1.
Karl Marx
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Karl Marx was a Prussian-born philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Trier to a family, he later studied political economy. His work has influenced subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. These economic critiques were set out in works such as the three volumes, published between 1867 and 1894, that comprise Das Kapital. According to Marx, states are run in the interests of the class but are nonetheless represented as being in favor of the common interest of all. He predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. Marx actively fought for its implementation, arguing that the class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and his work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marxs work, Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology and social science. Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and he was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of Prussias Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx was ancestrally Jewish, his grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Triers rabbis since 1723. Marx was also a cousin once removed of German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant, a classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed by an absolute monarchy. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney, in 1819 moving his family to a property near the Porta Nigra. Her sister Sophie Pressburg, was Marxs aunt and was married to Lion Philips Marxs uncle through this marriage, Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little is known of Karl Marxs childhood, the third of nine children, he became the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Karl was baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 along with his siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie. Young Karl was privately educated, by Heinrich Marx, until 1830, by employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government
2.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
3.
Leningrad Oblast
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Leningrad Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. It was established on August 1,1927, although it was not until 1946 that the borders had been mostly settled in their present position. The oblast was named after the city of Leningrad, the first governor of Leningrad Oblast was Vadim Gustov. The current governor, since 2012, is Alexander Drozdenko, the oblast has an area of 84,500 square kilometers and a population of 1,716,868, up from 1,669,205 recorded in the 2002 Census. The most populous town of the oblast is Gatchina, with 88,659 inhabitants, Leningrad Oblast is located around the Gulf of Finland and south of two great lakes of the European Part of Russia, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. Its northeastern part, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga, occupies the Karelian Isthmus, some islands in the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga also belong to the oblast. Much of the area of the oblast belongs to the basin of the Neva. Whereas the Neva, which flows to the Gulf of Finland is relatively short, its basin is enormously big and includes Lake Onega. The Svir and the Volkhov flow from Lake Onega and Lake Ilmen, respectively, other major tributaries of Lake Ladoga include the Vuoksi and the Syas. Rivers in the part of the oblast flow to the Gulf of Finland. Minor areas in the east of the oblast belong to the basin of the Chagodoshcha, a tributary of the Mologa. Thus, the divide between the basins of the Baltic and Caspian Seas crosses the oblast, the Karelian Isthmus is a rocky terrain which hosts a lake district. The biggest lakes on the Karelian Isthmus are Lake Vuoksa, Lake Sukhodolskoye, the rest of the area of the oblast is essentially flat. The exception is the Tikhvin Ridge, a chain of hills in the east of the oblast, most of the area is covered by forests and swamps. The most taxonomically diverse vascular plant families are Asteraceae, Cyperaceae, Poaceae and Rosaceae, by far the most diverse genus is Carex. The territory has no endemic plant taxa, the territory of present-day Leningrad Oblast was populated shortly after the end of the Weichsel glaciation and now hosts numerous archaeological remnants. The Volga trade route and trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks crossed the territory, staraya Ladoga, the first capital of legendary Rurik, founded in the 8th-9th century, is situated in the east of the oblast, on the Volkhov River. During the Russo-Swedish Wars of the 15th-17th centuries, the border moved back, ingrian Finns soon became the dominant ethnic group
4.
Wikimedia Commons
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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
5.
Volga River
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The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It is also Europes largest river in terms of discharge and watershed, the river flows through central Russia and into the Caspian Sea, and is widely regarded as the national river of Russia. Eleven of the twenty largest cities of Russia, including the capital, some of the largest reservoirs in the world can be found along the Volga. The river has a meaning in Russian culture and is often referred to as Волга-матушка Volga-Matushka in Russian literature and folklore. The Slavic name is a translation of earlier Scythian Rā Volga, literally wetness, cognate with Avestan Raŋhā mythical stream and Sanskrit rasā́- dew, liquid, juice. The Scythian name survives in modern Mordvin Rav Volga, the Turkic peoples living along the river formerly referred to it as Itil or Atil big river. In modern Turkic languages, the Volga is known as İdel in Tatar, Атăл in Chuvash, Idhel in Bashkir, Edil in Kazakh, the Turkic peoples associated the Itils origin with the Kama. Thus, a tributary to the Kama was named the Aq Itil White Itil which unites with the Kara Itil Black Itil at the modern city of Ufa. The name Indyl is used in Adyge language, among Asians, the river was known by its other Turkic name Sarı-su yellow water, but the Oirats also used their own name, Ijil mörön or adaptation river. Presently the Mari, another Uralic group, call the river Jul, formerly, they called the river Volgydo, a borrowing from Old Russian. The Volga is the longest river in Europe and it belongs to the closed basin of the Caspian Sea, being the longest river to flow into a closed basin. From there it turns south, flows past Ulyanovsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Saratov and Volgograd, at its most strategic point, it bends toward the Don. Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad, is located there, the Volga has many tributaries, most importantly the rivers Kama, the Oka, the Vetluga, and the Sura. The Volga and its tributaries form the Volga river system, which flows through an area of about 1,350,000 square kilometres in the most heavily populated part of Russia. The Volga Delta has a length of about 160 kilometres and includes as many as 500 channels, the largest estuary in Europe, it is the only place in Russia where pelicans, flamingos, and lotuses may be found. The Volga freezes for most of its length for three each year. The Volga drains most of Western Russia and its many large reservoirs provide irrigation and hydroelectric power. The Moscow Canal, the Volga–Don Canal, and the Volga–Baltic Waterway form navigable waterways connecting Moscow to the White Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Sea of Azov, high levels of chemical pollution have adversely affected the river and its habitats
6.
Vasili III of Russia
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Vasili III Ivanovich was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1505 to 1533. He was the son of Ivan III Vasiliyevich and Sophia Paleologue and was christened with the name Gavriil. He had three brothers, Yuri, born in 1480, Simeon, born in 1487 and Andrei, born in 1490, as well as five sisters, Elena, Feodosiya, another Elena, another Feodosiya and Eudoxia. Vasili III continued the policies of his father Ivan III and spent most of his reign consolidating Ivans gains, Vasili annexed the last surviving autonomous provinces, Pskov in 1510, appanage of Volokolamsk in 1513, principalities of Ryazan in 1521 and Novgorod-Seversky in 1522. Vasili was equally successful against the Crimean Khanate, although in 1519 he was obliged to buy off the Crimean khan, Mehmed I Giray, under the very walls of Moscow, towards the end of his reign he established Russian influence on the Volga. In 1531–32 he placed the pretender Cangali khan on the throne of Khanate of Kazan, regarding internal policy, Vasili III enjoyed the support of the Church in his struggle with the feudal opposition. In 1521, metropolitan Varlaam was banished for refusing to participate in Vasilis fight against an appanage prince, rurikid princes Vasili Shuisky and Ivan Vorotynsky were also sent into exile. The diplomat and statesman, Ivan Bersen-Beklemishev, was executed in 1525 for criticizing Vasilis policies, maximus the Greek, Vassian Patrikeyev and others were sentenced for the same reason in 1525 and 1531. During the reign of Vasili III, the landownership of the increased, while authorities actively tried to limit immunities and privileges of boyars. By 1526 when he was 47 years old, Vasili had been married to Solomonia Saburova for over 20 years with no heir to his throne being produced, conscious of her husbands disappointment, Solomonia tried to remedy this by consulting sorcerers and going on pilgrimages. When this proved unsuccessful, Vasili consulted the boyars, announcing that he did not trust his two brothers to handle Russias affairs, not many of the boyars approved of his choice, as Elena was of Catholic upringing. Vasili was so smitten that he defied Russian social norms and trimmed his beard to appear younger, after three days of matrimonial festivity, the couple consummated their marriage, though initially it appeared that Elena was as sterile as Solomonia. The Russian populace began to suspect this was a sign of Gods disapproval of the marriage, however, to the great joy of Vasili and the populace, the new tsaritsa gave birth to a son, who would succeed him as Ivan IV. Three years later, a son, Yuri, was born. According to a story, Solomonia Saburova also bore a son in the convent where she had been confined, whilst out hunting on horseback near Volokolamsk, Vasili felt a great pain in his right hip, the result of an abscess. He was transported to the village of Kolp, where he was visited by two German doctors who were unable to stop the infection with conventional remedies. Believing that his time was short, Vasili requested to be returned to Moscow, by 25 November 1533, Vasili reached Moscow and asked to be made a monk before dying. Taking on the name Varlaam, Vasili died at midnight,4 December 1533, rulers of Russia family tree Bain, Robert Nisbet
7.
Tsar
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Tsar /zɑːr/ or /tsɑːr/, also spelled tzar, csar, or czar, is a title used to designate certain Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, occasionally, the word could be used to designate other secular supreme rulers. Simeon II, the last Tsar of Bulgaria, is the last person to have borne the title Tsar, the title Tsar is derived from the Latin title for the Roman emperors, Caesar. In the history of the Greek language, basileus had originally meant something like potentate and it gradually approached the meaning of king in the Hellenistic Period, and it came to designate emperor after the inception in the Roman Empire. Thus, tsar was not only used as an equivalent of Latin imperator but was used to refer to Biblical rulers. From this ambiguity, the development has moved in different directions in the different Slavic languages, thus, the Bulgarian language and Russian language no longer use tsar as an equivalent of the term emperor/imperator as it exists in the West European tradition. Currently, the term refers to native sovereigns, ancient and Biblical rulers, as well as monarchs in fairy tales. The title of king is sometimes perceived as alien and is by some Russian-speakers reserved for European royalty, foreign monarchs of imperial status, both inside and outside of Europe, ancient as well as modern, are generally called imperator, rather than tsar. Biblical rulers in Serbian are called цар and in Croatian kralj, in the Polish language however tsar is always used as imperator, never as king. The term tsar is very used to refer to the Russian rulers after Peter the Great. In 705 Emperor Justinian II named Tervel of Bulgaria Caesar, the first foreigner to receive this title, the sainted Boris I is sometimes retrospectively referred to as tsar, because at his time Bulgaria was converted to Christianity. However, the tsar was actually adopted and used for the first time by his son Simeon I. Since in Byzantine political theory there was place for two emperors, Eastern and Western, the Bulgarian ruler was crowned basileus as a spiritual son of the Byzantian basileus. In Latin sources the Emperor of Bulgaria is sometimes designated Emperor of Zagora, various additional epithets and descriptions apart, the official style read Emperor and autocrat of all Bulgarians and Greeks. During the five-century period of Ottoman rule in Bulgaria, the sultan was referred to as tsar. This may be related to the fact that he had claimed the legacy of the Byzantine Empire or to the fact that the sultan was called Basileus in medieval Greek, after Bulgarias liberation from the Ottomans in 1878, its new monarchs were at first autonomous prince. With the declaration of independence, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria adopted the traditional title tsar in 1908. However, these titles were not generally perceived as equivalents of emperor any longer, in the Bulgarian as in the Greek vernacular, the meaning of the title had shifted
8.
Ivan the Terrible
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Ivan IV Vasilyevich, commonly known as Ivan the Terrible or Ivan the Fearsome, was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, then Tsar of All the Russias until his death in 1584. The last title was used by all his successors, during his reign, Russia conquered the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Sibir, becoming a multiethnic and multicontinental state spanning approximately 4,050,000 km2. Ivan exercised autocratic control over Russias hereditary nobility and developed a bureaucracy to administer his new territories and he transformed Russia from a medieval state into an empire, though at immense cost to its people, and its broader, long-term economy. In one such outburst, he killed his son and heir Ivan Ivanovich and this left his younger son, the pious but politically ineffectual Feodor Ivanovich, to inherit the throne. Ivan was a diplomat, a patron of arts and trade. He was popular among Russias commoners, except possibly the people of Novgorod and surrounding areas, the English word terrible is usually used to translate the Russian word grozny in Ivans nickname, but this is a somewhat archaic translation. The Russian word grozny reflects the older English usage of terrible as in inspiring fear or terror, dangerous, powerful and it does not convey the more modern connotations of English terrible, such as defective or evil. Vladimir Dal defines grozny specifically in archaic usage and as an epithet for tsars, courageous, magnificent, magisterial and keeping enemies in fear, other translations have also been suggested by modern scholars. Ivan was the first son of Vasili III and his wife, Elena Glinskaya. When Ivan was three years old, his father died from an abscess and inflammation on his leg that developed into blood poisoning, Ivan was proclaimed the Grand Prince of Moscow at the request of his father. His mother Elena Glinskaya initially acted as regent, but she died of what many believe to be assassination by poison, the regency then alternated between several feuding boyar families fighting for control. According to his own letters, Ivan, along with his younger brother Yuri, on 16 January 1547, at age sixteen, Ivan was crowned with Monomakhs Cap at the Cathedral of the Dormition. He was the first to be crowned as Tsar of All the Russias, prior to that, rulers of Muscovy were crowned as Grand Princes, although Ivan III the Great, his grandfather, styled himself tsar in his correspondence. Two weeks after his coronation, Ivan married his first wife Anastasia Romanovna, a member of the Romanov family, who became the first Russian tsaritsa. By being crowned Tsar, Ivan was sending a message to the world and to Russia, he was now the one and only ruler of the country. The new title symbolized an assumption of powers equivalent and parallel to those held by former Byzantine Emperor, the political effect was to elevate Ivans position. The new title not only secured the throne, but it also granted Ivan a new dimension of power and he was now a divine leader appointed to enact Gods will, as church texts described Old Testament kings as Tsars and Christ as the Heavenly Tsar. The newly appointed title was passed on from generation to generation
9.
Dormition of the Mother of God
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It is celebrated on August 15 as the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. The Armenian Apostolic Church celebrates the Dormition not on a fixed date, the Feast of the Dormition is preceded by a two-week fast, referred to as the Dormition Fast. From August 1 to August 14 Orthodox and Eastern Catholics fast from red meat, poultry, meat products, dairy products, fish, oil, and wine. The Dormition Fast is a stricter fast than either the Nativity Fast or the Apostles Fast, with only wine and oil allowed on weekends. As with the other Fasts of the Church year, there is a Great Feast that falls during the Fast, in this case, in some places, the services on weekdays during the Fast are similar to the services during Great Lent. Many churches and monasteries in the Russian tradition perform the services on at least the first day of the Dormition Fast. In the Greek tradition, during the Fast either the Great Paraklesis or the Small Paraklesis is celebrated every evening except Saturday evening and the Eves of the Transfiguration and the Dormition. The first day of the Dormition Fast is a feast day called the Procession of the Cross, on which day it is customary to have an outdoor procession, in Orthodoxy and Catholicism, in the language of the scripture, death is often called a sleeping or falling asleep. A prominent example of this is the name of this feast, another is the Dormition of Anna, up until the 5th century Church Fathers do not mention the Dormition of the Virgin and to the 6th century Dormition was not celebrated among the Christians as a holy day. And yet, nowhere does he say that he took the holy Virgin with him, Scripture simply kept silence because of the overwhelming wonder, not to throw men’s minds into consternation. For I dare not say — though I have my suspicions, perhaps, just as her death is not to be found, so I may have found some traces of the holy and blessed Virgin. The holy virgin may have dead and been buried — her falling asleep was with honor, her death in purity, or she may have remained alive, for God is not incapable of doing whatever he wills. But we must not honor the saints to excess, we must honor their Master and it is time for the error of those who have gone astray to cease. Christians in the late 4th century had different opinions regarding Marys death, for this reason, Ambrose, for example, wrote, Neither the letter of Scripture nor Tradition does not teach us that Mary had left this life as a consequence of suffering from bodily ulcers. One of these placed in the History of the Church Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos. All listed Apocrypha quite late and differ from other content. Therefore, the Church was not taken all their content, but only the idea that the Virgin Mary blissfully rested. According to Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos in his History of the Church, after that Christians in the empire began to celebrate the death of the Virgin Mary
10.
Time of Troubles
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In 1601–03, Russia suffered a famine that killed one-third of the population, about two million. At the time, during the Polish–Muscovite War, Russia was occupied by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Godunovs short reign was not as successful as his administration under the weak Feodor. Extremely poor harvests were encountered in 1601–03, with night temperatures in all summer months often below freezing, wrecking crops. The probable cause of changes was the eruption of Huaynaputina volcano in Peru in 1600. Under the influence of the nobles who had unsuccessfully opposed the election of Godunov. Rumours circulated that the tsars younger brother Dmitri, thought to be dead, was still alive. In 1603 a man calling himself Dmitri—first of the so-called False Dmitris—and professing to be the heir to the throne. He attracted support both in Russia and outside its borders, particularly in the Polish Commonwealth and the Papal States, False Dmitri was married per procura to Marina Mniszech, and immediately after Godunovs death in 1605, he made his triumphal entry into Moscow. The reign of False Dimitri was short, before a year had passed, Vasily Shuisky, an ambitious Rurikid prince, formed a conspiracy against him. His forces murdered False Dimitri soon after his marriage in the Moscow Kremlin, together with many of his supporters, Shuisky and his men were estimated to have killed 2,000 Poles. The reaction to the massacre in Poland was strong, but the government decided to postpone revenge against those responsible, like his predecessor, he enjoyed the protection and support of the Polish–Lithuanian magnates. After Shuisky signed an alliance with Sweden, the king of the Commonwealth, Sigismund III, seeing the Russian–Swedish alliance as a threat, resolved to intervene, Polish–Lithuanian troops crossed the Russian borders and laid siege to the fortress of Smolensk. After the combined Russo–Swedish forces were destroyed at the Battle of Klushino, before False Dmitri II could gain the throne, the Polish commander, voivode, and magnate Stanisław Żółkiewski, put forward a rival candidate, Sigismunds son, Władysław. Some people in Moscow swore allegiance to him on condition of his maintaining Orthodoxy, on this understanding, they allowed Polish troops to enter the city and occupy the Kremlin. The Polish king opposed the compromise, deciding to take the throne for himself, the contending factions were opposed and his plan aroused the anti-Catholic and anti-Polish feelings in Russia. The Swedes disapproved as they were rivals of the Poles on the Baltic coast and they declared war on Russia, supporting a false Dmitri of their choice in Ivangorod. Russia was in a critical condition, tens of thousands died in battles and riots, on 17–19 March 1611, the Poles and German mercenaries suppressed riots in Moscow, they massacred 7,000 Muscovites and set the city on fire. Many other cities were devastated or weakened
11.
Road of Life
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The siege lasted for 29 months from 8 September 1941, to 27 January 1944. Over one million citizens of Leningrad died from starvation, stress, exposure, each winter, the Lake Ladoga ice route was reconstructed by hand, and built according to precise arithmetic calculations depending on traffic volume. The road today forms part of the World Heritage Site, by 8 September 1941, the German Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb had almost completely surrounded Leningrad, successfully cutting off all major supply routes. To address this concern, a decision was cast by the Military Soviet of the Leningrad Front to establish an evacuation commission in November 1941. As the severity of the siege intensified, the proposed the construction of an ice road over Lake Ladoga as both a viable supply line and means for civilian evacuation en masse. The Road of Life began to operate on 19 November 1941 after Captain Mikhail Murov, however, due to proximal bombardments, ice breakage, and unreliable machinery, the route was far from fully functional at this time. It was only in mid-December, after troops of the Volkhov front recaptured Tikhvin, shortly thereafter, the ice road began receiving truck traffic, despite frequent breaks in the early stages of the ice. During the winter of 1941–42 the ice corridor of the Road of Life operated for 152 days, while the road was protected by anti-aircraft artillery on the ice and fighter planes in the air, truck convoys were constantly attacked by German artillery and airplanes, making travel dangerous. The Finnish forces intentionally left the route open in tacit defiance of Germanys requests. The total number of people evacuated from the siege of Leningrad through the Road of Life was about 1.3 million, mostly women and children. During 1942 the Artery of Life, a 29 km long oil pipeline via Lake Ladoga was built of which 21 km ran under water at a depth of 12.5 metres. During the following winter of 1942–1943, the Road of Life began to once again. Motor vehicles began to operate on 24 December 1942, construction of the 30 km long railway over piles and ice also began in December 1942. Operation Spark — a full-scale offensive of troops of the Leningrad, almost immediately, both truck and rail traffic began to bring supplies to Leningrad. For the heroic resistance of its citizens, Leningrad was the first city awarded the title of Hero City in 1945. Measuring 219 km in length and 138 km wide, Lake Ladoga is one of Europe’s largest lakes of its kind, due to its size and unpredictable weather conditions, many speculated that the construction of an ice road connecting its shores would be impossible. Although the Russians had previous experience in ice road construction. Even during winter, the region’s erratic winds were capable of increasing or decreasing the water level by as much as four feet within just a few hours
12.
Siege of Leningrad
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The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. Although the Soviets managed to open a land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, Leningrads capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Operation Barbarossa and the main target of Army Group North. By 1939 the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output and it has been reported Adolf Hitler was so confident of capturing Leningrad that he had invitations printed to the victory celebrations to be held in the citys Hotel Astoria. According to a sent to Army Group North on 29 September, After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. Following the citys encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot, in this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population. Hitlers ultimate plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give areas north of the River Neva to the Finns, Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Finnish military forces were north of Leningrad, while German forces occupied territories to the south, thus, it is argued that much of the Finns participation was merely defensive. The Germans planned on lack of food being their weapon against the citizens. On 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organised First response groups of civilians, in the next days, Leningrads civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilised for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the line ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo. Another line of defence passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino, in the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrads northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad, the 4th Panzer Group from East Prussia took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod by 16 August. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defence plans on an officers corpse, after the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepners 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad. However, the 18th Army — despite some 350,000 men lagging behind — forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. On 10 July, both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, the Finnish Army was then expected to advance along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga
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