Dissolution of the Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union occurred on 26 December 1991 granting self-governing independence to the Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was a result of the declaration number 142-Н of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union; the declaration acknowledged the independence of the former Soviet republics and created the Commonwealth of Independent States, although five of the signatories ratified it much or did not do so at all. On the previous day, 25 December, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, the eighth and final leader of the USSR, declared his office extinct and handed over its powers—including control of the Soviet nuclear missile launching codes—to Russian President Boris Yeltsin; that evening at 7:32 p.m. the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time and replaced with the pre-revolutionary Russian flag. From August to December all the individual republics, including Russia itself, had either seceded from the union or at the least denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR.
The week before formal dissolution, eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol formally establishing the CIS and declaring that the USSR had ceased to exist. Both the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the USSR marked the end of the Cold War. Several of the former Soviet republics have retained close links with the Russian Federation and formed multilateral organizations such as the Commonwealth of Independent States, Eurasian Economic Community, the Union State, the Eurasian Customs Union and the Eurasian Economic Union to enhance economic and security cooperation. On the other hand, the Baltic states have joined the European Union. Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo on March 11, 1985, three hours after predecessor Konstantin Chernenko's death at age 73. Gorbachev, aged 54, was the youngest member of the Politburo, his initial goal as general secretary was to revive the Soviet economy, he realized that doing so would require reforming underlying political and social structures.
The reforms began with personnel changes of senior Brezhnev-era officials who would impede political and economic change. On April 23, 1985, Gorbachev brought two protégés, Yegor Ligachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, into the Politburo as full members, he kept the "power" ministries happy by promoting KGB Head Viktor Chebrikov from candidate to full member and appointing Minister of Defence Marshal Sergei Sokolov as a Politburo candidate. This liberalization, fostered nationalist movements and ethnic disputes within the Soviet Union, it led indirectly to the revolutions of 1989, in which Soviet-imposed socialist regimes of the Warsaw Pact were toppled peacefully, which in turn increased pressure on Gorbachev to introduce greater democracy and autonomy for the Soviet Union's constituent republics. Under Gorbachev's leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1989 introduced limited competitive elections to a new central legislature, the Congress of People's Deputies. In May 1985, Gorbachev delivered a speech in Leningrad advocating reforms and an anti-alcohol campaign to tackle widespread alcoholism.
Prices of vodka and beer were raised, intended to discourage drinking by increasing the cost of liquor. A rationing program was introduced, where citizens were assigned punch cards detailing how much liquor they could buy in a certain time frame. Unlike most forms of rationing, adopted as a strategy to conserve scarce goods, this was done to restrict sales with the overt goal of curtailing drunkenness. Gorbachev's plan included billboards promoting sobriety, increased penalties for public drunkenness, censorship of drinking scenes from old movies; this mirrored Tsar Nicholas II's program during the First World War, intended to eradicate drunkenness in order to bolster the war effort. However, that earlier effort was intended to preserve grain for only the most essential purposes, which did not appear to be a goal in Gorbachev's program. Gorbachev soon faced the same adverse economic reaction to his prohibition; the disincentivization of alcohol consumption was a serious blow to the state budget according to Alexander Yakovlev, who noted annual collections of alcohol taxes decreased by 100 billion rubles.
Alcohol sales migrated to the black market and moonshining became more prevalent as some made "bathtub vodka" with homegrown potatoes. Poorer, less educated Soviets resorted to drinking unhealthy substitutes such as nail-polish remover, rubbing alcohol, or men's cologne, resulting in an additional burden on Russia's healthcare sector due to the increased poisoning cases; the underlying purpose of these reforms was to prop up the existing command economy, in contrast to reforms, which tended toward market socialism. On July 1, 1985, Gorbachev promoted Eduard Shevardnadze, First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party, to full member of the Politburo, the following day appointed him minister of foreign affairs, replacing longtime Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko; the latter, disparaged as "Mr Nyet" in the West, had served for 28 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Gromyko was relegated to the ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, as he was considered an "old thinker".
On July 1, Gorbachev sidelined his main rival by removing Grigory Romanov from the Politburo and he brought Boris Yeltsin and Lev Zaikov into the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat. In the fall of 1985, Gorbachev continued to bring more energetic men into government. On September 27, 55-year-ol
Kura Missile Test Range
Kura Missile Test Range known as Kama, is a Russian intercontinental ballistic missile impact area located in northern Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East. It is the destination for ballistic missiles which are test fired from other centers, was chosen due to its remoteness and distance, it is 130 kilometers northeast of the settlement of Klyuchi and the military townlet is called Klyuchi-1, after the nearest settlement. The range was developed beginning in 1955 and was operational in 1957; the first impact occurred on 21 August 1957, was followed by 136 impacts through 1964. Although the range is a test site for intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are controlled by the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, the range is administratively under Plesetsk Cosmodrome, is part of the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces, it continues to be active. It was reported that the strategic nuclear submarine K-535 Yury Dolgoruky of Project 955 on Wednesday, 29 October 2014 20:27 MSK conducted its fifth launch of Bulava submarine-launched ballistic missile at Kura firing range.
On 30 October 2013 Russia conducted a large-scale exercise to check the readiness of its strategic forces. The Strategic Rocket Forces conducted two ICBM launches - a Topol missile was launched from the Plesetsk test site and an R-36M2 missile from a silo in Dombarovskiy. Both missiles delivered their warheads to the Kura test site in Kamchatka. Previous impact was recorded at 10:15 on Wednesday 23 May 2012 when a new as yet unnamed ballistic missile designed to evade the US missile shield was tested; the missile was fired from a mobile launcher on the Plesetsk range. The warhead was delivered to its designated area on the Kura range on Kamchatka. A Bulava missile, launched from submarine Dimitri Donskoi, landed at Kura in October 2010. Test launches of R-29RMU Sineva and RT-2PM2 Topol-M missiles frequently target the Kura Missile Test Range; the Kura range attracted intense interest from United States intelligence agencies in 1957. There was early speculation that missiles were being launched from this range, but this was settled by information from Lockheed U-2 missions in summer 1957 which flew directly over the range and could find no launch infrastructure.
The study noted that impacts in the nearby water were and that the Soviets were expected to install sonic detection systems to measure water impacts. The missions revealed a regiment of seven Mil Mi-4 helicopters based at Klyuchi which provided logistical support for the range; the United States maintained a permanent Eareckson Air Station only 935 km away, equipped with radars and aircraft to monitor impacts at Kura. One of these radars, Cobra Dane, was fielded in 1977 at Shemya for this purpose; some past military staff photos, antennas and radio system photos, can be seen here from diverse tracking stations from around the range
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of geopolitical tension between the Soviet Union with its satellite states, the United States with its allies after World War II. A common historiography of the conflict begins between 1946, the year U. S. diplomat George F. Kennan's "Long Telegram" from Moscow cemented a U. S. foreign policy of containment of Soviet expansionism threatening strategically vital regions, the Truman Doctrine of 1947, ending between the Revolutions of 1989, which ended communism in Eastern Europe, the 1991 collapse of the USSR, when nations of the Soviet Union abolished communism and restored their independence. The term "cold" is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars; the conflict split the temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany and its allies, leaving the USSR and the US as two superpowers with profound economic and political differences. The capitalist West was led by the United States, a federal republic with a two-party presidential system, as well as the other First World nations of the Western Bloc that were liberal democratic with a free press and independent organizations, but were economically and politically entwined with a network of banana republics and other authoritarian regimes, most of which were the Western Bloc's former colonies.
Some major Cold War frontlines such as Indochina and the Congo were still Western colonies in 1947. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, was a self-proclaimed Marxist–Leninist state led by its Communist Party, which in turn was dominated by a totalitarian leader with different titles over time, a small committee called the Politburo; the Party controlled the state, the press, the military, the economy, many organizations throughout the Second World, including the Warsaw Pact and other satellites, funded communist parties around the world, sometimes in competition with communist China following the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. The two worlds were fighting for dominance in low-developed regions known as the Third World. In time, a neutral bloc arose in these regions with the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought good relations with both sides. Notwithstanding isolated incidents of air-to-air dogfights and shoot-downs, the two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat. However, both were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war.
Each side had a nuclear strategy that discouraged an attack by the other side, on the basis that such an attack would lead to the total destruction of the attacker—the doctrine of mutually assured destruction. Aside from the development of the two sides' nuclear arsenals, their deployment of conventional military forces, the struggle for dominance was expressed via proxy wars around the globe, psychological warfare, massive propaganda campaigns and espionage, far-reaching embargoes, rivalry at sports events, technological competitions such as the Space Race; the first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945. The USSR consolidated its control over the states of the Eastern Bloc, while the United States began a strategy of global containment to challenge Soviet power, extending military and financial aid to the countries of Western Europe and creating the NATO alliance; the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the Communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the conflict expanded.
The USSR and the US competed for influence in Latin America and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. The Soviets suppressed the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the closest the two sides came to nuclear war. Meanwhile, an international peace movement took root and grew among citizens around the world, first in Japan from 1954, when people became concerned about nuclear weapons testing, but soon in Europe and the US; the peace movement, in particular the anti-nuclear movement, gained pace and popularity from the late 1950s and early 1960s, continued to grow through the'70s and'80s with large protest marches and various non-parliamentary activism opposing war and calling for global nuclear disarmament. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, a new phase began that saw the Sino-Soviet split complicate relations within the Communist sphere, while US allies France, demonstrated greater independence of action.
The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, while the US experienced internal turmoil from the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, which ended with the defeat of the US-backed Republic of Vietnam, prompting further adjustments. By the 1970s, both sides had become interested in making allowances in order to create a more stable and predictable international system, ushering in a period of détente that saw Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the US opening relations with the People's Republic of China as a strategic counterweight to the Soviet Union. Détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979; the early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of KAL Flight 007 and the "Able Archer" NATO military exercises, both in 1983. The United States increased diplomatic and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was suffering from economic stag
Taiga
Taiga known as boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting of pines and larches. The taiga is the world's largest land biome. In North America, it covers most of inland Canada and parts of the northern contiguous United States. In Eurasia, it covers most of Sweden, much of Norway, some of the Scottish Highlands, some lowland/coastal areas of Iceland, much of Russia from Karelia in the west to the Pacific Ocean, areas of northern Kazakhstan, northern Mongolia, northern Japan. However, the main tree species, the length of the growing season and summer temperatures vary. For example, the taiga of North America consists of spruces. A different use of the term taiga is encountered in the English language, with "boreal forest" used in the United States and Canada to refer to only the more southerly part of the biome, while "taiga" is used to describe the more barren areas of the northernmost part of the biome approaching the tree line and the tundra biome.
Hoffman discusses the origin of this differential use in North America and why it is an inappropriate differentiation of the Russian term. Although at high elevations taiga grades into alpine tundra through Krummholz, it is not an alpine biome. Taiga is the world's second-largest land biome, after deserts and xeric shrublands, covering 17 million square kilometers or 11.5% of the Earth's land area. The largest areas are located in Canada; the taiga is the terrestrial biome with the lowest annual average temperatures after the tundra and permanent ice caps. Extreme winter minimums in the northern taiga are lower than those of the tundra; the lowest reliably recorded temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were recorded in the taiga of northeastern Russia. The taiga or boreal forest has a subarctic climate with large temperature range between seasons, but the long and cold winter is the dominant feature; this climate is classified as Dfc, Dsc and Dwd in the Köppen climate classification scheme, meaning that the short summer lasts 1–3 months and always less than 4 months.
In Siberian taiga the average temperature of the coldest month is between −6 °C and −50 °C. There are some much smaller areas grading towards the oceanic Cfc climate with milder winters, whilst the extreme south and west of the taiga reaches into humid continental climates with longer summers; the mean annual temperature varies from −5 °C to 5 °C, but there are taiga areas in eastern Siberia and interior Alaska-Yukon where the mean annual reaches down to −10 °C. According to some sources, the boreal forest grades into a temperate mixed forest when mean annual temperature reaches about 3 °C. Discontinuous permafrost is found in areas with mean annual temperature below 0 °C, whilst in the Dfd and Dwd climate zones continuous permafrost occurs and restricts growth to shallow-rooted trees like Siberian larch; the winters, with average temperatures below freezing, last five to seven months. Temperatures vary from −54 °C to 30 °C throughout the whole year; the summers, while short, are warm and humid.
In much of the taiga, −20 °C would be a typical winter day temperature and 18 °C an average summer day. The growing season, when the vegetation in the taiga comes alive, is slightly longer than the climatic definition of summer as the plants of the boreal biome have a lower threshold to trigger growth. In Canada and Finland, the growing season is estimated by using the period of the year when the 24-hour average temperature is +5 °C or more. For the Taiga Plains in Canada, growing season varies from 80 to 150 days, in the Taiga Shield from 100 to 140 days; some sources claim 130 days growing season as typical for the taiga. Other sources mention. Data for locations in southwest Yukon gives 80–120 frost-free days; the closed canopy boreal forest in Kenozersky National Park near Plesetsk, Arkhangelsk Province, Russia, on average has 108 frost-free days. The longest growing season is found in the smaller areas with oceanic influences; the shortest growing season is found at the northern taiga–tundra ecotone, where the northern taiga forest no longer can grow and the tundra dominates the landscape when the growing season is down to 50–70 days, the 24-hr average of the warmest month of the year is 10 °C or less.
High latitudes mean that the sun does not rise far above the horizon, less solar energy is received than further south. But the high latitude ensures long summer days, as the sun stays above the horizon nearly 20 hours each day, with only around 6 hours of daylight occurring in the dark winters, depending on latitude; the areas of the taiga inside the Arctic Circle have midnight sun in mid-summer and polar night in mid-winter. The taiga experiences low precipitation throughout the year as rain during the summer months, but as fog and snow; this fog predominant in low-lying areas during and after the thawing of frozen Arctic seas
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, tasked with gathering and analyzing national security information from around the world through the use of human intelligence. As one of the principal members of the United States Intelligence Community, the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. Unlike the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a domestic security service, the CIA has no law enforcement function and is focused on overseas intelligence gathering, with only limited domestic intelligence collection. Though it is not the only agency of the Federal government of the United States specializing in HUMINT, the CIA serves as the national manager for coordination of HUMINT activities across the U. S. intelligence community. Moreover, the CIA is the only agency authorized by law to carry out and oversee covert action at the behest of the President.
It exerts foreign political influence through its tactical divisions, such as the Special Activities Division. Before the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, the CIA Director concurrently served as the head of the Intelligence Community. Despite transferring some of its powers to the DNI, the CIA has grown in size as a result of the September 11 attacks. In 2013, The Washington Post reported that in fiscal year 2010, the CIA had the largest budget of all IC agencies, exceeding previous estimates; the CIA has expanded its role, including covert paramilitary operations. One of its largest divisions, the Information Operations Center, has shifted focus from counter-terrorism to offensive cyber-operations; when the CIA was created, its purpose was to create a clearinghouse for foreign policy intelligence and analysis. Today its primary purpose is to collect, analyze and disseminate foreign intelligence, to perform covert actions. According to its fiscal 2013 budget, the CIA has five priorities: Counterterrorism, the top priority Nonproliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Warning/informing American leaders of important overseas events. Counterintelligence Cyber intelligence; the CIA has an executive office and five major directorates: The Directorate of Digital Innovation The Directorate of Analysis The Directorate of Operations The Directorate of Support The Directorate of Science and Technology The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is appointed by the President with Senate confirmation and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence. The Deputy Director is formally appointed by the Director without Senate confirmation, but as the President's opinion plays a great role in the decision, the Deputy Director is considered a political position, making the Chief Operating Officer the most senior non-political position for CIA career officers; the Executive Office supports the U. S. military by providing it with information it gathers, receiving information from military intelligence organizations, cooperates on field activities. The Executive Director is in charge of the day-to-day operation of the CIA.
Each branch of the military service has its own Director. The Associate Director of military affairs, a senior military officer, manages the relationship between the CIA and the Unified Combatant Commands, who produce and deliver to the CIA regional/operational intelligence and consume national intelligence produced by the CIA; the Directorate of Analysis, through much of its history known as the Directorate of Intelligence, is tasked with helping "the President and other policymakers make informed decisions about our country's national security" by looking "at all the available information on an issue and organiz it for policymakers". The Directorate has four regional analytic groups, six groups for transnational issues, three that focus on policy and staff support. There is an office dedicated to Iraq; the Directorate of Operations is responsible for collecting foreign intelligence, for covert action. The name reflects its role as the coordinator of human intelligence activities between other elements of the wider U.
S. intelligence community with their own HUMINT operations. This Directorate was created in an attempt to end years of rivalry over influence and budget between the United States Department of Defense and the CIA. In spite of this, the Department of Defense organized its own global clandestine intelligence service, the Defense Clandestine Service, under the Defense Intelligence Agency; this Directorate is known to be organized by geographic regions and issues, but its precise organization is classified. The Directorate of Science & Technology was established to research and manage technical collection disciplines and equipment. Many of its innovations were transferred to other intelligence organizations, or, as they became more overt, to the military services. For example, the development of the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft was done in cooperation with the United States Air
Rokot
Rokot transliterated Rockot, is a Russian space launch vehicle that can launch a payload of 1,950 kilograms into a 200 kilometre Earth orbit with 63° inclination. It is a derivative of the UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missile and operated by Eurockot Launch Services; the first launches started in the 1990s from Baikonur Cosmodrome out of a silo. Commercial launches commenced from Plesetsk Cosmodrome using a launch ramp specially rebuilt from one for the Kosmos-3M rocket; the cost of the launcher itself was about 15 million in 1999. Rokot's total mass is its length 29 metres and its maximum diameter 2.5 metres. The liquid-fueled rocket comprises three stages; the lower two are based on the Soviet UR-100N ICBM. The third stage is a Briz-KM, which has a mass of about 6 tonnes when fuelled, is capable of flying for 7 hours and reigniting its engine six times during flight, allowing different satellites to be placed into different orbits. All stages use UDMH as dinitrogen tetroxide as oxidiser.
The Strela is a similar rocket based on the SS-19. The first suborbital test launch succeeded on 20 November 1990 in Baikonur Cosmodrome. On 26 December 1994 Rokot brought its first satellite into Earth orbit. In 1995, Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center formed a company with German DaimlerBenz Aerospace to market Rokot launches for commercial use; the company was renamed to Eurockot Launch Services. Eurockot bought 45 Rokots from the Russian strategic missile forces to build its inventory. In 2000, Eurokot was bought by the German company Astrium GmbH, a shareholder of Arianespace. Astrium now holds 51% of Eurockot's shares, while Khrunichev holds 49%. Although there are several silos in Baikonour capable of launching Rokots, it was decided to build an open, non-siloed launch pad at Plesetsk Cosmodrome instead; this is because of concerns that the amount of noise generated during a silo-based launch would damage satellites. In the new pad, Rokot is wheeled up to the structure in a vertical position, embraced by its launch tower.
The payload is placed on top of the bottom two stages. The procedure is in contrast to other Russian launchers, which had traditionally been assembled horizontally and transferred to the launch site via railways; the first launch from Plesetsk took place on 16 May 2000. After six successful launches, a launch failure occurred on 8 October 2005, leading to the loss of the European Space Agency's CryoSat spacecraft; the launch vehicle 2nd stage main engine was not shut down properly, resulting in a catastrophic failure and automatic termination of the launch mission by the on-board computer. The payload was lost. After the failed CryoSat launch, all Rokot launches were suspended; the root cause was unambiguously identified. The failure of this high-profile mission led to major reforms in Khrunichev: the director of the company Alexander Medvedev was dismissed, new launch procedures were introduced, the lines of management were straightened out to catch errors and the new Khrunichev chief, Viktor Nesterov, was required to report directly to the head of the Russian Space Agency, Anatoli Perminov.
Corrective measures for Rokot's return-to-flight were implemented for the South Korean Kompsat-2 earth observation satellite launch which took place on 28 July 2006. The Korean side praised the level of service they received, encouraging the Rokot team to rebuild its order book. Another launch failure occurred in February 2011, when a Briz-KM malfunction resulted in the Geo-IK-2 No.11 satellite being placed into a lower orbit than planned. The Rokot version with a Ukrainian control system will stop flying after 2019, due to Ukraine's ban on technology exports to Russia. A full Russian-made Rokot-2 light carrier rocket may begin again in 2021; the launch is expected to generate a revenue of 8 billion rubles, if the decision to resume the project is made within 2018. Comparison of orbital launchers families Strela Website of Eurockot, Launch Service Provider Rockot history on RussianSpaceWeb.com
Romanization of Russian
Romanization of Russian is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic script into the Latin script. As well as its primary use for citing Russian names and words in languages which use a Latin alphabet, romanization is essential for computer users to input Russian text who either do not have a keyboard or word processor set up for inputting Cyrillic, or else are not capable of typing using a native Russian keyboard layout. In the latter case, they would type using a system of transliteration fitted for their keyboard layout, such as for English QWERTY keyboards, use an automated tool to convert the text into Cyrillic. There are a number of incompatible standards for the Romanization of Russian Cyrillic, with none of them having received much popularity and in reality transliteration is carried out without any uniform standards. Scientific transliteration known as the International Scholarly System, is a system, used in linguistics since the 19th century, it is formed the basis of the GOST and ISO systems.
OST 8483 was the first Soviet standard on romanization of Russian, introduced in 16 October 1935. Developed by the National Administration for Geodesy and Cartography at the USSR Council of Ministers, GOST 16876-71 has been in service for over 30 years and is the only romanization system that does not use diacritics. Replaced by GOST 7.79-2000. This standard is an equivalent of GOST 16876-71 and was adopted as an official standard of the COMECON. GOST 7.79-2000 System of Standards on Information and Publishing–Rules for Transliteration of the Cyrillic Characters Using the Latin Alphabet is an adoption of ISO 9:1995. It is the Commonwealth of Independent States. GOST 52535.1-2006 Identification cards. Machine readable travel documents. Part 1. Machine readable passports is an adoption of an ICAO standard for travel documents, it was used in Russian passports for a short period during 2010–2013. The standard was substituted in 2013 by GOST R ISO/IEC 7501-1-2013, which does not contain romanization, but directly refers to the ICAO romanization.
Names on street and road signs in the Soviet Union were romanized according to GOST 10807-78, amended by newer Russian GOST R 52290-2004, the romanizations in both the standards are identical. ISO/R 9, established in 1954 and updated in 1968, was the adoption of the scientific transliteration by the International Organization for Standardization, it covers seven other Slavic languages. ISO 9:1995 is the current transliteration standard from ISO, it is based on its predecessor ISO/R 9:1968. ISO 9:1995 is the first language-independent, univocal system of one character for one character equivalents that faithfully represents the original and allows for reverse transliteration for Cyrillic text in any contemporary language; the UNGEGN, a Working Group of the United Nations, in 1987 recommended a romanization system for geographical names, based on the 1983 version of GOST 16876-71. It may be found in some international cartographic products. American Library Association and Library of Congress romanization tables for Slavic alphabets are used in North American libraries and in the British Library since 1975.
The formal, unambiguous version of the system requires some diacritics and two-letter tie characters, which are omitted in practice. British Standard 2979:1958 is the main system of the Oxford University Press, a variation was used by the British Library to catalogue publications acquired up to 1975; the BGN/PCGN system is intuitive for Anglophones to read and pronounce. In many publications, a simplified form of the system is used to render English versions of Russian names converting ë to yo, simplifying -iy and -yy endings to -y, omitting apostrophes for ъ and ь, it can be rendered using only the basic letters and punctuation found on English-language keyboards: no diacritics or unusual letters are required, although the interpunct character may be used to avoid ambiguity. This particular standard is part of the BGN/PCGN romanization system, developed by the United States Board on Geographic Names and by the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names for British Official Use; the portion of the system pertaining to the Russian language was adopted by BGN in 1944 and by PCGN in 1947.
In Soviet international passports, transliteration was based on French rules, so all of the names were transliterated in a French-style system. In 1997, with the introduction of new Russian passports, a diacritic-free English-oriented system was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this system was abandoned in 2010. In 2006, GOST 52535.1-2006 was adopted, which defines technical requirements and standards for Russian international passports and introduces its own system of transliteration. In 2010, the Federal Migratory Service of Russia approved Order No. 26, stating that all personal names in the passports issued after 2010 must be transliterated using GOST 52535.1-2006. Because of some differences between the new system and the old one, citizens who wanted to retain the old version of a name's transliteration, in the old pre-2010 passport, might apply to the local migratory office before acquiring a new passport; the standard was abandoned in 2013. In 2013, Order No. 320 of the Federal Migratory Service of Russia came into force.
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