|
Grūtas Park
Grūtas Park (unofficially known as Stalin's World; lt, Grūto parkas) is a socialist realism museum with a sculpture garden of Soviet-era statues and other Soviet ideological relics from the times of the Lithuanian SSR. Founded in 2001 by a mushroom magnate Viliumas Malinauskas, the park is located near Druskininkai, about southwest of Vilnius, Lithuania. The park requires an entrance fee. History After Lithuania restored its independence in 1990, the vast majority of the Soviet statues were taken down and dumped in different places. Malinauskas asked Lithuanian authorities to grant him possession of the sculptures, so that he could build a privately financed museum. This Soviet-theme park was created in the wetlands of the Dzūkija National Park. Many of its features are re-creations of Soviet Gulag prison camps: wooden paths, guard towers, and barbed-wire fences. Its establishment was controversial and faced considerable opposition at the time. Some ideas originally m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism. Born to an upper-middle-class family in Simbirsk, Lenin embraced revolutionary socialist politics following his brother's 1887 execution. Expelled from Kazan Imperial University for participating in protests against the Russian Empire's Tsarist government, he devoted the following years to a law degree. He moved to Saint Petersburg in 1893 and became a senior Marxist activist. In 1897, he was arrested for sedition and exiled to Shushenskoye in Siberia for three years, where he married ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, ''Pravda'', and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marytė Melnikaitė
Marytė or Marija Melnikaitė (18 March 1923 – 13 July 1943) was a Soviet partisan and the only Lithuanians, Lithuanian woman awarded Hero of the Soviet Union. While her partisan career lasted less than two months, Soviet propaganda exaggerated her duties and accomplishments. Many works, including a film and an opera, were dedicated to her. Several streets in the former Soviet Union (including Tyumen, Minsk, Almaty, Shymkent) are still named after her. Early life Melnikaitė was born to a family of a Russian mother Antonina Illarionovna and a Lithuanians, Lithuanian father Juozas Melnikas in Zarasai. She had four other siblings and the parents took assorted jobs to provide for the large family. They moved frequently in search for jobs (Zarasai, Anykščiai, Rokiškis, Zarasai, Marijampolė). Melnikaitė completed a primary school in Rokiškis and started working at ''Avanti'' confectionery at age 14 and studied sewing. In 1940, after Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Partisans
Soviet partisans were members of resistance movements that fought a guerrilla war against Axis forces during World War II in the Soviet Union, the previously Soviet-occupied territories of interwar Poland in 1941–45 and eastern Finland. The activity emerged after Nazi Germany's Operation Barbarossa was launched from mid-1941 on. It was coordinated and controlled by the Soviet government and modeled on that of the Red Army. The partisans made a significant contribution to the war by countering German plans to exploit occupied Soviet territories economically, gave considerable help to the Red Army by conducting systematic attacks against Germany's rear communication network, disseminated political rhetoric among the local population by publishing newspapers and leaflets, and succeeded in creating and maintaining feelings of insecurity among Axis forces. Soviet partisans also operated on interwar Polish and Baltic territories occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939–1940, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lithuanian–Soviet War
The Lithuanian–Soviet War or Lithuanian–Bolshevik War ( lt, karas su bolševikais) was fought between Act of Independence of Lithuania, newly independent Lithuania and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in the aftermath of World War I. It was part of the larger Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919. The offensive followed the retreat of German troops and sought to establish Republics of the Soviet Union, Soviet republics in Ukrainian People's Republic, Ukraine, Socialist Soviet Republic of Lithuania and Belorussia, Belarus, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic (1918–19), Lithuania, Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic, Latvia, Estonian War of Independence, Estonia, Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee, Poland and link up with the German Revolution of 1918–1919, German Revolution. By the end of December 1918 Soviet forces reached Lithuanian borders. Largely unopposed, they occupied one town after another and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1926 Lithuanian Coup D'état
The 1926 Lithuanian coup d'état ( Lithuanian: ) was a military coup d'état in Lithuania that resulted in the replacement of the democratically elected government with a Nationalist regime led by Antanas Smetona. The coup took place on 17 December 1926 and was largely organized by the military; Smetona's role remains the subject of debate. The coup brought the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, the most conservative party at the time, to power. Previously it had been a fairly new and insignificant nationalistic party. By 1926, its membership reached about 2,000 and it had won only three seats in the parliamentary elections. The Lithuanian Christian Democratic Party, the largest party in the Seimas at the time, collaborated with the military and provided constitutional legitimacy to the coup, but accepted no major posts in the new government and withdrew in May 1927. After the military handed power over to the civilian government, it ceased playing a direct role in political life. Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Terror
The Red Terror (russian: Красный террор, krasnyj terror) in Soviet Russia was a campaign of political repression and executions carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It started in late August 1918 after the beginning of the Russian Civil WarLlewellyn, Jennifer; McConnell, Michael; Thompson, Steve (11 August 2019)"The Red Terror" ''Russian Revolution''. Alpha History. Retrieved 4 August 2021. and lasted until 1922. Arising after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin and Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky, the latter of which was successful, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution,Wilde, Robert. 2019 February 20.The Red Terror" ''ThoughtCo''. Retrieved March 24, 2021. and sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power. More broadly, the term is usually applied to Bolshevik political repression throughout the Civil War (1917–1922), as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Felix Dzerzhinsky
Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky ( pl, Feliks Dzierżyński ; russian: Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович Дзержи́нский; – 20 July 1926), nicknamed "Iron Felix", was a Bolshevik revolutionary and official, born into Poland, Polish nobility. From 1917 until his death in 1926, Dzerzhinsky led the first two Soviet National Security, state-security organizations, the Cheka and the OGPU, establishing a Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, secret police for the Russian Revolution, post-revolutionary Sovnarkom, Soviet regime. He was one of the architects of the Red Terror and decossackization. Early life Felix Dzerzhinsky was born on 11 September 1877 to ethnically Poles, Polish parents of noble descent, at the Dzerzhinovo family estate, about from the small town of Ivyanets in the Minsk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Belarus). In the Russian Empire, his family was of a type known as "Uradel, column-listed nobility" (russian: столбовое двор ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ieronim Uborevich
Ieronim Petrovich Uborevich ( lt, Jeronimas Uborevičius; russian: Иерони́м Петро́вич Уборе́вич; – 12 June 1937) was a Soviet military commander of the Red Army during the Russian Civil War, reaching the rank of komandarm in 1935. He was executed during the Great Purge in June 1937 and was posthumously rehabilitated in 1957. Biography Uborevich was born into a Lithuanian peasant family in the village of Antandraja in the Novoalexandrovsky Uyezd of the Kovno Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Utena District Municipality, Lithuania). After graduating from the Dvinsk (now Daugavpils) realschule, he attended the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical Institute before transferring in 1915 to the , from which he graduated in 1916, receiving command of a battery and later a company. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (b) in 1917 and, after the October Revolution, began recruiting Red Guards in Bessarabia. During Operation Faustschla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feliksas Baltušis-Žemaitis
Feliksas Rafailovich Baltušis-Žemaitis (russian: Феликс Рафаилович Балтушис-Жемайтис, November 30, 1897 – June 1, 1957) was a Lithuanian Red Army major general. He participated in World War I, the Russian Civil War, the Hamburg Uprising, and World War II. Baltušis-Žemaitis was one of the few Lithuanian officers (others included Vytautas Putna, Ieronim Uborevich, Viktoras Penkaitis) of the Imperial Russian Army who after the February and October Revolutions went to serve in the Red Army. He was a lecturer/docent at the Frunze Military Academy in 1935–1940. Baltušis-Žemaitis briefly commanded the Lithuanian Army in 1940 during Lithuania's incorporation into the Soviet Union. He earned his Candidate of Military Sciences academic degree in 1940. He was also a senior lecturer at the USSR General Staff Academy during 1940–1941 and 1943–1945, and served as the chief of USSR Supreme Command Courses 1945–1947. Timeline *1940: Comman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established in January 1918. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations (especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Starting in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in 1991. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. During operations on the Eastern Front, it accounted for 75–80% of casual ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincas Mickevičius-Kapsukas
Vincas Mickevičius (Polish spelling: Mickiewicz), known under his pen name ''Kapsukas'' ( – 17 February 1935), was a Lithuanian communist political activist, publicist and revolutionary. As an active member of the Lithuanian National Revival, he wrote for and edited many Lithuanian publications and joined the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party. As his views turned from socialism to communism, he became one of the founders and leaders of the Lithuanian Communist Party and headed the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and Lithuanian–Belorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (Litbel) in 1918–1919. After the fall of these republics, Mickevičius left for Soviet Russia, where he continued to lead the Lithuanian communists and worked for the Communist International (Comintern). Biography Early life and education Mickevičius was born in 1880 in the village of Wyłkowyszki, Wyłkowyszki district, to a Lithuanian family of wealthy farmers. Suvalkija was then pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
