1.
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
2.
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
3.
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
4.
Mikhail Prokhorov
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Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov is a Russian billionaire, politician, and owner of the American basketball team the Brooklyn Nets. While he was running Norilsk Nickel, the became the worlds largest producer of nickel. He is the chairman of Polyus Gold, Russias largest gold producer. He resigned both positions to enter politics in June 2011 and he was third in the voting, amassing 7. 94% of the total vote. In June 2012 he declared the establishment of the new Russian political party called the “Party of Civic Platform”, as of 2017, Forbes estimates his wealth at $8.9 billion. Prokhorov was born in Moscow to Tamara and Dmitri Prokhorov and he has one sibling, an elder sister, Irina. His maternal grandmother, Anna Belkina, was a Jewish microbiologist who remained in Moscow during World War II to make vaccines while her daughter Tamara was moved east to safety. His paternal grandparents were relatively wealthy peasant farmers who were persecuted as class enemies under the Bolsheviks and his father, one of eight children, grew up poor, after his family lost everything and was forced to flee from one part of Siberia and restart life in another. Dmitri Prokhorov was trained as a lawyer and handled international relations for the Soviet Committee of Physical Culture, Tamara Prokhorova was a materials engineer at the Institute for Chemical Machine-Building. As part of his job, Dmitri Prokhorov had the opportunity to travel abroad and his wife worked as an engineer for a research group at the institute specializing in plastics. They died within a year of other, both from heart disease when they were in their late 50s. Prokhorov remained in their flat, which he shared with his sister and her daughter. He has never married and his sister, who runs his philanthropic organizations, a literary magazine. In 1989, Prokhorov graduated from the Moscow Finance Institute, from 1989–92, he worked in a management position at the International Bank for Economic Cooperation. When he departed in 2007, Prokhorovs share of the company was worth US $7.5 billion, Prokhorovs first major financial success came at MFK, which became a depository institution for the government. The bank acquired Soviet assets in the amount of US$300 to US$400 million, Prokhorov held the post of Chairman of the Board from 1992 until 1993. In 1994, Onexim became the depository and paying agent for Russian Treasury obligations, banks holding government funds earned handsome fees and paid minimal interest at a time when inflation was in the triple digits. In the 1990s, the Russian government needed loans to operate and their Onexim bank ran auctions for the government, in which bidders won the right to loan the Russian government money
5.
Brooklyn Nets
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The Brooklyn Nets are an American professional basketball team based in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The Nets compete in the National Basketball Association as a club of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. The team plays its games at Barclays Center. They are one of two NBA teams located in New York City, the other are the New York Knicks, the team was established in 1967 as a charter franchise of the NBAs rival league, the American Basketball Association. They played in New Jersey as the New Jersey Americans during their first season, before moving to Long Island in 1968, during this time, the Nets won two ABA championships. In 1976, the ABA merged with the NBA, and the Nets were absorbed into the NBA along with three other ABA teams, in 1977, the team returned to New Jersey and played as the New Jersey Nets from 1977 to 2012. During this time, the Nets won two consecutive Eastern Conference championships, but failed to win a league title, in the summer of 2012, the team moved to Barclays Center, and took its current geographic name. The Brooklyn Nets were founded in 1967 and initially played in Teaneck, New Jersey, in its early years, the team led a nomadic existence, moving to Long Island in 1968 and playing in various arenas there as the New York Nets. Led by Hall of Famer Julius Dr. J Erving, the Nets won two ABA championships in New York before becoming one of four ABA teams to be admitted into the NBA as part of the ABA–NBA merger in 1976. The team then moved back to New Jersey in 1977 and became the New Jersey Nets, the Boston Celtics were once rivals of the Nets during the early 2000s because of their respective locations and their burgeoning stars. The Nets were led by Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin, while the Celtics were experiencing newfound success behind Paul Pierce, the rivalry began to heat up in the 2002 Eastern Conference Finals, which was preceded by trash-talking from the Celtics who claimed Martin was a fake tough guy. Things progressed as the series started, and on-court tensions seemed to spill into the stands, celtic fans berated Kidd and his family with chants of Wife Beater. in response to Kidds 2001 domestic abuse charge. When the series returned to New Jersey, Nets fans responded, referring to a night club incident in 2000 in which Pierce was stabbed 11 times. When asked about the fan barbs being traded, Kenyon Martin stated, Our fans hate them, rondo was suspended for two games in the aftermath, while Wallace and Kevin Garnett were fined. The story was revisited on December 25, when Wallace grabbed Garnetts shorts and this move was billed as a merger of the two Atlantic Division teams. Celtics announcer Sean Grande said Its almost as if you found a home for these guys. You couldnt have found a better place and these guys will be in the New York market, theyll be on a competitive team, theyll stay on national TV. Its funny, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so with Celtics fans feeling the way they do about the Heat, feeling the way they do about the Knicks, the Nets are going to become almost the second team now
6.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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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
7.
Party of Growth
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Party of Growth (Russian, Партия Роста, Partiya Rosta, is a political party in Russia with representatives in several local legislatures. Although widely regarded as a party, it has already found itself in opposition to the presidential administration on several occasions. Right Cause was founded in November 2008 as a merger of three parties, Union of Rightist Forces, Civilian Power and Democratic Party of Russia. SPS and Civilian Power were both regarded as liberal parties, supporting free market reforms, protection of property and a decentralized federal government. The Democratic Party also supported liberal values, but its programme was more conservative, by 2008, the three parties were all in a state of decline. While SPS had achieved 8. 7% of votes in the 1999 Duma election, support for the Democratic Party and Civilian Power in the 2007 election was also low. With falling support and votes being lost to United Russia, the three parties, among others, considered mergers in order to survive, the decision to initiate the merger was made in October 2008, and in November the unification was completed. The new party, called Right Cause, was registered on 18 February 2009. The partys creation was supported by the administration of Dmitry Medvedev. Despite allegations that the party is too close to the Kremlin be an opposition party, Right Cause was involved in controversy. In January 2009, an arrest warrant was issued for Yevgeny Chichvarkin, founder of leading mobile phone retailer Euroset, the warrant was issued in absentia, as Chichvarkin is currently in London, England. The first major election where Right Cause took part was the Moscow City Duma elections in October 2009, the party was predicted to receive between 5-8% of the vote, but only managed to register one candidate, who was soundly defeated. The party currently has representation in several city legislatures, but lacks representation on the regional level, according to a survey conducted in March 2008, less than 2% of the Russian population were loyalists of the party. In April 2011, support for Right Cause was 2. 9%, the partys performance has been a disappointment, with analysts attributing its low popularity to the lack of a charismatic leader. In May,2011, billionaire businessman Mikhail Prokhorov announced a plan to join the leadership of Right Cause, prohkorov promised to make Right Cause Russias second largest party on a pro-business platform that will totally transform the country. In a television interview, Prokhorov said, we have got to return to a 14 percent tax, leave small business alone, simplify paperwork, I think we wont recognize the country in five to 10 years. On 25 June 2011, Prokhorov was elected to the leadership of the party at the party congress of 2011. At the acceptance ceremony, Prokhorov officially criticized the present ruling tandem of Medvedev-Putin, the structure of Russia, in September 2011, Prokhorov said he had quit Right Cause, condemning it as a puppet Kremlin party micromanaged by a puppet master in the president’s office
8.
Civic Platform (Russia)
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Civic Platform, is a political party in Russia. The party was formed on June 4,2012 by Mikhail Prokhorov, the party was formed with 500 members, the minimum number required by law for a party to be registered in Russia. According to Prokhorov, The Civil Platform is interested in participating in elections in cities with a population of 500,000. In Russia, there are 14 megacities and 23 cities where the population exceeds half a million people and that is where the most enterprising people live, those who form the framework of Russia. According his words, The party will support the development of the country. Mikhail Prokhorov began to participate in the Russian politics in May 2011 as he was announced that he would join the leadership of the Russian pro-business political party Right Cause, in June, Prokhorov was elected to the leadership of the party at the Right Cause Party Congress in 2011. However, in September, Prokhorov reversed course and resigned from Right Cause, surkov. 94% of the vote, and he promised to create a new party. In his official website he invited its supporters to take part in the selection of names for the party that is going to organize, among the proposal names were the New Russia Party, Democratic Party of Russia, and Free Russia Party. Finally, in June 2012, Prokhorov announced that the new party carry the name Civic Platform Party, sergey Andreyev who is the 4th Mayor of Tolyatti is the only representative from the party in the regional high office. List of political parties in Russia Official website Site organizing committee
9.
Order of Friendship
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It can trace its lineage to the Soviet Order of Friendship of Peoples. The badge of the Order of Friendship is made of gilded silver and it is a pentagonal star created from diverging golden rays. On the obverse at the center of the star is a terrestrial globe, the globe is surrounded by a green enamelled wreath of olive branches. On the reverse is the inscription Peace and Friendship and the serial number of the individual award. The distance between opposite tips of the star is 44 mm, when worn in the presence of other Orders and medals of the Russian Federation, the Order of Friendship is located immediately after the Order of Honour
10.
Legion of Honour
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The Legion of Honour, full name National Order of the Legion of Honour, is the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits, established 1802 by Napoléon Bonaparte. The order is divided into five degrees of increasing distinction, Chevalier, Officier, Commandeur, Grand Officier and Grand-Croix. The orders motto is Honneur et Patrie and its seat is the Palais de la Légion dHonneur next to the Musée dOrsay, in the French Revolution, all French orders of chivalry were abolished, and replaced with Weapons of Honour. The Légion however did use the organization of old French orders of chivalry, the badges of the legion also bear a resemblance to the Ordre de Saint-Louis, which also used a red ribbon. Napoleon originally created this to ensure political loyalty, the organization would be used as a facade to give political favours, gifts, and concessions. The Légion was loosely patterned after a Roman legion, with legionaries, officers, commanders, regional cohorts, the highest rank was not a grand cross but a Grand Aigle, a rank that wore all the insignia common to grand crosses. The members were paid, the highest of them extremely generously,5,000 francs to an officier,2,000 francs to a commandeur,1,000 francs to an officier,250 francs to a légionnaire. Napoleon famously declared, You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led, do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning. That is good only for the scholar in his study, the soldier needs glory, distinctions, rewards. This has been quoted as It is with such baubles that men are led. The order was the first modern order of merit, under the monarchy, such orders were often limited to Roman Catholics, and all knights had to be noblemen. The military decorations were the perks of the officers, the Légion, however, was open to men of all ranks and professions—only merit or bravery counted. The new legionnaire had to be sworn in the Légion and it is noteworthy that all previous orders were crosses or shared a clear Christian background, whereas the Légion is a secular institution. The jewel of the Légion has five arms, in a decree issued on the 10 Pluviôse XIII, a grand decoration was instituted. This decoration, a cross on a sash and a silver star with an eagle, symbol of the Napoleonic Empire, became known as the Grand Aigle. After Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French in 1804 and established the Napoleonic nobility in 1808, the title was made hereditary after three generations of grantees. Napoleon had dispensed 15 golden collars of the legion among his family and this collar was abolished in 1815. The Légion dhonneur was prominent and visible in the French Empire, the Emperor always wore it and the fashion of the time allowed for decorations to be worn most of the time
11.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
12.
Russians
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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
13.
Nornickel
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MMC Norilsk Nickel is a Russian nickel and palladium mining and smelting company. Its largest operations are located in the Norilsk–Talnakh area near the Yenisei River and it also has holdings near the Kola Peninsula at Nikel, Zapolyarny, and Monchegorsk, in western Finland at Harjavalta, in southern Africa in Botswana and South Africa, and in western Australia. MMC stands for Mining and Metallurgical Company, Norilsk Nickel is headquartered in Moscow and is the worlds leading producer of nickel and palladium. It is ranked among the top ten copper producers, the company is listed on MICEX-RTS. The key shareholders are Vladimir Potanins Interros and Oleg Deripaskas Rusal, in December 2010, Norilsk offered to buy out Rusals share for US$12 billion, but the offer was declined. Mining began in the Norilsk area in the 1920s, the Soviet government created the Norilsk Combine in 1935 and passed control to the NKVD. In 1943 Norilsk produced 4,000 tons of refined nickel, Mining and metal production continued first with Gulag forced labour, later with much volunteer labour owing to the comparatively good wages offered. In 1993 after the fall of the Soviet Union a joint-stock company was created, two years afterwards control over the deeply indebted company, which was bleeding cash at a rate of about $2m a day amid falling nickel prices, was given to a private company Interros. By the time the privatization was completed in 1997, the company became profitable, nowadays average pay is over $1,000 per month and workers enjoy two to three months of vacations, nevertheless, working and living conditions in Norilsk remain harsh. Starting in 2002, MMC Norilsk Nickel began purchasing gold mining assets, in 2003, the company took control of Stillwater Mining Company, the only US producer of palladium. Stillwater operates a platinum group metals facility in Stillwater, Montana in the USA, in November 2010, Norilsk Nickel announced that it was selling Stillwater. The key deal was completed on June 28,2007, when Norilsk Nickel acquired about 90 per cent of Canadas LionOre Mining International Ltd, the worlds 10th-largest nickel producer at the time. This takeover, valued at US$6.4 billion, is the biggest acquisition abroad by a Russian company, the nickel deposits of Norilsk-Talnakh are without doubt the largest nickel-copper-palladium deposits in the world. The deposit was formed 250 million years ago during the eruption of the Siberian Traps igneous province, the STIP erupted over one million cubic kilometres of lava, a large portion of it through a series of flat-lying lava conduits lying below Norilsk and the Talnakh Mountains. The Siberian Traps are considered to be responsible for the extinction event at the end of the Permian. The ore was formed when the erupting magma became saturated in sulphur, forming globules of pentlandite, chalcopyrite and these sulphides were then washed by the continuing torrent of erupting magma, and upgraded their tenor with nickel, copper, platinum, and palladium. The current resource known for these mineralised intrusion exceeds 1.8 billion tons, the ore is mined underground via several shafts, and a decline. The ore deposits are currently being extracted at >1,200 m below ground, the ore deposits are drilled from the surface
14.
Nickel
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Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a golden tinge. Nickel belongs to the metals and is hard and ductile. Meteoric nickel is found in combination with iron, a reflection of the origin of elements as major end products of supernova nucleosynthesis. An iron–nickel mixture is thought to compose Earths inner core, use of nickel has been traced as far back as 3500 BCE. Nickel was first isolated and classified as an element in 1751 by Axel Fredrik Cronstedt. The elements name comes from a mischievous sprite of German miner mythology, Nickel, an economically important source of nickel is the iron ore limonite, which often contains 1–2% nickel. Nickels other important ore minerals include garnierite, and pentlandite, major production sites include the Sudbury region in Canada, New Caledonia in the Pacific, and Norilsk in Russia. Nickel is slowly oxidized by air at room temperature and is considered corrosion-resistant, historically, it has been used for plating iron and brass, coating chemistry equipment, and manufacturing certain alloys that retain a high silvery polish, such as German silver. About 6% of world production is still used for corrosion-resistant pure-nickel plating. Nickel-plated objects sometimes provoke nickel allergy, Nickel has been widely used in coins, though its rising price has led to some replacement with cheaper metals in recent years. Nickel is one of four elements that are ferromagnetic around room temperature, alnico permanent magnets based partly on nickel are of intermediate strength between iron-based permanent magnets and rare-earth magnets. The metal is valuable in modern times chiefly in alloys, about 60% of world production is used in nickel-steels, other common alloys and some new superalloys comprise most of the remainder of world nickel use, with chemical uses for nickel compounds consuming less than 3% of production. As a compound, nickel has a number of chemical manufacturing uses. Nickel is a nutrient for some microorganisms and plants that have enzymes with nickel as an active site. Nickel is a metal with a slight golden tinge that takes a high polish. It is one of four elements that are magnetic at or near room temperature. Its Curie temperature is 355 °C, meaning that bulk nickel is non-magnetic above this temperature, the unit cell of nickel is a face-centered cube with the lattice parameter of 0.352 nm, giving an atomic radius of 0.124 nm
15.
Palladium
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Palladium is a chemical element with symbol Pd and atomic number 46. It is a rare and lustrous silvery-white metal discovered in 1803 by William Hyde Wollaston and he named it after the asteroid Pallas, which was itself named after the epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, acquired by her when she slew Pallas. Palladium, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium and osmium form a group of elements referred to as the platinum group metals and these have similar chemical properties, but palladium has the lowest melting point and is the least dense of them. More than half the supply of palladium and its congener platinum is used in catalytic converters, Palladium is also used in electronics, dentistry, medicine, hydrogen purification, chemical applications, groundwater treatment, and jewelry. Palladium is a key component of cells, which react hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity, heat. Ore deposits of palladium and other PGMs are rare, recycling is also a source, mostly from scrapped catalytic converters. The numerous applications and limited supply sources result in considerable investment interest, Palladium belongs to group 10 in the periodic table, but the configuration in the outermost electron shells is atypical for group 10. Fewer electron shells are filled than the directly preceding it. The valence shell has eighteen electrons – ten more than the eight found in the shells of the noble gases from neon onward. Palladium is a soft metal that resembles platinum. It is the least dense and has the lowest melting point of the platinum group metals and it is soft and ductile when annealed and is greatly increased in strength and hardness when cold-worked. Palladium dissolves slowly in concentrated acid, in hot, concentrated sulfuric acid. It dissolves readily at room temperature in aqua regia, common oxidation states of palladium are 0, +1, +2 and +4. Palladium was first observed in 2002, Palladium films with defects produced by alpha particle bombardment at low temperature exhibit superconductivity having Tc=3.2 K. Naturally occurring palladium is composed of seven isotopes, six of which are stable, the most stable radioisotopes are 107Pd with a half-life of 6.5 million years, 103Pd with 17 days, and 100Pd with 3.63 days. Eighteen other radioisotopes have been characterized with atomic weights ranging from 90.94948 u to 122.93426 u and these have half-lives of less than thirty minutes, except 101Pd, 109Pd, and 112Pd. For isotopes with atomic mass unit values less than that of the most abundant stable isotope, 106Pd, the primary mode of decay for those isotopes of Pd with atomic mass greater than 106 is beta decay with the primary product of this decay being silver. Radiogenic 107Ag is a product of 107Pd and was first discovered in 1978 in the Santa Clara meteorite of 1976
16.
Polyus Gold
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Polyus Gold International is the largest gold producer in Russia and one of the top 10 gold miners globally by ounces produced. As of the quarter of 2014, the company was the worlds 8th-largest producer of gold. The company holds the third largest gold reserves with over 90 million ounces of proven. Polyus Gold International, the new UK-based holding company for Russias biggest gold-miner, Polyus Gold International has a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange and is the largest London-listed gold producer gold output and reserves. Additionally, Polyus Gold International GDRs are traded OTC in the US, official website of Polyus Gold Polyus Gold companies grouped at OpenCorporates
17.
Russian presidential election, 2012
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The 2012 Russian presidential election was held on 4 March 2012. There were five officially-registered candidates, four representatives of registered parties, the election was for a new, extended term of six years. Putin immediately offered Medvedev to stand on the United Russia ticket in the elections in December. All independents had to register by 15 December, and candidates nominated by parties had to register by 18 January, the final list was announced on 29 January. On 2 March, outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev addressed the nation on the television channels about the following presidential election. He invited the citizens of Russia to vote in the election to be held on 4 March 2012, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received 63. 64% of the vote with almost 100% of the votes counted. With this election, Putin secured a third term in the Kremlin. The next presidential election will be in 2018, the following are individuals who submitted documents required to be officially registered as a presidential candidate to the Central Election Commission. Mikhail Prokhorov made a tour around the country, meeting with his supporters in various cities and he was the only candidate to do so except for Putin, who, however, visited Russias regions as a part of his Prime Minister of Russia duties. In the course of the 2012 presidential campaign, in order to present his manifesto, in those articles, he presented his vision of the problems which Russia successfully solved in the last decade and the goals yet to be achieved. The topics of the articles were as follows, the general overview, during the campaign Putin made a single outdoor public speech at a 100, 000-strong rally of his supporters in the Luzhniki Stadium on 23 February, Russias Defender of the Fatherland Day. In the speech he called not to betray the Motherland, but to love her, to unite around Russia and to work together for the good and he said that foreign interference in Russian affairs should not be allowed, that Russia has its own free will. Putin cited Lermontovs poem Borodino and ended the speech with Vyacheslav Molotovs famous Great Patriotic War slogan The Victory Shall Be Ours, the BBC reported that some attendees claimed they had been made to take part in the rally or paid. Some said they had been told they were attending a folk festival, after Putin spoke, popular folk band Lubeh took to the stage. Vladimir Volfovich Zhirinovsky is a veteran of Russian politics who has participated in five elections in Russia. Zhirinovskys campaign slogan for 2012 was Vote Zhirinovsky, or things will get worse, proshka, an donkey owned by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, became prominent during the presidential campaign, when he was filmed in an election advertisement video. In September 2011, Gennady Zyuganov again became the CPRFs candidate for the Russian presidential election, there were over 108,000,000 eligible voters and almost all 95,000 polling stations had webcams to observe the voting process. International observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe found that all competitors had access to the media
18.
Forbes
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Forbes is an American business magazine. Published bi-weekly, it features articles on finance, industry, investing. Forbes also reports on related subjects such as technology, communications, science, politics and its headquarters is located in Jersey City, New Jersey. Primary competitors in the business magazine category include Fortune and Bloomberg Businessweek. The magazine is known for its lists and rankings, including its lists of the richest Americans. Another well-known list by the magazine is The Worlds Billionaires list, the motto of Forbes magazine is The Capitalist Tool. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes, and its CEO is Mike Perlis, Forbes, a financial columnist for the Hearst papers, and his partner Walter Drey, the general manager of the Magazine of Wall Street, founded Forbes magazine on September 15,1917. Forbes provided the money and the name and Drey provided the publishing expertise, the original name of the magazine was Forbes, Devoted to Doers and Doings. Drey became vice-president of the B. C. Forbes Publishing Company, while B. C. Forbes became editor-in-chief, B. C. Forbes was assisted in his later years by his two eldest sons, Bruce Charles Forbes and Malcolm Stevenson Forbes. Bruce Forbes took over on his fathers death, and his strengths lay in streamlining operations, during his tenure, 1954–1964, the magazines circulation nearly doubled. On Malcolms death, his eldest son Malcolm Stevenson Steve Forbes Jr. became President and Chief Executive of Forbes, between 1961 and 1999 the magazine was edited by James Michaels. In 1993, under Michaels, Forbes was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. com, a 2009 New York Times report said,40 percent of the enterprise was sold. For a reported $300 million, setting the value of the enterprise at $750 million, according to Mark M. Edmiston of AdMedia Partners, Its probably not worth half of that now. The companys headquarters moved to the Newport section of downtown Jersey City. In November 2013, Forbes Media, which publishes Forbes magazine, was put up for sale and this was encouraged by Elevation Partners, of whom were minority shareholders. Sales documents prepared by Deutsche Bank revealed that the publishers 2012 EBITDA was $15 million, Forbes reportedly sought a price of $400 million. In July 2014, Forbes sold a majority of itself to Integrated Whale Media Investments, Steve Forbes and his magazines writers offer investment advice on the weekly Fox TV show Forbes on Fox and on Forbes On Radio. Other company groups include Forbes Conference Group, Forbes Investment Advisory Group, from the 2009 Times report, Steve Forbes recently returned from opening up a Forbes magazine in India, bringing the number of foreign editions to 10
19.
Russian Jews
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Jews in the Russian Empire have historically constituted a large religious diaspora, the vast territories of the Russian Empire at one time hosted the largest population of Jews in the world. The presence of Jewish people in the European part of Russia can be traced to the 7th–14th centuries CE, in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Jewish population in Kiev, in present-day Ukraine, was restricted to a separate quarter. Evidence of the presence of Jewish people in Muscovite Russia is first documented in the chronicles of 1471, during the reign of Catherine II in the 18th century, Jewish people were restricted to the Pale of Settlement within Russia, the territory where they could live or immigrate to. Beginning in the 1880s, waves of pogroms swept across different regions of the empire for several decades. More than two million Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920, mostly to the United States, before 1917 there were 300,000 Zionists in Russia, while the main Jewish socialist organization, the Bund, had 33,000 members. Only 958 Jews had joined the Bolshevik Party before 1917, thousands joined after the Revolution, the chaotic years of World War I, the February and October Revolutions, and the Russian Civil War had created social disruption that led to anti-Semitism. Some 150,000 Jews were killed in the pogroms of 1918–1922,125,000 of them in Ukraine,25,000 in Belarus and these were probably the largest-scale European massacres of Jews to date. The pogroms were perpetrated by anti-communist forces, sometimes, Red Army units engaged in pogroms as well. After a short period of confusion, the Soviets started executing guilty individuals, the Russian Civil War pogroms shocked world Jewry and rallied many Jews to the Red Army and the Soviet regime, and also strengthened the desire for the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people. In August 1919 the Soviet government arrested many rabbis, seized Jewish properties, including synagogues, the Jewish section of the Communist Party labeled the use of the Hebrew language reactionary and elitist and the teaching of Hebrew was banned. Zionists were persecuted harshly, with Jewish communists leading the attacks, following the civil war, however, the new Bolshevik governments policies produced a flourishing of secular Jewish culture in Belarus and western Ukraine in the 1920s. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Jews were 1.8 percent of the Soviet population, in 1934 the Soviet state established the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the Russian Far East, but the region never came to have a majority Jewish population. Today, the JAO is Russias only autonomous oblast and, aside of Israel, the observance of the Sabbath was banned in 1929, foreshadowing the dissolution of the Communist Partys Yiddish-language Yevsektsia in 1930 and worse repression to come. Numerous Jews were victimized in Stalins purges as counterrevolutionaries and reactionary nationalists, the share of Jews in the Soviet ruling elite declined during the 1930s, but was still more than double their proportion in the general Soviet population. According to Israeli historian Benjamin Pinkus, We can say that the Jews in the Soviet Union took over the privileged position, in the 1930s, many Jews held high rank in the Red Army High Command, Generals Iona Yakir, Yan Gamarnik, Yakov Smushkevich and Grigori Shtern. During World War Two, an estimated 500,000 soldiers in the Red Army were Jewish, about 160,000 were decorated, and more than a hundred achieved the rank of Red Army general. Over 150 were designated Heroes of the Soviet Union, the highest award in the country, more than two million Soviet Jews are believed to have died during the Holocaust in warfare and in Nazi-occupied territories. For many years during this period, Russia had a rate of immigration to Israel than any other country
20.
World War II
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World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
21.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
22.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
23.
Comecon
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The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. According to some historians, Moscow was concerned about the Marshall Plan, Comecon was meant to prevent countries in the Soviets’ sphere of influence from moving towards that of the Americans and South-East Asia. Although Mongolia and Vietnam later gained full membership, China stopped attending Comecon sessions after 1961, Yugoslavia negotiated a form of associate status in the organization, specified in its 1964 agreement with Comecon. In the late 1980s there were ten members, the Soviet Union, six East European countries. Geography, therefore, no longer united Comecon members, wide variations in economic size and level of economic development also tended to generate divergent interests among the member countries. All these factors combined to give rise to significant differences in the member states expectations about the benefits to be derived from membership in Comecon, unity was provided instead by political and ideological factors. All Comecon members were united by a commonality of fundamental class interests, in 1949 the ruling communist parties of the founding states were also linked internationally through the Cominform, from which Yugoslavia had been expelled the previous year. Although the Cominform was disbanded in 1956, interparty links continued to be strong among Comecon members, Comecon provided a mechanism through which its leading member, the Soviet Union, sought to foster economic links with and among its closest political and military allies. The East European members of Comecon were also allied with the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact. There were three kinds of relationships – besides the 10 full memberships – with the Comecon, Yugoslavia was the country considered to have associate member status. On the basis of the 1964 agreement, Yugoslavia participated in twenty-one of the thirty-two key Comecon institutions as if it were a full member, finland, Iraq, Mexico, and Nicaragua had a nonsocialist cooperant status with Comecon. Because the governments of countries were not empowered to conclude agreements in the name of private companies. They were represented in Comecon by commissions made up of members of the government, the commissions were empowered to sign various framework agreements with Comecons Joint Commission on Cooperation. After 1957, Comecon allowed certain countries with communist or pro-Soviet governments to attend sessions as observers, in November 1986, delegations from Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Laos, Nicaragua, and the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen attended the 42nd Council Session as observers. The Comecon was founded in 1949 by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and market economies. This has been described as the moment of truth in the post-World War II division of Europe, according to the Soviet view the Anglo-American bloc and American monopolists. Furthermore, GATTs notion of nondiscriminatory treatment of trade partners was incompatible with notions of socialist solidarity, recent research by the Romanian researcher Elena Dragomir suggests that Romania played a rather important role in the Comecons creation in 1949. According to Dragomir, in December 1948, the Romanian leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej sent a letter to Stalin, at first, planning seemed to be moving along rapidly
24.
Alexander Khloponin
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Alexander Gennadyevich Khloponin was born on March 6,1965 in Colombo, Ceylon. Khloponin was the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia, Russia, Khloponin has a finance degree from the Finance Academy and was chairman of the board of the Norilsk Nickel company. In 2001, he became the governor of Taymyr Autonomous Okrug in northern Siberia, Khloponin won the election for governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai against Alexander Uss, another man with major business links. The race was close, with Khloponin winning only 48% of the vote even in the runoff. In 2002 Alexander Khloponin was named Person of the Year by Expert magazine, president Vladimir Putin on May 12 replaced Khloponin as envoy with the interior ministrys Lieut Gen Sergey Melikov
25.
Vladimir Potanin
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Vladimir Olegovich Potanin is a Russian billionaire and entrepreneur. He acquired his wealth notably through the controversial loans-for-shares program in Russia and he is one of the wealthiest men in Russia, with an estimated net worth of $13.5 billion. His long-term business partner was Mikhail Prokhorov until they decided to split in 2008, subsequently, they put their mutual assets in a holding company, Folletina Trading, until their asset division was agreed upon. Potanin was born in Moscow, in the former USSR, into a high-ranking communist family, in 1978, he attended the faculty of the International economic relations at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, which groomed students for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Upon graduating MGIMO in 1983, he followed in his fathers footsteps, in 1993, Potanin became President of United Export Import Bank. From 14 August 1996 until 17 March 1997 he worked as First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, since August 1998, Potanin has held the positions of both President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Interros Company. Potanins Interros owns 30% and controls Russian Nickel giant Norilsk Nickel, since December 2001 he has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In April 2003 Potanin was elected Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the State Hermitage, since 2005 Potanin has been a member of the Public Chamber of Russia. In Paris in January 2007, he was named an Officer of the prestigious Order of Arts, the French Ministry of Culture and Communications granted the award. In March 2009, he sued former business partner Mikhail Prokhorov for $29 million over a property disagreement in Moscow. In May 2015 Potatin has been named a co-defendant in a case in which Vneshekonombank is looking for damages for losses from the liquidation of a corporation where he owned a stake. Vladmir Potanins first marriage was to Natalia Potanina, the couple have three children, the pair divorced in December 2013. Potanin was married a second time in 2014 to Ekaterina, Potanin is fluent in Russian, English, and French. He is the owner of two luxury motoryachts, both built by Oceanco, The 88.5 m Nirvana, built in 2012, the 76 m Anastasia, built in 2008. List of Russian billionaires Russian oligarchs Biography Forbes. com – The Worlds Billionaires 2006 - #89 Vladimir Potanin Forbes. com – The Worlds Billionaires 2007 - #38 Vladimir Potanin
26.
Interros
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Interros is a Russian conglomerate controlled by Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin with large stakes in mining, metals, energy, finance, retail, real estate and other sectors. The companys headquarters are located in Moscow, the company was founded in the early 1990s by Vladimir Potanin and Mikhail Prokhorov, and the primary owner is Vladimir Potanin, with Mikhail Prokhorov having departed in 2007. Prokhorov would have received $7.5 billion for his shares in Interros, Interros is a major Russian private investment company, and the total value of Interros stakes in various companies amounts to $30 billion as of January 1,2007. The Group’s companies operate throughout Russia, Europe, Asia, the Company has main assets in the following areas, Metallurgy and Mining, Gold mining, Food and Agriculture, Mass media, Real estate and Tourism
27.
60 Minutes
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60 Minutes is an American newsmagazine television program broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt, in 2002,60 Minutes was ranked #6 on TV Guides 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time and in 2013, it was ranked #24 on TV Guides 60 Best Series of All Time. The New York Times has called it one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television, the program employed a magazine format, similar to that of the Canadian program W5, which had premiered two years earlier. Similar programs sprang up in Australia and Canada during the 1970s, Wallace said that the show aimed to reflect reality. The first magazine-cover chroma key was a photo of two helmeted policemen, Wallace and Reasoner sat in chairs on opposite sides of the set, which had a cream-colored backdrop, the more famous black backdrop did not appear until the following year. The logo was in Helvetica type with the word Minutes spelled in all lower-case letters, the trademark stopwatch, however, did not appear on the inaugural broadcast, it would not debut until several episodes later. Alpo dog food was the sponsor of the first program. Don Hewitt, who had been a producer of the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, however, the initial season was troubled by lack of network confidence, as the program did not garner ratings much higher than that of other CBS News documentaries. 60 Minutes struggled under that stigma during its first three years, changes to 60 Minutes came fairly early in the programs history. When Reasoner left CBS to co-anchor ABCs evening newscast, Morley Safer joined the team in 1970, and he took over Reasoners duties of reporting less aggressive stories. After a six-month hiatus in late 1971, CBS found a place for 60 Minutes in a portion of that displaced time,6,00 to 7,00 p. m. (Eastern,5,00 to 6,00 Central Time on Sundays. This took place because football telecasts were protected contractually from interruptions in the wake of the infamous Heidi Bowl incident on NBC in November 1968. When a family-oriented drama, Three for the Road, ended after a 12-week run in the fall, the newsmagazine took its place at 7,00 p. m. Eastern Time on December 7. S. This move, and the addition of then-White House correspondent Dan Rather to the team, made the program into a strong ratings hit and, eventually. This was no less than a stunning reversal of the poor ratings performances of documentary programs on network television. By 1976,60 Minutes became the program on Sunday nights in the U. S. By 1979, it had achieved the #1 spot among all programs in the Nielsen ratings. This success translated into great profits for CBS, advertising rates went from $17,000 per 30-second spot in 1975 to $175,000 in 1982
28.
Yulia Latynina
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Yulia Leonidovna Latynina is a Russian writer and journalist. She is a columnist for Novaya Gazeta and the most popular host at the Echo of Moscow radio station, Yulia Latynina has authored more than twenty books, including fantasy and crime fiction. Yulia Latynina was born in Moscow on 16 June 1966 and her father is poet Leonid Latynin and her mother is literary critic Alla Latynina. Yulia Latynina studied philology at the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute from 1983 to 1988, in 1993, she defended her PhD at the Gorky Institute of World Literature. Latynina worked for periodicals Segodnya, Izvestia, Expert, Sovershenno Secretno, Ezhednevny Zhurnal and she also worked for television channels NTV, ORT, TVS and REN TV. Currently, she is a columnist for Novaya Gazeta and a host of the show Access Code at radio station Echo of Moscow, Latynina was a member of the Committee 2008. In 2007, Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera named her best foreign journalist in a ceremony dedicated to Maria Grazia Cutuli. In 2008, Yulia Latynina received the Freedom Defenders Award from the United States Department of State, Yulia Latynina is known for her sharp and polemic statements. She argues that universal suffrage is bad for poor countries and she also criticizes western liberalism and human rights organizations which she thinks prevent winning the War on Terror. Yulia Latynina is generally regarded as an opponent of Russian political establishment, but has also scolded supporters of Igor Sutyagin, lawyer Boris Kuznetsov, who represented Sutyagin, hinted that the Russian Federal Security Service benefited from her columns, which she vigorously denied. List of Russian-language novelists Biography at the official website A Superpower in What, Yulia Latynina at the Cato Institute Yulia Latynina at The Moscow Times Yulia Latynina at Novaya Gazeta Yulia Latynina at Echo of Moscow Yulia Latynina at Lib. ru Yulia Latynina at Goodreads
29.
Icebreaker
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An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels. For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most normal ships lack, a hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice. Icebreakers clear paths by pushing straight into ice pockets, the bending strength of sea ice is so low that usually the ice breaks without noticeable change in the vessels trim. In cases of very thick ice, an icebreaker can drive its bow onto the ice to break it under the weight of the ship, even in the earliest days of polar exploration, ice-strengthened ships were used. These were originally wooden and based on existing designs, but reinforced, particularly around the waterline with double planking to the hull, bands of iron were wrapped around the outside. Sometimes metal sheeting was placed at the bows, stern and along the keel, such strengthening was designed to help the ship push through ice and also to protect the ship in case it was nipped by the ice. Nipping occurs when ice floes around a ship are pushed against the ship, trapping it as if in a vise and this vise-like action is caused by the force of winds and tides on ice formations. Although such wind and tidal forces may be exerted many miles away, the first boats to be used in the polar waters were those of the indigenous Arctic people. Their kayaks are small human-powered boats with a deck, and one or more cockpits. Such boats, of course, have no icebreaking capabilities, but they are light, in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Viking expansion reached the North Atlantic, and eventually Greenland and Svalbard in the Arctic. Vikings, however, operated their ships in the waters that were ice-free for most of the year, in the 11th century, in North-Russia started settling the coasts of the White Sea, named so for being ice-covered for over half of a year. The mixed ethnic group of the Karelians and the Russians in the North-Russia that lived on the shores of the Arctic Ocean became known as Pomors. Gradually they developed a type of small one- or two-mast wooden sailing ships, used for voyages in the ice conditions of the Arctic seas. These earliest icebreakers were called kochi, the kochs hull was protected by a belt of ice-floe resistant flush skin-planking along the variable water-line, and had a false keel for on-ice portage. If a koch became squeezed by the ice-fields, its rounded bodylines below the water-line would allow for the ship to be pushed up out of the water, in the 19th century, similar protective measures were adopted to modern steam-powered icebreakers. Fram is said to be the ship to have sailed farthest north and farthest south. An early ship designed to operate in icy conditions was a 51-metre wooden paddle steamer,1, that was built for the city of Philadelphia by Vandusen & Birelyn in 1837
30.
Finland
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Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe. A peninsula with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, the country has borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north. Estonia is south of the country across the Gulf of Finland, Finland is a Nordic country situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia, which also includes Scandinavia. Finlands population is 5.5 million, and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region,88. 7% of the population is Finnish people who speak Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages, the second major group are the Finland-Swedes. In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe, Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital Helsinki, local governments in 311 municipalities, and an autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, from the late 12th century, Finland was an integral part of Sweden, a legacy reflected in the prevalence of the Swedish language and its official status. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, we are not Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns, nevertheless, in 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1906, Finland became the nation in the world to give the right to vote to all adult citizens. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Finland declared itself independent, in 1918, the fledgling state was divided by civil war, with the Bolshevik-leaning Reds supported by the equally new Soviet Russia, fighting the Whites, supported by the German Empire. After a brief attempt to establish a kingdom, the became a republic. During World War II, the Soviet Union sought repeatedly to occupy Finland, with Finland losing parts of Karelia, Salla and Kuusamo, Petsamo and some islands, Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and established an official policy of neutrality. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics during the Cold War era, Finland was a relative latecomer to industrialization, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. It rapidly developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity, however, Finnish GDP growth has been negative in 2012–2014, with a preceding nadir of −8% in 2009. Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life, a large majority of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, though freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Finnish Constitution. The first known appearance of the name Finland is thought to be on three rune-stones. Two were found in the Swedish province of Uppland and have the inscription finlonti, the third was found in Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It has the inscription finlandi and dates from the 13th century, the name can be assumed to be related to the tribe name Finns, which is mentioned first known time AD98. The name Suomi has uncertain origins, but a candidate for a source is the Proto-Baltic word *źemē, in addition to the close relatives of Finnish, this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian
31.
Rusal
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United Company RUSAL is the worlds sixth largest aluminium company. It was the largest until overtaken by China Hongqiao Group in 2015, UC RUSAL accounts for almost 9% of the worlds primary aluminium output and 9% of the world’s alumina production. The United Company was formed by the merger of RUSAL, SUAL, the company operates in 19 countries over five continents and employs over 72,000 people across its international operations and offices. The company is incorporated in Jersey, where it has its financial centre, RUSAL is the global leader in the aluminium industry and accounts for approximately 9% of global aluminium production and 9% of the world’s alumina output. It has played a role in the consolidation of the Russian aluminium industry during its establishment as a large. The Russian aluminium industry dates back to 1932, the year when the Volkhov aluminium smelter produced the first batch of aluminium, following that, construction of smelters began to meet the growing demand of the national economy. During WW2, the facilities in the country were evacuated to the Urals and Western Siberia. In the 1950s, new aluminium smelters were built for purposes in Kandalaksha, Nadvoitsy. In the 1960s and 1970s, smelters in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, by the early 1980s, Russia was the world’s second largest producer of aluminium after the US. Russia has been short of bauxite, which is used to produce alumina. The ‘shock therapy’ economic measures mostly hit the defence and engineering industries, by 1994, aluminium consumption in Russia fell to around 2 kg per capita, compared with 17 kg per capita in 1990. The only way the industry could survive was to re-orient itself towards external markets, in 1993, the Russian government launched the privatization of the aluminium industry. This period in Russian business history is now known as the Aluminium wars and his work included trading with major Russian aluminium smelters. In 1994, Mr. Deripaska was elected the General Director of SAZ, since then, gradual strategic acquisitions and growth projects have led to the creation of the world’s largest aluminium and alumina producer, based on production in 2008. RUSAL has historically adopted the policy of fully integrating assets it acquires and controls under centralised operational, in 2000, Sibirsky Aluminium and Millhouse Capital agreed to jointly manage the aluminium and alumina assets they controlled and founded RUSAL. In 2003, companies related to Deripaska increased their stake in those companies under common management to 75% by acquiring half of the interest managed by Millhouse Capital, in the Ukraine, RUSAL increased its share in the Nikolaev alumina refinery to 98%. In 2004, the consolidation of RUSAL’s ownership by companies related to Mr. Deripaska was completed with the acquisition of the remaining 25% equity interest in RUSAL managed by Millhouse Capital. This divestiture process was completed in 2006 with the distribution of certain aluminium construction plants
32.
Oleg Deripaska
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He is now considered to be among the richest men in Russia, with an estimated net worth of US$5.4 billion as of April 2017. Through stakes in companies, Deripaska is also involved in a broad range of industries, including energy, machinery, financial services. Deripaska was born in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, and grew up in Ust-Labinsk, Krasnodar Krai, Deripaska was raised on the familys small farm, where from the age of 5 or 6 his grandparents instructed him to learn everything about the land to survive. Deripaska credits his grandparents for teaching him the discipline of hard work and they taught the details of farming, including when and how to plant, grow and harvest. Both his grandfathers fought in the Second World War, one was killed in battle and buried in a grave in Austria. Deripaskas first job was at the Ust-Labinsk plant where his mother worked, at age 11, he became an electricians apprentice doing maintenance on electrical motors. Deripaska acquired a passion for reading, his favorite authors were Mayne Reid, today, Basic Elements headquarters contain walls of books, reflecting Deripaskas lifelong love of reading. His talent for math allowed him to enroll at the faculty of Moscow State University in 1985. One year into his studies, he was conscripted into the forces and served in the Soviet armys Strategic Missile Forces in the Trans-Baikal area, Siberia. In 1993, Deripaska graduated with honors in physics from Moscow State University, after graduation from Moscow State University, the collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated academic funding and made it impossible for Deripaska continue to his studies as a theoretical physicist. There were no stipends or grants for students either and it was an urgent and practical question every day. How do I earn money to buy food and keep studying, at the age of 25, teaming up with fellow physicists, engineers and rocket scientists, Deripaska set up his first metal trading company, VTK. He adopted a systematic, scientific approach to commodity trading, I represented companies that were buying and selling raw materials, Deripaska said. Deripaska undertook export arbitrage, buying metal at low Russian prices, Deripaska traded primarily through the Baltic state of Estonia as the Russian system of export licenses was in disarray. I started my business at a moment in history. The country in which I was born raised had disappeared, although the new country was not fully formed, the first one gave me an excellent education, the second one gave me the chance of success, Deripaska recalled in an interview with Metal Bulletin. He used nearly all his arbitrage and trading profits to acquire his initial package of shares in the Sayanogorsk Aluminium Smelter, in 1994, Deripaska became director general of the plant at the age of 26. In 1997, the became the core asset of Sibirsky Aluminium Group
33.
Nanotechnology
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Nanotechnology is manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. It is therefore common to see the plural form nanotechnologies as well as nanoscale technologies to refer to the range of research. Because of the variety of applications, governments have invested billions of dollars in nanotechnology research. Until 2012, through its National Nanotechnology Initiative, the USA has invested 3.7 billion dollars, scientists currently debate the future implications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology may be able to create new materials and devices with a vast range of applications, such as in nanomedicine, nanoelectronics, biomaterials energy production. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether regulation of nanotechnology is warranted. The term nano-technology was first used by Norio Taniguchi in 1974, also in 1986, Drexler co-founded The Foresight Institute to help increase public awareness and understanding of nanotechnology concepts and implications. In the 1980s, two major breakthroughs sparked the growth of nanotechnology in modern era, the microscopes developers Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory received a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. Binnig, Quate and Gerber also invented the atomic force microscope that year. Second, Fullerenes were discovered in 1985 by Harry Kroto, Richard Smalley, and Robert Curl, in the early 2000s, the field garnered increased scientific, political, and commercial attention that led to both controversy and progress. Controversies emerged regarding the definitions and potential implications of nanotechnologies, exemplified by the Royal Societys report on nanotechnology, challenges were raised regarding the feasibility of applications envisioned by advocates of molecular nanotechnology, which culminated in a public debate between Drexler and Smalley in 2001 and 2003. Meanwhile, commercialization of products based on advancements in nanoscale technologies began emerging and these products are limited to bulk applications of nanomaterials and do not involve atomic control of matter. Governments moved to promote and fund research into nanotechnology, such as in the U. S, by the mid-2000s new and serious scientific attention began to flourish. Projects emerged to produce nanotechnology roadmaps which center on atomically precise manipulation of matter and discuss existing and projected capabilities, goals, Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. This covers both current work and concepts that are more advanced, one nanometer is one billionth, or 10−9, of a meter. By comparison, typical carbon-carbon bond lengths, or the spacing between atoms in a molecule, are in the range 0. 12–0.15 nm. On the other hand, the smallest cellular life-forms, the bacteria of the genus Mycoplasma, are around 200 nm in length, by convention, nanotechnology is taken as the scale range 1 to 100 nm following the definition used by the National Nanotechnology Initiative in the US. The lower limit is set by the size of atoms since nanotechnology must build its devices from atoms and molecules
34.
Mikhail Fradkov
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Mikhail Yefimovich Fradkov is a Russian politician and statesman who was the Prime Minister of Russia from March 2004 to September 2007. Fradkov was the head of Russias Foreign Intelligence Service from 6 October 2007 to 5 October 2016, Fradkov was born near Samara to a family of Jewish origin on his fathers side. He studied at both the Moscow Machine Tool Design Institute and the Foreign Trade Academy, in 1973, he was posted to the economic section of the Soviet Unions embassy in India, where he remained for two years. He later held several positions back in Russia, in 1991, he was Russias representative to General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva. In late 1992, Fradkov was appointed Deputy Minister for Foreign Economic Relations, less than a year later, in October 1993, he became First Deputy Minister for Foreign Economic Relations. On 15 April 1997, a decree by Boris Yeltsin appointed Fradkov Minister of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade. In the middle of 1999, another presidential decree made him Minister of Trade and he was made director of the Federal Tax Police by Vladimir Putin in 2001, having previously been Deputy Secretary of the Security Council. In 2003 he was made Russias representative to the European Union, on 1 March 2004, he was nominated by Putin as the next Prime Minister, and this appointment was approved by the Duma on 5 March. Fradkovs nomination as Prime Minister was a surprise to many observers, former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, whom Fradkov has served under, called Fradkov absolutely independent from any sort of political clan or group. Putin and his allies praised Fradkov as experienced, professional, on 12 May 2004, Fradkov was appointed Prime Minister for the second time, as Vladimir Putin had won the presidential election and been inaugurated on 7 May. On 12 September 2007 Fradkov announced his resignation to President Putin, Putin bestowed an award on Fradkov and said that he would remain in office until the confirmation of a successor by the Duma. Zubkov was confirmed on 14 September 2007, on 6 October 2007, President Putin announced that he would appoint Fradkov as head of the Foreign Intelligence Service. Fradkovs appointment as head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, combined with his service in India, are suggestive of a KGB background and this calls into question earlier assumptions that he was an outsider in Kremlin circles and provides an explanation for Putins trust in him. In November 2010 reports emerged that one of Fradkovs intelligence officers, Shcherbakov also had a daughter in the US. Kommersant, which broke the story, speculated that Fradkov might be replaced by Sergei Naryshkin and/or Russian intelligence services reorganized, pavel Fradkov, the son of Mikhail Fradkov, is a deputy head of the state property watchdog Rosimushchestvo. Given his vast political experience, he is suggested as a possible successor to Vladimir Putin when his time in office comes to an end
35.
Sergei Ivanov
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Sergei Borisovich Ivanov is a Russian senior official and statesman. After the election of Dmitry Medvedev as President of Russia, Ivanov was reappointed a Deputy Prime Minister in Vladimir Putins second government, from December 2011 to August 2016, Ivanov was the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office. Before joining the administration in Moscow, Ivanov, a fluent speaker of English, served from the late 1970s in Europe and in Africa as a specialist in law. As an employee of the KGB in Soviet Union era, Ivanov became a friend of his colleague Vladimir Putin, Ivanov was born on 31 January 1953 in Leningrad. In 1975 he graduated from the English translation branch of the Department of Philology at Leningrad State University, in the late 1970s Ivanov began a two decades career on the staff of the external intelligence service. In 1976 he completed studies in counterintelligence, graduating from Higher Courses of the KGB in Minsk. Upon graduating in 1976, Ivanov was sent to serve for the Leningrad and Leningrad Oblast KGB Directorate, in the 1980s Ivanov served as the Second Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Helsinki, working directly under the KGB resident Felix Karasev. In August 1998, Vladimir Putin became head of the FSB, as deputy director of the Federal Security Service, Ivanov solidified his reputation in Moscow as a competent analyst in matters of domestic and external security. In that position, Ivanov replaced Putin as Yeltsins national security adviser upon Putins promotion to the premiership, as secretary, Ivanov was responsible for coordinating the daily work of the council, led by the president. But Ivanovs role as secretary was initially unclear to media observers, at the time of his appointment, the Security Council was a relatively new institution. Between 1992 and Ivanovs appointment in 1999, Yeltsin used the council as political expediency had dictated, Ivanov was named by Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded Yeltsin as President on 31 December 1999, as Russias Minister of Defense in March 2001. That month Ivanov stepped down as secretary of the Defense, Ivanov had resigned from military service around a year earlier, and was a civilian while serving as secretary of the Security Council. Ivanov therefore became Russias first civilian Defense minister, Putin called the personnel changes in Russias security structures coinciding with Ivanovs appointment as Defense minister a step toward demilitarizing public life. Putin also stressed Ivanovs responsibility for overseeing military reform as Defense minister, unsurprisingly to specialists on Russia, Ivanov became bogged down in the sheer difficulty of his duties as Deputy Prime Minister. But despite bureaucratic inertia and corruption in the military, Ivanov did preside over some changes the form of a shift towards a professional army. Although Ivanov was not successful in abandoning the draft, he did downsize it, as Defense Minister, Ivanov worked with U. S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to expand Russian-U. S. Cooperation against international terrorist threats to both states, on May 2001, Ivanov was elected chairman of the Council of Commonwealth of Independent States Defense Ministers. In October 2003 Sergei Ivanov claimed that Russia did not rule out a military strike anywhere in the world if the national interest demands it
36.
RBC Information Systems
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RBC Information Systems is a large Russian media group headquartered in Moscow. The company holds an informational agency RosBusinessConsulting, including a news web-portal, capitalization on MICEX is 31 billion roubles In 2000 RBC launched free webmail and hosting project, one of the large projects in Russia. In 2003 RBC launched RBC TV, the first and the only channel in Russia. Official web site of RBC, RBC Corporate Profile Official web site of RBC RBC Daily RBC-TV Russian Google
37.
Israel
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Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Middle East, on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. The country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israels economy and technology center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, in 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Mandatory Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency for Palestine, next year, the Jewish Agency declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. Israel has since fought several wars with neighboring Arab states, in the course of which it has occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and it extended its laws to the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israels occupation of the Palestinian territories is the worlds longest military occupation in modern times, efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in peace. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have successfully been signed, the population of Israel, as defined by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics, was estimated in 2017 to be 8,671,100 people. It is the worlds only Jewish-majority state, with 74. 8% being designated as Jewish, the countrys second largest group of citizens are Arabs, at 20. 8%. The great majority of Israeli Arabs are Sunni Muslims, including significant numbers of semi-settled Negev Bedouins, other minorities include Arameans, Armenians, Assyrians, Black Hebrew Israelites, Circassians, Maronites and Samaritans. Israel also hosts a significant population of foreign workers and asylum seekers from Africa and Asia, including illegal migrants from Sudan, Eritrea. In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a Jewish, Israel is a representative democracy with a parliamentary system, proportional representation and universal suffrage. The prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature, Israel is a developed country and an OECD member, with the 35th-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2016. The country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. The country has the highest standard of living in the Middle East and the third highest in Asia, in the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term Israeli to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have historically used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel. The name Israel in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, jacobs twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites, also known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. The earliest known artifact to mention the word Israel as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity, Islam
38.
Alla Pugacheva
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Alla Borisovna Pugacheva, is а Soviet and Russian musical performer. Her career started in 1965 and continues to this day and she became a Meritorious Artist of the Russian SFSR in 1980, Peoples Artist of the Russian SFSR in 1985 and Peoples Artist of the USSR in 1991. She represented Russia in the Eurovision Song Contest 1997, Pugacheva was born to Boris Mikhailovich Pugachëv and Zinaida Arkhipovna Pugachëv in Moscow, on 15 April 1949. In 1956, she enrolled in music school №31, and attended the Ippolitov-Ivanov music college and she went on to study at school №496, finishing her studies there in 1964. She then studied in the department of the college. Pugacheva recorded her first track Robot in 1965, for a programme on Radio Yunost. Pugacheva finished college in 1966 and subsequently toured with the group Yunost in Western Siberia, the following year she began working as a piano accompanist at the State Circus Musical college. She recorded songs throughout that period for numerous movies, in 1974, she came in 3rd place in the All-Union competition of musicians. In 1975, she received the Grand Prix of the international contest Golden Orpheus performing the song Harlequin by Emil Dimitrov, the Amiga label released her winning song as a single in East Germany. Subsequently in Bulgaria, the Balkanton label released the recording of Harlequin from the festival as a single. One year later, Pugacheva returned to the Golden Orpheus to perform a concert outside the competition, the Balkanton released the live tracks as Pugachevas first album Zolotoy Orfey 76. In that same year, Pugacheva recorded a number of songs for the musical drama-comedy The Irony of Fate as the voice of Nadja. Pugacheva went on to work on the musical film Zhenshchina, kotoraya poyot in cooperation with the band Ritm in 1977 and she played the leading lady, a famous pop singer who sacrifices her personal life for her career. The soundtrack, which was co-written by Pugacheva and composed of pop songs, culminated with the title ballad Zhenshchina. The Soviet audience, regarding the film as autobiographical, brought the soundtrack to reach audience of the year in 1979. The soundtrack was first released in 1977 as part of the double album Zerkalo dushi, the Victor label released a collection album Alla Pugacheva in the same year in Japan. In 1980, the Kansan label of Finland released her above listed works as the compilation album Huipulla, tonbandausnahmenkompanie Bayer GmbH did the same in West Germany, releasing Alla Pugachova. During the 1980s, Pugacheva was a frequent visitor to Stockholm and she started out with multiple guest appearances on the popular Swedish radio show Galaxen conducted by Jacob Dahlin, and later frequently appeared on his TV-show Jacobs Stege
39.
CSKA Moscow
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CSKA Moscow is a major Russian sports club based in Moscow. The historical CSKA sport club is still a department of Russian Defense Ministry, the Big CSKA had several teams in many sports, but those which are still operating are all now private clubs, For the bandy club, see CSKA Moscow. For the football club, see PFC CSKA Moscow, for the futsal club, see MFK CSKA Moscow. For the ice hockey club, see HC CSKA Moscow, for the volleyball club, see VC CSKA Moscow. For the mens club, see PBC CSKA Moscow. For the womens club, see WBC CSKA Moscow. For the water polo club see, CSK VMF Moscow For the sport wrestling club see, VC CSKA and WBC CSKA were disbanded in 2009. The CSKA has also been home to many elite skaters, including Adelina Sotnikova, Ekaterina Gordeeva. Elena Mukhina, the 1978 World Champion artistic gymnast, was a member, the field was located at the Sokolniki Park in Moscow. On April 29,1923 the football team of the club has played its first game in the Moscow city championship, in February 1928 the club was included to the newly established the Frunze Central House of Red Army as a department of physical culture and sports. In October 1953 all sports centers of CDKA and Air Force of the Moscow Military District were included in the Central Sports Club of Ministry of Defense, in April 1960 it was renamed into Central Sports Club of Army. - May 31,1937 Komkor Fyodor Rodionov
40.
National Basketball Association
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The National Basketball Association is the major mens professional basketball league in North America, and is widely considered to be the premier mens professional basketball league in the world. It has 30 teams, and is a member of USA Basketball. The NBA is one of the four professional sports leagues in the United States. NBA players are the worlds best paid athletes by average annual salary per player, the league was founded in New York City on June 6,1946, as the Basketball Association of America. The league adopted the name National Basketball Association on August 3,1949, the leagues several international as well as individual team offices are directed out of its head offices located in the Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth Avenue in New York City. NBA Entertainment and NBA TV studios are directed out of offices located in Secaucus, the Basketball Association of America was founded in 1946 by owners of the major ice hockey arenas in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and Canada. On November 1,1946, in Toronto, Canada, the Toronto Huskies hosted the New York Knickerbockers at Maple Leaf Gardens, the first basket was made by Ossie Schectman of the Knickerbockers. During its early years, the quality of play in the BAA was not significantly better than in competing leagues or among leading independent clubs such as the Harlem Globetrotters. For instance, the 1948 ABL finalist Baltimore Bullets moved to the BAA and won that leagues 1948 title, Following the 1948–49 season, the BAA took in the remainder of the NBL, Syracuse, Anderson, Tri-Cities, Sheboygan, Denver, and Waterloo. The new league had seventeen franchises located in a mix of large and small cities, as well as arenas and smaller gymnasiums. The process of contraction saw the leagues smaller-city franchises move to larger cities, the Hawks shifted from the Tri-Cities to Milwaukee in 1951, and then to St. Louis in 1955. The Rochester Royals moved from Rochester, New York, to Cincinnati in 1957, japanese-American Wataru Misaka broke the NBA color barrier in the 1947–48 season when he played for the New York Knicks. He remained the only player in league history prior to the first African-American, Harold Hunter. During this period, the Minneapolis Lakers, led by center George Mikan, won five NBA Championships, to encourage shooting and discourage stalling, the league introduced the 24-second shot clock in 1954. If a team does not attempt to score a goal within 24 seconds of obtaining the ball, play is stopped. In 1957, rookie center Bill Russell joined the Boston Celtics, who already featured guard Bob Cousy and coach Red Auerbach, and went on to lead the club to eleven NBA titles in thirteen seasons. Center Wilt Chamberlain entered the league with the Warriors in 1959 and became a dominant individual star of the 1960s, russells rivalry with Chamberlain became one of the greatest rivalries in the history of American team sports. The 1960s were dominated by the Celtics, led by Russell, Bob Cousy and coach Red Auerbach, Boston won eight straight championships in the NBA from 1959 to 1966
US$8.9 billion (January 2017)[1]
