Novodevichy Cemetery
Novodevichy Cemetery is a famous cemetery in Moscow. It lies next to the southern wall of the 16th-century Novodevichy Convent, the city's third most popular tourist site; the cemetery was designed by Ivan Mashkov and inaugurated in 1898. Its importance dates from the 1930s, when the necropolises of the medieval Muscovite monasteries were scheduled for demolition. Only the Donskoy survived the Joseph Stalin era intact; the remains of many famous Russians buried in other abbeys, such as Nikolai Gogol and Sergey Aksakov, were disinterred and reburied at the Novodevichy. A 19th-century necropolis within the walls of the Novodevichy convent, which contained the graves of about 2000 Russian noblemen and university professors underwent reconstruction; the vast majority of graves were destroyed. It was at that time, his grave served as the kernel of the so-called "cherry orchard" – a section of the cemetery which contains the graves of Constantin Stanislavski and the leading actors of his company. Under Soviet rule, burial in the Novodevichy Cemetery was second in prestige only to burial in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
Among the Soviet leaders, only Nikita Khrushchev was buried at the Novodevichy rather than at the Red Square. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Kremlin Wall is no longer used for burials and the Novodevichy Cemetery is used for only the most symbolically significant burials. For example, in April 2007, within one week both the first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin and world-renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich were buried there. Today, the cemetery holds the tombs of Russian authors, musicians and poets, as well as famous actors, political leaders, scientists. More than 27,000 are buried at Novodevichy. There is scant space for more burials. A new national cemetery is under construction in Mytishchi north of Moscow; the cemetery has a park-like ambience, dotted with large sculpted monuments. It is divided into the old and newest sections; the work of these sculptors, among others, can be found at Novodevichy Cemetery: Nikolay Andreyev Mikhail Anikushin Lev Kerbel Sergey Konenkov Vera Mukhina Ernst Neizvestny Ivan Shadr Nikolai Tomsky Yevgeny Vuchetich Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery Federal Military Memorial Cemetery Unofficial site.
Hi-resolution photos Famous and picturesque memorials photographed June 2005 Novodevichii Cemetery – article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia Novodevichy Cemetery: Where History sleeps -VIDEO
Sergey Botkin
Sergey Petrovich Botkin was a famous Russian clinician and activist, one of the founders of modern Russian medical science and education. He introduced triage, pathological anatomy, post mortem diagnostics into Russian medical practice. Botkin was born on 5 September 1832, in Moscow to the family of famous Russian tea tradesmen. First steps towards education the boy made in the private school of Ennes. In 1850 Botkin was admitted to Moscow State University. In 1855 Sergey Botkin graduated from the university with honors and received a Doctor of Medicine degree. Shortly afterwards however he was mobilized as a conscript, designated to serve as military surgeon and sent straight to Sevastopol, where the Crimean War was in full swing. There Botkin worked under the guidance of Nikolay Pirogov recognized as a pioneer of field surgery. Pirogov is known for performing the first operation under anesthesia on the battlefield at the time. Upon the end of his military service, Botkin received a flattering review from his supervisor.
He subsequently went abroad, seeking to improve his skills and was able to gain valuable professional experience working at some of the most prestigious institutions on the continent. Upon his return to Russia, Botkin was invited to work with professor Shipulinsky in the Academy of Medicine and Surgery, the following year Botkin took Shipulinsky’s position at the age of 29. In 1860–1861, Sergey Botkin opened a clinical and research laboratory and in the course of his research organized systematic studies in clinical pharmacology and experimental therapy, both novelties in Russian research at the time, he was the first to suggest. In early 1860s, Botkin was assigned as an advising member of the medical board of the Imperial Ministry of Internal Affairs. In 1873 he was made Head Surgeon to the Emperor, having been among the court physicians for both Tsar Alexander II and Tsar Alexander III. Furthermore, the same year he was elected president of the Medical Association of St. Petersburg. In 1886, Botkin headed the National Public Health Commission, created to investigate the unusually high mortality rates prevalent in Russia, both in times of peace and war.
Botkin Hospital is named after him. Family Botkin was married to A. A. Krylova, relative of Alexey Krylov, his brother Vasily was a prominent writer and his brother Mikhail was a painter and well-known art collector. His son, Dr. Eugene Botkin, was murdered with Nicholas II and the Tsar's family July 16/17, 1918 by the Bolsheviks. Sergey Petrovich Botkin died on 12 December 1889, in Menton, from liver disease, complicated by a heart ailment. Imperial Moscow University: 1755-1917: encyclopedic dictionary. Moscow: Russian political encyclopedia. A. Andreev, D. Tsygankov. 2010. Pp. 91–93. ISBN 978-5-8243-1429-8. Beliaeva, V S. "". Экспериментальная и клиническая гастроэнтерология, Experimental & Clinical Gastroenterology: 152–154. PMID 18389612. Bio Biography Biography Encyclopedia
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire known as Imperial Russia or Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917. The third largest empire in world history, at its greatest extent stretching over three continents, Europe and North America, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires; the rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighboring rival powers: the Golden Horde, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. It played a major role in 1812–1814 in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe and expanded to the west and south; the House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, its matrilineal branch of patrilineal German descent the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov ruled from 1762. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean, into Alaska and Northern California in America on the east.
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 and religion. There were numerous dissident elements. Economically, the empire had a predominantly agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs, Russian peasants; the economy industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways and factories. The land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that emerged, he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, laid the foundations of the Russian state. Emperor Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an huge empire into a major European power, he moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of St. Petersburg, led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a modern, Europe-oriented, rationalist system.
Empress Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. Emperor Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most 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. That connection by 1914 led to Russia's entry into the First World War on the side of France, the United Kingdom, Serbia, against the German and Ottoman empires; the Russian Empire functioned as an absolute monarchy on principles of Orthodoxy and Nationality until the Revolution of 1905 and became a de jure constitutional monarchy. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917 as a result of massive failures in its participation in the First World War. Though the Empire was only proclaimed by Tsar Peter I following the Treaty of Nystad, some historians would argue that it was born either when Ivan III of Russia conquered Veliky Novgorod in 1478, or when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552. According to another point of view, the term Tsardom, used after the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547, was a contemporary Russian word for empire.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonization of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was divided in the 1790 -- 1815 era, with much of the population going to Russia. Most of the 19th-century growth came from adding territory in Asia, south of Siberia. Peter I the Great played a major role in introducing Russia to the European state system. While the 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 in status to slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation. Russian agricultural kholops were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks.
His attention turned to the North. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport, except at Archangel on the White Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him to make a secret alliance in 1699 with Saxony, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden, resulting in the Great Northern War; the war ended in 1721. Peter acquired four provinces situated east of the Gulf of Finland; the coveted access to the sea was now secured. There he built Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, to replace Moscow, which had long been Russia's cultural center. In 1722, he tur
Russian nobility
The Russian nobility originated in the 14th century. In 1914 it consisted of 1,900,000 members. Up until the February Revolution of 1917 the noble estates staffed most of the Russian government; the Russian word for nobility, derives from Slavonic dvor, meaning the court of a prince or duke and of the tsar or emperor. Here, dvor referred to servants at the estate of an aristocrat. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, the word dvoryane described the highest rank of gentry, who performed duties at the royal court, lived in it, or were candidates to it. A nobleman is called a dvoryanin. Pre-Soviet Russia shared with other countries the concept that nobility connotes a status or social category rather than a title. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the title of nobleman in Russia became a formal status, rather than a reference to a member of aristocracy, due to a massive influx of commoners via the Table of ranks. Many descendants of former ancient Russian aristocracy, including royalty, had changed their formal standing to merchants, burghers or peasants, while people descended from serfs or clergy gained formal nobility.
The nobility arose in the 12th and 13th centuries as the lowest part of the feudal military class, which comprised the court of a prince or an important boyar. From the 14th century land ownership by nobles increased, by the 17th century the bulk of feudal lords and the majority of landowners were nobles; the nobles were granted estates out of State lands in return for their service to the Tsar, either for as long as they performed service, or for their lifetime. By the 18th century, these estates had become private property, they made up the Landed army —the basic military force of Russia. Peter the Great finalized the status of the nobility, while abolishing the boyar title; the adoption of the fashions and ideals of Western Europe by the Russian nobility was a gradual process rooted in the strict guidelines of Peter the Great and the educational reforms of Catherine the Great. While cultural westernization was superficial and restricted to court, it coincided with the efforts of Russian autocrats to link Russia to Western Europe in more fundamental ways – economically and politically.
However, Russia's existing economic system, which lacked a sizable middle class and which relied on forced labor, proved an insurmountable obstacle to the development of a free market economy. Furthermore, the lower classes lived isolated from the upper classes and the imperial court. Thus, most of the nobility's “western” tendencies were aesthetic and confined to a tiny proportion of the populace; as different rulers ascended the throne in the 19th century, each figure brought a different attitude and approach to ruling the nobility. By introducing the nobility to political literature from Western Europe, Catherine exposed Russia's autocracy to them as archaic and illiberal. While the nobility was conservative as a whole, a liberal and radical minority remained constant throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, resorting to violence on multiple occasions to challenge Russia's traditional political system. Although Peter the Great is considered by many to be the first westernized person of Russia, there were, in fact, contacts between the Muscovite nobility and Western Europe before his reign.
Ivan III, starting in 1472, sent numerous agents to Italy to study architecture. Both Michael Romanov and his son Alexis invited and sponsored European visitors – military and building specialists – who came to Moscow in foreign dress, speaking foreign languages; when the boyars began to imitate the westerners in dress and hair style, Tsar Alexis in 1675 and Tsar Feodor in 1680 restricted foreign fashions to distinguish between Russians and outsiders, but due to ineffective enforcement these efforts proved ineffective until the 1690s. Peter the Great was and foremost, eager to do away with Russia's reputation as an Asiatic land and to propel his new empire onto the political stage of Western Europe. One of the many ways he hoped to achieve this was by changing upper class culture. In 1697, he began to send nobles on compulsory trips abroad to England and Italy. While the Tsar designed these expeditions for naval training, he encouraged the noblemen to learn about the arts of the west. Furthermore Peter prioritized sending Russian natives as opposed to foreign expatriates.
When the travelers returned to Moscow, Peter tested them on their training, insisting on further education for those whose accumulated knowledge was unsatisfactory. By 1724, he had established – for the purpose of scientific study and discovery – the Academy of Sciences, which he modeled after “the ones in Paris, London and other places”. Peter's westernizing efforts became more radical after 1698 when he returned from his expedition through Europe known as the Grand Embassy. Upon arriving Peter summoned the nobility to his court and shaved every b
Russia
Russia the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and North Asia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres, Russia is by far or by a considerable margin the largest country in the world by area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, the ninth most populous, with about 146.77 million people as of 2019, including Crimea. About 77 % of the population live in the European part of the country. Russia's capital, Moscow, is one of the largest cities in the world and the second largest city in Europe. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Estonia, Latvia and Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, China and North Korea, it shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U. S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait. However, Russia recognises two more countries that border it, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are internationally recognized as parts of Georgia.
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, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. 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' disintegrated into a number of smaller states; the Grand Duchy of Moscow reunified the surrounding Russian principalities and achieved independence from the Golden Horde. By the 18th century, the nation had expanded through conquest and exploration to become the Russian Empire, the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east. Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first constitutionally socialist state; the Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War.
The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Lithuania, it is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic. Russia's economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2018. Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally; 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. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and an active global partner of ASEAN, as well as a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Trade Organization, as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Collective Security Treaty Organization and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union, along with Armenia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan; the name Russia is derived from Rus', a medieval state populated by the East Slavs. However, this proper name became more prominent in the history, the country was called by its inhabitants "Русская Земля", which can be translated as "Russian Land" or "Land of Rus'". In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus' by modern historiography.
The name Rus itself comes from the early medieval Rus' people, Swedish merchants and warriors who relocated from across the Baltic Sea and founded a state centered on Novgorod that became Kievan Rus. An old Latin version of the name Rus' was Ruthenia 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 Rus', Ρωσσία Rossía—spelled Ρωσία in Modern Greek. The standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are commonly
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks
The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks is a 1924 comedy film by Soviet director Lev Kuleshov, it is notable as the first Soviet film that explicitly challenges American stereotypes about Soviet Russia. The film is a broad satire of American ignorance of the Soviet Union; the naive American, Mr. John West, played by Porfiri Podobed as a Harold Lloyd type, is a YMCA president, planning a trip to the newly founded Soviet Union to spread the idea of the YMCA, his wife, Madge, is worried that Russia is full of savage Bolsheviks who wear primitive rags and fur for clothing, as depicted in American magazines. He takes along his cowboy friend Jeddie played as a companion. However, on arriving in the USSR his briefcase is stolen, he gets separated from Jeddie and he falls into the hands of a group of thieves, including a run-down Countess, who masquerade as counter-revolutionaries; the thieves play on West's fears and engineer his abduction by crooks dressed up as caricature Bolshevik "barbarians."
The thieves "rescue" West from the clutches of these fictional Bolsheviks, extorting thousands of dollars from him along the way. In the end, it is the real Bolshevik police, rather than his friend Jeddie. West takes a sightseeing tour of Moscow, where he sees that the Soviet government did not destroy all cultural landmarks, such as Moscow University and the Bolshoi Theater, as the thieves suggested; the film culminates in Mr. West watching a military parade with the policeman and concluding that the American view of the Soviet Union is wrong, he telegraphs his wife instructing her to hang a portrait of Lenin in his study. Porfiri Podobed - Mr. John West Boris Barnet - Jeddy - the cowboy Aleksandra Khokhlova - The'Countess' Vsevolod Pudovkin - Zhban The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks on IMDb The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolshevikse on YouTube "Mr. West" Program Notes
Mikhail Romm
Mikhail Ilych Romm was a Soviet film director. He was born in Irkutsk, his father was a social democrat of Jewish descent, exiled there. He graduated from gymnasium in 1917 and entered the Moscow College for Painting and Architecture. From 1918 - 1921, he served in the Red Army during the Russian civil war, first as a signalman and rising to the rank of inspector of a Special Commission concerning the numbers of the Red Army and Fleet of the Field Staff of the Supreme Military Soviet of the Republic; as such he travelled a lot and had the opportunity to see much of the life in different parts of the country, something that he said he "recalled with gratitude". After the end of his military career, Romm received a scholarship from the Soviet government. In 1925 he graduated as a sculptor from the class of Anna Golubkina of the Highest Artistic-Technical Institute and worked as a sculptor and translator. In 1928-1930 he conducted research on the theory of cinema in the Institute for the methods of extra-scholastic work.
Since 1931 he worked at the Mosfilm studio. In 1940-1943 he was an artistic leader for the Mosfilm films production. In 1942-1947 he was the director of a theater studio for movie actors. From 1938 he was a lecturer, from 1948 he was the leader of the actor's-producer department of the VGIK, professor, he influenced many prominent film-directors, including Andrei Tarkovsky, Grigori Chukhrai, Vasily Shukshin, Nikita Mikhalkov, Georgi Daneliya, Aleksander Mitta, Igor Talankin, Rezo Chkheidze, Gleb Panfilov, Vladimir Basov, Tengiz Abuladze, Elem Klimov and many others. Dream starring Faina Ranevskaya and other famous actors is considered one of the high points of Romm’s career; the film reveals deep spiritual crises and spiritual misery of inhabitants of a hostel titled Dream. President Roosevelt said. Another prominent film of Romm's was about young nuclear physicists; the documentary Ordinary Fascism, about the Third Reich gained over forty million viewers. No other historic documentary won such a numerous audience.
He wrote many books and articles on the theory of cinematographic art, memoirs. He was awarded the Stalin Prize 5 times. Romm was an honorary corresponding member of the Academy of the skills of DDR, he died in Moscow in 1971. Boule de Suif The Thirteen Lenin in October. Film director and Teacher Mikhail Romm on Film Directors Mikhail Romm on Different Types of Cinematic Shots
