supported by the Central powers following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, whereas the latter was solely supported by Soviet Russian forces; and neither by White Russian forces that remained. This conflict known as the Ukrainian–Soviet War was part of the ongoing Russian Civil War and a struggle for national independence, which ended with the Ukrainian People's Republic being annexed into the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (Ukrainian: ????), western Ukraine being absorbed into the Second Polish Republic, and the newly stable Ukraine becoming a founding member of the Soviet Union. This government of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic was founded on December 24–25, 1917. In its publications it names itself either the "Republic of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', and Peasants' Deputies"[8] or the "Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets."[9] However, that republic was only recognised by another non-recognised country, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was ultimately defeated by mid-1918 and eventually dissolved. The last session of the government took place in the city of Taganrog. In July 1918 the former members of the government formed the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in Moscow. With the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Bolshevik Russia resumed its hostilities towards the Ukrainian People's Republic fighting for Ukrainian independence and organised another Soviet government in Kursk, Russia. On March 10, 1919, according to the 3rd Congress of Soviets in Ukraine (conducted March 6–10, 1919) the name of the state was changed to the "Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic" (abbreviated "????" in Ukrainian as opposed to the later "????").[9] After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second ("socialist") and third ("soviet" or "radianska" in Ukrainian) words. In accordance, on December 5, 1936, the 8th Extraordinary Congress Soviets in Soviet Union changed the name of the republic to the "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic," which was ratified by the 14th Extraordinary Congress of Soviets in Ukrainian SSR on January 31, 1937.[9] History[edit] Further information: Modern history of Ukraine Founding: 1917–1922[edit]

Territories claimed by the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–1920). Boundaries of the Ukrainian SSR (1922). After the Russian Revolution of 1917, several factions sought to create an independent Ukrainian state, alternately cooperating and struggling against each other. Numerous more or less socialist-oriented factions participated in the formation of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) among which were Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, Socialists-Revolutionaries, and many others. The most popular faction was initially the local Socialist Revolutionary Party that composed the local government together with Federalists and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks boycotted any government initiatives most of the time, instigating several armed riots in order to establish the Soviet power without any intent for consensus. Immediately after the October Revolution in Petrograd, Bolsheviks instigated the Kiev Bolshevik Uprising to support the Revolution and secure Kiev. Due to a lack of adequate support from the local population and anti-revolutionary Central Rada, however, the Kiev Bolshevik group split. Most moved to Kharkiv and received the support of the eastern Ukrainian cities and industrial centers. Later, this move was regarded as a mistake by some of the People's Commissars (Yevgenia Bosch). They issued an ultimatum to the Central Rada on 17 December to recognise the Soviet regime of which the Rada was very critical. The Bolsheviks convened a separate congress and declared the first Soviet Republic of Ukraine on 24 December 1917 claiming the Central Rada and its supporters outlaws that need to be eradicated. Warfare ensued against the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) for the installation of the Soviet regime in the country and with the direct support from Soviet Russia the Ukrainian National forces were practically overran. The government of Ukraine appealed to foreign capitalists, finding the support in the face of the Central Powers as the others refused to recognise it. After the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Russian SFSR yielded all the captured Ukrainian territory as the Bolsheviks were forced out of Ukraine. The government of the Soviet Ukraine was dissolved after its last session on 20 November 1918. Eventually, after the creation of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine in Moscow, a new Ukrainian Soviet government was formed on 21 December 1919 that initiated new hostilities against Ukrainian nationalists as they lost their military support from the defeated Central Powers. Eventually, the Red Army ended up controlling much of the Ukrainian territory after the Polish-Soviet Peace of Riga. On 30 December 1922, along with the Russian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian republics, the Ukrainian SSR was one of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Interwar years: 1922–1939[edit] Soviet soldiers preparing rafts to cross the Dnieper during the Battle of the Dnieper (1943). The sign reads "To Kiev!". In 1932, the aggressive agricultural policies of Joseph Stalin's regime resulted in one of the largest national catastrophes in the modern history of the Ukrainian nation. A man-made famine known as the Holodomor caused a direct loss of human life estimated between 2.6 million[10][11] to 10 million.[12] Some Ukrainian scholars have claimed that this was an act of genocide, while other scholars assert that the catastrophe was caused by gross mismanagement and failure to collectivise on a voluntary basis.[citation needed] Between 1934 and 1939 prominent representatives of Ukrainian culture were executed.[citation needed] World War II: 1939–1945[edit] Main article: Ukraine in World War II Further information: Reichskommissariat Ukraine In September 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Poland and occupied Galician lands inhabited by Ukrainians, Poles and Jews to the territory of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1945, these lands were permanently annexed, and the Transcarpathia region was added as well, by treaty with the post-war administration of Czechoslovakia. Following eastward Soviet retreat in 1941, Ufa became the wartime seat of the Soviet Ukrainian government. Post-war years: 1945–1953[edit] While World War II (called the Great Patriotic War by the Soviet government) did not end before May 1945, the Germans were driven out of Ukraine between February 1943 and October 1944. The first task of the Soviet authorities was to reestablish political control over the republic which had been entirely lost during the war. This was an immense task, considering the widespread human and material losses. During World War II the Soviet Union lost around 11 million combatants and around 7 million civilians, of these, 4.1 million and 1.4 were Ukrainian civilians and military personnel. Also, an estimated 3.9 million Ukrainians were evacuated to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic during the war, and 2.2 million Ukrainians were sent to forced labour camps by the Germans. The material devastation was huge; Adolf Hitler's orders to create "a zone of annihilation" in 1943, coupled with the Soviet military's scorched-earth policy in 1941, meant Ukraine lay in ruins. These two policies led to the destruction of 28 thousand villages and 714 cities and towns. 85 percent of Kiev's city centre was destroyed, as was 70 percent of the city centre of the second-largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv. Because of this, 19 million people were left homeless after the war.[13] The republic's industrial base, as so much else, was destroyed.[14] The Soviet government had managed to evacuate 544 industrial enterprises between July and November 1941, but the rapid German advance led to the destruction or the partial destruction of 16,150 enterprises. 27,910 thousand collective farms, 1,300 machine tractor stations and 872 state farms were destroyed by the Germans.[15] The Curzon Line expanded the territory of the Ukrainian SSR to include western Ukraine, previously controlled by Poland. While the war brought to Ukraine an enormous physical destruction, victory also led to territorial expansion. As a victor, the Soviet Union gained new prestige and more land. The Ukrainian border was expanded to the Curzon Line. Ukraine was also expanded southwards, near the area Izmail, previously part of Romania.[15] An agreement was signed by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia whereby Carpathian Ruthenia was handed over to Ukraine.[16] The territory of Ukraine expanded by 64,500 square miles and increased its population with an estimated 11 million.[17] After World War II, amendments to the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR were accepted, which allowed it to act as a separate subject of international law in some cases and to a certain extent, remaining a part of the Soviet Union at the same time. In particular, these amendments allowed the Ukrainian SSR to become one of founding members of the United Nations (UN) together with the Soviet Union and the Byelorussian SSR. This was part of a deal with the United States to ensure a degree of balance in the General Assembly, which, the USSR opined, was unbalanced in favor of the Western Bloc. In its capacity as a member of the UN, the Ukrainian SSR was an elected member of the United Nations Security Council in 1948–1949 and 1984–1985. "Eternally Together": a Soviet poster made for the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1954. Khrushchev and Brezhnev: 1953–1985[edit] When Stalin died on 5 March 1953, a collective leadership led by Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria took power, and a period of de-Stalinisation took place.[18] Change came as early as 1953, when officials were allowed to criticise Stalin's policy of russification. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) openly criticised Stalin's russification policies in a meeting in June 1953. On 4 June 1953, Oleksii Kyrychenko succeeded Leonid Melnikov as First Secretary of the CPU; this was significant since Kyrychenko was the first ethnic Ukrainian to lead the CPU since the 1920s. The policy of de-Stalinisation took two main features, that of centralisation and decentralisation from the centre. In February 1954 the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) transferred Crimea as a gift to Ukraine from the Russians; even if only 22 percent of the Crimean population were ethnic Ukrainian.[19] 1954 also witnessed the massive state-organised celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav; the treaty which had reunified Ukraine with Russia three centuries before. The event was celebrated to prove the old and brotherly love between Ukrainians and Russians, and proof of the Soviet Union as a "family of nations"; it was also another way of legitimising Marxism–Leninism.[20] The "Thaw" – the policy of deliberate liberalisation – was characterised by four points: amnesty for all those convicted of state crime during the war or the immediate post-war years; amnesties for one-third of those convicted of state crime during Stalin's rule; the establishment of the first Ukrainian mission to the United Nations in 1958; and the steady increase of Ukrainians in the rank of the CPU and government of the Ukrainian SSR. Not only were the majority of CPU Central Committee and Politburo members ethnic Ukrainians, three-quarters of the highest ranking party and state officials were ethnic Ukrainians too. The policy of partial Ukrainisation also led to a cultural thaw within Ukraine.[20] In October 1964, Khrushchev was deposed by a joint Central Committee and Politburo plenum and succeeded by another collective leadership, this time led by Leonid Brezhnev, born in Ukraine, as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.[21] Brezhnev's rule would be marked by social and economic stagnation, a period often referred to as the Era of Stagnation.[22] The new regime introduced the policy of rastsvet, sblizhenie and sliianie ("flowering", "drawing together" and "merging"/"fusion"), which was the policy of uniting the different Soviet nationalities into one Soviet nationality by merging the best elements of each nationality into the new one. This policy turned out to be, in fact, the reintroduction of the russification policy.[23] The reintroduction of this policy can be explained by Khrushchev's promise of communism in 20 years; the unification of Soviet nationalities would take place, according to Vladimir Lenin, when the Soviet Union reached the final stage of communism, also the final stage of human development. Some all-Union Soviet officials were calling for the abolition of the "pseudosovereign" Soviet republics, and the establishment of one nationality. Instead of introducing the ideologic concept of the Soviet Nation, Brezhnev at the 24th Party Congress talked about "a new historical community of people – the Soviet people",[23] and introduced the ideological tenant of Developed socialism, which postponed communism.[24] When Brezhnev died in 1982, he was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who died quickly after taking power. Andropov was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko, who ruled for little more than a year. Chernenko was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985.[25] Gorbachev and dissolution: 1985–1991[edit] The 1991 Ukrainian presidential election. Former dissident Vyacheslav Chornovil gained 23.3 percent of the vote, compared to 61.6 percent for then Acting President Leonid Kravchuk. Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost (English: restructuring and openess) failed to reach Ukraine as early as other Soviet republics because of Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a conservative communist appointed by Brezhnev and the First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, who resigned from his post in 1989.[26] The Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the russification policies and the apparent social and economic stagnation led several Ukrainians to oppose Soviet rule. Gorbachev's policy During her grandfather's reign, Elizabeth was third in the line of succession to the throne, behind her uncle Edward, Prince of Wales, and her father, the Duke of York. Although her birth generated public interest, she was not expected to become queen, as the Prince of Wales was still young, and many assumed that he would marry and have children of his own.[15] When her grandfather died in 1936 and her uncle succeeded as Edward VIII, she became second-in-line to the throne, after her father. Later that year Edward abdicated, after his proposed marriage to divorced socialite Wallis Simpson provoked a constitutional crisis.[16] Consequently, Elizabeth's father became king, and she became heir presumptive. If her parents had had a later son, she would have lost her position as first-in-line, as her brother would have been heir apparent and above her in the line of succession.[17] Elizabeth received private tuition in constitutional history from Henry Marten, Vice-Provost of Eton College,[18] and learned French from a succession of native-speaking governesses.[19] A Girl Guides company, the 1st Buckingham Palace Company, was formed specifically so that she could socialise with girls her own age.[20] Later, she was enrolled as a Sea Ranger.[19] In 1939, Elizabeth's parents toured Canada and the United States. As in 1927, when her parents had toured Australia and New Zealand, Elizabeth remained in Britain, since her father thought her too young to undertake public tours.[21] Elizabeth "looked tearful" as her parents departed.[22] They corresponded regularly,[22] and she and her parents made the first royal transatlantic telephone call on 18 May.[21] Second World War In September 1939, Britain entered the Second World War, which lasted until 1945. During the war, many of London's children were evacuated to avoid the frequent aerial bombing. The suggestion by senior politician Lord Hailsham[23] that the two princesses should be evacuated to Canada was rejected by Elizabeth's mother, who declared, "The children won't go without me. I won't leave without the King. And the King will never leave."[24] Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret stayed at Balmoral Castle, Scotland, until Christmas 1939, when they moved to Sandringham House, Norfolk.[25] From February to May 1940, they lived at Royal Lodge, Windsor, until moving to Windsor Castle, where they lived for most of the next five years.[26] At Windsor, the princesses staged pantomimes at Christmas in aid of the Queen's Wool Fund, which bought yarn to knit into military garments.[27] In 1940, the 14-year-old Elizabeth made her first radio broadcast during the BBC's Children's Hour, addressing other children who had been evacuated from the cities.[28] She stated: We are trying to do all we can to help our gallant sailors, soldiers and airmen, and we are trying, too, to bear our share of the danger and sadness of war. We know, every one of us, that in the end all will be well.[28] Elizabeth in Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform, April 1945 Princess Elizabeth (left, in uniform) on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with (left to right) her mother Queen Elizabeth, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, King George VI, and Princess Margaret, 8 May 1945 In 1943, at the age of 16, Elizabeth undertook her first solo public appearance on a visit to the Grenadier Guards, of which she had been appointed colonel the previous year.[29] As she approached her 18th birthday, the law was changed so that she could act as one of five Counsellors of State in the event of her father's incapacity or absence abroad, such as his visit to Italy in July 1944.[30] In February 1945, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service as an honorary second subaltern with the service number of 230873.[31] She trained as a driver and mechanic and was promoted to honorary junior commander five months later.[32][33] At the end of the war in Europe, on Victory in Europe Day, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret mingled anonymously with the celebratory crowds in the streets of London. Elizabeth later said in a rare interview, "We asked my parents if we could go out and see for ourselves. I remember we were terrified of being recognised ... I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, all of us just swept along on a tide of happiness and relief."[34] During the war, plans were drawn up to quell Welsh nationalism by affiliating Elizabeth more closely with Wales. Proposals, such as appointing her Constable of Caernarfon Castle or a patron of Urdd Gobaith Cymru (the Welsh League of Youth), were abandoned for various reasons, which included a fear of associating Elizabeth with conscientious objectors in the Urdd, at a time when Britain was at war.[35] Welsh politicians suggested that she be made Princess of Wales on her 18th birthday. The idea was supported by the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, but rejected by the King because he felt such a title belonged solely to the wife of a Prince of Wales and the Prince of Wales had always been the heir apparent.[36] In 1946, she was inducted into the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.[37] In 1947, Princess Elizabeth went on her first overseas tour, accompanying her parents through southern Africa. During the tour, in a broadcast to the British Commonwealth on her 21st birthday, she made the following pledge: I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.[38] Marriage and family Main article: Wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh Elizabeth met her future husband, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, in 1934 and 1937.[39] They are second cousins once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark and third cousins through Queen Victoria. After another meeting at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in July 1939, Elizabeth—though only 13 years old—said she fell in love with Philip and they began to exchange letters.[40] Their engagement was officially announced on 9 July 1947.[41] The engagement was not without controversy: Philip had no financial standing, was foreign-born (though a British subject who had served in the Royal Navy throughout the Second World War), and had sisters who had married German noblemen with Nazi links.[42] Marion Crawford wrote, "Some of the King's advisors did not think him good enough for her. He was a prince without a home or kingdom. Some of the papers played long and loud tunes on the string of Philip's foreign origin."[43] Elizabeth's mother was reported, in later biographies, to have opposed the union initially, even dubbing Philip "The Hun".[44] In later life, however, she told biographer Tim Heald that Philip was "an English gentleman".[45] Before the marriage, Philip renounced his Greek and Danish titles, converted from Greek Orthodoxy to Anglicanism, and adopted the style Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, taking the surname of his mother's British family.[46] Just before the wedding, he was created Duke of Edinburgh and granted the style His Royal Highness.[47] Elizabeth and Philip were married on 20 November 1947 at Westminster Abbey. They received 2500 wedding gifts from around the world.[48] Because Britain had not yet completely recovered from the devastation of the war, Elizabeth required ration coupons to buy the material for her gown, which was designed by Norman Hartnell.[49] In post-war Britain, it was not acceptable for the Duke of Edinburgh's German relations, including his three surviving sisters, to be invited to the wedding.[50] The Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, was not invited either.[51] Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Prince Charles, on 14 November 1948. One month earlier, the King had issued letters patent allowing her children to use the style and title of a royal prince or princess, to which they otherwise would not have been entitled as their father was no longer a royal prince.[52] A second child, Princess Anne, was born in 1950.[53] Following their wedding, the couple leased Windlesham Moor, near Windsor Castle, until 4 July 1949,[48] when they took up residence at Clarence House in London. At various times between 1949 and 1951, the Duke of Edinburgh was stationed in the British Crown Colony of Malta as a serving Royal Navy officer. He and Elizabeth lived intermittently, for several months at a time, in the hamlet of Gwardamanga, at Villa Guardamangia, the rented home of Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten. The children remained in Britain.[54] Reign Accession and coronation Elizabeth in crown and robes next to her husband in military uniform Coronation portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, June 1953 Coronation of Elizabeth II Main article: Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II During 1951, George VI's health declined and Elizabeth frequently stood in for him at public events. When she toured Canada and visited President Harry S. Truman in Washington, D.C., in October 1951, her private secretary, Martin Charteris, carried a draft accession declaration in case the King died while she was on tour.[55] In early 1952, Elizabeth and Philip set out for a tour of Australia and New Zealand by way of Kenya. On 6 February 1952, they had just returned to their Kenyan home, Sagana Lodge, after a night spent at Treetops Hotel, when word arrived of the death of the King and consequently Elizabeth's immediate accession to the throne. Philip broke the news to the new Queen.[56] Martin Charteris asked her to choose a regnal name; she chose to remain Elizabeth, "of course".[57] She was proclaimed queen throughout her realms and the royal party hastily returned to the United Kingdom.[58] She and the Duke of Edinburgh moved into Buckingham Palace.[59] With Elizabeth's accession, it seemed probable that the royal house would bear her husband's name, becoming the House of Mountbatten, in line with the custom of a wife taking her husband's surname on marriage. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Elizabeth's grandmother, Queen Mary, favoured the retention of the House of Windsor, and so on 9 April 1952 Elizabeth issued a declaration that Windsor would continue to be the name of the royal house. The Duke complained, "I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children."[60] In 1960, after the death of Queen Mary in 1953 and the resignation of Churchill in 1955, the surname Mountbatten-Windsor was adopted for Philip and Elizabeth's male-line descendants who do not carry royal titles.[61] Amid preparations for the coronation, Princess Margaret informed her sister that she wished to marry Peter Townsend, a divorcé‚ 16 years Margaret's senior, with two sons from his previous marriage. The Queen asked them to wait for a year; in the words of Martin Charteris, "the Queen was naturally sympathetic towards the Princess, but I think she thought—she hoped—given time, the affair would peter out."[62] Senior politicians were against the match and the Church of England did not permit remarriage after divorce. If Margaret had contracted a civil marriage, she would have been expected to renounce her right of succession.[63] Eventually, she decided to abandon her plans with Townsend.[64] In 1960, she married Antony Armstrong-Jones, who was created Earl of Snowdon the following year. They were divorced in 1978; she did not remarry.[65] Despite the death of Queen Mary on 24 March, the coronation on 2 June 1953 went ahead as planned, as Mary had asked before she died.[66] The ceremony in Westminster Abbey, with the exception of the anointing and communion, was televised for the first time.[67][d] Elizabeth's coronation gown was embroidered on her instructions with the floral emblems of Commonwealth countries:[71] English Tudor rose; Scots thistle; Welsh leek; Irish shamrock; Australian wattle; Canadian maple leaf; New Zealand silver fern; South African protea; lotus flowers for India and Ceylon; and Pakistan's wheat, cotton, and jute.[72] Continuing evolution of the Commonwealth Further information: Historical development of the Commonwealth realms, from the Queen's accession The Commonwealth realms (pink) and their territories and protectorates (red) at the beginning of Elizabeth II's reign A formal group of Elizabeth in tiara and evening dress with eleven politicians in evening dress or national costume. Elizabeth II and Commonwealth leaders at the 1960 Commonwealth Conference, Windsor Castle From Elizabeth's birth onwards, the British Empire continued its transformation into the Commonwealth of Nations.[73] By the time of her accession in 1952, her role as head of multiple independent states was already established.[74] Spanning 1953–54, the Queen and her husband embarked on a six-month around-the-world tour. She became the first reigning monarch of Australia and New Zealand to visit those nations.[75] During the tour, crowds were immense; three-quarters of the population of Australia were estimated to have seen her.[76] Throughout her reign, the Queen has undertaken state visits to foreign countries and tours of Commonwealth ones and she is the most widely travelled head of state.[77] In 1956, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet and British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden discussed the possibility of France joining the Commonwealth. The proposal was never accepted and the following year France signed the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, the precursor of the European Union.[78] In November 1956, Britain and France invaded Egypt in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to capture the Suez Canal. Lord Mountbatten claimed the Queen was opposed to the invasion, though Eden denied it. Eden resigned two months later.[79] The absence of a formal mechanism within the Conservative Party for choosing a leader meant that, following Eden's resignation, it fell to the Queen to decide whom to commission to form a government. Eden recommended that she consult Lord Salisbury, the Lord President of the Council. Lord Salisbury and Lord Kilmuir, the Lord Chancellor, consulted the British Cabinet, Winston Churchill, and the Chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, resulting in the Queen appointing their recommended candidate: Harold Macmillan.[80] The Suez crisis and the choice of Eden's successor led in 1957 to the first major personal criticism of the Queen. In a magazine, which he owned and edited,[81] Lord Altrincham accused her of being "out of touch".[82] Altrincham was denounced by public figures and slapped by a member of the public appalled by his comments.[83] Aleksejs Širovs born – chess player Andris Škele born – politician Prime Minister of Latvia Armands Škele – basketball player Ksenia Solo born – actress Ernests Štalbergs – – architect ensemble of the Freedom Monument Izaks Nahmans Šteinbergs – – politician lawyer and author Maris Štrombergs – BMX cyclist gold medal winner at and Olympics T edit Esther Takeuchi born – materials scientist and chemical engineer Mihails Tals – – the th World Chess Champion Janis Roberts Tilbergs – – painter sculptor U edit Guntis Ulmanis born – president of Latvia Karlis Ulmanis – – prime minister and president of Latvia


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barbie-angel barbie-doll barett-moore bea-fiedler beata beatrice-poggi beatrice-valle becky-savage becky-sunshine belinda-butterfield bella-donna bethany-sweet beverly-bliss beverly-glen biggi-stenzhorn bionca black-widow blond-cat blondi blue-angel bobbi-bliss bobbi-dean bobbie-burns bonnie-holiday brandee brandi-edwards brandy-alexandre brandy-dean brandy-lee brandy-smile brandy-wine bree-anthony breezy-lane brenda-basse briana-blair bridgette-belle bridgette-monet bridgette-monroe bridget-waters brigitte-lahaie brigitte-monnin brigitte-verbecq brittany brittany-stryker britt-corvin britt-morgan bronze brooke-bennett brooke-fields brooke-haven brooke-west brook-van-buuren buffy-davis bunnie-blake bunny-bleu bunny-hatton busty-belle cali-caramel calisyn-heart cameo cameron-love camila-sampaio camilla-rhodes camille-morgan camrie-foxxx candace-daley candi candida-royalle candie-evens candi-summers candy-apples candy-barr candy-hill candy-samples candy-stanton cara-lott caressa-savage carmel-nougat carmen-blonde carmen-de-la-torre carmen-moore carmen-rose carol-connors carol-cross carol-cummings carole-dubois carole-gire carole-pierac carol-titian carolyn-connoly carolyn-monroe carrie-cruise cassandra-leigh cassidy cassie-courtland cataline-bullock catherine-count catherine-crystal catherine-ringer catherine-tailleferre cathy-delorme cathy-menard cathy-stewart celeste-fox celine-gallone chanel-preston chanel-price chantal-virapin chanta-rose chantelle-stevens charisma charisma-cole charlie-latour charlie-waters charlotte-de-castille charmane-star chasey-lain chayse-manhattan chaz-vincent chelsea-sinclaire chennin-blanc cheri-janvier cheri-taylor cherry-hill chessie-moore cheyenne-hunter cheyenne-silver china-lee china-leigh china-moon chloe-cruize chloe-dior chloe-kez chloe-stevens chris-collins chris-jordan chris-petersen chrissie-beauchamp christa-abel christa-ludwig christie-ford christi-lake christina-berg christina-blond christina-evol christina-skye christine-black christine-chavert christine-neona christine-rigoler christy-canyon cicciolina cindi-stephens cindy-carver cindy-crawford cindy-more cindy-shepard cindy-wong cinthya-marinho clair-dia claire-robbins claude-janna claudia-jackson claudia-jamsson claudia-mehringer claudia-nero claudia-van-statt claudia-zante claudine-beccarie clea-carson cleo-nichole cleo-patra cody-lane cody-love cody-nicole coffee-brown colleen-brennan connie-bennett connie-peterson constance-money copper-penny coreena corey-everson corinne-lemoine corneliah cory-everson cory-wolf courtney courtney-cummz courtney-james cris-cassidy crissy-moran cris-taliana crystal-breeze crystal-dawn crystal-holland crystal-knight crystal-lake crystal-lovin crystal-sync csilla-kalnay cuban-bee cynara-fox cyndee-summers cynthia-black cynthia-brooks cynthia-hammers cynthia-lavigne dagmar-lost daisy-layne dallas-miko dana-dylan dana-lynn danica-rhea daniela-nanou daniela-schiffer daniele-troeger daniella daniella-schiffer danielle danielle-foxxx danielle-rodgers danny-ricci danyel-cheeks daphne daphne-rosen darby-lloyd-rains darla-crane darla-delovely davia-ardell dayton-rain debbie-northrup debbie-revenge debbie-van-gils debi-diamond debi-jointed debra-lynn deidra-hopkins deidre-holland delania-raffino delia-moore delphine-thail delta-force delta-white demi-moor denice-klarskov denise-derringer denise-dior denise-sloan desiree-cousteau desiree-foxx desiree-lane desiree-west deva-station devin-devasquez devinn-lane devon-shire dia diana-holt diana-kisabonyi diana-siefert diana-stevenson diane-dubois diane-richards diane-sloan diane-suresne dido-angel dillan-lauren dina-deville dina-jewel dina-pearl ditty-blue diva divinity-love djiana dolly-darkley dominique dominique-dewitt dominique-saint-claire donna-hart donna-marie dorle-buchner dorothy-lemay dorothy-onan drea drimla dru-berrymore dusty-rose dyanna-lauren ebony-ayes edina-blond edita-ungerova edwige-faillel eileen-wells elaine-southern elena-berkova elena-maria-ricci eleonore-melzer elisabeth-bure elis-black elise elise-di-medici elle-devyne elle-rio elodie-delage elsa-maroussia elza-brown emili-doll emily-evermoore emily-george emily-jewel emmanuelle-pareze envy-mi erica-boyer erica-eaton erica-havens erica-idol erica-lauren erika-bella erika-cool erika-heaven erika-lockett esme-monroe eva-allen eva-angel eva-dionisio eva-gross eva-kleber eva-lux eva-uettori eve-laurence evelyne-lang evie-delatosso fabiana-venturi faith-stevens fallon fanny-garreau fanny-steel faye-runaway flame flick-shagwell flore-soller flower france-lomay france-quenie francoise frankie-leigh gabriella gabriella-mirelba gabriella-vincze gail-force gail-palmer gail-sterling georgette-saunders georgia-peach georgina-spelvin gia-givanna gianna-lynn gili-sky gina-carrera gina-gianetti gina-janssen gina-lee gina-martell gina-valentino ginger-jay ginger-lee ginger-lynn ginny-noack giovanna gisela-schwarz giselle-monet gladys-laroche gloria-leonard gloria-todd golden-jade greta-carlson greta-milos guia-lauri-filzi gwenda-farnel hare-krane harley-raine hayley-jade hazel-young heather-deeley heather-ellis heather-hart heather-lere heather-lyn heather-manfield heather-thomas heather-torrance heather-wayne heather-young helen-madigan helen-thomas helga-sven helga-wild hillary-summers holly-hollywood holly-joy holly-page holly-ryder honey-winter hottie-hollie hyapatia-lee ida-fabry ildiko-smits illana-moor ines-ridere ingrid-choray isabella-dior isabella-soprano isabelle-allay isabelle-brell isabelle-marchall isobel-wren iveta ivette-blanche jackie-right jacqueline-lorians jacy-allen jada-stevens jade-east jade-hsu jade-marcela jade-summers jade-wong jahn-gold jamie-brooks jamie-james jamie-summers jana-irrova jana-mrazkova jane-baker jane-darling jane-iwanoff jane-lindsay jane-lixx janet-jacme janey-robbins jasmine-delatori jayden-simone jaylyn-rose jayna-woods jazella-moore jazmin-luna-gold jean-afrique jeanette-littledove jeanie-marie-sullivan jean-jennings jeanna-fine jeannie-pepper jenna-jameson jenna-jane jenna-presley jenna-wells jennifer-haussmann jennifer-janes jennifer-jordan jennifer-morante jennifer-noxt jennifer-stewart jennifer-welles jennifer-west jenny jenny-feeling jenny-fields jenny-wings jersey-jaxin jesie-st-james jesse-capelli jessica-bangkok jessica-bogart jessica-darlin jessica-fiorentino jessica-gabriel jessica-laine jessica-may jessica-road jessica-wylde jessi-foster jill-ferari jill-kelly joana-redgrave joan-devlon joanna-storm joanna-sweet jody-maxwell joelle-lequement joelle-petinot johnni-black jordana-james jordan-green jordan-nevaeh jordan-star josephine-carrington joslyn-james julia-chanel julia-dal-fuoco juliana-grandi julia-paes julia-parton julia-perrin julia-swen julia-thomas julie-meadows julie-rage julie-simone juliet-anderson juliet-graham juliette-carelton kacey-jordan kagney-linn-karter kaitlyn-ashley kalena-rios kami-andrews kamila-smith kandee-licks kandi-barbour kapri-styles kara-nox karen-summer kari-foxx karine-gambier karin-schubert karli-sweet karmen-kennedy karol-castro kascha kassi-nova kat kate-frost kate-jones kathia-nobili kathleen-gentry kathleen-white kathy-divan kathy-harcourt kathy-heart kathy-kash katie-cummings katja-love kat-langer katrina-isis katrina-kraven katy-borman katy-caro kaycee-dean kayla-kupcakes kay-parker k-c-valentine keama-kim keira-moon keisha keli-richards kelli-tyler kelly-adams kelly-blue kelly-broox kelly-hearn kelly-kay kelly-kline kelly-nichols kelly-royce kelly-skyline kendra-kay kenzi-marie keri-windsor ketthy-divan kianna-dior kiley-heart kim-alexis kimber-blake kimberly-carson kimberly-kane kimberly-kyle kim-de-place kim-holland kimi-gee kimkim-de kim-kitaine kimmie-lee kimmy-nipples kina-kara kira-eggers kira-red kirsty-waay kitty-langdon kitty-lynxxx kitty-marie kitty-shayne kitty-yung kora-cummings kris-lara krista-lane krista-maze kristara-barrington kristarah-knight kristi-klenot kristina-blonde kristina-king kristina-klevits kristina-soderszk kristine-heller kristin-steen krisztina-ventura krystal-de-boor krystal-steal kylee-karr kylee-nash kylie-brooks kylie-channel kylie-haze kylie-wylde kym-wilde kyoto-sun lachelle-marie lacy-rose lady-amanda-wyldefyre lady-stephanie laetitia-bisset lana-burner lana-cox lana-wood lara-amour lara-roxx lara-stevens lataya-roxx latoya laura-clair laura-lazare laura-lion laura-may laura-orsolya laura-paouck laura-zanzibar lauren-black laurence-boutin lauren-montgomery laurien-dominique laurien-wilde laurie-smith lauryl-canyon lauryn-may leah-wilde lea-magic lea-martini leanna-foxxx lee-caroll leigh-livingston leilani lenora-bruce leslie-winston lesllie-bovee letizia-bruni lexi-lane lexi-matthews lezley-zen lia-fire liliane-gray liliane-lemieuvre lili-marlene lily-gilder lily-labeau lily-rodgers lily-valentine linda-shaw linda-vale linda-wong linnea-quigley lisa-bright lisa-de-leeuw lisa-k-loring lisa-lake lisa-melendez lisa-sue-corey lise-pinson little-oral-annie liza-dwyer liza-harper lizzy-borden logan-labrent lois-ayres lola-cait long-jean-silver loni-bunny loni-sanders loona-luxx lorelei-lee lorelei-rand lorena-sanchez lori-alexia lori-blue lorrie-lovett luci-diamond lucie-doll lucie-theodorova lucy-van-dam lydia-baum lynn-franciss lynn-lemay lynn-ray lynn-stevens lynx-canon lysa-thatcher madelina-ray madison-parker magdalena-lynn maggie-randall mai-lin mandi-wine mandy-bright mandy-malone mandy-may mandy-mistery mandy-starr marcia-minor maren margit-ojetz margitta-hofer margo-stevens margot-mahler mariah-cherry marianne-aubert maria-tortuga marie-anne marie-christine-chireix marie-christine-veroda marie-claude-moreau marie-dominique-cabannes marie-france-morel marie-luise-lusewitz marie-sharp marilyn-chambers marilyne-leroy marilyn-gee marilyn-jess marilyn-martyn marilyn-star marina-hedman marion-webb marita-ekberg marita-kemper marlena marlene-willoughby marry-queen martine-grimaud martine-schultz maryanne-fisher mary-hubay mary-ramunno mary-stuart mascha-mouton maud-kennedy mauvais-denoir maxine-tyler maya-black maya-france megan-leigh megan-martinez megan-reece mei-ling melanie-hotlips melanie-scott melba-cruz melinda-russell melissa-bonsardo melissa-del-prado melissa-golden melissa-martinez melissa-melendez melissa-monet mercedes-dragon mercedes-lynn merle-michaels mesha-lynn mia-beck mia-lina mia-smiles michele-raven michelle-aston michelle-ferrari michelle-greco michelle-maren michelle-maylene michelle-monroe micki-lynn mika-barthel mika-tan mikki-taylor mimi-morgan mindy-rae ming-toy miranda-stevens miss-bunny miss-meadow miss-pomodoro missy missy-graham missy-stone missy-vega misti-jane mistress-candice misty-anderson misty-dawn misty-rain misty-regan mona-lisa mona-page moni monica-baal monica-swinn monika-peta monika-sandmayr monika-unco monique-bruno monique-cardin monique-charell monique-demoan monique-gabrielle monique-la-belle morgan-fairlane morrigan-hel moxxie-maddron mulani-rivera mysti-may nadege-arnaud nadia-styles nadine-bronx nadine-proutnal nadine-roussial nadi-phuket nanci-suiter nancy-hoffman nancy-vee natacha-delyro natalia-wood natalli-diangelo natascha-throat natasha-skyler naudia-nyce nessa-devil nessy-grant nesty nicki-hunter nicky-reed nicole-berg nicole-bernard nicole-black nicole-grey nicole-london nicole-parks nicole-scott nicole-taylor nicolette-fauludi nicole-west nika-blond nika-mamic niki-cole nikita-love nikita-rush nikki-charm nikki-grand nikki-king nikki-knight nikki-randall nikki-rhodes nikki-santana nikki-steele nikki-wilde niko nina-cherry nina-deponca nina-hartley nina-preta oana-efria obaya-roberts olesja-derevko olga-cabaeva olga-conti olga-pechova olga-petrova olivia-alize olivia-del-rio olivia-flores olivia-la-roche olivia-outre ophelia-tozzi orchidea-keresztes orsolya-blonde paige-turner paisley-hunter pamela-bocchi pamela-jennings pamela-mann pamela-stanford pamela-stealt pandora paola-albini pascale-vital pat-manning pat-rhea patricia-dale patricia-diamond patricia-kennedy patricia-rhomberg patrizia-predan patti-cakes patti-petite paula-brasile paula-harlow paula-morton paula-price paula-winters pauline-teutscher penelope-pumpkins penelope-valentin petra-hermanova petra-lamas peyton-lafferty phaedra-grant pia-snow piper-fawn pipi-anderson porsche-lynn porsha-carrera precious-silver priscillia-lenn purple-passion queeny-love rachel-ashley rachel-love rachel-luv rachel-roxxx rachel-ryan rachel-ryder racquel-darrian rane-revere raven reagan-maddux rebecca-bardoux regan-anthony regine-bardot regula-mertens reina-leone reka-gabor renae-cruz renee-foxx renee-lovins renee-morgan renee-perez renee-summers renee-tiffany rhonda-jo-petty rikki-blake riley-ray rio-mariah rita-ricardo roberta-gemma roberta-pedon robin-byrd robin-cannes robin-everett robin-sane rochell-starr rosa-lee-kimball rosemarie roxanne-blaze roxanne-hall roxanne-rollan ruby-richards sabina-k sabre sabrina-chimaera sabrina-dawn sabrina-jade sabrina-johnson sabrina-love-cox sabrina-mastrolorenzi sabrina-rose sabrina-scott sabrina-summers sacha-davril sahara sahara-sands sai-tai-tiger samantha-fox samantha-ryan samantha-sterlyng samantha-strong samueline-de-la-rosa sandra-cardinale sandra-de-marco sandra-kalermen sandra-russo sandy-lee sandy-pinney sandy-reed sandy-samuel sandy-style sandy-summers sara-brandy-canyon sara-faye sarah-bernard sarah-cabrera sarah-hevyn sarah-mills sarah-shine sara-sloane sasha sasha-hollander sasha-ligaya sasha-rose satine-phoenix satin-summer savannah-stern savanna-jane scarlet-scarleau scarlet-windsor seka selena serena serena-south severine-amoux shana-evans shanna-mccullough shannon-kelly shannon-rush shantell-day sharon-da-vale sharon-kane sharon-mitchell shaun-michelle shawna-sexton shawnee-cates shay-hendrix shayne-ryder sheena-horne sheer-delight shelby-star shelby-stevens shelly-berlin shelly-lyons sheri-st-clair sheyla-cats shonna-lynn shyla-foxxx shy-love sierra-sinn sierra-skye sigrun-theil silver-starr silvia-bella silvia-saint silvie-de-lux silvy-taylor simone-west sindee-coxx sindy-lange sindy-shy siobhan-hunter skylar-knight skylar-price skyler-dupree smokie-flame smoking-mary-jane solange-shannon sonya-summers sophia-santi sophie-call sophie-duflot sophie-evans sophie-guers stacey-donovan stacy-lords stacy-moran stacy-nichols stacy-silver stacy-thorn starla-fox starr-wood stefania-bruni stella-virgin stephanie-duvalle stephanie-rage stephanie-renee stevie-taylor summer-knight summer-rose sunny-day sunset-thomas sunshine-seiber susan-hart susanne-brend susan-nero susi-hotkiss suzanne-mcbain suzan-nielsen suzie-bartlett suzie-carina suzi-sparks sweet-nice sweety-pie sybille-rossani sylvia-benedict sylvia-bourdon sylvia-brand sylvia-engelmann syreeta-taylor syren-de-mer syvette szabina-black szilvia-lauren tai-ellis taija-rae taisa-banx talia-james tamara-lee tamara-longley tamara-n-joy tamara-west tami-white tammy tammy-lee tammy-reynolds tania-lorenzo tantala-ray tanya-danielle tanya-fox tanya-foxx tanya-lawson tanya-valis tara-aire tasha-voux tatjana-belousova tatjana-skomorokhova tawnee-lee tawny-pearl tayla-rox taylor-wane teddi-austin teddi-barrett tera-bond tera-heart tera-joy teresa-may teresa-orlowski teri-diver teri-weigel terri-dolan terri-hall tess-ferre tess-newheart thais-vieira tia-cherry tianna tiara tiffany-blake tiffany-clark tiffany-duponte tiffany-rayne tiffany-rousso tiffany-storm tiffany-towers tiffany-tyler tiger-lily tigr timea-vagvoelgyi tina-blair tina-burner tina-evil tina-gabriel tina-loren tina-marie tina-russell tish-ambrose tommi-rose tonisha-mills topsy-curvey tori-secrets tori-sinclair tori-welles tracey-adams traci-lords traci-topps traci-winn tracy-duzit tracy-love tracy-williams tricia-devereaux tricia-yen trinity-loren trisha-rey trista-post trixie-tyler ultramax ursula-gaussmann ursula-moore uschi-karnat valentina valerie-leveau valery-hilton vanessa-chase vanessa-del-rio vanessa-michaels vanessa-ozdanic vanilla-deville velvet-summers veri-knotty veronica-dol veronica-hart veronica-hill veronica-rayne veronica-sage veronika-vanoza via-paxton vicky-lindsay vicky-vicci victoria-evans victoria-gold victoria-knight victoria-luna victoria-paris victoria-slick victoria-zdrok viper virginie-caprice vivian-valentine vivien-martines wendi-white wendy-divine whitney-banks whitney-fears whitney-wonders wonder-tracey wow-nikki xanthia-berstein yasmine-fitzgerald yelena-shieffer yvonne-green zara-whites zsanett-egerhazi zuzie-boobies

of perestroika was also never introduced into practice, 95 percent of industry and agriculture was still owned by the Soviet state in 1990. The talk of reform, but the lack of introducing reform into practice, led to confusion which in turn evolved into opposition to the Soviet state itself.[27] The policy of glasnost, which ended state censorship, led the Ukrainian diaspora to reconnect with their compatriots in Ukraine, the revitalisation of religious practices by destroying the monopoly of the Russian Orthodox Church and led to the establishment of several opposition pamphlets, journals and newspapers.[28] The result of the 1991 independence referendum proved to be a surprise. An overwhelming majority, 92.3%, voted for independence. The referendum carried in the majority of all oblasts. Notably, the Crimea, which had originally been a territory of the RSFSR until 1954, supported the referendum by a 54 percent majority. Over 80 percent of the population of Eastern Ukraine voted for independence. Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union led to an almost immediate recognition from the international community. Ukraine's new-found independence was the first time in the 20th century that Ukrainian independence had not been attempted without either foreign intervention or civil war. In the 1991 Ukrainian presidential election 62 percent of Ukrainians voted for Leonid Kravchuk.[29] The secession of the second most powerful republic in the Soviet Union ended any realistic chance of the Soviet Union staying together even on a limited scale. The Soviet Union formally dissolved three weeks after Ukraine's secession. Politics and government[edit] Further information: Politics of the Soviet Union and Leaders of Soviet Ukraine The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's system of government was based on a single-party communist system ruled by the Communist Party of Ukraine, a part of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (KPSS). The republic was one of 15 constituent republics composing the Soviet Union from its entry into the union in 1922 till its dissolution in 1991. All of the political power and authority in the USSR was in the hands of Communist Party authorities, with little real power being concentrated in official government bodies and organs. In such a system, lower-level authorities directly reported to higher level authorities and so on, with the bulk of the power being held at the highest echelons of the Communist Party.[30] The Declaration of Independence, as printed on the ballot for the referendum on December 1, 1991. Originally, the legislative authority was vested in the Central Executive Committee of Ukraine that for many years was headed by Grigoriy Petrovsky. Soon after publishing the Stalin Constitution, the Central Executive Committee was transformed into the Supreme Soviet, which consisted of 450 deputies.[note 1] The Supreme Soviet had the authority to enact legislation, amend the constitution, adopt new administrative and territorial boundaries, adopt the budget, and establish political and economic development plans.[31] In addition, parliament also had to authority to elect the republic's executive branch, the Council of Ministers as well as the power to appoint judges to the Supreme Court. Legislative sessions were short and were conducted for only a few weeks out of the year. In spite of this, the Supreme Soviet elected the Presidium, the Chairman, 3 deputy chairmen, a secretary, and couple of other government members to carry out the official functions and duties in between legislative sessions.[31] The Presidium was a powerful position in the republic's higher echelons of power, and could nominally be considered the equivalent of head of state,[31] although most executive authority would be concentrated in the Communist Party's politburo and its First Secretary. Full universal suffrage was granted for all eligible citizens aged 18 and over, excluding prisoners and those deprived of freedom. Although they could not be considered free and were of a symbolic nature, elections to the Supreme Soviet were contested every five years. Nominees from electoral districts from around the republic, typically consisting of an average of 110,000 inhabitants, were directly chosen by party authorities,[31] providing little opportunity for political change, since all political authority was directly subordinate to the higher level above it. With the beginning of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika reforms towards the mid-late 1980s, electoral reform laws were passed in 1989, liberalising the nominating procedures and allowing multiple candidates to stand for election in a district. Accordingly, the first relatively free elections[32] in the Ukrainian SSR were contested in March 1990. 111 deputies from the Democratic Bloc, a loose association of small pro-Ukrainian and pro-sovereignty parties and the instrumental People's Movement of Ukraine (colloquially known as Rukh in Ukrainian) were elected to the parliament.[33] Although the Communist Party retained its majority with 331 deputies, large support for the Democratic Bloc demonstrated the people's distrust of the Communist authorities, which would eventually boil down to Ukrainian independence in 1991. Draft Constitution of the Soviet Union (1937) On the international front, the Ukrainian SSR, along with the rest of the 15 republics, virtually had no say in their own foreign affairs. It is, however, important to note that in 1944 the Ukrainian SSR was permitted to establish bilateral relations with countries and maintain its own standing army.[30] This clause was used to permit the republic's membership in the United Nations. Accordingly, representatives from the "Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic" and 50 other nations founded the UN on October 24, 1945. In effect, this provided the Soviet Union (a permanent Security Council member with veto powers) with another vote in the General Assembly.[note 2] The latter aspect of the 1944 clauses, however, was never fulfilled and the republic's defense matters were managed by the Soviet Armed Forces and the Defense Ministry. Another right that was granted but never used until 1991 was the right of the Soviet republics to secede from the union,[34] which was codified in each of the Soviet constitutions. Accordingly, Article 69 of the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR stated: "The Ukrainian SSR retains the right to willfully secede from the USSR."[35] However, a republic's theoretical secession from the union was virtually impossible and unrealistic[30] in many ways until after Gorbachev's perestroika reforms. Ukraine is the legal successor of the Ukrainian SSR and it stated to fulfill "those rights and duties pursuant to international agreements of Union SSR which do not contradict the Constitution of Ukraine and interests of the Republic" on 5 October 1991.[36] After Ukrainian independence the Ukrainian SSR's parliament was named from Supreme Soviet to its current name Verkhovna Rada, the Verkhovna Rada is still Ukraine's parliament.[5][37] Administrative divisions[edit] Central Kharkiv during the 1980s. Main article: Administrative divisions of the Ukrainian SSR Although, technically speaking, the Soviet Union and the fifteen republics that formed it constituted a federal system, it was also very much a centralised state, with major decision-making taking place at the Kremlin, the capital and seat of government of the country. The constituent republic were essentially unitary states, with lower levels of power being directly subordinate to higher ones. Throughout its 72-year existence, the administrative divisions of the Ukrainian SSR changed numerous times, often incorporating regional reorganisation and annexation on the part of Soviet authorities during World War II. The most common administrative division was the oblast (province), of which there were 25 upon the republic's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Provinces were further subdivided into raions (districts) which numbered 490. The rest of the administrative division within the provinces consisted of cities, urban-type settlements, and villages. Cities in the Ukrainian SSR were a separate exception, which could either be subordinate to either the provincial authorities themselves or the district authorities of which they were the administrative center. Two cities, the capital Kiev, and Sevastopol in Crimea, treated separately because it housed an underground nuclear submarine base, were designated "cities with special status." This meant that they were directly subordinate to the central Ukrainian SSR authorities and not the provincial authorities surrounding them. Historical formation[edit] The 25 oblasts of Ukraine in 1953. Crimea would be transferred in 1954 and the Drohobych and Izmail oblasts would be absorbed by, respectively, the Lviv and Odessa oblasts. However, the history of administrative divisions in the republic was not so clear cut. At the time of the republic's formation, Kiev was the capital of the pro-independence Ukrainian People's Republic, which fought against the Ukrainian SSR government in the Ukrainian Civil War. Accordingly, the eastern city of Kharkiv was chosen as the republic's seat of government, colloquially named in the media as "the first capital" with implication to the era of Soviet regime.[38] Kharkiv was also the city where the first Soviet Ukrainian government was created in 1917 with strong support from Russian SFSR authorities. However, in 1934, the capital was moved from Kharkiv to Kiev, which remains the capital of Ukraine today, although at first Kharkiv retained some government offices and buildings for some time after the move. During the 1930s, there were significant numbers of ethnic minorities living within the Ukrainian SSR. National Districts were formed as separate territorial-administrative units within higher-level provincial authorities. Districts were established for the republic's three largest minority groups, which were the Jews, Russians, and Poles.[39] Other ethnic groups, however, were allowed to petition the government for their own national autonomy. From 1924 to 1940, Ukrainian Soviet authorities also retained control over the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, until it was upgraded to that of a constituent Soviet republic in 1940. Economy[edit] Further information: Economy of the Soviet Union Pavilion of Ukraine at All-Russia Exhibition Centre When the Soviet Union was established by the Bolsheviks in 1922, it was the constitutional organization which took over from the Russian Empire. At the time of the 1917 Revolution, the Russian Orthodox Church was deeply integrated into the autocratic state enjoying official status. This was a significant factor that contributed to the Bolshevik attitude to religion and the steps they took to control it.[1] Thus the USSR became the first state to have, as an ideological objective, the elimination of religion[2] and its replacement with universal atheism.[3][4] The communist regime confiscated religious property, ridiculed religion, harassed believers, and propagated atheism in schools.[5] The confiscation of religious assets was often based on accusations of illegal accumulation of wealth. The vast majority of people in the Russian empire were, at the time of the revolution, religious believers, whereas the communists aimed to break the power of all religious institutions and eventually replace religious belief with atheism. "Science" was counterposed to "religious superstition" in the media and in academic writing. The main religions of pre-revolutionary Russia persisted throughout the entire Soviet period, but they were only tolerated within certain limits. Generally, this meant that believers were free to worship in private and in their respective religious buildings (churches, mosques, etc.), but public displays of religion outside of such designated areas were prohibited. In addition, religious institutions were not allowed to express their views in any type of mass media, and many religious buildings were demolished or used for other purposes.[citation needed] State Atheism in the Soviet Union was known as gosateizm,[2] and was based on the ideology of Marxism–Leninism. As the founder of the Soviet state, V. I. Lenin, put it: Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[6] Marxist–Leninist Atheism has consistently advocated the control, suppression, and elimination of religion. Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed. Many more were persecuted.[7] Christians belonged to various churches: Orthodox (which had the largest number of followers), Catholic, and Baptist and various other Protestant denominations. The majority of the Muslims in the Soviet Union were Sunni. Judaism also had many followers. Other religions, practiced by a small number of believers, included Buddhism and Shamanism. Contents [hide] 1 Orthodox 1.1 Russian Orthodox Church 1.2 Georgian Orthodox Church 1.3 Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church 1.4 Armenian Apostolic 2 Catholics Algimantas Puipa – lt Algimantas Puipa film director Kostas Smoriginas – lt Kostas Smoriginas popular actor and singer Jonas Vaitkus – theater director director of Utterly Alone Adolfas Vecerskis – theatre and film actor director of theatre Arunas Žebriunas – lt Arunas Žebriunas one of the most prominent film directors during the Soviet rule Vytautas Šapranauskas – lt Vytautas Šapranauskas theater and film actor television presenter humorist Žilvinas Tratas actor and model Džiugas Siaurusaitis lt Džiugas Siaurusaitis actor television presenter humorist Sakalas Uždavinys lt Sakalas Uždavinys theater and film actor director Marius Jampolskis actor and TV host Ballet and Dance edit Egle Špokaite soloist of Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre – Actress art director Edita Daniute Professional Ballroom Dancer and World DanceSport Champion Iveta Lukosiute Professional Ballroom Dancer and World Dance Champion Music edit Soprano vocalist Violeta Urmanaviciute Urmana Pop singer Violeta RiaubiškyteSee also List of Lithuanian singers Linas Adomaitis – pop singer participant in the Eurovision Song Contest Ilja Aksionovas lt Ilja Aksionovas pop and opera singer boy soprano Osvaldas Balakauskas – ambassador and classical composer Alanas Chošnau – singer member of former music group Naktines Personos Egidijus Dragunas – lt Egidijus Dragunas leader of Sel one of the first hip hop bands in Lithuania Justas Dvarionas – lt Justas Dvarionas pianist educator Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis – painter and composer Balys Dvarionas – composer conductor pianist professor Gintare Jautakaite pop artist signed with EMI and Sony Music Entertainment in Gintaras Januševicius internationally acclaimed pianist Algirdas Kaušpedas architect and lead singer of Antis Nomeda Kazlauskaite Kazlaus opera singer dramatic soprano appearing internationally Vytautas Kernagis – one of the most popular bards Algis Kizys – long time bass player of post punk no wave band Swans Andrius Mamontovas – rock singer co founder of Foje and LT United Marijonas Mikutavicius – singer author of Trys Milijonai the unofficial sports anthem in Lithuania Vincas Niekus – lt Vincas Niekus composer Virgilijus Noreika – one of the most successful opera singers tenor Mykolas Kleopas Oginskis – one of the best composer of the late th century Kipras Petrauskas – lt Kipras Petrauskas popular early opera singer tenor Stasys Povilaitis – one of the popular singers during the Soviet period Violeta Riaubiškyte – pop singer TV show host Mindaugas Rojus opera singer tenor baritone Ceslovas Sasnauskas – composer Rasa Serra – lt Rasa Serra real name Rasa Veretenceviene singer Traditional folk A cappella jazz POP Audrone Simonaityte Gaižiuniene – lt Audrone Gaižiuniene Simonaityte one of the more popular female opera singers soprano Virgis Stakenas – lt Virgis Stakenas singer of country folk music Antanas Šabaniauskas – lt Antanas Šabaniauskas singer tenor Jurga Šeduikyte – art rock musician won the Best Female Act and the Best Album of in the Lithuanian Bravo Awards and the Best Baltic Act at the MTV Europe Music Awards Jonas Švedas – composer Michael Tchaban composer singer and songwriter Violeta Urmanaviciute Urmana opera singer soprano mezzosoprano appearing internationally Painters and graphic artists edit See also List of Lithuanian artists Robertas Antinis – sculptor Vytautas Ciplijauskas lt Vytautas Ciplijauskas painter Jonas Ceponis – lt Jonas Ceponis painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis – painter and composer Asteroid Ciurlionis is named for him Kostas Dereškevicius lt Kostas Dereškevicius painter Vladimiras Dubeneckis painter architect Stasys Eidrigevicius graphic artist Pranas Gailius lt Pranas Gailius painter Paulius Galaune Petronele Gerlikiene – self taught Lithuanian American artist Algirdas Griškevicius lt Algirdas Griškevicius Vincas Grybas – sculptor Leonardas Gutauskas lt Leonardas Gutauskas painter writer Vytautas Kairiukštis – lt Vytautas Kairiukštis painter art critic Vytautas Kasiulis – lt Vytautas Kasiulis painter graphic artist stage designer Petras Kalpokas painter Rimtas Kalpokas – lt Rimtas Kalpokas painter graphic artist Leonas Katinas – lt Leonas Katinas painter Povilas Kaupas – lt Povilas Kaupas Algimantas Kezys Lithuanian American photographer Vincas Kisarauskas – lt Vincas Kisarauskas painter graphic artist stage designer Saulute Stanislava Kisarauskiene – lt Saulute Stanislava Kisarauskiene graphic artist painter Stasys Krasauskas – lt Stasys Krasauskas graphic artist Stanislovas Kuzma – lt Stanislovas Kuzma sculptor Antanas Martinaitis – lt Antanas Martinaitis painter Jonas Rimša – lt Jonas Rimša painter Jan Rustem painter Antanas Samuolis – lt Antanas Samuolis painter Šarunas Sauka painter Boris Schatz – sculptor and founder of the Bezalel Academy Irena Sibley née Pauliukonis – Children s book author and illustrator Algis Skackauskas – painter Antanas Žmuidzinavicius – painter Franciszek Smuglewicz – painter Yehezkel Streichman Israeli painter Kazys Šimonis – painter Algimantas Švegžda – lt Algimantas Švegžda painter Otis Tamašauskas Lithographer Print Maker Graphic Artist Adolfas Valeška – painter and graphic artist Adomas Varnas – painter Kazys Varnelis – artist Vladas Vildžiunas lt Vladas Vildžiunas sculptor Mikalojus Povilas Vilutis lt Mikalojus Povilas Vilutis graphic artist Viktoras Vizgirda – painter William Zorach – Modern artist who died in Bath Maine Antanas Žmuidzinavicius – painter Kazimieras Leonardas Žoromskis – painter Politics edit President Valdas Adamkus right chatting with Vice President Dick Cheney left See also List of Lithuanian rulers Mindaugas – the first and only King of Lithuania – Gediminas – the ruler of Lithuania – Algirdas – the ruler together with Kestutis of Lithuania – Kestutis – the ruler together with Algirdas of Lithuania – Vytautas – the ruler of Lithuania – together with Jogaila Jogaila – the ruler of Lithuania – from to together with Vytautas the king of Poland – Jonušas Radvila – the field hetman of Grand Duchy of Lithuania – Dalia Grybauskaite – current President of Lithuania since Valdas Adamkus – President of Lithuania till Jonas Basanavicius – "father" of the Act of Independence of Algirdas Brazauskas – the former First secretary of Central Committee of Communist Party of Lithuanian SSR the former president of Lithuania after and former Prime Minister of Lithuania Joe Fine – mayor of Marquette Michigan – Kazys Grinius – politician third President of Lithuania Mykolas Krupavicius – priest behind the land reform in interwar Lithuania Vytautas Landsbergis – politician professor leader of Sajudis the independence movement former speaker of Seimas member of European Parliament Stasys Lozoraitis – diplomat and leader of Lithuanian government in exile – Stasys Lozoraitis junior – politician diplomat succeeded his father as leader of Lithuanian government in exile – Antanas Merkys – the last Prime Minister of interwar Lithuania Rolandas Paksas – former President removed from the office after impeachment Justas Paleckis – journalist and politician puppet Prime Minister after Soviet occupation Kazimiera Prunskiene – the first female Prime Minister Mykolas Sleževicius – three times Prime Minister organized

2.1 Roman Catholic Church 2.2 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church 3 Protestants 4 Other Christian groups 5 Islam 6 Policy toward religions in practice 6.1 Policy towards nationalities and religion 6.2 Policy towards Orthodoxy 6.3 Policy towards Catholicism and Protestantism 6.4 Policy toward other Christian groups 6.5 Policy towards Islam 6.6 Policy towards Judaism 7 See also 8 References Orthodox[edit] This section does not cite any references (sources). Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011) The Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow was demolished by the Soviet authorities in 1931 to make way for the Palace of Soviets. The palace was never finished, and the cathedral was rebuilt in 2000. Orthodox Christians constituted a majority of believers in the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s, three Orthodox churches claimed substantial memberships there: the Russian Orthodox Church, the Georgian Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (AOC). They were members of the major confederation of Orthodox churches in the world, generally referred to as the Eastern Orthodox Church. The first two functioned openly and were tolerated by the regime, but the Ukrainian AOC was not permitted to function openly. Parishes of the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church reappeared in Belarus only after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but they did not receive recognition from the Belarusian Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which controls Belarusian eparchies. Russian Orthodox Church[edit] According to both Soviet and Western sources,[which?] in the late 1980s the Russian Orthodox Church had over 50 million believers but only about 7,000 registered active churches. Over 4,000 of these churches were located in the Ukrainian Republic (almost half of them in western Ukraine). The distribution of the six monasteries and ten convents of the Russian Orthodox Church was equally disproportionate. Only two of the monasteries were located in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Another two were in Ukraine and there was one each in Belarus and Lithuania. Seven convents were located in Ukraine and one each in Moldova, Estonia, and Latvia. Georgian Orthodox Church[edit] The Georgian Orthodox Church, another autocephalous member of Eastern Orthodoxy, was headed by a Georgian patriarch. In the late 1980s it had 15 bishops, 180 priests, 200 parishes, and an estimated 2.5 million followers. In 1811 the Georgian Orthodox Church was incorporated into the Russian Orthodox Church, but it regained its independence in 1917, after the fall of the Tsar. Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church did not officially recognize its independence until 1943. Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church[edit] The Ukrainian AOC separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1919, when the short-lived Ukrainian state adopted a decree declaring autocephaly from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.[clarification needed (from it or for it?)] Its independence was reaffirmed by the Bolsheviks in the Ukrainian Republic, and by 1924 it had 30 bishops, almost 1,500 priests, nearly 1,100 parishes, and between 4 and 6 million members. From its inception, the Ukrainian AOC faced the hostility of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukrainian Republic. In the late 1920s, Soviet authorities accused it of nationalist tendencies. In 1930 the government forced the church to reorganize as the "Ukrainian Orthodox Church", and few of its parishes survived until 1936. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian AOC continued to function outside the borders of the Soviet Union, and it was revived on Ukrainian territory under the German occupation during World War II. In the late 1980s, some of the Orthodox faithful in the Ukrainian Republic appealed to the Soviet government to reestablish the Ukrainian AOC.[clarification needed (with what result?)] Armenian Apostolic[edit] The Armenian Apostolic Church is an independent Oriental Orthodox church. In the 1980s it had about 4 million adherents – almost the entire population of Armenia. It was permitted 6 bishops, between 50 and 100 priests, and between 20 and 30 churches, and it had one theological seminary and six monasteries. Catholics[edit] Catholics formed a substantial and active religious constituency in the Soviet Union. Their number increased dramatically with the annexation of territories of the Second Polish Republic in 1939 and the Baltic republics in 1940. Catholics in the Soviet Union were divided between those belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, which was recognized by the government, and those remaining loyal to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, banned since 1946. Roman Catholic Church[edit] The majority of the 5.5 million Roman Catholics in the Soviet Union lived in the Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Latvian republics, with a sprinkling in the Moldavian, Ukrainian, and Russian republics. Since World War II, the most active Roman Catholic Church in the Soviet Union was in the Lithuanian Republic, where the majority of people are Catholics. The Roman Catholic Church there has been viewed as an institution that both fosters and defends Lithuanian national interests and values. Since 1972 a Catholic underground publication, The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, supported not only Lithuanians' religious rights but also their national rights. Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church[edit] See also: History of Christianity in Ukraine Western Ukraine, which included largely the historic region of Galicia, became part of the Soviet Union in 1939. Although Ukrainian, its population was never part of the Russian Empire, but was Eastern Rite Catholic. After the Second World War, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church identified closely with the nationalist aspirations of the region, arousing the hostility of the Soviet government, which was in combat with Ukrainian Insurgency. In 1945, Soviet authorities arrested the church's Metropolitan Josyf Slipyj, nine bishops and hundreds of clergy and leading lay activists, and deported them to forced labor camps in Siberia and elsewhere. The nine bishops and many of the clergy died in prisons, concentration camps, internal exile, or soon after their release during the post-Stalin thaw,[8] but after 18 years of imprisonment and persecution, Metropolitan Slipyj was released when Pope John XXIII intervened on his behalf. Slipyj went to Rome, where he received the title of Major Archbishop of Lviv, and became a cardinal in 1965.[8] In 1946 a synod was called in Lviv, where, despite being uncanonical in both Catholic and Orthodox understanding, the Union of Brest was annulled, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was officially annexed to the Russian Orthodox Church. St. George's Cathedral in Lviv became the throne of Russian Orthodox Archbishop Makariy.[8] For the clergy that joined the Russian Orthodox Church, the Soviet authorities refrained from the large-scale persecution seen elsewhere. In Lviv only one church was closed. In fact, the western dioceses of Lviv-Ternopil and Ivano-Frankivsk were the largest in the USSR. Canon law was also relaxed, allowing the clergy to shave their beards (a practice uncommon in Orthodoxy) and to conduct services in Ukrainian instead of Slavonic. In 1989 the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was officially re-established after a catacomb period of more than 40 years.[8] There followed conflicts between Orthodox and Catholic Christians regarding the ownership of church buildings, conflicts which continued into the 1990s, after the Independence of Ukraine. Protestants[edit] By 1950 it was estimated that there were 2 million Baptists in the Soviet Union, with the largest number in Ukraine.[9] Many Protestants were apprehended under Communist rule of law, including imprisonment and execution. Vladimir Shelkov (1895–1980), the leader of the unregistered Seventh-day Adventist movement in the Soviet Union, spent almost all his life from 1931 on in prison; he died in Yakutia camp. Large numbers of Pentecostals were imprisoned, and many died there, including Ivan Voronaev, one of their leaders.[10] In the period after the Second World War, Protestants in the USSR (Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists and others) were sent to mental hospitals or tried and imprisoned, often for refusal to enter military service. Some were deprived of their parental rights.[10] The Lutheran Church in different regions of the country was persecuted during the Soviet era, and church property was confiscated.[11] Many of its members and pastors were oppressed, and some were forced to emigrate.[12] According to western sources, various Protestant religious groups collectively had as many as 5 million followers in the 1980s. Evangelical Christian Baptists constituted the largest Protestant group. Spread throughout the Soviet Union, some congregations were registered with the government and functioned with official approval. Many other unregistered congregations carried on religious activity without such approval. Lutherans, the second largest Protestant group, lived for the most part in the Latvian and Estonian republics. In the 1980s, Lutheran churches in these republics identified to some extent with nationality issues[clarification needed] in the two republics. The regime's attitude toward Lutherans was generally benign. Other Christian groups[edit] The March 1961 instruction on religious cults explained for the first time, that "sects, the teaching and character of activities of which has anti-state and savagely extremist [??????????] character: Jehovah's Witnesses, Pentecostalists, Adventists-reformists“ are not to be registered[13] and were thus banned. A number of congregations of Russian Mennonites, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other Christian groups existed in the Soviet Union. Nearly 9,000 Jehovah's Witnesses were deported to Siberia in 1951 (numbers of those missed[clarification needed] in deportation unknown). The number of Jehovah's Witnesses increased greatly over this period, with a KGB estimate of around 20,000 in 1968. Russian Mennonites began to emigrate from the Soviet Union in the face of increasing violence and persecution, state restrictions on freedom of religion, and biased allotments of communal farmland. They emigrated to Germany, Britain, the United States, parts of South America, and other regions. Islam[edit] Main article: Islam in the Soviet Union Map showing the distribution of Muslims within the Soviet Union in 1979 as a percentage of the population by administrative division. In the late 1980s, Islam had the second largest following in the Soviet Union: between 45 and 50 million people identified themselves as Muslims. But the Soviet Union had only about 500 working mosques, a fraction of the number in prerevolutionary Russia, and Soviet law forbade Islamic religious activity outside working mosques and Islamic schools. All working mosques, religious schools, and Islamic publications were supervised by four "spiritual directorates" established by Soviet authorities to provide government control. The Spiritual Directorate for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the Spiritual Directorate for the European Soviet Union and Siberia, and the Spiritual Directorate for the Northern Caucasus and Dagestan oversaw the religious life of Sunni Muslims. The Spiritual Directorate for Transcaucasia dealt with both Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. The overwhelming majority of the Muslims were Sunnis. Soviet Muslims differed linguistically and culturally from each other, speaking about fifteen Turkic languages, ten Iranian languages, and thirty Caucasian languages. Hence, communication between different Muslim groups was difficult. Although in 1989 Russian often served as a lingua franca among some educated Muslims, few were fluent in Russian. Culturally, some Muslim groups had highly developed urban traditions, whereas others were recently nomadic. Some lived in industrialized environments, others in isolated mountainous regions. In sum, Muslims were not a homogeneous group with a common national identity and heritage, although they shared the same religion and the same country. In the late 1980s, unofficial Muslim congregations, meeting in tea houses and private homes with their own mullahs, greatly outnumbered those in the officially sanctioned mosques. The unofficial mullahs were either self-taught or informally trained by other mullahs. In the late 1980s, unofficial Islam appeared to split into fundamentalist congregations and groups that emphasized Sufism. Policy toward religions in practice[edit] Repression in the Soviet Union General Political repression Economic repression Ideological repression Political repression Red Terror Collectivization Great Purge Population transfer Gulag Holodomor Political abuse of psychiatry Ideological repression Religion Suppressed research Censorship Censorship of images v t e See also: Living Church Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Communist Party. However, "the Soviet law and administrative practice through most of the 1920s extended some tolerance to religion and forbade the arbitrary closing or destruction of some functioning churches",[14] and each successive Soviet constitution granted freedom of belief. As the founder of the Soviet state, Lenin, put it: Religion is the opium of the people: this saying of Marx is the cornerstone of the entire ideology of Marxism about religion. All modern religions and churches, all and of every kind of religious organizations are always considered by Marxism as the organs of bourgeois reaction, used for the protection of the exploitation and the stupefaction of the working class.[6] Marxism-Leninism advocates the suppression and ultimately the disappearance of religious beliefs, considering them to be "unscientific" and "superstitious". In the 1920s and 1930s, such organizations as the League of the Militant Godless were active in anti-religious propaganda. Atheism was the norm in schools, communist organizations (such as the Young Pioneer Organization), and the media. The regime's efforts to eradicate religion in the Soviet Union, however, varied over the years with respect to particular religions and were affected by higher state interests. In 1923, a New York Times correspondent saw Christians observing Easter peacefully in Moscow despite violent anti-religious actions in previous years.[15] Official policies and practices not only varied with time, but also differed in their application from one nationality to another and from one religion to another. In 1929, with the onset of the Cultural Revolution in the Soviet Union and an upsurge of radical militancy in the Party and Komsomol, a powerful "hard line" in favor of mass closing of churches and arrests of priests became dominant and evidently won Stalin's approval. Secret "hard line" instructions were issued to local party organizations, but not published. When the anti-religious drive inflamed the anger of the rural population, not to mention that of the Pope and other Western church spokesmen, the regime was able to back off from a policy that it had never publicly endorsed anyway.[16][17] Although all Soviet leaders had the same long-range goal of developing a cohesive Soviet people, they pursued different policies to achieve it. For the Soviet regime, questions of nationality and religion were always closely linked. Therefore, their attitude toward religion also varied from a total ban on some religions to official support of others. Policy towards nationalities and religion[edit] This section does not cite any references (sources). Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011) In theory, the Soviet Constitution described the regime's position regarding nationalities and religions. It stated that every Soviet citizen also had a particular nationality, and every Soviet passport carried these two entries. The constitution granted a large degree of local autonomy, but this autonomy was subordinated to central authority. In addition, because local and central administrative structures were often not clearly divided, local autonomy was further weakened. Although under the Constitution all nationalities were equal, in practice they were not treated so. Only fifteen nationalities had union republic status, which granted them, in principle, many rights, including the right to secede from the union. Twenty-two nationalities lived in autonomous republics with a degree of local self-government and representation in the Council of Nationalities in the Supreme Soviet. Eighteen more nationalities had territorial enclaves (autonomous oblasts and autonomous okrugs) but had very few powers of self-government. The remaining nationalities had no right of self-government at all. Joseph Stalin's 1913 definition of a nation as "a historically constituted and stable community of people formed on the basis of common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup revealed in a common culture" was retained by Soviet authorities throughout the 1980s.[citation needed] However, in granting nationalities union republic status, three additional factors were considered: a population of at least 1 million, territorial compactness, and location on the borders of the Soviet Union. Although Lenin believed that eventually all nationalities would merge into one, he insisted that the Soviet Union be established as a federation of formally equal nations. In the 1920s, genuine cultural concessions were granted to the nationalities. Communist elites of various nationalities were permitted to flourish and to have considerable self-government. National cultures, religions, and languages were not merely tolerated but, in areas with Muslim populations, encouraged. Demographic changes in the 1960s and 1970s whittled down the overall Russian majority, but they also caused two nationalities (the Kazakhs and Kirgiz) to become minorities in their own republics at the time of the 1979 census, and considerably reduced the majority of the titular nationalities in other republics. This situation led Leonid Brezhnev to declare at the 24th Communist Party Congress in 1971 that the process of creating a unified Soviet people had been completed, and proposals were made to abolish the federative system and replace it with a single state. In the 1970s, however, a broad movement of national dissent began to spread throughout the Soviet Union. It manifestated itself in many ways: Jews insisted on their right to emigrate to Israel; Crimean Tatars demanded to be allowed to return to Crimea; Lithuanians called for the restoration of the rights of the Catholic Church; and Helsinki Watch groups were established in the Georgian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian republics. Petitions, literature, and occasional public demonstrations voiced public demands for the human rights of all nationalities. By the end of the 1970s, however, massive and concerted efforts by the KGB had largely suppressed the national dissent movement. Nevertheless, Brezhnev had learned his lesson. Proposals to dismantle the federative system were abandoned in favour of a policy of drawing the nationalities together more gradually. Soviet officials identified religion closely with nationality. The implementation of policy toward a particular religion, therefore, depended on the regime's perception of the bond between that religion and the nationality practicing it, the size of the religious community, the extent to which the religion accepted outside authority, and the nationality's willingness to subordinate itself to political authority. Thus the smaller the religious community and the more closely it identified with a particular nationality, the more restrictive were the regime's policies, especially if the religion also recognized a foreign authority such as the pope. Policy towards Orthodoxy[edit] This section does not cite any references (sources). Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011) The Russian Orthodox Cathedral, once the most dominant landmark in Baku, was demolished in the 1930s under Stalin. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it for the regime's own purposes; but their ultimate goal was to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled. Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were closed, and the publication of most religious material was prohibited. By 1941 only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in existence prior to World War I. Such crackdowns related to many people's dissatisfaction with the church in pre-revolutionary Russia. The close ties between the church and the state led to the perception of the church as corrupt and greedy by many members of the intelligentsia. Many peasants, while highly religious, also viewed the church unfavorably. Respect for religion did not extend to the local priests. The church owned a significant portion of Russia's land, and this was a bone of contention – land ownership was a big factor in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 induced Stalin to enlist the Russian Orthodox Church as an ally to arouse Russian patriotism against foreign aggression. Russian Orthodox religious life experienced a revival: thousands of churches were reopened; there were 22,000 by the time Nikita Khrushchev came to power. The regime permitted religious publications, and church membership grew. Khrushchev reversed the regime's policy of cooperation with the Russian Orthodox Church. Although it remained officially sanctioned, in 1959 Khrushchev launched an antireligious campaign that was continued in a less stringent manner by his successor, Brezhnev. By 1975 the number of active Russian Orthodox churches was reduced to 7,000. Some of the most prominent members of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy and some activists were jailed or forced to leave the church. Their place was taken by docile clergy who were obedient to the state and who were sometimes infiltrated by KGB agents, making the Russian Orthodox Church useful to the regime. It espoused and propagated Soviet foreign policy and furthered the russification of non-Russian Christians, such as Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusians. The regime applied a different policy toward the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Viewed by the government as very nationalistic, both were suppressed, first at the end of the 1920s and again in 1944 after they had renewed themselves under German occupation. The leadership of both churches was decimated; large numbers of priests were shot or sent to labor camps, and members of their congregations were harassed and persecuted. The Georgian Orthodox Church was subject to a somewhat different policy and fared far worse than the Russian Orthodox Church. During World War II, however, it was allowed greater autonomy in running its affairs in return for calling its members to support the war effort, although it did not achieve the kind of accommodation with the authorities that the Russian Orthodox Church had. The government reimposed tight control over it after the war. Out of some 2,100 churches in 1917, only 200 were still open in the 1980s, and it was forbidden to serve its adherents outside the Georgian Republic. In many cases, the regime forced the Georgian Orthodox Church to conduct services in Old Church Slavonic instead of in the Georgian language. Policy towards Catholicism and Protestantism[edit] The Jewish Autonomous Oblast (JAO) (Russian: ????´????? ??????´???? ?´??????, Yevreyskaya avtonomnaya oblast; Yiddish: ??????? ??????????? ??????, yidishe avtonome gegnt[14]) is a federal subject of Russia (an autonomous oblast) in the Russian Far East, bordering Khabarovsk Krai and Amur Oblast in Russia and Heilongjiang province in China. It is also referred to as "Yevrey"[15][unreliable source] (Yiddish: ?????) and "Birobidzhan"[16] (Yiddish: ?????????????). Its administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 176,558.[9] Soviet authorities established the autonomous oblast in 1934. It was the result of Soviet nationality policy under Stalin, which provided the Jewish population of the Soviet Union with a territory in which to pursue Yiddish cultural heritage.[17] According to the 1939 population census, 17,695 Jews lived in the region (16% of the total population). The Jewish population peaked in 1948 at around 30,000, about one-quarter of the region's population.[18] In 1953, Joseph Stalin died and thereafter the Jewish population in the JAO began a long decline. The census of 1959, found that the Jewish population of the JAO had declined by approximately 50%, down to 14,269 persons.[19] In 2002, there were 2,327 people of Jewish descent living in the JAO (1.2% of the total population), while ethnic Russians made up 90% of the JAO population. By 2010, according to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau, there were only 1,628 people of Jewish descent remaining in the JAO (1% of the total population), while ethnic Russians made up 92.7% of the JAO population.[20] By 2010, according to data provided by the Russian Census Bureau, 97 persons spoke Yiddish, 312 persons spoke Hebrew, and a further 54 persons spoke unspecified Jewish languages.[21] A 2007 article in the Jerusalem Post claimed that, at the time, approximately 4,000 Jews remain in the JAO.[22] According to Mordechai Scheiner, the Chief Rabbi of the JAO from 2002 to 2011, Judaism and the Jewish culture in the oblast have recently begun enjoying a religious and cultural resurgence.[22] However, according to the magazine of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS Lechaim, currently the Jewish presence in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast is extremely small, and is limited to the city of Birobidzhan and the nearby village of Valdgeym.[23] The JAO is Russia's only autonomous oblast[24] and, aside from Israel, the world's only Jewish territory with an official status. Jews nowadays make barely 0.2% of the JAO's population.[25] Contents [hide] 1 Geography 1.1 Climate 2 History 2.1 Military colonization and the advent of the Trans-Siberian Railway 2.2 Jewish settlement and development in the region 2.3 World War II era (1930s and 1940s) 2.4 Events since 1991 3 Administrative divisions 4 Economy 4.1 Transportation 4.2 Amur Bridge Project 5 Demographics 5.1 Religion 6 Education 7 See also 8 References 8.1 Notes 8.2 Sources 9 Bibliography 10 External links Geography[edit] Climate[edit] The territory has a monsoonal/anti-cyclonic climate, with warm, wet, humid summers due to the influence of the East Asian monsoon; and cold, dry, windy conditions prevailing in the winter months courtesy of the Siberian high-pressure system. History[edit] Military colonization and the advent of the Trans-Siberian Railway[edit] The northern bank of the Amur, including the territory of today's Jewish Autonomous Oblast, became incorporated into the Russian Empire pursuant to the treaties of Aigun and Peking of 1858-1860 (see Amur Annexation). In December 1858 the Russian government authorized formation of the Amur Cossacks to protect the southeast boundary of Siberia and communications on the Amur and Ussuri rivers. This military colonization included settlers from Transbaikalia. During the years 1858–82, sixty three settlements were founded, including, in 1857, Radde settlement; in 1858, Pashkovo, Pompeyevka, Puzino, Yekaterino-Nikolskoye, Mikhailo-Semyonovskoye, Voskresenovka, Petrovskoye, and Ventzelevo; in 1860, Storozhevoye, From the 1952 film Viva Zapata! Twentieth Century Pictures' Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck left United Artists over a stock dispute, and began merger talks with the management of financially struggling Fox Film, under president Sidney Kent. Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, helped make it happen (and later became president of the new company). Aside from the theater chain and a first-rate studio lot, Zanuck and Schenck felt there was not much else to Fox, which had been reeling since founder William Fox lost control of the company in 1930. The studio's biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn and Spencer Tracy had been dropped because of heavy drinking. At first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called "Fox-20th Century", even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck; it was more profitable than Fox and had considerably more talent. The new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31, 1935; the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, while Kent remained as President. Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Fox's longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan. For many years, 20th Century Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915, the year Fox Film was founded. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915.[4] The company's films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their opening credits as well as its opening fanfare, but with the name changed to 20th Century-Fox. After the merger was completed, Zanuck quickly signed young actors who would carry Twentieth Century-Fox for years:[citation needed] Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Sonja Henie, and Betty 1.12 Football (Association; Soccer) 1.13 Football (Australian Rules) 1.14 Golf 1.15 Gymnastics 1.16 Ice hockey 1.17 Judo 1.18 Kickboxing 1.19 Mixed martial arts 1.20 Motorsport 1.21 Rowing 1.22 Rugby league 1.23 Rugby union 1.24 Sailing 1.25 Shooting 1.26 Skiing 1.27 Speed skating 1.28 Swimming 1.29 Table tennis 1.30 Tennis 1.31 Track and field 1.32 Triathlon 1.33 Volleyball 1.34 Water polo 1.35 Weightlifting 1.36 Wrestling 1.37 Professional wrestling 2 Commissioners, managers/coaches and owners 3 Officials and referees 4 Jewish sports halls of fame 5 See also 6 References 6.1 Notes 6.2 Bibliography 6.2.1 General works 6.2.2 Baseball 6.2.3 Boxing 6.2.4 Chess 6.2.5 Olympics Athletes[edit] Baseball[edit] Ryan Braun, outfielder (Milwaukee Brewers) Ike Davis, first baseman (Oakland Athletics) Ian Kinsler, second baseman (Detroit Tigers) Ryan Lavarnway, catcher (Atlanta Braves) Jason Marquis, pitcher (Cincinnati Reds) Joc Pederson, outfielder (Los Angeles Dodgers) Kevin Youkilis, first and third baseman Cal Abrams, US, outfielder[2] Rubén Amaro, Jr., US, outfielder, general manager (Philadelphia Phillies)[2] Morrie Arnovich, US, outfielder, All-Star[2] Brad Ausmus, US, catcher, All-Star, 3x Gold Glove, manager of the Detroit Tigers[2] José Bautista, Dominican-born, pitcher[2] Robert "Bo" Belinsky, U.S., pitcher. Pitched no-hit game as rookie with Los Angeles Angels in 1962.[3] Moe Berg, US, catcher & shortstop, and spy for US in World War II[2] Ron Blomberg, US, DH/first baseman/outfielder, Major League Baseball's first designated hitter[4] Lou Boudreau, US, shortstop, 8x All-Star, batting title, MVP, Baseball Hall of Fame, manager[2] Ralph Branca, US, pitcher, 3x All-Star[5] Ryan Braun, US, outfielder, 2007 Rookie of the Year, home run champion, 5x All-Star, 5x Silver Slugger, 2011 National League MVP (Milwaukee Brewers)[6] Craig Breslow, US, relief pitcher (Boston Red Sox)[2] Mark Clear, US, relief pitcher, 2x All-Star[7] Andy Cohen, US, second baseman, coach Harry Danning, US, catcher, 4x All-Star[2][8] Ike Davis, US, first baseman (Oakland Athletics)[9] Moe Drabowsky, US, pitcher[10] Harry Eisenstat, US, pitcher[11] Mike Epstein, US, first baseman[2] Harry Feldman, US, pitcher[2] Scott Feldman, US, pitcher (Houston Astros)[2] Gavin Fingleson, South African-born Australian, Olympic silver medalist[12] Nate Freiman, US, first baseman (Oakland Athletics)[13][14] Sam Fuld, US, outfielder (Oakland Athletics)[15] Sid Gordon, US, outfielder & third baseman, 2x All-Star[2] John Grabow, US, relief pitcher[2] Shawn Green, US, right fielder, 2x All-Star, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger[2] Hank Greenberg, US, first baseman & outfielder, 5x All-Star, 4x home run champion, 4x RBI leader, 2x MVP, Baseball Hall of Fame[2] Ken Holtzman, US, starting pitcher, 2x All-Star[2] Joe Horlen, US, pitcher, All-Star, ERA leader[2] Gabe Kapler, US, outfielder[2] Ian Kinsler, US, second baseman, 3x All-Star (Detroit Tigers)[16] Sandy Koufax, US, starting pitcher, 6x All-Star, 5x ERA leader, 4x strikeouts leader, 3x Wins leader, 2x W-L% leader, 1 perfect game, MVP, 3x Cy Young Award, Baseball Hall of Fame[2] Barry Latman, US, pitcher[11] Ryan Lavarnway, US, catcher (Atlanta Braves)[17] Al Levine, US, relief pitcher[2] Mike Lieberthal, US, catcher, 2x All-Star, Gold Glove[2] Elliott Maddox, US, outfielder & third baseman[2] Jason Marquis, US, starting pitcher, Silver Slugger, All Star (Cincinnati Reds)[2] Erskine Mayer, US, pitcher[2] Bob Melvin, US, catcher & manager of the Oakland Athletics[18] Jon Moscot, US, pitcher (Cincinnati Reds)[19] Jeff Newman, US, catcher & first baseman, All-Star, manager[2] Joc Pederson, US, outfielder (Los Angeles Dodgers)[20] Barney Pelty, US, pitcher[2] Lipman Pike, US, outfielder, second baseman, & manager, 4x home run champion, RBI leader[2] Kevin Pillar, US, outfielder (Toronto Blue Jays) Aaron Poreda, US, pitcher (Yomiuri Giants)[2] Scott Radinsky, US, relief pitcher[2] Dave Roberts, US, pitcher[2] Saul Rogovin, US, pitcher[2] Al "Flip" Rosen, US, third baseman & first baseman, 4x All-Star, 2x home run champion, 2x RBI leader, MVP[2] Goody Rosen, Canada, outfielder, All-Star[2] Josh Satin, US, second baseman (Cincinnati Reds)[21] Richie Scheinblum, US, outfielder, All-Star[2] Scott Schoeneweis, US, pitcher[2] Michael Schwimer, US, relief pitcher (Toronto Blue Jays)[22] Art Shamsky, US, outfielder & first baseman[2] Larry Sherry, US, relief pitcher[2] Norm Sherry, US, catcher & manager[2] Moe "the Rabbi of Swat" Solomon, US, outfielder[2] George Stone, US, outfielder, 1x batting title[23] Steve Stone, US, starting pitcher, All-Star, Cy Young Award[2] Danny Valencia, US, third baseman (Oakland Athletics)[24] Phil "Mickey" Weintraub, US, first baseman & outfielder Josh Whitesell, US, first baseman (Saraperos de Saltillo)[25] Steve Yeager, US, catcher[2] Kevin Youkilis, US, first baseman, third baseman, & left fielder, 3x All-Star, Gold Glove, Hank Aaron Award[2] Josh Zeid, US, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers Basketball[edit] Omri Casspi Jordan Farmar Gal Mekel Jon Scheyer Sam Balter, US, 5' 10" guard, Olympic champion[8][26] Sue Bird, US & Israel, WNBA 5' 9" point guard, 2x Olympic champion, 4x All-Star (Seattle Storm)[27] David Blatt, US & Israel, Israeli Premier League 6' 3.5" point guard, coached Russia National Basketball Team, Israel's Maccabi Tel Aviv to Euroleague Championship, Euroleague Coach of the Year, 4x Israeli Coach of the Year, Head Coach of Cleveland Cavaliers[28][29] David Blu (formerly "Bluthenthal"), US & Israel, Euroleague 6' 7" forward (Maccabi Tel Aviv)[30] Harry Boykoff, US, NBA 6' 10" center[31] Tal Brody, US & Israel, Euroleague 6' 2" shooting guard[8] Larry Brown, US, ABA 5' 9" point guard, 3x All-Star, 3x assists leader, NCAA National Championship coach (1988), NBA coach, Olympic champion, Hall of Fame[8][26] Omri Casspi, Israel, 6' 9" small forward, drafted in 1st round of 2009 NBA Draft (Sacramento Kings)[32] Shay Doron, Israel & US, WNBA 5' 9" guard (New York Liberty)[33] Lior Eliyahu, Israel, 6' 9" power forward, NBA draft 2006 (Orlando Magic; traded to Houston Rockets), playing in the Euroleague (Hapoel Jerusalem)[34] Jordan Farmar, US, NBA 6' 2" point guard (Los Angeles Clippers)[35] Marty Friedman, US, 5' 7" guard & coach, Hall of Fame[8] Ernie Grunfeld, Romania-born US, NBA 6' 6" guard/forward & GM, Olympic champion[36] Yotam Halperin, Israel, 6' 5" guard, drafted in 2006 NBA draft by Seattle SuperSonics (Hapoel Jerusalem)[34] Sonny Hertzberg, US, NBA 5' 9" point guard, original NY Knickerbocker[37] Art Heyman, US, NBA 6' 5" forward/guard[37] Nat Holman, US, ABL 5' 11" guard & coach, Hall of Fame[8] Red Holzman, US, BAA & NBA 5' 10" guard, 2x All-Star, & NBA coach, NBA Coach of the Year, Hall of Fame[8] Eban Hyams, India-Israel-Australia, 6' 5" guard formerly of the Australian National Basketball League, Israeli Super League, first ever Indian national to play in ULEB competitions[38] Barry Kramer, first team All-American at NYU in 1963 Joel Kramer, US Phoenix Suns 6'7" forward Sylven Landesberg, US, 6' 6" former UVA shooting guard (Maccabi Tel Aviv)[39] Rudy LaRusso, US, NBA 6' 7" forward/center, 5x All-Star[40] Nancy Lieberman, US, WNBA player, general manager, & coach, Olympic silver, Hall of Fame[26][41] Gal Mekel, Israel, NBA 6' 3" point guard (Dallas Mavericks)[42] Bernard Opper, US, NBL and ABL 5' 10" guard, All-American at University of Kentucky Donna Orender (née Geils), US, Women's Pro Basketball League 5' 7" point guard, All-Star, current WNBA president[37] Lennie Rosenbluth, US, NBA 6' 4" forward[36] Danny Schayes, US, NBA 6' 11" center/forward (son of Dolph Schayes)[37] Dolph Schayes, US, NBA 6' 7" forward/center, 3x FT% leader, 1x rebound leader, 12x All-Star, Hall of Fame, & coach (father of Danny Schayes)[8] Ossie Schectman, US, NBA 6' 0" guard, scorer of first NBA basket[36] Doron Sheffer, US (college), Maccabi Tel Aviv,Hapoel Jerusalem Jon Scheyer, US, All-American Duke University 6' 5" shooting guard & point guard (Maccabi Tel Aviv)[43] Barney Sedran, US, Hudson River League & New York State League 5' 4" guard, Hall of Fame[8] Sidney Tannenbaum, US, BAA 6' 0" guard, 2x All-American, left as NYU all-time scorer[8] Alex Tyus, US & Israel, 6' 8" power forward/center (Maccabi Tel Aviv) Neal Walk, US, NBA 6' 10" center[37] Max Zaslofsky, US, NBA 6' 2" guard/forward, 1x FT% leader, 1x points leader, All-Star, ABA coach[8] Bowling[edit] Barry Asher, 10 PBA titles, PBA Hall of Fame[7] Marshall Holman, 22 PBA titles (11th all-time); PBA Hall of Fame[44] Mark Roth, 34 PBA titles (5th all-time); PBA Hall of Fame[45] Boxing[edit] Yuri Foreman Zab Judah Dmitry Salita Barney Aaron (Young), English-born US lightweight, Hall of Fame[46] Abe Attell ("The Little Hebrew"), US, world champion featherweight, Hall of Fame[8] Monte Attell ("The Knob Hill Terror"), US, bantamweight[47] Max Baer ("Madcap Maxie"), US, world champion heavyweight. Wore a Star of David on his trunks; inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame/[48] Benny Bass ("Little Fish"), US, world champion featherweight & world champion junior lightweight, Hall of Fame[8] Fabrice Benichou, France, world champion super bantamweight[34] Jack Kid Berg (Judah Bergman), England, world champion junior welterweight, wore a Star of David on his trunks, Hall of Fame[8] Maxie Berger, Canada, wore a Star of David on his trunks[49] Samuel Berger, US, Olympic champion heavyweight[8] Jack Bernstein (also "John Dodick", "Kid Murphy", and "Young Murphy"), US, world champion junior lightweight[8] Nathan "Nat" Bor, US, Olympic bronze lightweight[26] Mushy Callahan (Vincente Sheer), US, world champion light welterweight[47] Joe Choynski ("Chrysanthemum Joe"), US, heavyweight, Hall of Fame[8][50] Robert Cohen, French & Algerian, world champion bantamweight[8] Al "Bummy" Davis (Abraham Davidoff), US, welterweight & lightweight, wore a Star of David on his trunks[47] Louis "Red" Deutsch, US, heavyweight, later famous as the proprietor of the Tube Bar in Jersey City, NJ and inspiration for Moe Szyslak on "The Simpsons" Carolina Duer ("The Turk"), Argentine, WBO world champion super flyweight and bantamweight[51] John "Jackie" Fields (Jacob Finkelstein), US, world champion welterweight & Olympic champion featherweight, Hall of Fame[8] Hagar Finer, Israel, WIBF champion bantamweight[52] Yuri Foreman, Belarusian-born Israeli US middleweight and World Boxing Association champion super welterweight[53] György Gedó, Hungary, Olympic champion light flyweight[41] Abe Goldstein, US, world champion bantamweight[54] Ruby Goldstein ("Ruby the Jewel of the Ghetto"), US, welterweight, wore a Star of David on his trunks[8] Roman Greenberg ("The Lion from Zion"), Israel, International Boxing Organization's Intercontinental champion heavyweight[53] Stéphane Haccoun, France, featherweight, super featherweight, and junior lightweight[55][56] Alphonse Halimi ("La Petite Terreur"), France, world champion bantamweight[8] Harry Harris ("The Human Hairpin"), US, world champion bantamweight[8] Gary Jacobs, Scottish, British, Commonwealth, and European (EBU) champion welterweight[57] Ben Jeby (Morris Jebaltowsky), US, world champion middleweight[47] Yoel Judah, US, 3x world champion kickboxer and boxer & trainer[58] Zab Judah ("Super"), US, world champion junior welterweight & world champion welterweight (Converted to Christianity)[58][59][60][61] Louis Kaplan ("Kid Kaplan"), Russian-born US, world champion featherweight, Hall of Fame[8][50] Solly Krieger ("Danny Auerbach"), US, world champion middleweight[8] Julie Kogon US, 1947 New England Lightweight Champion. Inducted into the Connecticut Boxing Hall of Fame. Benny Leonard (Benjamin Leiner; "The Ghetto Wizard"), US, world champion lightweight, Hall of Fame[8] Battling Levinsky (Barney Lebrowitz), US, world champion light heavyweight, Hall of Fame[8] King Levinsky (Harry Kraków), US, heavweight, also known as Kingfish Levinsky[8] Harry Lewis (Harry Besterman), US, world champion welterweight[47] Ted "Kid" Lewis (Gershon Mendeloff), England, world champion welterweight, Hall of Fame[8] Sammy Luftspring, Canada, Canadian champion welterweight, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame[47] Saoul Mamby, US, world champion junior welterweight[47] Al McCoy (Alexander Rudolph), US, world champion middleweight[8] Daniel Mendoza, England, world champion heavyweight, Hall of Fame[8] Jacob Michaelsen, Denmark, Olympic bronze heavyweight[26] Samuel Mosberg, US, Olympic champion lightweight[8] Bob Olin, US, world champion light heavyweight[62] Victor Perez ("Young"), Tunisian, world champion flyweight[8] Harold Reitman ("The Boxing Doctor"), professional heavyweight that fought while working as surgeon, Golden Gloves champion.[63] Charlie Phil Rosenberg ("Charles Green"), US, world champion bantamweight[8] Dana Rosenblatt ("Dangerous"), US, world champion middleweight[64] Maxie Rosenbloom ("Slapsie"), US, world champion light heavyweight, wore a Star of David on his trunks, Hall of Fame[8] Barney Ross (Dov-Ber Rasofsky), US, world champion lightweight & junior welterweight, Hall of Fame[8] Mike Rossman (Michael Albert DiPiano; "The Jewish Bomber"), US, world champion light heavyweight, wore Star of David on trunks[64] Shamil Sabirov, Russia, Olympic champion light flyweight[26] Dmitry Salita ("Star of David"), US, North American Boxing Association champion light welterweight[65] Isadore "Corporal Izzy" Schwartz ("The Ghetto Midget"), US, world champion flyweight[8] Al Singer ("The Bronx Beauty"), US, world champion lightweight[47] "Lefty" Lew Tendler, US, bantamweight, lightweight, and welterweight, wore a Star of David on his trunks, Hall of Fame[8] Sid Terris ("Ghost of the Ghetto"), US, lightweight, wore a Star of David on his trunks[54] Matt Wels, England, champion of Great Britain lightweight and world champion welterweight Canoeing[edit] Jessica Fox Shaun Rubenstein László Fábián, Hungary, sprint canoer, Olympic champion (K-2 10,000 meter), 4x world champion (3x K-2 10,000 meter and 1x K-4 10,000 meter) and one silver (K-4 10,000 meter)[26] Imre Farkas, Hungary, sprint canoer, 2x Olympic bronze (C-2 1,000 and 10,000 meter)[66] Jessica Fox, French-born Australian, slalom canoer, Olympic silver (K-1 slalom), world championships bronze (C-1)[67] Myriam Fox-Jerusalmi, France, slalom canoer, Olympic bronze (K-1 slalom), 5 golds at ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships (2x K-1, 3x K-1 team)[41] Klára Fried-Bánfalvi, Hungary, sprint canoer, Olympic bronze (K-2 500 m), world champion (K-2 500 m)[26] Leonid Geishtor, USSR (Belarus), sprint canoer, Olympic champion (Canadian pairs 1,000-meter)[41] Joe Jacobi, US, slalom canoer, Olympic champion (Canadian slalom pairs)[41] Michael Kolganov, Soviet (Uzbek)-born Israeli, sprint canoer, world champion, Olympic bronze (K-1 500-meter)[41] Anna Pfeffer, Hungary, sprint canoer, Olympic 2x silver (K-2 500 m), bronze (K-1 500 m); world champion (K-2 500 m), silver (K-4 500 m), 2x bronze (K-2 500)[26] Naum Prokupets, Moldovan-born Soviet, sprint canoer, Olympic bronze (C-2 1,000-meter), gold (C-2 10,000-meter) at ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships[41] Leon Rotman, Romanian, sprint canoer, 2x Olympic champion (C-1 10,000 meter, C-1 1,000-meter) and bronze (C-1 1,000-meter), 14 national titles[41] Shaun Rubenstein, South Africa, canoer, World Marathon champion 2006[68] Cricket[edit] Michael Klinger Ben Ashkenazi, Australia (Victorian Bushrangers) Ali Bacher, South Africa, batsman and administrator (relative of Adam Bacher)[69] Mike Barnard, England, cricketer[69] Mark Bott, England, cricketer[70] Stevie Eskinazi, South African born, Australian raised, English wicketkeeper Mark Fuzes. Australian all rounder played for Hong Kong. Father Peter Fuzes kept goal for Australian Soccer team (see)[71] Dennis Gamsy, South Africa, Test wicket-keeper[72] Darren Gerard, England, cricketer[73] Norman Gordon, South Africa, fast bowler[69] Steven Herzberg, English-born Australian, cricketer[74] Sid Kiel, South Africa, opening batsman (Western Province)[75] Michael Klinger, Australia, batsman (Western Warriors)[69] Leonard "Jock" Livingston, Australia, cricketer[69] Bev Lyon, England, cricketer[69] Dar Lyon, England, cricketer (brother of Bev)[69] Greg, Jason, and Lara Molins, two brothers and a cousin from the same Irish family[74] Jon Moss, Australia, allrounder (Victorian Bushrangers)[69] John Raphael, England, batsman[69] Marshall Rosen, NSW Australia, cricketer and selector[76] Lawrence Seeff, South Africa, batsmen[77] Maurice Sievers, Australia, lower order batsman and fast-medium bowler[69] Bensiyon Songavkar, India, cricketer, MVP of 2009 Maccabiah Games cricket tournament[78] Fred Susskind, South Africa, Test batsman[69] Fred Trueman, England, English test fast bowler (a lifelong Christian)[69] Julien Wiener, Australia, Test cricketer[69] Mandy Yachad, South Africa, Test cricketer[69] Equestrian[edit] Margie Goldstein-Engle Robert Dover, US, 4x Olympic bronze, 1x world championship bronze (dressage)[79] Margie Goldstein-Engle, US, world championship silver, Pan American Games gold, silver, and bronze (jumping)[80] Edith Master, US, Olympic bronze (dressage)[26] Fencing[edit] Helene Mayer Soren Thompson Henri Anspach, Belgium (épée & foil), Olympic champion[26] Paul Anspach, Belgium (épée & foil), 2x Olympic champion[26] Norman Armitage (Norman Cohn), US (sabre), 17x US champion, Olympic bronze[26] Albert "Albie" Axelrod, US (foil); Olympic bronze, 4x US champion[8] Péter Bakonyi, Hungary (saber), Olympic 3x bronze[41] Cliff Bayer, US (foil); youngest US champion[37] Albert Bogen (Albert Bógathy), Austria (saber), Olympic silver[41] Tamir Bloom, US (épée); 2x US champion[37] Daniel Bukantz, US (foil); 4x US champion[37] Sergey Sharikov, Russia (saber), 2x Olympic champion, silver, bronze[26] Yves Dreyfus, France (épée), Olympic bronze, French champion[26] Ilona Elek, Hungary (saber), 2x Olympic champion[26] Boaz Ellis, Israel (foil), 5x Israeli champion[34] Siegfried "Fritz" Flesch, Austria (sabre), Olympic bronze[26] Dr. Dezsö Földes, Hungary (saber), 2x Olympic champion[26] Dr. Jenö Fuchs, Hungary (saber), 4x Olympic champion[81] Támas Gábor, Hungary (épée), Olympic champion[8] János Garay, Hungary (saber), Olympic champion, silver, bronze, killed by the Nazis[8] Dr. Oskar Gerde, Hungary (saber), 2x Olympic champion, killed by the Nazis[26] Dr. Sándor Gombos, Hungary (saber), Olympic champion[62] Vadim Gutzeit, Ukraine (saber), Olympic champion[82] Johan Harmenberg, Sweden (épée), Olympic champion[26] Delila Hatuel, Israel (foil), Olympian, ranked # 9 in world[83] Lydia Hatuel-Zuckerman, Israel (foil), 6x Israeli champion[84][85] Dr. Otto Herschmann, Austria (saber), Olympic silver[26] Emily Jacobson, US (saber), NCAA champion[86] Sada Jacobson, US (saber), ranked # 1 in the world, Olympic silver, 2x bronze[86] Allan Jay, British (épée & foil), Olympic 2x silver, world champion[26] Endre Kabos, Hungary (saber), 3x Olympic champion, bronze[26] Roman Kantor, Poland (épée), Nordic champion & Soviet champion, killed by the Nazis[26] Dan Kellner, US (foil), US champion[86] Byron Krieger, US[87] Grigory Kriss, Soviet (épée), Olympic champion, 2x silver[26] Allan Kwartler, US (saber), 3x Pan American Games champion[10] Alexandre Lippmann, France (épée), 2x Olympic champion, 2x silver, bronze[8] Helene Mayer, Germany & US (foil), Olympic champion[26] Ljubco Georgievski ????? ??????????? Kiro Gligorov ???? ???????? Nikola Gruevski ?????? ???????? Gjorge Ivanov ????? ?????? Gordana Jankuloska ??????? ?????????? Zoran Jolevski ????? ???????? Srgjan Kerim ????? ????? Lazar Koliševski ????? ?????????? Hari Kostov ???? ?????? Trifun Kostovski ?????? ????????? Ilinka Mitreva ?????? ??????? Lazar Mojsov ????? ?????? Tito Petkovski ???? ????????? Lui Temelkovski ??? ??????????? Boris Trajkovski ????? ?????????? Vasil Tupurkovski ????? ??????????? Zoran Zaev ????? ???? Partisans World War II freedom fighters edit Mirce Acev ????? ???? Mihajlo Apostolski ????j?? ?????????? Cede Filipovski Dame ???? ?????????? ???? Blagoj Jankov Muceto ?????? ?????? ?????? Orce Nikolov ???? ??????? Strašo Pindžur ?????? ?????? Hristijan Todorovski Karpoš ????????? ?????????? ?????? Revolutionaries edit Yordan Piperkata ?????? ???????? ????????? Goce Delcev ???? ????? Petar Pop Arsov ????? ??? ????? Dame Gruev ???? ????? Jane Sandanski ???? ????????? Dimitar Pop Georgiev Berovski ??????? ??? ???????? ???????? Ilyo Voyvoda ???? ??? ?????????? Pere Tošev ???? ????? Pitu Guli ???? ???? Dimo Hadži Dimov ???? ???? ????? Hristo Uzunov ?????? ?????? Literature edit Gjorgji Abadžiev ????? ??????? Petre M Andreevski ????? ? ?????????? Maja Apostoloska ???? ??????????? Dimitrija Cupovski ????????? ???????? Jordan Hadži Konstantinov Džinot ?????? ???? ???????????? ????? Vasil Iljoski ????? ?????? Slavko Janevski ?????? ???????? Blaže Koneski ????? ??????? Risto Krle ????? ???? Vlado Maleski ????? ??????? Mateja Matevski ?????? ???????? Krste Misirkov ????? ????????? Kole Nedelkovski ???? ??????????? Olivera Nikolova Anton Panov ????? ????? Gjorche Petrov ????? ?????? Vidoe Podgorec ????? ???????? Aleksandar Prokopiev ?????????? ????????? Koco Racin ???? ????? Jovica Tasevski Eternijan ?????? ???????? ????????? Gane Todorovski ???? ?????????? Stevan Ognenovski ?????? ?????????? Music edit Classical music edit Composers edit Atanas Badev ?????? ????? Dimitrije Bužarovski ????????? ?????????? Kiril Makedonski ????? ?????????? Toma Prošev ???? ?????? Todor Skalovski ????? ????????? Stojan Stojkov ?????? ??????? Aleksandar Džambazov ?????????? ???????? Conductors edit Borjan Canev ?????? ????? Instrumentalists edit Pianists Simon Trpceski ????? ???????? Opera singers edit Blagoj Nacoski ?????? ??????? Boris Trajanov ????? ???????? Popular and folk music edit Composers edit Darko Dimitrov ????? ???????? Slave Dimitrov ????? ???????? Jovan Jovanov ????? ??????? Ilija Pejovski ????? ???????? Musicians edit Bodan Arsovski ????? ???????? Goran Trajkoski ????? ????????? Ratko Dautovski ????? ????????? Kiril Džajkovski ????? ????????? Tale Ognenovski ???? ?????????? Vlatko Stefanovski ?????? ??????????? Stevo Teodosievski ????? ???????????? Aleksandra Popovska ?????????? ???????? Singers and Bands edit Lambe Alabakoski ????? ?????????? Anastasia ????????? Arhangel ???????? Kristina Arnaudova ???????? ????????? Kaliopi Bukle ??????? Dani Dimitrovska ???? ??????????? Riste Tevdoski ????? ???????? Karolina Goceva ???????? ?????? Vaska Ilieva ????? ?????? Andrijana Janevska ????????? ???????? Vlado Janevski ????? ???????? Jovan Jovanov ????? ??????? Leb i sol ??? ? ??? Aleksandar Makedonski ?????????? ?????????? Elvir Mekic ????? ????? Mizar ????? Jasmina Mukaetova ??????? ????e???? The Malagasy French Malgache are the ethnic group that forms nearly the entire population of Madagascar They are divided into two subgroups the "Highlander" Merina Sihanaka and Betsileo of the central plateau around Antananarivo Alaotra Ambatondrazaka and Fianarantsoa and the "coastal dwellers" elsewhere in the country This division has its roots in historical patterns of settlement The original Austronesian settlers from Borneo arrived between the third and tenth centuries and established a network of principalities in the Central Highlands region conducive to growing the rice they had carried with them on their outrigger canoes Sometime later a large number of settlers arrived from East Africa and established kingdoms along the relatively unpopulated coastlines The difference in ethnic origins remains somewhat evident between the highland and coastal regions In addition to the ethnic distinction between highland and coastal Malagasy one may speak of a political distinction as well Merina monarchs in the late th and early th century united the Merina principalities and brought the neighboring Betsileo people under their administration first They later extended Merina control over the majority of the coastal areas as well The military resistance and eventual defeat of most of the coastal communities assured their subordinate position vis à vis the Merina Betsileo alliance During the th and th centuries the French colonial administration capitalized on and further exacerbated these political inequities by appropriating existing Merina governmental infrastructure to run their colony This legacy of political inequity dogged the people of Madagascar after gaining independence in candidates ethnic and regional identities have often served to help or hinder their success in democratic elections Within these two broad ethnic and political groupings the Malagasy were historically subdivided into specifically named ethnic groups who were primarily distinguished from one another on the basis of cultural practices These were namely agricultural hunting or fishing practices construction style of dwellings music hair and clothing styles and local customs or taboos the latter known in the Malagasy language as fady citation needed The number of such ethnic groups in Madagascar has been debated The practices that distinguished many of these groups are less prevalent in the st century than they were in the past But many Malagasy are proud to proclaim their association with one or several of these groups as part of their own cultural identity "Highlander" ethnic groups Merina Sihanaka Betsileo Zafimaniry Coastal ethnic groups Antaifasy or Antefasy Antaimoro or Temoro or Antemoro Antaisaka or Antesaka Antambahoaka Antandroy or Tandroy Antankarana Antanosy or Tanosy Academia edit Afifi al Akiti Khasnor Johan historian Khoo Kay Kim Jomo Kwame Sundaram Danny Quah Harith Ahmad Architects edit Main article List of Malaysian architects Artists edit Main article List of Malaysian artists Business edit Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al Bukhary born Tan Sri Dato Loh Boon Siew – Tan Sri Jeffrey Cheah Tan Sri William Cheng Dato Choong Chin Liang born Tan Sri Dato Tony Fernandes born Lim Goh Tong – Tan Sri Tiong Hiew King Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow born Chung Keng Quee – Tan Sri Ananda Krishnan born Robert Kuok born Tan Sri Quek Leng Chan born Shoba Purushothaman Shah Hakim Zain Halim Saad Tan Sri Mohd Saleh Sulong Tan Sri Vincent Tan born Lillian Too born Tan Sri Dr Francis Yeoh Tun Daim Zainuddin born Tan Sri Kong Hon Kong Designers edit Bernard Chandran fashion designer Jimmy Choo born shoe designer Poesy Liang born artist writer philanthropist jewellery designer industrial designer interior architect music composer Inventors edit Yi Ren Ng inventor of the Lytro Entertainers edit Yasmin Ahmad – film director Stacy Angie Francissca Peter born Jamal Abdillah born Sudirman Arshad – Loganathan Arumugam died Datuk David Arumugam Alleycats Awal Ashaari Alvin Anthons born Asmawi bin Ani born Ahmad Azhar born Ning Baizura born Kasma Booty died Marion Caunter host of One In A Million and the TV Quickie Ella born Erra Fazira born Sean Ghazi born Fauziah Latiff born Angelica Lee born Daniel Lee Chee Hun born Fish Leong born Sheila Majid born Amy Mastura born Mohamad Nasir Mohamad born Shathiyah Kristian born Meor Aziddin Yusof born Ah Niu born Dayang Nurfaizah born Shanon Shah born Siti Nurhaliza born Misha Omar born Hani Mohsin – Aziz M Osman born Azmyl Yunor born P Ramlee born Aziz Sattar born Fasha Sandha born Ku Nazhatul Shima Ku Kamarazzaman born Nicholas Teo born Pete Teo Penny Tai born Hannah Tan born Jaclyn Victor born Chef Wan Adira Suhaimi Michael Wong born Victor Wong born Dato Michelle Yeoh Hollywood actress born James Wan director of Hollywood films like several Saw films Insidious The Conjuring Fast and Furious born Ziana Zain born Zee Avi Shila Amzah Yunalis Zarai Zamil Idris born Military edit Leftenan Adnan – Warrior from mainland Malaya Antanum Warrior from Sabah Borneo Rentap Warrior from Sarawak Syarif Masahor Warrior from Sarawak Monsopiad Warrior from Sabah Borneo Haji Abdul Rahman Limbong Warrior from Telemong Terengganu Mat Salleh Warrior from Sabah Borneo Rosli Dhobi Warrior from Sarawak Politicians edit Parameswara founder of Sultanate of Malacca Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al Haj st Prime Minister of independent Malaya Tun Abdul Razak nd Prime Minister V T Sambanthan Founding Fathers of Malaysia along with Tunku Abdul Rahman and Tan Cheng Lock Tun Dato Sir Tan Cheng Lock Founder of MCA Tun Hussein Onn rd Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad th Prime Minister Father of Modernisation Abdullah Ahmad Badawi th Prime Minister since Najib Tun Razak Current Prime Minister since Dato Seri Ong Ka Ting Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim Dato Wan Hisham Wan Salleh Nik Aziz Nik Mat Raja Nong Chik Zainal Abidin Federal Territory and Urban Wellbeing Minister Wan Azizah Wan Ismail Karpal Singh Lim Kit Siang Lim Guan Eng Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah Religious edit Antony Selvanayagam Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Penang Anthony Soter Fernandez Archbishop Emeritus of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur and Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Penang Gregory Yong – Second Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore Tan Sri Datuk Murphy Nicholas Xavier Pakiam Metropolitan archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kuala Lumpur president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of Malaysia Singapore and Brunei and publisher of the Catholic weekly newspaper The Herald Datuk Ng Moon Hing the fourth and current Anglican Bishop of West Malaysia Sportspeople edit Squash edit Datuk Nicol Ann David Ong Beng Hee Azlan Iskandar Low Wee Wern Badminton edit Chan Chong Ming men s doubles Dato Lee Chong Wei Chew Choon Eng men s doubles Wong Choong Hann Chin Eei Hui women s doubles Hafiz Hashim Roslin Hashim Wong Pei Tty women s doubles Choong Tan Fook men s doubles Lee Wan Wah men s doubles Koo Kien Keat men s doubles Tan Boon Heong men s doubles Retired edit Tan Aik Huang Eddy Choong Punch Gunalan Yap Kim Hock Foo Kok Keong Jalani Sidek Misbun Sidek Rashid Sidek Razif Sidek Cheah Soon Kit Lee Wan Wah Football soccer edit Brendan Gan Sydney FC Shaun Maloney Wigan Athletic Akmal Rizal Perak FA Kedah FA RC Strasbourg FCSR Haguenau Norshahrul Idlan Talaha Kelantan FA Khairul Fahmi Che Mat Kelantan FA Mohd Safiq Rahim Selangor FA Mohd Fadzli Saari Selangor FA PBDKT T Team FC SV Wehen Rudie Ramli Selangor FA PKNS F C SV Wehen Mohd Safee Mohd Sali Selangor FA Pelita Jaya Baddrol Bakhtiar Kedah FA Mohd Khyril Muhymeen Zambri Kedah FA Mohd Azmi Muslim Kedah FA Mohd Fadhli Mohd Shas Harimau Muda A FC ViOn Zlaté Moravce Mohd Irfan Fazail Harimau Muda A FC ViOn Zlaté Moravce Wan Zack Haikal Wan Noor Harimau Muda A FC ViOn Zlaté Moravce F C Ryukyu Nazirul Naim Che Hashim Harimau Muda A F C Ryukyu Khairul Izuan Abdullah Sarawak FA Persibo Bojonegoro PDRM FA Stanley Bernard Stephen Samuel Sabah FA Sporting Clube de Goa Nazmi Faiz Harimau Muda A SC Beira Mar Ahmad Fakri Saarani Perlis FA Atlético S C Chun Keng Hong Penang FA Chanthaburi F C Retired edit Serbegeth Singh owner founder of MyTeam Blackburn Rovers F C Global dvisor Mokhtar Dahari former Selangor FA and Malaysian player Lim Teong Kim former Hertha BSC player