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Optina Monastery
The Optina Pustyn (, literally ''Opta's hermitage'') is an Eastern Orthodox monastery for men near Kozelsk in Russia. In the 19th century, the Optina was the most important spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox Church and served as the model for several other monasteries, including the nearby Shamordino Convent. It was particularly renowned as the centre of Russian Orthodox eldership (staretsdom). History It is not clear when the monastery was established. Its name is probably derived from the Russian word for "living together", possibly because nuns were allowed into the cloister prior to 1504. Most of the monastery buildings were erected at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, when the monastery was being renovated as a centre of Russian staretsdom. In 1821, a hermitage for startsy was established away from the monastery. The startsy attracted crowds of devout Christians to Kozelsk. Among others, Optina Pustyn was visited by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vasily Zhukovsky, Nikol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Konstantin Leontyev
Konstantin Nikolayevich Leontiev, monastic name: Clement (; 25 January 1831 – 24 November 1891) was a conservative tsarist and imperial monarchist Russian philosopher who advocated closer cultural ties between Russia and the East against what he believed to be the West's catastrophic egalitarian, utilitarian and revolutionary influences. He also advocated Russia's cultural and territorial expansion eastward to India, Tibet and China. Life Leontiev was born and grew up on his father's estate in , Kaluga Governorate. His father, a nobleman, was a military officer but was discharged for "riotous behaviour". Still, the intervention of the Russian empress in behalf of the Leontiev brothers made him able to enter the Imperial Corps of Pages. He was engaged at 23 but broke off the relationship for the sake of "freedom and art" – a decision that made things difficult for him. After completing medical school in Moscow, Leontiev saw service as a doctor during the Crimean War. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katyn Massacre
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass killings under Communist regimes, mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish people, Polish military officer, military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), at Joseph Stalin's order in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Tver#20th century, Kalinin and Kharkiv NKVD prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943. The massacre is qualified as a Crimes against humanity, crime against humanity, Crime of aggression, crime against peace, war crime and (within the Polish Penal Code) a Communist crimes (Polish legal concept), Communist crime. According to a 2009 resolution of the Polish parliament's Sejm, it bears the hallmarks of a genocide. The order to execute captive members of the Polish officer corps wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR, the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as a commissariat of the Soviet Union ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
War Crime
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostages, unnecessarily destroying civilian property, deception by perfidy, wartime sexual violence, pillaging, and for any individual that is part of the command structure who orders any attempt to committing mass killings (including genocide or ethnic cleansing), the granting of no quarter despite surrender, the conscription of children in the military, and flouting the legal Indiscriminate attack, distinctions of Proportionality (law), proportionality and military necessity. The formal concept of war crimes emerged from the codification of the customary international law that applied to warfare between sovereign states, such as the Lieber Code (1863) of the Union Army in the American Civil War and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 for int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prisoner Of War
A prisoner of war (POW) is a person held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610. Belligerents hold prisoners of war for a range of legitimate and illegitimate reasons. These may include isolating them from enemy combatants still in the field (releasing and Repatriation, repatriating them in an orderly manner after hostilities), demonstrating military victory, punishment, prosecution of war crimes, labour exploitation, recruiting or even conscripting them as combatants, extracting collecting military and political intelligence, and political or religious indoctrination. Ancient times For much of history, prisoners of war would often be slaughtered or enslaved. Early Roman gladiators could be prisoners of war, categorised according to their ethnic roots as Samnites, Thracians, and Gauls (''Galli''). Homer's ''Iliad'' describes Trojan and Greek soldiers offeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Officer
An officer is a person who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization. The term derives from Old French ''oficier'' "officer, official" (early 14c., Modern French ''officier''), from Medieval Latin ''officiarius'' "an officer," from Latin ''officium'' "a service, a duty" the late Latin from ''officiarius'', meaning "official." Examples Ceremonial and other contexts *Officer, and/or Grand Officer, are both a grade, class, or rank of within certain chivalric orders and orders of merit, e.g. Legion of Honour (France), Order of the Holy Sepulchre (Holy See), Order of the British Empire ( UK), Order of Leopold (Belgium) *Great Officer of State * Merchant marine officer or licensed mariner *Officer of arms *Officer in The Salvation Army, and other state decorations Corporations *Bank officer *Corporate officer, a corporate title **Chief executive officer (CEO) **Chief financial officer (CFO) **Chief operating officer (COO) *Executive officer Education *Chief academi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polish Army
The Land Forces () are the Army, land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 110,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stretches back a millennium – since the 10th century (see List of Polish wars and History of the Polish Army). Poland's modern army was formed after Poland Partitions of Poland, regained independence following World War I in 1918. History 1918–1938 When Poland History of Poland (1918–1939), regained independence in 1918, it recreated its military which participated in the Polish–Soviet War of 1919–1921, and in the two smaller conflicts ( Polish–Ukrainian War (1918–1919) and the Polish–Lithuanian War (1919–1920)). Initially, right after the First World War, Poland had five military districts (1918–1921): * Poznań Military District (Poznański Okręg Wojskowy), HQ in Poznań * Kraków Military District (Krakowski ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tula, Russia
Tula (, ) is the largest city and the administrative center of Tula Oblast in Russia, located south of Moscow. Tula is located in the northern Central Russian Upland on the banks of the Upa (river), Upa River, a tributary of the Oka (river), Oka. At the Russian Census (2010), 2010 census, Tula had a population of 501,169, an increase from 481,216 in 2002, making it the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, 32nd-largest city in Russia by population.A primarily industrial types of inhabited localities in Russia, city, Tula was a fortress at the border of the Principality of Ryazan. The city was seized by Ivan Bolotnikov in 1606 during the Time of Troubles and withstood a four-month siege by the Tsar's army. Historically, Tula has been a major centre for the manufacture of Weapon, armaments. The Demidov family built the first armament factory in Russia in the city, in what would become the Tula Arms Plant, which still operates to this day. Tula is home to the Klokovo (a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hegumen
Hegumen, hegumenos, or igumen (, trans. ), is the title for the head of a monastery in the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, or an archpriest in the Coptic Orthodox Church, similar to the title of abbot. The head of a convent of nuns is called a hegumenia or igumeni (). Overview Initially, the title was applied to the head of any monastery. After 1874, when the Russian monasteries were reformed and classified into three classes, the title of ''hegumen'' was reserved only for the lowest, third class. The head of a monastery of the second or first class holds the rank of archimandrite. In the Greek Catholic Church, the head of all monasteries in a certain territory is called the ''protohegumen''. The duties of both hegumen and archimandrite are the same, archimandrite being considered the senior dignity of the two. In the Russian Orthodox Church, the title of Hegumen may be granted as an honorary title to any hieromonk, even one who does not head a monastery. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gulag
The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps), but the full official name of the agency #Etymology, changed several times. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
October Revolution
The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two revolutions in Russia in 1917. It was led by Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks as part of the broader Russian Revolution of 1917–1923. It began through an insurrection in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) on . It was the precipitating event of the Russian Civil War. The initial stage of the October Revolution, which involved the assault on Petrograd, occurred largely without any casualties. The October Revolution followed and capitalized on the February Revolution earlier that year, which had led to the abdication of Nicholas II and the creation of the Russian Provisional Government. The provisional government, led by Alexander Kerensky, had taken power after Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia, Grand Duke Michael, the younger brother of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
