1.
Boris Kustodiev
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Boris Mikhaylovich Kustodiev was a Russian painter and stage designer. Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan into the family of a professor of philosophy, history of literature and his father died young, and all financial and material burdens fell on his mothers shoulders. The Kustodiev family rented a wing in a rich merchants house. It was there that the boys first impressions were formed of the way of life of the merchant class. The artist later wrote, The whole tenor of the rich and it was like something out of an Ostrovsky play. The artist retained these childhood observations for years, recreating them later in oils, between 1893 and 1896, Boris studied in theological seminary and took private art lessons in Astrakhan from Pavel Vlasov, a pupil of Vasily Perov. Subsequently, from 1896 to 1903, he attended Ilya Repin’s studio at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, concurrently, he took classes in sculpture under Dmitry Stelletsky and in etching under Vasiliy Mate. I have great hopes for Kustodiev, wrote Repin and he is a talented artist and a thoughtful and serious man with a deep love of art, he is making a careful study of nature. When Repin was commissioned to paint a canvas to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the State Council. The painting was extremely complex and involved a great deal of hard work, together with his teacher, the young artist made portrait studies for the painting, and then executed the right-hand side of the final work. Also at this time, Kustodiev made a series of portraits of contemporaries whom he felt to be his spiritual comrades and these included the artist Ivan Bilibin, Moldovtsev, and the engraver Mate. Working on these portraits considerably helped the artist, forcing him to make a study of his model. In 1903, he married Julia Proshinskaya and he visited France and Spain on a grant from the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1904. Also in 1904, he attended the studio of René Ménard in Paris. After that he traveled to Spain, then, in 1907, to Italy, and in 1909 he visited Austria and Germany, during these years he painted many portraits and genre pieces. However, no matter where Kustodiev happened to be – in sunny Seville or in the park at Versailles – he felt the pull of his motherland. After five months in France he returned to Russia, writing with evident joy to his friend Mate that he was once more in our blessed Russian land. The Russian Revolution of 1905, which shook the foundations of society and he contributed to the satirical journals Zhupel and Adskaya Pochta
2.
Lebedyan
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It was founded in 1613 largely to guard the holdings of I. N. Romanov, the Tsars uncle, and served as a border outpost protecting South Russia from the Crimean Tatars incursions. The Trinity Monastery was established in 1621 and several churches were built by the end of the century, chartered in 1779, Lebedyan developed in the 19th century as a center of horse racing and horse breeding. The locals claim that the first racetrack in Russia was opened here in 1826, the Agricultural Society of Lebedyan, founded in 1847, was influential in preparing the emancipation reform of 1861. Within the framework of administrative divisions, Lebedyan serves as the center of Lebedyansky District. As an administrative division, it is incorporated within Lebedyansky District as Lebedyan Town Under District Jurisdiction, as a municipal division, Lebedyan Town Under District Jurisdiction is incorporated within Lebedyansky Municipal District as Lebedyan Urban Settlement. The town is the location of the largest fruit juice manufacturer in Eastern Europe, Lebedyan has two cathedrals, both dedicated to the icon of the Theotokos of Kazan. The old and neglected cathedral goes back to the 18th century, while the cathedral on the market square was designed in the Empire style. Lebedyan is the birthplace of Yevgeny Zamyatin, other residents of the town include Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrey Bely. Ivan Turgenev incorporated a story titled Lebedyan in his collection A Sportsmans Sketches and it was also the home of Leonid Mulyarchik, who attempted to singlehandedly build a subway system in the town. Закон №382-ОЗ от28 апреля2010 г, «Об административно-территориальном устройстве Липецкой области и порядке его изменения», в ред. Закона №343-ОЗ от5 декабря2014 г, «О внесении изменений в некоторые Законы Липецкой области в связи с объединением сельских поселений Добринский сельсовет и Сафоновский сельсовет Добринского муниципального района Липецкой области». Вступил в силу по истечении10 дней со дня официального опубликования, Опубликован, Липецкая газета, №88,7 мая2010 г. Закон №126-ОЗ от23 сентября2004 г, «Об установлении границ муниципальных образований Липецкой области», в ред. Закона №343-ОЗ от5 декабря2014 г, «О внесении изменений в некоторые Законы Липецкой области в связи с объединением сельских поселений Добринский сельсовет и Сафоновский сельсовет Добринского муниципального района Липецкой области». Вступил в силу26 сентября2004 г, Опубликован, Липецкая газета, №188,25 сентября2004 г
3.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
4.
Journalist
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A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information. A journalists work is called journalism, a journalist can work with general issues or specialize in certain issues. However, most journalists tend to specialize, and by cooperating with other journalists, for example, a sports journalist covers news within the world of sports, but this journalist may be a part of a newspaper that covers many different topics. A reporter is a type of journalist who researches, writes, and reports on information in order to present in sources, conduct interviews, engage in research, and make reports. The information-gathering part of a job is sometimes called reporting. Reporters may split their time working in a newsroom and going out to witness events or interviewing people. Reporters may be assigned a beat or area of coverage. Depending on the context, the term journalist may include various types of editors, editorial writers, columnists, Journalism has developed a variety of ethics and standards. While objectivity and a lack of bias are of concern and importance, more liberal types of journalism, such as advocacy journalism and activism. This has become prevalent with the advent of social media and blogs, as well as other platforms that are used to manipulate or sway social and political opinions. These platforms often project extreme bias, as sources are not always held accountable or considered necessary in order to produce a written, nor did they often directly experience most social problems, or have direct access to expert insights. These limitations were made worse by a media that tended to over-simplify issues and to reinforce stereotypes, partisan viewpoints. As a consequence, Lippmann believed that the public needed journalists like himself who could serve as analysts, guiding “citizens to a deeper understanding of what was really important. ”Journalists sometimes expose themselves to danger. Organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders publish reports on press freedom, as of November 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 887 journalists have been killed worldwide since 1992 by murder, crossfire or combat, or on dangerous assignment. The ten deadliest countries for journalists since 1992 have been Iraq, Philippines, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Algeria, Pakistan, India, Somalia, Brazil and Sri Lanka. The Committee to Protect Journalists also reports that as of December 1st 2010,145 journalists were jailed worldwide for journalistic activities. The ten countries with the largest number of currently-imprisoned journalists are Turkey, China, Iran, Eritrea, Burma, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Cuba, Ethiopia, apart from the physical harm, journalists are harmed psychologically. This applies especially to war reporters, but their offices at home often do not know how to deal appropriately with the reporters they expose to danger
5.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
6.
Science fiction
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Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a literature of ideas. Science fiction is difficult to define, as it includes a range of subgenres and themes. Author and editor Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying science fiction is what we point to when we say it, a definition echoed by author Mark C. Glassy, who argues that the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography, you do not know what it is, in 1970 or 1971William Atheling Jr. According to science fiction writer Robert A, rod Serlings definition is fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. Science fiction elements include, A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, a spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth. Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots, futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers. Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted physical laws, for time travel, wormholes. New and different political or social systems, e. g. utopian, dystopian, post-scarcity, paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis Other universes or dimensions and travel between them. A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of science itself. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Keplers work the first science fiction story and it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earths motion is seen from there. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon, more examples appeared throughout the 19th century. Wells The War of the Worlds describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry and it is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. In the late 19th century, the scientific romance was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland, the term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapledon. In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars
7.
We (novel)
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We is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921. The novel was first published in 1924 by E. P. Dutton in New York in an English translation by Gregory Zilboorg, the novel describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state. D-503, an engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style, people march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers, the society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individuals behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas, One thousand years after the One States conquest of the entire world, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to invade and conquer extraterrestrial planets. Meanwhile, the chief engineer, D-503, begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship. Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in an apartment building and is carefully watched by the secret police. D-503s lover, O-90, has been assigned by One State to visit him on certain nights and she is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by her state in life. O-90s other lover and D-503s best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions, while on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal sex visit, both repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. I-330 invites him to visit the Ancient House, notable for being the only building in One State. Objects of aesthetic and historical importance dug up from around the city are stored there, There, I-330 offers him the services of a corrupt doctor to explain his absence from work. Leaving in horror, D-503 vows to denounce her to the Bureau of Guardians and he begins to have dreams, which disturbs him, as dreams are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is involved with the Mephi and she takes him through secret tunnels inside the Ancient House to the world outside the Green Wall, which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets the inhabitants of the world, humans whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of the Mephi are to destroy the Green Wall, despite the recent rift between them, O-90 pleads with D-503 to impregnate her illegally. After O-90 insists that she will obey the law by turning over their child to be raised by the One State, however, as her pregnancy progresses, O-90 realizes that she cannot bear to be parted from her baby under any circumstances
8.
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
9.
Julian calendar
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The Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, was a reform of the Roman calendar. It took effect on 1 January 45 BC, by edict, the Julian calendar gains against the mean tropical year at the rate of one day in 128 years. For the Gregorian the figure is one day in 3,030 years, the difference in the average length of the year between Julian and Gregorian is 0. 002%. The Julian calendar has a year of 365 days divided into 12 months. A leap day is added to February every four years, the Julian year is, therefore, on average 365.25 days long. It was intended to approximate the tropical year, as a result, the calendar year gains about three days every four centuries compared to observed equinox times and the seasons. This discrepancy was corrected by the Gregorian reform of 1582, consequently, the Julian calendar is currently 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. Egypt converted on 20 December 1874/1 January 1875, turkey switched on 16 February/1 March 1917. Russia changed on 1/14 February 1918, Greece made the change for civil purposes on 16 February/1 March 1923 - the national day, which was a religious holiday, was to remain on the old calendar. Most Christian denominations in the west and areas evangelised by western churches have replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian as the basis for their liturgical calendars. However, most branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church still use the Julian calendar for calculating the date of Easter, some Orthodox churches have adopted the Revised Julian calendar for the observance of fixed feasts, while other Orthodox churches retain the Julian calendar for all purposes. The Julian calendar is used by the Berbers of the Maghreb in the form of the Berber calendar. In the form of the Alexandrian calendar, it is the basis for the Ethiopian calendar, during the changeover between calendars and for some time afterwards, dual dating was used in documents and gave the date according to both systems. In contemporary as well as texts that describe events during the period of change. The ordinary year in the previous Roman calendar consisted of 12 months, in addition, a 27- or 28-day intercalary month, the Mensis Intercalaris, was sometimes inserted between February and March. The net effect was to add 22 or 23 days to the year, some say the mensis intercalaris always had 27 days and began on either the first or the second day after the Terminalia. According to the later writers Censorinus and Macrobius, the ideal intercalary cycle consisted of ordinary years of 355 days alternating with intercalary years, alternately 377 and 378 days long. In this system, the average Roman year would have had 366 1⁄4 days over four years, Macrobius describes a further refinement whereby, in one 8-year period within a 24-year cycle, there were only three intercalary years, each of 377 days
10.
Gregorian calendar
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The Gregorian calendar is internationally the most widely used civil calendar. It is named after Pope Gregory XIII, who introduced it in October 1582, the calendar was a refinement to the Julian calendar involving a 0. 002% correction in the length of the year. The motivation for the reform was to stop the drift of the calendar with respect to the equinoxes and solstices—particularly the northern vernal equinox, transition to the Gregorian calendar would restore the holiday to the time of the year in which it was celebrated when introduced by the early Church. The reform was adopted initially by the Catholic countries of Europe, the last European country to adopt the reform was Greece, in 1923. Many countries that have used the Islamic and other religious calendars have come to adopt this calendar for civil purposes. The reform was a modification of a made by Aloysius Lilius. His proposal included reducing the number of years in four centuries from 100 to 97. Lilius also produced an original and practical scheme for adjusting the epacts of the moon when calculating the date of Easter. For example, the years 1700,1800, and 1900 are not leap years, but the years 1600 and 2000 are. The canonical Easter tables were devised at the end of the third century, when the vernal equinox fell either on 20 March or 21 March depending on the years position in the leap year cycle. As the rule was that the full moon preceding Easter was not to precede the equinox, the date was fixed at 21 March for computational purposes, the Gregorian calendar reproduced these conditions by removing ten days. To unambiguously specify a date, dual dating or Old Style, dual dating gives two consecutive years for a given date, because of differences in the starting date of the year, and/or to give both the Julian and the Gregorian dates. The Gregorian calendar continued to use the calendar era, which counts years from the traditional date of the nativity. This year-numbering system, also known as Dionysian era or Common Era, is the predominant international standard today, the Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar. A regular Gregorian year consists of 365 days, but as in the Julian calendar, in a leap year, in the Julian calendar a leap year occurs every 4 years, but the Gregorian calendar omits 3 leap days every 400 years. In the Julian calendar, this day was inserted by doubling 24 February. In the modern period, it has become customary to number the days from the beginning of the month, some churches, notably the Roman Catholic Church, delay February festivals after the 23rd by one day in leap years. Gregorian years are identified by consecutive year numbers, the cycles repeat completely every 146,097 days, which equals 400 years
11.
Police state
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Police state is a term denoting a government that exercises power arbitrarily through the power of the police force. Political control may be exerted by means of a police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state. Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, the Oxford English Dictionary traces the phrase police state back to 1851, when it was used in reference to the use of a national police force to maintain order, in Austria. The German term Polizeistaat came into English usage in the 1930s with reference to governments that had begun to emerge in Europe. Because there are different political perspectives as to what an appropriate balance is between individual freedom and national security, there are no standards defining a police state. This concept can be viewed as a balance or scale, along this spectrum, any law that has the effect of removing liberty is seen as moving towards a police state, while any law that limits government oversight is seen as moving towards a free state. An electronic police state is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search, the Oprichnina established by Ivan IV within the Tsardom of Russia in 1565 functioned as a police state, featuring persecutions and autocratic rule. Nazi Germany emerged from a democratic process, yet gradually exerted more and more repressive controls over its people in the lead-up to World War II. In addition to the SS and the Gestapo, the Nazi police state used the judiciary to assert control over the population from the 1930s until the end of the war in 1945, the Republic of Cuba under president Fulgencio Batista was an authoritarian police state during his rule. Police influence continued following his overthrow during the Cuban Revolution in 1959 with the rise to power of Fidel Castro, in response to government proposals to enact new security measures to curb protests, government of AK Party has been accused of turning Turkey into a police state. Fictional police states have featured in a number of media ranging from novels to films to video games, george Orwells 1984 has been described as the definitive fictional treatment of a police state, which has also influenced contemporary usage of the term. Amnesty International,2005 — annual report on human rights violations Council for Secular Humanism article describing attributes of police states David Mery Suspicious behaviour on the tube. Whitehead to Speak to Senior Statesmen of Virginia on the Emerging American Police State and What 2014 Holds in Store for Our Freedoms
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.
October Revolution
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It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on 25 October 1917. During this time, urban workers began to organize into councils wherein revolutionaries criticized the provisional government and this immediately initiated the establishment of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first self-proclaimed socialist state. The revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, who used their influence in the Petrograd Soviet to organize the armed forces, Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military Revolutionary Committee began the takeover of government buildings on 24 October 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace, was captured, the long-awaited Constituent Assembly elections were held on 12 November 1917. The Bolsheviks only won 175 seats in the 715-seat legislative body, coming in second behind the Socialist Revolutionary party, the Constituent Assembly was to first meet on 28 November 1917, but its convocation was delayed until 5 January 1918 by the Bolsheviks. On its first and only day in session, the body rejected Soviet decrees on peace and land, as the revolution was not universally recognized, there followed the struggles of the Russian Civil War and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922. At first, the event was referred to as the October coup or the Uprising of 25th, in Russian, however, переворот has a similar meaning to revolution and also means upheaval or overturn, so coup is not necessarily the correct translation. With time, the term October Revolution came into use and it is also known as the November Revolution having occurred in November according to the Gregorian Calendar. The Great October Socialist Revolution was the name for the October Revolution in the Soviet Union after the 10th anniversary of the Revolution in 1927. The February Revolution had toppled Tsar Nicolas II of Russia, however, the provisional government was weak and riven by internal dissension. It continued to wage World War I, which became increasingly unpopular, a nationwide crisis developed in Russia, affecting social, economic, and political relations. Disorder in industry and transport had intensified, and difficulties in obtaining provisions had increased, gross industrial production in 1917 had decreased by over 36% from what it had been in 1914. In the autumn, as much as 50% of all enterprises were closed down in the Urals, the Donbas, at the same time, the cost of living increased sharply. Real wages fell about 50% from what they had been in 1913, russias national debt in October 1917 had risen to 50 billion rubles. Of this, debts to foreign governments constituted more than 11 billion rubles, the country faced the threat of financial bankruptcy. In these months alone, more than a million took part in strikes. Workers established control over production and distribution in many factories and plants in a social revolution, by October 1917, there had been over 4,000 peasant uprisings against landowners. When the Provisional Government sent punitive detachments, it only enraged the peasants
14.
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
15.
Tambov Governorate
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Tambov Governorate was the administrative unit of the Russian Empire, Russian Republic, and later the Russian SFSR with the center in the city of Tambov. The governorate was located between 51°14 and 55°6 of north latitude and between 38°9 and 43°38 east longitude, the governorate was created in 1796 when it was reformed out of Tambov Viceroyalty that was organized in 1779. The borders of it were unchanged until 1926 when the half of the governorate was split between other two governorates of Penza and Ryazan. Due to the reform of 1928 Tambov governorate was divided into three okrugs, Tambov Okrug, Kozlov Okrug, and Borisoglebsk Okrug. In 1937 a substantial part of the governorate was transformed into Tambov Oblast out of Voronezh Oblast, during the times of Tambov rebellion 1920-1922 some part of the governorate became the separatist political formation, the Republic of Tambov, with Shendiapin as the head of the state. Later the republic was overwhelmed by the forces of the RKKA, in the 1920s, ethnologist Pyotr Petrovich Ivanov has conducted a major excavations that uncovered evidence of the culture of Mordvins that inhibited the area in the first millennium CE. The governorate was divided into twelve uyezds, in 1864, when the Zemstvo Law was passed, the uyezds and governorates received a certain degree of self-government governed by zemstvo. Borisoglebsk Kirsanov Kozlov Lebedyan Lipetsk Morshansk Shatsk Spassk Tambov Temnikov Usman Yelatma Big cities of over 10,000 were Tambov, Kozlov, Morshansk, Lipetsk, and Borisoglebsk. The population of the governorate consisted largely of the ethnic Russians with some Mordvins, Meshchera, in 1825 the Russian Subbotniks were expelled from the governorate by authorities while being labeled as Jews. Since 18th century and until 1858 the Russian government conducted the population revisions of around 10 that were documented, the estimated population in 1906 was 3,205,200. The following list is based upon the Russian Empire Census of 1897 with ethnic groups that were accounted for at least over 1000 people, almost everybody were the followers of the Russian Eastern Orthodoxy with insignificant number of Muslims and Molokans. It has an area of 25,703 sq. miles, cretaceous and Jurassic deposits, thickly covered with boulder-clay and loess, were widely spread over its surface, concealing the underlying Devonian and Carboniferous strata. These last crop out in the ravines, and seams of coal have been noticed at several places. Iron ore, limestone, clay and gypsum are obtained, the mineral waters of Lipetsk, similar to those of Franzensbad in their alkaline elements, and chalybeate like those of Pyrmont and Spa, are well known in Russia. The Oka touches the north-west corner of the region, but its tributaries, the Moksha, the Don also merely touches Tambov, and of its affluents none except the Voronezh and the Khoper and the Vorona, a tributary of the Khoper, are at all navigable. The climate is continental, and, although the temperature at Tambov is 42° F. the winter is comparatively cold. The rivers remain frozen for four and a half months, the soil is fertile throughout, in the north it is clayey and sometimes sandy, but the rest of the government was covered with a sheet,2 to 3 feet thick, of black earth. In the following century a few began to come in from the steppe
16.
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
17.
Russian Orthodox Church
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The Russian Orthodox Church, alternatively legally known as the Moscow Patriarchate, is one of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches, in full communion with other Eastern Orthodox patriarchates. The Primate of the ROC is the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus and it also exercises ecclesiastical jurisdiction over the autonomous Church of Japan and the Orthodox Christians resident in the Peoples Republic of China. The ROC branches in Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova and Ukraine since the 1990s enjoy various degrees of self-government, in Ukraine, ROC has tensions with schismatic groups supported by the current government, while it enjoys the position of numerically dominant religious organisation. The ROC should also not be confused with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, headquartered in New York, New York, the two Churches reconciled on May 17,2007, the ROCOR is now a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church. According to one of the legends, Andrew reached the location of Kiev. The spot where he erected a cross is now marked by St. Andrews Cathedral. By the end of the first millennium AD, eastern Slavic lands started to come under the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There is evidence that the first Christian bishop was sent to Novgorod from Constantinople either by Patriarch Photius or Patriarch Ignatios, by the mid-10th century, there was already a Christian community among Kievan nobility, under the leadership of Byzantine Greek priests, although paganism remained the dominant religion. Princess Olga of Kiev was the first ruler of Kievan Rus′ to convert to Christianity and her grandson, Vladimir of Kiev, made Rus officially a Christian state. The Kievan church was a metropolitanate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Ecumenical patriarch appointed the metropolitan, who usually was a Greek. The Metropolitans residence was located in Kiev itself, the capital of the medieval Rus state. Following the tribulations of the Mongol invasion, the Russian Church was pivotal in the survival, despite the politically motivated murders of Mikhail of Chernigov and Mikhail of Tver, the Mongols were generally tolerant and even granted tax exemption to the Church. Such holy figures as Sergius of Radonezh and Metropolitan Alexis helped the country to withstand years of Tatar oppression, the Trinity monastery founded by Sergius of Radonezh became the setting for the flourishing of spiritual art, exemplified by the work of Andrey Rublev, among others. The followers of Sergius founded four hundred monasteries, thus extending the geographical extent of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. However, the Moscow Prince Vasili II rejected the act of the Council of Florence brought to Moscow by Isidore in March 1441, Isidore was in the same year removed from his position as an apostate and expelled from Moscow. The Russian metropolitanate remained effectively vacant for the few years due largely to the dominance of Uniates in Constantinople then. In December 1448, Jonas, a Russian bishop, was installed by the Council of Russian bishops in Moscow as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia without the consent from Constantinople. Subsequently, there developed a theory in Moscow that saw Moscow as the Third Rome, the successor to Constantinople
18.
El (Cyrillic)
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El is a letter of the Cyrillic script. El commonly represents the alveolar lateral approximant /l/, in Slavic languages it may be either palatalized or slightly velarized, see below. In some typefaces the Cyrillic letter El has a grapheme which may be confused with the Cyrillic letter Pe, note that Pe has a straight left leg, without the hook. An alternative form of the letter El closely resembles the Greek letter lambda and this form is more common in Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia. The Cyrillic letter El was derived from the Greek letter lambda, in the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was людиѥ, meaning people. In the Cyrillic numeral system, El had a value of 30, Serbian and Macedonian orthographies use a separate letter Љ for the soft /l/ – it looks as a ligature of El with the soft sign. In these languages, ⟨Л⟩ denotes only hard /l/, pronunciation of hard /l/ is sometimes given as, but it is always more velar than in French or German. Slavic languages except Serbian and Macedonian use another orthographic convention to distinguish between hard and soft /l/, so ⟨Л⟩ can denote either variant depending on the subsequent letter, the pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language. In addition, л was formerly used in Chukchi to represent the alveolar lateral fricative /ɬ/ but has since been replaced by ԓ
19.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
20.
Bolsheviks
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The RSDLP was a revolutionary socialist political party formed in 1898 in Minsk in Belarus to unite the various revolutionary organisations of the Russian Empire into one party. In the Second Party Congress vote, the Bolsheviks won on the majority of important issues and they ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Bolsheviks or Reds came to power in Russia during the October Revolution phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917, with the Reds defeating the Whites, and others during the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922, the RSFSR became the chief constituent of the Soviet Union in December 1922. Their beliefs and practices were often referred to as Bolshevism, in the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, held in Brussels and London during August 1903, Lenin and Julius Martov disagreed over the membership rules. Lenin wanted members who recognise the Party Programme and support it by material means, Julius Martov suggested by regular personal assistance under the direction of one of the partys organisations. Lenin advocated limiting party membership to a core of active members. A main source of the factions could be attributed to Lenin’s steadfast opinion. It was obvious at early stages in Lenin’s revolutionary practices that he would not be willing to concede on any party policy that conflicted with his own predetermined ideas and it was the loyalty that he had to his own self-envisioned utopia that caused the party split. He was seen even by fellow party members as being so narrow minded that he believed there were only two types of people, Friend and enemy—those who followed him, and all the rest. Leon Trotsky, one of Lenins fellow revolutionaries, compared Lenin in 1904 to the French revolutionary Robespierre, Lenins view of politics as verbal and ideological warfare and his inability to accept criticism even if it came from his own dedicated followers was the reason behind this accusation. The root of the split was a book titled What is to be Done. that Lenin wrote while serving a sentence of exile, in Germany, the book was published in 1902, in Russia, strict censorship outlawed its publication and distribution. One of the points of Lenin’s writing was that a revolution can only be achieved by the strong leadership of one person over the masses. After the proposed revolution had overthrown the government, this individual leader must release power. Lenin also wrote that revolutionary leaders must dedicate their lives to the cause in order for it to be successful. Lenins view of a socialist intelligentsia showed that he was not a supporter of Marxist theory. For example, Lenin agreed with the Marxist idea of eliminating social classes, most party members considered unequal treatment of workers immoral, and were loyal to the idea of a completely classless society, so Lenin’s variations caused the party internal dissonance. Although the party split of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would not become official until 1903, as discussed in What is to be Done. Lenin firmly believed that a political structure was needed to effectively initiate a formal revolution
21.
1905 Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies and it led to Constitutional Reform including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. According to Sidney Harcave, author of The Russian Revolution of 1905, newly emancipated peasants earned too little, and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. A nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to them, banning strikes. Finally, the educated class fomented and spread radical ideas after a relaxing of discipline in universities allowed a new consciousness to grow among students, vladimir Lenin was a political theorist who also contributed his own ideology of how a revolution would be caused. In his book Imperialism he claimed that driven imperialism and the dependence on overseas markets would be a factor to revolution. This would cause a rivalry between the powers, leading to war. Taken individually, these issues might not have affected the course of Russian history, the government finally recognized these problems, albeit in a shortsighted and narrow-minded way. The minister of interior Plehve stated in 1903 that, after the problem, the most serious ones plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the revolution of 1905, every year, thousands of nobles in debt mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold them to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land and this plan was meant to prevent proletarianisation of the peasants. However, the peasants were not given land to provide for their needs. Their earnings were often so small that they could buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes. By the tenth year of Nicholas IIs reign, their total arrears in payments of taxes and dues was 118 million rubles, masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and sometimes walked hundreds of kilometres to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence and these violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so it created many committees to investigate their causes. The committees concluded that no part of the countryside was prosperous, some parts, although cultivated acreage had increased in the last half century, the increase had not been proportionate to the growth of peasant populations, which had doubled. The investigations revealed many difficulties but could not find solution that were both sensible and acceptable to the government, nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected, European civilization was valued over Asian culture, and Christianity was on the whole considered more progressive and true than other religions
22.
Siberia
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Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century, the territory of Siberia extends eastwards from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins. It stretches southwards from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and to the borders of Mongolia. With an area of 13.1 million square kilometres, Siberia accounts for 77% of Russias land area and this is equivalent to an average population density of about 3 inhabitants per square kilometre, making Siberia one of the most sparsely populated regions on Earth. If it were a country by itself, it would still be the largest country in area, the origin of the name is unknown. Some sources say that Siberia originates from the Siberian Tatar word for sleeping land, another account sees the name as the ancient tribal ethnonym of the Sirtya, a folk, which spoke a language that later evolved into the Ugric languages. This ethnic group was assimilated to the Siberian Tatar people. The modern usage of the name was recorded in the Russian language after the Empires conquest of the Siberian Khanate, a further variant claims that the region was named after the Xibe people. The Polish historian Chycliczkowski has proposed that the name derives from the word for north. He said that the neighbouring Chinese, Arabs and Mongolians would not have known Russian and he suggests that the name is a combination of two words, su and bir. The region is of significance, as it contains bodies of prehistoric animals from the Pleistocene Epoch. Specimens of Goldfuss cave lion cubs, Yuka and another woolly mammoth from Oymyakon, a rhinoceros from the Kolyma River. The Siberian Traps were formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earths geological history. They continued for a million years and are considered a cause of the Great Dying about 250 million years ago. At least three species of human lived in Southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago, H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, the last was determined in 2010, by DNA evidence, to be a new species. Siberia was inhabited by different groups of such as the Enets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Scythians. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as Khagan of Old Great Bulgaria in 630, the Mongols conquered a large part of this area early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Khanate of Sibir was established in the late 15th century, turkic-speaking Yakut migrated north from the Lake Baikal region under pressure from the Mongol tribes during the 13th to 15th century
23.
Grand Duchy of Finland
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The Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland. It existed between 1809 and 1917 as an part of the Russian Empire and was ruled by the Russian Emperor as Grand Duke. The new title Grand Duke of Finland did not result in any Finnish autonomy, during the next two centuries, the title was used by some of Johns successors on the throne, but not all. Usually it was just a title of the king, used only on very formal occasions. The title Grand Duke of Finland was added to the long list of titles of the Russian Tsar, after his return to Finland in 1812, the Finnish-born Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt became counsellor to the Russian emperor. The formation of the Grand Duchy stems from the Treaty of Tilsit between Czar Alexander I of Russia and Napoleon Bonaparte of France, the treaty mediated peace between Russia and France and allied the two countries against Napoleons remaining threats, Great Britain and Sweden. Russia invaded Finland in February of 1808, claimed as an effort to impose sanctions against Sweden, but not a war of conquest. The oath also dubbed anyone person who gave aid to the Swedish or Finnish armies a rebel, the Finns complied, bitter over Sweden abandoning the country for their war against Denmark and France, and begrudgingly embraced Russian conquest. The Diet of Finland was now to only meet whenever requested, further on, Alexander I requested a deputation of the four Finnish estates, as he expressed concern over continued Finnish resistance. The deputation refused to act without the Diet, to which Alexander agreed with, by 1809, all of Finland had been conquered and The Diet was summoned in March. Finland was then united through Russia via crown, and Finland was able to keep the majority of its own laws, the earlier years of the Grand Duchy can be seen as uneventful. In 1812, the area of Old Finland, known as the Viipuri Province was returned to Finland after being annexed by Russia in the Great Northern War, despite the outcry, the borders remained set until 1940. Moreover, Alexander moved the capital from Turku to Helsinki, a fortified town protected by Suomenlinna. Finlands main university also transferred to Helsinki after a fire out in Turku. Alexander went a step further to demand a Finnish House of Nobles, the house was designed to register all noble families in Finland, so that the highest Finnish estate would be representative of the next Finnish diet. As for Sweden, the majority did not think too much about Finlands conquest, as Sweden itself annexed Norway from Denmark in 1814, despite this, Alexander I ceased to give in to Finnish affairs and returned to governing Russia. In 1823, Arseny Zakrevsky was made general of Finland and quickly became unpopular by the Finns. Zakrevsky abolished the Committee for Finnish Affairs and managed to obtain the right to submit Finnish affairs to the Czar, bypassing the Finnish Secretary of State
24.
Marxism
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It originates from the mid-to-late 19th century works of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As the contradiction becomes apparent to the proletariat through the alienation of labor, Marxism has since developed into different branches and schools of thought, and there is now no single definitive Marxist theory. Marxism has been adopted by a number of academics and theorists working in various disciplines. Critics have taken issue with particular Marxist claims or accused Marxism as a whole of being inconsistent, refuted based on new information. The Marxian analysis begins with an analysis of the material conditions, the economic system and these social relations form a base and superstructure. As forces of production, most notably technology, improve, existing forms of social organization become inefficient, from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution and these inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society in the form of class struggle. Under the capitalist mode of production, this struggle materializes between the minority who own the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who produce goods, the socialist system would succeed capitalism as humanitys mode of production through workers revolution. According to Marxism, especially arising from crisis theory, socialism is a historical necessity, in a socialist society private property, in the form of the means of production, would be replaced by co-operative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits, Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. The historical materialist theory of history analyses the causes of societal development. All constituent features of a society are assumed to stem from economic activity, the base and superstructure metaphor portrays the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx, The sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society and this relationship is reflexive, at first the base gives rise to the superstructure and remains the foundation of a form of social organization. As Friedrich Engels clarified, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production. Primitive Communism, as in tribal societies. Slave Society, a development of tribal to city-state, aristocracy is born, feudalism, aristocrats are the ruling class, merchants evolve into capitalists. Capitalism, capitalists are the class, who create and employ the proletariat. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, the content of Marxism was Marxs economic doctrine
25.
Imperial Russian Navy
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It was expanded in the second half of the 18th century and by the early part of the 19th century had reached its peak strength, only behind the British and French fleets in terms of size. The First World War was mixed for the navy, with the Germans generally gaining the upper hand in the Baltic but the Black Sea falling under Russian control. The Russian Revolution marked the end of the Imperial Navy with its sailors fighting on both sides and its surviving ships forming the core of the Soviet Navy upon its creation in 1918. Under Tsar Mikhail I, construction of the first three-masted ship actually built within Russia was completed in 1636 and it was built in Balakhna by Danish shipbuilders from Holstein according to European design and was christened Frederick. During its maiden voyage on the Caspian Sea, Frederick sailed into a storm and was lost at sea. A boyar named Afanasy Ordin-Nashchokin founded a shipyard at Tsarevich-Dmitriev fortress, in 1661, however, Russia was once again forced to abide by the harsh terms of a treaty, this time the Peace of Cardis. Russia agreed to surrender to Sweden all captured territories, and all constructed at Tsarevich-Dmitriev were ordered destroyed. Boyar Ordin-Nashchyokin, not grieving long over defeat, turned his attention to the Volga River, with the Tsars approval, the boyar brought Dutch shipbuilding experts to the town of Dedinovo near the confluence of the Oka and Volga Rivers. Shipbuilding commenced in the winter of 1667, within two years, four vessels had been completed, one 22-gun galley, christened Орёл, and three smaller ships. The ill-fated Frederick had been a Holstein vessel, Орёл became Russias first own three-masted, European-designed sailing ship, the ship was captured in Astrakhan by rebellious Cossacks led by Stepan Razin. The Cossacks ransacked Орёл and abandoned it, half-submerged, in an estuary of the Volga, unquestionably, the most celebrated Russian explorer was Semyon Dezhnev, who, in 1648, sailed the entire length of present-day Russia by way of the Arctic Ocean. Rounding the Chukotsk Peninsula, Dezhnev passed through the Bering Sea, the creation of the regular Russian Navy took place during the reign of Peter the Great. During the Second Azov campaign of 1696 against Turkey, the Russians employed for the first time 2 warships,4 fireships,23 galleys and 1300 strugs, built on the Voronezh River. After the occupation of the Azov fortress, the Boyar Duma looked into Peters report of military campaign. This date is considered the birthday of the regular Russian Navy. During the Great Northern War of 1700-1721, the Russians built the Baltic Fleet, the construction of the oared fleet took place in 1702-1704 at several shipyards. From 1703-1723, the base of the Baltic Fleet was located in Saint Petersburg. The bases were created in Reval and in Vyborg after it was ceded from Sweden after the war of 1741-43
26.
Icebreaker
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An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters, and provide safe waterways for other boats and ships. Although the term refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels. For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most normal ships lack, a hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice. Icebreakers clear paths by pushing straight into ice pockets, the bending strength of sea ice is so low that usually the ice breaks without noticeable change in the vessels trim. In cases of very thick ice, an icebreaker can drive its bow onto the ice to break it under the weight of the ship, even in the earliest days of polar exploration, ice-strengthened ships were used. These were originally wooden and based on existing designs, but reinforced, particularly around the waterline with double planking to the hull, bands of iron were wrapped around the outside. Sometimes metal sheeting was placed at the bows, stern and along the keel, such strengthening was designed to help the ship push through ice and also to protect the ship in case it was nipped by the ice. Nipping occurs when ice floes around a ship are pushed against the ship, trapping it as if in a vise and this vise-like action is caused by the force of winds and tides on ice formations. Although such wind and tidal forces may be exerted many miles away, the first boats to be used in the polar waters were those of the indigenous Arctic people. Their kayaks are small human-powered boats with a deck, and one or more cockpits. Such boats, of course, have no icebreaking capabilities, but they are light, in the 9th and 10th centuries, the Viking expansion reached the North Atlantic, and eventually Greenland and Svalbard in the Arctic. Vikings, however, operated their ships in the waters that were ice-free for most of the year, in the 11th century, in North-Russia started settling the coasts of the White Sea, named so for being ice-covered for over half of a year. The mixed ethnic group of the Karelians and the Russians in the North-Russia that lived on the shores of the Arctic Ocean became known as Pomors. Gradually they developed a type of small one- or two-mast wooden sailing ships, used for voyages in the ice conditions of the Arctic seas. These earliest icebreakers were called kochi, the kochs hull was protected by a belt of ice-floe resistant flush skin-planking along the variable water-line, and had a false keel for on-ice portage. If a koch became squeezed by the ice-fields, its rounded bodylines below the water-line would allow for the ship to be pushed up out of the water, in the 19th century, similar protective measures were adopted to modern steam-powered icebreakers. Fram is said to be the ship to have sailed farthest north and farthest south. An early ship designed to operate in icy conditions was a 51-metre wooden paddle steamer,1, that was built for the city of Philadelphia by Vandusen & Birelyn in 1837
27.
Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne
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Walker is a residential suburb and electoral ward just east of the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 11,701, perhaps the most historic fact about Walker is contained in its name, which refers to Hadrians Wall which passed along its northern edge. The place-name Walker is first attested in 1242, where it appears as Waucre and this means wall-carr, that is to say, the marsh by the Roman wall. Large-scale coal-mining began in the area in the early 1700s, with up to ten collieries in operation in the Walker area, a wagon-way was constructed during this period to facilitate transportation of coal to the riverside staithes. From 1809 to 1883, Walker was home to a company, Losh, Wilson. Generally speaking Walker is an area between Welbeck Road and the banks of the River Tyne, although the city ward of Walker incorporates Pottery Bank. When most Geordies refer to Walker they also incorporate the areas of Daisy Hill, Walkergate, located between Welbeck Road and the Network rail line are sometimes considered parts of Walker. Other parts of Walker are Walkerdene and Walkerville, other areas included are Daisy Hill and Eastfield which help make up the city Ward of Walkergate. The area is notable for Walker Park, the Walker Riverside Park, and the Lady Stephenson Library as well as the Lightfoot Sports Centre, alderman Sir William Haswell Stephenson, built the library in 1908 in memory of his wife Eliza, who died in 1901. The library closed on 29 June 2013 and contents have been relocated into a built area within Walker Activity Dome in July 2013. Walker is served by the Tyne and Wear Metro, with a station at Walkergate, most children attend a local primary school, These are St Anthonys CE, St Vincents RC, Tyneview, Welbeck, West Walker, Walkergate and Wharrier Street. The scheme has its own known as the Walker Eye. Much of the older and run-down housing stock along Walker Road is in the process of being demolished and replaced with new homes which are a mixture of council, the stated aim was to build 1,600 new and replacement homes over a 15-year period. The £7m project will merge Wharrier Street and St Anthonys primary schools in Autumn 2012, plans for the areas regeneration were approved by the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Ruth Kelly. Cheryl Cole – singer, Born on 30 June 1983, lived in Walker and Heaton, attending Walker Comprehensive School, Middle Street, Walker is the birthplace of Eric Burdon, lead singer of The Animals who later recorded with War at the beginning of that bands career. The Animals recorded a song called Gonna Send You Back To Walker, another Walkerite, the author, journalist and broadcaster Keith Topping, titled one of the chapters in his novel The Hollow Men, The St. Anthonys Chinese Takeaway Massacre. The novelist is co author on Dr Who, The Hollow Men with Martin Day, lee Clark has since gone on to become a manager at both Huddersfield Town and Birmingham City. Tyne and Wear Archives Service, historical information on Walker Newcastle Council Ward Info, Walker
28.
Wallsend
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Wallsend, historically Wallsend on Tyne, is a large town in North Tyneside, Tyne and Wear, North East of England. Historically part of Northumberland, Wallsend derives its name as the location of the end of Hadrians Wall and it has a population of 42,842 and lies 3 1⁄2 miles east of Newcastle City Centre. The population of the Wallsend ward of the North Tyneside Borough was at the 2011 census 10,304, in Roman times, Wallsend hosted the fort Segedunum. This fort protected the eastern end of Hadrians Wall, which terminated at the wall of the fort. Ida the Saxon laid waste to the whole of the north in 547 and it was not until the golden age of Northumberland under Edwin, and the subsequent introduction of the Christian faith by King Oswald and Aidan that Wallsend enjoyed a time of peace and progress. This time of peace came to an end in 794 when the Danes swarmed up the Tyne in great number. The years preceding the coming of William of Normandy were a struggle between Danes and Saxons striving for mastery, several urban sanitary districts were formed in the parish in the late 19th century, Willington Quay, Howdon and Wallsend itself. Wallsend became incorporated as a borough in 1901, and in 1910 took over Willington Quay and Willington. This express liner held the Blue Riband, for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, the story is retold in the movie The Red Tent, starring Sean Connery and Peter Finch. He features in a BBC film called The Inventor of the Twentieth Century, russian novelist Yevgeny Zamyatin worked at Swan Hunter in 1916–17, and used it as background for his great anti-utopian work We which was a major influence on George Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four. WWII ships built here include HMS Sheffield and HMS Victorious which took part in the sinking of the Bismarck, other ships built there include the new HMS Ark Royal in the 1980s. The musical The Last Ship by Sting is set in the shipyard, much of Wallsends early industry was driven by coal mining. The Wallsend Colliery consisted of 7 pits which were active between 1778 and 1935, in the 1820s the pits became incorporated as Russells Colliery, which then became The Wallsend and Hebburn Coal Company Ltd. By 1924 the colliery employed 2,183 people and its most prominent manager was mining and railway engineer John Buddle who helped develop the Davy Lamp. Between 1767 and 1925 there were 11 major incidents recorded at the resulting in over 209 deaths. On 18 June 1835 a gas explosion in one of the tunnels killed 102 miners, the youngest of which was aged 8, many of the dead were found with their cloth caps in their mouth. This is believed to have been an attempt to prevent inhalation of the gas which eventually killed them, the bodies were extracted and buried in St Peters churchyard at the top of the bank overlooking the Wallsend Burn. A plaque has been erected within the churchyard to commemorate this tragedy, the town has expanded greatly in terms of housing since the end of World War II, and since the 1960s
29.
Newcastle upon Tyne
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Newcastle is the most populous city in the North East and forms the core of the Tyneside conurbation, the eighth most populous urban area in the United Kingdom. Newcastle is a member of the English Core Cities Group and is a member of the Eurocities network of European cities. Newcastle was part of the county of Northumberland until 1400, when it became a county of itself, the regional nickname and dialect for people from Newcastle and the surrounding area is Geordie. Newcastle also houses Newcastle University, a member of the Russell Group, the city developed around the Roman settlement Pons Aelius and was named after the castle built in 1080 by Robert Curthose, William the Conquerors eldest son. The city grew as an important centre for the trade in the 14th century. The port developed in the 16th century and, along with the lower down the River Tyne, was amongst the worlds largest shipbuilding and ship-repairing centres. Newcastles economy includes corporate headquarters, learning, digital technology, retail, tourism and cultural centres, among its icons are Newcastle United football club and the Tyne Bridge. Since 1981 the city has hosted the Great North Run, a marathon which attracts over 57,000 runners each year. The first recorded settlement in what is now Newcastle was Pons Aelius and it was given the family name of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who founded it in the 2nd century AD. This rare honour suggests Hadrian may have visited the site and instituted the bridge on his tour of Britain, Pons Aelius population at this period was estimated at 2,000. Fragments of Hadrians Wall are visible in parts of Newcastle, particularly along the West Road, the course of the Roman Wall can be traced eastwards to the Segedunum Roman fort in Wallsend—the walls end—and to the supply fort Arbeia in South Shields. After the Roman departure from Britain, completed in 410, Newcastle became part of the powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, conflicts with the Danes in 876 left the river Tyne and its settlements in ruin. After the conflicts with the Danes, and following the 1088 rebellion against the Normans, Monkchester was all, because of its strategic position, Robert Curthose, son of William the Conqueror, erected a wooden castle there in the year 1080. The town was known as Novum Castellum or New Castle. The wooden structure was replaced by a castle in 1087. The castle was again in 1172 during the reign of Henry II. Much of the keep which can be seen in the city dates from this period. Throughout the Middle Ages, Newcastle was Englands northern fortress, incorporated first by Henry II, the city had a new charter granted by Elizabeth in 1589
30.
February Revolution
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The February Revolution, known in Soviet historiography as the February Bourgeois Democratic Revolution was the first of two Russian revolutions in 1917. The revolution centered on Petrograd, then the Russian capital, arguably beginning on 8 March, Revolutionary activity was largely confined to the capital and its vicinity, and lasted about eight days. It involved mass demonstrations and armed clashes with police and gendarmes, on 12 March mutinous Russian Army forces sided with the revolutionaries. Three days later the result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, Russian Council of Ministers was replaced by a Russian Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov. The revolution appeared to break out spontaneously, without any leadership or formal planning. Russia had been suffering from a number of economic and social problems, bread rioters primarily women in bread lines, and industrial strikers were joined on the streets by disaffected soldiers from the citys garrison. As more and more troops deserted, and with loyal troops away at the Front, in all, over 1,300 people were killed in the protests of February 1917. A number of factors contributed to the downfall of the Imperial government in the spring of 1917, different historians apply different weights to different factors, liberal historians emphasise the turmoil created by the war, whereas Marxists emphasise the inevitability of change. Rabinowitch summarizes the main long-term and short-term causes, The February 1917 revolution, despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. As historian Richard Pipes writes, the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter. The first major event of the Russian Revolution was the February Revolution, dissatisfaction of proletarians was compounded by food shortages and military failures. Widespread strikes, riots and the mutiny on the Battleship Potemkin ensued. These conditions caused much agitation among the working and professional classes. This tension erupted into revolt with the 1905 Revolution, and again under the strain of war in 1917. The revolution was provoked by Russian military failures during the First World War, the economic challenges faced due to fighting a total war also contributed. In August 1914, all supported and virtually all political deputies voted in favour of the war. The exceptions included the Bolshevik Party and specifically Vladimir Lenin who argued it was not a war fighting. The declaration of war was followed by a revival of nationalism across Russian society, nearly six million casualties—dead, wounded and missing—had been accrued by January 1917
31.
Russian Revolution
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The Russian Revolution was a pair of revolutions in Russia in 1917, which dismantled the Tsarist autocracy and led to the eventual rise of the Soviet Union. The Russian Empire collapsed with the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II, in the second revolution that October, the Provisional Government was removed and replaced with a communist state. The February Revolution was a revolution focused around Petrograd, then capital of Russia, in the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution, the February Revolution took place in the context of heavy military setbacks during the First World War, which left much of the Russian Army in a state of mutiny. During this chaotic period there were frequent mutinies, protests and many strikes, when the Provisional Government chose to continue fighting the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks and other socialist factions campaigned for stopping the conflict. The Bolsheviks turned workers militias under their control into the Red Guards over which they exerted substantial control, the Bolsheviks appointed themselves as leaders of various government ministries and seized control of the countryside, establishing the Cheka to quash dissent. To end Russia’s participation in the First World War, the Bolshevik leaders signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in March 1918, soon after, civil war erupted among the Reds, the Whites, the independence movements and the non-Bolshevik socialists. It continued for years, during which the Bolsheviks defeated both the Whites and all rival socialists. In this way, the Revolution paved the way for the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, the Russian Revolution of 1905 was said to be a major factor to the February Revolutions of 1917. The events of Bloody Sunday triggered a line of protests, a council of workers called the St. Petersburg Soviet was created in all this chaos, and the beginning of a communist political protest had begun. World War I prompted a Russian outcry directed at Tsar Nicholas II and it was another major factor contributing to the retaliation of the Russian Communists against their royal opponents. However, the problems were merely administrative, and not industrial as Germany was producing great amounts of munitions whilst constantly fighting on two major battlefronts, the war also developed a weariness in the city, owing to a lack of food in response to the disruption of agriculture. Food scarcity had become a problem in Russia, but the cause of this did not lie in any failure of the harvests. As a result, they tended to hoard their grain and to revert to subsistence farming, thus the cities were constantly short of food. At the same time rising prices led to demands for wages in the factories. The outcome of all this, however, was a criticism of the government rather than any war-weariness. The original fever of excitement, which had caused the name of St. Heavy losses during the war also strengthened thoughts that Tsar Nicholas II was unfit to rule, the Liberals were now better placed to voice their complaints, since they were participating more fully through a variety of voluntary organizations
32.
Jack London
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John Griffith Jack London was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. Some of his most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories To Build a Fire, An Odyssey of the North, and Love of Life. He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as The Pearls of Parlay and The Heathen, London was part of the radical literary group The Crowd in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, socialism, and the rights of workers. He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss. Jack Londons mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania Canal builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Marshall Wellman was descended from Thomas Wellman, an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died, in San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and spiritualist, claiming to channel the spirit of a Sauk chief, Black Hawk. Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe Londons father was astrologer William Chaney, Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown, most San Francisco civil records were destroyed by the extensive fires that followed the 1906 earthquake, nobody knows what name appeared on her sons birth certificate. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to Londons mother Flora Wellman as having been his wife, according to Flora Wellmans account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4,1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child and she was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora turned the baby over for care to Virginia Prentiss and she was a major maternal figure throughout Londons life. Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, the family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed public grade school. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago, Chaney concluded by saying that he was more to be pitied than London. London was devastated by his fathers letter, in the following, he quit school at Berkeley. London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco, the house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Although the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as Londons later accounts claimed, in 1885, London found and read Ouidas long Victorian novel Signa. He credited this as the seed of his literary success, in 1886, he went to the Oakland Public Library and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his learning. In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmotts Cannery, seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate
33.
O. Henry
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William Sydney Porter, known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American short story writer. His stories are known for their surprise endings, William Sidney Porter was born on September 11,1862, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He changed the spelling of his name to Sydney in 1898. His parents were Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter, a physician, williams parents had married on April 20,1858. When William was three, his mother died from tuberculosis, and he and his father moved into the home of his paternal grandmother. As a child, Porter was always reading, everything from classics to dime novels, his works were Lanes translation of One Thousand and One Nights. Porter graduated from his aunt Evelina Maria Porters elementary school in 1876 and he then enrolled at the Lindsey Street High School. His aunt continued to him until he was fifteen. In 1879, he started working in his uncles drugstore and in 1881, at the age of nineteen, at the drugstore, he also showed off his natural artistic talents by sketching the townsfolk. Porter traveled with Dr. James K. Hall to Texas in March 1882 and he took up residence on the sheep ranch of Richard Hall, James son, in La Salle County and helped out as a shepherd, ranch hand, cook and baby-sitter. While on the ranch, he learned bits of Spanish and German from the mix of immigrant ranch hands and he also spent time reading classic literature. Porters health did improve and he traveled with Richard to Austin in 1884, where he decided to remain and was welcomed into the home of the Harrells, who were friends of Richards. Porter took a number of different jobs over the several years, first as pharmacist then as a draftsman, bank teller. He also began writing as a sideline, Porter led an active social life in Austin, including membership in singing and drama groups. He was a singer and musician. He played both the guitar and mandolin and he became a member of the Hill City Quartet, a group of young men who sang at gatherings and serenaded young women of the town. Porter met and began courting Athol Estes, then seventeen years old and her mother objected to the match because Athol was ill, suffering from tuberculosis. On July 1,1887, Porter eloped with Athol to the home of Reverend R. K. Smoot, the couple continued to participate in musical and theater groups, and Athol encouraged her husband to pursue his writing
34.
H. G. Wells
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Herbert George H. G. Wells was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, including the novel, history, politics, social commentary, Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is called a father of science fiction, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback. His most notable science fiction works include The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. Wellss earliest specialised training was in biology, and his thinking on ethical matters took place in a specifically and fundamentally Darwinian context and he was also from an early date an outspoken socialist, often sympathising with pacifist views. His later works became increasingly political and didactic, and he wrote science fiction. A diabetic, in 1934, Wells co-founded the charity The Diabetic Association, Herbert George Wells was born at Atlas House,46 High Street in Bromley, Kent, on 21 September 1866. Called Bertie in the family, he was the fourth and last child of Joseph Wells and his wife, Sarah Neal. An inheritance had allowed the family to acquire a shop in which they sold china and sporting goods, although it failed to prosper, the stock was old and worn out, and the location was poor. Joseph Wells managed to earn an income, but little of it came from the shop. Payment for skilled bowlers and batsmen came from voluntary donations afterwards, a defining incident of young Wellss life was an accident in 1874 that left him bedridden with a broken leg. To pass the time he started reading books from the local library and he soon became devoted to the other worlds and lives to which books gave him access, they also stimulated his desire to write. Later that year he entered Thomas Morleys Commercial Academy, a school founded in 1849 following the bankruptcy of Morleys earlier school. The teaching was erratic, the curriculum mostly focused, Wells later said, Wells continued at Morleys Academy until 1880. In 1877, his father, Joseph Wells, fractured his thigh, the accident effectively put an end to Josephs career as a cricketer, and his subsequent earnings as a shopkeeper were not enough to compensate for the loss of the primary source of family income. No longer able to support financially, the family instead sought to place their sons as apprentices in various occupations. From 1880 to 1883, Wells had an apprenticeship as a draper at the Southsea Drapery Emporium. Wellss parents had a turbulent marriage, owing primarily to his mother being a Protestant, when his mother returned to work as a ladys maid, one of the conditions of work was that she would not be permitted to have living space for her husband and children. Thereafter, she and Joseph lived separate lives, though they never divorced and remained faithful to each other, as a consequence, Herberts personal troubles increased as he subsequently failed as a draper and also, later, as a chemists assistant
35.
Censorship
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Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, Censorship could be direct or indirect, in which case it is referred to as soft censorship. Direct censorship may or may not be legal, depending on the type, location, there are no laws against self-censorship. In 399 BC, Greek philosopher, Socrates, defied attempts by the Greek state to censor his philosophical teachings and was sentenced to death by drinking a poison, hemlock. Socrates student, Plato, is said to have advocated censorship in his essay on The Republic, in contrast to Plato, Greek playwright Euripides defended the true liberty of freeborn men, including the right to speak freely. In 1766, Sweden became the first country to abolish censorship by law, the rationale for censorship is different for various types of information censored, Moral censorship is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. Pornography, for example, is often censored under this rationale, especially child pornography, Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. This is used to counter espionage, which is the process of gleaning military information, political censorship occurs when governments hold back information from their citizens. This is often done to control over the populace and prevent free expression that might foment rebellion. Religious censorship is the means by which any material considered objectionable by a religion is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent ones, alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their religion. Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Bloc, throughout the bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers. Cultural products there reflected the needs of the state. Party-approved censors exercised strict control in the early years, in the Stalinist period, even the weather forecasts were changed if they suggested that the sun might not shine on May Day. Under Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop. Independent journalism did not exist in the Soviet Union until Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader, pravda, the predominant newspaper in the Soviet Union, had a monopoly. Foreign newspapers were available if they were published by Communist Parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Possession and use of copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books, possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB
36.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
37.
Prague
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Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. It is the 14th largest city in the European Union and it is also the historical capital of Bohemia. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city has a temperate climate, with warm summers and chilly winters. Prague has been a political, cultural, and economic centre of central Europe with waxing and waning fortunes during its history and it was an important city to the Habsburg Monarchy and its Austro-Hungarian Empire. Prague is home to a number of cultural attractions, many of which survived the violence. Main attractions include the Prague Castle, the Charles Bridge, Old Town Square with the Prague astronomical clock, since 1992, the extensive historic centre of Prague has been included in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The city has more than ten major museums, along with theatres, galleries, cinemas. An extensive modern public transportation system connects the city, also, it is home to a wide range of public and private schools, including Charles University in Prague, the oldest university in Central Europe. Prague is classified as an Alpha- global city according to GaWC studies, Prague ranked sixth in the Tripadvisor world list of best destinations in 2016. Its rich history makes it a popular tourist destination, and the city more than 6.4 million international visitors annually. Prague is the fifth most visited European city after London, Paris, Istanbul, the region was settled as early as the Paleolithic age. In the last century BC, the Celts were slowly driven away by Germanic tribes, around the area where present-day Prague stands, the 2nd century map of Ptolemaios mentioned a Germanic city called Casurgis. In the following century, the Czech tribes built several fortified settlements in the area, most notably in Levý Hradec, Butovice and in the Šárka valley. The construction of what came to be known as the Prague Castle began near the end of the 9th century, the first masonry under Prague Castle dates from the year 885 at the latest. The other prominent Prague fort, the Přemyslid fort Vyšehrad, was founded in the 10th century, Prague Castle is dominated by the cathedral, which was founded in 1344, but completed in the 20th century. The legendary origins of Prague attribute its foundation to the 8th century Czech duchess and prophetess Libuše and her husband, Přemysl, legend says that Libuše came out on a rocky cliff high above the Vltava and prophesied, I see a great city whose glory will touch the stars. She ordered a castle and a town called Praha to be built on the site, a 17th century Jewish chronicler David Solomon Ganz, citing Cyriacus Spangenberg, claimed that the city was founded as Boihaem in c.1306 BC by an ancient king, Boyya. The region became the seat of the dukes, and later kings of Bohemia, under Roman Emperor Otto II the area became a bishopric in 973
Media related to Yevgeny Zamyatin at Wikimedia Commons
