Blagoveshchensk
Blagoveshchensk is a city and the administrative center of Amur Oblast, located at the confluence of the Amur and Zeya Rivers, opposite to the Chinese city of Heihe. Population: 214,390 ; the Amur has formed Russia's border with China since the 1858 Aigun Treaty and 1860 Treaty of Peking. The area north of the Amur belonged to the Manchu Qing dynasty by the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689, until it was ceded to Russia by Aigun Treaty in 1858; the early residents of both sides of the Amur in the region of today's Blagoveshchensk were the Daurs and Duchers. An early settlement in the area of today's Blagoveshchensk was the Ducher town whose name was reported by the Russian explorer Yerofey Khabarov as Aytyun in 1652; the Grodekovo site is thought by archaeologists to have been populated since ca. 1000 CE. As the Russians tried to assert their control over the region, the Ducher town was vacated when the Duchers were evacuated by the Qing to the Sungari or Hurka in the mid-1650s. Since 1673, the Chinese re-used the site for their fort, which served in 1683-1685 as a base for the Manchus' campaign against the Russian fort of Albazin further north.
After the capture of Albazin in 1685 or 1686, the Chinese relocated their town, to a new site on the right bank of the Amur, about 3 miles downstream from the original site. The series of conflicts between Russians and China ended with Russia's recognition of the Chinese sovereignty over both sides of the Amur by the Nerchinsk Treaty of 1689; as the balance of power in the region has changed by the mid-19th century, the Russian Empire was able to take over the left shore of the Amur from China. Since the 1858 Aigun Treaty and the 1860 Treaty of Peking, the river has remained the border between the countries, although the Qing subjects were allowed to continue to live in the so-called Sixty-Four Villages east of the Amur and the Zeya. Although Russian settlers had lived in the area as early as 1644 as "Hailanpao", the present-day city began in 1856 as the military outpost of Ust-Zeysky. Tsar Alexander II gave approval for the founding of the city in 1858, to be named Blagoveshchensk means "the city of good news", after the parish Church of the Annunciation and declared to be seat of government for the Amur region.
According to Blagoveshchensk authorities, by 1877 the city had some 8,000 residents, with 15 foreigners among them. The city was an important river port and trade center during the late 19th century, with growth further fueled by a gold rush early in the 20th century and by its position on the Chinese border, just hundreds of meters across from the city of Heihe. Local historian note the preeminence of Blagoveshchensk in the economy of the late 19th century Russian Far East, reflected by a "small detail": When the heir to Russian throne, HIH Nicholas Alexandrovich visited in 1891 during his grand tour of Asia, the locals presented him with bread and salt on a gold tray, rather than on a silver one, as it was done in other cities of the region. In the course of the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing Imperial army and Boxer insurgents shelled the city in July 1900. Chinese Honghuzi forces joined the attack against Blagoveshchensk. According to the Orthodox belief, the city was saved by a miraculous icon of Our Lady of Albazin, prayed to continuously during the shelling which lasted two weeks.
On July 3, a decision was made by the city's Police Chief Batarevich and the Military Governor Gribsky to deport the city's entire ethnic Chinese community, viewed as potential "fifth columnists". As the cross-river shipping was interrupted by the rebellion, a question arose how to get them from the Russian side of the Amur to the Chinese side. Batarevich suggested that the deportees could be first taken east of the Zeya, where they could try to obtain boats from the local Chinese villagers; the plan, was vetoed by the governor, the decision was made instead to take the deportees to the stanitsa of Verkhneblagoveshchenskaya—the place where the Amur is at its narrowest—and made them leave the Russian shore. As the local ataman refused to provide the deportees with boats to take them across the river, few of them made it to the Chinese side; the rest drowned in the Amur, or were shot or axed by the police and local volunteers, when refusing to leave the dry land. According to Chinese sources, about 5,000 people died during these events of July 4–8, 1900.
The expulsion of local Chinese caused some hardships for Blagoveshchensk consumers. Historians note that during the second half of 1900, it became impossible to buy any green vegetables in town; the massacre angered the Chinese, had ramifications for the future: the Chinese Honghuzi fought a guerilla war against Russian occupation and assisted th
Intercontinental ballistic missile
An intercontinental ballistic missile is a guided ballistic missile with a minimum range of 5,500 kilometres designed for nuclear weapons delivery. Conventional and biological weapons can be delivered with varying effectiveness, but have never been deployed on ICBMs. Most modern designs support multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, allowing a single missile to carry several warheads, each of which can strike a different target. Early ICBMs had limited precision, which made them suitable for use only against the largest targets, such as cities, they were seen as a "safe" basing option, one that would keep the deterrent force close to home where it would be difficult to attack. Attacks against military targets still demanded the use of a more precise, manned bomber. Second- and third-generation designs improved accuracy to the point where the smallest point targets can be attacked. ICBMs are differentiated by having greater range and speed than other ballistic missiles: intermediate-range ballistic missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles, short-range ballistic missiles and tactical ballistic missiles.
Short and medium-range ballistic missiles are known collectively as theatre ballistic missiles. The development of the world's first practical design for an ICBM, A9/10, intended for use in bombing New York and other American cities, was undertaken in Nazi Germany by the team of Wernher von Braun under Projekt Amerika; the ICBM A9/A10 rocket was intended to be guided by radio, but was changed to be a piloted craft after the failure of Operation Elster. The second stage of the A9/A10 rocket was tested a few times in January and February 1945; the progenitor of the A9/A10 was the German V-2 rocket designed by von Braun and used at the end of World War II to bomb British and Belgian cities. All of these rockets used liquid propellants. Following the war, von Braun and other leading German scientists were relocated to the United States to work directly for the US Army through Operation Paperclip, developing the IRBMs, ICBMs, launchers; this technology was predicted by US Army General Hap Arnold, who wrote in 1943: Someday, not too distant, there can come streaking out of somewhere – we won't be able to hear it, it will come so fast – some kind of gadget with an explosive so powerful that one projectile will be able to wipe out this city of Washington.
In the immediate post-war era, the US and USSR both started rocket research programs based on the German wartime designs the V-2. In the US, each branch of the military started its own programs, leading to considerable duplication of effort. In the USSR, rocket research was centrally organized, although several teams worked on different designs. Early designs from both countries were short-range missiles, like the V-2, but improvements followed. In the USSR, early development was focused on missiles able to attack European targets; this changed in 1953 when Sergei Korolyov was directed to start development of a true ICBM able to deliver newly developed hydrogen bombs. Given steady funding throughout, the R-7 developed with some speed; the first launch led to an unintended crash 400 km from the site. The first successful test followed on 21 August 1957; the first strategic-missile unit became operational on 9 February 1959 at Plesetsk in north-west Russia. It was the same R-7 launch vehicle that placed the first artificial satellite in space, Sputnik, on 4 October 1957.
The first human spaceflight in history was accomplished on a derivative of R-7, Vostok, on 12 April 1961, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. A modernized version of the R-7 is still used as the launch vehicle for the Soviet/Russian Soyuz spacecraft, marking more than 60 years of operational history of Sergei Korolyov's original rocket design; the U. S. initiated ICBM research in 1946 with the RTV-A-2 Hiroc project. This was a three-stage effort with the ICBM development not starting until the third stage. However, funding was cut after only three successful launches in 1948 of the second stage design, used to test variations on the V-2 design. With overwhelming air superiority and intercontinental bombers, the newly forming US Air Force did not take the problem of ICBM development seriously. Things changed in 1953 with the Soviet testing of their first thermonuclear weapon, but it was not until 1954 that the Atlas missile program was given the highest national priority; the Atlas A first flew on 11 June 1957.
The first successful flight of an Atlas missile to full range occurred 28 November 1958. The first armed version of the Atlas, the Atlas D, was declared operational in January 1959 at Vandenberg, although it had not yet flown; the first test flight was carried out on 9 July 1959, the missile was accepted for service on 1 September. The R-7 and Atlas each required a large launch facility, making them vulnerable to attack, could not be kept in a ready state. Failure rates were high throughout the early years of ICBM technology. Human spaceflight programs served as a visible means of demonstrating confidence in reliability, with successes translating directly to national defense implications; the US was well behind the Soviet Union in the Space Race, so U. S. President John F. Kennedy increased the stakes with the Apollo program, which used Saturn rocket technology, funded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Eldar Ryazanov
Eldar Alexandrovich Ryazanov was a Soviet and Russian film director and screenwriter whose popular comedies, satirizing the daily life of the Soviet Union and Russia, are celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union. He was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1984, received the USSR State Prize in 1977, he won the Nika Award for Best Director in 1991 for the film Promised Heaven. Among his most famous films are Carnival Night, Hussar Ballad, Beware of the Car, The Irony of Fate, Office Romance, The Garage, A Cruel Romance. Ryazanov's main genre was tragicomedy. Ryazanov had an acute ischemic stroke in November 2014, he was admitted to a Moscow hospital on 21 November 2015 due to shortness of breath. He died around midnight on 30 November 2015, of heart and lung failure, at the age of 88. Order of Merit for the Fatherland. 2007 The Irony of Fate 2 – Actor 2006 Andersen. Life Without Love – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Mortician / Producer 2006 Carnival Night 2 – Director / Actor 2003 The Key of Bedroom – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Police constable / Producer 2000 Still Waters – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Radiologist / Producer 2000 Old Hags – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Judge 1996 Hello, Fools!
– Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Manager of the bookshop 1993 Prediction – Director / Screenwriter 1991 Promised Heaven – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Man in Diner 1988 Dear Yelena Sergeyevna – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Neighbour 1987 Forgotten Melody for a Flute – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Astronomer 1984 A Cruel Romance – Director / Screenwriter 1982 Station for Two – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Railroad Supervisor 1981 Say a Word for the Poor Hussar – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Confectioner 1979 The Garage – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Sleeping Man 1977 Office Romance – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Bus Passenger 1975 The Irony of Fate – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Airplane Passenger 1974 Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia / Director / Screenwriter / Actor: Doctor 1971 Grandads-Robbers – Director / Screenwriter / Actor: The Passer-by 1968 Zigzag of Success – Director / Screenwriter 1966 Beware of the Car – Director / Screenwriter 1965 Give me a complaints book – Director / Actor: Chief editor 1962 Hussar Ballad – Director / Screenwriter 1961 Nowhere Man – Director 1961 How Robinson Was Created – Director 1957 The Girl Without Address – Director 1956 Carnival Night – Director 1955 Spring Voices, documentary - second Director 1954 Island of Sakhalin, documentary – Director 1953 Near Krasnodar, documentary – Director 1953 Your Books, documentary – Director 1952 On the World Chess 8Championship, documentary – Director 1951 The Way Named October, documentary – Director 1950 They are Studying in Moscow, documentary – author Additional sourcesDavid MacFadyen, The Sad Comedy of Elʹdar Riazanov: An Introduction to Russia's Most Popular Filmmaker, McGill-Queen's Press: 2003, ISBN 0-7735-2636-6 Official website Eldar Ryazanov on IMDb Russian fan site
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East. With a length of 9,289 kilometres, from Moscow to Vladivostok, it is the longest railway line in the world. There are connecting branch lines into Mongolia and North Korea, it has connected Moscow with Vladivostok since 1916, is still being expanded. It was built between 1891 and 1916 under the supervision of Russian government ministers appointed by Tsar Alexander III and his son, the Tsarevich Nicholas. Before it had been completed, it attracted travellers who wrote of their adventures; the railway is associated with the main transcontinental Russian line that connects hundreds of large and small cities of the European and Asian parts of Russia. At a Moscow–Vladivostok track length of 9,289 kilometres, it spans a record eight time zones. Taking eight days to complete the journey, it is the third-longest single continuous service in the world, after the Moscow–Pyongyang 10,267 kilometres and the Kiev–Vladivostok 11,085 kilometres services, both of which follow the Trans-Siberian for much of their routes.
The main route of the Trans-Siberian Railway begins in Moscow at Yaroslavsky Vokzal, runs through Yaroslavl, Omsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude and Khabarovsk to Vladivostok via southern Siberia. A second primary route is the Trans-Manchurian, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian east of Chita as far as Tarskaya, about 1,000 km east of Lake Baikal. From Tarskaya the Trans-Manchurian heads southeast, via Harbin and Mudanjiang in China's Northeastern Provinces, joining with the main route in Ussuriysk just north of Vladivostok; this is the oldest railway route to Vladivostok. While there are no traverse passenger services on this branch, it is still used by several international passenger services between Russia and China; the third primary route is the Trans-Mongolian Railway, which coincides with the Trans-Siberian as far as Ulan-Ude on Lake Baikal's eastern shore. From Ulan-Ude the Trans-Mongolian heads south to Ulaan-Baatar before making its way southeast to Beijing. In 1991, a fourth route running further to the north was completed, after more than five decades of sporadic work.
Known as the Baikal Amur Mainline, this recent extension departs from the Trans-Siberian line at Taishet several hundred miles west of Lake Baikal and passes the lake at its northernmost extremity. It crosses the Amur River at Komsomolsk-na-Amure, reaches the Tatar Strait at Sovetskaya Gavan. On 13 October 2011, a train from Khasan made its inaugural run to North Korea. In the late 19th century, the development of Siberia was hampered by poor transport links within the region, as well as with the rest of the country. Aside from the Great Siberian Route, good roads suitable for wheeled transport were rare. For about five months of the year, rivers were the main means of transport. During the cold half of the year and passengers travelled by horse-drawn sledges over the winter roads, many of which were the same rivers, but ice-covered; the first steamboat on the River Ob, Nikita Myasnikov's Osnova, was launched in 1844. But early beginnings were difficult, it was not until 1857 that steamboat shipping started developing on the Ob system in a serious way.
Steamboats started operating on the Yenisei in 1863, on the Lena and Amur in the 1870s. While the comparative flatness of Western Siberia was at least well served by the gigantic Ob–Irtysh–Tobol–Chulym river system, the mighty rivers of Eastern Siberia—the Yenisei, the upper course of the Angara River, the Lena—were navigable only in the north-south direction. An attempt to remedy the situation by building the Ob-Yenisei Canal was not successful. Only a railway could be a real solution to the region's transport problems; the first railway projects in Siberia emerged after the completion of the Saint Petersburg–Moscow Railway in 1851. One of the first was the Irkutsk–Chita project, proposed by the American entrepreneur Perry Collins and supported by Transport Minister Constantine Possiet with a view toward connecting Moscow to the Amur River, to the Pacific Ocean. Siberia's governor, Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, was anxious to advance the colonisation of the Russian Far East, but his plans could not materialise as long as the colonists had to import grain and other food from China and Korea.
It was on Muravyov's initiative. Before 1880, the central government had ignored these projects, because of the weakness of Siberian enterprises, a clumsy bureaucracy, fear of financial risk. By 1880, there were a large number of rejected and upcoming applications for permission to construct railways to connect Siberia with the Pacific, but not Eastern Russia; this made connecting Siberia with Central Russia a pressing concern. The design process lasted 10 years. Along with the route constructed, alternative projects were proposed: Southern route: via Kazakhstan, Barnaul and Mongolia. Northern route: via Tyumen, Tomsk and the modern Baikal Amur Mainline or through Yakutsk; the line was divided into seven sections, on all or mo
Russian Federal State Statistics Service
Russian Federal State Statistics Service is the governmental statistics agency in Russia. Since 2017, it is again part of the Ministry of Economic Development, having switched several times in the previous decades between that ministry and being directly controlled by the federal government. Goskomstat was the centralised agency dealing with statistics in the Soviet Union. Goskomstat was created in 1987 to replace the Central Statistical Administration, while maintaining the same basic functions in the collection, analysis and distribution of state statistics, including economic and population statistics; this renaming amounted to a formal demotion of the status of the agency. In addition to overseeing the collection and evaluation of state statistics, Goskomstat was responsible for planning and carrying out the population and housing censuses, it carried out seven such censuses, in 1926, 1937, 1939, 1959, 1970, 1980, 1989. House No. 39, on Ulitsa Myasnitskaya, Tsentrosoyuz building, home to Goskomstat, was designed by the Swiss-born architect, Le Corbusier.
Interstate Statistical Committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation
Tributary
A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. A confluence, where two or more bodies of water meet together refers to the joining of tributaries; the opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from and flows away from the main stream. Distributaries are most found in river deltas. "Right tributary" and "left tributary" are terms stating the orientation of the tributary relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream. In the United States, where tributaries sometimes have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks; these are designated by compass direction. For example, the American River receives flow from its North and South forks.
The Chicago River's North Branch has the East and Middle Fork. Forks are sometimes left. Here, the "handedness" is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream. For instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary, called Right Fork Steer Creek. Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river and ending with those nearest to the mouth of the river; the Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second and higher orders, with the first-order tributary being the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary. Another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure. A gallery of major river basins with tributaries Estuary
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