1.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
2.
Kazan (Volga region) Federal University
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Kazan Federal University is located in Kazan, Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. Founded in 1804 as Kazan Imperial University it is the second oldest among Russian universities, famous mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky served there as the rector from 1827 until 1846. In 1925, the university was renamed in honour of its most famous student Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, in 2010, Kazan University received the federal status. As of November 1,2015, the University consists of 16 Institutes,3 Higher Schools, Faculty of Law, more than 40,000 students enrolled in 479 degree programs at undergraduate and postgraduate level. It was not until 1814 that the university underwent its full opening and it was restructured as a classical university comprising four departments, moral and political sciences, physical and mathematical sciences, medical sciences and philology. In 1819, M. L. Magnitsky conducted a review of the university, in which he reported on the spirit of dissent and irreligion that he had observed at the university. In his report to the Emperor, he spoke of the destruction of the university and demanded it be closed. In addition, a strict barrack domestic regime was introduced for students of the university, in 1819-1821 an alumnus and scholar of Kazan University Ivan Simonov participated in the discovery of Antarctica during the first round-the-world expedition and pioneered Antarctic studies. In 1825, the Main Building of the university was built and, in 1830 and this included the Library Building, Chemical Laboratory, dissection facilities, astronomical observatory, and clinics. Resultantly the university became a centre of education and science. It was the scientific faculties that were, at time, organised into a number of research schools. In 1844, Karl Klaus, a professor at the university, discovered, and named in honour of Russia, Ruthenium, a renowned linguistic school was forming at the university during 1875-1883. Around that time Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, a leader of the Soviet Union. Subsequently, many of them were enrolled in universities in Siberia. This allowed the University of Kazan, which had lost the vast majority of its staff during the turmoil of the civil war, to restart proper education. The university soon opened a faculty, which aimed to provide the education for peasants. On 1 November 1919 peasant workers started their first classes without the requirement to pass an entrance exam, in 1922 the Universitys Faculty of Forestry merged with the Faculty of Agriculture of Kazan Polytechnic university to form Kazan Institute of Agriculture and Forestry. In 1925 by the decision of All-Russian Central Executive Committee Kazan State University was renamed to the V. I and this was done in order to recognise the period of time Vladimir Lenin spent as a student at the University of Kazan
3.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
4.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
5.
Gulag
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The Gulag was the government agency that administered and controlled the Soviet forced-labor camp system during Joseph Stalins rule from the 1930s up until the 1950s. The term is commonly used to reference any forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners. Large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas, the Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The agencys full name was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and it was administered first by the State Political Administration, later by the NKVD and in the final years by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The internment system grew rapidly, reaching a population of 100,000 in the 1920s, the author likened the scattered camps to a chain of islands and as an eyewitness he described the Gulag as a system where people were worked to death. Natalya Reshetovskaya, the wife of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, said in her memoirs that The Gulag Archipelago was based on folklore as opposed to objective facts. In March 1940, there were 53 Gulag camp directorates and 423 labor colonies in the USSR, todays major industrial cities of the Russian Arctic, such as Norilsk, Vorkuta, and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners. About 14 million people were imprisoned in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953, according to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to 1,727,970 in 1953. According with other estimates, at the beginning of 1953 the total number of prisoners in prison camps was more than 2.4 million of more than 465,000 were political prisoners. The institutional analysis of the Soviet concentration system is complicated by the distinction between GULAG and GUPVI. In many ways the GUPVI system was similar to GULAG and its major function was the organization of foreign forced labor in the Soviet Union. The top management of GUPVI came from the GULAG system, the major noted distinction from GULAG was the absence of convicted criminals in the GUPVI camps. Otherwise the conditions in both systems were similar, hard labor, poor nutrition and living conditions, and high mortality rate. According with the estimates, in total, during the period of the existence of GUPVI there were over 500 POW camps. According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 1934–53. Some independent estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the period from 1929 to 1953. Most Gulag inmates were not political prisoners, although significant numbers of prisoners could be found in the camps at any one time
6.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
7.
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
8.
Pharmacist
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Pharmacists, also known as chemists or druggists, are healthcare professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use. A pharmacist is a member of the care team directly involved with patient care. This is mated to anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology, Pharmacists interpret and communicate this specialized knowledge to patients, physicians, and other health care providers. Among other licensing requirements, different countries require pharmacists to hold either a Bachelor of Pharmacy, Master of Pharmacy, in most countries, the profession is subject to professional regulation. Depending on the scope of practice, pharmacists may contribute to prescribing and administering certain medications in some jurisdictions. Pharmacists may also practice in a variety of settings, including industry, wholesaling, research, academia, military. Historically, the role of pharmacists as a healthcare practitioner was to check. Pharmacists monitor the health and progress of patients to ensure the safe, Pharmacists may practice compounding, however, many medicines are now produced by pharmaceutical companies in a standard dosage and drug delivery form. One of the most important roles that pharmacists are currently taking on is one of pharmaceutical care, Pharmaceutical care involves taking direct responsibility for patients and their disease states, medications, and management of each to improve outcomes. Pharmacists are often the first point-of-contact for patients with health inquiries, thus pharmacists have a significant role in assessing medication management in patients, and in referring patients to physicians. In most countries, pharmacists must obtain a university degree at a school or related institution. In many contexts, students must first complete pre-professional coursework, followed by four years of professional academic studies to obtain a degree in pharmacy. Additional curriculum may cover diagnosis with emphasis on tests, disease state management, therapeutics. On graduation, pharmacists are licensed, either nationally or regionally, some may undergo further specialized training, such as in cardiology or oncology. Specialties include, The Australian Pharmacy Council is the independent accreditation agency for Australian pharmacists and it conducts examinations on behalf of the Pharmacy Board of Australia towards eligibility for registration. The Australian College of Pharmacy provides continuing education programs for pharmacists, wages for pharmacists in Australia appear to have stagnated. The award wages for a pharmacist is $812 a week, Pharmacist graduates are the lowest paid university graduates most years. Most pharmacists do earn above the wage, the average male pharmacist earns $65,000
9.
Kazan
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Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,535, it is the eighth most populous city in Russia, Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. The Kazan Kremlin is a World Heritage Site, in April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the right to brand itself as the Third Capital of Russia. In 2009 it was chosen as the Sports capital of Russia, in 2015, Kazan was visited by 2.1 million tourists, which is a 20% increase in comparison with 2014. The Kazan Kremlin was visited by 1.5 million tourists in 2015 and hotel, the origin of the name Kazan is uncertain. The most accepted legends derive it from the Bulgar word qazan, one legend claims that the city was named after the river Kazanka, which was named after the son of a Bulgar governor dropped a copper cauldron into it. Other local legends, including research by the Tatar scholar Shigabetdin Marjani, if there was a Bulgar city on the site, estimates of the date of its foundation range from the early 11th century to the late 13th century. It was a border post between Volga Bulgaria and two Finnic tribes, the Mari and the Udmurt, another vexatious question is where the citadel was built originally. The oldest of these seems to be the Kremlin, if Kazan existed in the 11th and 12th centuries, it could have been a stop on a Volga trade route from Scandinavia to Baghdad. It was a center, and possibly a major city for Bulgar settlers in the Kazan region. Kazan became a center of a duchy which was a dependency of the Golden Horde, two centuries later, in the 1430s, Kipchak descendants of Genghis Khan, such as Ghiasetdin of Kazan, usurped power from its Bolghar dynasty. Some Tatars also went to Lithuania, brought by Vytautas the Great, in 1438, after the destruction of the Golden Horde, Kazan became the capital of the powerful Khanate of Kazan. The city bazaar, Taş Ayaq became the most important trade center in the region, craft-based manufacturing also thrived, as the city gained a reputation for its leather and gold goods, as well as for the opulence of its palaces and mosques. The citadel and Bolaq channel were reconstructed, giving the city a strong defensive capacity, the Russians managed to occupy the city briefly several times. Kazan Khanate was making constant plundering raids on Russia, slavery in Kazan Khanate was legal. The number of slaves was up to 10% of the population, most of the slaves were Russian people who were captured during raids. All captured men were forced to turn Mohammedan, otherwise they could be killed or sold into slavery to other Muslim countries, as a result of the Siege of Kazan in 1552, Russia under Ivan the Terrible conquered the city and massacred the majority of the population. Also as a result of the Siege of Kazan 8,000 slaves were set free, in spite of the fact that under the treaty of 1551 all Russian slaves must be released Kazan Khanate still kept a lot of Russian slaves
10.
Social science
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Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. It in turn has many branches, each of which is considered a social science, the social sciences include economics, political science, human geography, demography, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, jurisprudence, history, and linguistics. The term is sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology. A more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the sciences can be found at Outline of social science. Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those of the sciences as tools for understanding society. In modern academic practice, researchers are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies, the term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various disciplines share in its aims and methods. Social sciences came forth from the philosophy of the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the Industrial Revolution. The social sciences developed from the sciences, or the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, the beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers. The growth of the sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The modern period saw social science first used as a distinct conceptual field, Social science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive sense experience and avoiding the negative, metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used the term science sociale to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier, following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte on other fields. One route that was taken was the rise of social research, large statistical surveys were undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by Émile Durkheim, studying social facts, a third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social phenomena were identified with and understood, this was championed by figures such as Max Weber. The fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard science, the last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values, the antipositivism and verstehen sociology of Max Weber firmly demanded this distinction. In this route, theory and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject, around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. The development of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology, examples of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology, neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of action and its implications. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a discipline of applied mathematics
11.
Pedagogy
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Pedagogy is the discipline that deals with the theory and practice of education, it thus concerns the study of how best to teach. Spanning a broad range of practice, its aims range from furthering liberal education to the specifics of vocational education. Instructive strategies are governed by the background knowledge and experience, situation. One example would be the Socratic schools of thought, the teaching of adults, as a specific group, is referred to as andragogy. Johann Friedrich Herbart is the father of the conceptualization of pedagogy, or. Herbarts educational philosophy and pedagogy highlighted the correlation between personal development and the benefits to society. In other words, Herbart proposed that humans become fulfilled once they establish themselves as productive citizens, herbartianism refers to the movement underpinned by Herbarts theoretical perspectives. Referring to the process, Herbart suggested 5 steps as crucial components. Specifically, these 5 steps include, preparation, presentation, association, generalization, Herbart suggests that pedagogy relates to having assumptions as an educator and a specific set of abilities with a deliberate end goal in mind. The word is a derivative of the Greek παιδαγωγία, from παιδαγωγός, itself a synthesis of ἄγω, I lead and it is pronounced variously, as /ˈpɛdəɡɒdʒi/, /ˈpɛdəɡoʊdʒi/, or /ˈpɛdəɡɒɡi/. Negative connotations of pedantry have sometimes been intended, or taken, doctor of Pedagogy, is awarded honorarily by some US universities to distinguished teachers. The term is used to denote an emphasis in education as a specialty in a field. The word pedagogue means leading children some say to the teacher and other leading them, in Denmark, a pedagogue is a practitioner of pedagogy. The term is used for individuals who occupy jobs in pre-school education in Scandinavia. But a pedagogue can occupy various kinds of jobs, e. g. in retirement homes, prisons, orphanages and these are often recognized as social pedagogues as they perform on behalf of society. The pedagogues job is usually distinguished from a teachers by primarily focusing on teaching children life-preparing knowledge such as social skills, there is also a very big focus on care and well-being of the child. Many pedagogical institutions also practice social inclusion, the pedagogues work also consists of supporting the child in their mental and social development. In Denmark all pedagogues are educated at a series of institutes for social educators located in all major cities
12.
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
13.
Siege of Leningrad
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The siege started on 8 September 1941, when the last road to the city was severed. Although the Soviets managed to open a land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943. It was one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, Leningrads capture was one of three strategic goals in the German Operation Barbarossa and the main target of Army Group North. By 1939 the city was responsible for 11% of all Soviet industrial output and it has been reported Adolf Hitler was so confident of capturing Leningrad that he had invitations printed to the victory celebrations to be held in the citys Hotel Astoria. According to a sent to Army Group North on 29 September, After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban center. Following the citys encirclement, requests for surrender negotiations shall be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot, in this war for our very existence, we can have no interest in maintaining even a part of this very large urban population. Hitlers ultimate plan was to raze Leningrad to the ground and give areas north of the River Neva to the Finns, Army Group North under Feldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb advanced to Leningrad, its primary objective. Finnish military forces were north of Leningrad, while German forces occupied territories to the south, thus, it is argued that much of the Finns participation was merely defensive. The Germans planned on lack of food being their weapon against the citizens. On 27 June 1941, the Council of Deputies of the Leningrad administration organised First response groups of civilians, in the next days, Leningrads civilian population was informed of the danger and over a million citizens were mobilised for the construction of fortifications. Several lines of defences were built along the perimeter to repulse hostile forces approaching from north and south by means of civilian resistance. In the south, the line ran from the mouth of the Luga River to Chudovo, Gatchina, Uritsk, Pulkovo. Another line of defence passed through Peterhof to Gatchina, Pulkovo, Kolpino, in the north the defensive line against the Finns, the Karelian Fortified Region, had been maintained in Leningrads northern suburbs since the 1930s, and was now returned to service. Even the guns from the cruiser Aurora were moved inland to the Pulkovo Heights to the south of Leningrad, the 4th Panzer Group from East Prussia took Pskov following a swift advance and managed to reach Novgorod by 16 August. The Soviet defenders fought to the death, despite the German discovery of the Soviet defence plans on an officers corpse, after the capture of Novgorod, General Hoepners 4th Panzer Group continued its progress towards Leningrad. However, the 18th Army — despite some 350,000 men lagging behind — forced its way to Ostrov and Pskov after the Soviet troops of the Northwestern Front retreated towards Leningrad. On 10 July, both Ostrov and Pskov were captured and the 18th Army reached Narva and Kingisepp, from where advance toward Leningrad continued from the Luga River line. This had the effect of creating siege positions from the Gulf of Finland to Lake Ladoga, the Finnish Army was then expected to advance along the eastern shore of Lake Ladoga
14.
Vasily Aksyonov
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Vasily Pavlovich Aksyonov was a Soviet and Russian novelist. He is known in the West as the author of The Burn and Generations of Winter, Vasily Aksyonov was born to Pavel Aksyonov and Yevgenia Ginzburg in Kazan, USSR on August 20,1932. His mother, Yevgenia Ginzburg, was a successful journalist and educator and his father, in 1937, however, both were arrested and tried for her alleged connection to Trotskyists. They were both sent to Gulag and then to exile, and each served 18 years, but remarkably survived, later, Yevgenia came to prominence as the author of a famous memoir, Into the Whirlwind, documenting the brutality of Stalinist repression. Aksyonov remained until rescued in 1938 by his uncle, with family he stayed until his mother was released into exile. In 1947, Vasily joined her in exile in the notorious Magadan, Kolyma prison area, vasilys half-brother Alexei died from starvation in besieged Leningrad in 1941. His parents, seeing that doctors had the best chance to survive in the camps and he therefore entered the Kazan University and graduated in 1956 from the First Pavlov State Medical University of St. Peterburg and worked as a doctor for the next 3 years. During his time as a student he came under surveillance by the KGB. It is likely that he would have been arrested had the liberalisation that followed Stalins death in 1953 not intervened, reportedly, during the liberalisation that followed Stalins death in 1953, Aksyonov came into contact with the first Soviet countercultural movement of zoot-suited hipsters called stilyagi. As a result, He fell in love with their slang, fashions, libertine lifestyles, dancing, from this point on began his lifelong romance with jazz. Interest in his new milieu, western music, fashion and literature turned out to be life-changing for Aksyonov and he remained a keen observer of youth, with its ever-changing styles, movements and trends. Like no other Soviet writer, he was attuned to the developments, in 1956, he was discovered and heralded by the Soviet writer Valentin Kataev for his first publication, in the liberal magazine Youth. His first novel, Colleagues, was based on his experiences as a doctor and his second, Ticket to the Stars, depicting the life of Soviet youthful hipsters, made him an overnight celebrity. In the 1960s Aksyonov was a frequent contributor to the popular Yunost magazine and eventually became a staff writer. Aksyonovs characters spoke in a way, using hip lingo, they went to bars and dance halls, had premarital sex, listened to jazz and rocknroll. There was a feeling of freshness and freedom about his writings, similar to the one emanating from black-market recordings of American jazz and it was amazing, We were being brought up robots, but we began to listen to jazz, Aksyonov said in a 2007 documentary about him. Ultimately, however, he shared Mr. Solzhenitsyns fate of exile from the Soviet Union and it was important to have the Aksyonov light, that light of personal freedom and personal self-expression. However, as Mark Yoffe notes in Aksyonovs obituary, his open pro-Americanism, and his involvement in 1979 with an independent magazine, Metropol, led to an open confrontation with the authorities
15.
Sergey Kirov
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Sergei Mironovich Kirov, born Kostrikov, was a prominent early Bolshevik leader in the Soviet Union. Kirov rose through the Communist Party ranks to head of the party organization in Leningrad. On 1 December 1934, Kirov was shot and killed by a gunman at his offices in the Smolny Institute, some historians place the blame for his assassination at the hands of Joseph Stalin and believe the NKVD organized his execution, but conclusive evidence for this claim remains lacking. Complicity in Kirovs assassination was a charge to which the accused confessed in the show trials of the period. The cities of Kirov, Kirovohrad, Kirovakan, and Kirovabad, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kirovakan and Kirovabad returned to their original names, Vanadzor and Ganja, respectively. In order to comply with decommunization laws Kirovohrad was renamed in July 2016 by the Ukrainian parliament to Kropyvnytskyi, miron, an alcoholic, abandoned the family around 1890. In 1893, Yekaterina died of tuberculosis, through her connections, she succeeded in having Sergey placed in an orphanage, but he saw his sisters and grandmother regularly. In 1901 a group of wealthy benefactors provided a scholarship for him to attend a school at Kazan. After gaining his degree in engineering he moved to Tomsk in Siberia, Kirov became a Marxist and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1904. Kirov took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905, and was arrested and he joined with the Bolsheviks soon after being released from prison. In 1906, Kirov was arrested again, but this time jailed for over three years, charged with printing illegal literature. Soon after his release, he took part in revolutionary activity. Once again being arrested for printing illegal literature, after a year of custody, Kostrikov moved to the Caucasus, where he stayed until the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. By this time, Sergei Kostrikov had changed his name to Kirov in order to make his name easier to remember, kostrikove began using the pen name Kir, first publishing under the pseudonym Kirov on April 26,1912. One account states that he chose the name Kir, after a Christian martyr in third-century Egypt from an Orthodox calendar of saints days, a second story is that he based it on the name of the Persian king Cyrus. Kirov became commander of the Bolshevik military administration in Astrakhan, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he fought in the Russian Civil War until 1920. Simon Sebag Montefiore writes, During the Civil War, Kirov was one of the swashbuckling commissars in the North Caucasus beside Ordzhonikidze, in Astrakhan he enforced Bolshevik power in March 1919 with liberal bloodletting, more than 4,000 were killed. When a bourgeois was caught hiding his own furniture, Kirov ordered him shot, in 1921, he became manager of the Azerbaijan party organization
16.
Great Purge
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The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938. In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina, after Nikolai Yezhov and it has been estimated between 600,000 and 3 million people died at the hands of the Soviet government during the Purge. In the Western world, Robert Conquests 1968 book The Great Terror popularized that phrase, Conquests title was in turn an allusion to the period called the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. The term repression was used to describe the prosecution of people considered counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the people by the leadership of the Soviet Union. The purge was motivated by the desire to remove dissenters from the Communist Party, most public attention was focused on the purge of the leadership of the Communist Party, as well as of government bureaucrats and leaders of the armed forces, most of whom were Party members. The campaigns also affected many other categories of the society, intelligentsia, peasants and especially those branded as too rich for a peasant, a series of NKVD operations affected a number of national minorities, accused of being fifth column communities. Due legal process, as defined by Soviet law in force at the time, was largely replaced with summary proceedings by NKVD troikas. Hundreds of thousands of victims were accused of political crimes, they were quickly executed by shooting. Many died at the labor camps of starvation, disease, exposure. Other methods of dispatching victims were used on an experimental basis, one secret policeman, for example, gassed people to death in batches in the back of a specially adapted airtight van. The campaigns were carried out according to the line, and often by direct orders. The threat of war heightened Stalins perception of marginal and politically suspect populations as the source of an uprising in case of invasion. He began to plan for the elimination of such potential recruits for a mythical fifth column of wreckers, terrorists. The term purge in Soviet political slang was an abbreviation of the purge of the Party ranks. In 1933, for example, the Party expelled some 400,000 people, but from 1936 until 1953, the term changed its meaning, because being expelled from the Party came to mean almost certain arrest, imprisonment, and often execution. Stalins opponents on both sides of the political spectrum chided him as undemocratic and lax on bureaucratic corruption and these tendencies may have accumulated substantial support among the working class by attacking the privileges and luxuries the state offered to its high-paid elite. The Ryutin Affair seemed to vindicate Stalins suspicions and he enforced a ban on party factions and banned those party members who had opposed him, effectively ending democratic centralism. In the new form of Party organization, the Politburo, and this required the elimination of all Marxists with different views, especially those among the prestigious old guard of revolutionaries
17.
Ryazan
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Ryazan is a city and the administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River 196 kilometers southeast of Moscow. It is argued that the Ryazan kremlin was founded in 800, by Slavic settlers, initially it was built of wood, gradually replaced by masonry. The oldest preserved part of the dates back to the 12th century. However, the first written mention of the city, under the name of Pereslavl, at that time, the city was part of the independent Principality of Ryazan, which had existed since 1078 and which was centered on the old city of Ryazan. The first ruler of Ryazan was supposedly Yaroslav Sviatoslavich, Prince of Ryazan, by the end of the 12th century, the capital of Duchy was burnt several times by the armies of Suzdal. Ryazan was the first Russian city to be sacked by the Mongol horde of Batu Khan, on December 21,1237, it was thoroughly devastated and never fully recovered. As result of the sack, the seat of the principality was moved about 55 kilometers to the town of Pereslavl-Ryazansky, the site of the old capital now carries the name of Staraya Ryazan, close to Spassk-Ryazansky. Late in the 13th century, the Princes of Ryazan moved their capital to Pereslavl, the principality was finally incorporated into that of Moscow in 1521. Immediately after World War II, rapid development of the city began, Ryazan became a major industrial, scientific, and military center of the European part of Russia. Massive factories were constructed in the city, occupying the urban areas. Leading areas of industry are heavy and non-ferrous metallurgy, oil refining and machine-tool industry, mechanical engineering, more than half of the plants produce for export. Several positioned MANPADS protect the urban sky, besides the Airborne School, Ryazan hosts the Automobile School and Institute of Communications, a regiment of railway troops, airbase strategic bombers, and a training center in Diaghilev. Ryazan developed particularly rapidly while Nadezhda Nikolaevna Chumakova served as Chair of the Council of Peoples Deputies of Ryazan and Ryazan mayor, under Chumakova, the citys population increased more than seven times, from 72 to 520 thousand people. Chumakova oversaw the construction of social and cultural amenities, more than 20 urban areas, landscaping became a fundamental strategy for the development of the city at that time. Ryazan repeatedly won recognition among the cities of the Soviet Union for its landscaping, during her 26 years in office, Nadezhda Chumakova often accepted awards of the Red Banner of the USSR on behalf of Ryazan. In September 1999, Ryazan became one of the involved in the Russian apartment bombings episode. In the Political system of Ryazan, the legislature, a city council is the Ryazan City Duma, kind of the lower house of the municipality - Youth Parliament, preparing draft legislative initiatives. Executive power in the city of Ryazan carried by the administration headed by the city manager, control over the activities of the authorities is administered by the Public Chamber of the city of Ryazan, work with youth involved in the headquarters of youth activists
18.
Kursk
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Kursk is a city and the administrative center of Kursk Oblast, Russia, located at the confluence of the Kur, Tuskar, and Seym Rivers. The area around Kursk was the site of a point in the Soviet–German struggle during World War II. Archaeology indicates that the site of Kursk was settled in the 5th or 4th century BCE, the settlement was fortified and included Slavs at least as early as the 8th century CE. The first written record of Kursk is dated 1032 and it was mentioned as one of Severian towns by Prince Igor in The Tale of Igors Campaign, Saddle, brother, your swift steeds. The seat of a principality, Kursk was raided by the Polovtsians in the 12th and 13th centuries. The city was no later than 1283. It was ruled by Grand Duchy of Lithuania between 1360 and 1508, Kursk joined the centralized Russian state in 1508, becoming its southern border province. It was an important center of the trade with Ukraine and hosted an important fair. However, a century later the city re-emerged in a new place, in 1596 a new fortress was built, in 1616 it was garrisoned by over 1,300 soldiers. At the beginning of the 17th century Kursk was repeatedly attacked by Polish-Lithuania, the Crimean Tatars, and the Nogai horde, residents of Oryol and other southern Russian cities were resettled in Kursk. The city developed due to its advantageous position on the shortest route from Moscow to the Crimea. It was raided frequently by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Crimean Khanate until the late 17th century and was ruled by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1611 and 1618 and it was successively part of the Kiev Governorate, Belgorod Governorate, and Kursk Viceroyalty. Town status was granted to Kursk in 1779 and it became the administrative center of Kursk Governorate in 1797. After a fire in 1781 devastated Kursk, a new plan for the city was developed in which a market center would be at the heart of the city, in 1768 the Voskirsensko Ilinskaya Church was built. In 1778 both the Sergiev Cathedral Kazan Cathedral Baroque and Trinity Sergius Cathedral were completed, the city opened its first school for the nobility in 1783. A mens gymnasium was opened in 1808 and a seminary in 1817, a womens gymnasium was opened in 1870. At the beginning of the 20th century Kursk played a dominant role in the industry and in other industries as well, so, in the 1900s. Working conditions in the factories of Kursk were harsh and often resulted in strikes, Kursk workers participated in the general political strike during the 1905 Russian Revolution
19.
Charlotte Corday
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Marie-Anne Charlotte de Corday dArmont, known as Charlotte Corday, was a figure of the French Revolution. Marat had played a role in the political purge of the Girondins. His murder was memorialized in the painting The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David, in 1847, writer Alphonse de Lamartine gave Corday the posthumous nickname lange de lassassinat. Born in Saint-Saturnin-des-Ligneries, a hamlet in the commune of Écorches, in Normandy and she was a fifth-generation matrilineal descendant of the dramatist Pierre Corneille. While Corday was a girl, her older sister and their mother, Charlotte Marie Jacqueline Gaultier de Mesnival. After 1791, she lived in Caen with her cousin, Madame Le Coustellier de Bretteville-Gouville, the two developed a close relationship, and Corday was the sole heir to her cousins estate. After the revolution radicalized further and headed towards terror, Charlotte Corday began to sympathize with the Girondins and she admired their speeches and grew fond of many of the Girondist groups whom she met while living in Caen. She respected the principles of the Girondins and came to align herself with their thinking. She regarded them as a movement that would ultimately save France, the Gironde represented a more moderate approach to the revolution and they, like Corday, were skeptical about the direction the revolution was taking. The opposition to this thinking, coupled with the influence of the Gironde, ultimately led Corday to carry out her plan to murder the most radical of them all. Cordays action aided in restructuring the private versus public role of the woman in society at the time, the idea of women as worthless beings was challenged, and Corday was considered a hero to those who were against the teachings of Marat. There have been suggestions that her act incited the banning of political clubs. The influence of Girondin ideas on Corday is evident in her words at her trial, I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand. As the revolution progressed, the Girondins had become progressively more opposed to the radical, violent propositions of the Montagnards such as Marat, Jean-Paul Marat was a member of the radical Jacobin faction which had a leading role during the Reign of Terror. As a journalist, he exerted power and influence through his newspaper, Cordays decision to kill Marat was stimulated not only by her revulsion at the September Massacres, for which she held Marat responsible, but by her fear of an all-out civil war. She believed that Marat was threatening the Republic, and that his death would end violence throughout the nation and she also believed that King Louis XVI should not have been executed. Corday believed in a structure like that of Ancient Greece or Rome, on 9 July 1793, Corday left her cousin, carrying a copy of Plutarchs Parallel Lives, and went to Paris, where she took a room at the Hôtel de Providence. She bought a knife with a six-inch blade
20.
Butyrka prison
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Butyrka prison is a prison in the Tverskoy District of central Moscow, Russia. It was the transit prison in Tsarist Imperial Russia. During Soviet times, it held political prisoners. Currently, Butyrka remains the largest of Moscow remand prisons, overcrowding continues to be a problem. The first references to Butyrka prison may be traced back to the 17th century, the current building was erected in 1879 near the Butyrsk gate on the site of a prison-fortress which had been built by the architect Matvei Kazakov during the reign of Catherine the Great. The towers of the old fortress once housed the rebellious Streltsy during the reign of Peter I, members of Narodnaya Volya were also prisoners of the Butyrka in 1883, as were the participants in the Morozov Strike of 1885. The Butyrka prison was known for its brutal regime, the prison administration resorted to violence anytime the inmates tried to protest. Its famous inmates include the revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian revolutionary Nikolay Bauman. During the February Revolution, the workers of Moscow freed all the prisoners from the Butyrka. After the October Revolution, Butyrka remained a place of internment for political prisoners, during the Great Purge, about twenty thousand inmates at a time were imprisoned in Butyrka. Thousands of political prisoners were shot after investigations, later, prominent political prisoners included the writers Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Yevgenia Ginzburg. Varlam Shalamov notes, in one of his tales, that the Butyrka is extremely hot in summer, Eduard Limonov, in his drama Death in the Police Van, emphatically agrees. He says that, with the collapse of the Soviet regime, overcrowding has become a real issue, most of these people are politically unreliable subjects from the Caucasus. Moreover, inmates are brought to the tribunal in overcrowded police vans, Butyrka has its own slang, the wardens are called manti, the inmates patzani, to take drugs is smazatsia, i. e. to oil oneself. The word khuy is used profusely, on a lighter note, television has been allowed since 1995. Fabijan Abrantovich, a well-known Catholic priest and a pro-independence activist from Belarus, anna Abrikosova, a nun of the Dominican Order and prominent figure in the Russian Catholic Church. Andrei Amalrik, Russian historian and famed dissident during the 1960s, author of Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984. Władysław Anders, Polish general and prime minister, isaak Babel, writer, killed in 1940
21.
Yaroslavl
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Yaroslavl is a city and the administrative center of Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia, located 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow. The historic part of the city, a World Heritage Site, is located at the confluence of the Volga and it is one of the Golden Ring cities, a group of historic cities northeast of Moscow that have played an important role in Russian history. The city lies in the portion of Yaroslavl Oblast. The nearest large towns are Tutayev, Gavrilov-Yam, and Nerekhta, the historic center of Yaroslavl lies to the north of the mouth of the Kotorosl River on the right bank of the larger Volga River. The citys entire urban area covers around 205 square kilometers and includes a number of south of the Kotorosl. With over 600,000 residents, Yaroslavl is, by population and it is a large transport node, and a great number of important national and regional roads, railways, and waterways pass through the city. In fact many of the roads that connect Yaroslavl to Moscow, typical for this region, the area in and around Yaroslavl is rich in mixed and coniferous forests. In addition to these, there are large areas of swampland. Yaroslavl and its area have a typical temperate continental climate, in comparison to central. This makes for a climate with more snowy, colder, but dry winters and typically temperate, the winter weather in Yaroslavl begins in about November and usually goes on for five months, into spring. The coldest month of the year is typically January, with a temperature of −12.0 °C. However, at time it is not uncommon for temperatures to drop below −20 °C. In some cases, temperatures of −35 to −40 °C can be experienced, on the other hand, Yaroslavl can also experience positive temperatures during this time of the year. Typically the Volga freezes over during the winter, snow cover is usually 35–50-centimeter thick, but can in some cases be up to 70 centimeters in depth. The springtime months are best characterized by a lack of precipitation. From the end of March into April, there is often a thaw and it is not uncommon for temperatures in April to reach +20 °C. Summers in Yaroslavl are typically wet with heavy rainstorms. The summer often reaches its hottest point during the months of June/July, with a daily temperature of +23.3 °C
22.
Vladivostok
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Vladivostok is a city and the administrative center of Primorsky Krai, Russia, located at the head of the Golden Horn Bay, not far from Russias borders with China and North Korea. The population of the city as of 2016 is 606,653, the city is the home port of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest Russian port on the Pacific Ocean. The name Vladivostok loosely translates from Russian as the ruler of the East—a name similar to Vladikavkaz which means the ruler of the Caucasus, the Japanese name of the city is Urajiosutoku. In Korean, the name is transliterated as Beulladiboseutokeu in South Korea, Ullajibosŭttokhŭ in North Korea, Qing China, which had just lost the Opium War with Britain, was unable to defend the region. The Manchu emperors of China, the Qing Dynasty, banned Han Chinese from most of Manchuria including the Vladivostok area —it was only visited by illegal gatherers of ginseng and sea cucumbers. On June 20,1860, the supply ship Manchur, under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Alexey K. Shefner. Warrant officer Nikolay Komarov with 28 soldiers and two non-commissioned officers under his command were brought from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur by ship to construct the first buildings of the future city, the Manza War in 1868 was the first attempt by Russia to expel Chinese from territory it controlled. Hostilities broke out around Vladivostok when the Russians tried to shut off gold mining operations, the Chinese resisted a Russian attempt to take Ashold Island and in response, two Russian military stations and three Russian towns were attacked by the Chinese whom the Russians failed to oust. An elaborate system of fortifications was erected between the 1870s and 1890s, a telegraph line from Vladivostok to Shanghai and Nagasaki was opened in 1871. That same year a commercial port was relocated to Vladivostok from Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, town status was granted on April 22,1880. A coat of arms, representing the Siberian tiger, was adopted in March 1883, the first high school was opened in 1899. The citys economy was given a boost in 1916, with the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, after the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks took control of Vladivostok and the Trans-Siberian Railway in its entirety. During the Russian Civil War they were overthrown by the White-allied Czechoslovak Legion, the intervention ended in the wake of the collapse of the White Army and regime in 1919, with all Allied forces except the Japanese withdrawing by the end of 1920. In April 1920, the city came under the governance of the Far Eastern Republic. Vladivostok then became the capital of the Japanese-backed Provisional Priamurye Government, the withdrawal of Japanese forces in October 1922 spelled the end of the enclave, with Ieronim Uborevichs Red Army taking the city on October 25,1922. As the main base of the Soviet Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was officially closed to foreigners during the Soviet years. The city hosted the summit at which Leonid Brezhnev and Gerald Ford conducted the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1974, at the time, the two countries decided quantitative limits on various nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers. In 2012, Vladivostok hosted the 24th APEC summit, leaders from the APEC member countries met at Russky Island, off the coast of Vladivostok
23.
Magadan
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Magadan is a port town and the administrative center of Magadan Oblast, Russia, located on the Sea of Okhotsk in Nagayevo Bay in Taui Bay and serving as a gateway to the Kolyma region. Magadan was founded in 1930 in the Magadan River valley, near the settlement of Nagayevo, during the Stalin era, Magadan was a major transit center for prisoners sent to labor camps. From 1932 to 1953, it was the center of the Dalstroy organization—a vast and brutal forced-labor gold-mining operation. The town later served as a port for exporting gold and other metals mined in the Kolyma region and its size and population grew quickly as facilities were rapidly developed for the expanding mining activities in the area. Town status was granted to it on July 14,1939, Magadan was visited by U. S. Vice-President Henry Wallace in May 1944. He took an instant liking to his secret policeman host, admired handiwork done by prisoners, Magadan is the administrative center of the oblast. As a municipal division, the town of oblast significance of Magadan is incorporated as Magadan Urban Okrug, ship building and fishing are the major industries. The town has a seaport and an international airport, Sokol Airport. There is also an airport nearby, Magadan 13. The unpaved Kolyma Highway leads from Magadan to the rich gold-mining region of the upper Kolyma River and then on to Yakutsk. The nearest major city available by road is Yakutsk,2,000 kilometers away via a road which is best used in the winter. The principal sources of income for the economy are gold mining. Fishing production, although improving from year to year, is well below the allocated quotas. Other local industries include pasta and sausage plants and a distillery, although farming is difficult owing to the harsh climate, there are many public and private farming enterprises. The town has a number of institutions including the Regional Museum of Anthropology, a geological museum, a regional library. The Church of the Nativity is actually a part of the diocese of Anchorage, Alaska and it is staffed by several priests and nuns. The climate of Magadan is subarctic, winters are prolonged and very cold, with up to six months of sub-zero high temperatures, so that the soil remains permanently frozen. Permafrost and tundra cover most of the region, the growing season is only one hundred days long
24.
Kolyma
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Kolyma is a region located in the Russian Far East. It is bounded by the East Siberian Sea and the Arctic Ocean in the north, the region gets its name from the Kolyma River and mountain range, parts of which were not discovered until 1926. Today the region consists roughly of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and the Magadan Oblast, the area, part of which is within the Arctic Circle, has a subarctic climate with very cold winters lasting up to six months of the year. Permafrost and tundra cover a part of the region. Average winter temperatures range from −19 °C to −38 °C, and average summer temperatures, there are rich reserves of gold, silver, tin, tungsten, mercury, copper, antimony, coal, oil, and peat. Twenty-nine zones of possible oil and gas accumulation have been identified in the Sea of Okhotsk shelf, total reserves are estimated at 3.5 billion tons of equivalent fuel, including 1.2 billion tons of oil and 1.5 billion m3 of gas. The principal town Magadan has nearly 100,000 inhabitants and is the largest port in north-eastern Russia and it has a large fishing fleet and remains open year-round thanks to icebreakers. Magadan is served by the nearby Sokol Airport, there are many public and private farming enterprises. Gold mines, pasta and sausage factories, fishing companies, the houses were analogous, on one hand, to Paleolithic European houses and, on the other, to ethnographically studied houses of the Eskimos, Chukchi and Koryaks. Under Joseph Stalins rule, Kolyma became the most notorious region for the Gulag labor camps. Tens of thousands or more people may have died en route to the area or in the Kolymas series of mining, road building, lumbering. It was Kolymas reputation that caused Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, to characterize it as the pole of cold, Gold and platinum were discovered in the region in the early 20th century. During the time of the USSRs industrialization the need for capital to economic development was great. The abundant gold resources of the area seemed tailor-made to provide this capital, a government agency Dalstroy was formed to organize the exploitation of the area. These prisoners formed a readily available workforce, the initial efforts to develop the region began in 1932, with the building of the town of Magadan by forced labor. Conditions aboard the ships were harsh, according to a 1987 article in Time Magazine, During the 1930s the only way to reach Magadan was by ship from Khabarovsk, which created an island psychology and the term Gulag archipelago. Within the crowded prison ships thousands died during transportation, one survivors memoir recounts that the prison ship Dzhurma was caught in the autumn ice in 1933 while trying to get to the mouth of the Kolyma River. When it reached port the following spring, it carried only crew, all 12,000 prisoners were missing, left dead on the ice
25.
Crimean German
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The Crimea Germans were ethnic German settlers who were invited to settle in the Crimea as part of the East Colonization. From 1783 onwards, there was a settlement of Russians, Ukrainians. The first planned settlements of Germans in Crimea were founded over 1805-1810 with the support of Czar Alexander I, however over time only Sudak produced quality wine and the other settlements soon turned to agriculture. The second generation didn’t have enough land and soon young men started buying land from the Russian aristocracy, later Mennonites began to move from Ukraine into Crimea. Details are vague but during the 19th century a German hospital, on 18 October 1921 the so-called Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was created as part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. In place of today Krasnohvardiiske Raion there were created two districts for Germans Biyuk-Onlar and Telman. Under the Soviet regime many Volksdeutsche were persecuted by gangs of Russian peasants as landowning Kulaks or class enemy bourgeoisie. In 1939, two years before their deportation to Central Asia, around 60,000 of the 1.1 million inhabitants of Crimea were German, exiles dispersed all over the world. In Canada, Reynold Rapp, a farmer and Lutheran immigrant from the Crimea, a strong supporter of the British heritage of freedom in his adoptive country, Rapp opposed the replacement of the Canadian Red Ensign with a new Maple leaf flag in 1964. He told reporters, I may be the man in this House who has lived under the Hammer & Sickle. A flag is not just a bunting, it represents so much more than that, consequently, many died in transit, although later they could not be seriously blamed for Nazi crimes in the region. Stalin had no doubts about the loyalty of the ethnic German minority and he considered them all potential traitors, and in line with his inherent Great Russian chauvinism, had already decided to deport the entire community to internal exile in case of war. Therefore, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22,1941, the first evacuations, which, in reality, were expulsions, as the inhabitants were never allowed to return to their homes, were decreed by the Supreme Soviet already on June 22. Action to deport every ethnic German from the Crimea began on August 15, the deportees were not told where they were going, how long they would stay there and how much food to take, they were given only three or four hours to pack. The result was starvation for many and, due to the confusion, in all, as many as 60,000 ethnic Germans were expelled from the Crimea at this time. It is unclear whether any remained at all during the Nazi occupation as German policy was to all surviving Soviet Volksdeutsche to settlements in Poland. The Nazi Generalkommissar Alfred Frauenfeld toyed with the idea of resettling ethnic Germans here from Italian South Tyrol after the war, Crimean Germans were only allowed to return to the peninsula after Perestroika. The German reunification brought a rebirth of Crimean-German culture and, since 1994, the 1991 RSFSR law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples addressed rehabilitation of all ethnicities repressed in the Soviet Union
26.
Krasnoyarsk
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Krasnoyarsk is a city and the administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, located on the Yenisei River. It is the third largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk and Omsk, Krasnoyarsk is an important junction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and one of Russias largest producers of aluminum. The city is notable for its landscapes, author Anton Chekhov judged Krasnoyarsk to be the most beautiful city in Siberia. The total area of the city, including suburbs and the river, is 348 square kilometers, the Yenisei River flows from west to east through the city. Due to the Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric dam 32 kilometers upstream, the Yenisei never freezes in winter and never exceeds +14 °C in summer through the city, near the city center, its elevation is 136 meters above sea level. There are several islands in the river, the largest of which are Tatyshev and Otdyha Isles, to the south and west, Krasnoyarsk is surrounded by forested mountains averaging 410 meters in height above river level. The most prominent of them are Nikolayevskaya Sopka, Karaulnaya Gora, and Chornaya Sopka, the major rivers in and near Krasnoyarsk are the Yenisei, Mana, Bazaikha, and Kacha Rivers, the latter flowing throughout the historical center of the city. Due to the nature of the terrain, a few lakes exist in the vicinity of Krasnoyarsk. The forests close to the city are mostly pine and birch, further afield, along with Kansk to the east, it represented the southern limit of Russian expansion in the Yenisei basin during the seventeenth century. In the letter to Tsar Michael I the Cossacks reported, the fort was named Krasny Yar after the Yarin name of the place it was built, Kyzyl Char, which was translated as Krasny Yar. An intensive growth of Krasnoyarsk began with the arrival of the Siberian Route in 1735 to 1741 which connected the towns of Achinsk and Kansk with Krasnoyarsk. In 1749, a meteorite with a mass of about 700 kilograms was found 230 km south of Krasnoyarsk and it was excavated by Peter Simon Pallas in 1772 and transported to Krasnoyarsk and subsequently to St. Petersburg. The Krasnoyarsk meteorite is important because it was the first pallasite ever studied, the name Krasnoyarsk was given in 1822 when the village of Krasny Yar was granted town status and became the administrative center of Yeniseysk Governorate. In the 19th century, Krasnoyarsk was the center of the Siberian Cossack movement, by the end of the 19th century, Krasnoyarsk had several manufacturing facilities and railroad workshops and an engine-house. Growth continued with the discovery of gold and the arrival of a railroad in 1895, in the Russian Empire, Krasnoyarsk was one of the places to which political exiles were banished. For example, eight Decembrists were deported from St. Petersburg to Krasnoyarsk after the failure of the revolt, in 1934, Krasnoyarsk Krai, was formed, with Krasnoyarsk as its administrative center. During Stalinist times, Krasnoyarsk was a center of the gulag system. The most important labor camp was the Kraslag or Krasnoyarsky ITL with the two located in Kansk and Reshyoty
27.
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
28.
Masterpiece
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Historically, a masterpiece was a work of a very high standard produced in order to obtain membership of a guild or academy in various areas of the visual arts and crafts. The word masterpiece probably derives from the Dutch meesterstuk or German meisterstück via loan translation, masterprize was another early variant in English. In English, the term became used in a variety of contexts for an exceptionally good piece of creative work. Originally, the term referred to a piece of work produced by an apprentice or journeyman aspiring to become a master craftsman in the old European guild system. His fitness to qualify for membership was judged partly by the masterpiece, and if he was successful. Great care was taken to produce a fine piece in whatever the craft was, whether confectionery, painting, goldsmithing, knifemaking. In the 17th century, the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, for instance, the workhouse had been set up as part of a tightening of standards after the company became concerned that the level of skill of goldsmithing was being diluted. The same goldsmithing organization still requires the production of a masterpiece, if they failed to be admitted, then they could continue to work for other goldsmiths but not as a master themselves. In some guilds, apprentices were not allowed to marry until they had obtained full membership, the practice of producing a masterpiece has continued in some modern academies of art, where the general term for such works is now reception piece. The Royal Academy in London uses the term work and it has acquired a fine collection of diploma works received as a condition of membership. Painting the Century,101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 Virtual Collection of Masterpieces Masterpieces at the Louvre
29.
Journey into the Whirlwind
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Journey into the Whirlwind is the English title of the critically acclaimed memoir by Eugenia Ginzburg. It was published in English in 1967, some thirty years after the story begins, the two-part book is a highly detailed first-hand account of her life and imprisonment in the Soviet Union during the rule of Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. Although Ginzburg sought to have the manuscript published in the Soviet Union, the manuscript was smuggled out of the country and later sold in many different languages. The first volume was published in 1967 and the volume was published in 1979 two years after Ginzburgs death. A copy would not be published by a Russian publisher until 1990, in the book, Ginzburg discusses a variety of her experiences. Throughout her experiences with the Gulag, Ginzburg was able to form friendships, cultivate a love of poetry and reunite with her son Vasily Aksyonov, readers have found these messages to be powerful and inspiring. Ginzburg wrote a sequel, Within the Whirlwind that continues from the point where she left off in the first instalment of her autobiography and it was republished in the UK by Persephone Books in 2014 as Into the Whirlwind
30.
Milan
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Milan is a city in Italy, capital of the Lombardy region, and the most populous metropolitan area and the second most populous comune in Italy. The population of the city proper is 1,351,000, Milan has a population of about 8,500,000 people. It is the industrial and financial centre of Italy and one of global significance. In terms of GDP, it has the largest economy among European non-capital cities, Milan is considered part of the Blue Banana and lies at the heart of one of the Four Motors for Europe. Milan is an Alpha leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, design, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, services, research, and tourism. Its business district hosts Italys Stock Exchange and the headquarters of the largest national and international banks, the city is a major world fashion and design capital, well known for several international events and fairs, including Milan Fashion Week and the Milan Furniture Fair. The city hosts numerous cultural institutions, academies and universities, with 11% of the national total enrolled students, Milans museums, theatres and landmarks attract over 9 million visitors annually. Milan – after Naples – is the second Italian city with the highest number of accredited stars from the Michelin Guide, the city hosted the Universal Exposition in 1906 and 2015. Milan is home to two of Europes major football teams, A. C. Milan and F. C. Internazionale, the etymology of Milan is uncertain. One theory holds that the Latin name Mediolanum comes from the Latin words medio, however, some scholars believe lanum comes from the Celtic root lan, meaning an enclosure or demarcated territory in which Celtic communities used to build shrines. Hence, Mediolanum could signify the central town or sanctuary of a Celtic tribe, indeed, the name Mediolanum is borne by about sixty Gallo-Roman sites in France, e. g. Saintes and Évreux. Alciato credits Ambrose for his account, around 400 BC, the Celtic Insubres settled Milan and the surrounding region. In 222 BC, the Romans conquered the settlement, renaming it Mediolanum, Milan was eventually declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in 286 AD. Diocletian chose to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire and his colleague Maximianus ruled the Western one, immediately Maximian built several monuments, such as a large circus 470 m ×85 m, the Thermae Herculeae, a large complex of imperial palaces and several other buildings. With the Edict of Milan of 313, Emperor Constantine I guaranteed freedom of religion for Christians, after the city was besieged by the Visigoths in 402, the imperial residence was moved to Ravenna. In 452, the Huns overran the city, in 539, the Ostrogoths conquered and destroyed Milan during the Gothic War against Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. In the summer of 569, a Teutonic tribe, the Lombards, conquered Milan, some Roman structures remained in use in Milan under Lombard rule. Milan surrendered to the Franks in 774 when Charlemagne took the title of King of the Lombards, the Iron Crown of Lombardy dates from this period
31.
Frankfurt
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The city is at the centre of the larger Frankfurt Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, which has a population of 5.8 million and is Germanys second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr. Since the enlargement of the European Union in 2013, the centre of the EU is about 40 km to the east of Frankfurts CBD. Frankfurt is culturally and ethnically diverse, with half of the population. A quarter of the population are foreign nationals, including many expatriates, Frankfurt is an alpha world city and a global hub for commerce, culture, education, tourism and traffic. Its the site of many global and European headquarters, Frankfurt Airport is among the worlds busiest. Automotive, technology and research, services, consulting, media, Frankfurts DE-CIX is the worlds largest internet exchange point. Messe Frankfurt is one of the worlds largest trade fairs, major fairs include the Frankfurt Motor Show, the worlds largest motor show, the Music Fair, and the Frankfurt Book Fair, the worlds largest book fair. Frankfurt is home to educational institutions, including the Goethe University, the UAS, the FUMPA. Its renowned cultural venues include the concert hall Alte Oper, Europes largest English Theatre and many museums, Frankfurts skyline is shaped by some of Europes tallest skyscrapers. In sports, the city is known as the home of the top football club Eintracht Frankfurt, the basketball club Frankfurt Skyliners, the Frankfurt Marathon. Its the seat of German sport unions for Olympics, football, Frankfurt is the largest financial centre in continental Europe. It is home to the European Central Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is one of the worlds largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and accounts for more than 90 percent of the turnover in the German market. Frankfurt is considered a city as listed by the GaWC groups 2012 inventory. Among global cities it was ranked 10th by the Global Power City Index 2011, among financial centres it was ranked 8th by the International Financial Centers Development Index 2013 and 9th by the Global Financial Centres Index 2013. Its central location within Germany and Europe makes Frankfurt a major air, rail, Frankfurt Airport is one of the worlds busiest international airports by passenger traffic and the main hub for Germanys flag carrier Lufthansa. Frankfurter Kreuz, the Autobahn interchange close to the airport, is the most heavily used interchange in the EU, in 2011 human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Frankfurt as seventh in its annual Quality of Living survey of cities around the world. According to The Economist cost-of-living survey, Frankfurt is Germanys most expensive city, Frankfurt has many high-rise buildings in the city centre, forming the Frankfurt skyline. It is one of the few cities in the European Union to have such a skyline and because of it Germans sometimes refer to Frankfurt as Mainhattan, the other well known and obvious nickname is Bankfurt
32.
Biographical film
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A biographical film, or biopic, is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a person and the central characters real name is used. Because the figures portrayed are actual people, whose actions and characteristics are known to the public, biopic roles are considered some of the most demanding of actors and actresses. Biopic scholars include George F. Custen of the College of Staten Island, Custen, in Bio/Pics, How Hollywood Constructed Public History, regards the genre as having died with the Hollywood studio era, and in particular, Darryl F. Zanuck. On the other hand, Binghams 2010 study Whose Lives Are They Anyway, ellen Cheshires Bio-Pics, a life in pictures examines UK/US films from the 1990s and 2000s. Each chapter reviews key films linked by profession and concludes with further viewing list, christopher Robé has also written on the gender norms that underlie the biopic in his article, Taking Hollywood Back in the 2009 issue of Cinema Journal. The Hurricane is not a documentary but a parable, some biopics purposely stretch the truth. Confessions of a Dangerous Mind was based on game show host Chuck Barris widely debunked yet popular memoir of the same name, Kafka incorporated both the life of author Franz Kafka and the surreal aspects of his fiction. The Errol Flynn film They Died with Their Boots On tells the story of Custer but is highly romanticized, casting can be controversial for biographical films. Casting is often a balance between similarity in looks and ability to portray the characteristics of the person, anthony Hopkins felt that he should not have played Richard Nixon in Nixon because of a lack of resemblance between the two. The casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror was objected to because of the American Wayne being cast as the Mongol warlord. Egyptian critics criticized the casting of Louis Gossett, Jr. an African American actor, also, some objected to the casting of Jennifer Lopez in Selena because she is a New York City native of Puerto Rican descent while Selena was Mexican-American. Biographical novel Biography in literature List of biographical films
33.
Within the Whirlwind
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Within the Whirlwind is a 2009 film directed by Marleen Gorris and based on the book by Eugenia Ginzburg. It stars Emily Watson and Pam Ferris, Watson has described the film as the most stretching thing I’ve done as a mature actress. During Joseph Stalins Great Purge, literature professor Evgenia Ginzburg is falsely convicted of anti-Soviet agitation, having lost everything, and no longer wishing to live, she meets Dr. Anton Walter, a Crimean German political prisoner who is a camp doctor in Kolyma. He recommends her for a position as a nurse in the camp infirmary and they fall in love and, slowly, Evgenia begins to come back to life. Emily Watson as Evgenia Ginzburg Pam Ferris as Genias mother Ian Hart as Beylin Ben Miller as Krasny Ulrich Tukur as Dr. Anton Walter Within the Whirlwind has not been picked up for distribution. According to Watson, It was delivered pretty much the day the market crashed so nobody was buying anything. Walk away and say, I have no idea what’s going to happen, within the Whirlwind at the Internet Movie Database Bernd Reinhardt reviews the film for the, World Socialist Website. Ronnie Scheib reviews Within the Whirlwind for Variety. com
34.
Marleen Gorris
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Marleen Gorris is a writer-director from the Netherlands. Gorris is known as an outspoken feminist and supporter of gay, in 1995 she won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for Antonias Line, this made her the first woman to direct a movie that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. Marleen Gorris was born on 9 December 1948 in Roermond in the Netherlands and she was born to Protestant working-class parents in the very Catholic southern part of the Netherlands. Gorris studied drama at home and abroad and she studied Drama at the University of Amsterdam and has an MA in Drama from the University of Birmingham, England. She began working as a filmmaker with almost no experience in the cinema and made an auspicious writing. The Dutch government gave her the funding to finance the project and it was not until the age of 30 that Gorris began writing scripts. Gorris took her first effort to the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, Akerman, however, told Gorris that she must make the film herself. Gorris was honored in her homeland with the Netherlands Golden Calf Award, the title A Question of Silence works on several levels. The title also alludes to the women’s shared silence, suggesting that it can function as a tool of solidarity, Gorris followed up A Question of Silence, with her second film, Broken Mirrors. Gorris did not make another film until 1990, when she directed The Last Island. An allegory on the condition, the film, which told the story of a group of people. Another indictment of male power - the women are seen as the balanced, sane people in the group, while the men constantly fall victim to stupidity. The Last Island furthered Gorris reputation as an insightful and uncompromising feminist filmmaker, Gorris had her greatest international success to date in 1995 with Antonias Line. However, critical support for the film was overwhelming, and it was honored with a number of awards, including a Golden Calf. She followed that up with The Luzhin Defence, based upon a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, the film tells the story of the love affair between an eccentric chess champion and a strong-willed society woman. She then directed the film Carolina starring Julia Stiles, Shirley MacLaine, and Alessandro Nivola, gorriss 2009 film Within the Whirlwind, is set during Joseph Stalins Great Purge and based on the chief protagonist Evgenia Ginzburgs highly acclaimed account of her experience of those years. A literature professor, she is convicted of anti-Soviet agitation. Having lost everything, and no longer wishing to live, she meets Dr. Anton Walter and he recommends her for a position as a nurse in the camp infirmary
35.
Emily Watson
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Emily Margaret Watson, OBE is an English actress. She won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress as Janet Leach for the 2011 ITV television film biopic Appropriate Adult, Watson began her career on stage and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992. In 2002, she starred in productions of Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya at the Donmar Warehouse, Watson was born in Islington, London. Her father, Richard Watson, was an architect and her mother, Katharine, was an English teacher at St Davids Girls School and she was brought up as an Anglican. Watson has described her childhood self as a Nice middle class English girl, id love to say I was a rebellious teenager but I wasnt. Watson was educated at St James Independent Schools, in west London and she attended the University of Bristol, where she obtained a BA. Following university, she trained at the Drama Studio London and she later received an MA from Bristol University. Watsons career began on the stage and her theatre credits include The Childrens Hour, Three Sisters, Much Ado About Nothing and The Lady from the Sea. Watson has also worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in A Jovial Crew, The Taming of the Shrew, Alls Well That Ends Well and her performance was widely acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic and garnered her an Olivier Award nomination for Uncle Vanya. Watson was virtually unknown until director Lars von Trier chose her to star in his controversial Breaking the Waves after Helena Bonham Carter dropped out at the very last minute. She also played a role in Cradle Will Rock, a story of a theatre show in the 1930s. Though she won the role of Frank McCourts mother in the adaptation of his acclaimed memoir, Angelas Ashes. In 2001, she appeared alongside John Turturro in The Luzhin Defence, in 2004, Watson received a Golden Globe nomination for her role as Peter Sellerss first wife, Anne Howe, in the HBO film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. 2005 saw Watson starring in four films, Wah-Wah, Richard E, in 2007, she appeared in The Water Horse, Legend of the Deep, an adaptation of the Dick King-Smith childrens novel about the origin of the Loch Ness Monster. Watson considers Ginzburg to be her best recent role, however, in 2011, she played Janet Leach in the ITV two-part film Appropriate Adult, about serial killer Fred West, for which she won a BAFTA. She also received rave reviews for her portrayal of Julie Nicholson in the BBC Drama A Song for Jenny, Watson was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to drama. In 2017, she starred in the BBC mini-series Apple Tree Yard, in 2007, Mood Indigo, a script written by Watson and her husband, was optioned by Capitol Films. The film is a story set during the Second World War
36.
Pam Ferris
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Pamela E. Pam Ferris is a German-Welsh character actress. In 2004 Pamela Ferris played Lolita in the second Doc Martin movie Legend of the Cloutie, Ferris was born in Hanover, Lower Saxony, Germany, to Welsh parents, while her father was serving in the Royal Air Force. Ferris spent her childhood in the Aberkenfig area, near Bridgend in Wales and her father, Fred Ferris, was a policeman, and her mother, Ann Perkins, worked in her familys bakery business. Her family emigrated to New Zealand when she was 13, Ferris returned to the UK in her early 20s. In 1986, she married actor Roger Frost and she lives in Eltham, Kent, South East England. She appeared in The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends as Aunt Pettitoes in The Tale of Pigling Bland in 1995 and she has also acted in a succession of television dramas. These include, Meantime, in which she played the Cockney mother of Phil Daniels and Tim Roth, Connie, Hardwicke House, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Where the Heart Is and Paradise Heights. From 2003 to 2006, she played the sleuth, Laura Thyme. Her roles in costume dramas include parts in television adaptations of Middlemarch, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Our Mutual Friend, The Turn of the Screw, Pollyanna, Ferris portrayed the horrid school headmistress Miss Agatha Trunchbull in Matilda. Additionally, she played the nasty Aunt Marge in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Miriam and she appeared in Agatha Christies Marples 4.50 from Paddington in 2004 as Mrs Elspeth McGillicuddy. She has also acted in productions for BBC Radio 4 and her career in the theatre has included parts in Royal Court Theatre and National Theatre productions. In 2007 she played Phoebe Rice in a revival of John Osbornes The Entertainer at Londons Old Vic Theatre. In 2007 Ferris took part in the BBC Wales programme Coming Home about her Welsh family history, in 2008 she played Mrs General in an all-star cast BBC adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Little Dorrit. From 2009 to 2010, she appeared in the series of the BBC comedy Gavin & Stacey as Cath Smith. In 2010 she made a guest appearance in the sitcom Grandmas House, from 2012 to 2016 Ferris played the part of Sister Evangelina in the series Call the Midwife. In June and July 2015 Ferris was the guest of Sarah Walker on BBC Radio 3s Essential Classics, Pam Ferris at the Internet Movie Database
37.
Ben Miller
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Bennet Evan Ben Miller is an English comedian, actor and director. He is best known as one half of comedy double act Armstrong and Miller, Miller and Armstrong wrote and starred in the Channel 4 sketch show Armstrong and Miller, as well as the BBC sketch show The Armstrong & Miller Show. Miller was born in London, England and grew up in Nantwich and his paternal grandfather was a Lithuanian Jewish tailor who emigrated to the UK and lived in Londons East End. Bens father Michael Miller was a lecturer in American Literature at the City of Birmingham Polytechnic and she taught English at South Cheshire College. He has two sisters, Leah and Bronwen. Miller was educated at Malbank School and Sixth Form College, his local school in Nantwich. He studied Natural Sciences at St Catharines College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate, he participated in theatre with Rachel Weisz, and also dated her. He remained at Cambridge to study for a PhD in solid state physics and he abandoned completion of his thesis to pursue a career in comedy. Millers interest in comedy began when a friend asked him to ferry around the judges of the National Student Drama Festival. Having already finished his degree, he joined the Footlights in 1989, working with Andy Parsons, David Wolstencroft and Sue Perkins. Miller moved to London to pursue a career in comedy and he was introduced to fellow Cambridge graduate Alexander Armstrong in 1992, at the TBA Sketch Comedy Group, a comedy club which ran at the Gate Theatre Studio, Notting Hill throughout the 1990s. They performed their first full-length show together at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1994 and returned in 1996, when they were nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. Their success resulted in the commission of the television series Armstrong and Miller, in 1998, the duo also had their own radio show with the same name on BBC Radio 4, which featured many of the sketches and characters from their TV series. After a six-year break, the show was recommissioned for Hat Trick Productions as The Armstrong, in 2008, they also had a second radio show, Childrens Hour with Armstrong and Miller. Miller also started acting in films, starring in Steve Coogans first feature film, in 2003 he played the role of Bough, sidekick to Rowan Atkinsons title character, in the film Johnny English. In 2004 he co-starred in The Prince and Me, in 2004 and 2005, he starred in two series of the BBC television series The Worst Week of My Life, with Sarah Alexander. In 2006 he took part in a three-part Christmas special, The Worst Christmas of My Life and he starred as James Lester in ITVs 2007 sci-fi drama Primeval and as Mr Jonathan in the Australian film Razzle Dazzle, A Journey into Dance. Miller provided the voice for the ITV Digital and now PG Tips Monkey in a series of television advertisements featuring Johnny Vegas
38.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
39.
Samizdat
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Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows, Samizdat, I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself. Etymologically, the word derives from sam and izdat. The Ukrainian language has a term, samvýdav, from sam, self. The Russian poet Nikolai Glazkov coined a version of the term as a pun in the 1940s when he typed copies of his poems, Tamizdat refers to literature published abroad, often from smuggled manuscripts. Samizdat copies of texts, such as Mikhail Bulgakovs novel The Master, the techniques used to reproduce these forbidden texts varied. Samizdat distinguishes itself not only by the ideas and debates which it helped spread to a wider audience, the hand-typed, often blurry and wrinkled pages with numerous typographical errors and nondescript covers helped to separate and elevate Russian samizdat from Western literature. The physical form of samizdat arose from a lack of resources. The form samizdat took gained precedence over the ideas it expressed, in effect, the physical form of samizdat itself elevated the reading of samizdat to a prized clandestine act. Samizdat originated from the dissident movement of the Russian intelligentsia, while circulation of samizdat was relatively low, at around 200,000 readers on average, many of these readers possessed positions of cultural power and authority. The purpose and methods of samizdat may contrast with the purpose of the concept of copyright, self-published and self-distributed literature has a long history in Russia. Samizdat is unique to the post-Stalin USSR and other countries with similar systems, under the grip of censorship of the police state, society turned to underground literature for self-analysis and self-expression. Certain works published legally in the State-controlled media were practically impossible to find in bookshops and libraries, the first full-length book to be distributed as samizdat was Boris Pasternaks 1957 novel Doctor Zhivago. Although the literary magazine Novy Mir had published ten poems from the book in 1954, the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn had a similar fate and was widely distributed via samizdat. The editors of magazines were regulars at impromptu public poetry readings in 1958-61 on Mayakovsky square in Moscow. The gatherings did not last long, as soon the authorities began clamping down on them, in the summer of 1961, several meeting regulars were arrested and charged with anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, putting an end to most of the magazines. Not everything published in samizdat had political overtones, in 1963, Joseph Brodsky was charged with social parasitism and convicted for being nothing but a poet. His poems circulated in samizdat, with only four judged as suitable for official Soviet anthologies, in the mid-1960s, the Youngest Society of Geniuses, an unofficial literary group known by the acronym SMOG issued an almanac titled The Sphinxes and collections of prose and poetry
40.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was a critic of the Soviet Union and communism. He was allowed to only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward, August 1914, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature. Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he would not be allowed to reenter and he was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the states dissolution. Solzhenitsyn was born in Kislovodsk, RSFSR and his mother, Taisiya Zakharovna was of Ukrainian descent. Her father had risen from humble beginnings to become a wealthy landowner, during World War I, Taisiya went to Moscow to study. While there she met and married Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn, a officer in the Imperial Russian Army of Cossack origins. The family background of his parents is vividly brought to life in the chapters of August 1914. In 1918, Taisia became pregnant with Aleksandr, on 15 June, shortly after her pregnancy was confirmed, Isaakiy was killed in a hunting accident. Aleksandr was raised by his mother and aunt in lowly circumstances. His earliest years coincided with the Russian Civil War, by 1930 the family property had been turned into a collective farm. Later, Solzhenitsyn recalled that his mother had fought for survival and his educated mother encouraged his literary and scientific learnings and raised him in the Russian Orthodox faith, she died in 1944. As early as 1936, Solzhenitsyn began developing the characters and concepts for an epic work on World War I. This eventually led to the novel August 1914 – some of the chapters he wrote then still survive, Solzhenitsyn studied mathematics at Rostov State University. At the same time he took courses from the Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History. As he himself makes clear, he did not question the state ideology or the superiority of the Soviet Union until he spent time in the camps. During the war Solzhenitsyn served as the commander of a battery in the Red Army, was involved in major action at the front
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Khrushchev Thaw
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The Thaw became possible after the death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953. Khrushchev denounced Stalin in The Secret Speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, the term was coined after Ilya Ehrenburgs 1954 novel The Thaw, sensational for its time. Although the power struggle between pro-Khrushchev and pro-Stalinists never stopped, it weakened the Soviet Communist Party. Such political and cultural updates all together helped liberate the minds of millions, Khrushchevs Thaw had its genesis in the concealed power struggle among Stalins lieutenants. Several major leaders among the Red Army commanders, such as Marshal Georgy Zhukov, on the surface, the Red Army and the Soviet leadership seemed united after their victory in World War II. That power struggle was surreptitiously prepared by Khrushchev while Stalin was alive, at the same time, millions of soldiers and officers had seen Europe after World War II, and had become aware of different ways of life which existed outside the Soviet Union. The loot was confiscated by Stalins security apparatus, and Marshal Zhukov was demoted, humiliated and exiled, Zhukov waited until the death of Stalin, which allowed Khrushchev to bring Zhukov back for a new political battle. Khrushchev and Zhukov needed one another to eliminate their enemies in the Soviet political elite. In 1953, Zhukov helped Khrushchev to eliminate Lavrenty Beria, then a First Vice-Premier, soon Khrushchev ordered the release of millions of political prisoners from the Gulag camps. Under Khrushchevs rule the number of prisoners in the Soviet Union was decreased, according to some writers, Khrushchev also promoted and groomed Leonid Brezhnev, whom he brought to Kremlin and introduced to Stalin in 1952. Then Khrushchev promoted Brezhnev to Presidium and made him the Head of Political Directorate of the Red Army and Navy, after the delivery of the speech, it was officially disseminated in a shorter form among members of the Soviet Communist Party across the USSR starting 5 March 1956. Then Khrushchev initiated a wave of rehabilitations that officially restored the reputations of many millions of innocent victims, further, tentative moves were made through official and unofficial channels to relax restrictions on freedom of speech that had been held over from the rule of Stalin. Khrushchevs speech was published internationally within a few months, and his initiatives to open, Khrushchevs speech had angered many of his powerful enemies, thus igniting another round of ruthless power struggle within the Soviet Communist Party. Khrushchevs denouncement of Stalin came as a shock to the Soviet people, many in Georgia, Stalins homeland, especially the young generation, bred on the panegyrics and permanent praise of the genius of Stalin, perceived it as a national insult. The first big international failure of Khrushchevs politics came in October–November 1956, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was suppressed by a massive invasion of Soviet tanks and Red Army troops in Budapest. The street fighting against the invading Red Army caused thousands of casualties among Hungarian civilians and militia, the attack of the Soviet Red Army also caused massive emigration from Hungary, as hundreds of thousands of Hungarians had fled as refugees. At the same time, the Polish October emerged as the political and social climax in Poland, a faction of the Soviet communist party was enraged by Khrushchevs speech in 1956, and rejected Khrushchevs de-Stalinization and liberalization of Soviet society. One year after Khrushchevs secret speech, the Stalinists attempted to oust Khrushchev from the position in the Soviet Communist Party
42.
Henry Abramson
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Henry Abramson was the former Dean for Academic Affairs and Student Services at Touro Colleges Miami branch. He is currently the Dean of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences in Flatbush, henry Abramson was born and raised in Iroquois Falls, Ontario. His research was also supervised by Professor Michael Marrus and Professor Zvi Gitelman, Abramson was named to the Shevchenko Scientific Society in 1999. While teaching at Hebrew University, he attended the class taught by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach at Ohr Somayach. In 2006, Abramson moved to his position at Touro College South and he authored the Ukraine entry in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe as well as the Zionist movement entry in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine. Abramson also was curator for an exhibit on the history of antisemitic iconography in Florida entitled The Art of Hatred and he has written two introductory books directed toward general audiences about the Talmud and lectures regularly at Touro College South about the history of Orthodox Judaism. Abramson has also been a popularizer of Jewish thought, publishing a primer of Talmud, kathleen Raymond Award for Excellence in Teaching, IMPAC Award, Florida Atlantic University,2001. Distinguished Professor of the Year, Phi Alpha Theta History Honors Society, Xi Omega Chapter, Excellence in the Academy Award, National Education Association,2000. * 1999/2000 Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Florida Atlantic University,2000. Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers listing,2000, Award for Outstanding Teaching, Life Long Learning Society, Florida Atlantic University,1999. Abramson has pioneered the development of Jewish education online and his This Week in Jewish History videos are a regular feature in Rabbi Gil Students Torah Musings blog as well as Torahcafe. He shares his research in teacher training seminars in Miami, in addition to This Week in Jewish History, Abramson also teaches History of the Jewish People for Touro College. This online course has two sections and is designed to be more interactive than the online course. Course information is provided in video format simulating a traditional classroom lecture, additionally, students are required to take part in group projects. He currently teaches a History of the Jewish People II course at Touro College, henry Abramson, A Prayer for the Government, Ukrainians and Jews in Revolutionary Times, 1917-1920. Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University Press,1999, New York, NY, Feldheim,2006, reprinted 2012 by Parnoseh Books at Smashwords. Henry Abramson, The Art of Hatred, Images of Intolerance in Florida Culture, Miami Beach, FL, Jewish Museum of Florida,2001. Henry Abramson, The Sea of Talmud, A Brief and Personal Introduction Miami Beach, FL, henry Abramson, Moses Maimonides on Teshuvah, The Ways of Repentance, A New Translation and Commentary Smashwords/Createspace,2012. Henry Abramson, The Kabbalah of Forgiveness, The Thirteen Levels of Mercy in Rabbi Moshe Cordoveros Date Palm of Devorah Smashwords/Createspace,2014
43.
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
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Soviet dissidents
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Soviet dissidents were persons who disagreed with certain features in the embodiment of Soviet ideology and who were willing to speak out against them. The term dissident was used in the Soviet Union in the period following Joseph Stalins death until the fall of communism and it was used to refer to small groups of marginalized intellectuals whose modest challenges to the Soviet regime met protection and encouragement from correspondents. Following the etymology of the term, a dissident is considered to sit apart from the regime, as dissenters began self-identifying as dissidents, the term came to refer to an individual whose non-conformism was perceived to be for the good of a society. Political opposition in the USSR was barely visible and, with rare exceptions, instead, an important element of dissident activity in the Soviet Union was informing society about violation of laws and human rights. Over time, the dissident movement created vivid awareness of Soviet Communist abuses, Soviet dissidents who criticized the state faced possible legal sanctions under the Soviet Criminal Code and faced the choice of exile, the mental hospital, or the labor camp. In the 1950s, Soviet dissidents started leaking criticism to the West by sending documents and statements to foreign missions in Moscow. Our history shows that most of the people can be fooled for a long time. But now all this idiocy is coming into clear contradiction with the fact that we have some level of openness, the heyday of the dissenters as a presence in the Western public life was the 1970s. The Helsinki Accords inspired dissidents in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, dissident Russian and East European intellectuals who urged compliance with the Helsinki accords have been subjected to official repression. According to Soviet dissident Leonid Plyushch, Moscow has taken advantage of the Helsinki security pact to improve its economy while increasing the suppression of political dissenters,50 members of Soviet Helsinki Groups were imprisoned. US President Jimmy Carter in his address on 20 January 1977 announced that human rights would be central to foreign policy during his administration. In February, Carter sent Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov a letter expressing his support for the stance on human rights. In the wake of Carters letter to Sakharov, the USSR cautioned against attempts to interfere in its affairs under a pretext of defending human rights. The KGB head Yuri Andropov determined, The need has thus emerged to terminate the actions of Orlov, fellow Helsinki monitor Ginzburg and others once and for all, if we accept human rights violations as just their way of doing things, then we are all guilty. On the grounds that political dissenters in the Soviet Union were psychotic and deluded, they were locked away in psychiatric hospitals, confinement of political dissenters in psychiatric institutions had become a common practice. Finally, many persons at that time tended to believe that dissidents were abnormal people whose commitment to mental hospitals was quite justified. Another wave of arrests followed in the early 1980s, Malva Landa, Viktor Nekipelov, Leonard Ternovsky, Feliks Serebrov, Tatiana Osipova, Anatoly Marchenko, Soviet authorities offered some activists the opportunity to emigrate. By 1983 the Ukrainian Helsinki Group had 37 members, of whom 22 were in camps,5 were in exile,6 emigrated to the West,3 were released and were living in Ukraine,1 committed suicide
