The Faculty Of Useless Knowledge
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The Faculty Of Useless Knowledge
''The Faculty of Useless Knowledge'' ( rus, Факультет ненужных вещей, Fakultet nenuzhnykh veshchey) is a novel by Yury Dombrovsky about the fate of Russian ''intelligentsia'' in the era of the Great Purge, written in 1964–1975. It completes a kind of dialogue begun by the novel ''The Guardian of Antiquities'' (published in 1964 in ''Novy Mir''). The novel was dedicated to Dombrovsky's ''Novy Mir'' editor Anna Samoilovna Berser and published by YMCA Press in Paris; according to the popular version, the publication was the cause of Dombrovsky's death (possibly murder). In the USSR it was published in 1988. Synopsis The novel takes place in the summer of 1937 in the city of Almaty. The protagonist of the novel, Georgy Nikolaevich Zybin, is a thirty-year-old historian and an employee of the ethnographic museum. For a long time Zybin has tried to live besides his epoch, not penetrating into the essence of events occurring around: arrests, public judicial ...
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Yury Dombrovsky
Yury Osipovich Dombrovsky (russian: Ю́рий О́сипович Домбро́вский; 29 May 1978) was a Russian writer who spent nearly eighteen years in Soviet prison camps and exile. Life and career Dombrovsky was the son of Jewish lawyer Joseph Dombrovsky and Russian mother. Dombrovsky fell foul of the authorities as early as 1932, for his part in the student suicide case described in '' The Faculty of Useless Knowledge''. He was exiled to Alma-Ata in Kazakhstan where he established himself as a teacher, and which provided the setting for his novel ''The Keeper of Antiquities''. This work, translated into English by Michael Glenny, gives several ominous hints as to the development of the Stalinist terror and its impact in remote Alma-Ata. Dombrovsky had begun publishing literary articles in ''Kazakhstanskaya Pravda'' by 1937, when he was imprisoned again — this time for a mere seven months, having the luck to be detained during the partial hiatus between the ...
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Humanism
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "humanism" has changed according to the successive intellectual movements that have identified with it. During the Italian Renaissance, ancient works inspired scholars in various Italian cities, giving rise to a movement now called Renaissance humanism. With Enlightenment, humanistic values were re-enforced by the advances in science and technology, giving confidence to humans in their exploration of the world. By the early 20th century, organizations solely dedicated to humanism flourished in Europe and the United States, and have since expanded all over the globe. In the current day, the term generally refers to a focus on human well-being and advocates for human freedom, autonomy, and progress. It views humanity as responsible for the promotio ...
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Books About Soviet Repression
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's '' Physics'' i ...
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Censored Books
Book censorship is the act of some authority taking measures to suppress ideas and information within a book. Censorship is "the regulation of free speech and other forms of entrenched authority". Censors typically identify as either a concerned parent, community members who react to a text without reading, or local or national organizations. Marshall University Library defines a ''banned book'' as one that is "removed from a library, classroom etc." and a ''challenged book'' as one that is "requested to be removed from a library, classroom etc." Books can be censored by burning, shelf removal, school censorship, and banning books. Books are most often censored for age appropriateness, offensive language, sexual content, amongst other reasons. Similarly, religions may issue lists of banned books, such as the historical example of the Roman Catholic Church's ''Index Librorum Prohibitorum'' and bans of such books as Salman Rushdie's ''The Satanic Verses'' by Ayatollah Khomeini, ...
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Novels Set In The Stalin Era
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially th ...
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1978 Novels
Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd government). * January 6 – The Holy Crown of Hungary (also known as Stephen of Hungary Crown) is returned to Hungary from the United States, where it was held since World War II. * January 10 – Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, a critic of the Nicaraguan government, is assassinated; riots erupt against Somoza's government. * January 18 – The European Court of Human Rights finds the British government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland, but not guilty of torture. * January 22 – Ethiopia declares the ambassador of West Germany '' persona non grata''. * January 24 ** Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 burns up in Earth's atmosphere, scattering debris over Canada's Northwest Territories. ** Rose Dugdale and Eddie Gallagher become the first convic ...
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Soviet Novels
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national republics; in practice, both its government and its economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with the city of Moscow serving as its capital as well as that of its largest and most populous republic: the Russian SFSR. Other major cities included Leningrad (Russian SFSR), Kiev (Ukrainian SSR), Minsk (Byelorussian SSR), Tashkent (Uzbek SSR), Alma-Ata (Kazakh SSR), and Novosibirsk (Russian SFSR). It was the largest country in the world, covering over and spanning eleven time zones. The country's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government that ...
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Harvill Secker
Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, by Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse. The firm became renowned for its political stance, being both anti-fascist and anti-communist, a position that put them at loggerheads with the ethos of many intellectuals of the time. When George Orwell parted company with Communist Party sympathizer Victor Gollancz over his editing of ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (1937), he took his next book ''Homage to Catalonia'' to Secker & Warburg, who published it in 1938. They also published, after 18 months of rejections and setbacks, ''Animal Farm'' (1945), and Orwell's subsequent books.Orwell, Sonia, and Ian Angus (eds), ''The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose (1945–1950)''. Penguin, 1970. Orwell ...
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Igor Zolotussky
Igor may refer to: People * Igor (given name), an East Slavic given name and a list of people with the name * Mighty Igor (1931–2002), former American professional wrestler * Igor Volkoff, a professional wrestler from NWA All-Star Wrestling * Igorrr, (born 1984) a French musician Fictional characters * Igor (character), a stock character * Igor Karkaroff, character in the ''Harry Potter'' series * Igor, the eagle in '' Count Duckula'' * Igor, the first enemy character in fighting game '' Human Killing Machine'' * Igor, a baboon with shape-shifting powers in Marvel comics (see List of fictional monkeys) * Igor, a reoccurring character in the ''Persona'' series * Igor, a character in '' Young Frankenstein'' * Igor Nevsky, an assassin in ''Air Force One'' (film) Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Igor'' (album), a 2019 album by Tyler, The Creator * ''Igor'' (film), a 2008 American animated film * '' Igor: Objective Uikokahonia'', a 1994 Spanish MS-DOS PC video game relea ...
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Valentin Nepomniyashchy
Valentin is a male given name meaning "strong, healthy, power, rule, terco". It comes from the Latin name ''Valentinus'', as in Saint Valentin. Commonly found in Spain, Romania, Bulgaria, France, Italy, Russia, Ukraine, Scandinavia, Latin America etc. Valentin is also used as a surname in Spanish and German speaking-countries. Given name First name * Valentin Abel (born 1991), German politician * Valentin Alexandru (born 1991), Romanian footballer * Valentin Blass (born 1995), German basketball player * Valentin Bondarenko (1937–1961), Soviet fighter pilot * Valentin de Boulogne (before 1591 – 1632), French painter * Valentin Brunel (born 1996), French DJ known as Kungs * Valentin "Val" Brunn (born 1994), German electronic music producer and DJ known as Virtual Riot * Valentin Bosioc (born 1983), Romanian bodybuilder * Valentín Castellanos (born 1998), Argentine footballer * Valentin Ceaușescu (born 1948), Romanian physicist * Valentin Chmerkovskiy (born 1986), Ukrain ...
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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 ...
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