Gigantomania
Gigantomania (from Ancient Greek γίγας ''gigas'', "giant" and μανία ''mania'', "madness") is the production of unusually and superfluously large works. Khiterer, V. ''Gigantomania''. Gale Encyclopedia of Russian History. Gigantomania is in varying degrees a feature of the political and cultural lives of prehistoric and ancient civilizations (Megalithic cultures, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Ancient China, Aztec civilization), several totalitarian regimes ( Stalin's USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Maoist China, Juche Korea), as well as of contemporary capitalist countries (notably for skyscrapers and shopping malls). Soviet Union The social engineering and modernization efforts in agriculture and industry of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin have been described as gigantomaniac. The creation of extremely large industrial complexes, farms, engineering efforts, buildings and statues was to prove the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism. These projects al ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek, of which Attic Greek developed into Koine. Dia ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Inside The Third Reich
''Inside the Third Reich'' (german: Erinnerungen, "Memories") is a memoir written by Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister of Armaments from 1942 to 1945, serving as Adolf Hitler's main architect before this period. It is considered to be one of the most detailed descriptions of the inner workings and leadership of Nazi Germany but is controversial because of Speer's lack of discussion of Nazi atrocities and questions regarding his degree of awareness or involvement with them. First published in 1969, it appeared in English translation in 1970. At the Nuremberg Trials, Speer was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his use of prisoners in the armaments factories while Minister of Armaments. From 1946 to 1966, while serving the sentence in Spandau Prison, he penned more than 2,000 manuscript pages of personal memoirs. His first draft was written from March 1953 to 26 December 1954. After his release on 1 October 1966, he used Federal Archive documents to rework the material into his aut ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Super-heavy Tank
A super-heavy tank or super heavy tank is any tank that is notably beyond the standard of the class heavy tank in either size or weight relative to contemporary vehicles. Programs have been initiated on several occasions with the aim of creating an extremely resilient vehicle for penetrating enemy formations without fear of being destroyed in combat; however, only a few examples were built, and there is little evidence of any super heavy tank having seen combat. Examples were designed in the First and Second World Wars, along with a few during the Cold War. History First World War left, Model of the Flying Elephant design The first super-heavy tank was designed by the Russian naval engineer Vasily Mendeleyev who worked on the project from 1911 to 1915. The tank was envisioned to be invulnerable to almost all contemporary threats but remained on paper due to its high construction cost. Following the production of their first tanks, the British "Flying Elephant" was desig ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Albert Speer
Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (; ; 19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison. An architect by training, Speer joined the Nazi Party in 1931. His architectural skills made him increasingly prominent within the Party, and he became a member of Hitler's inner circle. Hitler commissioned him to design and construct structures including the Reich Chancellery and the Nazi party rally grounds in Nuremberg. In 1937, Hitler appointed Speer as General Building Inspector for Berlin. In this capacity he was responsible for the Central Department for Resettlement that evicted Jewish tenants from their homes in Berlin. In February 1942, Speer was appointed as Reich Minister of Armaments and War Production. Using misleading statistics, he promoted himsel ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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University Of California Press
The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by faculty of the University of California, established 25 years earlier in 1868, and has been officially headquartered at the university's flagship campus in Berkeley, California, since its inception. As the non-profit publishing arm of the University of California system, the UC Press is fully subsidized by the university and the State of California. A third of its authors are faculty members of the university. The press publishes over 250 new books and almost four dozen multi-issue journals annually, in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, and maintains approximately 4,000 book titles in print. It is also the digital publisher of Collabra and Luminos open access (OA) initiatives. The University of California Press publishes in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the Chancellor of Germany, chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated European theatre of World War II, World War II in Europe by invasion of Poland, invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of Holocaust victims, about six million Jews and millions of other victims. Hitler was born in Braunau am Inn in Austria-Hungary and was raised near Linz. He lived in Vienna later in the first decade of the 1900s and moved to Germany in 1913. He was decorated during his Military career of Adolf Hitler, service in the German Army in Worl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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White Sea Canal
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no hue). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully reflect and scatter all the visible wavelengths of light. White on television and computer screens is created by a mixture of red, blue, and green light. The color white can be given with white pigments, especially titanium dioxide. In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore white togas as symbols of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity. It was the royal color of the kings of France, and of the monarchist movement that opposed the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917–1922). Greek and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of new churches ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Motherland Calls
''The Motherland Calls'' ( rus, Родина-мать зовёт!, Rodina-mat' zovyot!, t=Homeland-Mother Is Calling!) is the compositional centre of the monument-ensemble "Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad" on Mamayev Kurgan in Volgograd, Russia. The statue is designed in the Soviet style of socialist realism. It was designed by sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and structural engineer Nikolai Nikitin, and declared the tallest statue in the world in 1967. At , it is the tallest statue in Europe, the tallest in the eastern hemisphere outside of Asia and the tallest statue (excluding pedestals) of a woman in the world. Together with the '' Warrior Liberator'' in Treptower Park, Berlin and ''Rear-front Memorial'' in Magnitogorsk, the monument is a part of a triptych. Construction The work of sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich and engineer Nikolai Nikitin is an figure of a woman stepping forward with a raised sword. The statue is an allegorical image of the Motherland, which calls on its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Palace Of The Soviets
The Palace of the Soviets (russian: Дворец Советов, ''Dvorets Sovetov'') was a project to construct a political convention center in Moscow on the site of the demolished Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The main function of the palace was to house sessions of the Supreme Soviet in its wide and tall grand hall seating over 20,000 people. If built, the tall palace would have become the world's tallest structure, with an internal volume surpassing the combined volumes of the six tallest American skyscrapers. Boris Iofan won a series of four architectural competitions held in 1931–1933 marking the beginning of a sharp turn of Soviet architecture from 1920s modernism to the monumental historicism of Stalinist architecture. The individuals behind these events and their motives remain a matter of conjecture and debate. Recent research supports the hypothesis that Iofan had been the chosen architect from the very start and manipulated the competitions to his own ben ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Magnitogorsk
Magnitogorsk ( rus, Магнитого́рск, p=məɡnʲɪtɐˈɡorsk, ) is an industrial city in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located on the eastern side of the extreme southern extent of the Ural Mountains by the Ural River. Its population is It was named after Mount Magnitnaya, a geological anomaly that once consisted almost completely of iron ore, around 55% to 60% iron. It is the second-largest city in Russia that is not the administrative centre of any federal subject or district. Magnitogorsk contains the largest iron and steel works in the country: Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. The official motto of the city is "the place where Europe and Asia meet", as the city occupies land in both Europe and Asia. Magnitogorsk is one of only two planned socialist realist settlements ever built (the other being Nowa Huta in Poland). History Foundation Magnitogorsk was founded in 1743 as part of the Orenburg Line of forts built during the reign of the Empress Elizabeth. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kuybyshev Hydroelectric Station
The Zhiguli Hydroelectric Station or Zhigulyovskaya Hydroelectric Station (russian: Жигулёвская ГЭС, Zhigulyovskaya GES++), formerly known as Kuybyshev Hydroelectric Station (Kuybyshev GES) is a large dam and hydroelectric station on the Volga River, located near Zhigulyovsk and Tolyatti in Samara Oblast of Russia. It is the sixth stage of the Volga-Kama Cascade of dams, and the second of them by installed power. General data Construction started in 1950 and was completed in 1957. The complex consists of earth-fill dam, 2800 m long, 750 m wide and 52 m high, concrete spillway dam, 980 m long, power plant house, 700 m long, and two-lane navigable locks. Installed power is 2,488 MW, average annual production is 11,700 GWh. The power house has 20 generator units with Kaplan turbines, 4 of 120 MW and 16 of 125.5 MW at 22.5 m head. The dam forms Kuybyshev Reservoir. Economic value The station covers peak loads and maintains frequency stability in the unified po ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |