June 14 in Russian history

1856: Famous Russian mathematicians, Andrei Markov, was born. His best known discovery, Markov chains, are ubiquitous in modern science. They are used in physics to model stochastic processes, in computerized music composition, in statistics, in linguistics, artificial intelligence, robotics. It is most probable that you, dear reader, use Markov chains every day. Markov chains are the basis of Google's ranking algorithm. They are also used in the Bayesian algorithms which filter spam from your e-mail.

1862: Dimitri Pisarev, writer and political extremist, is arrested and put to the jail of the fortress of St. Peter and Paul in St.Petersburg. He had written a political proclamation "On the brochure of Schedo-Ferroti", where he had called to the rebellion against monarcy. He spent more than 4 years in jail. He was not only political, but also literature radical. He fought against "outdated" esthetics, refused to acknowledge the importance of Pushkin's poetry. Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, said later that Lenin grew under Pisarev's influence.

1941: The Soviet Union begins mass deportations in the occupied Baltic countries. Deportations took place before, but not on such large scale. On one day, June 14, the NKVD troops and local Communist party activists enter the homes of former politicians, army officers, judges, state officials, policemen, jounalists, farmer union leaders, businessmen, land owners, ship owners, labour union members, criminals, prostitutes, anti-communist activists and give them one or two hours to gather their clothes and food for one month. About 30%-40% of the deportees were children under 16. People were taken to railway stations and transported to Urals and Siberia. About 30,000 people were deported from Lithuania, more than 15,000 from Latvia and 9,000 from Estonia. Not all of them were ethnic Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. There were also Poles who fled from occupied Poland, Jews (the first victims, as usual), Russians, etc. About 40% of deportees died in the exile. Some starved to death, some were killed, some simply disappeared. The date is the Day of Mourning and Hope in Lithuania and the official mourning day in Latvia. A group of Estonians has prepared an interesting exhibition: No people, no problem (quotation from Stalin). Highly recommended. Two more interesting links are: Materials of the international conference "Deportation of 14 June 1941: Crimes against Humanity" and the database Exile and Imprisonment Locations of the Residents of Lithuania.

March 29 in Russian history

1814: In the early morning, Russian troops begin the battle of Paris. After the first assault, they are stopped by the artillery gunfire, but the assistance of the Prussian and Austrian allies allows them to throw away the French Imperial Guard. Russian troops enter the Montmartre hills. For the first time since 1437 a foreign army enters the French capital. One of the commanders of the glorious French army, Joseph Bonapart, fled, while the other, Auguste Marmont, sent truce envoys to the allied forces and agreed to capitulate. A year and a half later, the winning countries sign the treaty of the so called Holy Alliance. This Alliance was extremely interesting and deserves a separate article, but for now the most interesting thing for us is that the main idea behind the alliance was to establish the European peacekeeping forces. Unfortunately, Russian emperor Alexander I, who was the main proponent of this document, had a very special view of "peacekeeping". In his opinion, it was the alliance of god-blessed monarchies against liberal conspiracies.

1856: The end of the Crimean war. The war started in 1853, when the political landscape of Europe had significantly changed since the birth of the Holy Alliance. Revolutions in Belgium, France and interference of the alliance in the internal affairs of European countries led to the negative attitude towards Russia. There were other reasons, of course. Britain competed with Russia in Persia and sought to weaken the opponent. France attempted to increase influence in the Holy Land, controlled by Turkey. The Austrian position was, probably, influenced by other countres, because her anti-Russian position was inexplicable: only four years earlier Russia helped to suppress the rebellion in Hungary and saved the Austrian empire from dissipation. Anyway, the war had started. Russia successfully defeated the Turkish fleet near Sinop and the Turkish army in Bayazet, Kuruk Dar and Kars. Then the European countries interfered and landed in Crimea. After 11 months of siege, Russian troops abandoned the southern part of Sevastopol. Some more months later, Russia agreed to sign the peace treaty. According to the Second peace treaty of Paris, Russia lost the right to keep fleet and fortresses on the Black Sea. Russia returned Kars, settled by Georgians and Armenians, to Turkey and received back Sevastopol. Russia was also prohibited from protecting the Christian nations subjugated by the Ottoman empire. Russia lost much of the influence in Romania and Serbia.

1867: The Crimean war had shown that Russia was weaker than the European countries. Russia began to understand that it will be very difficult to keep the overseas territories, especially Alaska, where only 600-800 Russians lived at that time. In 1859, USA had already attempted to buy Alaska for $5,000,000, but the Russian government was too busy with the forthcoming abolition of serfdom and refused. By 1867, the Russian government became more interested in Middle Asia and the Far East, so it was decided to sell the Russian America to the United States. The US payed $7,200,000 and renamed Russian America to Alaska. For the USA, the importance of Alaska was lying in the political, rather than in the economical sphere. Had it not been for the Gold Rush of the 1896, Alaska could have remained the barren land for many more years.

That's it. So the victory in the war with Napoleon finally led to the loss of Alaska.

1945: Soviet troops liberate Gdansk (Danzig) and raise the Polish national flag over the city. The 2nd Ukrainian front crossed the borders of Austria, so ungrateful 100 years ago.

1969: Soviet ice hockey squad becomes the world champion for the seventh time in a row.

February 26 in Russian history

1832: Poland becomes a part of the Russian Empire. After the Third Partition of Poland, a semi-autonomous state was formed on the territory belonging to Russia, the Congress Kingdom of Poland. The Kingdom had a constitution but was ruled by the Russian emperor. With time, emperors Alexander I and, especially, Nicholas I began to violate the constitution and became autocratic rulers. This was one of the reasons which caused the uprising of 1830. After the suppression of the uprising, in February 1832, a new decree was issued, called the Organic Statute of the Kingdom of Poland which abolished the Polish army and the Sejm (legislative body). The Statute officially turned Poland into a part of the Empire.

1878: Ivan Franko is put under trial on the false accusation of being a member of a socialist organization. Franko was an interesting personality. He was born in 1856 near Lviv, in Galicia, which was a part of Austria-Hungary at that time. Lviv (Lemberg) was the capital of Galicia. The region was inhabited mostly by Ukrainians (or Ruthenians), but ruled by the Polish aristocracy. In 1875, Franko entered the Lviv university and joined a circle of the so called "moscowphiles". The popularity of pro-Russian sentiments in the Western Ukraine in XVIII-XIX centuries may be explained by weak self-identification of the Ruthenians. In spite of relatively tolerant position of the government of Austria-Hungary towards the Ukrainian language, this language was perceived as "low" and "uncultured" by the Ukrainians themselves. The attempts of self-identification were directed to affiliation with a larger cultural unity: Polish, Russian or Austria. The Russian party was one of the strongest for a number of reasons, especially in the second half of the XIX century. They published a number of magazines and newspapers. Trying to limit the influence of the moscowphiles, the Austrian authorities started a number of trials, accusing them in treason and anti-Austrian conspiracies. Ivan Franko was a member of one such group and he was sentenced to 9 months in jail and had to leave the university after the term. He spent these months in one room with thieves and vagabonds. This period defined his writing style. He wrote about workers and peasants who were forced by poverty to commit crimes. He also writes stories from Jewish life, which was rather unusual in those days, when anti-Semitism was a norm of everyday life. His stories were often called "radical" and "naturalistic", but the critics recognized the talent of the writer. Paradoxically, the moscowphiles gave the first impulse to the Ukrainian national movement, partially because Austria saw Russia as the worst of the three evils and attempted to replace the moscowphile tendencies with the ideas of the Ukrainian revival.

1917: Civil unrest in Petrograd. The State Duma is dissolved. On midday, demonstrations begin, which are dispersed with armed forces. Barricades are built on the streets and a general strike begins.

January 18 in Russian history

1654: Pereyaslav Rada (Assembly) approved the treaty prepared by the Cossack Hetman, Bogdan Khmelnytsky, to re-unite Ukraine with Russia. In the morning the Hetman called the elders' rada (council of the leaders of Cossacks) and after their approval, the open rada assembled and confirmed the decision. The participants included representatives of all areas liberated from Polish troops, people from the town of Pereyaslav and peasants from nearby villages. The Hetman, the Cossack leaders and the people pledged their allegiance to the tsar Alexey I. The Russian government was very careful about the decision and declined the Ukrainian initiative for a number of times before finally signing the Pereyaslav Treaty on March, 14, 1654.

1825: The new building of the Bolshoi Theatre was inaugurated. The theatre was founded in 1776 and they gave performances in Znamensky theatre. In 1780, it was destroyed by a fire and a new theatre, Petrovsky, was designed by Osip Bove. In 1805, this building burnt down, too, and in 1808 the theatre moved to Arbatsky theatre built by an Italian architect Carlo Rossi. The Arbatsky theatre was destroyed when Napoleon took Moscow in 1812. In 1821, Osip Bove started the construction of the new building, designed by Alexey Mikhailov, the rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. The Muscovites, impressed by the grandeur of the new building, called it Colosseum. During the first concert on January, 18, 1825, a piece by Russian composers A.Verstovsky and A.Alyabyev, "The Triumph of The Muses", was performed. In 1853, during a fire, the building was damaged, but it was restored in 1856. Now, in 2007, the building is closed for restoration works.

1926: Premiere of "Battleship Potemkin", a film by Sergei Eisenstein. The film is considered one of the most influential films. In 1958, during the World's Fair at Brussels, it was named by experts the greatest film of all time.

1943: The Soviet troops broke the blockade of Leningrad. After a week of fierce fighting, units of Leningrad and Volkhov fronts overcame the German fortifications and opened a corridor to supply the food to the dying city.

1944: Precisely one year later, on January 18, 1944, the siege was ended and the German troops were driven away from Leningrad, after 900 days-long tragedy, one of the most frightening ones in history. From 670,000 to 1,500,000 people died, mostly from starvation and exposure.