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Vertushka
The Vertushka () was a special internal telephone system in the Soviet Union, named after the Russian word for rotary dials, the existence of which on a telephone was a novelty in an era dominated by manual switchboards. The telephone is dial-less and directly linked to the Kremlin. It connected the leader to key subordinates, like regional party secretaries, high ranking military officials or important state-owned factory chiefs. Having a Vertushka reflected the high status of the owner in the hierarchy of governance. The telephone was designed only to receive calls from the leader. Parallel systems existed in other cities, as well as in the capitals of Soviet satellite states, as well as in many Soviet ministries and departments, to make up for an insufficiency in funding levels for a true national network; the legacy of this persisted beyond the fall of the Soviet Union, with approximately 20 percent of phones in 1991 existing on private networks. References Further readin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soviet Union
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rotary Dial
A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone number to a telephone exchange. On the rotary dial, the digits are arranged in a circular layout, with one finger hole in the finger wheel for each digit. For dialing a digit, the wheel is rotated against spring tension with one finger positioned in the corresponding hole, pulling the wheel with the finger to a stop position given by a mechanical barrier, the finger stop. When released at the finger stop, the wheel returns to its home position driven by the spring at a speed regulated by a governor device. During this return rotation, an electrical switch interrupts the direct current (DC) of the telephone line (local loop) the specific number of times associated with each digit and thereby generates electrical pulses which the telephone exchang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Switchboard Operator
In the early days of telephony, companies used manual telephone switchboards, and switchboard operators connected calls by inserting a pair of phone plugs into the appropriate jacks. They were gradually phased out and replaced by automated systems, first those allowing direct dialing within a local area, then for long-distance and international direct dialing. Description A typical telephone switchboard has a vertical panel containing an array of jacks with a desk in front. The desk has a row of switches and two rows of plugs attached to cables that retract into the desk when not in use. Each pair of plugs was part of a cord circuit with a switch associated that let the operator participate in the call or ring the circuit for an incoming call. Each jack had a light above it that lit when the customer's telephone receiver was lifted (the earliest systems required the customer to hand-crank a magneto to alert the central office and, later, to "ring off" the completed call). Lines ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kremlin
The Kremlin ( rus, Московский Кремль, r=Moskovskiy Kreml', p=ˈmɐˈskofskʲɪj krʲemlʲ, t=Moscow Kremlin) is a fortified complex in the center of Moscow founded by the Rurik dynasty, Rurik dynasty. It is the best known of the Kremlin (fortification), kremlins (Russian citadels), and includes five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Kremlin Wall with Kremlin towers. In addition, within this complex is the Grand Kremlin Palace that was formerly the Tsar's Moscow residence. The complex now serves as the official residence of the President of Russia, President of the Russian Federation and as a Moscow Kremlin Museums, museum with almost 3 million visitors in 2017. The Kremlin overlooks the Moskva River to the south, Saint Basil's Cathedral and Red Square to the east, and the Alexander Garden to the west. The name "''Kremlin''" means "fortress inside a city", and is often also used metonymically to refer to the Government of Russia, government of the Russi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Satellite State
A satellite state or dependent state is a country that is formally independent in the world, but under heavy political, economic, and military influence or control from another country. The term was coined by analogy to planetary objects orbiting a larger object, such as smaller moons revolving around larger planets, and is used mainly to refer to Central and Eastern European countries of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War or to Mongolia or Tannu Tuva between 1924 and 1990, for example. As used for Central and Eastern European countries it implies that the countries in question were "satellites" under the hegemony of the Soviet Union. In some contexts it also refers to other countries in the Soviet sphere of influence during the Cold War, such as North Korea (especially in the years surrounding the Korean War of 1950–1953), Cuba (particularly after it joined the Comecon in 1972), North Vietnam during Vietnam War, and to some countries in the American sphere of influence, such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dissolution Of The Soviet Union
The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Soviet Union (USSR) which resulted in the end of the country's and its federal government's existence as a sovereign state, thereby resulting in its constituent republics gaining full sovereignty on 26 December 1991. It brought an end to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's (later also President) effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide. The Soviet Union had experienced internal stagnation and ethnic separatism. Although highly centralized until its final years, the country was made up of fifteen top-level republics that served as homelands for different ethnicities. By late 1991, amid a catastrophic political crisis, with several republics alre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arkady Shevchenko
Arkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko ( uk, Аркадій Миколайович Шевченко, russian: Аркадий Николаевич Шевченко; October 11, 1930 – February 28, 1998) was a Soviet diplomat who was the highest-ranking Soviet official to defect to the West. Shevchenko joined the Soviet diplomatic service, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as a young man and rose through its ranks to become an advisor to Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. In 1973, he was appointed Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations (USG). During his assignment at the UN headquarters, in New York City, Shevchenko began to pass Soviet secrets to the CIA because he could not objectively fulfill his mission of impartiality to the United Nations. In 1978, he cut his ties to the Soviet Union and defected to the United States, where he lived for the rest of his life. Early life and education Shevchenko was born in the town of Horlivka, in the east of Ukraine, and when he was five ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Voslensky
Mikhail Sergeyevich Voslensky (russian: Михаил Серге́евич Восленский) (December 6, 1920, Berdyansk, Ukrainian SSR – February 8, 1997, Bonn, Germany) was a Soviet writer, scientist, diplomat and dissident who authored the book ''Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class'', about the Soviet nomenklatura, translated into 14 languages and printed in multiple editions. Voslensky was an interpreter for the Soviet Union during the Nuremberg Trials. In 1953-1955 he worked with the World Peace Council. Later he worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1974, after 4 years of living in West Germany, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship (restored in 1990) and worked with the Forschungsinstitut für Sowjetische Gegenwart (Research Institute for the Soviet Union). His book ''Nomenklatura'' was motivated by Milovan Djilas's concept of a New Class emerging in communist states. His book ''Secrets Revealed: Moscow Archives Speak'' sketches the role of terror in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Mosbacher
Eric Mosbacher (22 December 1903 – 2 July 1998) was an English journalist and translator from Italian, French, German and Spanish. He translated work by Ignazio Silone and Sigmund Freud.'Eric Mosbacher', ''The Times'', 10 July 1998, p.25 Life Eric Mosbacher was born in London. He was educated at St Paul's School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, graduating in 1924 in French and Italian. After working on local newspapers, he worked for the '' Daily Express'' and then the ''Evening Standard''. He also worked as assistant editor of the weekly ''Everyman'' and editor of ''Anglo-American News'', the London journal of the American Chamber of Commerce. Mosbacher's wife, Gwenda David, introduced him to the work of Ignazio Silone, and the pair translated Silone's anti-Fascist novel ''Fontamara'' in 1934. Often working in collaboration with his wife, Mosbacher continued translating in parallel with his other jobs. During World War II he worked as an interpreter interrogating Italian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milovan Djilas
Milovan Djilas (; , ; 12 June 1911 – 30 April 1995) was a Yugoslav communist politician, theorist and author. He was a key figure in the Partisan movement during World War II, as well as in the post-war government. A self-identified democratic socialist, Djilas became one of the best-known and most prominent dissidents in Yugoslavia and all of Eastern Europe. During an era of several decades, he critiqued communism from the viewpoint of trying to improve it from within; after the revolutions of 1989 and the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, he critiqued it from an anti-communist viewpoint of someone whose youthful dreams had been disillusioned. Early life and revolutionary activities Milovan Djilas was born in Podbišće near Mojkovac, Kingdom of Montenegro, on 12 June 1911 into a Montenegrin Serb peasant family. He was the fourth of nine children. His father Nikola, a recipient of the Obilić Medal for bravery, served in the Montenegrin Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telecommunications In Russia
Censorship and the issue of media freedom in Russia have been main themes since the era of the telegraph. Radio was a major new technology in the 1920s, when the Communists had recently come to power. Soviet authorities realized that the "ham" operator was highly individualistic and encouraged private initiative – too much so for the totalitarian regime. Criminal penalties were imposed but the working solution was to avoid broadcasting over the air. Instead radio programs were transmitted by copper wire, using a hub and spoke system, to loudspeakers in approved listening stations, such as the "Red" corner of a factory. Due to the enormous size of the country Russia today leads in List of countries by number of television broadcast stations, the number of TV broadcast stations and repeaters. There were few channels in the Soviet time, but in the past two decades many new state-run and private-owned List of Russian language radio stations, radio stations and Television in Russia, T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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