1.
Siversk
–
Siversk is a city in Bakhmut Raion of Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine situated 99 km north of Donetsk. There are some industrial factories located within the raion, notably the Stroidetal brick factory, Siversk is a former sovhoz by the name of Yamskyi. The town was founded in 1913 because of the operation of the mine near the railway station of Yama built in 1910. The town received city status in 1961 and was renamed Siversk in 1973, on 10 July 2014, Ukrainian forces reportedly secured the town from pro-Russian separatists. Recent population estimates or census results
Siversk
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Railway station in Siversk
Siversk
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Bakhmutka river near Siversk
Siversk
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Siversk dolomite plant
Siversk
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Soviet architecture in Siversk
2.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
Geographic coordinate system
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Longitude lines are perpendicular and latitude lines are parallel to the equator.
3.
Subdivisions of Russia
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Russia is divided into several types and levels of subdivisions. Since March 18,2014, the Russian Federation consisted of eighty-five federal subjects that are constituent members of the Federation, however, two of these federal subjects—the Republic of Crimea and the federal city of Sevastopol—are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. All federal subjects are of equal rights in the sense that they have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council. They do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy, there are 6 types of federal subjects—22 republics,9 krais,46 oblasts,3 federal cities,1 autonomous oblast, and 4 autonomous okrugs. According to the Treaty, the Republic of Crimea is accepted as a subject with the status of a republic while the City of Sevastopol has received federal city status. Neither the Republic of Crimea nor the city of Sevastopol are politically recognized as parts of Russia by most countries and this was interpreted by the governments of the federal subjects as a sign that the matters of the administrative-territorial divisions became solely the responsibility of the federal subjects. As a result, the modern structures of the federal subjects vary significantly from one federal subject to another. Autonomous okrugs, while being under the jurisdiction of federal subject, are still constitutionally recognized as federal subjects on their own right. Chukotka Autonomous Okrug is an exception in that it is not administratively subordinated to any federal subject of Russia. Okrugs are usually former autonomous okrugs that lost their federal subject status due to a merger with another federal subject. According to the law, the units of the division are as follows, Municipal district. In practice, municipal districts are formed within the boundaries of existing administrative districts. In practice, urban okrugs are usually formed within the boundaries of existing cities of federal subject significance, intra-urban territory of a federal city, a part of a federal citys territory. In Moscow, these are called municipal formations, in St. Petersburg—municipal okrugs, towns, in Sevastopol, they are known as municipal okrugs and a town. Territories not included as a part of municipal formations are known as inter-settlement territories and this municipal formation type would typically be established within the borders of existing city districts. In June 2014, Chelyabinsky Urban Okrug became the first urban okrug to implement intra-urban divisions, all of the federal subjects are grouped into nine federal districts, each administered by an envoy appointed by the President of Russia. For economic and statistical purposes the federal subjects are grouped into twelve economic regions, economic regions and their parts sharing common economic trends are in turn grouped into economic zones and macrozones. In order for the Armed Forces to provide an efficient management of units, their training, and other operational activities
Subdivisions of Russia
–
Russia
4.
Russia
–
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
Russia
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Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
Russia
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Flag
Russia
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The
Baptism of Kievans, by
Klavdy Lebedev
Russia
–
Sergius of Radonezh blessing
Dmitry Donskoy in
Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the
Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by
Ernst Lissner
5.
Federal subjects of Russia
–
Since March 18,2014, the Russian Federation constitutionally consists of 85 federal subjects, although the two most recently added subjects are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. Three Russian cities of importance have a status of both city and separate federal subject which comprises other cities and towns within federal city keeping old structure of postal address. In 1993, there were 89 federal subjects listed, by 2008, the number of federal subjects had been decreased to 83 because of several mergers. In 2014, Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea became the 84th and 85th federal subjects of Russia, every federal subject has its own head, a parliament, and a constitutional court. Federal subjects have their own constitution and legislation, subjects have equal rights in relations with federal government bodies. The federal subjects have equal representation—two delegates each—in the Federation Council and they do, however, differ in the degree of autonomy they enjoy. Composition of post-Soviet Russia was formed during the history of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic within the USSR, the Federation Treaty was included in the text of the 1978 Constitution of the Russian SFSR. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the system became de jure closer to other modern federal states with a republican form of government in the world. There are several groupings of Russian regions, Federal subjects should not be confused with the eight Federal districts which are not subdivisions of Russia, are much larger and each encompass many federal subjects. Federal districts were created by Executive Order of the President of Russia specially for presidential envoys, an official government translation of the Constitution of Russia in Article 5 states,1. Another translation of the Constitution of Russia gives for article 65, each federal subject belongs to one of the following types, b. ^ According to Article 13 of the Charter of Leningrad Oblast, however, St. Petersburg is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ According to Article 24 of the Charter of Moscow Oblast, however, Moscow is not officially named to be the administrative center of the oblast. ^ Not recognized internationally as a part of Russia, the merging process was finished on March 1,2008. No new mergers have been planned since March 2008, Федерального конституционного закона №7-ФКЗ от30 декабря2008 г. Вступил в силу со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Российская газета, №237,25 декабря1993 г
Federal subjects of Russia
–
Russia
6.
Tomsk Oblast
–
Tomsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. It lies in the southeastern West Siberian Plain, in the southwest of the Siberian Federal District and its administrative center is the city of Tomsk. The development of the territory which now constitutes the oblast began in the early 17th century, Tomsk itself was founded in 1604. Some of the oblasts 316,900 square kilometers territory is inaccessible because it is covered with taiga woods, Tomsk oblast contains Vasyugan Swamp, the biggest swamp in the northern hemisphere. The oblast borders with Krasnoyarsk Krai and Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, long before Siberia became part of Russia, the territory of modern Tomsk Oblast was inhabited by people belonging to the taiga Kulayskoy civilization known for its bronze artifacts. The development of the began in the end of the 16th. The oldest settlement in the area is the village Narym, founded in 1596, the administrative center of the province, the city of Tomsk, was founded in 1604. From 1719 to 1804 in the province of Tobolsk, in 1782, is formed by Tomskaya oblast in the composition of Tobolsky namestnichestva. In 1804 the Tomsk province was founded, which existed until 1925, Tomsk oblast was established August 13,1944 by isolation from the Novosibirsk region of the districts and the former Narym District. On July 26,1995 the Oblasts charter was adopted, since 1991, CPSU lost all the power, and the head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor was appointed/elected alongside elected regional parliament. The Charter of Tomsk Oblast is the law of the region. The Legislative Duma of Tomsk Oblast is the provinces standing legislative body, the Legislative Duma exercises its authority by passing laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and by supervising the implementation and observance of the laws and other legal acts passed by it. Tomsk Oblast is rich in resources, particularly oil, natural gas, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, peat. Forests are also among the most significant assets of the oblast, industry makes up about half of the regional GDP, while agriculture contributes 19% and construction 13%. Chemical and oil industries are the most developed in the region, the oblasts major export items are, oil, methanol, and machines and equipment. Oil extraction and lumbering are the business of the regions joint ventures. Major ethnic groups living in the oblast are Russians, Ukrainian-Belorussian, Siberian Tatars & Volga German, slavs, Finns and Germans make up more than 94. 4% of the population, while Tatars, Chuvash, Armenes and Khants make up the remaining part. Additionally,45,016 people were registered from administrative databases and it is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group
Tomsk Oblast
–
postage stamp depicting the oblast, issued in 2009
Tomsk Oblast
Tomsk Oblast
–
Oblast Administration building in Tomsk, 2000
7.
Russian Census (2010)
–
The Russian Census of 2010 is the first census of the Russian Federation population since 2002 and the second after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Preparations for the census began in 2007 and it took place between October 14 and October 25, the census was originally scheduled for October 2010, but was moved to 2013 allegedly for financial reasons, although it was also speculated that political motives were influential in the decision. However, in late 2009 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the Government of Russia allocated 10.5 billion rubles in order to conduct the census as originally scheduled, Results showed the population to stand at 142.9 million. Since the previous 2002 census, population has decreased by 2.3 million, according to the 2010 census, urban population is 105.3 million, rural population is 37.5 million. The urbanisation rate is currently 73. 7%, the median age is 38 years. The ethnic composition is dominated by Russians, demographics of Russia Russian Census 2010 final results Results of 2010 All-Russia population census Official website of the 2010 Census
Russian Census (2010)
–
Inside a census station in
Severodvinsk
8.
Time in Russia
–
There are eleven time zones in Russia, which currently observe times ranging from UTC+02,00 to UTC+12,00. Daylight saving time is not used in Russia, since 4 December 2016, the time zones are as follows, Daylight saving time in Russia was originally introduced on 30 June 1917 by a decree of the Russian Provisional Government. However, it was abandoned by a Decree of the Soviet government five months later, Daylight saving time was re-introduced in the USSR on 1 April 1981, by a decision of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The usage of daylight saving time continued after the Soviet collapse but ended in 2011, on 27 March 2011, clocks were advanced as usual, but they did not go back on 30 October 2011, effectively making Moscow Time UTC+4 permanently. In the Russian Empire, most of the observed solar time. During the late 19th century, Moscow Mean Time was introduced on 1 January 1880,2,30,17 corresponds to 37. 6166667°, the longitude of Moscow. Other parts of Russia kept solar time for several years. At this time, Russia had the Julian calendar with 12 or 13 days less date compared to Western Europe, so it is possible to say the Moscow actually had GMT-285,29,43, GMT-309,29,43 and GMT-309,28,41. Russia adopted the Gregorian calendar on Thursday,14 February 1918, after the Soviet Union was created, Moscow Time became UTC+2 and the various other time zones were introduced throughout Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union, for example Irkutsk Time GMT+7. Between 1917-1922 the time was ordered, with daylight savings time some of those years. On 21 June 1930, the Soviet Union advanced all clocks by one hour, Moscow Time was now GMT+3 and Irkutsk Time GMT+8. On 1 April 1981, daylight saving time was re-introduced, clocks were moved one hour forward on 1 April, on 1 April 1981,00,00,00, Oymyakonsky District changed its time zone from MSK+6 to MSK+8. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+9 to UTC+12, on 1 April 1982,00,00,00, Chukotka Autonomous Okrug changed its time zone from MSK+10 to MSK+9, thus eliminating Anadyr Time. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+14 to UTC+13, on 27 March 1988,02,00,00, Saratov and Volgograd oblasts changed its time zone from MSK+1 to MSK. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+5 to UTC+4, on 23 May 1993,00,00,00, Novosibirsk Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. The change occurred during DST effectively changing the offset from UTC+8 to UTC+7, on 28 May 1995,00,00,00, Altai Krai and Altai Republic changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. On 30 March 1997,02,00,00, Sakhalin Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+8 to MSK+7, on 1 May 2002,03,00,00, Tomsk Oblast changed its time zone from MSK+4 to MSK+3. On 1 January 2004,00,00,00, New Siberian Islands, Tomponsky District, the following time zone changes occurred on 28 March 2010, which, in particular, led to abolition of two of the eleven time zones
Time in Russia
–
Time in Russia Time
9.
Krasnoyarsk Time
–
Krasnoyarsk Time is the time zone seven hours ahead of UTC and 4 hours ahead of Moscow Time. KRAT is the time zone for central and east Siberian regions of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Kemerovo Oblast, Khakassia. Novosibirsk Oblast used this time zone until 1993 when it was known as Novosibirsk Time NOVT/NOVST, between 27 March 2011 and 25 October 2014, Krasnoyarsk Time was fixed at UTC+8. The IANA time zone identifier is Asia/Krasnoyarsk
Krasnoyarsk Time
–
Time in Russia Time
10.
Geographical renaming
–
Geographical renaming is the changing of the name of a geographical feature or area. This can range from the change of a street name to a highly disputed change to the name of a country. Some names are changed locally but the new names are not recognised by other countries, other names may not be officially recognised but remain in common use. Many places have different names in different languages, and a change of language in official or general use has resulted in what is arguably a change of name. There are many reasons to undertake renaming, with political motivation being the cause, for example many places in the former Soviet Union. Sometimes a place reverts to its former name, one of the most common reasons for a country changing its name is newly acquired independence. When borders are changed, sometimes due to a splitting or two countries joining together, the names of the relevant areas can change. This, however, is more the creation of a different entity than an act of geographical renaming, often the older name will persist in colloquial expressions. For example, the known in English as Peking duck retained that name even when the Chinese capital changed its transliteration to Beijing. Names in non-Roman characters can also be spelled differently when Romanised in different European languages. China developed and adopted the pinyin romanisation system in February 1958 in place of previous systems such as the postal romanization, many Chinese geographical entities thus had their English names changed. Pinyin was adopted by the International Organization for Standardisation in 1982, the system is not used by North Korea. Transfer of a city between countries with different patterns of phonology can result in seeming changes of name. Changes can be so slight as Straßburg and Strasbourg, some are translations, Karlsbad became Karlovy Vary. When the formerly-German city of Danzig came under Polish rule, it known in English by its Polish name of Gdańsk. The pattern is far from uniform, and it takes time, decolonisation in India saw a trend to change the established English names of cities to the names in the local language. Since then, changes have included Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai, for example, it changed Dihua to Ürümqi and Zhenxi to Barkol. It peacefully dissolved into the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1993, yugoslavia was originally Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, created by joining Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of Montenegro and parts of Austro-Hungarian Empire inhabited by South Slavs
Geographical renaming
–
Sea of Japan naming dispute
11.
Wikimedia Commons
–
Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound, and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, the repository contains over 38 million media files. In July 2013, the number of edits on Commons reached 100,000,000, the project was proposed by Erik Möller in March 2004 and launched on September 7,2004. The expression educational is to be according to its broad meaning of providing knowledge. Wikimedia Commons itself does not allow fair use or uploads under non-free licenses, for this reason, Wikimedia Commons always hosts freely licensed media and deletes copyright violations. The default language for Commons is English, but registered users can customize their interface to use any other user interface translations. Many content pages, in particular policy pages and portals, have also translated into various languages. Files on Wikimedia Commons are categorized using MediaWikis category system, in addition, they are often collected on individual topical gallery pages. While the project was proposed to also contain free text files. In 2012, BuzzFeed described Wikimedia Commons as littered with dicks, in 2010, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported Wikimedia Commons to the FBI for hosting sexualized images of children known as lolicon. Wales responded to the backlash from the Commons community by voluntarily relinquishing some site privileges, over time, additional functionality has been developed to interface Wikimedia Commons with the other Wikimedia projects. Specialized uploading tools and scripts such as Commonist have been created to simplify the process of uploading large numbers of files. In order to free content photos uploaded to Flickr, users can participate in a defunct collaborative external review process. The site has three mechanisms for recognizing quality works, one is known as Featured pictures, where works are nominated and other community members vote to accept or reject the nomination. This process began in November 2004, another process known as Quality images began in June 2006, and has a simpler nomination process comparable to Featured pictures. Quality images only accepts works created by Wikimedia users, whereas Featured pictures additionally accepts nominations of works by third parties such as NASA, the three mentioned processes select a slight part from the total number of files. However, Commons collects files of all quality levels, from the most professional level across simple documental, files with specific defects can be tagged for improvement and warning or even proposed for deletion but there exists no process of systematic rating of all files. The site held its inaugural Picture of the Year competition, for 2006, all images that were made a Featured picture during 2006 were eligible, and voted on by eligible Wikimedia users during two rounds of voting
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
Wikimedia Commons
12.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
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Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
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Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
–
This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
–
The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
13.
Closed city
–
A closed city or closed town is a settlement where travel or residency restrictions are applied so that specific authorization is required to visit or remain overnight. They may be sensitive military establishments or secret research installations which require more space or freedom than is available in a conventional military base. There may also be a variety of permanent residents including close family members of workers or trusted traders who are not directly connected with its clandestine purposes. Closed cities are a feature of heavily militarized countries and secretive regimes, in modern Russia, such places are officially known as closed administrative-territorial formations. Sometimes closed cities may only be represented on classified maps which are not available to the general public, in some cases there may be no road signs or directions to closed cities, and they are usually omitted from railroad time tables and bus routes. Sometimes closed cities may be indicated obliquely as an insignificant village. For mail delivery, a city is usually named as the nearest large city. The actual settlement can be distant from its namesakes, for instance, Sarov, designated Arzamas-16, is in the federal republic of Mordovia. People not dwelling in a city were subject to document checks and security checkpoints. To relocate to the city, one would need security clearance by the Organization running it. The closed city was guarded by a security perimeter with barbed wire and towers. The very fact of such an existence was often classified. This lack of freedom was often compensated by better housing conditions, also, in the USSR, people working with classified information received a salary bonus. They fell into two distinct categories, the first category comprised relatively small communities with sensitive military, industrial, or scientific facilities, such as arms plants or nuclear research sites. Examples are the towns of Ozyorsk with a plutonium production plant, and Sillamäe. Even Soviet citizens were not allowed access to places without proper authorization. In addition to this, some cities were closed for unauthorized access to foreigners. These included cities like Perm, a center for Soviet tank production, and Vladivostok, the second category consisted of border cities which were closed for security purposes
Closed city
–
Central entry checkpoint to the closed city of
Seversk, Tomsk Oblast, Russia
Closed city
–
A view of
Zelenogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia
Closed city
–
A checkpoint in the closed city of
Zheleznogorsk, in
Krasnoyarsk Krai,
Russia
Closed city
–
A view of
Severomorsk, Murmansk Oblast, Russia
14.
Tomsk
–
Tomsk is a city and the administrative center of Tomsk Oblast in Russia, located on the Tom River. One of the oldest towns in Siberia, Tomsk celebrated its 410th anniversary in 2014, Tomsk originated with a decree from Tsar Boris Godunov in 1604 after Toian, the Tatar duke of Eushta, asked for the Tsars protection against Kirghiz bandits. Toian ceded the land for the fortress to the Tsar, the new status brought development and the city grew quickly. In time, Novosibirsk would surpass Tomsk in importance, in the mid-19th century one fifth of the citys residents were exiles. However, within a few years, the city would be reinvented as the center of Siberia with the establishment of Tomsk State University. By World War II, every resident of the city was a student. After the October Revolution of 1917 the city became a center of the White movement, led by Anatoly Pepelyayev and Maria Bochkareva. After the victory of the Red Army in the 1920s, Soviet authorities incorporated Tomsk into the West Siberian Krai, like many Siberian cities, Tomsk became the new home for many factories relocated out of the war zone from 1941. The resulting growth of the city led the Soviet government to establish the new Tomsk Oblast, during the Cold War Tomsk became one of many designated closed cities, which outsiders and, in particular, foreigners, could not visit. Tomsk-7 received municipal status in 1956 and was renamed Seversk in 1992, as a municipal division, Tomsk City Under Oblast Jurisdiction is incorporated as Tomsk Urban Okrug. Tomsk is divided into four city districts, Kirovsky, Leninsky, Oktyabrsky, Tomsk has a humid continental climate barely escaping a subarctic classification. The annual average temperature is +0.87 °C, winters are severe and lengthy, and the lowest recorded temperature was −55 °C in January 1931. However, the temperature in January is between −21 °C and −13 °C. The average temperature in July is +18.7 °C, the total annual rainfall is 568 millimeters. In 2006, Tomsk experienced what might have been its first recorded winds of hurricane force, Tomsk is governed by a mayor and a 33-member Duma. The current mayor, appointed in 2013, is Ivan Klyain, of the 33 members,16 are elected from the eight double mandate districts while 17 are chosen from party lists. In the October 2005 local elections, United Russia was expected to cruise to a victory, however. There are three powerstations in the city, TEC-1 GRES-2 TEC-3 Tomsk consumes more energy than it produces
Tomsk
–
The "Where Tomsk was Founded" marker at the Tomsk History Museum
Tomsk
Tomsk
–
Tomsk City Administration building
Tomsk
–
Tomsk, view from the fire-observation tower
15.
Tom River
–
The Tom River is a river in Russia, a right tributary of the Ob River in Central Siberia. Its watershed lies within the Republic of Khakassia, Kemerovo Oblast, the river is 827 kilometers long. It flows from the Abakan Range northward through the Kuznetsk Basin and it joins the Ob approximately 50 kilometers north of Tomsk. Cities on the Tom River include Mezhdurechensk, Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo, Yurga, Tomsk, the Aba people live near the Tom River
Tom River
–
Tom near Novokuznetsk
Tom River
–
Tom River during the hot summer 2012
Tom River
–
A record flooding of the Tom, April 29, 2010; caused by the floating of ice on the river in November 2009
Tom River
–
Tom river near
Tomsk
16.
Russian Census (2002)
–
Russian Census of 2002 was the first census of the Russian Federation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, carried out on October 9 through October 16,2002. It was carried out by the Russian Federal Service of State Statistics, the census data were collected as of midnight October 9,2002. The census was intended to collect statistical information about the resident population of Russian Federation. All detailed census tables are for the resident population, a sample of the participants were also asked more detailed questions about their economic and housing situation. Also, the census also counted two more groups of people, Russian citizens currently living abroad for more one year in connection with the employment with the federal government. Persons permanently residing abroad, but temporarily present in Russia, Foreign citizens present in Russia as employees of foreign diplomatic missions or international organizations, and members of their household, were excluded from the census altogether. The Census recorded the resident population of 145,166,731 persons and that included urban population of 106,429,000 and rural population of 38,738,000. The non-resident populations included, Russian citizens living abroad in connection with the government service,107,288. Census participants were asked what country they were citizens of,142,442,000 respondents reported being Russian citizens, among them,44,000 also had citizenship of another country. Among Russias resident population,1,025,413 foreign citizens and 429,881 stateless persons were counted,1,269,023 persons did not report their citizenship. Among the questions asked were Are you competent in the Russian language, and What other languages are you competent in. As the census manual explained, competence meant either the ability to speak, read and write a language, the questions did not distinguish native and non-native speakers, nor did they try to measure the degree of language competence. For small children, presumably, the answer was based on the language spoken by the parents. 142.6 million of the responders claimed competence in Russian, other widely reported languages are listed in the table below. 1.42 million responders did not provide language information, for a more detailed list, see List of languages of Russia. Demographics of Russia Russian Empire Census Soviet Census Official census home page Population of Chechnya, was the Census correct
Russian Census (2002)
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Contents
17.
Nuclear reactor
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This article is a subarticle of Nuclear power. A nuclear reactor, formerly known as a pile, is a device used to initiate. Nuclear reactors are used at power plants for electricity generation. Heat from nuclear fission is passed to a fluid, which runs through steam turbines. These either drive a ships propellers or turn electrical generators, Nuclear generated steam in principle can be used for industrial process heat or for district heating. Some reactors are used to produce isotopes for medical and industrial use, some are run only for research. As of April 2014, the IAEA reports there are 435 nuclear power reactors in operation, when a large fissile atomic nucleus such as uranium-235 or plutonium-239 absorbs a neutron, it may undergo nuclear fission. The heavy nucleus splits into two or more nuclei, releasing kinetic energy, gamma radiation, and free neutrons. A portion of neutrons may later be absorbed by other fissile atoms and trigger further fission events, which release more neutrons. This is known as a chain reaction. To control such a chain reaction, neutron poisons and neutron moderators can change the portion of neutrons that will go on to cause more fission. Nuclear reactors generally have automatic and manual systems to shut the fission reaction down if monitoring detects unsafe conditions, commonly-used moderators include regular water, solid graphite and heavy water. Some experimental types of reactor have used beryllium, and hydrocarbons have been suggested as another possibility, the reactor core generates heat in a number of ways, The kinetic energy of fission products is converted to thermal energy when these nuclei collide with nearby atoms. The reactor absorbs some of the rays produced during fission. Heat is produced by the decay of fission products and materials that have been activated by neutron absorption. This decay heat-source will remain for some even after the reactor is shut down. A kilogram of uranium-235 converted via nuclear processes releases approximately three times more energy than a kilogram of coal burned conventionally. A nuclear reactor coolant — usually water but sometimes a gas or a metal or molten salt — is circulated past the reactor core to absorb the heat that it generates
Nuclear reactor
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Core of
CROCUS, a small nuclear reactor used for research at the
EPFL in Switzerland
Nuclear reactor
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Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn in their laboratory.
Nuclear reactor
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The control room of
NC State 's Pulstar Nuclear Reactor.
Nuclear reactor
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Treatment of the interior part of a
VVER-1000 reactor frame on
Atommash.
18.
Uranium
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Uranium is a chemical element with symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons, Uranium is weakly radioactive because all its isotopes are unstable. The most common isotopes in natural uranium are uranium-238 and uranium-235, Uranium has the highest atomic weight of the primordially occurring elements. Its density is about 70% higher than that of lead, and it occurs naturally in low concentrations of a few parts per million in soil, rock and water, and is commercially extracted from uranium-bearing minerals such as uraninite. In nature, uranium is found as uranium-238, uranium-235, Uranium decays slowly by emitting an alpha particle. The half-life of uranium-238 is about 4.47 billion years, many contemporary uses of uranium exploit its unique nuclear properties. Uranium-235 is the naturally occurring fissile isotope, which makes it widely used in nuclear power plants. However, because of the amounts found in nature, uranium needs to undergo enrichment so that enough uranium-235 is present. Uranium-238 is fissionable by fast neutrons, and is fertile, meaning it can be transmuted to fissile plutonium-239 in a nuclear reactor, another fissile isotope, uranium-233, can be produced from natural thorium and is also important in nuclear technology. In sufficient concentration, these maintain a sustained nuclear chain reaction. This generates the heat in nuclear reactors, and produces the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Depleted uranium is used in kinetic energy penetrators and armor plating, Uranium is used as a colorant in uranium glass, producing lemon yellow to green colors. Uranium glass fluoresces green in ultraviolet light and it was also used for tinting and shading in early photography. The 1789 discovery of uranium in the mineral pitchblende is credited to Martin Heinrich Klaproth, eugène-Melchior Péligot was the first person to isolate the metal and its radioactive properties were discovered in 1896 by Henri Becquerel. An ensuing arms race during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced tens of thousands of weapons that used uranium metal. The security of those weapons and their fissile material following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 is a concern for public health. When refined, uranium is a white, weakly radioactive metal
Uranium
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Uranium, 92 U
Uranium
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Depleted uranium is used by various militaries as high-density penetrators
Uranium
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The most visible civilian use of uranium is as the thermal power source used in
nuclear power plants
Uranium
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Uranium glass glowing under
UV light
19.
Plutonium
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Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states and it reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that can expand the sample up to 70% in volume and it is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous. Plutonium was first produced and isolated on December 14,1940 by Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, Joseph W. Kennedy, Edwin M. McMillan, wahl by deuteron bombardment of uranium-238 in the 60-inch cyclotron at the University of California, Berkeley. They first synthesized neptunium-238 which subsequently beta-decayed to form a new element with atomic number 94. Uranium had been named after the planet Uranus and neptunium after the planet Neptune, and so element 94 was named after Pluto, wartime secrecy prevented them from announcing the discovery until 1948. Plutonium is the heaviest element to occur in nature as trace quantities arising similarly from the capture of natural uranium-238. Both plutonium-239 and plutonium-241 are fissile, meaning that they can sustain a chain reaction, leading to applications in nuclear weapons. Plutonium-240 exhibits a high rate of fission, raising the neutron flux of any sample containing it. The presence of plutonium-240 limits a plutonium samples usability for weapons or its quality as reactor fuel, plutonium-238 has a half-life of 88 years and emits alpha particles. It is a source in radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which are used to power some spacecraft. Plutonium isotopes are expensive and inconvenient to separate, so particular isotopes are usually manufactured in specialized reactors, producing plutonium in useful quantities for the first time was a major part of the Manhattan Project during World War II that developed the first atomic bombs. The Fat Man bombs used in the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945, Human radiation experiments studying plutonium were conducted without informed consent, and several criticality accidents, some lethal, occurred after the war. Disposal of plutonium waste from power plants and dismantled nuclear weapons built during the Cold War is a nuclear-proliferation. Other sources of plutonium in the environment are fallout from numerous above-ground nuclear tests, Plutonium, like most metals, has a bright silvery appearance at first, much like nickel, but it oxidizes very quickly to a dull gray, although yellow and olive green are also reported. At room temperature plutonium is in its α form and this, the most common structural form of the element, is about as hard and brittle as gray cast iron unless it is alloyed with other metals to make it soft and ductile. Unlike most metals, it is not a conductor of heat or electricity
Plutonium
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Plutonium, 94 Pu
Plutonium
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A ring of
weapons-grade 99.96% pure electrorefined plutonium, enough for one
bomb core. The ring weighs 5.3 kg, is ca. 11 cm in diameter and its shape helps with
criticality safety.
Plutonium
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Various oxidation states of plutonium in solution
Plutonium
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Plutonium
pyrophoricity can cause it to look like a glowing ember under certain conditions.
20.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
United States
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Native Americans meeting with Europeans, 1764
United States
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Flag
United States
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The signing of the
Mayflower Compact, 1620.
United States
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The
Declaration of Independence: the
Committee of Five presenting their draft to the
Second Continental Congress in 1776
21.
Nuclear weapon
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A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from small amounts of matter. The first test of a bomb released the same amount of energy as approximately 20,000 tons of TNT. The first thermonuclear bomb test released the same amount of energy as approximately 10 million tons of TNT, a thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons of TNT. A nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate a city by blast, fire. Nuclear weapons are considered weapons of destruction, and their use. Nuclear weapons have been used twice in nuclear warfare, both times by the United States against Japan near the end of World War II, the bombings resulted in the deaths of approximately 200,000 civilians and military personnel from acute injuries sustained from the explosions. The ethics of the bombings and their role in Japans surrender remain the subject of scholarly, since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for the purposes of testing and demonstration. Only a few nations possess such weapons or are suspected of seeking them, israel is also believed to possess nuclear weapons, though in a policy of deliberate ambiguity, it does not acknowledge having them. Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands are nuclear weapons sharing states, south Africa is the only country to have independently developed and then renounced and dismantled its nuclear weapons. Modernisation of weapons continues to occur, all existing nuclear weapons derive some of their explosive energy from nuclear fission reactions. Weapons whose explosive output is exclusively from fission reactions are commonly referred to as bombs or atom bombs. This has long noted as something of a misnomer, as their energy comes from the nucleus of the atom. The latter approach is considered more sophisticated than the former and only the approach can be used if the fissile material is plutonium. A major challenge in all nuclear weapon designs is to ensure that a significant fraction of the fuel is consumed before the weapon destroys itself. The amount of energy released by fission bombs can range from the equivalent of just under a ton to upwards of 500,000 tons of TNT, all fission reactions necessarily generate fission products, the radioactive remains of the atomic nuclei split by the fission reactions. Many fission products are highly radioactive or moderately radioactive. Fission products are the radioactive component of nuclear fallout
Nuclear weapon
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The
mushroom cloud of the
atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 rose some 11 miles (18 km) above the bomb's
hypocenter.
Nuclear weapon
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Nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapon
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Edward Teller, often referred to as the "father of the hydrogen bomb"
Nuclear weapon
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A demilitarized and
commercial launch of the Russian
Strategic Rocket Forces R-36
ICBM; also known by the NATO reporting name:
SS-18 Satan. Upon its first fielding in the late 1960s, the SS-18 remains the single highest
throw weight missile delivery system ever built.
22.
Nuclear accident
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A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency as an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility. Examples include lethal effects to individuals, large radioactivity release to the environment, the prime example of a major nuclear accident is one in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of radioactivity are released, such as in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The impact of nuclear accidents has been a topic of debate since the first nuclear reactors were constructed in 1954, as of 2014, there have been more than 100 serious nuclear accidents and incidents from the use of nuclear power. Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and about 60% of all nuclear-related accidents have occurred in the USA, serious nuclear power plant accidents include the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Chernobyl disaster, Three Mile Island accident, and the SL-1 accident. Nuclear power accidents can involve loss of life and large costs for remediation work. Nuclear-powered submarine core meltdown and other include the K-19, K-11, K-27, K-140, K-429, K-222. The IAEA maintains a website reporting recent accidents, one of the worst nuclear accidents to date was the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in 1986 in Ukraine. The accident killed 31 people directly and damaged approximately $7 billion of property, a study published in 2005 estimates that there will eventually be up to 4,000 additional cancer deaths related to the accident among those exposed to significant radiation levels. Radioactive fallout from the accident was concentrated in areas of Belarus, Ukraine, other studies have estimated as many as over a million eventual cancer deaths from Chernobyl. Estimates of eventual deaths from cancer are highly contested, industry, UN and DOE agencies claim low numbers of legally provable cancer deaths will be traceable to the disaster. The UN, DOE and industry agencies all use the limits of the epidemiological resolvable deaths as the cutoff below which they cannot be proven to come from the disaster. These are two different concepts and lead to the huge variations in estimates. Both are reasonable projections with different meanings, approximately 350,000 people were forcibly resettled away from these areas soon after the accident. Fifty-seven accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster, and almost two-thirds of all nuclear-related accidents have occurred in the US, there have been comparatively few fatalities associated with nuclear power plant accidents. The vulnerability of nuclear plants to attack is of concern in the area of nuclear safety and security. The United States 9/11 Commission has said that power plants were potential targets originally considered for the September 11,2001 attacks. New reactor designs have features of nuclear safety, which may help. In the United States, the NRC carries out Force on Force exercises at all Nuclear Power Plant sites at least once every three years
Nuclear accident
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Following the 2011 Japanese
Fukushima nuclear disaster, authorities shut down the nation's 54 nuclear power plants. As of 2013, the Fukushima site remains
highly radioactive, with some 160,000 evacuees still living in temporary housing, and some land will be unfarmable for centuries. The
difficult cleanup job will take 40 or more years, and cost tens of billions of dollars.
Nuclear accident
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The
Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, a Japanese nuclear plant with seven units, the largest single nuclear power station in the world, was completely shut down for 21 months following an earthquake in 2007.
Nuclear accident
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The abandoned city of
Prypiat, Ukraine, following the
Chernobyl disaster. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is in the background.
Nuclear accident
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Dr.
Joseph G. Hamilton was the primary researcher for the human plutonium experiments done at U.C. San Francisco from 1944 to 1947. Hamilton wrote a memo in 1950 discouraging further human experiments because the AEC would be left open "to considerable criticism," since the experiments as proposed had "a little of the
Buchenwald touch."
23.
Radioactivity
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A material containing such unstable nuclei is considered radioactive. Certain highly excited short-lived nuclear states can decay through neutron emission, or more rarely, however, for a collection of atoms, the collections expected decay rate is characterized in terms of their measured decay constants or half-lives. This is the basis of radiometric dating, the half-lives of radioactive atoms have no known upper limit, spanning a time range of over 55 orders of magnitude, from nearly instantaneous to far longer than the age of the universe. A radioactive nucleus with spin can have no defined orientation. If there are multiple particles produced during a single decay, as in decay, their relative angular distribution. Such a parent process could be a previous decay, or a nuclear reaction, the decaying nucleus is called the parent radionuclide, and the process produces at least one daughter nuclide. Except for gamma decay or internal conversion from an excited state. When the number of changes, an atom of a different chemical element is created. The first decay processes to be discovered were alpha decay, beta decay, alpha decay occurs when the nucleus ejects an alpha particle. This is the most common process of emitting nucleons, but highly excited nuclei can eject single nucleons, or in the case of cluster decay, specific light nuclei of other elements. Beta decay occurs when the nucleus emits an electron or positron, the nucleus may capture an orbiting electron, causing a proton to convert into a neutron in a process called electron capture. All of these result in a well-defined nuclear transmutation. By contrast, there are radioactive decay processes that do not result in a nuclear transmutation, another type of radioactive decay results in products that vary, appearing as two or more fragments of the original nucleus with a range of possible masses. For a summary table showing the number of stable and radioactive nuclides in each category, there are 29 naturally occurring chemical elements on Earth that are radioactive. They are those that contain 34 radionuclides that date before the time of formation of the solar system, well-known examples are uranium and thorium, but also included are naturally occurring long-lived radioisotopes, such as potassium-40. Radioactivity was discovered in 1896 by the French scientist Henri Becquerel and these materials glow in the dark after exposure to light, and he suspected that the glow produced in cathode ray tubes by X-rays might be associated with phosphorescence. He wrapped a photographic plate in black paper and placed various phosphorescent salts on it, all results were negative until he used uranium salts. The uranium salts caused a blackening of the plate in spite of the plate being wrapped in black paper and these radiations were given the name Becquerel Rays
Radioactivity
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Pierre and Marie Curie in their Paris laboratory, before 1907
Radioactivity
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Alpha decay is one type of radioactive decay, in which an atomic nucleus emits an
alpha particle, and thereby transforms (or "decays") into an atom with a
mass number decreased by 4 and
atomic number decreased by 2.
Radioactivity
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Taking an X-ray image with early
Crookes tube apparatus in 1896. The Crookes tube is visible in the centre. The standing man is viewing his hand with a
fluoroscope screen; this was a common way of setting up the tube. No precautions against radiation exposure are being taken; its hazards were not known at the time.
Radioactivity
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Gamma-ray energy spectrum of uranium ore (inset). Gamma-rays are emitted by decaying
nuclides, and the gamma-ray energy can be used to characterize the decay (which nuclide is decaying to which). Here, using the gamma-ray spectrum, several nuclides that are typical of the decay chain of 238 U have been identified: 226 Ra, 214 Pb, 214 Bi.
24.
Duma
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A duma is a Russian assembly with advisory or legislative functions. The term comes from the Russian verb думать meaning to think or to consider, the first formally constituted duma was the State Duma introduced into the Russian Empire by Tsar Nicholas II in 1906. It was dissolved in 1917 during the Russian Revolution, since 1993, the State Duma is the lower legislative house of the Russian Federation. The term Boyar Duma is used by historians to denote the class of boyars, in 1721, Peter the Great transferred its functions to the Governing Senate. In contemporary sources it is called simply the boyars or the duma. Originally there were ten to twelve boyars and five or six okolnichii, by 1613 it had increased to twenty boyars and eight okolnichii. Lesser nobles, duma gentlemen and secretaries, were added to the duma, in 1676 the number of boyars was increased to 50 and was by then constituted only a third of the duma. Under the reign of Alexander II, several reforms were enacted during the 1860s and 1870s and these included the creation of local political bodies known as zemstvoes. All owners of houses, tax-paying merchants and workmen are enrolled on lists in a descending order according to their assessed wealth. The total valuation is then divided into three parts, representing three groups of electors very unequal in number, each of which elects an equal number of delegates to the municipal duma. The executive is in the hands of a mayor and an uprava. Under Alexander III, however, by laws promulgated in 1892 and 1894, in 1894 municipal institutions, with still more restricted powers, were granted to several towns in Siberia, and in 1895 to some in Caucasia. Under the pressure of the Russian Revolution of 1905, on 6 August 1905, Sergei Witte issued a manifesto about the convocation of the Duma, however, Nicholas II was determined to retain his autocratic power. Just before the creation of the Duma in May 1906, the Tsar issued the Fundamental Laws and it stated in part that the tsars ministers could not be appointed by, and were not responsible to, the Duma, thus denying responsible government at the executive level. Furthermore, the tsar had the power to dismiss the Duma, at this first meeting of the Duma members proposed that political prisoners should be released, trade unions given rights and land reform be introduced. Nicholas II rejected these suggestions and dissolved the assembly in July,1906, the imperial State Duma was elected four times, in 1906, twice in 1907, and in 1912. The State Duma in Russia is the house of the Federal Assembly of Russia. Under Russias 1993 constitution, there are 450 deputies of the State Duma, each elected to a term of four years, this was changed to a five-year term in late 2008
Duma
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Moscow City Duma.
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