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Parasitism (social Offense)
Social parasitism was considered a political crime in the Soviet Union, where individuals accused of living off the efforts of others or society were prosecuted. The Soviet Union, proclaiming itself a workers' state, mandated that every capable adult engage in work until retirement, theoretically eliminating unemployment. Soviet Union In the Soviet Union, which declared itself a workers' state, every adult able-bodied person was expected to work until official retirement. Thus unemployment was officially and theoretically eliminated. Those who refused to work, study or serve in another way risked being criminally charged with ''social parasitism'' ( ''tuneyadstvo'', тунеядцы Anti-social behaviour">anti-social, parasitic way of life" in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Charges of parasitism were frequently applied to the homeless, vagrants, beggars, dissidents and refuseniks, many of whom were intellectuals. Since their writings were considered ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Crime
In criminology, a political crime or political offence is an offence that prejudices the interests of the state or its government. States may criminalise any behaviour perceived as a threat, real or imagined, to the state's survival, including both violent and non-violent opposition. A consequence of such criminalisation may be that a range of human rights, civil rights, and freedoms are curtailed, and conduct which would not normally be considered criminal ''per se'' (in other words, that is not antisocial according to those who engage in it) is criminalised at the convenience of the group holding power. Thus, there may be a question of the morality of a law which simply criminalises ordinary political dissent, even though the majority of those who support the current regime may consider criminalisation of politically motivated behaviour an acceptable response when the offender is driven by more extreme political, ideological, religious or other beliefs. Political crime is to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Room
A mechanical room, boiler room or plant room is a technical room or space in a building dedicated to the mechanical equipment and its associated electrical equipment, as opposed to rooms intended for human occupancy or storage. Unless a building is served by a centralized heating plant, the size of the mechanical room is usually proportional to the size of the building. A small building or home may have at most a utility room but in larger buildings, mechanical rooms can be of considerable size, often requiring multiple rooms throughout the building, or even occupying one or more complete floors (see: mechanical floor). Technical rooms in residential houses typically house technical equipment such as air handling units, central heating, electric panels or water heaters, or gives easy access to utilities such as a building's internal stop-tap for water supply, inspection holes for greywater or sewage lines. Equipment Mechanical systems and equipment that may be housed in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Workhouse
In Britain and Ireland, a workhouse (, lit. "poor-house") was a total institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. In Scotland, they were usually known as Scottish poorhouse, poorhouses. The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' is from 1631, in an account by the mayor of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, Abingdon reporting that "we have erected within our borough a workhouse to set poorer people to work". The origins of the workhouse can be traced to the Statute of Cambridge 1388, which attempted to address the labour shortages following the Black Death in England by restricting the movement of labourers, and ultimately led to the state becoming responsible for the support of the poor. However, mass unemployment following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the introduction of new technology to replace agricultural workers in particular, and a series of bad harvests, meant that by the early 1830s the established sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2017 Belarusian Protests
The 2017 Belarusian protests were a series of demonstrations and street protests against President Alexander Lukashenko that broke out in late February 2017. Protesters mobilized against a tax levied against the unemployed in Belarus. Demonstrations and marches were held in sites throughout the country with sizes of several hundred to several thousand gathering at a given time. Context Belarus has been described for several years as Europe's "last dictatorship" with no genuine political opposition against Lukashenko possible. Previous protests in 2011 and 2015 resulted in mass arrests. The country has also been in an economic recession since 2015 due to falling gasoline prices and that year a law was passed taxing the unemployed. Roughly 470,000 Belarusians are obliged to pay the tax but only about 10% have since it was issued. Activities Approximately 2,500 protesters filled the streets in Minsk on 17 February to protest a policy that required anyone who works for less tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subsistence Agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops on smallholdings to meet the needs of themselves and their families. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occur principally with an eye toward what the family will need during the coming year, and only secondarily toward market prices. Tony Waters, a professor of sociology, defines "subsistence peasants" as "people who grow what they eat, build their own houses, and live without regularly making purchases in the marketplace". Despite the self-sufficiency in subsistence farming, most subsistence farmers also participate in trade to some degree. Although their amount of trade as measured in cash is less than that of consumers in countries with modern complex markets, they use these markets mainly to obtain goods, not to generate income for food; these goods are typically not necessary for survival and may include sugar, iron roofing-sheets, bicycle ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Housewife
A housewife (also known as a homemaker or a stay-at-home mother/mom/mum) is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which may include Parenting, caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; Sewing, making, buying and/or mending clothes for the family; Grocery shopping, buying, cooking, and Food preservation, storing food for the family; buying Good (economics), goods that the family needs for everyday life; partially or solely managing the family budget—and who is not employed outside the home (e.g., a ''career woman''). The male equivalent is the househusband. ''The Merriam-Webster Dictionary'' defines a housewife as a Marriage, married woman who is in charge of her household. The British ''Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary'' (1901) defines a housewife as "the mistress of a household; a female domestic manager [...]". In the Western world, stereotypical gender roles, particularly for women, were challenged by the femin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freeloading
{{Short pages monitor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (also transliterated as Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka; born 30 August 1954) is a Belarusian politician who has been the first and only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making him the List of current state leaders by date of assumption of office, current longest-serving European leader. Before embarking on his political career, Lukashenko worked as the director of a state farm (''sovkhoz'') and served in both the Soviet Border Troops and the Soviet Army. In 1990, Lukashenko was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he assumed the position of head of the interim anti-corruption committee of the Supreme Council of Belarus. In 1994, he won the presidency in the country's 1994 Belarusian presidential election, inaugural presidential election after the adoption of a new Constitution of Belarus, constitution. Lukashenko opposed Shock ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrei Amalrik
Andrei Alekseevich Amalrik (, 12 May 1938, Moscow – 12 November 1980, Guadalajara, Castile-La Mancha, Spain), alternatively spelled ''Andrei'' or ''Andrey'', was a Soviet writer and dissident. Amalrik was best known in the Western world for his 1970 essay, ''Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?''. Early life Amalrik was born in Moscow, during the time of Joseph Stalin's purges. When the Soviet revolution broke out, Andrei's father, then a young man, volunteered for the Red Army. After the war he went into the film industry. Andrei's father fought in World War II in the Northern Fleet and then the Red Army. He was overheard uttering negative views about Stalin's qualities as a military leader, which led to his arrest and imprisonment; he feared for his life, but shortly afterward was released to rejoin the army. In 1942 he was wounded at Stalingrad and invalided out of the service. Andrei's father's hardships explain Andrei's decision to become a historian. For his fath ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lev Kopelev
Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (, German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912 – 18 June 1997) was a Soviet author and dissident. Early life Kopelev was born in Kyiv, then Russian Empire, to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved to Kharkiv. While a student at Kharkiv State University's philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in Russian and Ukrainian languages; some of his articles were published in the '' Komsomolskaya Pravda'' newspaper. An idealist communist and active party member, he was first arrested in March 1929 for "consorting with the Bukharinist and Trotskyist opposition," and spent ten days in prison. Career Later, he worked as an editor of radio news broadcasts at a locomotive factory. In 1932, as a correspondent, Kopelev witnessed the NKVD's forced grain requisitioning and the dekulakization. Later, he described the Holodomor in his memoir ''The Education of a True Believer''. Robert Conquest's '' The Harvest of Sorrow'' later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vladimir Voinovich
Vladimir Nikolayevich Voinovich (; 26 September 1932 – 27 July 2018) was a Russian writer and former Soviet dissident, and the "first genuine comic writer" produced by the Soviet system. Among his most well-known works are the satirical epic '' The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin'' and the dystopian '' Moscow 2042''. He was forced into exile and stripped of his citizenship by Soviet authorities in 1980 but later rehabilitated and moved back to Moscow in 1990. After the fall of the Soviet Union, he continued to be an outspoken critic of Russian politics under the rule of Vladimir Putin. Biography Early life Voinovich was born in Stalinabad, Tajik SSR, Soviet Union. According to himself, his father was of Serbian descent and a translator of Serbian literature, and his mother was of Jewish descent. Vladimir Voinovich claimed that his father belonged to the Serbian Vojnović noble family, although this is solely based on his surname and the book by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iosif Begun
Iosif Ziselovich Begun, sometimes spelled Yosef (born 9 July 1932, , ) is a former Soviet refusenik, prisoner of conscience, human rights activist, author and translator. Over the course of 17 years, Begun was imprisoned three times and spent over eight years in prisons and labor camps as a political prisoner. He was pardoned and freed in 1987 after political pressure from Jewish political organizations and the U.S. Government. Biography Begun was born and grew up in Moscow, Soviet Union. He graduated from the radio technology department of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, in 1957, and the department of mathematics at Moscow State University (the extension school), in 1962. He received a Candidate of Technical Sciences degree and worked as an electronics engineer and a statistician. From 1971 to 1988, Begun was repeatedly arrested for his political activities. He was dismissed from his job as an engineer in 1971 after having submitted an application to emigrate. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
