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Stalin Epigram
The "Stalin Epigram", also known as "The Kremlin Highlander" (russian: Кремлёвский горец) is a satirical poem by the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, written in November 1933. The poem describes the climate of fear in the Soviet Union. Mandelstam read the poem only to a few friends, including Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova. The poem played a role in his own arrest and the arrests of Akhmatova's son and husband, Lev Gumilev and Nikolay Punin. The poem was almost the first case Genrikh Yagoda dealt with after becoming NKVD boss. Nikolai Bukharin visited Yagoda to intercede for Mandelstam, unaware of the nature of his "offense". According to Mandelstam's widow Nadezhda: "Yagoda liked M.'s poem so much that he even learned it by heart – he recited it to Bukharin – but he would not have hesitated to destroy the whole of literature, past, present and future, if he had thought it to his advantage. For people of this extraordinary type, human blood is like water." ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to question. Satire is found in many a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. Established in 1917 as NKVD of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the agency was originally tasked with conducting regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, with its functions being dispersed among other agencies, only to be reinstated as an all-union commissariat in 1934. The functions of the OGPU (the secret police organization) were transferred to the NKVD around the year 1930, giving it a monopoly over law enforcement activities that lasted until the end of World War II. During this period, the NKVD included both ordinary public order activities, and secret police activities. The NKVD is known for its role in political repression and for carrying out the Great ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1933 Poems
Events January * January 11 – Sir Charles Kingsford Smith makes the first commercial flight between Australia and New Zealand. * January 17 – The United States Congress votes in favour of Philippines independence, against the wishes of U.S. President Herbert Hoover. * January 28 – "Pakistan Declaration": Choudhry Rahmat Ali publishes (in Cambridge, UK) a pamphlet entitled ''Now or Never; Are We to Live or Perish Forever?'', in which he calls for the creation of a Muslim state in northwest India that he calls " Pakstan"; this influences the Pakistan Movement. * January 30 ** National Socialist German Workers Party leader Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany by President of Germany Paul von Hindenburg. ** Édouard Daladier forms a government in France in succession to Joseph Paul-Boncour. He is succeeded on October 26 by Albert Sarraut and on November 26 by Camille Chautemps. February * February 1 – Adolf Hitler gives his "Proclamation to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1933 In The Soviet Union
The following lists events that happened during 1933 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Incumbents * General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union – Joseph Stalin * Chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets – Mikhail Kalinin * Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union – Vyacheslav Molotov * People's Commissar for military and naval affairs- Kliment Voroshilov * People's Commissar for heavy industry- Sergo Ordzhonikidze * People's Commissar for Ways of Communication- Andrey Andreyev * First Secretary of Moscow urban committee of AUCP(b) - Lazar Kaganovich Events * 2 August - White Sea–Baltic Canal opened. * 5 September - Tupolev ANT-7 crash near Podolsk, which led to a complete reorganization of air traffic in the Soviet Union. Undated * Second Five Year Plan Begins * The Holodomor famine takes place in Ukraine. * Joseph Stalin added Article 121 to the entire Soviet Union criminal code, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ossetians
The Ossetians or Ossetes (, ; os, ир, ирæттæ / дигорӕ, дигорӕнттӕ, translit= ir, irættæ / digoræ, digorænttæ, label=Ossetic) are an Iranian ethnic group who are indigenous to Ossetia, a region situated across the northern and southern sides of the Caucasus Mountains. They natively speak Ossetic, an Eastern Iranian language of the Indo-European language family, with most also being fluent in Russian as a second language. Ossetic, a remnant of the Scytho-Sarmatian dialect group which was once spoken across the Pontic–Caspian Steppe, is one of the few Iranian languages remaining inside Europe. Currently, the Ossetian homeland of Ossetia is politically divided between North Ossetia–Alania in Russia, and the ''de facto'' country of South Ossetia (recognized by the United Nations as Russian-occupied territory that is ''de jure'' part of Georgia). Their closest historical and linguistic relatives, the Jász people, live in the Jászság region withi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 rac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nadezhda Mandelshtam
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam ( rus, Надежда Яковлевна Мандельштам, p=nɐˈdʲeʐdə ˈjakəvlʲɪvnə mənʲdʲɪlʲˈʂtam, , Хазина; 29 December 1980) was a Russian Jewish writer and educator, and the wife of the poet Osip Mandelstam who died in 1938 in a transit camp to the ''gulag'' of Siberia. She wrote two memoirs about their lives together and the repressive Stalinist regime: '' Hope Against Hope'' (1970) and '' Hope Abandoned'' (1974), both first published in the West in English, translated by Max Hayward. Of these books the critic Clive James wrote, "''Hope Against Hope'' puts her at the centre of the liberal resistance under the Soviet Union. A masterpiece of prose as well as a model of biographical narrative and social analysis it is mainly the story of the terrible last years of persecution and torment before the poet er husband Osipwas murdered. The sequel, ''Hope Abandoned'', is about the author's personal fate, and is in some ways ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин) ( – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory. As a young man, he spent six years in exile working closely with fellow exiles Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. After the revolution of February 1917, he returned to Moscow, where his Bolshevik credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October Revolution became editor of their newspaper ''Pravda.'' Within the Bolshevik Party, Bukharin was initially a left communist, but gradually moved to the right from 1921. His strong support for and defence of the New Economic Policy (NEP) eventually saw him lead the Right Opposition. By late 1924, this stance had positioned Bukharin favourably as Joseph Stalin's chief ally, with Bukharin soon elaborating Stalin's new theory and policy of Socialism in One Country. Together, Bukh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genrikh Yagoda
Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda ( rus, Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, Genrikh Grigor'yevich Yagoda, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge. Yagoda also supervised construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the GULAG system, during which 12,000–25,000 laborers died. Like many Soviet NKVD officers who conducted political repression, Yagoda himself ultimately became a victim of the Purge. He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in favor of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936 and arrested in 1937. Charged with crimes of wrecking, espionage, Trotskyism and conspiracy, Yagoda was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones and shares Borders of Russia, land boundaries with fourteen countries, more than List of countries and territories by land borders, any other country but China. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, world's ninth-most populous country and List of European countries by population, Europe's most populous country, with a population of 146 million people. The country's capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city is Moscow, the List of European cities by population within city limits, largest city entirely within E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikolay Punin
Nikolay Nikolayevich Punin (russian: link=no, Никола́й Никола́евич Пу́нин; – August 21, 1953) was a Russian art scholar and writer. He edited several magazines, such as ''Izobrazitelnoye Iskusstvo'' among others, and was also co-founder of the Department of Iconography in the State Russian Museum. Punin was a lifelong friend and common-law husband of poet Anna Akhmatova who is famous for writing the poem ''Requiem''. Biography A key figure in the Russian art world Nikolay Punin was born in Helsingfors (now Helsinki), Grand Duchy of Finland, into the family of Nikolay Mikhaylovich Punin, a Medical Doctor of the Imperial Russian Army stationed in Helsingfors. Nikolay’s younger brother Leonid Punin was later to become a commander in the White armies. Young Punin moved to St. Petersburg and attended the classical gymnasium where he first met young student Anna Akhmatova. From 1907 to 1914, Punin attended the St. Petersburg University, studied hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lev Gumilev
Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov (russian: Лев Никола́евич Гумилёв; 1 October 1912 – 15 June 1992) was a Soviet historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism. Life Gumilyov's parents, two prominent poets Nikolay Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova, divorced when he was 7 years old and his father was executed by the Cheka when he was just 9. Gumilyov spent much of his youth, from 1938 until 1956, in Soviet labor camps. He was arrested by the NKVD in 1935 and released, but rearrested and sentenced to five years in 1938. Osip Mandelstam's " Stalin Epigram" is said to have played a role in his arrest. After release, he joined the Red Army and took part in the Battle of Berlin of 1945. However, he was arrested again in 1949 and sentenced to ten years in prison camps. Aiming to secure his freedom, Akhmatova published a dithyramb to Joseph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
