Sloboda
A sloboda was a kind of settlement in the history of Russia and Ukraine. The name is derived from the early Slavic word for "freedom" and may be loosely translated as "free settlement". In modern Russia, the term is used to denote a type of a rural locality and is used in Kursk, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov, Ryazan and Voronezh Oblasts. A sloboda was a colonization-type settlement in sparsely populated lands by Cossacks in Cossack Hetmanate, see "Sloboda Ukraine"; the settlers of such sloboda were freed from various taxes and levies for various reasons, hence the name. Freedom from taxes was an incentive for colonization. By the first half of the 18th century, this privilege was abolished, slobodas became ordinary villages, townlets, suburbs; some slobodas were suburban settlements, right behind the city wall. Many of them were subsequently incorporated into cities, the corresponding toponyms indicate their origin, such as Ogorodnaya Sloboda Lane, Moscow; the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary writes that by the end of the 19th century a sloboda was a large village with more than one church, a marketplace, volost administration, or a village-type settlement of industrial character, where the peasants have little involvement in agriculture.
The term is preserved in names of various settlements and city quarters. Some settlements were named just thus: "Sloboda", "Slobodka", "Slabodka", "Slobidka". Similar settlements existed in Wallachia and Moldavia, called slobozie or slobozia; the latter term is the name of the capital city of Ialomiţa County in modern Romania, located in the historical region of Wallachia. Wola, a similar concept in Polish history Lhota, a similar concept in Czech history
Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor is a cathedral that functions as a museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is dedicated to Saint Isaac of Dalmatia, a patron saint of Peter the Great, born on the feast day of that saint, it was built as a cathedral but was turned into a museum by the Soviet government in 1931 and has remained a museum since. In 2017, the Governor of Saint Petersburg offered to transfer the cathedral back to the Russian Orthodox Church, but the church has not exercised this offer; the church on St Isaac's Square was ordered by Tsar Alexander I, to replace an earlier structure by Vincenzo Brenna, was the fourth consecutive church standing at this place. A specially appointed commission examined several designs, including that of the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand, who had studied in the atelier of Napoleon's designer, Charles Percier. Montferrand's design was criticised by some members of the commission for the dry and boring rhythm of its four identical pedimented octastyle porticos.
It was suggested that despite gigantic dimensions, the edifice would look squat and not impressive. The members of the commission, which consisted of well-known Russian architects, were particularly concerned by necessity to build a new huge building on the old unsecure foundation; the emperor, who favoured the ponderous Empire style of architecture, had to step in and solve the dispute in Montferrand's favour. The cathedral took 40 years to construct, under Montferrand's direction, from 1818 to 1858; the building of the cathedral took so long, that it left an idiom to Finnish language: rakentaa kuin Iisakinkirkkoa when speaking of long-term construction projects. To secure the construction, the cathedral's foundation was strengthened by driving 25,000 piles into the fenland of Saint Petersburg. Innovative methods were created to erect the giant columns of the portico; the construction costs of the cathedral totalled an incredible sum of 1 000 000 gold rubles. Under the Soviet government, the building was stripped of religious trappings.
In 1931, it was turned into the Museum of the History of Religion and Atheism, the dove sculpture was removed, replaced by a Foucault pendulum. On April 12, 1931, the first public demonstration of the Foucault pendulum was held to visualize Copernicus’s theory. In 1937, the museum was transformed into the museum of the cathedral, former collections were transferred to the Museum of the History of Religion. During World War II, the dome was painted over in gray to avoid attracting attention from enemy aircraft. On its top, in the skylight, a geodesical intersection point was placed, to determine the positions of German artillery batteries. With the fall of communism, the museum was removed and regular worship activity has resumed in the cathedral, but only in the left-hand side chapel; the main body of the cathedral is used for services on feast days only. On January 10, 2017 Georgy Poltavchenko, the Governor of St. Petersburg, announced that the cathedral would be transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The key protocols of the transfer were defined by the order issued by St. Petersburg’s Committee on Property Relations on December 30, 2016; the document expired on December 30, 2018. The new order can be issued upon request from the Russian Orthodox Church, but no such request has yet been submitted.. The transfer of Saint Isaac's Cathedral in use the ROC agreed in January 2017, but the decision has caused discontent of the townspeople, who defended the status of the museum; the decision of the city authorities was disputed in the courts. The status of the building is museum. Today, church services are held here only ecclesiastical occasions; the neoclassical exterior expresses the traditional Russian-Byzantine formula of a Greek-cross ground plan with a large central dome and four subsidiary domes. It is similar to Andrea Palladio's Villa La Rotonda, with a full dome on a high drum substituted for the Villa's low central saucer dome; the design of the cathedral in general and the dome in particular influenced the design of the United States Capitol dome, Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison and the Lutheran Cathedral in Helsinki.
The exterior is faced with gray and pink stone, features a total of 112 red granite columns with Corinthian capitals, each hewn and erected as a single block: 48 at ground level, 24 on the rotunda of the uppermost dome, 8 on each of four side domes, 2 framing each of four windows. The rotunda is encircled by a walkway accessible to tourists. 24 statues stand on the roof, another 24 on top of the rotunda. The cathedral's main dome is plated with pure gold; the dome is decorated with twelve statues of angels by Josef Hermann. These angels were the first large sculptures produced by the novel process of electrotyping, an alternative to traditional bronze casting of sculptures. Montferrand's design of the dome is based on a supporting cast iron structure, it was the third historical instance of cast iron cupola after the Leaning Tower of Nevyansk and Mainz Cathedral. The cathedral's bronze doors, covered in reliefs by Ivan Vitali, are patterned after the celebrated doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni in Florence, designed by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
Suspended underneath the peak of the dome is a sculpted white dove representing the Holy Spirit. Internal features such as columns, pilasters and statue of Montferrand are composed of multicolored granites and marbles gathered from all parts of Russia; the iconostasis is framed by eight columns of semiprecious stone: six of malachite and two smaller ones of l
Sturgeon
Sturgeon is the common name for the 27 species of fish belonging to the family Acipenseridae. Their evolution dates back to the Triassic some 245 to 208 million years ago; the family is grouped into four genera: Acipenser, Huso and Pseudoscaphirhynchus. Four species may now be extinct. Two related species, Polyodon spathula and Psephurus gladius are of the same order, but are in the family Polyodontidae and are not considered to be "true" sturgeons. Both sturgeons and paddlefish have been referred to as "primitive fishes" because their morphological characteristics have remained unchanged since the earliest fossil record. Sturgeons are native to subtropical and sub-Arctic rivers and coastlines of Eurasia and North America. Sturgeons are long-lived, late-maturing fishes with distinctive characteristics, such as a heterocercal caudal fin similar to that of sharks, an elongated spindle-like body, smooth-skinned and armored with 5 lateral rows of bony plates called scutes. Several species can grow quite large ranging 7–12 feet in length.
The largest sturgeon on record was a Beluga female captured in the Volga estuary in 1827, weighing 1,571 kg and 7.2 m long. Most sturgeons are anadromous bottom-feeders which migrate upstream to spawn but spend most of their lives feeding in river deltas and estuaries; some species inhabit freshwater environments while others inhabit marine environments near coastal areas, are known to venture into open ocean. Several species of sturgeon are harvested for their roe, processed into caviar—a luxury food and the reason why caviar-producing sturgeons are among the most valuable of all wildlife resources, they are vulnerable to overexploitation and other threats, including pollution and habitat fragmentation. Most species of sturgeon are considered to be at risk of extinction, making them more critically endangered than any other group of species. In heraldry, a sturgeon is the symbol on the coat of arms for Saint Amalberga of Temse. Acipenseriform fishes appeared in the fossil record some 245 to 208 million years ago near the end of the Triassic, making them among the most ancient of still-living actinopterygian fishes.
True sturgeons appear in the fossil record during the Upper Cretaceous. In that time, sturgeons have undergone remarkably little morphological change, indicating their evolution has been exceptionally slow and earning them informal status as living fossils; this is explained in part by the long generation interval, tolerance for wide ranges of temperature and salinity, lack of predators due to size and bony plated armor, or scutes, the abundance of prey items in the benthic environment. Although their evolution has been remarkably slow, they are a evolved living fossil, do not resemble their ancestral chondrosteans, they do however still share several primitive characteristics, such as heterocercal tail, reduced squamation, more fin rays than supporting bony elements, unique jaw suspension. Despite the existence of a fossil record, full classification and phylogeny of the sturgeon species has been difficult to determine, in part due to the high individual and ontogenic variation, including geographical clines in certain features, such as rostrum shape, number of scutes and body length.
A further confounding factor is the peculiar ability of sturgeons to produce reproductively viable hybrids between species assigned to different genera. While ray-finned fishes have a long evolutionary history culminating in our most familiar fishes, past adaptive evolutionary radiations have left only a few survivors, like sturgeons and garfish; the wide range of the acipenserids and their endangered status have made collection of systematic materials difficult. These factors have led researchers in the past to identify over 40 additional species that were rejected by scientists, it is still unclear whether the species in the Acipenser and Huso genera are monophyletic or paraphyletic —though it is clear that the morphologically motivated division between these two genera is not supported by the genetic evidence. There is an ongoing effort to resolve the taxonomic confusion using a continuing synthesis of systematic data and molecular techniques. Sturgeons retain several primitive characters among the bony fishes.
Along with other members of the subclass Chondrostei, they are unique among bony fishes because the skeleton is entirely cartilaginous. Notably, the cartilagineous skeleton is not a primitive character, but a derived one: sturgeon ancestors had bony skeletons, they lack vertebral centra, are covered with 5 lateral rows of bony plates called scutes rather than scales. They have four barbels—sensory organs that precede their wide, toothless mouths, they navigate their riverine habitats traveling just off the bottom with their barbels dragging along gravel, or murky substrate. Sturgeon are recognizable for their elongated bodies, flattened rostra, distinctive scutes and barbels, elongated upper tail lobes; the skeletal support for the paired fins of ray-finned fish is inside the body wall, although the ray-like structures in the webbing of the fins can be seen externally. Sturgeon have been referred to as both the Methuselahs of freshwater fish, they are among the largest fish: some beluga in the Caspian Sea attain over 5.5 m and 2000 kg while for kaluga in the Amur River, similar lengths and over 1,000 kg weights have been reported.
They are among the longest-lived of t
Imperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by the founder of the Imperial Moscow University Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years in 1789 by the Neva River; the academy promoted the neoclassical style and technique, sent its promising students to European capitals for further study. Training at the academy was required for artists to make successful careers. Formally abolished in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, the academy was renamed several times, it established free tuition. In 1947 the national institution was moved to Moscow, much of its art collection was moved to the Hermitage; the building in Leningrad was devoted to the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting and Architecture, named in honor of one of Russia's foremost realist artists. Since 1991 it has been called the St. Petersburg Institute for Painting and Architecture.
The academy was located in the Shuvalov Palace on Sadovaya Street. In 1764, Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector, Alexander Kokorinov, to design a new building, it took 25 years to complete the Neoclassical edifice, which opened in 1789. Konstantin Thon was responsible for the sumptuous decoration of the interiors, he designed a quayside in front of the building, with stairs down to the Neva River, adorned it with two 3000-year-old sphinxes, which were transported from Egypt. Ivan Betskoy reorganized the academy into a de facto government department; the academy vigorously promoted the principles of Neoclassicism by sending the most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn the ancient and Renaissance styles of Italy and France. It had its own sizable collection of choice artworks intended for study and copying. In the mid-19th-century, the Academism of training staff, much influenced by the doctrines of Dominique Ingres, was challenged by a younger generation of Russian artists who asserted their freedom to paint in a Realistic style.
The adherents of this movement became known as peredvizhniki. Led by Ivan Kramskoi, they publicly broke with the Academy and organized their own exhibitions, which traveled from town to town across Russia. Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel and some other painters still regarded the academy's training as indispensable for the development of basic professional and technical skills. In 1893, Imperial Academy of Arts was divided into the Academy of Arts itself, responsible for all the artistic work in the Russian Empire, the Higher Art School of the Academy of Arts, which dealt only with academic affairs; the initiator of the reform was the vice-president of Count Ivan Ivanovich Tolstoy. The Charter, approved at the end of 1893, divided the former Academy into two institutions: Аcademy itself, a state institution «for the maintenance and dissemination of art in Russia». Educational institution — Higher Art School at the Academy, managed by the «Council of Professors» with the Rector at the head. Both institutions were located in St. Petersburg in the historic building of the Academy of Arts.
Instead of the old professors, peredvizhniki artists were invited to teaching positions at the Higher Art School. The program of study at the Higher School has changed significantly: the institute of professors and managers was established and free topics for competitive tests were established. New professors came among whom Ilya Repin stood out. Famous artists were invited by the heads of personal workshops: Vladimir Makovsky, Ivan Shishkin, Arkhip Kuindzhi, Aleksey Kivshenko. Came: Alexander Kiselyov, Dmitry Kardovsky, Nikolay Dubovskoy, Nikolay Samokish, Vasily Mate; the Big Gold Medal, which granted the right to a foreign pensioner, was awarded in a competition to which the most talented graduates of the Academy were allowed to complete their studies, awarded to the beginning of the competition with the small gold medal of the Academy «For Success in Drawing». Graduates who received a large gold medal remained at the Academy of Arts for another year; those admitted to the competition were obliged to execute the «program», to draw a picture according to the program, one for all, approved by the Council of the Academy of Arts.
The task, most on a historical theme, was made in such a way that the participant showed all the professional skills and knowledge that he mastered during his studies. Category:Awarded with a large gold medal of the Academy of Arts Category:Imperial Academy of Arts alumni Members of the Imperial Academy of Arts Full Members of the Imperial Academy of Arts After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Academy passed through a series of transformations, it was formally abolished in 1918 and the Petrograd Free Art Educational Studios created in its place. After the Academ
Rybinsk Reservoir
Rybinsk Reservoir, informally called the Rybinsk Sea, is a water reservoir on the Volga River and its tributaries Sheksna and Mologa, formed by Rybinsk Hydroelectric Station dam, located in the Tver and Yaroslavl Oblasts. At the time of its construction, it was the largest man-made body of water on Earth, it is the northernmost point of the Volga. The Volga-Baltic Waterway starts from there; the principal ports are Cherepovets in Vologda Vesyegonsk in Tver Oblast. The construction of the dam in Rybinsk started in 1935; the filling of the reservoir started on April 14, 1941, continued until 1947. Some 150,000 people had to be resettled elsewhere, the historic town of Mologa in Yaroslavl Oblast along with 663 villages have disappeared under water. In recent years however, it has been viewed as a typical example of Stalinism for its disregard of the interests of the local people affected by the project. Today the dam is less important for hydroelectric power supply than it used to be, the ecological damage caused by the reservoir is being reassessed.
Detailed map of the reservoir Webpage of the Leushino Monastery, now submerged under the waters of the Rybinsk Sea
Rybinsky District, Yaroslavl Oblast
Rybinsky District is an administrative and municipal district, one of the seventeen in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia. It is located in the northwest of the oblast; the area of the district is 3,150 square kilometers. Its administrative center is the city of Rybinsk. Population: 28,153. Within the framework of administrative divisions, Rybinsky District is one of the seventeen in the oblast; the city of Rybinsk serves as its administrative center, despite being incorporated separately as a city of oblast significance—an administrative unit with the status equal to that of the districts. As a municipal division, the district is incorporated as Rybinsky Municipal District; the city of oblast significance of Rybinsk is incorporated separately from the district as Rybinsk Urban Okrug. Государственная Дума Ярославской области. Закон №12-з от 7 февраля 2002 г «Об административно-территориальном устройстве Ярославской области и порядке его изменения», в ред. Закона №67-з от 21 декабря 2012 г. «О внесении изменений в отдельные законодательные акты Ярославской области и признании утратившими силу отдельных законодательных актов Ярославской области».
Вступил в силу через шесть месяцев со дня официального опубликования. Опубликован: "Губернские вести", №11, 15 февраля 2002 г.. Губернатор Ярославской области. Постановление №34 от 22 января 2008 г. «Об описании границ административно-территориальных единиц Ярославской области и городских районов города Ярославля», в ред. Постановления №658 от 2 сентября 2008 г. «О внесении изменений в Постановление Губернатора области от 22.01.2008 №34». Вступил в силу с 22 января 2008 г. Опубликован: "Губернские вести", №7, 30 января 2008 г.. Государственная Дума Ярославской области. Закон №65-з от 21 декабря 2004 г. «О наименованиях, границах и статусе муниципальных образований Ярославской области», в ред. Закона №59-з от 28 декабря 2011 г «Об изменении статуса рабочего посёлка Песочное Рыбинского района и о внесении изменений в отдельные законодательные акты Ярославской области». Вступил в силу через 10 дней со дня официального опубликования. Опубликован: "Губернские вести", №70, 23 декабря 2004 г
Confluence
In geography, a confluence occurs where two or more flowing bodies of water join together to form a single channel. A confluence can occur in several configurations: at the point where a tributary joins a larger river. Confluences are studied in a variety of sciences. Hydrology studies the characteristic flow patterns of confluences and how they give rise to patterns of erosion and scour pools; the water flows and their consequences are studied with mathematical models. Confluences are relevant to the distribution of living organisms as well; the United States Geological Survey gives an example: "chemical changes occur when a stream contaminated with acid mine drainage combines with a stream with near-neutral pH water. According to Lynch, "the color of each river is determined by many things: type and amount of vegetation in the watershed, geological properties, dissolved chemicals and biologic content – algae." Lynch notes that color differences can persist for miles downstream before they blend completely.
Hydrodynamic behaviour of flow in a confluence can be divided into six distinct features which are called confluence flow zones. These include Stagnation zone Flow deflection zone Flow separation zone / recirculation zone Maximum velocity zone Flow recovery zone Shear layers Since rivers serve as political boundaries, confluences sometimes demarcate three abutting political entities, such as nations, states, or provinces, forming a tripoint. Various examples are found in the list below. A number of major cities, such as Chongqing, St. Louis, Khartoum, arose at confluences. Within a city, a confluence forms a visually prominent point, so that confluences are sometimes chosen as the site of prominent public buildings or monuments, as in Koblenz and Winnipeg. Cities often build parks at confluences, sometimes as projects of municipal improvement, as at Portland and Pittsburgh. In other cases, a confluence is an industrial site, as in Mannheim. A confluence lies in the shared floodplain of the two rivers and nothing is built on it, for example at Manaus, described below.
One other way that confluences may be employed by humans is as a sacred place in a religion. Rogers suggests that for the ancient peoples of the Iron Age in northwest Europe, watery locations were sacred sources and confluences. Pre-Christian Slavic peoples chose confluences as the sites for fortified triangular temples, where they practiced human sacrifice and other sacred rites. In Hinduism, the confluence of two sacred rivers is a pilgrimage site for ritual bathing. In Pittsburgh, a number of adherents to Mayanism consider their city's confluence to be sacred. At Lokoja, the Benue River flows into the Niger. At Kazungula in Zambia, the Chobe River flows into the Zambezi; the confluence defines the tripoint of Zambia and Namibia. The land border between Botswana and Zimbabwe to the east reaches the Zambezi at this confluence, so there is a second tripoint only 150 meters downstream from the first. See Kazungula and Quadripoint, Gallery below for image; the Sudanese capital of Khartoum is located at the confluence of the White Nile and the Blue Nile, the beginning of the Nile.
82 km north of Basra in Iraq at the town of Al-Qurnah is the confluence of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, forming the Shatt al-Arab. At Devprayag in India, the Ganges River originates at the confluence of the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda. Near Allahabad, the Yamuna flows into the Ganges. In Hinduism, this is a pilgrimage site for ritual bathing. In Hindu belief the site is held to be a triple confluence, the third river being the metaphysical Sarasvati. Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, is where the Gombak River flows into the Klang River at the site of the Jamek Mosque; the Kolam Biru, a pool with elaborate fountains, has been installed at the apex of the confluence. The Nam Khan River flows into the Mekong at Luang Prabang in Laos; the Jialing flows into the Yangtze at Chongqing in China. The confluence forms a focal point in the city, marked by Chaotianmen Square, built in 1998. In the Far East, the Amur forms the international boundary between Russia; the Ussuri, which demarcates the border, flows into the Amur at a point midway between Fuyuan in China and Khabarovsk in Russia.
The apex of the confluence is located in a rural area, part of China, where a commemorative park, Dongji Square, has been built.
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Kingsport, Tennessee, United States (1989)
