1.
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
2.
Novozybkov
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Novozybkov is a historical town in Bryansk Oblast, Russia. It was founded in 1701 and was granted town status in 1809, Novozybkov was a major hemp supplier in the 18th and 19th centuries, particularly for the production of ropes for the Imperial Russian Navy. Following the Crimean War, the demand for hemp fell, the worlds first ground effect vehicle designer Rostislav Alexeyev was born in the town. During World War II, Novozybkov was occupied by the German Army from 16 August 1941 to 25 September 1943, on April 26,1986, Novozybkovsky District and the neighbouring Krasnogorsky District were contaminated with radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl disaster. Today, these two remain the most contaminated in the Russian Federation as to the total contaminated area. The area not suitable for human habitation starts at 1 km west of Novozybkov city limits, within the framework of administrative divisions, Novozybkov serves as the administrative center of Novozybkovsky District, even though it is not a part of it. As an administrative division, it is incorporated separately as Novozybkovsky Urban Administrative Okrug—an administrative unit with the equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, Novozybkovsky Urban Administrative Okrug is incorporated as Novozybkov Urban Okrug, Закон №13-З от5 июня1997 г. «Об административно-территориальном устройстве Брянской области», в ред, Закона №4-З от5 февраля2014 г. «О внесении изменений в отдельные законодательные акты Брянской области», Опубликован, Брянский рабочий, №119,24 июня1997 г. Закон №69-З от2 ноября2012 г, Вступил в силу1 января2013 г. Опубликован, Информационный бюллетень Официальная Брянщина, №16,6 ноября2012 г, Закон №3-З от9 марта2005 г. Закона №75-З от28 сентября2015 г, «Об изменении статуса населённого пункта посёлок Красный Ятвиж Клетнянского района Брянской области». Вступил в силу через10 дней после официального опубликования, Опубликован, Брянская неделя, №13,8 апреля2005 г. Website of Novozybkov Website about Novozybkov The murder of the Jews of Novozybkov during World War II, at Yad Vashem website
3.
Chernigov
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Chernihiv also known as Chernigov, a historic city in northern Ukraine, serves as the administrative center of the Chernihiv Oblast, as well as of the surrounding Chernihiv Raion within the oblast. Administratively, it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance, population,294, 727 Chernihiv stands on the Desna River to the north-north-east of Kiev. The area was served by Chernihiv Shestovitsa Airport, and during the Cold War it was the site of Chernigov air base, Chernihiv was first mentioned in the Rus-Byzantine Treaty, but the time of establishment is not known. According to the items uncovered by archaeological excavations of a settlement which included artifacts from the Khazar Khaganate, towards the end of the 10th century, the city probably had its own rulers. It was there that the Black Grave, one of the largest and earliest royal mounds in Eastern Europe, was excavated in the 19th century, in the southern portion of the Kievan Rus the city was the second by importance and wealth. The grand principality was the largest in Kievan Rus and included not only the Severian towns but even such remote regions as Murom, Ryazan and Tmutarakan. The golden age of Chernihiv, when the city peaked at 25,000, lasted until 1239 when the city was sacked by the hordes of Batu Khan. The area fell under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1353, the areas importance increased again in the middle of the 17th century during and after the Khmelnytsky Uprising. In the Hetman State Chernihiv was the city of deployment of Chernihiv Cossack regiment, under the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo the legal suzerainty of the area was ceded to Tsardom of Russia, with Chernihiv remaining an important center of the autonomous Cossack Hetmanate. With the abolishment of the Hetmanate, the city became an administrative center of the Russian Empire. According to the census of 1897, in the city of Chernihiv there were about 11,000 Jews out of the population of 27,006. Their primary occupations were industrial and commercial, many tobacco plantations and fruit gardens in the neighborhood were owned by Jews. There were 1,321 Jewish artisans in Chernihiv, including 404 tailors and seamstresses, there were 69 Jewish day-laborers, almost exclusively teamsters. But few were engaged in the factories, during World War II, Chernihiv was occupied by the German Army from 9 September 1941 to 21 September 1943. The Cathedral of Sts Boris and Gleb, dating from the century, was much rebuilt in succeeding periods. Likewise built in brick, it has a dome and six pillars. The crowning achievement of Chernihiv masters was the exquisite Pyatnytska Church and this graceful building was seriously damaged in the Second World War, its original medieval outlook was reconstructed to a design by Peter Baranovsky. The earliest residential buildings in the date from the late 17th century
4.
Governorate (Russia)
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A governorate, or a guberniya, was a major and principal administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire and the early Russian SFSR. The term is translated as government, governorate, or province. A governorate was ruled by a governor, a word borrowed from Latin gubernator, sometimes the term guberniya was informally used to refer to the office of a governor. Selected governorates were united under a governor general such as Grand Duchy of Finland, Tsardom of Poland, Russian Turkestan. There also were military governors such as Kronshtadt, Vladivostok, aside of governorates, other types of divisions were oblasts and okrugs. This subdivision type was created by the edict of Peter the Great on December 18,1708 On the establishment of the gubernias and cities assigned to them, in 1719, guberniyas were further subdivided into provinces. Later the number of guberniyas was increased to 23, the term guberniya, however, still remained in use. These viceroyalties were governed by namestniki or governors general, correspondingly, the term governorate general was in use to refer to the actual territory being governed. The office of general had more administrative power and was in a higher position than the previous office of governor. Sometimes a governor general ruled several guberniyas, for the guberniya as subdivisions of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Finland, see Administrative division of Congress Poland and Governorates of the Grand Duchy of Finland. For the guberniya as subdivisions of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and the Ukrainian SSR, after the February Revolution, the Russian Provisional Government renamed governors into guberniya commissars. The October Revolution left the subdivision in place, but the apparatus was replaced by guberniya soviets. Actual subdivisions of the Soviet Union into particular territorial units was subject to numerous changes, eventually, in 1929, the subdivision was replaced by the notions of oblast, okrug, and raion. In post-Soviet republics such as Russia and Ukraine, the term Guberniya is obsolete, there is another archaic meaning of the word as the word denoted a type of estate in former Lithuania of the Russian Empire till 1917. History of the division of Russia List of governorates of the Russian Empire Governorate-General GOELRO plan Ignatov. History of state administration of Russia
5.
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
6.
Bryansk Oblast
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Bryansk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Bryansk, as of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,278,217. Bryansk Oblast lies in western European Russia in the central to western parts of the East European Plain, the relief is a typical East European Plain landscape, with alternating rolling hills and shallow lowlands, although lowlands dominate in the western and central parts. A total of 125 rivers flow through Bryansk Oblast, with the longest one, at 1,187 kilometers, other major rivers include the Bolva, Navlya, Nerussa, Sudost, Besed, and Iput. There are forty-nine major lakes, with Lake Kozhany being the largest, the average temperature in January is −7 to −9 °C. The average July temperature is +18 to +19 °C, average annual precipitation varies from 560 to 600 millimeters. Natural resources include deposits of peat, sand, clay, chalk, marl, about a quarter of the total area of the oblast is covered by forests, mainly coniferous, mixed, and deciduous, as well as forest-steppe. Bryansky Les Nature Reserve is a reserve which protects, among other things. As a result of the Chernobyl disaster on April 26,1986, in 1999, some 226,000 people lived in areas with the contamination level above 5 Curie/km2, representing approximately 16% of the oblasts population. The Venus of Eliseevichi is a piece of Paleolithic art dated 14,000 YBP found in the region, the Eliseevichi site is also associated with the earliest recognized dog remains dating to 15,000 YBP. In the 9th to 11th centuries, Slavic tribes lived along the banks of the Desna River, the city of Bryansk was established in 985. Bryansk remained poorly attested until the Mongol invasion of Russia and it was the northernmost of the Severian cities in the possession of the Chernigov Rurikids and the principality of Novgorod-Seversky. After Mikhail of Chernigov was murdered by the Mongols and his capital was destroyed, in 1310, when the Mongols sacked the town again, it belonged to the principality of Smolensk. After the demise of Chernigov by the Mongols, the Principality of Bryansk was formed, in 1356 Bryansk territory was under the authority of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Great Duchy of Moscow conquered Bryansk following the Battle of Vedrosha in 1503, the town was turned into a fortress which played a major role during the Time of Troubles. In 1618 the Deulino Armistice saw the southern and western area of the Bryansk region temporarily ceded to Poland, Peter the Great incorporated Bryansk into Kiev Governorate, but Catherine the Great deemed it wise to transfer the town to the Oryol Governorate in 1779. She also promulgated the towns coat of arms, Bryansk became the duchys south-western outpost in the fight against Lithuania, Poland and Crimean Khanate. One of the largest was Starodubaka, in 1781, these regiments merged into districts and several territories
7.
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
8.
Ukrainians
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Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is by total population the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term Ukrainians to all its citizens, also among historical names of the people of Ukraine Rusyns, Cossacks, etc. can be found. According to some definitions, a descriptive name for the inhabitants of Ukraine is Ukrainian or Ukrainian people. Belarusians and Russians are considered among the bloodline of Ukrainians, while Rusyns are another closely related group, the ethnonym Ukrainians became widely accepted only in the 20th century after their territory obtained distinctive statehood in 1917. People of these territories were usually called Rus or Rusyns, the Ukrainian language appeared in the 14th – 16th centuries, but at that time, it was mostly known as Ruthenian, like its brothers. In the 16th – 17th centuries, with the establishment of the Zaporizhian Sich, however, the ethnonym Ukrainians and the linguonym Ukrainian were used only occasionally, and the people of Ukraine usually continued to call themselves and their language Ruthenian. This official name did not spread widely among the peasantry constituted the majority of the population. Ukrainian peasants still referred to their country as Ukraine and to themselves, in areas outside the control of the Russian/Soviet state until the mid-20th century, Ukrainians were known by their pre-existing names for much longer. The modern name derives from Ukrayina, a name first documented in 1187. Several scientific theories attempt to explain the etymology of the term, according to some new alternative Ukrainian historians such as Hryhoriy Pivtorak, Vitaly Sklyarenko and other scholars, translate the term u-kraine as in-land, home-land or our-country. The name in this context derives from the word u-kraina in the sense of domestic region, in the last few centuries the population of Ukraine experienced periods of Polonization and Russification, but preserved a common culture and a sense of common identity. Most ethnic Ukrainians live in Ukraine, where make up over three-quarters of the population. The inhabitants of the Kuban, for example, have vacillated among three identities, Ukrainian, Russian, and Cossack, approximately 800,000 people of Ukrainian ancestry live in the Russian Far East in an area known historically as Green Ukraine. According to some assumptions, an estimated number of almost 2.1 million people of Ukrainian origin live in North America. Large numbers of Ukrainians live in Brazil, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Poland, Argentina, Belarus, Portugal, there are also Ukrainian diasporas in the UK, Australia, Germany, Latvia, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Ireland, Sweden and the former Yugoslavia. Today, large ethnic Ukrainian minorities reside in Russia, Canada, Ukrainians have one of the largest diasporas in the world. The East Slavs emerged from the undifferentiated early Slavs with the Slavic migrations in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the East Slavs were united in the Kievan Rus during the 9th to 13th centuries. East Slavic tribes cited as proto-Ukrainian include the Volhynians, Derevlianians, Polianians, and Siverianians and the less significant Ulychians, Tivertsians, the Gothic historian Jordanes and 6th-century Byzantine authors named two groups that lived in the south-east of Europe, Sclavins and Antes
9.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
10.
Riga
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Riga is the capital and the largest city of Latvia. With 696,593 inhabitants, Riga is the largest city in the Baltic states, the city lies on the Gulf of Riga, at the mouth of the Daugava. Rigas territory covers 307.17 square kilometres and lies one and ten metres above sea level, on a flat and sandy plain. Riga was founded in 1201 and is a former Hanseatic League member, Rigas historical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and 19th century wooden architecture. Riga was the European Capital of Culture during 2014, along with Umeå in Sweden, Riga hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, and the 2006 IIHF Mens World Ice Hockey Championships. It is home to the European Unions office of European Regulators for Electronic Communications, Riga is served by Riga International Airport, the largest airport in the Baltic states. Riga is a member of Eurocities, the Union of the Baltic Cities, another theory could be that Riga was named after Riege, the German name for the River Rīdzene, a tributary of the Daugava. The river Daugava has been a trade route since antiquity, part of the Vikings Dvina-Dnieper navigation route to Byzantium. A sheltered natural harbour 15 km upriver from the mouth of the Daugava — the site of todays Riga — has been recorded, as Duna Urbs and it was settled by the Livs, an ancient Finnic tribe. Riga began to develop as a centre of Viking trade during the early Middle Ages, Rigas inhabitants occupied themselves mainly with fishing, animal husbandry, and trading, later developing crafts. German traders began visiting Riga, establishing a nearby outpost in 1158, along with German traders also arrived the monk Meinhard of Segeberg to convert the Livonian pagans to Christianity. Catholic and Orthodox Christianity had already arrived in Latvia more than a century earlier, Meinhard settled among the Livs, building a castle and church at Ikšķile, upstream from Riga, and established his bishopric there. The Livs, however, continued to practice paganism and Meinhard died in Ikšķile in 1196, in 1198, the Bishop Berthold arrived with a contingent of crusaders and commenced a campaign of forced Christianization. Berthold was killed soon afterwards and his forces defeated, pope Innocent III issued a bull declaring a crusade against the Livonians. Bishop Albert was proclaimed Bishop of Livonia by his uncle Hartwig of Uthlede, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen, Albert landed in Riga in 1200 with 23 ships and 500 Westphalian crusaders. In 1201, he transferred the seat of the Livonian bishopric from Ikšķile to Riga, the year 1201 also marked the first arrival of German merchants in Novgorod, via the Dvina. To defend territory and trade, Albert established the Order of Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1202, open to nobles, in 1207, Albert started on fortification of the town. Emperor Philip invested Albert with Livonia as a fief and principality of the Holy Roman Empire, until then, it had been customary for crusaders to serve for a year and then return home
11.
Baltic Fleet
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The Baltic Fleet is the Russian Federation Navys presence in the Baltic Sea. In previous historical periods, it has been part of the navy of Imperial Russia, the Fleet gained the Twice Red Banner appellation during the Soviet period, indicating two awards of the Order of the Red Banner. It is headquartered in Kaliningrad, with its base in Baltiysk and another base at Kronshtadt. Established 18 May 1703, under Czar Peter the Great, the Fleet is the oldest Russian Navy formation, the first commander was a recruited Dutch admiral, Cornelius Cruys, who in 1723 was succeeded by Count Fyodor Apraksin. In 1703, the base of the fleet was established in Kronshtadt. One of the fleets first actions was the taking of Shlisselburg, in 1701 Peter the Great established a special school, the School of Mathematics and Navigation, situated in the Sukharev Tower in Moscow. The Fleets base was moved to St. Petersburg and in 1752 it was renamed the Naval Cadet Corps, today it is the St. Petersburg Naval Institute – Peter the Great Naval Corps. The Baltic Fleet began to receive new vessels in 1703, the first vessel, the 24-gun three-masted frigate Shtandart, is considered to flagship of the fleet and an example of a newly popular design of warship, the frigate. By 1724, the fleet boasted 141 sail warships and hundreds of oar-propelled ships, during the Great Northern War, the Baltic Fleet assisted in taking Viborg, Tallinn, Riga, the West Estonian archipelago, Helsinki, and Turku. The first claimed victories of the new Imperial Russian Navy were the Gangut in 1714 and, arguably, from 1715, the English Royal Navy intervened in the Baltic Sea on behalf of the German principality of Hanover, and more or less in a tacit alliance with Russia. During the concluding stages of the war, the Russian fleet would land troops along the Swedish coast to devastate coastal settlements. However, after the death of King Charles XII, the Royal Navy would rather protect Swedish interests after a rapprochement between the Kingdom of Sweden and King George I, a Russian attempt to reach the Swedish capital of Stockholm was checked at the Battle of Stäket in 1719. During the Seven Years War, the Russian Baltic Sea fleet was active on the Pomeranian coast of northern Germany and Prussia, helping the infantry to take Memel in 1757, the Oresund was blockaded in order to prevent the British Navy from entering the Baltic sea. During the Russo-Swedish War the fleet, commanded by Samuel Greig, checked the Swedes at Hogland, the Russian defeat in this battle effectively ended the war. In the Crimean War, the fleet – although stymied in its operations by the absence of steamships – prevented the British and French Allies from occupying Hangö, Sveaborg, and Saint Petersburg. Despite being greatly outnumbered by the technologically superior Allies, it was the Russian Fleet that introduced into naval warfare such novelties as torpedo mines, other outstanding inventors who served in the Baltic Fleet were Alexander Stepanovich Popov, Stepan Makarov, Alexei Krylov, and Alexander Mozhaiski. As early as 1861, the first armor-clad ships were built for the Baltic Fleet, in 1863, during the American Civil War, most of the Fleets ocean-going ships, including the flagship Alexander Nevsky were sent to New York City. At the same time ten Uragan-class monitors based on an American-designed Passaic monitor were launched, here it was the policy of the Czar and his government to show support for the Northern Union Army in the United States during their Civil War, observing and exchanging naval tactics and cooperation
12.
Kronstadt
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It is also Saint Petersburgs main seaport. In March 1921, it was the site of the Kronstadt rebellion, traditionally, the seat of the Russian admiralty and the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet were located in Kronstadt guarding the approaches to Saint Petersburg. The historic centre of the city and its fortifications are part of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt has been a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Christians for many years due to the holy memory of Saint John of Kronstadt. Bus and water tours to Kronstadt are taken daily from Saint Petersburg, Kronstadt was the birthplace of Pyotr Kapitsa, co-recipient of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics. Kronstadt was founded by Peter the Great, who took the island of Kotlin from the Swedes in 1703, the first fortifications were inaugurated on May 18,1704. These fortifications, known as Kronstadts Forts, were constructed very quickly, during the winter the Gulf of Finland freezes completely. Workers used thousands of frames made of oak logs filled with stones and these were carried by horses across the frozen sea, and placed in cuttings made in the ice. Thus, several new small islands were created, and forts were erected on them, only two narrow navigable channels remained, and the strongest forts guarded them. Kronstadt was thoroughly refortified in the 19th century, the old three-decker forts, five in number, which formerly constituted the principal defences of the place, and defied the Anglo-French fleets during the Crimean War, became of secondary importance. From the plans of Eduard Totleben a new fort, Constantine, and four batteries were constructed to defend the principal approach, all these fortifications were low and thickly armored earthworks, powerfully armed with heavy Krupp guns in turrets. The town is surrounded with an enceinte, in summer 1891, the French fleet was officially—and triumphantly—received in Kronstadt. It was a first step towards the coming Franco-Russian Alliance, during the Petrograd riots of the February revolution, the sailors of Petrograd joined the revolution and executed their officers, thus gaining a reputation as dedicated revolutionaries. During the civil war, the sailors participated on the red side, until 1921, Kronstadt and the supporting forts and minefields were the key to the protection of Petrograd from foreign forces. Despite this, the cruiser Oleg was torpedoed and sunk by a motor boat after participating in a bombardment of Krasnaya Gorka fort that had revolted against the Bolsheviks. In 1921, a group of officers and sailors, soldiers as well as their civilian supporters rebelled against the Bolshevik government in Soviet Kronstadt. The garrison had previously been a centre of support for the Bolsheviks, and throughout the Civil War of 1917–1921. Their demands included freedom of speech, a stop to the deportation to camps, a change in Soviet war politics. After brief negotiations, Leon Trotsky responded by sending the army to Kronstadt, in the late 1930s, Kronstadt lived the life of the fortified city and was the base of the Baltic Fleet
13.
Russian cruiser Pamiat Azova
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Pamiat Azova was a unique armoured cruiser built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the late 1880s. She was decommissioned from front line service in 1909, converted into a ship and sunk by British torpedo boats during the Baltic Naval War. The name of the ship commemorated the Russian ship of the line Azov, the name of that ship, in its turn, referred to the Azov campaigns of Peter the Great. After the battle Nicholas I of Russia decreed that after the retirement of Azov the Imperial Navy must perpetually have a ship named Pamyat Azova, the cruiser commissioned in 1890 was the third ship carrying this name. The ship was designed as a raider and rigged with sails to extend range. She was built by Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg and launched on 1 July 1888 and her machinery was re-built in 1904 with Bellville type boilers. The ship served with the Baltic Fleet, and in 1891-1892 it took part in a Cruise around Asia with Crown Prince Nicholas on board and this led to a Fabergé egg, the Memory of Azov being made to commemorate this event. She made a visit to the French Navy in October 1893 in Toulon to reinforce the Franco-Russian Alliance, in 1906, during the First Russian Revolution, the crew of the cruiser mutinied while near Reval. The ship subsequently was placed in reserve, in 1909 she was converted into a torpedo boat depot ship and renamed Dvina. The ship was sunk by the British torpedo boat CMB79 in Kronstadt Harbour on 18 August 1919, the wreck was raised and scrapped. Media related to Frigate Pamyat Azova at Wikimedia Commons Conways All the Worlds Fighting Ships 1860-1905 battleships-cruisers. com Pamiat Azova statistics
14.
Russian battleship Imperator Pavel I
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Imperator Pavel I was an Andrei Pervozvanny-class predreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The ships construction was extended by design changes as a result of the Russo-Japanese War and labor unrest after the 1905 Revolution. Imperator Pavel I was not very active during World War I, the ship was laid up in 1918 and she was scrapped in 1923. Imperator Pavel I was 454 feet long at the waterline and 460 feet long overall and she had a beam of 80 feet and a draft of 27 feet. She displaced 18,902 long tons at deep load and her hull was subdivided by 17 transverse watertight bulkheads and the engine rooms were divided by a centerline longitudinal bulkhead. She had a bottom and a metacentric height of 4 feet. Imperator Pavel I had two 4-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines with a designed output of 17,600 indicated horsepower. Twenty-five Belleville boilers provided steam to the engines at a pressure of 285 pounds per square inch. On sea trials, the engines produced 18,596 ihp, the main armament consisted of two pairs of 12-inch Model 1895 40-caliber guns mounted in twin-gun turrets fore and aft. These guns had an elevation of 35° and could depress to -5°. 80 rounds per gun were carried and they could fire one round per minute, eight of the fourteen 8-inch Model 1905 45-caliber guns were mounted in four twin-gun turret at the corners of the superstructure while six were mounted in casemates in the superstructure. For defense against torpedo boats, Imperator Pavel I carried twelve 120-millimeter guns mounted in casemates above the 8-inch guns in the superstructure, two underwater 457-millimeter torpedo tubes were mounted, one on each side, and they were provided with six spare torpedoes. Based on the Russian experience at the Battle of Tsushima, the sides of the hull were completely protected by Krupp cemented armor. The main waterline belt had a thickness of 8.5 inches. The sides of the gun turrets were 8 inches thick. The greatest thickness of armor was 1.5 inches. Imperator Pavel I was built by the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg, construction began on 27 October 1904 and was slowed by labor trouble in the shipyard from the 1905 Revolution. She was launched on 7 September 1907 and began her sea trials in October 1910, the ship entered service on 10 March 1911 before her trials were completed in October 1911
15.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
16.
Leon Trotsky
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Trotsky initially supported the Menshevik Internationalists faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution, and he was, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov, one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. He was a figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union from exile, on Stalins orders, he was assassinated in Mexico in August 1940 by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born Soviet agent. Trotskys ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism. He was written out of the books under Stalin, and was one of the few Soviet political figures who was not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. It was not until the late 1980s that his books were released for publication in the Soviet Union and his parents were David Leontyevich Bronstein and his wife Anna Lvovna. The family was of Jewish origin, the language they spoke at home was Surzhyk, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. Trotskys younger sister, Olga, who grew up to be a Bolshevik. Many anti-Communists, anti-semites, and anti-Trotskyists have noted Trotskys original surname, some authors, notably Robert Service, have also claimed that Trotskys childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an apparent attempt to emphasize Trotskys Jewish origins but, contrary to Services claims and he says that it is highly improbable that the family was Jewish, as they did not speak Yiddish, the common language among eastern European Jews. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotskys childhood name was Lyova, when Trotsky was nine, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated in a Jewish school. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial governments policy of Russification. As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was then a cosmopolitan port city. This environment contributed to the development of the young mans international outlook, although Trotsky said in his autobiography My Life that he was never perfectly fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian, Raymond Molinier wrote that Trotsky spoke French fluently. Trotsky became involved in activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he initially opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism later that year by his future first wife, instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name Lvov, he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, in January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested
17.
Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich
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Mikhail Dmitriyevich Bonch-Bruyevich was an Imperial Russian and Soviet military commander, Lieutenant General. His family was of Polish descent and his surname is written in Polish as Boncz-Brujewicz. From 1892-1895, Bonch-Bruyevich served as an officer with the Lithuanian Guards Regiment, at the outbreak of World War I Bonch-Bruyevich was in command of the 176th Perevolochensky Regiment, based at Chernigov. He was an eye witness to the aerial ramming attack in which the Russian aviator Pyotr Nesterov died and he later became chief of staff and deputy commander of the Russian Northern Front. He was commander of the Northern Front from 29 August 1917 to 9 September 1917, after the October Revolution, he was chief of staff of the Supreme Commander, the military director of the Supreme Military Council, and chief of field staff of the Revolutionary Military Council. He survived the Stalinist purge, in a large part because of his brother, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, who was Vladimir Lenins personal secretary
18.
Pravda
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The newspaper began publication on 5 May 1912 in the Russian Empire, but was already extant abroad in January 1911. It emerged as a newspaper of the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. The newspaper was an organ of the Central Committee of the CPSU between 1912 and 1991, in 1996 there was an internal dispute between the owners of Pravda International and some of the Pravda journalists which led to Pravda splitting into different entities. After a legal dispute between the parties, the Russian court of arbitration stipulated that both entities would be allowed to continue using the Pravda name. Though Pravda officially began publication on 5 May 1912, the anniversary of Karl Marxs birth, its origins back to 1903 when it was founded in Moscow by a wealthy railway engineer. Pravda had started publishing in the light of the Russian Revolution of 1905, during its earliest days, Pravda had no political orientation. Kozhevnikov started it as a journal of arts, literature and social life, Kozhevnikov was soon able to form up a team of young writers including A. A. Bogdanov, N. A Rozhkov, M. N Pokrovsky, I. I Skvortsov-Stepanov, P. P Rumyantsev, lunts, who were active contributors on social life section of Pravda. Later they became the board of the journal and in the near future also became the active members of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Because of certain quarrels between Kozhevnikov and the board, he had asked them to leave and the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP took over as Editorial Board. But the relationship between them and Kozhevnikov was also a bitter one, the Ukrainian political party Spilka, which was also a splinter group of the RSDLP, took over the journal as its organ. Leon Trotsky was invited to edit the paper in 1908 and the paper was moved to Vienna in 1909. By then, the board of Pravda consisted of hard-line Bolsheviks who sidelined the Spilka leadership soon after it shifted to Vienna. Trotsky had introduced a format to the newspaper and distanced itself from the intra-party struggles inside the RSDLP. During those days, Pravda gained an audience among Russian workers. By 1910 the Central Committee of the RSDLP suggested making Pravda its official organ, finally, at the sixth conference of the RSDLP held in Prague in January 1912, the Menshevik faction was expelled from the party. The party under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin decided to make Pravda its official mouthpiece, the paper was shifted from Vienna to St. Petersburg and the first issue under Lenins leadership was published on 5 May 1912. It was the first time that Pravda was published as a political newspaper
19.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
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The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between the new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, that ended Russias participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk, after two months of negotiations, the treaty was forced on the Bolshevik government by the threat of further advances by German and Austrian forces. According to the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russias commitments to the Triple Entente alliance, in the treaty, Bolshevik Russia ceded the Baltic States to Germany, they were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings. Russia also ceded its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, furthermore, Russia agreed to pay six billion German gold marks in reparations. Historian Spencer Tucker says, The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator, Congress Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, as Germans refused to recognize the existence of any Polish representatives, which in turn led to Polish protests. When Germans later complained that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was too harsh on them, the treaty was effectively terminated in November 1918, when Germany surrendered to the Allies. By 1917, Germany and Imperial Russia were stuck in a stalemate on the Eastern Front of World War I, at the time, the Russian economy nearly collapsed under the strain of the war effort. The large numbers of war casualties and persistent food shortages in the urban centers brought about civil unrest, known as the February Revolution. The Russian Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar, decided to continue the war on the Entente side, the pro-war Provisional Government was opposed by the self-proclaimed Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, dominated by leftist parties. Its Order No.1 called for a mandate to soldier committees rather than army officers. The Soviet started to form its own power, the Red Guards. The position of the Provisional Government led the Germans to offer support to the Russian opposition, the Communist Party in particular, in April 1917, Germany allowed Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to return to Russia from his exile in Switzerland and offered him financial help. Throughout 1917, Bolsheviks spread defeatist and revolutionary propaganda, called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, following the disastrous failure of the Kerensky Offensive, discipline in the Russian army deteriorated completely. Soldiers would disobey orders, often under the influence of Bolshevik agitation, Russian and German soldiers occasionally left their positions and fraternized. The defeat and ongoing hardships of war led to anti-government riots in Petrograd headed by the Bolsheviks, several months later, on 7 November, Red Guards seized the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government in what is known as the October Revolution. The newly established Soviet government decided to end Russias participation in the war with Germany, on 26 October 1917, Vladimir Lenin signed the Decree on Peace, which was approved by the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies. The Decree called upon all the belligerent nations and their governments to start negotiations for peace. Leon Trotsky was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs in the new Bolshevik government, on 15 December 1917, an armistice between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers was concluded and fighting stopped
20.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
21.
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
22.
Alexandra Kollontai
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Alexandra Mikhailovna Kollontai was a Russian Communist revolutionary, first as a member of the Mensheviks, then from 1914 on as a Bolshevik. In 1923, Kollontai was appointed Soviet Ambassador to Norway, one of the first women to such a post. Alexandra Mikhailovna Domontovich was born on 31 March 1872 in St. Petersburg and her father, General Mikhail Alekseevich Domontovich, descended from a Ukrainian Cossack family that traced its ancestry back to the 13th century. He served as a officer in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. Russian opera singer Yevgeniya Mravina was Kollontais half-sister via her mother, the saga of her parents long and difficult struggle to be together in spite of the norms of society would color and inform Alexandra Kollontais own views of relationships, sex, and marriage. Alexandra Mikhailovna – or Shura as she was called growing up – was close to her father, with whom she shared an analytical bent and her relationship with her mother, for whom she was named, was more complex. She later recalled, My mother and the English nanny who reared me were demanding. There was order in everything, to tidy up toys myself, to lay my underwear on a chair at night, to wash neatly, to study my lessons on time. Alexandra was a good student growing up, sharing her fathers interest in history and she spoke French with her mother and sisters, English with her nanny, Finnish with the peasants at a family estate inherited from her maternal grandfather in Kuusa, and was a student of German. Instead, Alexandra was to be allowed to take an exam to gain certification as a teacher before making her way into society to find a husband. In 1890 or 1891, Alexandra, aged around 19, met her husband, Vladimir Ludvigovich Kollontai. Alexandras mother objected bitterly to the union since the young man was so poor. Her mother bitterly scoffed at the notion, You work and you, who cant even make up your own bed to look neat and tidy. You, who never picked up a needle and you, who go marching through the house like a princess and never help the servants with their work. You, who are just like your father, going around dreaming and leaving your books on every chair, Alexandra became pregnant soon after her marriage and bore a son, Mikhail, in 1894. She devoted her time to reading radical populist and Marxist political literature, while Kollontai was initially drawn to the populist ideas of a restructuring of society based upon the Mir, effective advocates of such theories in the last decade of the 19th century were few. Through this library Kollontai met Elena Stasova, an activist in the budding Marxist movement in St. Petersburg, Stasova began to use Kollontai as a courier, transporting parcels of illegal writings to unknown individuals, which were delivered upon utterance of a password. Years later, she wrote about her marriage, We separated although we were in love because I felt trapped, I was detached, because of the revolutionary upsettings rooted in Russia
23.
Moscow Kremlin
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It is the best known of the kremlins and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. Also within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace, the complex serves as the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation. It had previously used to refer to the government of the Soviet Union. Kremlinology refers to the study of Soviet and Russian politics, the site has been continuously inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples since the 2nd century BC. Vyatichi built a structure on the hill where the Neglinnaya River flowed into the Moskva River. Up to the 14th century, the site was known as the grad of Moscow, the word Kremlin was first recorded in 1331. The grad was greatly extended by Prince Yuri Dolgorukiy in 1156, destroyed by the Mongols in 1237, dmitri Donskoi replaced the oak walls with a strong citadel of white limestone in 1366–1368 on the basic foundations of the current walls, this fortification withstood a siege by Khan Tokhtamysh. Dmitris son Vasily I resumed construction of churches and cloisters in the Kremlin, the newly built Annunciation Cathedral was painted by Theophanes the Greek, Andrei Rublev, and Prokhor in 1406. The Chudov Monastery was founded by Dmitris tutor, Metropolitan Alexis, while his widow, Eudoxia and it was during his reign that three extant cathedrals of the Kremlin, the Deposition Church, and the Palace of Facets were constructed. The highest building of the city and Muscovite Russia was the Ivan the Great Bell Tower, built in 1505–08, the Kremlin walls as they now appear were built between 1485 and 1495. Spasskie gates of the wall bear a dedication in Latin praising Petrus Antonius Solarius for the design. After construction of the new walls and churches was complete. The Kremlin was separated from the merchant town by a 30-meter-wide moat. The same tsar also renovated some of his grandfathers palaces, added a new palace and cathedral for his sons, and endowed the Trinity metochion inside the Kremlin. The metochion was administrated by the Trinity Monastery and boasted the graceful tower church of St. Sergius, during the Time of Troubles, the Kremlin was held by the Polish forces for two years, between 21 September 1610 and 26 October 1612. The Kremlins liberation by the army of prince Dmitry Pozharsky. During his reign and that of his son Alexis, the eleven-domed Upper Saviour Cathedral, Armorial Gate, Terem Palace, Amusement Palace, following the death of Alexis, the Kremlin witnessed the Moscow Uprising of 1682, from which czar Peter barely escaped. As a result, both of them disliked the Kremlin, three decades later, Peter abandoned the residence of his forefathers for his new capital, Saint Petersburg
24.
Samara
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Samara, known from 1935 to 1991 as Kuybyshev, is the sixth largest city in Russia and the administrative center of Samara Oblast. It is situated in the part of European Russia at the confluence of the Volga. The Volga acts as the western boundary, across the river are the Zhiguli Mountains. The northern boundary is formed by the Sokolyi Hills and by the steppes in the south, the land within the city boundaries covers 46,597 hectares. The metropolitan area of Samara-Tolyatti-Syzran within Samara Oblast contains a population of three million. Formerly a closed city, Samara is now a large and important social, political, economic, industrial and it has a continental climate characterised by hot summers and cold winters. Samaras riverfront is considered one of the recreation places both for local citizens and tourists. After the Soviet novelist Vasily Aksyonov visited Samara, he remarked, I am not sure where in the West one can find such a long, ahmad ibn Fadlan visited the area that is now Samara around the year 921 AD while on his journey up the Volga. The Volga port of Samara appears on Italian maps of the 14th century, before 1586, the Samara Bend was a pirate nest. Lookouts would spot a boat and quickly cross to the other side of the peninsula where the pirates would organize an attack. Officially, Samara started with a built in 1586 at the confluence of the Volga. This fortress was a frontier post protecting the then easternmost boundaries of Russia from forays of nomads, a local customs office was established in 1600. As more and more pulled into Samaras port, the town turned into a center for diplomatic and economic links between Russia and the East. Samara also opened its gates to peasant war rebels headed by Stepan Razin and Yemelyan Pugachyov, welcoming them with traditional bread, the town was visited by Peter the Great and later Tsars. In 1780, Samara was turned into a town of Simbirsk Governorate overseen by the local Governor-General, and Uyezd and Zemstvo Courts of Justice. On January 1,1851, Samara became the center of Samara Governorate with a population of 20,000. This gave a stimulus to the development of the economic, political and cultural life of the community, in 1877, during the Russian-Turkish War, a mission from the Samara city government Duma led by Pyotr V. The quick growth of Samaras economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was determined by the scope of the bread trade and flour milling business
25.
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
26.
Makhno
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Nestor Ivanovych Makhno or Batko Makhno was a Ukrainian anarchist revolutionary and the commander of an independent anarchist army in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War of 1917–22. As commander of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine, commonly referred to as the Makhnovshchina, Makhno and his movement repeatedly attempted to reorganize life in the Huliaipole region along anarchist lines, however, the disruptions of the civil war precluded any long-term social experiments. Although Makhno considered the Bolsheviks a threat to the development of an anarchist Free Territory within Ukraine, after a series of imprisonments and escapes, Makhno finally settled in Paris with his wife Halyna and daughter Yelena. In exile Makhno wrote three volumes of memoirs, Makhno died in exile at the age of 45 from tuberculosis-related causes. He is also credited as the inventor of the tachanka, a horse-drawn platform mounting a machine gun. Nestor Makhno was born into a peasant family in Huliaipole. He was the youngest of five children, church files show a baptism date of October 27,1888, but Nestor Makhnos parents registered his date of birth as 1889. His father died when he was ten months old, due to extreme poverty, he had to work as a shepherd at the age of seven. He studied at the Second Huliaipole primary school in winter at the age of eight and he left school at the age of twelve and was employed as a farmhand on the estates of nobles and on the farms of wealthy peasants or kulaks. At the age of seventeen, he was employed in Huliaipole itself as a painter, then as a worker in a local iron foundry. During this time he involved in revolutionary politics. His involvement was based on his experiences of injustice at work, in 1906, Makhno joined the anarchist organization in Huliaipole. He was arrested in 1906, tried, and acquitted and he was again arrested in 1907, but could not be incriminated, and the charges were dropped. The third arrest came in 1908 when an infiltrator was able to testify against Makhno, in 1910 Makhno was sentenced to death by hanging, but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he was sent to Butyrskaya prison in Moscow. In prison he came under the influence of his intellectual cellmate Piotr Arshinov and he was released from prison after the February Revolution in 1917. After liberation from prison, Makhno organized a peasants union and it gave him a Robin Hood image and he expropriated large estates from landowners and distributed the land among the peasants. In March 1918 the new Bolshevik government in Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk concluding peace with the Central Powers, but ceding large amounts of territory, including Ukraine. As the Central Rada of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic proved unable to maintain order and they finally dominated the countryside in mid-1919, the largest portion would follow either Socialist Revolutionary Matviy Hryhoriyiv or the anarchist flag of Makhno
27.
Nikifor Grigoriev
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Nikifor Grigoriev, born Nychypir Servetnyk in a small village of Zastavlia, was a paramilitary leader noted for numerous switching of sides during the civil war in Ukraine. He was commonly known as Otaman Grigoriev, as Matviy Hryhoriyiv, Matvey Grigoriev and he is sometimes misrepresented as the Otaman of the Green Army. His association with the term Green Army is due to collaboration with the army of Otaman Zeleny which fought against the UNR Directory, Bolsheviks, although he cooperated with Zeleny, this was marginal. The Otaman or warlord was born Nychypir Servetnyk in a village of Zastavlia of Novo-Ushytsia uyezd in Podolia Governorate. Servetnyk served in the cavalry of the Russian Imperial Army in the region of Kherson, after his discharge he served as a gendarme in the town of Proskuriv, Podolia Governorate. Servetnyk volunteered to the army with the outbreak of the First World War and was enlisted as a Praporshchik to the 56th Infantry Regiment in 1914, in course of war he was awarded the Cross of St. George for bravery. Servetnyk eventually rose to the rank of captain in the 58th Prague Infantry Regiment. During this period he became a member of Eser Party, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he supported the socialist-oriented Ukrainian Central Rada of the UNR Ukrainian National Republic. He served in the reorganized National Army of Ukraine and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, in April 1918, he took part in the conservative coup detat led by Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky which earned him the rank of colonel. In summer of year he revolted against the Hetman State. He joined another revolt in November that year which was organized by the Dyrektoria, during the Russian Civil War in December Grigoriev participated in the military campaign against the Russian forces of the South. During that campaign he took Mykolaiv, Kherson, Ochakiv, Oleshki, before capturing Mykolaiv he overran the forces of already defeated Hetmanate of 545 soldiers. He occupied Mykolaiv on December 13 and appointed himself the city commissioner struggling against the city council and he was later forced out of those cities by the Entente forces. During this time the general Hrekov participated in the negotiations with The Entente forces to ally against the Bolsheviks, Grigoriev did not approve that and was especially upset when Vynnychenko was forced out of the office leading Petliura to head the Directory Committee later on February 13. Grigoriev decided to ignore that order and he had not intentions to fight against the White forces as well as the forces of Makhno who operated in the area and were in the opposition to the Directorate. Since that time he ignored all the orders that were coming from the Headquarters of the Ukrainian Army. The similar situation was taken throughout the Ukrainian Armed Forces at that time. On January 30 Grigoriev sent a representative to the Yelizavetgrad revkom claiming to be the Chairman of the Soviet Emissaries and he also sent a telegram to the revkom of Alexandrovsk with an approval for the actions of the Soviet Bolshevik Left-SR government of the Ukrainian SSR
28.
Dnipro
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Dnipropetrovsk or Dnepropetrovsk, is Ukraines fourth largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is 391 kilometres southeast of the capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, Dnipropetrovsk is the administrative centre of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Administratively, it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance, the city was originally envisioned as the Russian Empires third capital city, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg. A vital industrial centre of Soviet Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk was one of the key centres of the nuclear, arms, in particular, it is home to the Yuzhmash, a major space and ballistic missile design bureau and manufacturer. Because of its industry, Dnipropetrovsk was a closed city until the 1990s. On 19 May 2016 the official name of the city was changed to Dnipro, Dnipropetrovsk is a powerhouse of Ukraines business and politics as the native city for many of the countrys most important figures. Ukraines politics are still defined by the legacies of Leonid Kuchma, Pavlo Lazarenko, in some Anglophone media the city was also known as the Rocket City. In 1918, the Central Council of Ukraine proposed to change the name of the city to Sicheslav, however, in 1926 the city was renamed after Communist leader Grigory Petrovsky. Hence following the 2015 law on decommunization the city had to be renamed, on 19 May 2016 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to officially rename the city to the name Dnipro. A monastery was founded by Byzantine monks on Monastyrsky Island, probably in the 9th century, the Tatars destroyed the monastery in 1240. At the beginning of the 15th century, Tatar tribes inhabiting the right bank of the Dnieper were driven away by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, by the mid-15th century, the Nogai and the Crimean Khanate invaded these lands. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crimean Khanate agreed to a border along the Dnieper and it was in this time that a new force appeared, the free people, the Cossacks. They later became known as Zaporozhian Cossacks and this was a period of raids and fighting causing considerable devastation and depopulation in that area, the area became known as the Wild Fields. On the night of ¾ August 1635, the Cossacks of Ivan Sulyma captured the fort by surprise, burning it down, the fort was rebuilt by French engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan for the Polish Government in 1638, and had a mercenary garrison. Kodak was captured by Zaporozhian Cossacks on 1 October 1648, and was garrisoned by the Cossacks until its demolition in accordance with the Treaty of the Pruth in 1711, the ruins of the Kodak are visible now. There is currently a project to restore it and create a tourist centre, under the Treaty of Pereyaslav of 1654, the territory became part of the Russian Empire. For practical purposes, the Prydniprovye lands remained a border area until the destruction of the Zaporizhian Sich in 1775. The Zaporozhian village of Polovytsia was founded in the late-1760s, between the settlements of Stari and Novi Kodaky and it was located at the present centre of the city to the West to district of Central Terminal and the Ozyorka farmers market
29.
Crimea
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The peninsula is located south of the Ukrainian region of Kherson and west of the Russian region of Kuban. It is connected to Kherson Oblast by the Isthmus of Perekop and is separated from Kuban by the Strait of Kerch, the Arabat Spit is located to the northeast, a narrow strip of land that separates a system of lagoons named Sivash from the Sea of Azov. Crimea has historically been at the boundary between the world and the Pontic–Caspian steppe. Crimea and adjacent territories were united in the Crimean Khanate during the 15th to 18th century, in 1783, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire. It became the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within newly independent Ukraine in 1991, with Sevastopol having its own administration, within Ukraine, the ex-Soviet Black Sea Fleet and its facilities were divided between Russias Black Sea Fleet and the Ukrainian Naval Forces. The two navies shared some of the harbours and piers, while others were demilitarised or used by either country. Sevastopol remained the location of the Russian Black Sea Fleet headquarters with the Ukrainian Naval Forces Headquarters also based in the city, most of the international community does not recognize the annexation and considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory. Russia currently administers the peninsula as two federal subjects, the Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol. Ukraine continues to assert its right over the peninsula, the classical name Tauris or Taurica is from the Greek Ταυρική, after the peninsulas Scytho-Cimmerian inhabitants, the Tauri. In English usage since the modern period the Crimean Khanate is referred to as Crim Tartary. The Italian form Crimea also becomes current during the 18th century, the omission of the definite article in English became common during the later 20th century. The name Crimea follows the Italian form from the Crimean Tatar name for the city Qırım which served as a capital of the Crimean province of the Golden Horde, the name of the capital was extended to the entire peninsula at some point during Ottoman suzerainty. The origin of the word Qırım is uncertain, suggestions argued in various sources include, a corruption of Cimmerium. A derivation from the Turkic term qirum, from qori-, other suggestions that have not been supported by sources but are apparently based on similarity in sound include, a derivation from the Greek Cremnoi. However, he identifies the port, not in Crimea, no evidence has been identified that this name was ever in use for the peninsula. The classical name was revived in 1802 in the name of the Russian Taurida Governorate, in the 8th century BCE the Cimmerians migrated to the region and subsequently the Scythians as well it being the site of Greek colonies. The most important city was Chersonesos at the edge of todays Sevastopol, the Persian Achaemenid Empire expanded to Crimea. Later occupiers included the Romans, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, the Byzantine Empire, Khazars, the Kipchaks, the Golden Horde, consideration of the succeeding residents of the peninsula by their linguistic grouping is also of relevance
30.
Donbass
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The Donbass or Donbas is a historical, cultural, and economic region in eastern Ukraine. The word Donbass is a formed from Donets Basin, which refers to the river Donets that flows through it. Multiple definitions of the regions extent exist, but its boundaries have never been officially demarcated, a Euroregion of the same name is composed of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine and Rostov Oblast in Russia. Donbass formed the border between the Zaporizhian Sich and the Don Cossack Host. It has been an important coal mining area since the late 19th century, in March 2014, following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Russian military intervention, large swaths of the Donbass became gripped by unrest. Until the ongoing war, the Donbass was the most densely populated of all the regions of Ukraine apart from the city of Kiev. Before the war, the city of Donetsk was considered the capital of the Donbass. Large cities also included Luhansk, Mariupol, Makiivka, Horlivka, now the city of Kramatorsk is the interim administrative center of the Donetsk Oblast, whereas the interim center of Luhansk Oblast is the city of Severodonetsk. On the separatist side, Donetsk, Makiivka and Horlivka are now the largest cities in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, the region now known as the Donbass was largely unpopulated until the second half of the 17th century, when Don Cossacks settled in the area. The first town in the region was founded in 1676, called Solanoye and it named the conquered territories New Russia. As the Industrial Revolution took hold across Europe, the vast coal resources of the region, discovered in 1721, began to be exploited in the mid-late 19th century. It was at point that the name Donbass came into use, derived from the term Donets Coal Basin. The rise of the industry led to a population boom in the region. The region was governed as the Bakhmut, Slovianserbsk and Mariupol counties of Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Donetsk, the most important city in the region today, was founded in 1869 by British businessman John Hughes on the site of the old Zaporozhian Cossack town of Oleksandrivka. Hughes built a mill and established several collieries in the region. The city was named after him as Yuzovka, with development of Yuzovka and similar cities, large amounts of landless peasants from peripheral governorates of the Russian Empire came looking for work. According to the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, ethnic Ukrainians comprised 52. 4% of the population of region, whilst ethnic Russians comprised 28. 7%. Ethnic Greeks, Germans, Jews and Tatars also had a significant presence in the Donbass, particularly in the district of Mariupol, despite this, Russians constituted the majority of the industrial work-force
31.
Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov
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Dmitri Ilyich Ulyanov was a Russian physician and revolutionary, the younger brother of Aleksandr Ulyanov and Vladimir Lenin. As a medical student at Lomonosov Moscow State University, he involved with revolutionary activity. He was first arrested in 1897, the following year he was exiled to Tula, then Podolsk, where was put under police supervision. As his brothers renown grew, he would endure countless arrests, in 1900 he became a correspondent of Iskra. The following year he graduated from the school of the University of Tartu. As a doctor and a Marxist, Ulyanov sought to apply his training to the revolutionary struggle. During the Revolution of 1905 he provided aid to strikers in Simbirsk. He became a cadre of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party and was a delegate to its 2nd Congress. He served as the representative of the Central Committee in Kiev and his duties carried him throughout Russia and Ukraine, first to Serpukhov, then to Feodosiya and Crimea. At the beginning of the First World War, Ulyanov was mobilized into the army and he served as a medical officer in Sevastopol, in Odessa, and on the Romanian front, continuing his revolutionary activities on the side. In 1916 he married Antonia Ivanovna Neshcheretova and he had a son, Viktor, and a daughter, Olga. In 1921 he moved to Moscow, where he worked at Narkomzdrav, at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, in the research department of the Kremlin. During the 1930s, he collaborated with his sister Maria to write reminiscences about their famous brother and he was a delegate to the 16th and 17th Congresses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He died in Gorki Leninskiye but was buried in Moscow, many streets and localities in the former Soviet Union were renamed in his honor. Lenin, Letters from Afar, 1893-1922, complete collected works, 5th edition, correspondence of the Ulyanov family, 1883-1917,1969. Ulyanov, Questions in the History of the CPSU,1964, R. Khigerov, The Younger Brother, chapter of the book The Party Steps into the Revolution,1969. Boris Yarochkiy, Dmitri Ulyanov, Young Guards,1977
32.
Anton Denikin
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Anton Ivanovich Denikin was a Lieutenant General in the Imperial Russian Army and afterwards a leading general of the White movement in the Russian Civil War. Denikin was born in Szpetal Dolny village, now part of the Polish city Włocławek in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship and his father, Ivan Efimovich Denikin, had been born a serf in the province of Saratov. Sent as a recruit to do 25 years of military service and he retired from the army in 1869 with the rank of major. In 1869 Ivan Denikin married Polish seamstress Elżbieta Wrzesińska as his second wife, Anton Denikin, the couples only child, spoke both Russian and Polish growing up. His fathers Russian patriotism and devotion to the Russian Orthodox religion led Anton Denikin to the Russian army, the Denikins lived very close to poverty, with the retired majors small pension as their only source of income, and their finances worsened after Ivans death in 1885. Anton Denikin at this time began tutoring younger schoolmates to support the family, in 1890 Denikin enrolled at the Kiev Junker School, a military college from which he graduated in 1892. The twenty-year-old Denikin joined a brigade, in which he served for three years. In 1895 he was first accepted into the General Staff Academy, after this disappointment, Denikin attempted to attain acceptance again. On his next attempt he did better and finished fourteenth in his class, however, to his misfortune, the Academy decided to introduce a new system of calculating grades and as a result Denikin was not offered a staff appointment after the final exams. He protested the decision to the highest authority, after being offered a settlement according to which he would rescind his complaint in order to attain acceptance into the General Staff school again, Denikin declined, insulted. Denikin first saw service during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. In 1905 he won promotion to the rank of colonel, in 1910 he became commander of the 17th infantry regiment. A few weeks before the outbreak of the First World War, by the outbreak of World War I in August 1914 Denikin was a Chief of staff of the Kiev Military District. He was initially appointed Quartermaster of General Brusilovs 8th Army, not one for staff service, Denikin petitioned for an appointment to a fighting front. He was transferred to the 4th Rifle Brigade and his brigade was transformed into a division in 1915. It was with this brigade Denikin would accomplish his greatest feats as a General, in 1916 he was appointed to command the Russian VIII Corps and lead troops in Romania during the last successful Russian campaign of the war, the Brusilov Offensive. Following the February Revolution and the overthrow of Tsar Nicholas II, he became Chief of Staff to Mikhail Alekseev, then Aleksei Brusilov, Denikin supported the attempted coup of his commander, the Kornilov Affair, in September 1917 and was arrested and imprisoned with him. After this Alekseev would be reappointed commander-in-Chief, Kornilov was killed in April 1918 near Ekaterinodar and the Volunteer Army came under Denikins command
33.
Volgograd
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Volgograd, formerly Tsaritsyn, 1589–1925, and Stalingrad, 1925–1961, is an important industrial city and the administrative center of Volgograd Oblast, Russia. It is 80 kilometers long, north to south and is situated on the bank of the Volga River, after which the city was named. The city became famous for its resistance during the Battle of Stalingrad against the German Army in World War II and it is often regarded as the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Although the city may have originated in 1555, documented evidence of Tsaritsyn located at the confluence of the Tsaritsa, grigori Zasekin established the fortress Sary Su as part of the defences of the unstable southern border of the Tsardom of Russia. The structure stood slightly above the mouth of the Tsaritsa River on the right bank and it soon became the nucleus of a trading settlement. In 1607 the fortress garrison rebelled against the troops of Tsar Vasili Shuisky for six months, in 1608 the city acquired its first stone church, St. John the Baptist. At the beginning of the 17th century, the garrison consisted of 350 to 400 people, in 1670 troops of Stepan Razin captured the fortress, they left after a month. In 1708 the insurgent Cossack Kondraty Bulavin held the fortress, in 1717 in the Kuban pogrom, raiders from the Kuban under the command of the Crimean Tatar Bakhti Gerai blockaded the town and enslaved thousands in the area. In August 1774 Yemelyan Pugachev unsuccessfully attempted to storm the city, in 1708 Tsaritsyn was assigned to the Kazan Governorate, in 1719 to the Astrakhan Governorate. According to the census in 1720, the city had a population of 408 people, in 1773 the city became the provincial and district town. From 1779 it belonged to the Saratov Viceroyalty, in 1780 the city came under the newly established Saratov Governorate. In the 19th century Tsaritsyn became an important river-port and commercial center, the population expanded rapidly, increasing from fewer than 3,000 people in 1807 to about 84,000 in 1900. The first railroad reached the town in 1862, the first theatre opened in 1872, the first cinema in 1907. In 1913 Tsaritsyn got its first tram-line, and the citys first electric lights were installed in the city center, during the Russian Civil War of 1917-1923, Tsaritsyn came under Soviet control from November 1917. In 1918 White troops under the Ataman of the Don Cossack Host, Pyotr Krasnov, the Reds repulsed three assaults by the Whites. However, in June 1919 the White Armed Forces of South Russia under the command of General Denikin captured Tsaritsyn, the fighting from July 1918 to January 1920 became known as the Battle for Tsaritsyn. The city was renamed Stalingrad after Joseph Stalin on April 10,1925 and this was officially to recognize the citys and Stalins role in its defense against the Whites between 1918 and 1920. In 1931, the German settlement-colony Old Sarepta became a district of Stalingrad, renamed Krasnoarmeysky Rayon, it became the largest area of the city
34.
Tula, Russia
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Tula is an industrial city and the administrative center of Tula Oblast, Russia, located 193 kilometers south of Moscow, on the Upa River. The name of the city is of pre-Russian, probably Baltic, Tula was first mentioned in the Nikon Chronicle in 1146. As the chronicle was written in the 16th century, the date is disputed, the first confirmed mention of Tula dates to 1382. In the Middle Ages, Tula was a fortress at the border of the Principality of Ryazan. As soon as it passed to the Grand Duchy of Moscow and it was a key fortress of the Great Abatis Belt and successfully resisted a siege by the Tatars in 1552. In 1607, Ivan Bolotnikov and his supporters seized the citadel, in the 18th century, some parts of the kremlin walls were demolished. Despite its archaic appearance, the five-domed Assumption Cathedral in the kremlin was built as late as 1764, in 1712, Tula was visited by Peter the Great, who commissioned the Demidov blacksmiths to build the first armament factory in Russia. Several decades later, Tula was turned by the Demidovs into the greatest ironworking center of Eastern Europe, the oldest museum in the city, showcasing the history of weapons, was inaugurated by the Demidovs in 1724, and Nicholas-Zaretsky Church in the city houses their family vault. The first factory to produce samovars industrially was also established there in the course of the 18th century, after the Demidovs moved the center of their manufacture to the Urals, Tula continued as a center of heavy industry, particularly in the manufacture of matériel. In the 1890s, Ivan Savelyev, an orderly, became the founder of social democracy in Tula. The city grew rapidly in the early 20th century as a result of production during the 1905 Russo-Japanese War. Tulas factories also manufactured weapons for the Red Army during the Russian Civil War of 1918–1921, during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, the city was important in the production of armaments. Tula became the target of a German offensive to break Soviet resistance in the Moscow area between October 24 and December 5,1941, the heavily fortified city held out, however, and Guderians Second Panzer Army was stopped near Tula. The city secured the southern flank during the Battle of Moscow, Tula was awarded the title Hero City in 1976. It is home to the Klokovo air base and the Tula Arms Plant, Tula serves as the administrative center of the oblast. Within the framework of administrative divisions, it is incorporated as Tula City Under Oblast Jurisdiction—an administrative unit with the equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the territories of Tula City Under Oblast Jurisdiction, sergey Kazakov Vladimir Mogilnikov Alisa Tolkachyova Yevgeny Avilov Aleksandr Prokopuk Yuri Tskipuri For more than four centuries Tula has been known as a center of crafts and metalworking. Tula is an industrial center
35.
Mikhail Tukhachevsky
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Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky was a leading Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937. He contributed to the modernization of Soviet armament and army force structure in the 1920s and 1930s and became instrumental in the development of aviation, mechanized, as a theoretician, he was a driving force behind Soviet development of the theory of deep operations. The Soviet authorities accused him of treason and had him shot during the purges of 1937–1938. Tukhachevsky was born at Alexandrovskoye, Safonovsky District, into a family of impoverished hereditary nobles, legend states that his family descended from a Flemish count who ended up stranded in the East during the Crusades and took a Turkish wife before settling in Russia. His great-grandfather Alexander Tukhachevsky served as a Colonel in the Imperial Russian Army, after attending the Moscow Military School in 1912, he moved on to the Aleksandrovskoye Military School, whence he graduated in 1914. I told myself that I shall either be a general at thirty, Tukhachevskys fifth escape met with success, and after crossing the Swiss-German border he returned to Russia in September 1917. Following the October Revolution of 1917, Tukhachevsky joined the Bolsheviks and he became an officer in the newly established Red Army and rapidly advanced in rank because of his great ability. During the Russian Civil War, he was given responsibility for defending Moscow, the Bolshevik Defence Commissar, Leon Trotsky, gave Tukhachevsky command of the 5th Army in 1919, and he led the campaign to capture Siberia from the anticommunist White forces of Aleksandr Kolchak. Tukhachevsky used concentrated attacks to exploit the enemys flanks and threaten them with envelopment. He also helped defeat General Anton Denikin in the Crimea in 1920, in February 1920, he launched an offensive into the Kuban, using cavalry to disrupt the enemys rear. In the retreat that followed, Denikins force disintegrated, and Novorossiysk was evacuated hastily, in the final stage of the civil war, Tukhachevsky commanded the 7th Army during the suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921. He also commanded the assault against the Tambov Republic between 1921 and 1922, british historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has described Tukhachevsky as being as ruthless as any Bolshevik. He was known for using summary execution of hostages and poison gas in his suppression of peasant uprisings, Tukhachevsky commanded the Soviet invasion of Poland during the Polish-Soviet War in 1920. In the leadup to hostilities, Tukhachevsky concentrated his troops near Vitebsk, on to Wilno, Minsk, and Warsaw -- forward. According to Richard M. Watt, The boldness of Tukhachevskys drive westward was the key to his success, the Soviet High Command dispatched 60,000 men as reinforcements, but Tukhachevsky never stopped to let them catch up. His onrushing armies were leaving behind greater numbers of every day. His supply services were in chaos and his rear scarcely existed as an organized entity, on the day his troops captured Minsk, a new cry arose--Give us Warsaw. Tukhachevsky was determined to give them what they wanted, all things considered, Tukhachevskys performance was a virtuoso display of energy, determination, and, indeed, rashness
36.
Kronstadt rebellion
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The Kronstadt rebellion was a major unsuccessful uprising against the Bolsheviks in March 1921, during the later years of the Russian Civil War. The rebellion was crushed by the Red Army after a 12-day military campaign, after years of economic crises caused by World War I and the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik economy started to collapse. It is estimated that the output of mines and factories in 1921 was 20 percent of the pre-World War I level. Production of cotton, for example, had fallen to 5 percent and iron to 2 percent of the level, and this coincided with droughts in 1920 and 1921. Discontent grew among the Russian populace, particularly the peasantry, who felt disadvantaged by Communist grain requisitioning and they resisted by refusing to till their land. In February 1921, more than 100 peasant uprisings took place, the workers in Petrograd were also involved in a series of strikes, caused by the reduction of bread rations by one third over a ten-day period. On February 26, delegates from the Kronstadt naval base visited Petrograd to investigate the situation, immediate new elections to the Soviets, the present Soviets no longer express the wishes of the workers and peasants. The new elections should be held by secret ballot, and should be preceded by free electoral propaganda for all workers, freedom of speech and of the press for workers and peasants, for the Anarchists, and for the Left Socialist parties. The right of assembly, and freedom for trade union and peasant associations, the organisation, at the latest on 10 March 1921, of a Conference of non-Party workers, soldiers and sailors of Petrograd, Kronstadt and the Petrograd District. The liberation of all prisoners of the Socialist parties, and of all imprisoned workers and peasants, soldiers and sailors belonging to working class. The election of a commission to look into the dossiers of all those detained in prisons, the abolition of all political sections in the armed forces, no political party should have privileges for the propagation of its ideas, or receive State subsidies to this end. In place of the section, various cultural groups should be set up. The immediate abolition of the militia detachments set up towns and countryside. The equalisation of rations for all workers, except those engaged in dangerous or unhealthy jobs, the abolition of Party combat detachments in all military groups, the abolition of Party guards in factories and enterprises. If guards are required, they should be nominated, taking account the views of the workers. The granting to the peasants of freedom of action on their own soil and we request that all military units and officer trainee groups associate themselves with this resolution. We demand that the Press give proper publicity to this resolution and we demand the institution of mobile workers control groups. We demand that handicraft production be authorised, provided it does not utilise wage labour, on March 1, a general meeting of the garrison was held, attended also by Mikhail Kalinin and Commissar of the Soviet Baltic Fleet Nikolai Kuzmin, who made speeches for the Government
37.
Order of the Red Banner
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The Order of the Red Banner was the first Soviet military decoration. The order was established on 16 September 1918, during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and it was the highest award of Soviet Russia, subsequently the Soviet Union, until the Order of Lenin was established in 1930. Recipients were recognised for extraordinary heroism, dedication, and courage demonstrated on the battlefield, the order was awarded to individuals as well as to military units, cities, ships, political and social organizations, and state enterprises. In later years it was awarded on the twentieth and again on the thirtieth anniversary of military service without requiring participation in combat. The Russian Order of the Red Banner was established during the Russian Civil War by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of September 16,1918, the first recipient was Vasily Blyukher on September 28,1918. The second recipient was Iona Yakir, during the Civil War there existed similarly named orders and decorations established by the Soviet communist governments of several other constituent and nonconstituent republics. The August 1,1924 decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee established the all-Soviet Order of the Red Banner for deserving personnel of the Red Army, from 1918 till the late 1930s there was also a collective variant - the Revolutionary Red Banner of Honor. This was in the form of a military color awarded to distinguished Red Army, Soviet Air Force and it was more older than the order, having been established on August 3, a month and several weeks before. As a military decoration, The Order of the Red Banner recognised heroism in combat or otherwise extraordinary accomplishments of military valour during combat operations. Before the establishment of the Order of Lenin on April 5,1930, during World War II, under various titles, it was presented both to individuals and to units for acts of extreme military heroism. Nearly all well-known Soviet commanders became recipients of the Order of the Red Banner, the order was awarded to individuals as well as whole formations, which then added the prefix Red Banner to their official designations. Naval vessels also flew a special ensign, the Order of the Red Banner was also used as a long service award between 1944 and 1958 to mark twenty and thirty years of service in the military, state security, or police. This was surrounded by two golden panicles of wheat, at the bottom were the letters SSSR, additional awards of the Order bore a white enamelled shield with a silver sequence number at the bottom of the obverse. A recipient of three Orders of the Red Banner would wear a badge of the order followed by his second award bearing a number 2. The early variants of the Order were screw back badges to wear on clothing. Later variants hung from a standard Soviet pentagonal mount with a ring through the suspension loop, the mount was covered with an overlapping 24mm wide red silk moiré ribbon with 1. 5mm wide white edge stripes and a 7mm wide white central stripe. The Order of the Red Banner was worn on the side of the chest. If worn in the presence of Orders or medals of the Russian Federation, pavel Dybenko won 3 Orders of the Red Banner, his first in the 1921 bloody suppression of the naval rebellion in Kronstadt, his 2 others in 1922 in the suppression of peasants uprisings
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Tambov Rebellion
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The Tambov Rebellion, which occurred between 1920 and 1921, was one of the largest and best-organized peasant rebellions challenging the Bolshevik regime during the Russian Civil War. The uprising took place in the territories of the modern Tambov Oblast and part of the Voronezh Oblast, the movement was later portrayed by the Soviets as anarchical banditry, similar to other anti-Soviet movements that opposed them during this period. The rebellion was caused by the confiscation of grain by the Bolshevik authorities. In 1920, the requisitions were increased from 18 million to 27 million poods in the region and this caused the peasants to reduce their grain production since they knew that anything they did not consume themselves would be immediately confiscated. Filling the state quotas meant death for many by starvation, a distinctive feature of this rebellion, among the many of these times, was that it was led by a political organization, the Union of Working Peasants. A Congress of Tambov rebels abolished Soviet power and created the Constituent Assembly that called for universal suffrage, a major tenet proposed by them was returning all land to the peasants. On 2 February 1921, the Soviet leadership announced the end of the prodrazvyorstka, the new policy was essentially a tax on grain and other foodstuffs. This was done prior to the 10th Congress of the Bolsheviks, the announcement began circulating in the Tambov area on 9 February 1921. The Tambov uprising and unrest elsewhere were significant reasons that the policy was implemented. Antonov became a hero to the people of the Tambov region of central Russia where he started his campaigns. In October 1920 the peasant army numbered over 50,000 fighters, the rebel militia proved highly effective and even infiltrated the Tambov Cheka. Alexander Schlichter, Chairman of the Tambov Gubernia Executive Committee, contacted Vladimir Lenin, in January 1921 peasant revolts spread to Samara, Saratov, Tsaritsyn, Astrakhan and Siberia. In February, the peasant army reached its peak, numbering up to 70,000, the Red Army, under the command of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, used heavy artillery and armoured trains and also engaged in the summary execution of civilians. Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of bandits with the poison gas, seven concentration camps were set up. At least 50,000 people were interned, mostly women, children, each month 15 to 20 percent of inmates in the camps died. The Bolsheviks gradually quelled the uprising in the course of 1921, antonov was killed in 1922 during an attempt to arrest him. Sennikov estimated the losses among the population of Tambov region in 1920 to 1922 resulting from the war, executions. In 1933, the government decided to burn documents that could compromise the Soviet regime
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Volga River
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The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It is also Europes largest river in terms of discharge and watershed, the river flows through central Russia and into the Caspian Sea, and is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. Eleven of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including the capital, some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka in Russian literature and folklore. The Slavic name is a translation of earlier Scythian Rā Volga, literally wetness, cognate with Avestan Raŋhā mythical stream and Sanskrit rasā́- dew, liquid, juice. The Scythian name survives in modern Mordvin Rav Volga, the Turkic peoples living along the river formerly referred to it as Itil or Atil big river. In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as İdel in Tatar, Атăл in Chuvash, Idhel in Bashkir, Edil in Kazakh, the Turkic peoples associated the Itils origin with the Kama. Thus, a tributary to the Kama was named the Aq Itil White Itil which unites with the Kara Itil Black Itil at the modern city of Ufa. The name Indyl is used in Adyge language, among Asians, the river was known by its other Turkic name Sarı-su yellow water, but the Oirats also used their own name, Ijil mörön or adaptation river. Presently the Mari, another Uralic group, call the river Jul, formerly, they called the river Volgydo, a borrowing from Old Russian. The Volga is the longest river in Europe and it belongs to the closed basin of the Caspian Sea, being the longest river to flow into a closed basin. From there it turns south, flows past Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd, at its most strategic point, it bends toward the Don. Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is located there, the Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the rivers Kama, the Oka, the Vetluga, and the Sura. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which flows through an area of about 1,350,000 square kilometres in the most heavily populated part of Russia. The Volga Delta has a length of about 160 kilometres and includes as many as 500 channels, the largest estuary in Europe, it is the only place in Russia where pelicans, flamingos, and lotuses may be found. The Volga freezes for most of its length for three each year. The Volga drains most of Western Russia and its many large reservoirs provide irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Moscow Canal, the Volga–Don Canal, and the Volga–Baltic Waterway form navigable waterways connecting Moscow to the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov, high levels of chemical pollution have adversely affected the river and its habitats
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Ieronim Uborevich
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Ieronim Petrovich Uborevich was a Soviet military commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. He eventually attained the rank of Army Commander, 1st Rank, Uborevich was born into a Lithuanian farming family in Užpaliai. From 1909 to 1914 he studied at a school in Daugavpils in Latvia. In 1914–15 he attended the Petrograd Polytechnic and he joined the Konstantinovskoye Artillery School in 1915 graduating in 1916 and joining the Imperial Russian Army. Uborevich began his career during World War I, serving as a junior officer in the Imperial Russian Army. He joined the Bolshevik Party in March 1917, in January 1918, he commanded a detachment of Red Guards in Belarus and was captured by the Germans but escaped. During the Russian Civil War, he served in a variety of posts in the Red Army, commanding the 9th, 13th. He fought alongside Mikhail Tukhachevsky in the Polish–Soviet War and in suppressing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921, in 1922 he became War Minister of the short-lived Far Eastern Republic, a buffer state between Soviet Russia and Japan. In 1925 he became commander of the North Caucasus Military District and he served as the Red Armys Chief of Armaments from 1928–1931 and Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council from 1930 to 1931. From 1931–1937, he was commander of the Belorussian Military District, Uborevich was arrested during the Great Purge of the Red Army. In May 1937, Uborevich was tried by the NKVD in an event known as the Case of Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization and he was executed in June 1937 and posthumously rehabilitated in 1957. Voennyi entsiklopedicheskii slovar Grazhdanskaia voina i voennaia interventsiia v SSSR, Entsiklopediia
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Kliment Voroshilov
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Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov, was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin era. Voroshilov was born in the settlement of Verkhnye, Bakhmut district, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, in the Russian Empire, however, according to the Soviet Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, Voroshilov himself alluded to his Ukrainian heritage and to the previous family name of Voroshilo. Voroshilov joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Voroshilov became a member of the Ukrainian Council of Peoples Commissars and Commissar for Internal Affairs along with Vasiliy Averin. He was well known for aiding Joseph Stalin in the Military Council, Voroshilov was active as a commander of the Southern Front during the Russian Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War while with the 1st Cavalry Army. As Political Commissar serving co-equally with Stalin, Voroshilov was responsible for the morale of the 1st Cavalry Army, Voroshilovs efforts as Commissar did not prevent a resounding Polish victory at the Battle of Komarów or regular outbreaks of murderous anti-Semitic violence within the Cavalry armys ranks. Voroshilov headed the Petrograd Police during 1917 and 1918, Voroshilov served as a member of the Central Committee from his election in 1921 until 1961. Frunzes political position adhered to that of the Troika, but Stalin preferred to have a close, Frunze was urged by a group of Stalins hand-picked doctors to have surgery to treat an old stomach ulcer, despite previous doctors recommendations to avoid surgery and Frunzes own unwillingness. He died on the table of a massive overdose of chloroform. Voroshilov became a member of the newly formed Politburo in 1926. Voroshilov was appointed Peoples Commissar for Defence in 1934 and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935 and he played a central role in Stalins Great Purge of the 1930s, denouncing many of his own military colleagues and subordinates when asked to do so by Stalin. Voroshilov personally signed 185 documented execution lists, fourth among the Soviet leadership after Molotov, Stalin, during World War II, Voroshilov was a member of the State Defense Committee. Voroshilov followed this retort by smashing a platter of roast suckling pig on the table, nikita Khrushchev said it was the only time he ever witnessed such an outburst. Voroshilov was nonetheless made the scapegoat for the failures in Finland. He was later replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko, Voroshilov was then made Deputy Premier responsible for cultural matters. Voroshilov initially argued that thousands of Polish army officers captured in September 1939 should be released, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Voroshilov became commander of the short-lived Northwestern Direction, controlling several fronts. In September 1941 he commanded the Leningrad Front, Stalin had a political need for popular wartime leaders, however, and Voroshilov remained as an important figurehead. In 1945–1947 Voroshilov supervised the establishment of the communist regime in postwar Hungary, in 1952, Voroshilov was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. Stalins death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership, Voroshilov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev brought about the 26 June 1953 arrest of Lavrenty Beria after Stalins death
