1.
Dekulakization
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Dekulakization was the Soviet campaign of political repressions, including arrests, deportations, and executions of millions of the better-off peasants and their families in 1929–1932. The richer peasants were labeled kulaks and considered class enemies, more than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931. The stated purpose of the campaign was to fight the counter-revolution and this policy was accomplished simultaneously with collectivization in the USSR and effectively brought all agriculture and peasants in Soviet Russia under state control. The liquidation of the kulaks as a class was announced by Joseph Stalin on 27 December 1929, the decision was formalized in a resolution On measures for the elimination of kulak households in districts of comprehensive collectivization on 30 January 1930. OGPU secret police chief Efim Georgievich Evdokimov organized and supervised the roundup of peasants, the results were soon known outside the Soviet Union. In 1941, the American journalist H. R. Knickerbocker wrote It is an estimate to say that some 5,000,000. Died at once, or within a few years, red Terror Decossackization Population transfer in the Soviet Union Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union Collectivization in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
2.
Forced settlements in the Soviet Union
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Forced settlements in the Soviet Union took several forms. Though the most notorious was the Gulag labor camp system of penal labor, at the same time, involuntary settlement played a role in the colonization of remote areas of the Soviet Union. This role was mentioned in the first Soviet decrees about involuntary labor camps. Population transfer in the Soviet Union that led to the creation of settlements was performed in a series of operations organized according to social and national criteria of the deported. All settlers were overseen by the NKVD, once a month a person had to visit a local law enforcement office at a selsoviet in rural areas or at a department in urban settlements. Exile settlements were a kind of internal exile, the system of political and administrative exile existed in Imperial Russia as well. The most notable category of exile settlers in the Soviet Union were the whole nationalities resettled during Joseph Stalins rule, at various times, a number of other terms were used for this category, special settlement, special resettlement, and administrative exile. Exiles were sent to areas of the Soviet Union, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia. The major source of the population in exile settlements were victims of what is now called ethnic cleansing, the Soviet government feared that people of certain nationalities would act as fifth column subversives during the expected war, and took drastic measures to prevent this perceived threat. The deported were sent to prisons, labor camps, exile settlements, several waves of forced resettlement occurred from the territories on the Western borders. They were usually sentenced to 8–20 years of labor camps, in addition, settlers or osadniks as well as foresters and railroad workers were forcibly removed. Massive deportations of the Polish population into areas of the Soviet Union took place in 1940–1941. Estimates of the number of deported Poles vary between 400,000 and 1.7 million people, including prisoners of war. On 23 June 1940 Lavrenty Beria, head of the NKVD, ordered the Murmansk Oblast to be cleansed of foreign nationals, people of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian ethnicities were moved to the Karelo-Finnish SSR. Germans, Koreans, Chinese, and others were moved to Altay, deportations of exiled settlers from the Baltic States and the annexed part of Romania were carried out in May–June 1941. Those deportations are commemorated by monuments such as Monument to the Fallen and these deportations concerned Soviet citizens of enemy nationality. The affected were Volga Germans, Finns, Romanians, Italians, at the end of this period Crimean Tatars were included in this wave of deportation. The Red Army occupation led to the deportation to Siberia of more than 200,000 ethnic Germans of Romania, Hungary, see Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union for details
3.
Gulag
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The Gulag was the government agency that administered and controlled the Soviet forced-labor camp system during Joseph Stalins rule from the 1930s up until the 1950s. The term is commonly used to reference any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas, the Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The agencys full name was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and it was administered first by the State Political Administration, later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s, the author likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on folklore as opposed to objective facts. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates and 423 labor colonies in the USSR, todays major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners. About 14 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953, according to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953. According with other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of more than 465,000 were political prisoners. The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG and its major function was the organization of foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union. The top management of GUPVI came from the GULAG system, the major noted distinction from GULAG was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both systems were similar, hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, and high mortality rate. According with the estimates, in total, during the period of the existence of GUPVI there were over 500 POW camps. According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934–53. Some independent estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the period from 1929 to 1953. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time
4.
Deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia
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The deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia took place as an act of forced resettlement and ethnic cleansing throughout the 20th century. Prior to the October Revolution, Azerbaijanis had made up 43 percent of the population of Yerevan, the Tartar population endured a process of forced migration from the territory of the Democratic Republic of Armenia and later in the Armenian SSR several times during the 20th century. Under Stalins policies, approximately 100,000 Azerbaijanis were deported from the Armenian SSR in 1948 and their houses were subsequently inhabited by Armenian repatriates who arrived in the Soviet Union from abroad. The British command, which had its own political objectives didn’t allow Andranik to extend his activity to Karabakh, Andranik brought 30,000 Armenian refugees from Eastern Anatolia, mainly from Mush and Bitlis. According to statistical data from Caucasian Ethnographical Collection of Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the relocation of the Azerbaijani population during the Stalinist era happened after the establishment of the Armenian SSR. According to the First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union of 1926, according to All-Union census of 1939,130,896 Azerbaijanis lived in Armenian SSR. Results of All-Union census of 1959 show that this decreased to 107,748, although in the rate of natality. In 1945 the Soviet Union presented a claim to Turkish territories of Kars. This confrontation in the relations of both lasted until Stalin’s death. These policies continued until 1953, and Stalin’s decisions became the significant step of offering Armenians living in countries to move to Soviet Armenia. The Armenian SSR was located in an advantageous military-geographical territory at the frontier of Turkey within the context of influencing Turkey. Cleansing Armenia of the Azerbaijani Muslims with the purpose of strengthening Armenia’s stronghold was one of the plans of the Soviet regime, one clauses of the resolution stated, Details of resettlement were defined in the Soviet Union’s Council of Ministers’ Resolution #754. The part of kolkhoz’s moveable property was assigned and gratuitous transportation of property to the new settlement was provided for the deported. Price of moveable property abandoned in Armenia was paid for in kolkhozs at places of new settlement of Azerbaijanis, some benefits were given to migrants and at the same time permanent grants of 1000 rubles were given out per head of family and 300 rubles per each member of family. At the same time he gave consent for repatriation of 90,000 Armenians to the settlements of the newly deported Azerbaijanis, numerous reports were received of Azeris stating their unwillingness to leave the Armenian SSR. The Armenian SSR Interior Ministry reported in 1948 that some Azerbaijanis would even visit cemeteries, on the other hand, some groups decided it was better to leave as in the case of a war with Turkey, they were convinced they would be massacred by Armenians. According to Thomas de Waal, the Azeris of Armenia once again fell victims to the Armenian–Turkish question, besides Azerbaijanis, representatives of other ethnicities lived in Armenia, Russians, Kurds, Ukrainians, Greeks and other ethnic minorities. According to census of 1979, Azerbaijanis were the largest minority in Armenia making up 5, the expulsion of Azerbaijanis en masse by Armenian extremists started in 1987 from district of Kafan
5.
Deportation of the Crimean Tatars
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The state-organized removal is known as the Sürgünlik in Crimean Tatar. A total of more than 230,000 people were deported and this included the entire ethnic Crimean Tatar population, at the time about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula, as well as smaller numbers of ethnic Greeks and Bulgarians. A large number of deportees died from starvation or disease as a result of deportation. It is considered to be a case of ethnic cleansing, for a long time Crimean Tatars and Soviet dissidents called for recognition of the genocide of Crimean Tatars. During Destalinization the deportation was denounced by the Soviet government, nevertheless, in November 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR recognized the deportation as a crime against humanity of the highest degree. On 21 April 2014, President of Russia Vladimir Putin signed a decree that rehabilitated Crimean Tatars and other ethnicities who suffered from Stalinist repressions in Crimea. On November 12,2015 parliament of Ukraine adopted a resolution recognizing the event as a genocide, however, under Joseph Stalin, the official policy of the Soviet government turned to one of repression. However, between 1923 and 1938, the Crimean Tatar population had increased from 150,000 to over 218,000 people. In September 1941 the German 11th Army and troops from the Romanian Third Army and Fourth Army entered the Crimean Peninsula, by November, they controlled the entire peninsula except for the city of Sevastopol. After a siege lasting for months, Sevastopol also fell and the peninsula was occupied by Army Group A with the 17th Army, with the fall of the peninsula to the Germans, the resistance activity of the Soviet partisans, led by A. N. Martynov and organized by the NKVD and activists of the Communist Party began, however, Crimean Tatars were banned from joining this movement. Historian J. Otto Pohl has accused Mokrousov and Martynov of incompetence, some Crimean Tatar communists were forced out of their refuges in woodlands by the partisans, which resulted in their execution by the occupying German forces. The partisans specifically targeted and destroyed Crimean Tatar villages, according to Pohl, Crimean Tatar villages were also pillaged for food by the partisans. Overall, the number of Crimean Tatar men who joined these battalions was around 20,000 The motivations of Crimean Tatar men who joined these battalions varied, some were members of the defeated 51st Army and had been taken as prisoners of war by the German Army. They joined the battalions to avoid the conditions in the POW camps in Simferopol and Mykolaiv. Some aimed to protect their villages from the activities of Soviet partisans, however, 15% of the adult male Crimean Tatar population remained active in the ranks of the Red Army, and some Crimean Tatars were taken to Germany as forced laborers, called Ostarbeiter. According to Pohl, the aim of the Soviet government was the ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars and this constituted the continuation of a policy practiced earlier in the Caucasus, whereby an ethnic group was selected to be deported and then charges of treason were fabricated. Another motivation, according to Pohl, was their close historical and cultural ties with Turkey
6.
Soviet deportations from Estonia
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Soviet deportations from Estonia were a series of mass deportations by the Soviet Union of approximately 33,000 people from Estonia in 1941 and 1945–1951. The two largest waves of deportations occurred in June 1941 and March 1949 simultaneously in all three Baltic states, the deportations targeted various categories of anti-Soviet elements and enemies of the people, nationalists, bandits, kulaks, and others. There were deportations based on nationality and religion, estonians residing in the Leningrad Oblast had already been subjected to deportation since 1935. People were deported to areas of the Soviet Union, predominantly to Siberia and Kazakhstan. Entire families, including children and the elderly, were deported without trial or prior announcement, of March 1949 deportees, over 70% of people were women and children under the age of 16. The Estonian Internal Security Service has brought to justice several past organizars of these events, the deportations have been repeatedly declared to constitute a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Estonia and also acknowledged to be so by the European Court of Human Rights. The deportation procedure was established by the Serov Instructions, the first repressions in Estonia affected Estonias national elite. On 17 July 1940, Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces Johan Laidoner and his family, the country political and military leadership was deported almost entirely, including 10 of 11 ministers and 68 of 120 members of parliament. Only 4,331 persons returned to Estonia,11,102 people were to be deported from Estonia according to the order of 13 June but some managed to escape. Identical deportations were carried out in Latvia and Lithuania at the same time, the first wave of deportation has always been well documented, as many witnesses were subsequently able to flee abroad during the Second World War. Deportations after 1944 were, however, much harder to document, in July 1941 Estonia was conquered by Nazi Germany, who were forced out by advancing Soviet troops in 1944. As soon as the Soviets had returned the deportations resumed, in August 1945,407 persons, most of them of German descent, were transferred from Estonia to Perm Oblast. 18 families were transferred to Tyumen Oblast in October,37 families in November and other 37 families in December 1945 as Traitors, during the collectivization period in the Baltic republics, on 29 January 1949, the Council of Ministers issued top secret decree No. 390–138ss, which obligated the Ministry for State Security to exile the kulaks, lieutenant General Pyotr Burmak, commander of the MGB Internal Troops, was in generally charge for the operation. In Estonia the deportations were coordinated by Boris Kumm, Minister of Security of the Estonian SSR, over 8,000 managed to escape, but 20,722 were sent to Siberia during three days. Slightly more than 10 percent were men of working age, the deported included disabled people, pregnant women, newborns and children separated from their parents. The youngest deportee was 1-day-old Virve Eliste from Hiiumaa island, who died a year later in Siberia, nine trainloads of people were directed to Novosibirsk Oblast, six to Krasnoyarsk Krai, two to Omsk Oblast, and two to Irkutsk Oblast. Many perished, most have never returned home and this second wave of the large-scale deportations was aimed to facilitate collectivization, which was implemented with great difficulties in the Baltic republics
7.
Soviet deportations from Lithuania
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Soviet deportations from Lithuania were a series of 35 mass deportations carried out in the Lithuanian SSR, a republic of the Soviet Union, in 1941 and 1945–1952. Among the deportees were about 4,500 Poles and these deportations do not include Lithuanian partisans or political prisoners deported to Gulags. Deportations of the civilians served a purpose, repressing resistance to Sovietization policies in Lithuania. Approximately 28,000 of Lithuanian deportees died in exile due to living conditions. After Stalins death in 1953, the deportees were slowly and gradually released, the last deportees were released only in 1963. Some 60,000 managed to return to Lithuania, while 30,000 were prohibited from settling back in their homeland, similar deportations took place in Latvia, Estonia, and other parts of the Soviet Union. Lithuania observes the annual Mourning and Hope Day on June 14 in memory of those deported, in August 1939, Nazi Germany and Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact whereby dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence. The Baltic states became part of the Russian sphere, the Soviet Union began preparations for the occupation and incorporation of these territories. First, it imposed mutual assistance treaties by which the Baltic states agreed to allow bases for Soviet soldiers within their territory. Further steps were delayed by Winter War with Finland, by spring 1940, the war was over and Soviet Union increased its rhetoric accusing the Baltics of anti-Soviet conspiracy. Lithuania received Soviet ultimatum on June 14,1940, almost identical ultimatums to Latvia and Estonia followed two days later. Soviet Union demanded to allow a number of Soviet troops to enter the state territory. The Soviets followed semi-constitutional procedures while transforming independent Baltic states into the soviet socialist republics and they formed pro-Soviet Peoples Governments and held show elections to Peoples Parliaments. The annexation of the Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR, and Estonian SSR was completed by August 6,1940, the Soviets took control of political, economic, and cultural life in the three states. Economic life was disrupted and standard of living decreased, political activists and other people labeled as enemy of the people were arrested and imprisoned. In June 1941, some 17,000 Lithuanians were deported during the first deportation, further repressions were prevented by Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Within a week Lithuania was under Nazi regime, at first the Germans were greeted as liberators from the oppressive Soviet rule. In 1944, Nazi Germany was losing the war and Soviet Russia was making steady advances, in July 1944, Red Army reached the Lithuanian borders as part of the Operation Bagration
8.
June deportation
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The June deportation was a mass deportation by the Soviet Union of tens of thousands of people from the territories occupied in 1940–1941, Baltic states, occupied Poland, and Moldavia. The deportation took place from May 22 to June 20,1941, however, the goal of the deportations was to eliminate political opponents of the Soviet regime, not to strengthen security in preparation for the German attack. In occupied Poland, it was the wave of mass deportations and was intended to combat the counter-revolutionary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The procedure for the deportations was approved by Ivan Serov in the so-called Serov Instructions, people were deported without trials in whole families. The mortality rate among the Estonian deportees was estimated at 60%, the number of deported people include, The June deportation has been the subject of several Baltic films from the 2010s. The 2013 Lithuanian film The Excursionist dramatises the events through a 10-year-old girl who escapes from her camp, estonias 2014 In the Crosswind is an essay film based on the memoirs of a woman who was deported to Siberia, and is told through staged tableaux vivants filmed in black-and-white. Estonias Ülo Pikkov also addressed the events in the short film Body Memory from 2012. Soviet deportations from Estonia Soviet deportations from Lithuania
9.
Operation Priboi
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Operation Priboi was the code name for the Soviet mass deportation from the Baltic states on 25–28 March 1949. The action is known as the March deportation by Baltic historians. More than 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, labeled as enemies of the people, were deported to forced settlements in areas of the Soviet Union. Over 70% of the deportees were women and children under the age of 16, the deportation fulfilled its purposes, by the end of 1949, 93% and 80% of the farms were collectivized in Latvia and Estonia. In Lithuania, the progress was slower and the Soviets organized another large deportation known as Operation Osen in fall 1951, the deportations were for eternity with no rights to return. The mortality rate for the deportees was estimated at less than 15%, based on the Martens Clause and the principles of the Nuremberg Charter, the European Court of Human Rights has held that the March deportation constituted a crime against humanity. Collectivisation in the Baltic states was introduced in early 1947, despite new heavy taxes on farmers and intense propaganda, only about 3% of farms in Lithuania and Estonia joined kolkhozes by the end of 1948. Borrowing from the experiences of the early 1930s, kulaks were named as the primary obstacle. It is unclear when the idea of a mass deportation was advanced, on 18 January 1949, leaders of all three Baltic republics were called to report to Joseph Stalin. That day, during a session of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on 29 January, the top secret decision No. 390-138 ss was adopted by the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, approving the deportation of kulaks, nationalists, bandits, their supporters and families from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Lists of kulaks to be deported were to be compiled by each republic, given just two months for preparations, the various agencies began marshaling resources. On 28 February 1949, Viktor Abakumov, the minister of MGB, Lieutenant General Pyotr Burmak commanded the MGB troops while Lieutenant General Sergei Ogoltsov, Deputy Minister of MGB, was in charge of the overall MGB role in the deportation. Burmak set up his headquarters in Riga, the success of the operation depended on its suddenness to prevent mass panic, escape attempts, or retaliations by the Forest Brothers. Therefore, secrecy was of paramount importance, special MGB representatives were dispatched to various local offices of MGB to form operative staff that would select the deportees and compile a file on each family. This led to confusion and uncertainty as to what offenses warranted deportation. Deportees often blamed local informants of MGB who, they believed, acted out of petty revenge or greed and this caused much confusion during the operation. Local MGB offices would prepare summary certificates for each family and send them for approval to the republican MGB office, for example, by 14 March, Estonian MGB approved summary certificates for 9,407 families which created a reserve of 1,907 families above the quota
10.
Operation Vistula
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The action was carried out by the Soviet-installed Polish communist authorities with the aim of removing material support and assistance to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued to fight until 1947 in both Subcarpathian and Lublin Voivodeships with no hope for any peaceful resolution, Operation Vistula effectively brought an end to the hostilities. The operation was named after the Vistula River, Wisła in Polish, some Polish and Ukrainian politicians as well as historians condemned the operation following the 1989 fall of communism in Eastern Europe, and described it as ethnic cleansing. Others pointed out no other means of stopping the violence existed at the time since partisans used to regroup outside the Polish borders. During Operation Vistula conditions of the United Nations Charter of June 26,1945 on the right of self-determination, in the years 1956-1958 they received mostly non-repayable credits totalling 170 million PLN which was a considerable amount of money in the Polish national budget. A similar operation was performed in Ukrainian SSR by the Soviet Union at exactly the same time, both operations were coordinated from Moscow, however, there was a shocking difference between their outcomes. Operation West parallel to Operation Vistula was conducted in West Ukraine by the Soviet NKVD targeting families of suspected UPA members, over 114,000 mostly women and children were deported to Kazakh SSR and Siberia and forced into extreme poverty. Only 19,000 men were among the NKVD deportees, most of them sent to coal mines, none of the people deported by the NKVD received any farms or empty homes to live in. The stated goal of the operation was to suppress the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the original codename of the operation was Akcja Wschód, similar to Operation West conducted by the NKVD on the Soviet side of the border. It is sometimes assumed that the cause for Operation Vistula was the March 28,1947 assassination of the Polish communist General Karol Świerczewski in an ambush set up by UPA. About 12 hours after the incident, the Polish communist authorities made the decision to deport all Ukrainians and it is known, however, that preparations for Operation Vistula had started already in January 1947, if not earlier. On September 10,1947 the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union issued an Order № 3214-1050, the operation was carried out by the Operational Group Vistula consisting of about 20,000 personnel commanded by General Stefan Mossor. The group included soldiers of the Polish Peoples Army and the Internal Security Corps, as well as functionaries of the police Milicja Obywatelska, the operation commenced at 4 a. m. Initially, the expellees comprised about 20,000 Ukrainians and Lemkos, with time, the total number grew to 80,000 and eventually to 150,000 inhabitants of Polesie, Roztocze, Pogórze Przemyskie, Bieszczady, Low Beskid, Beskid Sądecki, and Ruś Szlachtowska. The expellees were resettled over an area in the Northern and Western Territories assigned to Poland by the Potsdam Agreement including Warmia and Masuria. They received financial credits and material help from the government, including grain contingents, most of their personal debts, however, have been remitted in the following years. Nevertheless, the UPA continued its fight for a few more years, after the last relocations, UPAs activities on Polish territory died out. Some Ukrainian insurgents fled to Western Europe, notably to West Germany, and they were helped by the former Nazis from the Gehlen Organization
11.
Virgin Lands Campaign
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The Virgin Lands Campaign was Nikita Khrushchev’s 1953 plan to dramatically boost the Soviet Union’s agricultural production in order to alleviate the food shortages plaguing the Soviet populace. Khrushchev, irritated that Malenkov had received credit for agricultural reform, khrushchevs plan both expanded the reforms that Malenkov had begun and proposed the plowing and cultivation of 13 million hectares of previously uncultivated land by 1956. Targeted lands included areas on the bank of the Volga, in the northern Caucasus, in Western Siberia. Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich and other leading CPSU members expressed opposition to the Virgin Lands Campaign, many saw the plan as not economically or logistically feasible. During the summer of 1954,300,000 Komsomol volunteers traveled to the Virgin Lands. Between the years 1954 and 1958 the Soviet Union spent 30.7 million rubles on the Virgin Lands Campaign, from 1954 to 1960, the total sown area of land in the USSR increased by 46 million hectares, with 90% of the increase due the Virgin Lands Campaign. Overall, the Virgin Lands Campaign succeeded in increasing production of grain and in alleviating food shortages in the short term, the enormous scale and initial success of the campaign were quite a historical feat. In historical perspective, the laid the ground for a recovery of wheat production in post-independence Kazakhstan. The first Virgin Land harvest exceeded expectations, the total output of grain for Virgin Land regions in 1954 was 14,793,000 tons greater and 65% higher than the average grain yield for the period of 1949-1953. The 1955 Virgin Lands crop fell far below expectations due to a drought in the virgin land regions, especially Kazakhstan. Even though the total area in 1955 was almost double that of 1954. However, other regions of the Soviet Union had a good year. Enthusiasm over the Virgin Lands Campaign dampened after the poor harvest of 1955, much less new land was put into cultivation in 1956. However, the harvest of 1956 proved to be the most successful of the entire Virgin Lands Campaign, grain output for Virgin Lands regions increased by 180% compared to the average of 1949-1953 and 90% compared to the 1954-1955 average. The grain output in 1956 of the entire Soviet Union was 50% higher than the 1949-53 average, encouraged by the success, Khrushchev went on a tour through the Virgin Land regions awarding medals to farmers. The 1957 harvest was a failure, Virgin Land’s grain output decreased 40% from 1956, and 18% for the total Soviet Union grain output. In 1958 and 1959 there was almost no new land ploughed up in Virgin Land regions, the 1958 harvest was a particularly good one, reaching 58,385,000 tons of grain, only 8% below the record of 62,263,000 tons set in 1956. The 1959 growing season was extremely rainy, causing many difficulties, however, the harvest was not disappointing
12.
Japanese prisoners of war in the Soviet Union
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By the end of World War II there were from 560,000 to 760,000 Japanese personnel in the Soviet Union and Mongolia interned to work in labor camps as POWs. Of them, about 10% died, mostly during the winter of 1945–46, the majority of the approximately 3.5 million Japanese armed forces outside Japan were disarmed by the United States and Kuomintang China and repatriated in 1946. After the end of the military conflict, the number of Japanese prisoners captured in combat was very small. In 1946,49 labor camps for Japanese POWs under the management of GUPVI housed about 500,000 persons, in addition there were two camps for those convicted of various crimes. Handling of Japanese POWs was, in line with the USSR State Defense Committee Decree no, 9898cc About Receiving, Accommodation, and Labor Utilization of the Japanese Army Prisoners of War dated by 23 August 1945. The repatriation of Japanese POWs started in 1946 and those remaining after 1950 were detained having been convicted of various crimes. The release of these persons continued from 1953 under various amnesties, there are about 60 associations of Japanese former internees and members of their families today. The Soviet Union did not provide the lists of POWs and did not allow the relatives of those POWs who died in captivity to visit their burial sites and this became possible after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. One of these critics is Haruo Minami who later became one of the most famous singers in Japan, Minami, because of his harsh experiences in the labor camp, became a well-known anti-communist. Most Japanese were captured in Soviet-occupied Manchuria and were brought to Soviet POW camps, some remained in captivity until December 1956 before they were allowed to return to Japan. Various associations of former internees seek compensation for their wartime treatment and those who chose to stay in Russia and eventually decided to return had to deal with significant Japanese bureaucracy. A major problem is the difficulty in providing the documentary confirmation of their status, toshimasa Meguro, a 77-year-old former POW, was permitted to visit Japan as late as in 1998. He served 8 years of labor camps and after the release was ordered to stay in Siberia, tetsuro Ahiko is the last remaining Japanese POW living in Kazakhstan. Research into the history of the Japanese POWs has become possible in Russia only since the second half of the 1980s, with glastnost, until this time the only public information about any World War II POWs taken by the Soviet Union was some numbers of prisoners taken. After opening the secret Soviet archives the true scope of the POW labor in the Soviet Union has become known, in 2000 a fundamental collection of documents related to POWs in the USSR was published, which contained significant information about Japanese. In the 2000s, several books about Japanese POWs were published in Russia, about 2,000 memoirs of Japanese POWs in the Soviet Union have been published in Japan. The Japanese television drama Fumou Chitai is an account of the experiences of a POW after returning to Japan. A dramatisation of experiences as a Soviet POW form a portion of the part of the epic movie trilogy, The Human Condition
13.
Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union
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Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers, Ethnic Germans living in the USSR were deported during World War II and conscripted for forced labor. German prisoners of war were used as a source of forced labor during and after the war by the Soviet Union. The use of German labor as reparations was proposed by the Soviet government starting in 1943, the USSR began deporting ethnic Germans from the Balkans in late 1944, most of the surviving internees had returned by 1950. The NKVD took the role in it via its department. Information about the labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was suppressed in the Eastern Bloc until the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Before that, however, it was known in the West through accounts released in West Germany and these German accounts are cited by historians that cover the employment of German labor by the USSR. Statistics for the Soviet use of German civilian labor are divergent, recently declassified statistical data from the Soviet archives on the use of German civilian labor in the Stalin era was published in the book Against Their Will. Since the fall of the USSR the Soviet archives have been accessible to researchers, the study was published by Central European University Press. In 1943 Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the UK, was ordered by the Soviet government to form a force on the issue of post-war reparations from Germany. Maiskys report of August 1944 proposed the employment of German civilian labor in the USSR as part of war reparations, by the summer of 1944 the Soviet forces had reached the Balkans that had ethnic German minorities. Consequently,111,831 able bodied adult ethnic Germans from Romania, Yugoslavia, during the 1945 military campaign in Poland the Soviet Union interned suspected Nazi party members and government officials in camps in the Soviet-occupied areas east of the Oder-Neisse line. In early 1947 the Soviets sent an additional 4,579 Germans from the Soviet occupation zone to the USSR as forced laborers. Soviet records state that they repatriated 21,061 Polish citizens from labor camps which indicates that not all of the internees were ethnic Germans and some could have been ethnic Poles. The Soviets sent about 3/4 of the laborers to the Donets Basin to work in the reconstruction of industry and mines. The workers were housed in camps under armed guard. The working and living conditions were harsh and according to Soviet records about 24% of those interned died, Forced labor turned out to be inefficient and unprofitable since many of the women and older men were not able to perform heavy labor. Repatriation started as early as 1945 and almost all were released by 1950, Ethnic German civilians interned by USSR Soviet data from the Russian archives Source of figures Pavel Polian-Against Their Will Notes,1
14.
Forced displacement
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Forced displacement or forced migration is the coerced movement of a person or persons away from their home or home region and it often connotes violent coercion. Someone who has experienced forced displacement is a migrant, a displaced person, rarely also a displacee, or if it is within the same country. In some cases the forced migrant can also become a refugee, a specific form of forced displacement is population transfer, which is a coherent policy to move unwanted persons, for example, as an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement has accompanied persecution, as well as war, throughout history but has only become a topic of serious study. The concept of forced displacement envelopes demographic movements like flight, evacuation, displacement, however this thought has been questioned, especially by Marxians, who argue that in most cases migrants have little or no choice. In such a scenario, migration becomes more of a strategy, as natural disasters often cause the loss of money, homes. For example, Hurricane Katrina resulted in displacement of almost the population of New Orleans, leaving the community and government with several economic. Biological, physical or chemical change in ecosystem, Migration can also occur as a result of slow-onset climate change, such as desertification or sea-level rise, of deforestation or land degradation. Man-made disasters can also cause forced migration, examples are industrial accidents and especially accidents that involve radioactivity, such as in Chernobyl or Fukushima. An elaboration of such migrants is given by Essam El-Hinnawi, Migrants who are able to return to their original habitat once the disruption is over, Migrants who seek better living conditions due to deterioration of environmental conditions in their present habitat, such as soil fertility. In the middle of the 19th century, for example, Ireland experienced a famine never before seen in the country’s history. War, civil war, political repression or religious conflicts, Some migrants are impelled to cross national borders by war or persecution, due to political, social, ethnic and these immigrants may be considered refugees if they apply for asylum in the receiving country. It has been associated with the construction of dams for hydroelectric power and irrigation purposes but also appears due to many other activities, such as mining. The best-known recent example of such development-induced displacement may be resulting from the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China. This type of forced migration disproportionately affects low income earners and ethnic minorities, according to estimates, between 90 and 100 million people were forced to leave their homes due to development projects in the 1990s. Human trafficking and human smuggling, Migrants displaced through deception or coercion with purpose of their exploitation fall under this category, the data on such forced migration are limited since the activities involved are clandestine in nature. While migration of this nature is well covered for male migrants, the International Labour Organization considers trafficking an offence against labor protection and denies them the opportunity of utilizing their resources for their country. ILO’s Multilateral Framework includes principle no, slavery, Historys greatest forced migration was the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade during the 15th through the 19th centuries
15.
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
16.
Anti-Sovietism
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Anti-Sovietism and Anti-Soviet refer to persons and activities actually or allegedly aimed against the Soviet Union or government power within the Soviet Union. Three different flavors of the usage of the term may be distinguished, anti-Sovietism in international politics, such as the United States opposition to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Anti-Soviet opponents of Bolsheviks shortly after the Russian Revolution and during the Russian Civil War, as applied to Soviet citizens involved in anti-government activities. During the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution of 1917, between the wars, some resistance movement, particularly in the 1920s, was cultivated by Polish intelligence in the form of the Promethean project. After Nazi Germanys attack on the USSR, anti-Soviet forces were created and led primarily by Nazi Germany, in the time of the Russian Civil War, whole categories of people, such as clergy, kulaks, former Imperial Russian police, etc. were automatically considered anti-Soviet. More categories are listed in the article Enemy of the people, for many people the major evidence of their guilt was their social status rather than actual deeds. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education and these are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. Later in the Soviet Union, being anti-Soviet was a criminal offense, the epithet antisoviet was synonymous with counter-revolutionary. The noun antisovietism was rarely used and the noun antisovietist was used in a derogatory sense, Anti-Soviet agitation and activities were political crimes handled by the Article 58 and later Article 70 of the RSFSR penal code, and similar articles in other Soviet republics. In February 1930, there was an insurgency in the Kazak Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic village of Sozak. After the end of the Second World War there were Eastern European anti-Communist insurgencies
17.
Ethnic cleansing
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Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group, with the intent of making it ethnically homogeneous. The forces applied may be forms of forced migration, intimidation, as well as mass murder. An antecedent to the term is the Greek word andrapodismos, which was used in ancient texts to describe atrocities that accompanied Alexander the Greats conquest of Thebes in 335 BC. In the early 1900s, regional variants of the term could be found among the Czechs, the Poles, the French, a 1913 Carnegie Endowment report condemning the actions of all participants in the Balkan Wars contained various new terms to describe brutalities committed toward ethnic groups. During World War II, the euphemism čišćenje terena was used by the Croatian Ustaše to describe military actions in which non-Croats were purposely killed or otherwise uprooted from their homes. Viktor Gutić, a senior Ustaše leader, was one of the first Croatian nationalists on record to use the term as a euphemism for committing atrocities against Serbs. This process was repeated on a larger scale in 1939–41. During The Holocaust, Nazi Germany pursued a policy of ensuring that Europe was cleansed of Jews, according to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the term cleansing was used in Israeli military documents dating to the 1948 Israeli–Arab war, referring to the expulsion of Arabs from Israel. In the 1980s, the Soviets used the term ethnic cleansing to describe the violence in Nagorno-Karabakh. At around the time, the Yugoslav media used it to describe what they alleged was an Albanian nationalist plot to force all Serbs to leave Kosovo. It was widely popularized by the Western media during the Bosnian War, the first recorded mention of its use in the Western media can be traced back to an article in The New York Times dated 15 April 1992, in a quote by an anonymous Western diplomat. Those practices constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes, furthermore, such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention. As a category, ethnic cleansing encompasses a continuum or spectrum of policies, in the words of Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, thnic cleansing defies easy definition. At one end it is virtually indistinguishable from forced emigration and population exchange while at the other it merges with deportation, at the most general level, however, ethnic cleansing can be understood as the expulsion of a population from a given territory. The term ethnic cleansing has frequently employed to refer to the events in Bosnia. General Assembly resolution 47/121 referred in its Preamble to the abhorrent policy of ethnic cleansing and it can only be a form of genocide within the meaning of the Convention, if it corresponds to or falls within one of the categories of acts prohibited by Article II of the Convention. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide, there is no international treaty that specifies a specific crime of ethnic cleansing. There are however situations, such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II, timothy V. Waters argues that if similar circumstances arise in the future, this precedent would allow the ethnic cleansing of other populations under international law
18.
Soviet Union
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The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
19.
Genocide
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Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people in whole or in part. The hybrid word genocide is a combination of the Greek word génos, the United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. The term genocide was coined in a 1943 book responding to mass murder of populations in the 20th century, in 1943, Raphael Lemkin created the term genocide in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The book describes the implementation of Nazi policies in occupied Europe, the term described the systematic destruction of a nation or people, and the word was quickly adopted by many in the international community. The word genocide is the combination of the Greek prefix geno-, Lemkin defined genocide as follows, Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. The preamble to the 1948 Genocide Convention notes that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history. Lemkins lifelong interest in the murder of populations in the 20th century was initially in response to the killing of Armenians in 1915. He dedicated his life to mobilizing the international community, to together to prevent the occurrence of such events. In a 1949 interview, Lemkin said I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times and it happened to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler took action. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention, the CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951. The USSR argued that the Conventions definition should follow the etymology of the term, and may have feared greater international scrutiny of its own Great Purge. Other nations feared that including political groups in the definition would invite international intervention in domestic politics. ”The conventions purpose and scope was later described by the United Nations Security Council as follows, In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights, noted in its judgement on Jorgic v. In the same judgement the ECHR reviewed the judgements of several international and municipal courts judgements, in the case of Onesphore Rwabukombe the German Supreme Court adhered to its previous judgement and didnt follow the narrow interpretation of the ICTY and the ICJ. The phrase in whole or in part has been subject to discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Trial Chamber I – Judgment – IT-98-33 ICTY8 that Genocide had been committed. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the destruction of entire human groups. The Appeals Chamber goes into details of other cases and the opinions of respected commentators on the Genocide Convention to explain how they came to this conclusion. The judges continue in paragraph 12, The determination of when the part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations
20.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
21.
European Parliament
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The European Parliament is the directly elected parliamentary institution of the European Union. Together with the Council of the European Union and the European Commission, the Parliament is composed of 751 members, who represent the second-largest democratic electorate in the world and the largest trans-national democratic electorate in the world. It has been elected every five years by universal suffrage since 1979. However, voter turnout at European Parliament elections has fallen consecutively at each election since that date, voter turnout in 2014 stood at 42. 54% of all European voters. The Parliament is the first institution of the EU, and shares equal legislative and it likewise has equal control over the EU budget. Finally, the European Commission, the body of the EU, is accountable to Parliament. In particular, Parliament elects the President of the Commission, and it can subsequently force the Commission as a body to resign by adopting a motion of censure. The President of the European Parliament is Antonio Tajani, elected in January 2017 and he presides over a multi-party chamber, the two largest groups being the Group of the European Peoples Party and the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. The last union-wide elections were the 2014 elections, the European Parliament has three places of work – Brussels, the city of Luxembourg and Strasbourg. Luxembourg is home to the administrative offices, meetings of the whole Parliament take place in Strasbourg and in Brussels. Committee meetings are held in Brussels, the Parliament, like the other institutions, was not designed in its current form when it first met on 10 September 1952. One of the oldest common institutions, it began as the Common Assembly of the European Coal and it was a consultative assembly of 78 appointed parliamentarians drawn from the national parliaments of member states, having no legislative powers. Its development since its foundation shows how the European Unions structures have evolved without a master plan. Some, such as Tom Reid of the Washington Post, said of the union, nobody would have designed a government as complex. Even the Parliaments two seats, which have switched several times, are a result of various agreements or lack of agreements, the body was not mentioned in the original Schuman Declaration. It was assumed or hoped that difficulties with the British would be resolved to allow the Council of Europes Assembly to perform the task, a separate Assembly was introduced during negotiations on the Treaty as an institution which would counterbalance and monitor the executive while providing democratic legitimacy. The wording of the ECSC Treaty demonstrated the desire for more than a normal consultative assembly by using the term representatives of the people. Its early importance was highlighted when the Assembly was given the task of drawing up the treaty to establish a European Political Community
22.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
23.
Central Asia
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Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. It is also referred to as the -stans as the five countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix -stan. Central Asias five former Soviet republics are Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. It has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, the Silk Road connected Muslim lands with the people of Europe, India, and China. This crossroads position has intensified the conflict between tribalism and traditionalism and modernization, in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was predominantly Iranian, peopled by Eastern Iranian-speaking Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians and the semi-nomadic Scythians and Parthians. Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan, the idea of Central Asia as a distinct region of the world was introduced in 1843 by the geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The borders of Central Asia are subject to multiple definitions, historically built political geography and geoculture are two significant parameters widely used in the scholarly literature about the definitions of the Central Asia. The most limited definition was the one of the Soviet Union. This definition was also used outside the USSR during this period. However, the Russian culture has two terms, Средняя Азия and Центральная Азия. Since then, this has become the most common definition of Central Asia, the UNESCO general history of Central Asia, written just before the collapse of the USSR, defines the region based on climate and uses far larger borders. An alternative method is to define the region based on ethnicity and these areas include Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the Turkic regions of southern Siberia, the five republics, and Afghan Turkestan. Afghanistan as a whole, the northern and western areas of Pakistan, the Tibetans and Ladakhi are also included. Insofar, most of the peoples are considered the indigenous peoples of the vast region. Central Asia is a large region of varied geography, including high passes and mountains, vast deserts. The vast steppe areas of Central Asia are considered together with the steppes of Eastern Europe as a geographical zone known as the Eurasian Steppe. Much of the land of Central Asia is too dry or too rugged for farming, the Gobi desert extends from the foot of the Pamirs, 77° E, to the Great Khingan Mountains, 116°–118° E. Central Asia has the following geographic extremes, The worlds northernmost desert, at Buurug Deliin Els, Mongolia, the Northern Hemispheres southernmost permafrost, at Erdenetsogt sum, Mongolia, 46°17′ N
24.
Operation Barbarossa
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Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Nazi Germanys invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, which was launched on Sunday 22 June 1941. In the two leading up to the invasion, the two countries signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Nevertheless, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the Soviet Union in July 1940, over the course of the operation, about four million Axis personnel invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2, 900-kilometer front, the largest invasion force in the history of warfare. In addition to troops, the Wehrmacht employed some 600,000 motor vehicles, the offensive marked an escalation of the war, both geographically and in the formation of the Allied coalition. Despite their successes, the German offensive stalled in the Battle of Moscow and was pushed back by the Soviet winter counteroffensive. The Red Army repelled the Wehrmachts strongest blows and forced the unprepared Germans into a war of attrition, the Wehrmacht would never again mount a simultaneous offensive along the entire strategic Soviet–Axis front. The failure of the operation drove Hitler to demand further operations of limited scope inside the Soviet Union, such as Case Blue. The failure of Operation Barbarossa proved a point in the fortunes of the Third Reich. Most importantly, the operation opened up the Eastern Front, in more forces were committed than in any other theater of war in world history. The German armies captured 5,000,000 Soviet prisoners of war who were not granted protections stipulated in the Geneva Conventions, a majority of them never returned alive. The Nazis deliberately starved 3.1 million of the prisoners to death as part of a Hunger Plan that aimed to reduce the population of Eastern Europe, over a million Soviet Jews were murdered by Einsatzgruppen death squads and gassing as part of the Holocaust. On 10 February 1939, Hitler told his commanders that the next war would be purely a war of Weltanschauungen. Totally a peoples war, a racial war, on 23 November, once World War II had already started, Hitler declared that racial war has broken out and this war shall determine who shall govern Europe, and with it, the world. The racial policy of Nazi Germany viewed the Soviet Union as populated by non-Aryan Untermenschen, Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that Germanys destiny was to turn to the East as it did six hundred years ago. Accordingly, it was stated Nazi policy to kill, deport, or enslave the majority of Russian and other Slavic populations and repopulate the land with Germanic peoples, under the Generalplan Ost. Likening the Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan, Hitler told Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the Mongolian race threatened Europe. Following the invasion, Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood, German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the partisan struggle. The main guideline policy for German troops was Where theres a partisan, theres a Jew, many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub-human
25.
Koreans
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Koreans are an ethnic group native to the whole Korean Peninsula and southeastern Manchuria. Over the course of the 20th century, significant Korean communities have emerged in Australia, Canada, United States and, to a lesser extent, as of 2013, there were an estimated 7.4 million ethnic Korean expatriates around the planet. South Koreans refer to themselves as Hanguk-in, or Hanguk-saram, both of which mean Korean nation people, when referring to members of the Korean diaspora, Koreans often use the term Han-in. North Koreans refer to themselves as Joseon-in or Joseon-saram, both of which literally mean Joseon people, using similar words, Koreans in China refer to themselves as Chaoxianzu in Chinese or Joseonjok in Korean, which are cognates that literally mean Joseon ethnic group. Ethnic Koreans living in Russia and Central Asia refer to themselves as Koryo-saram, alluding to Goryeo, Koreans are the descendants of the peoples that migrated for over 13. 000-7.000 years from Southeast Asia and todays Russian Far East into the Korean Peninsula and southern Manchuria. Later Chinese and other, often said to be Siberian or paleo-Asian tribes migrated into parts of Korea, archaeological evidence suggests that most of the later arriving tribes were migrants from south-central Siberia. During the Four Commanderies of Han some Chinese clans migrated to northern Korea, susumu Ōno, Ki-Moon Lee and Choong-Soon Kim suspect that proto-Dravidian people migrated to Korea and parts of Japan. Susumu Ōno suggest also an Austronesian immigration into the Korean peninsula, the largest concentration of dolmens in the world is found on the Korean Peninsula. In fact, with an estimated 35, 000-100,000 dolmen, Korean males also exhibit a moderate frequency of Haplogroup C-M217. About 2% of Korean males belong to Haplogroup D-M174, the D1b-M55 subclade has been found with maximal frequency in a small sample of the Ainu people of Japan, and is generally frequent throughout the Japanese Archipelago. Haplogroup D4 is the modal haplogroup among Koreans and among Northeast Asians in general. Haplogroup B, which very frequently in many populations of Southeast Asia, Polynesia. Haplogroup A has been detected in approximately 7% to 15% of Koreans, Haplogroup A is the most common mtDNA haplogroup among the Chukchi, Eskimo, Na-Dene, and many Amerind ethnic groups of North and Central America. The language of the Korean people is the Korean language, which uses Hangul as its writing system with some Hanja. There are more than 78 million speakers of the Korean language worldwide, estimating the size, growth rate, sex ratio, and age structure of North Koreas population has been extremely difficult. Until release of data in 1989, the 1963 edition of the North Korea Central Yearbook was the last official publication to disclose population figures. After 1963 demographers used varying methods to estimate the population, thus, on the basis of remarks made by President Kim Il-sung in 1977 concerning school attendance, the population that year was calculated at 17.2 million persons. During the 1980s, health statistics, including life expectancy and causes of mortality, were made available to the outside world
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