1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
Subdivisions of Russia
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Russia is divided into several types and levels of subdivisions. Since March 18,2014, the Russian Federation consisted of eighty-five federal subjects that are constituent members of the Federation, however, two of these federal subjects—the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol—are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. All federal subjects are of equal rights in the sense that they have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council. They do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy, there are 6 types of federal subjects—22 republics,9 krais,46 oblasts,3 federal cities,1 autonomous oblast, and 4 autonomous okrugs. According to the Treaty, the Republic of Crimea is accepted as a subject with the status of a republic while the City of Sevastopol has received federal city status. Neither the Republic of Crimea nor the city of Sevastopol are politically recognized as parts of Russia by most countries and this was interpreted by the governments of the federal subjects as a sign that the matters of the administrative-territorial divisions became solely the responsibility of the federal subjects. As a result, the modern structures of the federal subjects vary significantly from one federal subject to another. Autonomous okrugs, while being under the jurisdiction of federal subject, are still constitutionally recognized as federal subjects on their own right. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug is an exception in that it is not administratively subordinated to any federal subject of Russia. Okrugs are usually former autonomous okrugs that lost their federal subject status due to a merger with another federal subject. According to the law, the units of the division are as follows, Municipal district. In practice, municipal districts are formed within the boundaries of existing administrative districts. In practice, urban okrugs are usually formed within the boundaries of existing cities of federal subject significance, intra-urban territory of a federal city, a part of a federal citys territory. In Moscow, these are called municipal formations, in St. Petersburg—municipal okrugs, towns, in Sevastopol, they are known as municipal okrugs and a town. Territories not included as a part of municipal formations are known as inter-settlement territories and this municipal formation type would typically be established within the borders of existing city districts. In June 2014, Chelyabinsky Urban Okrug became the first urban okrug to implement intra-urban divisions, all of the federal subjects are grouped into nine federal districts, each administered by an envoy appointed by the President of Russia. For economic and statistical purposes the federal subjects are grouped into twelve economic regions, economic regions and their parts sharing common economic trends are in turn grouped into economic zones and macrozones. In order for the Armed Forces to provide an efficient management of units, their training, and other operational activities
3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
4.
Federal subjects of Russia
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Since March 18,2014, the Russian Federation constitutionally consists of 85 federal subjects, although the two most recently added subjects are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Three Russian cities of importance have a status of both city and separate federal subject which comprises other cities and towns within federal city keeping old structure of postal address. In 1993, there were 89 federal subjects listed, by 2008, the number of federal subjects had been decreased to 83 because of several mergers. In 2014, Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea became the 84th and 85th federal subjects of Russia, every federal subject has its own head, a parliament, and a constitutional court. Federal subjects have their own constitution and legislation, subjects have equal rights in relations with federal government bodies. The federal subjects have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council and they do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy. Composition of post-Soviet Russia was formed during the history of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the USSR, the Federation Treaty was included in the text of the 1978 Constitution of the Russian SFSR. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the system became de jure closer to other modern federal states with a republican form of government in the world. There are several groupings of Russian regions, Federal subjects should not be confused with the eight Federal districts which are not subdivisions of Russia, are much larger and each encompass many federal subjects. Federal districts were created by Executive Order of the President of Russia specially for presidential envoys, an official government translation of the Constitution of Russia in Article 5 states,1. Another translation of the Constitution of Russia gives for article 65, each federal subject belongs to one of the following types, b. ^ According to Article 13 of the Charter of Leningrad Oblast, however, St. Petersburg is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ According to Article 24 of the Charter of Moscow Oblast, however, Moscow is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ Not recognized internationally as a part of Russia, the merging process was finished on March 1,2008. No new mergers have been planned since March 2008, Федерального конституционного закона №7-ФКЗ от30 декабря2008 г. Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Российская газета, №237,25 декабря1993 г
5.
Omsk Oblast
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Omsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia, located in southwestern Siberia. The oblast has an area of 139,700 square kilometers and its population is 1,977,665 with the majority,1.15 million, living in Omsk, the administrative center. The oblast borders with Tyumen Oblast in the north and west, Novosibirsk and Tomsk Oblasts in the east and it shares borders with Kazakhstan to the south, the Tyumen region in the west and north of the Novosibirsk and Tomsk regions in the east. Included in the Siberian Federal District, the territory stretches for 600 km from north to south and 300 km from west to east. The main water artery - Irtysh and its tributaries Ishim, Om, Osha, the region is located in the West Siberian Plain, flat terrain dictates. In the south - the steppe, gradually turning into steppe, forest, along the Irtysh River, in t. N. Irtysh region, there is a oasis microclimate, with a wooded landscape and gully. Here, the most fertile land in the region, also, in the Omsk region has many lakes, Sultan, Tennis, Ik, Ebeyty, Ulzhan, Tobol-Cushla. The highest point in the Omsk region - about 150 m Upland village, the property is located in Omsk region 28 specially protected natural territories of regional destinations. Including parks in Bolshereche and Omsk, the oblast has a classic continental climate, with cold, snowy winters and hot, dry summers. Average January temperatures range from -42 °C to -30 °C, average July temperatures range from +28 °C to +25 °C, and can reach up to +35 °C and even +40 °C. The southern plains have notably longer and warmers summers and an onset of freezing temperatures. They are also drier than the northern forests, receiving only 250–300 mm of precipitation annually. Winters, however, are as severe as on the plains as they are further north, spring rains are rare, but late spring freezes are not. The early part of the summer is dominated by hot. As of February 1,2016 on the territory of the Omsk region, there are 35 areas that have the status of protected areas, archeological findings indicate that the present day territory of the oblast has been inhabited for the last 14,000 years. Neolithic societies in the area lived by fishing and hunting, about three thousand years ago, pastoralism began to take hold. Various Turkic states dominated the area throughout the Medieval era, the most notable of these were the Western Turkic Khaganate and the Siberian Khanate. Siberian Tatars, Mongols, Khanty and Mansi tribes, along with others, the Russian history of Omsk began with the 1584 arrival of a Cossack force under the command of ataman Yermak, who defeated local rulers and established nominal Russian control of the area
6.
Area
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Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a two-dimensional figure or shape, or planar lamina, in the plane. Surface area is its analog on the surface of a three-dimensional object. It is the analog of the length of a curve or the volume of a solid. The area of a shape can be measured by comparing the shape to squares of a fixed size, in the International System of Units, the standard unit of area is the square metre, which is the area of a square whose sides are one metre long. A shape with an area of three square metres would have the area as three such squares. In mathematics, the square is defined to have area one. There are several formulas for the areas of simple shapes such as triangles, rectangles. Using these formulas, the area of any polygon can be found by dividing the polygon into triangles, for shapes with curved boundary, calculus is usually required to compute the area. Indeed, the problem of determining the area of plane figures was a motivation for the historical development of calculus. For a solid such as a sphere, cone, or cylinder. Formulas for the areas of simple shapes were computed by the ancient Greeks. Area plays an important role in modern mathematics, in addition to its obvious importance in geometry and calculus, area is related to the definition of determinants in linear algebra, and is a basic property of surfaces in differential geometry. In analysis, the area of a subset of the plane is defined using Lebesgue measure, in general, area in higher mathematics is seen as a special case of volume for two-dimensional regions. Area can be defined through the use of axioms, defining it as a function of a collection of certain plane figures to the set of real numbers and it can be proved that such a function exists. An approach to defining what is meant by area is through axioms, area can be defined as a function from a collection M of special kind of plane figures to the set of real numbers which satisfies the following properties, For all S in M, a ≥0. If S and T are in M then so are S ∪ T and S ∩ T, if S and T are in M with S ⊆ T then T − S is in M and a = a − a. If a set S is in M and S is congruent to T then T is also in M, every rectangle R is in M. If the rectangle has length h and breadth k then a = hk, let Q be a set enclosed between two step regions S and T
7.
Russian Census (2010)
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The Russian Census of 2010 is the first census of the Russian Federation population since 2002 and the second after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preparations for the census began in 2007 and it took place between October 14 and October 25, the census was originally scheduled for October 2010, but was moved to 2013 allegedly for financial reasons, although it was also speculated that political motives were influential in the decision. However, in late 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the Government of Russia allocated 10.5 billion rubles in order to conduct the census as originally scheduled, Results showed the population to stand at 142.9 million. Since the previous 2002 census, population has decreased by 2.3 million, according to the 2010 census, urban population is 105.3 million, rural population is 37.5 million. The urbanisation rate is currently 73. 7%, the median age is 38 years. The ethnic composition is dominated by Russians, demographics of Russia Russian Census 2010 final results Results of 2010 All-Russia population census Official website of the 2010 Census
8.
Population density
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Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume, it is a quantity of type number density. It is frequently applied to living organisms, and most of the time to humans and it is a key geographical term. Population density is population divided by land area or water volume. Low densities may cause a vortex and lead to further reduced fertility. This is called the Allee effect after the scientist who identified it, commonly this may be calculated for a county, city, country, another territory, or the entire world. The worlds population is around 7,000,000,000, therefore, the worldwide human population density is around 7,000,000,000 ÷510,000,000 =13.7 per km2. If only the Earths land area of 150,000,000 km2 is taken into account and this includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. If Antarctica is also excluded, then population density rises to over 50 people per km2, thus, this number by itself does not give any helpful measurement of human population density. Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states, microstates, cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though this will depend on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure and access to resources. Most of the most densely populated cities are in Southeast Asia, though Cairo, for instance, Milwaukee has a greater population density when just the inner city is measured, and the surrounding suburbs excluded. Arithmetic density, The total number of people / area of land, physiological density, The total population / area of arable land. Agricultural density, The total rural population / area of arable land, residential density, The number of people living in an urban area / area of residential land. Urban density, The number of people inhabiting an urban area / total area of urban land, ecological optimum, The density of population that can be supported by the natural resources. S. States by population density Selected Current and Historic City, Ward & Neighborhood Density
9.
Time in Russia
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There are eleven time zones in Russia, which currently observe times ranging from UTC+02,00 to UTC+12,00. Daylight saving time is not used in Russia, since 4 December 2016, the time zones are as follows, Daylight saving time in Russia was originally introduced on 30 June 1917 by a decree of the Russian Provisional Government. However, it was abandoned by a Decree of the Soviet government five months later, Daylight saving time was re-introduced in the USSR on 1 April 1981, by a decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The usage of daylight saving time continued after the Soviet collapse but ended in 2011, on 27 March 2011, clocks were advanced as usual, but they did not go back on 30 October 2011, effectively making Moscow Time UTC+4 permanently. In the Russian Empire, most of the observed solar time. During the late 19th century, Moscow Mean Time was introduced on 1 January 1880,2,30,17 corresponds to 37. 6166667°, the longitude of Moscow. Other parts of Russia kept solar time for several years. At this time, Russia had the Julian calendar with 12 or 13 days less date compared to Western Europe, so it is possible to say the Moscow actually had GMT-285,29,43, GMT-309,29,43 and GMT-309,28,41. Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar on Thursday,14 February 1918, after the Soviet Union was created, Moscow Time became UTC+2 and the various other time zones were introduced throughout Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, for example Irkutsk Time GMT+7. Between 1917-1922 the time was ordered, with daylight savings time some of those years. On 21 June 1930, the Soviet Union advanced all clocks by one hour, Moscow Time was now GMT+3 and Irkutsk Time GMT+8. On 1 April 1981, daylight saving time was re-introduced, clocks were moved one hour forward on 1 April, on 1 April 1981,00,00,00, Oymyakonsky District changed its time zone from MSK+6 to MSK+8. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+9 to UTC+12, on 1 April 1982,00,00,00, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug changed its time zone from MSK+10 to MSK+9, thus eliminating Anadyr Time. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+14 to UTC+13, on 27 March 1988,02,00,00, Saratov and Volgograd oblasts changed its time zone from MSK+1 to MSK. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+5 to UTC+4, on 23 May 1993,00,00,00, Novosibirsk Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+8 to UTC+7, on 28 May 1995,00,00,00, Altai Krai and Altai Republic changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. On 30 March 1997,02,00,00, Sakhalin Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+8 to MSK+7, on 1 May 2002,03,00,00, Tomsk Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. On 1 January 2004,00,00,00, New Siberian Islands, Tomponsky District, the following time zone changes occurred on 28 March 2010, which, in particular, led to abolition of two of the eleven time zones
10.
Omsk Time
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Omsk Time is a time zone in Russia that is six hours ahead of UTC, and 3 hours ahead of Moscow Time. Until 1991, Omsk Time was one of the two time zones used in Soviet Central Asia, in addition to Omsk Oblast in the Russian SFSR, it covered the eastern two thirds of Kazakh SSR, all of Kyrgyz and Tajik SSRs, and eastern Uzbek SSR. This included the city of Omsk and the capitals Alma-Ata, Frunze, Dushanbe, for two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Omsk Oblast remained the only region in Russia in this time zone. The newly independent Central Asian states ceased to observe daylight saving time, in 1990s-2010s, Russia experienced a countrywide wave of clock shifts towards Moscow. By 2010, all Western Siberias Moscow+4 regions moved to Moscow+3, in 2011, Russia moved to year-round daylight saving time. In 2016 Altai Region, Altai Republic, Tomsk oblast and Novosibirsk oblast goes to Krasnoyarsk Time, now is only Omsk Oblast uses this time zone
11.
Wikimedia Commons
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Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, the repository contains over 38 million media files. In July 2013, the number of edits on Commons reached 100,000,000, the project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7,2004. The expression educational is to be according to its broad meaning of providing knowledge. Wikimedia Commons itself does not allow fair use or uploads under non-free licenses, for this reason, Wikimedia Commons always hosts freely licensed media and deletes copyright violations. The default language for Commons is English, but registered users can customize their interface to use any other user interface translations. Many content pages, in particular policy pages and portals, have also translated into various languages. Files on Wikimedia Commons are categorized using MediaWikis category system, in addition, they are often collected on individual topical gallery pages. While the project was proposed to also contain free text files. In 2012, BuzzFeed described Wikimedia Commons as littered with dicks, in 2010, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported Wikimedia Commons to the FBI for hosting sexualized images of children known as lolicon. Wales responded to the backlash from the Commons community by voluntarily relinquishing some site privileges, over time, additional functionality has been developed to interface Wikimedia Commons with the other Wikimedia projects. Specialized uploading tools and scripts such as Commonist have been created to simplify the process of uploading large numbers of files. In order to free content photos uploaded to Flickr, users can participate in a defunct collaborative external review process. The site has three mechanisms for recognizing quality works, one is known as Featured pictures, where works are nominated and other community members vote to accept or reject the nomination. This process began in November 2004, another process known as Quality images began in June 2006, and has a simpler nomination process comparable to Featured pictures. Quality images only accepts works created by Wikimedia users, whereas Featured pictures additionally accepts nominations of works by third parties such as NASA, the three mentioned processes select a slight part from the total number of files. However, Commons collects files of all quality levels, from the most professional level across simple documental, files with specific defects can be tagged for improvement and warning or even proposed for deletion but there exists no process of systematic rating of all files. The site held its inaugural Picture of the Year competition, for 2006, all images that were made a Featured picture during 2006 were eligible, and voted on by eligible Wikimedia users during two rounds of voting
12.
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
13.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
14.
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
15.
Ural Mountains
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The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
16.
Novosibirsk
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Novosibirsk is the third-most populous city in Russia after Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is the most populous city in Asian Russia, with a population of 1,473,754 as of the 2010 Census and it is the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast as well as of the Siberian Federal District. It is split into ten districts and occupies an area of 502.1 square kilometers and it superseded nearby Krivoshchekovskaya village, which was founded in 1696. The bridge was completed in the spring of 1897, making the new settlement the regional transport hub, the importance of the city further increased with the completion of the Turkestan-Siberia Railway in the early 20th century. The new railway connected Novonikolayevsk to Central Asia and the Caspian Sea, at the time of the bridges opening, Novonikolayevsk had a population of 7,800 people. Its first bank opened in 1906, and a total of five banks were operating by 1915, in 1907, Novonikolayevsk, now with a population exceeding 47,000, was granted town status with full rights for self-government. During the pre-revolutionary period, the population of Novonikolayevsk reached 80,000, the city had steady and rapid economic growth, becoming one of the largest commercial and industrial centers of Siberia. It developed a significant agricultural processing industry, as well as a station, iron foundry, commodity market, several banks. In 1913, Novonikolayevsk became one of the first places in Russia to institute compulsory primary education, the Russian Civil War took a toll on the city. There were wartime epidemics, especially of typhus and cholera, that thousands of lives. In the course of the war the Ob River Bridge was destroyed, for the first time in the citys history, the population of Novonikolayevsk began to decline. The Soviet Workers and Soldiers Deputies of Novonikolayevsk took control of the city in December 1917, in May 1918, the Czechoslovak Legions rose in opposition to the revolutionary government and, together with the White Guards, captured Novonikolayevsk. The Red Army took the city in 1919, retaining it throughout the rest of the Civil War, Novonikolayevsk began reconstruction in 1921 at the start of Lenins New Economic Policy period. It was a part of Tomsk Governorate and served as its center from December 23,1919 to March 14,1920. Between June 13,1921 and May 25,1925, it served as the center of Novonikolayevsk Governorate. The city was given its present name on September 12,1926, since then, it has served as the administrative center of Novosibirsk Oblast. The Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution was erected in the center of the city and has one of the chief historic sites. Neglect in the 1990s while other areas were redeveloped helped preserve it in the post-Soviet era, during Joseph Stalins industrialization effort, Novosibirsk secured its place as one of the largest industrial centers of Siberia
17.
Trans-Siberian Railway
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The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East. With a length of 9,289 kilometres, it is the longest railway line in the world, there are connecting branch lines into Mongolia, China and North Korea. It has connected Moscow with Vladivostok since 1916, and is still being expanded and it was built between 1891 and 1916 under the supervision of Russian government ministers personally appointed by Tsar Alexander III and his son, the Tsarevich Nicholas. Even before it had completed, it attracted travellers who wrote of their adventures. Russia has expressed its desire for Pakistan to participate in the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, the railway is often associated with the main transcontinental Russian line that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At a Moscow-Vladivostok track length of 9,289 kilometres, it spans a record eight time zones, a second primary route is the Trans-Manchurian, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian east of Chita as far as Tarskaya, about 1,000 km east of Lake Baikal. From Tarskaya the Trans-Manchurian heads southeast, via Harbin and Mudanjiang in Chinas Northeastern Provinces and this is the shortest and the oldest railway route to Vladivostok. While there are currently no passenger services on this branch. The third primary route is the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Ulan-Ude on Lake Baikals eastern shore, from Ulan-Ude the Trans-Mongolian heads south to Ulaan-Baatar before making its way southeast to Beijing. In 1991, a route running further to the north was finally completed. Known as the Baikal Amur Mainline, this recent extension departs from the Trans-Siberian line at Taishet several hundred miles west of Lake Baikal and it crosses the Amur River at Komsomolsk-na-Amure, and reaches the Tatar Strait at Sovetskaya Gavan. On 13 October 2011, a train from Khasan made its run to Rajin. In the late 19th century, the development of Siberia was hampered by poor transport links within the region, aside from the Great Siberian Route, good roads suitable for wheeled transport were rare. For about five months of the year, rivers were the means of transport. During the cold half of the year, cargo and passengers travelled by horse-drawn sledges over the roads, many of which were the same rivers. The first steamboat on the River Ob, Nikita Myasnikovs Osnova, was launched in 1844, but early beginnings were difficult, and it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing on the Ob system in a serious way. Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, and on the Lena, an attempt to partially remedy the situation by building the Ob-Yenisei Canal was not particularly successful. Only a railway could be a solution to the regions transport problems
18.
Irtysh River
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The Irtysh River is a river in Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. It is the tributary of the Ob River. The rivers source lies in the Mongolian Altai in Dzungaria close to the border with Mongolia, the Irtyshs main tributaries include the Tobol River and the Ishim River. The Ob-Irtysh system forms a drainage basin in Asia, encompassing most of Western Siberia. The name Black Irtysh is applied by some authors, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan, to the course of the river. The term White Irtysh, in opposition to the Black Irtysh, was used in the past to refer to the Irtysh below lake Zaysan. In Kazakhstan and Russia, tankers, passenger and freight boats navigate the river during the ice-free season, Omsk, home to the headquarters of the state-owned Irtysh River Shipping Company, functions as the largest river port in Western Siberia. On the Kazakhstan section of the river there are three major hydroelectric plants, namely at Bakhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk. The worlds deepest lock, with a drop of 42 metres, plans exist for the construction of several more dams. Three dams have been constructed on the Chinese section of the Irtysh as well, the Keketuohai Dam, the Kalasuke Dam, in 2002, pipelines were constructed to supply water from the canal to the Ishim River and Kazakhstans capital, Astana. In the last years of the 20th century and the early 2000s, a more major project. Increased water use in China has caused significant concerns among Kazakh, opened in 1896, this is the oldest bridge on the river. Tobolsk, on the Tyumen-Surgut line As the Kuytun–Beitun Railway in Chinas Xinjiang is being extended toward Altay City, numerous highway bridges over the Irtysh exist in China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. There are no bridges of any kind on the Irtysh downstream of Tobolsk, a number of Mongol and Turkic peoples occupied the river banks for many centuries. In 657, Tang Dynasty general Su Dingfang defeated Ashina Helu, qaghan of the Western Turkic Khaganate, at the Battle of Irtysh River, helus defeat ended the Khaganate, strengthened Tang control of Xinjiang, and led to Tang suzerainty over the western Turks. The Khanate of Sibir was conquered by the Russians in the 1580s, farther east, Tara was founded in 1594, roughly at the border of the taiga belt and the steppe to the south. In the 17th century the Dzungar Khanate, formed by the Mongol Oirat people, became Russias southern neighbor, the Chinese Qing Empire conquered Dzungaria in the 1750s. Concerns were raised in Russia about the possibility of a Chinese fleet sailing from Lake Zaysan down the Irtysh, a Russian expedition visited Lake Zaysan in 1764, and concluded that such a riverine invasion would not be likely
19.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
20.
Steppe
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In South Africa they are referred to as Veld. The prairie is an example of a steppe, though it is not usually called such and it may be semi-desert, or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude. The term is used to denote the climate encountered in regions too dry to support a forest. The soil is typically of chernozem type, steppes are usually characterized by a semi-arid and continental climate. Extremes can be recorded in the summer of up to 45 °C and in winter, besides this huge difference between summer and winter, the differences between day and night are also very great. In the highlands of Mongolia,30 °C can be reached during the day with sub-zero °C readings at night, the mid-latitude steppes can be summarized by hot summers and cold winters, averaging 250–510 mm of precipitation per year. Precipitation level alone is not what defines a steppe climate, potential evapotranspiration must also be taken into account, the Eurasian Grass-Steppe of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands had a role in the spread of the horse, the wheel, and the Indo-European languages. The Indo-European expansion and diverse invasions of horse archer civilizations of the steppe eventually led to, the Pannonian Plain is another steppe region in eastern Europe, primarily Hungary. Another large steppe area is located in the central United States, western Canada, the shortgrass prairie steppe is the westernmost part of the Great Plains region. The Channeled Scablands in Southern British Columbia and Washington State is an example of a region in North America outside of the Great Plains. In South America, cold steppe can be found in Patagonia, relatively small steppe areas can be found in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand. In Asia, a subtropical steppe can be found in semi-arid lands that fringe the Thar Desert of the Indian subcontinent, in Australia, subtropical steppe can be found in a belt surrounding the most severe deserts of the continent and around the Musgrave Ranges. Ecology and Conservation of Steppe-land Birds by Manuel B. Morales, Santi Mañosa, Jordi Camprodón, international Symposium on Ecology and Conservation of steppe-land birds
21.
Russian Civil War
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The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russias political future. In addition, rival militant socialists and nonideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, eight foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied Forces and the pro-German armies. The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine, the remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. Armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934, there were an estimated 7,000, 000–12,000,000 casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen, many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war. Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was established during the February Revolution of 1917, Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty. In June 1918, when it became apparent that an army composed solely of workers would be far too small. Former Tsarist officers were utilized as military specialists, sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty, at the start of the war three-quarters of the Red Army officer corps was composed of former Tsarist officers. By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers, a Ukrainian nationalist movement was active in Ukraine during the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine or the Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno, some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers organizations in the cities. The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian army and numbered around 30,000 troops by October 1917 and they had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the port of Vladivostok to France. The transport from the Eastern Front to Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos, under pressure from the Central Powers, Trotsky ordered the disarming and arrest of the legionaries, which created tensions with the Bolsheviks. The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks, hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle, the British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials. After the treaty, it looked like much of material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext began allied intervention in the Russian Civil War with the United Kingdom, there were violent clashes with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks
22.
Siberian Republic
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Provisional Siberian Government - government for Siberia created by the White movement. At the beginning of 1918 a Provisional Siberian Government was established in the coastal city of Vladivostok. Most of the members of this first Siberian provisional government were members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, including the head of this government, in June 1918, Bolshevik forces in central Siberia were overthrown by the Czechoslovak Legions and Monarchist Russian officers organizations. On 30 June 1918 a meeting was convened to establish such a new regime, chairman of the Council of Ministers of this new government was Pyotr Vologodsky. The Derber government in Vladivostok refused to recognize the legitimacy of new government based in Omsk. A reorganization of the Vladivostok government followed, with the name Provisional Government of Autonomous Siberia adopted, the PGAS in Vladivostok and new PSG in Omsk refused to recognize the other, and each claimed for themselves the mantle as sole government of Siberia. The generals of the Siberian Army placed their allegiance with the Vologodskii government in Omsk, however, in September 1918 the Provisional Siberian Government became a part of Provisional All-Russian Government. Гражданская война в России, катастрофа Белого движения в Сибири - Moscow, AST Publishing House,2005
23.
Siberian Cossacks
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Siberian Cossacks were Cossacks who settled in the Siberian region of Russia from the end of the 16th century, following Yermak Timofeyevichs conquest of Siberia. In early periods, practically the whole Russian population in Siberia, especially the serving-men, were called Cossacks, most of these people came from northwest Russia and had little connection to the Don Cossacks or Zaporozhian Cossacks. By 1808 the Host had been organised into ten regiments of mounted cossacks, during the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 the cossacks of the Siberian Host provided a significant proportion of the 207 squadrons of Russian cavalry involved. There was, however, criticism of their standard of horsemanship, the Siberian Host was disbanded in 1919, following the Russian Revolution, and efforts were made by the new Soviet regime to eliminate the cultural and other distinctions of the cossacks at large. While some cossack regiments were reestablished in 1937, these did not include specifically Siberian units, currently a regiment of the Russian Ground Forces at Borzya in the Eastern Military District has the title Cossack. In 1802 the Siberian Host were authorized to wear uniforms, replacing their traditional dress, initially these were based on the uniforms of the Don Cossacks, although after 1812 a more conventional lancer style dress was adopted. In practice the Siberian cossacks continued to provide their own clothing and equipment, high fleece hats were worn on occasion with red cloth tops. In 1909 khaki government issue tunics and caps were provided but the red facings and green breeches were retained
24.
Episcopal see
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An episcopal see is, in the usual meaning of the phrase, the area of a bishops ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Phrases concerning actions occurring within or outside an episcopal see are indicative of the significance of the term. The word see is derived from Latin sedes, which in its original or proper sense denotes the seat or chair that, the word throne is also used, especially in the Eastern Orthodox Church, both for the seat and for the area of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The term see is also used of the town where the cathedral or the residence is located. Within Roman Catholicism, each diocese is considered to be a See unto itself with an allegiance to the See of Rome. The idea of a See as an entity is somewhat complicated due to the existence of the 23 Particular churches of the Roman Catholic Church. The Western Church and its Eastern Counterparts all reserve some level of autonomy within their particular See, the episcopal see of the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, is known as the Holy See or the Apostolic See, claiming Papal supremacy. The view of the Catholic Church contrasted by the Eastern Catholic idea of Pentarchy, followed by Eastern Orthodox opposition to papal supremacy
25.
Tara, Omsk Oblast
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It was founded as a fort around 1594 as a direct result of Yermaks incursions into Siberia, and as such is one of the oldest towns in the region. Tara pre-dates many of Siberias larger cities and for years served as a gateway for further eastward settlement. Omsk, which subsequently eclipsed Tara in importance, was founded at the request of Taras military commanders, Taras historical churches recall a time when it was one of only two cities in Tobolsk Eparchy and Tara served as the first administrative division of the Russian Orthodox Church in Siberia. In the 18th–19th centuries, Tara was also the seat of Tarsky Uyezd of Tobolsk Governorate, with jurisdiction over Omsk. In the 1930s, Tara was the center of Tara Okrug, a part of Omsk Oblast. In 1943, Tara was designated the center of Tarsky District of redefined Omsk Oblast. It is still mentioned in the title of Archbishop of Omsk and Tara, Tara has been dropping in regional population rankings, slipping behind the towns of Isilkul, Kalachinsk, and Nazyvayevsk, all of which are located on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Within the framework of administrative divisions, Tara serves as the center of Tarsky District. As a municipal division, the town of oblast significance of Tara is incorporated within Tarsky Municipal District as Tara Urban Settlement, in the first decade of the 2000s, Tara has somewhat revived economically after the general collapse of the 1990s. The construction of a bridge across the Irtysh River completed the Tomsk–Tara–Tobolsk highway. Tara has a continental climate bordering on a subarctic climate, with very cold winters. Precipitation is quite low, but is higher in summer than at other times of the year. Закон №467-ОЗ от15 октября2003 г, «Об административно-территориальном устройстве Омской области и о порядке его изменения», в ред. Закона №1591-ОЗ от10 декабря2013 г, «О внесении изменений в отдельные Законы Омской области в связи с принятием Федерального Закона Об образовании в Российской Федерации». Вступил в силу через три месяца со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Омский вестник, №69,31 октября2003 г. Закон №548-ОЗ от30 июля2004 г, «О границах и статусе муниципальных образований Омской области», в ред. Закона №1642-ОЗ от27 июня2014 г, «О внесении изменений в Закон Омской области О границах и статусе муниципальных образований Омской области». Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Омский вестник, №45, №47, №49,13,20,27 августа2004 г
26.
Kyrgyz people
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The Kyrgyz people are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia, primarily Kyrgyzstan. There are several theories on the origin of ethnonym Kyrgyz and it is often said to be derived from the Turkic word kyrk, with -iz being an old plural suffix, so Kyrgyz literally means a collection of forty tribes. A rival myth, recorded in 1370 in the Yuán Shǐ, the original root of the ethnonym appears to have been the word kirkün, probably meaning field people. This and the Chinese transcription Tse-gu suggest that the ethnonym was Kirkut and/or Kirkur. By the time of the Mongol Empire, the meaning of the word kirkun had apparently been forgotten – as was shown by variations in readings of it across different reductions of the Yuán Shǐ and this may have led to the adoption of Kyrgyz and its mythical explanation. When distinction had to be made, more specific terms were used, the Kyrgyz proper were known as the Kara-Kirghiz, and the Kazakhs were named the Kaisaks. or Kirghiz-Kazaks. They were described in Tang Dynasty texts as having red hair and green eyes, while those with dark hair, in Chinese sources, these Kyrgyz tribes were described as fair-skinned, green- or blue-eyed and red-haired people with a mixture of European and Mongol features. According to recent historical findings, Kyrgyz history dates back to 201 BC, the Yenisei Kyrgyz lived in the upper Yenisey River valley, central Siberia. In Late Antiquity the Yenisei Kyrgyz were a part of the Tiele people, later, in the Early Middle Ages, the Yenisei Kyrgyz were a part of the confederations of the Göktürk and Uyghur Khaganates. In 840 a revolt led by the Yenisei Kyrgyz brought down the Uyghur Khaganate, by the 16th century the carriers of the ethnonym Kirgiz lived in South Siberia, Xinjiang, Tian Shan, Pamir-Alay, Middle Asia, Urals, in Kazakhstan. Though it is impossible to directly identify the Yenisei and Tien Shan Kyrgyz. Also, there follow from the oldest notes about the Kyrgyz that the mention of Kyrgyz ethnonym originates from the 6th century. The Kyrgyz as ethnic group are mentioned quite unambiguously in the time of Genghis Khan rule, the genetic makeup of the Kyrgyz is consistent with their origin as a mix of tribes. For instance, 63% of modern Kyrgyz men of Jumgal District share Haplogroup R1a1 with Ishkashimis, Tajiks of Panjikent, Pashtuns, low diversity of Kyrgyz R1a1 indicates a founder effect within the historical period. Other groups of Kyrgyz show considerably lower haplogroup R frequencies and almost lack haplogroup N, west Eurasian mtDNA ranges from 27% to 42. 6% in the Kyrgyz with Haplogroup mtDNA H being the most predominant marker at 21. 3% among the Kyrgyz. They are considered to be a people that were created by a combination of Mongol, Khitan and they generally have an East Asian appearance like their neighbours the Kazakhs, in contrast to the mostly Caucasoid Tajiks and the mixed-looking Uzbeks. The Kyrgyz state reached its greatest extent after defeating the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 AD, the Kirghiz qaghan assisted the Tang dynasty in destroying the Uyghur Khaganate and rescuing the Princess Taihe from the Uyghurs. They also killed a Uyghur khagan in the process, then Kyrgyz quickly moved as far as the Tian Shan range and maintained their dominance over this territory for about 200 years
27.
Dzungar people
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The name Dzungar people, also written as Zunghar, referred to the several Oirat tribes who formed and maintained the Dzungar Khanate in the 17th and 18th centuries. Historically they were one of major tribes of the Four Oirat confederation and they were also known as the Eleuths or Ööled, from the Qing dynasty euphemism for the hated word Dzungar, and also called Kalmyks. In 2010,15,520 people claimed Ööled ancestry in Mongolia, an unknown number also live in China, Russia, and Kazakhstan. This confederation rose to power in what known as Dzungaria between the Altai Mountains and the Ili River Valley. Initially, the confederation consisted of the Oöled, Dorbet and Khoit tribes, later on, elements of the Khoshut and Torghut tribes were forcibly incorporated into the Dzungar military, thus completing the re-unification of the West Mongolian tribes. According to oral history, the Oöled and Dörbed tribes are the tribes to the Naiman. The Oöled shared the clan name Choros with the Dörvöd, zuun gar and Baruun gar formed the Oirats military and administrative organization. The Dzungar Olots and Choros became the ruling clans in the 17th century, in 1697, two relatives of Galdan Boshugtu Khan, Danjila and Rabdan, surrendered to the Qing Kangxi Emperor. Their people were organized into two Oolod banners and resettled in modern Bayankhongor Province, Mongolia. In 1731, five hundred households fled back to Dzungar territory while the remaining Oolods were deported to Hulun Buir, after 1761 some of them were resettled in Arkhangai Province. After a series of military conflicts that started in the 1680s. Clarke argued that the Qing campaign in 1757–58 amounted to the destruction of not only the Dzungar state. Amursana rejected the Qing arrangement and rebelled since he wanted to be leader of a united Dzungar nation, Qing scholar Wei Yuan estimated the total population of Dzungars before the fall at 600,000 people, or 200,000 households. Oirat officer Saaral betrayed and battled against the Oirats, during this war Kazakhs attacked dispersed Oirats and Altays. Historian Peter Perdue attributed the decimation of the Dzungars to an policy of extermination launched by Qianlong. Mark Levene, a historian whose recent research focus on genocide, has stated that the extermination of the Dzungars was arguably the eighteenth century genocide par excellence. The Dzungar genocide was completed by a combination of a smallpox epidemic, anti-Dzungar Uyghur rebels from the Turfan and Hami oases had submitted to Qing rule as vassals and requested Qing help for overthrowing Dzungar rule. Uyghur leaders like Emin Khoja were granted titles within the Qing nobility, and it was not until generations later that Dzungaria rebounded from the destruction and near liquidation of the Dzungars after the mass slayings of nearly a million Dzungars
28.
Tobolsk
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Tobolsk is a town in Tyumen Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Tobol and Irtysh Rivers. It is a capital of Siberia. Situated where the River Irtysh turns from flowing westward to flowing northward and it became the seat of the newly established Siberia Governorate in 1708 and prospered on trade with China to the east and with Bukhara to the south. Tobolsk saw the establishment of the first school, theater, after the Russians defeated the Swedish army at Poltava in 1709, large numbers of Swedish prisoners were sent to Tobolsk. They numbered about 25% of the total population, many of them were not repatriated until the 1720s, and some of them settled permanently in Tobolsk. After administrative division of the territory, Tobolsk remained the seat of the Governor-General of Western Siberia until the seat moved to Omsk in the 1820s or 1830s. Acknowledging the authority of Tobolsk, many Siberian towns, including Omsk, Tyumen, Omsk continues to honor the legacy as of 2015. From 1796 until 1919, the served as the seat of Tobolsk Governorate. After 1825 some of the Decembrists were exiled and lived there as well, the towns relative importance declined when the Trans-Siberian Railway line between Tyumen and Omsk bypassed it to the south in the 1890s. In August 1917, after the February Revolution, the Provisional Government evacuated Tsar Nicholas II, after a White Army approached the city in spring of 1918, the Bolsheviks moved the imperial family west to Yekaterinburg in the Urals and had them shot there in July 1918. Within the framework of administrative divisions, Tobolsk serves as the center of Tobolsky District. As an administrative division, it is, together with one urban-type settlement, as a municipal division, the Town of Tobolsk is incorporated as Tobolsk Urban Okrug. The economy of modern Tobolsk centers on a oil refinery. Some traditional crafts, such as bone-carving, are also preserved, Tobolsk has a humid continental climate bordering on a subarctic climate. Winters are very cold with temperatures from −21.6 °C to −12.7 °C in January. Precipitation is moderate and is higher in summer than at other times of the year. Tobolsk is the town in Siberia and one of the few in Russia which has a standing stone kremlin. Its white walls and towers with an ensemble of churches and palatial buildings spectacularly sited on a river bank were proclaimed a national historical and architectural treasure in 1870
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Kazakhstan
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Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in northern Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Kazakhstan is the worlds largest landlocked country, and the ninth largest in the world, Kazakhstan is the dominant nation of Central Asia economically, generating 60% of the regions GDP, primarily through its oil/gas industry. It also has vast mineral resources, Kazakhstan is officially a democratic, secular, unitary, constitutional republic with a diverse cultural heritage. Kazakhstan shares borders with Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, the terrain of Kazakhstan includes flatlands, steppe, taiga, rock canyons, hills, deltas, snow-capped mountains, and deserts. Kazakhstan has an estimated 18 million people as of 2014, Given its large area, its population density is among the lowest. The capital is Astana, where it was moved in 1997 from Almaty, the territory of Kazakhstan has historically been inhabited by nomadic tribes. This changed in the 13th century, when Genghis Khan occupied the country as part of the Mongolian Empire, following internal struggles among the conquerors, power eventually reverted to the nomads. By the 16th century, the Kazakh emerged as a distinct group, the Russians began advancing into the Kazakh steppe in the 18th century, and by the mid-19th century, they nominally ruled all of Kazakhstan as part of the Russian Empire. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, and subsequent civil war, the territory of Kazakhstan was reorganised several times, in 1936, it was made the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan has worked to develop its economy, especially its dominant hydrocarbon industry. Kazakhstans 131 ethnicities include Kazakhs, Russians, Uzbeks, Ukrainians, Germans, Tatars, the Kazakh language is the state language, and Russian has equal official status for all levels of administrative and institutional purposes. The name Kazakh comes from the ancient Turkic word qaz, to wander, the name Cossack is of the same origin. The Persian suffix -stan means land or place of, so Kazakhstan can be translated as land of the wanderers. Kazakhstan has been inhabited since the Neolithic Age, the regions climate, archaeologists believe that humans first domesticated the horse in the regions vast steppes. Central Asia was originally inhabited by the Scythians, the Cuman entered the steppes of modern-day Kazakhstan around the early 11th century, where they later joined with the Kipchak and established the vast Cuman-Kipchak confederation. Under the Mongol Empire, the largest in history, administrative districts were established. These eventually came under the rule of the emergent Kazakh Khanate, throughout this period, traditional nomadic life and a livestock-based economy continued to dominate the steppe. Nevertheless, the region was the focus of ever-increasing disputes between the native Kazakh emirs and the neighbouring Persian-speaking peoples to the south, at its height the Khanate would rule parts of Central Asia and control Cumania
30.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel and his most acclaimed works include Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. Dostoyevskys oeuvre consists of 11 novels, three novellas,17 short stories and numerous other works, many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature. His 1864 novella Notes from Underground is considered to be one of the first works of existentialist literature, born in Moscow in 1821, Dostoyevsky was introduced to literature at an early age through fairy tales and legends, and through books by Russian and foreign authors. His mother died in 1837 when he was 15, and around the time he left school to enter the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. After graduating, he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a lavish lifestyle, in the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which gained him entry into St. Petersburgs literary circles. Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a group that discussed banned books critical of Tsarist Russia, he was sentenced to death. He spent four years in a Siberian prison camp, followed by six years of military service in exile. In the following years, Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist, publishing and editing several magazines of his own and later A Writers Diary and he began to travel around western Europe and developed a gambling addiction, which led to financial hardship. For a time, he had to beg for money, but he became one of the most widely read. His books have been translated more than 170 languages. Dostoyevskys parents were part of a multi-ethnic and multi-denominational Lithuanian noble family from the Pinsk region, branches of the family included Russian Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics and Eastern Catholics. Dostoyevskys immediate ancestors on his mothers side were merchants, the line on his fathers side were priests. His father, Mikhail, was expected to join the clergy but instead ran away from home, in 1809, the 20-year-old Mikhail Dostoyevsky enrolled in Moscows Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. From there he was assigned to a Moscow hospital, where he served as military doctor, in 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. The following year, he took up a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor, Dostoyevskys parents subsequently had six more children, Varvara, Andrei, Lyubov, Vera, Nikolai and Aleksandra. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, born on 11 November 1821, was the child of Dr. Mikhail Dostoyevsky. He was raised in the home in the grounds of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor
31.
Katorga
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Katorga was a system of penal labor in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Prisoners were sent to penal colonies in vast uninhabited areas of Siberia. The prisoners had to forced labor under harsh conditions. Katorga camps were established in the 17th century in underpopulated areas of Siberia, despite the isolated conditions, a few prisoners successfully escaped to populated areas. From these times, Siberia gained its fearful connotation of punishment, after the change in Russian penal law in 1847, exile and katorga became common punishment for participants in national uprisings within the Russian Empire. This led to increasing numbers of Poles sent to Siberia for katorga and these people have become known in Poland as Sybiraks. Some of them remained there, forming a Polish minority in Siberia, the most common occupations in katorga camps were mining and timber work. A notable example involved the construction of the Amur Cart Road, in 1891 Anton Chekhov, the Russian writer and playwright, visited the katorga settlements on Sakhalin island in the Russian Far East and wrote about the conditions there in his book Sakhalin Island. He criticized the short-sightedness and incompetence of the officials in charge led to poor living-standards, waste of government funds. Cheka founder Felix Dzerzhinsky, imprisoned twice, in 1897 and 1900, david Riazanov, a narodnik at the time and latter founder of the Marx-Engels Institute Revolutionary Vera Figner, a well-known political activist. Decembrists, initial verdict was 16 persons for termless katorga,5 persons for 10 years,15 persons for 6 years, after the trial, Tsar Nicholas I reduced the sentences, subsequent amnesties further shortened the terms. Prince Sergey Volkonsky, sought liberal reforms, spent 30 years as an exile in Siberia. Fanny Kaplan, a Russian political revolutionary and attempted assassin of Vladimir Lenin, sukhomlinov, a Russian former Minister of War, for abuse of power. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the Russian penal system was taken over by the Bolsheviks, in 1943 the katorga labor as a special, severe type of punishment was reintroduced. It was initially intended for Nazi collaborators, but other categories of prisoners were also sentenced to katorga labor. Prisoners sentenced to labor were sent to gulag prison camps with the most harsh regime. Gulag P. Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons, London, Ward, daly, Jonathan W. Autocracy under Siege, Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905. P. Kropotkin, In Russian and French Prisons
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Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
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October Revolution
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It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
34.
White movement
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Remnants and continuations of the movement, some of which only had narrow support, endured within the wider White émigré community until after the fall of Communism. The Whites had the aim of bringing about law and order and the salvation of Russia, fighting against traitors, barbarians. They worked to remove Soviet organizations and functionaries in White-controlled territory, overall, the White Army was nationalistic, rejected ethnic particularism and separatism. The White Army generally believed in a united multinational Russia, amongst White Army members, anti-Semitism was widespread. Western sponsors expressed dismay at this, especially as the Bolsheviks had prohibited anti-Semitism, many of the White leaders were conservative, accepting autocracy while remaining suspicious of politics. Aside from being anti-Bolshevik and patriotic, the Whites had no set ideology or main leader, the White Armies did acknowledge a single provisional head of state, the so-called Supreme Governor of Russia, but this post was prominent only under the leadership of Admiral Alexander Kolchak. The movement had no set plan for foreign policy, Whites differed on policies toward Germany, the Whites wanted to keep from alienating any potential supporters and allies, and thus saw an exclusively monarchist position as a detriment to their cause and recruitment. White-movement leaders such as Anton Denikin advocated for Russians to create their own government, Admiral Alexander Kolchak succeeded in creating a temporary wartime government in Omsk, acknowledged by most other White leaders, only for it to fall with the loss of his armies. Some warlords who were aligned with the White movement, such as Grigory Semyonov and Roman Ungern von Sternberg, did not acknowledge any authority, consequently, the White movement had no set political leanings, members could be monarchists, republicans, rightists, Kadets, etc. Moreover, other parties supported the anti-Bolshevik White Army, among them the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. But depending on the time and place, those White Army supporters might also exchange right-wing allegiance for allegiance to the Red Army, the Volunteer Army in South Russia became the most prominent and the largest of the various and disparate White forces. Starting off as a small and well-organized military in January 1918, the Kuban Cossacks joined the White Army, and conscription of both peasants and Cossacks began. In late February 1918,4,000 soldiers under the command of General Aleksei Kaledin were forced to retreat from Rostov-on-Don due to the advance of the Red Army, in 1919 the Don Cossacks joined and the Army began drafting Ukrainian peasants. In that year, between May and October, the Volunteer Army grew from 64,000 to 150,000 soldiers and was better supplied than its Red counterpart. The White Armys rank-and-file comprised active anti-Bolsheviks, such as Cossacks, nobles, the White movement had access to various naval forces, both sea-going and river-based. Note especially the use of the Black Sea Fleet, aerial forces available to the Whites included the Slavo-British Aviation Corps. The Russian ace Alexander Kazakov operated within this unit, the White movements leaders and first members came mainly from the ranks of military officers. Many came from outside the nobility, such as generals Mikhail Alekseev, the White generals never mastered administration, they often utilized prerevolutionary functionaries or military officers with monarchististic inclinations for administering White-controlled regions
35.
Provisional All-Russian Government
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The Provisional All-Russian Government was a short-lived government centred in Omsk during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1922. It formed from the Komuch and from the Provisional Siberian Government, the two régimes had previously failed to work effectively together, with rivalry leading to a customs war and to numerous border disputes. It encompassed 170 delegates, including some other regions. G. Boldyrev the left Kadet Vladimir Aleksandrovich Vinogradov A Council of Ministers carried out the administration of the government. A majority of the Council of Ministers had served formerly as members of the Provisional Siberian Government, with the Bolsheviks replacing Kerensky the Directory was replaced. A Cossack detachment arrested Avksentiev and Zenzinov, next morning Vologodsky called for a PA-RG Council of Ministers. The Directory was dissolved and its former Minister of War, Admiral Kolchak, the Supreme Governor issued the following manifesto to the population, The Provisional All-Russian Government has come to an end. The Council of Ministers, having all the power in its hands, has invested me, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, I call upon you, citizens, to unite and to sacrifice your all, if necessary, in the struggle with Bolshevism. Included among Kolchaks ministers was former prominent Tsarist minister Sergey Sazonov, viktor Chernov, founder of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, criticised the PA-RG vehemently. He denounced the Ufa settlement as unsatisfactory and saw counter-revolutionary elements involved in the new government and he advocated that the SR Party should rally the population behind the Constituent Assembly and organise the Peoples Army as an independent force. This antagonised the right, who identified the PA-RG with the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky The SR leaders in Russia denounced Kolchak and called for him to be killed. Their activities resulted in a revolt in Omsk on December 22,1918, Cossack troops. The SRs opened negotiations with the Bolsheviks and in January 1919 the remnants of the Komuchs Peoples Army joined the Red Army, with the death of Kolchak power passed southwards to the Volunteer Army. Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War, Russian government documents Search Official Russian government documents, including historic ones
36.
Alexander Kolchak
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Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak CB was a polar explorer and commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, who fought in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. His government was based in Omsk, in southwestern Siberia, for a year and a half, Kolchak was the internationally recognised leader of Russia. As his White forces fell apart, he was betrayed and captured by independent units who handed him over to local Bolsheviks, Kolchak was born in Saint Petersburg in 1874 to a family of minor Russian nobility. His father was a retired major-general of the Marine Artillery and a veteran of the 1854 siege of Sevastopol, Kolchak was educated for a naval career, graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1894 and joining the 7th Naval Battalion. He was soon transferred to the Russian Far East, serving in Vladivostok from 1895 to 1899 and he then returned to western Russia and was based at Kronstadt, joining the Russian Polar expedition of Eduard Toll on the ship Zarya in 1900 as a hydrologist. After considerable hardship, Kolchak returned in December 1902, Eduard Toll with three other explorers continued further north and were lost, Kolchak took part in two Arctic expeditions and for a while was nicknamed Kolchak-Poliarnyi. For his explorations Kolchak received the highest award of the Russian Geographical Society, in December 1903, Kolchak was en route to St. In the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War, he served as officer on the cruiser Askold. He made several sorties to lay naval mines, one of which succeeded in sinking the Japanese cruiser Takasago. He was decorated with the Order of St. Anna 4th class for the exploit, as the blockade of the port tightened and the Siege of Port Arthur intensified, he was given command of a coastal artillery battery. He was wounded in the battle for Port Arthur and taken as a prisoner of war to Nagasaki. His poor health— led to his repatriation before the end of the war, Kolchak was awarded the Golden Sword of St. George with the inscription For Bravery on his return to Russia. He served on the Naval General Staff from 1906, helping draft a shipbuilding program, a program, and developing a new protection plan for St. Petersburg. Kolchak took part in designing the special icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, based in Vladivostok, these vessels were sent on cartographic expedition to the Bering Strait and Cape Dezhnev. Kolchak commanded the Vaigach during this expedition and later worked at the Academy of Sciences with the materials collected by him during expeditions. His study, The Ices of the Kara and Siberian Seas, was printed in the Proceedings of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and is considered the most important work on this subject. Extracts from it were published under the title The Arctic Pack, in 1910 he returned to the Naval General Staff, and in 1912 he was assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet. The onset of the First World War found him on the flagship Pogranichnik, commanding Admiral Essen was not satisfied to remain on the defensive and ordered Kolchak to prepare a scheme for attacking the approaches of the German naval bases
37.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
38.
Red Army
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The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
39.
Irkutsk
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Irkutsk is a city and the administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, and one of the largest cities in Siberia. In 1652, Ivan Pokhabov built a zimovyo near the site of Irkutsk for gold trading, in 1661, Yakov Pokhabov built an ostrog or small fort nearby. The ostrog gained official town rights from the government in 1686, the first road connection between Moscow and Irkutsk, the Siberian Road, was built in 1760, and benefited the town economy. Many new products, often imported from China via Kyakhta, became available in Irkutsk for the first time, including gold, diamonds, fur, wood, silk. In 1821, as part of the Speransky reforms, Siberia was administratively divided at the Yenisei River, in the early 19th century, many Russian artists, officers, and nobles were sent into exile in Siberia for their part in the Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nicholas I. By the end of the 19th century, there was one exiled man for every two locals, people of varying backgrounds, from members of the Decembrist uprising to Bolsheviks, had been in Irkutsk for many years and had greatly influenced the culture and development of the city. As a result, Irkutsk eventually became a cultural and educational center in Eastern Siberia. Three-quarters of the city was destroyed, including approximately 4,000 houses, however, the city quickly rebounded, with electricity arriving in 1896, the first theater being built in 1897 and a major train station opened in 1898. The first train arrived in Irkutsk on August 16 of that year, by 1900, the city had earned the nickname of The Paris of Siberia. During the Russian Civil War, which broke out after the October Revolution, Irkutsk became the site of many furious, in 1920, Aleksandr Kolchak, the once-feared commander of the largest contingent of anti-Bolshevik forces, was executed in Irkutsk, which effectively destroyed the anti-Bolshevik resistance. Irkutsk was the center of the short-lived East Siberian Oblast. The city subsequently became the center of Irkutsk Oblast after East Siberian Oblast was divided into Chita Oblast. During the Communist years, the industrialization of Irkutsk and Siberia in general was heavily encouraged, the large Irkutsk Reservoir was built on the Angara River between 1950 and 1959 in order to facilitate industrial development. The Epiphany Cathedral, the palace, a school of medicine, a museum, a military hospital. The Aleksandr Kolchak monument, designed by Vyacheslav Klykov, was unveiled in 2004, on July 27,2004, the Irkutsk Synagogue was gutted by a conflagration. In December 2016,62 people in Irkutsk died in a mass methanol poisoning, the city proper lies on the Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei,72 kilometers below its outflow from Lake Baikal and on the bank opposite the suburb of Glaskovsk. The river, 580-meter wide, is crossed by the Irkutsk Hydroelectric Dam, the Irkut River, from which the town takes its name, is a smaller river that joins the Angara directly opposite the city. The main portion of the city is separated from several landmarks—the monastery, the fort and the port, as well as its suburbs—by another tributary, the Ida River
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Púchov, Slovakia
Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic
Kaifeng, China
Jinju, South Korea
Petropavl, Kazakhstan
Novosibirsk, Russia
Milwaukee, United States
Regional Municipality of York, Ontario, Canada
Lublin, Poland
"Omsk". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
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