December 10 in Russian history. Nobel prize awards.

The 10 December, the day when Alfred Nobel died, for more than 100 years has been the day when Nobel prizes are awarded. For the last five years, there were no Russians among the winners. Here's the list of Russian/Soviet Nobel prize winners:

• Ivan Pavlov, Physiology or Medicine, 1904
• Ilya Mechnikov, Physiology or Medicine, 1908
• Ivan Bunin, Literature, 1933
• Nikolay Semenov, Chemistry, 1956
• Pavel Cherenkov, Physics, 1958
• Boris Pasternak, Literature, 1958 (forced to decline)
• Lev Landau, Physics, 1962
• Aleksandr M. Prokhorov, Physics, 1964
• Nicolay G. Basov, Physics, 1964
• Michail Sholokhov, Literature, 1965
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Literature, 1970
• Leonid Kantorovich, Economics, 1975
• Mikhail Gorbachev, Peace, 1990
• Zhores I. Alferov, Physics, 2000
• Alexei A. Abrikosov, Physics, 2003
• Vitaly Ginzburg, Physics, 2003

Some years ago, though, Kommersant newspaper compiled a list of Nobel prize winners with connections to Russia:

Year of award	Category	Name	Relation to Russia (USSR)
1903	Physics	Marie Curie (born Marie Sklodowska)	Born in Warsaw (Russian part of Poland)
1904	Physiology and medicine	Ivan Petrovich Pavlov	Subject of the Russian Empire; later a citizen of the USSR
1905	Literature	Henryk Sienkiewicz	Born in the Russian part of Poland; subject of the Russian Empire
1908	Physiology and medicine	Ilya Ilich Mechnikov	Subject of the Russian Empire
1911	Chemistry	Marie Curie	Born in Warsaw (Russian part of Poland)
1933	Literature	Ivan Alekseevich Bunin	Born in Voronezh (Russian Empire); at the time of the award, a stateless person resident in France
1945	Physiology and medicine	Ernst Boris Chain	Son of a native of Mogileva (Russian Empire, now Belarus)
1952	Physiology and medicine	Selman Abraham Waksman	Born in Priluky (now Ukraine; left the Russian Empire are age 22)
1956	Chemistry	Nikolai Nikolaevich Semenov	Citizen of the USSR
1958	Physics	Igor Evgenevich Tamm	Citizen of the USSR
1958	Physics	Ilya Mikhailovich Frank	Citizen of the USSR
1958	Physics	Pavel Alekseevich Cherenkov	Citizen of the USSR
1958	Literature	Boris Leonidovich Pasternak*	Citizen of the USSR
1960	Physics	Donald Arthur Glaser	Son of a Russian woman (Russian Empire)
1961	Chemistry	Melvin Calvin	Son of Russian immigrants
1962	Physics	Lev Davidovich Landau	Citizen of the USSR
1964	Physics	Nikolai Gennadievich Basov	Citizen of the USSR
1964	Physics	Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov	Citizen of the USSR
1965	Physiology and medicine	André Michel Lvov	Son of Russian immigrants
1965	Literature	Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov	Citizen of the USSR
1970	Literature	Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn	Citizen of the USSR at the time of the award (later stripped of citizenship and expelled from the country; now a citizen of Russia)
1970	Physiology and medicine	Sir Bernard Katz	Son of Russian immigrants
1971	Economics	Simon Smith Kuznets	Born in Kharkov (Russian Empire, now Ukraine); left the country in 1922
1971	Physics	Dennis Gabor	Great-grandson of a Russian subject
1973	Economics	Vasily (Vasilevich) Leontev	Born in St. Petersburg; left the Soviet Union after graduating from Leningrad University in 1925
1975	Peace Prize	Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov	Citizen of the USSR
1975	Economics	Leonid Vitalevich Kantorovich	Citizen of the USSR
1976	Literature	Saul Bellow	Son of Russian immigrants
1977	Chemistry	Ilya (Romanovich) Prigogine	Born in Moscow (Russian Empire); left Russia at age 4
1977	Physiology and medicine	Andrew Victor Schally	Born in Wilno (Poland; later Vilnius, USSR; now Lithuania
1978	Physics	Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa	Citizen of the USSR
1978	Physiology and medicine	Daniel Nathans	Son of Russian immigrants
1979	Physics	Sheldon Lee Glashow (Glukhovsky)	Son of Russian immigrants
1979	Chemistry	Herbert Brown (Brovarnik)	Son of Russian immigrants
1980	Chemistry	Paul Berg	Son of a Russian immigrant
1981	Physics	Arthur Schawlow	Son of a Riga native (Russian Empire, now Latvia)
1981	Chemistry	Roald Hoffmann (Saffran)	Born in the city of Zloczow (Poland; later Zolochev, USSR; now Zolochiv, Ukraine)
1982	Chemistry	Aaron Klug	Born into a family of Russian natives (Russian Empire)
1982	Physiology and medicine	John Vane	Son of Russian immigrants
1986	Physiology and medicine	Stanley Cohen	Son of Russian immigrants
1987	Literature	Joseph Brodsky	Born in Leningrad (USSR); left the country in 1972
1988	Physiology and medicine	Gertrude Bell Elion	Daughter of Russian emigrants
1990	Physics	Jerome Isaac Friedman	Son of Russian immigrants
1990	Peace Prize	Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev	Citizen of the USSR
1995	Peace Prize	Joseph Rotblat	Born in Warsaw; subject of the Russian Empire until Poland declared independence
2000	Physics	Zhores Ivanovich Alferov	Citizen of Russia
2002	Physiology and medicine	Robert Horwitz	Grandson of a Russian immigrant
2003	Physics	Aleksei Alekseevich Abrikosov	Citizen of Russia and the United States
2003	Physics	Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg	Citizen of Russia

January 22 in Russian history

1905: (Jan 9 Old Style) The Bloody Sunday. Beginning of the first revolution. In the beginning of January, the workers of Putilovsky factory began a strike, demanding for 8-hour working day, guaranteed minimum salary, abolishment of obligatory overtime, etc. The St. Petersburg committee of bolsheviks called on the workers of St.Petersburg for support of the strike. As a result, more than 150,000 people participated in the general strike. Without newspapers and electricity, the city was paralysed. The governement, trying to regain control, declared martial law and collected around 40,000 policemen and armed soldiers in the city. In spite of the tensions, the workers' committees adopted the plan of a mass peaceful demonstration proposed by a priest Father Gapon. A petition to the tsar was prepared, which included both economical and political requirements: convocation of the Constituent Assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of workers' unions, peace with Japan, separation of church from the state, etc. On the day before the demonstration, the bolsheviks issued a proclamation, saying that the workers will achieve liberation through the armed revolt only, but not by sending petitions. The perspective of a bloodshed was getting more inevitable. A group of intelligentsia, including Maxim Gorky, visited the prime-minister S. Vitte, asking him to do all possible to avoid violence. Vitte sent them to the minister of home affairs Svyatopolk-Mirsky, but he refused to admit them. In the morning of January 22, more than 140,000 people started moving to the tsar's palace. Women and children were put in the front rows to prevent the troops from attacking. At about noon, the cavalry attacked the demonstrants and gunmen started shooting. The wounded were killed by sabres or died under the horses' hooves. Father Gapon fled. Streets were covered with bodies. The official government news reported of 96 killed, but most sources give figures of 1000-4000 killed. As a response to the massacre, the workers started all-Russian strike, where around 440,000 people participated. The revolution began.

1908: Lev Landau, an outstanding Russian physicist, was born. Landau was one of the greatest Soviet physicists and a charismatic personality. The areas of physics where he worked include quantum physics, solid body physics, low temperature physics, cosmic rays, hydrodynamics, elementary particles, plasma and many others. In 1927 he graduated from the Leningrad university. In 1929 he went to Denmark, Britain and Switzerland for traineeship. He worked with Niels Bohr, whom he used to call his only teacher. In 1938, during the Stalin's purges, he was arrested and spent one year in Gulag, but was released after the interference of academician Pyotr Kapitsa. He discovered (or co-discovered)the density matrix method in quantum mechanics, the quantum mechanical theory of diamagnetism, the theory of superfluidity, the theory of second order phase transitions, the Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity, the explanation of Landau damping in plasma physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and the two-component theory of neutrinos. In 1962, he became a Nober Prize laureate for the development of the theory of superfluidity. On the same year he suffered heavily in a car accident and six years later died during a surgical operation. Two most influential parts of his scientific heritage are the Course of Theoretical Physics in ten volumes and the founding of the brilliant scientific school, known as Landau school, which became a legend of the Soviet science.

January 17 in Russian history

1700: (Julian Jan. 6) Tsar Peter I the Great, who had just returned from Western Europe, decreed that all Russians, except for clerics, had to shave their beards off and to wear short dress instead of the old long one. The new clothes were copied from European fashions: the summer clothes reminded German dress and the winter ones were in the Hungarian style.

1799: Ballerina Avdotya Ilyinichna Istomina was born. Her father was a policeman. Mother died soon. At the age of 6 she entered the St.Petersburg theater college, which was a luck for a girl from a poor family. At the age of 9, she danced for the first time in the ballet 'Zephyr and Flora'. She was the first ballerina to dance sur les pointes, on the toes. She was known not only for her outstanding technique, but also for the purely artistic, dramatic talent. Now, her name is widely known because Pushkin, who admired her, mentioned her name in Evgeny Onegin:

Then with a half-ethereal splendour,
Bound where the magic bow will send her,
Istomina, thronged all around
by Naiads, one foot on the ground,
twirls the other slowly as she pleases,
then suddenly she's off, and there
she's up and flying through the air
like fluff before Aeolian breezes;
she'll spin this way and that, and beat
against each other swift, small feet.

Istomina died from cholera on June, 26, 1848.

1920: Capital punishments outlawed in Soviet Russia.During the rule of Ivan IV the Terrible, death penalty was widely used, around 4000 people were killed (it may be interesting to compare the figure with around 72000 vagabonds hanged by Henry VIII). Boris Godunov swore during the accession to observe a five-year moratorium on death penalty. After these five years, though, he used it often. In the times of Peter I, death penalty was the punishment for 123 various crimes. Peter's daughter, Elizabeth, was the first ruler in Europe who attempted to outlaw the capital punishment. During the period of 1891-1905, it was never used. After the revolutions began, in 1905-1906, about 4000 people were shot. Death penalty was outlawed again in 1917, but not for long, until July, 17. During the Soviet period, death penalty was outlawed three times: Nov.1917-Feb.1918, 17 Jan 1920-11 May 1920, 26 May 1947-12 Jan 1950. Since 1962, death penalty became a punishment for 'economic' crimes. 24000 people were executed during 1962-1990. After the break-up of the USSR, use of capital punishment was dramatically cut (163 executions during 1991-1996). Since 1996, the moratorium was enacted and the death penalty is not used now. However, it is not totally outlawed as yet, unfortunately.