinsk is a city in the north of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia, located in the delta of the Northern Dvina River,35 kilometers west of Arkhangelsk, the administrative center of the oblast. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 192,353, due to the presence of important military shipyards, Severodvinsk is an access restricted town for foreign citizens. Vikings explored the territories around the North Dvina River - part of Bjarmaland - at the start of the first millennium. British and Norman ships came to these places for mining, fur and fishing before the 13th century, tradition states that Saint Euphemius, an Orthodox missionary in Karelia, founded this monastery. The abbey stood in ruins until 1471, when two sons of Marfa Boretskaya died in a storm, their bodies were recovered on the beach near the monastery twelve days later. At the urging of Boretskaya, the monastery was restored and her sons were buried there, on August 24,1553, a ship of Richard Chancellor reached the salt-mining settlement of Nyonoksa, which is still famous for its traditional wooden architecture. The British sailors visited the Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery, where they were surprised to find a community of sailors in soutanes, in late 1613, during the Time of Troubles in Russia, Polish-Lithuanian vagabonds, the Lisowczycy, captured and looted Severodvinsk with the monastery. The Nikolo-Korelsky Monastery flourished after the establishment of the Muscovy Company, in August 1618 the harbour was visited by John Tradescant the elder, who conducted a survey of an island situated opposite the monastery. This island became known to the British as Rose Island, because it was there that Tradescant found a rare plant which he named Rosa moscovita. The surviving buildings of the monastery were constructed at the close of the Muscovite period, the five-domed cathedral of St. Nicholas was built between 1670 and 1674, preceded by the Assumption church, to which it is joined by a gallery. Several decades later, the walls and towers were built of timber, the Soviets transported the best-preserved of these towers to Kolomenskoye, Moscow, Severodvinsk is the second-largest city in Arkhangelsk Oblast. Its main industry remains defense-related — the construction and repair of submarines at the huge Northern Machine-building Enterprise SEVMASH, the Soviet Unions first nuclear submarine Leninsky Komsomol was built here in 1957. At the beginning of the 1980s the worlds largest submarine, a Typhoon class, was built here. The modern city of Severodvinsk developed in the Soviet period, as it began to be built it was called Sudostroy. It received town status in 1938 and until 1957 was named Molotovsk, on September 12,1957 it was renamed Severodvinsk. During World War II a significant portion of the materials delivered by the Arctic Convoys to Murmansk and Arkhangelsk for the Soviet Union were unloaded in Severodvinsk. For example, the Empire Elgar, a British heavy lift ship that arrived in Arkhangelsk with convoy PQ16, a Russian naval-base supports the sea trials of nuclear submarines from the major submarine construction- and repair-facilities located in the area. In Soviet times the 17th-century buildings of the Nikolo-Korelsky monastery, located on the territory of the shipyard, were adapted and used for shipbuilding purposes, in recent years the monastery buildings, specifically the main church, have been restored and re-consecrated
8.
Russian Provisional Government
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The Russian Provisional Government was a provisional government of the Russian Republic established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire on 2 March 1917. The intention of the government was the organization of elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly. The provisional government lasted approximately eight months, and ceased to exist when the Bolsheviks seized power after the October Revolution in October 1917. According to Harold Whitmore Williams the history of eight months during which Russia was ruled by the Provisional Government was the history of the steady and systematic disorganisation of the army. The Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and was led first by Prince Georgy Lvov and it replaced the institution of the Council of Ministers of Russia, members of which after the February Revolution presided in the Chief Office of Admiralty. At the same time the Russian Emperor Nicholas II abdicated in favor of the Grand Duke Michael who agreed that he would accept after the decision of Russian Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Government was unable to make decisive policy decisions due to political factionalism and a breakdown of state structures. This weakness left the government open to challenges from both the right and the left. The weakness of the Provisional Government is perhaps best reflected in the nickname given to Kerensky. The authority of the Tsars government began disintegrating on 1 November 1916, Stürmer was succeeded by Alexander Trepov and Nikolai Golitsyn, both Prime Ministers for only a few weeks. During the February Revolution two rival institutions, the Imperial Duma and the Petrograd Soviet, both located in the Tauride Palace, competed for power. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 2 March and Milyukov announced the decision to offer the Regency to his brother. Grand Duke Michael did not want to take the poisoned chalice, public announcement of the formation of the Provisional Government was made. It was published in Izvestia the day after its formation, the announcement stated the declaration of government Full and immediate amnesty on all issues political and religious, including, terrorist acts, military uprisings, and agrarian crimes etc. Freedom of word, press, unions, assemblies, and strikes with spread of political freedoms to military servicemen within the restrictions allowed by military-technical conditions, abolition of all hereditary, religious, and national class restrictions. Immediate preparations for the convocation on basis of universal, equal, secret, and direct vote for the Constituent Assembly which will determine the form of government, replacement of the police with a public militsiya and its elected chairmanship subordinated to the local authorities. Elections to the authorities of local self-government on basis of universal, direct, equal, non-disarmament and non-withdrawal out of Petrograd the military units participating in the revolution movement. Under preservation of strict discipline in ranks and performing a military service - elimination of all restrictions for soldiers in the use of rights granted to all other citizens. It also said, The provisional government feels obliged to add that it is not intended to take advantage of circumstances for any delay in implementing the above reforms
9.
Gulag
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The Gulag was the government agency that administered and controlled the Soviet forced-labor camp system during Joseph Stalins rule from the 1930s up until the 1950s. The term is commonly used to reference any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas, the Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The agencys full name was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and it was administered first by the State Political Administration, later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s, the author likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on folklore as opposed to objective facts. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates and 423 labor colonies in the USSR, todays major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners. About 14 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953, according to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953. According with other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of more than 465,000 were political prisoners. The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG and its major function was the organization of foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union. The top management of GUPVI came from the GULAG system, the major noted distinction from GULAG was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both systems were similar, hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, and high mortality rate. According with the estimates, in total, during the period of the existence of GUPVI there were over 500 POW camps. According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934–53. Some independent estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the period from 1929 to 1953. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time
10.
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
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In most cases their destinations were underpopulated remote areas. This includes deportations to the Soviet Union of non-Soviet citizens from countries outside the USSR and it has been estimated that, in their entirety, internal forced migrations affected some 6 million people. Kulaks were a group of relatively affluent farmers and had gone by this term in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia. They were the most numerous group deported by the Soviet Union, resettlement of people officially designated as kulaks continued until early 1950, including several major waves. Large numbers of kulaks regardless of their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990,1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931, Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521, during the 1930s, categorisation of so-called enemies of the people shifted from the usual Marxist–Leninist, class-based terms, such as kulak, to ethnic-based ones. Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union led to an escalation in Soviet ethnic cleansing. Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics, by some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition. The deportations started with Poles from Byelorussia, Ukraine and European Russia 1932-1936, koreans in the Russian Far East were deported in 1937. After the Soviet invasion of Poland following the corresponding German invasion that marked the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviet Union annexed eastern parts of the Second Polish Republic. During 1939-19411.45 million people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63. 1% were Poles, previously it was believed that about 1. From the newly conquered Eastern Poland 1.5 million people were deported, the same followed in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been deported from the Baltic in 1940-1953, in addition, at least 75,000 were sent to the Gulag. 10% of the entire adult Baltic population was deported or sent to labor camps, in 1989, native Latvians represented only 52% of the population of their own country. In Estonia, the figure was 62%, likewise, Romanians from Chernivtsi Oblast and Moldovia had been deported in great numbers which range from 200,000 to 400,000. During World War II, particularly in 1943-44, the Soviet government conducted a series of deportations, some 1.9 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics
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