Roseland Cottage, also known as Henry C. Bowen House or as Bowen Cottage, is a historic house located on Route 169 in Woodstock, Connecticut, United States. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, and was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1992.  It is described as one of the best-preserved and best-documented Gothic summer houses in the nation, with virtually intact interior decorations.

It is now owned by Historic New England, a non-profit organization that preserves the historical value of the house and operates it as a museum.

History
Roseland Cottage was built in 1846 in the Gothic Revival style as the summer home of Henry Chandler Bowen and family. The entire complex, with a boxwood parterre garden, an icehouse, garden house, carriage barn, and the nation's oldest surviving indoor bowling alley, reflects the principles of writer and designer Andrew Jackson Downing. In his widely popular books, Downing stressed practicality along with the picturesque, and offered detailed instructions on room function, sanitation, and landscaping.

Beginning in 1870, the largest Fourth of July celebrations in the United States were held at Roseland Cottage. Four United States Presidents visited Bowen's summer home as his guests and speakers for these celebrations: Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison, Rutherford B. Hayes, and William McKinley. Other prominent visitors included Henry Ward Beecher, Julia Ward Howe, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John C. Fremont. The home and gardens on one of these occasions were described in a local newspaper in 1887:

Today the house remains in excellent historic condition, with original Gothic furniture and embossed Lincrusta Walton wall decoration. The house, known locally as The Pink House, is currently painted coral pink, and located on Woodstock Hill Common. Roseland's parterre garden contain twenty-one flowerbeds with more than 4,000 annuals bordered in boxwood, in their original 1850 pattern, and now form part of Connecticut's Historic Gardens.

The house is a contributing property within NRHP-listed Woodstock Hill Historic District.

Gallery

See also
List of National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut
National Register of Historic Places listings in Windham County, Connecticut

References

External links

 Historic New England website
 Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress) - Bowen Cottage

Woodstock, Connecticut
Historic house museums in Connecticut
Museums in Windham County, Connecticut
National Historic Landmarks in Connecticut
Carpenter Gothic houses in the United States
Houses completed in 1846
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut
Houses in Windham County, Connecticut
National Register of Historic Places in Windham County, Connecticut
Historic New England
Historic district contributing properties in Connecticut

Roseland Cottage


The Soviet Armed Forces, also known as the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, the Red Army (1918–1946) and the Soviet Army (1946–1991), were the armed forces of the Russian SFSR (1917–1922) and the Soviet Union (1922–1991) from their beginnings in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1923 to the collapse of the USSR in 1991. In May 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued decrees forming the Russian Armed Forces, which subsumed much of the Soviet Armed Forces. Multiple sections of the former Soviet Armed Forces in the other, smaller Soviet republics gradually came under those republics' control.

According to the all-union military service law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of the Ground Forces, the Air Forces, the Navy, the State Political Directorate (OGPU), and the convoy guards. The OGPU was later made independent and amalgamated with the NKVD in 1934, and thus its Internal Troops were under the joint management of the Defence and Interior Commissariats. In 1989, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the Ground Forces, Air Defence Forces, the Air Forces, and the Navy, listed in their official order of importance.

In the USSR, general conscription applied, which meant that all able-bodied males aged eighteen and older were drafted in the armed forces. International observers regarded the armed organizations as collectively one of the strongest such forces in world history. The relative advancement and development of the government's militaries was a key part of the history of the USSR.

In the context of the Cold War, an academic study by the rival organization U.S. Department of Defense in 1984 found that the Soviets maintained a notable reach across the planet and particularly inside Europe. The analysis explicitly concluded that "Soviet armies have always been massive" while "they are also highly modernized, well-equipped, and have great firepower... [as well as] mobility", which meant that "[m]anpower and materiel combined make the present Soviet ground forces a very formidable land army." Although Soviet military strategy in general merited comment, "[t]he ground forces constitute[d] the largest of the five Soviet military services" as of the date the research ended.

Names

 Russian: ,
 Ukrainian: ,
 Belarusian: ,
 Uzbek: ,
 Kazakh: ,
 Georgian: ,
 Azerbaijani: ,
 Lithuanian:
 Moldovan (called "Moldavian" in the USSR): Форцеле армате але Униуна Републичилори Сочиалисти Совиетичи,
 Latvian:
 Kyrgyz: ,
 Tajik: ,
 Armenian: ,
 Turkmen: ,
 Estonian:

History

Origins

The Council of People's Commissars set up the Red Army by decree on January 15, 1918 (Old Style) (January 28, 1918), basing it on the already-existing Red Guard. The official Red Army Day of February 23, 1918, marked the day of the first mass draft of the Red Army in Petrograd and Moscow, and of the first combat action against the rapidly advancing Imperial German Army. February 23 became an important national holiday in the Soviet Union, later celebrated as "Soviet Army Day", and it continues as a day of celebration in  Russia as Defenders of the Motherland Day. Credit as the founder of the Red Army generally goes to Leon Trotsky, the People's Commissar for War from 1918 to 1924.

At the beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree of May 29, 1918, imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional Military commissariats (voenkomats), which still carry out this function in Russia. They should not be confused with military political commissars. Democratic election of officers was also abolished by decree, while separate quarters for officers, special forms of address, saluting, and higher pay were all reinstated.

After General Aleksei Brusilov offered the Bolsheviks his professional services in 1920, they decided to permit the conscription of former officers of the Imperial Russian Army. The Bolshevik authorities set up a special commission under the chair of Lev Glezarov (Лев Маркович Глезаров), and by August 1920 had drafted about 315,000 ex-officers. Most often they held the position of military advisor (voyenspets: "военспец" an abbreviation of "военный специалист", i.e., "military specialist"). A number of prominent Red Army commanders had previously served as Imperial Russian generals. In fact, a number of former Imperial military men, notably a member of the Supreme Military Council, Mikhail Bonch-Bruevich, had joined the Bolsheviks earlier.

The Bolshevik authorities assigned to every unit of the Red Army a political commissar, or politruk, who had  the authority to override unit commanders' decisions if they ran counter to the principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Although this sometimes resulted in inefficient command, the Party leadership considered political control over the military necessary, as the Army relied more and more on experienced officers from the pre-revolutionary Tsarist period.

Civil War

Polish–Soviet War

The Polish–Soviet War represented the first foreign campaign of the Red Army. The Soviet counter-offensive following the 1920 Polish invasion of Ukraine at first met with success, but Polish forces  halted it at the disastrous (for the Soviets) Battle of Warsaw (1920).

Far East

In 1934, Mongolia and the USSR, recognising the threat from the mounting Japanese military presence in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, agreed to co-operate in the field of defence. On March 12, 1936, the co-operation increased with the ten-year Mongolian-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, which included a mutual defence protocol.

In May 1939, a Mongolian cavalry unit clashed with Manchukuoan cavalry in the disputed territory east of the Halha River (also known in Russian as Халхин-Гол, Halhin Gol). There followed a clash with a Japanese detachment, which drove the Mongolians over the river. The Soviet troops quartered there in accordance with the mutual defence protocol intervened and obliterated the detachment. Escalation of the conflict appeared imminent, and both sides spent June amassing forces. On July 1 the Japanese force numbered 38,000 troops. The combined Soviet-Mongol force had 12,500 troops. The Japanese crossed the river, but after a three-day battle their opponents threw them back over the river. The Japanese kept probing the Soviet defences throughout July, without success.

On August 20 Georgy Zhukov opened a major offensive with heavy air attack and three hours of artillery bombardment, after which three infantry divisions and five armoured brigades, supported by a fighter regiment and masses of artillery (57,000 troops in total), stormed the 75,000 Japanese force deeply entrenched in the area. On August 23 the entire Japanese force found itself encircled, and on August 31 largely destroyed. Artillery and air attacks wiped out those Japanese who refused to surrender. Japan requested a cease-fire, and the conflict concluded with an agreement between the USSR, Mongolia and Japan signed on September 15 in Moscow. In the conflict, the Red Army losses were 9,703 killed in action (KIA) and missing in action (MIA) and 15,952 wounded. The Japanese lost 25,000 KIA; the grand total was 61,000 killed, missing, wounded and taken prisoner.

Shortly after the cease-fire, the Japanese negotiated access to the battlefields to collect their dead. Finding thousands upon thousands of dead bodies came as a further shock to the already shaken morale of the Japanese soldiers. The scale of the defeat probably became a major factor in discouraging a Japanese attack on the USSR during World War II, which allowed the Red Army to switch a large number of its Far Eastern troops into the European Theatre in the desperate autumn of 1941.

Second World War

The Polish Campaign

On September 17, 1939, the Red Army marched its troops into the eastern territories of Poland (now part of Belarus and Ukraine), using the official pretext of coming to the aid of the Ukrainians and the Belarusians threatened by Germany, which had attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. The Soviet invasion opened a second front for the Poles and forced them to abandon plans for defence in the Romanian bridgehead area, thus hastening the Polish defeat. The Soviet and German advance halted roughly at the Curzon Line.

The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which had included a secret protocol delimiting the "spheres of interest" of each party, set the scene for the remarkably smooth partition of Poland between Germany and the USSR. The defined Soviet sphere of interest matched the territory subsequently captured in the campaign. The Soviet and German troops met each other on a number of occasions. Most remarkably, on 22 September 1939, the German XIX Panzer Corps had occupied Brest-Litovsk, which lay within the Soviet sphere of interest. When the Soviet 29th Tank Brigade approached Brest-Litovsk, the commanders negotiated a German withdrawal, and a joint parade was held. Just three days earlier, however, the parties had a more damaging encounter near Lviv, when the German 137th Gebirgsjägerregimenter (mountain infantry regiment) attacked a Soviet reconnaissance detachment.; After a few casualties on both sides, the parties negotiated, the German troops left the area, and the Red Army troops entered L'viv on 22 September.

According to post-1991 Russian sources, the Red Army force in Poland numbered 466,516. The Red Army troops faced little resistance, mainly due to the entanglement of the majority of the Polish forces in fighting Germans along the Western border, but partly due to an official order by the Polish Supreme Command not to engage in combat with the Soviet troops, and also partly because many Polish citizens in the Kresy region—Ukrainians and Belarusians—viewed the advancing troops as liberators. Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists rose against the Poles, and communist partisans organised local revolts, e.g. in Skidel, robbing and murdering Poles. Nonetheless, the Red Army sustained losses of 1,475 killed and missing and 2,383 wounded. The losses of the opposing Polish troops are estimated at 6,000–7,000.

The Finnish campaigns
The Winter War began when the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939, two months after the invasion of Poland by Germany that started World War II. Because the attack was judged as illegal, the Soviet Union was expelled from the League of Nations on 14 December. The war ended on 13 March 1940.

The Continuation War was the second of two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II. On 25 June 1941 the Soviet Union conducted an air raid on Finnish cities, prompting Finland to declare war and to allow German troops stationed in Finland to begin an offensive. By September 1941, Finland had regained its post–Winter War concessions to the Soviet Union: the Karelian Isthmus and Ladoga Karelia. However, the Finnish Army continued the offensive past the 1939 border during the conquest of East Karelia, including Petrozavodsk, and halted only around  from the centre of Leningrad. It participated in besieging the city by cutting the northern supply routes and by digging in until 1944.

In Lapland, joint German-Finnish forces failed to capture Murmansk or to cut the Kirov (Murmansk) Railway, a transit route for Soviet lend-lease equipment. The conflict stabilised with only minor skirmishes until the tide of the war turned against the Germans and the Soviet strategic Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive occurred in June 1944. The attack drove the Finns from most of the territories that they had gained during the war, but the Finnish Army halted the offensive in August 1944. Hostilities between Finland and the USSR ended with a ceasefire, which was called on 5 September 1944, formalised by the signing of the Moscow Armistice on 19 September 1944.

Barbarossa, 1941–1945 (Great Patriotic War)

By the autumn of 1940, Nazi Germany and its allies dominated most of the European continent. Only the United Kingdom (in the West) was actively challenging national socialist and fascist hegemony. Nazi Germany and Britain had no common land border, but a state of war existed between them; the Germans had an extensive land border with the Soviet Union, but the latter remained neutral, adhering to a non-aggression pact and by numerous trade agreements.

For Adolf Hitler, no dilemma ever existed in this situation. Drang nach Osten (German for "Drive towards the East") remained the order of the day. This culminated, on December 18, in the issuing of 'Directive No. 21 – Case Barbarossa', which opened by saying "the German Armed Forces must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign before the end of the war against England". Even before the issuing of the directive, the German General Staff had developed detailed plans for a Soviet campaign. On February 3, 1941, the final plan of Operation Barbarossa gained approval, and the attack was scheduled for the middle of May, 1941. However, the events in Greece and Yugoslavia necessitated a delay—to the second half of June.

At the time of the Nazi assault on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Red Army had 303 divisions and 22 brigades (4.8 million troops), including 166 divisions and 9 brigades (2.9 million troops) stationed in the western military districts. Their Axis opponents deployed on the Eastern Front 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3.8 million troops). The first weeks of the war saw the annihilation of virtually the entire Soviet Air Force on the ground, the loss of major equipment, tanks, artillery, and major Soviet defeats as German forces trapped hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers in vast pockets.

Soviet forces suffered heavy damage in the field as a result of poor levels of preparedness, which was primarily caused by a reluctant, half-hearted and ultimately belated decision by the Soviet Government and High Command to mobilize the army. Equally important was a general tactical superiority of the German army, which was conducting the kind of warfare that it had been combat-testing and fine-tuning for two years. The hasty pre-war growth and over-promotion of the Red Army cadres as well as the removal of experienced officers caused by the Purges offset the balance even more favourably for the Germans. Finally, the sheer numeric superiority of the Axis cannot be underestimated.

A generation of brilliant Soviet commanders (most notably Georgy Zhukov) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow, at Stalingrad, Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive in what became known to the Soviets as the Great Patriotic War.

The Soviet government adopted a number of measures to improve the state and morale of the retreating Red Army in 1941. Soviet propaganda turned away from political notions of class struggle, and instead invoked the deeper-rooted patriotic feelings of the population, embracing Tsarist Russian history. Propagandists proclaimed the War against the German aggressors as the "Great Patriotic War", in allusion to the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon. References to ancient Russian military heroes such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov appeared. Repressions against the Russian Orthodox Church stopped, and priests revived the tradition of blessing arms before battle. The Communist Party abolished the institution of political commissars—although it soon restored them. The Red Army re-introduced military ranks and adopted many additional individual distinctions such as medals and orders. The concept of a Guard re-appeared: units which had shown exceptional heroism in combat gained the names of "Guards Regiment", "Guards Army", etc.

During the German–Soviet War, the Red Army drafted a staggering 29,574,900 in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of these it lost 6,329,600 KIA, 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 MIA (most captured). Of these 11,444,100, however, 939,700 re-joined the ranks in the subsequently re-took Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. The majority of the losses were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). The German losses on the Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA (most killed) and 3,576,300 captured (total 7,181,100).

In the first part of the war, the Red Army fielded weaponry of mixed quality. It had excellent artillery, but it did not have enough trucks to manoeuvre and supply it; as a result the Wehrmacht (which rated it highly) captured much of it.  Red Army T-34 tanks outclassed any other tanks the Germans had when they appeared in 1941, yet most of the Soviet armoured units were less advanced models; likewise, the same supply problem handicapped even the formations equipped with the most modern tanks. The Soviet Air Force initially performed poorly against the Germans. The quick advance of the Germans into the Soviet territory made reinforcement difficult, if not impossible, since much of the Soviet Union's military industry lay in the west of the country.

The Manchurian Campaign

After the end of the war in Europe, the Red Army attacked Japan and Manchukuo (Japan's puppet state in Manchuria) on 9 August 1945, and in combination with Mongolian and Chinese Communist forces rapidly overwhelmed the outnumbered Kwantung Army. Soviet forces also attacked in Sakhalin, in the Kuril Islands and in northern Korea. Japan surrendered unconditionally on 2 September 1945.

The Cold War

The Soviet Union only had Ground Forces, Air Forces, and the Navy in 1945. The two ministries (Narkomats), one supervising the Ground Forces and Air Forces, and the other directing the Navy, were combined into the Ministry of the Armed Forces in March 1946. A fourth service, the Troops of National Air Defence, was formed in 1948. The Ministry was briefly divided into two again from 1950 to 1953, but then was amalgamated again as the Ministry of Defence. Six years later the Strategic Rocket Forces were formed. The Soviet Airborne Forces, were also active by this time as a Reserve of the Supreme High Command. Also falling within the Soviet Armed Forces were the Tyl, or Rear Services.

Men within the Soviet Armed Forces dropped from around 11.3 million to approximately 2.8 million in 1948. In order to control this demobilisation process, the number of military districts was temporarily increased to thirty-three, dropping to twenty-one in 1946. The size of the Ground Forces during most of the Cold War remained between 4 million and 5 million, according to Western estimates. However, there was a large-scale reduction in force size in 1953-56; 1.1 million personnel were released from the armed forces. Two military districts were disestablished in 1956. Soviet law required all able-bodied males of age to serve a minimum of two years. As a result, the Soviet Ground Forces remained the largest active army in the world from 1945 to 1991. Soviet units which had taken over the countries of Eastern Europe from German rule remained to secure the régimes in what became satellite states of the Soviet Union and to deter and to fend off  pro-independence resistance and later NATO forces. The greatest Soviet military presence was in East Germany, in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, but there were also smaller forces elsewhere, including the Northern Group of Forces in Poland, the Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia, and the Southern Group of Forces in Hungary. In the Soviet Union itself, forces were divided by the 1950s among fifteen military districts, including the Moscow, Leningrad, and Baltic Military Districts.

The trauma of the devastating German invasion of 1941 influenced the Soviet Cold War doctrine of fighting enemies on their own territory, or in a buffer zone under Soviet hegemony, but in any case preventing any war from reaching Soviet soil. In order to secure Soviet interests in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Army moved in to quell anti-Soviet uprisings in the German Democratic Republic (1953), Hungary (1956) and Czechoslovakia (1968).
As a result of the Sino-Soviet border conflict, a sixteenth military district was created in 1969, the Central Asian Military District, with headquarters at Alma-Ata. To improve capabilities for war at a theatre level, in the late 1970s and early 1980s four high commands were established, grouping the military districts, groups of forces, and fleets. The Far Eastern High Command was established first, followed by the Western and South-Western High Commands towards Europe, and the Southern High Command at Baku, oriented toward the Middle East.

Confrontation with the US and NATO during the Cold War mainly took the form of threatened mutual deterrence with nuclear weapons. But a number of proxy wars took place. The Soviet Union and the United States supported loyal client régimes or rebel movements in Third World countries. During the Korean War, the Soviet Air Forces directly fought against United States and United Nations Command (UNC) forces. Two Soviet air divisions flying MiG-9 and MiG-15 fighter jets were sent against U.S. Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers and their U.S. and allied fighter escorts The Soviet Union invested heavily in nuclear capabilities, especially in the production of ballistic missiles and of nuclear submarines to deliver them.

Military doctrine

The Soviet meaning of military doctrine was much different from U.S. military usage of the term. Soviet Minister of Defence Marshal Andrei Grechko defined it in 1975 as 'a system of views on the nature of war and methods of waging it, and on the preparation of the country and army for war, officially adopted in a given state and its armed forces.' Soviet theorists emphasised both the political and 'military-technical' sides of military doctrine, while from the Soviet point of view, Westerners ignored the political side. According to Harriet F Scott and William Scott, the political parts of Soviet military doctrine best explained the international moves that the Soviet Union undertook during the Cold War.

The limited contingent in Afghanistan

In 1979, however, the Soviet Army intervened in a civil war raging in Afghanistan. The Soviet Army came to back a Soviet-friendly communist government threatened by multinational, mainly Afghan, insurgent groups called the mujahideen. The insurgents received military training in neighboring Pakistan, China, and billions of dollars from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. Technically superior, the Soviets did not have enough troops to establish control over the countryside and to secure the border. This resulted from hesitancy in the Politburo, which allowed only a "limited contingent", averaging between 80,000 and 100,000 troops. Consequently, local insurgents could effectively employ hit-and-run tactics, using easy escape-routes and good supply-channels. This made the Soviet situation hopeless from the military point of view (short of using "scorched earth" tactics, which the Soviets did not practice except in World War II in their own territory). The understanding of this made the war highly unpopular within the Army. With the coming of glasnost, Soviet media started to report heavy losses, which made the war very unpopular in the USSR in general, even though actual losses remained modest, averaging 1670 per year. The war also became a sensitive issue internationally, which finally led General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev to withdraw the Soviet forces from Afghanistan. The "Afghan Syndrome" suffered by the Army parallels the American Vietnam Syndrome trauma over their own unsuccessful war in Vietnam. Tactically, both sides concentrated on attacking supply lines, but Afghan mujahideen were well dug-in with tunnels and defensive positions, holding out against artillery and air attacks. The decade long war resulted in millions of Afghans fleeing their country, mostly to Pakistan and Iran. At least half a million Afghan civilians were killed in addition to the rebels in the war.

The end of the Soviet Union

From 1985 to 1991, the new leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reduce the strain the Army placed on economic demands. His government slowly reduced the size of the army. By 1989 Soviet troops were  leaving their Warsaw Pact neighbors to fend for themselves. That same year Soviet forces left Afghanistan. By the end of 1990, the entire Eastern Bloc had collapsed in the wake of democratic revolutions. As a result, Soviet citizens quickly began to turn against the Soviet government as well. As the Soviet Union moved towards disintegration, the reduced military was rendered feeble and ineffective and could no longer prop up the ailing Soviet government. The military got involved in trying to suppress conflicts and unrest in Central Asia and the Caucasus but it often proved incapable of restoring peace and order. On April 9, 1989, the army, together with MVD units, massacred about 190 demonstrators in Tbilisi in Georgia. The next major crisis occurred in Azerbaijan, when the Soviet army forcibly entered Baku on January 19–20, 1990, removing the rebellious republic government and allegedly killing hundreds of civilians in the process. On January 13, 1991, Soviet forces stormed the State Radio and Television Building and the television retranslation tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, both under opposition control, killing 14 people and injuring 700. This action was perceived by many as heavy-handed and achieved little.

By mid-1991, the Soviet Union had reached a state of emergency. According to the official commission (the Soviet Academy of Sciences) appointed by the Supreme Soviet (the higher chamber of the Russian parliament) immediately after the events of August 1991, the Army did not play a significant role in what some describe as coup d'état of old-guard communists. Commanders sent tanks into the streets of Moscow, but (according to all the commanders and soldiers) only with orders to ensure the safety of the people. It remains unclear why exactly the military forces entered the city, but they clearly did not have the goal of overthrowing Gorbachev (absent on the Black Sea coast at the time) or the government. The coup failed primarily because the participants did not take any decisive action, and after several days of their inaction the coup simply stopped. Only one confrontation took place between civilians and the tank crews during the coup, which led to the deaths of three civilians. Although the victims became proclaimed heroes, the authorities acquitted the tank crew of all charges. Nobody issued orders to shoot at anyone.

Following the coup attempt of August 1991, the leadership of the Soviet Union retained practically no authority over the component republics. Nearly every Soviet Republic declared its intention to secede and began passing laws defying the Supreme Soviet. On December 8, 1991, the Presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine declared the Soviet Union dissolved and signed the document setting up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Gorbachev finally resigned on December 25, 1991, and the following day the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body, dissolved itself, officially ending the Soviet Union's existence. For the next year and a half various attempts were made to keep the Soviet military in existence as the United Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Steadily, the units stationed in Ukraine and some other breakaway republics swore loyalty to their new national governments, while a series of treaties between the newly independent states divided up the military's assets.  Following dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Army dissolved and the USSR's successor states shared out its assets among themselves. The share out mostly occurred on a regional basis, with Soviet soldiers from Russia becoming part of the new Russian Army, while Soviet soldiers originating from Kazakhstan became part of the new Kazakh Army.

In mid-March 1992, Yeltsin appointed himself as the new Russian Minister of Defence, marking a crucial step in the creation of the new Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, comprising the bulk of what was still left of the military.  The last vestiges of the old Soviet command structure were finally dissolved in June 1993. In the next few years, the former Soviet forces withdrew from central and Eastern Europe (including the Baltic states), as well as from the newly independent post-Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia (partially), Moldova (partially), Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In 2020, Russian forces remained in Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Ossetia, Tajikistan and Transnistria. While in many places the withdrawal and division took place without any problems, the Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet remained in the Crimea, Ukraine, with the fleet division and a Russian leasehold for fleet facilities in Crimea finally achieved in 1997.

The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) became successful members of NATO since 2004. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine maintain cooperation with NATO as well.

Structure and leadership

The Soviet Armed Forces were controlled by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Ministry of Defence. At its head was the Minister of Defence, generally a full member of the Politburo (the Politburo, in turn, was chaired by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, generally the de facto leader of the Soviet Union) and from 1934 onwards, a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Stalin was the last civilian/politician Minister of Defence; from 1947 onwards, the Minister of Defence was a serving general (though the last was a airman). Between 1934 and 1946, 1950 and 1953, a separate Ministry of the Navy existed and the Ministry of Defence was responsible only for land and air forces. In practice, the Navy Minister was a far more junior official and the Defence Ministry continued to dominate policymaking.

Beneath the Minister of Defence were two First Deputy Ministers of Defence; the Chief of the General Staff, who was responsible for operations and planning, and the First Deputy Minister of Defence for General Affairs, who was responsible for administration. From 1955 the Supreme Commander of the Warsaw Pact also held the title of First Deputy Minister of Defence. By the 1980s there was another eleven Deputy Minister of Defence; including the commanders-in-chief of the five service branches.

In 1989, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of the Strategic Rocket Forces, the Ground Forces, Air Defence Forces, the Air Forces, and the Navy, listed in their official order of importance. The Rear services, "Tyl", had their own deputy minister of defence. In 1970 the troops of the All-Union National Civil Defence Forces were added.

There were also a number of armed organisations beyond the Ministry of Defence; in 1989 these included Internal Troops and the KGB Border Troops.

Personnel

Ranks and titles

The early Red Army never adopted the idea of a professional officer corps. It was seen as a "heritage of tsarism.". In particular, the Bolsheviks condemned the use of the word "officer" and used the word "commander" instead. The Red Army never adopted epaulettes and ranks, using purely functional titles such as "Division Commander", "Corps Commander", and similar titles. In 1924 it supplemented this system with "service categories", from K-1 (lowest) to K-14 (highest). The service categories essentially operated as ranks in disguise: they indicated the experience and qualifications of a commander. The insignia now denoted the category,  not the position of a commander. However, one still had to use functional titles to address commanders, which could become as awkward as "comrade deputy head-of-staff of corps". If one did not know a commander's position, one used one of the possible positions—for example: "Regiment Commander" for K-9.

On September 22, 1935, the Red Army abandoned service categories and introduced personal ranks. These ranks, however, used a unique mix of functional titles and traditional ranks. For example, the ranks included "Lieutenant" and "Komdiv" (Комдив, Division Commander). Further complications ensued from the functional and categorical ranks for political officers (e.g., "Brigade Commissar", "Army Commissar 2nd Rank"), for technical corps (e.g., "Engineer 3rd Rank", "Division Engineer"), for administrative, medical and other non-combatant branches. The year before (1934), the revival of personal ranks began with the Marshal of the Soviet Union rank bestowed upon 5 Army Commanders.

There were further modifications to the system. 1937 saw the Junior Lieutenant and Junior Military Technician ranks being added. On May 7, 1940, the ranks of "General" or "Admiral" replaced the senior functional ranks of Kombrig, Komdiv, Komkor, Komandarm; the other senior functional ranks ("Division Commissar", "Division Engineer", etc.) remained unaffected. On November 2, 1940, the system underwent further modification with the abolition of functional ranks for non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and the introduction of the Podpolkovnik (Lieutenant Colonel) rank.

In early 1942 all the functional ranks in technical and administrative corps became regularised ranks (e.g., "Engineer Major", "Engineer Colonel", "Captain of the Intendant Service", etc.). On October 9, 1942, the authorities abolished the system of military commissars, together with the commissar ranks. The functional ranks remained only in medical, veterinary and legislative corps. By then the Naval rank of Midshipman was revived in the Soviet Navy as an NCO rank, a role lasting until the 1970s.

In early 1943 a unification of the system saw the abolition of all the remaining functional ranks. The word "officer" became officially endorsed, together with the epaulettes that superseded the previous rank insignia. The ranks and insignia of 1943 did not change much until the last days of the USSR; the contemporary Russian Army uses largely the same system. The old functional ranks of Kombat (Battalion or Battery Commander), Kombrig (Brigade Commander) and Komdiv (Division Commander) continue in informal use.

By the end of the Second World War, the Admiral of the Fleet rank (which, from 1945 was already equivalent to Marshal) was later renamed Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union in 1955. In the 1960s however, it became a rank of its own when new regulations revived the Fleet Admiral rank in the Soviet Navy, thus becoming the naval equivalent to General of the Army.

By 1972, the final transformation of military ranks began as the rank of Praporshchik (Warrant officer) ranks being added in the Army and Air Force for contract NCOs since the rank of Starshina (Sergeant Major) was from now on for conscripts. But in the Soviet Navy, it meant that the Naval rank of Midshipman became a rank for Naval warrant officers since the Navy created the new rank of Ship Chief Sergeant Major for its NCOs in naval service. The year of 1974 saw the rank insignia changed for Army Generals and Navy Fleet Admirals in their parade dress and working and combat dress uniforms.

General Staff
On September 22, 1935, the authorities renamed the RKKA Staff as the General Staff, which essentially reincarnated the General Staff of the Russian Empire.  Many of the former RKKA Staff officers had served as General Staff officers in the Russian Empire and became General Staff officers in the USSR. General Staff officers typically had extensive combat experience and solid academic training.

Military education
During the Civil War the commander cadres received training at the General Staff Academy of the RKKA (Академия Генерального штаба РККА), an alias of the Nicholas General Staff Academy (Николаевская академия Генерального штаба) of the Russian Empire. On August 5, 1921, the academy became the Military Academy of the RKKA (Военная академия РККА), and in 1925 the Frunze (М.В. Фрунзе) Military Academy of the RKKA. The senior and supreme commanders received training at the Higher Military Academic Courses (Высшие военно-академические курсы), renamed in 1925 as the Advanced Courses for Supreme Command (Курсы усовершенствования высшего начальствующего состава); in 1931, the establishment of an Operations Faculty at the Frunze Military Academy supplemented these courses. On April 2, 1936, the General Staff Academy was re-instated; it became a principal school for the senior and supreme commanders of the Red Army and a centre for advanced military studies.

Red Army (and later Soviet Army) educational facilities called "academies" do not correspond to the military academies in Western countries. Those Soviet Academies were the post-graduate schools, mandatory for officers applying for senior ranks (e.g., the rank of colonel since the 1950s). While a basic officer education in the Red Army was provided by the facilities named военная школа or военное училище–which may be generally translated as "school" and compared to Western "academies" like West Point or Sandhurst.

Manpower and enlisted men

The Soviet Armed Forces were manned through conscription, which had been reduced in 1967 from three to two years (with remaining 3 years service in naval forces). This system was administered through the thousands of Military commissariats (voenkomats) located throughout the Soviet Union. Between January and May of every year, every young Soviet male citizen was required to report to the local voenkomat for assessment for military service, following a summons based on lists from every school and employer in the area. The voenkomat worked to quotas sent out by a department of the General Staff, listing how young men are required by each service and branch of the Armed Forces. The new conscripts were then picked up by an officer from their future unit and usually sent by train across the country. On arrival, they would begin the Young Soldiers' course, and become part of the system of hazing and domination by an older class of draftees, known as dedovshchina, literally "rule by the grandfathers." The "..armed forces of the USSR and Warsaw Pact, working to a common Soviet model, ..relied on young officers to conduct in units [rather than in training depots] all the junior command and training tasks which in many Western armies are done in depots or by regular professional long-service NCOs." There were only a very small number of professional non-commissioned officers (NCOs), as most NCOs were conscripts sent on short courses to prepare them for section commanders' and platoon sergeants' positions. These conscript NCOs were supplemented by praporshchik warrant officers, positions created in the 1960s to support the increased variety of skills required for modern weapons.

Ethnic Composition and Tension
For years, Soviet leadership argued that Soviet military played a role in decreasing ethnic tensions and nationalist loyalties. According to professor Deborah Yarsike Ball, Soviet historians, such as B. F. Klochkov, argued that, "the Red Army strengthened friendship between soldiers of various nationalities." The official view of the military was that it was a "school of internationalism," where all the various people of the Soviet Union could develop unity and respect for each other. During the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik government employed non-Slavic ethnic groups, who were known as national military units.

Despite the official view, the history of inter-ethnic relations in the military was more complicated. As the Bolsheviks consolidated power in the late 1910s and early 1920s, the central leadership became suspicious of the size of the national units. Their sizes were restricted, they were put under close supervision, and eventually disbanded by 1938. The national units were briefly brought back during World War II before being disbanded again in the mid-1950s. In 1956, when soldier were ordered to respond to protesters in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the ethnic-Georgian unit refused to follow orders from their Russian higher ranking officers.

Soviet minorities were not treated equally and many carried anti-regime views. According to a 1983 RAND Corporation report by Alexander Alexiev and S. Enders Wimbush, the Second World War saw the recruitment of 600,000 to 1,400,000 former Soviet citizens into the German military on the Eastern Front. Interestingly, more than 50% of these auxiliaries came from non-Russian backgrounds, such as Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians. In addition, more than 250,000 volunteer nationals of Central Asian and Caucasian origin were organized in the Ostlegionen. As the authors noted, "some Soviet nationalities may have been better represented in the Wehrmacht than in the Red Army." At the height of WWII, infantry units in the armed forces were composed of Russians (62.95%), Ukrainians (14.52%), Belarusians (1.9%), and various other ethnicities (20.63%). The war had shown that the integration of various ethnic groups was questionable and fragile.

Inter-ethnic relations in the military did not improve after World War II. In fact, although the Russian language was crucial in the organization, many non-Slavic servicemen entered the military with "no previous to communicate in Russian." According to a 1980 Time magazine article citing an analyst from the RAND Corporation, Soviet non-Slavs were also generally barred from joining elite or strategic positions (like the Strategic Rocket Forces, Soviet Air Force and the Soviet Navy) of the late-Cold War military because of suspicions of loyalty of ethnic minorities to the Kremlin. Around 80% or more of combat units were staffed by Slavic nationalities while non-combat units usually contained 70% to 90% non-Slavs, especially Central Asians and Caucasians. The military branches associated with high technology services, such as the Navy, Strategic Rocket Forces, and the Air Force, were disproportionately made up of Russians. In addition, Russians made up 69.4% of the officer corps, while the Slavic number is up to 89.7%.

By 1990, Slavic troops still made a majority of Soviet soldiers. In total, 69.2% of all military members were ethnic Slavic (Russian, Ukrainian, Belorussian), 1.9% were Baltic people, 20.6% were Muslim-Turkic people and 8.3% were all other types of people.

Purge
The late 1930s saw the "Purges of the Red Army cadres", occurring against the historical background of the Great Purge. The Purges had the objective of cleansing the Red Army of "politically unreliable elements", mainly among the higher-ranking officers. This inevitably provided a convenient pretext for settling personal vendettas and eventually resulted in a witch-hunt. In 1937, the Red Army numbered around 1.3 million, and it grew to almost three times that number by June 1941. This necessitated quick promotion of junior officers, often despite their lack of experience or training, with obvious grave implications for the effectiveness of the Army in the coming war against Germany.

In the highest echelons of the Red Army the Purges removed 3 of the 5 marshals, 13 of 15 generals of the army, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 army corps generals, 154 out of 186 division generals, 16 of 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars.

Party control of the Armed Forces

The Communist Party had a number of mechanisms of control over the country's armed forces. First, starting from a certain rank, only a Party member could be a military commander, and was thus subject to Party discipline. Second, the top military leaders had been systematically integrated into the highest echelons of the party. Third, the party placed a network of political officers throughout the armed forces to influence the activities of the military.

A political commander (zampolit) served as a political commissar of the armed forces. A zampolit supervised party organizations and conducted party political work within a military unit. He lectured troops on Marxism–Leninism, the Soviet view of international affairs, and the party's tasks for the armed forces. During World War II the zampolit lost veto authority over the commander's decisions but retained the power to report to the next highest political officer or organization on the political attitudes and performance of the unit's commander.

In 1989 over 20% of all armed forces personnel were party members or Komsomol members. Over 90% of all officers in the armed forces were party or Komsomol members.

Weapons and equipment
The Soviet Union established an indigenous arms industry as part of Stalin's industrialization program in the 1920s and 1930s. The five-round, stripper clip-fed, bolt-action Mosin–Nagant rifle remained the primary shoulder firearm of the Red Army through World War II.  Over 17 million model 91/30 Mosin–Nagant rifles were manufactured from 1930 to 1945 by various Soviet arsenals. In 1943 design started on the M44, designed to replace the M91/30. Full production began in 1944, and remained in production until 1948, when it was replaced by the SKS semiautomatic rifle.

The Red Army suffered from a shortage of adequate machine guns and semiautomatic firearms throughout World War II.  The semiautomatic Tokarev SVT Model 38 and Model 40 were chambered for the same 7.62×54mmR cartridge used by the Mosin–Nagants.  The rifle, though of sound design, was never manufactured in the same numbers as the Mosin–Nagants and did not replace them. Soviet experimentation with small-arms began during the Second World War. In 1945 the Red Army adopted the Simonov SKS, a semi-automatic 7.62×39mm carbine. In 1949 production of the 7.62×39mm Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle began: planners envisaged troops using it in conjunction with the SKS, but it soon replaced the SKS completely. In 1959 the AKM came out as a modernised version of the AK-47, this was created to ease manufacture and improve aspects of the AK-47. In 1978 the 5.45×39mm AK-74 assault rifle replaced the AKM: it utilized no less than 51% of the AKM's parts. Designers put together the new weapon as a counterpart to the American 5.56×45mm cartridge used in the M-16 assault rifle, and the Russian army  to use it today.

See also

 List of Soviet Union military bases abroad
 Comparative military ranks of World War II
 List of military aircraft of the Soviet Union and the CIS
 Soviet war crimes
 Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Notes

References

 Donnelly, Christopher, Red Banner: the Soviet military system in peace and war, Coulsdon, Surrey : Janes's Information Group ; Alexandria, VA : 1988.

  For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O.

Further reading
 Lehrke, Jesse Paul. "The Transition to National Armies in the Former Soviet Republics, 1988–2005." Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge (2013). See especially Chapters 1–4 (see: The Transition to National Armies in the Former Soviet Republics, 1988–2005)
 Lester W. Grau and Ali Ajmad Jalali, "The Campaign for the Caves: The Battles for Ahawar in the Soviet-Afghan War" Foreign Military Studies Office, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, reprinted from Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 14, September 2001, Number 3.
 Michael MccGwire, 1987. Military Objectives in Soviet Foreign Policy. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

External links

 Losses Suffered by USSR Armed Forces in Wars, Combat Operations, and Military Conflicts
 Soviet Nuclear Weapons in Hungary 1961–1991

1918 establishments in Russia
1991 disestablishments in the Soviet Union
Articles containing video clips
Military wings of communist parties

fr:Armée Rouge

Soviet Armed Forces


Apnea of prematurity is a disorder in infants who are preterm that is defined as cessation of breathing by that lasts for more than 20 seconds and/or is accompanied by hypoxia or bradycardia. Apnea of prematurity is often linked to earlier prematurity (younger gestational age). Apnea is traditionally classified as either obstructive, central, or mixed. Obstructive apnea may occur when the infant's neck is hyperflexed or conversely, hyperextended. It may also occur due to low pharyngeal muscle tone or to inflammation of the soft tissues, which can block the flow of air though the pharynx and vocal cords. Central apnea occurs when there is a lack of respiratory effort. This may result from central nervous system immaturity, or from the effects of medications or illness. Many episodes of apnea of prematurity may start as either obstructive or central, but then involve elements of both, becoming mixed in nature.

Over 50% of infants who are born preterm are estimated to be affected by apnea of prematurity. Infants who are born weighing less than 1000g have close to a 100% risk of being affected by apnea of prematurity. Most premature infants are affected by 'central' apnea due to the developmental stage of their respiratory tract.

Apnea of prematurity can increase the risk of chronic health conditions including retinopathy and increases the risk of problems with the infant's neurological development. Apnea lasting more than 60 seconds may result in death or disability.

The main treatment for apnea of prematurity has been pharmaceutical treatment with methylxanthines that have a mechanism of action of bronchodilation and a stimulant of the respiratory system to promote spontaneous breathing. Caffeine, theophylline, and minophylline are  the common medications used.

Pathophysiology

Ventilatory drive is primarily dependent on response to increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) and acid in the blood. A secondary stimulus is hypoxia. Responses to these stimuli are impaired in premature infants due to immaturity of specialized regions of the brain that sense these changes.  In addition, premature infants have an exaggerated response to laryngeal stimulation (a normal reflex that closes the airway as a protective measure).

Diagnosis

Apnea of prematurity can be readily identified from other forms of infant apnea such as obstructive apnea, hypoventilation syndromes, breathing regulation issues during feeding, and reflux associated apnea with an infant pneumogram or infant apnea/sleep study.

It has been reported that the incidence of neonatal apnea happens in almost all infants with gestational age of less than 29 weeks or the birth weight of less than 1000g.

Treatment

Medications

Methylxanthines (theophylline and caffeine) have been used for almost three decades to treat apnea of prematurity. These medications are thought to help by stimulating the preterm infant's respiratory drive, increasing activity of the diaphragm muscles, and by bronchodilation. There is some evidence that these medications can reduce to need for mechanical ventilation in preterm infants. There is no clear evidence to determine which type of methylxanthine formulation is more effective for preterm infants. The long term effects of this treatment approach has not been well studied. There is also not a lot of evidence to support the most effective way to treat very young preterm infants such as those who are born earlier than 28 weeks of gestational age.

Respiratory support

Simple tactile stimulation by touching the skin or patting the infant may stop an apneic episode by raising the infant's level of alertness.  Increasing the environmental oxygen level by placing the infant in a tent or hood with supplemental oxygen can diminish the frequency of AOP, and may also help the infant maintain adequate oxygenation during short episodes of apnea.  Increased oxygen at low levels can also be delivered using a nasal cannula, which additionally may provide some stimulation due to the tactile stimulation of the cannula.  CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) is sometimes used for apnea when medications and supplemental oxygen are not sufficient.  Usually as a last resort, mechanical ventilation is used to support infants whose apnea cannot be controlled sufficiently by other methods and where the potential risk of harm from recurrent hypoxia is felt to outweigh the risks of injury from ventilation.

Monitoring

In-hospital monitors in the NICU typically measure respiratory movements, heartrate, and pulse oximetry.  Central apnea can be detected quickly since it results in absence of respiratory movements.  Obstructive apnea can be detected when the level of oxygen has declined in the blood and/or results in slowing of the heart rate.

Home apnea monitors (which must be distinguished from infant monitors that are designed only to allow parents to listen to the infant remotely) most frequently measure only respiratory movements and/or heart rate.  They are generally used with premature infants who are otherwise ready for discharge, but who continue to require supplemental oxygen or medication for mild residual AOP.  Home apnea monitoring is typically required for 6–12 weeks after discharge.

Outcome

Since AOP is fundamentally a problem of the immaturity of the physiological systems of the premature infant, it is a self-limited condition that will resolve when these systems mature.  It is unusual for an infant to continue to have significant problems with AOP beyond 43 weeks post-conceptual age.

Infants who have had AOP are at increased risk of recurrence of apnea in response to exposure to anesthetic agents, at least until around 52 weeks post-conceptual age.

There is no evidence that a history of AOP places an infant at increased risk for SIDS.  However, any premature infant (regardless of whether they have had AOP) is at increased risk of SIDS.  It is important that other factors related to SIDS risk be avoided (exposure to smoking, prone sleeping, excess bedding materials, etc.)

Epidemiology

Apnea of prematurity occurs in at least 85 percent of infants who are born at less than 34 weeks of gestation. The incidence is inversely related to the gestational maturity of the infant, but has considerable individual variability.

References

External links

Breathing abnormalities
Preterm birth

Apnea of prematurity


Maria Philomena Potter (3 January 1925 – 7 April 2004), known as Maureen Potter, was an Irish singer, actress, comedienne and performer.

Early life
Potter was born in Dublin and educated at St. Mary's school in Fairview. She had a long career in Irish theatre, mainly as Ireland's première comedienne, but also as a straight actress. She was a regular performer at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin and for many years starred in Christmas pantomime. She became the first star to have a bronze cast of her handprints outside the theatre. She married Jack O'Leary in 1959, an Irish army officer whom she had first met in 1943, and he wrote most of her comedic material.

Career
Among Potter's many dramatic roles in the theatre was that of Maisie Madigan in Juno and the Paycock. While still a teenager, she toured abroad before World War II as a singer and dancer with Jack Hylton (known as Jack Haylton and his orchestra). On a tour of Germany, they once performed in front of Adolf Hitler and other Nazis. In January 1938, Potter appeared on the BBC Television Service with Jack Hylton and his Band. Film of her performance is held by the Alexandra Palace Television Society. In 2001, the Archivist of the Alexandra Palace Television Society gave Potter a copy of her 1938 television appearance, and she recalled her memories:"I was 13 years of age when I appeared with the Jack Hylton Band in RadiOlympia, a programme that went out on television all those years ago. What I remember most is the heavy ochre make-up the performers had to wear. I was excused the make-up for some reason; maybe mine was such a long shot that it was not deemed necessary. If you blink you miss me! However, June Malo, the Henderson Twins, Peggy Dell, Bruce Trent and Freddie Schweitzer had this heavy ochre make-up plastered on them. Plastered is the only word! Having toured with them for over 12-months and used to seeing them in stage make-up they looked very strange. Mr Hylton was excused also. He was always Mr Hylton to me. He called me "Morine", (the American pronunciation, and was a kind man who made such a difference to my career. He always wore those two-tone shoes that were so popular at the time. It is wonderful to see him so trim and dapper in the tape, which Simon Vaughan has sent me."Potter first appeared professionally with Jimmy O'Dea in pantomime and appeared frequently on television and in cabaret. She played the role of Dante Riordan in Joseph Strick's film, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1977).

Later life and death

Potter was conferred with the Freedom of the City of Dublin in 1984, and was later awarded an honorary degree from Trinity College Dublin in 1988. She died in her sleep at her home in Clontarf on 7 April 2004, at the age of 79. She was survived by her husband, Jack O'Leary and her sons, John and Hugh.

Filmography

References

External links

 Potter, Maureen at Dictionary of Irish Biography – Cambridge University Press.
The Guardian obituary
The Independent obituary

1925 births
2004 deaths
Irish comedy musicians
Irish stage actresses
Irish television actresses
Irish women comedians
People from Clontarf, Dublin
20th-century Irish women singers
20th-century Irish comedians
Actors from Dublin (city)

Maureen Potter


Somila Jho (born 25 August 1995 in King William's Town, South Africa) is a South African rugby union player who last played for the  in the Currie Cup and in the Rugby Challenge. His regular position is outside centre.

Rugby career

Youth rugby

Jho attended Dale College in his home town of King William's Town and played first team rugby for them for three years from 2011 to 2013. He also represented his local provincial side, the , during this time. In 2011, he played at the Under-16 Grant Khomo Week held in nearby Queenstown, playing as a flanker for Border in matches against KwaZulu-Natal and Boland scoring a try in the latter match. He was included in their squad for the Under-18 Craven Week – South Africa's most prestigious high schools rugby union tournament – in both 2012 and 2013. He was mainly used as a replacement during the 2012 tournament held in Port Elizabeth, but still weighed in with a try in their defeat to Limpopo. He started all three their matches at the 2013 event; after scoring a try in their 38–20 victory over Namibia in the first match, he also scored a brace in their 37–19 victory in the second match to finish the tournament as their second-highest try-scorer.

At the end of 2013, Jho moved to Grahamstown to enroll at Kingswood College, which is in the ' catchment area and he subsequently joined the academy of the Port Elizabeth-based union for the 2015 season. He played in all twelve of s' matches during the 2015 Under-21 Provincial Championship, the first season that the team competed in Group A of this competition, having won promotion from Group B in 2014. Jho was one of the top performers for a team that struggled to adjust at this level (winning just one of their matches), scoring five tries in the competition. His first try came in their Round Three match in a 13–44 defeat to  and he followed this up with braces in their only win of the competition against  – winning 25–15 – and against  in a 15–33 defeat in Round Ten. His five tries were the most by any Eastern Province player and he was also the team's second-highest points scorer, with his contribution of 25 points just four less than that of fly-half MC Venter.

Eastern Province Kings

Serious financial problems at the  at the end of the 2015 season saw a number of first team regulars leave the union and Jho was among a number of youngsters that were promoted to the squad that competed in the 2016 Currie Cup qualification series. He was named in the starting lineup for their first match of the season against the , playing the entire 80 minutes in a 14–37 defeat. He started their second match of the season away to the  in a match that saw Jho score the first senior try of his career in an 18–37 defeat. After starting their next match against the , he scored another try away to Namibian side  in a 31–18 victory, his team's first win in the competition. A third try followed in their Round Seven match against a , but was a mere consolation in a 15–35 defeat.

Personal life

He is the younger brother of Andile Jho, who also played first class rugby for the . On 14 May 2016, the two brothers played together in a first class match for the first time when they were named as the starting centre-pairing for their 2016 Currie Cup qualification defeat to  in Cape Town.

References

South African rugby union players
Living people
1995 births
Sportspeople from Qonce
Rugby union centres
Eastern Province Elephants players
Rugby union players from the Eastern Cape

Somila Jho


Duncan Barrett is a writer and editor who specialises in biography and memoir. After publishing several books in collaboration with other authors, he published his first solo book, Men of Letters, in 2014. Barrett also works as an actor and theatre director.

Early life
Duncan was born in Islington, London in 1983 and went to City of London School from 1994 to 2001, before studying English at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he served as Film Editor of student newspaper Varsity. He is the author of Star Trek: The Human Frontier, co-written with his mother Michele Barrett and published by Polity Press in 2000. He edited Vitali Vitaliev's travelogue Passport to Enclavia, published by Reportage Press in 2008.

Work as writer and editor
Barrett was the editor of Ronald Skirth's pacifist First World War memoir The Reluctant Tommy, published by Macmillan in 2010. In it he wrote that, having come across Skirth's memoir through his mother's research, he felt determined that it should be read by a wide audience. The book was favourably reviewed by Richard Holmes in the Evening Standard and Jonathan Gibbs in the Financial Times, Socialist Worker and the Sunday Express. However, it came under attack from critics who objected to its pacifist politics and questioned its accuracy. In a revised introduction to the paperback edition (2011), Barrett defended the memoir, encouraging people to "read the book for yourself and make up your own mind who to believe".

In 2012, Collins published The Sugar Girls, a book co-written by Barrett with Nuala Calvi, telling the stories of women workers at Tate & Lyle's East End factories since the Second World War. It soon became a best-seller. In an article for History Workshop Online, Barrett wrote that, while their methodology was indebted to oral history, the result was a work of narrative non-fiction. The authors were inspired by Jennifer Worth's Call the Midwife, which was their "touchstone" as they wrote. The book is accompanied by a blog, where Barrett and Calvi discuss broader issues of life and work in the East End of London in the period covered by the book, as well as posting photographs and audio clips of the women they interviewed.

In 2013, Barrett and Calvi's second book together, GI Brides, was published by Harper, based on interviews with British women who married Americans during the Second World War. It soon became a Sunday Times best-seller. The following year, a US edition of the book went into The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.

Barrett and Calvi's third collaboration for HarperCollins, The Girls Who Went to War, tells the true stories of women who served in the Army, Navy and Air Force during the Second World War. The book was published on 7 May 2015, and launched the following day to commemorate the 70th anniversary of VE-Day. On 17 May 2015, it went into the Sunday Times bestseller list at number 6.

In 2014, Barrett's first solo book, Men of Letters was published by AA Publishing. The book tells the story of the Post Office Rifles during the First World War.

Work in theatre
Barrett also works as an actor and theatre director. He trained at Central School of Speech and Drama, graduating in 2006. In 2007 he played John Walker in Eastern Angles' production of Arthur Ransome's We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea and was praised for "neatly avoid[ing] any jolly hockeysticks". In 2011 he was seen as W. T. Tutte in the BBC's Code-breakers and in 2012 as Paul Winder in National Geographic's Locked up Abroad.

Barrett has often worked on the plays of Shakespeare and other dramatists. He is the director of the short film Exit Strategy (2010), adapted from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. He played Frederick in a production of Aphra Behn's The Rover at the Edinburgh Fringe 2006. The previous year he played the title role in Shakespeare's Richard II at the festival. In 2004, he directed All's Well That Ends Well at the festival, with a cast including Joe Thomas of The Inbetweeners.

Bibliography
Notes

References
 - Total pages: 324

External links
The Sugar Girls website
GI Brides website
The Girls Who Went to War website

1983 births
Living people
20th-century English writers
21st-century English memoirists
21st-century English male actors
Writers from Islington (district)
Alumni of Jesus College, Cambridge
People educated at the City of London School
English biographers
English book editors
English theatre directors

Duncan Barrett


Claude Fournier L'Héritier (21 December 1745 – 1825) was a French personality of the Revolution, nicknamed l'Américain ("the American").

Life

Early activities
He was born at Auzon (Haute-Loire), the son of a poor weaver, and went to French America to seek his fortune. On the island of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), he began the manufacture of tafia (an inferior quality of rum), but lost everything in a fire.

Revolution
Returning to France, he joined the Revolution with enthusiasm, and distinguished himself by organizing a popular armed force which became involved in all major insurrections of the capital including the Women's March on Versailles (1789), Champ de Mars Massacre (1791), the storming of the Tuileries Palace (1792) and the 9 September massacres.

He was on bad terms with the majority of the politicians (particularly with Jean-Paul Marat) and spent much of his time in prison, all governments regarding him as an agitator and accusing him of inciting to insurrection. Arrested for the first time for trying to force an entrance into the club of the Cordeliers, from which he had been expelled, he was released, but was in prison from 12 December 1793, to 21 September 1794, and again from 9 March to 26 October 1795.

Consulate, Empire, Restoration
After the attempt on the First Consul in the Rue Sainte-Nicaise he was deported to French Guiana, but was allowed to return to the French Empire in 1809. In 1811, while under surveillance at Auxerre, he was accused of having provoked a riot against indirect taxes known as the droits réunis (afterwards called contributions indirectes), and was imprisoned in the Château d'If, where he remained until 1814.

On the second Bourbon Restoration, Fournier was confined for about nine months in La Force Prison. After 1816 he turned Royalist, and passed his last years in importuning the Restoration government for compensation for his lost property in Saint-Domingue. He died in obscurity.

See also
Society of the Friends of Truth

Notes

References
 In turn, it cites as reference:
Preface to François Victor Alphonse Aulard's edition of Fournier's Mémoires secrets (Paris, 1890), published by the Société de l'histoire de la Révolution.

External links

1745 births
1825 deaths
People from Haute-Loire
People of the French Revolution
People from Saint-Domingue
French male non-fiction writers
19th-century French memoirists

Claude Fournier (revolutionary)


The Persian jird (Meriones persicus) is a species of rodent in the Muridae family. It is found in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan.

The Persian jird is about 6 inches long.  It has a brush-tipped tail that is slightly longer than the body.  They are wild brown with white bellies.

They live in dry rocky hillsides with little plant life and semi-desert areas.  The eat dry plant material and grains, and sometimes small insects.

Persian jirds usually have two litters a year.  Each litter has around seven pups.

Some people keep them as a pet.  They can live to be six or seven years old.  They need large cages that let them climb and leap.

Rodents
Mammals of Pakistan

Persian Jird


The Grand Canyon Railway  is a heritage railroad which carries passengers between Williams, Arizona, and the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.

The  railroad, built by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, was completed on September 17, 1901. The arrival of trains led increased tourism to the area, and the railway company was instrumental in the creation of the Grand Canyon Village to serve guests. Declining ridership due to the popularity of the automobile led the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to cease passenger service of the Grand Canyon Railway in July 1968 and freight service on the line ended in 1974.

Private investors purchased the line in 1988, restored the facilities, and started running passenger trains again on September 17, 1989. Today, the railroad carries hundreds of passengers to and from the canyon every day and operates year-round.

The entire Grand Canyon Railway has been added to the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing the contribution the train has made to the history of the United States.

History

Santa Fe ownership

In 1901, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway completed a branch line from Williams to Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim. The first scheduled train to carry paying passengers of the Grand Canyon Railway arrived from Williams on September 17 of that year. The  long trip cost $3.95, and naturalist John Muir later commended the railroad for its limited environmental impact. To accommodate travelers, the Santa Fe designed and built the El Tovar Hotel, located just  from the Canyon Rim. El Tovar opened its doors in January 1905

Competition with the automobile forced the Santa Fe to cease operation of the Grand Canyon Railway in July 1968 (only three passengers were on the last run), although Santa Fe continued to use the tracks for freight until 1974.

Plans by entertainer Arthur Godfrey to resume service in 1977 fell through. In addition, two other companies attempted to resurrect the line in 1980 and 1984, with each attempt helping to maintain interest in preserving the line and saving it from scrapping.

Max and Thelma Biegert ownership

In 1988, the line was bought by Max and Thelma Biegert. The railway was restored and in 1989 began operations as a separate company, independent of the Santa Fe. The first run of the restored railroad was on September 17, 1989, commemorating the September 17 debut of the original railroad.

The Biegerts, a couple originally from Nebraska, had made their fortune in crop dusting through Biegert Aviation, founded in 1947, which had a large federal government contract for its B-17 and later C-54 fleet.  After leaving the crop-dusting business, they operated a for-profit day care business in Houston, Texas, which became the Children's World Learning Center and is now part of KinderCare Learning Centers. The Biegerts never intended to get into the rail business. They had loaned money secured by the tracks to another person for the rail line. When they defaulted the Biegerts took over the line. In conjunction with the startup, the Biegerts were principal investors in the short-lived Farwest Airlines, an air taxi service operating a DHC Dash 7 that was intended to bring tourists from California, Las Vegas and Phoenix to Flagstaff where the passengers would then take the rail line.

The first locomotives the railway acquired were a pair of EMD GP7u units from the Santa Fe, as well as four 2-8-0 consolidation steam locomotives formerly operated by the Lake Superior and Ishpeming Railroad. In the early 1990s, the Grand Canyon Railway purchased a fleet of 1950s-era ALCO FA Diesel-electric locomotives, featuring an iconic "snub nose" design. The fleet consisted of two cab-equipped lead A unit models and two cabless booster B unit models. The new locomotives supplemented the fleet of steam locomotives and allowed the railway to grow into a year-round operation. In 1996, the railway boosted their steam roster by rebuilding a 2-8-2 mikado; former Chicago Burlington and Quincy 4960, a locomotive with a long history of excursion service.

The ALCO FA locomotives lacked the features found in more modern units, such as increased horsepower and dynamic brakes. Therefore, in February 2003, the Grand Canyon Railway purchased three late-1970s F40PH locomotives from Amtrak and placed them into service in 2004.

In March 2006, owners Max and Thelma Biegert announced to the media that they were placing the railroad and its associated restaurants, hotels and amenities up for sale. The combined properties had an annual revenue of nearly $40 million. The Biegerts sought a new buyer/operator with a possible theme park background, which would ensure that the railroad, hotels, RV park, restaurants (and a possible new amusement park in Williams) would continue to be operated as one entity.

Xanterra ownership

On September 21, 2006, it was announced that Xanterra Travel Collection, submitted the winning bid (for an undisclosed sum) and was selected as the new owner for the Grand Canyon Railway. Xanterra is the corporate name and identity for what was originally known as the Fred Harvey Company, a company with restaurant, hotel and service ties to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway as far back as 1876.

Xanterra said that it intended to keep all 480 of the railway's current employees, and planned to focus on growing the business and increasing the coordination between the railway and Xanterra's other services in the Grand Canyon National Park's South Rim. In the press release, the railway and Xanterra reported over 225,000 passengers and over $38 million in revenue in calendar year 2005. The purchase of the GCR included all of the railway's assets, depots, hotels, RV park, rolling stock, shops and the land on which the  line operates over.

Steam locomotive operations on the Grand Canyon Railway were suspended in September 2008. Xanterra cited extra diesel fuel costs and environmental concerns as the reason for the decision, pointing out that each roundtrip of a steam locomotive consumed 1,450 gallons of diesel fuel (compared to the 550 gallons used by a diesel-electric locomotive) and 1,200 gallons of water. Industry experts said that ridership losses due to the late 2000s recession and rising fuel prices due to the 2000s energy crisis likely contributed to the decision.

Steam locomotives would return to the Grand Canyon Railway on September 19, 2009. Xanterra converted the steam locomotives to operate using waste vegetable oil collected from restaurants across Northern Arizona and installed a rainwater collection system on the maintenance building to fill boilers when available. Since 2011, special occasion trips, and at least one roundtrip per month during the summer is operated using a steam locomotive. In 2017, the Grand Canyon Railway added to its fleet of diesel locomotives, purchasing two additional F40PH units from New Jersey Transit. As of 2021, the Grand Canyon Railway only has two steam locomotives left in their roster. In 2019, the GCR purchased three Ex-Rio Grande business cars, and since then, the GCR used them exclusively for private charter service, with the option of being pulled by steam or diesel.

Locomotive roster

There are also other locomotives that occasionally visit the GCR, whether its for special events like Santa Fe 3751 or modern units from Amtrak, or just for temporary storage, like Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway No. 4, or the Arizona State Railroad Museum's locomotive collection.

Operations

The railroad carries hundreds of passengers to and from the canyon every day, totaling about 225,000 people per year.

The restored Santa Fe Railway Station in Williams serves as the southern terminus for the Grand Canyon Railway and the Grand Canyon Depot, owned by the National Park Service, is the northern terminus for passengers of the line.

Most trains are pulled by the Railway's fleet of F40PH diesel locomotives. They were regeared to run at freight locomotive speeds and have been redesignated as F40FH. Steam locomotives pull trains on special holidays and the first Saturday of the peak travel season (March through October). The Grand Canyon Railway's fleet of historic ALCO FA diesel locomotives also see occasional use.

Passengers ride to and from the Grand Canyon in 1950s era climate-controlled coaches. During the peak travel season, 1920s era Pullman Harriman style coaches with open windows are also available.

The railroad adds to the Old West experience by having actors dressed as bandits stage a mock train robbery during the return trip from the Grand Canyon to Williams.

The Grand Canyon Railway offers at least one daily round trip of its Williams Flyer train between Williams and the Grand Canyon every day except on Christmas Day, December 25. During peak demand periods a second train departure is added.

During the winter season (November – January), the line runs The Polar Express from Williams to the 'North Pole', a station about  north of town. In 2008, this winter service carried about 78,000 passengers.

The route included stops at Quivero, Valle, Willaha, and Coconino stations.

Historic designations
The entire Grand Canyon Railway has been added to the National Register of Historic Places for being associated with events that made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of the history of the United States. In the nomination to the register, the railroad was credited with, "Opening up of a large area north of Williams, the building of the Grand Canyon National Park facilities at the south rim, establishment of a solid tourist trade in the American Southwest, support of cattle and sheep ranching, copper and uranium mining, lumber industries, and the building of a sub culture around the railroad that continues to this day."

The Grand Canyon Depot was added to the register on September 6, 1974, while the Williams Depot and the rest of the railroad between Williams and the Grand Canyon National Park was added as a Historic District on August 23, 2000. The Grand Canyon Depot was also designated as a National Historic Landmark on May 28, 1987, for its outstanding historical significance.

See also

 ATSF Grand Canyon Limited
 Grand Canyon Railway 4960
 Grand Canyon Railway 29
 History of the Grand Canyon area
 List of heritage railroads in the United States
 List of heritage railways

References

Further reading

External links

 Grand Canyon Railway official website
 History of Line
 More History of Line

American companies established in 1901
American companies disestablished in 1974
Grand Canyon
Heritage railroads in Arizona
Transportation in Coconino County, Arizona
Defunct Arizona railroads
Former Class I railroads in the United States
National Register of Historic Places in Coconino County, Arizona
Predecessors of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
Spin-offs of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
Railway companies established in 1901
Railway companies disestablished in 1942
Railway companies established in 1989
Tourist attractions in Coconino County, Arizona
Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona
Rail infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places in Arizona
Williams, Arizona
National Register of Historic Places in Grand Canyon National Park
1901 establishments in Arizona Territory
Arthur Godfrey

Grand Canyon Railway


Steven Thomas Avery (born April 14, 1970) is an American left-handed former pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). He played for the Atlanta Braves, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers in his career.

Career

Atlanta Braves
Avery was the third overall selection by Atlanta in the 1988 amateur draft. He made his first career start on June 13, 1990, against the Cincinnati Reds at Riverfront Stadium, giving up eight runs in 2 innings. He finished his rookie year with a record of 3–11 in 21 starts with a 5.64 ERA.  The pitching staff of Avery, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Pete Smith were dubbed Atlanta's "Young Guns".

1991
The 1991 season was a good year for both Avery and his team.  The team went from worst to first in the NL West while Avery compiled a record of 18–8 with a 3.38 ERA. He gave the Braves their first win of the season, a 7–5 victory over the defending World Champion Cincinnati Reds.  In the heat of a September pennant race with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the 21-year-old Avery beat them twice, 9–1 at home on September 15, and 3–0 on the road on September 20, pitching a complete game both times.  Avery's last win of the regular season was a stellar performance against the Houston Astros.  On October 4, Avery threw a no-hitter for 6 innings until Luis Gonzalez broke it up with a single. His amazing season continued with one of the greatest postseason performances in history. He shut out the Pittsburgh Pirates for 16 innings over two games and accumulated two 1–0 wins.  His performance earned him MVP honors for the 1991 NLCS. In the 1991 World Series, Avery earned no decisions in two starts but pitched effectively in both Game Three and Game Six.

Continued success
In 1992, Avery lowered his ERA to 3.20, but his record fell off to 11–11, mostly due to the Braves inability to score runs when he pitched.  However, his playoff success continued when he took the mound against the Pirates in the 1992 NLCS.  He extended his mastery over the Pittsburgh offense to 22 shutout innings before giving up five runs in the seventh inning of a Braves rout in Game Two.  After lasting only  of an inning and giving up four runs in his second start in Game Five, Avery kept the Pirates at bay in the crucial middle innings of Game Seven in relief of John Smoltz.  Avery's clutch performance kept the game close enough for Francisco Cabrera to perform his game-winning heroics in the ninth inning, when he cracked a two-run single that scored David Justice and Sid Bream.

Avery started Game Three of the 1992 World Series and was the losing pitcher in the first World Series game ever played outside the United States.  He pitched effectively but lost, 3–2, to the Toronto Blue Jays. In Game Six, he was pulled after giving up a home run to Candy Maldonado in the fourth inning. Avery appeared on his way to another loss, but a Braves rally extended the game into the eleventh inning before the Blue Jays prevailed, winning their first World Series and saddling the hard-luck Braves with their second consecutive World Series defeat.

Unexpected decline
In 1993, Avery had the best season of his career. He was selected to the All-Star team and had a record of 16–4 entering the September 12, 1993 game against the San Diego Padres.  Avery lost and suffered an injury to a muscle under his pitching armpit.  Many blame Avery's injury on his heavy workload as a young pitcher; he had started 135 major league games before reaching the age of 24.  Avery was never again the same pitcher, although he ended the year 18–6 with a 2.94 ERA.

Avery was outpitched early in Game One of the 1993 NLCS by Curt Schilling of the Philadelphia Phillies.  A late rally tied the game and got Avery off the hook, but the Braves still lost. In his second matchup with Schilling, the Braves again got Avery off the hook for the loss, but again ultimately lost the game in extra innings, 4–3.

Avery's career went rapidly downhill after his injury.  His record after September 12, 1993, was 44–50 after compiling a 47–22 record from the beginning of 1991 until the injury.  However, Avery showed occasional flashes of his previous brilliance.  After struggling throughout 1995, Avery started Game Four of the 1995 NLCS with the Braves up three games to none over the Reds.  He pitched an outstanding game and won, 6–0, sending Atlanta into the World Series. In Game Four of the 1995 World Series, he was the surprise starter over ace Greg Maddux, and he was also the winner, 5–2, pitching six innings and giving up one run.

Avery missed two months with injury in 1996 and finished with a 7–10 record.  His only appearance in the 1996 World Series was in the top of the 10th inning of Game Four, a game that saw the Braves blow a 6–0 lead to the New York Yankees en route to an 8–6 loss in the game. Pitching  innings, Avery earned the loss, giving up a hit, a run, and three walks, the last of which (to Wade Boggs) forced in the go-ahead run.  Atlanta manager Bobby Cox earned some criticism at the time owing to his decision to have Avery intentionally walk Bernie Williams to load the bases for Boggs.

Boston, Cincinnati and Detroit
With his career in a sudden and premature decline, Avery was granted free agency and signed with the Boston Red Sox on January 22, 1997.  He pitched two years for the Red Sox, going 16–14 over two seasons as the number two starter behind Pedro Martínez.

He signed a one-year contract with the Reds for the 1999 season.  He was 6–7 when he was lost for the rest of the year in July to a torn labrum.  He signed with the Braves during spring training in 2000 and again during spring training in 2001, but failed to make the club each time.

In 2003, Avery made a brief comeback with the Detroit Tigers team that threatened to break the 120-loss record of the 1962 New York Mets.  He made 19 relief appearances, including the final appearance of his career on July 20, 2003, at U.S. Cellular Field against the Chicago White Sox. His final pitch was a double play caused when Paul Konerko lined to Avery and he threw Magglio Ordóñez out before he was able to get back to first base.

Avery was 2-0 and batted 1.000 as a Tiger.

In an eleven-season career, Avery posted a 96–83 record with 980 strikeouts and a 4.19 ERA in 1554 innings pitched.

References

Sources
The ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia – Gary Gillette, Peter Gammons, Pete Palmer. Publisher: Sterling Publishing, 2005. Format: Paperback, 1824pp. Language: English.

External links

1970 births
Living people
People from Trenton, Michigan
Baseball players from Wayne County, Michigan
National League All-Stars
Atlanta Braves players
Boston Red Sox players
Cincinnati Reds players
Detroit Tigers players
Major League Baseball pitchers
Pulaski Braves players
Greenville Braves players
Durham Bulls players
Richmond Braves players
Gulf Coast Red Sox players
Pawtucket Red Sox players
Myrtle Beach Pelicans players
Macon Braves players
Toledo Mud Hens players
National League Championship Series MVPs

Steve Avery (baseball)


The Variophone was developed by Evgeny Sholpo in 1930 at Lenfilm Studio Productions, in Leningrad, the Soviet Union, during his experiments with graphical sound techniques, also known as ornamental, drawn, paper, artificial or synthetic sound. In his research Sholpo was assisted by the composer Georgy Rimsky‐Korsakov.
The Variophone was an optical synthesizer that utilized sound waves cut onto cardboard disks rotating synchronously with a moving 35mm movie film while being photographed onto it to produce a continuous soundtrack. Afterwards this filmstrip is played as a normal movie by means of a film projector. Being read by photocell, amplified and monitored by a loudspeaker, it functions as a musical recording process.

Although with the first version of the Variophone, polyphonic soundtracks of up to 6 voices could be produced by shooting of several monophonic parts and combining them later, by the late 1930s and 1940s, some soundtracks contained up to twelve voices, recorded as tiny parallel tracks inside the normal soundtrack area.

At the same time in the Soviet Union several other artists were experimenting with similar ideas. The first artificial soundtrack ever created was drawn in 1930 by composer and musical theorist Arseny Avraamov who was working with a hand-drawn technique for producing sound effects.  Nikolai Voinov, Ter‐Gevondian and Konstantinov were developing paper sound techniques. Boris Yankovsky was developing his spectral analysis, decomposition and resynthesis technique, resembling the recent computer music techniques of cross synthesis and the phase vocoder.

Many sound films and artificial soundtracks for movies and cartoons were produced by means of the Variophone, including the popular sound-films, often broadcast in 1930-1940s Symphony of the Piece and Torreodor. At the end of 1941 Siege of Leningrad, the Variophon was destroyed when the last missile exploded.  After World War II, Evgeny Sholpo became the director of the new Scientific‐Research Laboratory for Graphical sound at the State Research Institute for Sound Recording, in Leningrad.

The fourth and final version of Variophone was not finished, despite promising experiments in musical intonation and the temporal characteristics of live musical performance. The laboratory was moved to Moscow and Sholpo was removed from his position as director.  In 1951, after a long illness, Evgeny Sholpo died and his laboratory was closed.

Documentation for the Variophones was transferred to the Acoustical Laboratory at Moscow State Conservatory and later, to the Theremin Center.  In 2007, several hours of graphical soundtracks produced with the Variophone were discovered in a Moscow film archive and await publishing.

See also
 Daphne Oram
 Oramics

References
 Izvolov Nikolai.From the history of painted sound in USSR. Kinovedcheskie Zapiski, no.53, 2001, p. 292 (in Russian)
 Levin, Thomas. 2003. Tones from out of Nowhere: Rudolf Pfenninger and the Archaeology of Synthetic Sound. Grey Room 12 (Fall 2003): p. 32-79
 Smirnov, Andrei. Sound Out of Paper. Moscow, November, 2007
 Smirnov, Andrei. Boris Yankovsky: Leben im Klangspektrum. Gezeichneter Klang und Klangsynthese in der Sowjetunion der 30er Jahre. pp. 97–120; Tim Boykett/Andrei Smirnov. Notation und visuelle Musik. pp. 121–126. Klangmaschinen zwischen Experiment und Medientechnik. (C)2010 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld. Aus:Daniel Gethmann (Hg.)
 Smirnov, Andrei. Son produit par la lumiere et le papier. Article in the catalogue of the exhibition "Vois ce que j'entends" at the Centre des Arts Enghien-les-Bains, France. pp. 16–27,
 Andrei Smirnov & Liubov Pchelkina. Les Pionniers Russes de'l ART du SON. Experimentations musicales. Article in the catalogue of the exhibition "LENIN, STALIN and Music", pp. 96–105. Musee de la musique, October 12, 2010 - January 16, 2011. Cite de la musique, Paris.

External links
Variophone at the Theremin Center website (in Russian)
Excerpt form Carburettor Suite by G.Rimsky-Korsakov, created with Variophone in 1935
Excerpt form Prelude by Chopin, created with Variophone in 1935
Excerpt form Rhapsody by List, created with Variophone in 1935
Excerpt form Sterviatniki soundtrack by E.Sholpo and I.Boldirev, created with Variophone in 1941
A link mentioning the invention

Synthesizers
Soviet inventions
Russian electronic musical instruments
Graphical sound

Variophone


Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is the physical phenomenon in which magnetic nuclei in a magnetic field absorb, then re-emit electromagnetic radiation. This energy is of a specific resonance frequency that depends on the magnetic field strength, and the magnetic properties of the isotopes of the atoms. Many scientific techniques exploit the NMR phenomena to study molecular physics, crystals and non crystalline materials through NMR spectroscopy. NMR is also used for advanced medical imaging techniques, for example, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

How it works
All isotopes that contain an odd number of protons and/or of neutrons (see Isotope) have an intrinsic magnetic moment and angular momentum, in other words a nonzero spin, while all nuclides with even numbers of both have a total spin of zero. The most commonly studied nuclei are 1H and 13C, although nuclei from isotopes of many other elements (e.g. 2H, 6Li, 10B, 11B, 14N, 15N, 17O, 19F, 23Na, 29Si, 31P, 35Cl, 113Cd, 129Xe, 195Pt) have been studied by high-field NMR spectroscopy as well.

A key idea of NMR is that the resonance frequency of a particular substance is directly proportional to the strength of the applied magnetic field. This resonance is used in imaging techniques. If a sample is placed in a non-uniform magnetic field then the resonance frequencies of the sample's nuclei depend on where in the field they are located. Scientists try to use the highest possible magnetic fields to get the best image quality.

The principle of NMR usually involves two sequential steps:
The alignment (polarization) of the magnetic nuclear spins in an applied, constant magnetic field H0.
An electro-magnetic, usually radio frequency (RF), pulse causes a small shift of this alignment of the nuclear spins. The pulse frequency is chosen based on the static magnetic field (H0) and the nuclei being measured.

The constant field and the pulse field are usually set perpendicular to each other. This maximizes the NMR signal strength. The resulting response by the total magnetization (M) of the nuclear spins is the phenomenon that is used in NMR spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging. Both use intense applied magnetic fields (H0) in order to achieve dispersion and very high stability to deliver spectral resolution. Scientist explain their readings as chemical shifts, the Zeeman effect, and Knight shifts (in metals).

NMR is used in low-field NMR, NMR spectroscopy and MRI in the Earth's magnetic field (referred to as Earth's field NMR), and in several types of magnetometers.

History

Nuclear magnetic resonance was first described and measured in molecular beams by Isidor Rabi in 1938. In 1944, Rabi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. In 1946, Felix Bloch and Edward Mills Purcell expanded the technique for use on liquids and solids. They shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1952 for this discovery.

Purcell had worked on the development of radar during World War II at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Radiation Laboratory. His work during that project on the production and detection of radio frequency power and on the absorption of such RF power by matter laid the background for Rabi's discovery of NMR.

Rabi, Bloch, and Purcell noticed that magnetic nuclei, like 1H and 31P, could absorb RF energy when placed in a magnetic field of a strength specific to the identity of the nuclei. When this absorption occurs, the nucleus is described as being in resonance. Different atomic nuclei within a molecule resonate at different (radio) frequencies for the same magnetic field strength. The observation of such magnetic resonance frequencies of the nuclei present in a molecule allows any trained user to discover essential, chemical and structural information about the molecule.

After World War II, the development of NMR as a technique in analytical chemistry and biochemistry happened at the same time as the development of electromagnetic technology and advanced electronics and their introduction into civilian use. In the 1960s, William Lipscomb was a pioneer in using NMR to study chemical structures. He worked out how to look at NMR data to tell what atoms are connected together in a molecule.  This is called chemical shift.

References

Nuclear physics

Nuclear magnetic resonance