Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of kabbalah named after Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the Jewish rabbi who developed it. Lurianic Kabbalah gave a seminal new account of Kabbalistic thought that its followers synthesised with, and read into, the earlier Kabbalah of the Zohar that had disseminated in Medieval circles.

Lurianic Kabbalah describes new doctrines of the origins of Creation, and the concepts of Olam HaTohu (Hebrew: עולם התהו "The World of Tohu-Chaos") and Olam HaTikun (Hebrew: עולם התיקון "The World of Tikun-Rectification"), which represent two archetypal spiritual states of being and consciousness. These concepts derive from Isaac Luria's interpretation of and mythical speculations on references in the Zohar. The main popularizer of Luria's ideas was Rabbi Hayyim ben Joseph Vital of Calabria, who claimed to be the official interpreter of the Lurianic system, though some disputed this claim. Together, the compiled teachings written by Luria's school after his death are metaphorically called "Kitvei HaARI" (Writings of the ARI), though they differed on some core interpretations in the early generations.

Previous interpretations of the Zohar had culminated in the rationally influenced scheme of Moses ben Jacob Cordovero in Safed, immediately before Luria's arrival. Both Cordovero's and Luria's systems gave Kabbalah a theological systemisation to rival the earlier eminence of Medieval Jewish philosophy. Under the influence of the mystical renaissance in 16th-century Safed, Lurianism became the near-universal mainstream Jewish theology in the early-modern era, both in scholarly circles and in the popular imagination. The Lurianic scheme, read by its followers as harmonious with, and successively more advanced than the Cordoverian, mostly displaced it, becoming the foundation of subsequent developments in Jewish mysticism. After the Ari, the Zohar was interpreted in Lurianic terms, and later esoteric Kabbalists expanded mystical theory within the Lurianic system. The later Hasidic and Mitnagdic movements diverged over implications of Lurianic Kabbalah, and its social role in popular mysticism. The Sabbatean mystical tradition would also derive its source from Lurianic messianism, but had a different understanding of the Kabbalistic interdependence of mysticism with Halakha Jewish observance.

Lurianic thought

Where the messianic aim remained only peripheral in the linear scheme of Cordovero, the more comprehensive theoretical scheme and meditative practices of Luria explained messianism as its central dynamic, incorporating the full diversity of previous Kabbalistic concepts as outcomes of its processes. Luria conceptualises the Spiritual Worlds through their inner dimension of Divine exile and redemption. The Lurianic mythos brought deeper Kabbalistic notions to the fore: theodicy (primordial origin of evil) and exile of the Shekhinah (Divine Presence), eschatological redemption, the cosmic role of each individual and the historical affairs of Israel, symbolism of sexuality in the supernal Divine manifestations, and the unconscious dynamics in the soul. Luria gave esoteric theosophical articulations to the most fundamental and theologically daring questions of existence.

Kabbalist views
Religious Kabbalists see the deeper comprehensiveness of Lurianic theory being due to its description and exploration of aspects of Divinity, rooted in the Ein Sof, that transcend the revealed, rationally apprehended mysticism described by Cordovero. The system of Medieval Kabbalah becomes incorporated as part of its wider dynamic. Where Cordovero described the Sefirot (Divine attributes) and the Four spiritual Realms, preceded by Adam Kadmon, unfolding sequentially out of the Ein Sof, Luria probed the supra-rational origin of these Five Worlds within the Infinite. This revealed new doctrines of Primordial Tzimtzum (contraction) and the Shevira (shattering) and reconfiguration of the sephirot. In Kabbalah, what preceded more deeply in origins, is also reflected within the inner dimensions of subsequent Creation, so that Luria was able to explain messianism, Divine aspects, and reincarnation, Kabbalistic beliefs that remained unsystemised beforehand.

Cordovero and Medieval attempts at Kabbalistic systemisation, influenced by Medieval Jewish philosophy, approach Kabbalistic theory through the rationally conceived paradigm of "Hishtalshelut" (sequential "Evolution" of spiritual levels between the Infinite and the Finite - the vessels/external frames of each spiritual World). Luria systemises Kabbalah as a dynamic process of "Hitlabshut" ("Enclothement" of higher souls within lower vessels - the inner/soul dimensions of each spiritual World). This sees inner dimensions within any level of Creation, whose origin transcends the level in which they are enclothed. The spiritual paradigm of Creation is transformed into a dynamical interactional process in Divinity. Divine manifestations enclothe within each other, and are subject to exile and redemption:
The concept of hitlabshut ("enclothement") implies a radical shift of focus in considering the nature of Creation. According to this perspective, the chief dynamic of Creation is not evolutionary, but rather interactional. Higher strata of reality are constantly enclothing themselves within lower strata, like the soul within a body, thereby infusing every element of Creation with an inner force that transcends its own position within the universal hierarchy. Hitlabshut is very much a "biological" dynamic, accounting for the life-force which resides within Creation; hishtalshelut, on the other hand, is a "physical" one, concerned with the condensed-energy of "matter" (spiritual vessels) rather than the life-force of the soul.
Due to this deeper, more internal paradigm, the new doctrines Luria introduced explain Kabbalistic teachings and passages in the Zohar that remained superficially understood and externally described before. Seemingly unrelated concepts become unified as part of a comprehensive, deeper picture. Kabbalistic systemisers before Luria, culminating with Cordovero, were influenced by Maimonides' philosophical Guide, in their quest to decipher the Zohar intellectually, and unify esoteric wisdom with Jewish philosophy. In Kabbalah this embodies the Neshama (Understanding) mental level of the soul. The teachings of Luria challenge the soul to go beyond mental limitations. Though presented in intellectual terms, it remains a revealed, supra-rational doctrine, giving a sense of being beyond intellectual grasp. This corresponds to the soul level of Haya (Wisdom insight), described as "touching/not-touching" apprehension.

Academic views
In the academic study of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem saw Lurianism as a historically located response to the trauma of Spanish exile, a fully expressed mythologising of Judaism, and a uniquely paradoxically messianic mysticism, as mysticism phenomenologically usually involves withdrawal from community. In more recent academia, Moshe Idel has challenged Scholem's historical influence in Lurianism, seeing it instead as an evolving development within the inherent factors of Jewish mysticism by itself. In his monograph Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship, Stanford University Press, 2003, Lawrence Fine explores the world of Isaac Luria from the point of view of the lived experience of Luria and his disciples.

Influence

Sabbatean mystical heresies

Lurianic Kabbalah has been accused by some of being the cause of the spread of the Sabbatean Messiahs Shabbetai Tzvi (1626–1676) and Jacob Frank (1726–1791), and their Kabbalistically based heresies. The 16th century mystical renaissance in Safed, led by Moshe Cordovero, Joseph Karo and Isaac Luria, made Kabbalistic study a popular goal of Jewish students, to some extent competing for attention with Talmudic study, while also capturing the hold of the public imagination. Shabbeteanism emerged in this atmosphere, coupled with the oppressions of Exile, alongside genuine traditional mystic circles.

Where Isaac Luria's scheme emphasised the democratic role of every person in redeeming the fallen sparks of holiness, allocating the Messiah only a conclusive arrival in the process, Shabbetai's prophet Nathan of Gaza interpreted his messianic role as pivotal in reclaiming those sparks lost in impurity. Now faith in his messianic role, after he apostasised to Islam, became necessary, as well as faith in his antinomian actions. Jacob Frank claimed to be a reincarnation of Shabbetai Tzvi, sent to reclaim sparks through the most anarchist actions of his followers, claiming the breaking of the Torah in his emerged messianic era was now its fulfilment, the opposite of the messianic necessity of Halakhic devotion by Luria and the Kabbalists. Instead, for the elite 16th century Kabbalists of Safed after the Expulsion from Spain, they sensed a personal national responsibility, expressed through their mystical renaissance, ascetic strictures, devoted brotherhood, and close adherence to normative Jewish practice.

Influence on ritual practice and prayer meditation

Lurianic Kabbalah remained the leading school of mysticism in Judaism, and is an important influence on Hasidism and Sefardic kabbalists. In fact, only a minority of today's Jewish mystics belong to other branches of thought in Zoharic mysticism. Some Jewish kabbalists have said that the followers of Shabbetai Tzvi strongly avoided teachings of Lurianic Kabbalah because his system disproved their notions. On the other hand, the Shabbetians did use the Lurianic concepts of sparks trapped in impurity and pure souls being mixed with the impure to justify some of their antinomian actions.

Luria introduced his mystic system into religious observance. Every commandment had a particular mystic meaning. The Shabbat with all its ceremonies was looked upon as the embodiment of the Divinity in temporal life, and every ceremony performed on that day was considered to have an influence upon the superior world. Every word and syllable of the prescribed prayers contain hidden names of God upon which one should meditate devoutly while reciting. New mystic ceremonies were ordained and codified under the name of Shulkhan Arukh HaARI (The "Code of Law of the Ari"). In addition, one of the few writings of Luria himself comprises three Sabbath table hymns with mystical allusions. From the third meal's hymn:
You princes of the palace, who yearn to behold the splendour of Zeir AnpinBe present at this meal at which the King leaves His imprintExult, rejoice in this gathering together with the angels and all supernal beings
Rejoice now, at this most propitious time, when there is no sadness...I herewith invite the Ancient of Days at this auspicious time, and impurity will be utterly removed...
In keeping with the custom of engaging in all-night Torah study on the festival of Shavuot, Isaac Luria arranged a special service for the night vigil of Shavuot, the Tikkun Leil Shavuot ("Rectification for Shavuot Night"). It is commonly recited in synagogue, with Kaddish if the Tikkun is studied in a group of ten. Afterwards, Hasidim immerse in a mikveh before dawn.

Modern Jewish spirituality and dissenting views

Rabbi Luria's ideas enjoy wide recognition among Jews today. Orthodox as well as Reform, Reconstructionist and members of other Jewish groups frequently acknowledge a moral obligation to "repair the world" (tikkun olam). This idea draws upon Luria's teaching that shards of divinity remain contained in flawed material creation and that ritual and ethical deeds by the righteous help to release this energy. The mystical theology of the Ari does not exercise the same level of influence everywhere, however. Communities where Luria's thought holds less sway include many German and Modern Orthodox communities, groups carrying forward Spanish and Portuguese traditions, a sizable segment of Baladi Yemenite Jews (see Dor Daim), and other groups that follow a form of Torah Judaism based more on classical authorities like Maimonides and the Geonim.

With its Rationalist project, the 19th century Haskalah movement and the critical study of Judaism dismissed Kabbalah. In the 20th century, Gershom Scholem initiated the academic study of Jewish mysticism, utilising historical methodology, but reacting against what he saw as its exclusively Rationalist dogma. Rather, he identified Jewish mysticism as the vital undercurrent of Jewish thought, periodically renewing Judaism with new mystical or messianic impetus. The 20th century academic respect of Kabbalah, as well as wider interest in spirituality, bolster a renewed Kabbalistic interest from non-Orthodox Jewish denominations in the 20th century. This is often expressed through the form of Hasidic incorporation of Kabbalah, embodied in Neo-Hasidism and Jewish Renewal.

Contemporary traditional Lurianism

Study of the Kitvei Ha'Ari (writings of Isaac Luria's disciples) continues mostly today among traditional-form Kabbalistic circles and in sections of the Hasidic movement. Mekubalim mizra'chim (oriental Sephardi Kabbalists), following the tradition of Haim Vital and the mystical legacy of the Rashash (1720–1777, considered by Kabbalists to be the reincarnation of the Ari), see themselves as direct heirs to and in continuity with Luria's teachings and meditative scheme.

Both sides of the Hasidic-Mitnagdic schism from the 18th century, upheld the theological world view of Lurianic Kabbalah. It is a misconception to see the Rabbinic opposition to Hasidic Judaism, at least in its formative origin, as deriving from adherence to Rationalist Medieval Jewish philosophical method. The leader of the Rabbinic Mitnagdic opposition to the mystical Hasidic revival, the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797), was intimately involved in Kabbalah, following Lurianic theory, and produced Kabbalistically focused writing himself, while criticising Medieval Jewish Rationalism. His disciple, Chaim Volozhin, the main theoretician of Mitnagdic Judaism, differed from Hasidism over practical interpretation of the Lurianic tzimtzum. For all intents, Mitnagdic Judaism followed a transcendent stress in tzimtzum, while Hasidism stressed the immanence of God. This theoretical difference led Hasidism to popular mystical focus beyond elitist restrictions, while it underpinned the Mitnagdic focus on Talmudic, non-mystical Judaism for all but the elite, with a new theoretical emphasis on Talmudic Torah study in the Lithuanian Yeshiva movement.

The largest scale Jewish development based on Lurianic teaching was Hasidism, though it adapted Kabbalah to its own thought. Joseph Dan describes the Hasidic-Mitnagdic schism as a battle between two conceptions of Lurianic Kabbalah. Mitnagdic elite Kabbalah was essentially loyal to Lurianic teaching and practice, while Hasidism introduced new popularised ideas, such as the centrality of Divine immanence and Deveikut to all Jewish activity, and the social mystical role of the Tzadik Hasidic leadership.

Literal and non-literal interpretations of the Tzimtzum

In the decades after Luria and in the early 18th century, different opinions formed among Kabbalists over the meaning of tzimtzum, the Divine self-withdrawal: should it be taken literally or symbolically? Immanuel Hai Ricci (Yosher Levav, 1736–7) took tzimtzum literally, while Joseph Ergas (Shomer Emunim, 1736) and Abraham Herrera held that tzimtzum was to be understood metaphorically.

Hasidic and Mitnagdic views of the Tzimtzum

The issue of the tzimtzum underpinned the new, public popularisation of mysticism embodied in 18th century Hasidism. Its central doctrine of almost-Panentheistic Divine Immanence, shaping daily fervour, emphasised the most non-literal stress of the tzimtzum. The systematic articulation of this Hasidic approach by Shneur Zalman of Liadi in the second section of Tanya, outlines a Monistic Illusionism of Creation from the Upper Divine Unity perspective. To Schneur Zalman, the tzimtzum only affected apparent concealment of the Ohr Ein Sof. The Ein Sof, and the Ohr Ein Sof, actually remain omnipresent, this world nullified into its source. Only, from the Lower, Worldly Divine Unity perspective, the tzimtzum gives the illusion of apparent withdrawal. In truth, "I, the Eternal, I have not changed" (Malachi 3:6), as interpreting the tzimtzum with any literal tendency would be ascribing false corporeality to God.

Norman Lamm describes the alternative Hasidic-Mitnagdic interpretations of this. To Chaim Volozhin, the main theoretician of the Mitnagdim Rabbinic opposition to Hasidism, the illusionism of Creation, arising from a metaphorical tzimtzum is true, but does not lead to Panentheism, as Mitnagdic theology emphasised Divine transcendence, where Hasidism emphasised immanence. As it is, the initial general impression of Lurianic Kabbalah is one of transcendence, implied by the notion of tzimtzum. Rather, to Hasidic thought, especially in its Chabad systemisation, the Atzmus ultimate Divine essence is expressed only in finitude, emphasising Hasidic Immanence. Norman Lamm sees both thinkers as subtle and sophisticated. The Mitnagdim disagreed with Panentheism, in the early opposition of the Mitnagdic leader, the Vilna Gaon seeing it as heretical. Chaim Volzhin, the leading pupil of the Vilna Gaon, was at the same time both more moderate, seeking to end the conflict, and most theologically principled in his opposition to the Hasidic interpretation. He opposed panentheism as both theology and practice, as its mystical spiritualisation of Judaism displaced traditional Talmudic learning, as was liable to inspire antinomian blurring of Halachah Jewish observance strictures, in quest of a mysticism for the common folk.

As Norman Lamm summarises, to Schneur Zalman and Hasidism, God relates to the world as a reality, through His Immanence. Divine immanence - the Human perspective, is pluralistic, allowing mystical popularisation in the material world, while safeguarding Halacha. Divine Transcendence - the Divine perspective, is Monistic, nullifying Creation into illusion. To Chaim Volozhin and Mitnagdism, God relates to the world as it is through His transcendence. Divine immanence - the way God looks at physical Creation, is Monistic, nullifying it into illusion. Divine Transcendence - the way Man perceives and relates to Divinity is pluralistic, allowing Creation to exist on its own terms. In this way, both thinkers and spiritual paths affirm a non-literal interpretation of the tzimtzum, but Hasidic spirituality focuses on the nearness of God, while Mitnagdic spirituality focuses on the remoteness of God. They then configure their religious practice around this theological difference, Hasidism placing Deveikut fervour as its central practice, Mitnagdism further emphasising intellectual Talmudic Torah study as its supreme religious activity.

See also
Kabbalah

References

External links
 Learn Kabbalah: Lurianic Kabbalah
 Which Lurianic Kabbalah?
 Notes on the Study of Later Kabbalah in English: The Safed Period & Lurianic Kabbalah

Kabbalah
Isaac Luria

Lurianic Kabbalah


Hubert Hurkacz (; born 11 February 1997) is a Polish professional tennis player. He has been ranked as high as world No. 9 in singles by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which he first achieved in November 2021, making him the highest-ranked Polish man in singles history. He has won seven ATP Tour singles titles, including two Masters 1000 titles at the 2021 Miami Open and the 2023 Shanghai Masters, becoming the first Pole to win an ATP Masters 1000 title. Hurkacz also has a career-high ranking of world No. 30 in doubles, which he attained in June 2022.

As a junior, Hurkacz was ranked as high as No. 29 in the world. He and his partner Alex Molčan were the runners-up at the 2015 Australian Open boys' doubles final. As a professional, he broke into the top 100 for the first time in 2018 after reaching the second rounds of the 2018 French Open and 2018 US Open. That year, he qualified for the Next Generation ATP Finals, where he won against Jaume Munar, but lost to Frances Tiafoe and Stefanos Tsitsipas. In 2019, he won his first ATP title at the 2019 Winston-Salem Open. The next year, he defeated three higher-ranked opponents at the 2020 ATP Cup and reached the semifinals of the 2020 ATP Auckland Open. In doing so, he entered the top 30 of the world rankings. In 2021, after winning his second and third singles titles, he went on to reach his first Grand Slam semifinal at the 2021 Wimbledon Championships and became the second Polish man to make a semifinals appearance at a Grand Slam after Jerzy Janowicz in 2013.

Hurkacz is an all-court player. At , he also possesses a serve reaching up to  to set up effective one-two punches. In addition to being a defensive baseliner, he has often included netplay into his style and has been recognized for his penchant for playing serve-and-volley to close points.

Early life and background
Hurkacz was born on 11 February 1997 to Zofia Maliszewska-Hurkacz and Krzysztof Hurkacz in Wrocław, Poland as the first of two children. His younger sister, Nika, is ten years younger and also plays tennis. Hurkacz grew up in a family with athletic prowess. His mother was a junior tennis champion in Poland and one of his uncles, Tomasz Maliszewski, played tennis professionally. His grandfather was also a volleyball player at an international level. When asked whether his family's history shaped him to become the athlete he became, Hurkacz replied, "The [sporting] genes, the motivation in the family, the love for the sport. I think they have helped me a lot."

Hurkacz began playing tennis at the age of five after his mother introduced him to the sport as she practiced. His mother and father were his first teachers but he later enrolled in classes and started playing more consistently. He later became interested in professional tennis after watching Roger Federer on television. He has stated that if tennis was not his future, he would have pursued either basketball or motor racing, or he would continue his education. By 2014, Hurkacz had established himself as a member of the group of the most talented young Polish tennis players at the time, alongside Kamil Majchrzak and Jan Zieliński.

Career

2018: Grand Slam and Next Generation ATP Finals matches

Hurkacz played in the main draw at the French Open and defeated Tennys Sandgren in the first round. This marked his first victory at a Grand Slam and at any ATP main-draw event. He lost in the second round to third seed Marin Čilić in four sets.

In August, Hurkacz made his US Open debut. He began as the sixth seed in the qualifying draw and reached his third consecutive Grand Slam main draw as a qualifier, beating John-Patrick Smith, Egor Gerasimov and Pedro Martínez Portero (all in straight sets) to enter into the first round. There, he faced Stefano Travaglia who, like many others, fell victim to the extreme heat and retired. In the second round, Hurkacz lost to 2014 US Open champion Čilić in their second meeting.

In November, Hurkacz played at the 2018 Next Generation ATP Finals held in Milan, where he won against Jaume Munar but lost to Frances Tiafoe and Stefanos Tsitsipas. At the end of the season, Hurkacz received a nomination for the ATP Newcomer of the Year Award.

2019: First ATP title and top 40 debut

Hurkacz started his season at the Maharashtra Open in Pune, India. He continued at the Canberra Challenger, where he won the title after defeating Ilya Ivashka in the final. Hurkacz followed that up by making his debut at the Australian Open. He faced one of the best servers on the Tour, drawing Ivo Karlović in the opening round at Melbourne Park. After winning the first set, Hurkacz lost the match in four sets, all of which were tiebreakers. At the Dubai Championships, he defeated Corentin Moutet in the first round and then went on to win against No. 1 seeded player, Kei Nishikori, which marked his first ever win against a top 10 player. Hurkacz lost in the quarterfinals in three sets to the eventual runner-up of the tournament, Stefanos Tsitsipas.

In March, Hurkacz played at the Indian Wells Open, where he made it to the quarterfinals of an ATP Masters 1000 event for the first time in his career. On his way to the quarterfinals, he defeated Kei Nishikori in the third round and Denis Shapovalov in the fourth round. In the quarterfinals, he lost to Roger Federer. Following Indian Wells, Hurkacz achieved a new career high singles ranking of world No. 54. He continued at Miami, where he defeated Matteo Berrettini in first round. In the second round, Hurkacz took down the 2019 Indian Wells Open champion Dominic Thiem, in straight sets, before falling to Félix Auger-Aliassime in the third round.

At the Madrid Open, Hurkacz defeated Alex de Minaur and Lucas Pouille. He lost to Alexander Zverev in the third round after winning the first set. He continued at the French Open, where he lost to world No. 1, Novak Djokovic, in the first round.

Hurkacz later produced an upset in the first round of the Eastbourne International, with a victory over seventh seed Marco Cecchinato in just over an hour. He then defeated Steve Johnson in the second round. In the quarterfinals Hurkacz lost a tight match against the eventual champion Taylor Fritz.

For the first time in his career, Hurkacz reached the third round of a Grand Slam. At Wimbledon, he defeated Dušan Lajović and Leonardo Mayer to set up a third-round match with world No. 1 Djokovic. For two sets, Hurkacz gave Djokovic all he could handle before eventually succumbing to the top seed in four sets. At the Rogers Cup, Hurkacz defeated Taylor Fritz and Stefanos Tsitsipas before losing his third-round match to Gaël Monfils. Two weeks later, Hurkacz defeated Benoît Paire to win his first ATP title in Winston-Salem. In October, Hurkacz prevailed over Monfils in straight sets in the second round of the Shanghai Masters. In the third round he lost to Stefanos Tsitsipas.

2020: First Masters doubles title and top 30 debut
At the 2020 ATP Cup, Hurkacz defeated a trio of higher-ranked opponents: Dominic Thiem, Diego Schwartzman and Borna Ćorić. Sixth seed, Hurkacz picked up where he left off at the ATP Cup, advancing to the semifinal of the ATP Auckland Open with victories over Lorenzo Sonego, Mikael Ymer, and Feliciano López. Seeded No. 31 at the Australian Open, Hurkacz reached the second round, defeating Dennis Novak before falling to John Millman in straight sets. With this successful run he reached the top 30 at world No. 28, on 3 February 2020.

Playing at the Rotterdam Open Hurkacz lost a three set 1st round match to Tsitsipas. He continued in doubles with Auger-Aliassime. To reach the quarterfinal, they defeated third seeds Nikola Mektić and Wesley Koolhof. At Dubai, Hurkacz lost to Alexander Bublik in the first round.

After tennis stopped in March 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic, Hurkacz resumed training with his coach Craig Boynton at the Saddlebrook Academies in Florida.

In May, Hurkacz played at the UTR Pro Match Series presented by Tennis Channel, a two-day round-robin tournament in West Palm Beach, Florida. Four top 60 ATP players including Hurkacz, Miomir Kecmanović, Reilly Opelka and Tommy Paul competed in the inaugural edition from 8–9 May 2020.

In August, Hurkacz traveled to New York City for the Cincinnati Open. In the first round he lost to John Isner. He continued at the US Open, where he defeated Peter Gojowczyk in the first round. In the second round he lost to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. Seeded fifth at the Austrian Open Kitzbühel, Hurkacz defeated João Sousa in the first round. At the Italian Open, he defeated 2020 US Open quarterfinalist Andrey Rublev before falling to eighth seed Diego Schwartzman in the third round.

Hurkacz continued at the French Open where he was seeded at No. 29. In the first round he lost to Tennys Sandgren in five sets.

Hurkacz and Auger-Aliassime ended the six-match winning streak of Łukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo to reach their maiden doubles team final at the Paris Masters. They defeated US Open champions Mate Pavić and Bruno Soares in the final.

2021: First Masters singles title, Major semifinal, ATP Finals debut, World No. 9

Hurkacz started his season at the Delray Beach Open where he was seeded fourth. He advanced to his second career ATP Tour final in straight sets. In the final, he defeated Sebastian Korda to win his second ATP title.  Next, Hurkacz played at the 2021 Great Ocean Road Open in Melbourne, where he reached the quarterfinals in both singles and doubles. Coming into the Australian Open as the No. 26 seed, he lost to Mikael Ymer in the first round.

At the Rotterdam Open, Hurkacz struck 17 aces to knock out Adrian Mannarino in straight sets. In the second round, he lost to second-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas in three sets. He continued at the Dubai Championships, where he defeated Richard Gasquet before falling to third-seeded Denis Shapovalov in the third round.

In March, Hurkacz participated at the Miami Open. He defeated Denis Shapovalov, Milos Raonic, Tsitsipas, Rublev, and Jannik Sinner en route to his first Masters 1000 title and third ATP title overall. By lifting the title in Miami, he entered the top 20 for the first time and reached a career-high ranking of No. 16 on 5 April 2021.

At the Halle Open he reached his second doubles final partnering again with Auger-Aliassime, but lost to third-seeded German Kevin Krawietz and Romanian Horia Tecău.

As the 14th seed at Wimbledon, Hurkacz defeated Lorenzo Musetti, Marcos Giron and Alexander Bublik all in straight sets to reach the fourth round at a Grand Slam for the first time in his career. In the fourth round Hurkacz defeated second seed Daniil Medvedev, his third top-10 win of the year. He was the fifth Polish man to reach the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Hurkacz then defeated eight-time Wimbledon champion and sixth seed Roger Federer in the quarterfinals in three sets, in what would transpire to be the Swiss player's final professional singles match. With this victory, he became the first man since Mario Ančić in 2002 to defeat Federer in straight sets at Wimbledon. Hurkacz became only the second Polish man in history to reach the semifinals at a Grand Slam (after Jerzy Janowicz at Wimbledon in 2013). Hurkacz then lost to 7th-seed Matteo Berrettini in the semifinals. With this successful run he entered the top 15 in the rankings at World No. 11 on 12 July 2021.

Following his Wimbledon run, Hurkacz attended the 2020 Summer Olympics and entered as the seventh seed. He defeated Luke Saville in the first round before falling in a stunning defeat to Liam Broady in a second round three-setter. For the year's US Open Series, Hurkacz embarked on his first tournament of the North American summer swing at the Canadian Open in Toronto, where the seventh seed defeated Nikoloz Basilashvili to reach the quarterfinals before he lost to top seed Daniil Medvedev in a tight three-set match involving two tiebreaks. The following week, ninth-seeded Hurkacz took on the Cincinnati Masters and defeated former world No. 1 Andy Murray in straight sets before losing to Pablo Carreño Busta in the third round in another hard-fought match with two tiebreak sets. The loss ended Hurkacz's 12-match win streak in the United States following his success at Delray Beach and Miami earlier in the year. In New York, Hurkacz embarked on the US Open as the 10th seed. He defeated Egor Gerasimov in the first round in straight sets before he was ousted by Andreas Seppi in a five-set second round match with a final set tiebreak.

After his loss in New York, Hurkacz headed to the 2021 Moselle Open to play in both the singles and doubles tournaments. In the singles, he was drawn as the top seed. After he defeated Lucas Pouille, Murray, and Peter Gojowczyk without dropping a set, he beat Carreño Busta in another straight-set win in the final and earned himself his fourth ATP title. In the doubles, after making the finals without dropping a set, Hurkacz and his partner, Jan Zieliński, defeated Hugo Nys and Arthur Rinderknech in straight sets to win the tournament. Hurkacz's win gave him his second career doubles title and made him the first player to sweep both titles in the tournament's history. The win earned him a top 50 debut in doubles and his then-career-high doubles ranking of world No. 47 on 27 September 2021.

Seeded eighth at the 2021 Indian Wells Masters, he reached the quarterfinals without dropping a set after beating Alexei Popyrin, Frances Tiafoe, and Aslan Karatsev. There, he lost to Grigor Dimitrov in a three-set match that ended in a deciding tiebreak. After the tournament, Hurkacz made his debut in the top 10 at No. 10 on 18 October and became just the second male Polish tennis player to be ranked inside the top 10 in singles after Wojciech Fibak achieved the feat in 1977.

At the Paris Masters, Hurkacz defeated qualifier Tommy Paul and lucky loser Dominik Koepfer to reach the quarterfinals. There, he beat Australian James Duckworth, to take the 8th and final spot at the ATP Finals. He is the second Polish player to earn a spot at the event in tournament history (after 1976 runner-up Wojciech Fibak). Hurkacz lost to Novak Djokovic in the semifinals in three sets. Due to his result at the tournament, his ranking shot up to No. 9 thus surpassing Wojciech Fibak for the highest ranked Polish man in ATP singles ranking history.

2022: Second Masters singles final and doubles title, ATP 500 title

In January Hubert Hurkacz participated at the 2022 ATP Cup, where his win over Diego Schwartzman sealed victory for Poland over Argentina and allowed Polish team to advance to the semifinals. At the 2022 Australian Open Hurkacz defeated Egor Gerasimov before falling to Adrian Mannarino in the second round. Seeded fourth at the 2022 ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam Hurkacz overpowered Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the first round. In the second round he lost to Lorenzo Musetti in three sets.

At the 2022 Dubai Tennis Championships Hurkacz reached his first ATP 500 semifinal when he defeated Jannik Sinner in the quarterfinal. Seeded 5th he lost to 2nd seed Andrey Rublev in the semifinal.

In March, Hurkacz, seeded eighth, entered into the Miami Open where he was the defending champion. After wins over Arthur Rinderknech, Aslan Karatsev and Lloyd Harris, he reached the quarterfinals where he defeated top seeded Daniil Medvedev. In the semifinals, he lost in a close match to Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets, which included two tiebreaks. Hurkacz also entered the doubles tournament with John Isner as wildcards, where they won the title, defeating Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski in the final.

At the Monte Carlo Masters, Hurkacz recorded his 100th career victory by defeating Pedro Martínez in the second round. He then defeated Albert Ramos Viñolas to reach his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal on a clay court. At the quarterfinals he fell short to Grigor Dimitrov again in a three set thriller.

In May, Hurkacz participated at the Madrid Open achieving victories over Hugo Dellien, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Dušan Lajović. In the quarterfinal, he lost to World No. 1 Novak Djokovic in straight sets.
At the 2022 Italian Open (tennis), Hurkacz lost in the first round to David Goffin in two tiebreak sets.

He reached the fourth round at the French Open for the first time after beating David Goffin in the third round. He lost in the fourth round to the Norwegian Casper Ruud in four sets. With that match Hurkacz concluded his clay season as one of the best in his career so far with a win loss record of 9–3 (75% win record).

In June, he won the Halle Open, his first title of 2022, on grass, as well as his first ATP 500 title, winning against the world No.1 Daniil Medvedev in the final. On the way to the final he defeated Maxime Cressy, Ugo Humbert, Félix Auger-Aliassime and Nick Kyrgios. This also became his fifth singles final in a row that he won and became the seventh player in the Open Era to win the first five ATP tour finals.
He lost his first round match at the 2022 Wimbledon Championships to Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in a tight  hours five set match with a super tiebreak in the fifth after saving three match points.

At the Canadian Open Hurkacz battled past Emil Ruusuvuori, Albert Ramos Viñolas, Nick Kyrgios and fourth seed Casper Ruud to reach the final. In the final he lost to Pablo Carreño Busta in three sets. The defeat ended Hurkacz's 5-ATP Tour finals win streak. At the same tournament, he reached the semifinals in doubles with compatriot Zieliński defeating en route sixth seeds Puetz/Venus in the first round, Bopanna/Middelkoop in the second and fourth seeds, French Open champions Arévalo/Rogers in the quarterfinals.

In September, Hurkacz participated at the Moselle Open as the defending champion and reached the semifinal after defeating Dominic Thiem and Arthur Rinderknech. In the semifinal he lost to Lorenzo Sonego in straight sets.

In October, he entered the Astana Open and defeated Francisco Cerúndolo and Alexander Bublik in the first and second rounds respectively. He advanced to the quarterfinal where he lost to Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets. At the 2022 European Open in Antwerp, he also reached the quarterfinals but lost to Dominic Thiem. At the 2022 Erste Bank Open in Vienna he advanced to his third consecutive quarterfinal where he faced Borna Ćorić losing a tight three-set match featuring two tie-breaks. At the Paris Masters, he beat Adrian Mannarino in the first round before losing to the eventual champion Holger Rune in the second round.

2023: United Cup semifinalist, second Masters title

Ranked No. 10 at the 2023 United Cup Hurkacz defeated Alexander Bublik to give Poland a 2–1 lead against Kazakhstan. Hurkacz then defeated Switzerland's Stan Wawrinka to help Poland advance to the Brisbane City Finals. Paired with Iga Świątek against the Italian pair of Camilla Rosatello and Lorenzo Musetti, Hubi and Iga won the decisive point to send Poland into the United Cup Final Four in Sydney.

At the 2023 Australian Open Hurkacz, the No. 10 seed, defeated Pedro Martínez in the first round. In the second round he faced Lorenzo Sonego and won the match in five sets. He defeated Denis Shapovalov in the next round in five sets and advanced to the fourth round, his best result at Australian Open so far. He played against Sebastian Korda and lost a tight five-set match, which ended in a super tiebreak.

In February, he reached the final in Marseille defeating Leandro Riedi, Mikael Ymer and Alexander Bublik en route. In the final, he beat Benjamin Bonzi in straight sets to claim his sixth career singles title.

In March, at the 2023 Miami Open he reached the third round with a win over lucky loser Thanasi Kokkinakis after saving five match points, playing in the longest three sets match of the season thus far, lasting 3 hours and 31 minutes with three tiebreaks.

At the 2023 Monte-Carlo Masters he recorded his 50th Masters win, more than any other Polish male player, defeating Laslo Djere in another also close to three and half hours battle with three tiebreaks saving a match point. In the second round he defeated Jack Draper before losing to Jannik Sinner in three sets in the third round.

In May, Hurkacz entered the 2023 French Open as the 13th seed. In the first round, he defeated David Goffin in five sets. In the second round, he played against Tallon Griekspoor and again won the match in five sets. He was subsequently upset in the third round by unseeded Juan Pablo Varillas in five sets.

At Wimbledon, Hurkacz entered the tournament as the 17th seed. He reached the fourth round after eliminating Albert Ramos Viñolas, Jan Choinski and Lorenzo Musetti all in straight sets. In the fourth round, despite having served 33 aces, he lost to second seed Novak Djokovic in four sets featuring two tie-breaks.
At the National Bank Open, Hurkacz, the last year's runner-up at the event, reached third round after beating Alexander Bublik and Miomir Kecmanović. In the third round, he lost to the reigning World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz in three sets.
At the Western & Southern Open, Hurkacz defeated Thanasi Kokkinakis, Borna Ćorić, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Alexei Popyrin. In the semifinal, he again lost to the World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz in three sets. In September, he made his debut appearance at the Laver Cup representing Team Europe.

In October he reached his third Masters career final at the 2023 Rolex Shanghai Masters defeating Fábián Marozsán and Sebastian Korda. In the final, he defeated Andrey Rublev in three sets to claim his second Masters title and his seventh overall. As a result he returned to world No. 11 in the singles rankings on 16 October 2023. Hurkacz reached another final at the ATP 500 2023 Swiss Indoors defeating Ugo Humbert. In the final he lost to the defending champion Félix Auger-Aliassime.

Playing style

Hurkacz plays an all-court game with an emphasis on defensive baseline play, and former top 10 player Wojciech Fibak stated that Hurkacz is "an excellent, versatile player who can attack, accelerate and defend". Hurkacz is a big hitter, given that he stands 196 cm (6'5"). He is an effective server, with a top serve capable of reaching , and can hit powerfully from both his forehand and backhand. But like many of the tour's more powerful players, consistency has been described as an issue. Hurkacz plays solidly from the back of the court. He plays a low, flat and dangerous ball, while holding the ball in court. Over the years, Hurkacz has also developed a reputation as a diver on court. Speaking of his unique moves, Hurkacz explains, "I always enjoy grass courts, when you play on the hardcourt or clay court it's probably better not to dive as when you're falling down from the dive you can scratch yourself, on the grass, it's pretty comfortable. Sometimes, trying to get to a ball which is pretty far away, you just have to do it." He has also been described as a serve-and-volley player, especially on grass courts. His coach, Craig Boynton, summarized Hurkacz's style by comparing it to that of Andy Murray: "I think if you look at him, people have said he kind of mirrors Andy Murray with a similar routine on returns, a little bit of a similar backhand. He's a little taller than Andy. Andy's movement was phenomenal. But Hubi's a very good athlete, too."

Despite all tennis players being taught to keep their eye on the ball, Hurkacz does quite the opposite. In a 2019 interview with L'Équipe, he admitted, "I confess, it's true, I close my eyes when I hit the ball. In fact, I've probably always played like that, and it's been a while since I've been noticed."

Coaches
In the early years (2010–2016), Hurkacz was coached by Filip Kańczuła. In 2017, he continued with Wrocław coaches Alexander Charpantidis and Paweł Stadniczenko, who shaped the tennis career of Michał Przysiężny, while Przemysław Piotrowicz was responsible for physical preparation. In 2018, "Hubi" decided to work with New Zealander Rene Moller, who appeared at his side during the Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan later that same year. Under his leadership, Hurkacz won the Challenger in Canberra and strengthened himself in the top 100. At the 2019 Indian Wells Open, Hurkacz began his coaching partnership with Craig Boynton, who had worked with players including Jim Courier, Mardy Fish, John Isner, Sam Querrey and Steve Johnson.

Endorsements
Sports company Yonex is the primary brand sponsor of Hubert Hurkacz. He has a head-to-toe deal with the company. Hubert plays with Yonex using Vcore ProO 97 racquet, Pro Series bag, Eclipson3 tennis shoes, and apparel. He is also sponsored by Lotos, a Polish capital group investing in oil. During his matches Hurkacz wears the Lotos brand's logo on his shirts. At the beginning of 2022 Hurkacz started to wear the Gerald Charles GC sport watch collection during his matches.

Hurkacz has turned his childhood love of sports cars into a partnership with U.K. based McLaren that has him driving McLaren vehicles while at tournaments. It started in New York City when Hurkacz toured around in the McLaren GT. At the 2021 BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells he was spinning in the McLaren 720S, the same car he drives when in Poland.

Personal life
For the past several years Hurkacz has adhered to a vegan diet. However, during an interview with ATP, he stated that "when I was a kid, I didn't like salad at all and I didn't like most of the veggies".

Grand Slam tournament performance timelines

Singles
Current through the 2023 US Open.

Doubles

Significant finals

Masters 1000 finals

Singles: 3 (2 titles, 1 runner-up)

Doubles: 2 (2 titles)

Notes

References

External links

1997 births
Living people
Polish expatriate sportspeople in Monaco
Polish male tennis players
Sportspeople from Wrocław
Lazarski University alumni
Olympic tennis players for Poland
Tennis players at the 2020 Summer Olympics

Hubert Hurkacz


The Apterygota are a small subclass of primitive insects.

They are insects which have never had wings at any time in their evolutionary history. Their first known occurrence in the fossil record is in the Rhynie chert of the Devonian period, ~400 million years ago. While some other insects, such as fleas, also lack wings, these are descended from winged insects, and have lost them during the course of evolution. By contrast, the apterygotes are a primitive group of insects that diverged from other orders before wings evolved.

They have some other primitive traits (features).
The nymphs (younger stages) go through little or no metamorphosis, so they look like the adults. They continue to moult throughout life, with multiple instars (stages) after reaching sexual maturity. All other insects have only a single sexually mature adult stage. Their skin is thin, making them appear translucent. Males deposit sperm packages rather than fertilising the female internally.

Currently, no species are listed as being at conservation risk.

History of the group
The classification of the Apterygota changed over time. By the mid 20th century, the subclass included four orders (Collembola, Protura, Diplura, and Thysanura). With the advent of a more rigorous cladistic methodology, the subclass turned out to be paraphyletic. The first three groups formed a monophyletic group, the Entognatha. The Thysanura is more closely related to winged insects. thus rendering even the amyocerate apterygotes paraphyletic.

Some think the Collembola are no longer insects at all, but their position is not yet clear.

Sources

 Firefly Encyclopedia of Insects and Spiders, edited by Christopher O'Toole, , 2002

Insects

Apterygota


George Robert Acworth Conquest  (15 July 1917 – 3 August 2015) was a British-American propagandist, historian and poet.

A long-time research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, Conquest was most notable for his work on the Soviet Union. His books included The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s (1968); The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine (1986); and Stalin: Breaker of Nations (1991). He was also the author of two novels and several collections of poetry.

Early life and education
Conquest was born in Great Malvern, Worcestershire, to an American father, Robert Folger Wescott Conquest, and an English mother, Rosamund Alys Acworth. His father served in an American Ambulance Field Service unit with the French Army in World War I, and was awarded the Croix de Guerre, with Silver Star in 1916.

Conquest was educated at Winchester College, where he won an exhibition to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Magdalen College, Oxford. He took a gap year, spending time at the University of Grenoble and in Bulgaria, and returning to Oxford in 1937, where he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Carlton Club. He was awarded an MA in PPE and a DLitt in history.

Career

War years
In Lisbon on an American passport at the outbreak of the Second World War, Conquest returned to England. As the Communist Party of Great Britain denounced the war in 1939 as imperialist and capitalist, Conquest broke with it and was commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry on 20 April 1940, serving with the regiment until 1946.

In 1943 he was posted to the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (later part of University College London) to study Bulgarian. The following year he was posted to Bulgaria as a liaison officer to the Bulgarian forces fighting under Soviet command, attached to the Third Ukrainian Front, then to the Allied Control Commission. At the end of the war, he joined the Foreign Office, returning to the British Legation in Sofia where he remained as the press officer. In 1948 he left Bulgaria when he was recalled to London under a minor diplomatic cloud after he had helped smuggle two Bulgarians out of the country.

Information Research Department
In 1948 Conquest joined the Foreign Office's Information Research Department (IRD), a "propaganda counter-offensive" unit created by the Labour Attlee government in order to "collect and summarize reliable information about Soviet and communist misdoings, to disseminate it to democratic journalists, politicians, and trade unionists, and to support, financially and otherwise, anticommunist publications." The IRD was also engaged in manipulating public opinion. Conquest was remembered there as a "brilliant, arrogant" figure who had 10 people reporting to him. He continued to work at the Foreign Office until 1956, becoming increasingly involved in the intellectual counter-offensive against communism.

In 1949 Conquest's assistant, Celia Kirwan (later Celia Goodman), approached George Orwell for information to help identify Soviet sympathisers. Orwell's list, discovered after her death in 2002, included Guardian and Observer journalists, as well as E. H. Carr and Charlie Chaplin. Conquest, like Orwell, fell for the beautiful Celia Kirwan, who inspired him to write several poems. One of his foreign office colleagues was Alan Maclean, brother of Donald Maclean, one of the Philby spy ring, who fled to Russia with Guy Burgess in 1951. When his brother defected, Alan resigned, then went to Macmillan and published a book of Conquest's poems. At the Foreign Office, Conquest wrote several papers that sowed the seeds for his later work. One, on the Soviet means of obtaining confessions, was elaborated on in The Great Terror. Other papers were "Peaceful Co-existence in Soviet Propaganda and Theory", and "United Fronts – a Communist Tactic". In 1950 Conquest served briefly as First Secretary in the British Delegation to the United Nations.

Writing
In 1956 Conquest left the Foreign Office and became a freelance writer and historian. After he left, he says, the Information Research Department (IRD) suggested to him that he could combine some of the data he had gathered from Soviet publications into a book. During the 1960s he edited eight volumes of work produced by the IRD, published in London by the Bodley Head as the Soviet Studies Series. Many of his Foreign Office works were published this way. In the United States, the material was republished as The Contemporary Soviet Union Series by Frederick Praeger, who had previously published several books on communism at the request of the CIA, in addition to works by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Milovan Đilas, Howard Fast, and Charles Patrick Fitzgerald.

In 1962–1963 Conquest was literary editor of The Spectator, but he resigned when he found the job interfering with his historical writing. His first books on the Soviet Union were Common Sense About Russia (1960), The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (1960) and Power and Policy in the USSR (1961). His other early works on the Soviet Union included Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair (1961) and Russia After Khrushchev (1965).

Historical works

The Great Terror (1968)

In 1968 Conquest published what became his best-known work, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties, the first comprehensive research of the Great Purge, which took place in the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1939. Many reviewers at the time were not impressed by his way of writing about the Great Terror, which was in the tradition of "great men who make history". The book was based mainly on information which had been made public, either officially or by individuals, during the so-called "Khrushchev Thaw" in the period 1956–64. It also drew on accounts by Russian and Ukrainian émigrés and exiles dating back to the 1930s, and on an analysis of official Soviet documents such as the Soviet census.

The most important aspect of the book was that it widened the understanding of the purges beyond the previous narrow focus on the "Moscow trials" of disgraced Communist Party of the Soviet Union leaders such as Nikolai Bukharin and Grigory Zinoviev, who were executed shortly thereafter. The question of why these leaders had pleaded guilty and confessed to various crimes at the trials had become a topic of discussion for a number of western writers, and helped inspire anti-Communist tracts such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon.

Conquest argued that the trials and executions of these former Communist leaders were a minor detail of the purges. By his estimates, Stalinist purges had led to the deaths of some 20 million people. He later stated that the  total number of deaths could "hardly be lower than some thirteen to fifteen million."

Conquest sharply criticized Western intellectuals such as Beatrice and Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Duranty, Sir Bernard Pares, Harold Laski, D. N. Pritt, Theodore Dreiser, Bertolt Brecht, Owen Lattimore, and Romain Rolland, as well as American ambassador Joseph Davies, accusing them of being dupes of Stalin and apologists of his regime. Conquest cites various comments made by them where, he argues, they were denying, excusing, or justifying various aspects of the purges.

After the opening up of the Soviet archives, detailed information was released that Conquest argued supported his conclusions. When Conquest's publisher asked him to expand and revise The Great Terror, Conquest is famously said to have suggested the new version of the book be titled I Told You So, You Fucking Fools. In fact, the mock title was jokingly proposed by Conquest's old friend, Sir Kingsley Amis. The new version was published in 1990 as The Great Terror: A Reassessment; . The American historian J. Arch Getty disagreed, writing in 1993 that the archives did not support Conquest's casualty figures. In 1995, investigative journalist Paul Lashmar suggested that the reputation of prominent academics such as Robert Conquest was built upon work derived from material provided by the IRD.
According to Denis Healey The Great Terror was an important influence, "but one which confirmed people in their views rather than converted them".

Many aspects of his book continue to be disputed by sovietologist historians and researchers on Russian and Soviet history, such as Stephen G. Wheatcroft, who insists that Conquest's victim totals for Stalinist repressions are too high, even in his reassessments. In 2000, Michael Ignatieff, whose family had emigrated from Russia as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution, wrote "One of the few unalloyed pleasures of old age is living long enough to see yourself vindicated. Robert Conquest is currently enjoying this pleasure." Conservative historian Paul Johnson, one of Thatcher's closest advisers, described Conquest as "our greatest living historian". And, in the phrase of Timothy Garton Ash, he was Solzhenytsin before Solzhenytsin.

In 1996 Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, who had been previously attacked by Conquest for his book Age of Extremes, praised Conquest's The Great Terror "as a remarkable pioneer effort to assess the Stalin Terror". However he expressed the view that this work and others were now to be considered obsolete "simply because the archival sources are now available". As a result, he wrote, there was no need for "fragmentary sources" and "guesswork". "[W]hen better or more complete data are available, they must take the place of poor and incomplete ones." In 2002 Conquest replied to his revisionist critics: "They're still talking absolute balls. In the academy, there remains a feeling of, "Don't let's be too rude to Stalin. He was a bad guy, yes, but the Americans were bad guys too, and so was the British Empire."

The Harvest of Sorrow (1986)

In 1986 Conquest published The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine, dealing with the collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine and elsewhere in the USSR, under Stalin's direction in 1929–31, and the resulting famine, in which millions of peasants died due to starvation, deportation to labor camps, and execution. In this book, Conquest supported the view that the famine was a planned act of genocide. According to historians Stephen Wheatcroft and R. W. Davies, "Conquest holds that Stalin wanted the famine... and that the Ukrainian famine was deliberately inflicted for its own sake." Nevertheless, he wrote to them in a letter in 2003 that "Stalin purposely inflicted the 1933 famine? No. What I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put 'Soviet interest' other than feeding the starving first thus consciously abetting it."

Stalin and the Kirov Murder (1989)
For the Trotskyists, Kirov's murder was the Stalinist equivalent of the Reichstag fire, deliberately started by the Nazis to justify the arrest of German Communists. The Trotskyist-Menshevik view became the dominant one among western historians, popularised in Robert Conquest's influential books.

In The Great Terror, Conquest already undermined the official Soviet story of conspiracy and treason. Conquest placed the murder in 1934 of the Leningrad party boss, Sergei Kirov, one of Stalin's inner circle, as the key to the mechanism of terror.

He returned to this in Stalin and the Kirov Murder (1989), where he argued that Stalin not only sanctioned Kirov's assassination, but used it as a justification for the terror that culminated in 1937–38, though no evidence has been found to confirm Stalin's role in the murder.

Poetry and literature

Poems
In addition to his scholarly work, Conquest was a well-regarded poet whose poems have been published in various periodicals from 1937. In 1945 he was awarded the PEN Brazil Prize for his war poem "For the Death of a Poet" – about an army friend, the poet Drummond Allison, killed in Italy – and, in 1951, he received a Festival of Britain verse prize. During his lifetime, he had seven volumes of poetry and one of literary criticism published.

Conquest was a major figure in a prominent British literary circle known as "The Movement" which also included Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis. Movement poets, many of whom bristled at being so labeled, rejected the experiments of earlier practitioners such as Ezra Pound.

He edited, in 1956 and 1962, the influential New Lines anthologies, introducing works by them, as well as Thom Gunn, Dennis Enright, and others, to a wider public. He spent 1959–60 as visiting poet at the University of Buffalo. Several of his poems were published in The New Oxford Book of Light Verse (1978; compiled by Amis), under the pseudonyms "Stuart Howard-Jones", "Victor Gray" and "Ted Pauker".

It emerged from the pages of poet Philip Larkin's published letters that Conquest and Larkin shared an enthusiasm for pornography in the 1950s. When Larkin was in Hull, Conquest sent him judicious selections of the latest pornography, and, when he came down to London, Conquest took him on shopping trips to the Soho porn shops. On one occasion Conquest, in 1957, wrote a letter to Larkin purporting to come from the Vice Squad which had found the poet's name on a pornographic publisher's list. Larkin panicked and went to see his solicitor, convinced that he was going to lose his job as librarian at Hull University, before Conquest owned up. The true story of the joke became in 2008, Mr Larkin's Awkward Day, a comedy radio play by Chris Harrald.

Soon after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn met with Conquest, asking him to translate a 'little' poem of his into English verse. This was "Prussian Nights" – nearly two thousand lines in ballad metre – published in 1977.

A new Collected Poems, edited by Elizabeth Conquest, was published in March 2020 by the Waywiser Press.

Novels
Conquest had been a member of the British Interplanetary Society since the 1940s, and shared Amis's taste for science fiction. Starting from 1961, the two writers jointly edited Spectrum, five anthologies of new sci-fi writing. Conquest also proposed to Amis a collaboration based on a draft comic novel that Conquest had completed. This was revised by Amis, then it appeared under both their names as The Egyptologists (1965). The novel is about a secret Egyptological London society that is really a husbands' organization serving as an alibi for philanderers. A reviewer in The New York Times felt that their "elaborate little jokes leave an unpleasant taste".

Later a film version of the novel was cancelled when its star, Peter Sellers, was called away to Hollywood. Conquest published a science-fiction novel, A World of Difference (1955).

Political works

What to Do When the Russians Come (1984)
In 1984, Robert Conquest wrote, with Jon Manchip White, the fictional book What to Do When the Russians Come: a Survivor's Guide which, however, was intended to be a real survival manual in case of Soviet invasion. This book, as many other works of the mid-1980s in different media, like Sir John Hackett's The Third World War, the movie Red Dawn, and the Milton Bradley game Fortress America, starts from the premise that a Soviet ground-invasion of the United States could be imminent and that the Soviet Union was about to engulf the world.

It is widely accepted that the United States now faces a real possibility of succumbing to the power of an alien regime unless the right policies are pursued. [This book's aim] is, first, to show the American citizen clearly and factually what the results of this possible Soviet domination could be and how it would affect him or her personally; and second, to give some serious advice on how to survive."

Conquest supported the Reagan defense buildup and asked for an increase of expenses on US defense budget, claiming that in the nuclear field NATO was only possibly matching USSR military power:

We live in dangerous times. Such miscalculations are very possible. But they are not inevitable. The American people and their representatives have it in their power to prevent their country from undergoing the ordeal we have described. A democratic government, with all its distractions and disadvantages, ... It is not infallible, it is slow to learn, and it is willing to grasp at comfortable illusions; but it may yet act decisively"

"But why should we fear that such an ordeal may face us? The economic potential of the West in gross national product is far greater than that of the Soviet Union....In fact, the Soviet Union is economically far behind the United States. American technology is always a generation ahead of theirs. They have to turn to the United States for wheat. The Soviet economy is at a dead end. The Communist system has failed to win support in any of the countries of Eastern Europe. The Soviet idea has no attractions. On any calculation—of economic power or social advance or intellectual progress there could be no question of the Russians imposing their will. But in terms of actual military power, the West's advantage does not seem to have been made use of. It is at least matched, and many would say overmatched, in the nuclear field; the Western forces in Europe have less than half the striking power of their opponents. It is no good our being more advanced than they are if this is not translated into power—both military power and political willpower."

In 1986 Conquest affirmed that "a science-fiction attitude is a great help in understanding the Soviet Union. It isn't so much whether they're good or bad, exactly; they're not bad or good as we'd be bad or good. It's far better to look at them as Martians than as people like us."

Reflections on a Ravaged Century (1999)

Reflections on a Ravaged Century is a book devoted to the psychological roots of fanaticism, in which Conquest argues that Communism and Nazism were equal and more twins than opposites.

There is much more in this book about communism than Nazism, partly because of Conquest's greater expertise on communism, and partly because comparatively few Western intellectuals became Nazis. He focuses mainly on attacks on intellectuals in the West who became communists because they felt or believed that this was "anti-fascism" or "anti-Nazism".

Laws of politics

Conquest posited two laws of politics, apparently not referenced in any of his books but as observations he made in conversations while alive:
 Generally speaking, everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.
 Every organisation appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents.

Conquest's first and second law are attested by at least two sources. On 14 February 2003, Andrew Brown wrote of Conquest's campaign against the expansion of university education that "[f]rom this period dates 'Conquest's Law', which states that 'Everyone is a reactionary about subjects he understands'. This was later supplemented with the balancing rule that every organisation behaves as if it is run by secret agents of its opponents." In his 1991 Memoirs, Kingsley Amis wrote of Conquest that "he was to point out that, while very 'progressive' on the subject of colonialism and other matters I was ignorant of, I was a sound reactionary about education, of which I had some understanding and experience. From my own and others' example he formulated his famous First Law, which runs, 'Generally speaking, everybody is reactionary on subjects he knows about.' (The Second Law, more recent, says, 'Every organisation appears to be headed by secret agents of its opponents.')"

On 25 June 2003, John Derbyshire wrote in the National Review Onlines blog The Corner that "[a]s best I can remember", Conquest conjectured three laws of politics:
 Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
 Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
 The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

Derbyshire commented: "Of the Second Law, Conquest gave the Church of England and Amnesty International as examples. Of the third, he noted that a bureaucracy sometimes actually IS controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies — e.g. the postwar British secret service." For these statements, Conquest would become well known among certain thinkers, especially online conservatives; however, Derbyshire cited no source for them and implied his memory was not certain on the matter. Indeed, the second law given here is O'Sullivan's first law, which was stated by John O'Sullivan in his article "O'Sullivan's First Law" in the 27 October 1989 print issue of the National Review, in which he also references Derbyshire's Conquest's third law as Conquest's second law:

Personal life
Conquest was married four times, first in 1942 to Joan Watkins, with whom he had two sons. They divorced in 1948. There followed a marriage to Tatiana Mihailova (1948–1962), whom he had helped escape from Bulgaria. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1951. In 1962 he married Caroleen MacFarlane; they divorced in 1978. That year he began dating Elizabeth Neece Wingate, a lecturer in English and the daughter of a United States Air Force colonel. He and Wingate married in 1979. When he died in 2015, he had several grandchildren from his sons and stepdaughter.

Later life

In 1981 Conquest moved to California to take up a post as Senior Research Fellow and Scholar-Curator of the Russian and Commonwealth of Independent States Collection at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, where he remained a Fellow. In 1985 he signed a petition in support of the anti-Communist Contras (Nicaragua). He was a fellow of the Columbia University's Russian Institute, and of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; a distinguished visiting scholar at The Heritage Foundation; a research associate of Harvard University's Ukrainian Research Institute. In 1990 he presented Red Empire, a seven-part mini-series on the Soviet Union produced by Yorkshire Television.

Conquest died in 2015 in Stanford, California, at the age of 98, of respiratory failure as a result of Parkinson's disease.

Awards and honors
Conquest was a Fellow of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature, and the British Interplanetary Society, and a Member of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.

His honours include
  Presidential Medal of Freedom (2005)
 Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG; 1996)
 Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE; 1955])
 Commander Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2009)
 Estonian Cross of Terra Mariana (2008)
 Ukrainian Order of Yaroslav Mudryi (2005).
Hearing Secret Harmonies, by Anthony Powell, the final volume in Powell's 12 volume sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time, is dedicated to Conquest.

His awards include:
 Selection by the National Endowment for the Humanities to deliver the 1993 Jefferson Lecture (the highest honor the U.S. government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities)
 Richard Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters (1999)
 Michael Braude Award for Light Verse (American Academy of Arts & Letters,1997)
 Dan David Prize (2012).
Conquest was a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.
 Antonovych prize (1987)

Selected works
Historical and political

 Common Sense About Russia (1960)
 Power and Policy in the USSR (1961)
 The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (1960)
 Courage of Genius: The Pasternak Affair (1961)
 Russia After Khrushchev (1965)
 The Politics of Ideas in the U.S.S.R. (1967)
 Soviet Nationalities Policy in Practice (1967)
 Industrial Workers in the USSR (1967)
 Agricultural Workers in the USSR (1968)
 Religion in the U.S.S.R. (1968)
 The Soviet Political System (1968)
 The Soviet Police System (1968)
 Justice and the Legal System in the U.S.S.R. (1968)
 The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties (1968)
 The Great Terror: A Reassessment (1990)
 The Great Terror: 40th Anniversary Edition (2008)
 Where Marx Went Wrong (1970)
 The Nation Killers: The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (1970)
 The Human Cost of Soviet Communism (Prepared for the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 1970)
 Lenin (1972)
 The Russian Tradition (with Tibor Szamuely, 1974)
 Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps (1979)
 Present Danger: Towards a Foreign Policy (1979)
 We & They: Civic & Despotic Cultures (1980)
 The Man-made Famine in Ukraine (with James Mace, Michael Novak and Dana Dalrymple, 1984)
 What to Do When the Russians Come: A Survivor's Guide (with Jon Manchip White, 1984)
 Inside Stalin's Secret Police: NKVD Politics, 1936–1939 (1985)
 The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (1986)
 The Last empire: nationality and the Soviet future (1986)
 Tyrants and Typewriters: Communiques in the Struggle for Truth (1989)
 Stalin and the Kirov Murder (1989)
 Stalin: Breaker of Nations (1991)
 History, Humanity, and Truth (1993)
 Reflections on a Ravaged Century (1999)
 The Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History, W. W. Norton & Company (2004),

Journal articles
 The Limits of Detente. Foreign Affairs, 46(4), pp. 733–742.
 Stalin's Successors. (1970) Foreign Affairs, 48(3), pp. 509–524.
 A New Russia? A New World? (1975) Foreign Affairs, 53(3), pp. 482–497.
 Revisionizing Stalin's Russia. (1987) The Russian Review, 46(4), pp.386-390.
 Academe and the Soviet Myth. (1993) The National Interest, 31, pp. 91–98.
 Toward an English-Speaking Union. (1999) The National Interest, (57), pp. 64–70.
 Downloading Democracy. (2004) The National Interest, (78), pp. 29–32.

Poetry
 Poems (1956)
 Back to Life: Poems from behind the Iron Curtain  as translator/editor (1958)
 Between Mars and Venus (1962)
 Arias from a Love Opera, and Other Poems (1969)
 Forays (1979)
 New and Collected Poems (1988)
 Demons Don't (1999)
 Penultimata (2009)
 A Garden of Erses [limericks, as Jeff Chaucer] (2010)
 Blokelore and Blokesongs (2012)

Novels
 A World of Difference (1955)
 The Egyptologists (with Kingsley Amis, 1965)

Criticism
 The Abomination of Moab (1979)

References

External links

 Scourge and Poet, a profile of Robert Conquest
 articles by and about Robert Conquest at the New York Review of Books
 "Stanford legend Robert Conquest: new books at 93 for the historian and poet," by Cynthia Haven, Stanford Report, August 16, 2010
 Where Ignorance Isn't Bliss, article by Robert Conquest at National Review Online
 His biography at the Hoover Institution
 Great Terror at 40
 Elizabeth Farnsworth talks with historian Robert Conquest about his new book Reflections on a Ravaged Century at PBS
 Robert Conquest profile at Spartacus site
 Robert Conquest's profile at Stanford University, Ukrainian Studies Department webpage
 Remembering Robert Conquest. The Hoover Institution.

 Dunlop, J., & Naimark, N. (2016). "Robert Conquest, 19172015". Slavic Review. 75(1), 238–239.

1917 births
2015 deaths
Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford
Alumni of University College London
Alumni of the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies
American anti-communists
American historians
Commanders of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George
English historians
English people of American descent
Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellows of the British Academy
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Historians of communism
Officers of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at Winchester College
People from Malvern, Worcestershire
Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients
Stalinism-era scholars and writers
Stanford University staff
Grenoble Alpes University alumni
Writers about the Soviet Union
Writers from Worcestershire
English emigrants to the United States
British Army personnel of World War II
Recipients of the Shevchenko National Prize
Recipients of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana, 2nd Class
Information Research Department
University at Buffalo faculty

Robert Conquest


Ron Brinkmann (born 1964), a visual effects supervisor and a founding employee of Sony Imageworks. While there he was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects for his work on the movie Speed.  He later co-founded Nothing Real, a software company that produced the digital compositing application Shake. Nothing Real was acquired in 2002 by Apple.

Brinkmann is also the author of the book The Art and Science of Digital Compositing ().

He is a regular guest in the podcast 'This Week in Photography'.

External links

1964 births
Living people
Visual effects supervisors

Ron Brinkmann


Lapush is an American rock band, formed in 2002 in St. Charles, Missouri.

After releasing several singles and one EP independently, Lapush signed to New York-based label, 456 (Universal Music Group) in 2005. The label is co-owned by Carson Daly and Jonathan Rifkind.

Their music features a melding of American and European influences.

The band's discography consists of two studio albums, one EP and 10 singles. Lapush made their network television debut on Last Call with Carson Daly on NBC (December 2005) performing two songs; Quit You Now and Tout Le Monde. Their debut album, Someplace Closer To Here, reached No. 15 on the Alternative/Specialty Albums Chart. The second single from that record, Aurora, reached No. 15 on the Alternative/Specialty Singles Chart and also appeared in the television show Moonlight on CBS.

History

Lapush formed in St. Charles, Missouri, in 2002 by brothers Thom Donovan and Stephen Donovan. Thom previous played guitar in the band Stir and Stephen played bass in the band Flynova. The original Lapush lineup consisted of: Thom Donovan (guitar and vocals), Stephen Donovan (guitar and vocals), Kevin Bachmann (bass), Casey Bazzell (keyboards and vocals) and Brett Voelker (drums). The band was named after La Push, Washington; a small community in Washington state. The name La Push is an infusion of the French la bouche, meaning "mouth", into Chinook Jargon. It describes the town's location at the mouth of the river. Instead of separating 'La Push', the band would simply combine the two into one word, 'Lapush'.

The band played their first show October 2003 and quickly became a top draw in the local St. Louis music scene. Early shows included a sold-out performance at The Pageant opening for The Urge, as well as sold-out concerts at Mississippi Nights and Creepy Crawl.

Lapush released a self-titled EP in 2004 which sold out of its initial pressing. The band began receiving airplay on KEXP (Seattle), Indie 103.1 (Los Angeles), Q101 (Chicago), 105.7 The Point (St. Louis) as well as XM Satellite Radio. The band toured regionally and developed a following in neighboring college towns including Columbia, MO and Lawrence, KS. During this period, Lapush opened for several national acts including; Matt Nathanson and Nikka Costa.

Unable to commit to the band's touring schedule, Stephen Donovan and Casey Bazzell left the group late 2004. Thom Donovan took over singing full-time and the band carried on as a trio. By early 2005 Lapush signed to 456 (Universal Music Group), a New York-based indie label co-owned by Carson Daly and Jonathan Rifkind.

Someplace Closer To Here (2005)
Lapush began recording Someplace Closer To Here in 2004. The album was produced and mixed by Thom Donovan in the band's rehearsal space using the minimal amount of recording equipment the band owned. The band thought they were simply recording demos. Those "demos" were eventually released as the bands nationally distributed debut album.

Someplace Closer To Here was released on June 5, 2005. The album features 3 singles, Say Something, Quit You Now and Aurora. Aurora would go to No. 15 on the Alternative/Specialty Singles Chart. The album would follow suit on the Alternative/Specialty Albums Chart. The band continued to play across the country; including shows with Hot Hot Heat and The Sounds. Lapush also performed a DJ set at Hiro Ballroom in New York City with Andy Rourke from The Smiths. Thom Donovan performed a DJ set with Kasabian after a sold-out show in St. Louis. In December 2005, Lapush would make their network television debut, performing 2 songs on Last Call with Carson Daly on NBC.

Music from Someplace Closer To Here has appeared in several television shows including, Moonlight (CBS), Laguna Beach (MTV), The Hills (MTV), College Life (MTV), The T.O. Show (VH1) as well as the Clear Pictures indie film, Outpatient.

Someplace Closer To Here was also listed at No. 18 on PlaybackSTL Magazine's Top Albums of 2005.

Press Reviews for Someplace Closer To Here
If Lapush hailed from England, no one would be the least bit surprised at the band's debut, Someplace Closer To Here, which recalls the romanticism of Coldplay, the insistent groove of Oasis, the drama of Radiohead, or the expansive bombast of The Verve. Savvy listeners would nod and smile at the lush production, the eclectic arrangements, and the gauzy vocals and tip their bowlers once more at the cleverness of another handful of talented Brits. The trouble is that Lapush, who sound every bit as good as the bands noted above, did not burst from a posh London studio, but from a basement in St. Louis, MO. —  Amplifier Magazine

There's something eternally attractive about the rock trio format — some of rock & roll's finest and most powerful bands have consisted of nothing more than a guy singing and playing guitar with a bass player and drummer alongside him. That's the format used by the St. Louis-based trio Lapush, but if you're expecting something like either the Jam's taut mod-pop attack or Cream's elephantine, bluesy swagger, think again: these guys specialize in a medium-tempo, sometimes rather mopey version of the rock trio approach that puts mood over hooks and doesn't hesitate to add a few quirky electronic keyboards to the mix. Singer Thom Donovan comes across as something kind of like an enervated Bono, letting his voice fall into a croak at times but rarely pushing himself to emotional extremes. As a guitarist he's more interesting than flashy — Tout le Monde features what is probably the best six-note guitar solo ever recorded. Throughout the album there are hints of an extensive 1980s record collection; apart from the Bono influence, there's Quit You Now, which sounds suspiciously like an Echo & the Bunnymen outtake circa 1984. You'll find yourself being quietly enchanted over and over again. Recommended. — Rick Anderson, All Music Guide

Modern Blues (2007)
By late 2006, drummer Brett Voelker left the band and was replaced by Neil Bardon. Modern Blues, the band's second album, was released on May 30, 2007. Brad Booker from Stir recorded drums on Modern Blues prior to Neil Bardon joining the band. Richard Fortus performed cello on the album's closing track, All The Lost Souls; a track Donovan penned after reading Richard Dawkins book, The Ancestor's Tale. The liner notes of Modern Blues includes a dedication to Donovan's father, who died in 2006 from pancreatic cancer. The band's record label, 456 (Universal Music Group), had shut down and Modern Blues was released independently through their own imprint, Lapush Recordings. Music from Modern Blues has appeared in several television shows including, The Hills (MTV), College Life (MTV) and 16 And Pregnant (MTV). In the Fall of 2008, Lapush played to their biggest hometown crowd; performing at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in front of 22,000 people for Pointfest.

Press Review for Modern Blues
The title of the trio's latest EP doesn't refer to the musical genre, but the feeling of loss, heartbreak and bereavement. This can lead bands to write dreary, sad-sack mopers—or, in the case of Lapush, turn the hurt into something grand and uplifting. Singer and guitarist Thom Donovan wrote the album-opening Closer after the death of his father, and it's as good of a send-off as anyone could want: The spacey guitar atmospherics and the alternately sad and hopeful lyrics are enough to bring a tear to the eye of the hard-hearted cynic. — Riverfront Times

Aurora - Digital Single (2008)
The band released an acoustic version of Aurora on March 12, 2008, on iTunes.

Hiatus
The band's last performance was in March 2008 at The Duck Room in St. Louis, Missouri.

In July 2008, Thom Donovan performed a solo acoustic set; opening for OneRepublic in St. Louis, Missouri. Donovan's first solo album, Cast a Light, was released on March 30, 2010. The album release was kicked off by a pair of shows at SXSW in Austin, TX March 2010. Songs from the album were featured in the series finale of The Hills on MTV. September Glows, the final track from Cast A Light, received airplay on KROQ-FM in Los Angeles. Donovan released his second solo album, "Mercury Maybe", in March 2012. His third solo album, "Canon", was released June 16, 2014. The first single, Shipwreck, features a collaboration with Wyclef Jean and Ruby Amanfu. He also has a small role in the ABC musical drama series, Nashville, as the keyboardist in Avery Barkley's band. In 2012 Donovan formed Nashville-based duo, Rossi, with Kendall Morgan.

Kevin Bachmann has released two studio albums with Troubadour Dali.

Band members

Members
 Thom Donovan - vocals, guitar, keyboards (2002-2008)
 Kevin Bachmann - bass (2002-2008)
 Neil Bardon - drums (2007-2008)

Former members
 Brett Voelker - drums (2002–2006)
 Stephen Donovan - vocals, guitar (2002–2004)
 Casey Bazzell - vocals, keyboards (2002-2004)

Discography

Albums

EP

Singles

References

External links
 Official Lapush Website
 Lapush at MySpace
 Lapush at MTV.com

Alternative rock groups from Missouri
Musical groups established in 2002
Musical groups disestablished in 2008
2002 establishments in Missouri

Lapush


Robert Dibdale (or Debdale) (ca. 1556 – 8 October 1586) was an English Catholic priest and martyr.

Biography
Dibdale was born the son of John Dibdale of Shottery, a village in the county of Warwickshire, within the parish of Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway, at a date unknown. He had a brother, Richard, and two sisters, Joan and Agnes. It would seem the family were Catholics. Peter Ackroyd speculates that Dibdale (or Debdale) attended the King's New School in Stratford, the same grammar school attended by William Shakespeare.

Government records show that in 1581 his absence abroad at Louvain since about 1576 had been noted by the English authorities. Catholic records, however, show that, by that time, he had already been to Rome and had then gone to the English College in Rheims, France, arriving there on 29 December 1579, before setting out for England on 22 June 1580. At that point, he had still not been ordained.

Dibdale was immediately arrested upon landing at Dover. It is recorded that he was committed to the Gatehouse by 29 July the same year. While in prison his father sent him bread, cheese, and five shillings. He was discharged on 10 September 1582. His whereabouts immediately thereafter are obscure but on 14 March 1583, he again entered the English College at Rheims and was ordained a priest in Rheims Cathedral on 31 March 1584.

Using the alias Palmer, he set out for England the following 2 August. He served as chaplain at the Manor of Denham in Buckinghamshire. Denham was held by Edmund Peckham, whose wife Dorothy was the sister of John Gerard SJ. Dibdale was arrested near Tothill Street in London on 24 July 1586, and was imprisoned, first at the Counter, then at Newgate. Given the 1585 Act making it a capital offence to be a Catholic priest in England, the terrible sentence of hanging, drawing and quartering was inevitable. It was carried out at Tyburn on 8 October 1586. His fate was shared by two fellow priests, John Adams and John Lowe.

All three priests were beatified (the last stage prior to canonisation) by Pope John Paul II on 22 November 1987.

In 1998, the Catholic church in his home village, the Church of Our Lady Peace (opened in 1973), was rededicated to Our Lady of Peace and Blessed Robert Dibdale.

See also
 Douai Martyrs
 Eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales

References

Sources
Anstruther, Godfrey. Seminary Priests, St Edmund's College, Ware, vol. 1 (1968), p.101.
Brownlow, Frank W. Shakespeare, Harsnett, and the devils of Denham, University of Delaware Press (1993), pp.167–168.

1550s births
1586 deaths
People from Stratford-on-Avon District
16th-century English Roman Catholic priests
Martyred Roman Catholic priests
English beatified people
People executed under Elizabeth I by hanging, drawing and quartering
Executed people from Warwickshire
16th-century Roman Catholic martyrs
16th-century venerated Christians
People educated at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon
People executed at Tyburn
Eighty-five martyrs of England and Wales

Robert Dibdale


William Brewster Williams (July 28, 1826 – March 4, 1905) was a politician and judge from the U.S. State of Michigan.

Williams was born in Pittsford, New York.  He attended the common schools, received an academic education, and graduated from the State and National Law School, Ballston Spa, New York in 1851.  He was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Rochester, New York. He moved to Allegan, Michigan in 1855.

Williams was a probate court judge from 1857 to 1865 and a member of the Michigan Senate from 1866 to 1870, serving as president pro tempore in 1869.  He was also a member of the State constitutional convention in 1867, and a Michigan delegate to 1868 Republican National Convention.  In 1871, he was appointed by Governor Henry P. Baldwin to serve as a member of the State board for the supervisory control of the charitable, penal, and beneficiary institutions, which position he resigned upon his election to the U.S. Congress.

After the death of U.S. Representative Wilder D. Foster on September 20, 1873, Williams was elected November 4, 1873 as a Republican to fill the vacancy. Williams was elected to represent Michigan's 5th congressional district in the 43rd Congress, serving from December 1, 1873 to March 3, 1877.  He was not a candidate for re-nomination in 1876.

William B. Williams served as railroad commissioner of Michigan from 1877 to 1883 and resumed the practice of law.  He died in Allegan and is interred there in Oakwood Cemetery.

References

The Political Graveyard

1826 births
1905 deaths
Michigan state court judges
Republican Party Michigan state senators
State and National Law School alumni
Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Michigan
19th-century American politicians
19th-century American judges

William B. Williams (politician)


The Hilo Art Museum (HAM) was an effort in Hilo, Hawaii. The Museum became a Hawaii non-profit corporation on April 16, 2007. HAM was a member of the Western Museums Association and the Hawaii Museums Association. In 2007, the HAM Education Centers was opened to provide a program of studio art classes, workshops and special exhibits. Its main location closed in December 2007, and only a few classes in a donated space were held in 2008.

Collections and holdings
The Hilo Art Museum permanent collection included original works of art by Huc-Mazelet Luquiens, Pablo Picasso, Keith Haring, Jack Sudlow, Salvador Dalí, Stephen Freedman, Emily DuBois, Suzanne Dix, and many others. The Museum featured a permanent exhibit, "Art of the Holocaust and Genocide" which contains a rare signed lithograph by Picasso, works by Chagall and other significant artists.

The Museum Teaching Collection also featured a unique teaching collection of hand painted life sized reproductions of the masters. This collection was necessary to teach the island children about art in museums around the world. Isolation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has kept most of the island inhabitants and their families from viewing the world's master art.

Hours and admissions
The Hilo Art Museum exhibited a portion of their collection in the Keaau Fine Arts Center, 16-643 Kipimana Street, in the Shipman Industrial Park, Keaau, Hawaii.

Hilo Art Museum Research Library
The Hilo Art Museum maintained a library of books on art topics.

History
In April 2007, artist and island resident, Ted Coombs, began to realize his dream of a general art museum in Hilo, Hawaii, the State's second largest city. He contacted several others he knew shared his dream, and formed the HAM Board of Trustees. A search began for a location, and for art to fill the permanent collection. Before finding a permanent home, the trustees decided it would be best to open the facility in the historic Hilo Iron Works building. This facility closed as of December 2007, with a new, smaller facility donated in January 2008, in Keaau.

The Hilo Iron Works building was home to the noted Art in the Iron Works gallery which maintained one of Hilo's premier art education resources. This program was generously donated to the Museum when the Museum took over the Art in the Iron Works facility in the Summer of 2007.

Donations of art began arriving including an original Picasso drawing of the "Two Monkeys", original work by abstract expressionist, Willem de Kooning, social commentary artist, Suzanne Dix and Dale Chihuly.

The initial funding for the museum came from the trustees, Ted Coombs and family, Stephen Davey, and through museum memberships.

In January 2008, the Hilo Art Museum began a program of opening small exhibit centers throughout the Island of Hawaii. The only center so far is the Keaau Fine Art Center which features portions of the permanent collection and rotating exhibits.

In February 2009, an exhibition featuring Italian artist Mirko was put on at the Hilo Palace Theater by the museum's Director, Stephen Davey.  These works, painted canvas and ceramic pieces, featured images true to the Hawaiian heritage.

In June 2009, the museum was closed for business.

Closed
The Hilo Art Museum Education Center was closed in December 2008. The Hilo Art Museum is no longer a member of the American Alliance of Museums, and never met the criteria for accreditation by the AAM.

References

External links
Ted Coombs' Home Page
Stephen Davey Official Site

Art museums established in 2007
Art museums disestablished in 2008
Art museums and galleries in Hawaii
Museums in Hilo, Hawaii
2007 establishments in Hawaii
2008 disestablishments in Hawaii
Defunct museums in Hawaii

Hilo Art Museum