April 13 in Russian history

1934: I already told the story of the steamship Chelyuskin (there's a typo in that article, I put the article under 1924 instead of 1934, sorry.) Just wanted to remind that this drama ended successfully on April 13, 1934, when last members of the expedition were evacuated.

1943: On this day in 1943, the German army issued an official press-release anouncing the results of the investigation of mass burials found in the Katyn forest, near Smolensk. In April-May 1940, 4,421 Polish prisoners of war were executed in Katyn by Soviet NKVD. Thousands more were killed in other places: Kharkiv, Kalinin, etc. The total amount of victims, according to the KGB archives, was 21,857 people. The Nazi propaganda used this case to accuse mythical "Jewish commanders of NKVD" in the executions. USSR denied all accusations but refused to accept an international team for the investigation. A Soviet "investigation" later in 1943-1944 concluded that the Polish officers were killed in 1941, when the territory was occupied by Nazis. There's no reason to reproduce here the full detailed history, just a couple of comments. When the Nazis attacked USSR in 1941, it suddenly turned out that Poland and USSR found themselves on one side of the war. Stalin established contacts with the Polish government in exile, released all surviving Poles from prisons and began to form Polish detachments. On December 3, 1941, Stalin met the leaders of the Polish government, Wladyslaw Sikorski and Wladyslaw Anders, who were trying to find all Polish POWs in Gulag. Sikorski said that not all Poles were released from the detention camps, but Stalin answered that this is impossible and all Polish officers were released. Then Sikorski gave a list of 4,000 people who were not released and stressed that these people were not found in Poland or in German camps for POWs. Stalin said: "It's impossible. They are hiding." "Where could they hide?" asked Sikorski perplexedly. "Well, in Manchuria", answered Stalin floutingly... In the late 1980s-early 1990s, having studied a lot of declassified documents of KGB-NKVD, a group of Soviet historians found strong evidences proving that the massacre was organized by NKVD. On April 13, 1990 (47 years after the German announcement mentioned in the beginning of this article), M. Gorbachev officially called NKVD responsible for the executions and expressed the "profound regret". A criminal case was started and in May 1991 the General Prosecutor of the USSR said that "it is possible to make a preliminary conclusion that the Polish POWs could be executed on the basis of the decision of the Special Council of NKVD of USSR in April-May 1940 by regional NKVD of Smolensk, Kharkiv and Kalinin oblasts, in Katyn forest near Smolensk, in Mednoe located in 32 kilometres from Tver and in the 6th quarter of the park zone of Kharkiv correspondingly." In 1992, Boris Yeltsin transferred a pack of documents related to the Katyn massacre to Lech Walesa. With the inauguration of V. Putin, the situation has changed. In 2004, Polish investigators were not allowed to visit Moscow. In 2005, the official investigation was over, but the General Military Prosecutor A. Savenkov concluded that it was neither a genocide, nor a crime against humanity, not even a war crime, but a military crime with the term of 50 years which had already expired. During the last years, some conspirologists attempt to refute the proofs found by the multiple investigators and proclaim that the murders were committed by the Nazis. Like many other conspirologists and pyramidiots, they are mostly dilettantes, like a metallurgy engineer who is by coincidence the author of the hypothesis of human immortality, the founder of the Army of the Will of the People (?!), who has "proved" that Boris Yeltsin died in 1996, that American astronauts never landed on the Moon, that Stalin was killed by Khruschev, etc. And no, he is not hospitalized yet, if you meant to ask.

1958: Van Cliburn, an American pianist, wins the First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. He hasn't become a super star of the classical music, but his performance of Tchaikovsky and Rakhmaninov piano concerts in Moscow was so romantic, emotional and deeply personal, that the judges unanimously gave him the first prize (having consulted with Khruschev first) and the audience was applauding for eight minutes. The recording became a bestseller in Russia, with over 1,000,000 copies sold. I think one of them is still standing somewhere deep in my bookshelf, where old LPs are stored. He was known and loved by millions of Soviet people. The Reporter magazine wrote: "Russians did not discover Van Cliburn. They have simply accepted with enthusiasm what we watch indifferently, what their people value and we ignore." I think that most Russians still remember his name, especially after his visit to Moscow in 2004. There's even a rock group named Van Cliburn, AFAIK. Now, he lives alone in Fort Worth, without family or children. If you happen to find that recording of 1958, listen. It is worth it. Listen and drink a glass of wine for Van Cliburn, he really deserved it.

April 5 in Russian history

1242: Battle of the Ice. With the stupidity that deserves a better use, the law of the Russian Federation "On the days of the glory" orders to celebrate this date on April 18. In the autumn of 1240, the knights of the Teutonic order, assuming that Russians were weakened by Swedish and Tatar raids, attacked the Republic of Novgorod. Poor guys who miserably failed in the Holy Land thought that the northern savages would be an easier prey than the southern ones. After the initial successes against Prussians, Poles, Livonians and Estonians, they decided to christianize the Russian christians. They succeeded in occupying Russian cities of Pskov, Izborsk and Koporye and moved towards Novgorod. In 1241, knyaz Alexander Yaroslavich (who had already earned his name Alexander Nevsky after defeating the Swedes in 1240) drove them off and took Pskov and Koporye. Alexander led his army to Izborsk, but during the march one of the reconnaissance detachments was defeated by the knights. This allowed Alexander to determine the position and number of the Teutonic forces, which were moving towards a narrow straight between Chudskoye and Pskovskoye lakes (the lakes are known in English as one lake Peipus, from the Estonian name Peipsi). Alexander retreated in order to start the battle on a position that would be favorable for the Russian forces. The troops of the Teutonic Order included around 1,000-2,000 people, of whom about 500-700 were mounted knights. The number of Russians was about 4,000-5,000 people, including Alexander's druzhina, professional soldiers of the Novgorod garrison, militia from the "ends" of Novgorod and its prigorods and members of private militarized forces of boyars and merchants. About 800 of them were cavalry. The mounted knights followed by foot soldiers attacked the centre of the Novgorod army in their typical wedge-shaped "boar's head" formation and caused severe damages, but could not disrupt the order or get through the rows of the soldiers. Some time later, when the Teutonic troops began to grow tired, Alexander ordered the left and right wings to flank the enemy. The Novgorod archers killed many foot soldiers and forced the knights to flee. Heavy mounted knights stepped onto the ice, hoping to make to the opposite coast, but ice collapsed and many of them drowned. Russian chronicles reported of 500 killed knights, but the whole Order was smaller than that. A more reasonable estimation is that about 400 Germans (including 20 knights) were killed and 90 (including 6 "brothers") were captured. The losses of Novgorodians are unclear. Some historians, for example I.Danilevsky, assume that the importance of the battle was overestimated, but, after all, the Order never attempted serious attacks on Russian lands any more.

1797: Emperor Pavel I prohibits the land-lords to force the serfs to work on Sundays.

1941: Yugoslavia and USSR sign the friendship and non-aggression treaty. Only some days earlier, on March 25, Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact joining the Axis. The decision was not easy and resulted into resignment of four members of the cabinet of ministers. What is more important is that the Yugoslavians did not support the alliance. Immediately after the pact was signed, mass demonstrations began in Belgrade and the Yugoslavians overthrew the pro-fascist government and regent prince Paul. Peter II became the king of Yugoslavia and signed the friendship treaty with the USSR. On the very next day, on April 6, the Nazi Luftwaffe began furious attacks on Belgrade. What amazes me most is the reaction of the Yugoslavians. A lot of European countries either happily elected fascist governments or inclined to support nationalist dictatorships of a rather fascist-like type. For example, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy, who invaded Yugoslavia after the German bombardments, or Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Greece, etc. The reaction of the Yugoslavians to the alliance with the Axis was so strongly negative that it seems that they had some kind of immunity to fascism. This reaction was not limited to certain groups of population, but was rather universal: army, trade-unions, peasants and even clerics opposed any relationships with the Nazis. Of course, they had their own fascist-like movements, but the general rejection of the ideology is remarkable, IMHO.

1943: The first aerial battle of the fighter squadron Normandie-Niemen. The squadron comprised French pilots who came to the USSR to fight against the Nazi Germany. The idea of such a detachment belonged to Charle de Gaulle. The squadron was formed in September 1942 and departed to the front after some months of training on March 22, 1943, under commandment of Jean Tulasne (died on July 17, 1943). On April 5, the first German Fw 190 was shot down by Albert Préziosi (died on July 28, 1943 near Orel) and the second one by Albert Durand (died on September 1, 1943 near Yelna). The squadron was so successful that Wilhelm Keitel issued an order to execute all captured French pilots. During the war, the pilots of Normandie-Niemen shot down 273 German planes and damaged more than 80. 42 members of the squadron were killed during the war. In 1956, a memorial was built in Moscow with the names of all killed pilots. There are two squadrons named Normandie-Niemen in the Air Forces of France and Russia

1945: About 800 Georgian members of the Georgian Legion, ex-Soviet army soldiers, who were captured during the war and agreed to serve the Nazis, begin a rebellion on the Dutch island Texel. They expected the Allies to land on the island, but the Allies had other priorities. The Georgians failed to capture the artillery batteries on the coasts and Germans managed to land on the island and forced the Georgians to split into small groups and begin a guerilla-style war. The fighting did not stop after the capitulation of Germany and continued till May 20. Probably, neither Germans, nor Georgians would stop the battle because of hatred and fear of immediate execution. During the battle, about 800 German occupants were killed. 565 members of the Georgian battalion and 120 Dutch civilians were killed, too. For the natives of Texel, used to the comfort of the German occupation, the events were absolutely unexpected and frightening. However, they assisted the Georgians and after the war built a monument in the memory of this rebellion. 228 survivors returned to the USSR and, like many other POWs, were sent to the Gulag camps.

April 3 in Russian history

1933: The first kidney tranplantation was performed by Yuri Voronoy. Some sources give different dates, some even speak of the tranplantation being done in 1934 or 1936. His experiments started in 1929 and in 1930 he managed to transplant a kidney to a dog's neck. As the Ukrainian National museum of medicine reports:

Yu.Yu. Voronoy renounced the thought to take an organ from an alive man, since he thought that “one cannot make a healthy man invalid removing a necessary organ for the problematic saving of a patient”. He decided to use the kidney from a dead body. As we succeeded to establish, on April, 1933 (not in 1934, as it was informed in some sources, 1934 — is the year of publication of Yu. Yu. Voronoy’s work) the surgeon Yu. Yu. Voronoy made the transplantation of the kidney taken from a dead body. The recipient was a woman of 26 years, whose own kidneys did not function for 4 days because of acute poisoning with mercury biochloride. The donor’s kidney belonged to a man of 60 who died as a result of craniocerebral trauma, and was taken 6 hours after his death. ... She [the recipient] lived with the transplanted kidney more than 48 hours. Voronoy had every reason to think that the short-term transplant grafting (only during two days) does not compromise the kidney transplantation as the method of treatment under some forms of mercury biochloride poisonings. And what is more, he supposed that in case of dying off of the first implanted kidney, it is recommended to substitute it by a new, fresh kidney, i. e., he proposed the repeated transplantation. ... Yu. Yu. Voronoy outstripped for a long time the development of transplantology. Suffice it to say that clinical transplantations of the corpse kidney in most countries all over the world were made only in the 50–60’s of the 20th century. Professor Voronoy took part in development of other urgent trends of experimental and clinical surgery. He studied in detail the extremely important problem of the shock. But the problems of transplantology continued to remain the main ones in scientific activity of Voronoy. In 1950 he informed about 5 operations of the corpse kidney transplantation under severe nephrologic diseases.

1945: His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God, emperor of Ethiopia, transfers 10,000 pounds to the population of the USSR, suffering from the consequences of the Nazi occupation.

1945: The government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic decides to build a monument in Babiy Yar, a gully in Kiev, used by the Nazis as the place of mass executions. On September 27, 1941, 752 patients of a mental hospital were killed. On September 29-30, 33,771 Jews, almost whole Jewish population of Kiev, were executed. In October, 17,000 more Jews were killed there. Later, 621 member of the Ukrainian nationalist organization OUN were also killed. The executions were continuing till autumn of 1943, when the Soviet troops liberated Kiev. The total number of victims is not clear, various sources estimate it between 70,000 and 200,000 people. It is not clear why, but the monument was not built. Moreover, the authorities of Kiev preferred to make a dump in Babiy yar. In 1950, a wall was built and the gully was turned into a collector for liquid waste of nearby brick plant. In 1961, the wall fell and the mudflow destroyed a district of Kiev known as Kurenyovka. About 3,000 people died in this tragedy. In 1965 a granite stele was built. Only in 1976, on July 2, a monument was erected with the inscription: "To the Soviet citizens, soldiers and officers of the Soviet army, killed by fascists in Babiy Yar". Later, in 1990s, more monuments were built commemorating not all victims, but only certain groups of them: Jews, members of OUN, patients of the mental hospital, etc. There's also a cross erected in the memory of German prisoners of war.

1966: Soviet spacecraft Luna-10 becomes the first man-made object ever to orbit another celestial body. It enters the Lunar orbit and begins to collect scientific data using a spectrometer, a magnetometer and a number of other tools. Among other things, Luna 10 discovers a strange objects under the surface of the Moon, called 'mascons' (mass concentrations). On May 29, 1966, Luna 10 fell onto the Moon. On April 3, during the XXIII CPSU congress (BTW, it was the first congress where L.Brezhnev was the general secretary of the Communist Party), Luna 10 transmitted back to the Earth a sound record of L'Internationale.

March 22 in Russian history

1710: Peter I issues a manifesto which prohibits the "great Russians" (the term used for Russians in that time) to insult "little Russians" (whom we know as Ukrainians) and to accuse them in the treason of hetman Mazepa. The punishment would be strict, up to the death penalty. Only one year had passed after the battle of Poltava, where a part of the Ukrainian forces, led by Mazepa, who violated the oath of allegiance he had sworn to Peter I, and Peter I intended to strengthen the ties between Great Russia and Little Russia. So, he had also granted certain financial privileges to the Ukrainians. For example, they were exempted from the state monopoly on alcohol. Ukrainians, unlike Russians, were allowed to produce and to sell alcohol on the whole territory of all Russias.

1932: Maxim Gorky, a.k.a. "Stalin in literature", publishes an article titled "On whose side are you, masters of culture?" Unfortunately, I couldn't find an English translation online. It's an amazing sample of the most rude Soviet political journalism. He accuses capitalists and intelligentsia, the "consolers of the bourgeoisie", in racism, in attempts to limit the progress and to tame artists.

"Artists like Possart or Monet Sully are not needed anymore, their place is taken by Fairbankses, Harold-Lloyds and other jugglers of that kind, led by monotonously sentimental and downcast Charlie Chaplin, just like the music of classical composers is replaced by jazz, and Stendal, Balsac, Dickens and Flobert are replaced by various Wallaces, the people who can only tell about policemen, the guards of large robbers and mass murderers, are hunting puny thieves and killers. In the area of art, bourgeoisie is quite satisfied with collecting of post stamps or bus tickets or, in the best case, the forged paintings of the old masters. In the area of science, bourgeoisie is only interested in the most comfortable and cheap exploitation of the forces of the working class. The science exists for a bourgeois only as long as it serves his aims of self-enrichment, to control his digestion and to raise the sexual energy of the debauchee. The basics goals of the science are beyond the understanding for the bourgeois: intellectual development, physical recovery of the humanity, transformation of the inert matter into energy, solution of the growth of the human body are just as uninteresting for a bourgeois as for a savage from the Central Africa.

...

No, preaching love of the poor to the rich, of the worker to his master, is not my craft. I am unable to console. I know too well that the world lives in the atmosphere of hatred and I see that this atmosphere is getting more dense, active, beneficial.

You, "humanists who want to be practical", should understand that there are two hatred in this world: one has originated among the predators on the basis of their competition with each other and out of fear before the future, which threatens them with an imminent death; and another one, the hatred of the proletariat, is born from the disgust towards the reality and is fed by the understanding of the right for power. The force of these two hatreds makes it impossible to conciliate them, and nothing but the inevitable physical conflict of their carriers, nothing but the victory of the proletariat, will set the world free from hatred.

...

Let's talk about "violence". Dictatorship of the proletariat is temporary, it is necessary to re-educate, to turn tens of millions of former slaves of nature and the bourgeoisie into the only master of their country and all its treasures. The dictatorship of the proletariat will cease to be necessary as soon as all the working people, all peasants will find themselves in equal social and economical positions, and everyone of them will obtain the possibility to work according to his abilities and to receive according to his needs. "Violence" as you and many others understand it, is a misunderstanding, but even more often it is the libel and slander against the working class of the Union of Soviets and its party. The word "violence" is applied to the social process taking place in the Union of Soviets by the enemies of the working class in order to discredit his work in the area of culture: the restoration of his country and the creation of the new forms of economical life.

In my opinion, we can talk about the coercion without violence, just like when you teach children you do not use violence. The working class of the Union of Soviets and his party are teaching the social and political literacy to the peasants. You, the intellectuals, are also forced by something or someone to feel the dramatism of your life between the hammer and the anvil. You are also taught the basics of social and political literacy, and this someone is not me, of course.

...

The laws in the Union of Soviets are created within the working masses, they are a corollary of the workers' life. The Soviet power and the party formulate and approve as the law only the statements which were shaped in the process of the work of the proletariat and the peasants, of the work, the task of which is to create the society of equal ones. The party is the dictator as long as it is the organizing centre, the neural system of the working masses. The goal of the party is to transform in the shortest possible time the maximum amount of the physical energy into the intellectual energy, to give freedom of development to every single individual and to the whole population.

About two years ago, an article with the same name, "On whose side are you, masters of culture?", was published by a funny pseudo-patriotic organization called the Youth Union "For the Motherland!". It retains the obtuse, meaningless style of the original Gorky's phrase-mongering:

Just like 100 years ago, when Maxim Gorky wrote his famous answer to the American journalists, you are still busy with the same: "consolation of the bourgeoisie in their trite woes, mending the worn-out, dirty clothes of the bourgeoisie, lavishly soiled with the blood of the working class."

You, scientists, literary critics, musicians, journalists, writers, actors, sportsmen, where are your thoughts, do you live the same life as the people of Russia, or are you not worried by the people's hopes? What have you done for your motherland? Why didn't you, Maxim Sokolov, criticize the vices of the modern society in your column in the newspaper? Have you, Sergey Shnurov, had your hands cut off, like a Chilean musician, for the songs of protest? Why didn't you, Sergey Bezrukov, read Pushkin's verses to the Russian soldiers in Chechnya?

...

Why didn't you, Yegor Titov, win the European football championship, did not fulfill your citizen's duty? We, the Youth Union "For the Motherland!", call the masters of culture to account. Answer your country and your conscience: what have you done for your land when you had such a credit of the people? Determine, are you with the people or are you by yourselves, since the culture is inseparable from the people, and if you are not with the people, the people will reject you and what is an intellectual without the people — an empty place. ... The time of postmodernism is gone, the time of new realism has come!

Unique stupidity. Gorky would look a brilliant stylist near these dead serious children. At least, he knew more words in Russian.

1943: Nazi troops from the infamous brigade Dirlewanger together with Ukrainian and Belorussian collaborators under comman of Grigory Vasyura destroyed the Belorussian village Khatyn. It was a part of the Winterzauber operation. 10 schutzmannschaft (guard) battallions took part in the operation, including 8 Latvian battallions and two Ukrainian-Belorussian battalions from OUN (organization of Ukrainian nationalists). During the operation 158 villages were sacked and destroyed. Villages Ambrazeevo, Aniskovo, Buly, Zhernoseki, Kalyuty, Konstantinovo, Paporotnoe, Sokolovo and a number of others were burnt together with their inhabitants. About 3,500 people were killed, 2,000 were sent to Germany for slave work, 1,000 children were sent to the Salaspils children's death camp in Latvia. On March 22, after the partisans attacked a Nazi detachment and killed Hans Woelke, an SS officer, a large group of fascists entered the village Khatyn. All people of the village, including women, children and old people, were locked in a wooden barn. Some people tried to escape. Little Lena Yaskevich dashed for the forest. Fascists started shooting, but missed. Then they ran after her, caught her and killed. Then the Nazis covered the barn with straw, spilt the benzine over it set it on fire. People burnt suffocated and burnt alive. At last, the locked people broke the door and started running. Machine guns, carefully put around the spot, started shooting. 149 people, including 75 children, were killed.

Victor Zhelobkovich, who was 8 at the time of the massacre, recalls: "We were with my mother near the locked doors of the barn and I saw how the straw was put around, how the fire was set. When the burning roof fell and the clothes started burning on the people, we dashed to the doors and broke them away. The soldiers started shooting at the running people. We ran for 5 or 6 meters, then my mother pushed me, we fell and she told me to lie and not to move. Something hit my arm strongly and it started bleeding. I told about it to my mother, but she did not reply, she was already dead. I don't know how long it went on. Everything around was burning and even my hat started smouldering. Then, when the soldiers left, I stood up. There were smoking bodies all around. Someone moaned and asked for water. I brought water, but it was not needed anymore."

Joseph Kaminsky, another survivor, who died in 1973, recalled: "I was at the forge. My wife and my son Adasik, who came recently from Minsk, were at home. Then the fascists came, and sent us all to the barn and set it on fire. I told my son to climb over the wall and helped him. They started shooting outside and I was stunned by the thought that I sent my son to die. Then the doors opened, we ran and they were shooting at us. I fell and the killed people were falling on me. When the fascists left, I rose and found Adasik: wake up, they are gone. I wanted to help him up, and the guts began to fall from his waist. I picked them and they fell again, and I picked, and he kept asking: "Water, water..."

During the war, Nazis destroyed 9,200 cities and villages in Belorussia. 5,295 of them were destroyed together with the people who lived there. During the three years of occupation, 2,230,000 people were killed, about every third citizen of Belorussia.

February 2 in Russian history

1238: Batu Khan seized and burnt Moscow. Batu Khan was a grandson of Chingiz Khan and the founder of the Blue Horde, later transformed into the Golden Horde. The most detailed account of the seizure of Moscow is given in Lavrentiev chronicle: "On the same winter Tatars took Moscow and killed the chieftain Philip Nyanko for the true Christian faith, and took knyaz Vladimir, son of Yuri, with hands, and killed people from old to little ones; and the burnt the town and the sacred churches, and all monasteries and villages, and left, having taken large loot." Anyway, there is another source -- some sheets, glued into a copy of Nikanorov chronicle. These sheets were copied by Johann-Werner Pause in the first half of XVIII century from a lost chronicle and were not explored sufficiently until late 1970s. This text reports: "Tatars came from there (from Kolomna. DM) to Moscow and beat it incessantly. The chieftain Filip Nyanskin sat on his horse and all his army with him, crossed themselves, opened the gates and, shouting, attacked the Tatars. And the Tatars, seeing the great force, were frightened and started to run. And tsar Batu then with great force stepped onto the chieftain and captured him alive, and dissected his body in parts and strewn it all over the field, and the town of Moscow was burnt and sacked, and all people and babies were killed."

1701: Peter I issued "The Decree about construction of six 16-gun ships on Ladoga lake." These ships became the first ships of the Russian Baltic fleet.

1943: The end of the battle of Stalingrad, sometimes called the bloodiest battle in the history. Frankly, I see no reason to describe it, since it is covered extensively in many books and online sources. For a brief introduction, see (I was perplexed by one sentence in the article: "The battle was marked by brutality and disregard for military and civilian casualties on both sides." German civilian casualties in the middle of Russia?) Instead, I will copy an article I posted at the Sima Qian Studio forum a year and a half ago when I visited Volgograd. See the next post in this blog.

January 26 in Russian history

1525: First printed map of Russia. It was drawn by a geographer Dmitri Gerasimov and was based on the accounts of travellers and merchants and on interviews with them.

1582: The end of the Livonian war. Ambassador of Ivan IV, tsar of Russia, and Stefan Batory, king of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with help of the papal legatus Antonio Possevino, sign the Treaty of Jam Zapolski in a village Kiverova Gora. Russian ambassadors were duke Yeletsky and book publisher Alferyev. The Livonian war started in 1558 to establish control on the territory of Livonian Confederation (modern Latvia and Estonia). This confederation consisted of a number of German colonies: the Livonian Order, Archbishopric of Riga, Bishopric of Dorpat, Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek, and Bishopric of Courland. In the course of the war Sweden joined the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the accent moved to the territories lying between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. According to the terms of the 20-year truce, Russia renounced the claims to Livonia and Polotsk, but Poland returned the occupied Russian city of Velikie Luki and stopped the siege of Pskov. Russia lost the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, the only access to the Baltic Sea and regained it only 13 years later, during the Russian-Swedish war of 1590-1595.

1924: The 2nd congress of Soviets renamed Petrograd (ex-St. Petersburg) to Leningrad.

1943: Nikolai Vavilov, a prominent botanist and geneticist, died in a prison in Saratov from dystrophia. Vavilov, born in 1887, graduated from Moscow Agricultural Institute and worked together with the father of genetics, William Bateson, for some years. Vavilov was interested in the origin of cultivated plants, especially the cereal crops. He organized a number of botanical expeditions, created the largest collection of largest plant seeds in the world and was the first to identify the centres of origin of the cultivated plants. He also formulated the law of homologous series in variation. In 1940 he was repressed as a defender of the "bourgeois pseudoscience" genetics. In 1968, the Research Institute of Plant Industry in Leningrad was renamed to the Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry.

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.