1.
Vadim Brovtsev
–
Brovtsev had served in the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. From 2005 until his appointment to a political post, Brovtsev was head of the board of directors of Russian construction company Vermikulit based in the city of Chelyabinsk, of Russian ethnicity, he was born in Chelyabinsk-65 in 1969. 24 out of 27 MPs voted in favour of Brovtsev as the new PM, in April 2010, Brovtsev came under heavy criticism from various sides. It was claimed that he did not manage Russias monetary aid to rebuild destroyed South Ossetian buildings very well. Several members of the South Ossetian parliament called for Brovtsev to resign, and brought a motion of no confidence to the parliamentary debating floor, on 5 May, president Eduard Kokoity appeared before parliament, reiterating his support for Brovtsev. Parliament still passed a motion, creating a commission to review the governments activities, the commission is to be led by deputy chairman of parliament and former Prime Minister Zurab Kokoyev, and among its other members is also former Prime Minister Merab Chigoev. Brovtsev, on the hand is credited 37. 8% positive and 10. 9% negative. Kokoitys advisor Kosta Dzugaev called the poll lies, stating that the MTsPA had never any actual research in South Ossetia. The MTsPA has been linked to the website rsoinform. com, an agency reporting favorably about Brovtsev. South Ossetian government press agency OSinform states, however, that it is not official and it is speculated that Brovtsev himself is linked to these institutions. In an effort to defend himself against media attacks, Brovtsev has sued several media, apparently the lawsuit at first included OSInform, leading to a somewhat embarrassing situation for Brovtsev, who did not know OSInform is the South Ossetian state information agency. Brovtsev is married and has two children
Vadim Brovtsev
–
Vadim Brovtsev Вадим Бровцев
2.
Soviet Union
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
Soviet Union
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Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd with Trotsky, 1920
Soviet Union
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Flag
Soviet Union
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Stalin and
Nikolai Yezhov, head of the
NKVD. After Yezhov was executed, he was
edited out of the image.
Soviet Union
3.
South Ossetia
–
It has a population of 53,000 people which live in an area of 3,900 km2, south of the Russian Caucasus, with 30,000 living in its capital city of Tskhinvali. South Ossetia declared independence from the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, the Georgian government responded by abolishing South Ossetias autonomy and trying to re-establish its control over the region by force. The crisis escalation led to the 1991–92 South Ossetia War, Georgian fighting against those controlling South Ossetia occurred on two other occasions, in 2004 and 2008. The latter conflict led to the Russo–Georgian War, during which Ossetian and Russian forces gained full de facto control of the territory of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast. In the wake of the 2008 war, Russia, followed by Nicaragua, Venezuela, Georgia and a significant part of the international community consider South Ossetia to be occupied by the Russian military. South Ossetia relies heavily on military, political and financial aid from Russia, Russia does not allow European Union Monitoring Mission monitors to enter South Ossetia. South Ossetia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Abkhazia are sometimes referred to as post-Soviet frozen conflict zones, the Ossetians are believed to originate from the Alans, a Sarmatian Iranian tribe. In the 17th century, Ossetians started migration from the North Caucasus to Georgia, Ossetian peasants, who were migrating to the mountainous areas of the South Caucasus, often settled in the lands of Georgian feudal lords. The Georgian King of the Kingdom of Kartli permitted Ossetians to immigrate, in the 1770s there were more Ossetians living in Kartli than ever before. This period has been documented in the diaries of Johann Anton Güldenstädt who visited Georgia in 1772. The Baltic German explorer called modern North Ossetia simply Ossetia, while he wrote that Kartli was populated by Georgians, Güldenstädt also wrote that the northernmost border of Kartli is the Major Caucasus Ridge. The Georgian Kingdom of Kartli-Kakheti, part of which was the territory of modern South Ossetia, was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1801. Following the Russian revolution, the area of modern South Ossetia became part of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, although the Ossetians were initially discontented with the economic policies of the central government, the tension soon transformed into ethnic conflict. The first Ossetian rebellion began in February 1918, when three Georgian princes were killed and their land was seized by the Ossetians, the central government of Tiflis retaliated by sending the National Guard to the area. However, the Georgian unit retreated after they had engaged the Ossetians, Ossetian rebels then proceeded to occupy the town of Tskhinvali and began attacking ethnic Georgian civilian population. During uprisings in 1919 and 1920, the Ossetians were covertly supported by Soviet Russia, but even so, were defeated. Between 3,000 and 7,000 Ossetians were killed during the crushing of the 1920 uprising, according to Ossetian sources ensuing hunger, the drawing of administrative boundaries of the South Ossetian AO was quite a complicated process. Many Georgian villages were included within the South Ossetian AO despite numerous protests by the Georgian population, while the city of Tskhinvali did not have a majority Ossetian population, it was made the capital of the South Ossetian AO
South Ossetia
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Historical Russian map of the Caucasus region at the beginning of the 19th century
South Ossetia
–
Flag
South Ossetia
–
Fragment of the historical map by
J. H. Colton. The map depicts Caucasus region in 1856. Modern South Ossetia is not labeled. Modern North Ossetia is labeled as "Ossia".
South Ossetia
–
Map of South Ossetia (November 2004).
4.
Ossetian language
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Ossetian, also known as Ossete and Ossetic, is an Eastern Iranian language spoken in Ossetia, a region on the northern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. It is a descendant of the Scythian, Sarmatian and Alanic languages. Ossetian speakers number about 577,450, with 451,000 speakers in the Russian Federation recorded in the 2010 census, Ossetian belongs to the Iranian group of the Indo-European family of languages. Within Iranian it is placed in an Eastern subgroup and further to a Northeastern sub-subgroup, the other Eastern Iranian languages such as Pashto and Yaghnobi show certain commonalities but also deep-reaching divergences from Ossetic. From deep Antiquity, the languages of the Iranian group were distributed in a vast territory including present-day Iran, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Ossetian is the sole survivor of the branch of Iranian languages known as Scythian. The Scythian group included numerous tribes, known in ancient sources as the Scythians, Massagetae, Saka, the more easterly Khorezmians and the Sogdians were also closely affiliated, in linguistic terms. Ossetian, together with Kurdish, Tati and Talyshi, is one of the main Iranian languages with a community of speakers in the Caucasus. It is descended from Alanic, the language of the Alans and it is believed to be the only surviving descendant of a Sarmatian language. The closest genetically related language may be the Yaghnobi language of Tajikistan, the names of ancient Iranian tribes in fact reflect this pluralization, e. g. Saromatae and Masagetae. The earliest known sample of Ossetian is an inscription which dates from the 10th to 12th centuries and was found near the River Bolshoi Zelenchuk at Arkhyz. The text is written in the Greek alphabet, with special digraphs, the scholarly transliteration of the Alanic phrases is, dæ ban xʷærz, mæ sfili, xsinjæ kurθi kændæ and du farnitz, kintzæ mæ sfili, kajci fæ wa sawgin. Equivalents in modern Ossetian would be Dæ bon xwarz, me’fšini ‘xšinæ, kurdigæj dæ. and farm neč, the passage translates as, The Alans I greet in their language, Good day to you my lords lady, where are you from. Good day to you my lords lady, where are you from, and other things, When an Alan woman takes a priest as a lover, you might hear this, Arent you ashamed, my lordly lady, that your cunt is being fucked by a priest. Arent you ashamed, my lady, to have an affair with the priest. Marginalia of Greek religious books, with parts of the book translated into Old Ossetic, have been recently found. Heavy-stem nouns possessed a long vowel or diphthong, and were stressed on the first-occurring syllable of this type. This is precisely the situation observed in the earliest records of Ossetian presented above and this situation also obtains in Modern Ossetian, although the emphasis in Digor is also affected by the openness of the vowel. The trend is found in a glossary of the Jassic dialect dating from 1422
Ossetian language
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Ossetian text from a book published in 1935. Part of an alphabetic list of proverbs. Latin script.
Ossetian language
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Ossetic text written with Georgian script, from a book on Ossetian folklore published in 1940 in South Ossetia
Ossetian language
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The first page of the first issue of the Ossetian newspaper "
Ræstdzinad ". Sjögren's Cyrillic alphabet. 1923
5.
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
Russian language
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Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
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Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
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This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
–
The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
6.
Georgian language
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Georgian is a Kartvelian language spoken by Georgians. It is the language of Georgia. Georgian is written in its own writing system, the Georgian script, Georgian is the literary language for all regional subgroups of Georgians, including those who speak other Kartvelian languages, Svans, Mingrelians and the Laz. Georgian is the most pervasive of the Kartvelian languages, a family that also includes Svan and Megrelian and Laz. Dialects of Georgian are from Imereti, Racha-Lechkhumi, Guria, Adjara, Imerkhevi, Kartli, Kakheti, Saingilo, Tusheti, Khevsureti, Khevi, Pshavi, Fereydan, Mtiuleti and Meskheti. Georgian as separate from the other Kartvelian languages would have emerged in the 1st millennium BC in the area known later as the Kingdom of Iberia, the evolution of Georgian into a written language was a consequence of the conversion of the Georgian elite to Christianity in the mid-4th century. The first Georgian texts are inscriptions and palimpsests dating to the 5th century, Georgian has a rich literary tradition. The oldest surviving work in Georgian is the 5th century Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik by Iakob Tsurtaveli. In the 11th century, Old Georgian gives rise to Middle Georgian, the Georgian national epic, Shota Rustavelis The Knight in the Panthers Skin, dates from the 12th century. This marked the beginning of the modern Georgian language, symbols on the left are those of the IPA and those on the right are of the modern Georgian alphabet. Opinions also differ on the aspiration of /t͡sʰ, t͡ʃʰ/, as it is non-contrastive, a former distinction between /x/ and /qʰ/ has been lost. Prosody in Georgian involves stress, intonation, and rhythm, stress is very weak, and linguists disagree as to where stress occurs in words. Jun, Vicenik, and Lofstedt have proposed that Georgian stress and intonation are the result of pitch accents on the first syllable of a word, the rhythm of Georgian speech is syllable-timed. Georgian contains many harmonic clusters involving two consonants of a type which are pronounced with only a single release, e. g. ბგერა bgera, ცხოვრება tskhovreba. There are also frequent consonant clusters, sometimes involving more than six consonants in a row, as may be seen in words like გვფრცქვნი gvprtskvni and მწვრთნელი mtsvrtneli. Vicenik has observed that Georgian vowels following ejective stops have creaky voice, Georgian has been written in a variety of scripts over its history. Currently the Mkhedruli or Military script is almost completely dominant, the others are used mostly in religious documents, Mkhedruli has 33 letters in common use, a half dozen more are obsolete in Georgian, though still used in other alphabets, like Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan. The letters of Mkhedruli correspond closely to the phonemes of the Georgian language, however, the first examples of a Georgian script date from the 5th century AD
Georgian language
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The Kartvelian people
Georgian language
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Georgian
Georgian language
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Calligraphy
Georgian language
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Road sign in Latin and Georgian
7.
South Ossetian presidential election, 2012
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A presidential election was held in South Ossetia on 25 March, with a runoff scheduled on 8 April 2012. This election would choose the first full president since the country gained partial international recognition, the date was set by the parliament after the 2011 election was annulled by the Supreme Court after Alla Dzhioyeva was disqualified following allegations of electoral violations by Anatoly Bibilov. A deal was reached on 9 December 2011 under which the incumbent Kokoity stepped down at the end of his mandate and was replaced by Prime Minister Vadim Brovtsev as acting president. Though Dzhioyeva was previously barred from running again, she was allowed to register in the re-run of the election. However, Kokoity and his supporters reneged on parts of the deal, no candidate participating in the 2011 election registered, including the previous leaders Dzihoyeva and Bibilov. There were four registered candidates, Leonid Haritonovich Tibilov, candidate in the 2006 election, david Georgievich Sanakoyev, human rights commissioner. Dmitriy Nikolayevich Medoyev, ambassador of South Ossetia to Russia and backed by Russia, stanislav Yakovlevich Kochiyev, chairman of the Communist Party of South Ossetia and speaker of the Parliament of South Ossetia. Dzhioyeva did not register to run in the election after she was in hospital with allegations of being beaten, Tibilov and Sanakoyev disagreed with former President Eduard Kokoity who said that South Ossetia would eventually be a part of Russia. Sanakoyev said, In November–December, it very clear that those supported by Kokoity did not win. A week before the election, a poll by the IR media centre suggested Medoyev or Tibilov would win. In addition to Russian observers the election said that it would call on the Council of Europe. First round turnout was over 65%, with expatriate voting still to be counted, without an absolute winner the election was set for a run off. The second round occurred on Easter with 84 voting centres opening at 8,00 for the 35,000 registered voters. The preliminary result with 95. 64% of the ballots counted, indicated Tibilov winning with 53. 74%, or 15,257, of the votes, with Sanakoyev getting 42. 98%, or 12,272, of the votes. After the first round, Tibilov said that todays figures show that my candidacy is taken normally, lets hope the second round confirms this. He also denied having Russian backing, but said that he would consult Russia in choosing his new government, Georgia – Deputy Foreign Minister Nino Kalandadze said that South Ossetia staged a farce. No one will recognise these elections, no matter who wins, Minister for Reintegration Eka Tkeshelashvili said of that the election that it was a continuation of farce and an imitation of elections in the Russian-occupied ethnically-cleansed region. Russia – After the first round, the Public Chambers Maxim Grigoryev said that there were not material breaches, united States – The embassy in Georgia said it does not recognise the election
South Ossetian presidential election, 2012
–
Nominee
8.
KGB
–
The KGB, an initialism for Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. Formed in 1954, as a successor of such preceding agencies as the Cheka, NKGB, and MGB. It was the government agency of union-republican jurisdiction, acting as internal security, intelligence. Similar agencies were constituted in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from Russia and consisted of ministries, state committees. The KGB was a service and was governed by army laws and regulations. While most of the KGB archives remain classified, two documentary sources are available. After the dissolution of the USSR, the KGB was split into the Federal Security Service, after breaking away from the Republic of Georgia in the early 1990s with Russian help, the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia established its own KGB. A1983 Time magazine article reported that the KGB was the worlds most effective information-gathering organization, at best, the compromised spy was either returned to the Soviet Union or was declared persona non grata and expelled by the government of the target country. The illegal resident spied, unprotected by diplomatic immunity, and worked independently of Soviet diplomatic, in its early history, the KGB valued illegal spies more than legal spies, because illegal spies infiltrated their targets with greater ease. The KGB classified its spies as agents and controllers, the false-identity or legend assumed by a USSR-born illegal spy was elaborate, using the life of either a live double or a dead double. In the 1980s, the glasnost liberalisation of Soviet society provoked KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov to lead the August 1991 Soviet coup détat attempt to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev, the thwarted coup détat ended the KGB on 6 November 1991. The KGBs successors are the police agency FSB and the espionage agency SVR. The GRU recruited the ideological agent Julian Wadleigh, who became a State Department diplomat in 1936, the NKVDs first US operation was establishing the legal residency of Boris Bazarov and the illegal residency of Iskhak Akhmerov in 1934. Throughout, the Communist Party USA and its General Secretary Earl Browder, helped NKVD recruit Americans, working in government, business, moreover, when Whittaker Chambers, formerly Alger Hisss courier, approached the Roosevelt Government—to identify the Soviet spies Duggan, White, and others—he was ignored. To wit, British Manhattan Project team physicist Klaus Fuchs was the agent of the Rosenberg spy ring. In 1944, the New York City residency infiltrated the top secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, by recruiting Theodore Hall, the KGB failed to rebuild most of its US illegal resident networks. The aftermath of the Second Red Scare and the crisis in the CPUSA hampered recruitment, the last major illegal resident, Rudolf Abel, was betrayed by his assistant, Reino Häyhänen, in 1957. One notable KGB success occurred in 1967, with the recruitment of US Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker
KGB
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Lubyanka Building in 1991
KGB
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The 1954
ukase establishing the KGB.
KGB
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KGB Regulation seen in Museum of Genocide Victims Vilnius
KGB
–
Vladimir Putin worked as a high-ranking KGB officer in
Dresden,
East Germany during the 1980s.
9.
Georgia (country)
–
Georgia is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. The capital and largest city is Tbilisi, Georgia covers a territory of 69,700 square kilometres, and its 2016 population is about 3.72 million. Georgia is a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the government elected through a representative democracy, during the classical era, several independent kingdoms became established in what is now Georgia. The kingdoms of Colchis and Iberia adopted Christianity in the early 4th century, a unified Kingdom of Georgia reached the peak of its political and economic strength during the reign of King David IV and Queen Tamar in the 12th and early 13th centuries. Thereafter the kingdom declined and eventually disintegrated under hegemony of various powers, including the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire. Russian rule over Georgia was eventually acknowledged in various treaties with Iran. Since the establishment of the modern Georgian republic in April 1991, post-communist Georgia suffered from civil, the countrys Western orientation soon led to the worsening of relations with Russia, culminating in the brief Russo-Georgian War in August 2008. Georgia is a member of the United Nations, the Council of Europe, and it contains two de facto independent regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which gained limited international recognition after the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. Georgia and a part of the international community consider the regions to be part of Georgias sovereign territory under Russian military occupation. Georgia probably stems from the Persian designation of the Georgians – gurğān, in the 11th and 12th centuries adapted via Syriac gurz-ān/gurz-iyān, starting with the Persian word gurğ/gurğān, the word was later adopted in numerous other languages, including Slavic and West European languages. This term itself might have established through the ancient Iranian appellation of the near-Caspian region. The self-designation used by ethnic Georgians is Kartvelebi, the medieval Georgian Chronicles present an eponymous ancestor of the Kartvelians, Kartlos, a great-grandson of Japheth. However, scholars agree that the word is derived from the Karts, the name Sakartvelo consists of two parts. Its root, kartvel-i, specifies an inhabitant of the core central-eastern Georgian region of Kartli, ancient Greeks and Romans referred to early western Georgians as Colchians and eastern Georgians as Iberians. Today the full, official name of the country is Georgia, before the 1995 constitution came into force the countrys name was the Republic of Georgia. The territory of modern-day Georgia was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era, the proto-Georgian tribes first appear in written history in the 12th century BC. The earliest evidence of wine to date has found in Georgia. In fact, early metallurgy started in Georgia during the 6th millennium BC, the classical period saw the rise of a number of early Georgian states, the principal of which was Colchis in the west and Iberia in the east
Georgia (country)
–
It is said that
Georgians were so named because they revered
Saint George.
Georgia (country)
–
Flag
Georgia (country)
–
Ancient Georgian states of
Colchis and
Iberia, 500-400 BC
Georgia (country)
–
Queen
Tamar of Georgia presided over the "Golden Age" of the medieval Georgian monarchy. Her position as the first woman to rule Georgia in her own right was emphasized by the title "Mepe mepeta" ("King of Kings").
10.
South Ossetian presidential election, 2006
–
A presidential election in South Ossetia, an unrecognized republic within Georgia, was held on November 12,2006, coinciding with the South Ossetian independence referendum. Incumbent Eduard Kokoity was seeking a second full five-year term and he was re-elected with more than 98. 1%. According to the de facto authorities, the election was monitored by a team of 34 international observers from Germany, Austria, Poland, Sweden, the Ukrainian delegation was led by Nataliya Vitrenko of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine. The election process was criticised by local civic society and the results were likely to be inflated, voters were also to answer a question, do you agree with the renewal of talks with Georgia on a federal union. The alternative elections and referendum were held in the villages with mixed Georgian-Ossetian population not controlled by the secessionist government, although Georgian government has officially declared both elections illegal, Kokoity accused Tbilisi of staging the alternative elections in order to create a puppet government in South Ossetia. Georgia, South Ossetia Seeks To Contain Opposition Challenge, Radio Free Europe, 2006-11-10 Staging ‘Alternative Choice’ for S. Ossetia, Online Magazine - Civil Georgia, South Ossetia to Elect Two Presidents, Kommersant, November 11,2006. Georgia, South Ossetia Seeks To Contain Opposition Challenge, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 10,2006
South Ossetian presidential election, 2006
–
South Ossetia
11.
Eduard Kokoity
–
Eduard Dzhabeyevich Kokoity is the former President of South Ossetia. His term in office lasted just over ten years, beginning December 2001, eduard Kokoity was born in Tskhinvali, in the Georgian SSR, a part of the Soviet Union at the time. He was a member, and champion, of the Soviet Unions national wrestling team, prior to 1989, he was the First Secretary of the Tskhinvali branch of the Komsomol, the Young Communist League. He moved to Moscow in 1992, where he became a businessman, in 2001, he moved back to South Ossetia. Kokoity was elected president, at the age of 38, with a majority in the elections of November–December 2001. In the first round of the elections on 18 November 2001, he collected 45% of the vote, with Stanislav Kochiev collecting 24%, in the Second and final round, he won 53% of the vote to Stanislav Kochievs 40% on 6 December. Kokoity assumed office on 18 December 2001, Kokoitys victory was unexpected and owed much to the support of the Tedeyev clan, one of South Ossetias most powerful families. He had gained key support from Albert Dik Tedeyev and his brother Dzhambolat, also a champion wrestler, the clan had previously supported Lyudvig Chibirov, but broke off support for him after he attempted to move against them. After Kokoity was elected president, members of the Tedeyev clan took over responsibility for the customs service. Revenues from the highway provide much of the South Ossetian governments revenue, in July 2003, Kokoity moved against the Tedeyevs. Sacking Albert Tedeyev, the Secretary of the Security Council, according to Kokoity, the Security Council Secretary, along with the Defense and Security Chiefs had links with criminals. The affair prompted an outbreak of gunfire in Tskhinvali, but no casualties were reported, following a tense stand-off with the central Georgian government in July 2004, he claimed Georgia wants war. But we are ready for self-defense and he was reelected on 12 November 2006 following the 2006 presidential election. On the same day, Georgian-backed forces organized an election in the territories controlled by Georgia or only loosely controlled by the South Ossetian government. Dmitry Sanakoyev, a prime minister of South Ossetia, who was sacked by Kokoity in 2001, was elected as a rival president. On 10 December 2011, he resigned as President of South Ossetia, Prime Minister Vadim Brovtsev was acting president until the presidential election rerun on 25 March 2012. Eduard Kokoity was constitutionally barred from serving a term in office. Although attempts were made to call a referendum to change the constitution, Kokoity himself stated he had no intention in seeking a third term, and called on everybody to refrain from initiatives to allow him to serve a third term
Eduard Kokoity
–
Eduard Kokoity Кокойты Эдуард
12.
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
Russia
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Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
Russia
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Flag
Russia
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The
Baptism of Kievans, by
Klavdy Lebedev
Russia
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Sergius of Radonezh blessing
Dmitry Donskoy in
Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the
Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by
Ernst Lissner
13.
BBC News Online
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BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. The website is the most frequently accessed news website in the United Kingdom, and forms a part of BBC Online. The website contains international news coverage, as well as British, entertainment, science, BBC News Online is closely linked to its sister department website, that of BBC Sport. Both sites follow similar layout and content options and respective journalists work alongside each other, location information provided by users is also shared with the website of BBC Weather to provide local content. From 1998 to 2001 the site was named best news website at the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards when the category was withdrawn. It has previously won both the Judges award and the Peoples Voice award for best news site at the annual Webby Awards, the website was launched on 4 November 1997, headed by founding editor Mike Smartt and Project Director Bob Eggington. The management team for launch included Dave Brewer, Chris Nuttall, Matthew Karas, Matt Jones, Janet Marsh, Simon George, nic Newman was seconded from BBC World Service to launch and run Talking Point. The broader editorial team was together from within the BBC, from print journalism. A major overhaul in 2003, primarily by Paul Sissons and Maire Flynn, coincided with a relaunch of the BBC News Channel and featured a wider page design. The site launched a set of semi-official RSS0.91 syndication feeds in June 2003, each news index has its own RSS feed, including the in-depth sections. In 2004 the BBC News website partnered with Moreover Technologies, in a response to the 2003 Graf Report, whilst the BBC does not censor or change results the algorithms used tend to give greater weight to national and international sources over regional or local ones. The BBC began providing real-time global user information in June 2006, new features were gradually introduced, including the publicising of video content more prominently, and the introduction of live streaming of the BBC News channel. Beginning on 30 April 2009, some published stories included in-text links, mostly to in-site profile articles on people, the BBC announced on 19 November 2009 that it was to pay more attention to search engine optimisation by extending news headlines. On 14 July 2010 the site was redesigned, with the vertical section headings moved to run horizontally near the top of the page. It was met with mixed opinions, Stephen Fry stated his approval of the redesign, however, there was also criticism, with some stating that the use of white space was too widespread and led to the need for continuous and excessive scrolling. The new design went live on 23 March 2015, there are two different editions of the site, a UK edition, which gives prominence to UK stories, and an international edition, which prioritises international news. Internet users with IP addresses originating from the UK are served the UK edition, the international version contains advertising and an Advertise With Us link at the bottom. All articles are archived indefinitely and can be retrieved via searching or by browsing the extensive Special Reports section, the previous seven days top stories were formerly available through the Week at a Glance section of the website
BBC News Online
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The original BBC News website design, 1999
BBC News Online
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BBC News Online in March 2015
14.
Reuters
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Reuters /ˈrɔɪtərz/ is an international news agency headquartered in London, England. It is a division of Thomson Reuters, until 2008, the Reuters news agency formed part of an independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data. Since the acquisition of Reuters Group by the Thomson Corporation in 2008, Reuters transmits news in English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Urdu, and Chinese. The Reuter agency was established in 1851 by Paul Julius Reuter in Britain at the London Royal Exchange, Paul Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at the beginning of the Revolutions in 1848. Upon moving to England, he founded Reuters Telegram Company in 1851, headquartered in London, the company initially covered commercial news, serving banks, brokerage houses, and business firms. The first newspaper client to subscribe was the London Morning Advertiser in 1858, Reuters agency built a reputation in Europe and the rest of the world as the first to report news scoops from abroad. Reuters was the first to report Abraham Lincolns assassination in Europe, for instance, in 1872, Reuters expanded into the far east, followed by South America in 1874. Both expansions were made possible by advances in overland telegraphs and undersea cables, in 1883, Reuters began transmitting messages electrically to London newspapers. In 1923, Reuters began using radio to transmit news internationally, in 1925, The Press Association of Great Britain acquired a majority interest in Reuters, and full owners some years later. During the world wars, The Guardian reported that Reuters came under pressure from the British government to national interests. In 1941 Reuters deflected the pressure by restructuring itself as a private company, the new owners formed the Reuters Trust. In 1941, the PA sold half of Reuters to the Newspaper Proprieters Association, the Reuters Trust Principles were put in place to maintain the companys independence. At that point, Reuters had become one of the major news agencies. In 1961, Reuters scooped news of the erection of the Berlin Wall, in 1981, Reuters began making electronic transactions on its computer network, and afterwards developed a number of electronic brokerage and trading services. Reuters was floated as a company in 1984, when Reuters Trust was listed on the stock exchanges such as the London Stock Exchange. Reuters published the first story of the Berlin Wall being breached in 1989, share price grew during the dotcom boom, then fell after the banking troubles in 2001. In 2002, Brittanica wrote that most news throughout the world came from three major agencies, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse, Reuters merged with Thomson Corporation in Canada in 2008, forming Thomson Reuters. In 2009, Thomson Reuters withdrew from the LSE and the NASDAQ, instead listing its shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange, the last surviving member of the Reuters family founders, Marguerite, Baroness de Reuter, died at age 96 on 25 January 2009
Reuters
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Reuters Building, Canary Wharf, London
Reuters
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Reuters building entrance in
New York City
15.
Znaur Gassiev
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Gassiev was born in Tskhinvali in 1925, but soon moved with his parents to Moscow. In 1935 the family went back to Tskhinvali, where Znaur Gassiev finished secondary school in 1942. He enrolled in the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of the South Ossetian State Pedagogical Institute, upon completion of his studies in 1947, he started working as a teacher, teaching mathematics and physics in various schools in Tskhinvali. He then started working at the Mining Department of Kvaisa, where he held several ranks, Gassiev subsequently moved into politics, first working as the head of the industrial and transport committee of Dzau district. In the early 1960s, he was appointed the chairman of the Tskhinvali branch of the Georgian Communist Party, in 1963, he went to the Higher Party School, from which he graduated with honours in 1965. Then, until 1972, he worked as deputy chairman of the South Ossetian executive committee, in 1991, when armed aggression was starting, he was elected first secretary of the South Ossetian Communist Party, and also headed the Supreme Council when South Ossetia declared its independence. As chairman of parliament, Gassiev was Head of State of South Ossetia, in early 1992, Gassiev handed over power to Torez Kulumbegov, a former chairman of the Supreme Council, who had been imprisoned in Tblisi by Georgian police until then. Since 1992, Gassiev remained active in politics, being re-elected as an MP in the 1994 election, Gassiev was once again elected in the 2004 election, where he ran as a member of President Eduard Kokoitys Unity Party. Following the Unity Partys electoral victory, Gassiev was once again elected chairman of Parliament, after the 2008 South Ossetia war, Gassiev was appointed head of the governments commission to deal with the resulting emergencies. Gassiev, then 84 years old, did not run in the 2009 election, on 27 October 2010, Gassiev was appointed State Advisor to President Eduard Kokoity. His death was announced on 6 March 2016
Znaur Gassiev
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Znaur Gassiev (2009)
16.
Lyudvig Chibirov
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Lyudvig Alekseyevich Chibirov was the Chairman of the Parliament and later, following inaugural elections the first President of South Ossetia. Born in 1932, Chibirov is a member of the South Ossetian Parliament. Prior to the elections in 1996, he had been South Ossetias head of state since 1993, when the post of Chairman of the Parliament was abolished in favor of the presidency, Chibirov became the first occupant of the new office. Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze blasted the elections calling them unlawful
Lyudvig Chibirov
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Znaur Gassiev
