1.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
2.
Joseph Stalin
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Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
3.
Committee
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A committee is a body of one or more persons that is subordinate to a deliberative assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to them more fully than would be possible if the assembly itself were considering them. Committees may have different functions and the type of work that each committee does would depend on the type of organization, a deliberative assembly may form a committee consisting of one or more persons to assist with the work of the assembly. For larger organizations, much work is done in committees and they may have the advantage of widening viewpoints and sharing out responsibilities. They can also be appointed with experts to recommend actions in matters that require specialized knowledge or technical judgment, a governance committee is formed as a separate committee to review the performance of the board and board policy as well as nominate candidates for the board. Coordination and administration A large body may have smaller committees with more specialized functions, examples are an audit committee, an elections committee, a finance committee, a fundraising committee, and a program committee. Large conventions or academic conferences are organized by a coordinating committee drawn from the membership of the organization. Research and recommendations Committees may be formed to do research and make recommendations on a potential or planned project or change, discipline A committee on discipline may be used to handle disciplinary procedures on members of the organization. However, this could be considered a dilatory tactic, generally, committees are required to report to their parent body. Committees do not usually have the power to act unless the body that created it gives it such power. When a committee is formed, a chairman is designated for the committee, sometimes a vice-chairman is also appointed. It is common for the chairman to organize its meetings. The chairman is responsible for running meetings, duties include keeping the discussion on the appropriate subject, recognizing members to speak, and confirming what the committee has decided. Using Roberts Rules of Order Newly Revised, committees may follow informal procedures, the level of formality depends on the size and type of committee, in which sometimes larger committees considering crucial issues may require more formal processes. Minutes are a record of the decisions at meetings and they can be taken by a person designated as the secretary. For most organizations, committees are not required to keep formal minutes, however, some bodies require that committees take minutes, especially if the committees are public ones subject to open meeting laws. Committees may meet on a basis, such as weekly or more often. The frequency of the meetings depend on the work of the committee, when the committee completes its work, it provides the results in a report to its parent body
4.
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
5.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
6.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
7.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
8.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
9.
Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary
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Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary are words and morphemes of the Vietnamese language borrowed from Chinese. They comprise about a third of the Vietnamese lexicon, and may account for as much as 60% of the used in formal texts. Together with Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese vocabularies, Sino-Vietnamese has been used in the reconstruction of the categories of Middle Chinese. Samuel Martin grouped the three together as Sino-xenic, as a result of a thousand years of Chinese control, and a further thousand years of strong Chinese influence, two main layers of Chinese vocabulary have been borrowed into Vietnamese. These layers were first systematically studied by Wang Li, Middle Chinese and Vietnamese are of analytic type, with almost all morphemes monosyllabic and lacking inflection. The phonological structure of their syllables is also similar, the Old Sino-Vietnamese layer was introduced after the Chinese conquest of the kingdom of Nanyue, including the northern part of Vietnam, in 111 BC. The influence of the Chinese language was felt during the Eastern Han period, due to increased Chinese immigration. This layer consists of roughly 400 words, which have fully assimilated and are treated by Vietnamese speakers as native words. The much more extensive Sino-Vietnamese proper was introduced with Chinese rhyme dictionaries such as the Qieyun in the late Tang dynasty, Vietnamese scholars used a systematic rendering of Middle Chinese within the phonology of Vietnamese to derive consistent pronunciations for the entire Chinese lexicon. Around 3,000 words entered Vietnamese over this period, most scholars now follow André-Georges Haudricourt in assigning these words to the Old Sino-Vietnamese layer. Until the early 20th century, Literary Chinese was the language of administration and scholarship, not only in China, as contact with the West grew, Western works were translated into Chinese and read by the literati. In order to translate words for new concepts scholars in these countries coined new compounds formed from Chinese morphemes, the local readings of these compounds were readily adopted into local vernaculars, including Vietnamese. Often, multiple compounds for the concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged. A fairly large amount of Sino-Vietnamese have meanings that differ significantly from their usage in other Sinitic vocabularies, for example, bác sĩ is widely used with the meaning physician, while it means doctor or Ph. D. Interestingly, club became 俱樂部 kurabu in Japan, was borrowed to China, then to Vietnam, is read as câu lạc bộ, and abbreviated CLB, which can be an abbreviation for club. Some Sino-Vietnamese words are entirely invented by the Vietnamese and are not used in Chinese, such as linh mục for pastor, or giả kim thuật, others are no longer used in modern Chinese or have other meanings. Because Sino-Vietnamese provides a Vietnamese form for almost all Chinese characters, for example, the name of the Chinese leader Xi Jinping consists of the Chinese characters 習近平. Applying a Sino-Vietnamese reading to each character in turn yields a Vietnamese name Tập Cận Bình, Western names, approximated in Chinese, were further garbled in Vietnamese pronunciations
10.
Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
11.
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
12.
Grigory Zinoviev
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Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev, born Hirsch Apfelbaum, known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. Zinoviev was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Zinoviev is best remembered as the head of the Communist International. He was in competition against Joseph Stalin who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership in 1926, Zinoviev was the alleged author of the Zinoviev letter to British communists, urging revolution, and published just before the 1924 general election, apparently to provoke a right-wing reaction. The letter is widely dismissed as a forgery, gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad, Russian Empire, to Jewish dairy farmers, who educated him at home. Between 1923 and 1935 the city was known as Zinovyevsk and he studied philosophy, literature and history. He became interested in politics, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901 and he was a member of its Bolshevik faction from the time of its creation in 1903. He was elected to the RSDLPs Central Committee in 1907 and sided with Lenin in 1908 when the Bolshevik faction split into Lenins supporters, Zinoviev remained Lenins constant aide-de-camp and representative in various socialist organizations until 1917. Zinoviev spent the first three years of World War I in Switzerland, after the Russian monarchy was overthrown during the February Revolution, he returned to Russia in April 1917 in a sealed train with Lenin and other revolutionaries opposed to the war. He remained a part of the Bolshevik leadership throughout most of that year, however, Zinoviev and Lenin soon had a falling out over Zinovievs opposition to Lenins call for an open insurrection against the Provisional Government. On October 10,1917, he and Lev Kamenev were the only two Central Committee members to vote against an armed revolt and their publication of an open letter opposed to the use of force enraged Lenin, who demanded their expulsion from the party. In response, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Vladimir Milyutin, the following day, Lenin wrote a proclamation calling Zinoviev and Kamenev deserters. He never forgot their behavior, eventually making a reference to their October episode in his Testament. Zinoviev soon returned to the fold and was again elected to the Central Committee at the VII Party Congress on March 8,1918. He was put in charge of the Petrograd city and regional government, sometime in 1918, while Ukraine was under German occupation, the rabbis of Odessa ceremonially anathematized Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Jewish Bolshevik leaders in the synagogue. He became a member of the ruling Politburo when it was created after the VIII Congress on March 25,1919. He also became the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern when it was created in March 1919, Zinoviev was responsible for Petrograds defense during two periods of intense clashes with White forces in 1919. Trotsky, who was in charge of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, thought little of Zinovievs leadership
13.
Lev Kamenev
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Lev Borisovich Kamenev, born Rozenfeld, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev was the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky. He served briefly as the equivalent of the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, Joseph Stalin viewed him as a source of discontent and a source of opposition to his own leadership. After Kamenev fell out of favour, Stalin had him executed on 25 August 1936, aged 53, Lev Borisovich Rozenfeld was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker and a Russian Orthodox mother. His father used the wealth he earned in the building of the Baku-Batumi railway to pay for an education for Lev. He went to the boys Gymnasium in Tiflis, Georgia and attended Moscow University, Rozenfeld became politically active during university and was arrested in 1902, ending his formal education. From that point on, he worked as a professional revolutionary and he adopted Kamenev as his revolutionary surname. In the early 1900s, he married Olga Bronstein, a fellow Marxist, the couple had two sons together. Kamenev joined the Communists in 1901 and he took a brief trip abroad in 1902, meeting Russian social democratic leaders living in exile, including Vladimir Lenin, whose adherent and close associate he became. He also visited Paris and met the Iskra group who published the newspaper. He went back to London to attend the 5th RSDLP Party Congress, where he was elected to the partys Central Committee and the Bolshevik Center, in May 1907, but was arrested upon his return to Russia. After Kamenev was released from prison in 1908, he and his family went abroad later in the year to help Lenin edit the Bolshevik magazine Proletariy. After Lenins split with another senior Bolshevik leader, Alexander Bogdanov, in mid-1908, Kamenev and they helped him expel Bogdanov and his Otzovist followers from the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP in mid-1909. In January 1910 Leninists, followers of Bogdanov, and various Menshevik factions held a meeting of the partys Central Committee in Paris, Kamenev and Zinoviev were dubious about the idea, but were willing to give it a try under pressure from conciliator Bolsheviks like Victor Nogin. Lenin was adamantly opposed to re-unification, but was outvoted within the Bolshevik leadership, the meeting reached a tentative agreement. As one of its provisions, Trotskys Vienna-based Pravda was designated as a central organ. Kamenev, Trotskys brother-in-law, was added to Pravdas editorial board as a representative of the Bolsheviks in this process, the unification attempts failed in August 1910, when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations. After the failure of the attempt, Kamenev continued working for Proletariy
14.
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
15.
Grigori Sokolnikov
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Grigori Yakovlevich Sokolnikov was a Russian old Bolshevik revolutionary, economist, and Soviet politician. Grigori Sokolnikov was born Girsh Yankelevich Brilliant to a doctor in Romny on 15 August 1888. He moved to Moscow as a teenager and joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905 and he served time in prison and studied economics whilst at the Sorbonne. He returned to Russia in April 1917 along with Vladimir Lenin in the sealed train, grigori Sokolnikov was a member of the first Politburo, with seven members, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. After the October Revolution, he held government positions. He was a member of the Joffe led delegation for peace negotiations with Germany, later, alongside Rosalia Zemlyachka, he became commissar of the Eighth army, using this position to order mass shootings during the Russian Civil War. He was appointed Peoples Commissar of Finance following the introduction of the New Economic Policy, bajanov also notes that despite Sokolnikovs past in the Red Army, he was not ruthless in his personality. Privately, Sokolnikov lost faith in the Soviet Union under Stalin, Sokolnikov was appointed instead as vice-chairman of Gosplan, the new economic planning agency and later as head of an oil company. He was the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1932, during the Great Purge, Sokolnikov was arrested in 1937 and tried at the Trial of the Seventeen. He was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment, reportedly, he was killed in a prison by other convicts on 21 May 1939. A post-Stalin investigation during the Khrushchev Thaw revealed that the murder was orchestrated by the NKVD, in 1988, during perestroika, he was rehabilitated along with many other victims of the Great Purge. Soviet Policy in Public Finance, 1917–1928, by Gregory Y, Sokolnikov & Associates, translated by Elena Varneck, edited by Lincoln Hutchinson & Carl C. Grigory Sokolnikov Archive, part of Marxists Internet Archive, grigorii Yakovlevich Sokolnikov and the development of the Soviet state, 1921–1929
16.
Andrei Bubnov
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Andrei Sergeyevich Bubnov was a Bolshevik revolutionary leader in Russia, and member of the Left Opposition. Bubnov was born in Ivanovo-Voznesensk in Vladimir Governorate on 23 March 1883 into a local Russian merchants family and he was expelled from Moscow University for revolutionary activities. He studied at the Moscow Agricultural Institute and while a student joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. He was a supporter of the Bolshevik faction of the party and attended the 4th and 5th Party Conferences in Stockholm and London, in 1909 Bubnov was made an agent of the Central Committee in Moscow and later sent to organize workers in Nizhny Novgorod. He was arrested a total of thirteen times by the czarist government, on the outbreak of the First World War Bubnov became involved in the anti-war movement. He was arrested in October 1916 and exiled to Siberia, Bubnov returned to Moscow in 1917 after the February Revolution. He joined the Moscow Soviet and, at the 6th Party Conference in July 1917, just before the October Revolution, he was elected as one of the seven members of the first Bolshevik Politburo alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, and Sokolnikov. As a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee he helped organize the October Revolution, during the Russian Civil War Bubnov joined the Red Army and fought on the Ukrainian Front and in the Caucasus. After the war he joined the Moscow Party Committee and became a member of the Left Opposition. He was not always orthodox, The Party noted that he was with the left-wing in 1918, the Democratic-Centralists in 1920–1, and the Trotskyites in 1923, when he signed their Declaration of 46. In January 1924, however, he switched to supporting Joseph Stalin and was rewarded by being appointed as Head of Political Control of the Red Army, from the 13th to 17th Party Conferences, he was elected to the central committee. Under the pseudonym Kisanko, he traveled to Guangzhou, China, to lead a team of Soviet advisors to the Nationalists, following the Canton Coup on 20 March 1926, he worked out an agreement with the new Nationalist strongman Chiang Kai-shek. He was recalled at Chiangs request the next month and he then worked with Grigori Voitinsky and Fedor Raskolnikov on the Preliminary Theses on the Situation in China, which was presented to the ECCI in November and December of that year. In 1929, he replaced Lunacharsky as Peoples Commissar for Education, as Commissar for Education, he ended the period of progressive, experimental educational practices and switched the emphasis to training in practical industrial skills. He was arrested by the NKVD during the Great Purge on 17 October 1937, records from the time, which were not made public until the 1980s and 1990s, show that he was sentenced to death on 1 August 1938 and shot the same day. It encouraged their families and the public to believe that they were probably still alive in a camp or hospital somewhere. Bubnov was posthumously rehabilitated in February 1956 during the de-Stalinization of the Khrushchev thaw, however, even at the time, the Soviet government did not make public the lists of the purged persons who had already long been executed. Thus, their relatives were still searching for them in various psychiatric hospitals in the 1970s
17.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
18.
Afghanistan
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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located within South Asia and Central Asia. It has a population of approximately 32 million, making it the 42nd most populous country in the world. It is bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan in the north and its territory covers 652,000 km2, making it the 41st largest country in the world. The land also served as the source from which the Kushans, Hephthalites, Samanids, Saffarids, Ghaznavids, Ghorids, Khiljis, Mughals, Hotaks, Durranis, the political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak and Durrani dynasties in the 18th century. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a state in the Great Game between British India and the Russian Empire. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, King Amanullah unsuccessfully attempted to modernize the country and it remained peaceful during Zahir Shahs forty years of monarchy. A series of coups in the 1970s was followed by a series of wars that devastated much of Afghanistan. The name Afghānistān is believed to be as old as the ethnonym Afghan, the root name Afghan was used historically in reference to a member of the ethnic Pashtuns, and the suffix -stan means place of in Persian. Therefore, Afghanistan translates to land of the Afghans or, more specifically in a historical sense, however, the modern Constitution of Afghanistan states that he word Afghan shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan. An important site of historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites. The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and it has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within large regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire. Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilisation today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, in more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan. There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well, after 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan, among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, the region at the time was referred to as Ariana
19.
Czechoslovakia
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From 1939 to 1945, following its forced division and partial incorporation into Nazi Germany, the state did not de facto exist but its government-in-exile continued to operate. From 1948 to 1990, Czechoslovakia was part of the Soviet bloc with a command economy and its economic status was formalized in membership of Comecon from 1949, and its defense status in the Warsaw Pact of May 1955. A period of liberalization in 1968, known as the Prague Spring, was forcibly ended when the Soviet Union, assisted by several other Warsaw Pact countries. In 1993, Czechoslovakia split into the two states of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Form of state 1918–1938, A democratic republic, 1938–1939, After annexation of Sudetenland by Nazi Germany in 1938, the region gradually turned into a state with loosened connections among the Czech, Slovak, and Ruthenian parts. A large strip of southern Slovakia and Carpatho-Ukraine was annexed by Hungary, 1939–1945, The region was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the Slovak Republic. A government-in-exile continued to exist in London, supported by the United Kingdom, United States and its Allies, after the German invasion of Russia, Czechoslovakia adhered to the Declaration by United Nations and was a founding member of the United Nations. 1946–1948, The country was governed by a government with communist ministers, including the prime minister. Carpathian Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union, 1948–1989, The country became a socialist state under Soviet domination with a centrally planned economy. In 1960, the country became a socialist republic, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It was a state of the Soviet Union. 1989–1990, The federal republic consisted of the Czech Socialist Republic, 1990–1992, Following the Velvet Revolution, the state was renamed the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, consisting of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. Neighbours Austria 1918–1938, 1945–1992 Germany Hungary Poland Romania 1918–1938 Soviet Union 1945–1991 Ukraine 1991–1992 Topography The country was of irregular terrain. The western area was part of the north-central European uplands, the eastern region was composed of the northern reaches of the Carpathian Mountains and lands of the Danube River basin. Climate The weather is mild winters and mild summers, influenced by the Atlantic Ocean from the west, Baltic Sea from the north, and Mediterranean Sea from the south. The area was long a part of the Austro Hungarian Empire until the Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the new state was founded by Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who served as its first president from 14 November 1918 to 14 December 1935. He was succeeded by his ally, Edvard Beneš. The roots of Czech nationalism go back to the 19th century, nationalism became a mass movement in the last half of the 19th century
20.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
21.
North Korea
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North Korea, officially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, is a country in East Asia, constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang is both the capital as well as its largest city. To the north and northwest the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok, the country is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone separating the two. Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948 two separate governments were formed, the communist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea in the north, an invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War. The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, and no peace treaty was ever signed. North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant socialist state and formally holds elections, critics regard it as a totalitarian dictatorship. Various outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung, International organizations have assessed human rights violations in North Korea as belonging to a category of their own, with no parallel in the contemporary world. Over time, North Korea has gradually distanced itself from the world communist movement, Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution as a creative application of Marxism–Leninism in 1972. The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises, most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded. From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered from a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 0.24 and 3.5 million people, and the continues to struggle with food production. North Korea follows Songun, or military-first policy and it is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel. Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion and where public religion is discouraged. The name Korea derives from the name Goryeo, the name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a shortened form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After the division of the country into North and South Korea, the two sides used different terms to refer to Korea, Chosun or Joseon in North Korea, in 1948, North Korea adopted Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as its new legal name. After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Korea was occupied by Japan, Japan tried to suppress Korean traditions and culture and ran the economy primarily for its own benefit. Korean resistance groups known as Dongnipgun operated along the Sino-Korean border, some of them took part in allied action in China and parts of South East Asia. One of the leaders was the communist Kim Il-sung, who later became the leader of North Korea
22.
Laos
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Present day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to the kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao, which existed for four centuries as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Due to Lan Xangs central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom was able to become a hub for overland trade. After a period of conflict, Lan Xang broke off into three separate kingdoms— Luang Phabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In 1893, it became a French protectorate, with the three territories uniting to form what is now known as the country of Laos and it briefly gained independence in 1945 after Japanese occupation, but returned to French rule until it was granted autonomy in 1949. Laos became independent in 1953, with a monarchy under Sisavang Vong. Shortly after independence, a civil war ended the monarchy. Laos is a one-party socialist republic and it espouses Marxism and is governed by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, in which the party leadership is dominated by military figures. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnam Peoples Army continue to have significant influence in Laos, other large cities include Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, and Pakse. Laos is a country with the politically and culturally dominant Lao people making up approximately 60 percent of the population. Mon-Khmer groups, the Hmong, and other hill tribes, accounting for 40 percent of the population, live in the foothills. It is a member of the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asia Summit, Laos applied for membership of the World Trade Organization in 1997, on 2 February 2013, it was granted full membership. According to the anti-corruption non-governmental organisation Transparency International, Laos remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world and this has deterred foreign investment and created major problems with the rule of law, including the nations ability to enforce contract and business regulation. This has contributed to a third of the population of Laos currently living below the poverty line. Laos has an economy, with one of the lowest annual incomes in the world. In 2014, the country ranked 141st on the Human Development Index, according to the Global Hunger Index, Laos ranks as the 29th hungriest nation in the world out of the list of the 52 nations with the worst hunger situation. Laos has also had a human rights record. In the Lao language, the name is Muang Lao or Pathet Lao. Stone artefacts including Hoabinhian types have been found at sites dating to the Late Pleistocene in northern Laos, archaeological evidence suggests agriculturist society developed during the 4th millennium BC
23.
Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a historical city as well. The northern part of Vietnam was part of Imperial China for over a millennium, an independent Vietnamese state was formed in 939, following a Vietnamese victory in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified in what is known as the Vietnam War, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under a communist government but remained impoverished, in 1986, the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms which began Vietnams path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnams economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world and its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Vietnam remains one of the worlds four remaining one-party socialist states officially espousing communism. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt, a name that can be traced back to the Triệu Dynasty of the 2nd century BC. The word Việt originated as a form of Bách Việt. The form Vietnam is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem Sấm Trạng Trình, the name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that dates to 1558. Then, as recorded, rewarded Yuenan/Vietnam as their nations name, to also show that they are below the region of Baiyue/Bach Viet. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long and it was revived in the early 20th century by Phan Bội Châus History of the Loss of Vietnam, and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when both the government in Huế and the Viet Minh government in Hanoi adopted Việt Nam. Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age, Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have also been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, in 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương
24.
Cuba
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Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and it is south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital, other cities include Santiago de Cuba. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of 109,884 square kilometres, prior to Spanish colonization in the late 15th century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes. It remained a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, as a fragile republic, Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Further unrest and instability led to Batistas ousting in January 1959 by the July 26 Movement, since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. A point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America, Cuba is a Marxist–Leninist one-party republic, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of human rights abuses. It is one of the worlds last planned economies and its economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee, according to the Human Development Index, Cuba is described as a country with high human development and is ranked the eighth highest in North America. It also ranks highly in some metrics of national performance, including health care, the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language. The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as where fertile land is abundant, authors who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by three distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Taíno, the Guanajatabey, and the Ciboney people. The ancestors of the Ciboney migrated from the mainland of South America, the Taíno arrived from Hispanola sometime in the 3rd century A. D. When Columbus arrived they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having a population of 150,000. The name Cuba comes from the native Taíno language and it is derived from either coabana meaning great place, or from cubao meaning where fertile land is abundant. The Taíno were farmers, while the Ciboney were farmers as well as fishers and hunter-gatherers, Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa, other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital
25.
Socialist state
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A socialist state or socialist republic refers to any state that is constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. Aside from the Communist states, a number of states have described their orientation as socialist in their constitutions. In such cases, the system and machinery of government is not specifically structured to pursue the development of socialism. The concept of a socialist state is related to state socialism. Specifically, the state would become an entity for production as opposed to a mechanism for political control. According to Friedrich Engels, Saint-Simon foreshadowed the classical Marxist notion of the development of the state in a socialist society, karl Marx understood the state to be an instrument of the class rule, dominated by the interests of the ruling class in any mode of production. This transitional stage would involve working-class interests dominating government policy, in the manner that capitalist-class interests dominate government policy under capitalism. Karl Marx described the Paris Commune as the prototype for a government of the future. Friedrich Engels noted that all officials, high or low, were only the wages received by other workers. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, such a state would be a temporary affair, Engels argued. A new generation, he suggested, brought up in new and free social conditions, the Leninist conception of a socialist state is tied to Vladimir Lenins theory of the revolutionary party and organizational principles of democratic centralism. These ideas were adopted by Vladimir Lenin in 1917 just prior to the October Revolution in Russia and published in The State and Revolution, a central text for many Marxists. Vladimir Lenin argued that as socialism is replaced by communism, the state would wither away as strong centralized control progressively reduces as local communities gain more empowerment, as he put succinctly, So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state, states run by Communist parties that adhere to Marxism–Leninism, or some variation thereof, refer to themselves as socialist states. The Soviet Union was the first to proclaim itself a socialist state in its 1936 Constitution, another well-known example is the Peoples Republic of China, which proclaims itself to be a socialist state in its 1982 Constitution of the Peoples Republic of China. In the West, such states are known as communist states. This often includes at least the commanding heights of the economy to be nationalized, usually operated according to a plan of production, at least in the major production and social spheres. These Communist states often dont claim to have achieved socialism in their countries, rather, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea used to be a Marxist–Leninist state
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Party conference
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The terms party conference, political convention, and party congress usually refer to a general meeting of a political party. The conference is attended by delegates who represent the party membership. The term conference or caucus may also refer to the organization of all party members as a whole, the definitions of all of these terms vary greatly, depending on the country and situation in which they are used. Chairmanship — Chosen from within the membership to preside over its business. Secretary — Responsible for keeping minutes of the conferences proceedings, policy committees — Responsible for setting and maintaining review of current party policy, and preparing proposals for presentation to the full conference. In Canada, besides annual or biennial conventions, parties often hold special conventions to elect new leaders, Communist parties convene a congress to elect a Central Committee, which in turn sets up a Politburo. A Communist conference may also meet on occasion, to discuss an issue or plan an event. Irish Labour Party has an annual Party Conference at which party policy is decided by the membership, british Labour Party conference elects the National Executive Committee. Unique to the UK, the Liberal Democrat Party Conference decides party policy, the membership also elects the Federal Executive. In the United States, the party conference is used to refer to the equivalent of parliamentary groups in other countries. Ardfheis, Irish term for a party conference Political parties List of political parties around the world Political conventions
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Trotskyism
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Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism, as they oppose Stalins theory of Socialism in One Country in favor of Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution, Trotskyists also criticize the bureaucracy that developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky were close both ideologically and personally during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, and some call Trotsky its co-leader, Trotsky was the paramount leader of the Soviet Red Army in the direct aftermath of the Revolutionary period. Trotsky originally opposed some aspects of Leninism, later, he concluded that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible, and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a role with Lenin in the revolution. Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote, Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible, Trotsky understood this and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik. Trotsky was exiled from the USSR to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan on 31 January 1928 under Stalins orders, almost all of the Partys Trotskyists were executed in the Great Purges of 1937–1938 effectively removing all of Trotskys internal influence on the USSR. In contemporary English language usage, an advocate of Trotskys ideas is called a Trotskyist. In the 1920s they called themselves the Left Opposition, although todays left communism is distinct, the terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Anti-revisionists consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right, but given that Stalinism is often labeled rightist within the communist spectrum and left communism leftist, Anti-revisionists idea of left is very different from that of left communism. Trotsky was extremely critical of the Stalinist USSR for suppressing democracy, in 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the theory of Permanent Revolution. It is one of the characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxism only claimed that a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one, according to the original theory it was impossible for such to occur in more backward countries such as early 20th century Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a capitalist society, the theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the class could overthrow feudalism. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there and they would win its own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers state in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the working class would come to Russias aid. Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism, Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia
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Lanka Sama Samaja Party
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The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is a Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka. The party was founded in 1935 and emerged as a political force in the Sri Lankan independence movement during the 1940s. It joined a government in 1964, and was then expelled from the Fourth International. It peaked in strength in the 1970s, but has declined gradually during the last 30 years. In the parliamentary election held on 2 April 2004, the party was part of the United Peoples Freedom Alliance, one of those 105 seats belongs to LSSP. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party was the first modern party in Sri Lanka and the first party to have an indigenous name rather than an English one. The Sinhala term samasamajaya was one coined by Dally Jayawardena in the Swadesa Mitraya to translate the term socialist, however, the usage of samasamajaya has since been superseded by samajavadaya in everything but in the names of the LSSP and various of its splinter groups. The Tamil term samadharmam was used to translate socialist, but nowadays the English term is used, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was founded on 18 December 1935 with the broad aims of Independence and Socialism, by a group of young people who had gathered together for that purpose. The group at the commencement numbered a bare half-dozen composed principally of students who had returned from abroad, influenced deeply by the ideas of Karl Marx and Lenin. The original group consisted of N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Philip Gunawardena, the LSSP grew out of the Youth Leagues, in which a nucleus of Marxists had developed. The leaders were mainly educated returnees from London, youth who had come into contact with the ideas of the European Left and were influenced by Harold Laski. Dr S. A. Wickremasinghe, an early returnee and a member of the State Council from 1931, was part of this group, the group, through the South Colombo Youth League, became involved in a strike at the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills. It published a journal in Sinhala, Kamkaruwa. In 1933 the group got involved in the Suriya-Mal movement, which had formed to provide support for indigenous ex-servicemen by the sale of Suriya flowers. The Suriya-Mal movement surged as a reaction to the fact that at the time Poppy Day funds went solely to British ex-servicemen, the movement was honed by volunteer work among the poor during the Malaria Epidemic of 1934-1935. The volunteers found that there was widespread malnutrition, which helped fight by making pills of Marmite yeast extract. In 1936 the LSSP contested the State Council elections in four constituencies, the two new members, Philip Gunawardena and N. M. Perera, proved to be a thorn in the side of the British Colonial government. The LSSP began fraternal relations with the Congress Socialist Party of India, Mrs Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya of the CSP was invited by the LSSP for a highly successful political tour of the island
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Eastern Bloc politics
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The resulting governments contained vestiges of western democracies to initially conceal the process. Party and social purges were employed along with the use of secret police organizations modeled on the Soviet KGB to monitor. At the end of World War II by mid-1945, all eastern, Eastern Poland, eastern Finland, the Baltics, Bukovina, and Bessarabia, now called Moldova, were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union. The eastern Polish territories remain part of Ukraine and Belarus as of the early 21st century, Red Army and NKVD personnel began to impose the communist system in 1939. The Soviet invasion of these areas in 1939 created local allies, the Soviet Union began planning the transformation of Eastern Europe even before the 1941 Nazi invasion of the USSR. There is evidence that the USSR did not expect to create a communist bloc quickly or easily, Ivan Maiskii, Soviet foreign minister under Stalin, wrote in 1944 that all European nations would eventually become communist states but only after a period of three to four decades. Eastern European communist leaders generally participated in national front coalitions during the 1930s to oppose Nazi expansion and these coalitions were modeled upon those of Spain and France. Historian Tony Judt described the war in Spain as “a dry run for the seizure of power in Eastern Europe after 1945. ”These included Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, part of eastern Finland. By 1945, these additional annexed countries totaled approximately 180,000 additional square miles, or slightly more than the area of West Germany, East Germany and Austria combined. The Soviets encouraged the worship of everything Russian and the reproduction of their own Communist structural hierarchies in each of the Bloc states, the Soviets mandated expropriation and etatization of private property. In addition, media in the Eastern Bloc served as an organ of the state, completely reliant on, the state owned radio and television organizations while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the ruling communist party. The initial issue arising in countries occupied by the Red Army in 1944 and 1945 was the manner in which to transform occupation power into control over domestic development. Because communists were relatively small minorities in all countries but Czechoslovakia, at the wars end, concealment of the Kremlins role was considered crucial to neutralize resistance and to make the regimes appear not only autochthonous, but also to resemble bourgeois democracies. Dissenters who approached such foreigners were arrested, for many years after World War II, even the best informed foreigners did not know the number of arrested or executed Soviet citizens, or how poorly the Soviet economy had performed. In the other countries of the Bloc, Stalin stated that the Eastern European version of democracy was a modification of western bourgeois democracy. This sovietization involved the gradual assimilation of local political, socioeconomic, Moscow trained cadres were placed into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Elimination of the social and financial power by expropriation of landed. These measures were publicly billed as reforms rather than socioeconomic transformations and those organizations were managed by communist cadres, though some diversity was permitted initially
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Politburo of the Communist Party of China
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Unlike politburos of other Communist parties, power within the politburo is centralized in the Politburo Standing Committee. The Politburo is nominally elected by the Central Committee, in addition, some Politburo members hold powerful regional positions. How the Politburo works internally is unclear, but it appears that the full Politburo meets once a month and this is believed to be much more infrequent than the former Soviet Politburo had met. The agenda for the meetings appears to be controlled by the General Secretary, the Politburo was eclipsed by the Secretariat of the Communist Party of China Central Committee in the early 1980s under Hu Yaobang, but has re-emerged as a dominant force after Hus ousting in 1987. The 18th Politburo was elected at the 1st Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee on November 15,2012, the 9th Politburo was elected at the 1st Plenary Session of the 9th Central Committee on April 28,1969, consisting of 21 members and 4 alternate members. There have been no alternate members since, miller, China Leadership Monitor No.9 www. nodulo. org Pictures of the members
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Politburo of the Communist Party of Vietnam
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According to Party rules, the Politburo directs the general orientation of the government and enacts policies which have been approved by either the National Party Congress or the Central Committee. The members of the Politburo are elected by the Central Committee in the aftermath of a National Party Congress. The current Politburo, the 12th, was elected by the Central Committee in the aftermath of the 12th National Congress, the first-ranked member is General Secretary of the Central Committee. The Politburo is a subunit of the Central Committee, the organ on party affairs. The members of the Central Committee, when the Party Congress has ended, the number of Politburo members is also decided by the Central Committee membership. Until 1990, there were two different forms of Politburo membership, full and alternate, when the Secretariat was abolished in 1996, a short-lived Politburo Standing Committee was established. Unlike the Secretariat, the Politburo Standing Committee was appointed by the Politburo, the Politburo Standing Committee was abolished in 2001 at the 9th National Congress, and the Secretariat was reestablished. Elected members are given rankings in an order of precedence and it is the duty of the Politburo to ensure that resolutions of the Party Congress and the Central Committee are implemented nationally. It is also responsible for related to organisation and personnel. Meetings are held regularly, decisions within the Politburo are made through collective decision-making, in the 1960s, outside analysts believed the Politburo was divided into two factions, this forced Politburo members to decide policy through compromise. This was later proven wrong, because Hồ Chí Minh became a believer in collective decision-making during the 1950s after the beginning of de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union. Hồs emphasis on the maintenance of unity led the Party to eschew the Communist Party of Chinas policy of criticism and self-criticism, the CPCs criticism and self-criticism policy was used to resolve internal contradictions, the problem with this concept was that it always assumed that one side was right. Criticism and self-criticism was not introduced in Vietnam, chiefly for this reason, however, Zachary Abuza claims that Politburo decision-making is built on factional infighting and ideological differences rather than on any notion of collective leadership. The Politburo is responsible to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee can question the Politburo, the composition of the Central Military Commission, the leading Party organ on military affairs, is decided by the Politburo. It is the responsibility of the Secretariat to ensure the implementation of directives stemming from the Politburo, before the reforms of Nguyễn Văn Linh during the late 1980s, the Politburo was the supreme decision-making organ in all areas of party and state. Before 1988, the Politburo had no clear guideline on its responsibilities on socioeconomic issues, because of this lack, the Politburo frequently meddled in the affairs of the Council of Ministers. The all-encompassing role of the Politburo before 1988 blurred the roles of the party, another problem until 1988 was that many members of the Politburo were leading officials within the state. The Politburo has the power to appoint members of the central government through the National Assembly of Vietnam
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Politburo of the Workers' Party of Korea
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The Politburo of the Workers Party of Korea is the highest leading body of the Workers Party of Korea. The Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee shall meet at least once every month, the Politburo is elected by the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea. After Kim Il-sung’s unitary ruling system was established in the late 1960s and it became a rubber stamp where only the voices of Kim’s loyal supporters were heard. Nevertheless, it remained a body where constructive opinions could be voiced, as Kim Jong-il inherited more of his fathers power and authority, the leadership system changed in important ways. Institutionally, Kim shifted the center of gravity within the Party from the Politburo to the Secretariat, in 1994,29 out of 50 North Korean elites had worked for the KWP Politburo. This means that body was an important stop on the road to advancement. In 2006, however, only eight members of the elite had served in the Politburo, publicized Politburo meetings became more frequent after Kim Jong-un took power in December 2011. Officially, the Politburo is responsible for conducting its activities as well as deciding on important issues between two Central Committee plenums and should meet once a month and its members include important state and military leaders, as the Premier and the vice-chairmen of the National Defence Commission. The Politburos inner body is the Politburo Standing Committee, elected by the WPK Central Committee and it is usually made up by the supreme leader and four other members
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Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format
