1.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
2.
Elena Stasova
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Elena Dmitrievna Stasova was a Russian communist revolutionary who became a political functionary working for the Communist International. She was a Comintern representative to Germany in 1921, from 1927 to 1938 she was the president of International Red Aid. From 1938 to 1946 she worked on the staff of the magazine International Literature. Elena Stasova was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1873 to an ethnic Russian family and she was the daughter of a liberal jurist, Dmitry Stasov who worked in the Senate and was a Herald at the coronation of Alexander II. Her grandfather had been architect to Tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I and her uncle was art critic Vladimir Stasov. After finishing secondary school, Elena became a committed socialist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party at the time of its establishment in 1898. When the RSDRP split into Bolshevik and Menshevik factions in 1903, Stasova cast her lot with Lenin and the Bolsheviks as a professional revolutionary. Over the next two years Stasova adopted the pseudonyms Absolute and Thick and served as the conduit for Lenins newspaper, Iskra, in St. Petersburg and she taught new members how to encode and decode. Stasova also served as secretary of the Northern Bureau of the Bolshevik Central Committee, other pseudonyms which Stasova used during the underground period included Delta, Heron, Knol, and Varvara Ivanovna. Stasova emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland in 1905, where she was at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905 and she returned home in January 1906 to direct Bolshevik work in Tiflis, the capital of Georgia. In January 1912, Stasova was elected as a member of the Bolshevik partys Central Committee. She was then secretary to the partys Russian bureau and this was followed in 1913 by arrest and exile to Siberia, where she remained until 1916. She had left the party treasury with her brother, after the February Revolution of 1917, Stasova was named a secretary of the Central Committee — a position which she retained through the October Revolution, finally standing down in March 1920. She was also returned as a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee by the 6th Congress of the Russian Communist Party in 1917. She was elected to membership on the CC by the 7th Congress of 1918. However, the 9th Congress of 1920 dropped her both from the Central Committee and from the party secretariat, after being removed from the Central Committee, Stasova worked for the Petrograd party organization, from where she was brought into the Cominterns apparatus. She was appointed Comintern representative to the Communist Party of Germany in May 1921, Stasova remained in Germany through 1926, where she played a leading role in the German affiliate of the International Red Aid organization, Die Rote Hilfe. Stasova returned to the USSR in February 1926, the next year she was named deputy director head of the international MOPR as well as head of the Central Committee of the MOPR organization in the USSR, positions which she retained through 1937
3.
All-Russian Central Executive Committee
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The All-Russian Central Executive Committee, was the highest legislative, administrative, and revising body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until 1937. Although the All-Russian Congress of Soviets had supreme authority, in periods between its sessions its powers were passed to VTsIK, by the Russian Constitution VTsIK was obligated to convene the All-Russian Congress of Soviets not fewer than two times a year. Extraordinary Congresses could be called whether from the initiative of VTsIK or on the request of local Soviets, the VTsIK was elected by the full Congress, with no more than 200 individuals. It was completely responsible to the Congress, the functions of the Collegiate or the Presidium were not declared in the Constitution but presumably they were supposed to be purely supervisory or revisionary bodies. VTsIK gave a direction for the policies of the Workers-Peasant government. VTsIK convoked the All-Russian Congress of Soviets to which it presented the reports on its activity, general policy, members of VTsIK worked in the departments or executed special assignments of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Equally with the All-Russian Congress of Soviets VTsIK defined the State budget as well as budgets in different regions, All-Russian Central Executive Committee was first elected at the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd, June 3–24,1917. The first Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets was not a governing body and this changed at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets during the October Revolution. The Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets met in, and elected the second Central Executive Committee and this then became the executive body of the RSFSR. It was composed of 62 Bolsheviks 29 Social Revolutionaries 10 Mensheviks The first chairman of the CEC was Lev Kamenev and he only cast a vote if there was an even split in the committee. The full name at a one time was All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Workers, Peasants, Red Army, from the formation of the Soviet Union, it downgraded from first level to second level of governing body. Following the adoption of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, this organ was replaced with the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, Lev Kamenev Yakov Sverdlov Mikhail Vladimirsky Mikhail Kalinin On December 30,1922 the Soviet Union was formed. It comprised the Russian SFSR and other communist-controlled Soviet republics, both positions were mostly ceremonial, increasingly so in later years. Supreme Soviet Text of the Russian Constitution of 1918
4.
All-Russian Congress of Soviets
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The All-Russian Congress of Soviets was the supreme governing body of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1917 until 1936, effectively. The October Revolution ousted the government, making the Congress of Soviets the sole. It is important to note that this Congress was not the same as the Congress of Soviets of the Soviet Union which governed the whole Soviet Union after its creation in 1922, for the earlier portion of its life, the Congress was a democratic body. Over Russia there were hundreds of soviets, democratic local governing bodies in which the population could participate. The soviets elected the delegates to the Congress, and then in turn the Congress held the national authority, there were several political parties represented in the various sessions of the Congress, each of which fought for increasing their own influence in the soviets. The Congress was formed of representatives of city councils and the congresses of the provincial, on the other issues, the Congress and the Central Executive Committee had the same authority. The First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies was convened by the National Conference of the Soviets and it was dominated by pro-government parties and confirmed the supremacy of the Russian Provisional Government. There were 1090 delegates,822 with a right to vote, representing 305 workers, soldiers and peasant soviets, the breakdown of delegates by party was thus,285 Socialist-Revolutionaries,248 Mensheviks,105 Bolsheviks,32 Menshevik Internationalists, and others. The right to vote was given to these soviets containing at least 25,000 persons, on the first day of the Congress, the Socialist Revolutionaries split into two groups - the Left Social Revolutionaries and the Right Social Revolutionaries. Also on the first day, the Menshevik delegation and Right Socialist Revolutionary deputies walked out in protest,505 delegates voted in favour of the transfer of power to the Soviets. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee and Council of Peoples Commissars was elected by the Congress, naming Lenin the Chairman, uttering what are sometimes called the Land Decree and Decree on Peace. The Bolsheviks comprised 441 of the 707 delegates, on the fourth day January 13, more delegates who had been at the Third All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants Deputies arrived. By the end there were 1,587 delegates, the Congress had a Praesidium composed of ten Bolsheviks and three Left Socialist-Revolutionaries with a further delegate from each other group. The Swiss, Rumanian, Swedish and Norwegian Social-Democratic parties, the British Socialist Party, the Congress received, Yakov Sverdlovs report on the activity of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Vladimir Lenins report on the activity of the Council of Peoples Commissars, joseph Stalins report from the Peoples Commissariat of Nationalities on the principles of federation and the nationalities policy for the emerging Soviet state. The Mensheviks, Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Menshevik internationalists used the Congress to indicate their opposition to the domestic, the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People was passed and this went on to become the basis of the Soviet Constitution. It was also agreed to establish the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on the basis of a union of the peoples of Russia. The Congress also approved the Decree on Land which provided the provisions of the redistribution and nationalization of land
5.
Lev Kamenev
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Lev Borisovich Kamenev, born Rozenfeld, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev was the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky. He served briefly as the equivalent of the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, Joseph Stalin viewed him as a source of discontent and a source of opposition to his own leadership. After Kamenev fell out of favour, Stalin had him executed on 25 August 1936, aged 53, Lev Borisovich Rozenfeld was born in Moscow, the son of a Jewish railway worker and a Russian Orthodox mother. His father used the wealth he earned in the building of the Baku-Batumi railway to pay for an education for Lev. He went to the boys Gymnasium in Tiflis, Georgia and attended Moscow University, Rozenfeld became politically active during university and was arrested in 1902, ending his formal education. From that point on, he worked as a professional revolutionary and he adopted Kamenev as his revolutionary surname. In the early 1900s, he married Olga Bronstein, a fellow Marxist, the couple had two sons together. Kamenev joined the Communists in 1901 and he took a brief trip abroad in 1902, meeting Russian social democratic leaders living in exile, including Vladimir Lenin, whose adherent and close associate he became. He also visited Paris and met the Iskra group who published the newspaper. He went back to London to attend the 5th RSDLP Party Congress, where he was elected to the partys Central Committee and the Bolshevik Center, in May 1907, but was arrested upon his return to Russia. After Kamenev was released from prison in 1908, he and his family went abroad later in the year to help Lenin edit the Bolshevik magazine Proletariy. After Lenins split with another senior Bolshevik leader, Alexander Bogdanov, in mid-1908, Kamenev and they helped him expel Bogdanov and his Otzovist followers from the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP in mid-1909. In January 1910 Leninists, followers of Bogdanov, and various Menshevik factions held a meeting of the partys Central Committee in Paris, Kamenev and Zinoviev were dubious about the idea, but were willing to give it a try under pressure from conciliator Bolsheviks like Victor Nogin. Lenin was adamantly opposed to re-unification, but was outvoted within the Bolshevik leadership, the meeting reached a tentative agreement. As one of its provisions, Trotskys Vienna-based Pravda was designated as a central organ. Kamenev, Trotskys brother-in-law, was added to Pravdas editorial board as a representative of the Bolsheviks in this process, the unification attempts failed in August 1910, when Kamenev resigned from the board amid mutual recriminations. After the failure of the attempt, Kamenev continued working for Proletariy
6.
Mikhail Vladimirsky
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Mikhail Fyodorovich Vladimirsky was a Soviet politician and for a short period of time, the Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. He was in office from March 16,1919 to March 30,1919 and he was also Deputy of Chairman of Gosplan of the USSR in 1926-1927 and Peoples Commissar of Public Healthcare of the RSFSR in 1930-1934. Vladimirsky was the son of a priest
7.
Nizhny Novgorod
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Nizhny Novgorod, colloquially shortened to Nizhny, is a city in the administrative center of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and Volga Federal District in Russia. From 1932 to 1990, it was known as Gorky, after the writer Maxim Gorky, the city is an important economic, transportation, scientific, educational and cultural center in Russia and the vast Volga-Vyatka economic region, and is the main center of river tourism in Russia. In the historical part of the city there are a number of universities, theaters, museums. Nizhny Novgorod is located about 400 km east of Moscow, where the Oka empties into the Volga, the city was founded in 1221 by Prince Yuri II of Vladimir. In 1612 Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky organized an army for the liberation of Moscow from the Poles, in 1817 Nizhny Novgorod became a great trade center of the Russian Empire. In 1896 at a fair, an All-Russia Exhibition was organized, during the Soviet period, the city turned into an important industrial center. In particular, the Gorky Automobile Plant was constructed in this period, then the city was given the nickname Russian Detroit. During the World War II Gorky became the biggest provider of equipment to the front. Due to this, the Luftwaffe constantly bombed the city from the air, the majority of the German bombs fell in the area of the Gorky Automobile Plant. Although almost all the sites of plant were completely destroyed. After the war, Gorky became a city and remained one until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990. At that time the city was renamed Nizhny Novgorod once again, in 1985 the metro was opened. In 2016 Vladimir Putin opened the new 70th Anniversary of Victory Plant which is part of the Almaz-Antey Air, the Kremlin – the main center of the city – contains the main government agencies of the city and the Volga Federal District. Originally the name was just Novgorod, but to distinguish it from the other, older and well-known Novgorod to the west and this land was named lower because it is situated downstream, especially from the point of view of other Russian cities such as Moscow, Vladimir and Murom. Later it was transformed into the name of the city that literally means Lower Newtown. Later a major stronghold for border protection, Nizhny Novgorod fortress took advantage of a moat formed by the two rivers. With the agreement of the Mongol Khan, Nizhny Novgorod was incorporated into the Vladimir-Suzdal Principality in 1264, after 86 years its importance further increased when the seat of the powerful Suzdal Principality was moved here from Gorodets in 1350. Grand Duke Dmitry Konstantinovich sought to make his capital a rival worthy of Moscow, he built a stone citadel, the earliest extant manuscript of the Russian Primary Chronicle, the Laurentian Codex, was written for him by the local monk Laurentius in 1377
8.
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
9.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700
10.
Soviet people
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Soviet people or Citizens of the USSR was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Initially used as a reference to the Soviet population, it was eventually declared to be a new historical, social and international unity of people. Through the history of the Soviet Union, both doctrine and practice regarding ethnic distinctions within the Soviet population varied over time, minority national cultures were not completely abolished in the Soviet Union. By Soviet definition, national cultures were to be socialist by content and national by form, to be used to promote the official aims, the fifth record was the section of the obligatory internal passport document which stated the citizens ethnicity. The 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union finalized this definition, according to the 2010 Russian Census 27,000 Russians identified themselves as members of the Soviet people. Homo Sovieticus Melting pot New Soviet man Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality Rootless cosmopolitan Russification Zhonghua minzu, the equivalent notion in the Peoples Republic of China Yugoslavs
11.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
12.
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
13.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
14.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
15.
Russian Orthodox Church
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The Russian Orthodox Church, alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches, in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox patriarchates. The Primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and it also exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and the Orthodox Christians resident in the Peoples Republic of China. The ROC branches in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Ukraine since the 1990s enjoy various degrees of self-government, in Ukraine, ROC has tensions with schismatic groups supported by the current government, while it enjoys the position of numerically dominant religious organisation. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, headquartered in New York, New York, the two Churches reconciled on May 17,2007, the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the location of Kiev. The spot where he erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrews Cathedral. By the end of the first millennium AD, eastern Slavic lands started to come under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, by the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Byzantine Greek priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus′ to convert to Christianity and her grandson, Vladimir of Kiev, made Rus officially a Christian state. The Kievan church was a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical patriarch appointed the metropolitan, who usually was a Greek. The Metropolitans residence was located in Kiev itself, the capital of the medieval Rus state. Following the tribulations of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival, despite the politically motivated murders of Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver, the Mongols were generally tolerant and even granted tax exemption to the Church. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, the Trinity monastery founded by Sergius of Radonezh became the setting for the flourishing of spiritual art, exemplified by the work of Andrey Rublev, among others. The followers of Sergius founded four hundred monasteries, thus extending the geographical extent of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441, Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia without the consent from Constantinople. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople
16.
Zinovy Peshkov
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Zinovy Alekseyevich Peshkov was a Russian-born French general and diplomat. He was born Yeshua Zalman Sverdlov to a Jewish engraver in Nizhny Novgorod and his younger brother Yakov Sverdlov was a Bolshevik party leader. In 1896, Maxim Gorky met the Sverdlov family at an exhibition and soon became a close friend, during Gorkys exile to Arzamas in 1902, Zinovy worked as his secretary. To evade Russian restrictions on Jewish residence, Zinovy Sverdlov was baptized in the Russian Orthodox Church, Gorky became his godfather and adoptive father. Zinovy Peshkov was disowned by his family, and in 1904 he emigrated to Canada, after two years, he joined Gorky in Capri. After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he volunteered for the French Army, in May 1915, he was wounded and his right arm was amputated. He became a naturalized French citizen, in 1916, as a successful officer, he was sent to the United States to agitate for that countrys entry into the war. After being decorated with the Légion dhonneur in 1917, Peshkov worked in French diplomatic missions in Russia, Romania, China, Japan, in the periods 1921-1926 and 1937-1940 he served in the French Foreign Legion in French Morocco, and wrote a book about his experiences there. In 1926-1937, he served in the Foreign Ministry in France, during World War II, Zinovy Peshkov worked against the influence of Nazi Germany in Morocco and in Syria. In 1940, he joined Free France, the government-in-exile of Charles de Gaulle, after his 1943 promotion to the rank of Brigadier General, Peshkov served as French ambassador to the Republic of China and, after 1946, as ambassador to Japan. In 1964 he participated in negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek regarding Taiwan, Zinovy Peshkov died in Paris and was buried at the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery
17.
Maxim Gorky
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Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was also a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire. Gorkys most famous works were The Lower Depths, Twenty-six Men and he had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs. Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement and he publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanovs Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia, in 1932, he returned to Russia on Joseph Stalins personal invitation and died there in June 1936. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod and he was brought up by his grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs, as a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида. He began using the pseudonym Gorky in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ, the name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorkys first book Очерки и рассказы in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity. Gorkys reputation grew as a literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russias social, political. By 1899, he was associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth, in his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou and he publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press, in 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy, from 1900 to 1905, Gorkys writings became more optimistic
18.
Vladimir Lenin
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Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known by the alias Lenin, was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, under his administration, Russia and then the wider Soviet Union became a one-party socialist state governed by the Russian Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, he developed political theories known as Leninism, born to a wealthy middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brothers execution in 1887. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empires Tsarist regime and he moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior figure in the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye for three years, where he married Nadezhda Krupskaya, after his exile, he moved to Western Europe, where he became a prominent party theorist through his publications. In 1903, he took a key role in a RSDLP ideological split, Lenins government was led by the Bolsheviks—now renamed the Communist Party—with some powers initially also held by elected soviets. It redistributed land among the peasantry and nationalised banks and large-scale industry, opponents were suppressed in the Red Terror, a violent campaign orchestrated by the state security services, tens of thousands were killed and others interned in concentration camps. Anti-Bolshevik armies, established by both right and left-wing groups, were defeated in the Russian Civil War from 1917 to 1922, responding to wartime devastation, famine, and popular uprisings, in 1921 Lenin promoted economic growth through a mixed economic system. Seeking to promote world revolution, Lenins government created the Communist International, waged the Polish–Soviet War, in increasingly poor health, Lenin expressed opposition to the growing power of his successor, Joseph Stalin, before dying at his Gorki mansion. He became a figurehead behind Marxism-Leninism and thus a prominent influence over the international communist movement. Lenins father, Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov, was from a family of serfs, his origins remain unclear, with suggestions being made that he was Russian, Chuvash, Mordvin. Despite this lower-class background he had risen to middle-class status, studying physics and mathematics at Kazan Imperial University before teaching at the Penza Institute for the Nobility, Ilya married Maria Alexandrovna Blank in mid-1863. Well educated and from a prosperous background, she was the daughter of a German–Swedish woman. Soon after their wedding, Ilya obtained a job in Nizhny Novgorod, five years after that, he was promoted to Director of Public Schools for the province, overseeing the foundation of over 450 schools as a part of the governments plans for modernisation. His dedication to education earned him the Order of St. Vladimir, the couple had two children, Anna and Alexander, before Lenin—who would gain the childhood nickname of Volodya—was born in Simbirsk on 10 April 1870, and baptised several days later. They were followed by three children, Olga, Dmitry, and Maria. Two later siblings died in infancy, Ilya was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church and baptised his children into it, although Maria – a Lutheran – was largely indifferent to Christianity, a view that influenced her children. Every summer they holidayed at a manor in Kokushkino
19.
1905 Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies and it led to Constitutional Reform including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. According to Sidney Harcave, author of The Russian Revolution of 1905, newly emancipated peasants earned too little, and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. A nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to them, banning strikes. Finally, the educated class fomented and spread radical ideas after a relaxing of discipline in universities allowed a new consciousness to grow among students, vladimir Lenin was a political theorist who also contributed his own ideology of how a revolution would be caused. In his book Imperialism he claimed that driven imperialism and the dependence on overseas markets would be a factor to revolution. This would cause a rivalry between the powers, leading to war. Taken individually, these issues might not have affected the course of Russian history, the government finally recognized these problems, albeit in a shortsighted and narrow-minded way. The minister of interior Plehve stated in 1903 that, after the problem, the most serious ones plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the revolution of 1905, every year, thousands of nobles in debt mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold them to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land and this plan was meant to prevent proletarianisation of the peasants. However, the peasants were not given land to provide for their needs. Their earnings were often so small that they could buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes. By the tenth year of Nicholas IIs reign, their total arrears in payments of taxes and dues was 118 million rubles, masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and sometimes walked hundreds of kilometres to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence and these violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so it created many committees to investigate their causes. The committees concluded that no part of the countryside was prosperous, some parts, although cultivated acreage had increased in the last half century, the increase had not been proportionate to the growth of peasant populations, which had doubled. The investigations revealed many difficulties but could not find solution that were both sensible and acceptable to the government, nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected, European civilization was valued over Asian culture, and Christianity was on the whole considered more progressive and true than other religions
20.
Ural Mountains
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The mountain range forms part of the conventional boundary between the continents of Europe and Asia. Vaygach Island and the islands of Novaya Zemlya form a continuation of the chain to the north into the Arctic Ocean. The mountains lie within the Ural geographical region and significantly overlap with the Ural Federal District and they have rich resources, including metal ores, coal, precious and semi-precious stones. Since the 18th century the mountains have contributed significantly to the sector of the Russian economy. As attested by Sigismund von Herberstein, in the 16th century Russians called the range by a variety of names derived from the Russian words for rock and it might have been a borrowing from either Turkic stone belt, or Ob-Ugric. From the 13th century, in Bashkortostan there has been a legend about a hero named Ural and he sacrificed his life for the sake of his people and they poured a stone pile over his grave, which later turned into the Ural Mountains. Possibilities include Bashkir үр elevation, upland or Mansi ур ала mountain peak, top of the mountain, tatischev believes that this oronym is set to belt and associates it with the Turkic verb oralu- gird. Dobrodomov suggests a transition from Aral to Ural explained on the basis of ancient Bulgar-Chuvash dialects, hawks believes that the name goes back to the Bashkir folklore Ural-Batyr. Shumilov suggested a Mongolian origin, Khural Uul, that is, the Evenk geographical term era mountain has also been theorized. Finno-Ugrist scholars consider Ural deriving from the Mansi word urr meaning a mountain, turkologists, on the other hand, have achieved majority support for their assertion that ural in Tatar means a belt, and recall that an earlier name for the range was stone belt. During the next few centuries Novgorodians engaged in fur trading with the population and collected tribute from Yugra and Great Perm. The rivers Chusovaya and Belaya were first mentioned in the chronicles of 1396 and 1468, in 1430 the town of Solikamsk was founded on the Kama at the foothills of the Ural, where salt was produced in open pans. Ivan III of Moscow captured Perm, Pechora and Yugra from the declining Novgorod Republic in 1472, with the excursions of 1483 and 1499–1500 across the Ural Moscow managed to subjugate Yugra completely. The Middle and Southern Ural were still largely unavailable and unknown to the Russian or Western European geographers, the Stroganovs land provided the staging ground for Yermaks incursion into Siberia. Yermak crossed the Ural from the Chusovaya to the Tagil around 1581, in 1597 Babinovs road was built across the Ural from Solikamsk to the valley of the Tura, where the town of Verkhoturye was founded in 1598. Customs was established in Verkhoturye shortly thereafter and the road was made the legal connection between European Russia and Siberia for a long time. In 1648 the town of Kungur was founded at the foothills of the Middle Ural. During the 17th century the first deposits of iron and copper ores, mica, gemstones, iron and copper smelting works emerged
21.
Turukhansk
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One of the first Russian settlements in Siberia, Turukhansk was founded in 1607 as a winter camp for Cossacks and merchants. After the disastrous fires of Mangazeya in 1619,1642, and 1662, Turukhansk welcomed a large portion of the colonys population. A timber fort with cannons was built there in 1677, the settlement hosted one of the largest fairs in Siberia and was incorporated as an uyezd town of Turukhansk in 1785. In the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union Turukhansk was often used as a destination for political exile, among people exiled there were Julius Martov, Yakov Sverdlov, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev, Marina Tsvetaevas daughter Ariadna Efron and Archbishop Luka Voyno-Yasenetsky. The town is served by the Turukhansk Airport
22.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
23.
Joseph Stalin
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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
24.
Okhrana
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Formed to combat political terrorism and left-wing revolutionary activity, the Okhrana operated offices throughout the Russian Empire and satellite agencies in a number of foreign nations. It was concerned primarily with monitoring the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad, including Paris, the task was performed by multiple methods, including covert operations, undercover agents, and perlustration—reading of private correspondence. Even the Foreign Agency served this purpose, the Okhrana was notorious for its agents provocateurs, including Dr. Jacob Zhitomirsky, Yevno Azef, Roman Malinovsky and Dmitry Bogrov. The Okhrana tried to compromise the labour movement by creating police-run trade unions, other controversial activities included alleged fabrication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and fabrication of the antisemitic Beilis trial. Suspects captured by the Okhrana were passed to the Russian judicial system, the Okhrana never received more than 10% of the police budget, the most it ever received being five million rubles in 1914. Its street address, Fontanka,16, was known in the Russian Empire. The position of Chief of Gendarmes was merged with the Minister, still, these measures did not prevent the assassination of Alexander II in March 1881. The Imperial Gendarmerie still operated as security police in the rest of the country through their Gubernial, the rise of the socialist movements called for the integration of security forces. Since 1898, the Special Section of the Department of Police succeeded the Gendarmes in gaining information from domestic and foreign agents, perhaps most paradoxical of all was the Okhrana’s collaboration with revolutionary organizations. Sudeykin and his colleague, a revolutionary-turned-police-informant named Sergey Degayev, passed drafts of the publication through Okhrana censors before printing and this episode marked the beginning of the Okhrana’s efforts to surreptitiously observe, but also influence and undermine, revolutionary movements. To this end, Zubatov created the Moscow Mechanical Production Workers’ Mutual Aid Society in May 1901, after Zubatov was made head of the Special Section in 1902, he expanded his trade unions from Moscow to St. Petersburg and Southern Russia. Although the police-run unions continued to operate after Zubatov’s ousting, without Okhrana funding, Petersburg and were fired upon by Imperial soldiers. K. Plehve on July 15,1904, for over twenty years, the Okhrana had focused on interfering with the activities of relatively small, and distinct, revolutionary groups. The Revolution of 1905, characterized by seemingly spontaneous marches and strikes, not only did the Okhrana lack the capacity to prevent the mass movements of 1905, or even to contain them once they began, the Okhrana’s misguided attempts may even have worsened the unrest. D. F. Trepov, the Assistant Minister of the Interior in charge of police affairs, in October of that year, Trepov again attempted a violent repression of the revolution only to call off the effort for lack of manpower. Since these attempts at repression never reached fruition, they served to aggravate the already enraged Russian populace. Durnovo in late-October ushered in a period of even more repression of the Revolution. Indicative of this new period is the head of the St. Petersburg Special Section, gerasimov’s, strike on the St. Petersburg Soviet
25.
Roman Malinovsky
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Roman Vatslavovich Malinovsky was a prominent Russian Bolshevik politician before the revolution, while at the same time working as the best paid agent for the Okhrana. He was a brilliant orator, tall, red-haired, yellow-eyed and pockmarked, Malinovsky was born in Poland, at the time part of the Russian Empire. His parents were peasants, who died while he was still a child and he was jailed for several robberies from 18941899 and was also charged and imprisoned for rape. In 1902, he enlisted in the prestigious Izmaylovsky Regiment by impersonating a cousin with the same name, Malinovsky began as an Okhrana agent within the regiment, reporting on fellow soldiers and officers. He was discharged from the army at the end of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1906, he found a job as a lathe operator and joined the Petrograd Metalworkers Union and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In 1910, Malinovsky was arrested by the Okhrana but soon released, he became a tsarist spy. He was the agent, earning 8,000 rubles a year,1,000 more than the Director of the Imperial Police. In January 1912, he joined the Central Committee with Vladimir Lenins support at the Prague Party Conference, on October 25,1912, he was elected to the State Duma of the Russian Empire by the workers electoral college of Moscow Governorate. He led the six-member Bolshevik group and was deputy chairman of the Social Democrats in the Duma, as a secret agent, he helped send several important Bolsheviks into Siberian exile. When Menshevik leader Julius Martov first denounced Malinovsky as a spy in 1913, Lenin refused to believe him, the accusing article was signed Ts, short for Tsederbaum, Martovs real name. Stalin threatened Martovs sister and brother-in-law, Lydia and Fedor Dan by saying they would regret it if the Mensheviks denounced Malinovsky, in November 1912, he visited Lenin in Krakow and was urged not to unite with the Mensheviks. Malinovsky ignored that by reading a conciliatory speech in the Duma, on December 28,1912, he attended a Central Committee meeting in Vienna. He persuaded Lenin to appoint an Okhrana agent, Miron Chernomazov, as editor of Pravda as opposed to Stalins candidate Stepan Shahumyan, the tsarist regime was determined to keep the RSDLP split so conciliators were targeted. Malinovskys efforts helped the Okhranka arrest Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Yakov Sverdlov, the latter was arrested at a Bolshevik fundraising ball, which Malinovsky had persuaded him to attend by lending him a suit and silk cravat. Malinovsky was talking to Stalin when detectives took him and even shouting he would free him, in July 1913, he betrayed a plan for Sverdlov and Stalin to escape, warning the police chief in Turukhansk. He was then the only Bolshevik leader not in foreign or Siberian exile, on May 8,1914 he was forced to resign from the Duma. His real identity was unveiled by his ex-mistress Elena Troyanovskaya, when World War I broke out, he was interned into a POW camp by the Germans. Lenin, still standing by him, sent him clothes and he said, If he is a provocateur, the police gained less from it than our Party did
26.
Karl Marx
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Karl Marx was a Prussian-born philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. Born in Trier to a family, he later studied political economy. His work has influenced subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. These economic critiques were set out in works such as the three volumes, published between 1867 and 1894, that comprise Das Kapital. According to Marx, states are run in the interests of the class but are nonetheless represented as being in favor of the common interest of all. He predicted that, like previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system, socialism. Marx actively fought for its implementation, arguing that the class should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and his work in economics laid the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital, and subsequent economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties worldwide have been influenced by Marxs work, Marx is typically cited as one of the principal architects of modern sociology and social science. Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and he was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of Prussias Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx was ancestrally Jewish, his grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Triers rabbis since 1723. Marx was also a cousin once removed of German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant, a classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed by an absolute monarchy. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney, in 1819 moving his family to a property near the Porta Nigra. Her sister Sophie Pressburg, was Marxs aunt and was married to Lion Philips Marxs uncle through this marriage, Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Little is known of Karl Marxs childhood, the third of nine children, he became the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Karl was baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 along with his siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie. Young Karl was privately educated, by Heinrich Marx, until 1830, by employing many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach incurred the anger of the local conservative government
27.
February Revolution
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The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. The revolution centered on Petrograd, then the Russian capital, arguably beginning on 8 March, Revolutionary activity was largely confined to the capital and its vicinity, and lasted about eight days. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, on 12 March mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov. The revolution appeared to break out spontaneously, without any leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, bread rioters primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the citys garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, in all, over 1,300 people were killed in the protests of February 1917. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of the Imperial government in the spring of 1917, different historians apply different weights to different factors, liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Rabinowitch summarizes the main long-term and short-term causes, The February 1917 revolution, despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. As historian Richard Pipes writes, the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter. The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. Widespread strikes, riots and the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin ensued. These conditions caused much agitation among the working and professional classes. This tension erupted into revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917. The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, the economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed. In August 1914, all supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The exceptions included the Bolshevik Party and specifically Vladimir Lenin who argued it was not a war fighting. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, nearly six million casualties—dead, wounded and missing—had been accrued by January 1917
28.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
29.
October Revolution
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It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
30.
Russian Constituent Assembly
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The All Russian Constituent Assembly was a constitutional body convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It met for 13 hours, from 4 p. m. to 5 a. m, 18–19 January 1918, whereupon it was dissolved by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, making the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets the new governing body of Russia. A democratically elected Constituent Assembly to create a Russian constitution was one of the demands of all Russian revolutionary parties prior to the Russian Revolution of 1905. In 1906, the Tsar decided to grant basic civil liberties and hold elections for a newly created legislative body, however, the Duma was never authorized to write a new constitution, much less abolish the monarchy. Moreover, the Dumas powers were falling into the hands of the Constitutional Democrats, the government dissolved the Duma, as was their legal agreement, in July 1906 and, after a new election, in June 1907. The final election law written by the government after the dissolution on 16 June 1907 favored the landed. What little the Duma could do after 1907 was often vetoed by the Tsar or the upper house of the Russian parliament. With the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in the February Revolution of 1917 and these actions triggered criticism from both left and right. Monarchists saw the declaration of a form of government in Russia as unacceptable, while the left considered the declaration a power grab intended to weaken the influence of the Soviets. The Bolsheviks position on the Constituent Assembly evolved during 1917, at first, like all the other socialist parties, the Bolsheviks supported the election of a Constituent Assembly. But there was a contradiction in Bolshevik policy. Since Lenins return from Switzerland in April 1917, the Bolsheviks had distinguished themselves from other socialists by calling for All Power to the Soviets. The Bolsheviks thus opposed bourgeois parliamentary bodies, like the Provisional Government, on 7 November 1917, the Bolsheviks acted on this policy by leading the October Revolution against the Provisional Government. The uprising in Petrograd coincided with the convocation of the Second All-Russian Congress of Workers and Soldiers Soviets. Over the next few weeks, the Bolsheviks established control in areas and in almost all of Great Russia. Officially, the Bolshevik government at first considered itself a provisional government, more than 60 percent of citizens with the right to vote actually voted for Constituent Assembly. A partial count was published by N. V. Svyatitsky in A Year of the Russian Revolution, 1917-18, Moscow, Zemlya i Volya Publishers,1918. In the city of Moscow, for example, the Bolsheviks won 47. 9% of the votes, the Constitutional Democrats 35. 7% and the SRs 8.1 percent
31.
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
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The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on 3 March 1918 between the new Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia and the Central Powers, that ended Russias participation in World War I. The treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk, after two months of negotiations, the treaty was forced on the Bolshevik government by the threat of further advances by German and Austrian forces. According to the treaty, Soviet Russia defaulted on all of Imperial Russias commitments to the Triple Entente alliance, in the treaty, Bolshevik Russia ceded the Baltic States to Germany, they were meant to become German vassal states under German princelings. Russia also ceded its province of Kars Oblast in the South Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, furthermore, Russia agreed to pay six billion German gold marks in reparations. Historian Spencer Tucker says, The German General Staff had formulated extraordinarily harsh terms that shocked even the German negotiator, Congress Poland was not mentioned in the treaty, as Germans refused to recognize the existence of any Polish representatives, which in turn led to Polish protests. When Germans later complained that the Treaty of Versailles of 1919 was too harsh on them, the treaty was effectively terminated in November 1918, when Germany surrendered to the Allies. By 1917, Germany and Imperial Russia were stuck in a stalemate on the Eastern Front of World War I, at the time, the Russian economy nearly collapsed under the strain of the war effort. The large numbers of war casualties and persistent food shortages in the urban centers brought about civil unrest, known as the February Revolution. The Russian Provisional Government that replaced the Tsar, decided to continue the war on the Entente side, the pro-war Provisional Government was opposed by the self-proclaimed Petrograd Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies, dominated by leftist parties. Its Order No.1 called for a mandate to soldier committees rather than army officers. The Soviet started to form its own power, the Red Guards. The position of the Provisional Government led the Germans to offer support to the Russian opposition, the Communist Party in particular, in April 1917, Germany allowed Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to return to Russia from his exile in Switzerland and offered him financial help. Throughout 1917, Bolsheviks spread defeatist and revolutionary propaganda, called for the overthrow of the Provisional Government, following the disastrous failure of the Kerensky Offensive, discipline in the Russian army deteriorated completely. Soldiers would disobey orders, often under the influence of Bolshevik agitation, Russian and German soldiers occasionally left their positions and fraternized. The defeat and ongoing hardships of war led to anti-government riots in Petrograd headed by the Bolsheviks, several months later, on 7 November, Red Guards seized the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government in what is known as the October Revolution. The newly established Soviet government decided to end Russias participation in the war with Germany, on 26 October 1917, Vladimir Lenin signed the Decree on Peace, which was approved by the Second Congress of the Soviet of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies. The Decree called upon all the belligerent nations and their governments to start negotiations for peace. Leon Trotsky was appointed Commissar of Foreign Affairs in the new Bolshevik government, on 15 December 1917, an armistice between Soviet Russia and the Central Powers was concluded and fighting stopped
32.
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
33.
Execution of the Romanov family
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The Tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik troops led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet. Their bodies were mutilated, burned and buried in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest. The emergence of Romanov impostors drew media attention away from Soviet Russia, the burial site was discovered in 1979 by an amateur sleuth, but the remains were not made public until 1989, during the glasnost period. The identity of the remains was confirmed by forensic and DNA investigation, a second, smaller grave containing the remains of two Romanov children missing from the larger grave was discovered by amateur archeologists in 2007. However, their remains are kept in a state repository pending further DNA tests, in 2008, after considerable and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor Generals office rehabilitated the Romanov family as victims of political repressions. A criminal case was opened by the government in 1993. This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotskys diary, Lenin had close control over the Romanovs although he ensured his name was not associated with their fate in any official documents. President Boris Yeltsin described the killings as one of the most shameful pages in Russian history, on 22 March 1917, Nicholas, no longer a monarch and addressed with contempt by the sentries as Nicholas Romanov, was reunited with his family at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo. He was placed under house arrest with his family by the Provisional Government, surrounded by guards, in August 1917, Alexander Kerenskys provisional government evacuated the Romanovs to Tobolsk, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There they lived in the governors mansion in considerable comfort. After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, the conditions of their imprisonment grew stricter, Nicholas was forbidden to wear epaulettes, and the sentries scrawled lewd drawings on the fence to offend his daughters. On 1 March 1918, the family was placed on soldiers rations, as the Bolsheviks gathered strength, the government in April moved Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughter Maria to Yekaterinburg under the direction of Vasily Yakovlev. Alexei, who had severe haemophilia, was too ill to accompany his parents and remained with his sisters Olga, Tatiana, the family was imprisoned with a few remaining retainers in Yekaterinburgs Ipatiev House, which was designated The House of Special Purpose. The imperial family was kept in isolation at the Ipatiev House and was subjected to numerous rigorous inspections. They were strictly forbidden to any language other than Russian. They were not permitted access to their luggage which was stored in an outhouse in the interior courtyard and their brownie cameras and photographic equipment were confiscated. The servants were ordered to address the Romanovs only by their names, the house was surrounded by a 4 metre high double palisade that obscured the streets from the house. The initial fence enclosed the garden along Voznesensky Lane, on 5 June a second palisade was erected, higher and longer than the first, which completely enclosed the property
34.
Grigory Zinoviev
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Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev, born Hirsch Apfelbaum, known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician. Zinoviev was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov. Zinoviev is best remembered as the head of the Communist International. He was in competition against Joseph Stalin who eliminated him from the Soviet political leadership in 1926, Zinoviev was the alleged author of the Zinoviev letter to British communists, urging revolution, and published just before the 1924 general election, apparently to provoke a right-wing reaction. The letter is widely dismissed as a forgery, gregory Zinoviev was born in Yelizavetgrad, Russian Empire, to Jewish dairy farmers, who educated him at home. Between 1923 and 1935 the city was known as Zinovyevsk and he studied philosophy, literature and history. He became interested in politics, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1901 and he was a member of its Bolshevik faction from the time of its creation in 1903. He was elected to the RSDLPs Central Committee in 1907 and sided with Lenin in 1908 when the Bolshevik faction split into Lenins supporters, Zinoviev remained Lenins constant aide-de-camp and representative in various socialist organizations until 1917. Zinoviev spent the first three years of World War I in Switzerland, after the Russian monarchy was overthrown during the February Revolution, he returned to Russia in April 1917 in a sealed train with Lenin and other revolutionaries opposed to the war. He remained a part of the Bolshevik leadership throughout most of that year, however, Zinoviev and Lenin soon had a falling out over Zinovievs opposition to Lenins call for an open insurrection against the Provisional Government. On October 10,1917, he and Lev Kamenev were the only two Central Committee members to vote against an armed revolt and their publication of an open letter opposed to the use of force enraged Lenin, who demanded their expulsion from the party. In response, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Vladimir Milyutin, the following day, Lenin wrote a proclamation calling Zinoviev and Kamenev deserters. He never forgot their behavior, eventually making a reference to their October episode in his Testament. Zinoviev soon returned to the fold and was again elected to the Central Committee at the VII Party Congress on March 8,1918. He was put in charge of the Petrograd city and regional government, sometime in 1918, while Ukraine was under German occupation, the rabbis of Odessa ceremonially anathematized Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other Jewish Bolshevik leaders in the synagogue. He became a member of the ruling Politburo when it was created after the VIII Congress on March 25,1919. He also became the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Comintern when it was created in March 1919, Zinoviev was responsible for Petrograds defense during two periods of intense clashes with White forces in 1919. Trotsky, who was in charge of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, thought little of Zinovievs leadership
35.
Edvard Radzinsky
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Edvard Stanislavovich Radzinsky is a Russian playwright, television personality, screenwriter, and the author of more than forty popular history books. Edvard Stanislavovich Radzinsky was born in Moscow, Russia on September 23,1936 to playwright Stanislav Radzinsky and he studied in the Moscow Archive Institute and is a trained historian. Edvard married actress Alla Geraskina, herself the daughter of the popular Soviet playwright and writer Lia Geraskina and their son, Oleg was born in 1958. Edvard Radzinsky divorced Alla in 1964 and he later married Tatiana Doronina, one of the leading Soviet actresses of the 60s-70s. He is currently married to the actress Elena Denisova, Radzinsky is an author of more than forty popular non-fiction books on historical subjects. Since the 1990s, he has written the series Mysteries of History, the books translated to English include his biographies of Tsars Nicholas II and Alexander II, Rasputin, and Joseph Stalin. According to Radzinsky, Stalin was poisoned by order of Lavrentiy Beria and his book includes an interview with a former bodyguard of Stalin, who stated that on the night of Stalins death, the bodyguards were relieved of duty by an NKVD officer named Khrustalev. This same officer was briefly mentioned in Memories, the memoir of Stalins daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, Radzinsky also supported the hypothesis by Viktor Suvorov that Stalin had prepared a preemptive strike against Nazi Germany for 1941. In July 10,2011 in Moscow Oblast on the highway Anosino - Pavlovskaya Sloboda, while driving the car Radzinsky drove it into oncoming traffic, 24-year-old girl named Maria Kulikova - passenger second vehicle was killed in accident. According to the wife of a writer, he suffered an attack after the accident. At the hospital, his condition is said to have started to worsen, during the investigation Radzinsky admitted his guilt. Two moth after accident, on September 10th, Edvard Radzinsky presented reading of his new play Several meetings with Mr. Mozart in Tchaikovsky Hall, which lasted for three hours. At the same time, according to Kirill Choporov, the investigation was delayed because Radzinsky refused to come in for questioning to the police. According to the investigator to relatives of the deceased, the claimed that he could not come to the interview because of the poor state of health. Six months later, the results of re-examination with Radzinsky all charges were dropped, at the same time the driver of Nissan Kirill Choporov was accused of committing the accident. Parents Maria Kulikova and Kirill Choporov filed an appeal to the court, further investigation proved full guilt of Edvard Radzinsky. But in 2014, the case was closed under the amnesty, «На Руси от ума одно горе» © AST,2006 г. «Начало театрального романа», Сборник пьес © Издательство «ВАГРИУС»,2004 г, Собрание сочинений © Издательство «ВАГРИУС», 1998—2003 г
36.
Pseudohistory
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In practice, a pseudohistory presents a big lie—sensational claims—about historical fact that would require the revision of the historical record. The term pseudohistory was coined in the early 19th century, an older than the term pseudo-scholarship. Similarly, in an 1815 attestation, it is used to refer to Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi, the pejorative sense of the term, labelling a flawed or disingenuous work of historiography, is found in another 1815 attestation. Writers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman see pseudohistory as the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes, robert Todd Carroll has developed a list of criteria to identify pseudo historic works. He identifies two necessary elements as A complete ignorance of the sources and the repetition of inaccuracies. Other common characteristics of pseudohistory are, The arbitrary linking of disparate events so as to form – in the theorists opinion – a pattern and this is typically then developed into a conspiracy theory postulating a hidden agent responsible for creating and maintaining the pattern. Hypothesising the consequences of events that could have happened, thereby assuming tacitly that they did. Sensationalism, or shock value The following are some categories of pseudohistorical theory. Note that not all theories in a category are necessarily pseudohistorical. Ancient astronauts, Archaeoastronomy and Lost lands Alternative chronologies – revised sequences of events or other alterations to the timeline of ancient history, ethnocentric pseudo-history Most Afrocentric ideas have been identified as pseudohistorical The Indigenous Aryans theories published in Hindu nationalism during the 1990s and 2000s. The crypto-history of Germanic mysticism and Nazi occultism, the Ancient Macedonia continuity theory that postulates demographic, cultural and linguistic continuity between Macedonians of antiquity and the main ethnic group in Republic of Macedonia. Antisemitism inspired The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fraudulent work purporting to show a conspiracy for world domination by Jews. The Khazar theory, a fringe theory which postulates that the bulk of European Jewry are of Central Asian origin. In spite of mainstream academic consensus, this theory has been promoted in Anti-Semitic and Anti-Zionist circles alike, pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact excluding the Norse colonization of the Americas and other reputable scholarship Arab or Islamic discovery of the Americas. Gavin Menziess book 1421, The Year China Discovered the World, Psychohistory, the ill-fated attempt to merge psychology with history, replacing historical method. Notably Lloyd deMause, the founder of The Journal of Psychohistory, see also Searches for Noahs Ark The theory of Lemuria and Kumari Kandam. Chariots of the Gods. and other books by Erich von Däniken, publications by Christopher Knight, such as Uriels Machine, claiming ancient technological civilizations. Visits to Earth by spacefaring aliens The Shakespeare authorship question, which claims that other than William Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the works traditionally attributed to him
