1.
Alexey Rykov
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Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet politician most prominent as Premier of Russia and the Soviet Union from 1924 to 1929 and 1924 to 1930 respectively. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898, and after it split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903 and he played an active part in the 1905 Russian Revolution. During the Russian Civil War, Rykov oversaw the implementation of the War Communism economic policy, after Lenin was incapacitated by his third stroke in March 1923 Rykov—along with Lev Kamenev—was elected by the Sovnarkom to serve as Deputy Chairman to Lenin. While both Rykov and Kamenev were Lenins deputies, Kamenev was the acting Premier of the Soviet Union, on 21 December 1930 he was removed from the Politburo. From 1931-37 Rykov served as Peoples Commissar of Communications on the Council he formerly chaired, on 17 February 1937—at a meeting of the Central Committee—he was arrested with Nikolai Bukharin. In March 1938 both were found guilty of treason and executed, Alexei Ivanovich Rykov was born on 25 February 1881 in Saratov, Russia. His parents were peasants from the village of Kukarka, alexeis father, Ivan Illych Rykov, a farmer whose work had led the family to settle in Saratov died in 1889 from cholera while working in Merv. His widowed stepmother could not care for him, so he was cared for by his sister, Klavdiya Ivanovna Rykova. In 1892 he began his first year of school in Saratov. An outstanding student, he started school at age 13. He excelled in mathematics, physics and the natural sciences, at 15 Rykov stopped attending church and confession, and renounced his faith. He graduated from school in 1900 and enrolled at the University of Kazan to study law. Rykov joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898 and supported its Bolshevik faction when the party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks at its Second Congress in 1903. He worked as a Bolshevik agent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and he was elected a member of the Partys Central Committee at its 3rd Congress in London in 1905 and its 4th Congress in Copenhagen in 1906. He was elected member of the Central Committee at the 5th Congress in London. He spent 1910-11 exiled in France, and in 1912 expressed reproach towards Lenins proposal that the Bolsheviks become an independent party, the dispute was interrupted by Rykovs exile to Siberia for revolutionary activity. Rykov returned from Siberia after the February Revolution of 1917 and re-joined the Bolsheviks and he became a member of the Petrograd Soviet and the Moscow Soviet. At the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party in July–August 1917 he was elected to the Central Committee, during the October Revolution of 1917, he was a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee in Moscow
Alexey Rykov
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Alexei Rykov Алексей Рыков
Alexey Rykov
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Alexei Ivanovich Rykov
Alexey Rykov
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Rykov on the cover of
Time in 1924
Alexey Rykov
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Rykov as Soviet Premier, mid-1920s
2.
Leon Trotsky
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Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and he was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union from exile, on Stalins orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent. Trotskys ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union and his parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna. The family was of Jewish origin, the language they spoke at home was Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Trotskys younger sister, Olga, who grew up to be a Bolshevik. Many anti-Communists, anti-semites, and anti-Trotskyists have noted Trotskys original surname, some authors, notably Robert Service, have also claimed that Trotskys childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an apparent attempt to emphasize Trotskys Jewish origins but, contrary to Services claims and he says that it is highly improbable that the family was Jewish, as they did not speak Yiddish, the common language among eastern European Jews. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotskys childhood name was Lyova, when Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated in a Jewish school. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial governments policy of Russification. As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a cosmopolitan port city. This environment contributed to the development of the young mans international outlook, although Trotsky said in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently. Trotsky became involved in activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he initially opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism later that year by his future first wife, instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name Lvov, he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, in January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested
Leon Trotsky
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Trotsky in 1921
Leon Trotsky
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8-year-old Lyova Bronshtein, 1888
Leon Trotsky
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Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, 1897
Leon Trotsky
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Leon Trotsky with his daughter Nina in 1915
3.
Kliment Voroshilov
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Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov, was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin era. Voroshilov was born in the settlement of Verkhnye, Bakhmut district, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, in the Russian Empire, however, according to the Soviet Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, Voroshilov himself alluded to his Ukrainian heritage and to the previous family name of Voroshilo. Voroshilov joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Voroshilov became a member of the Ukrainian Council of Peoples Commissars and Commissar for Internal Affairs along with Vasiliy Averin. He was well known for aiding Joseph Stalin in the Military Council, Voroshilov was active as a commander of the Southern Front during the Russian Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War while with the 1st Cavalry Army. As Political Commissar serving co-equally with Stalin, Voroshilov was responsible for the morale of the 1st Cavalry Army, Voroshilovs efforts as Commissar did not prevent a resounding Polish victory at the Battle of Komarów or regular outbreaks of murderous anti-Semitic violence within the Cavalry armys ranks. Voroshilov headed the Petrograd Police during 1917 and 1918, Voroshilov served as a member of the Central Committee from his election in 1921 until 1961. Frunzes political position adhered to that of the Troika, but Stalin preferred to have a close, Frunze was urged by a group of Stalins hand-picked doctors to have surgery to treat an old stomach ulcer, despite previous doctors recommendations to avoid surgery and Frunzes own unwillingness. He died on the table of a massive overdose of chloroform. Voroshilov became a member of the newly formed Politburo in 1926. Voroshilov was appointed Peoples Commissar for Defence in 1934 and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935 and he played a central role in Stalins Great Purge of the 1930s, denouncing many of his own military colleagues and subordinates when asked to do so by Stalin. Voroshilov personally signed 185 documented execution lists, fourth among the Soviet leadership after Molotov, Stalin, during World War II, Voroshilov was a member of the State Defense Committee. Voroshilov followed this retort by smashing a platter of roast suckling pig on the table, nikita Khrushchev said it was the only time he ever witnessed such an outburst. Voroshilov was nonetheless made the scapegoat for the failures in Finland. He was later replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko, Voroshilov was then made Deputy Premier responsible for cultural matters. Voroshilov initially argued that thousands of Polish army officers captured in September 1939 should be released, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Voroshilov became commander of the short-lived Northwestern Direction, controlling several fronts. In September 1941 he commanded the Leningrad Front, Stalin had a political need for popular wartime leaders, however, and Voroshilov remained as an important figurehead. In 1945–1947 Voroshilov supervised the establishment of the communist regime in postwar Hungary, in 1952, Voroshilov was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. Stalins death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership, Voroshilov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev brought about the 26 June 1953 arrest of Lavrenty Beria after Stalins death
Kliment Voroshilov
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Voroshilov in his cabinet. Portrait by
Isaak Brodsky.
Kliment Voroshilov
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From left to right Kaganovich, Stalin,
Postyshev, Voroshilov.
Kliment Voroshilov
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With the
Turkish leader
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the celebration ceremony for the tenth anniversary of the Turkish Republic in 1933
Kliment Voroshilov
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President Voroshilov with
J.K. Paasikivi in
Helsinki
4.
Bishkek
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Bishkek, formerly Pishpek and Frunze, is the capital and largest city of the Kyrgyz Republic. Bishkek is also the center of the Chuy Region. The province surrounds the city, although the city itself is not part of the province, but rather a province-level unit of Kyrgyzstan. According to post-Soviet research, the name is thought to derive from a Kyrgyz word for a used to make fermented mares milk. The city was founded in 1825 as the Khokand fortress of Pishpek in order to control local caravan routes, on 4 September 1860, the fortress was destroyed by Russian forces led by colonel Zimmermann, with the approval of the Kyrgyz. In 1868 a Russian settlement was founded on the spot, under its original name. It lay within the General Governorship of Russian Turkestan and its Semirechye Oblast, in 1925, the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast was created in Russian Turkestan, promoting Pishpek to its capital. In 1926, the city was given the name Frunze, after the Bolshevik military leader Mikhail Frunze, in 1936, the city of Frunze became the capital of the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, during the final stages of the national delimitation in the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Kyrgyz parliament changed the name to Bishkek. Bishkek is situated at an altitude of about 800 meters, just off the northern fringe of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too range and these mountains rise to a height of 4,855 meters and provide a spectacular backdrop to the city. North of the city, a fertile and gently undulating steppe extends far north into neighboring Kazakhstan, the Chui River drains most of the area. Bishkek is connected to the Turkestan-Siberia Railway by a spur line, Bishkek is a city of wide boulevards and marble-faced public buildings combined with numerous Soviet-style apartment blocks surrounding interior courtyards. Mostly outside the city center, there are thousands of smaller privately built houses. It is laid out on a pattern, with most streets flanked on both sides by narrow irrigation channels that water the innumerable trees that provide shade in the hot summers. Originally a caravan rest stop on one of the branches of the Silk Road through the Tian Shan range, in the last years of Kokhand rule, the fortress was led by Atabek, the Datka. In 1860, the fort was conquered and razed by the forces of Colonel Zimmermann when Tsarist Russia annexed the area. Colonel Zimmermann rebuilt the town over the fort and put field Poruchik Titov as head of a new Russian garrison. The site was redeveloped from 1877 onward by the Russian government, in June 1990, a state of emergency was declared following severe ethnic riots in southern Kyrgyzstan that threatened to spread to the capital
Bishkek
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Ala-Too Square
Bishkek
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Frunze statue near the railway station
Bishkek
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Russian Orthodox cathedral of Holy Resurrection.
Bishkek
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National Historical Museum
5.
Semirechye Oblast
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The Semirechye Oblast was an oblast of the Russian Empire. It roughly corresponded to most of present-day southeastern Kazakhstan and northeastern Kyrgyzstan and it was created out of the territories of the northern part of Khanate of Kokand that had been part of Kazakh Khanate. Its center was Verniy, now Almaty, Russia seized the Zhetysu region in 1854 and control over the region was recognized in the Treaty of Saint Petersburg between Russia and China. As of 1897, the Semirechye Oblast was divided into 6 uyezds, kazakhs constituted the majority of the population. Significant minorities consisted of Russians and Taranchi
Semirechye Oblast
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Flag
6.
Russian Turkestan
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That year the Russian forces took the city of Tashkent under the leadership of General Mikhail Chernyayev expanding the territories of Turkestan Oblast. Chernyayev had exceeded his orders but Saint Petersburg recognized the annexation in any case, an account of the Russian conquest of Tashkent was written in Urus leshkerining Türkistanda tarikh 1262-1269 senelarda qilghan futuhlari by Mullah Khalibay Mambetov. In 1867 Turkestan was made a separate Governor-Generalship, under its first Governor-General and its capital was Tashkent and it consisted initially of three oblasts, Syr Darya, Semirechye Oblast and the Zeravshan Okrug. In 1894 the Transcaspian Region, which had conquered in 1881–1885 by Generals Mikhail Skobelev. The administration of the region had an almost purely military character throughout, Von Kaufman died in 1882, and a committee under Fedor Karlovich Giers toured the Krai and drew up proposals for reform, which were implemented after 1886. In 1888 the new Trans-Caspian railway, begun at Uzun-Ada on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 1877 and it was quite unlike European Russia. In 1908 Count Konstantin Konstantinovich Pahlen led another commission to Turkestan. The Jadid educational reform movement which originated among Tatars spread among Muslims of Central Asia under Russian rule, in 1897 the railway reached Tashkent, and finally in 1906 a direct rail link with European Russia was opened across the steppe from Orenburg to Tashkent. This caused considerable discontent amongst the population as these settlers took scarce land. In 1916 discontent boiled over in the Basmachi Revolt, sparked by a decree conscripting the natives into labour battalions, thousands of settlers were killed, and this was matched by Russian reprisals, particularly against the nomadic population. To escape Russians slaughtering them in 1916, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, xinjiang became a sanctuary for fleeing Kazakhs escaping the Russians after the Muslims faced conscription by the Russian government. The Turkmen, Kyrgyz, and Kazakhs were all impacted by the 1916 insurrection caused by the conscription decreed by the Russian government, the corvée conscription issued on 25 June 1916. Order had not really been restored by the time the February Revolution took place in 1917, resistance to the Bolsheviks by the local population continued well into the beginning of the 1930s. After the foundation of the Soviet Union it was split into the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic, the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic was formed out of part of the Uzbek SSR in 1929, and in 1936 the Kyrgyz SSR was separated from Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these gained their independence. Semirechye Cossacks Orenburg Cossacks Turkestan Military District History of Uzbekistan History of Kazakhstan History of Turkmenistan History of Tajikistan Eugene Schuyler Turkistan 18762 Vols, curzon Russia in Central Asia 1889 Ген. Терентьев История Завоевания Средней Азии19033 Vols, Бартольд История Культурной Жизни Туркестана1927 Count K. K. Pahlen Mission to Turkestan 1964 Seymour Becker Russias Protectorates in Central Asia, Bukhara, jadidism in Central Asia 1997 T. K. by Tsugitaka Sato, Londres,2004
Russian Turkestan
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The Defence of the Samarkand Citadel in 1868
Russian Turkestan
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Provinces of Russian Turkestan in 1900
Russian Turkestan
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Map of the
Syr-Darya Oblast in 1872
7.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
Russian Empire
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Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia the Russian Empire in 1721, and himself its first emperor. He instituted the
sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.
Russian Empire
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Flag
Russian Empire
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Empress
Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, continued the empire's expansion and modernization. Considering herself an
enlightened absolutist, she played a key role in the
Russian Enlightenment.
Russian Empire
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Catherine II Sestroretsk Rouble (1771) is made of solid copper measuring 77 millimetres (3 3 ⁄ 100 in) (diameter), 26 millimetres (1 1 ⁄ 50 in) (thickness), and weighs 1.022 kg (2.25 lb). It is the largest copper coin ever issued.
8.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
Moscow
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Left to right, top to bottom:
Moscow State University,
Spasskaya Clocktower,
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour;
Bolshoi Theatre,
Moscow International Business Center;
Red Square
Moscow
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Tatar raid upon Moscow
Moscow
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Map of Moscow, 1784
Moscow
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Red Square, painting by
Fedor Alekseev, 1801
9.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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Flag (1954–1991)
10.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
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
11.
Soviet people
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Soviet people or Citizens of the USSR was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a new historical, social and international unity of people. Through the history of the Soviet Union, both doctrine and practice regarding ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population varied over time, minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be socialist by content and national by form, to be used to promote the official aims, the fifth record was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizens ethnicity. The 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union finalized this definition, according to the 2010 Russian Census 27,000 Russians identified themselves as members of the Soviet people. Homo Sovieticus Melting pot New Soviet man Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality Rootless cosmopolitan Russification Zhonghua minzu, the equivalent notion in the Peoples Republic of China Yugoslavs
Soviet people
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Pomerki child sanatory in
Kharkov. Summer 1950
12.
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as the Soviet leader. His rule is best known for his liberalization of political and social life, and the end of terror as a means of social control
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
The Brezhnev era is commonly referred to by historians as the
Era of Stagnation, a term coined by CPSU General Secretary Gorbachev
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
–
Gorbachev, the last leader of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, as seen in 1986
All-Union Communist Party (bolsheviks)
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A Politburo resolution to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and Soviet Power" who led "counter-revolutionary, right-trotskyite, plotting and spying activities". Signed by Stalin
13.
Bolshevik
–
The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
Bolshevik
–
Bolshevik Party meeting. Sitting (from left):
Avel Enukidze,
Mikhail Kalinin,
Nikolai Bukharin,
Mikhail Tomsky,
Mikhail Lashevich,
Lev Kamenev,
Yevgeni Preobrazhensky,
Leonid Serebryakov,
Vladimir Lenin and
Alexei Rykov.
Bolshevik
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Boris Kustodiev ’s 1920 painting " Bolshevik "
Bolshevik
–
Left to right:
Leon Trotsky,
Vladimir Lenin, and
Lev Kamenev
Bolshevik
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"Down with Bolshevism. Bolshevism brings war and destruction, hunger and death", anti-Bolshevik propaganda, Germany, 1919.
14.
Russian Revolution of 1917
–
The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
Russian Revolution of 1917
–
Bolshevik forces marching on
Red Square
Russian Revolution of 1917
–
Soldiers blocking
Narva Gate on
Bloody Sunday
Russian Revolution of 1917
–
Russian soldiers marching in Petrograd in February 1917
Russian Revolution of 1917
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The Petrograd Soviet Assembly meeting in 1917
15.
Russian Civil War
–
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russias political future. In addition, rival militant socialists and nonideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, eight foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied Forces and the pro-German armies. The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine, the remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. Armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934, there were an estimated 7,000, 000–12,000,000 casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen, many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war. Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was established during the February Revolution of 1917, Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty. In June 1918, when it became apparent that an army composed solely of workers would be far too small. Former Tsarist officers were utilized as military specialists, sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty, at the start of the war three-quarters of the Red Army officer corps was composed of former Tsarist officers. By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers, a Ukrainian nationalist movement was active in Ukraine during the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine or the Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno, some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers organizations in the cities. The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian army and numbered around 30,000 troops by October 1917 and they had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the port of Vladivostok to France. The transport from the Eastern Front to Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos, under pressure from the Central Powers, Trotsky ordered the disarming and arrest of the legionaries, which created tensions with the Bolsheviks. The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks, hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle, the British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials. After the treaty, it looked like much of material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext began allied intervention in the Russian Civil War with the United Kingdom, there were violent clashes with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks
Russian Civil War
–
Clockwise from top: Soldiers of the
Don Army in 1919; a White
infantry division in March 1920; soldiers of the
1st Cavalry Army;
Leon Trotsky in 1918; hanging of workers in
Yekaterinoslav by the
Austro-Hungarian Army, April 1918.
Russian Civil War
–
Anti-Bolshevik
Volunteer Army in South Russia, January 1918
Russian Civil War
–
Russian soldiers of the anti-Bolshevik
Siberian Army in 1919
Russian Civil War
–
American troops in Vladivostok during the
Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (August 1918)
16.
Pyotr Wrangel
–
After his side lost the civil war in 1920, he left Russia and became one of the most prominent exiled White émigrés. Wrangel was born in Mukuliai, Kovno Governorate in the Russian Empire, the Wrangel family was of the local Baltic German nobility, but Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel was only distantly related to the famed Arctic explorer Ferdinand von Wrangel. He soon resigned his commission, and travelled to Irkutsk, where he was assigned to missions by the Governor-General. At the start of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, he reenlisted and was assigned to the 2nd Regiment of the Transbaikal Cossack Corps, in December 1904, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. After the war ended, he was reassigned to the 55th Finland Dragoon Regiment, in 1907, he returned to the Life Guards Cavalry Regiment. In 1908 he married Olga Mikhaylovna Ivanenko in St. Petersburg, Wrangel graduated from the Nicholas Imperial General Staff Academy in 1910 and the Cavalry Officers School in 1911. With the start of World War I, Wrangel was promoted to captain, on October 13,1914 he became one of the first Russian officers to be awarded the Order of St. George in the war, the highest military decoration of the Russian Empire. In December 1914, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, in October 1915 Wrangel was transferred to the Southwestern Front and was appointed commander of the 1st Regiment of the Transbaikal Cossacks. This unit was active in Galicia against the Austrians. He was further decorated with the George Cross for his defense of the Zbruch River in the summer of 1917, following the end of Russias participation in the war, Wrangel resigned his commission and went to live at his dacha at Yalta in the Crimea. Arrested by the Bolsheviks at the end of 1917, he was released and escaped to Kiev, after the Second Kuban Campaign in late 1918, he was promoted to lieutenant general, and his Division was raised to that of a corps. An aggressive commander, he won a number of victories in the north Caucasus, from January 1919, his military force was renamed the Caucasus Volunteer Army. Wrangel soon clashed politically with Armed Forces of South Russia leader Anton Denikin, Wrangel gained a reputation as a skilled and just administrator, who, in contrast to some other White Army generals, did not tolerate lawlessness or looting by his troops. Continuing disagreement with Denikin led to his removal from command, and he assumed the post on April 4,1920 and put forth a coalition government which attempted to institute sweeping reforms. He also recognized and established relations with the new anti-Bolshevik independent republics of Ukraine and Georgia, however, by this stage in the Russian Civil War, such measures were too late, and the White movement was rapidly losing support both domestically and overseas. After defeats in which he lost half his army, and facing defeat in Northern Tavria. Wrangel gave every officer, soldier, and civilian a free choice, evacuate and go with him into the unknown, or remain in Russia, Wrangel evacuated the White forces from the Crimea in 1920 in remnants of the Russian Imperial Navy that became known as Wrangels fleet. The last military and civilian personnel left Russia with Wrangel on board the General Kornilov on November 14,1920, initially, Wrangel lived on his yacht Lucullus at Constantinople, which was rammed and sunk by the Italian steamer Adria, which had sailed from Soviet-held Batum
Pyotr Wrangel
–
Pyotr Wrangel, c.1920
Pyotr Wrangel
–
At a prayer vigil upon accepting command.
Pyotr Wrangel
–
Statue of Wrangel in Sremski Karlovci
17.
Kyrgyzstan
–
Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a country in Central Asia. Landlocked and mountainous, Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west and southwest, Tajikistan to the southwest and its capital and largest city is Bishkek. Kyrgyzstans recorded history spans over 2,000 years, encompassing a variety of cultures and empires, ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the countrys 5.7 million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Kyrgyz is closely related to other Turkic languages, although Russian remains widely spoken and is the official language, the majority of the population are non-denominational Muslims. In addition to its Turkic origins, Kyrgyz culture bears elements of Persian, Mongolian and Russian influence. Kyrgyz is believed to have derived from the Turkic word for forty, in reference to the forty clans of Manas. Literally, Kyrgyz means We are forty, at the time, in the early 9th century AD, the Uyghurs dominated much of Central Asia, Mongolia, and parts of Russia and China. King, Scythians were early settlers in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz state reached its greatest expansion after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 A. D. From the 10th century the Kyrgyz migrated as far as the Tian Shan range, in the twelfth century the Kyrgyz dominion had shrunk to the Altay Range and Sayan Mountains as a result of the Mongol expansion. With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century, the Kyrgyz peacefully became a part of the Mongol Empire in 1207. The descent of the Kyrgyz from the autochthonous Siberian population is confirmed on the hand by the recent genetic studies. Issyk Kul Lake was a stopover on the Silk Road, a route for traders, merchants. Kyrgyz tribes were overrun in the 17th century by the Mongols, in the century by the Manchurian Qing Dynasty. In the late century, the majority part of what is today Kyrgyzstan was ceded to Russia through two treaties between China and Russia. The territory, then known in Russian as Kirghizia, was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. The Russian takeover was met with numerous revolts against Tsarist authority, in addition, the suppression of the 1916 rebellion against Russian rule in Central Asia caused many Kyrgyz later to migrate to China. Soviet power was established in the region in 1919. On 5 December 1936, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic was established as a republic of the Soviet Union
Kyrgyzstan
–
Silk road caravansary utilized during the
Islamic Golden Age
Kyrgyzstan
Kyrgyzstan
–
Kyrgyz nomads, 1869–1870, by Vasily Vereshchagin
Kyrgyzstan
–
Kyrgyz yurt, 1869–1870, by
Vasily Vereshchagin
18.
Romanian people
–
Romanians are natives of Romania that share a common Romanian culture, ancestry, and speak the Romanian language as a mother tongue, as well as by citizenship or by being subjects to the same country. Just under 89% of Romanias population identified as Romanian in the 2011 Romanian Census, in one interpretation of the census results in Moldova, Moldovans are counted as Romanians, which would mean that the latter form part of the majority in that country as well. Romanians are also a minority in several nearby countries. Inhabited by the ancient Dacians, todays territory of Romania was conquered by the Roman Empire in 106, the Roman administration withdrew two centuries later, under the pressure of the Goths and Carpi. Two theories account for the origin of the Romanian people, according to the first theory, the Romanians are descended from indigenous populations that inhabited what is now Romania and its immediate environs, Thracians and Roman legionnaires and colonists. This process was concluded by the 10th century when the assimilation of the Slavs by the Daco-Romanians was completed. The south-of-the Danube theory usually favours northern Albania and/or Moesia as the specific places of Romanian ethnogenesis. Small genetic differences were found among Southeastern European populations and especially those of the Dniester–Carpathian region. The genetic affinities among Dniester–Carpathian and southeastern European populations do not reflect their linguistic relationships, according to the report, the results indicate that the ethnic and genetic differentiations occurred in these regions to a considerable extent independently of each other. The entire Balkan peninsula was annexed by the Ottoman Empire, however, Moldavia and Wallachia were allowed a certain degree of temporary autonomy. Transylvania, a region inhabited by a slight majority of Romanian speakers had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire until 1918. The three principalities were united for several months in 1600 under the authority of Wallachian Prince Michael the Brave and this area fell to the Ottoman Turks by the 15th century. Up until 1541, Transylvania was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, in 1699 it became a part of the Habsburg lands. By the 19th century, the Austrian Empire was awarded by the Ottomans with the region of Bukovina and, in 1812, in 1821 and 1848, two rebellions occurred, and both failed, but they had an important role in the spreading of the liberal ideology. In 1859, Moldavia and Wallachia elected the same ruler – Alexander John Cuza and were thus unified de facto, the newly founded Kingdom of Romania—led by the Hohenzollern prince Carol I—fought a War of Independence against the Ottomans, and was recognised in 1878. Although allied with Austria-Hungary, Romania refused to go to enter World War I on the side of the Central Powers, in 1916, Romania joined the war on the side of the Triple Entente. As a result, at the end of the war, Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina were awarded to Romania, resulting in Greater Romania. As of 1920, Romanian people were believed to number over 15 million in the Romania region, larger than the populations of Sweden, Denmark, the eastern territory losses were facilitated by the Molotov-Ribbentrop German-Soviet non-aggression pact
Romanian people
–
Territories inhabited by Eastern Romance peoples before World War I.
Romanian people
–
Regions with green inhabited by significant Eastern Romance speakers
Romanian people
–
Romanians from Câmpulung Moldovenesc in national costumes
Romanian people
–
Peasants of Transylvania
19.
Feldsher
–
Feldsher is a health care professional who provides various medical services limited to emergency treatment and ambulance practice, according to the World Health Organization. They are collectively grouped under the category “paramedical practitioners” in the International Standard Classification of Occupations,2008 revision, the word Feldsher is derived from the German Feldscher, which was coined in the 15th century. Today, Feldshers do not exist in Germany anymore, but the term was exported with Prussian officers, the Feldsher system of rural primary care provided some of the inspiration for Chinas barefoot doctors. Today feldshers can be found in every medical setting from primary to intensive care and they are often the first point of contact with health professionals for people in rural areas. Training for feldshers can include up to four years of education, including medical diagnosis. They have clinical responsibilities that may be considered midway between those of physicians and those of nurses and they do not have full professional qualifications as physicians. The training program includes basic pre-clinical sciences, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, microbiology, laboratory subjects. The Feldsher, Medical, Sociological and Historical Aspects of Practitioners of Medicine with below University Level Education, the Magnes Press, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem,1992
Feldsher
–
A feldsher performing an amputation. Engraving from 1540
Feldsher
–
German Feldscher in the
Franco-Prussian War 1870
20.
Kherson Governorate
–
The Kherson Governorate or Government of Kherson was a guberniya, or administrative territorial unit, between the Dnieper and Dniester Rivers, of the Russian Empire. It was one of three created in 1802 when the Novorossiya guberniya was abolished. It was known as the Nikolayev Governorate until 1803, when Kherson replaced Nikolayev as the governorates capital, the economy of the governorate was mainly based on agriculture. During the grain harvest, thousands of laborers from the parts of the Empire found work in the area. The industrial part of the economy, consisting primarily of flour milling, distilling, metalworking industry, iron mining, beet-sugar processing, from 1809, the governorate consisted of five uyezds, Kherson, Aleksandriya, Ovidiopol, Tiraspol, and Yelisavetgrad. The city of Odessa carried a special status, in 1825, The Odessa uyezd was added into the territorial division of the Kherson Governorate. A seventh uyezd — Bobrynets, existed from 1828 to 1865, in 1920, while being under Soviet Ukrainian rule, the governorates territory,70,600 km2, was divided to form the newer Odessa Governorate. The Kherson Governorate was renamed Mykolaiv Governorate in 1921, and in 1922 - merged with the Odessa Governorate, in 1925, the Odessa Governorate was abolished, and its territory was divided into six okruhas, Kherson, Kryvyi Rih, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Pershotravneve, and Zinoviivske. In 1932, much of this territory was incorporated into the new Odessa Oblast, now a division of the modern Ukrainian nation. The gubernia had a population of about 245,000 in 1812,893,000 in 1851,1,330,000 in 1863,2,027,000 in 1885,2,733,600 in 1897, and 3,744,600 in 1914. In the 1850s it consisted of Ukrainians, Romanians, Russians, Jews, Germans, Bulgarians, Poles, Greeks, in 1914, Ukrainians composed only 53% of the population, while Russians made up 22% and Jews - 12%. Urban dwellers made up 10 to 20 percent of the population until the 1850s, after which the proportion of urban dwellers increased, migration within the Russian Empire mainly accounted for the areas population growth, with 46% of the population born outside of the governorate in 1897. Kherson regional universal science library of Oles Honchar
Kherson Governorate
–
Cathedral dedicated to
Saint Catherine (
Russian: Свято-Екаерининский Собор) in
Kherson the governorates seat at the time.
Kherson Governorate
21.
Russians
–
Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
Russians
–
Three generations of a Russian family, ca. 1910
Russians
–
East Slavic tribes and peoples, 8th-9th century
Russians
–
Russia's Arctic coastline from the
White Sea to the
Bering Strait had been explored and settled by
Pomors, Russian settlers from
Novgorod
Russians
–
Terek Cossacks of the north
Caucasus guarded the southern frontier
22.
Almaty
–
Almaty /ˈælməti/, formerly known as Alma-Ata /ˌælmə. əˈtɑː/ and Verny, is the largest city in Kazakhstan, with a population of 1,703,481 people, containing 9% of the countrys total population. Almaty is considered a World City with a Beta - classification according to GaWC and it served as capital of the Kazakh state in its various forms from 1929 to 1997, under the influence of the then Soviet Union and its appointees. Alma-Ata was the host city for a 1978 international conference on Primary Health Care where the Alma Ata Declaration was adopted, in 1997, the government relocated the capital to Astana in the north of the country. Almaty continues as the commercial and cultural centre of Kazakhstan. From 1929 to 1936, Almaty was the capital of Kazakh ASSR, from 1936 to 1991 it was the capital of Kazakh SSR. After Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, Almaty continued as the capital until 1997, Almaty remains the largest, most developed, and most ethnically and culturally diverse city in Kazakhstan. The city is in the foothills of Trans-Ili Alatau in the extreme south-east and it has a relatively mild climate with warm summers and quite cold winters. Since the city is in an active area, it has an endemic risk of earthquakes. Although most do not cause any significant damage, Almaty has suffered some large destructive earthquakes, in 1997 the capital was moved to Astana in the north-central part of the country. Since then Almaty has been referred to as the capital of Kazakhstan. The name Almaty has its roots in the medieval settlement Almatu, a disputed theory holds that the name is derived from the Kazakh word for apple, and is often translated as full of apples. Originally it was Almatau which means Apple Mountain, the Russian version of the name was Alma-Ata, however, since independence Russian has tended to use the Kazakh Almaty. There is great diversity among the wild apples in the region surrounding Almaty. The wild Malus sieversii is considered a candidate for the ancestor of the modern domestic apple. The citys name was written as آلماتی in Turkish and Persian written with the Perso-Arabic script, during 1000–900 BC in the Bronze Age, the first farmers and cattle-breeders established settlements in the territory of Almaty. During the Saka period, these lands were occupied by the Saka and later Wusun tribes, evidence of these times can be found in the numerous burial mounds and ancient settlements, especially the giant burial mounds of the Saka tsars. The most famous archaeological finds have been the The Golden man, also known as The Golden Warrior, from the Issyk Kurgan, the Zhalauly treasure, the Kargaly diadem, during the period of Saka and Wusun governance, Almaty became an early educational centre. During the Middle Ages, a city developed in Almaty
Almaty
–
Clockwise from top: The city view of mountains in background; Kok-Tobe Cableway; View of the city from Kok-Tobe; Ascension Cathedral; Presidential Palace; Panoramic view of the Independence Square.
Almaty
Almaty
–
Zenkov Cathedral, a 19th-century
Russian Orthodox cathedral located in Panfilov Park, is the second tallest wooden building in the world.
Almaty
–
Panfilov's Twenty-Eight Guardsmen Park.
23.
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
–
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University is a major Russian technical university situated in Saint Petersburg. Other former names included Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute and Kalinin Polytechnic Institute, on a national scale, SPbPU in Russian Federation is somewhat akin to Caltech in the United States. Currently SPbPU is ranked among the top 400 in the World and it houses one of the countrys most advanced research labs in hydro–aerodynamics. The idea was advanced by agricultural scientist and Deputy Finance Minister Vladimir Kovalevsky, the first director of the institute became Prince Andrey Gagarin. Ivan Meshersky was professor of St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute, unlike École Polytechnique the polytechnic institute was always considered to be a civilian establishment. In tsarist Russia it was subordinated to the Ministry of Finance, its students, the main campus was built by the architect Ernst Virrikh on the rural lands beyond the dacha settlement Lesnoye. The location was intended to provide separation between the campus and the capital city of Saint Petersburg. The institute was opened to students on October 1,1902, originally there were four departments, Economics, Shipbuilding, Electro-mechanics and Metallurgy. Its work was interrupted by the Russian Revolution of 1905, one student, M. Savinkov, was killed during the Bloody Sunday events of January 221905. The reaction of students was so strong that classes resumed much later in September 1906 almost two years after. Among the polytechnic students who participated in the Revolutionary events were the future prominent bolshevik Mikhail Frunze, among the deputies of the First Duma were four Polytechnic Institutes faculties, N. A. Gredeskul, N. I. In 1909 the Shipbuilding Department opened the School of Aviation and it was the first aviation and aerodynamics school in Russia. In 1911 the same department opened the School for Car Manufacturing, in 1910 the institute was named Peter the Great Polytechnic Institute after Peter I of Russia. In 1914 the number of students reached 6,000, with the onset of World War I many students found themselves in the Army and soon the number of students decreased to 3,000. Some students, like future Soviet military commander Leonid Govorov studied at the institute for one month, part of the institutess buildings were transferred into the Maria Fyodorovna Hospital at that time the largest military hospital in Russia. Despite the war the institute did not stop its work, in 1916 Abram Ioffe opened his Physics Seminar at the Polytechnic Institute. The seminar prepared three Nobel Prize-winners and many other prominent Russian physicists, eventually, this seminar became the core of the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute. On June 5,1918 the institute was renamed to First Polytechnic Institute, in November 1918 Sovnarkom abolished all forms of scientific decrees, licenses and certifications
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
–
Main Building, 1902
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
–
Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
–
An auditorium of the new institute, 1902
Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University
–
Ioffe's physics seminar at the Polytechnic Institute, among the people in the picture:
Yakov Frenkel sits first on the left, next to him
Nikolay Semyonov,
Abram Ioffe sits in the center,
Pyotr Kapitsa is on the left
24.
London
–
London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
London
–
Palace of Westminster,
Buckingham Palace and
Central London skyline
London
London
London
–
The name London may derive from the
River Thames
25.
Vladimir Lenin
–
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
Vladimir Lenin
–
Lenin in 1920
Vladimir Lenin
–
"Volodya", aged four.
Vladimir Lenin
–
Lenin, c. 1887.
Vladimir Lenin
–
Lenin (left) in December 1895 and his wife Nadezhda.
26.
Julius Martov
–
Julius Martov or L. Martov (Ма́ртов, real name Yuliy Osipovich Tsederbaum was a Russian politician who became the leader of the Mensheviks in early 20th-century Russia. According to his sister and fellow Menshevik, Lydia Dan, Martov had a charm that attracted people. As a result, some commented it was difficult to record why they followed him. He was an old friend and mentor of Leon Trotsky, Trotsky later described him as the Hamlet of Democratic Socialism. Vladimir Lenin later confessed in 1921 that his single greatest regret was that Martov is not with us, what an amazing comrade he is, what a pure man. Martov was born to a Jewish middle-class family in Constantinople, Turkey and his sister was fellow Menshevik leader Lydia Dan. Martov was one the Marxists who wanted Nikolay Bauman expelled from the party after an incident where he drove a party member to suicide after drawing a cartoon of her. The founders were arrested almost immediately after its establishment, it could claim some success when local activists of the union organised the textile strike of 30,000 workers in 1896. Both Martov and Lenin were exiled to Siberia for this, Martov was sent to Turukhansk in the Arctic, in Munich, Martov was on the editorial board alongside Lenin and Potresov. Initially, with Lenin, on terms with the Jewish Bund. At the Second Congress of the RSDLP in London in 1903, Martov later refused to participate in the editorial board of Iskra with Lenin and Plekhanov, after Lenin had removed the three Menshevik veterans Axelrod, Potresov and Zasulich. Both Martov and Lenin based their ideas for party organization on those prevailing in the European social democratic parties, the split with Lenin was based in differences of the wording of article one of the party statute, concerning membership definition, at the Second Party Congress in Brussels. Martov believed those willing to obey the partys leadership and recognize the party program should be admitted as members and they referred to themselves as Bolsheviks throughout the Congress, hence their adoption of the name Bolshevik which literally means person of the majority. The minority or Menshevik faction adopted the corresponding title, Martov was described as being too good an intellectual to be a successful politician, as he often was held back by his integrity, and philosophical approach to matters of politics. He tended to select political allies primarily by the coherence of their general worldview and his high minded approach would later win rounds of applause among the socialist intelligentsia. Nonetheless, Martovs noble principles made him too soft and indecisive and he has been described as a brilliant intellectual and party theoretician. The plan detailed that workers were to see a need for political campaigning through participating in strikes. Martov became one of the outstanding Menshevik leaders along with George Plekhanov, Fedor Dan, Leon Trotsky too was a member of the Menshevik faction for a brief period but soon broke with them
Julius Martov
–
Yuliy Osipovich Martov
Julius Martov
–
Leaders of the Menshevik Party at
Norra Bantorget in Stockholm, Sweden, May 1917.
Pavel Axelrod, Julius Martov and
Alexander Martinov
27.
Leader
–
Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill encompassing the ability of an individual or organization to lead or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. The literature debates various viewpoints, contrasting Eastern and Western approaches to leadership, US academic environments define leadership as a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task. Leadership seen from a European and non-academic perspective encompasses a view of a leader who can be moved not only by communitarian goals but also by the search for personal power. Studies of leadership have produced theories involving traits, situational interaction, function, behavior, power, vision and values, charisma, the search for the characteristics or traits of leaders has continued for centuries. Philosophical writings from Platos Republic to Plutarchs Lives have explored the question What qualities distinguish an individual as a leader, underlying this search was the early recognition of the importance of leadership and the assumption that leadership is rooted in the characteristics that certain individuals possess. This idea that leadership is based on individual attributes is known as the theory of leadership. In Heroes and Hero Worship, Carlyle identified the talents, skills, galtons Hereditary Genius examined leadership qualities in the families of powerful men. After showing that the numbers of eminent relatives dropped off when his focus moved from first-degree to second-degree relatives, in other words, leaders were born, not developed. Both of these notable works lent great initial support for the notion that leadership is rooted in characteristics of a leader, international networks of such leaders could help to promote international understanding and help render war impossible. This vision of leadership underlay the creation of the Rhodes Scholarships, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, however, a series of qualitative reviews of these studies prompted researchers to take a drastically different view of the driving forces behind leadership. Subsequently, leadership was no longer characterized as an individual trait, as situational approaches posited that individuals can be effective in certain situations. The focus then shifted away from traits of leaders to an investigation of the behaviors that were effective. Additionally, during the 1980s statistical advances allowed researchers to conduct meta-analyses and this advent allowed trait theorists to create a comprehensive picture of previous leadership research rather than rely on the qualitative reviews of the past. Equipped with new methods, leadership researchers revealed the following, Individuals can and do emerge as leaders across a variety of situations, fail to consider patterns or integrations of multiple attributes. Do not distinguish between those leader attributes that are generally not malleable over time and those that are shaped by, do not consider how stable leader attributes account for the behavioral diversity necessary for effective leadership. Considering the criticisms of the theory outlined above, several researchers have begun to adopt a different perspective of leader individual differences—the leader attribute pattern approach. David McClelland, for example, posited that leadership takes a strong personality with a well-developed positive ego, to lead, self-confidence and high self-esteem are useful, perhaps even essential. Kurt Lewin, Ronald Lipitt, and Ralph White developed in 1939 the seminal work on the influence of leadership styles, the researchers evaluated the performance of groups of eleven-year-old boys under different types of work climate
Leader
–
General Petraeus talks with U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan
Leader
–
A graphical representation of the managerial grid model
Leader
–
Julius Caesar, one of the world's greatest military leaders
Leader
–
Niccolò Machiavelli 's
The Prince argues that it is better to be feared rather than to be loved.
28.
Professional revolutionaries
–
Functionally, the Leninist vanguard party was to provide the working class with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in Imperial Russia. As a political-science term, Leninism entered common usage in 1922, two years later, in July 1924, at the fifth congress of the Communist International, Grigory Zinoviev popularized the term Leninism to denote vanguard-party revolution. In the pamphlet What is to be Done, in the pamphlet Freedom to Criticise and Unity of Action, Lenin said, Full, inner-party democratic debate was Bolshevik Party practice under Lenin, even after the banning of party factions in 1921. Although a guiding influence in policy, Lenin did not exercise absolute power, under Stalin, the inner-party practice of democratic free debate did not continue after the death of Lenin in 1924. Democracy for the exploiters will be, in one or another form, is a question of the specific national features of this or that capitalism. In the soviet political system, the party would be one of many political parties competing for elected power. Nevertheless, the circumstances of the Red vs, to feed the populaces of town and country, Lenin instituted War Communism as a necessary condition—adequate supplies of food and weapons—for fighting the Russian Civil War. Lenin regarded the appearance of new socialist states in the countries as necessary to the strengthening Russias economy. In that, he was encouraged by the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Italian insurrection and general strikes of 1920, and industrial unrest in Britain, France, and the U. S. Lenin vs. To that end followed proposals reducing the powers of Party posts. Lenin advised Trotsky to emphasize Stalins recent bureaucratic alignment in such matters, despite advice to refuse any rotten compromise, Trotsky did not heed Lenins advice, and General Secretary Stalin retained power over the Communist Party and the bureaucracy of the soviet government. In the course of instituting government policy, Stalin promoted the doctrine of Socialism in One Country, hence, revolutionary workers should politically ally with peasant political organisations, but not with capitalist political parties. The Oppositionists Until exiled from Russia in 1929, Leon Trotsky helped develop and led the Left Opposition with members of the Workers Opposition, the Decembrists, the Stalinist economic policy vacillated between appeasing capitalist kulak interests in the countryside, and destroying them. Initially, the Stalinists also rejected the national industrialisation of Russia, in both cases, the Left Opposition denounced the regressive nature of the policy towards the kulak social class of wealthy peasants, and the brutality of forced industrialisation. Trotsky described the vacillating Stalinist policy as a symptom of the nature of a ruling bureaucracy. The anti–Trotsky campaign culminated in the executions of the Moscow Trials, in political practice, Leninism, despite its origin as Communist revolutionary praxis, was adopted throughout the political spectrum. In Singapore, the Peoples Action Party was organised Leninist political party featuring internal democracy, the PAP initiated single-party dominance in the government and popular politics of Singapore. In Marxist philosophy, the term Left communism identifies a range of the Communist political perspectives that are the left-wing among Communists, Left communism criticizes the political ideas that the Bolshevik Party practiced at certain periods of their history as a revolutionary vanguard party
Professional revolutionaries
–
The Russian revolutionary and later Soviet premier Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov) in 1920.
Professional revolutionaries
–
Leninism codified: the intellectual
György Lukács, the
philosopher of Leninism, c. 1952.
Professional revolutionaries
–
Leon Trotsky (ca. 1929)
29.
Mensheviks
–
The dispute originated at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, ostensibly over minor issues of party organization. Neither side held a consistent majority over the course of the congress, Lenins formulation required the party member to be a member of one of the partys organizations, whereas Martovs only stated that he should work under the guidance of a party organization. Martovs proposal was accepted by the majority of the delegates and that was also the reason behind the naming of the factions. Despite the outcome of the congress, the years saw the Mensheviks gathering considerable support among regular Social Democrats. In 1906, at the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, on the other hand, numerous disagreements about alliances and strategy emerged. The two factions kept their separate structures and continued to operate separately, both believed that the working class had to contribute to this revolution. In the event of a revolution, this was meant to lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, the Mensheviks came to argue for predominantly legal methods and trade union work, while the Bolsheviks favoured armed violence. Some Mensheviks left the party after the defeat of 1905 and joined legal opposition organisations, after a while, Lenins patience wore out with their compromising and in 1908 he called these Mensheviks liquidationists. The Menshevik faction split further in 1914 at the beginning of World War I, most Mensheviks opposed the war, but a vocal minority supported it in terms of national defense. They called for a revolution and transfer of all power to the Soviets. In March–April 1917, the Menshevik leadership conditionally supported the newly formed liberal Russian Provisional Government, from then on, the Mensheviks had at least one representative in the Provisional Government until it was overthrown by the Bolsheviks during the October Revolution of 1917. With Mensheviks and Bolsheviks diverging, Mensheviks and non-factional social democrats returning from exile in Europe, others, like Alexandra Kollontai, joined the Bolsheviks. A significant number, including Leon Trotsky and Adolf Joffe, joined the non-factional Petrograd-based anti-war group called Mezhraiontsy, a small but influential group of social democrats associated with Maxim Gorkys newspaper Novaya Zhizn refused to join either party. The Mensheviks got just 3. 3% of the national vote,41. 7% of their support came from the Transcaucasus. In Georgia about 75% voted for them, the right wing of the Menshevik party supported actions against the Bolsheviks, while the left wing, the majority of the Mensheviks at that point, supported the Left in the ensuing Russian Civil War. However, Martovs leftist Menshevik faction refused to break with the wing of the party, resulting in their press being sometimes banned. The Mensheviks opposed war communism, and in 1919 suggested an alternative programme, during World War I, some anti-war Mensheviks had formed a group called Menshevik-Internationalists. They were active around the newspaper Novaya Zhizn and took part in the Mezhraiontsy formation. After July 1917 events in Russia, they broke with the Menshevik majority that supported continued war with Germany, the Mensheviks-Internationalists became the hub of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party
Mensheviks
–
Leaders of the Menshevik Party at
Norra Bantorget in
Stockholm,
Sweden, May 1917.
Pavel Axelrod,
Julius Martov and
Alexander Martinov
Mensheviks
–
Noe Zhordania, Menshevik leader and Prime Minister of Georgia
30.
Russian Revolution of 1905
–
The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies and it led to Constitutional Reform including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. According to Sidney Harcave, author of The Russian Revolution of 1905, newly emancipated peasants earned too little, and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. A nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to them, banning strikes. Finally, the educated class fomented and spread radical ideas after a relaxing of discipline in universities allowed a new consciousness to grow among students, vladimir Lenin was a political theorist who also contributed his own ideology of how a revolution would be caused. In his book Imperialism he claimed that driven imperialism and the dependence on overseas markets would be a factor to revolution. This would cause a rivalry between the powers, leading to war. Taken individually, these issues might not have affected the course of Russian history, the government finally recognized these problems, albeit in a shortsighted and narrow-minded way. The minister of interior Plehve stated in 1903 that, after the problem, the most serious ones plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the revolution of 1905, every year, thousands of nobles in debt mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold them to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land and this plan was meant to prevent proletarianisation of the peasants. However, the peasants were not given land to provide for their needs. Their earnings were often so small that they could buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes. By the tenth year of Nicholas IIs reign, their total arrears in payments of taxes and dues was 118 million rubles, masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and sometimes walked hundreds of kilometres to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence and these violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so it created many committees to investigate their causes. The committees concluded that no part of the countryside was prosperous, some parts, although cultivated acreage had increased in the last half century, the increase had not been proportionate to the growth of peasant populations, which had doubled. The investigations revealed many difficulties but could not find solution that were both sensible and acceptable to the government, nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected, European civilization was valued over Asian culture, and Christianity was on the whole considered more progressive and true than other religions
Russian Revolution of 1905
–
Manifestations before
Bloody Sunday
Russian Revolution of 1905
–
Nakhichevan, the corpses of Armenians after the
May massacre.
Russian Revolution of 1905
–
Troops in St. Petersburg.
Russian Revolution of 1905
–
Artistic impression of
Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg.
31.
Textile
–
A textile or cloth is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, hemp, Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or felting. The words fabric and cloth are used in textile assembly trades as synonyms for textile, however, there are subtle differences in these terms in specialized usage. Textile refers to any material made of interlacing fibres, a fabric is a material made through weaving, knitting, spreading, crocheting, or bonding that may be used in production of further goods. Cloth may be used synonymously with fabric but is often a piece of fabric used for a specific purpose. The word textile is from Latin, from the adjective textilis, meaning woven, from textus, the word cloth derives from the Old English clað, meaning a cloth, woven or felted material to wrap around one, from Proto-Germanic kalithaz. The discovery of dyed flax fibres in a cave in the Republic of Georgia dated to 34,000 BCE suggests textile-like materials were made even in prehistoric times. The production of textiles is a craft whose speed and scale of production has been altered almost beyond recognition by industrialization, however, for the main types of textiles, plain weave, twill, or satin weave, there is little difference between the ancient and modern methods. Textiles have an assortment of uses, the most common of which are for clothing and for such as bags. In the household they are used in carpeting, upholstered furnishings, window shades, towels, coverings for tables, beds, and other flat surfaces, in the workplace they are used in industrial and scientific processes such as filtering. Textiles are used in traditional crafts such as sewing, quilting. Textiles for industrial purposes, and chosen for other than their appearance, are commonly referred to as technical textiles. Technical textiles include textile structures for applications, medical textiles, geotextiles, agrotextiles. In all these applications stringent performance requirements must be met, woven of threads coated with zinc oxide nanowires, laboratory fabric has been shown capable of self-powering nanosystems using vibrations created by everyday actions like wind or body movements. Fashion designers commonly rely on textile designs to set their fashion collections apart from others, armani, the late Gianni Versace, and Emilio Pucci can be easily recognized by their signature print driven designs. Textiles can be made from many materials and these materials come from four main sources, animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic. In the past, all textiles were made from natural fibres, including plant, animal, in the 20th century, these were supplemented by artificial fibres made from petroleum. Textiles are made in various strengths and degrees of durability, from the finest gossamer to the sturdiest canvas, microfibre refers to fibres made of strands thinner than one denier
Textile
–
Sunday textile market on the sidewalks of
Karachi, Pakistan
Textile
–
Simple textile (magnified)
Textile
–
A small fabric shop in
Al-Mukalla, Yemen
Textile
–
Late antique textile,
Egyptian, now in the
Dumbarton Oaks collection
32.
Shuya, Ivanovo Oblast
–
Shuya is the third largest town in Ivanovo Oblast, Russia, located on the Teza River. The first record of Shuya is dated by 1393, since 1403, the area was held by a branch of the House of Suzdal, which got their name Shuysky after the town. In 1539, the town was sacked by Safa Giray of Kazan, in 1566, it was taken by Ivan the Terrible as his personal property into Oprichnina. In 1722, the town was visited by Peter the Great, Town status was granted to it in 1778. By the 19th century, Shuya was developed into a major flax-processing center, within the framework of administrative divisions, Shuya serves as the administrative center of Shuysky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the Town of Shuya—an administrative unit with the equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the Town of Shuya is incorporated as Shuya Urban Okrug, Nikolo-Shartomsky Abbey, situated 12 kilometers from Shuya, has one of the largest monastic communities in Russia. The cloister was first mentioned in 1425 and it has a cathedral from 1652 and a refectory from 1678. The belltower of the Resurrection Cathedral, is the tallest freestanding tower in the world. Notable people from Shuya include peasant Feodor Vassilyev, whose first wife still holds the record for most children ever born. Mikhail Frunze led textile workers in the town in an action during the Revolution of 1905. List of tallest Orthodox church buildings Shuysky Ивановская областная Дума, Закон №145-ОЗ от14 декабря2010 г. «Об административно-территориальном устройстве Ивановской области», в ред, Закона №2-ОЗ от4 февраля2015 г. «Об отдельных вопросах правового регулирования в сфере присвоения наименований географическим объектам и переименования географических объектов на территории Ивановской области», Вступил в силу через10 дней после дня официального опубликования. Опубликован, Собрание законодательства Ивановской области, №50,30 декабря2010 г, Закон №124-ОЗ от29 сентября2004 г. «О муниципальных районах и городских округах», в ред, Закона №7-ОЗ от12 января2005 г «О внесении изменений в Закон Ивановской области О муниципальных районах и городских округах». Вступил в силу1 октября2004 г, Опубликован, Ивановская газета, №189,1 октября2004 г. Official website of Shuya Nikolo-Shartomsky Abbey Museum of Mikhail Frunze
Shuya, Ivanovo Oblast
–
Resurrection Cathedral and its bell tower in Shuya
Shuya, Ivanovo Oblast
–
Central Market Place, 1890s
Shuya, Ivanovo Oblast
–
Nikolo-Shartomsky Abbey
33.
Ivanovo
–
Ivanovo is a city and the administrative center of Ivanovo Oblast, Russia, located 254 kilometers from Moscow and approximately 100 kilometers from Yaroslavl, Vladimir, and Kostroma. The Uvod River, a tributary of the Klyazma, flows north to south. There are also two rivers in Ivanovo, the Talka and the Kharinka, the city is first mentioned in 1561, when it was given to the Cherkassky princely family by Ivan IV, after the latters marriage to Maria Cherkasskaya. However, the relevant document has since been lost, the modern city was created by merging the old flax-processing village Ivanovo with the industrial Voznesensky Posad in 1871. Yakov Garelin—a patron of arts, historian, manufacturer, and public figure—is considered to be the founder of the city, under his government, the city began to develop, industrialise, and grow. Until 1932, the name of the city was Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Because of its manufacturing industry, Ivanovo earned the sobriquet of the Russian Manchester during the 19th century. By the early 20th century, Ivanovo was competing with Łódź for the title of the textile production center of Europe. As the workers living conditions were appalling, the strikes were frequent, one of these strikes led to the first Russian revolution. According to the Soviet historiography, the Ivanovo Soviet was one of the first soviets in history, in 1937 the city opened the Interdom - a school for children of foreign Communists, including high learning. In Ivanov the legendary air squadron Normandie-Niemen began operations, by agreement between the Soviet government and the Free French government-in-exile in late 1942, a group of French pilots was sent to the Soviet Union. Construction of a new airport began on the outskirts of the city. The pilots were provided with decent housing, and 14 Yak-1 fighter aircraft, during 1943, the French fought alongside the Soviet Air Forces. After the war, along with the textile industry in Ivanovo engineering. In the 1960s, the city became the center of the Upper-Economic Council, the 1980s saw the accelerated pace of housing construction. Since the beginning of the 21st century there has been declining production in Ivanovo, in the first decade of the century, a large number of enterprises were closed. The weaving factories BIM, BAT melange Plant and other companies in the textile industry ceased to exist. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as the City of Ivanovo—an administrative unit with the equal to that of the districts
Ivanovo
–
Lenina Avenue
Ivanovo
–
Industrial and art museum
Ivanovo
–
Ship-house
Ivanovo
–
Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology
34.
Capital punishment
–
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government sanctioned practice whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, etymologically, the term capital in this context alluded to execution by beheading. Fifty-six countries retain capital punishment,103 countries have abolished it de jure for all crimes, six have abolished it for ordinary crimes. Capital punishment is a matter of controversy in various countries and states. In the European Union, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment, also, the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, prohibits the use of the death penalty by its members. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, in 2007,2008,2010,2012 and 2014, non-binding resolutions calling for a moratorium on executions. Although most nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the population live in countries where executions take place, such as China, India. Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime, in most countries that practise capital punishment it is reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, defection or as part of military justice. In many countries use the death penalty, drug trafficking is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are punished by the death penalty, in militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history, most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishment for wrongdoing generally included compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment, usually, compensation and shunning were enough as a form of justice. The response to crime committed by neighbouring tribes or communities included a formal apology, a blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails or an arbitration system is non-existent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of a system based on state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes or a code of honour, acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished. However, in practice, it is difficult to distinguish between a war of vendetta and one of conquest. Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context, compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include material compensation, exchange of brides or grooms, or payment of the blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, the person offered for execution did not have to be an original perpetrator of the crime because the system was based on tribes, not individuals
Capital punishment
–
Anarchist
Auguste Vaillant guillotined in France in 1894
Capital punishment
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Hanged, drawn and quartered: the execution of
Hugh Despenser the Younger, as depicted in the
Froissart of Louis of Gruuthuse
Capital punishment
–
The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by
Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883).
Roman Colosseum.
Capital punishment
–
Giovanni Battista Bugatti, executioner of the
Papal States between 1796 and 1865,
carried out 516 executions (Bugatti pictured offering
snuff to a condemned prisoner).
Vatican City abolished
its capital punishment statute in 1969.
35.
Death row
–
Death row is a special section of a prison in the United States that houses inmates who are awaiting execution after being sentenced to death for the conviction of a capital crime. The US is the only Western country that applies the death penalty for capital crimes. Thirty-one of its 50 states and the federal government authorize this penalty, Death row is a term also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. After a person is guilty of a capital offense, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is up to a jury to decide whether to give the death sentence, if sentenced to death, a convict will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which can take years. Since 1973 and later, with an number of persons being freed since 1993, some 157 persons as of January 2017 have been exonerated on appeal. Alabama is the state in the United States that allows a judge to overrule even a unanimous jury decision. Judges are elected to office and some run on their record of imposing the death penalty, in 2016 Florida repealed its law to allow judicial intervention and the Delaware Supreme Court ruled that year that the practice was unconstitutional. If sentenced to death, a convict will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, in the United States,157 inmates have been exonerated and freed from death row from 1973 to January 2017. An increasing number of these exonerations have been won since 1993, Louisiana and several other states hold people on death row in solitary confinement and extreme isolation, in windowless cells 23 hours a day, with virtually no human contact except with guards. Such prisoners are not allowed to take part in any educational or work programs, opponents of capital punishment claim that a prisoners extreme social isolation on death row and uncertainty over his or her fate constitute a form of mental cruelty. Long-time death row inmates are liable to become ill, if they are not already. This is referred to as the death row phenomenon, in extreme cases some inmates may attempt to commit suicide. Each man had held in solitary more than 25 years. Angola has 71 prisoners on death row, but the state has executed a small proportion of such prisoners, so inmates sentenced to death may serve nearly life in solitary. In the United States, prisoners may wait many years as they appeal their convictions or sentences, the time between sentencing and execution has increased relatively steadily from 1977, when some states reinstated their death penalties through new legislation, to 2010. There was a 22% jump between 1989 and 1990, as DNA evidence began to be used regularly in trial. Finding evidence and testing of DNA took more time, although the use of lethal injections was declared constitutional, there has been increasing controversy associated with its use
Death row
–
United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute houses the male death row prisoners sentenced by the
U.S. federal government
Death row
–
San Quentin State Prison houses the male death row prisoners sentenced by the U.S. state of
California
Death row
–
Allan B. Polunsky Unit houses the male death row prisoners sentenced by the U.S. state of
Texas
Death row
–
Louisiana State Penitentiary, which houses the male death row prisoners sentenced by the State of
Louisiana
36.
Penal labour
–
Penal labour is a generic term for various kinds of unfree labour which prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context, forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude, penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour. The term may refer to several related scenarios, labour as a form of punishment, the system used as a means to secure labour. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, large-scale implementations of penal labour include labour camps, prison farms, penal colonies, penal military units, penal transportation, or aboard prison ships. Punitive labour, also known as labour, prison labour. Punitive labour encompasses two types, productive labour, such as work, and intrinsically pointless tasks used as primitive occupational therapy. Sometimes authorities turn prison labour into an industry, as on a farm or in a prison workshop. On the other hand, for example in Victorian prisons, inmates commonly were made to work the treadmill, in some cases, similar punishments included turning the crank machine or carrying cannonballs. Semi-punitive labour also included oakum-picking, teasing apart old tarry rope to make caulking material for sailing vessels, section 1 of the Penal Servitude Act 1891 makes provision for enactments which authorise a sentence of penal servitude but do not specify a maximum duration. It must now be subject to section 1 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948. Sentences of penal servitude were served in prisons and were controlled by the Home Office. After sentencing, convicts would be classified according to the seriousness of the offence of which they were convicted, first time offenders would be classified in the Star class, persons not suitable for the Star class, but without serious convictions would be classified in the intermediate class. Habitual offenders would be classified in the Recidivist class, care was taken to ensure that convicts in one class did not mix with convicts in another. Penal servitude included hard labour as a standard feature, notable recipients of hard labour under British law include Oscar Wilde and John William Gott. In Inveraray Jail from 1839 prisoners worked up to ten hours a day, most male prisoners made herring nets or picked oakum, those with skills were often employed where the skills could be used, such as shoemaking, tailoring or joinery. Female prisoners picked oakum, knitted stockings or sewed, forms of labour for punishment included the treadmill, shot drill, and the crank machine. Prisoners had to six or more hours a day, climbing the equivalent of 5,000 to 14,000 vertical feet. While the purpose was mainly punitive, the mills could have used to grind grain, pump water
Penal labour
–
Female convicts chained together by their necks for work on a road.
Dar es Salaam,
Tanganyika c.1890-1927.
Penal labour
–
Convict labourers in
Australia in the early 20th century.
Penal labour
–
Prisoners picking oakum at
Coldbath Fields Prison in London (ca. 1864).
Penal labour
–
Inmates sewing in a
Brazilian prison.
37.
Siberia
–
Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
Siberia
–
Painting of
Chukchi by
Louis Choris, 1816
Siberia
–
Siberian Federal District Geographic Russian Siberia Siberia in its widest definition and historical use
Siberia
–
The tower of a 17th-century
ostrog fort in
Yakutsk
Siberia
–
Siberian
Cossack family in
Novosibirsk
38.
Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai
–
Chita is a city and the administrative center of Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia, located at the confluence of the Chita and Ingoda Rivers and on the Trans-Siberian Railway,900 kilometers east of Irkutsk. For several centuries before the Russians arrived, local Mongolic and Turkic tribes inhabited the Chita region, pyotr Beketovs Cossacks founded Chita in 1653. After 1825, several of the Decembrists suffered exile to Chita, thus, many of the Decembrists were intellectuals and members of the middle class, and consequently their arrival had a positive effect. According to George Kennan, Among the exiles in Chita were some of the brightest, most cultivated, Chita was granted town status on July 11,1851. When Richard Maack visited the city in 1855, he saw a wooden town, with one, also wooden, church. He estimated Chitas population at under 1,000, but predicted that the city would soon experience fast growth, by 1885, Chitas population had reached 5,728, and by 1897 it increased to 11,500. At the end of the 19th century, many Muslims settled in Chita and these Muslims were mainly of Tatar origin. They settled down near the Jewish quarter and built a mosque, many Tatars living in Chita descend from these immigrants. Chita was occupied by the Japanese between 1918 and 1920, from 1920 to 1922, Chita served as the capital of the Far Eastern Republic. From the 1930s to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Chita was a closed city, during this period, foreigners were prohibited from traveling to Chita, as were many Russians. In 1945, Puyi, the last Emperor of China, and some of his associates were held prisoner in the city, as a municipal division, the city of Chita together with one rural locality in Chitinsky District is incorporated as Chita Urban Okrug. The city is subdivided into four districts, Chernovsky, Ingodinsky, Tsentralny. Chernovsky Administrative District used to be a settlement, which was incorporated into Chita in 1941. Chernovskiye mines themselves are a nature monument of international status. The Trans-Siberian Highway passes through Chita, two sections of the highway connect in Chita, the M55 Baikal Highway, which goes from Chita to Irkutsk, and the M58 Amur Highway, which goes from Chita to Khabarovsk. Chita is served by Kadala Airport, situated 15km to the west, FC Chita is Chitas association football club. An indoor arena for speed skating is planned, Chita experiences a borderline subarctic climate/humid continental climate with very cold, very dry winters and warm, wet summers. «Реестр административно-территориальных единиц и населённых пунктов Забайкальского края», в ред, Распоряжения №209-р от10 июня2014 г
Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai
–
Chita Mosque
Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai
–
Location of Zabaykalsky Krai in Russia
Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai
–
Chita railway station in 1910
Chita, Zabaykalsky Krai
–
Chita railway station today
39.
February Revolution
–
The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. The revolution centered on Petrograd, then the Russian capital, arguably beginning on 8 March, Revolutionary activity was largely confined to the capital and its vicinity, and lasted about eight days. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, on 12 March mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov. The revolution appeared to break out spontaneously, without any leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, bread rioters primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the citys garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, in all, over 1,300 people were killed in the protests of February 1917. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of the Imperial government in the spring of 1917, different historians apply different weights to different factors, liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Rabinowitch summarizes the main long-term and short-term causes, The February 1917 revolution, despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. As historian Richard Pipes writes, the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter. The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. Widespread strikes, riots and the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin ensued. These conditions caused much agitation among the working and professional classes. This tension erupted into revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917. The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, the economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed. In August 1914, all supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The exceptions included the Bolshevik Party and specifically Vladimir Lenin who argued it was not a war fighting. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, nearly six million casualties—dead, wounded and missing—had been accrued by January 1917
February Revolution
–
Wounded Russian soldiers retreating from the front
February Revolution
–
Putilov workers protesting in the streets
February Revolution
–
Meeting Germans in No Man's Land
February Revolution
–
Nikolay Chkheidze, first Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Petrograd Soviet
40.
Minsk
–
Minsk (Belarusian, Мінск pronounced, is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Belarus, situated on the Svislach and Nyamiha rivers. It is the centre of the Commonwealth of Independent States. As the national capital, Minsk has an administrative status in Belarus and is the administrative centre of Minsk Region. In 2013, it had a population of 2,002,600, the earliest historical references to Minsk date to the 11th century, when it was noted as a provincial city within the principality of Polotsk. The settlement developed on the rivers, in 1242, Minsk became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It received town privileges in 1499, from 1569, it was a capital of the Minsk Voivodeship in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It was part of a region annexed by the Russian Empire in 1793, from 1919 to 1991, after the Russian Revolution, Minsk was the capital of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union. Minsk will host the 2019 European Games, Minsk is located on the southeastern slope of the Minsk Hills, a region of rolling hills running from the southwest to the northeast – that is, to Lukomskaye Lake in northwestern Belarus. The average altitude above sea level is 220 metres, the physical geography of Minsk was shaped over the two most recent ice ages. There are six smaller rivers within the city limits, all part of the Black Sea basin, Minsk is in the area of mixed forests typical of most of Belarus. Pinewood and mixed forests border the edge of the city, especially in the north, some of the forests were preserved as parks as the city grew. The city was built on the hills, which allowed for defensive fortifications. Minsk has a warm summer humid continental climate, owing to its location between the strong influence of the moist air of the Atlantic Ocean and the dry air of the Eurasian landmass. Its weather is unstable and tends to change often, the average January temperature is −4.5 °C, while the average July temperature is 18.5 °C. The lowest temperature was recorded on 17 January 1940, at −40 °C and the warmest on 29 July 1936 at 35 °C and this results in frequent fogs, common in the autumn and spring. Minsk receives annual precipitation of 690 millimetres, of one third falls during the cold period. Throughout the year, most winds are westerly and northwesterly, bringing cool, similar climatic regimes are found in Stockholm, Sweden and in Halifax, Canada. The ecological situation is monitored by Republican Centre of Radioactive and Environmental Control, during 2003–2008 the overall weight of contaminants increased from 186,000 to 247,400 tons
Minsk
–
Victors' Avenue in Minsk
Minsk
–
Minsk. A view of Svislach river
Minsk
–
The Saviour Church (1577) is part of an archaeological preservation in
Zaslavl, 23 km (14 mi) northwest of Minsk.
41.
Militia
–
For instance, the members of some U. S. Army National Guard units are considered professional soldiers, as they are trained to maintain the same standards as their full-time counterparts. Militias thus can be military or paramilitary, depending on the instance, some of the contexts in which the term militia is used include, Forces engaged in defense activity or service, to protect a community, its territory, property, and laws. The entire able-bodied population of a community, town, county, or state, a subset of these who may be legally penalized for failing to respond to a call-up. A subset of these who actually respond to a call-up, regardless of legal obligation, a private, non-government force, not necessarily directly supported or sanctioned by its government. An irregular armed force enabling its leader to exercise military, economic, an official reserve army, composed of citizen soldiers. Called by various names in different countries, such as the Army Reserve, National Guard, the national police forces in several former communist states such as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries, but also in the non-aligned SFR Yugoslavia. The term was inherited in Russia and other former CIS countries, in France the equivalent term Milice has become tainted due to its use by notorious collaborators with Nazi Germany. A select militia is composed of a small, non-representative portion of the population, as regular military forces were insufficient to counter the British attackers, Santiago de Liniers drafted all males in the city capable of bearing arms into the military. These recruits included the peoples, who ranked low down in the social hierarchy. With these reinforcements, the British armies were twice defeated, the militias became a strong factor in the politics of the city afterwards, as a springboard from which the criollos could manifest their political ambitions. They were a key element in the success of the May Revolution, a decree by Mariano Moreno derogated the system of promotions involving criollos, allowing instead their promotion on military merit. The Argentine Civil War was waged by militias again, as both federalists and unitarians drafted common people into their ranks as part of ongoing conflicts and these irregular armies were organized at a provincial level, and assembled as leagues depending on political pacts. This system had declined by the 1870s, mainly due to the establishment of the modern Argentine Army, provincial militias were outlawed and decimated by the new army throughout the presidential terms of Mitre, Sarmiento, Avellaneda and Roca. Armenian militia also played a role in the Georgia-Abkhazia War of 1992–1993, in the Colony of New South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie proposed a colonial militia but the idea was rejected. Governor Ralph Darling felt a mounted force was more efficient than a militia. A military volunteer movement attracted wide interest during the Crimean War, following Federation, the various military reserve forces of the Commonwealth of Australia became the Citizen Military Force. In the beginning, members didnt have uniforms and often paraded in business attire and they were given instruction on guerrilla warfare, and later the private organization was taken over by the Australian Government and became part of the Australian Military Forces. After World War I, multiple militias formed as soldiers returned home to their villages, only to many of them occupied by Slovene
Militia
–
The Lexington Minuteman, a statue commemorating
Captain John Parker, a commander of Massachusetts militia forces during the
American Revolutionary War.
Militia
–
Peshmurga Kurdish Militia, cleaning weapons
Militia
–
The war standard of the Imeretian militia of the Imperial Russian Army. The inscription reads in Russian and Georgian: "To the Militia of Our Faithful Imeretian People for Exceptional Courage Displayed against the Mountaineers in 1838.".
Militia
–
Captain
John Smith's 1624 map of the Somers Isles (
Bermuda), showing
St. George's Town and related fortifications, including the
Castle Islands Fortifications with their garrisons of militiamen
42.
Belarus
–
Its capital and most populous city is Minsk. Over 40% of its 207,600 square kilometres is forested and its strongest economic sectors are service industries and manufacturing. In the aftermath of the 1917 Russian Revolution, Belarus declared independence as the Belarusian Peoples Republic, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia became a founding constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922 and was renamed as the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Belarus lost almost half of its territory to Poland after the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, during WWII, military operations devastated Belarus, which lost about a third of its population and more than half of its economic resources. The republic was redeveloped in the post-war years, in 1945 the Byelorussian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations, along with the Soviet Union and the Ukrainian SSR. The parliament of the declared the sovereignty of Belarus on 27 July 1990. Alexander Lukashenko has served as the president since 1994. Belarus has been labeled Europes last dictatorship by some Western journalists, Lukashenko continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy. Though not directly espousing communism like the five remaining communist countries of China, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and North Korea, in 2000 Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, with some hints of forming a Union State. Over 70% of Belaruss population of 9.49 million resides in urban areas, more than 80% of the population is ethnic Belarusian, with sizable minorities of Russians, Poles and Ukrainians. Since a referendum in 1995, the country has had two official languages, Belarusian and Russian, the Constitution of Belarus does not declare any official religion, although the primary religion in the country is Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Belarus is the only European country to retain capital punishment in both law and practice, the name Belarus is closely related with the term Belaya Rus, i. e. White Rus. There are several claims to the origin of the name White Rus, an alternate explanation for the name comments on the white clothing worn by the local Slavic population. A third theory suggests that the old Rus lands that were not conquered by the Tatars had been referred to as white, other sources claim that, before 1267, the land not conquered by the Mongols was considered White Rus. The name Rus is often conflated with its Latin forms Russia and Ruthenia, in some languages, including German and Dutch, the country is generally called White Russia to this day. The Latin term Alba Russia was used again by Pope Pius VI in 1783 to recognize the Society of Jesus there, exclaiming Approbo Societatem Jesu in Alba Russia degentem, approbo, approbo. The first known use of White Russia to refer to Belarus was in the century by Englishman Sir Jerome Horsey. During the 17th century, the Russian tsars used White Rus to describe the lands added from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Belarus
–
Stamp with the
Cross of St. Euphrosyne from 1992
Belarus
–
Flag
Belarus
–
Principalities of Kievan Rus'
Belarus
–
Khatyn Memorial. The Nazis murdered civilians in 5,295 different localities in
occupied Soviet Belarus.
43.
October Revolution
–
It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
October Revolution
–
Red Guards at Vulkan factory in 1917
October Revolution
–
Bolshevik (1920), by
Boris Kustodiev
October Revolution
–
A scene from the July Days. The army has just opened fire on street protesters.
October Revolution
–
Cruiser
Aurora
44.
Political commissar
–
The political commissar is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education and organization, and committed to the civilian control of the military. Historically, the commissaire politique first appeared in the French Revolution, guarding it against anti-Revolutionary thought, in the communist government established by the October Revolution, the political commissar remained in the Red Army until 1942. In the Red Army and the Soviet Army, the political commissar existed, by name, only during the 1918–24, 1937–40, in the periods of the Red Armys history when political officers were militarily subordinate to unit commanders, the position of political commissar did not exist. The political supervision of the Russian military was effected by the political commissar, revolutionary Military Councils were established at army-, front-, fleet-, and flotilla-level, comprising at least three members — commander and two political workers. The political workers were denominated members of the RVS, not commissars, in 1919, the title politruk was assigned to political officers at company level. Despite being official political commissars, they were not addressed as commissar, beginning in 1925, the politico-military doctrinal course towards edinonachalie was established, and the political commissar, as a military institution, was gradually abolished. Earlier, in 1924, the RVSs were renamed as Military Councils, such high-level political officers were known as ChVS, on 10 May 1937 the political commissar was reinstated to the Red Army, and Military Councils were created. These events derived from the purges that began in the Soviet armed forces. Again, in August 1940, the political commissars was abolished, yet the Military Councils continued throughout the German-Soviet War, below army level, the edinonachalie system was restored. In July 1941, consequent to the Red Army’s defeats at war’s start, the commissar had an influential role as a second commander within the military units during this time. Their ranks and insignia generally paralleled those of officers, when this proved less-than-effective, General Konev asked Stalin to subordinate the political officer to commanding officers, the commissars work was refocused to morale-related functions. The term commissar itself was abolished in August 1942, and at the company- and regiment-level. Though no longer known by the original title, political officers were retained by all the Soviet armed forces. Soviet Army, Soviet Navy, Soviet Air Force, Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, et al, the position of political commissar also exists in the Peoples Liberation Army of China. Usually, the political commissar is a military officer, although this position has been used to give civilian party officials some experience with the military. The political commissar was head of a party cell within the military, however, today the political commissar is largely responsible for administrative tasks such as public relations and counseling, and mainly serves as second-in-command. The position of political commissar also exists in the Republic of China Army of the Republic of China, opposed to this was Sun Li-jen, who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute. Chiang Ching-kuo then arrested Sun Li-jen, charging him of conspiring with the American CIA of plotting to overthrow Chiang Kaishek, Sun was placed under house arrest in 1955
Political commissar
–
Brigade commissar
Leonid Brezhnev (right) giving a Communist party membership card to a soldier (1942)
45.
Alexander Kolchak
–
Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak CB was a polar explorer and commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, who fought in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. His government was based in Omsk, in southwestern Siberia, for a year and a half, Kolchak was the internationally recognised leader of Russia. As his White forces fell apart, he was betrayed and captured by independent units who handed him over to local Bolsheviks, Kolchak was born in Saint Petersburg in 1874 to a family of minor Russian nobility. His father was a retired major-general of the Marine Artillery and a veteran of the 1854 siege of Sevastopol, Kolchak was educated for a naval career, graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1894 and joining the 7th Naval Battalion. He was soon transferred to the Russian Far East, serving in Vladivostok from 1895 to 1899 and he then returned to western Russia and was based at Kronstadt, joining the Russian Polar expedition of Eduard Toll on the ship Zarya in 1900 as a hydrologist. After considerable hardship, Kolchak returned in December 1902, Eduard Toll with three other explorers continued further north and were lost, Kolchak took part in two Arctic expeditions and for a while was nicknamed Kolchak-Poliarnyi. For his explorations Kolchak received the highest award of the Russian Geographical Society, in December 1903, Kolchak was en route to St. In the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War, he served as officer on the cruiser Askold. He made several sorties to lay naval mines, one of which succeeded in sinking the Japanese cruiser Takasago. He was decorated with the Order of St. Anna 4th class for the exploit, as the blockade of the port tightened and the Siege of Port Arthur intensified, he was given command of a coastal artillery battery. He was wounded in the battle for Port Arthur and taken as a prisoner of war to Nagasaki. His poor health— led to his repatriation before the end of the war, Kolchak was awarded the Golden Sword of St. George with the inscription For Bravery on his return to Russia. He served on the Naval General Staff from 1906, helping draft a shipbuilding program, a program, and developing a new protection plan for St. Petersburg. Kolchak took part in designing the special icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, based in Vladivostok, these vessels were sent on cartographic expedition to the Bering Strait and Cape Dezhnev. Kolchak commanded the Vaigach during this expedition and later worked at the Academy of Sciences with the materials collected by him during expeditions. His study, The Ices of the Kara and Siberian Seas, was printed in the Proceedings of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and is considered the most important work on this subject. Extracts from it were published under the title The Arctic Pack, in 1910 he returned to the Naval General Staff, and in 1912 he was assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet. The onset of the First World War found him on the flagship Pogranichnik, commanding Admiral Essen was not satisfied to remain on the defensive and ordered Kolchak to prepare a scheme for attacking the approaches of the German naval bases
Alexander Kolchak
–
Admiral Kolchak
Alexander Kolchak
–
Kolchak on Zarya
Alexander Kolchak
–
Signature Supreme Ruler Alexander Kolchak
Alexander Kolchak
–
Draft Russian government Сoat of arms
46.
White movement
–
Remnants and continuations of the movement, some of which only had narrow support, endured within the wider White émigré community until after the fall of Communism. The Whites had the aim of bringing about law and order and the salvation of Russia, fighting against traitors, barbarians. They worked to remove Soviet organizations and functionaries in White-controlled territory, overall, the White Army was nationalistic, rejected ethnic particularism and separatism. The White Army generally believed in a united multinational Russia, amongst White Army members, anti-Semitism was widespread. Western sponsors expressed dismay at this, especially as the Bolsheviks had prohibited anti-Semitism, many of the White leaders were conservative, accepting autocracy while remaining suspicious of politics. Aside from being anti-Bolshevik and patriotic, the Whites had no set ideology or main leader, the White Armies did acknowledge a single provisional head of state, the so-called Supreme Governor of Russia, but this post was prominent only under the leadership of Admiral Alexander Kolchak. The movement had no set plan for foreign policy, Whites differed on policies toward Germany, the Whites wanted to keep from alienating any potential supporters and allies, and thus saw an exclusively monarchist position as a detriment to their cause and recruitment. White-movement leaders such as Anton Denikin advocated for Russians to create their own government, Admiral Alexander Kolchak succeeded in creating a temporary wartime government in Omsk, acknowledged by most other White leaders, only for it to fall with the loss of his armies. Some warlords who were aligned with the White movement, such as Grigory Semyonov and Roman Ungern von Sternberg, did not acknowledge any authority, consequently, the White movement had no set political leanings, members could be monarchists, republicans, rightists, Kadets, etc. Moreover, other parties supported the anti-Bolshevik White Army, among them the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. But depending on the time and place, those White Army supporters might also exchange right-wing allegiance for allegiance to the Red Army, the Volunteer Army in South Russia became the most prominent and the largest of the various and disparate White forces. Starting off as a small and well-organized military in January 1918, the Kuban Cossacks joined the White Army, and conscription of both peasants and Cossacks began. In late February 1918,4,000 soldiers under the command of General Aleksei Kaledin were forced to retreat from Rostov-on-Don due to the advance of the Red Army, in 1919 the Don Cossacks joined and the Army began drafting Ukrainian peasants. In that year, between May and October, the Volunteer Army grew from 64,000 to 150,000 soldiers and was better supplied than its Red counterpart. The White Armys rank-and-file comprised active anti-Bolsheviks, such as Cossacks, nobles, the White movement had access to various naval forces, both sea-going and river-based. Note especially the use of the Black Sea Fleet, aerial forces available to the Whites included the Slavo-British Aviation Corps. The Russian ace Alexander Kazakov operated within this unit, the White movements leaders and first members came mainly from the ranks of military officers. Many came from outside the nobility, such as generals Mikhail Alekseev, the White generals never mastered administration, they often utilized prerevolutionary functionaries or military officers with monarchististic inclinations for administering White-controlled regions
White movement
–
Coat of Arms of the Russian Government. 1919
White movement
–
"Why aren't you in the army?" Volunteer Army recruiting poster during the Russian Civil War.
White movement
–
The White Army: the flag of the Battalion of Death, later integral to the
Volunteer Army.
White movement
–
Blagoveshchensky Temple, a Russian Orthodox church in
Harbin, China
47.
Omsk
–
Omsk is a city and the administrative center of Omsk Oblast, Russia, located in southwestern Siberia 2,236 kilometers from Moscow. With a population of 1,154,116, it is Russias second-largest city east of the Ural Mountains after Novosibirsk, during the Imperial era, Omsk was the seat of the Governor General of Western Siberia, and later of the Governor General of the Steppes. For a brief period during the Russian Civil War in 1918–1920, it served as the capital of the anti-Bolshevik Russian State, Omsk is the administrative center of the Siberian Cossack Host. It also serves as the see of the bishop of Omsk and Tara, Omsk stretches along the banks of the north-flowing Irtysh at its confluence with the smaller Om River. The city has an elevation of 87 meters above sea level at its highest point. Omsk is an important railroad hub, and is the point for the northern and southern branches of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The city also serves as a hub for the regional highway network. River-port facilities handle both passengers and freight, giving the city access to navigating the extensive waterways of the Irtysh and Ob River. The waterways connect Omsk with the coal and mineral-mining towns further up the river in Kazakhstan, as well as with the oil, natural gas and lumber operations of northern Siberia. Omsk is served by the Tsentralny Airport, which access to domestic and international destinations, making the city an important aviation hub for Siberia. In 1768 Om fortress was relocated, the original Tobolsk and the restored Tara gates, along with the original German Lutheran Church and several public buildings are left from that time. Omsk was granted town status in 1782, but as the frontier receded and its military importance diminished, the town fell into lethargy. For that time Omsk became a center of the Siberian exile. From 1850 to 1854 Fyodor Dostoyevsky served his sentence in an Omsk katorga prison and he related his impressions of the city in a 1854 letter to his brother Mikhail, Omsk is a hateful hole. There is hardly a tree here, in summer—heat and winds that bring sandstorms, in winter—snowstorms. I have scarcely seen anything of the country round, the place is dirty, almost exclusively inhabited by military, and dissolute to the last degree. If I hadn’t discovered some human beings here, I should have gone utterly to the dogs, development of the city was catalyzed with the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s that affected significance of Omsk as a logistic hub. Many trade companies established stores and offices in Omsk defining the character of the city center, british, Dutch, and German consulates were established roughly at the same time in order to represent their commercial interests
Omsk
–
Pushkin State Library
Omsk
–
Clockwise from top: The Omsk Theater of Drama, The Vrubel Museum of Fine Arts, Lenina Street on the City Day, Tarskiye Gates
Omsk
–
Leningrad bridge over the Irtysh
Omsk
–
Mikhail Vrubel Museum of Fine Arts
48.
Red Army
–
The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
Red Army
–
Red Guards unit of the Vulkan factory
Red Army
–
Soviet Armed Forces
Red Army
–
Vladimir Lenin,
Klim Voroshilov,
Leon Trotsky and soldiers,
Petrograd, 1921
Red Army
–
Soviet tanks in the
Battle of Khalkhin Gol, August 1939
49.
Turkestan
–
Turkestan, also spelled Turkistan, literally means Land of the Turks in Persian. It refers to an area in Central Asia between Siberia to the north and Tibet, India and Afghanistan to the south, the Caspian Sea to the west, of Persian origin, the term Turkestan has never referred to a single national state. Muslim geographers first used the word to describe the place of Turkic peoples, Turkestan was used to describe any place where Turkic peoples lived. Anatolia during Ottoman rule was referred to as Turkestan by Ottoman writers, on their way southward during the conquest of Central Asia in the course of the 19th century, the Russians took the city of Turkestan in 1864. Mistaking its name for that of the region, they adopted the name of Turkestan for their new territory. It includes present-day Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang. Often, the history of Turkestan dates back to at least the third millennium BC. Many artifacts were produced in that period, and much trade was conducted, the region was a focal point for cultural diffusion, as the Silk Road traversed it. Turkestan covers the area of Central Asia and acquired its Turkic character from the 4th to 6th centuries AD with the incipient Turkic expansion, Huns conquered the area after they conquered Kashgaria in the early 2nd century BC. With the dissolution of the Huns empire, Chinese rulers took over Eastern Turkestan, arab forces captured it in the 8th century. The Persian Samanid dynasty subsequently conquered it and the area experienced economic success, the entire territory was held at various times by Turkic forces, such as the Göktürks until the conquest by Genghis Khan and the Mongols in 1220. Genghis Khan gave the territory to his son, Chagatai and the became the Chagatai Khanate. Timur took over the portion of Turkestan in 1369 and the area became part of the Timurid Empire. Eastern portion of Turkestan was also called Mogulistan, and continued to be ruled by descendants of Genghis Khan, known as Turan to the Persians, western Turkestan has also been known historically as Sogdiana, Ma waraun-nahr, and Transoxiana by Western travellers. Tajiks and Russians form sizable non-Turkic minorities and it is subdivided into Afghan Turkestan and Russian Turkestan in the West, and Xinjiang in the East. Aladdin, an Arabic Islamic story which is set in China, the title Malik al-Mashriq wal-Ṣīn was bestowed by the Abbāsid Caliph upon the Tamghaj Khan, the Samarqand Khaqan Yūsuf b. Western Liaos rule over Muslim Central Asia reinforced these Muslims view that Central Asia was a Chinese territory. For example, Turkestan and Chīn were identified with each other by Fakhr al-Dīn Mubārak Shāh, with China being identified as the country where the cities of Balāsāghūn, the Liao Chinese traditions and the Qara Khitais clinging helped the Qara Khitai avoid Islamization and conversion to Islam. The Qara Khitai used Chinese and Central Asian features in their administrative system, although in modern Urdu Chin means China, Chin referred to Central Asia in Muhammad Iqbals time, which is why Iqbal wrote that Chin is ours in his song Tarana-e-Milli
Turkestan
–
Map from
Mahmud al-Kashgari 's Diwanu Lughat at-Turk, showing the 11th century distribution of Turkic tribes.
Turkestan
–
Restaurant of an East Turkestani expat in
Istanbul,
Turkey
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