1.
Pskov Republic
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Pskov, known at various times as the Principality of Pskov or the Pskov Republic, was a medieval state on the south shore of Lake Pskov. It was originally known as Pleskov, and is now roughly equivalent geographically to the Pskov Oblast of Russia, 862–1230, after which it was joined to the Novgorod Republic. From 1348, Pleskov became again independent from Novgorod and established an aristocratic oligarchy, each exiled prince that went to Pleskov could be proclaimed prince there. In any case, he could at least get an honorary reception and it kept its special autonomous rights, including the right for independent construction of suburbs. Due to Pskovs leading role in the struggle against the Livonian Order, the long reign of Daumantas and especially his victory in the Battle of Rakvere ushered in the period of Pskovs actual independence. The Novgorod boyars formally recognized Pskovs independence in the Treaty of Bolotovo, the Pskov Republic had well-developed farming, fishing, blacksmithing, jewelery-making and construction industries. As opposed to the Novgorod Republic, Pskov never had big feudal landowners, estates were smaller, the estates of Pskovian monasteries and churches were much smaller as well. The social relations that had taken shape in the Pskov Republic were reflected in the Legal Code of Pskov, peculiarities of the economy, centuries-old ties with Novgorod, frontier status, and military threats led to the development of the veche system in the Pskov Republic. The princes played a subordinate role, the veche elected posadniks and sotskiys and regulated the relations between feudals, posad people, izborniks, and smerds. The boyar council had a influence on the decisions of the veche. The latter also held the archives of the veche and important private papers, the elective offices became a privilege of several noble families. During the most dramatic moments in the history of Pskov, however, since 1399 Pskov with its adjacent lands became a viceroyalty of Moscow with their own namestnik knyaz appointed by the Moscows royalty. Since the 15th century, several princes of the Gediminid line were prominent there too and their surnames included Golitsin, Kurakin and Khovansky. In 1501, armies of Pskov and Moscow were defeated in the Battle of the Siritsa River by the Livonian Order, but the city withstood the subsequent siege. In 1510, Grand Prince of Moscow Vasili III arrived in Pskov and pronounced it his votchina, thus putting an end to the Pskov Republic, the citys ruling body, the veche, was dissolved and some 300 families of rich Pskovians were deported from the city. Their estates were distributed among the Muscovite service class people, from that time on, the city of Pskov and the lands around it continued to develop as a part of the centralized Russian state, preserving some of its economic and cultural traditions. The downfall of Pskov is recounted in the Muscovite Story of the Taking of Pskov, the history of the Muscovites leisurely perseverance is told with admirable simplicity and art. An atmosphere of descending gloom pervades the narrative, all is useless, and whatever the Pskovites can do
2.
Viktor Vasnetsov
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Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov was a Russian artist who specialized in mythological and historical subjects. He is considered the co-founder of Russian folklorist and romantic nationalistic painting, Viktor Vasnetsov was born in the remote village of Lopyal in Vyatka Governorate in 1848, the second of the six children. His father Mikhail Vasilievich Vasnetsov, known to be inclined, was a member of priesthood. His grandfather was an icon painter, two of Mikhail Vasnetsovs three sons, Viktor and Apollinary, became remarkable painters, the third one becoming a schoolteacher. It was in Lopyal that Viktor started to paint, mostly landscapes and scenes of village life, recalling his childhood in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, Vasnetsov remarked that he had lived with peasant children and liked them not as a narodnik but as a friend. From the age of ten, Viktor studied in a seminary in Vyatka, during his seminary years, he worked for a local icon shopkeeper. He also helped an exiled Polish artist, Michał Elwiro Andriolli, having graduated from the seminary, Viktor decided to move to Saint Petersburg to study art. He auctioned his paintings of Woman Harvester and Milk-maid in order to raise money required for the trip to the Russian capital, in August 1867 Viktor entered the Imperial Academy of Arts. Three years later, the Peredvizhniki movement of realist painters rebelled against the Academism, Vasnetsov befriended their leader Ivan Kramskoi, referring to him as his teacher. He also became close to his fellow student Ilya Yefimovich Repin. It is ironic, but Viktor, whose name is associated with historical and mythological paintings, for his graphic composition of Christ and Pontius Pilate Before the People, the Academy awarded a small silver medal to him. In the early 1870s he executed a lot of engravings depicting contemporary life, two of them won him a bronze medal at the World Fair in London. At that period he started producing genre paintings in oil. Such pieces as Peasant Singers and Moving House were warmly welcomed by democratic circles of Russian society, in 1876 Repin invited Vasnetsov to join the Peredvizhniki colony in Paris. While living in France, Viktor studied classical and contemporary paintings, at that period, he painted Acrobats, produced prints, and exhibited some of his works at the Salon. It was in Paris that he became fascinated with fairy-tale subjects, starting to work on Ivan Tsarevich Riding a Grey Wolf, Vasnetsov was a model for Sadko in Repins celebrated painting Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. In 1877 he returned to Moscow and these works were not appreciated at the time they appeared. Many radical critics dismissed them as undermining the realist principles of the Peredvizhniki, even such prominent connoisseurs as Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov refused to buy them
3.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
4.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
5.
Ukrainian language
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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
6.
Belarusian language
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Belarusian is an official language of Belarus, along with Russian, and is spoken abroad, chiefly in Russia, Ukraine, and small parts in far-eastern Poland. Following independence, it became known as Belarusian. Belarusian is one of the East Slavic languages and shares many grammatical and lexical features with other members of the group, to some extent, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian are mutually intelligible. Its predecessor stage is known as Ruthenian, in turn descended from Old East Slavic, at the 1999 Belarus Census, the Belarusian language was declared as a language spoken at home by about 3,686,000 Belarusian citizens. About 6,984,000 of Belarusians declared it their mother tongue, other sources put the population of the language as 6,715,000 in Belarus and 9,081,102 in all countries. According to a study done by the Belarusian government in 2009, 72% of Belarusians speak Russian at home,29. 4% of Belarusians can write, speak, and read Belarusian, while 52. 5% can only read and speak it. Although closely related to other East Slavic languages, especially Ukrainian, Belarusian phonology is distinct in a number of ways, the phoneme inventory of the modern Belarusian language consists of 45 to 54 phonemes,6 vowels and 39 to 48 consonants, depending on how they are counted. When the nine geminate consonants are excluded as mere variations, there are 39 consonants, the number 48 includes all consonant sounds, including variations and rare sounds, which may be semantically distinct in the modern Belarusian language. The Belarusian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic script, which was first used as an alphabet for the Old Church Slavonic language, the modern Belarusian form was defined in 1918, and consists of thirty-two letters. Before that, Belarusian had also written in the Belarusian Latin alphabet, the Belarusian Arabic alphabet. The Glagolitic script had been used, sporadically, until the 11th or 12th century, there are several systems of romanizing written Belarusian text in existence, see Romanization of Belarusian. Standardized Belarusian grammar in its form was adopted in 1959. It was developed from the form set down by Branislaw Tarashkyevich. Historically, there had existed several other alternative standardized forms of Belarusian grammar and it is mainly based on the Belarusian folk dialects of Minsk-Vilnius region. Belarusian grammar is mostly synthetic and partly analytic, and overall is similar to Russian grammar. The most significant instance of this is in the representation of vowel reduction, and in particular akannye, the merger of unstressed /a/ and /o/, Belarusian always spells this merged sound as ⟨a⟩, whereas Russian uses either ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩, according to what the underlying phoneme is. This can significantly complicate the task of foreign speakers in learning these paradigms, besides the literary norm, there exist two main dialects of the Belarusian language, the North-Eastern and the South-Western. In addition, there exist the transitional Middle Belarusian dialect group, the North-Eastern dialect is chiefly characterized by the soft sounding R and strong akanye, and the South-Western dialect is chiefly characterized by the hard sounding R and moderate akanye
7.
Middle Ages
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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or Medieval Period lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and merged into the Renaissance, the Middle Ages is the middle period of the three traditional divisions of Western history, classical antiquity, the medieval period, and the modern period. The medieval period is subdivided into the Early, High. Population decline, counterurbanisation, invasion, and movement of peoples, the large-scale movements of the Migration Period, including various Germanic peoples, formed new kingdoms in what remained of the Western Roman Empire. In the seventh century, North Africa and the Middle East—once part of the Byzantine Empire—came under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate, although there were substantial changes in society and political structures, the break with classical antiquity was not complete. The still-sizeable Byzantine Empire survived in the east and remained a major power, the empires law code, the Corpus Juris Civilis or Code of Justinian, was rediscovered in Northern Italy in 1070 and became widely admired later in the Middle Ages. In the West, most kingdoms incorporated the few extant Roman institutions, monasteries were founded as campaigns to Christianise pagan Europe continued. The Franks, under the Carolingian dynasty, briefly established the Carolingian Empire during the later 8th, the Crusades, first preached in 1095, were military attempts by Western European Christians to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Kings became the heads of centralised nation states, reducing crime and violence, intellectual life was marked by scholasticism, a philosophy that emphasised joining faith to reason, and by the founding of universities. Controversy, heresy, and the Western Schism within the Catholic Church paralleled the conflict, civil strife. Cultural and technological developments transformed European society, concluding the Late Middle Ages, the Middle Ages is one of the three major periods in the most enduring scheme for analysing European history, classical civilisation, or Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. Medieval writers divided history into periods such as the Six Ages or the Four Empires, when referring to their own times, they spoke of them as being modern. In the 1330s, the humanist and poet Petrarch referred to pre-Christian times as antiqua, leonardo Bruni was the first historian to use tripartite periodisation in his History of the Florentine People. Bruni and later argued that Italy had recovered since Petrarchs time. The Middle Ages first appears in Latin in 1469 as media tempestas or middle season, in early usage, there were many variants, including medium aevum, or middle age, first recorded in 1604, and media saecula, or middle ages, first recorded in 1625. The alternative term medieval derives from medium aevum, tripartite periodisation became standard after the German 17th-century historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. The most commonly given starting point for the Middle Ages is 476, for Europe as a whole,1500 is often considered to be the end of the Middle Ages, but there is no universally agreed upon end date. English historians often use the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 to mark the end of the period
8.
Slavs
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Slavs are the largest Indo-European ethno-linguistic group in Europe. They are native to Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Northeastern Europe, North Asia, Slavs speak Slavic languages of the Balto-Slavic language group. From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit most of Central, states with Slavic languages comprise over 50% of the territory of Europe, therefore it is the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe by land area. Present-day Slavic people are classified into West Slavs, East Slavs, there are an estimated 360 million Slavs worldwide. The Slavic autonym is reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ, plural *Slověne, the oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest the autonym as Slověne. The word slovo and the related slava and slukh originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew-, cognate with Ancient Greek κλῆς, whence comes the name Pericles, Latin clueo, some other theories have limited support. The English term slave eventually derives from the ethnonym Slav, Slavs were captured and enslaved by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD. The Slavs under name of the Antes and the Sclaveni make their first appearance in Byzantine records in the early 6th century. Procopius wrote in 545 that the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a name in the remote past. He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy, and that believe in one god. They lived in scattered housing, and constantly changed settlement, regarding warfare, they were mainly foot soldiers with small shields and battleaxes, lightly clothed, some entering battle naked with only their genitals covered. And they live a life, giving no heed to bodily comforts. Jordanes described the Sclaveni having swamps and forests for their cities, another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes. Menander Protector mentions a Daurentius that slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I. The Avars asked the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars, he declined and is reported as saying, Others do not conquer our land. The relationship between the Slavs and a called the Veneti east of the River Vistula in the Roman period is uncertain. The name may refer both to Balts and Slavs, perhaps some Slavs migrated with the movement of the Vandals to Iberia and north Africa. Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in great numbers, the Byzantine records note that grass would not regrow in places where the Slavs had marched through, so great were their numbers
