1.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
2.
Soviet Union
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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
3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
4.
Imperial Academy of Arts
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The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, the academy promoted the neoclassical style and technique, and sent its promising students to European capitals for further study. Training at the academy was virtually required for artists to make successful careers, formally abolished in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, the academy was renamed several times. It established free tuition, students from across the country competed fiercely for its few places annually, in 1947 the national institution was moved to Moscow, and much of its art collection was moved to the Hermitage. The building in Leningrad was devoted to the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, since 1991 it has been called the St. Petersburg Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The academy was located in the Shuvalov Palace on Sadovaya Street, in 1764, Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector, Alexander Kokorinov, to design a new building. It took 25 years to complete the Neoclassical edifice, which opened in 1789, konstantin Thon was responsible for the sumptuous decoration of the interiors. He also designed a quayside in front of the building, with stairs down to the Neva River, Ivan Betskoy reorganized the academy into a de facto government department, it supervised matters concerning art throughout the country, distributing orders and awarding ranks to artists. The academy vigorously promoted the principles of Neoclassicism by sending the most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn the ancient and Renaissance styles of Italy and it also had its own sizable collection of choice artworks intended for study and copying. The adherents of this movement became known as peredvizhniki, led by Ivan Kramskoi, they publicly broke with the Academy and organized their own exhibitions, which traveled from town to town across Russia. Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel and some other painters still regarded the academys training as indispensable for the development of professional and technical skills. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Academy passed through a series of transformations, after the Academys move to Moscow that year, the building in what was then called Leningrad was renamed Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The national academy has stayed in Moscow, in 1991 it was renamed the Russian Academy of Arts. The old academys art collection, which included works by Poussin, David. During the Soviet era, academies were free of tuition fees as they were financed by the government, many would-be students would apply to the Academy for as many as six or seven years in a row without success. With just twenty places available and thousands of applicants, the competition was brutal, well-known graduates of Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1930–1950s include, The Russian Academy of Arts has been headquartered in Moscow since 1947. Its current president is Zurab Tsereteli and its vice-president is Tair Salakhov and it is also called the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. - Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition,2007, the Leningrad School Russian Academy of Arts The St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts Sergei V. Ivanov
5.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
6.
Symbolism (arts)
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Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style originates with the 1857 publication of Charles Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, the works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and 1870s, in the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name symbolist itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism in art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism and Impressionism. In ancient Greece, the symbolon was a shard of pottery which was inscribed, Symbolism was a reaction in favour of spirituality, the imagination, and dreams. Some writers, such as Joris-Karl Huysmans, began as naturalists before becoming symbolists, for Huysmans, the Symbolist poets have a more complex relationship with Parnassianism, a French literary style that immediately preceded it. The Symbolists continued to admire Théophile Gautiers motto of art for arts sake, many Symbolist poets, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine, published early works in Le Parnasse contemporain, the poetry anthologies that gave Parnassianism its name. One of Symbolisms most colourful promoters in Paris was art and literary critic Joséphin Péladan, a number of Symbolists were associated with the Salon. Symbolists believed that art should represent absolute truths that could only be described indirectly, thus, they wrote in a very metaphorical and suggestive manner, endowing particular images or objects with symbolic meaning. Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro on 18 September 1886, the Symbolist Manifesto names Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Paul Verlaine as the three leading poets of the movement. In a nutshell, as Mallarmé writes in a letter to his friend Cazalis, to not the thing. Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe, – both poets seek to identify one sense experience with another. The earlier Romanticism of poetry used symbols, but these symbols were unique, the symbolists were more extreme, investing all things, even vowels and perfumes, with potential symbolic value. The physical universe, then, is a kind of language that invites a privileged spectator to decipher it, Symbolist symbols are not allegories, intended to represent, they are instead intended to evoke particular states of mind. The nominal subject of Mallarmés Le cygne is of a trapped in a frozen lake. Significantly, in French, cygne is a homophone of signe, un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre. They were also portrayed as at odds with society, having tragic lives and these traits were not hindrances but consequences of their literary gifts. Schopenhauers aesthetics represented shared concerns with the symbolist programme, they tended to consider Art as a contemplative refuge from the world of strife and will
7.
History painting
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History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than artistic style. History paintings usually depict a moment in a story, rather than a specific and static subject. The term is derived from the senses of the word historia in Latin and Italian, meaning story or narrative. Most history paintings are not of scenes from history, especially paintings from before about 1850, History paintings almost always contain a number of figures, often a large number, and normally show some type of action that is a moment in a narrative. The genre includes depictions of moments in religious narratives, above all the Life of Christ, as well as scenes from mythology. These groups were for long the most frequently painted, works such as Michelangelos Sistine Chapel ceiling are therefore history paintings, History painting may be used interchangeably with historical painting, and was especially so used before the 20th century. Where a distinction is made historical painting is the painting of scenes from secular history, in the 19th century historical painting in this sense became a distinct genre. In phrases such as historical painting materials, historical means in use before about 1900 and he placed emphasis on the ability to depict the interactions between the figures by gesture and expression. This view remained general until the 19th century, when artistic movements began to struggle against the establishment institutions of academic art, which continued to adhere to it. Scenes from ancient history had been popular in the early Renaissance, and once again became common in the Baroque and Rococo periods, and still more so with the rise of Neoclassicism. In some 19th or 20th century contexts, the term may refer specifically to paintings of scenes from history, rather than those from religious narratives. Scenes from ancient history and mythology were also popular, artists continued for centuries to strive to make their reputation by producing such works, often neglecting genres to which their talents were better suited. The large works of Raphael were long considered, with those of Michelangelo, un Peintre qui ne fait que des portraits, na pas encore cette haute perfection de lArt, & ne peut prétendre à lhonneur que reçoivent les plus sçavans. He who produces perfect landscapes is above another who only produces fruit, a painter who only does portraits still does not have the highest perfection of his art, and cannot expect the honour due to the most skilled. By the late 18th century, with religious and mytholological painting in decline, there was an increased demand for paintings of scenes from history. Classical history remained popular, but scenes from national histories were often the best-received, the unheroic nature of modern dress was regarded as a serious difficulty. When, in 1770, Benjamin West proposed to paint The Death of General Wolfe in contemporary dress and he ignored these comments and showed the scene in modern dress. Although George III refused to purchase the work, West succeeded both in overcoming his critics objections and inaugurating a more historically accurate style in such paintings. M. W, conveniently their clothes had been worn away to classical-seeming rags by the point the painting depicts
8.
Mythology
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
9.
History
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History is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory and it is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians and their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in modern historical writing. In Asia, a chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals was known to be compiled from as early as 722 BC although only 2nd-century BC texts survived. Ancient influences have helped spawn variant interpretations of the nature of history which have evolved over the centuries, the modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study of specific regions and the study of certain topical or thematical elements of historical investigation. Often history is taught as part of primary and secondary education, the word history comes ultimately from Ancient Greek ἱστορία, meaning inquiry, knowledge from inquiry, or judge. It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his Περὶ Τὰ Ζῷα Ἱστορίαι, the ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus, the Athenian ephebes oath, and in Boiotic inscriptions. History was borrowed from Latin into Old English as stær, and it was from Anglo-Norman that history was borrowed into Middle English, and this time the loan stuck. In Middle English, the meaning of history was story in general, the restriction to the meaning the branch of knowledge that deals with past events, the formal record or study of past events, esp. human affairs arose in the mid-fifteenth century. With the Renaissance, older senses of the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the sixteenth century. For him, historia was the knowledge of objects determined by space and time, in an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are synthetic and highly inflected. The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from 1669, Historian in the sense of a researcher of history is attested from 1531. Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of how to interpret the past, in the words of Benedetto Croce, All history is contemporary history. History is facilitated by the formation of a discourse of past through the production of narrative. The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the production of this discourse. All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record, the task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the archive is a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and documents
10.
Romantic nationalism
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Romantic nationalism is the form of nationalism in which the state derives its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes, depending on the manner of practice, the language, race, culture, religion. Such downward-radiating power might ultimately derive from a god or gods, among the key themes of Romanticism, and its most enduring legacy, the cultural assertions of romantic nationalism have also been central in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. The ideas of Rousseau and of Johann Gottfried von Herder inspired much early Romantic nationalism in Europe, in 1784 Herder argued that geography formed the natural economy of a people, and that their customs and society would develop along the lines that their basic environment favored. The Brothers Grimm, inspired by Herders writings, put together a collection of tales. Because of the Germans role in the Protestant Reformation, Hegel argued that his historical moment had seen the Zeitgeist settle on the German-speaking peoples. In continental Europe, Romantics had embraced the French Revolution in its beginnings, in Prussia, the development of spiritual renewal as a means to engage in the struggle against Napoleon was argued by, among others, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a disciple of Kant. The word Volkstum, or folkhood, was coined in Germany as part of resistance to French hegemony. In the Balkans, Romantic views of a connection with classical Greece, verdis opera choruses of an oppressed people inspired two generations of patriots in Italy, especially with Va pensiero. In Norway, romanticism was embodied, not in literature, but in the movement toward a national style, following the Congress of Vienna, and subsequent Concert of Europe system, several major empires took control of European politics. Among these were the Russian Empire, the restored French monarchy, the German Confederation, under the dominance of Prussia, the Austrian Empire, the conservative forces held sway until the Revolutions of 1848 swept across Europe and threatened the old order. Numerous movements developed around various cultural groups, who began to develop a sense of national identity, Romantic nationalists expected patriots to then learn that language and raise their children speaking that language – as part of a general program to establish a unique identity. Katharevousa Greek was constructed as a form of Modern Greek drawing on classical Greek morphology, the linguistic processes of romantic nationalism demanded linguistic culture models. Romantic historiography was centered on biographies and produced culture heroes, the modern Italian of Risorgimento patriots like Alessandro Manzoni was based on the Tuscan dialects sanctified by Dante and Petrarch. In English, Shakespeare became an iconic figure, Romantic nationalism inspired the collection of folklore by such people as the Brothers Grimm. The Brothers Grimm were criticized because their first edition was insufficiently German and they also altered the language used, changing each Fee to an enchantress or wise woman, every prince to a kings son, every princess to a kings daughter. Discussing these views in their editions, they particularly singled out Giambattista Basiles Pentamerone as the first national collection of fairy tales. Among those influenced were the Russian Alexander Afanasyev, the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, many artists and writers also drew on their native countries folklore and folktunes for their own work to express their nationalism
11.
Russian Revival architecture
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Sometimes, Russian Revival style is often erroneously called Russian or Old-Russian architecture, but the majority of Revival architects did not directly reproduce the old architectural tradition. Like the romantic revivals of Western Europe, the Russian revival was informed by a scholarly interest in the monuments of the nation. The historicism resonated with the nationalism and pan-Slavism of the period. The state took an interest in the endeavour by sponsoring a series of folios published as Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudavstva depicting antiquities, by this time the Moscow Archaeological Society undertook research on the subject, formalising it as a field of study. A series of conferences was instituted from 1869 to 1915. Perhaps the Society’s most significant achievement was the publication of the Kommissii po sokhraneniiu drevnikh pamyatnikov in 6 volumes between 1907 and 1915, next year, in 1827, Stasov completed a larger five-domed Church of the Tithes in Kiev. The Russo-Byzantine idea was carried forward by Konstantin Thon with the approval by Nicholas I. Thons style embodied the idea of continuity between Byzantium and Russia, perfectly matching the ideology of Nicholas I, in 1838, Nicholas I pointed out Thons book of model designs to all architects, more enforcement followed in 1841 and 1844. Official enforcement of Byzantine architecture was, in fact, very limited, it applied only to new construction and, to a lesser extent. Private and public construction proceeded independently, Thons own public buildings, like the pseudo-Renaissance Nikolaevsky Terminal, lack any Byzantine features. A closer look at churches constructed in Nicholas reign reveals many first-rate neoclassical buildings, like the Elokhovo Cathedral in Moscow by Yevgraph Tyurin. Official Byzantine art was not absolute in Nicholas reign, it is scarce in our days, as the Byzantine churches, another direction taken by the Russian Revival style was a reaction against official Thon art, influenced by romanticism, Slavophilism and detailed studies of vernacular architecture. The forerunner of this trend in design was Alexey Gornostaev, notable for reinventing Northern Russian tented roof motif augmented with Romanesque. An early extant example in architecture is the wooden Pogodinsky cottage in Devichye Pole, Moscow. The Emancipation reform of 1861 and subsequent reforms of Alexander II pushed the liberal elite into exploring the roots of national culture, the first result of these studies in architecture was a birth of folk or Pseudo-Russian style, exemplified by 1870s works of Ivan Ropet and Viktor Hartmann. These artists, in alliance with Narodnik movement, idealized the peasant life, another factor was the rejection of western eclectics that dominated civil construction of 1850s-1860s, a reaction against decadent West, pioneered by influential critic Vladimir Stasov. Ivan Zabelin, a theorist of the movement, declared that Russian Khoromy, grown naturally from peasants log cabins, beauty of a building is not in its proportions, but on the contrary, in the difference and independence of its parts. Wood was the material, since many fantasies could not be physically built in masonry
12.
Natural science
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Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on observational and empirical evidence. Mechanisms such as review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances. Natural science can be divided into two branches, life science and physical science. Physical science is subdivided into branches, including physics, space science, chemistry and these branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches. Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy, usually traced to ancient Greece, galileo, Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, natural history suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences, philosophers of science have suggested a number of criteria, including Karl Poppers controversial falsifiability criterion, to help them differentiate scientific endeavors from non-scientific ones. Validity, accuracy, and quality control, such as peer review and this field encompasses a set of disciplines that examines phenomena related to living organisms. The scale of study can range from sub-component biophysics up to complex ecologies, biology is concerned with the characteristics, classification and behaviors of organisms, as well as how species were formed and their interactions with each other and the environment. The biological fields of botany, zoology, and medicine date back to periods of civilization. However, it was not until the 19th century that became a unified science. Once scientists discovered commonalities between all living things, it was decided they were best studied as a whole, modern biology is divided into subdisciplines by the type of organism and by the scale being studied. Molecular biology is the study of the chemistry of life, while cellular biology is the examination of the cell. At a higher level, anatomy and physiology looks at the internal structures, constituting the scientific study of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, chemistry deals primarily with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules, crystals, and metals. The composition, statistical properties, transformations and reactions of these materials are studied, chemistry also involves understanding the properties and interactions of individual atoms and molecules for use in larger-scale applications. Most chemical processes can be studied directly in a laboratory, using a series of techniques for manipulating materials, chemistry is often called the central science because of its role in connecting the other natural sciences. Early experiments in chemistry had their roots in the system of Alchemy, the science of chemistry began to develop with the work of Robert Boyle, the discoverer of gas, and Antoine Lavoisier, who developed the theory of the Conservation of mass. The success of science led to a complementary chemical industry that now plays a significant role in the world economy
Media related to Viktor Vasnetsov at Wikimedia Commons
