Radziwiłł family
The Radziwiłł family was a powerful magnate family originating from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. The descendants of Kristinas Astikas, a Lithuanian and a close associate of the 14th century Lithuanian ruler Vytautas, were prominent for centuries, first in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Kingdom of Prussia; the family has produced many individuals notable in Lithuanian, Polish and general European history and culture. The Radziwiłł family received the title of Reichsfürst, from the Holy Roman Empire; the Nesvizh Castle complex, maintained by the family in Belarus between the 16th century and 1939, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The countries of Belarus, Lithuania, Russian Federation, Ukraine jointly nominated its family archives to the UNESCO Memory of the World Register in 2008, they were inscribed on the Register in 2009; the Radziwiłł family is a directly descended branch of the extinct Lithuanian noble Astikai family line.
Its first notable member, Kristinas Astikas, a close associate of the Lithuanian ruler Vytautas, became Castellan of Vilnius. The patronym Radvila arose following its use by his son Radvila Astikas and grandson Mikalojus Radvila. A legendary version of the patronym's etymology associates it with a child raised by wolves; the name has been written in, recognized by, the polonized version and spelling for several centuries. The family descends from Lithuanian bajorai-ducal courtiers who advanced in the 15th century politics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Along with possessions of land near Kernavė, the family's traced place of origin, the Radziwiłł family inherited the Trąby coat of arms. Three of Mikalojus' sons, Mikołaj, Jerzy, went on to become the progenitors of the three known Radziwiłł family lines; the Radziwiłł family divided by branch: the Goniądz-Meteliai line the Biržai-Dubingiai line the Nesvizh-Kletsk-Olyka lineThe Goniądz-Meteliai line became extinct by the next generation as Mikołaj's descendants consisted of one male heir, Mikołaj III, who entered the priesthood and became the Bishop of Samogitia, thus bearing no known offspring to extend the line.
The Biržai-Dubingiai line was moderately more successful and produced some notable state officials and politicians, but became extinct after the death of Ludwika Karolina Radziwiłł in 1695. The Nesvizh-Kletsk-Olyka line was the most successful and was further divided into smaller family lines in order to maintain clarity and specificity of descent and the passing of titles. Since the 18th century, all Radziwiłł family members have been descendants of this line. Three sons of Mikołaj "the Black", Mikołaj Krzysztof "Sierotka", Stanisław "the Pious", are said to be the progenitors of the three smaller branches; the branches are as follows: the Nesvizh line the older Kletsk line the Olyka linePossibly both the Olyka and older Kletsk lines became extinct, the former in 1656 and the latter in 1690. The direct descendant of the Nesvizh line, Dominik Hieronim's son, Aleksander Dominik, was born before the marriage of his parents and formed the so-called Galician branch, which became extinct in 1938.
The younger Kletsk line descends from Michał Hieronim, continued through his son Ludwik Mikolaj. The descendants of his other son, Antoni Henryk, formed the beginning of the so-called Ordynant branch. Other than the Ordynant branch, from the younger Kletsk line descends the lesser titled branches of Szydłowiec and Połoneczka, as well as Dziatłava, Żyrmunów; the younger Kletsk line has continued into the present day. The Nesvizh line the Galician line the younger Kletsk line the Ordynant line the Szydłowiec-Połoneczka line the Dziatłava-Berdychiv-Żyrmunów line Kristinas Astikas, ancestor of the Radziwiłł family, was among these who were granted and adopted the emblem known as Trąby after the Union of Horodło in 1413; this emblem became the hereditary coat of arms of the Radziwiłłs. In 1518, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I created Mikalojus Radvila's son, Mikołaj, Reichsfürst of Goniądz and Meteliai after the Jagiellonian-Habsburg congress at Vienna. Mikołaj Radziwiłł received an expanded, more solemn coat of arms: as princes of the Holy Roman Empire, the Radziwiłłs bore a black eagle, on whose breast is a shield with Trąby and other emblems.
The family motto is "God advises us". In 1547, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, created Mikołaj "the Black" and his brother, hereditary Reichsfürsten of Nesvizh and Olyka; the same year King Sigismund II Augustus of Poland married Barbara Radziwiłł and confirmed these titles in 1549. So high a title was rare among the szlachta: just five Polish families, including the Radziwiłłs, received the title of imperial prince from the Holy Roman emperor; the Radziwiłł family divided on religious grounds. Following the Protestant and Polish Reformation, two branches converted to Calvinism. One branch, the Nesvizh–Kletsk-Olyka line, remained as Calvinists for two generations until the children of Mikołaj "the Black" converted to Catholicism before the end of the century; the Biržai-Dubingiai line remained in the Protestant faith until the extinction of their line one century later. Both Mikołaj "the Black" and Mikołaj "the Red" were zealous promoters and active participants of the Protestant religion within the G
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire known as Imperial Russia or Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917. The third largest empire in world history, at its greatest extent stretching over three continents, Europe and North America, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires; the rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighboring rival powers: the Golden Horde, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Ottoman Empire. It played a major role in 1812–1814 in defeating Napoleon's ambitions to control Europe and expanded to the west and south; the House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, its matrilineal branch of patrilineal German descent the House of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov ruled from 1762. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire extended from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean, into Alaska and Northern California in America on the east.
With 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics and religion. There were numerous dissident elements. Economically, the empire had a predominantly agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs, Russian peasants; the economy industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways and factories. The land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that emerged, he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, laid the foundations of the Russian state. Emperor Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an huge empire into a major European power, he moved the capital from Moscow to the new model city of St. Petersburg, led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political mores with a modern, Europe-oriented, rationalist system.
Empress Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. Emperor Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861, his policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. That connection by 1914 led to Russia's entry into the First World War on the side of France, the United Kingdom, Serbia, against the German and Ottoman empires; the Russian Empire functioned as an absolute monarchy on principles of Orthodoxy and Nationality until the Revolution of 1905 and became a de jure constitutional monarchy. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917 as a result of massive failures in its participation in the First World War. Though the Empire was only proclaimed by Tsar Peter I following the Treaty of Nystad, some historians would argue that it was born either when Ivan III of Russia conquered Veliky Novgorod in 1478, or when Ivan the Terrible conquered the Khanate of Kazan in 1552. According to another point of view, the term Tsardom, used after the coronation of Ivan IV in 1547, was a contemporary Russian word for empire.
Much of Russia's expansion occurred in the 17th century, culminating in the first Russian colonization of the Pacific in the mid-17th century, the Russo-Polish War that incorporated left-bank Ukraine, the Russian conquest of Siberia. Poland was divided in the 1790 -- 1815 era, with much of the population going to Russia. Most of the 19th-century growth came from adding territory in Asia, south of Siberia. Peter I the Great played a major role in introducing Russia to the European state system. While the vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns; the class of kholops, close in status to slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation. Russian agricultural kholops were formally converted into serfs earlier in 1679. Peter's first military efforts were directed against the Ottoman Turks.
His attention turned to the North. Peter still lacked a secure northern seaport, except at Archangel on the White Sea, where the harbor was frozen for nine months a year. Access to the Baltic was blocked by Sweden. Peter's ambitions for a "window to the sea" led him to make a secret alliance in 1699 with Saxony, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Denmark against Sweden, resulting in the Great Northern War; the war ended in 1721. Peter acquired four provinces situated east of the Gulf of Finland; the coveted access to the sea was now secured. There he built Russia's new capital, Saint Petersburg, to replace Moscow, which had long been Russia's cultural center. In 1722, he tur
Antonov An-14
The Antonov An-14 Pchelka (Russian: «Пчелка», "Little Bee", is a Soviet utility aircraft, first flown on 15 March 1958. It was a twin-engined light STOL utility transport, with two 300 hp Ivchenko AI-14RF radial piston engines. Serial production started in 1966, about 300 examples were built by the time production ended in 1972; the An-14 failed to replace the more successful An-2 biplane, manufactured until 1990. The An-14's successor, the An-28 with turboprop engines, is still manufactured at PZL Mielec factories in Poland, under the names PZL M28 Skytruck and PZL M28B Bryza. With stable flight characteristics, the An-14 could be flown by most pilots after a few hours of basic training. A small number of An-14s are still in airworthy condition. AfghanistanThe Afghan Air Force operated 12 from 1985 through 1991. BulgariaBulgarian Air Force East GermanyEast German Air Force MongoliaMongolian People's Air Force- operated two from early 1970s through 1980 GuineaMilitary of Guinea YugoslaviaLetalski center Maribor - civil operator Soviet UnionSoviet Air Force Aeroflot Data from Soviet Transport Aircraft since 1945General characteristics Crew: two Capacity: six–eight passengers or 720 kg cargo Length: 11.36 m Wingspan: 21.99 m Height: 4.63 m Wing area: 39.72 m² Aspect ratio: 12.15:1 Empty weight: 2,600 kg Loaded weight: 3,450 kg Max.
Takeoff weight: 3,600 kg Powerplant: 2 × Ivchenko AI-14RF air-cooled radial engines, 224 kW eachPerformance Maximum speed: 210 km/h Cruise speed: 180 km/h Range: 650 km Service ceiling: 5,000 m Landing Speed: 80 km/h Landing Roll: 110 m Takeoff Roll: 100–110 m Cabin size: 3.1 x 1.53 x 1.6 m Related development Antonov An-28 Antonov An-38Aircraft of comparable role and era IAI Arava Short SC.7 Skyvan Stroud, John. Soviet Transport Aircraft since 1945. London:Putnam, 1968. ISBN 0-370-00126-5. Taylor, John W. R. Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1976–77. London: Jane's Yearbooks. ISBN 0-354-00538-3; the initial version of this article was based on material from aviation.ru. It has been released under the GFDL by the copyright holder. Walkaround An-14 from Aviatechnical museum, Ukraine Walkaround An-14 from Civil Aviation Museum, Russia
Yiddish
Yiddish is the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High German-based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as from Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is written with a vocalized version of the Hebrew alphabet; the earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז or טײַטש, a variant of tiutsch, the contemporary name for Middle High German. Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון, distinguishing it from לשון־קודש, meaning Hebrew and Aramaic; the term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh, did not become the most used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century the language was more called "Jewish" in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the more common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today.
It includes Southeastern and Northeastern dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by the extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern and Northwestern dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; the term "Yiddish" is used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit. Prior to the Holocaust, there were 11–13 million speakers of Yiddish among 17 million Jews worldwide. 85% of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah, immigration to Israel, further decreased the use of Yiddish both among survivors and among Yiddish-speakers from other countries. However, the number of speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities; the established view is that, as with other Jewish languages, Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they Judaized.
In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German, from these groups the Ashkenazi community took shape. What German base lies behind the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. In Max Weinreich's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic, or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia extending over parts of Germany and France. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in the mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language and Eastern Yiddish, they retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a autonomous language. Linguistic research has finessed the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to the language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata, the means and location of this fusion.
Some theorists argue. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in the two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East; the lines of development proposed by the different theories do not rule out the others. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has met with little academic support, strong critical challenges among historical linguists. By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe which came to be called אַשכּנזי Ashkenazi, "Ashkenazi Jews, from Hebrew: אַשכּנז Ashkenaz, the medieval Hebrew name for northern Europe and Germany. Ashkenaz was centered on the Rhineland and the Palatinate, in what is now the westernmost part of Germany.
Its geographic extent did not
Ghetto
A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live as a result of social, legal, or economic pressure. The term was used in Venice to describe the part of the city to which Jews were restricted and segregated. However, early societies may have formed their own versions of the same structure. Ghettos in many cities have been nicknamed "the hood", colloquial slang for neighborhood. Versions of ghettos appear across the world, each with their own names and groupings of people; the word "ghetto" comes from the Jewish area of Venice, the Venetian Ghetto in Cannaregio, traced to a special use of Venetian ghèto, or "foundry". By 1899 the term had been extended to crowded urban quarters of other minority groups; the etymology of the word is uncertain, as there is no agreement among etymologists about the origins of the Venetian language term. According to various theories it comes: from the above-mentioned Venetian ghèto. Another possibility is from the Italian Egitto in memory of the exile of the Israelites in Egypt.
A Jewish quarter is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews in the diaspora. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were the outgrowths of segregated ghettos instituted by the surrounding authorities. A Yiddish term for a Jewish quarter or neighborhood is Di yiddishe gas, or "The Jewish street". Many European and Middle Eastern cities once had a historical Jewish quarter. Jewish ghettos in Europe existed; as a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities. The character of ghettos has varied through times. In some cases, the ghetto was a Jewish quarter with a affluent population. In other cases, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. During World War II, ghettos were established by the Nazis to confine Jews and Romani people into packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe; the Nazis most referred to these areas in documents and signage at their entrances as "Jewish quarter".
These Nazi ghettos sometimes coincided with traditional Jewish ghettos and Jewish quarters, but not always. On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued a decree ordering the dissolution of all ghettos in the East and their transformation into Nazi concentration camps. A mellah is a walled Jewish quarter of a city in an analogue of the European ghetto. Jewish populations were confined to mellahs in Morocco beginning from the 15th century and since the early 19th century. In cities, a mellah was surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway; the Jewish quarter was situated near the royal palace or the residence of the governor in order to protect its inhabitants from recurring riots. In contrast, rural mellahs were separate villages inhabited by the Jews; the Shanghai Ghetto was an area of one square mile in the Hongkou District of Japanese-occupied Shanghai to which about 20,000 Jewish refugees were relocated by the Japanese-issued Proclamation Concerning Restriction of Residence and Business of Stateless Refugees after having fled from German-occupied Europe before and during World War II.
The development of ghettos in the United States is associated with different waves of immigration and internal urban migration. The Irish and German immigrants of the mid-19th century were the first ethnic groups to form ethnic enclaves in United States cities; this was followed by large numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, including many Italians and Poles between 1880 and 1920. These European immigrants were more segregated than blacks in the early twentieth century. Most of these remained in their established immigrant communities, but by the second or third generation, many families were able to relocate to better housing in the suburbs after World War II; these ethnic ghetto areas included the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York, which became notable as predominantly Jewish, East Harlem, which became home to a large Puerto Rican community in the 1950s. Little Italys across the country were predominantly Italian ghettos. Many Polish immigrants moved to sections like Polish Hill of Pittsburgh.
Brighton Beach in Brooklyn is the home of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. During the Great Depression, many people would congregate in large open parking lots, they built shelters out of whatever materials they could find at the time. These congregations of shelters were called "ghettos". A used definition of a ghetto is a community distinguished by a homogeneous race or ethnicity. Additionally, a key feature that developed throughout the postindustrial era and continues to symbolize the demographics of American ghettos is the prevalence of poverty. Poverty constitutes the separation of ghettos from suburbanized or private neighborhoods; the high percentage of poverty justifies the difficulty of out-migration, which tends to reproduce constraining social opportunit
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 is a supersonic jet fighter and interceptor aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau in the Soviet Union. It was popularly nicknamed "balalaika", from the aircraft's planform-view resemblance to the Russian stringed musical instrument or ołówek by Polish pilots due to the shape of its fuselage, it was nicknamed "Én bạc" by North Vietnamese, now Vietnam People's Air Force and the Vietnamese people. 60 countries over four continents have flown the MiG-21, it still serves many nations six decades after its maiden flight. It made aviation records, became the most-produced supersonic jet aircraft in aviation history, the most-produced combat aircraft since the Korean War and the longest production run of a combat aircraft; the MiG-21 jet fighter was a continuation of Soviet jet fighters, starting with the subsonic MiG-15 and MiG-17, the supersonic MiG-19. A number of experimental Mach 2 Soviet designs were based on nose intakes with either swept-back wings, such as the Sukhoi Su-7, or tailed deltas, of which the MiG-21 would be the most successful.
Development of what would become the MiG-21 began in the early 1950s, when Mikoyan OKB finished a preliminary design study for a prototype designated Ye-1 in 1954. This project was quickly reworked when it was determined that the planned engine was underpowered. Both these and other early prototypes featured swept wings; the first prototype with delta wings as found on production variants was the Ye-4. It made its maiden flight on 16 June 1955 and its first public appearance during the Soviet Aviation Day display at Moscow's Tushino airfield in July 1956. In the West, due to the lack of available information, early details of the MiG-21 were confused with those of similar Soviet fighters of the era. In one instance, Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1960–1961 listed the "Fishbed" as a Sukhoi design and used an illustration of the Su-9'Fishpot'; the MiG-21 was the first successful Soviet aircraft combining fighter and interceptor characteristics in a single aircraft. It was a lightweight fighter, achieving Mach 2 with a low-powered afterburning turbojet, is thus comparable to the American Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter and the French Dassault Mirage III.
Its basic layout was used for numerous other Soviet designs. However, the characteristic layout with the shock cone and front air intake did not see widespread use outside the USSR and proved to have limited development potential because of the small space available for the radar. Like many aircraft designed as interceptors, the MiG-21 had a short range; this was exacerbated by the poor placement of the internal fuel tanks ahead of the centre of gravity. As the internal fuel was consumed, the center of gravity would shift rearward beyond acceptable parameters; this had the effect of making the plane statically unstable to the point of being difficult to control, resulting in an endurance of only 45 minutes in clean condition. This can be somewhat countered by carrying fuel in external tanks closer to the center of gravity; the Chinese variants somewhat improved the internal fuel tank layout, carry larger external fuel tanks to counter this issue. Additionally, when more than half the fuel was used up, violent maneuvers prevented fuel from flowing into the engine, thereby causing it to shut down in flight.
This increased the risk of tank implosions, a problem inherited from the MiG-15, MiG-17 and MiG-19. The short endurance and low fuel capacity of the MiG-21F, PF, PFM, S/SM and M/MF variants—though each had a somewhat greater fuel capacity than its predecessor—led to the development of the MT and SMT variants; these had an increased range of 250 km compared to the MiG-21SM, but at the cost of worsening all other performance figures, such as a lower service ceiling and slower time to altitude. The delta wing, while excellent for a fast-climbing interceptor, meant any form of turning combat led to a rapid loss of speed. However, the light loading of the aircraft could mean that a climb rate of 235 m/s was possible with a combat-loaded MiG-21bis, not far short of the performance of the F-16A. Given a skilled pilot and capable missiles, it could give a good account of itself against contemporary fighters, its G-limits were increased from +7Gs in initial variants to +8.5Gs in the latest variants. It was replaced by the newer variable-geometry MiG-23 and MiG-27 for ground support duties.
However, not until the MiG-29 would the Soviet Union replace the MiG-21 as a maneuvering dogfighter to counter new American air superiority types. The MiG-21 was exported and remains in use; the aircraft's simple controls, engine and avionics were typical of Soviet-era military designs. The use of a tail with the delta wing aids stability and control at the extremes of the flight envelope, enhancing safety for lower-skilled pilots. While technologically inferior to the more advanced fighters it faced, low production
Shchuchyn District
Shchuchyn District is a district in Grodno Region, Belarus. The administrative center is Shchuchyn
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Be-Ščučyn.ogg (help·info); Russian: Щýчин, pronounced [ˈɕːʉtɕɪn]; Polish: Szczuczyn Litewski; Lithuanian: Šukynas; Yiddish: שטשוטשין, Shtutchin) is a city in the Grodno Region of Belarus. It is the center of Shchuchyn District; the population is nearly 15,000 (2010).
