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Len Wincott
Len Wincott (1907 – January 1983) was an English sailor, mutineer and communist activist who later defected to the Soviet Union. Childhood and early naval career Len Wincott was born in poverty in Leicester in 1907. Having few other options, he joined the Royal Navy as a boy seaman in 1923 after time at the training centre for boys at Shotley in Suffolk. Despite the low pay and low peacetime prospects, the navy provided him with a degree of security. His service record up to the end of 1929 is at The National Archives (piece ADM 188/861) and shows a model seaman. Invergordon Mutiny, September 1931 In September 1931, as part of its attempts to deal with the Great Depression, the new National Government launched cuts to public spending. Navy spending cuts were translated into a 10% pay cut (matching 10% cuts across the board for public sector workers). However, the cuts were not applied equally to all ranks. Sailors of the Atlantic Fleet, arriving at Invergordon (on the Crom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century and has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century. The English language, the Anglican Church, and Eng ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia. It is situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, with a population of roughly 5.4 million residents. Saint Petersburg is the List of European cities by population within city limits, fourth-most populous city in Europe after Istanbul, Moscow and London, the List of cities and towns around the Baltic Sea, most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's List of northernmost items#Cities and settlements, northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a Ports of the Baltic Sea, historically strategic port, it is governed as a Federal cities of Russia, federal city. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Devonport, Plymouth
Devonport ( ), formerly named Plymouth Dock or just Dock, is a district of Plymouth in the English county of Devon, although it was, at one time, the more important settlement. It became a county borough in 1889. Devonport was originally one of the " Three Towns" (along with Plymouth and East Stonehouse); these merged in 1914 to form what would become in 1928 the City of Plymouth. It is represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom as part of the Plymouth Sutton and Devonport constituency. Its elected Member of Parliament (MP) is Luke Pollard, who is a member of the Labour Party. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 14,788. History Plymouth Dock In 1690 the Admiralty gave a contract to Robert Waters from Portsmouth to build a stone dock at Point Froward on the east bank of the Hamoaze at the mouth of the River Tamar. Plymouth Dock, as Devonport was originally called, began around 1700 as a small settlement to house workers employed on the new naval bas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million residents within the city limits, over 17 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in the metropolitan area. The city covers an area of , while the urban area covers , and the metropolitan area covers over . Moscow is among the world's largest cities; being the most populous city entirely in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent. First documented in 1147, Moscow grew to become a prosperous and powerful city that served as the capital of the Grand Duchy that bears its name. When the Grand Duchy of Moscow evolved into the Tsardom of Russia, Moscow remained the political and economic center for most of the Tsardom's history. When ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Maclean (spy)
Donald Duart Maclean (; 25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a British diplomat who conveyed government secrets to the Soviet Union. As an undergraduate, Maclean openly proclaimed his left-wing views, and was recruited into the Soviet intelligence service, then known as the NKVD. He entered the Civil Service and in 1938, he was made Third Secretary at the Paris embassy. He then served in London and was sent to Washington, D.C. from 1944 to 1948, achieving promotion to First Secretary. He was posted to Egypt and then was appointed head of the American Department in the Foreign Office. The Soviets helped Maclean to defect to Moscow in 1951. In Moscow, Maclean worked as a specialist on British policy and relations between the Soviet Union and NATO. He died there on 6 March 1983. Childhood and school Born in Marylebone, London, Donald Duart Maclean was the son of Sir Donald Maclean and Gwendolen Margaret Devitt. His father was chosen as chairman of the rump of the 23 independent MPs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
De-Stalinisation
De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension of Nikita Khrushchev to power, and his 1956 secret speech On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, which denounced Stalin's cult of personality and the Stalinist political system. Monuments to Stalin were removed or toppled, his name was removed from places, buildings, and the state anthem, and his body was removed from the Lenin Mausoleum (from 1953 to 1961 known as Lenin and Stalin Mausoleum) and buried. These reforms were started by the collective leadership which succeeded him after his death on 5 March 1953, comprising Georgi Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union; Lavrentiy Beria, head of the Ministry of the Interior; and Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rehabilitation (Soviet)
Rehabilitation (russian: реабилитация, transliterated in English as ''reabilitatsiya'' or academically rendered as ''reabilitacija'') was a term used in the context of the former Soviet Union and the post-Soviet states. Beginning after the death of Stalin in 1953, the government undertook the political and social restoration, or political rehabilitation, of persons who had been repressed and criminally prosecuted without due basis. It restored the person to the state of acquittal. In many cases, rehabilitation was posthumous, as thousands of victims had been executed or died in labor camps. The government also rehabilitated several minority populations which it had relocated under Stalin, and allowed them to return to their former territories and in some cases restored their autonomy in those regions. Post-Stalinism epoch The government started mass amnesty of the victims of Soviet repressions after the death of Joseph Stalin. In 1953, this did not entail any fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labour Camps
A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especially prison farms). Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators. Convention no. 105 of the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO), adopted internationally on 27 June 1957, abolished camps of forced labor. In the 20th century, a new category of labor camps developed for the imprisonment of millions of people who were not criminals ''per se'', but political opponents (real or imagined) and various so-called undesirables under communist and fascist regimes. Some of those camps were dubbed "reeducation facilities" for political coercion, but most others served as backbones of industry and agriculture for the benefit of the state, especially in times of war. Precursors Early-modern states could exploi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Louis (journalist)
Victor Louis (5 February 1928 – 18 July 1992) was a Soviet journalist who had close work connections with the senior levels of the USSR KGB. He was used by the Soviet government as an informal channel of communication and for subtle disinformation operations in the Cold War. Viewed as an agent provocateur of the secret police, he was hated and boycotted by the Moscow intelligentsia. Biography Born () in Moscow, he changed his name to Victor Louis in the 1950s, when he began writing for the Western press. His Russian mother died a week of his birth; his father came from a well-off (prior to the 1917 revolution) German (Prussian) family that lived in Moscow. Starting from 1944, Lui managed to land a series of low-level support staff positions with foreign embassies in Moscow, which got him into trouble with the NKVD; he was arrested in Leningrad around 1946 and later tried and sentenced to 25 years of labour camps on espionage charges (Article 58). He did time in Inta. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in charge of the Soviet Union, Soviet network of Correctional labour camp, forced labour camps which were set up by order of Vladimir Lenin, reaching its peak during Joseph Stalin's rule from the 1930s to the early 1950s. English-language speakers also use the word ''gulag'' in reference to each of the forced-labor camps that existed in the Soviet Union, including the camps that existed in the History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), post-Lenin era. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Show Trial
A show trial is a public trial in which the judicial authorities have already determined the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The actual trial has as its only goal the presentation of both the accusation and the verdict to the public so they will serve as both an impressive example and a warning to other would-be dissidents or transgressors. Show trials tend to be retributive rather than corrective and they are also conducted for propagandistic purposes. When aimed at individuals on the basis of protected classes or characteristics, such trials are examples of political persecution. The term was first recorded in 1928. China During the Land Reform Movement, between 1 and 2 million landlords were executed as counterrevolutionaries during the early years of Communist China. After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, show trials were given to "rioters and counter-revolutionaries" involved in the protests and the subsequent military massacre. Chinese Nobel P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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