1.
Schwerin
–
Schwerin is the capital and second-largest city of the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The population is 91,583 and 98.000 as of July 2016, Schwerin was first mentioned in 1018 and was granted city rights in 1160, thus it is the oldest city of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. It is known for its romantic Schwerin Palace, crowning an island in the Lake Schwerin, the city also has a largely intact old town, thanks to only minor damage in World War II. Schwerin is located within the region of Hamburg and close to that of Berlin. The largest of these lakes, the Schweriner See, has an area of 60 km2, in the midst of these lakes there was a settlement of the Slavic Obotrite. The area was called Zuarin, and the name Schwerin is derived from that designation, in 1160, Henry the Lion defeated the Obotrites and captured Schwerin. The town was expanded into a powerful regional centre. A castle was built on site, and expanded to become a ducal palace. It is supposedly haunted by the small, impious ghost, called Petermännchen, in 1358, Schwerin became a part of the Duchy of Mecklenburg, making it the seat of the duchy from then on. About 1500, the construction of the Schwerin Palace began, as a residence for the dukes, after the division of Mecklenburg, Schwerin became the capital of the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Between 1765 and 1837, the town of Ludwigslust served as the capital, in the mid-1800s, many residents from Schwerin moved to the United States, many to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Today Milwaukee and Schwerin are sister cities, after 1918, and during the German Revolution, resulting in the fall of all the German monarchies, the Grand Duke abdicated. Schwerin became capital of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern thereafter, at the end of World War II, on 2 May 1945, Schwerin was taken by U. S. troops. Schwerin was then in the Soviet Occupation Zone which was to become the German Democratic Republic, initially, it was the capital of the State of Mecklenburg which at that time included the western part of Pomerania. After the states were dissolved in the GDR, in 1952, after reunification in 1990, the former state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was recreated as one of the Bundesländer. Rostock was a contender for state capital but the decision went in favour of Schwerin. City buses and trams are run by NVS, Schwerin Hauptbahnhof is connected by rail to Berlin, Hamburg and Rostock. The landmark of the city is the Schwerin Palace, located on an island in the lake of the same name and it was, for centuries, the residence of the Dukes of Mecklenburg and today is the seat of the Landtag
Schwerin
–
Schwerin Palace - Parliament of
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Schwerin
–
Aerial view of
Schwerin Palace
Schwerin
–
Schwerin Palace during the
BUGA 2009, Germany's federal garden show
Schwerin
–
Aerial view of Schwerin
2.
Berdychiv
–
Berdychiv is a historic city in the Zhytomyr Oblast of northern Ukraine. Serving as the center of the Berdychiv Raion, the city itself is of direct oblast subordinance. It is located 44 km south of the oblast capital, Zhytomyr, however the etymology of the name Berdychiv is not known. In 1483, Crimean Tatars destroyed the settlement, during the 1546 partition between Lithuania and Poland, the region was listed as a property of Lithuanian magnate. According to the Union of Lublin, Volhynia formed a province of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the fortified Carmelite monastery, captured and plundered by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1647, was dissolved in 1864. In 1764, Kazimierz Pulaski defended the city with his 700 men surrounded by army during Bar Confederation. The town underwent rapid development after king Stanisław August Poniatowski, under pressure from the powerful Radziwiłł family and this made Berdychiv one of the most important trading and banking centers in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later, the Russian Empire. At the time, the saying Pisz na Berdyczów, later, because of the phrase being used in a popular poem by Juliusz Słowacki, Pisz na Berdyczów. Acquired a second meaning as a brush-off, send me a letter to nowhere or leave me alone, the banking industry was moved from Berdychiv to Odessa after 1850, and the town became impoverished again in a short period of time. In 1846, the town had 1893 buildings,69 of which were brick-made,11 streets,80 alleys, honoré de Balzac visited it in 1850 and noted that its unplanned development made it resemble the dance of a polka as some buildings leaned left while others leaned right. According to the census of 1789, the Jews constituted 75% of Berdychivs population, in 1797, Prince Radziwill granted seven Jewish families the monopoly privilege of the cloth trade in the town. By the end of the 18th century, Berdychiv became an important center of Hasidism, in its heyday, Berdychiv accounted some eighty synagogues and batei midrash, and was famous for its cantors. Berdychiv was also one of the centers of the conflict between Hasidim and Mitnagdim, as the ideas of Haskalah influenced parts of the Jewish communities, a large group of Maskilim formed in Berdychiv in the 1820s. In 1847,23,160 Jews resided in Berdychiv and by 1861 the number doubled to 46,683, constituting the second-largest Jewish community in the Russian Empire. The May Laws of 1882 and other government persecutions affected Jewish population and in 1897, 58% of Jewish males and 32% of Jewish females were literate. Until World War I, the growth was balanced by the emigration. During the 1917 October Revolution and Russian Civil War, the mayor of the town was the Bundist leader D. Lipets. In early 1919, the Jews of Berdychiv became victims of a pogrom, and in 1920, the Soviet authorities closed or destroyed most of the towns synagogues
Berdychiv
–
17th century fortified
Carmelite convent in Berdychiv.
Berdychiv
–
Church of St. Barbara
Berdychiv
–
Carmelite monastery walls
Berdychiv
–
A dwelling house in Berdychiv
3.
Russian Empire
–
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
Russian Empire
–
Peter the Great officially renamed the Tsardom of Russia the Russian Empire in 1721, and himself its first emperor. He instituted the
sweeping reforms and oversaw the transformation of Russia into a major European power.
Russian Empire
–
Flag
Russian Empire
–
Empress
Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, continued the empire's expansion and modernization. Considering herself an
enlightened absolutist, she played a key role in the
Russian Enlightenment.
Russian Empire
–
Catherine II Sestroretsk Rouble (1771) is made of solid copper measuring 77 millimetres (3 3 ⁄ 100 in) (diameter), 26 millimetres (1 1 ⁄ 50 in) (thickness), and weighs 1.022 kg (2.25 lb). It is the largest copper coin ever issued.
4.
Moscow
–
Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
Moscow
–
Left to right, top to bottom:
Moscow State University,
Spasskaya Clocktower,
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour;
Bolshoi Theatre,
Moscow International Business Center;
Red Square
Moscow
–
Tatar raid upon Moscow
Moscow
–
Map of Moscow, 1784
Moscow
–
Red Square, painting by
Fedor Alekseev, 1801
5.
Soviet Union
–
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
Soviet Union
–
Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd with Trotsky, 1920
Soviet Union
–
Flag
Soviet Union
–
Stalin and
Nikolai Yezhov, head of the
NKVD. After Yezhov was executed, he was
edited out of the image.
Soviet Union
6.
History of the Soviet Union
–
The History of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union reflects a period of change for both Russia and the world. The original ideology of the state was based on the works of Karl Marx. Displeased by the few changes made by the Tsar after the Russian Revolution of 1905, Russia became a hotbed of anarchism, socialism. The dominant socialist party, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, starting in 1903 a series of splits in the party between two main leaders was escalating, the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin, and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov. Up until 1912, both continued to stay united under the name RSDLP, but significant differences between Lenin and Martov thought split the party for its final time. Not only did these groups fight each other, but also had common enemies, notably. This resulted in large territorial changes, albeit temporarily for some of these, eventually crushing all opponents, the RCP spread Soviet style rule quickly and established itself through all of Russia. Following Lenins death in 1924, Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the RCP, became Lenins successor and continued as leader of the Soviet Union into the 1950s. The history of the Soviet Union between 1927 and 1953 covers the period of the Second World War and of victory against Germany while the USSR remained under the control of Joseph Stalin. Stalins power within the party and the state was established and eventually evolved into Stalins cult of personality, Soviet secret-police and the mass-mobilization Communist party were Stalins major tools in molding the Soviet society. World War II, known as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union, after World War II the Soviet Unions armies occupied Eastern Europe, where Socialist governments took power. By 1949 the Cold War had started between the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, with the Warsaw Pact pitched against NATO in Europe, after 1945 Stalin did not directly engage in any wars. Stalin continued his rule until his death in 1953. The history of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, referred to as the Brezhnev Era and this period began with high economic growth and soaring prosperity, but ended with a much weaker Soviet Union facing social, political, and economic stagnation. The average annual income stagnated, because needed economic reforms were never carried out. Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin replaced him as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, anastas Mikoyan, and later Nikolai Podgorny, became Chairmen of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The collective leadership first set out to stabilize the Soviet Union and calm Soviet society, in addition, they attempted to speed up economic growth, which had slowed considerably during Khrushchevs last years in power. In 1965 Kosygin initiated several reforms to decentralize the Soviet economy, after initial success in creating economic growth, hard-liners within the Party halted the reforms, fearing that they would weaken the Partys prestige and power
History of the Soviet Union
–
Soviet Union
7.
World War II
–
World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945, although related conflicts began earlier. It involved the vast majority of the worlds countries—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing alliances, the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, and directly involved more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. Marked by mass deaths of civilians, including the Holocaust and the bombing of industrial and population centres. These made World War II the deadliest conflict in human history, from late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, and formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Poland, Finland, Romania and the Baltic states. In December 1941, Japan attacked the United States and European colonies in the Pacific Ocean, and quickly conquered much of the Western Pacific. The Axis advance halted in 1942 when Japan lost the critical Battle of Midway, near Hawaii, in 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained all of its territorial losses and invaded Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in South Central China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy, thus ended the war in Asia, cementing the total victory of the Allies. World War II altered the political alignment and social structure of the world, the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The victorious great powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the Cold War, which lasted for the next 46 years. Meanwhile, the influence of European great powers waned, while the decolonisation of Asia, most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery. Political integration, especially in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities, the start of the war in Europe is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or even the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously and this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935. The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939, the exact date of the wars end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 14 August 1945, rather than the formal surrender of Japan
World War II
–
Clockwise from top left: Chinese forces in the
Battle of Wanjialing, Australian
25-pounder guns during the
First Battle of El Alamein, German
Stuka dive bombers on the
Eastern Front in December 1943, a U.S. naval force in the
Lingayen Gulf,
Wilhelm Keitel signing the
German Instrument of Surrender, Soviet troops in the
Battle of Stalingrad
World War II
–
The
League of Nations assembly, held in
Geneva,
Switzerland, 1930
World War II
–
Adolf Hitler at a German
National Socialist political rally in
Weimar, October 1930
World War II
–
Italian soldiers recruited in 1935, on their way to fight the
Second Italo-Abyssinian War
8.
Russian language
–
Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
Russian language
–
Russian language street sign in
Russia.
Russian language
–
Russian minimarket in
Limassol, Cyprus; translation: "Teremok market. Russian goods. Phone number: 96 74 19 63"
Russian language
–
This page from an "ABC" book printed in Moscow in 1694 shows the letter
П.
Russian language
–
The
Ostromir Gospels of 1056 is the second oldest
East Slavic book known, one of many medieval
illuminated manuscripts preserved in the
Russian National Library.
9.
Ukrainian language
–
Ukrainian /juːˈkreɪniən/ is an East Slavic language. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic script, historical linguists trace the origin of the Ukrainian language to the Old East Slavic of the early medieval state of Kievan Rus. After the fall of the Kievan Rus as well as the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Modern Ukrainian language has been in common use since the late 17th century, associated with the establishment of the Cossack Hetmanate. From 1804 until the Russian Revolution, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools in the Russian Empire and it has always maintained a sufficient base in Western Ukraine, where the language was never banned, in its folklore songs, itinerant musicians, and prominent authors. The Ukrainian language retains a degree of intelligibility with Belarusian and Russian. The first theory of the origin of Ukrainian language was suggested in Imperial Russia in the middle of the 18th century by Mikhail Lomonosov and this theory posits the existence of a common language spoken by all East Slavic people in the time of the Rus. Another point of view developed during the 19th and 20th centuries by linguists of Imperial Russia, like Lomonosov, they assumed the existence of a common language spoken by East Slavs in the past. This general point of view is the most accepted amongst academics worldwide, the supporters of this theory disagree, however, about the time when the different languages were formed. Soviet scholars set the divergence between Ukrainian and Russian only at time periods. During the time of the incorporation of Ruthenia into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and this point of view is, however, at variance with some historical data. In fact, several East Slavic tribes, such as Polans, Drevlyans, Severians, Dulebes, White Croats, Tiverians, notably, some Ukrainian features were recognizable in the southern dialects of Old East Slavic as far back as the language can be documented. In contrast, Ahatanhel Krymsky and Alexei Shakhmatov assumed the existence of the spoken language of Eastern Slavs only in prehistoric times. According to their point of view, the diversification of the Old East Slavic language took place in the 8th or early 9th century, Ukrainian linguist Stepan Smal-Stotsky went even further, denying the existence of a common Old East Slavic language at any time in the past. Similar points of view were shared by Yevhen Tymchenko, Vsevolod Hantsov, Olena Kurylo, Ivan Ohienko, according to this theory, the dialects of East Slavic tribes evolved gradually from the common Proto-Slavic language without any intermediate stages during the 6th through 9th centuries. The Ukrainian language was formed by convergence of tribal dialects, mostly due to a migration of the population within the territory of todays Ukraine in later historical periods. This point of view was supported by George Shevelovs phonological studies. During the 13th century, when German settlers were invited to Ukraine by the princes of Galicia-Vollhynia and their influence would continue under Poland not only through German colonists but also through the Yiddish-speaking Jews. Often such words involve trade or handicrafts, examples of words of German or Yiddish origin spoken in Ukraine include dakh, rura, rynok, kushnir, and majster
Ukrainian language
–
Miniature of
St Luke from the
Peresopnytsia Gospels (1561).
Ukrainian language
–
Ukrainian-speaking world
Ukrainian language
–
The 1921 Soviet recruitment poster. It uses traditional Ukrainian imagery with Ukrainian-language text: "Son! Enroll in the school of
Red commanders, and the defense of
Soviet Ukraine will be ensured."
Ukrainian language
–
Anti-russification protest. The banner reads "For Ukrainian Children – a Ukrainian school!".
10.
Russia
–
Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
Russia
–
Kievan Rus' in the 11th century
Russia
–
Flag
Russia
–
The
Baptism of Kievans, by
Klavdy Lebedev
Russia
–
Sergius of Radonezh blessing
Dmitry Donskoy in
Trinity Sergius Lavra, before the
Battle of Kulikovo, depicted in a painting by
Ernst Lissner
11.
Donbass
–
The Donbass or Donbas is a historical, cultural, and economic region in eastern Ukraine. The word Donbass is a formed from Donets Basin, which refers to the river Donets that flows through it. Multiple definitions of the regions extent exist, but its boundaries have never been officially demarcated, a Euroregion of the same name is composed of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in Ukraine and Rostov Oblast in Russia. Donbass formed the border between the Zaporizhian Sich and the Don Cossack Host. It has been an important coal mining area since the late 19th century, in March 2014, following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Russian military intervention, large swaths of the Donbass became gripped by unrest. Until the ongoing war, the Donbass was the most densely populated of all the regions of Ukraine apart from the city of Kiev. Before the war, the city of Donetsk was considered the capital of the Donbass. Large cities also included Luhansk, Mariupol, Makiivka, Horlivka, now the city of Kramatorsk is the interim administrative center of the Donetsk Oblast, whereas the interim center of Luhansk Oblast is the city of Severodonetsk. On the separatist side, Donetsk, Makiivka and Horlivka are now the largest cities in the Donetsk Peoples Republic, the region now known as the Donbass was largely unpopulated until the second half of the 17th century, when Don Cossacks settled in the area. The first town in the region was founded in 1676, called Solanoye and it named the conquered territories New Russia. As the Industrial Revolution took hold across Europe, the vast coal resources of the region, discovered in 1721, began to be exploited in the mid-late 19th century. It was at point that the name Donbass came into use, derived from the term Donets Coal Basin. The rise of the industry led to a population boom in the region. The region was governed as the Bakhmut, Slovianserbsk and Mariupol counties of Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Donetsk, the most important city in the region today, was founded in 1869 by British businessman John Hughes on the site of the old Zaporozhian Cossack town of Oleksandrivka. Hughes built a mill and established several collieries in the region. The city was named after him as Yuzovka, with development of Yuzovka and similar cities, large amounts of landless peasants from peripheral governorates of the Russian Empire came looking for work. According to the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, ethnic Ukrainians comprised 52. 4% of the population of region, whilst ethnic Russians comprised 28. 7%. Ethnic Greeks, Germans, Jews and Tatars also had a significant presence in the Donbass, particularly in the district of Mariupol, despite this, Russians constituted the majority of the industrial work-force
Donbass
–
Poor Collecting Coal by
Nikolay Kasatkin: Donbass, 1894
Donbass
–
The contemporary media definition of Donbas in Ukraine overlapping territories of
Sloboda Ukraine
Donbass
–
A Soviet propaganda poster from 1921 that says "Donbass is the heart of Russia"
Donbass
–
A monument to
Don Cossacks in Luhansk. "To the sons of glory and freedom"
12.
War correspondent
–
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. They were also called special correspondents in the 19th century and their jobs require war correspondents to deliberately go to the most conflict-ridden parts of the world. Once there, they attempt to get enough to the action to provide written accounts, photos. Thus, being a war correspondent is often considered the most dangerous form of journalism, on the other hand, war coverage is also one of the most successful branches of journalism. Newspaper sales increase greatly in wartime and television news ratings go up, News organizations have sometimes been accused of militarism because of the advantages they gather from conflict. William Randolph Hearst is often said to have encouraged the Spanish–American War for this reason, only some conflicts receive extensive worldwide coverage, however. Among recent wars, the Kosovo War received a deal of coverage. Written war correspondents have existed as long as journalism, before modern journalism it was more common for longer histories to be written at the end of a conflict. The first known of these is Herodotuss account of the Persian Wars, thucydides, who some years later wrote a history of the Peloponnesian Wars was an observer to the events he described. Her description of the events took place in the Marshall House are particularly poignant because she was in the midst of battle. A further modernization came with the development of newspapers and magazines, one of the earliest war correspondents was Henry Crabb Robinson, who covered Napoleons campaigns in Spain and Germany for The Times of London. Another early correspondent was William Hicks who letters describing the Battle of Trafalgar were also published in The Times, early film and television news rarely had war correspondents. Rather, they would simply collect footage provided by sources, often the government. This footage was often staged as cameras were large and bulky until the introduction of small, the situation changed dramatically with the Vietnam War when networks from around the world sent cameramen with portable cameras and correspondents. This proved damaging to the United States as the brutality of war became a daily feature on the nightly news. The discourse in mediated conflicts is influenced by its public character, by forwarding information and arguments to the media, conflict parties attempt to use the media influence to gain support from their constituencies and persuade their opponents. The continued progress of technology has allowed live coverage of events via satellite up-links, the rise of twenty-four hour news channels has led to a heightened demand for coverage. William Howard Russell, who covered the Crimean War, also for The Times, is described as the first modern war correspondent
War correspondent
–
Battle council on the
De Zeven Provinciën by
Willem van de Velde the Elder. The prelude to the
Four Days Battle in 1666.
War correspondent
–
Western
military attachés and war correspondents with the Japanese forces after the
Battle of Shaho in 1904.
War correspondent
–
United States
World War II correspondents
13.
Red Army
–
The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, involving, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
Red Army
–
Red Guards unit of the Vulkan factory
Red Army
–
Soviet Armed Forces
Red Army
–
Vladimir Lenin,
Klim Voroshilov,
Leon Trotsky and soldiers,
Petrograd, 1921
Red Army
–
Soviet tanks in the
Battle of Khalkhin Gol, August 1939
14.
Battle of Moscow
–
The Battle of Moscow is the name given by Soviet historians to two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between October 1941 and January 1942, the Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitlers attack on Moscow, capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the largest Soviet city. Moscow was one of the military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months, the German Army Group North moved towards Leningrad, Army Group South took control of Ukraine, and Army Group Center advanced towards Moscow. By July 1941, Army Group Center crossed the Dnieper River, in August 1941, German forces captured Smolensk, an important stronghold on the road to Moscow. At this stage, although Moscow was vulnerable, an offensive against the city would have exposed the German flanks. In part to address these risks, in part to attempt to secure Ukraines food and mineral resources, Hitler ordered the attack to turn north and south and eliminate Soviet forces at Leningrad and this delayed the German advance on Moscow. When that advance resumed on 2 October 1941, German forces had been weakened, for Hitler, the Soviet capital was secondary, and he believed the only way to bring the Soviet Union to its knees was to defeat it economically. He felt this could be accomplished by seizing the economic resources of Ukraine east of Kiev, when Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, supported a direct thrust to Moscow, he was told that only ossified brains could think of such an idea. Franz Halder, head of the Army General Staff, was convinced that a drive to seize Moscow would be victorious after the German Army inflicted enough damage on the Soviet forces. This view was shared by most within the German high command, but Hitler overruled his generals in favor of pocketing the Soviet forces around Kiev in the south, followed by the seizure of Ukraine. The move was successful, resulting in the loss of 660,000 Red Army personnel by 26 September, with the end of summer, Hitler redirected his attention to Moscow and assigned Army Group Center to this task. The forces committed to Operation Typhoon included three infantry armies supported by three Panzer Groups and by the Luftwaffes Luftflotte 2, up to two million German troops were committed to the operation, along with 1,000 tanks and 14,000 guns. German aerial strength, however, had severely reduced over the summers campaign. Luftflotte 2 had only 549 serviceable machines, including 158 medium and dive-bombers and 172 fighters, the attack relied on standard blitzkrieg tactics, using Panzer groups rushing deep into Soviet formations and executing double-pincer movements, pocketing Red Army divisions and destroying them. Facing the Wehrmacht were three Soviet fronts forming a line between the cities of Vyazma and Bryansk, which barred the way to Moscow. The armies comprising these fronts had also involved in heavy fighting. Still, it was a formidable concentration consisting of 1,250,000 men,1,000 tanks and 7,600 guns, the Soviet Air Force had suffered appalling losses of some 7,500 or 21,200 aircraft
Battle of Moscow
–
December 1941. Fresh forces going to the front from Moscow.
Battle of Moscow
–
With all the men at the Front, Moscow women dig anti-tank trenches around Moscow in 1941
Battle of Moscow
–
The German offensives during operation Typhoon
Battle of Moscow
–
The mud of the
rasputitsa before Moscow, November 1941
15.
Battle of Stalingrad
–
Marked by fierce close quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians by air raids, it is often regarded as one of the single largest and bloodiest battles in the history of warfare. German forces never regained the initiative in the East and withdrew a vast military force from the West to replace their losses, the German offensive to capture Stalingrad began in August 1942, using the German 6th Army and elements of the 4th Panzer Army. The attack was supported by intensive Luftwaffe bombing that reduced much of the city to rubble, the fighting degenerated into house-to-house fighting, and both sides poured reinforcements into the city. By mid-November 1942, the Germans had pushed the Soviet defenders back at great cost into narrow zones along the west bank of the Volga River. On 19 November 1942, the Red Army launched Operation Uranus, the Axis forces on the flanks were overrun and the 6th Army was cut off and surrounded in the Stalingrad area. Adolf Hitler ordered that the stay in Stalingrad and make no attempt to break out, instead, attempts were made to supply the army by air. Heavy fighting continued for two months. By the beginning of February 1943, the Axis forces in Stalingrad had exhausted their ammunition, the remaining units of the 6th Army surrendered. The battle lasted five months, one week, and three days, elsewhere, the war had been progressing well, the U-boat offensive in the Atlantic had been very successful and Rommel had just captured Tobruk. In the east, they had stabilized their front in a running from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. There were a number of salients, but these were not particularly threatening, neither Army Group North nor Army Group South had been particularly hard pressed over the winter. Stalin was expecting the main thrust of the German summer attacks to be directed against Moscow again, with the initial operations being very successful, the Germans decided that their summer campaign in 1942 would be directed at the southern parts of the Soviet Union. The initial objectives in the region around Stalingrad were the destruction of the capacity of the city. The river was a key route from the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea to central Russia and its capture would disrupt commercial river traffic. The Germans cut the pipeline from the oilfields when they captured Rostov on 23 July, the capture of Stalingrad would make the delivery of Lend Lease supplies via the Persian Corridor much more difficult. On 23 July 1942, Hitler personally rewrote the operational objectives for the 1942 campaign, both sides began to attach propaganda value to the city based on it bearing the name of the leader of the Soviet Union. The expansion of objectives was a significant factor in Germanys failure at Stalingrad, caused by German overconfidence, the Soviets realized that they were under tremendous constraints of time and resources and ordered that anyone strong enough to hold a rifle be sent to fight. If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny then I must finish this war, Army Group South was selected for a sprint forward through the southern Russian steppes into the Caucasus to capture the vital Soviet oil fields there
Battle of Stalingrad
–
Soviet soldier waving the Red Banner over the central plaza of Stalingrad in 1943.
Battle of Stalingrad
–
Infantry and a supporting
StuG III assault gun advance towards the city center.
Battle of Stalingrad
–
October 1942: German officer with a Russian
PPSh-41 submachine gun in Barrikady factory rubble. Many German soldiers took up Russian weapons when found, as they were more effective than their own in
close quarter combat.
Battle of Stalingrad
–
German soldiers on their way in Stalingrad
16.
Battle of Kursk
–
The Battle of Kursk was a Second World War engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk in the Soviet Union during July and August 1943. The German offensive was code-named Operation Citadel and led to one of the largest armoured clashes in history, the German offensive was countered by two Soviet counter-offensives, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev and Operation Kutuzov. For the Germans, the battle was the strategic offensive that they were able to launch on the Eastern Front. Their extensive loss of men and tanks ensured that the victorious Soviet Red Army enjoyed the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. The Germans hoped to weaken the Soviet offensive potential for the summer of 1943 by cutting off a number of forces that they anticipated would be in the Kursk salient. The Kursk salient or bulge was 250 kilometres long north to south and 160 kilometres from east to west. The plan envisioned an envelopment by a pair of breaking through the northern and southern flanks of the salient. Adolf Hitler believed that a victory here would reassert German strength and improve his prestige with his allies and it was also hoped that large numbers of Soviet prisoners would be captured to be used as slave labour in the German armaments industry. The Soviet government had foreknowledge of the German intentions, provided in part by the British intelligence service, aware months in advance that the attack would fall on the neck of the Kursk salient, the Soviets built a defence in depth designed to wear down the German armoured spearhead. The Germans delayed the offensive while they tried to build up their forces and waited for new weapons, mainly the new Panther tank and this gave the Red Army time to construct a series of deep defensive belts. The defensive preparations included minefields, fortifications, artillery fire zones and anti-tank strong points, Soviet mobile formations were moved out of the salient and a large reserve force was formed for strategic counter-offensives. The Battle of Kursk was the first time in the Second World War that a German strategic offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defences, the maximum depth of the German advance was 8–12 kilometres in the north and 35 kilometres in the south. Though the Red Army had succeeded in winter offensives previously, their counter-offensives following the German attack at Kursk were their first successful strategic summer offensives of the war. As the Battle of Stalingrad slowly ground to its conclusion the Red Army moved to an offensive in the south. Army Group Center came under significant pressure as well, Kursk fell to the Soviets on 8 February 1943, and Rostov on 14 February. The Soviet Bryansk, Western, and newly created Central Fronts prepared for an offensive which envisioned the encirclement of Army Group Center between Bryansk and Smolensk, by February 1943 the southern sector of the German front was in strategic crisis. Since December 1942 Field Marshal Erich von Manstein had been strongly requesting unrestricted operational freedom to him to use his forces in a fluid manner. On 6 February 1943, Manstein met with Hitler at the headquarters in Rasternburg to discuss the proposals he had previously sent and he received an approval from Hitler for a counteroffensive against the Soviet forces advancing in the Donbass region
Battle of Kursk
–
Soldiers of the 2nd SS Panzer Division and a Tiger I tank
Battle of Kursk
–
German soldiers in Orel pass by the Church of the Intercession, early 1943.
Battle of Kursk
–
Waffen-SS soldiers aboard a Panzer IV in Kharkov, March 1943
Battle of Kursk
–
Ernst-Georg Buchterkirch (left) in discussion with General Model
17.
Battle of Berlin
–
The Battle of Berlin, designated the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, was the final major offensive of the European theatre of World War II. Following the Vistula–Oder Offensive of January–February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km east of Berlin, on 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz. The first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici. When the Soviet offensive resumed on 16 April, two Soviet fronts attacked Berlin from the east and south, while a third overran German forces positioned north of Berlin. Before the main battle in Berlin commenced, the Red Army encircled the city after successful battles of the Seelow Heights, on 23 April General Helmuth Weidling assumed command of the forces within Berlin. The garrison consisted of several depleted and disorganized Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS divisions, along with poorly trained Volkssturm, over the course of the next week, the Red Army gradually took the entire city. Before the battle was over, Hitler and a number of his followers committed suicide. Starting on 12 January 1945, the Red Army began the Vistula–Oder Offensive across the Narew River, and, from Warsaw, an operation on a broad front. On the fourth day, the Red Army broke out and started moving west, up to 30 to 40 km per day, taking East Prussia, Danzig, and Poznań, drawing up on a line 60 km east of Berlin along the Oder River. The newly created Army Group Vistula, under the command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, attempted a counter-attack, the Red Army then drove on to Pomerania, clearing the right bank of the Oder River, thereby reaching into Silesia. In the south the Siege of Budapest raged, three German attempts to relieve the encircled Hungarian capital city failed, and Budapest fell to the Soviets on 13 February. Adolf Hitler insisted on a counter-attack to recapture the Drau-Danube triangle, the goal was to secure the oil region of Nagykanizsa and regain the Danube River for future operations, but the depleted German forces had been given an impossible task. By 16 March, the German Lake Balaton Offensive had failed, on 30 March, the Soviets entered Austria, and in the Vienna Offensive they captured Vienna on 13 April. Between June and September 1944, the Wehrmacht had lost more than a million men, and it lacked the fuel and armaments needed to operate effectively. On 12 April 1945, Hitler, who had decided to remain in the city against the wishes of his advisers. No plans were made by the Western Allies to seize the city by a ground operation, the major Western Allied contribution to the battle was the bombing of Berlin during 1945. The Soviet offensive into central Germany, what later became East Germany, had two objectives, but the overriding objective was to capture Berlin. The two goals were complementary because possession of the zone could not be won quickly unless Berlin were taken, another consideration was that Berlin itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Adolf Hitler and the German atomic bomb programme
Battle of Berlin
–
After the battle, Soviet soldiers hoist the Soviet flag on the balcony of the
Hotel Adlon in Berlin
Battle of Berlin
–
Photo of Willi Hübner awarded the Iron Cross II Class medal
Battle of Berlin
–
9 March 1945,
Joseph Goebbels handing Iron Cross II class to 16-year-old Hitler Youth Willi Hübner after capture of
Lauban
Battle of Berlin
–
Volkssturmmann with
Panzerschreck, Berlin, April 1945
18.
Extermination camp
–
This genocide of the Jewish people of Europe was the Third Reichs Final Solution to the Jewish question. It is now known as the Holocaust. In 1941, the experience gained in the killing of these hospital patients led to the creation of extermination camps for the implementation of the Final Solution. By then, the Jews were already confined to new ghettos and interned in Nazi concentration camps along with other targeted groups, including Roma, and the Soviet POWs. The Nazi Endlösung der Judenfrage, based on the killing of Europes Jews by gassing, began during Operation Reinhard. Responsibility for the logistics were to be executed by the programme administrator, notably, the order preceded the Wannsee Conference by three months, but the gassings at Kulmhof north of Łódź using gas vans began already in December, under Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange. The camp at Bełżec was operational by March 1942, with leadership brought in from Germany under the guise of Organisation Todt, Auschwitz concentration camp was fitted with brand new gassing bunkers in March 1942. Majdanek had them built in September, todeslagers were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people delivered en masse by the Holocaust trains. The executioners did not expect the prisoners to more than a few hours beyond arrival at Belzec, Sobibór. The Jewish men, women and children were delivered from the ghettos for special treatment in an atmosphere of terror by uniformed police battalions from both, Orpo and Schupo. From March 1936, all Nazi concentration camps were managed by the SS-Totenkopfverbände, who operated extermination camps from 1941 as well. An SS anatomist, Dr. Johann Kremer, after witnessing the gassing of victims at Birkenau, wrote in his diary on 2 September 1942 and they dont call Auschwitz the camp of annihilation for nothing. The distinction was evident during the Nuremberg trials, when Dieter Wisliceny was asked to name the extermination camps, then, when asked How do you classify the camps Mauthausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald. He replied, They were normal concentration camps, from the point of view of the department of Eichmann, irrespective of round-ups for extermination camps, the Nazis abducted millions of foreigners for slave labour in other types of camps, which provided perfect cover for the extermination programme. Prisoners represented about a quarter of the workforce of the Reich, with mortality rates exceeding 75 percent due to starvation, disease, exhaustion, executions. On top of that, the new death camps outside the borders of the Third Reich proper could be kept secret from the German civil populace. The killing method was based on experience gained by the SS during the secretive Aktion T4 programme of involuntary euthanasia, there were two types of death chambers operating during the Holocaust. The three killing centres of Einsatz Reinhard were constructed predominantly for the extermination of Polands Jews trapped in the Nazi ghettos
Extermination camp
Extermination camp
–
The Holocaust map: Nazi extermination camps (marked with skulls in black squares) set up in
occupied Poland, 1942
Extermination camp
–
Members of the
Sonderkommando burn corpses in the fire pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
Extermination camp
–
Jewish children during deportation to the
Chełmno extermination camp
19.
Treblinka extermination camp
–
Treblinka was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was located in a forest north-east of Warsaw,4 kilometres south of the Treblinka train station in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship, the camp operated between 23 July 1942 and 19 October 1943 as part of Operation Reinhard, the deadliest phase of the Final Solution. During this time, it is estimated that between 700,000 and 900,000 Jews were killed in its gas chambers, along with 2,000 Romani people, more Jews were killed at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz. Managed by the German SS and Trawnikis, the camp consisted of two separate units, Treblinka I was a forced-labour camp whose prisoners worked in the gravel pit or irrigation area and in the forest, where they cut wood to fuel the crematoria. Between 1941 and 1944, more than half of its 20,000 inmates died from summary executions, hunger, disease, the second camp, Treblinka II, was an extermination camp, or the Vernichtungslager in German, referred to euphemistically as the SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka by the Nazis. A small number of Jewish men who were not killed immediately upon arrival became its Jewish slave-labour units called Sonderkommandos and these bodies were exhumed in 1943 and cremated on large open-air pyres along with the bodies of new victims. Gassing operations at Treblinka II ended in October 1943 following a revolt by the Sonderkommandos in early August, several SS Hiwi guards were killed and 200 prisoners escaped from the camp, almost a hundred survived the subsequent chase. The camp was dismantled ahead of the Soviet advance, a farmhouse for a watchman was built on the site and the ground ploughed over in an attempt to hide the evidence of genocide. In postwar Poland, the government bought most of the land where the camp had stood, in 1964 Treblinka was declared a national monument of Jewish martyrology in a ceremony at the site of the former gas chambers. In the same year the first German trials were held regarding war crimes committed at Treblinka by former SS members, after the end of communism in Poland in 1989, the number of visitors coming to Treblinka from abroad increased. An exhibition centre at the camp opened in 2006 and it was later expanded and made into a branch of the Siedlce Regional Museum. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939 most of the 3.5 million Polish Jews were rounded up, the system was intended to isolate the Jews from the outside world in order to facilitate their exploitation and abuse. The supply of food was inadequate, living conditions were cramped and unsanitary, malnutrition and lack of medicine led to soaring mortality rates. The initial victories of the Wehrmacht over the Soviet Union inspired plans for the German colonisation of occupied Poland, including all territory within the General Government. At the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin on 20 January 1942, new plans were outlined for the genocide of the Jews, Treblinka was one of three secret extermination camps set up for Operation Reinhard, the other two were Bełżec and Sobibór. All three were equipped with gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, for the processing of entire transports of people, the lethal agent was established following a pilot project of mobile killing conducted at Soldau and Chełmno extermination camps that began operating in 1941 and used gas vans. Chełmno was a ground for the establishment of faster methods of killing and incinerating people. It was not a part of Reinhard, which was marked by the construction of facilities for mass murder
Treblinka extermination camp
–
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka extermination camp
–
The
Wannsee Conference, where the plans for Operation Reinhard and the Treblinka extermination camp were outlined, took place at this villa.
Treblinka extermination camp
–
Official announcement of the founding of Treblinka I, the forced-labour camp
Treblinka extermination camp
–
Memorial at Treblinka II, with 17,000 quarry stones symbolising
gravestones.
Inscriptions indicate places of
Holocaust train departures with at least 5,000 victims and selected ghettos from across Poland.
20.
Armenian language
–
The Armenian language is an Indo-European language spoken by the Armenians. Like Hellenic Greek, it has its own branch in the language tree. It is the language of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. It has historically been spoken throughout the Armenian Highlands and today is spoken in the Armenian diaspora. Armenian has its own script, the Armenian alphabet, introduced in 405 AD by Mesrop Mashtots. Armenian is an independent branch of the Indo-European languages and it is of interest to linguists for its distinctive phonological developments within that family. Armenian exhibits more satemization than centumization, although it is not classified as belonging to either of these subgroups, Armenia was a monolingual country by the 2nd century BC at the latest. Its language has a literary history, with a 5th-century Bible translation as its oldest surviving text. Its vocabulary has been influenced by Western Middle Iranian languages, particularly Parthian, and to an extent by Greek, Persian. There are two standardized modern literary forms, Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian, with which most contemporary dialects are mutually intelligible and he is also credited by some with the creation of the Caucasian Albanian alphabet. In The Anabasis, Xenophon describes many aspects of Armenian village life and he relates that the Armenian people spoke a language that to his ear sounded like the language of the Persians. W. M. However, unlike shared innovations, the retention of archaisms is not considered conclusive evidence of a period of common isolated development. Some of the terms he gives admittedly have an Akkadian or Sumerian provenance, loan words from Iranian languages, along with the other ancient accounts such as that of Xenophon above, initially led linguists to erroneously classify Armenian as an Iranian language. Scholars such as Paul de Lagarde and F. Müller believed that the similarities between the two meant that Iranian and Armenian were the same language. The distinctness of Armenian was recognized when philologist Heinrich Hübschmann used the method to distinguish two layers of Iranian loans from the older Armenian vocabulary. Meillets hypothesis became popular in the wake of his Esquisse, eric P. Hamp supports the Graeco-Armenian thesis, anticipating even a time when we should speak of Helleno-Armenian. Nevertheless, as Fortson comments, by the time we reach our earliest Armenian records in the 5th century AD, graeco--Aryan is a hypothetical clade within the Indo-European family, ancestral to the Greek language, the Armenian language, and the Indo-Iranian languages. Graeco-Aryan unity would have divided into Proto-Greek and Proto-Indo-Iranian by the mid-third millennium BC
Armenian language
–
Armenian manuscript, 5th–6th century.
Armenian language
–
regions where Armenian is the language of the majority
Armenian language
–
The Four Gospels, 1495, Portrait of St Mark Wellcome with Armenian inscriptions
Armenian language
–
First Armenian language Bible.
21.
Interlinear gloss
–
In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When glossed, each line of the original text acquires one or more lines of known as an interlinear text or interlinear glossed text —interlinear for short. Such glosses help the reader follow the relationship between the text and its translation, and the structure of the original language. In its simplest form, an interlinear gloss is simply a literal, Interlinear glosses have been used for a variety of purposes over a long period of time. One common usage has been to annotate bilingual textbooks for language education and this sort of interlinearization serves to help make the meaning of a source text explicit without attempting to formally model the structural characteristics of the source language. Such annotations have occasionally been expressed not through interlinear layout, but rather, through enumeration of words in the object, even so, this approach requires the readers to re-align the correspondences between source and target forms. In this style, the example might be rendered thus. Finally, modern linguists have adopted the practice of using abbreviated grammatical category labels, in computing, special text markers are provided in Specials to indicate the start and end of interlinear glosses. A semi-standardized set of parsing conventions and grammatical abbreviations is explained in the Leipzig Glossing Rules, goá iáu-boē koat-tēng tang-sî boeh tńg-khì. Goa1 iau1-boe3 koat2-teng3 tang7-si5 boeh2 tng1-khi3, goa2 iau2-boe7 koat4-teng7 tang1-si5 boeh4 tng2-khi3. I not-yet decide when want return, I have not yet decided when I shall return. In linguistics, it has become standard to align the words and that is, koat-tēng in line 1 above would either require a hyphenated two-word gloss, or be transcribed without a hyphen, for example as koattēng. Grammatical terms are commonly abbreviated and printed in SMALL CAPITALS to keep them distinct from translations, varying levels of analysis may be detailed. For example, in a Lezgian text using standard romanization, Here every Lezgian morpheme is set off with hyphens, since many of these are difficult to gloss in English, the roots are translated, but the grammatical suffixes are glossed with three-letter grammatical abbreviations. In interlinear morphological glosses, various forms of punctuation separate the glosses. Typically, the words are aligned with their glosses, within words and that is, there should be the same number of words separated with spaces in the text and its gloss, as well as the same number of hyphenated morphemes within a word and its gloss. This is the system, and can be applied universally. For example, Odadan hızla çıktım. FEM. PL. DAT to the houses, however, sometimes finer distinctions may be made
Interlinear gloss
–
Interlinear text in Toussaint-Langenscheidt Spanisch, a
Spanish language textbook for
German speakers, 1910.
22.
Joseph Stalin
–
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov, and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials. Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which later constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin also had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials. The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would later be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori, Georgia and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
Joseph Stalin
–
Stalin at the
Tehran Conference in 1943.
Joseph Stalin
–
Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the Russian government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Russian police in Saint Petersburg.
Joseph Stalin
–
A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin,
Vladimir Lenin, and
Mikhail Kalinin.
23.
Antisemitism
–
Antisemitism is hostility, prejudice, or discrimination directed against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite, Antisemitism is generally considered to be a form of racism. The root word Semite gives the impression that antisemitism is directed against all Semitic people. However, the compound word antisemite was popularized in Germany in 1879 as a term for Judenhass Jew-hatred. Although the term did not come into common usage until the 19th century, the origin of antisemitic terminologies is found in the responses of Moritz Steinschneider to the views of Ernest Renan. As Alex Bein writes, The compound anti-Semitism appears to have been used first by Steinschneider, avner Falk similarly writes, The German word antisemitisch was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase antisemitische Vorurteile. Steinschneider used this phrase to characterise the French philosopher Ernest Renans false ideas about how Semitic races were inferior to Aryan races and he coined the phrase the Jews are our misfortune which would later be widely used by Nazis. According to Jonathan M. Hess, the term was used by its authors to stress the radical difference between their own antisemitism and earlier forms of antagonism toward Jews and Judaism. In 1879 German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet, Der Sieg des Judenthums über das Germanenthum, vom nicht confessionellen Standpunkt aus betrachtet in which he used the word Semitismus interchangeably with the word Judentum to denote both Jewry and jewishness. The pamphlet became very popular, and in the year he founded the Antisemiten-Liga. The Jewish Encyclopedia reports, In February 1881, a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums speaks of Anti-Semitism as a designation which recently came into use, on 19 July 1882, the editor says, This quite recent Anti-Semitism is hardly three years old. The related term philosemitism was coined around 1885, from the outset the term anti-Semitism bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews. The term is confusing, for in modern usage Semitic designates a language group, though antisemitism has been used to describe bigotry against people who speak other Semitic languages, the validity of such usage has been questioned. The term may be spelled with or without a hyphen, for example, Emil Fackenheim supported the unhyphenated spelling, in order to the notion that there is an entity Semitism which anti-Semitism opposes. Objections to the usage of the term, such as the nature of the term Semitic as a racial term, have been raised since at least the 1930s. Because of this bad nature, Jews have to be not as individuals. Jews remain essentially alien in the surrounding societies, Jews bring disaster on their host societies or on the whole world, they are doing it secretly, therefore the anti-Semites feel obliged to unmask the conspiratorial, bad Jewish character. It was anti-liberal, racialist and nationalist, bernard Lewis defines antisemitism as a special case of prejudice, hatred, or persecution directed against people who are in some way different from the rest
Antisemitism
–
Cover page of Marr's The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism, 1880 edition
Antisemitism
–
Antisemitic caricature by C.Léandre (France, 1898) showing
Rothschild with the world in his hands
Antisemitism
–
1889 Paris, France elections poster for self-described "candidat antisémite"
Adolphe Willette: "The Jews are a different race, hostile to our own... Judaism, there is the enemy!" (see file for complete translation)
Antisemitism
–
Jews (identified by the mandatory
Jewish badge and
Jewish hat) being burned during the
Black Death in 1348.
24.
Political censorship
–
In the absence of neutral and objective information, people will be unable to dissent with the government or political party in charge. The term also extends to the suppression of views that are contrary to those of the government in power. At times this involves bribery, defamation, imprisonment, and even assassination, the word censorship comes from the Latin word censor, the job of two Romans whose duty was to supervise public behaviour and morals, hence censoring the way people acted. The Ancien régime, for example, is known for having implemented censorship. In 1851, Napoleon III declared himself emperor, the wealthier citizens immediately saw in him a way to protect their privileges, that were put in danger by the French Revolution of 1848, which threatened to re-organise the social hierarchy. This was a time all sorts of cultural productions was censored. Independent journalism did not exist in the Soviet Union until Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader, pravda, the predominant newspaper in the Soviet Union, had a near-monopoly. Foreign newspapers were available if they were published by Communist Parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union. The Cuban media is operated under the supervision of the Communist Partys Department of Revolutionary Orientation, in 1973, a military coup took power in Uruguay, and the state employed censorship. For example, writer Eduardo Galeano was imprisoned and later was forced to flee and his book Open Veins of Latin America was banned by the right-wing military government, not only in Uruguay, but also in Chile and Argentina. Many countries campaign finance laws restrict speech on candidates and political issues, in Citizens United v. FEC, the United States Supreme Court found that many such restrictions are an unconstitutional form of censorship. Jeyaretnam was also banned for being a party political film and this law, however, is often disregarded when such political films are made supporting the ruling Peoples Action Party. Channel NewsAsias five-part documentary series on Singapores PAP ministers in 2005, exceptions are also made when political films are made concerning political parties of other nations. Films such as Michael Moores Fahrenheit 911 are thus allowed to screen regardless of the law
Political censorship
–
Nikolai Yezhov, the man to the right of
Joseph Stalin was shot in 1940. He was edited out from the photo by Soviet censors. Such retouching was a common occurrence during Stalin's reign.
Political censorship
25.
Nikita Khrushchev
–
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, Khrushchevs party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the border between Russia and Ukraine. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar, with the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalins purges, and approved thousands of arrests, in 1938, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalins close advisers, in the power struggle triggered by Stalins death in 1953, Khrushchev, after several years, emerged victorious. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the Secret Speech, denouncing Stalins purges and his domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchevs rule saw the most tense years of the Cold War, flaws in Khrushchevs policies eroded his popularity and emboldened potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed the premier in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the fate of previous losers of Soviet power struggles, and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow. His lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970, Khrushchev died in 1971 of heart disease. Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894, in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russias Kursk Oblast and his parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Ksenia Khrushcheva, were poor peasants of Russian origin, and had a daughter two years Nikitas junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, and laboring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, Kalinovka was a peasant village, Khrushchevs teacher, Lydia Shevchenko, later stated that she had never seen a village as poor as Kalinovka had been. Nikita worked as a herdsboy from an early age and he was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village parochial school and part under Shevchenkos tutelage in Kalinovkas state school. She urged Nikita to seek education, but family finances did not permit this. In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka, fourteen-year-old Nikita followed later that year, while Ksenia Khrushcheva and her daughter came after
Nikita Khrushchev
–
Khrushchev in
East Berlin, 1963
Nikita Khrushchev
–
Khrushchev in 1916
Nikita Khrushchev
–
NKVD chief
Genrikh Yagoda (middle) inspecting the construction of the
Moscow-Volga canal, 1935. Khrushchev is left behind Yagoda.
Nikita Khrushchev
–
Nestor Lakoba, Khrushchev,
Lavrenti Beria and
Aghasi Khanjian during opening of the
Moscow Metro
26.
Nonperson
–
The term also refers to people whose death is unverifiable and about which inquiries result in a blank wall of nobody knows that. Who is a person and what every person is entitled to depends on context, for example, wards that are under the authority of a legal guardian due to infancy, incapacity, or disability are not usually considered nonpersons. There are many possible meanings associated with the term nonperson, in Nazi extermination camps, Jewish people and Romani were treated as nonpersons. The purpose of these camps was to systematically dehumanise these unwanted elements, use them where possible, nonperson status was required because it removed the moral and social obstacles for committing otherwise objectionable acts of violence, crime, abuse, and murder. Some people are held by governments or other bodies. This has happened in dictatorial regimes such as Chile under Pinochet, the USSR and it was also the guiding strategy behind the Nazi governments Nacht und Nebel policy in Western Europe. To dodge pointed questions regarding supposedly democratically controlled governments covertly holding people or employing torture, the existence of ghost detainees in a secret CIA prison system is an example of this. This is often the case of homeless and marginalized people in general, for example, in most countries, ordinary prisoners are denied political rights such as voting, in the most severe cases, total or partial isolation from the outside world can be inflicted. A nonperson status can also be consciously or unconsciously applied to unwanted persons by their surrounding society and this can be extended and applied to an entire nation or ethnic group, as often happens in wars or other conflicts. Similar cases, concerning contra-revolutionaries, are found in most socialist states, nonpersons are described in George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four as people who were erased from existence by alteration of records. The Newspeak word for such a person was unperson, in the real-time strategy game Red Alert 2, Yuri names General Vladimir as a nonperson, and orders the player to apprehend him. In the TV series Max Headroom, a group known as Blanks consists of people who have intentionally erased all records of themselves from government databases. In the MMORPG Eve Online, players from the largest in-game group, known as The Goonswarm Federation, refer to any players, other than perhaps their allies. Damnatio memoriae Homo sacer Personhood Stateless person
Nonperson
–
A
Soviet "nonperson" vanishes:
commissar Nikolai Yezhov retouched after falling from favor and being executed in 1940.
Nonperson
27.
KGB
–
The KGB, an initialism for Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti, was the main security agency for the Soviet Union from 1954 until its break-up in 1991. Formed in 1954, as a successor of such preceding agencies as the Cheka, NKGB, and MGB. It was the government agency of union-republican jurisdiction, acting as internal security, intelligence. Similar agencies were constituted in each of the republics of the Soviet Union aside from Russia and consisted of ministries, state committees. The KGB was a service and was governed by army laws and regulations. While most of the KGB archives remain classified, two documentary sources are available. After the dissolution of the USSR, the KGB was split into the Federal Security Service, after breaking away from the Republic of Georgia in the early 1990s with Russian help, the self-proclaimed Republic of South Ossetia established its own KGB. A1983 Time magazine article reported that the KGB was the worlds most effective information-gathering organization, at best, the compromised spy was either returned to the Soviet Union or was declared persona non grata and expelled by the government of the target country. The illegal resident spied, unprotected by diplomatic immunity, and worked independently of Soviet diplomatic, in its early history, the KGB valued illegal spies more than legal spies, because illegal spies infiltrated their targets with greater ease. The KGB classified its spies as agents and controllers, the false-identity or legend assumed by a USSR-born illegal spy was elaborate, using the life of either a live double or a dead double. In the 1980s, the glasnost liberalisation of Soviet society provoked KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov to lead the August 1991 Soviet coup détat attempt to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev, the thwarted coup détat ended the KGB on 6 November 1991. The KGBs successors are the police agency FSB and the espionage agency SVR. The GRU recruited the ideological agent Julian Wadleigh, who became a State Department diplomat in 1936, the NKVDs first US operation was establishing the legal residency of Boris Bazarov and the illegal residency of Iskhak Akhmerov in 1934. Throughout, the Communist Party USA and its General Secretary Earl Browder, helped NKVD recruit Americans, working in government, business, moreover, when Whittaker Chambers, formerly Alger Hisss courier, approached the Roosevelt Government—to identify the Soviet spies Duggan, White, and others—he was ignored. To wit, British Manhattan Project team physicist Klaus Fuchs was the agent of the Rosenberg spy ring. In 1944, the New York City residency infiltrated the top secret Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, by recruiting Theodore Hall, the KGB failed to rebuild most of its US illegal resident networks. The aftermath of the Second Red Scare and the crisis in the CPUSA hampered recruitment, the last major illegal resident, Rudolf Abel, was betrayed by his assistant, Reino Häyhänen, in 1957. One notable KGB success occurred in 1967, with the recruitment of US Navy Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker
KGB
–
Lubyanka Building in 1991
KGB
–
The 1954
ukase establishing the KGB.
KGB
–
KGB Regulation seen in Museum of Genocide Victims Vilnius
KGB
–
Vladimir Putin worked as a high-ranking KGB officer in
Dresden,
East Germany during the 1980s.
28.
Typewriter
–
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for writing characters similar to those produced by printers movable type. A typewriter operates by means of keys that strike a ribbon to transmit ink or carbon impressions onto paper, typically, a single character is printed on each key press. The machine prints characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the used in movable type letterpress printing. At the end of the century, the term typewriter was also applied to a person who used a typing machine. After its invention in the 1860s, the quickly became an indispensable tool for practically all writing other than personal handwritten correspondence. It was widely used by writers, in offices. As with the automobile, telephone, and telegraph, a number of people contributed insights, historians have estimated that some form of typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design. Some of the early typing instruments, In 1575 an Italian printmaker, Francesco Rampazzetto, invented the scrittura tattile, in 1714, Henry Mill obtained a patent in Britain for a machine that, from the patent, appears to have been similar to a typewriter. In 1802 Italian Agostino Fantoni developed a particular typewriter to enable his blind sister to write, in 1808 Italian Pellegrino Turri invented a typewriter. He also invented carbon paper to provide the ink for his machine, in 1823 Italian Pietro Conti di Cilavegna invented a new model of typewriter, the tachigrafo, also known as tachitipo. In 1829, William Austin Burt patented a machine called the Typographer which, the Science Museum describes it merely as the first writing mechanism whose invention was documented, but even that claim may be excessive, since Turris invention pre-dates it. Even in the hands of its inventor, this machine was slower than handwriting, Burt and his promoter John D. Sheldon never found a buyer for the patent, so the invention was never commercially produced, because the typographer used a dial, rather than keys, to select each character, it was called an index typewriter rather than a keyboard typewriter. Index typewriters of that era resemble the squeeze-style embosser from the 1960s more than they resemble the modern keyboard typewriter, by the mid-19th century, the increasing pace of business communication had created a need for mechanization of the writing process. Stenographers and telegraphers could take down information at rates up to 130 words per minute, from 1829 to 1870, many printing or typing machines were patented by inventors in Europe and America, but none went into commercial production. Charles Thurber developed multiple patents, of which his first in 1843 was developed as an aid to the blind, in 1855, the Italian Giuseppe Ravizza created a prototype typewriter called Cembalo scrivano o macchina da scrivere a tasti. It was a machine that let the user see the writing as it was typed. In 1861, Father Francisco João de Azevedo, a Brazilian priest, made his own typewriter with basic materials and tools, such as wood, in that same year the Brazilian emperor D
Typewriter
–
Mechanical desktop typewriters, such as this
Underwood Touchmaster Five, were long-time standards of government agencies, newsrooms, and offices
Typewriter
–
Peter Mitterhofer (de), typewriter prototype 1864
Technisches Museum Wien
Typewriter
–
Disassembled parts of an Adler Favorit mechanical typewriter.
Typewriter
–
John J. Pratt 's "pterotype" of 1865
29.
Mikhail Suslov
–
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the power separation within the Communist Party. His hardline attitude toward change made him one of the foremost anti-reformist Soviet leaders, born in rural Russia in 1902, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party in 1921 and studied economics for much of the 1920s. He left his job as a teacher in 1931 to pursue politics full-time, Suslov impressed the Soviet leadership to such an extent in the pre-Eastern Front Soviet Union that he was made First Secretary of Stavropol Krai administrative area. During the war, Suslov headed the local Stavropol guerrilla movement and he became a member of the Organisational Bureau of the Central Committee in 1946 and, four years later, was elected to the Presidium of the All-Union Communist Party. Suslov lost much of the recognition and influence he had earned following the reshuffle of the Soviet leadership after Stalins death, however, by the late 1950s, Suslov had risen to become the leader of the hardline opposition to Nikita Khrushchevs revisionist leadership. After Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Suslov supported the establishment of a collective leadership and he also supported inner-party democracy and opposed the reestablishment of the one-man rule as seen during the Stalin and Khrushchev Eras. During the Brezhnev Era, Suslov was considered to be the Partys Chief Ideologue and his death on 25 January 1982 is viewed as starting the battle to succeed Leonid Brezhnev in the post of General Secretary. Suslov was born in Shakhovskoye, a locality in Pavlovsky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast. Suslov began work in the local Komsomol organisation in Saratov in 1918, after working in the Komsomol for nearly three years, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party in 1921. After graduating from the rabfak, he studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy between 1924–1928, in 1931 he abandoned teaching in favour of the party apparatus. He became an inspector on the Communist Partys Party Control Commission and on the Peoples Commissariat of the Workers and his main task there was to adjudicate on large numbers of personal cases, breaches of discipline, and appeals against expulsion from the party. In 1933 and 1934 Suslov directed a commission charged with purging the party in the Ural, the purge was organised by Lazar Kaganovich, then Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission. On the orders of Joseph Stalin, Suslov purged the city of Rostov in 1938, Suslov was made First Secretary of the Stavropol Krais Communist Party in 1939. On the Eastern Front in World War II, Suslov was a member of the Military Soviet of the Northern Group of Forces, according to Soviet historiography, Suslovs years as a guerrilla fighter were highly successful, however, testimonies from participants differ from the official account. These participants claim that there were a number of problems which reduced their effectiveness on the battlefield. During the war, Suslov spent much of his time mobilising workers to fight against the German invaders, the guerrilla movement he led was operated by the regional party cells. During the liberation of the Northern Caucasus, Suslov maintained close contact with the Red Army, during the war, Suslov supervised the deportations of Chechens and other Muslim minorities from the Caucasus
Mikhail Suslov
–
Mikhail Suslov Михаил Суслов
30.
Andrei Sakharov
–
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Russian nuclear physicist, Soviet dissident, an activist for disarmament, peace and human rights. He became renowned as the designer of the Soviet Unions RDS-37, Sakharov later became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union, for which he faced state persecution, these efforts earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The Sakharov Prize, which is awarded annually by the European Parliament for people and organizations dedicated to human rights, Sakharov was born in Moscow on May 21,1921. His father was Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, a school physics teacher. His father later taught at the Second Moscow State University, andreis grandfather Ivan had been a prominent lawyer in the Russian Empire who had displayed respect for social awareness and humanitarian principles that would later influence his grandson. Sakharovs mother was Yekaterina Alekseyevna Sakharova, a great-granddaughter of the prominent military commander Alexey Semenovich Sofiano, Sakharovs parents and paternal grandmother, Maria Petrovna, largely shaped his personality. Although Sakharovs paternal great-grandfather had been a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, however, he did believe that a guiding principle governed the universe and human life. Sakharov entered Moscow State University in 1938, following evacuation in 1941 during the Great Patriotic War, he graduated in Aşgabat, in todays Turkmenistan. He was then assigned to work in Ulyanovsk. In 1943, he married Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he raised two daughters and a son before she died in 1969 and he returned to Moscow in 1945 to study at the Theoretical Department of FIAN. He received his Ph. D. in 1947, after World War II, he researched cosmic rays. In mid-1948 he participated in the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov, Sakharovs study group at FIAN in 1948 came up with a second concept in August–September 1948. This idea of a layered fission-fusion-fission bomb led Sakharov to call it the sloika, the first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29,1949. Before his Third Idea, Sakharov tried a layer cake of alternating layers of fission and fusion fuel, the results were disappointing, yielding no more than a typical fission bomb. However the design was seen to be worth pursuing because deuterium is abundant and uranium is scarce, Sakharov was surprised by the size of the explosion and realized that the Americans had harnessed the power of a separate fission explosion to compress the fusion fuel. Sakharov realised that in order to cause the explosion of one side of the fuel to symmetrically compress the fusion fuel, Sakharovs idea was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955. A larger variation of the design which Sakharov worked on was the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba of October 1961. Sakharov saw striking parallels between his fate and those of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller in the USA, in both cases, the reaction would have been the same – avoid the trap and immediately take advantage of the enemys stupidity
Andrei Sakharov
–
Sakharov at a conference of the
USSR Academy of Sciences on 1 March 1989
Andrei Sakharov
–
The apartment building in the Scherbinki district of Nizhny Novgorod where Sakharov lived in exile from 1980 to 1986. His apartment is now a museum.
Andrei Sakharov
–
Sakharov's grave, 1990
Andrei Sakharov
–
A statue of Andrei Sakharov in
Yerevan,
Armenia
