1.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
2.
Hungarian language
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Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, its closest relatives being Mansi and it is one of several European languages not part of the Indo-European languages, and the most widely-spoken European language that does not belong to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar or magyar nyelv, the word Magyar is used as an English and Hungarian word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, the name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur, there are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, for example, Hungarian ház house vs. Khanty xot house, and Hungarian száz hundred vs. Khanty sot hundred. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular, during the later half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b. c. e. in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists, in Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’, tíz ‘ten’, tej ‘milk’, increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs later had a influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e. g. borjú ‘calf’, dél ‘noon, many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a dramatic way during these 300 years. After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities, Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries, e. g. koboz ‘cobza’, komondor ‘mop dog’. Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages, in exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e. g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. Approximately 1. 6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin, on the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too
3.
Bulgarian language
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Bulgarian /bʌlˈɡɛəriən/, /bʊlˈ-/ is an Indo-European language, a member of the Southern branch of the Slavic language family. Various evidential verb forms exist to express unwitnessed, retold, with the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Bulgarian became one of the official languages of the European Union. Development of the Bulgarian language may be divided into several periods, prehistoric period – occurred between the Slavonic migration to eastern Balkans and the mission of Saints Cyril and Methodius to Great Moravia in the 860s. Old Bulgarian – a literary norm of the southern dialect of the Common Slavic language from which Bulgarian evolved. It was used by Saints Cyril and Methodius and their disciples to translate the Bible, Middle Bulgarian – a literary norm that evolved from the earlier Old Bulgarian, after major innovations were accepted. It was a language of literary activity and the official administration language of the Second Bulgarian Empire. Modern Bulgarian – dates from the 16th century onwards, undergoing general grammar, present-day written Bulgarian language was standardized on the basis of the 19th-century Bulgarian vernacular. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing, as Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity, in the oldest manuscripts this language was initially referred to as языкъ словяньскъ, the Slavic language. In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was replaced by the name языкъ блъгарьскъ. In some cases, the name языкъ блъгарьскъ was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system, today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in the latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот, непонятен, ядро and others. As usual in cases, many other loans from French, English. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of the language, between 1835–1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and linguistic chaos ensued. Eventually the eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography, the language is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Common Slavic yat vowel. This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgarias, E. g. млеко – milk, хлеб – bread. This rule obtains in most Eastern dialects, although some have ya, or an open e sound. The literary language norm, which is based on the Eastern dialects
4.
Russian language
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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
5.
Brest, Belarus
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Brest formerly also Brześć nad Bugiem Brest-on-the-Bug and Brest-Litovsk, is a city in Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the Polish city of Terespol, where the Bug and Mukhavets rivers meet. It is the city of the Brest voblast. The city of Brest is a site of many cultures. It was the location of important historical events such as the Union of Brest, the Brest Fortress was recognized by the Soviet Union as the Hero Fortress in honor of the defense of Brest Fortress in June 1941. During medieval times, the city was part of the Kingdom of Poland from 1020 until 1319 when it was taken by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and it became part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. As a result of the Partitions of Poland, it was incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1795, after World War I, the city returned to Second Polish Republic. In 1941 it was again by the Nazis during Operation Barbarossa. After the war, once the new boundaries between the USSR and Poland were ratified, the city part of the Soviet BSSR until the breakup of the country in 1991. It is part of sovereign Belarus of today, several theories attempt to account for the origin of the citys name. It might have come from the Slavic root beresta meaning birch, the name of the city could also originate from the Slavic root berest meaning elm. And finally, the name of the city could have come from the Lithuanian word brasta meaning ford, once a center of Jewish scholarship, the city has the Yiddish name בריסק, hence the term Brisker used to describe followers of the influential Soloveitchik family of rabbis. The traditional Belarusian name for the city is Берасце, Brest became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1319. In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth formed in 1569 the town was known in Polish as Brześć, after World War I, and the rebirth of Poland, the government of the Second Polish Republic renamed the city as Brześć nad Bugiem on March 20,1923. After World War II the city part of Soviet Belarus with the name simplified as Brest. Brests coat of arms features an arrow pointed upwards and a bow on a sky-blue shield and it was adopted on January 26,1991. An alternative coat of arms has a red shield, Sigismund II Augustus, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, first granted Brest a coat of arms in 1554. The city was founded by the Slavs, as a town, Brest – Berestye in Kievan Rus – was first mentioned in the Primary Chronicle in 1019 when the Kievan Rus took the stronghold from the Poles. It is one of the oldest cities in Belarus and it was hotly contested between the Polish rulers and Kievan Rus princes, laid waste by the Mongols in 1241, and was not rebuilt until 1275
6.
Ukraine
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Ukraine is currently in territorial dispute with Russia over the Crimean Peninsula which Russia annexed in 2014 but which Ukraine and most of the international community recognise as Ukrainian. Including Crimea, Ukraine has an area of 603,628 km2, making it the largest country entirely within Europe and it has a population of about 42.5 million, making it the 32nd most populous country in the world. The territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited since 32,000 BC, during the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus forming the basis of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. A Cossack republic emerged and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, two brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the end of World War I and another during World War II. Before its independence, Ukraine was typically referred to in English as The Ukraine, following independence, Ukraine declared itself a neutral state. Nonetheless it formed a limited partnership with the Russian Federation and other CIS countries. In the 2000s, the government began leaning towards NATO, and it was later agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum at some point in the future. Former President Viktor Yanukovych considered the current level of co-operation between Ukraine and NATO sufficient, and was against Ukraine joining NATO and these events formed the background for the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, and the War in Donbass in April 2014. On 1 January 2016, Ukraine applied the economic part of the Deep, Ukraine has long been a global breadbasket because of its extensive, fertile farmlands and is one of the worlds largest grain exporters. The diversified economy of Ukraine includes a heavy industry sector, particularly in aerospace. Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate powers, legislative, executive. Its capital and largest city is Kiev, taking into account reserves and paramilitary personnel, Ukraine maintains the second-largest military in Europe after that of Russia. Ukrainian is the language and its alphabet is Cyrillic. The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly influenced Ukrainian architecture, literature, there are different hypotheses as to the etymology of the name Ukraine. According to the older and most widespread hypothesis, it means borderland, while more recently some studies claim a different meaning, homeland or region. The Ukraine now implies disregard for the sovereignty, according to U. S. ambassador William Taylor. Neanderthal settlement in Ukraine is seen in the Molodova archaeological sites include a mammoth bone dwelling
7.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
8.
Austria-Hungary
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The union was a result of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and came into existence on 30 March 1867. Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies, and one region, the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia under the Hungarian crown. It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal, Foreign affairs and the military came under joint oversight, but all other governmental faculties were divided between respective states. Austria-Hungary was a state and one of the worlds great powers at the time. Austria-Hungary was geographically the second-largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire, at 621,538 km2, the Empire built up the fourth-largest machine building industry of the world, after the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom. After 1878, Bosnia and Herzegovina was under Austro-Hungarian military and civilian rule until it was annexed in 1908. The annexation of Bosnia also led to Islam being recognized as a state religion due to Bosnias Muslim population. Austria-Hungary was one of the Central Powers in World War I and it was already effectively dissolved by the time the military authorities signed the armistice of Villa Giusti on 3 November 1918. The realms full, official name was The Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council, each enjoyed considerable sovereignty with only a few joint affairs. Certain regions, such as Polish Galicia within Cisleithania and Croatia within Transleithania, enjoyed autonomous status, the division between Austria and Hungary was so marked that there was no common citizenship, one was either an Austrian citizen or a Hungarian citizen, never both. This also meant that there were always separate Austrian and Hungarian passports, however, neither Austrian nor Hungarian passports were used in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia. Instead, the Kingdom issued its own passports which were written in Croatian and French and it is not known what kind of passports were used in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was under the control of both Austria and Hungary. The Kingdom of Hungary had always maintained a separate parliament, the Diet of Hungary, the administration and government of the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely untouched by the government structure of the overarching Austrian Empire. Hungarys central government structures remained well separated from the Austrian imperial government, the country was governed by the Council of Lieutenancy of Hungary – located in Pressburg and later in Pest – and by the Hungarian Royal Court Chancellery in Vienna. The Hungarian government and Hungarian parliament were suspended after the Hungarian revolution of 1848, despite Austria and Hungary sharing a common currency, they were fiscally sovereign and independent entities. Since the beginnings of the union, the government of the Kingdom of Hungary could preserve its separated. After the revolution of 1848–1849, the Hungarian budget was amalgamated with the Austrian, from 1527 to 1851, the Kingdom of Hungary maintained its own customs controls, which separated her from the other parts of the Habsburg-ruled territories
9.
Kingdom of Bulgaria
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Ferdinand I was crowned a Tsar at the Declaration of Independence, mainly because of his military plans and for seeking options for unification of all Balkan lands with an ethnic Bulgarian majority. The state was almost constantly at war throughout its existence, lending to its nickname as the Balkan Prussia, following the First World War the Bulgarian army was disbanded and forbidden to exist by the Allied powers, and all plans for national unification of the Bulgarian lands failed. In 1946, the monarchy was abolished, its final Tsar was sent into exile, to complicate matters, Serbia and Greece too made claims over parts of Macedonia, while Serbia, as a Slavic nation, also considered Macedonian Slavs as belonging to the Serbian nation. Thus began a struggle for control of these areas which lasted until World War I. In 1903, there was a Bulgarian insurrection in Ottoman Macedonia, in 1908, Ferdinand used the struggles among the Great Powers to declare Bulgaria an independent kingdom with himself as Tsar. He did this on 5 October in the St Forty Martyrs Church in Veliko Tarnovo, in February 1912 a secret treaty was signed between Bulgaria and Serbia, and in May 1912 a similar treaty was signed with Greece. Montenegro was also brought into the pact, the treaties provided for the partition of Macedonia and Thrace between the allies, although the lines of partition were left dangerously vague. After the Ottomans refused to implement reforms in the disputed areas, the allies had an astonishing success. The Bulgarian army inflicted several crushing defeats on the Ottoman forces and advanced threateningly against Constantinople, while the Serbs, the Ottomans sued for peace in December. Negotiations broke down, and fighting resumed in February 1913, the Ottomans lost Adrianople to a Bulgarian task force. A second armistice followed in March, with the Ottomans losing all their European possessions west of the Midia-Enos line, Bulgaria gained possession of most of Thrace, including Adrianople and the Aegean port of Dedeagach. Bulgaria also gained a slice of Macedonia, north and east of Thessaloniki, Bulgaria sustained the heaviest casualties of any of the allies, and on this basis felt entitled to the largest share of the spoils. Some circles in Bulgaria inclined toward going to war with Serbia, in June 1913 Serbia and Greece formed a new alliance, against Bulgaria. The Serbian and the Greek forces were initially on the retreat on the western border, the fighting was very harsh, with many casualties, especially during the key Battle of Bregalnica. Soon Romania entered the war and attacked Bulgaria from the north, the Ottoman Empire also attacked from the south-east. The war was now definitely lost for Bulgaria, which had to abandon most of her claims of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, Romania took possession of southern Dobruja. In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian opinion turned against Russia and the western powers, the government of Vasil Radoslavov aligned Bulgaria with Germany and Austria-Hungary, even though this meant also becoming an ally of the Ottomans, Bulgarias traditional enemy. But Bulgaria now had no claims against the Ottomans, whereas Serbia, Greece, the UK, France, Italy and Russia then declared war on Bulgaria
10.
Ottoman Empire
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After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans the Ottoman Beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror, at the beginning of the 17th century the empire contained 32 provinces and numerous vassal states. Some of these were later absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, while others were granted various types of autonomy during the course of centuries. With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, while the empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline following the death of Suleiman the Magnificent, this view is no longer supported by the majority of academic historians. The empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society, however, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind that of their European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian Empires. While the Empire was able to hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent. Starting before World War I, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. The word Ottoman is an anglicisation of the name of Osman I. Osmans name in turn was the Turkish form of the Arabic name ʿUthmān, in Ottoman Turkish, the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿOsmānīye, or alternatively ʿOsmānlı Devleti. In Modern Turkish, it is known as Osmanlı İmparatorluğu or Osmanlı Devleti, the Turkish word for Ottoman originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in the fourteenth century, and subsequently came to be used to refer to the empires military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term Turk was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population, the term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish-speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. In Western Europe, the two names Ottoman Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favored both in formal and informal situations and this dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–23, when the newly established Ankara-based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. Most scholarly historians avoid the terms Turkey, Turks, and Turkish when referring to the Ottomans, as the power of the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as the Anatolian Beyliks. One of these beyliks, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman, osmans early followers consisted both of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended the control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along the Sakarya River and it is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbours, due to the scarcity of the sources which survive from this period. One school of thought which was popular during the twentieth century argued that the Ottomans achieved success by rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam, in the century after the death of Osman I, Ottoman rule began to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans. Osmans son, Orhan, captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326 and this conquest meant the loss of Byzantine control over northwestern Anatolia. The important city of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387, the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe
11.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
12.
Wikisource
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Wikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project, the projects aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, the project officially began in November 24,2003 under the name Project Sourceberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name seven months later, the project has come under criticism for lack of reliability but it is also cited by organisations such as the National Archives and Records Administration. The project holds works that are either in the domain or freely licensed, professionally published works or historical source documents, not vanity products. Verification was initially made offline, or by trusting the reliability of digital libraries. Now works are supported by online scans via the ProofreadPage extension, some individual Wikisources, each representing a specific language, now only allow works backed up with scans. While the bulk of its collection are texts, Wikisource as a whole hosts other media, some Wikisources allow user-generated annotations, subject to the specific policies of the Wikisource in question. Wikisources early history included several changes of name and location, the original concept for Wikisource was as storage for useful or important historical texts. These texts were intended to support Wikipedia articles, by providing evidence and original source texts. The collection was focused on important historical and cultural material. The project was originally called Project Sourceberg during its planning stages, in 2001, there was a dispute on Wikipedia regarding the addition of primary source material, leading to edit wars over their inclusion or deletion. Project Sourceberg was suggested as a solution to this, perhaps Project Sourceberg can mainly work as an interface for easily linking from Wikipedia to a Project Gutenberg file, and as an interface for people to easily submit new work to PG. Wed want to complement Project Gutenberg--how, exactly, and Jimmy Wales adding like Larry, Im interested that we think it over to see what we can add to Project Gutenberg. It seems unlikely that primary sources should in general be editable by anyone -- I mean, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, unlike our commentary on his work, the project began its activity at ps. wikipedia. org. The contributors understood the PS subdomain to mean either primary sources or Project Sourceberg, however, this resulted in Project Sourceberg occupying the subdomain of the Pashto Wikipedia. A vote on the name changed it to Wikisource on December 6,2003. Despite the change in name, the project did not move to its permanent URL until July 23,2004, since Wikisource was initially called Project Sourceberg, its first logo was a picture of an iceberg
13.
Peace treaty
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A peace treaty is an agreement between two or more hostile parties, usually countries or governments, which formally ends a state of war between the parties. A treatys content usually depends on the nature of the conflict being concluded, in the case of large conflicts between numerous parties there may be one international treaty covering all issues or separate treaties signed between each party. There are many issues which may be included in a peace treaty. Some of these may be, Formal designation of borders, a peace treaty also is often not used to end a civil war, especially in cases of a failed secession, as it implies mutual recognition of statehood. In cases such as the American Civil War, it ends when the armies of the losing side surrender. By contrast, a secession or declaration of independence is often formalized by means of a peace treaty. Treaties are often ratified in territories deemed neutral in the previous conflict, since its founding after World War II the United Nations has sought to act as a forum for resolution in matters of international conflict. A number of treaties and obligations are involved in which member states seek to limit. This has meant that formal declarations of war are not undertaken. Probably the earliest recorded peace treaty, although rarely mentioned or remembered, was between the Hittite Empire and the Hayasa-Azzi confederation, circa 1350 BC. More famously, one of the earliest recorded peace treaties was concluded between the Hittite and Egyptian empires after the ca.1274 BC Battle of Kadesh, the battle took place in what is modern-day Syria, the entire Levant being at that time contested between the two empires. After an extremely costly four-day battle, in which neither side gained a substantial advantage, the lack of resolution led to further conflict between Egypt and the Hittites, with Ramesses II capturing the city of Kadesh and Amurru in his 8th year as king. However, the prospect of further protracted conflict between the two states eventually persuaded both their rulers, Hatusiliš III and Ramesses, to end their dispute and sign a peace treaty. The peace treaty was recorded in two versions, one in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the other in Akkadian using cuneiform script, fortunately, such dual-language recording is common to many subsequent treaties. This treaty differs from others, however, in that the two versions are worded differently. Although the majority of the text is identical, the Hittite version claims that the Egyptians came suing for peace, while the Egyptian version claims the reverse. The treaty was given to the Egyptians in the form of a plaque. The Treaty was concluded between Ramesses II and Hatusiliš III in Year 21 of Ramesses reign and its eighteen articles call for peace between Egypt and Hatti and then proceed to maintain that their respective gods also demand peace
14.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
15.
Central Powers
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The Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria – hence also known as the Quadruple Alliance – was one of the two main factions during World War I. It faced and was defeated by the Allied Powers that had formed around the Triple Entente, the Powers origin was the alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1879. The Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria did not join until after World War I had begun, the Central Powers consisted of the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the beginning of the war. The Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers later in 1914, in 1915, the Kingdom of Bulgaria joined the alliance. The name Central Powers is derived from the location of these countries, finland, Azerbaijan, and Lithuania joined them in 1918 before the war ended and after the Russian Empire collapsed. When Russia enacted a general mobilization, Germany viewed the act as provocative, the Russian government promised Germany that its general mobilization did not mean preparation for war with Germany but was a reaction to the events between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. The German government regarded the Russian promise of no war with Germany to be nonsense in light of its general mobilization, and Germany, in turn, mobilized for war. On August 1, Germany sent an ultimatum to Russia stating that since both Germany and Russia were in a state of military mobilization, a state of war existed between the two countries. After Germany declared war on Russia, France with its alliance with Russia prepared a general mobilization in expectation of war, on 3 August 1914, Germany responded to this action by declaring war on France. This plan was hoped to gain victory against the French. Belgium was a country and would not accept German forces crossing its territory. Germany disregarded Belgian neutrality and invaded the country to launch an offensive towards Paris, europe Upon its founding in 1871, the German Empire controlled Alsace-Lorraine as an imperial territory incorporated from France after the Franco-Prussian War. It was held as part of Germanys sovereign territory, Africa Germany held multiple African colonies at the time of World War I. All of Germanys African colonies were invaded and occupied by Allied forces during the war, cameroon, German East Africa, and German Southwest Africa were German colonies in Africa. Togoland was a German protectorate in Africa, Asia The Kiautschou Bay concession was a German dependency in East Asia leased from China in 1898. It was occupied by Japanese forces following the Siege of Tsingtao, Pacific German New Guinea was a German protectorate in the Pacific. It was occupied by Australian forces in 1914, German Samoa was a German protectorate following the Tripartite Convention. It was occuiped by the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1914, Austria-Hungary regarded the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as being orchestrated with the assistance of Serbia
16.
World War I
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World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Italy, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world. On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany then invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors. During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was also sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary, Russia and Germany
17.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
18.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, 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, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically 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 and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this 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 to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
19.
Triple Entente
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Historians continue to debate the importance of the alliance system in igniting the Great War. At the start of World War I in 1914, all three Triple Entente members entered it as Allies of World War I against the Central Powers, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The situation in the Balkans and the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, in an attempt to stop Russia from allying with France, Bismarck signed the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia in 1887. It assured that both parties would remain neutral toward each other if war broke out, after the Reinsurance Treaty was not renewed in 1890, Russias leaders grew alarmed at the countrys diplomatic isolation and entered into the Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894. In 1904 Britain and France signed a series of agreements, the Entente cordiale, the Entente heralded the end of British neutrality in Europe. It was partly a response to growing German antagonism, as expressed in the expansion of the Kaiserliche Marine into a fleet that could threaten the supremacy of the Royal Navy. The Entente, in contrast to the Triple Alliance or the Franco-Russian Alliance, was not an alliance of mutual defence, as British Foreign Office Official Eyre Crowe minuted, The fundamental fact of course is that the Entente is not an alliance. For purposes of ultimate emergencies it may be found to have no substance at all. For the Entente is nothing more than a frame of mind, in 1907 Britain and Russia signed an agreement called the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 to stop both countries rivalry in Central Asia, The Great Game. In the last decade of the century, Britain continued its policy of splendid isolation. However, by the early 1900s the German threat increased dramatically, some in Britain thought it was in need of allies. The Tangier Crisis later encouraged co-operation between the two countries from their fear of apparent German expansionism. Russia was defeated in the Russo-Japanese War, which resulted in concern over Russian imperialism. France was already allied to Russia in the Dual Alliance, Britain was frightened about the rising threat of German imperialism. Kaiser Wilhelm II had announced to the world his intentions to create a global German empire, Britain, traditionally having control of the seas, saw this as a serious threat to its own empire and navy. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, Prussia defeated the Second French Empire, in the Treaty of Frankfurt, Prussia forced France to cede Alsace-Lorraine to the new German Empire. Ever since, relations had been at an all time low, France, worried about the escalating military development of Germany, began building up its own war industries and army to deter to German aggression. As another measure, France developed a bond with Russia by ratifying the Franco-Russian Alliance
20.
Baltic states
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The Baltic states cooperate on a regional level in several intergovernmental organizations. While the native populations of Latvia and Lithuania are known as Baltic people, another Baltic identity, Baltic German, began to develop during the Middle Ages after the Livonian Crusade. After the collapse of Livonia, parts of Latvia and Estonia came under influence of the Commonwealth and this lasted until the 18th century, when the lands of all three modern countries were gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire. The Baltic states gained independence after World War I, but were occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, all three countries are members of the European Union, NATO and the Eurozone. They are classified as high-income economies by the World Bank and maintain high Human Development Index, Estonia and Latvia are also members of the OECD, while Lithuania is a prospective candidate. The term Baltic stems from the name of the Baltic Sea – a hydronym dating back to the 11th century, although there are several theories about its origin, most ultimately trace it to Indo-European root *bhel meaning white, fair. This meaning is retained in modern Baltic languages, where baltas, however the modern names of the region and the sea, that originate from this root, were not used in either of the two languages prior to the 19th century. In English Ost is East, and in fact, the Baltic Sea mostly lies to the east of Germany, Denmark, Norway, in the 13th century pagan Baltic and Finnic peoples in the region became a target of the Northern Crusades. In the aftermath of the Livonian crusade, a crusader state officially named Terra Mariana and it was divided into four autonomous bishoprics and lands of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. After the Brothers of the Sword suffered defeat at the Battle of Saule, Northern Estonia initially became a Danish dominion, but it was purchased by the Teutonic Order in the mid-14th century. The Lithuanians were also targeted by the crusaders, however they were able to resist and it allied with the Kingdom of Poland. After the Union of Krewo in 1385 created a union between the two countries, they became ever more closely integrated and finally merged into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569. After victory in the Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War, the Polish–Lithuanian union became a political power in the region. In 1558 Livonia was attacked by the Tsardom of Russia and the Livonian war broke out, the rulers of different regions within Livonia sought to ally with foreign powers, which resulted in Polish–Lithuanian, Swedish and Danish involvement. In the aftermath of conflicts of the 17th century, much of the Duchy of Livonia. These newly acquired Swedish territories, as well as Ingria and Kexholm, at the beginning of the 18th century the Swedish Empire was attacked by a coalition of several European powers in the Great Northern War. Among these powers was Russia, seeking to restore its access to the Baltic Sea, during the course of the war it conquered all of the Swedish provinces on the Eastern Baltic coast. This acquisition was legalized by the Treaty of Nystad in which the Baltic Dominions were ceded to Russia, under Russian rule these territories came to be known as Ostsee Governorates
21.
Kars Oblast
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Kars Oblast was one of the Transcaucasian oblasts of the Russian Empire between 1878 and 1917. Its capital was the city of Kars, presently in the Republic of Turkey, the governorate bordered with the Ottoman Empire, Batum Oblast, Tiflis Governorate, Erivan Governorate, and from 1883 to 1903 the Kutaisi Governorate. It covered all of Turkeys present provinces of Kars and Ardahan and the northeastern part of Erzurum Province as well as a small part of Armenia. According to the Russian Empire Census of 1897, the Oblast was populated with 25. 3% Armenians,21. 9% Turks,14. 8% Kurds,11. 2% Caucasus Greeks,10. 3% Karapapaks, and 7. 7% Russians. Kars Oblast was created in 1878 from some of the lands conquered by Russia from the Ottoman Empire, the lands of the Oblast had previously belonged to the Ottoman Kars Eyalet and Samtskhe Province before 1845 and Erzurum Eyalet after 1845. With the incorporation of the region into Russian Empire, a portion of the local Muslim population left for Ottoman territory. Many of these Christian Orthodox communities had fought in or collaborated with the Russian imperial army as a means of recapturing territory from the Muslim Ottomans for Christian Orthodoxy, the first ruler of the oblast held the title of nachalnik, later the title became military governor. Nachalniks were Ivan Popko between 01.11.1877 and 08.06.1878, and Viktor Frankini, the first military governor of was Viktor Frankini. In any event Turkish forces soon invaded the area, forming an unrecognized puppet government, incorporation of most of the lands of the former Kars Oblast into Turkey was confirmed by the Treaty of Kars, signed by the unrecognized Turkish state and the Soviet Union. Since 1881, Kars Oblast consisted of four okrugs, Kars Ardahan Kaghzvan Oltu Two more okrugs, Zarushat, in 1892, the population of Kars Oblast was estimated as 200,868. This number may perhaps imply that the 200,868 estimate for 1892 given by Brockhaus is too low, viz. among the 27,856 speakers of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian,19,910 men and 7,946 women were recorded. The Polish, and Lithuanian speakers were almost exclusively male as well, Germans and this preponderance of males in the European ethnic groups may indicate presence of a large numbers of soldiers or exiled persons in the region. Ethnic groups in Kars Oblast according to 1897 Russian census Russian Armenia First Republic of Armenia
22.
Transcaucasia
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Transcaucasia, or the South Caucasus, is a geopolitical region in the vicinity of the southern Caucasus Mountains on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Transcaucasia roughly corresponds to modern Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, Transcaucasia and Ciscaucasia together comprise the larger Caucasus geographical region that divides Eurasia. All of present-day Armenia is in Transcaucasia, the majority of present-day Georgia and Azerbaijan, including the exclave of Nakhchivan, parts of Iran and Turkey are also included within the region of Transcaucasia. Goods produced in the region include oil, manganese ore, tea, citrus fruits and it remains one of the most politically tense regions in the post-Soviet area, and contains three heavily disputed areas, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Nagorno-Karabakh. Between 1878 and 1917 the Russian controlled province of Kars Oblast was also incorporated into the Transcaucasus, Transcaucasia is a Latin rendering of the Russian-language word zakavkazie, meaning the area beyond the Caucasus Mountains. This implies a Russian vantage point, and is analogous to similar terms such as Transnistria and Transleithania, other forms of this word include Trans-Caucasus and Transcaucasus. The region is referred to as Southern Caucasia and the South Caucasus. Located on the peripheries of Turkey, Iran and Russia, the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, throughout history, Transcaucasia was usually under the direct rule of the various in-Iran based empires and part of the Iranian world. In the course of the 19th century, Qajar Iran had to cede the region as a result of the two Russo-Persian Wars of that century to Imperial Russia. Ancient kingdoms of the region included Armenia, Albania and Iberia, later, the Orthodox Christian Kingdom of Georgia dominated most of Transcaucasia. The region was conquered by the Seljuk, Mongol, Turkic, Safavid, Ottoman, Afsharid. The 1826-1828 conquerings were confirmed in the 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay, in 1801, what is now Georgia was formally incorporated into the Russian Empire. After 1828-1829 war, Ottomans ceded Western Georgia except Adjaria, which was known as Sanjak of Batum, finally after Russo-Turkish War, Russians completed conquest of Transcaucasus. In 1844, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were combined into a single czarist government-general, Transcaucasia, in particular where modern-day Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Iran are located, is one of the native areas of the wine-producing vine Vitis vinifera. Some experts speculate that Transcaucasia may be the birthplace of wine production, archaeological excavations and carbon dating of grape seeds from the area have dated back to 7000–5000 BC. Wine found in Iran has been dated to c. 7400 BC and c. 5000 BC, the earliest winery, dated to c. 4000 BC, was found in Armenia
23.
Ukrainian People's Republic
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Between April and December 1918 the Ukrainian Peoples Republic did not function, having been overthrown by the Ukrainian State of Pavlo Skoropadsky. From autumn 1919 the UNR operated as an ally of the Second Polish Republic, the 18 March 1921 Treaty of Riga between the Second Polish Republic, Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine sealed the fate of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic. These two sides fought constantly with each other, which resulted in casualties among Ukrainians fighting in a civil war as part of the wider Ukrainian-Soviet War of 1917-1921. The Soviet Union would extend control over what would become the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. On 10 June 1917 the Ukrainian Central Council declared its autonomy as part of the Russian Republic by its First Universal at the All-Ukrainian Military Congress, the highest governing body of the Ukrainian Peoples Republic became the General Secretariat headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko. After the October Revolution the Kievan faction of the Bolshevik Party instigated the uprising in Kiev on November 8,1917 in order to establish Soviet power in the city. Kiev Military District forces attempted to stop it, but after the Tsentralna Rada threw its support behind the Bolsheviks, after expelling the government forces, the Rada announced a wider autonomy for the Ukrainian Republic, still maintaining ties to Russia, on November 22,1917. It also stated that the people of the governorates, Voronezh, Kholm, the Central Rada called all revolutionary activities such as the October Revolution a civil war and expressed its hopes for the resolution of the chaos. After a brief truce, the Bolsheviks realized that the Rada had no intention of supporting the Bolshevik Revolution and they re-organized into an All-Ukrainian Council of Soviets in December 1917 in an attempt to seize power. When that failed due to the Bolsheviks relative lack of popularity in Kiev, the Bolshevik Red Army entered Ukraine from the Russian SFSR in support of the local Soviet government. The Donetsk-Kryvoi Rog Republic was created by a decree of Lenin as part of the Russian SFSR with its capital in Kharkiv. That decree was implemented by Fyodor Sergeyev who became the chairman of the local government as well as joining the Soviet government of Ukraine. The congress accepted the declaration of a plan of Ukrainization of the Russian Army. The congress showed its support to the Ukrainian Central Council, Petty Council created of the Regional Committee in Protection of Revolution in Ukraine. The committee announced the extension of its powers over the nine Ukrainian governorates November 8 – the Ukrainian Central Council adopted a resolution which condemned the revolution, each deputy represents 100,000 of population, a right of vote have citizens of 20 years and older. International diplomatic missions transferred their offices from Mohyliv-Podilsky to Kiev, the Petty Council adopted the law about the new monetary system. The monetary unit became hryvnia that had 8.712 units of pure gold, less than a month later, on February 9,1918, the Red Army seized Kiev. Germany helped the Ukrainian Army force the Bolsheviks out of Ukraine, on February 20,1918 the council of the Kuban Peoples Republic accepted the resolution for a federal union of Kuban with Ukraine as Bolshevik forces pushed towards Yekaterinodar
24.
Russian Partition
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The Russian Partition constituted the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that were invaded by the Russian Empire in the course of late-18th-century Partitions of Poland. The Russian acquisition encompassed the largest share of Polands population, living on 463,200 km2 of land constituting formerly east-central territory of a sovereign country. The first partitioning led by imperial Russia took place in 1772, the one in 1793. To both Russians and Poles, the term Russian Poland was not acceptable, to the Russians after partition Poland ceased to exist, and their newly acquired territories were considered the long lost parts of Mother Russia. To Poles, Poland was simply Polish, never Russian, while the Russians used varying administrative names for their new territories, another popular term, used in Poland and adopted by most other historiographies, was the Russian Partition. Even before the partitions from the late 18th century, the Russian Empire had already acquired some territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The first Russian partition took place in the late 17th century, under the Third Partition of Poland Russia acquired Courland, all Lithuanian territory east of the Nieman River, and the remaining parts of Volhynian Ukraine. Major historical events of the Russian Partition included the Warsaw Uprising soon after Kościuszkos victory at Racławice. It ended up in the massacre of Praga district of Warsaw, in which the Russian imperial army killed up to 20,000 civilians in reprisal or revenge, regardless of gender and age. The whole of Praga was strewn with bodies, blood was flowing in streams wrote Suvorov himself. In 1807, the victorious Napoleon formed the Duchy of Warsaw after his War of the Fourth Coalition against Prussia and Russia, the new Duchy was held in personal union by King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony. However, the Duchy was dissolved after just a few years following the 1815 Congress of Vienna, the Tsarist Kingdom of Poland was established in the territory returned to Russia with the Tsar taking the title of King of Poland. The protectorate was gradually integrated into Russia over the course of the 19th century, notwithstanding, the relentless Russian exploitation activities led to the 1830–1831 November Uprising which took place in the heartland of partitioned Poland, forming a government. Its subsequent defeat resulted in a new wave of Tsarist mass repressions, in 1863–1864 another insurrection, the January Uprising, broke out. This time, the Carmelite friars who helped the insurgents were sent on death marches to Siberia chained by their necks together, the January Uprising lead to the Kingdoms autonomy being drastically reduced, and its renaming as Vistula Land. There is debate as to whether the Kingdom of Poland, as a state, was replaced by the Vistula Land. Towns were stripped of their charters in reprisal, and turned into villages, the Russian Partition of Poland was made an official province of the Russian Empire in 1867. In early 20th century, a part of the Russian Revolution of 1905 was the Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland
25.
Treaty of Versailles
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The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the peace treaties that brought World War I to an end. The Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers and it was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of World War I signed separate treaties, although the armistice, signed on 11 November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The treaty was registered by the Secretariat of the League of Nations on 21 October 1919 and this article, Article 231, later became known as the War Guilt clause. The treaty forced Germany to disarm, make substantial territorial concessions, in 1921 the total cost of these reparations was assessed at 132 billion marks. On the other hand, prominent figures on the Allied side such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch criticized the treaty for treating Germany too leniently, although it is often referred to as the Versailles Conference, only the actual signing of the treaty took place at the historic palace. Most of the negotiations were in Paris, with the Big Four meetings taking place generally at the Quai dOrsay, the First World War was fought across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Countries beyond the war zones were also affected by the disruption of trade, finance. In 1917, two revolutions occurred within the Russian Empire, which led to the collapse of the Imperial Government, the American war aim was to detach the war from nationalistic disputes and ambitions after the Bolshevik disclosure of secret treaties between the Allies. The existence of these treaties tended to discredit Allied claims that Germany was the power with aggressive ambitions. On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points and this speech outlined a policy of free trade, open agreements, democracy and self-determination. After the Central Powers launched Operation Faustschlag on the Eastern Front and this treaty ended the war between Russia and the Central powers and annexed 1,300,000 square miles of territory and 62 million people. During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse, desertion rates within the German army began to increase, and civilian strikes drastically reduced war production. On the Western Front, the Allied forces launched the Hundred Days Offensive, sailors of the Imperial German Navy at Kiel mutinied, which prompted uprisings in Germany, which became known as the German Revolution. The German government tried to obtain a settlement based on the Fourteen Points. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, the terms of the armistice called for an immediate evacuation of German troops from occupied Belgium, France, and Luxembourg within fifteen days. In addition, it established that Allied forces would occupy the Rhineland, in late 1918, Allied troops entered Germany and began the occupation. Both the German Empire and Great Britain were dependent on imports of food and raw materials, primarily from the Americas, the Blockade of Germany was a naval operation conducted by the Allied Powers to stop the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs reaching the Central Powers
26.
Russian Civil War
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The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the Russian Revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russias political future. In addition, rival militant socialists and nonideological Green armies fought against both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, eight foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the Allied Forces and the pro-German armies. The Red Army defeated the White Armed Forces of South Russia in Ukraine, the remains of the White forces commanded by Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel were beaten in Crimea and evacuated in late 1920. Lesser battles of the war continued on the periphery for two years, and minor skirmishes with the remnants of the White forces in the Far East continued well into 1923. Armed national resistance in Central Asia was not completely crushed until 1934, there were an estimated 7,000, 000–12,000,000 casualties during the war, mostly civilians. The Russian Civil War has been described by some as the greatest national catastrophe that Europe had yet seen, many pro-independence movements emerged after the break-up of the Russian Empire and fought in the war. Several parts of the former Russian Empire—Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the rest of the former Russian Empire was consolidated into the Soviet Union shortly afterwards. After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the Russian Provisional Government was established during the February Revolution of 1917, Political commissars were appointed to each unit of the army to maintain morale and ensure loyalty. In June 1918, when it became apparent that an army composed solely of workers would be far too small. Former Tsarist officers were utilized as military specialists, sometimes their families were taken hostage in order to ensure their loyalty, at the start of the war three-quarters of the Red Army officer corps was composed of former Tsarist officers. By its end, 83% of all Red Army divisional and corps commanders were ex-Tsarist soldiers, a Ukrainian nationalist movement was active in Ukraine during the war. More significant was the emergence of an anarchist political and military movement known as the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine or the Anarchist Black Army led by Nestor Makhno, some of the military forces were set up on the basis of clandestine officers organizations in the cities. The Czechoslovak Legions had been part of the Russian army and numbered around 30,000 troops by October 1917 and they had an agreement with the new Bolshevik government to be evacuated from the Eastern Front via the port of Vladivostok to France. The transport from the Eastern Front to Vladivostok slowed down in the chaos, under pressure from the Central Powers, Trotsky ordered the disarming and arrest of the legionaries, which created tensions with the Bolsheviks. The Western Allies armed and supported opponents of the Bolsheviks, hence, many of these countries expressed their support for the Whites, including the provision of troops and supplies. Winston Churchill declared that Bolshevism must be strangled in its cradle, the British and French had supported Russia during World War I on a massive scale with war materials. After the treaty, it looked like much of material would fall into the hands of the Germans. Under this pretext began allied intervention in the Russian Civil War with the United Kingdom, there were violent clashes with troops loyal to the Bolsheviks
27.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
28.
Finland
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Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a sovereign state in Northern Europe. A peninsula with the Gulf of Finland to the south and the Gulf of Bothnia to the west, the country has borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north. Estonia is south of the country across the Gulf of Finland, Finland is a Nordic country situated in the geographical region of Fennoscandia, which also includes Scandinavia. Finlands population is 5.5 million, and the majority of the population is concentrated in the southern region,88. 7% of the population is Finnish people who speak Finnish, a Uralic language unrelated to the Scandinavian languages, the second major group are the Finland-Swedes. In terms of area, it is the eighth largest country in Europe, Finland is a parliamentary republic with a central government based in the capital Helsinki, local governments in 311 municipalities, and an autonomous region, the Åland Islands. Over 1.4 million people live in the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, from the late 12th century, Finland was an integral part of Sweden, a legacy reflected in the prevalence of the Swedish language and its official status. In the spirit of the notion of Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, we are not Swedes, we do not want to become Russians, let us therefore be Finns, nevertheless, in 1809, Finland was incorporated into the Russian Empire as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland. In 1906, Finland became the nation in the world to give the right to vote to all adult citizens. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, Finland declared itself independent, in 1918, the fledgling state was divided by civil war, with the Bolshevik-leaning Reds supported by the equally new Soviet Russia, fighting the Whites, supported by the German Empire. After a brief attempt to establish a kingdom, the became a republic. During World War II, the Soviet Union sought repeatedly to occupy Finland, with Finland losing parts of Karelia, Salla and Kuusamo, Petsamo and some islands, Finland joined the United Nations in 1955 and established an official policy of neutrality. The Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948 gave the Soviet Union some leverage in Finnish domestic politics during the Cold War era, Finland was a relative latecomer to industrialization, remaining a largely agrarian country until the 1950s. It rapidly developed an advanced economy while building an extensive Nordic-style welfare state, resulting in widespread prosperity, however, Finnish GDP growth has been negative in 2012–2014, with a preceding nadir of −8% in 2009. Finland is a top performer in numerous metrics of national performance, including education, economic competitiveness, civil liberties, quality of life, a large majority of Finns are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, though freedom of religion is guaranteed under the Finnish Constitution. The first known appearance of the name Finland is thought to be on three rune-stones. Two were found in the Swedish province of Uppland and have the inscription finlonti, the third was found in Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It has the inscription finlandi and dates from the 13th century, the name can be assumed to be related to the tribe name Finns, which is mentioned first known time AD98. The name Suomi has uncertain origins, but a candidate for a source is the Proto-Baltic word *źemē, in addition to the close relatives of Finnish, this name is also used in the Baltic languages Latvian and Lithuanian
29.
Estonia
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Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia consists of a mainland and 2,222 islands and islets in the Baltic Sea, covering 45,339 km2 of land and water, and is influenced by a humid continental climate. The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 6500 BC, in 1988, during the Singing Revolution, the Estonian Supreme Soviet issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration in defiance of Soviet rule, and independence was restored on 20 August 1991. Estonia is a parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. Its capital and largest city is Tallinn, with a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, OECD and Schengen Area. Estonia is a country with an advanced, high-income economy that is among the fastest growing in the EU. Its Human Development Index ranks very highly, and it performs favourably in measurements of economic freedom, civil liberties, the 2015 PISA test places Estonian high school students 3rd in the world, behind Singapore and Japan. Citizens of Estonia are provided with health care, free education. Since independence the country has developed its IT sector, becoming one of the worlds most digitally advanced societies. In 2005 Estonia became the first nation to hold elections over the Internet, in the Estonian language, the oldest known endonym of the Estonians was maarahvas, meaning country people or people of the land. The land inhabited by Estonians was called Maavald meaning Country Parish or Land Parish, one hypothesis regarding the modern name of Estonia is that it originated from the Aesti, a people described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania. The historic Aesti were allegedly Baltic people, whereas the modern Estonians are Finno-Ugric, the geographical areas between Aesti and Estonia do not match, with Aesti being further down south. Ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to a land called Eistland, as the country is called in Icelandic. Early Latin and other ancient versions of the name are Estia and Hestia, esthonia was a common alternative English spelling prior to 1921. Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, the oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago, the earliest human inhabitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to Kunda culture, which is named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in communities near bodies of water
30.
Latvia
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Latvia, officially the Republic of Latvia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe, one of the three Baltic states. It is bordered by Estonia to the north, Lithuania to the south, Russia to the east, Latvia has 1,957,200 inhabitants and a territory of 64,589 km2. The country has a seasonal climate. Latvia is a parliamentary republic established in 1918. The capital city is Riga, the European Capital of Culture 2014, Latvia is a unitary state, divided into 119 administrative divisions, of which 110 are municipalities and 9 are cities. Latvians and Livs are the people of Latvia. Latvian and Lithuanian are the two surviving Baltic languages. Despite foreign rule from the 13th to 20th centuries, the Latvian nation maintained its identity throughout the generations via the language, Latvia and Estonia share a long common history. Until World War II, Latvia also had significant minorities of ethnic Germans, Latvia is historically predominantly Protestant Lutheran, except for the Latgale region in the southeast, which has historically been predominantly Roman Catholic. The Russian population has brought a significant portion of Eastern Orthodox Christians. The Republic of Latvia was founded on 18 November 1918, however, its de facto independence was interrupted at the outset of World War II. The peaceful Singing Revolution, starting in 1987, called for Baltic emancipation of Soviet rule and it ended with the Declaration on the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia on 4 May 1990, and restoring de facto independence on 21 August 1991. Latvia is a democratic and developed country and member of the European Union, NATO, the Council of Europe, the United Nations, CBSS, the IMF, NB8, NIB, OECD, OSCE, and WTO. For 2014, Latvia was listed 46th on the Human Development Index and it used the Latvian lats as its currency until it was replaced by the euro on 1 January 2014. The name Latvija is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes, henry of Latvia coined the Latinisations of the countrys name, Lettigallia and Lethia, both derived from the Latgalians. The terms inspired the variations on the name in Romance languages from Letonia. Around 3000 BC, the ancestors of the Latvian people settled on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. The Balts established trade routes to Rome and Byzantium, trading local amber for precious metals, by 900 AD, four distinct Baltic tribes inhabited Latvia, Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians, as well as the Livonians speaking a Finnic language
31.
Lithuania
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Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in Northern Europe. One of the three Baltic states, it is situated along the shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.9 million people as of 2015, and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. The official language, Lithuanian, along with Latvian, is one of two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. For centuries, the shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, the King of Lithuania, and the first unified Lithuanian state, with the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighboring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772–95, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuanias territory. As World War I neared its end, Lithuanias Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, in the midst of the Second World War, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end and the Germans retreated, Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, a full member of the Eurozone, Schengen Agreement and NATO. It is also a member of the Nordic Investment Bank, the United Nations Human Development Index lists Lithuania as a very high human development country. Lithuania has been among the fastest growing economies in the European Union and is ranked 21st in the world in the Ease of Doing Business Index, the first people settled in the territory of Lithuania after the last glacial period in the 10th millennium BC. Over a millennium, the Indo-Europeans, who arrived in the 3rd – 2nd millennium BC, mixed with the local population, the first written mention of Lithuania is found in a medieval German manuscript, the Annals of Quedlinburg, in an entry dated 9 March 1009. Initially inhabited by fragmented Baltic tribes, in the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, after his assassination in 1263, pagan Lithuania was a target of the Christian crusades of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. Despite the devastating century-long struggle with the Orders, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded rapidly, by the end of the 14th century, Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe and included present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia. The geopolitical situation between the west and the east determined the multicultural and multi-confessional character of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the ruling elite practised religious tolerance and Chancery Slavonic language was used as an auxiliary language to the Latin for official documents. In 1385, the Grand Duke Jogaila accepted Polands offer to become its king, Jogaila embarked on gradual Christianization of Lithuania and established a personal union between Poland and Lithuania. It implied that Lithuania, the fiercely independent land, was one of the last pagan areas of Europe to adopt Christianity, after two civil wars, Vytautas the Great became the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1392. During his reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its expansion, centralization of the state began
32.
Eastern Front (World War I)
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It stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, included most of Eastern Europe and stretched deep into Central Europe as well. The term contrasts with Western Front, which was being fought in Belgium, in the opening months of the war, the Imperial Russian Army attempted an invasion of eastern Prussia in the northwestern theater, only to be beaten back by the Germans after some initial success. At the same time, in the south, they successfully invaded Galicia, in Russian Poland, the Germans failed to take Warsaw. But by 1915, the German and Austro-Hungarian armies were on the advance, dealing the Russians heavy casualties in Galicia and in Poland, Grand Duke Nicholas was sacked from his position as the commander-in-chief and replaced by the Tsar himself. Several offensives against the Germans in 1916 failed, including Lake Naroch Offensive, however, General Aleksei Brusilov oversaw a highly successful operation against Austria-Hungary that became known as the Brusilov Offensive, which saw the Russian Army make large gains. The Kingdom of Romania entered the war in August 1916, the Entente promised the region of Transylvania in return for Romanian support. The Romanian Army invaded Transylvania and had successes, but was forced to stop and was pushed back by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians when Bulgaria attacked them in the south. Meanwhile, a revolution occurred in Russia in February 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate and a Russian Provisional Government was founded, with Georgy Lvov as its first leader, who was eventually replaced by Alexander Kerensky. The newly formed Russian Republic continued to fight the war alongside Romania, Kerensky oversaw the July Offensive, which was largely a failure and caused a collapse in the Russian Army. The new government established by the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, taking it out of the war and making large territorial concessions. Romania was also forced to surrender and signed a similar treaty, the front in the east was much longer than that in the west. This had an effect on the nature of the warfare. While World War I on the Western Front developed into trench warfare and this was because the greater length of the front ensured that the density of soldiers in the line was lower so the line was easier to break. Once broken, the communication networks made it difficult for the defender to rush reinforcements to the rupture in the line. Propaganda was a key component of the culture of World War I and it was most commonly deployed through the state-controlled media to glorify the homeland and demonize the enemy. Propaganda often took the form of images which portrayed stereotypes from folklore about the enemy or from glorified moments from the nations history, on the Eastern Front, propaganda took many forms such as opera, film, spy fiction, theater, spectacle, war novels and graphic art. Across the Eastern Front the amount of used in each country varied from state to state. Propaganda took many forms within each country and was distributed by different groups
33.
Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
34.
February Revolution
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The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. The revolution centered on Petrograd, then the Russian capital, arguably beginning on 8 March, Revolutionary activity was largely confined to the capital and its vicinity, and lasted about eight days. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, on 12 March mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov. The revolution appeared to break out spontaneously, without any leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, bread rioters primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the citys garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, in all, over 1,300 people were killed in the protests of February 1917. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of the Imperial government in the spring of 1917, different historians apply different weights to different factors, liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Rabinowitch summarizes the main long-term and short-term causes, The February 1917 revolution, despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. As historian Richard Pipes writes, the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter. The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. Widespread strikes, riots and the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin ensued. These conditions caused much agitation among the working and professional classes. This tension erupted into revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917. The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, the economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed. In August 1914, all supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The exceptions included the Bolshevik Party and specifically Vladimir Lenin who argued it was not a war fighting. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, nearly six million casualties—dead, wounded and missing—had been accrued by January 1917
35.
Nicholas II of Russia
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Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic, Soviet historiography portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader, whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects. The Anglo-Russian Entente, designed to counter German attempts to influence in the Middle East. Nicholas approved the Russian mobilisation on 30 July 1914, which led to Germany declaring war on Russia on 1 August 1914 and it is estimated that around 3,300,000 Russians were killed in World War I. Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas abdicated on behalf of himself and his son, Nicholas, the recovered remains of the Imperial Family were finally re-interred in St. Petersburg, eighty years to the day on 17 July 1998. In 1981, Nicholas, his wife and their children were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, located in New York City. On 15 August 2000 Nicholas and his family were canonized as passion bearers, Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. He had five siblings, Alexander, George, Xenia, Michael. Nicholas often referred to his father nostalgically in letters after Alexanders death in 1894 and he was also very close to his mother, as revealed in their published letters to each other. His paternal grandparents were Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia and his maternal grandparents were King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor being Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna, Nicholas was related to several monarchs in Europe. His mothers siblings included Kings Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece, Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins of King George V of the United Kingdom. Nicholas was also a first cousin of both King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway, as well as King Constantine I of Greece, Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin-once-removed of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as Nikolasha and Nicholas the Tall, while the Tsar was Nicholas the Short. In his childhood, Nicholas, his parents and siblings made annual visits to the Danish royal palaces of Fredensborg and Bernstorff to visit his grandparents, the king and queen. The visits also served as family reunions, as his mothers siblings would come from the United Kingdom, Germany. It was there in 1883, that he had a flirtation with one of his English first cousins, in 1873, Nicholas also accompanied his parents and younger brother, two-year-old George, on a two-month, semi-official visit to England. In London, Nicholas and his family stayed at Marlborough House, as guests of his Uncle Bertie and Aunt Alix, the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he was spoiled by his uncle
36.
Russian Provisional Government
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The Russian Provisional Government was a provisional government of the Russian Republic established immediately following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II of the Russian Empire on 2 March 1917. The intention of the government was the organization of elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly. The provisional government lasted approximately eight months, and ceased to exist when the Bolsheviks seized power after the October Revolution in October 1917. According to Harold Whitmore Williams the history of eight months during which Russia was ruled by the Provisional Government was the history of the steady and systematic disorganisation of the army. The Provisional Government was formed in Petrograd by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and was led first by Prince Georgy Lvov and it replaced the institution of the Council of Ministers of Russia, members of which after the February Revolution presided in the Chief Office of Admiralty. At the same time the Russian Emperor Nicholas II abdicated in favor of the Grand Duke Michael who agreed that he would accept after the decision of Russian Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Government was unable to make decisive policy decisions due to political factionalism and a breakdown of state structures. This weakness left the government open to challenges from both the right and the left. The weakness of the Provisional Government is perhaps best reflected in the nickname given to Kerensky. The authority of the Tsars government began disintegrating on 1 November 1916, Stürmer was succeeded by Alexander Trepov and Nikolai Golitsyn, both Prime Ministers for only a few weeks. During the February Revolution two rival institutions, the Imperial Duma and the Petrograd Soviet, both located in the Tauride Palace, competed for power. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on 2 March and Milyukov announced the decision to offer the Regency to his brother. Grand Duke Michael did not want to take the poisoned chalice, public announcement of the formation of the Provisional Government was made. It was published in Izvestia the day after its formation, the announcement stated the declaration of government Full and immediate amnesty on all issues political and religious, including, terrorist acts, military uprisings, and agrarian crimes etc. Freedom of word, press, unions, assemblies, and strikes with spread of political freedoms to military servicemen within the restrictions allowed by military-technical conditions, abolition of all hereditary, religious, and national class restrictions. Immediate preparations for the convocation on basis of universal, equal, secret, and direct vote for the Constituent Assembly which will determine the form of government, replacement of the police with a public militsiya and its elected chairmanship subordinated to the local authorities. Elections to the authorities of local self-government on basis of universal, direct, equal, non-disarmament and non-withdrawal out of Petrograd the military units participating in the revolution movement. Under preservation of strict discipline in ranks and performing a military service - elimination of all restrictions for soldiers in the use of rights granted to all other citizens. It also said, The provisional government feels obliged to add that it is not intended to take advantage of circumstances for any delay in implementing the above reforms
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Georgy Lvov
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Prince Georgy Yevgenyevich Lvov was a Russian statesman and the first post-imperial prime minister of Russia, from 15 March to 21 July 1917. Prince Lvov was born in Dresden and descended from the sovereign Viking princes of Yaroslavl and his family moved home to Popovka in the Aleksin district of Tula Governorate from Germany soon after his birth. He graduated from the University of Moscow with a degree in law, during the Russo-Japanese War he organized relief work in the East and in 1905, he joined the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party. A year later he won election to the First Duma, and was nominated for a ministerial position and he married Countess Julia Alexeievna Bobrinskaya, great-great-granddaughter of Grigory Orlov and Catherine the Great, without issue. During the first Russian Revolution and the abdication of Nicholas II, emperor of Russia, unable to rally sufficient support, he resigned in July 1917 in favour of his Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky. Lvov was arrested when the Bolsheviks seized power later that year and he escaped and settled in Paris, where he spent the rest of his life. There is a memorial to Prince Lvov in Aleksin as well as an exhibition on him in the town museum. In Popovka there is another memorial opposite his local church and a plaque on the wall of the school he founded. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine and is buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery in France, a relative of his by the name of Prince Andre Nikita Lwoff, variously described as either Georgy Lvovs son or nephew, is buried in the old cemetery in Menton. Lvov wrote an autobiography, Воспоминания, while in exile and a biography was written in 1932 by Tikhon Polner entitled Жизненный путь князя Георгія Евгеніевича Львова. Neither has been translated but both have been reprinted and are available in Russian. Note on transliteration, An older French form, Lvoff, is used on his tombstone, Georgy can be written as Georgi and is sometimes seen in its translated form, George or Jorge. Lvov Days and memorials Aleksin Museum of Art and Regional Studies Publishers of Lvovs biographies
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Alexander Kerensky
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Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a Russian lawyer and key political figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917. A leader of the moderate-socialist Trudoviks faction of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, on 7 November, his government was overthrown by the Lenin-led Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. He spent the remainder of his life in exile, in Paris and New York City, Alexander Kerensky was born in Simbirsk on the Volga River on 4 May 1881. His father, Fyodor Kerensky, was a teacher and director of the gymnasium and was later promoted to Inspector of public schools. He subsequently embarked upon a career, in which he prospered, allowing him to move his business to Moscow. Kerenskys father was the teacher of Vladimir Ulyanov, and members of the Kerensky, in 1889, when Kerensky was eight, the family moved to Tashkent, where his father had been appointed the main inspector of public schools. Alexander graduated with honours in 1899, the same year he entered St. Petersburg University, where he studied history and philology. The next year he switched to law and he earned his law degree in 1904 and married Olga Lvovna Baranovskaya, the daughter of a Russian general, the same year. Kerensky joined the Narodnik movement and worked as a counsel to victims of the Revolution of 1905. At the end of 1904, he was jailed on suspicion of belonging to a militant group, afterwards he gained a reputation for his work as a defence lawyer in a number of political trials of revolutionaries. In 1912, Kerensky became widely known when he visited the goldfields at the Lena River and he was a brilliant orator and skilled parliamentary leader of the socialist opposition to the government of Tsar Nicholas II. According to Kerensky, Rasputin had terrorised the empress by threatening to return to his native village, Rasputin was murdered in December 1916 by monarchists and buried near the imperial residence in Tsarskoye Selo. It is likely the corpse was incinerated in the cauldrons of in the boiler shop of the Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, including the coffin. Anything that had to do with Rasputin disappeared permanently, simultaneously, he became the first Minister of Justice in the newly formed Russian Provisional Government. When the Soviet passed a resolution prohibiting its leaders from joining the government, although the decision was never formalised, he was granted a de facto exemption and continued acting in both capacities. On 10 May, Kerensky started for the front and visited one division after another and his speeches were impressive and convincing for the moment, but had little lasting effect. Under Allied pressure to continue the war, he launched what became known as the Kerensky Offensive against the Austro-Hungarian/German South Army on 17 June, at first successful, the offensive was soon stopped and then thrown back by a strong counter-attack. The Russian army suffered heavy losses, and it was clear from the incidents of desertion, sabotage
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Pavel Milyukov
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Pavel Nikolayevich Miliukov was a Russian historian and liberal politician. His name is rendered in English as Paul Miliukov or Paul Milukoff. Milyukov was the founder, leader, and the most prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic party, in the Russian Provisional Government, he served as Foreign Minister, working to prevent Russias exit from the First World War. Pavel was born in Moscow in the family of a professor in architecture who taught at the school of arts. Milyukov studied history and philology at the Moscow University, where he was influenced by Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte and his teachers were Vasily Klyuchevsky and Paul Vinogradoff. In summer 1877 he briefly took part in Russo-Turkish War as a military logistic and he was expelled for taking part in student riots, went to Italy, but was readmitted and allowed to take his degree. He specialized in the study of Russian history and in 1885 received the degree for a work on the State Economics of Russia in the First Quarter of the 18th Century, in 1890 he became a member of the Moscow Society of Russian History and Antiquities. He gave private lectures with great success at an institute for girl teachers. These lectures were afterwards expanded by him in his book Outlines of Russian Culture and he started an association for “home university reading, ” and, as its first president, edited the first volume of its programm, which was widely read in Russian intellectual circles. As a student Milyukov was influenced by the ideas of Konstantin Kavelin. His liberal opinions brought him conflict with the educational authorities. When released from jail, Milyukov went to Bulgaria, and was appointed professor in the University of Sofia and he was sent to Macedonia, part of the Ottoman Empire. There he worked in an archaeological site, in 1899 he was allowed to return to St Petersburg. In 1901 he was arrested again for taking part in a commemoration of the populist writer Pyotr Lavrov, in 1901, according to Milyukov, about 16.000 people were exiled from the capital. He contributed under a pseudonym to the clandestine journal Liberation, founded by Peter Berngardovich Struve, the government again gave him the choice of exile for three years or jail for six months, Milyukov chose the Kresty Prison. After an interview with Vyacheslav von Plehve, whom he regarded as the symbol of the Russia he hated and he was central in the founding of the Union of Unions in 1905. In 1903 he delivered courses of lectures in the United States at summer sessions in University of Chicago and he visited London, and attended the Paris Conference 1904, organized by the Finish dissident Konni Zilliacus. Milyukov returned to Russia during the Russian Revolution of 1905, according to Orlando Figes in many ways a foretaste of the conflicts of 1917
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Petrograd Soviet
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The Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was a city council of Petrograd, the capital of the Russian Empire. For brevity, it is called the Petrograd Soviet. Its committees were key components during the Russian Revolution and some of them led the revolt of the October Revolution. Before 1914, Petrograd was known as Saint Petersburg, and in 1905 the workers called the St Petersburg Soviet was created. The group became increasingly radical as World War I progressed and the situation worsened, encouraging street demonstrations. That evening, between 50 and 300 people attended the meeting at the Tauride Palace, a provisional executive committee was chosen, chaired by Nikolay Chkheidze, and with mostly Menshevik deputies. Izvestia was chosen as the newspaper of the group. The following day, February 28, was the session, elected representatives from factories and the military joined the soviet. Non-representative voting and enthusiasm gave the Soviet almost 3,000 deputies in two weeks, of which the majority were soldiers, the meetings were chaotic, confused and unruly, little more than a stage for speechmakers. The party-based Ispolkom quickly took charge of actual decision-making and this created an intellectual and radical head to the peasant-, worker-, and soldier-dominated body. The Executive Committee meetings were more intense and almost as disorderly as the public meetings, on March 1, the Executive Committee resolved to remain outside any new State Duma. This allowed the group to criticize without responsibility, and kept away from any potential backlash. On March 2, the Soviet received the eight-point program of the Provisional Committee of the State Duma, appointed an oversight committee, moreover, the Soviet undermined the Provisional Government by issuing its own orders, beginning with the seven-article Order No.1. This created a situation described as dvoevlastie, in which the Petrograd Soviet competed for legitimacy with the Provisional Government until the October Revolution, the Ispolkom of the Petrograd Soviet often publicly attacked the Provisional Government as bourgeois and boasted of its de facto power over de jure authority. A shadow government with a Contact Commission was created on March 8 to inform, about the demands of the revolutionary people, to exert pressure on the government to satisfy all these demands, and to exercise uninterrupted control over their implementation. On March 19, the control extended into the front lines with commissars appointed with Ministry of War support. In March 1917, the Petrograd Soviet was opposed to the workers, on March 8, the Menshevik newspaper Rabochaia Gazeta even claimed that the strikers were discrediting the soviet by disobeying it. The Ispolkom expanded to 19 members on April 8, nine representing the Soldiers Section, all members were socialists, the majority Mensheviks or Socialist-Revolutionaries, there was no Bolshevik representation
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Red Guards (Russia)
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Red Guards were paramilitary volunteer formations consisting mainly of factory workers, peasants, cossacks and partially of soldiers and sailors for protection of the soviet power. Most of them were formed in the frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Red Guards formations were organized across most of the former Russian Empire, including territories outside of the contemporary Russian Federation such as Finland, Estonia, Ukraine and they were not centralized and were formed by decision of a local political party and local soviet members. By fighting to protect and extend the power of the soviets, they aided the creation of a new state that would give all power to the soviets, composing the majority of the urban population, they were the main strike force of several radically oriented socialist political factions. Red Guard units were created in March 1917 at manufacturing companies by Factory and Plant Committees, the Red Guards formations were based on the workers strike forces of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Red Guards refused to acknowledge any form of government that had too much power. They refused to follow the Soviet Executive because they felt the group would later serve anti-revolutionary groups, on March 26,1917 the Bureau of the Central Committee of the RSDRP published a resolution About the Provisional Government since then the term, Red Guards, received the widest usage. The biggest centralized Red Guards formations were created in Petrograd and Moscow, soon thereafter series attempts took place to legalize those formations. On April 14,1917 the Moscow Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party adopted a resolution for creation of its Red Guard, the Vyborg raion council of Petrograd on April 28 declared to transform the squads of workers and factory militia into the Red Guard squads. On May 17 the Samara council of representatives at its session established a commission in creation of Red Guard squads. A big role in creation of the Red Guard squads played the Factory committees, before April 1917 seventeen Russian cities have created Red Guard squads which by the June increased in numbers to 24. Red Guards were the base for the forming of the Red Army, therefore, the term is often used as just another English name for the Red Army in reference to the times of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War. In Petrograd, the head of the Red Guards was Konstantin Yurenev, at the moment of the October Revolution, the Russian Red Guards had 200,000 personnel. During the revolution, training of the Red Guards was arranged by the Military Organization of the RSDLP, enlistment was voluntary, but required recommendations from Soviets, Bolshevik party units or other public organizations. The military training of workers was performed without disengagement from the work at plants. There were both infantry and mounted regiments, at different places the organization was nonuniform in terms of subordination, head count, degree of military training. This state was often called half-partisan, while successful at local conflicts, this loose organization was inefficient when combating larger, organized forces of the White Army. Therefore, when the creation of the Red Army was decreed, Red Guards had become the Army Reserve, eduard Martynovich Dune, Notes of a Red Guard Translated by D. Koenker, S. A. Smith U
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Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
Russian SFSR
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