Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
newly formed Russian air force. At a time when
aerial warfare was in its infancy, the record con-
firm that Kazakov shot down 17 planes; he may
have been responsible for bringing down more
airplanes in remote rural areas. Kazakov's most
widely known fighting tactic was to ram the
enemy aircraft in midair, a risky but effective
method. After the
OCTOBER REVOLUTION
of 1917,
Kazakov joined the White forces that sought
to overthrow the Bolshevik government. On
August 1, 1919, he was killed in an air crash.
The timing of his death, soon after the Allies had
ceased supporting the Whites in July 1919, and
his great expertise at landing airplanes have led
many to believe that he purposely crashed his
plane out of depression over the fate of the
White cause.
ation. By the mid-1990s its population had
reached 1.4 million.
Kerensky, Aleksandr Feodorovich
(1881-1970)
politician
The central figure behind the Provisional Gov-
ernment that succeeded
NICHOLAS II
in February
1917, Kerensky was born in Simbirsk (now
Ulyanovsk), the son of a headmaster who once
taught the man who later overthrew him,
Vladimir
LENIN
. A lawyer by trade, Kerensky
joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1905
and was briefly imprisoned and exiled. Return-
ing from exile in 1906, he began a successful
career as a defense lawyer in political cases. In
1912 he was part of the delegation that traveled
to Siberia to investigate the
LENA GOLDFIELDS
MASSACRE
, which left 170 miners dead. That
same year he was elected to the Fourth
DUMA
for
the Trudovik (Labor) faction of the Socialist Rev-
olutionaries. By the time of the
FEBRUARY REVO
-
LUTION
, Kerensky had developed parliamentary
connections and a not insignificant mass follow-
ing from his highly visible activities as a radical
lawyer. Already a deputy chairman of the Pet-
rograd Soviet, Kerensky entered the Provisional
Government as minister of justice. Over the
next six months, he accumulated power in the
Provisional Government, becoming minister of
war and navy in May 1917, prime minister in
July after the defeat of a pro-Bolshevik insur-
rection, and supreme commander in chief in
September after the murky
KORNILOV
affair. By
then, Kerensky's policy of strongly supporting
the war, despite its great unpopularity, and post-
poning basic reforms until the convening of a
democratically elected Constituent Assembly
had destroyed what little support the govern-
ment had left. On October 25, Kerensky fled Pet-
rograd in disguise, as the
BOLSHEVIKS
and their
allies took over the city, proclaiming a Soviet
government. After the
OCTOBER REVOLUTION
, he
remained active in anti-Soviet politics. In hiding
after October 1917, he did not leave Russia until
Kazan
A city on the Volga River, located about 500
miles east of Moscow, Kazan is the political and
cultural center of Russia's Tatar Muslim popula-
tion. Kazan was founded in the late 14th cen-
tury and in 1445 became the capital of the
Khanate of Kazan, one of the states that formed
as the
GOLDEN HORDE
began to fragment. In
1552, after a long campaign it was captured by
the troops of
IVAN IV
the Terrible. The famous
cathedral of St. Basil's in Moscow was built to
commemorate its capture, an important turning
point in Russian history. The city declined dur-
ing the following centuries and suffered great
damage in 1774 during the
PUGACHEV REBEL
-
LION
. In 1781,
CATHERINE II
designated it a pro-
vincial capital, and the city recovered to become
an important regional transportation and man-
ufacturing center. Kazan became an important
intellectual and cultural center in the 19th cen-
tury following the foundation in 1804 of Kazan
University, which counted Lev
TOLSTOY
and
Vladimir
LENIN
among its famous students. In
Soviet times, Kazan became the capital of the
Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic,
which after 1991 became known as Tatarstan, an
autonomous republic within the Russian Feder-
Search WWH ::
Custom Search