In the early days of sound cinema, among the various distinguished composers ready to try their hand at film music, Prokofiev was not an obvious choice for the commission. Based in Paris for almost a decade, he had a reputation for experimentation and dissonance, characteristics at odds with the cultural norms of the Soviet Union. By early 1933, however, Prokofiev was anxious to return to his homeland, and saw the film commission as an opportunity to write music in a more popular and accessible style. (Full article...)
Poltava was salvaged after the Japanese captured Port Arthur and incorporated into the Imperial Japanese Navy. The ship, renamed Tango in Japanese service, participated in the Battle of Tsingtao in late 1914, during World War I. She was sold back to the Russians in 1916 and renamed Chesma as her original name was in use by another battleship. The ship became the flagship of the Russian Arctic Flotilla in 1917, and her crew supported the Bolsheviks later that year. Chesma was seized by the British in early 1918 when they intervened in the Russian Civil War, abandoned by them when they withdrew and scrapped by the Soviets in 1924. (Full article...)
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A Finnish Maxim M/09-21 machine gun crew during the Winter War
The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from its organization.
The Soviets made several demands, including that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons – primarily the protection of Leningrad, 32 km (20 mi) from the Finnish border. When Finland refused, the Soviets invaded. Most sources conclude that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland, and cite the establishment of the puppet Finnish Communist government and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols as evidence of this, while other sources argue against the idea of a full Soviet conquest. Finland repelled Soviet attacks for more than two months and inflicted substantial losses on the invaders in temperatures as low as −43 °C (−45 °F). The battles focused mainly on Taipale along the Karelian Isthmus, on Kollaa in Ladoga Karelia and on Raate Road in Kainuu, but there were also battles in Salla and Petsamo in Lapland. (Full article...)
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Modern interpretation of Rus'Varangians and their longships in Gardariki, by Nicholas Roerich. The Caspian expeditions of the Rus' were military raids undertaken by the Rus' between the late 9th century and c. 1041 on the Caspian Sea shores, of what are nowadays Iran, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan. Initially, the Rus' appeared in Serkland in the 9th century travelling as merchants along the Volga trade route, selling furs, honey, and slaves. The first small-scale Viking raids took place in the late 9th and early 10th century. The Rus' undertook the first large-scale expedition in 913; having arrived on 500 ships, they pillaged in the Gorgan region, in the territory of present-day Iran, and more to the west, in Gilan and Mazandaran, taking slaves and goods. On their return, the northern raiders were attacked and defeated by the Khazars in the Volga Delta, and those who escaped were killed by the local tribes in the middle Volga.
During their next expedition in 943, the Rus' captured Bardha'a, the capital of Arran, in the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan. The Rus' stayed there for several months, killing many inhabitants of the city and amassing substantial plunder. It was only an outbreak of dysentery among the Rus' that forced them to depart with their spoils. Sviatoslav, prince of Kiev, commanded the next attack, which destroyed the Khazar state in 965. Sviatoslav's campaign established the Rus's hold on the north-south trade routes, helping to alter the demographics of the region. Raids continued through the time period with the last Scandinavian attempt to reestablish the route to the Caspian Sea taking place in c. 1041 by Ingvar the Far-Travelled. (Full article...)
He led the team that made the first crossing of the Greenland interior in 1888, traversing the island on cross-country skis. He won international fame after reaching a record northern latitude of 86°14′ during his Fram expedition of 1893–1896. Although he retired from exploration after his return to Norway, his techniques of polar travel and his innovations in equipment and clothing influenced a generation of subsequent Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. He was elected an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1897. (Full article...)
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A natural diamond crystal
Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. Diamond as a form of carbon is a tasteless, odourless, strong, and brittle solid that is transparent in colour, a poor conductor of electricity, and insoluble in water. Another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form of carbon at room temperature and pressure, but diamond is metastable and converts to it at a negligible rate under those conditions. Diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, properties that are used in major industrial applications such as cutting and polishing tools. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can subject materials to pressures found deep in the Earth.
Because the arrangement of atoms in diamond is extremely rigid, few types of impurity can contaminate it (two exceptions are boron and nitrogen). Small numbers of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) can color a diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (defects), green (radiation exposure), purple, pink, orange, or red. Diamond also has a very high refractive index and a relatively high optical dispersion. (Full article...)
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Eduard Anatolyevich Streltsov (Russian: Эдуа́рд Анато́льевич Стрельцо́в, IPA:[ɨdʊˈartɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲitɕstrʲɪlʲˈtsof]ⓘ; 21 July 1937 – 22 July 1990) was a Soviet footballer who played as a forward for Torpedo Moscow and the Soviet national team during the 1950s and 1960s. A powerful and skilful attacking player, he scored the fourth-highest number of goals for the Soviet Union and has been called "the greatest outfield player Russia has ever produced". He is sometimes dubbed "the Russian Pelé".
Born and raised in east Moscow, Streltsov joined Torpedo at the age of 16 in 1953 and made his international debut two years later. He was part of the squad that won the gold medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, and came seventh in the 1957 Ballon d'Or. The following year, his promising career was interrupted by allegations of sexual assault shortly before the 1958 World Cup. Soviet authorities pledged he could still play if he admitted his guilt, after which he confessed, but was instead prosecuted and sentenced to twelve years of forced labour under the Gulag system (abolished in 1960 and replaced by prisons). The conviction was highly controversial, with many pointing to conflicts between Streltsov and government officials. (Full article...)
Named for the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, the ship was commissioned into the First Pacific Squadron of the Russian Pacific Fleet and was stationed at Port Arthur (today Lüshunkou District, Dalian, Liaoning, China), a Russian naval base acquired from China in 1898 as part of the Kwantung Leased Territory. One of the first ships to use Harvey nickel-steel armor and Popov radios, she displaced 11,854 long tons (12,044 t) at full load and was 369 feet (112.5 m) long overall, and mounted a main battery of four 12-inch (305 mm) guns in two twin turrets. She was laid down in May 1892, launched on 1 June 1895 and completed in 1899. Her sea trials lasted until 1900. (Full article...)
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Bezhin Meadow (Бежин луг, Bezhin lug) is a 1937 Soviet propaganda film, famous for having been suppressed and believed destroyed before its completion. Directed by Sergei Eisenstein, it tells the story of a young farm boy whose father attempts to betray the government for political reasons by sabotaging the year's harvest and the son's efforts to stop his own father to protect the Soviet state, culminating in the boy's murder and a social uprising. The film draws its title from a story by Ivan Turgenev, but is based on the (largely fabricated) life story of Pavlik Morozov, a young Russian boy who became a political martyr following his death in 1932, after he supposedly denounced his father to Soviet government authorities and subsequently died at the hands of his family. Pavlik Morozov was immortalized in school programs, poetry, music, and film.
Commissioned by a communist youth group, the film's production ran from 1935 to 1937, until it was halted by the central Soviet government, which said it contained artistic, social, and political failures. Some, however, blamed the failure of Bezhin Meadow on government interference and policies, extending all the way to Joseph Stalin himself. In the wake of the film's failure, Eisenstein publicly recanted his work as an error. Individuals were arrested during and after the ensuing debacle. (Full article...)
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Portrait of Rimsky-Korsakov in 1898 by Valentin Serov (detail)
Rimsky-Korsakov believed in developing a nationalistic style of classical music, as did his fellow composer Mily Balakirev and the critic Vladimir Stasov. This style employed Russian folk song and lore along with exotic harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements in a practice known as musical orientalism, and eschewed traditional Western compositional methods. Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony, and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous three-year program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka and fellow members of The Five. Rimsky-Korsakov's techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner. (Full article...)
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Nadezhda Sergeyevna Alliluyeva (Russian: Надежда Сергеевна Аллилуева; 22 September [O.S. 9 September] 1901 – 9 November 1932) was the second wife of Joseph Stalin. She was born in Baku to a friend of Stalin, a fellow revolutionary, and was raised in Saint Petersburg. Having known Stalin from a young age, she married him when she was 17, and they had two children. Alliluyeva worked as a secretary for Bolshevik leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Stalin, before enrolling at the Industrial Academy in Moscow to study synthetic fibres and become an engineer. She had health issues, which had an adverse impact on her relationship with Stalin. She also suspected he was unfaithful, which led to frequent arguments with him. On several occasions, Alliluyeva reportedly contemplated leaving Stalin, and after an argument, she fatally shot herself early in the morning of 7 November 1932. (Full article...)
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Jeannette at Le Havre in 1878, prior to her departure for San Francisco in a trip that would see her round Cape Horn The Jeannetteexpedition of 1879–1881, officially called the U.S. Arctic Expedition, was an attempt led by George W. De Long to reach the North Pole by pioneering a route from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. The premise was that a temperate current, the Kuro Siwo, flowed northwards into the strait, providing a gateway to the hypothesized Open Polar Sea and thus to the pole.
This theory proved illusory; the expedition's ship, USS Jeannette and its crew of thirty-three men, was trapped by ice and drifted for nearly two years before she was crushed and sunk north of the Siberian coast. De Long then led his men on a perilous journey by sled, dragging the Jeannette'swhaleboat and two cutters, eventually switching to these small boats to sail for the Lena Delta in Siberia. During this journey, and in the subsequent weeks of wandering in Siberia before rescue, twenty of the ship's complement died, including De Long. (Full article...)
At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Petropavlovsk took part in the Battle of Port Arthur, where she was lightly damaged by Japanese shells and failed to score any hits in return. On 13 April 1904, the ship sank after striking one or more mines near Port Arthur, in northeast China. Casualties numbered 27 officers and 652 enlisted men, including Vice AdmiralStepan Makarov, the commander of the squadron, and the war artistVasily Vereshchagin. The arrival of the competent and aggressive Makarov after the Battle of Port Arthur had boosted Russian morale, which plummeted after his death. (Full article...)
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81; depicted in 1872) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. After publishing his first novel, Poor Folk, at age 25, Dostoyevsky wrote (among others) eleven novels, three novellas, and seventeen short novels, including Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).
A late nineteenth-century photochrom of a reindeer sled, Arkhangelsk, Russia. Reindeer have been herded for centuries by several Arctic and Subarctic people including the Sami and the Nenets. They are raised for their meat, hides, antlers and, to a lesser extent, for milk and transportation.
This photo of the Nilov Monastery on Stolobny Island in Tver Oblast, Russia, was taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky in 1910 before the advent of colour photography. His process used a camera that took a series of monochrome pictures in rapid sequence, each through a different coloured filter. By projecting all three monochrome pictures using correctly coloured light, it was possible to reconstruct the original colour scene.
Although James Clerk Maxwell made the first color photograph in 1861, the results were far from realistic until Prokudin-Gorsky perfected the technique with a series of improvements around 1905. His process used a camera that took a series of monochrome pictures in rapid sequence, each through a different colored filter. Prokudin-Gorskii then went on to document much of the country of Russia, travelling by train in a specially equipped darkroomrailroad car.
The Tauride Palace is one of the largest and most historic palaces in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was designed by Ivan Starov for Prince Grigory Potemkin, and was constructed between 1783 and 1789. After the owner's death, it was purchased by Catherine the Great, who constructed a theatre in the east wing and a church in the west wing. Many improvements were also made to the grounds, including construction of the Admiralty Pavilion, the gardener house, the orangery, glass-houses, bridges, and ironwork fences. Although the exterior of the building was rather plain, the interior was very luxurious. More recently, the building housed the first Imperial State Duma (1906–1917) and the post-revolution provisional government.
An Alaskan parchment scrip banknote in the denomination of 1 ruble, printed on vellum or parchment by the Russian-American Company. On the obverse, the horizontal text immediately beneath the double-headed eagle reads "Seal of the Russian American Company". The oval text reads "under august protection of His Imperial Majesty", and under the oval is the value of the note "one ruble".
Alaskan parchment scrip was used as a form of company scrip in Alaska when it was a possession of the Russian Empire. In circulation from 1816 to 1867, such scrip could be printed on vellum, parchment, or pinniped skin. Denominations of 10, 25, 50 kopecks and 1, 5, 10, and 25 rubles were issued.
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the world's greatest novelists. He is best known for War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction. Born to an aristocratic family on 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828, Tolstoy was orphaned when he was young. He studied at Kazan University, but this was not a success, and he left university without completing his degree. During this time, he began to write and published his first novel, Childhood, in 1852. Tolstoy later served at the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, and was appalled by the number of deaths and left at the conclusion of the war. He spent the remainder of his life writing whilst also marrying and starting a family. In the 1870s he converted to a form of fervent Christian anarchism.
Hotel Astoria is a five-star hotel located on Saint Isaac's Square in Saint Petersburg. Commissioned in 1910 by the Palace Hotel Company to host visitors to the Romanov tercentenary, the hotel was designed by Fyodor Lidval and first opened in 1912. After the October Revolution, it continued to be used as a state-operated hotel, though during World War II it was also a field hospital. The hotel, now owned by Rocco Forte Hotels, has been renovated several times, most recently in 2012.
Traditional preparation of the dessert is made by baking milk or cream until a golden milk skin forms. Then, this skin is lifted and used to separate the dish's ingredients by layers with the skin between each layer. It's sprinkled on top with sugar and browned in a broiler. (Full article...)
Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, Khrushchev worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He originally supported Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. (Full article...)
... that Vostok 2022 marked the most comprehensive participation of Chinese forces in a Russian military exercise to date?
... that the 2002 Russian pop song "A Man like Putin" inadvertently became adopted as propaganda?
... that American horticulturalist Joseph Lancaster Budd traveled to England, France, Austria, Russia, and China in 1882 to discover fruit trees that could grow in Iowa?
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