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Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

(Russian, in full: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин (Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin), real name: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили (Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili), Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვილი (Ioseb Jughashvili); December 6 (OS)/December 18 (NS), 1878 – March 5, 1953) was the leader of the Soviet Union from mid-1920s to his death in 1953 and General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922-1953), a position which had later become that of party leader. Stalin became general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1922 and following the death of Vladimir Lenin, he prevailed over Leon Trotsky in a power struggle during the 1920s. In the 1930s Stalin eliminated effective political opposition both within the Party and among the population (see Gulag) and consolidated his authority with the Great Purge, a period of widespread arrests and executions which reached its peak in 1937, remaining in power through World War II and until his death. Stalin molded the features that characterized the new Soviet regime; his policies, based on Marxist–Leninist ideology, are often considered to represent a political and economic system called Stalinism. Under Stalin, who replaced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s with five year plans (introduced in 1928) and collective farming, the Soviet Union was transformed from a largely peasant society to a major world industrial power by the end of the 1930s. Since many peasants resisted collectivization, the government resorted to often violent repression against the "kulaks," resulting in millions of deaths. A hard-won victory in World War II (the Great Patriotic War, 1941–45), made possible in part through the capacity for production that was the outcome of industrialization, laid the groundwork for the formation of the Warsaw Pact and established the USSR as one of the two major world powers, a position it maintained for nearly four decades following Stalin's death in 1953. Stalin's cult of personality, his extreme concentration of power and the means of its execution defines him as a dictator. He was directly or indirectly responsible, via his policies, for tens of millions of deaths and unjust deportations to labour camps in the Soviet Union. Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's actual successor, denounced his mass repressions and cult of personality in 1956, initiating the process of "de-Stalinization". Apparently Winston Churchill once said of Stalin: "The outside world was at liberty to wonder respectfully at the hidden meaning of his actions."

Childhood and early years

de-Stalinization.]] Stalin was born in Gori, Georgia, to a cobbler named Vissarion Jughashvili. His mother, Ekaterina Geladze, was born a serf. Their other three children died young; Joseph, nicknamed "Soso" (the Georgian pet name for Joseph), was effectively the only child. Vissarion Ivanovich Jughashvili was a former serf who, when freed, became a cobbler. He opened his own shop, but quickly went bankrupt, forcing him to work in a shoe factory in Tiflis (Archer 11). Rarely seeing his family and drinking heavily, Vissarion often beat his wife and small son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father." The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry (Hoober 15). Another of his childhood friends, Iremashvili, felt that the beatings by Stalin's father gave him a hatred of authority. He also said that anyone with power over others reminded Stalin of his father's cruelty. One of the people for whom Ekaterina did laundry and housecleaning was a Gori Jew, David Papismedov. Papismedov gave Joseph, who would help out his mother, money and books to read, and encouraged him. Decades later, Papismedov came to the Kremlin to learn what had become of little Soso. Stalin surprised his colleagues by not only receiving the elderly man, but happily chatting with him in public places. In 1888, Stalin's father left to live in Tiflis, leaving the family without support. Rumors said he died in a drunken bar fight; however, others said they had seen him in Georgia as late as 1931. At the age of eight, Soso began his education at the Gori Church School. When attending school in Gori, Soso was among a very diverse group of students. Stalin and most of his classmates were Georgian and spoke mostly Georgian. However, at school they were forced to use Russian. Even when speaking in Russian, their Russian teachers mocked Stalin and his classmates because of their Georgian accents. His peers were mostly the sons of affluent priests, officials, and merchants. Although Stalin later sought to hide his Georgian origins, during his childhood he was fascinated by Georgian folklore. The stories he read told of Georgian mountaineers who valiantly fought for Georgian independence. Stalin's favorite hero of these stories was a legendary mountain ranger named Koba, which became his first alias as a revolutionary. He graduated first in his class and at age 14 he was awarded a scholarship to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, a Russian Orthodox institution which he attended from 1894 and onward. In addition to the small stipend from the scholarship he was also paid for singing in the choir. Although his mother wanted him to be a priest (even after he had become leader of the Soviet Union), he attended seminary not because of any religious vocation, but because it was one of the few educational opportunities available as the Tsarist government of Russia was wary of establishing a university in Georgia. Tsarist government] Stalin's involvement with the socialist movement (or, to be more exact, the branch of it that later became the communist movement) began at the seminary. During these school years, Stalin joined a Georgian Social-Democratic organization, and began propagating Marxism. Stalin was expelled from the seminary in 1899 for these actions. He worked for a decade with the political underground in the Caucasus, experiencing repeated arrests and exile to Siberia between 1902 and 1917. He adhered to Vladimir Lenin's doctrine of a strong centralist party of professional revolutionaries. His practical experience made him useful in Lenin's Bolshevik party, gaining him a place on its Central Committee in January 1912. Some historians have suggested that, during this period, Stalin was actually a Tsarist spy, who was working to infiltrate the Bolshevik party, but there are no reliable documents to substantiate this. In 1913 he adopted the name Stalin, which means "steel man" in Russian. His only significant contribution to the development of the Marxist theory at this time was a treatise, written while he was briefly in exile in Vienna, Marxism and the national question. It presents an orthodox Marxist position on this important debate. This treatise may have contributed to his appointment as People's Commissar for Nationalities Affairs after the revolution (see Lenin's article On the right of nations to self-determination[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/self-det/] for comparison).

Marriages and family

People's Commissar Stalin's first wife was called Ekaterina Svanidze, he married for just three years until her death in 1907. At her funeral, Stalin said that any warm feelings he had for people died with her, for only she could mend his heart. With her he had a son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, with whom he did not get along in later years. His son tried to kill himself, unsucessfully, resulting in serious injuries. Stalin was quoted to have laughed at the boy, saying, "Ha! He could not even shoot straight!" Yakov served in the Red Army and was captured by the Germans. They offered to exchange him for a German General, but Stalin turned the offer down, allegedly saying "A lieutenant is not worth a General," and Yakov is said to have died running into an electric fence in the camp where he was being held. This however, is the "official report", and to this day, his cause of death is not known. Nonetheless, there are many who believe his death was a suicide. People's CommissarHis second wife was Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who died in 1932; she may have committed suicide by shooting herself after a quarrel with Stalin, leaving a suicide note which according to their daughter was "partly personal, partly political". "Officially", she died of an illness, but other theories claim that Stalin himself killed her. It is alleged that Stalin had said "She died an enemy," at her funeral. With her, he had two children: a son, Vassili, and a daughter, Svetlana. Vassili rose through the ranks of the Soviet Air Force, but died an alcoholic death in 1962. Stalin doted on Svetlana when she was young, but she ended up defecting from the Soviet Union in 1967. Stalin's mother died in 1937; he did not attend the funeral but instead sent a wreath. Stalin is said to have remained bitter at his mother because of her forcing him to join the Tiflis Theological Seminary, and is reputed to have called her "an old whore." In March 2001, Russian Independent Television NTV discovered a previously unknown grandson living in Novokuznetsk. Yuri Davydov told NTV that his father had told him of his lineage, but, because the campaign against Stalin's cult of personality was in full swing at the time, he was told to keep quiet. Soviet dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn had mentioned a son being born to Stalin and his common law wife, Lida, in 1918 during his exile in northern Siberia.

Rise to power

Siberia In 1912 Stalin was co-opted to the Bolshevik Central Committee at the Prague Party Conference. In 1917 Stalin was editor of Pravda, the official Communist newspaper, while Lenin and much of the Bolshevik leadership were in exile. Following the February Revolution, Stalin and the editorial board took a position in favor of supporting Kerensky's provisional government and, it is alleged, went to the extent of declining to publish Lenin's articles arguing for the provisional government to be overthrown. When Lenin returned from exile, he wrote the April Theses which put forward his position. In April 1917, Stalin was elected to the Central Committee with the third highest vote total in the party and was subsequently elected to the Politburo of the Central Committee (May 1917); he held this position for the remainder of his life. According to many accounts, Stalin only played a minor role in the revolution of November 7.Other writers such as Adam Ulam stressed that each man in the Central Committee had a job he was assigned to do. The following summary of Trotsky's Role in 1917 was given by Stalin in Pravda, November 6th 1918: "All practical work in connection with the organisation of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organised." (Although this passage was quoted in Stalin's book "The October Revolution" issued in 1934, it was expunged in Stalin's Works released in 1949). Later, in 1924, Stalin himself created a myth around a so-called "Party Centre" which "directed" all practical work pertaining to the uprising, consisting of himself, Sverdlov, Dzherzhinsky, Uritsky, and Bubnov. However, no evidence was ever shown for the activity of this "centre", which was anyway, subordinate to the Military Revolutionary Council, headed by - Trotsky. During the Russian Civil War and Polish-Soviet War, Stalin was a political commissar in the Red Army at various fronts. Stalin's first government position was as People's Commissar of Nationalities Affairs (1917–23). Also, he was People's Commissar of Workers and Peasants Inspection (1919–22), a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the republic (1920–23) and a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets (from 1917). In April 1922, Stalin became general secretary of the ruling Communist Party, a post that he subsequently built up into the most powerful in the country. This position was an unwanted one within the party (Stalin was sometimes referred to as "Comrade Card-Index" by fellow party members) but Stalin saw its potential as a power base. The position had great influence on who joined the party. This allowed him to fill the party with his allies. Stalin's accumulation of personal power increasingly alarmed the dying Lenin, and in Lenin's Testament he famously called for the removal of the "rude" Stalin, also stating that Stalin's views were too extreme and violent. However, this document was suppressed by members of the Central Committee, many of whom were also criticised by the Bolshevik leader in the testament. After Lenin's death in January 1924, Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev together governed the party, placing themselves ideologically between Trotsky (on the left wing of the party) and Bukharin (on the right). During this period, Stalin abandoned the traditional Bolshevik emphasis on international revolution in favor of a policy of building "Socialism in One Country", in contrast to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Stalin would soon switch sides and join with Bukharin. Together they fought a new opposition of Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. By 1928 (the first year of the Five-Year Plans) Stalin was supreme among the leadership, and the following year Trotsky was exiled because of his intrigues. Having also outmaneuvered Bukharin's Right Opposition and now advocating collectivization and industrialization, Stalin can be said to have exercised control over the party and the country. However, as the popularity of other leaders such as Sergei Kirov and the so-called Ryutin Affair were to demonstrate, Stalin did not achieve absolute power until the Great Purge of 1936–38.

Stalin and changes in Soviet society

Industrialization

Main article: Industrialization of the USSR. The Russian Civil War had a devastating effect on the country's economy. Industrial output in 1922 was 13% of that in 1914. Under Stalin's direction, the New Economic Policy, which allowed a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism, was replaced by a system of centrally ordained Five-Year Plans in the late 1920s. These called for a highly ambitious program of state-guided crash industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture. In spite of early breakdowns and failures, the first two Five-Year Plans achieved rapid industrialization from a very low economic base. The Soviet Union, generally ranked as the poorest nation in Europe in 1922, now industrialized at a phenomenal rate, far surpassing Germany's pace of industrialization in the 19th century and Japan's earlier in the 20th. With no seed capital, little international trade, and barely any modern industry to start with, Stalin's government financed industrialization by both restraining consumption on the part of ordinary Soviet citizens, to ensure that capital went for re-investment into industry, and by ruthless extraction of wealth from the peasantry. In 1933, worker's real earnings sank to about one-tenth of the 1926 level. There was also use of the almost free labor of prisoners in forced-labor camps and the frequent "mobilization" of communists and Komsomol members for various construction projects.

Collectivization

Main article: Collectivization in the USSR Collectivization in the USSR Stalin's regime moved to force collectivization of agriculture. This was in order to increase agricultural output from large-scale mechanized farms, to bring the peasantry under more direct political control, to make tax collection more efficient, and to provide workers for Gulags. Collectivization meant drastic social changes, on a scale not seen since the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and alienation from control of the land and its produce. Collectivization also meant a drastic drop in living standards for many peasants, and it faced widespread and often violent resistance among the peasantry. In the first years of collectivization, it was estimated that industrial and agricultural production would rise by 200% and 50%, respectively; however, agricultural production actually dropped. Stalin blamed this unexpected drop on kulaks (rich peasants), who resisted collectivization. Therefore those defined as "kulaks," "kulak helpers" and later "ex-kulaks" were to be shot, placed into Gulag labor camps, or deported to remote areas of the country, depending on the charge. The two-stage progress of collectivization — interrupted for a year by Stalin's famous editorial, "Dizzy with success"[http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/DS30.html] (Pravda, March 2, 1930), and "Reply to Collective Farm Comrades" [http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/RCFC30.html] (Pravda, April 3, 1930)— is a prime example of his capacity for tactical retreats. Many historians agree that the disruption caused by collectivization was largely responsible for major famines which caused up to 5 million deaths in 1932–33, particularly in Ukraine and the lower Volga region. (Chairman Mao Zedong of China would trigger a similar famine in 1958 to 1960 with his Great Leap Forward.) Not only rich peasants were killed. The Black Book of Communism documents that all grains were taken from areas that did not meet targets, including the next year's seed grain. It also documents that peasants were forced to remain in the starving areas, sales of train tickets were stopped, and the State Political Directorate set up barriers to prevent people from leaving the starving areas (p. 164). The Soviet Union exported grain while millions of Soviet citizens were starving to death (p. 167). Similar detailed references can be found here [http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/soviet_famine.html].

Science

Main article: Research in the Soviet Union. Science in the Soviet Union was under strict ideological control, along with art, literature and everything else. On the positive side, there was significant progress in "ideologically safe" domains due to the free Soviet education system and state-financed research. However, in several cases the consequences of ideological pressure were dramatic, the most notable examples being the "bourgeois pseudosciences," genetics and cybernetics. In the late 1940s there were also attempts to suppress special and general relativity, as well as quantum mechanics, on grounds of "idealism." However, top Soviet physicists made it clear that without using these theories, they would be unable to create a nuclear bomb. Linguistics was the only area of Soviet academic thought to which Stalin personally and directly contributed. At the beginning of Stalin's rule, the dominant figure in Soviet linguistics was Nikolai Yakovievich Marr, who argued that language is a class construction and that language structure is determined by the economic structure of society. Stalin, who had previously written about language policy as People's Commissar for Nationalities, felt he grasped enough of the underlying issues to coherently oppose this simplistic Marxist formalism, ending Marr's ideological dominance over Soviet linguistics. Stalin's principal work discussing linguistics is a small essay, Marxism and Linguistic Questions . Although no great theoretical contributions or insights came from it, neither were there any apparent errors in Stalin's understanding of linguistics; his influence arguably relieved Soviet linguistics from the sort of ideologically driven theory that dominated genetics. Scientific research in nearly all areas was hindered by the fact that many scientists were sent to labor camps (including Lev Landau, later a Nobel Prize winner, who spent a year in prison in 1938–39) or executed (e.g. Lev Shubnikov, shot in 1937). They were persecuted for their (real or imaginary) dissident views, and seldom for "politically incorrect" research. Nevertheless, great progress was made under Stalin in some areas of science and technology. It laid the ground for the famous achievements of Soviet science in the 1950s, such as the development of the BESM-1 computer in 1953 and the launching of Sputnik in 1957. Indeed, many politicians in the United States began to fear, after the "Sputnik crisis," that their country had been eclipsed by the Soviet Union in science and in public education.

Social services

Sputnik crisis Stalin's government placed heavy emphasis on the provision of free medical services. Campaigns were carried out against typhus, cholera, and malaria; the number of doctors was increased as rapidly as facilities and training would permit; and death and infant mortality rates steadily declined. Education in primary schools continued to be free and was expanded, with many more Soviet citizens learning to read and write, and higher education also expanded. Stalin was the only ruler in the history of Russia and Soviet Union who established fees for secondary education in public schools. With the industrialization and heavy human losses due to the World War II and repressions the generation that survived under Stalin saw a major expansion in job opportunities, especially for women.

Culture and religion

It was during Stalin's reign that the official and long-lived style of Socialist Realism was established for painting, sculpture, music, drama and literature. Previously fashionable "revolutionary" expressionism, abstract art, and avant-garde experimentation were discouraged or denounced as "formalism." Careers were made and broken, some more than once. Famous figures were not only repressed, but often persecuted, tortured and executed, both "revolutionaries" (among them Isaac Babel, Vsevolod Meyerhold) and "non-conformists" (for example, Osip Mandelstam). A minority, both representing the "Soviet man" (Arkady Gaidar) and remnants of the older pre-revolutionary Russia (Konstantin Stanislavski), thrived. A number of former emigrés returned to the Soviet Union, among them Alexei Tolstoi in 1925, Alexander Kuprin in 1936, and Alexander Vertinsky in 1943. It is of note that Anna Akhmatova was subjected to several cycles of suppression and rehabilitation, but was never herself arrested, although her first husband, poet Nikolai Gumilev, had been shot in 1921, and her son, historian Lev Gumilev, spent two decades in the Gulag. The degree of Stalin's personal involvement in general and specific developments has been assessed variously. His name, however, was constantly invoked during his reign in discussions of culture as in just about everything else; and in several famous cases, his opinion was final. Stalin's occasional beneficence showed itself in strange ways. For example, Mikhail Bulgakov was driven to poverty and despair; yet, after a personal appeal to Stalin, he was allowed to continue working. His play, The Days of the Turbines, with its sympathetic treatment of an anti-Bolshevik family caught up in the Civil War, was finally staged, apparently also on Stalin's intervention, and began a decades-long uninterrupted run at the Moscow Arts Theater. Bulgakov was relatively fortunate - in the vast majority of cases, appeals had little effect and the slightest displeasure caused to others or guilt by any association was tantamount to a harsh sentence, if not death. Some insights into Stalin's political and esthetic thinking might perhaps be gleaned by reading his favorite novel, Pharaoh, by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus, a historical novel on mechanisms of political power. Similarities have been pointed out between this novel and Sergei Eisenstein's film, Ivan the Terrible, produced under Stalin's tutelage. In architecture, a Stalinist Empire Style (basically, updated neoclassicism on a very large scale, exemplified by the seven skyscrapers of Moscow) replaced the constructivism of the 1920s. An amusing anecdote has it that the Moskva Hotel in Moscow was built with mismatched side wings because Stalin had mistakenly signed off on both of the two proposals submitted, and the architects had been too afraid to clarify the matter. (This was actually just a joke: the hotel had been built by two independent teams of architects that had different visions of how the hotel should look.) Stalin's role in the fortunes of the Russian Orthodox Church is complex. Continuous persecution in the 1930s resulted in its near-extinction: by 1939, active parishes numbered in the low hundreds (down from 54,000 in 1917), many churches had been levelled, and tens of thousands of priests, monks and nuns were dead or imprisoned. During World War II, however, the Church was allowed a partial revival, as a patriotic organization: thousands of parishes were reactivated, until a further round of suppression in Khrushchev's time. The Church Synod's recognition of the Soviet government and of Stalin personally led to a schism with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia that remains not fully healed to the present day. Just days before Stalin's death, certain religious sects were outlawed and persecuted. Stalin's rule had a largely disruptive effect on the numerous indigenous cultures that made up the Soviet Union. The politics of the Korenization and forced development of Cultures National by Form, Socialist by their substance was arguably beneficial to later generations of indigenous cultures in allowing them to integrate more easily into Russian society. However, the unification of the cultures evident from the second half of the Stalin citation, was very harmful. The political repressions and purges had even more devastating repercussions on the indigenous cultures than on the urban ones, since the cultural elite of the indigenous culture was often not very numerous. The traditional lives of many peoples in the Siberian, Central Asian and Caucasian provinces was upset and large populations were displaced and scattered in order to prevent nationalist uprisings. Many religions popular in the ethnic regions of the Soviet Union including Roman Catholic Church, Uniats, Baptists, Islam, Buddhism underwent the same or worse ordeals as the Orthodox church in other parts: thousands of monks were tortured and executed, and hundreds of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, sacred monuments, monasteries and so on were razed.

Purges and deportations

The purges

Main article: Great Purge Stalin, as head of the Politburo, consolidated near-absolute power in the 1930s that started with a Great Purge of his political and ideological opponents (real or merely suspected), culminating not only in the extermination of the majority of the original Bolshevik Central Committee, and of over half of the largely pliant delegates of the 17th Party Congress in January 1934, but also of huge swathes of the population. Measures ranged from imprisonment in Gulag labor camps to execution after a show trial or summary trial by NKVD troikas. Some argue that a motive for the purge was a feeling that the Party needed to be unified in the face of anticipated conflict with Nazi Germany; others believe that it was motivated only by Stalin's desire to consolidate his own power. Several trials known as the Moscow Trials were held, but the procedures were replicated throughout the country. There were four key trials during this period: the Trial of the Sixteen (August 1936); Trial of the Seventeen (January 1937); the trial of Red Army generals, including Marshal Tukhachevsky (June 1937); and finally the Trial of the Twenty One (including Bukharin) in March 1938. Trotsky's August 1940 assassination in Mexico, where he had lived in exile since 1936, eliminated the last of Stalin's opponents among the former Party leadership. Only three members of the "Old Bolsheviks" (Lenin's Politburo) now remained in Politburo —Stalin himself, "the all-Union Chieftain" (всесоюзный староста) Mikhail Kalinin, and Chairman of Sovnarkom Vyacheslav Molotov. The repression of so many formerly high-ranking revolutionaries and party members led Leon Trotsky to claim that a "river of blood" separated Stalin's regime from that of Lenin. In contrast, Solzhenitsyn is among those who argued that Stalin only continued the political repressions that had started under Lenin's regime, such as labor camps and express executions of political opponents. No segment of society was left untouched during the purges. Article 58 of the legal code, listing prohibited "anti-Soviet activities", was applied in the broadest manner. Initially, the execution lists for the enemies of the people were confirmed by the Politburo. Over time the procedure was greatly simplified and delegated down the line of command. People would inform on others arbitrarily, to attempt to redeem themselves, or to gain small retributions. The flimsiest pretexts were often enough to brand someone an "Enemy of the People", starting the cycle of public persecution and abuse, often proceeding to interrogation, torture and deportation, if not death. Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the poet Osip Mandelstam and one of the key memoirists of the Purges, recalls being shouted at by Akhmatova, also a famous Russian poet: "Don't you understand? They are arresting people for nothing now?" The Russian word troika gained a new meaning: a quick, simplified trial by a committee of three subordinated to NKVD. Towards the end of the purge, the Politburo relieved NKVD head Nikolai Yezhov, from his position for overzealousness. He was subsequently executed. Some historians such as Amy Knight and Robert Conquest postulate that Stalin had Yezhov and his predecessor, Yagoda, removed in order to deflect blame from himself.

Deportations

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale which profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. Over 1.5 million people were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the main official reasons for the deportations. The following ethnic groups were deported completely or partially: Ukrainians, Poles, Koreans, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Finns, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians. Large numbers of Kulaks, regardless of their nationality, were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninist principles, and reversed most of them, although it was not until as late as 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhs and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic republics, Tatarstan and Chechnya.

Death toll

It is generally agreed by historians that if famines, prison and labor camp mortality, and state terrorism (deportations and political purges) are taken into account, Stalin and his colleagues were directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions. How many millions died under Stalin is greatly disputed. Comparison of the 1926–37 census results suggests 5–10 million deaths in excess of what would be normal in the period, mostly through famine in 1931–34. The 1926 census shows the population of the Soviet Union at 147 million and in 1937 another census found a population of between 162 and 163 million. This was 14 million less than the projected population value and was suppressed as a "wrecker's census" with the census takers severely punished. A census was taken again in 1939, but its published figure of 170 million has been generally attributed directly to the decision of Stalin (see also Demographics of the Soviet Union). Note that the figure of 14 million does not have to imply 14 million additional deaths, since as many as 3 million may be births that never took place due to reduced fertility and choice. Since "the margin of error" with regard to the number of Stalin's victims is virtually impossible to narrow down to a universally accepted figure, various historians have come up with extremely varying [http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin estimates of the number of victims], with the most likely figure of 20 million. A quote popularly attributed to Stalin is "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." (Possibly said in response to Churchill at the Potsdam Conference in 1945).

World War II

Potsdam Conference] After declining Franco-British missions to Moscow in hopes that the USSR would enter a treaty of Polish defense with them, Stalin began to negotiate a non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany. In his speech on August 19, 1939, Stalin prepared his comrades for the great turn in Soviet policy, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, it had a 'secret' annex according to which Central Europe was divided into the two powers' respective spheres of influence. The exact motivations behind this pact are disputed, but it appears that neither side expected it to last very long. On September 1 1939, the German invasion of Poland started World War II. According to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact [popularly known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact], Eastern Poland was in the Soviet sphere of influence. Hence, Stalin decided to intervene and on September 17 the Red Army invaded Poland as well. Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to modify the spheres of influences slightly and Poland was divided between these two states. According to the 'secret' annex of the pact, the Soviets were promised a slice of Poland, the annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and an undisturbed military advance on Finland, which the Soviets acted on almost immediately. In November, 1939, Stalin sent troops over the Finnish border provoking war. The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland proved to be more difficult than Stalin and the Red Army was prepared for, and the Soviets sustained high casualties. The Soviets finally prevailed in March, 1940, but their inferior army had been revealed to the rest of the world, including Germany. In June 1941, Hitler broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa. Stalin had not expected this — or at the very least, he had not expected an invasion to come so soon — and the Soviet Union was largely unprepared for this invasion. Until the last moment, Stalin had sought to avoid any obvious defensive preparation which might provoke German attack, in the hope of buying time to modernize and strengthen his military forces. Even after the attack commenced, Stalin appeared unwilling to accept the fact and, according to some historians, was too stunned to react appropriately for a number of days. A controversial theory put forward by Viktor Suvorov asserts that Stalin had been preparing an invasion of Germany while neglecting preparations for defensive warfare, which left Soviet forces vulnerable despite their heavy concentration near the border. Such speculations are difficult to substantiate, as information on the Soviet Army from 1939 to 1941 remains classified, but it is known that the Soviets had advanced and detailed warnings of the German invasion through their extensive foreign intelligence agents, such as Richard Sorge. The Nazis initially made huge advances, capturing and killing millions of Soviet troops. The 1937–38 execution of many of the Red Army's experienced generals had a severely debilitating effect on the ability of the USSR to organize defences. Hitler's experts had expected eight weeks of war, and early indications evidenced their prescience. In response on November 6 1941, Stalin addressed the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule (the first time was earlier that year on July 2). He claimed that although 350,000 troops had been killed by German attacks, the Germans had lost 4.5 million soldiers (an inflated figure) and that Soviet victory was near. The Soviet Red Army did put up fierce resistance, but during the war's early stages was largely ineffective against the better-equipped and trained German forces, until the invaders were halted and then driven back in December 1941 in front of Moscow. Stalin then worked with independent-minded Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov to orchestrate the decisive German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad. Battle of Stalingrad, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta Conference.]] Stalin met in several conferences with Churchill and/or Roosevelt in Moscow, Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam to plan military strategy (Truman taking the place of the deceased Roosevelt).
In these conferences, his first appearances on the world stage, Stalin proved to be a formidable negotiator. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary noted:
"Marshal Stalin as a negotiator was the toughest proposition of all. Indeed, after something like thirty years' experience of international conferences of one kind and another, if I had to pick a team for going into a conference room, Stalin would be my first choice. Of course the man was ruthless and of course he knew his purpose. He never wasted a word. He never stormed, he was seldom even irritated." His shortcomings as strategist are frequently noted regarding massive Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats. (In his autobiography Khrushchev claimed that Stalin tried to conduct tactical decisions using a world globe.) Yet Stalin did rapidly move Soviet industrial production east of the Volga river, far from Luftwaffe-reach, to sustain the Red Army's war machine with astonishing success. Additionally, Stalin was well aware that other European armies had utterly disintegrated when faced with Nazi military efficacy and responded effectively by subjecting his army to galvanizing terror and unrevolutionary patriotism. Stalin's Order No. 227 of July 27 1942 illustrates the ruthlessness with which he sought to stiffen army resolve: all those who retreated or otherwise left their positions without orders to do so were to be summarily shot. Other orders declared that the families of those who surrendered were subject to NKVD terror. Barrier forces of NKVD were soon set up in the rear to machine-gun anyone who retreated. The surrendered Soviet soldiers were declared traitors and sent to the Gulag after their release from POW camps. POW camp, 1943. Time had named Stalin Man of the Year the first time for the year 1939.]] In the war's opening stages, the retreating Red Army also sought to deny resources to the enemy through a scorched earth policy of destroying the infrastructure and food supplies of areas before the Germans could seize them. Unfortunately, this, along with abuse by German troops, caused inconceivable starvation and suffering among the civilian population that were left behind. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of civilian and military losses in World War II. Approximately 7 million Red Army personnel and 20 million civilians died. The Nazis considered Slavs to be "sub-human," and many people believe the Nazis killed Slavs as an ethnically targeted genocide. This concept of Slavic inferiority was also the reason why Hitler did not accept into his army many Russians who wanted to fight the Stalinist regime until 1944, when the war was lost for Germany. In the Soviet Union, World War II left a huge deficit of men of the wartime fighting-age generation. To this day the war is remembered very vividly in Russia, Belarus, and other parts of the former Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, and May 9, Victory Day, is one of Russia's biggest national holidays.

Post-war era

May 9]] Following World War II, the Red Army occupied much of the territory that had been formerly held by the Axis countries: there were Soviet occupation zones in Germany and Austria. Hungary and Poland were under practical military occupation, despite the fact that the latter was formally an Allied country. Soviet-friendly governments were established in Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and homegrown communist regimes existed in Yugoslavia and Albania. Finland retained formal independence, but was politically isolated and economically dependent on the Soviet Union. Greece, Italy and France were under the strong influence of local communist parties, which were at the very least friendly towards Moscow. Stalin hoped that the withdrawal of the Americans from Europe would lead to Soviet hegemony over the whole continent. The foundation of Trizonia and American help for the anti-communist side in the Greek Civil War changed the situation. East Germany was proclaimed a separate country in 1949, ruled by German communists. Moreover, Stalin made a decision to switch to direct control over his satellites in Central Europe: all of the countries were to be ruled by local communist parties that tried to implement the Soviet template locally. In 1948 this decision led to the establishment of Stalinist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, later called the "Communist Bloc". Communist Albania remained an ally, but Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito broke with the USSR. Stalin viewed

Russian language

Russian (Russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, ) is the most widely spoken language of Europe and the most widespread of the Slavic languages. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages, and is therefore related to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, as well as the modern Germanic, Romance, and Celtic languages, including English, French, and Irish, respectively. Written examples are attested from the 10th century onwards. While it preserves much of its ancient synthetic-inflexional structure and a Common Slavonic word base, modern Russian exhibits a large stock of the international vocabulary for politics, science, and technology. A language of great political importance in the 20th century, Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations. NOTE. Russian is written in a non-Latin script. All examples below are in the Cyrillic alphabet, with transcriptions in IPA.

Classification

Russian is a Slavic language in the Indo-European family. From the point of view of the spoken language, its closest relatives are Belarusian and Ukrainian, the other two national languages in the East Slavic group. In many places in Ukraine and Belarus, these languages are spoken interchangeably. The basic vocabulary, principles of word-formation, and, to some extent, inflexions and literary style of Russian have been influenced by Church Slavonic, a developed and partly adopted form of the South Slavic Old Church Slavonic language used by the Russian Orthodox Church. Many words in modern literary Russian are closer in form to the modern Bulgarian language than to Ukrainian or Belarusian. However, the East Slavic forms have tended to remain in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with slightly different meanings. For details, see Historical Sound Changes and History of the Russian language. Outside the Slavic languages, the vocabulary and literary style of Russian have been greatly influenced by Greek, Latin, French, German, and English.

Geographic distribution

Russian is primarily spoken in Russia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics of the USSR. Until 1917, it was the sole official language of the Russian Empire. During the Soviet period, the policy toward the languages of the various other ethnic groups fluctuated in practice. Though each of the constituent republics had its own official language, the unifying role and superior status was reserved for Russian. Following the break-up of 1991, several of the newly independent states have encouraged their native languages, which has partly reversed the privileged status of Russian, though its role as the language of post-Soviet national intercourse throughout the region has continued. In Latvia, notably, its official recognition and legality in the classroom have been a topic of considerable debate in a country where more than third of the population is Russian-speaking, consisting mostly of post-World War II immigrants from Russia and other parts of the former USSR (Belarus, Ukraine). Similarly, in Estonia, the Soviet-era immigrants and their Russian-speaking descendants constitute about one quarter of the country's current population. A much smaller Russian-speaking minority in Lithuania has largely been assimilated during the decade of independence and currently represent less than 1/10 of the country's overall population. In the twentieth century it was widely taught in the schools of the members of the old Warsaw Pact and in other countries that used to be satellites of the USSR, especially in Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. However, younger generations are usually not fluent in it, because Russian is no longer mandatory in the school system. It was, and still is, widely taught in Asian countries such as Laos, Vietnam and Mongolia due to Soviet influence, and is still used as a lingua franca in Afghanistan by various tribes. Russian is also spoken in Israel by at least 750,000 ethnic Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (1999 census). The Israeli press and websites regularly publish material in Russian. Sizeable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America (especially in large urban centers of the US and Canada such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Miami, and Chicago). In the first two of them, Russian-speaking groups total over half a million. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, live in their self-sufficient neighborhoods (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early sixties). It is important to note, however, that only about a quarter of them are ethnic Russians. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union the overwhelming majority were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterwards the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat. According to the United States 2000 Census, Russian was reported as language spoken at home by 1.50% of population, or about 4.2 million, placing it as #10 language in the United States. Significant Russian-speaking groups also exist in Western Europe. These have been fed by several waves of immigrants since the beginning of the twentieth century, each with its own flavour of language. Germany, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Belgium, and Greece have significant Russian-speaking communities totaling 3 million people. Two thirds of them are actually Russian-speaking descendants of Germans, Greeks, Jews, Armenians, or Ukrainians who either repatriated after the USSR collapsed or are just looking for temporary employment. But many are well-off Russian families acquiring property and getting education. Earlier, the descendants of the Russian émigrés tended to lose the tongue of their ancestors by the third generation. Now, when the border is more open, Russian is likely to survive longer, especially when many of the emigrants visit their homelands at least once a year and also have access to Russian websites and TV channels. Recent estimates of the total number of speakers of Russian:

Official status

Russian is the official language of Russia, and an official language of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukraine) and the unrecognized Moldovan Republic of Transnistria. It is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a popular choice for many of the both native and RSL (Russian as a second language) speakers in Russia and many of the former Soviet republics. 97% of the public school students of Russia, 75% in Belarus, 41% in Kazakhstan, 24% in Ukraine, 23% in Kyrgyzstan, 21% in Moldova, 7% in Azerbaijan, 5% in Georgia received their education only or mostly in Russian, although the corresponding percentage of ethnic Russians was 80% in Russia, 11% in Belarus, 27% in Kazakhstan, 17% in Ukraine, 9% in Kyrgyzstan, 6% in Moldova, 2% in Azerbaijan, 1.5% in Georgia.

Dialects

Despite levelling after 1900, especially in matters of vocabulary, a large number of dialects exist in Russia. Some linguists divide the dialects of the Russian language into two primary regional groupings, "Northern" and "Southern", with Moscow lying on the zone of transition between the two. Others divide the language into three groupings, Northern, Central and Southern, with Moscow lying in the Central region. Dialectology within Russia recognizes dozens of smaller-scale variants. The dialects often show distinct and non-standard features of pronunciation and intonation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some of these are relics of ancient usage now completely discarded by the standard language. Also cf. Moscow pronunciation of "-чн-", e.g. "булошная" (buloshnaya - bakery) instead of "булочная" (bulochnaya). The northern dialects typically pronounce unstressed clearly (the phenomenon called okanye оканье); the southern palatalize the final and aspirate the into . It should be noted that some of these features are also present in modern Ukrainian, indicating a linguistic continuum or strong influence one way or the other. Among the first to study Russian dialects was Lomonosov in the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth, Vladimir Dal compiled the first dictionary that included dialectal vocabulary. Detailed mapping of Russian dialects began at the turn of the twentieth century. In modern times, the monumental Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language (Диалектологический атлас русского языка ), was published in 3 folio volumes 1986-1989, after four decades of preparatory work. The standard language is based on the Moscow dialect.

Derived languages

- Fenia or Fenka, a criminal lingo of ancient origin, with Russian grammar, but with distinct vocabulary.
- Surzhyk is a Ukrainian-Russian pidgin spoken in some rural areas of Ukraine
- Trasianka is a Belarusian-Russian mix (sort of pidgin) used by a large portion of the rural population in Belarus.
- Russenorsk is an extinct pidgin language with Russian vocabulary and Norwegian grammar, used for communication between Russians and Norwegians in Svalbard and Kola Peninsula.
- Runglish: Russian-English pidgin.

Writing system

Alphabet

Runglish publication describing the "Slavonic" language.]] Russian is written using a modified version of the Cyrillic (кириллица) alphabet, consisting of 33 letters. The following table gives their majuscule forms, along with IPA values for each letter's typical sound: Old letters that have been abolished at one time or another but occur in this and related articles include or , і , and or . The yers ъ and ь were originally pronounced as ultra-short or reduced , (conventional transcription, not IPA). For information on an informal approach on transliterating Russian into English, see the article Transliteration of Russian into English.

Orthography

Russian spelling is reasonably phonetic in practice. It is in fact a balance among phonetics, morphology, etymology, and grammar, and, like that of most living languages, has its share of inconsistencies and controversial points. The current spelling follows the major reform of 1918, and the final codification of 1956. An update proposed in the late 1990's has met a hostile reception, and has not been formally adopted. The punctuation, originally based on Byzantine Greek, was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reformulated on the French and German models.

Sounds

The phonological system of Russian is inherited from Common Slavonic, but underwent considerable modification in the early historical period, before being largely settled by about 1400. The language possesses five vowels, which are written with different letters depending on whether or not the preceding consonant is palatalized. The consonants typically come in plain vs. palatalized pairs, which are traditionally called hard and soft. (The 'hard' consonants are sometimes said to be velarized, but this is only the case for /l/.) The standard language, based on the Moscow dialect, possesses heavy stress and moderate variation in pitch. Stressed vowels are somewhat drawled, while unstressed vowels (except /u/) tend to be reduced to an unclear schwa. Russian syllable structure can be quite complex with both initial and final consonant clusters of up to 4 consecutive sounds. Using a formula with V standing for the nucleus (vowel) and C for each consonant the stucture can be described as follows: (C)(C)(C)(C)V(C)(C)(C)(C)

Consonants

Russian is notable for its distinction based on palatalization of most of the consonants. While /k/, /ɡ/, /x/ do have palatalized allophones , only might be considered a phoneme, though it is marginal and generally not considered distinctive. It should be noted that palatalization is a phonological concept, and not all 'soft' consonants are phonetically palatalized. The velar and labial consonants are truly palatalized, which means that the center of the tongue is raised during and after the articulation of the consonant. The coronal stops, however, are phonetically laminal. In addition, in the case of /t/ and /d/, the tongue is raised enough to produce frication, thus making affricate-like. (There is no contrast between frication and no frication, though, as /ts/ is never palatalized.) are postalveolar with a flat tongue (laminal retroflex).

Grammar

Russian has preserved an Indo-European synthetic-inflexional structure, although considerable levelling has taken place. Russian grammar encompasses
- a highly synthetic morphology
- a syntax that, for the literary language, is the conscious fusion of three elements:
- a polished vernacular foundation;
- a Church Slavonic inheritance;
- a Western European style. The spoken language has been influenced by the literary, but continues to preserve characteristic forms. The dialects show various non-standard grammatical features, some of which are archaisms or descendants of old forms since discarded by the literary language.

Vocabulary

Western European See History of Russian language for an account of the successive foreign influences on the Russian language. The total number of words in Russian is difficult to reckon because of the ability to agglutinate and create manifold compounds, diminutives, etc. (see Word Formation under Russian grammar). The number of listed words or entries in some of the major dictionaries published during the last two centuries, and the total vocabulary of Pushkin, are as follows: Philologists have estimated that the language today may contain as many as 350,000 to 500,000 words. (As a historical aside, Dahl was, in the second half of the nineteenth century, still insisting that the proper spelling of the adjective русский, which was at that time applied uniformly to all the Orthodox Eastern Slavic subjects of the Empire, as well as to its one official language, be spelled руский with one s, in accordance with ancient tradition and what he termed the "spirit of the language". He was contradicted by the philologist Grot, who distinctly heard the s lengthened or doubled.)

The language of abuse and invective

Main article: Mat (language) Apparently, the ability to curse effectively has always been recognized as a form of art not only in certain quarters of society, but even by the more conservative-minded literati. For example, as far back as in the nineteenth-century naval yarns of Staniukovich, "artistic invective" (артистическая ругань ) keeps coming out of the sailors' mouths, though it is never spelled out. The ability to agglutinate has produced the so-called "three-decker curse" (трёхэтажный мат ).

Proverbs and sayings

Main article: Russian proverbs, Russian sayings Russian language is replete with many hundreds of proverbs (пословица ) and sayings (поговоркa ). These were already tabulated by the seventeenth century, and collected and studied in the nineteenth and twentieth, with the folk-tales being an especially fertile source.

History and examples

See also: Reforms of Russian orthography The history of Russian language may be divided into the following periods.
- Origins
- The Kievan period (9th-11th centuries)
- Feudal breakup (12th-14th centuries)
- The Moscovite period (15th-17th centuries)
- Empire (18th-19th centuries)
- Soviet period and beyond (20th century) See also:
- Examples of literary language (12-20th century) Judging by the historical records, by approximately 1000 AD the predominant ethnic group over much of modern European Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus was the Eastern branch of the Slavs, speaking a closely related group of dialects. The political unification of this region into Kievan Rus, from which both modern Russia and Ukraine trace their origins, was soon followed by the adoption of Christianity in 988-9 and the establishment of Old Church Slavonic as the liturgical and literary language. Borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and simultaneously the literary language began to be modified in its turn to become more nearly Eastern Slavic. Dialectal differentiation accelerated after the breakup of Kievan Rus' in approximately 1100, and the Mongol conquest of the thirteenth century. After the disestablishment of the "Tartar yoke" in the late fourteenth century, both the political centre and the predominant dialect in European Russia came to be based in Moscow. There is some consensus that Russian and Ukrainian can be considered distinct languages from this period at the latest. The official language remained a kind of Church Slavonic until the close of the seventeenth century, but, despite attempts at standardization, as by Meletius Smotrytsky c. 1620, its purity was by then strongly compromised by an incipient secular literature. The political reforms of Peter the Great were accompanied by a reform of the alphabet, and achieved their goal of secularization and Westernization. Blocks of specialized vocabulary were adopted from the languages of Western Europe. By 1800, a significant portion of the gentry spoke French, less often German, on an everyday basis. The modern literary language is usually considered to date from the time of Alexander Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century. The political upheavals of the early twentieth century and the wholesale changes of political ideology gave written Russian its modern appearance after the spelling reform of 1918. Political circumstances and Soviet accomplishments in military, scientific, and technological matters (especially cosmonautics), gave Russian a world-wide if occasionally grudging prestige, especially during the middle third of the twentieth century. Since the collapse of 1990-91, fashion for ways and things Western, economic uncertainties and difficulties within the educational system have made for inevitable rapid change in the language. Russian today is a tongue in great flux.

References

The following serve as references for both this article and the related articles listed below that describe the Russian language:

In English

- B. Comrie, G. Stone, M. Polinsky, The Russian Language in the Twentieth Century, 2nd. ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996
- W.K. Matthews, Russian Historical Grammar, London, University of London, Athlone Press, 1960
- T.R. Carleton, Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages, Columbus, Ohio : Slavica Publishers, 1991
- A. Stender-Petersen, Anthology of old Russian literature, New York, Columbia University Press, 1954

In Russian

- Иванов В.В. Историческая грамматика русского языка. "Просвещение", М., 1990.
- Цыганенко Г. П. Этимологический словарь русского языка. Киев, 1970.
- Т. Н. Михельсон, Рассказы русских летописей XV–XVII веков. М., 1978
- Н.М. Шанский, В.В. Иванов, Т.В. Шанская. Краткий этимологический словарь русского языка. М. 1961.
- А. Шицгал, Русский гражданский шрифт, "Исскуство", Москва, 1958, 2-e изд. 1983.
- Л. П. Жуковская, отв. ред. Древнерусский литературный язык и его отношение к старославянскому. М., «Наука», 1987. Many further references are listed in the books above.

External links

- [http://www.declan-software.com/russian Russian language learning software]
- [http://www.russianlessons.net/ Online Russian language lessons]
- [http://www.dicts.info/dictlist1.php?k1=81 All free Russian dictionaries]
- [http://overstuffed-closet.net/russian The Russian Language Fanlisting]
- [http://www.speakrus.ru/dict/ Free downloadable vocabularies of the Russian language]
- [http://RusWin.net Cyrillic (Russian)]
- [http://www.masterrussian.com MasterRussian.com - vocabulary words and phrases, tips, hand-picked links]
- [http://www.ifstudio-translations.com/ Free Russian translations.]
- [http://tinyurl.com/5lhlp Vasmer's Etymological Dictionary of Russian language]
- [http://www.masterrussian.net/mforum Russian Language Forum. A large community interested in Russian]
- [http://www.gramota.ru "GRAMOTA". An educational/reference site on the Russian language, supported by the Russian government. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.lib.ru "Moshkov's library". A large collection of classical and modern Russian e-texts. (In Russian)]
- [http://www.languagehelpers.com/Russian/TheRussianAlphabet.html Russian alphabet with sound (languagehelpers.com)]
- [http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/russian/language/ Reference Grammar]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian - English Dictionary]
- [http://www.lorem-ipsum.info/_russian Generator for Russian typographical filler text]
- [http://www.andaman.org/book/reprints/weber/rep-weber.htm G. Weber, "Top Languages"]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rus SIL Ethnologue Report for Russian]
- [http://www.linguarus.com Russian for Everybody (Self-Learning)]
- [http://www.applelanguages.com/en/learn/russian.php Russian courses]
- [http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Linguistics/Languages/Natural/Indo-European/Slavic/Russian/ ODP Russian Language category]
- [http://www.language-usa.com/ Russian Translation USA]
- [http://runglish1.narod.ru Runglish]
- [http://www.orlandorussians.com/ Russian Language Groups in America]
- [http://www.russki-mat.net/ Multilingual Russian slang dictionaries]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Russian-english/ Russian English Dictionary] from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition Category:Languages of Belarus Category:Languages of Finland Category:Languages of Russia Category:Languages of Ukraine Category:Languages of Kazakhstan Category:Languages of Georgia Category:Languages of Armenia Category:Languages of Azerbaijan Category:Languages of Turkmenistan Category:Languages of Uzbekistan Category:Languages of Moldova Category:Languages of Tajikistan Category:Languages of Kyrgyzstan Category:Languages of Estonia Category:Languages of Latvia Category:Languages of Lithuania Category:Languages of China Category:Languages of Mongolia Category:Languages of Afghanistan Category:Languages of Bulgaria Category:Russian language Category:East Slavic languages ko:러시아어 ms:Bahasa Russia ja:ロシア語 simple:Russian language th:ภาษารัสเซีย

December 6

December 6 is the 340th day (341st on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 25 days remaining.

Events

- 963 - Leo VIII is elected Pope.
- 1240 - Mongol invasion of Rus: Kiev under Danylo of Halych and Voivode Dmytro falls to the Mongols under Batu Khan.
- 1534 - The city of Quito in Ecuador is founded by Spanish settlers led by Sebastián de Belalcázar.
- 1768 - The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is published.
- 1790 - The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- 1845 - Alpha Sigma Phi Fraternity was founded at Yale College by Louis Manigault, Horace Spangler Weiser, and Stephen Ornsby Rhea.
- 1849 - American abolitionist Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.
- 1865 - The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.
- 1877 - The Washington Post newspaper is first published.
- 1884 - The Washington Monument in Washington D.C. is completed.
- 1907 - A coal mine explosion at Monongah, West Virginia kills 362 workers.
- 1917 - Finland declares its independence from Russia.
- 1917 - Halifax Explosion: In Canada, a munitions explosion kills more than 1900 people and destroys part of the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
- 1921 - The Anglo-Irish Treaty is signed in London by British and Irish representatives
- 1922 - One year to the day after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the Irish Free State comes into existence.
- 1933 - U.S. federal judge John M. Woolsey rules that the James Joyce novel Ulysses is not obscene.
- 1947 - The Everglades National Park in Florida is dedicated.
- 1957 - Project Vanguard: A launchpad explosion thwarts the first United States attempt to launch a satellite.
- 1965 - Pakistan's Islamic Ideology Advisory Committee recommended that Islamic Studies be made a compulsory subject for Muslim students from primary to graduation level.
- 1969 - Meredith Hunter is killed by Hell's Angels during The Rolling Stones's concert at the Altamont speedway in California.
- 1971 - Pakistan snaps diplomatic ties with India following New Delhi's recognition of Bangladesh.
- 1971 - King Faisal of Saudi Arabia condemns Indian aggression on Pakistan.
- 1973 - The United States House of Representatives votes 387 to 35 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on November 27, the Senate confirmed him 92 to 3).
- 1975 - Balcombe Street Siege: An IRA Active Service Unit takes a couple hostage in Balcombe Street, London.
- 1977 - South Africa grants independence to Bophuthatswana, although it is not recognized by any other country
- 1978 - Spain approves its latest constitution in a referendum.
- 1989 - École Polytechnique Massacre: Marc Lépine kills 14 young women in Montreal, Quebec.
- 1991 - In Croatia, forces of the Yugoslav People's Army bombard Dubrovnik after laying siege there since May.
- 1992 - In Ayodhya, India, Hindus belonging to the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party demolish the Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque.
- 1997 - A Russian Antonov AN-124 transport cargo plane crashes into an apartment complex near Irkutsk, Siberia, killing 67.
- 2005 - David Cameron becomes leader of the Conservative Party, defeating David Davis.

Births

- 846 - Hasan al-Askari, Shia Imam (d. 874)
- 1285 - King Ferdinand IV of Castile (d. 1312)
- 1421 - King Henry VI of England (d. 1471)
- 1478 - Baldassare Castiglione, Italian diplomat and author (d. 1529)
- 1550 - Orazio Vecchi, Italian composer (baptism) (d. 1605)
- 1586 - Niccolo Zucchi, Italian astronomer (d. 1670)
- 1608 - George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, English soldier (d. 1670)
- 1637 - Sir Edmund Andros, English governor in North America (d. 1714)
- 1640 - Claude Fleury, French historian (d. 1723)
- 1642 - Johann Christoph Bach, German composer (d. 1703)
- 1721 - James Elphinston, British philologist (d. 1809)
- 1721 - Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, French statesman (d. 1794)
- 1778 - Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, French physicist and chemist (d. 1850)
- 1792 - King William II of the Netherlands (d. 1849)
- 1805 - Adolf Reubke, German organ builder (d. 1875)
- 1805 - Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, French magician (d. 1861)
- 1823 - Friedrich Max Müller, German orientalist (d. 1900)
- 1833 - John Singleton Mosby, American Confederate guerrilla leader (d. 1916)
- 1841 - Frédéric Bazille, French painter (d. 1870)
- 1849 - August von Mackensen, German Field Marshal (d. 1945)
- 1863 - Charles Martin Hall, American chemist (d. 1914)
- 1872 - William S. Hart, American actor (d. 1946)
- 1875 - Evelyn Underhill, British poet (d. 1941)
- 1886 - Joyce Kilmer, American poet (d. 1918)
- 1890 - Rudolf Schlichter, German artist and writer (d. 1955)
- 1892 - Sir Osbert Sitwell, British author (d. 1969)
- 1896 - Ira Gershwin, American lyricist (d. 1983)
- 1898 - Alfred Eisenstaedt, German-born American photojournalist (d. 1995)
- 1898 - Gunnar Myrdal, Swedish economist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1987)
- 1900 - Agnes Moorehead, American actress (d. 1974)
- 1903 - Tony Lazzeri, American baseball player (d. 1946)
- 1905 - James J. Braddock, American boxer and World Heavyweight Champion (d. 1974)
- 1908 - Pierre Graber, Swiss Federal Councilor (d. 2003)
- 1913 - Eleanor Holm, American swimmer and Olympic gold medalist (d. 2004)
- 1917 - Kamal Jumblatt, leader of the Lebanese Druze (d. 1977)
- 1919 - Paul de Man, Belgian-born literary critic (d. 1983)
- 1920 - Dave Brubeck, American pianist and composer
- 1920 - George Porter, British chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2002)
- 1921 - Otto Graham, American football player (d. 2003)
- 1928 - Bobby Van, American singer (d. 1980)
- 1929 - Alain Tanner, Swiss filmmaker
- 1929 - Nikolaus Harnoncourt, German conductor
- 1930 - Daniel Lisulo, Zambian Prime Minister
- 1933 - Henryk Górecki, Polish composer
- 1936 - David Ossman, American comedian
- 1942 - Peter Handke, Austrian writer
- 1945 - Larry Bowa, American baseball player
- 1948 - JoBeth Williams, American actress
- 1948 - Keke Rosberg, Finnish race car driver and Formula 1 World Champion
- 1950 - Joe Hisaishi, Japanese composer
- 1952 - Rick Charlesworth, Australian cricketer, politician, hockey player, and coach
- 1953 - Tom Hulce, American actor
- 1953 - Gary Ward, American baseball player
- 1955 - Steven Wright, American comedian
- 1955 - Rick Buckler, British drummer (The Jam)
- 1956 - Peter Buck, American guitarist (R.E.M.)
- 1956 - Randy Rhoads, American guitarist (d. 1982)
- 1958 - Xander Berkeley, American actor
- 1958 - Nick Park, British filmmaker and animator
- 1961 - David Lovering, American drummer (The Pixies)
- 1962 - Janine Turner, American actress
- 1967 - Hacken Lee, cantopop singer
- 1971 - Richard Krajicek, Dutch tennis player
- 1971 - Ryan White, American AIDS activist (d. 1990)
- 1976 - Colleen Haskell, American reality TV contestant
- 1977 - Kevin Cash, American baseball player
- 1977 - Andrew Flintoff, English test cricketer
- 1979 - Tim Cahill, Australian international footballer
- 1980 - Steve Lovell, British footballer
- 1993 - Elian Gonzalez, Cuban subject of child custody battle

Deaths

- 1185 - King Afonso I of Portugal (b. 1109)
- 1352 - Pope Clement VI (b. 1291)
- 1562 - Jan van Scorel Dutch painter and architect
- 1618 - Jacques-Davy Duperron, French cardinal (b. 1556)
- 1658 - Baltasar Gracián y Morales, Spanish writer (b. 1601)
- 1672 - King John II Casimir of Poland (b. 1609)
- 1675 - John Lightfoot, English churchman (b. 1602)
- 1718 - Nicholas Rowe, English poet and dramatist (b. 1674)
- 1746 - Lady Grizel Baillie, Scottish songwriter (b. 1665)
- 1771 - Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Italian anatomist (b. 1682)
- 1779 - Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, French painter (b. 1699)
- 1788 -