1.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
2.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
3.
Oceanography
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Oceanography, also known as oceanology, is the study of the physical and the biological aspects of the ocean. Paleoceanography studies the history of the oceans in the geologic past, humans first acquired knowledge of the waves and currents of the seas and oceans in pre-historic times. Observations on tides were recorded by Aristotle and Strabo, early exploration of the oceans was primarily for cartography and mainly limited to its surfaces and of the animals that fishermen brought up in nets, though depth soundings by lead line were taken. Although Juan Ponce de León in 1513 first identified the Gulf Stream, Franklin measured water temperatures during several Atlantic crossings and correctly explained the Gulf Streams cause. Franklin and Timothy Folger printed the first map of the Gulf Stream in 1769-1770, information on the currents of the Pacific Ocean was gathered by explorers of the late 18th century, including James Cook and Louis Antoine de Bougainville. James Rennell wrote the first scientific textbooks on oceanography, detailing the current flows of the Atlantic, during a voyage around the Cape of Good Hope in 1777, he mapped the banks and currents at the Lagullas. He was also the first to understand the nature of the intermittent current near the Isles of Scilly, Robert FitzRoy published a four-volume report of the Beagles three voyages. In 1841–1842 Edward Forbes undertook dredging in the Aegean Sea that founded marine ecology, the first superintendent of the United States Naval Observatory, Matthew Fontaine Maury devoted his time to the study of marine meteorology, navigation, and charting prevailing winds and currents. His 1855 textbook Physical Geography of the Sea was one of the first comprehensive oceanography studies, many nations sent oceanographic observations to Maury at the Naval Observatory, where he and his colleagues evaluated the information and distributed the results worldwide. Despite all this, human knowledge of the oceans remained confined to the topmost few fathoms of the water, almost nothing was known of the ocean depths. The Royal Navys efforts to all of the worlds coastlines in the mid-19th century reinforced the vague idea that most of the ocean was very deep. As exploration ignited both popular and scientific interest in the regions and Africa, so too did the mysteries of the unexplored oceans. The seminal event in the founding of the science of oceanography was the 1872-76 Challenger expedition. As the first true oceanographic cruise, this laid the groundwork for an entire academic. In response to a recommendation from the Royal Society, The British Government announced in 1871 an expedition to explore worlds oceans, charles Wyville Thompson and Sir John Murray launched the Challenger expedition. The Challenger, leased from the Royal Navy, was modified for scientific work, under the scientific supervision of Thomson, Challenger travelled nearly 70,000 nautical miles surveying and exploring. On her journey circumnavigating the globe,492 deep sea soundings,133 bottom dredges,151 open water trawls and 263 serial water temperature observations were taken, around 4,700 new species of marine life were discovered. The result was the Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H. M. S, Murray, who supervised the publication, described the report as the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
4.
Ethnography
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Ethnography is the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study, an ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. The word can thus be said to have a double meaning, the resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group. The typical ethnography is a study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate. In all cases it should be reflexive, make a contribution toward the understanding of the social life of humans, have an aesthetic impact on the reader. An ethnography records all observed behavior and describes all symbol-meaning relations, the word ethnography is derived from the Greek ἔθνος, meaning a company, later a people, nation and -graphy meaning field of study. Ethnographic studies focus on large groups of people who interact over time. Ethnography is a design, where the researcher explains about shared learnt patterns of values, behaviour, beliefs. The field of anthropology originated from Europe and England designed in late 19th century and it spread its roots to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the main contributors like EB Tylor from Britain and Lewis H Morgan, franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, were a group of researchers from United States who contributed the idea of cultural relativism to the literature. He gives the point of the native and this became the origin of field work. Since Malinowski was very firm with his approach he applied it practically and he was interested in learning the language of the islanders and stayed there for a long time doing his field work. The field of ethnography became very popular in the late 19th century, again, in the latter part of the 19th century, the field of anthropology became a good support for scientific formation. Though the field was flourishing it had a lot of threat to encounter, post colonialism, the research climate shifted towards post-modernism and feminism. Therefore, the field of anthropology moved into discipline of social science, gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition as a professor of history and geography. Whilst involved in the expedition, he differentiated Völker-Beschreibung as an area of study. This became known as ethnography, following the introduction of the Greek neologism ethnographia by Johann Friedrich Schöpperlin, there are different forms of ethnography, confessional ethnography, life history, feminist ethnography etc. Two popular forms of ethnography are realist ethnography and critical ethnography, realist ethnography, is a traditional approach used by cultural anthropologists
5.
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
6.
Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert von Berg
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Count Friedrich Wilhelm Rembert von Berg was a Russian Field Marshal, and the Governor-General of Finland from 1855 to 1861. He was born in the Sangaste Castle, Livonia into a Baltic German noble family and he studied at the University of Dorpat and joined the Imperial Russian Army in 1812. He was also the last Namestnik of the Kingdom of Poland and he was crucial in crushing the Polish January Uprising and carrying out repressions and russification policies afterwards. Polish insurgents carried out an assassination attempt on him on 19 September 1863. He was made a count in the Finnish House of Nobility in 1857, along with his adopted sons, warsaw 1872 – Autobiography Berg, Fredrik Wilhelm Rembert
7.
Karl Ernst von Baer
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Karl Ernst Ritter von Baer, Edler von Huthorn was an Estonian scientist and explorer. Baer is also known in Russia as Karl Maksimovich Baer, Baer was a naturalist, biologist, geologist, meteorologist, geographer, and a founding father of embryology. He was an explorer of European Russia and Scandinavia, Karl Ernst von Baer was born into a Baltic German noble family in the Piep estate, Kreis Jerwen, Governorate of Estonia, as a knight by birthright. He spent his childhood at Lasila manor, Estonia. Many of his ancestors had come from Westphalia and he was educated at the Knight and Cathedral School in Reval and the Imperial University of Dorpat, each of which he found lacking in quality education. In 1812, during his tenure at the university, he was sent to Riga to aid the city after Napoleons armies had laid siege to it. In his autobiography, his discontent with his education at Dorpat inspired him to write a lengthy appraisal of education in general, after leaving Tartu, he continued his education in Berlin, Vienna, and Würzburg, where Ignaz Döllinger introduced him to the new field of embryology. In 1817, he became a professor at Königsberg University and full professor of zoology in 1821, in 1829, he taught briefly in St Petersburg, but returned to Königsberg. In 1834, Baer moved back to St Petersburg and joined the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, first in zoology and then in comparative anatomy and his interests while there were anatomy, ichthyology, ethnography, anthropology, and geography. While embryology had kept his attention in Königsberg, then in Russia von Baer engaged in a deal of field research. The last years of his life were spent in Dorpat, where he became a critic of Charles Darwin. Von Baer studied the development of animals, discovering the blastula stage of development. In 1826, Baer discovered the mammalian ovum, the human ovum was first described by Edgar Allen in 1928. In 1827, he completed research Ovi Mammalium et Hominis genesi for St Petersburgs Academy of Science, in 1827 von Baer became the first person to observe human ova. Only in 1876 did Oscar Hertwig prove that fertilization is due to fusion of an egg, Von Baer formulated what became known as Baers laws of embryology, General characteristics of the group to which an embryo belongs develop before special characteristics. General structural relations are formed before the most specific appear. The form of any given embryo does not converge upon other definite forms, the embryo of a higher animal form never resembles the adult of another animal form, such as one less evolved, but only its embryo. From his studies of embryology, Baer had believed in the transmutation of species
8.
Ferdinand von Wrangel
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He is best known as chief manager of the Russian-American Company, in fact governor of the Russian settlements in present-day Alaska. In English texts, Wrangel is sometimes spelled Vrangel, a transliteration from Russian, Wrangel was born in Pskov, into the noble Baltic German Wrangel family. He graduated from the Naval Cadets College in 1815 and he took part in Vasily Golovnins world cruise on the ship Kamchatka in 1817–1819. He was appointed in 1820 to command the Kolymskaya expedition to explore the Russian polar seas, sailing from St. Petersburg, he arrived at Nizhnekolymsk on 2 November 1820, and early in 1821 journeyed to Cape Shelagskiy on sledges drawn by dogs. He sailed afterward up Kolyma River, advancing about 125 miles into the interior, on 10 March 1822, he resumed his journey northward, and traveled 46 days on the ice, reaching 72°2 north latitude. He left Nizhnekolymsk on 1 November 1823, and returned to St. Petersburg on 15 August 1824 and he established that north of the Kolyma River and Cape Shelagsky there was an open sea, not dry land, as people thought. Together with Fyodor Matyushkin and P. Kuzmin, Wrangel described the Siberian coastline from the Indigirka River to the Kolyuchinskaya Bay in the Chukchi Sea. His expedition made a research in glaciology, geomagnetics, and climatology and also collected data about natural resources. Having been promoted to commander, Wrangel led the Russian world voyage on the ship Krotky in 1825–1827 and he was appointed chief manager of the Russian-American Company in 1829, effectively governor of its settlements in North America. Prior to his departure for Russia’s American colonies, he was married to Elisabeth Teodora Natalia Karolina de Rossillon and he traveled to his post early in 1829, by way of Siberia and Kamchatka. He promoted investment, and sent out missionaries and he began a survey of the country, opened roads, built bridges and government buildings. He made geographical and ethnographical observations, which he embodied in a memoir to the navy department, recalled in 1834, he returned by way of the Isthmus of Panama and the United States, where he visited several cities. Wrangel was promoted admiral in 1837, and made director of the ship-timber department in the navy office. He became vice-admiral in 1847, but resigned in 1849, Wrangel had been a member of the board of directors of the Russian-American Company from 1840 to 1849. In 1854 he re-entered active service and was chief director of the hydrographical department of the navy. He was the Minister of the Navy 1855–1857 and he opposed the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867. Wrangel wrote the book Journey along the coastline of Siberia. He lived in his last years in Roela in the part of Estonia
9.
Vladimir Dal
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Vladimir Ivanovich Dal was one of the greatest Russian language lexicographers. He was a member of the Russian Geographical Society. He knew at least six languages including Turkic and is considered to be one of the early Turkologists, during his lifetime he compiled and documented the oral history of the region that was later published in Russian and became part of modern folklore. His father was a Danish physician named Johan Christian von Dahl and he was a linguist versed in German, English, French, Russian, Yiddish, Latin, Greek and Hebrew languages. His mother, Maria Freitag, was of German and French descent and she spoke at least five languages and came from a family of scholars. The prospective lexicographer was born in the town of Lugansky Zavod, in Novorossiya under the jurisdiction of Yekaterinoslav Governorate, part of Russian Empire, which is now Luhansk, Ukraine. On the outskirts, the composition varied and included such nationalities as Ukrainians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, Tatars. Dal grew up under the influence of various ethnic mixture of people. Dal served in the Russian Navy from 1814 to 1826, graduating from the St Petersburg Naval Cadet School in 1819, in 1826, he began studying medicine at Dorpat University and took part as a military doctor in the Russo-Turkish War and the campaign against Poland in 1831–1832. Dal was interested in language and folklore from his early years and he started traveling by foot through the countryside, collecting sayings and fairy tales in various Slavic languages from the region. He published his first collection of fairy-tales in 1832 in Russian language, some others, yet unpublished, were put in verse by his friend Alexander Pushkin and have become some of the most familiar texts in the Russian language. After Pushkins fatal duel, Dal was summoned to his deathbed and looked after the poet during the last hours of his life. In 1838, Dal was elected to the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, in the following decade, Dal adopted the pen name Kazak Lugansky and published several realistic essays in the manner of Nikolai Gogol. He continued his studies and extensive travels throughout the 1850s and 1860s. Having no time to edit his collection of tales, he asked Alexander Afanasyev to prepare them for publication. Joachim T. Baer wrote, While Dal was an observer, he lacked talent in developing a story. He was interested in the wealth of the Russian language, later he collected and recorded fairy tales, folk songs, birch bark woodcuts, and accounts of superstitions, beliefs, and prejudices of the Russian people. His industry in the sphere of collecting was prodigious and his magnum opus, Explanatory Dictionary of the Live Great Russian language, was published in four huge volumes in 1863–1866
10.
Gregor von Helmersen
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Gregor von Helmersen was a Baltic German geologist. He received a training and became major-general in the corps of Mining Engineers. In 1837 he was appointed professor of geology in the Mining Institute at Saint Petersburg of which he was also director, in 1839, along with Karl Ernst von Baer, he founded the first serial natural scientific publication in Russia known as Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches. In 1850, he became an academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg and he founded and became the first head of the Russian Geological Committee in 1882. His geological work was continued to an age, one of the later publications being Studien über die Wanderblöcke und die Diluvialgebilde Russlands. Most of his memoirs were published by the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Saint Petersburg, list of Baltic German scientists This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Helmersen, Gregor von. Kammeri Manor, birthplace of Gregor von Helmersen at Estonian Manors Portal
11.
Adam Johann von Krusenstern
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Baron Ivan Fyodorovich Kruzenshtern, born as Adam Johann Ritter von Krusenstern, was a Russian admiral and explorer of Baltic German descent, who led the first Russian circumnavigation of the globe. In 1787, he joined the Russian Imperial Navy, and served in the war against Sweden, subsequently, he served in the Royal Navy in 1793–1799, visiting America, India and China. Under the patronage of Tsar/Czar Alexander I, Count Nikolay Petrovich Rumyantsev, the chief object of this undertaking was the development of the fur trade with Russian America. Krusenstern arrived back at Kronstadt in August 1806, both seafarers made maps and detailed recordings of their voyages. It was published in 1811–1812 in Berlin, this was followed by an English translation, published in London in 1813 and subsequently by French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and his scientific work, which includes an atlas of the Pacific, was published in 1827 in Saint Petersburg. The geographical discoveries of Krusenstern made his very important for the progress of geographical science. His work won him a membership in the Russian Academy of Sciences. In 1816, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. As director of the Russian naval school Krusenstern did much useful work and he was also a member of the scientific committee of the marine department, and his contrivance for counteracting the influence of the iron in vessels on the compass was adopted in the navy. Krusenstern became an admiral in 1841 and he was awarded the Pour le Mérite in 1842 and he died in 1846 in Kiltsi manor, an Estonian manor he had purchased in 1816, and was buried in the Tallinn Cathedral. The Russian training tall ship Kruzenshtern is named after him, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Krusensterns circumnavigation, the ship retraced his route around the globe in 2005–2006. Another ship named after him is Russian icebreaker Ivan Kruzenshtern, also, an Aeroflot Airbus 320 VP-BKC is named after him. The crater Krusenstern on the Moon is named after him, there is Krusenstern Island in the Bering Strait, as well as a small group of islands in the Kara Sea, southwest of the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, called Krusenstern Islands. Cape Krusenstern in Northwest Alaska is the site of Cape Krusenstern National Monument, as a third-level linguistic derivation, there is a Russophone Israel klezmer-rock band, Kruzenshtern & Parohod. Another legacy is that the Cook Islands in the South Pacific bear that name thanks to von Krusenstern, previously known as the Hervey Islands, he changed their name in 1835 to honour Captain Cook. He recorded the new name in his Atlas de lOcéan Pacifique published at St. Petersberg between 1824 and 1835
12.
Fyodor Litke
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Count Fyodor Petrovich Litke was a Russian navigator, geographer, and Arctic explorer. He became a count in 1866, and an admiral in 1855 and he was a Corresponding Member, Honorable Member, and President of the Russian Academy of Science in St. Petersburg. He was also an Honorable Member of many other Russian and foreign scientific establishments, count Friedrich Lütke came from a family of Baltic Germans. Count Litke’s grandfather was Johann F. Lütke, a German Lutheran preacher and writer on physical science, in 1745, Johann Lütke went from Germany to Moscow as pastor of a Lutheran parish in order to spread Protestantism to Russia and Baltic provinces. As a youth, Fyodor attended a Lutheran German-speaking school and his maternal language was German and he always spoke Russian with a German accent. A book, in English, about Fyodor P. Litke, published in 1996 by The University of Alaska, alekseev, ISBN 0-912006-86-2, is a 262-page biography of this 19th-century Russian scientist. This book was published in Russian in Moscow in 1970. Litke started his career in the Imperial Russian Navy in 1813. He took part in Vasily Golovnins world cruise on the ship Kamchatka from 1817 to 1819, then from 1821 to 1824, Litke led the expedition to explore the coastline of Novaya Zemlya, the White Sea, and the eastern parts of the Barents Sea. From August 20,1826 to August 25,1829, he headed the world cruise on the ship Senyavin, sailing from Kronstadt, at the beginning, he was accompanied from Copenhagen and the Baltic Sea by Capt. Staniukovich who was in command of the sloop Möller. The scientific team included Heinrich von Kittlitz, Karl Heinrich Mertens, in particular, the expedition spent three weeks in the Nomoi Islands, which had been last visited by Pedro Quiros in 1565. The team collected over 8000 plant, animal and mineral samples, in 1835 Fyodor Litke was appointed by Tsar Nicholas I of Russia as tutor of his second son, Grand Duke Constantine Nicholaievich of Russia. Litke was the first one to come up with the idea of a recording tide measurer and they were built and installed along the coastlines of the Arctic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean in 1841. Litke was one of the organizers of the Russian Geographic Society and its president in 1845–1850 and he was appointed Chairman of the Naval Scientific Committee in 1846. Litke was a commander-in-chief and a governor of the ports of Reval. In 1855, Litke became a member of the Russian State Council, in 1873, Russian Geographical Society introduced the Litke gold medal. Nereocystis luetkeana was named after him by Mertens and then described by Postels, during his voyage round the world on the Russian corvette Seniavin Litke arrived at Sitka in 1827. Partie historique, avec un atlas, litographié d’après les dessins originaux d’Alexandre Postels et du baron Kittlitz, traduit du russe sur le manuscrit original, sous les yeux de l’auteur, par le conseiller d’état F. Boyé
13.
Mikhail Muravyov-Vilensky
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He should not be confused with his grandson, Mikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, who served as Russian Foreign Minister between 1897 and 1900. During his years at the University of Moscow, Muravyov set up the Mathematical Society and he volunteered during the Patriotic War of 1812 and was wounded at Borodino. By some sources he was cooperating with the buying out his freedom this way. Upon the intercession of his relatives, Muravyov was appointed Vice-Governor of Vitebsk in 1826. At these posts, he known for his harsh policy of Russification. He instituted a ban on the Latin alphabet and the Lithuanian language in printed content. The ban was lifted in 1904, as a consequence, he made it his priority to close the Vilnius University and to expel Catholic priests from other educational facilities. He was reported as saying that, What Russian rifle did not succeed in doing, in 1831 Muravyov governed Grodno, only to be moved to Minsk the following year. In 1850, he was made a member of the State Council of the Russian Empire, in the 1850s he served as Vice-President of the Russian Geographical Society. Alexander II appointed him Minister of State Properties, a position which Muravyov used to lead the party opposed to the emancipation of the serfs. His administration of state-owned peasant households proved catastrophic and effectively reduced many of them to bankruptcy, during the January Uprising of 1863, Muravyov was appointed Governor General of Northwestern Krai. He managed to subdue the rebellion. About 9000 insurgents were resettled to Siberia,127 were demonstratively hanged, konstanty Kalinowski, Zygmunt Sierakowski and Antanas Mackevičius were amongst the rebel leaders executed on his orders. Those settlements where the rebels were reported had to pay enormous contributions, to many nationally minded Russians, Muravyov was a hero and the de facto head of the Russian Party. They flooded Muravyov with congratulatory telegrams on his nameday, November 8,1863, after defeating the rebels militarily, Muravyov began a series of deep reforms which aimed at the liquidation of the breeding grounds for future uprisings. He strengthened the economic, educational and social positions of Orthodox Belarusian peasants who made up the majority of the Krais population at these times, on May 1,1865 Muravyov was relieved from his duties. For his vital services to the Empire, he received a title and spent late 1865. At the time of his death Muravyov was investigating Dmitry Karakozovs attempt to assassinate the tsar, in the long term, Muravyovs policy proved mixed
14.
Vladimir Odoyevsky
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Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky was a prominent Russian philosopher, writer, music critic, philanthropist and pedagogue. He became known as the Russian Hoffmann on account of his keen interest in phantasmagoric tales, the last of his family, Prince Odoevsky was genealogically the most senior member of the House of Rurik. Considered by his contemporaries as a typical Muscovite, he was educated at the Nobility School of the Moscow University in 1816-22. In the mid-1820s, Odoyevsky presided over the Lyubomudry Society, where he and his fellow students met to discuss the ideas of Friedrich Schelling, at that period, he came to know many future Slavophiles and Westernizers, but refused to identify himself with any of these movements. Since 1824, Odoyevsky was active as a critic and journalist. In 1824 he and Wilhelm Küchelbecker founded the short-lived Moscow literary magazine Mnemozina, perhaps most famously, he co-edited the Sovremennik with Alexander Pushkin in the mid-1830s. In 1826, he moved to St Petersburg, where he joined the staff of the Imperial Public Library, two decades later, he was put in charge of the Rumyantsev Museum. Odoyevsky finally returned to Moscow in 1861 but continued to serve as a senator until his death and he is buried in the Donskoy monastery necropolis. Following the success of Pushkins The Queen of Spades, Odoyevsky wrote a number of stories on the dissipated life of the Russian aristocracy. On account of his short stories from the 1820s and 1830s. His most mature book was the collection of essays and novellas entitled The Russian Nights, loosely patterned after the Noctes Atticae, the book took two decades to complete. It contains some of Odoyevskys best known fiction, including the dystopian novellas The Last Suicide, the stories are interlaced with philosophic conversations redolent of the French Encyclopedists. As a music critic, Odoyevsky set out to propagate the national style of Mikhail Glinka and his followers and he also wrote a romanticised biography of the Russian violinist Ivan Khandoshkin, whose career he presented as thwarted by the malign influence of such Italian musicians as Giuseppe Sarti. Johann Sebastian Bach and Beethoven appear as characters in some of his novellas, Odoyevsky was active in the foundation of the Russian Musical Society, Moscow Conservatory, and St. Petersburg Conservatory. Odoyevsky took part in development of electroplating technology, invented by Moritz von Jacobi in Russia, in 1844 Odoyevsky wrote a book, Galvanism applied in technology. He made a number of experiments and developed cobalt electroplating, recently, Odoyevsky has been credited to have predicted blogging, and the basic principles of the Internet. In his unfinished utopian novel Year 4338, he mused, Finally, today we received a journal from the prime minister. You need to know that in many houses, especially well connected, such journals are published
15.
Vasily Perovsky
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Count Vasily Alekseevich Perovsky was an imperial Russian general and statesman. After studying in Moscow University, he joined the retinue in 1811. When retreating toward Moscow after the Battle of Borodino, he was prisoner by the French. He was seriously wounded in the 1828 war with Turkey, in 1833 Perovsky was appointed the military governor of Orenburg. Perovskys expeditionary force consisted of 5,200 infantry and 10,000 camels. Due to poor planning and a bit of bad luck, they set off, in November 1839, into one of the worst winters in memory, the expeditionary force arrived back into Orenburg in May, having suffered over 1,000 casualties, mostly from cold and disease. In 1842, Perovsky left the Orenburg governors position, but was back to that office in 1851. This time, his campaigning in the central Asia against the Khanates of Khiva, after the successful taking of the Kokand fortress of Ak-Mechet by his troops in 1853, the fort was renamed Fort-Perovsky after him. His military successes forced the Khanate of Khiva to sign the 1854 treaty with the Russia Empire beneficial for the latter, for his achievements, he was made a count in 1855. Perovsky, Vasily Alekseevich in Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
16.
Pyotr Ivanovich Ricord
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In 1803–1805 among the twelve best naval officers, he was sent as a volunteer to the British Fleet to improve Russian maritime practices. At that time he made sea trips to almost all British maritime dominions and took part in the war with France, in 1807–1809 Ricord took part as a senior officer in Vasily Golovnins world cruise on the ship Diana. He was awarded with the Order of St, in 1810–1811 he participated in the hydrographic exploration of the North Pacific, and he was awarded with the Order of St. George 4th class for 18 six-month maritime campaigns. The captivity of Vasily Golovnin in 1811–1813 almost led to war between Russia and Japan in what known as the Golovnin Incident. After the capture Ricord organized and led three expeditions to the release Russian sailors from Japanese captivity, during which he showed his extraordinary diplomatic skills. From 1817 to 1822 he was the head of Kamchatka and he was awarded with the 2nd class of the Order of St. Anne with diamond ornaments for the care for the welfare of the residents. His plan of reforms on the Kamchatka Peninsula was accepted as a basis for long-term program of development of this region, an imperial decree ordered his successors as heads of the region to stick to the rules worked out by fleet captain Ricord and to refrain from any changes. In 1850, he was appointed chairman of the Naval Scientific Committee, a Rikord Island in Peter the Great Gulf was named after him. Narrative of my Captivity in Japan, during the years 1812 and 1813, with Observations on the Country and People. By Captain Golownin, R. N. to which is added An Account of the Voyages to the Coasts of Japan, and of the Negotiations with the Japanese for the release of the Author and his Companions
17.
Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve
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Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve was a German, Russian astronomer from a famous dynasty. He was born at Altona, Duchy of Holstein, the son of Jacob Struve, Struves father moved the family away from the French occupation to Dorpat in Imperial Russia to avoid military service, equipped with Danish passports. In 1808 he entered the Imperial University of Dorpat, where he first studied philology, from 1813 to 1820, he taught at the university and collected data at the Dorpat Observatory, and in 1820 became a full professor and director of the observatory. His teachings have had strong effect that is felt in at the university. Struve was occupied with research on stars and geodesy in Dorpat until 1839. Among other honors, he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1826 and he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March,1827 and was awarded their Royal Medal the same year. Struve was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1833, in 1843 he formally adopted Russian nationality. He retired in 1862 due to failing health, Struves name is best known for his observations of double stars, which he carried on for many years. Although double stars had been studied earlier by William Herschel and John Herschel and Sir James South and he discovered a very large number of double stars and in 1827 published his double star catalogue Catalogus novus stellarum duplicium. Since most double stars are binary stars rather than mere optical doubles, they orbit around one anothers barycenter. Thus Struve made micrometric measurements of 2714 double stars from 1824 to 1837, Struve carefully measured the constant of aberration in 1843. He was also the first to measure the parallax of Vega, in an 1847 work, Etudes dAstronomie Stellaire, Sur la voie lactee et sur la distance des etoiles fixes, Struve was one of the first astronomers to identify the effects of interstellar extinction. His estimate of the rate of visual extinction,1 mag per kpc, is remarkably close to modern estimates. He was also interested in surveying, and in 1831 published Beschreibung der Breitengradmessung in den Ostseeprovinzen Russlands. UNESCO listed the chain on its List of World Heritage Sites in Europe in 2005, Struve was the second of a dynasty of astronomers through five generations. He was the great-grandfather of Otto Struve and the father of Otto Wilhelm von Struve and he was also the grandfather of Hermann Struve, who was Otto Struves uncle. In 1815 he married Emilie Wall in Altona, who bore 12 children,8 of which survived early childhood, after his first wife died, he remarried to Johanna Henriette Francisca Bartels, a daughter of the mathematician Martin Bartels, who bore him six more children. The most well-known was Karl de Struve, who served successively as Russian ambassador to Japan, the United States, bernhards son Peter Berngardovich Struve is probably the best known member of the family in Russia
18.
Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia
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Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia was the second son of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and younger brother of Tsar Alexander II. During the reign of Alexander II, Konstantin was an admiral of the Russian fleet and he was also an instrumental figure in the emancipation of the serfs. He was less fortunate as viceroy of Poland and had to be recalled to Russia where he was attacked for his liberalism, after the assassination of his brother Alexander II in 1888, Konstantin fell from favour. The new tsar, Alexander III, his nephew, opposed Konstantins liberal ideas and his retirement was marked with personal turmoil and family setbacks. After suffering a stroke, he spent his last years as an invalid, Konstantin was born in St. Petersburg, the second son and fifth child of Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. His parents were happy to have a son after nine years of having only daughters. Nicholas I and his wife were devoted to other and to their children. Normally the Imperial children were kept under supervision until they were seven. However, by the time he was five Konstantin had become too willful and difficult for a governess to handle, Nicholas I intended that Konstantin would eventually become Admiral General of the Russian Fleet and with this in mind chose Fyodor Litke as tutor for his son. Litke, who had circumnavigated the globe at the age of twenty, was a brash and bold man, unafraid of controversy or offense and he trained the boy in naval sciences and filled his head with tales of the sea, gaining the friendship of his pupil for life. Languages were an important part of Konstantins education, he learned Russian, English, German, as he grew older, his lessons increased in length and complexity to encompass mathematics, science, statistics, and government administration. There were also early military lessons and drills, Konstantin also enjoyed music, learning to play the piano and cello. He loved drawing and had great appreciation for the arts and he also became an enthusiastic reader and his fascination with Homer led him to translate the Odyssey from German. In 1835, Konstantin accompanied his parents to Germany and from age eight onwards was taught to keep a diary. When he was just eight years old, he was given a small yacht, in 1836, accompanied by Litke, he embarked on a lengthy sailing expedition and finally he was given command of the Russian frigate Hercules under Litkes direction. During his training Konstantin was treated like all other naval cadets and he was placed on watch duty at midnight as well as in rain and storms. The encouragement and guidance of his aunt, Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, was important influence in Konstantins education. Elena took him under her wing, broadening his taste in literature and music and she was well known for her liberal bent and had a big influence in her nephews political views
19.
Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia
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Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia was the eldest son of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich of Russia and a first cousin of Alexander III. A scholar and an eminent historian, he made valuable contributions to the study of Russian history in the reign of Tsar Alexander I. A political liberal, he veered towards what he called authoritarian republicanism and he fought tirelessly for reform from within the system. His reformist views made him an oddball within his own family and he fell from favour during the last part of the reign of Nicholas II, as Empress Alexandra disliked him for his liberal views. As the political situation in Russia worsened, he urged the Tsar to implement reforms, after the fall of the monarchy, he was exiled to Vologda. Known in the family as Bimbo, he was three years old when in 1862 the family moved to Tiflis when his father was named Viceroy of the Caucasus, Nicholas spent his childhood and youth in Georgia, where the family lived for twenty years. His father was preoccupied with governmental and military matters and remained a distant figure and his mother was a strict disciplinarian and the dominating figure in the family. Nicholas was his mothers son, they had a close relationship as reflected in their surviving letters. The sons of Grand Duke Michael Nikolaevich were educated by tutors and Nicholas. From his youth he was interested in art, literature, architecture, however, as with all male members of his family, Nicholas was expected to follow a military career. In Tiflis, he commanded a battalion of the Caucasian Archers in 1877 and this experience was traumatic and made him a pacifist for the rest of his life. When his father was appointed President of the Council of the Empire in 1882, Nicholas was assigned to Marie Fyodorovnas Horse Guards Regiment. She is charming and pleases one immediately, he wrote, adding, She kisses you, the Russian Orthodox Church, which prohibited first cousins to marry, would not permit any thought of marriage. Nicholas nevertheless asked his uncle Alexander II to allow the wedding, threatening if he were not allowed to marry Victoria of Baden. Permission was not granted, Princess Victoria eventually became Queen of Sweden, Nicholas tried to find a royal bride for a second time in the 1880s. He was interested in Princess Amélie of Orléans, the eldest daughter of Prince Philippe, Nicholas described her as beautiful and large of stature, beautiful eyes, but not very pretty all the while a beautiful person. He asked his parents permission to marry her, but she was Catholic and her family was unwilling to allow her to convert, Nicholas Mikhailovich never came close to marriage again. Instead he channeled his energy into scholarly pursuits and the management of his several grand residences and estates and he was highly conscientious of his responsibility for the welfare of those who relied upon him for their livelihood
20.
Count
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Count or countess is a title in European countries for a noble of varying status, but historically deemed to convey an approximate rank intermediate between the highest and lowest titles of nobility. The word count came into English from the French comte, itself from Latin comes—in its accusative comitem—meaning “companion”, the adjective form of the word is comital. The British and Irish equivalent is an earl, alternative names for the count rank in the nobility structure are used in other countries, such as Graf in Germany and Hakushaku during the Japanese Imperial era. In the Western Roman Empire, Count came to indicate generically a military commander, in the Eastern Roman Empire, from about the seventh century, count was a specific rank indicating the commander of two centuries. Military counts in the Late Empire and the Germanic successor kingdoms were often appointed by a dux, the position of comes was originally not hereditary. By virtue of their estates, many counts could pass the title to their heirs—but not always. For instance, in Piast Poland, the position of komes was not hereditary, the title had disappeared by the era of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the office had been replaced by others. Only after the Partitions of Poland did the title of count resurface in the title hrabia, in the United Kingdom, the equivalent Earl can also be used as a courtesy title for the eldest son of a duke or marquess. In Italy, by contrast, all the sons of certain counts were counts, in Sweden there is a distinction between counts created before and after 1809. All children in comital families elevated before 1809 are called count/countess, the following lists are originally based on a Glossary on Heraldica. org by Alexander Krischnig. The male form is followed by the female, and when available, apart from all these, a few unusual titles have been of comital rank, not necessarily to remain there. Dauphin was a comital title in southern France, used by the Dauphins of Vienne and Auvergne. The Dauphin was the lord of the province known as the région Dauphiné. Conde-Barão Count-Baron is a title used in Portugal, notably by D. Luís Lobo da Silveira, 7th Baron of Alvito. His palace in Lisbon still exists, located in a named after him. The German Graf and Dutch graaf stems from the Byzantine-Greek grapheus meaning he who calls a meeting together), the Ottoman military title of Serdar was used in Montenegro and Serbia as a lesser noble title with the equivalent rank of a Count. Since Louis VII, the highest precedence amongst the vassals of the French crown was enjoyed by those whose benefice or temporal fief was a pairie, i. e. In the eleventh century, conti like the Count of Savoy or the Norman Count of Apulia, were virtually sovereign lords of broad territories
21.
Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky
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Pyotr Petrovich Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky was a Russian geographer and statistician who managed the Russian Geographical Society for more than 40 years. Pyotr Semenov was born into a family and studied at Saint Petersburg University. Together with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Semenov attended secret meetings of the Petrashevsky Circle, during the 1850s he studied geography and geology in Berlin under Alexander Humboldt and Carl Ritter, whose writings he translated into Russian. On Humboldts suggestion, Semenov determined to explore the unknown mountains of the Tian Shan. In 1856, he set off from Barnaul on his first expedition, passing through the Altay Mountains, in 1857, he returned to the Tian Shan, exploring the interior of this hitherto unknown mountain range. Semenov was the first European to see the panorama of the Tengri Tag, and its most beautiful peak. One of his most interesting discoveries was to disprove Humboldts earlier claims about Tian Shans supposed volcanic origins, Semenov found no evidence of volcanic activity anywhere in the mountains. The next year, he published the first systematic description of the Tian Shan, the reputation of this monograph was such that half a century later Nicholas II of Russia authorized him to add the epithet Tian-Shansky to his last name. Semenov also became interested in statistics and did his best to advance this discipline in Russia and it was largely due to his efforts that the first census of the Russian Empire was held in 1897. The same year, he was made a member of the State Council of Imperial Russia and his insect collection consisted of ca.700,000 specimens, while more than a hundred new species were named after him. Semenovs memoirs were published after his death in four volumes, several of his descendants, including a son, Andrey Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, continued his work and became scientists of note. Trans. by Liudmila Gilmour, Colin Thomas and Marcus Wheeler, edited and annotated by Colin Thomas. Information about donation to the Hermitage
22.
Yuly Shokalsky
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Yuly Mikhailovich Shokalsky was a Russian oceanographer, cartographer, and geographer. At the same time, he developed interest in limnology and meteorology, in the Marine Miscellanies alone, he published some 300 articles. Shokalsky insisted on differentiating oceanography and hydrography and coined the term World Ocean, in 1904, Shokalsky was elected into the Royal Geographical Society. Ten years later, he was put in charge of the Russian Geographical Society and his name was given to the Shokalsky Strait connecting the Laptev Sea and the Kara Sea, to the large Shokalsky Island in the Kara Sea, and to the ship Akademik Shokalskiy
23.
Richard Maack
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Richard Otto Maack was a 19th-century Russian naturalist, geographer, and anthropologist. He is most known for his exploration of the Russian Far East and Siberia, particularly the Ussuri, ethnically Maack was an Estonian, however, the Russian Empire controlled this country during his lifetime. He was a member of the Siberian branch of the Russian Geographical Society and he studied natural sciences at the University of St. Petersburg. In 1852 he became a professor of natural sciences at the Gymnasium in Irkutsk, from 1868 to 1879, he was the superintendent of all schools of northern Siberia. During the 1850s he undertook a number of expeditions in Siberia including those to the Amur River valley and he also participated in the Russian Geographical Societys first expedition to describe the orography, geology and population of the Vilyuy and Chona River basins. He is credited with discovering Syringa reticulata var. amurensis simultaneously and independently of Carl Maximowicz, Maack is most famous for collecting previously unknown species and sending specimens back for scientific descriptions and naming. A number of those he found on his Amur River expedition bear his name, pleopeltis ussuriensis Regel & Maack Rubia chinensis Regel & Maack Puteshestvie na Amur/Путешествие на Амур. Puteshestvie po doline ryeki Ussuri/Путешествие в долину реки Уссури, Вилюйский округ Якутской области Очерк флоры Уссурийской страны1862. Енисейская губерния in the List of settlements Russian Empire
24.
Peter Kropotkin
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Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian activist, scientist, and philosopher, who advocated anarchism. Born into an aristocratic land-owning family, he attended a school and later served as an officer in Siberia. He was imprisoned for his activism in 1874 and managed to escape two years later and he spent the next 41 years in exile in Switzerland, France and in England. He returned to Russia after the Russian Revolution in 1917 but was disappointed by the Bolshevik form of state socialism, Kropotkin was a proponent of a decentralised communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He also contributed the article on anarchism to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Kropotkin was born in Moscow, into the second-highest level of the Russian aristocracy. His mother was the daughter of a Cossack general and his father, Alexei Petrovich Kropotkin, was a prince in Smolensk, of the Rurik dynasty which had ruled Russia before the rise of the Romanovs. Kropotkins father owned large tracts of land and nearly 1,200 male serfs in three provinces, nder the influence of republican teachings, Kropotkin dropped his princely title at age 12, and even rebuked his friends, when they so referred to him. In 1857, at age 14, Kropotkin enrolled in the Corps of Pages at St. Petersburg, Kropotkins memoirs detail the hazing and other abuse of pages for which the Corps had become notorious. In Moscow, Kropotkin developed an interest in the condition of the peasantry, although his work as a page for Tsar Alexander II made Kropotkin skeptical about the tsars liberal reputation, Kropotkin was greatly pleased by the tsars decision to emancipate the serfs in 1861. In St. Petersburg, he read widely on his own account, in 1862, Kropotkin was promoted from the Corps of Pages to the army. The members of the corps had the right to choose the regiment to which they would be attached. For some time, he was aide de camp to the governor of Transbaikalia at Chita, later he was appointed attaché for Cossack affairs to the governor-general of East Siberia at Irkutsk. The expeditions yielded valuable geographical results, in 1866, Kropotkin began reading the works of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and other political thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexander Herzen. These readings, along with his experiences among peasants in Siberia and his departure from a family tradition of military service prompted his father to disinherit him, leaving him a prince with no visible means of support. In 1871, he explored the glacial deposits of Finland and Sweden for the Society, accordingly, he refused the offer and returned to St. Petersburg, where he joined the revolutionary party. Kropotkin visited Switzerland in 1872 and became a member of the International Workingmens Association at Geneva, however, he found that he did not like IWAs style of socialism. Instead, he studied the programme of the more radical Jura federation at Neuchâtel and spent time in the company of the leading members, on returning to Russia, Kropotkins friend Dmitri Klements introduced him to the Circle of Tchaikovsky, a socialist/populist group created in 1872. Kropotkin worked to spread propaganda among peasants and workers
25.
Nikolay Przhevalsky
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Nikolay Mikhaylovich Przhevalsky was a Russian geographer and a renowned explorer of Central and East Asia. Although he never reached his goal, the holy city of Lhasa in Tibet, he traveled through regions then unknown to the West, such as northern Tibet, Amdo. He contributed significantly to European knowledge of Central Asia and was the first known European to describe the only extant species of wild horse, Przhevalsky was born in Smolensk into a noble polonized Belarusian family, and studied there and at the military academy in St. Petersburg. In 1864, he became a teacher at the military school in Warsaw. In 1867, Przhevalsky successfully petitioned the Russian Geographical Society to be dispatched to Irkutsk and his intention was to explore the basin of the Ussuri River, a major tributary of the Amur on the Russian-Chinese frontier. This was his first expedition of importance and it lasted two years, after which Przhevalsky published a diary of the expedition under the title, Travels in the Ussuri Region, 1867-69. In the following years he made four journeys to Central Asia, 1870–1873 from Kyakhta he crossed the Gobi Desert to Beijing then explored the upper Yangtze, and in 1872 crossed into Tibet. He surveyed over 7,000 sq mi, collected and brought back with him 5000 plants,1000 birds and 3000 insect species, as well as 70 reptiles, during his expedition, the Dungan Revolt was raging in China. The Russian newspaper Golos Prikazchika called the one of the most daring of our time. 1876–1877 traveling through East Turkestan through the Tian Shan, he visited what he believed to be Qinghai Lake, which had reportedly not been visited by any European since Marco Polo. The expedition consisted of ten men, twenty-four camels, four horses, three tonnes of baggage and a budget of 25,000 rubles, but the expedition was beset by disease, 1879–1880 via Hami and through the Qaidam Basin to Qinghai Lake. The expedition then returned to Qinghai Lake and moved westwards to Hotan, among other things, he reported on the wild population of Bactrian camels as well as the Przewalskis horse and Przewalskis gazelle, named after him. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founders Gold Medal in 1879 for his work, Przhevalsky died of typhus not long before the beginning of his fifth journey, at Karakol on the shore of Issyk Kul in present-day Kyrgyzstan. He contracted typhoid from the Chu River, which was acknowledged as being infected with the disease, the Tsar immediately changed the name of the town to Przhevalsk. There are monuments to him, and a museum about his life and work, there, less than a year after his premature death, Mikhail Pevtsov succeeded Przhevalsky at the head of his expedition into the depths of Central Asia. Przhevalskys work was continued by his young disciple Pyotr Kozlov. There is another named after Przhevalsky, he had lived in a small village called Sloboda, Smolensk Oblast, Russia from 1881-7. The village was renamed after him in 1964 and is now called Przhevalskoye, there is a memorial complex there that includes the old and new houses of Nikolay Przhevalsky, his bust, pond, garden, birch alleys, and khatka
26.
Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay
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Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay was a Russian explorer, ethnologist, anthropologist and biologist who became famous as the first scientist to settle among and study people who had never seen a European. Miklouho-Maclay spent the part of his life travelling and conducted scientific research in the Middle East, Australia, New Guinea. Australia, became his country and Sydney the home town of his family. He became a prominent figure of nineteenth-century Australian science and became involved in significant issues of Australian and his three grandsons have all contributed to the public life of Australia. Miklouho-Maclay was born in a workers camp in Borovichi county, Novgorod Governorate in Russia. In fact, his Cossack lineage was extensive and also included the Otaman of Zaporizhian Host Okhrim Myklukha and his paternal grandparents were friends of Gogols. About his origins, Miklouho-Maclay wrote, My ancestors came originally from the Ukraine, Nicholas father, Mykola Myklukha, graduated from the Nizhyn Lyceum, after which he walked all the way to Saint Petersburg, where he enrolled in the Roadway Institute of Engineering Corps. He graduated from the institute in 1840 and became an engineer assigned to work on the construction of the Moscow–Saint Petersburg Railway, after becoming the first chief of the Moskovsky passenger railway station in Saint Petersburg, Myklukha moved his family there. He died in December 1857 from tuberculosis and was survived by his wife, before his death, Myklukha was fired from his job for sending 150 rubles to Taras Shevchenko. Nicholas mother, Ekaterina Semenovna, née Bekker, was of German, after 1873, the Miklouho-Maclay family purchased and lived in a country estate in Malyn,100 kilometres northwest of Kiev in the Polesia region. One of Nicholas brothers, Sergei, became a judge in Malyn where he eventually died, another brother, Mikhail, became a geologist. A third brother, Vladimir, was a captain of the Russian coast defense ship Admiral Ushakov, both Mikhail and Vladimir were members of the Russian revolutionary organization Narodnaya Volya. Nicholas was baptised on 21 July 1846 by priest Ioann Smirnov at the Shegrinskaya Church of Nikolaos the Wonderworker and his godfather was Nicholas Ridigier, a Borovichi landowner who was a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812 and a participant in the Battle of Borodino. In 1858 Nicholas enrolled into the grade of a German Lutheran school at the Saint Anna Kirche in Saint Petersburg. The young students were saved by the Russian writer Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy who was a friend of Nicholas father. In March of the year, with a forged passport, he moved abroad to complete his studies in German universities. Miklouho-Maclays brilliant student records attracted the attention of Haeckel, who made him his assistant as part of an expedition to the Canary Islands in 1866. He also became a friend of the biologist Anton Dohrn, with whom he helped conceive the idea of research stations while staying with him at Messina
27.
Pyotr Kozlov
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Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov was a Russian and Soviet traveler and explorer who continued the studies of Nikolai Przhevalsky in Mongolia and Tibet. Although prepared by his parents for a career, Kozlov chose to join Nikolai Przhevalskys expedition. After his mentors death, Kozlov continued traveling in Asia with his successors, Pevtsov, in 1895, he took general command of the expedition from ailing Roborovsky. From 1899 to 1901, he explored and later described in a book the upper reaches of the Yellow River, Yangtze, and Mekong rivers, for which he received the Constantine Medal in 1902. During the first decade of the 20th century, when the Great Game reached its peak, Kozlov rivaled Sven Hedin, although he was on good terms with Hedin and other foreign explorers, the British government, as represented by George Macartney, monitored his movements across Central Asia. Kozlovs 1905 visit to the Dalai Lama in Urga gave the British War Office a fright, during his expedition of 1907–1909, Kozlov explored the Gobi Desert and discovered the ruins of Khara-Khoto, a Tangut city destroyed by the Ming Chinese in 1372. It took him years to excavate the site and bring to St. Petersburg no less than 2,000 books in the Tangut language he uncovered there. Kozlov described his findings in a volume entitled Mongolia and Amdo. He was awarded the 1911 Royal Geographical Societys Founders Gold Medal for his explorations and his last expedition to Mongolia and Tibet resulted in the discovery of an unprecedented number of Xiongnu royal burials at Noin-Ula. After bringing to Petrograd some amazing samples of 2000-year-old Bactrian textiles, Kozlov retired from scientific work, media related to Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov at Wikimedia Commons Kozlovs biography
28.
Vladimir Obruchev
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Vladimir Afanasyevich Obruchev was a Russian and Soviet geologist who specialized in the study of Siberia and Central Asia. He was also one of the first Russian science fiction authors, vladimir Obruchev graduated from the Petersburg Mining Institute in 1886. His early work involved the study of gold-mining, which led him to come up with a theory explaining the origin of gold deposits in Siberia and he also gave advice on construction of the Central Asian and Trans-Siberian Railways and consulted Sven Hedin on his projected journey to Siberia. While working for the railway, Obruchev explored the Karakum Desert, the shores of the Amu Darya River, and he also worked as a geologist on Lake Baikal, on the Lena River, and in gold fields near the Vitim. Between 1892 and 1894, Obruchev was a member of the Grigory Potanins expedition into, mongolia, to the mountains of Nan Shan and Northern China. He also explored the Transbaikal area, Dzhungaria, and Altai, largely as a result of his participation in this expedition he became interested inloess and made considerable contributions to the study of loess deposits. In 1929, Obruchev was elected to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, many of his works deal with the origins of loess in Central Asia and Siberia, ice formation and permafrost in Siberia, problems of Siberian tectonics, and Siberian goldfields. He also authored many scientific works, such as Formation of Mountains and Ore Deposits, Fundamentals of Geology, Field Geology, Ore Deposits. In his native country Obruchev is best known as the author of two popular science fiction novels, Plutonia and Sannikov Land. In Plutonia, dinosaurs and other Jurassic species are found in an underground area north of Alaska. The descriptive passages are more credible by Obruchevs extensive knowledge of paleontology. Sannikov Land is named for an island of the Arctic Ocean. During the Soviet period, Obruchev attempted to emulate Edwardian models of boys adventure stories in his novels Golddiggers in the Desert, hero of Socialist Labor Obruchevite, a mineral. Vladimir Obruchev – oil and gas research vessel, built at Kirov yard, Khabarovsk, two of his sons also became notable scientists, Sergei Obruchev, a geologist, discovered the Chersky Range in Siberia. Dmitry Obruchev, a paleontologist, was an authority on early vertebrates. Fundamentals Of Geology, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow
29.
Lev Berg
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Lev Semyonovich Berg was a leading Soviet geographer, biologist and ichthyologist who served as President of the Soviet Geographical Society between 1940 and 1950. He also developed his own theory as opposed to the theories of Darwin. Lev Berg was born in Bessarabia, the son of Simon Gregor’evich Berg, a notary and he graduated from the Second Kishinev Gymnasium in 1894. Like some of his relatives, Berg converted to Christianity in order to pursue his studies at Moscow University, at Moscow University, Berg studied hydrobiology and geography. He later studied icthyology and in 1928 was awarded he was also a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, lev Berg graduated from the Moscow University in 1898. Between 1903 and 1914, he worked in the Museum of Zoology in Saint Petersburg and he was one of the founders of the Geographical Institute, now a Faculty of Geography of the Saint Petersburg University. Berg studied and determined the depth of the lakes of Central Asia, including Balkhash and he developed Dokuchaevs doctrine of natural zones, which became one of the foundations of the Soviet biology. Among his pioneering monographs on climatology were Climate and Life and Foundations of Climatology, during his lifetime, Berg was a towering presence in the science of ichthyology. In 1916, he published four volumes of the study of Fishes of Russia, the fourth edition was issued in 1949 as Freshwater Fishes of the Soviet Union and Adjacent Countries and won him the Stalin Prize. He was said to have discovered the relationship between lampreys and salmon. Bergs name is featured in the Latin appellations of more than 60 species of plants, in 2001, the Central Bank of Transnistria minted a silver coin honoring this native of todays Transnistria, as part of a series of commemorative coins called The Outstanding People of Pridnestrovie. Berg is most well known for his theory called nomogenesis. In the book Berg collected an amount of empirical data which offered a strong criticism of Darwins theory of evolution. Bergs theory of nomogenesis combined arguments from paleontology, zoology and botany to claim that evolution is not a random process, the theory of Nomogenesis emphasized the limitations of natural selection which determine the directionality of evolution. Berg claimed that the variation of characters in species is confined within certain limits due to internal and external factors. Berg distanced himself from both Darwinism and Lamarckism, instead he proposed the concept of directed mass mutations as the main mechanism for directing evolution. This mass transformation is a phenomenon of geological magnitude, according to Berg, newly evolved species beget the subordinate taxonomic categories, and appear to be perfectly adapted to their environments. Although Bergs theory was anti-Darwinian, and anti-Lamarckian, it still advocated adaptive evolution, J B S Haldane called Nomogenesis by far the best anti-Darwinian book of this century
30.
Folklore of Russia
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Folklore of Russia is folklore of Russians and other ethnic groups of Russia. Russian folklore takes its roots in the beliefs of ancient Slavs. Epic Russian bylinas are also an important part of Slavic mythology, the oldest bylinas of Kievan cycle were actually recorded mostly in the Russian North, especially in Karelia, where most of the Finnish national epic Kalevala was recorded as well. Many Russian fairy tales and bylinas have been adapted for films, or for feature movies by prominent directors such as Aleksandr Ptushko. Folklorists today consider the 1920s the Soviet Union’s golden age of folklore, there were two primary trends of folklore study during the decade, the formalist and Finnish schools. Formalism focused on the form of ancient byliny and faerie tales, specifically their use of distinctive structures. The Finnish school was concerned with the connections amongst related legends of various Eastern European regions, Finnish scholars collected comparable tales from multiple locales and analyzed their similarities and differences, hoping to trace these epic stories’ migration paths. Once Joseph Stalin came to power and put his First Five Year Plan into motion in 1928, Stalin and the Soviet regime repressed Folklore, believing that it supported the old tsarist system and a capitalist economy. They saw it as a remnant of the backward Russian society that the Bolsheviks were working to surpass, to keep folklore studies in check and prevent inappropriate ideas from spreading amongst the masses, the government created the RAPP – the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. The RAPP specifically focused on censoring fairy tales and children’s literature, believing that fantasies, faerie tales were removed from bookshelves and children were encouraged to read books focusing on nature and science. RAPP eventually increased its levels of censorship and became the Union of Soviet Writers in 1932, in order to continue researching and analyzing folklore, intellectuals needed to justify its worth to the Communist regime. Otherwise, collections of folklore, along all other literature deemed useless for the purposes of Stalin’s Five Year Plan. In 1934, Maksim Gorky gave a speech to the Union of Soviet Writers arguing that folklore could, in fact, be consciously used to promoted Communist values. Apart from expounding on the value of folklore, he stressed that traditional legends and faerie tales showed ideal, community-oriented characters. The attitudes of such legendary characters paralleled the mindset that the Soviet government wished to instill in its citizens, convinced by Gor’kij and Sokolov’s arguments, the Soviet government and the Union of Soviet Writers began collecting and evaluating folklore from across the country. The Union handpicked and recorded stories that, in their eyes, sufficiently promoted the collectivist spirit and showed the Soviet regime’s benefits. It then proceeded to redistribute copies of approved stories throughout the population, meanwhile, local folklore centers arose in all major cities. Responsible for advocating a sense of Soviet nationalism, these organizations ensured that the media published appropriate versions of Russian folktales in a systematic fashion and these contemporary folktales combined the structures and motifs of the old byliny with contemporary life in the Soviet Union
31.
Ural Mountains
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The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
32.
Amur River
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The Amur River or Heilong Jiang is the worlds tenth longest river, forming the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The largest fish species in the Amur is the kaluga, attaining a length as great as 5.6 metres, historically, it was common to refer to a river simply as water. The word for water is similar in a number of Asiatic languages, mul in Korean, muren in Mongolian, the name Amur may have evolved from a root word for water, coupled with a size modifier for Big Water. The Chinese name for the river, Heilong Jiang, means Black Dragon River in Chinese, and its Mongolian name, Khar mörön, means Black River. The river rises in the hills in the part of Northeast China at the confluence of its two major affluents, the Shilka River and the Ergune River, at an elevation of 303 metres. It flows east forming the border between China and Russia, and slowly makes an arc to the southeast for about 400 kilometres, receiving many tributaries. At Huma, it is joined by a tributary, the Huma River. Afterwards it continues to south until between the cities of Blagoveschensk and Heihe, it widens significantly as it is joined by the Zeya River. At the confluence with the Songhua the river turns northeast, now flowing towards Khabarovsk, now the river spreads out dramatically into a braided character, flowing north-northeast through a wide valley in eastern Russia, passing Amursk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The valley narrows after about 200 kilometres and the river flows north onto plains at the confluence with the Amgun River. Shortly after, the Amur turns sharply east and into an estuary at Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, in many historical references these two geopolitical entities are known as Outer Manchuria and Inner Manchuria, respectively. The Chinese province of Heilongjiang on the bank of the river is named after it. The name Black River was used by the Manchu and the Ta-tsing Empire who regarded this river as sacred, the Amur River is an important symbol of, and geopolitical factor in, Chinese–Russian relations. The Amur was especially important in the following the Sino–Soviet political split in the 1960s. For many centuries the Amur Valley was populated by the Tungusic and Mongol people, for many of them, fishing in the Amur and its tributaries was the main source of their livelihood. Until the 17th century, these people were not known to the Europeans, and little known to the Han Chinese, the term Yupi Dazi was used for the Nanais and related groups as well, owing to their traditional clothes made of fish skins. This Ming Dynasty Aigun was located on the bank to the later Aigun that was relocated during the Qing Dynasty. In any event, the Ming presence on the Amur was as short-lived as it was tenuous, soon after the end of the Yongle era, Russian Cossack expeditions led by Vassili Poyarkov and Yerofey Khabarov explored the Amur and its tributaries in 1643–44 and 1649–51, respectively
33.
Kashgar
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Kashgar is an oasis city in Xinjiang and is the westernmost Chinese city, located near the border with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Located historically at the point of widely varying cultures and empires, Kashgar has been under the rule of the Chinese, Turkic, Mongol. The city has also been the site of a number of battles between various groups of people on the steppes. The city itself has a population of 506,640, and its area covers 15 km2. The city was made into a Special Economic Zone in 2010, Kashgar also forms a terminus of the Karakoram Highway, whose reconstruction is considered a major part of the multi-billion dollar China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. The modern Chinese name is 喀什, a form of the longer. Ptolemy, in his Geography, Chapter 15. 3A, refers to Kashgar as “Kasi” and its western and probably indigenous name is the Kāš, to which the East Iranian -γar, cf. Pashto and Middle Persian gar/ġar, from Old Persian/Pahlavi girīwa was attached. Alternative historical Romanizations for Kashgar include Cascar and Cashgar, non-native names for the city, such as the old Chinese name Shule 疏勒 and Tibetan Śu-lig may have originated as an attempts to transcribe the Sanskrit name for Kashgar, Śrīkrīrāti. - The postal romanization was 疏附 Shufu 1900s/50s, bilingual postmarks readingSHUFU /date/疏附 were used in this period, 疏附 Shufu was also used on contemporary bilingual maps. The earliest mention of Kashgar occurs when a Chinese Han dynasty envoy traveled the Northern Silk Road to explore lands to the west, ptolemy speaks of Scythia beyond the Imaus, which is in a “Kasia Regio”, probably exhibiting the name from which Kashgar and Kashgaria are formed. The country’s people practised Zoroastrianism and Buddhism before the coming of Islam. In the Book of Han, which covers the period between 125 BC and 23 AD, it is recorded there were 1,510 households,18,647 people and 2,000 persons able to bear arms. By the time covered by the Book of the Later Han, the Book of the Later Han provides a wealth of detail on developments in the region, In the period of Emperor Wu, the Western Regions1 were under the control of the Interior. The Imperial Government established a Colonel Envoys there to direct and protect these countries, Emperor Xuan changed this title to Protector-General. Emperor Yuan installed two Wuji Colonels to take charge of the garrisons on the frontiers of the king of Nearer Jushi. During the time of Emperor Ai and Emperor Ping, the principalities of the Western Regions split up, wang Mang, after he usurped the Throne, demoted and changed their kings and marquises. Following this, the Western Regions became resentful, and rebelled and they, therefore, broke off all relations with the Interior and, all together, submitted to the Xiongnu again. The Xiongnu collected oppressively heavy taxes and the kingdoms were not able to support their demands, in the middle of the Jianwu period, they each, sent envoys to ask if they could submit to the Interior, and to express their desire for a Protector-General
34.
Dzungaria
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Dzungaria is a geographical region in northwest China corresponding to the northern half of Xinjiang, also known as Beijiang. Bounded by the Tian Shan mountain range to the south and the Altai Mountains to the north, it covers approximately 777,000 km2, extending into western Mongolia and eastern Kazakhstan. Formerly the term could cover an area, conterminous with the Dzungar Khanate. In comparison to southern Xinjiang, Dzungaria is relatively well-integrated with the rest of China by rail, the name Dzungaria or Zungharia is a corruption of the Mongolian term Zűn Gar or Jüün Gar depending on the dialect of Mongolian used. Zűn/Jüün means left and Gar means hand, the name originates from the notion that the Western Mongols are on the left hand side when the Mongol Empire began its division into East and West Mongols. After this fragmentation, the western Mongolian nation was called Zuun Gar, however, Qing people began to think of both areas as part of one distinct region called Xinjiang. It is bounded by the Tian Shan to the south, the Altai Mountains to the northeast, the three corners are relatively open. The northern corner is the valley of the upper Irtysh River, the eastern corner of the basin leads to Gansu and the rest of China. In the south an easy pass leads from Ürümqi to the Turfan Depression, in the southwest the tall Borohoro Mountains branch of the Tian Shan separates the basin from the upper Ili River. The basin is similar to the larger Tarim Basin on the side of the Tian Shan Range. This is enough to sustain populations of wild camels, jerboas, the Dzungarian Basin is a structural basin with thick sequences of Paleozoic-Pleistocene rocks with large estimated oil reserves. The Gurbantunggut Desert, China’s second largest, is in the center of the basin, the Dzungarian basin does not have a single catchment center. The northernmost section of Dzungaria is part of the basin of the Irtysh River, the rest of the region is split into a number of endorheic basins. In particular, south of the Irtysh, the Ulungur River ends up in the endorheic Lake Ulungur, the Southwestern part of the Dzungarian basin drains into the Aibi Lake. In the west-central part of the region, streams flow into a group of lakes that include Lake Manas. Runoff from the mountains into the basin supplies several lakes. The ecologically rich habitats traditionally included meadows, marshlands, and rivers, however most of the land is now used for agriculture. It is a steppe and semi-desert basin surrounded by high mountains, the Tian Shan in the south
35.
Mongolia
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Mongolia /mɒŋˈɡoʊliə/ is a landlocked unitary sovereign state in East Asia. Its area is equivalent with the historical territory of Outer Mongolia. It is sandwiched between China to the south and Russia to the north, while it does not share a border with Kazakhstan, Mongolia is separated from it by only 36.76 kilometers. At 1,564,116 square kilometers, Mongolia is the 18th largest and it is also the worlds second-largest landlocked country behind Kazakhstan and the largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea. The country contains very little land, as much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to about 45% of the countrys population, approximately 30% of the population is nomadic or semi-nomadic, horse culture is still integral. The majority of its population are Buddhists, the non-religious population is the second largest group. Islam is the dominant religion among ethnic Kazakhs, the majority of the states citizens are of Mongol ethnicity, although Kazakhs, Tuvans, and other minorities also live in the country, especially in the west. Mongolia joined the World Trade Organization in 1997 and seeks to expand its participation in regional economic, the area of what is now Mongolia has been ruled by various nomadic empires, including the Xiongnu, the Xianbei, the Rouran, the Turkic Khaganate, and others. In 1206, Genghis Khan founded the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history. His grandson Kublai Khan conquered China to establish the Yuan dynasty, after the collapse of the Yuan, the Mongols retreated to Mongolia and resumed their earlier pattern of factional conflict, except during the era of Dayan Khan and Tumen Zasagt Khan. In the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism began to spread in Mongolia, being led by the Manchu-founded Qing dynasty. By the early 1900s, almost one-third of the male population were Buddhist monks. After the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, Mongolia declared independence from the Qing dynasty, shortly thereafter, the country came under the control of the Soviet Union, which had aided its independence from China. In 1924, the Mongolian Peoples Republic was declared as a Soviet satellite state, after the anti-Communist revolutions of 1989, Mongolia conducted its own peaceful democratic revolution in early 1990. This led to a multi-party system, a new constitution of 1992, homo erectus inhabited Mongolia from 850,000 years ago. Modern humans reached Mongolia approximately 40,000 years ago during the Upper Paleolithic, the Khoit Tsenkher Cave in Khovd Province shows lively pink, brown, and red ochre paintings of mammoths, lynx, bactrian camels, and ostriches, earning it the nickname the Lascaux of Mongolia. The venus figurines of Malta testify to the level of Upper Paleolithic art in northern Mongolia, the wheeled vehicles found in the burials of the Afanasevans have been dated to before 2200 BC
36.
Ivan Aksakov
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Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov was a Russian littérateur and notable Slavophile. He was the son of Sergey Aksakov and younger brother of Konstantin Aksakov and he was born in what is now Bashkortostan. Aksakov graduated from the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in 1842, Ivan took part in the Crimean War, and promoted the ideas of Pan-Slavism in the Russian press during the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878. D. S. Mirsky considered him the finest Russian journalist, Aksakov also wrote the first biography of his father-in-law, the Slavophile poet Fyodor Tyutchev. Aksakovo town in Northeastern Bulgaria and Aksakov Street in Sofia, Bulgaria are named after Ivan Aksakov, list of 19th-century Russian Slavophiles Media related to Ivan Aksakov at Wikimedia Commons From the Jewish Encyclopedia
37.
Caspian Sea
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The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed inland body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the worlds largest lake or a full-fledged sea. It is in a basin located between Europe and Asia. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the west, Iran to the south, the Caspian Sea lies to the east of the Caucasus Mountains and to the west of the vast steppe of Central Asia. In its northern part, the Caspian Depression lies 28 to 130 m below sea level, the sea bed in the southern part reaches as low as 1023 m below sea level, which is the second lowest natural depression on earth after Lake Baikal. The ancient inhabitants of its coast perceived the Caspian Sea as an ocean, probably because of its saltiness, the sea has a surface area of 371,000 km2 and a volume of 78,200 km3. It has a salinity of approximately 1. 2%, about a third of the salinity of most seawater, the word Caspian is derived from the name of the Caspi, an ancient people who lived to the southwest of the sea in Transcaucasia. Strabo wrote that to the country of the Albanians belongs also the territory called Caspiane, which was named after the Caspian tribe, as was also the sea, but the tribe has now disappeared. Moreover, the Caspian Gates, which is the name of a region in Irans Tehran province, the Iranian city of Qazvin shares the root of its name with that of the sea. In fact, the traditional Arabic name for the sea itself is Bahr al-Qazwin, in classical antiquity among Greeks and Persians it was called the Hyrcanian Ocean. In Persian antiquity, as well as in modern Iran, it is known as the دریای خزر, Daryā-e Khazar, ancient Arabic sources refer to it as Baḥr Gīlān meaning the Gilan Sea. Turkic languages refer to the lake as Khazar Sea, in Turkmen, the name is Hazar deňizi, in Azeri, it is Xəzər dənizi, and in modern Turkish, it is Hazar denizi. An exception is Kazakh, where it is called Каспий теңізі, old Russian sources call it the Khvalyn or Khvalis Sea after the name of Khwarezmia. In modern Russian, it is called Каспи́йское мо́ре, Kaspiyskoye more, the Caspian Sea, like the Black Sea, Namak Lake, and Lake Urmia, is a remnant of the ancient Paratethys Sea. It became landlocked about 5.5 million years ago due to tectonic uplift and a fall in sea level. Due to the current inflow of water, the Caspian Sea is a freshwater lake in its northern portions, and is most saline on the Iranian shore. Currently, the salinity of the Caspian is one third that of Earths oceans. The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world, the coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan. The Caspian is divided into three distinct regions, the Northern, Middle, and Southern Caspian
38.
Gustav Radde
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Gustav Ferdinand Richard Radde was a German naturalist and explorer. Radde was born in Danzig, the son of a schoolmaster and he had little formal education, and began a career as an apothecary. He became increasingly interested in history, and in 1852 he gave up his career. He made further trips to southern Russia with Johann Friedrich von Brandt and he was botanist and zoologist on the East Siberian Expedition of 1855, led by the astronomer Ludwig Schwarz. In 1864 he eventually settled in Tbilisi, in the same year he explored the region surrounding Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in the Western Palearctic. As well as collecting many plants he recorded the languages, ballads and he set up a museum and library in Tbilisi to exhibit his discoveries. His collecting expeditions included visits along the Black Sea coast and eastwards beyond the Caspian Sea to Askhabad. In 1895 he sailed to India and Japan with the Grand Duke Michael and he eventually became a member of the Council of State in Tiblisi. In 1884 he was honoured with the chairmanship of the first International Ornithological Congress in Vienna and he was also an honorary member of the D. O. -G. and a foreign member of the British Ornithologists Union and the Zoological Society of London. He was awarded the Patrons Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1889 and this botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Radde when citing a botanical name. His publications include, Reisen im Süden von Ost-Sibirien in den Jahren 1855-59 Vier Vorträge über den Kaukasus Die Chewsuren und ihr Land Ornis Caucasica, barbara and Richard Mearns - Biographies for Birdwatchers ISBN 0-12-487422-3 Anonym 1903 Wien. ent. Ztg.22108 Blasius, R.1904 Journ,52 1-49 Daniel, K.1904 Münch. 2 1904-190693 Kraatz, G.1903 Dtsch, thurston, H. T. Colby, F. M. eds. Works by or about Gustav Radde at Internet Archive
39.
Alexander Kolchak
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Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak CB was a polar explorer and commander in the Imperial Russian Navy, who fought in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War. His government was based in Omsk, in southwestern Siberia, for a year and a half, Kolchak was the internationally recognised leader of Russia. As his White forces fell apart, he was betrayed and captured by independent units who handed him over to local Bolsheviks, Kolchak was born in Saint Petersburg in 1874 to a family of minor Russian nobility. His father was a retired major-general of the Marine Artillery and a veteran of the 1854 siege of Sevastopol, Kolchak was educated for a naval career, graduating from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1894 and joining the 7th Naval Battalion. He was soon transferred to the Russian Far East, serving in Vladivostok from 1895 to 1899 and he then returned to western Russia and was based at Kronstadt, joining the Russian Polar expedition of Eduard Toll on the ship Zarya in 1900 as a hydrologist. After considerable hardship, Kolchak returned in December 1902, Eduard Toll with three other explorers continued further north and were lost, Kolchak took part in two Arctic expeditions and for a while was nicknamed Kolchak-Poliarnyi. For his explorations Kolchak received the highest award of the Russian Geographical Society, in December 1903, Kolchak was en route to St. In the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War, he served as officer on the cruiser Askold. He made several sorties to lay naval mines, one of which succeeded in sinking the Japanese cruiser Takasago. He was decorated with the Order of St. Anna 4th class for the exploit, as the blockade of the port tightened and the Siege of Port Arthur intensified, he was given command of a coastal artillery battery. He was wounded in the battle for Port Arthur and taken as a prisoner of war to Nagasaki. His poor health— led to his repatriation before the end of the war, Kolchak was awarded the Golden Sword of St. George with the inscription For Bravery on his return to Russia. He served on the Naval General Staff from 1906, helping draft a shipbuilding program, a program, and developing a new protection plan for St. Petersburg. Kolchak took part in designing the special icebreakers Taimyr and Vaigach, based in Vladivostok, these vessels were sent on cartographic expedition to the Bering Strait and Cape Dezhnev. Kolchak commanded the Vaigach during this expedition and later worked at the Academy of Sciences with the materials collected by him during expeditions. His study, The Ices of the Kara and Siberian Seas, was printed in the Proceedings of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences and is considered the most important work on this subject. Extracts from it were published under the title The Arctic Pack, in 1910 he returned to the Naval General Staff, and in 1912 he was assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet. The onset of the First World War found him on the flagship Pogranichnik, commanding Admiral Essen was not satisfied to remain on the defensive and ordered Kolchak to prepare a scheme for attacking the approaches of the German naval bases
40.
Carl Friedrich Schmidt (1832)
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Carl Friedrich Schmidt was Baltic German geologist and botanist in Russian Empire. He is acknowledged as the founder of Estonian geology, main papers of Friedrich Schmidt research the stratigraphy and fauna of Lower Palaeozoic rocks in Estonia and the neighboring areas. In 1885 he became academician of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and he won the Wollaston Medal, awarded by the Geological Society of London, in 1902. Friedrich Schmidt was the first European to discover the Sakhalin Fir on the Russian island of Sakhalin in 1866, but he did not introduce it to Europe
41.
Grigory Grumm-Grzhimaylo
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Grigory Yefimovich Grumm-Grzhimaylo was a Russian entomologist, best known for his expeditions to Central Asia, West Mongolia and Tuva, and the Russian Far East. In botanical literature his name is spelled as Grigor Efimowitsch Grumm-Grzhimailo. Born in St. Petersburg, his early interest was in the problem in the vineyards of N. Y. He wrote his first scientific work at the age of 21 on some lepidoptera of the Crimea and he was associated with Professor M. N. Bogdanov at the St. Petersburg Museum and contributed many of his own collections to it. He also studied the collections of the museum that had made by Nikolai Przhevalsky, Grigory Potanin, Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky. From 1882, Grumm-Grzhimaylo studied Lepidoptera from the Bessarabia, Podolia Governorate, Crimea, while collecting near Sarepta, he met the German collector Rückbeil. He also met the Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich Romanov who suggested that he should publish his work and he also promised his support for an expedition to the Pamirs. In 1884, he started his first Pamir expedition on which he visited the Alai Mountains and he visited Lake Karakul and returned. He collected 12,000 specimens, thirty of which were new to science and this time he collected 20,000 specimens of insects. Range, along the Great Silk Route to Tash-Rabat and Lake Chatyr-Kul and they went until Kashgar and then via Pass Irkeshtam and back to Osh. The expeditions of the brothers between 1889 and 1890 were initially never for birds or large animals and their aims included obtaining specimens of the Mongolian wild horse and they were afraid that shooting would frighten the animals away. After securing two wild horses near Gushen, they succeeded in collecting 1048 bird specimens and he made several more expeditions in the succeeding years but he later lost much of the early interest in entomology owing in part to a conflict with the sponsor of his expeditions. A term was that the materials he collected were to go to Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhaylovich Romanov and he was accused of embezzling material and financial difficulties made him sell part of his collection to Henry John Elwes. He was awarded the Constantine Medal in 1907 by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, partial list Novae species et varietas Rhopalocerum Horae Soc. ent. Rossicae,22, 303-307 Le Pamir et la faune lépidoptérologique, ed. N. M. Romanoff 4 volumes 576 p.21 pl. Lepidoptera nova in Asia centrali novissime lecta et descripta Horae Soc. ent. Ross. 25, 445-465 Lepidoptera nova vei parum cognita regionis palaearcticae, Lepidoptera nova vel parum cognita regionis palaearcticae. Sc. Volume 7 Many of Grumm-Grzhimaylos specimens of Lepidoptera and Coleoptera are in the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg, other specimens were sold to H. J. Elwes. Grieshuber, J. & Churkin, S. Grum-Grshimailos journey through China with notes on some Colias taxa
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Fridtjof Nansen
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Fridtjof Nansen was a Norwegian explorer, scientist, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In his youth he was a skier and ice skater. He led the team made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888. He won international fame after reaching a record latitude of 86°14′ during his North Pole expedition of 1893–96. Between 1906 and 1908 he served as the Norwegian representative in London, in the final decade of his life, Nansen devoted himself primarily to the League of Nations, following his appointment in 1921 as the Leagues High Commissioner for Refugees. In 1922 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of the victims of the First World War. Among the initiatives he introduced was the Nansen passport for stateless persons and he worked on behalf of refugees until his sudden death in 1930, after which the League established the Nansen International Office for Refugees to ensure that his work continued. This office received the Nobel Peace Prize for 1938, Nansen was honoured by many nations, and his name is commemorated in numerous geographical features, particularly in the polar regions. The Nansen family originated in Denmark, Hans Nansen, a trader, was an early explorer of the White Sea region of the Arctic Ocean. In later life he settled in Copenhagen, becoming the citys borgmester in 1654, later generations of the family lived in Copenhagen until the mid-18th century, when Ancher Antoni Nansen moved to Norway. His son, Hans Leierdahl Nansen, was a magistrate first in the Trondheim district, after Norways separation from Denmark in 1814, he entered national political life as the representative for Stavanger in the first Storting, and became a strong advocate of union with Sweden. After suffering a stroke in 1821 Hans Leierdahl Nansen died, leaving a four-year-old son, Baldur Fridtjof Nansen. Baldur was a lawyer without ambitions for public life, who became Reporter to the Supreme Court of Norway, Baldur and Adelaide settled at Store Frøen, an estate at Aker, a few kilometres north of Norways capital city, Christiania. The couple had three children, the first died in infancy, the second, born 10 October 1861, was Fridtjof Nansen, Store Frøens rural surroundings shaped the nature of Nansens childhood. In the short summers the main activities were swimming and fishing, the long winter months were devoted mainly to skiing, which Nansen began to practice at the age of two, on improvised skis. At the age of 10 he defied his parents and attempted the ski jump at the nearby Huseby installation. This exploit had near-disastrous consequences, as on landing the skis dug deep into the snow, pitching the boy forward, I, head first, hen I came down again I bored into the snow up to my waist. The boys thought I had broken my neck, but as soon as they saw there was life in me, a shout of mocking laughter went up
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Boris Vilkitsky
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Boris Andreyevich Vilkitsky was a Russian hydrographer and surveyor. He was the son of Andrey Ippolitovich Vilkitsky, Vilkitsky graduated from the Naval Academy in Saint Petersburg in 1908. He participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, in 1913—1915 he led the Arctic hydrographic expedition on the ships Taimyr and Vaigach with the purpose of further exploration of the Northern Sea Route. In 1913, Vilkitskys expedition discovered Emperor Nicholas II Land —later renamed Severnaya Zemlya, other discoveries were an island that now bears his name, as well as the islands of Maly Taymyr and neighboring Starokadomsky. He was awarded the prestigious Constantine Medal by the Russian Geographical Society for his endeavours, in 1918, Vilkitsky was appointed head of the first Soviet hydrographic expedition, which never took place due to its seizure by the interventionists in Arkhangelsk. In 1920, Vilkitsky emigrated to Britain, in 1923 and 1924, Vilkitsky led commercial expeditions in the Kara Sea at the invitation of the Soviet foreign trade organizations. Later in his life, Vilkitsky was employed as a hydrographer in the Belgian Congo, boris Vilkitsky died in Brussels in 1961. Zaliv Vilkitskogo, a bay in the NW shores of Novaya Zemlya, Vilkitsky Island in the Kara Sea. The Vilkitsky Islands, a division of the Nordenskjold Archipelago, the Vilkitsky Islands subgroup of the Komsomolskaya Pravda Islands in the Laptev sea off the eastern shores of the Taymyr Peninsula. Vilkitsky Island in the De Long Group in the Eastern Siberian Sea, Russian Hydrographic Service The Arctic Personalities at poseidonexpeditions. com
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Nikolai Vavilov
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Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov ForMemRS was a prominent Russian and Soviet botanist and geneticist best known for having identified the centres of origin of cultivated plants. He devoted his life to the study and improvement of wheat, corn, Vavilov was born into a merchant family in Moscow, the older brother of renowned physicist Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. He graduated from the Moscow Agricultural Institute in 1910 with a dissertation on snails as pests, from 1911 to 1912, he worked at the Bureau for Applied Botany and at the Bureau of Mycology and Phytopathology. From 1913 to 1914 he travelled in Europe and studied plant immunity, in collaboration with the British biologist William Bateson, from 1924 to 1935 he was the director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Leningrad. She declined, but visited the institute in 1933 for three months to train 50 students in her research, while developing his theory on the centres of origin of cultivated plants, Vavilov organized a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, and collected seeds from every corner of the globe. In Leningrad, he created the worlds largest collection of plant seeds, Vavilov also formulated the law of homologous series in variation. He was a member of the USSR Central Executive Committee, President of All-Union Geographical Society, Vavilov encountered the young Trofim Lysenko and at the time encouraged him in his work. At the time Lysenko was not the best at growing wheat and peas and it was not until later when he was under pressure from the Soviet State that Vavilov began to criticize the non-Mendelian concepts of Trofim Lysenko, who won the support of Joseph Stalin. As a result, Vavilov was arrested on August 6,1940 and he was sentenced to death in July 1941. In 1942 his sentence was commuted to twenty years imprisonment, he died in prison in 1943, the Leningrad seedbank was diligently preserved through the 28-month Siege of Leningrad. While the Soviets had ordered the evacuation of art from the Hermitage, they had not evacuated the 250,000 samples of seeds, roots, and fruits stored in what was then the worlds largest seedbank. A group of scientists at the Vavilov Institute boxed up a section of seeds, moved them to the basement. Those guarding the seedbank refused to eat its contents, even though by the end of the siege in the spring of 1944, nine of them had died of starvation. In 1943, parts of Vavilovs collection, samples stored within the occupied by the German armies, mainly in Ukraine. Many of the samples were transferred to the SS Institute for Plant Genetics, by the 1960s his reputation was publicly rehabilitated and he began to be hailed as a hero of Soviet science. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry in St. Petersburg still maintains one of the worlds largest collections of plant genetic material, Vavilov was the head of the institute from 1921 to 1940. In 1968 the institute was renamed after Vavilov in time for its 75th anniversary, a minor planet,2862 Vavilov, discovered in 1977 by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh is named after him and his brother Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov. The crater Vavilov on the far side of the Moon is also named after him, the story of the researchers at the Vavilov Institute during the Siege of Leningrad was fictionalized by novelist Elise Blackwell in her 2003 novel Hunger
