- published: 17 May 2012
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- author: tyrlop
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Albania
Albania (
i/ælˈbeɪniə/ al-BAY-nee-ə, Albanian: Shqipëri/Shqipëria; Gheg Albanian: Shqipnia), officially known as the Republic of Albania (Albanian: Republika e Shqipërisë pronounced Albanian pronunciation: [ɾɛpuˈblika ɛ ʃcipəˈɾiːs]), is a country in Southern Europe. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west, and on the Ionian Sea to the southwest. It is less than 72 km (45 mi) from Italy, across the Strait of Otranto which links the Adriatic Sea to the Ionian Sea.
Albania is a member of the UN, NATO, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Council of Europe, World Trade Organisation, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and one of the founding members of the Union for the Mediterranean. Albania has been a potential candidate for accession to the European Union since January 2003, and it formally applied for EU membership on 28 April 2009.
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Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Eastern Bloc claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. In practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post-World War II period.
The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified. The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame"—a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt—while condemning the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB) that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, both borders came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" that separated Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
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Burma
Burma
i/ˈbɜrmə/ BUR-mə, also known as Myanmar i/ˌmjɑːnˈmɑr/ MYAHN--MAR, is a country in South Asia and Southeast Asia. It is bordered by India, Bangladesh, China, Laos and Thailand. One-third of Burma's total perimeter of 1,930 kilometres (1,200 mi) forms an uninterrupted coastline along the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. At 676,578 km2 (261,227 sq mi), it is the 40th largest country in the world and the second largest country in Southeast Asia. Burma is also the 24th most populous country in the world with over 60.28 million people.
Burma is home to some of the early civilizations of Southeast Asia including the Pyu and the Mon. In the 9th century, the Burmans of the Kingdom of Nanzhao, entered the upper Irrawaddy valley and, following the establishment of the Pagan Empire in the 1050s, the Burmese language and culture slowly became dominant in the country. During this period, Theravada Buddhism gradually became the predominant religion of the country. The Pagan Empire fell due to the Mongol invasions (1277–1301), and several warring states emerged. In the second half of the 16th century, the country was reunified by the Taungoo Dynasty which for a brief period was the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia. The early 19th century Konbaung Dynasty ruled over an area that included modern Burma as well as Manipur and Assam. The country was colonized by Britain following three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–1885).
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Chechnya
The Chechen Republic (
/ˈtʃɛtʃɨn/; Russian: Чече́нская Респу́блика, Chechenskaya Respublika; Chechen: Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika), commonly referred to as Chechnya (/ˈtʃɛtʃniə/; Russian: Чечня́, Chechnya; Chechen: Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria (English: Land of Minerals), is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. Population: 1,268,989 (2010 Census).
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a systematic reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting continues in the mountains and southern regions of the republic.
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East Germany
The German Democratic Republic (GDR; German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik [ˈdɔʏtʃə demoˈkʀaːtɪʃə ʀepuˈbliːk] or DDR), informally known as East Germany (German: Ostdeutschland), was a socialist state established by the USSR in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city. The GDR had an area of 107,771 km2 (41,610 mi2), bordering Czechoslovakia to the south, West Germany to the south and west, Poland to the east, and the Baltic Sea to the north. East Germany was dissolved upon joining the institutions of West Germany in the German reunification, on 3 October 1990.
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Hungary
Hungaryi/ˈhʌŋɡəri/ (Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ] (
listen)) is a country, which is located in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The country's capital, and largest city, is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and is a Schengen state. The official language is Hungarian, also known as Magyar, which is part of the Finno-Ugric group and is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.
Following a Celt (after c. 450 BC) and a Roman (AD 9 - c. 430) period, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian prince Árpád, whose great-grandson Saint Stephen I was crowned with a crown sent by the pope from Rome in 1000 AD. The Kingdom of Hungary lasted for 946 years, and at various points was regarded as one of the cultural centres of the Western world. After about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary was integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy, and later constituted half of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy (1867–1918).
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Incheon
Coordinates: 37°29′N 126°38′E / 37.483°N 126.633°E / 37.483; 126.633
The Incheon Metropolitan City (인천, 仁川, literally 'wise river' - formerly Inchon; named Jinsen during the time of Japanese rule) is located in northwestern South Korea. The city was home to just 4,700 people when Jemulpo port was built in 1883. Today 2.76 million people live in the city, making it Korea’s third most populous city after Seoul and Busan Metropolitan City. While people have inhabited the area from the New Stone Age, the city’s growth was assured in modern times with the development of its port due to its natural advantages as a coastal city.
Incheon has since led the economic development of Korea by opening its port to the outside world, issuing in the modernization of Korea as a center of industrialization. In 2003, the city was designated as Korea’s first free economic zone. Since then, large local companies and global enterprises have increasingly invested in Incheon Free Economic Zone, including Samsung which chose Songdo International City as its new investment destination for its bio industry.
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Jeonju
Jeonju is a city in South Korea, and the capital of North Jeolla Province. It is an important tourist center famous for Korean food, historic buildings, sports activities and innovative festivals.
In May 2012, Jeonju was indicted as a Creative Cities for Gastronomy as part of UNESCO's Creative Cities Network. This honour recognize the city's traditional home cooking handed down thru generations over thousands of years, its active public and private food research, a system of nurturing talented chefs, and its hosting of distinctive local food festivals.
Located in the fertile Honam plain, famous for strawberries and exceptional produce, Jeonju has been an important regional center in the province for centuries. Once, the city was the capital of Hubaekje Kingdom, which was founded by Gyeon Hwon. The city was regarded as the spiritual capital of the Joseon Dynasty because the Yi royal family originated there. The Chŏnju Kim in North Korea, of whom Kim Il-sung was descended from, have their ancestral seat (pon’gwan) in Jeonju as well.
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Khabarovsk
Khabarovsk (Russian: Хабаровск; IPA: [xɐˈbarəfsk]) is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia. It is located 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the Chinese border. It is the second largest city in the Russian Far East, after Vladivostok. The city became the administrative center of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia in 2002. Population: 577,668 (2010 Census preliminary results); 583,072 (2002 Census); 600,623 (1989 Census).
The city lies at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, about 800 kilometers (500 mi) north of Vladivostok and is accessible from there by an overnight train running along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Rail distance from Moscow is 8,523 kilometers (5,296 mi).
The lands near the confluence of the Ussuri and the Amur Rivers, where today's Khabarovsk stands, have been populated by many centuries by Tungusic people, probably related to the Jurchens of the past and/or the Nanais of the present day. Chinese expeditions reached this area as early as the first half of the 15th century, when the fleets of the Ming eunuch Yishiha sailed several times from Jilin City all the way to Tyr on the lower Amur.
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Kim Il-sung Square
Kim Il-sung Square is a large city square in the centre of Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and is named after the founding leader of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. Opened in August 1954, the square is located on the west bank of the Taedong River, directly opposite the Juche Tower on the other side of the river. It is the 30th largest square in the world, having an area of about 75,000 square meters (807,293 square feet) which can accommodate a rally of more than 100,000 people. The square has a great cultural significance, as it is a common gathering place for rallies, dances and military parades and is often featured in media concerning North Korea.
The Kim Il-sung Square is located at the center of Pyongyang on the west bank of the Taedong river. It is similar in form and design to the Tiananmen Square in Beijing and is used for the same purposes. The Kim Il-sung Square is architecturally more refined with its dramatic riverside setting. If one stands in the square, the Tower of the Juche idea on the opposite bank appears to sit at the other end of the square, although it is actually across the river. The optical effect is achieved since the square is a few meters lower in the middle than near the waterside. Surrounding the square are a number of government buildings, with the Great People's Study House sitting at the "head" of the square.
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Kim Il-sung Stadium
The Kim Il-sung Stadium is a large football stadium located in Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The Kim Il-sung Stadium was originally built as the Kirimri Stadium in 1926 during the Japanese occupation in 1930-1940s.
This stadium held the annual Gyeong-Pyong Football Match between Gyeongseong FC and Pyongyang FC during 1920s, 1930s and the 1940s.
After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, it was used as a venue for speeches by politicians, and it was the site of Kim Il-sung's first speech after returning from exile in 1945. Rebuilt in 1969, it was then called Moranbong Stadium, but in 1982 it was renovated and renamed in honour of Kim Il-sung. The stadium's capacity is 50,000. It is used mainly for football matches, and the yearly Mass Games. It is not to be confused with the larger Rungrado May Day Stadium.
Today, the Kim Il-sung stadium is used as the home ground for the North Korea national football team, the North Korea women's national football team and the Pyongyang City Sports Group.
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Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States of America, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in four buildings in Washington, D.C., as well as the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and number of books. The head of the Library is the Librarian of Congress, currently James H. Billington.
The Library of Congress was instituted for Congress in 1800, and was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century. After much of the original collection had been destroyed during the War of 1812, Thomas Jefferson sold 6,487 books, his entire personal collection, to the library in 1815. After a period of decline during the mid-19th century the Library of Congress began to grow rapidly in both size and importance after the American Civil War, culminating in the construction of a separate library building and the transference of all copyright deposit holdings to the Library. During the rapid expansion of the 20th century the Library of Congress assumed a preeminent public role, becoming a "library of last resort" and expanding its mission for the benefit of scholars and the American people.
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Mangyongdae-guyok
Man'gyŏngdae-guyŏk, or Man'gyŏngdae District (만경대구역) is one of the 19 guyŏk that constitute Pyongyang, North Korea. It began as a village, Mangyongdae-ri, South Pyongan Province and became a district of Pyongyang in September of 1959. The area is surrounded by several hills, the highest one named Mangyong (Ten thousand views) Hill because one can enjoy a bird’s-eye view of the exquisite landscape, and the village at its foot is called Mangyongdae. It extends to the west past the Sunhwa River, to Kangso-gun. Aside from Chilgol and Oryu-ri (which is a military area), the district is divided between Kwangbok (Restoration) Street and Chongchun (Youth) Street. Kwangbok Street is a residential district of high rise apartments populated by members of the DPRK media and cultural institutions.
Mangyongdae is presented as the birthplace of the former Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
Coordinates: 39°01′03″N 125°40′49″E / 39.0174826°N 125.6802035°E / 39.0174826; 125.6802035
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NATO
Coordinates: 50°52′34.16″N 4°25′19.24″E / 50.8761556°N 4.4220111°E / 50.8761556; 4.4220111
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO ( /ˈneɪtoʊ/ NAY-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programs. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.
For its first few years, NATO was not much more than a political association. However, the Korean War galvanized the member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, stated in 1949 that the organization's goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966.
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North Korea
Coordinates: 40°00′N 127°00′E / 40°N 127°E / 40; 127 The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK; Chosŏn'gŭl: 조선민주주의인민공화국), commonly referred to as "North Korea" ( listen), is a country in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer zone between North Korea and South Korea. The Amnok, or Yalu, and the Tumen rivers form the border between North Korea and China. A section of the Tumen River in the far northeast is the border with Russia.
The peninsula was governed by the Korean Empire until it was annexed by Japan after the Russo-Japanese War in 1910. It was divided into Soviet- and American-occupied zones in 1945, after the end of World War II. North Korea refused to participate in a United Nations–supervised election held in the south in 1948, which led to the creation of separate Korean governments for the two occupation zones. North and South Korea each claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean Peninsula, which led to the Korean War of 1950. The Armistice Agreement of 1953 ended the fighting; but the two countries are officially still at war against each other, for a peace treaty was never signed. Both states were accepted into the United Nations in 1991.
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Pan-European Picnic
The Pan-European Picnic (German: Paneuropäisches Picknick; Hungarian: páneurópai piknik) was a peace demonstration held on the Austrian-Hungarian border near the town of Sopron on 19 August 1989, an important event in political developments which led to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany. It was organised by Otto von Habsburg and Imre Pozsgay.
In a symbolic gesture agreed to by both countries, a border gate on the road from Sankt Margarethen im Burgenland (Austria) to Sopronkőhida (Hungary) was to be opened for three hours. About 6 km (3.7 mi) away from this spot on 27 June 1989, Austria's then foreign minister Alois Mock and his Hungarian counterpart Gyula Horn had together cut through the border fence, in a move highlighting Hungary's decision to dismantle its surveillance installations along the border, a process started on 2 May 1989.
More than 600 East Germans seized the opportunity presented by this brief lifting of the Iron Curtain and fled into the west. In the run-up to August 19th, the organisers of the Pan-European Picnic had distributed pamphlets advertising the event. Before the event started, Hungarian border guards received an order from the Ministry of the Interior of Hungary not to intervene in it and not to bear any arms on the day of the event. At the time, the Hungarian border guards even helped people to flee across the border.
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Poland
Polandi/ˈpoʊlənd/ (Polish: Polska), officially the Republic of Poland (Polish: Rzeczpospolita Polska; Kashubian: Pòlskô Repùblika; Silesian: Polsko Republika), is a country in Central Europe, bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres (120,726 sq mi), making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous post-communist member. Poland is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. Poland is a member of the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Economic Area, International Energy Agency, Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, International Atomic Energy Agency, G6, Council of the Baltic Sea States, Visegrád Group, Weimar Triangle and Schengen Agreement.
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Poznań 1956 protests
The Poznań 1956 protests, also known as Poznań 1956 uprising or Poznań June (Polish: Poznański Czerwiec), were the first of several massive protests of the Polish people against the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland. Demonstrations by workers demanding better conditions began on June 28, 1956, at Poznań's Cegielski Factories and were met with violent repression.
A crowd of approximately 100,000 gathered in the city center near the UB secret police building. About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers of Ludowe Wojsko Polskie and the Internal Security Corps under Polish-Soviet general Stanislav Poplavsky were ordered to suppress the demonstration and during the pacification fired at the protesting civilians.
The death toll was placed between 57 and over a hundred people, including a 13-year-old boy, Romek Strzałkowski. Hundreds of people sustained injuries. Nonetheless the Poznań protests were an important milestone on the way to the installation of a less Soviet-controlled government in Poland in October.
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Pyongyang
Pyongyang (평양, Korean pronunciation: [pʰjɔŋjaŋ], literally: "Flat Land") is the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly known as North Korea, and the largest city in the country. Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River and, according to preliminary results from the 2008 population census, has a population of 3,255,388. The city was split from the South P'yŏngan province in 1946. It is administered as a directly governed city (chikhalsi), on the same level as provincial governments, not a special city (teukbyeolsi) as Seoul is in South Korea.
One of Pyongyang's many historic names is Ryugyong (류경; 柳京), or "capital of willows", as willow trees have always been numerous throughout the city's history, and many poems have been written about these willows. Even today, the city has numerous willow trees, with many buildings and places having "Ryugyŏng" in their names. The most notable of these is the uncompleted Ryugyong Hotel. The city's other historic names include Kisong, Hwangsong, Rakrang, Sŏgyong, Sodo, Hogyong, and Changan.[citation needed] During the colonial period (1910–1945), Pyongyang was named Puto ".
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Romania
Romania (i/roʊˈmeɪniə/ roh-MAY-nee-ə; dated: Roumania; or Rumania;Romanian: România [romɨˈni.a] ( listen)) is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea. Romania shares a border with Hungary and Serbia to the west, Ukraine and Moldova to the northeast and east, and Bulgaria to the south.
At 238,400 square kilometers (92,000 sq mi), Romania is the ninth largest country of the European Union by area, and has the seventh largest population of the European Union with over 19 million people. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, the tenth largest city in the EU with about two million people.
The Kingdom of Romania emerged when the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia were united under Prince Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859. Independence from the Ottoman Empire was declared on 9 May 1877, and was internationally recognized the following year. At the end of World War I, Transylvania, Bukovina and Bessarabia united with the Kingdom of Romania. Greater Romania emerged into an era of progression and prosperity that would continue until World War II. By the end of the War, many north-eastern areas of Romania's territories were occupied by the Soviet Union, and Romania forcibly became a socialist republic and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
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Seoul
Seoul (Korean pronunciation: [sʌ.ul] ( listen), English /soʊl/), officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world. The Seoul National Capital Area is the world's second largest metropolitan area with over 25 million inhabitants, which includes the surrounding Incheon metropolis and Gyeonggi province. Almost a quarter of South Koreans live in Seoul, half of South Koreans live in the metropolitan area, along with over 275,000 international residents.
Located in the Han River, Seoul has been a major settlement for over 2,000 years, with its foundation dating back to 18 B.C. when Baekje, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, established its capital in what is now south-east Seoul. It continued as the capital of Korea during the Joseon Dynasty and the Korean Empire. The Seoul National Capital Area is home to four UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Changdeokgung, Hwaseong Fortress, Jongmyo Shrine and the Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty.
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Silla
Silla (57 BC – 935 AD) (Korean pronunciation: [ɕilːa]) was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and one of the longest sustained dynasties in Asian history. Although it was founded by King Park Hyeokgeose, who is also known to be the originator of the Korean family name Park (박, 朴), the dynasty was to see the Gyeongju Kim (김, 金) clan hold rule for most of its 992-year history. What began as a chiefdom in the Samhan confederacies, once allied with China, Silla eventually conquered the other two kingdoms, Baekje in 660 and Goguryeo in 668. Thereafter, Unified Silla or Later Silla, as it is often referred to, occupied most of the Korean Peninsula, while the northern part re-emerged as Balhae, a successor-state of Goguryeo. After nearly 1000 years of rule, Silla fragmented into the brief Later Three Kingdoms, handing over power to its successor dynasty Goryeo in 935.
From its founding until its growth into a full-fledged kingdom, Silla was recorded with various hanja phonetically approximating its native Korean name: 斯盧 (사로, Saro), 斯羅 (사라, Sara), 徐那(伐) (서나[벌], Seona[beol]), 徐耶(伐) (서야[벌], Seoya[beol]), 徐羅(伐) (서라[벌], Seora[beol]), and 徐伐 (서벌, Seobeol). In 503, King Jijeung standardized on the characters 新羅(신라), which in Modern Korean is pronounced "Shilla".
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South Korea
South Korea ( listen), officially the Republic of Korea (Hangul: 대한민국; Hanja: 大韓民國; Daehan Minguk listen), is a sovereign state in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula. The name "Korea" is derived from Goryeo, a dynasty which ruled in the Middle Ages (an initial "G" in Korean is pronounced like an English "K").
Its neighbors are China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the Korea Strait to the south. South Korea lies in the north temperate zone with a predominantly mountainous terrain. It covers a total area of 99,392 square kilometers and has a population of almost 50 million. The capital and largest city is Seoul, with a population of 9,794,304.
Archaeological findings show that the Korean Peninsula was occupied by the Lower Paleolithic period.Korean history begins with the founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BC by the legendary Dan-gun. Following the unification of the Three Kingdoms of Korea under Silla 668 AD, Korea went through the Goryeo Dynasty and Joseon Dynasty as one nation until the end of the Korean Empire in 1910, when it was annexed by Japan. After liberation and occupation by Soviet and U.S. forces at the end of World War II, the nation was divided into North and South Korea. The latter was established in 1948 as a democracy, though political turmoil and times of military rule and martial law characterized much of the period until the foundation of the Sixth Republic in 1987.
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South Yemen
The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen — also referred to as South Yemen, Democratic Yemen or Yemen (Aden) — was a single-party socialist state in the present-day southern and eastern Provinces of Yemen. It united with the Yemen Arab Republic, commonly known as North Yemen, on May 22, 1990, to form the current Republic of Yemen.
In 1838, Sultan Muhsin bin Fadl of the nearby state of Lahej ceded 194 km² (75 sq. miles) including Aden to the British. On 19 January 1839, the British East India Company landed Royal Marines at Aden to occupy the territory and stop attacks by pirates against British shipping to India. It then became an important trading hub between British India and the Red Sea, and following the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, it became a coaling station for ships en route to India. Aden was ruled as part of British India until 1937, when the city of Aden became the Colony of Aden. The Aden hinterland and Hadhramaut to the east formed the remainder of what would become South Yemen and was not administered directly by Aden but were tied to Britain by treaties of protection with local rulers of traditional polities that, together, became known as the Aden Protectorate. Economic development was largely centred in Aden, and while the city flourished, the states of the Aden Protectorate stagnated.
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Soviet Union
The Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik; IPA: [sɐˈjus sɐˈvʲetskʲɪx sətsɨəlʲɪˈstʲitɕɪskʲɪx rʲɪsˈpublʲɪk] ( listen); abbreviated СССР, SSSR), was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
The Soviet Union was a single-party state ruled by the Communist Party from its foundation until 1990. A union of 15 subnational Soviet republics, the Soviet state was structured under a highly centralized government and economy.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 caused the downfall of the Russian Empire. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a struggle for power between the Bolshevik party, led by Vladimir Lenin, and the anti-communist White movement. In December 1922, the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Soviet Union was formed with the merger of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.
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Tajik SSR
The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik: Республикаи Советии Социалистии Тоҷикистон Respublikai Sovetii Sotsialistii Tojikiston; Russian: Таджикская Советская Социалистическая Республика Tadzhikskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika), also known as the Tajik SSR for short, was one of the 15 republics that made up the Soviet Union. Located in Central Asia, the Tajik SSR was created on 5 December 1929 as a national entity for the Tajik people within the Soviet Union. It succeeded the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Tajik ASSR), which had been created on 14 October 1924 as a part of the predominantly Turkic Uzbek SSR in the process of national delimitation in Soviet Central Asia. On 9 September 1991, Tajik SSR declared independence from the Soviet Union and was renamed the Republic of Tajikistan. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the state ceased to exist on 6 November 1994 with the adoption of the new Constitution of Tajikistan
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Turkmen SSR
The Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkmen: Түркменистан Совет Социалистик Республикасы Türkmenistan Sovet Sotsialistik Respublikasy; Russian: Туркменская Советская Социалистическая Республика Turkmenskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika), also known as the Turkmen SSR for short, was one of republics of the Soviet Union in Central Asia. It was initially established on 7 August 1921 as the Turkmen Oblast of the Turkestan ASSR. On 13 May 1925 it was transformed into Turkmen SSR and became a separate republic of the USSR. In 1991, the Turkmen SSR became independent and was renamed Turkmenistan.
Russian attempts to encroach upon Turkmen territory began in earnest in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Of all the Central Asian peoples, the Turkmen put up the stiffest resistance against Russian expansion[citation needed]. In 1869 the Russian Empire established a foothold in present-day Turkmenistan with the foundation of the Caspian Sea port of Krasnovodsk (now Turkmenbashy). From there and other points, they marched on and subdued the Khiva Khanate in 1873. Because Turkmen tribes, most notably the Yomud, were in the military service of the Khivan khan, Russian forces undertook punitive raids against Khorazm, in the process slaughtering hundreds of Turkmen and destroying their settlements. In 1881 the Russians under General Mikhail Skobelev besieged and captured Geok Tepe, one of the last Turkmen strongholds, northwest of Ashgabat. With the Turkmen defeat (which is now marked by the Turkmen as a national day of mourning and a symbol of national pride), the annexation of what is present-day Turkmenistan met with only weak resistance. Later the same year, the Russians signed an agreement with the Persians and established what essentially remains the current border between Turkmenistan and Iran. In 1897 a similar agreement was signed between the Russians and Afghans.
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USS Pueblo (AGER-2)
USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is an American ELINT and SIGINTBanner-class technical research ship (Navy intelligence) which was boarded and captured by North Korean forces on 23 January 1968, in what is known as the Pueblo incident or alternatively as the Pueblo crisis or the Pueblo affair. Occurring less than a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson's State of the Union Address and only weeks before the Tet Offensive, it was a major incident in the Cold War.
North Korea stated that it strayed into their territorial waters, but the United States maintains that the vessel was in international waters at the time of the incident.
Pueblo, still held by North Korea today, officially remains a commissioned vessel of the United States Navy. It is currently moored along the Taedong River in Pyongyang, where it is used as a museum ship. It is the only ship of the U.S. Navy currently being held captive.
The ship was launched at the Kewaunee Shipbuilding and Engineering Company in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, on 16 April 1944, as United States Army Freight and Passenger (FP) FP-344. The Army later redesignated the FP vessels as Freight and Supply changing the designation to FS-344. The ship, commissioned at New Orleans on 7 April 1945, served as a Coast Guard manned Army vessel used for training civilians for the Army. Her first commanding officer was LT J. R. Choate, USCGR, succeeded by LTJG Marvin B. Barker, USCGR, on 12 September 1945.
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Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945 , was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin, respectively, for the purpose of discussing Europe's post-war reorganization. The conference convened in the Livadia Palace near Yalta, in the Crimea.
The meeting was intended mainly to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of war-torn Europe. Within a few years, with the Cold War dividing the continent, Yalta became a subject of intense controversy. To some extent, it has remained controversial.
Yalta was the second of three wartime conferences among the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin). It had been preceded by the Tehran Conference in 1943, and it was followed by the Potsdam Conference in July 1945, which was attended by Harry S Truman, who replaced the late Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, who was replaced mid-point by the newly elected British Prime Minister Clement Attlee.
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Yan'an
Yan'an (Chinese: 延安; pinyin: Yán'ān; Wade–Giles: Yen-an), is a prefecture-level city in the Shanbei region of Shaanxi province in China, administering several counties, including Zhidan County (formerly Bao'an), which served as the Chinese communist capital before the city of Yan'an proper took that role.
Yan'an was near the endpoint of the Long March, and became the center of the Chinese communist revolution from 1936 to 1948. Chinese communists celebrate Yan'an as the birthplace of the revolution.
In medieval China, Yan'an was once called Yanzhou, a location of strategic military importance for the Chinese empire and Tanguts of the Western Xia Dynasty. It was once successfully defended by the Song Dynasty (960–1279) era Chinese scientist, statesman, and general Shen Kuo (1031–1095 AD). However, it was eventually taken over by the Tanguts in 1082 once Shen's defensive victories were marginalized and sacrificed by the new Chancellor Cai Que (who handed the city over to the Tanguts as terms of a peace treaty). Yan'an and the whole of Shaanxi were taken over by the Mongols in the late 1220s, only after their leader Genghis Khan had died during the siege of the Western Xia capital in 1227. The city was maintained by the successive Chinese Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), as well as the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the city fell into the hands of the newly-created Republic of China.
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Abimael Guzmán
Manuel Rubén Abimael Guzmán Reynoso (born 3 December 1934), also known by the nom de guerre Presidente Gonzalo (English: Chairman Gonzalo), a former professor of philosophy, was the leader of the Shining Path during the Maoist insurgency known as the internal conflict in Peru. Shining Path had been active in Peru since the late 1970s and began what it called "the armed struggle" on 17 May 1980. Wanted on charges of terrorism and treason, Guzmán was captured by the Peruvian government in 1992 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
He is currently incarcerated at the Callao naval base, near the city of Lima, Peru. While the activity of the insurgency increased shortly after Guzmán's capture[citation needed], it has declined in the years following. It has been criticized for its violence against peasants, trade union organizers, and elected officials, which were deemed by the group to be collaborating with the Peruvian state. Shining Path is on the U.S. Department of State's "Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations" list. The United Kingdom, the European Union, and Peru likewise describe Shining Path as a terrorist group and prohibit providing funding or other financial support.[citation needed]
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Adam Malik
Adam Malik Batubara (22 July 1917 – 5 September 1984) was Indonesia's third vice president, a senior diplomat, and one of the pioneers of Indonesian journalism.
Malik was born in Pematang Siantar, North Sumatra, Dutch East Indies to Abdul Malik Batubara and Salamah Lubis. He is from a Batak Muslim family of Batubara clan. After completing Junior High School, he received his first job as a shopkeeper, filling in time by reading books and increasing his knowledge.
Malik quickly developed an interest in politics and aged just 17, became the Chairman of the Pematang Siantar branch of Partindo (Indonesia Party). In this position, Malik campaigned for the Dutch Colonial Government to grant independence to Indonesia. As a result of this, Malik was put in prison for disobeying the Colonial Government's ban on political assemblies. Once he was freed, Malik left Pematang Siantar for Jakarta.
After leaving hometown, Malik pursued a job as a journalist. He wrote for Partindo's Party Magazine and Pelita Andalas Newspaper. In 1937, along with like-minded colleagues, Malik formed ANTARA. ANTARA would develop to become Indonesia's national news agency.
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Adolfo Suárez
Adolfo Suárez y González, 1st Duke of Suárez, Grandee of Spain, KOGF (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈðolfo ˈswaɾeθ]; born 25 September 1932) is a Spanish lawyer and politician. Suárez was Spain's first democratically elected prime minister after the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, and the key figure in the country's transition to democracy.
He is a son of Hipólito Suárez Guerra and Herminia González Prados (Ávila, 1910 – 18 July 2006), and the brother of Doña María del Carmen Suárez González, who is married to Aurelio Delgado Martín
Suárez studied Law at Salamanca University, and held several government posts during the late Francoist regime.
He became the Minister Secretary General of the National Movement (Movimiento Nacional), a body that served as sole political party, for 18 years, a period that extended beyond the death of Franco in November 1975. At a rally just a month before Franco's death, Suárez was queried by the aging Caudillo on the political future of Spain and told him frankly that the Movement would not likely long survive Franco and that democratization was inevitable. Suárez was appointed as the 138th Prime Minister of Spain by the Spanish King Juan Carlos on 4 July 1976, a move opposed by leftists and some centrists given his Francoist history. As a nationalist, he was chosen by the monarch to lead the country towards a democratic, parliamentary monarchy without annoying the powerful conservative factions (especially the military) in the country. Surprising many observers and political opponents, Suárez introduced Political Reform in 1976 as a first, decisive step in the Transition (La Transición) to democracy.
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Agostinho Neto
António Agostinho Neto (September 17, 1922 – September 10, 1979) served as the first President of Angola (1975–1979), leading the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in the war for independence and the civil war. His birthday is celebrated as National Heroes Day, a public holiday in Angola.
Born at Ícolo e Bengo, in Bengo Province, Angola, in 1922, Neto attended high school in the capital city, Luanda; his father, also called Agostinho Neto, was a Methodist pastor. The younger Neto left Angola for Portugal, and studied medicine at the universities of Coimbra and Lisbon. He combined his academic life with covert political activity of a revolutionary sort; and PIDE, the security police force of the Estado Novo regime headed by Portuguese Prime Minister Salazar, arrested him in 1951 for his separatist activism. Seven years later he was released from prison, and he finished his studies, marrying a white 23-years-old Portuguese woman who was born in Trás-os-Montes, Maria Eugénia da Silva, the same day he graduated. He returned to Angola in 1959.
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Ahmad Shah Massoud
Ahmad Shah Massoud (احمد شاه مسعود Aḥmad Šāh Mas'ūd; September 2, 1953 – September 9, 2001) was a political and military leader in Afghanistan. He was a central figure, known as the "Lion of Panjshir", in the resistance against the Soviet occupation between 1979 and 1989, fought against the alliance of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the early 1990s, and led resistance against the Taliban regime between 1996 and 2001. Massoud was assassinated on September 9, 2001, two days before the attacks of September 11.
Massoud was an Afghan-Tajik Sunni Muslim born in the Panjshir in northern Afghanistan. He studied engineering at Kabul University in the 1970s, where he became involved with Muslim anti-communist movements around Burhanuddin Rabbani. He led an uprising against the Soviet-backed communist government in his native Panjshir in 1979. His role in the following period of armed resistance against the Soviet occupation forces earned him the nickname of "Lion of Panjshir" (شیر پنجشیر). Following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan the Wall Street Journal named Massoud "the Afghan who won the Cold War". In 1992, he was appointed minister of defense in the government of the newly established Islamic State of Afghanistan by the peace and power-sharing agreement Peshawar Accords. He led the Islamic State's defense against attacks by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's alliance of militias which were backed by Pakistan. Following the rise of the Taliban in 1996, Massoud, who rejected the Taliban's and Al-Qaeda's extremist interpretation of Islam, returned to the role of an armed opposition leader, serving as the military and political leader of the multiethnic United Islamic Front (also known in the West as Northern Alliance). In 1997, he helped end the civil war in neighboring Tajikistan urging parties to accept a United Nations peace plan.
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Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (Arabic أحمد حسن البكر 'Aḥmad Ḥasan al-Bakr; 1 July 1914 – 4 October 1982) was the fourth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 17 July 1968 until 16 July 1979. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region (the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi cell), which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
Al-Bakr first rose to prominence following the 14 July Revolution which overthrew the monarchy. In the newly-established regime, al-Bakr was involved in improving Iraqi–Soviet relations. In 1959 al-Bakr was forced to resign from the Iraqi military; the then Iraqi regime accused him of being involved in anti-government activities. Following his forced retirement, he became the chairman of the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi cell's Military Bureau. Through this office he was able to recruit members to the ba'athist cause through patronage and cronyism. Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim was overthrown in the Ramadan (8 February) Revolution; al-Bakr was appointed Prime Minister, and later, Vice President of Iraq in a ba'ath-nasserist coalition government. The government lasted for little more than a year, and was ousted in November 1963.
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Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou (French pronunciation: [alɛ̃ badju] (listen) (help·info); born 17 January 1937 in Rabat, Morocco) is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS).
Badiou has written about the concepts of being, truth and the subject in a way that, he claims, is neither postmodern nor simply a repetition of modernity. Politically, Badiou is committed to the far left, and to the communist tradition.
Slavoj Žižek has written of Badiou that he is "a figure like Plato or Hegel walk[ing] here among us".
Badiou was a student at the Lycée Louis-Le-Grand and then the Ecole Normale Supérieure (1957–1961). He taught at the lycée in Reims from 1963 where he became a close friend of fellow playwright (and philosopher) François Regnault, and published a couple of novels before moving to the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) in 1969. Badiou was politically active very early on, and was one of the founding members of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU). The PSU was particularly active in the struggle for the decolonization of Algeria. He wrote his first novel, Almagestes, in 1964. In 1967 he joined a study group organized by Louis Althusser, became increasingly influenced by Jacques Lacan and became a member of the editorial board of Cahiers pour l’Analyse. By then he "already had a solid grounding in mathematics and logic (along with Lacanian theory)", and his own two contributions to the pages of Cahiers "anticipate many of the distinctive concerns of his later philosophy".
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Alain Poher
Alain Émile Louis Marie Poher (French: [alɛ̃ pɔɛʁ]; 17 April 1909 – 9 December 1996) was a French centrist politician, affiliated first with the Popular Republican Movement and later with the Democratic Centre. He served as a Senator for Val-de-Marne from 1946 to 1995. He was President of the Senate from 3 October 1968 to 1 October 1992 and, in that capacity, served twice as the country's interim president. Candidate in the 1969 presidential election, he was defeated by Georges Pompidou in the second round.
Poher was born in Ablon-sur-Seine, Val-de-Marne.
He graduated from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Lycée Saint-Louis in Paris and later studied law. On 19 August 1938 he married Henriette Tugler, with whom he had one daughter, Marie-Agnès.
His political career began in 1938, when he became a junior executive officer in the Ministry of Finance.
Later he served on several positions before entering Senate:
A longtime ally and political protege of Schumann, Poher was elected to the Senate in 1952, where he remained for over 40 years (until 1995). As Senator he continued to serve in some governments and his home town mayor. Like Schuman, he was known for strongly pro-European integration positions, having served as President of the European Parliament (1968–1969).
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Alcide De Gasperi
Alcide De Gasperi (Italian pronunciation: [alˈtʃiːde de ˈɡasperi]; April 3, 1881 – August 19, 1954) was an Italian statesman and politician and founder of the Christian Democratic Party. From 1945 to 1953 he was the prime minister of eight successive coalition governments. His eight-year rule remains a landmark of political longevity for a leader in modern Italian politics. A conservative Catholic, he was one of the Founding fathers of the European Union, along with the Frenchman Robert Schuman and the German Konrad Adenauer.
De Gasperi was born in Pieve Tesino in Tyrol, which at that time belonged to Austria-Hungary, now part of the Trentino in Italy. His father was a local police officer of limited financial means. From 1896 De Gasperi was active in the Social Christian movement. In 1900 he joined the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy in Vienna, where he played an important role in the inception of the Christian student movement. He was very much inspired by the Rerum Novarum encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891. In 1904 he took an active part in the student demonstrations in favour of an Italian-language university. Imprisoned with other protesters during the inauguration of the Italian juridical faculty in Innsbruck, he was released after twenty days. In 1905, De Gasperi obtained a degree in philology.
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Aldo Moro
Aldo Moro (Italian pronunciation: [ˈaldo ˈmɔːro]; September 23, 1916 – May 9, 1978) was an Italian politician and the 39th Prime Minister of Italy, from 1963 to 1968, and then from 1974 to 1976. He was one of Italy's longest-serving post-war Prime Ministers, holding power for a combined total of more than six years.
A leader of Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy, DC), Moro was considered an intellectual and a patient mediator, especially in the internal life of his party. He was kidnapped on March 16, 1978, by the left-wing Red Brigades (BR), and killed after 55 days of captivity.
Moro was born in Maglie, in the province of Lecce (Puglia), into a family from Ugento. At 4, he moved with his family to Milan, but they soon moved back to Puglia, where he gained a classical high school degree at Archita lyceum in Taranto. Till 1939 he studied Law at the University of Bari, an institution where he was later to hold the post of ordinary professor of philosophy of Law and Colonial Policy (1941) and of Criminal Law (1942).
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Alexander Dubček
Alexander Dubček (Slovak pronunciation: [ˈalɛksandɛr ˈduptʃɛk]; 27 November 1921 – 7 November 1992) was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia (1968–1969), famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring. Later, after the overthrow of the government in 1989, he was Chairman of the federal Czecho-Slovak parliament.
Dubček was born in Uhrovec, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), and raised in the Kyrgyz SSR of the Soviet Union (now Kyrgyzstan) as a member of the Esperantist industrial cooperative Interhelpo. His father, Štefan, moved from Chicago to Czechoslovakia after World War I, when he refused to serve in the military for his pacifism. Alexander Dubček was conceived in Chicago, but born after the family relocated to Czechoslovakia. When Alexander Dubček was three, the family moved to the Soviet Union, in part to help build socialism and in part because jobs were scarce in Czechoslovakia. In 1938 the family returned to Czechoslovakia.
During the Second World War, Alexander Dubček joined the underground resistance against the wartime pro-German Slovak state headed by Jozef Tiso. In August 1944, Dubček fought in the Slovak National Uprising and was wounded. His brother, Július, was killed.
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Andrei Gromyko
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko (Russian: Андре́й Андре́евич Громы́ко; Belarusian Андрэ́й Андрэ́евіч Грамы́ка; 18 July [O.S. 5 July] 1909 – 2 July 1989) was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs (1957–1985) and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1985–1987). Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1987. In the West he was given the nickname Mr. Nyet ("Mr. No").
Gromyko's political career started in 1939 with his employment at the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (later renamed Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1946). In 1943 Gromyko became the Soviet ambassador to the United States, leaving in 1946 to become the Soviet Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Upon his return to the Soviet Union he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952.
Gromyko played a direct role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in his role as the Soviet Foreign Minister. Gromyko helped negotiate arms limitations treaties such as the ABM Treaty, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and SALT I and II among others. Under Leonid Brezhnev's leadership Gromyko helped build the policy of détente between the US and the USSR. He supported Mikhail Gorbachev's candidacy for General Secretary in 1985. Gromyko lost his office as foreign minister when Gorbachev became General Secretary, and was instead appointed to the largely ceremonial office of head of state. Gromyko retired from political life in 1988 and died the following year on 2 July 1989 in Moscow.
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Andrei Lankov
Andrei Nikolaevich Lankov (Russian: Андрей Николаевич Ланьков; born 26 July 1963 in Leningrad) is a Russian scholar of Asia and a specialist in Korean studies. He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Leningrad State University in 1986 and 1989, respectively; He also attended Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung University in 1985. Following his graduate studies, he taught Korean history and language at his alma mater, and in 1992 went to South Korea for work; he moved to Australia in 1996 to take up a post at the Australian National University, and moved back to Seoul to teach at Kookmin University in 2004. Dr. Lankov has a DPRK-themed Livejournal blog in Russian with occasional English posts, where he documents aspects of life in North (and South) Korea, together with his musings and links to his publications. He also writes columns for the English-language daily The Korea Times.
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Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC (12 June 1897 – 14 January 1977) was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957. He was also Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including during the Second World War. He is best known for his outspoken opposition to appeasement in the 1930s, his diplomatic leadership in the 1940s and 1950s, and the failure of his Middle East policy in 1956 that ended his premiership.
Eden's worldwide reputation as an opponent of appeasement, a "Man of Peace", and a skilled diplomat was overshadowed in the second year of his premiership when the United States refused to support the Anglo-French military response to the Suez Crisis, which critics across party lines regarded as an historic setback for British foreign policy, signalling the end of British predominance in the Middle East. Most historians argue that he made a series of blunders, especially not realizing the depth of opposition to military action by the US. Most historians say that Eden completely dominated the British decision-making process in the Suez crisis. However, Jonathan Pearson argues in Sir Anthony Eden and the Suez Crisis: Reluctant Gamble (2002) that Eden was more reluctant and less bellicose than most historians say.
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António de Spínola
António Sebastião Ribeiro de Spínola, GCTE, ComA (generally referred to as António de Spínola, though this particular surname never had a particle) (Santo André, Estremoz, April 11, 1910 – Lisbon, August 13, 1996) was a Portuguese soldier, conservative politician and author, who was important in the transition to democracy following the Portuguese Carnation Revolution.
He was a son of António Sebastião Spínola and first wife Maria Gabriela Alves Ribeiro, both natives of Madeira.
Spínola entered the Colégio Militar in 1920, beginning what would be a very successful military career. By 1928, Spínola was at Portugal's Military Academy, where he stood out as a young and promising cavalry officer.
In Anjos, Lisbon, by August 1932, he married Maria Helena Martin Monteiro de Barros (14 January 1913 - 23 May 2002), daughter of João de Azevedo Monteiro de Barros and his German wife Gertrud Elisabete Martin.
In 1939, he became adjunct-de-camp of the Guarda Nacional Republicana (English: Republican National Guard). In 1941 he travelled to the German-Russian Front, as an observer, to monitor Wehrmacht movements during the encirclement of Leningrad (the Portuguese volunteers had been incorporated into the Blue Division).
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Anwar Sadat
Anwar El Sadat (Arabic: محمد أنور السادات Anwar as-Sādāt, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mæˈħæmmæd ˈʔɑnwɑɾˤ essæˈdæːt]; 25 December 1918 – 6 October 1981) was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. In his eleven years as president he changed Egypt's direction, departing from some of the economic and political principles of Nasserism by re-instituting the multi-party system, and launching the Infitah economic policy.
He was a senior member of the Free Officers group that overthrew the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of President Gamal Abdul Nasser, whom he succeeded as President in 1970. As president he led Egypt in the October War of 1973 to re-acquire Egyptian territory lost to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, making him a hero in Egypt and, for a time, the wider Arab World. Afterwards he engaged in negotiations with Israel, culminating in the Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. This won him the Nobel Peace Prize but also made him unpopular among some Arabs, resulting in a temporary suspension of Egypt's membership in the Arab League, and eventually his assassination.
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Aníbal Cavaco Silva
Aníbal António Cavaco Silva, GCC (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐˈniβɐɫ kɐˈvaku ˈsiɫvɐ]; born 15 July 1939), is the President of Portugal. He won the Portuguese presidential election on 22 January 2006 and was re-elected on 23 January 2011, for a second five-year term. Cavaco Silva was sworn in on 9 March 2006.
He was previously Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 November 1985 to 28 October 1995. His tenure of ten years was the longest of any Prime Minister since Salazar, and he was the first Portuguese Prime Minister to have won an absolute parliamentary majority under the current constitutional system (which was established after the country's redemocratization following the Carnation Revolution).
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Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet (Spanish pronunciation: [auˈɣusto pinoˈtʃet]), (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973. He was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army from 1973 to 1998, president of the Government Junta of Chile from 1973 to 1981 and President of the Republic from 1974 until transferring power to a democratically elected president in 1990.
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Babrak Karmal
Babrak Karmal (born Sultan Hashem; 6 January 1929 – 1 or 3 December 1996) was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Karmal was born in Kamari and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his career as a bureaucrat. Before, during and after his career as a bureaucrat Karmal was a leading member of the Afghan movement. He was introduced to Marxism by Mir Akbar Khyber during his imprisonment for activities deemed too radical by the government. When the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) was formed, Karmal became one of its leading members, and eventually became the leader of the Parcham faction. When the PDPA split in 1967, the Parcham-faction established a Parcham PDPA, while their ideological nemesis, the Khalqs, established a Khalqist PDPA. Under Karmal's leadership, the Parchamite PDPA participated in Mohammad Daoud Khan's rise to power, and his subsequent regime. While relations were good at the beginning, Daoud began a major purge of leftist influence in the mid-1970s. This in turn led to the refoundation of the PDPA in 1977. The PDPA took power in the 1978 Saur Revolution.
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Baik Bong
Baik Bong is famous for writing the official biography of Kim Il-sung published in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), also known as North Korea. The biography counts on his successes and fight for national independence. During the 1960s and 1970s, P'yŏngyang began a massive campaign to publish the works and feats of Kim Il-sung in several languages in order to promote its Juche ideology throughout the world (and in the third world in particular). The famous biography by Baik Bong was published in three volumes. The first volume is titled "From Birth to Triumphant Return to Homeland," the second volume "From Building Democratic Korea to Chollima Flight," and the third volume "From Independent National Economy to 10-Point Political Programme."
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Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick is an American journalist. She is currently Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood (Andrews & McMeel, 1996). Her next book, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, was published by Spiegel & Grau/Random House in December 2009 and Granta Books in 2010.
Demick was correspondent for the Philadelphia Inquirer in Eastern Europe from 1993 to 1997. Along with photographer John Costello, she produced a series of articles that ran 1994-1996 following life on one Sarajevo street over the course of the war in Bosnia. The series won the George Polk Award for international reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for international reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer in the features category. She was stationed in the Middle East for the newspaper between 1997 and 2001.
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Benigno Aquino, Jr.
Benigno Simeon "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr. (November 27, 1932 – August 21, 1983) was a Filipino Senator and a former Governor of Tarlac. Aquino, together with Gerry Roxas and Jovito Salonga, formed the leadership of the opposition to the Marcos regime in the years leading to the imposition of martial law in the Philippines. In 1973 he was arrested and incarcerated for 7 years, but was allowed to depart for the United States to seek medical treatment after he suffered a heart attack in 1980. He was assassinated at the Manila International Airport upon returning home from exile in the United States in 1983. His death catapulted his widow, Corazon Aquino, into the limelight, and prompted her to run for President as a member of the UNIDO party in the 1986 elections. Manila International Airport has been renamed Ninoy Aquino International Airport in his honor, and the anniversary of his death is a national holiday in the Philippines, Ninoy Aquino Day.
Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. was born in Concepcion, Tarlac, to a prosperous family of hacenderos (landlords), original owners of Hacienda Tinang, Hacienda Lawang and Hacienda Murcia.[citation needed]
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Bettino Craxi
Benedetto "Bettino" Craxi (pronounced [betˈtiːno ˈkraksi]) (24 February 1934 – 19 January 2000) was an Italian politician, head of the Italian Socialist Party from 1976 to 1993, the first socialist President of the Council of Ministers of Italy from 1983 to 1987.
Craxi led the 2nd longest-lived government of Italy during the republican era (after the 2nd Silvio Berlusconi cabinet), and had strong influence in Italian politics throughout the eighties; for some time, he was a close ally of two key figures of Christian Democracy, Giulio Andreotti and Arnaldo Forlani, in a loose cross-party alliance often dubbed CAF (from the first letter of the surname Craxi-Andreotti-Forlani). Craxi had a firm grasp on a party previously troubled by factionalism, and tried to distance it from the communists and to bring it closer to Christian Democrats and other parties; his objective was to create an Italian version of European reformist socialist parties, like the German SPD or the French Socialist Party. The Italian Socialist Party reached its post-war apex when it increased its share of votes in the general election of 1987. However, the Italian Socialist Party never outgrew the much larger Italian Communist Party, whose highly charismatic leader, Enrico Berlinguer, was a fierce adversary of Craxi's policies throughout the years.
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Bolesław Bierut
Bolesław Bierut ([bɔˈlɛswaf ˈbjɛrut] ( listen); 1892–1956; also known under assumed names Jerzy Bolesław Bielak and Bolesław Birkowski) was a Polish Communist leader, NKVD agent, and a hard-line Stalinist who became President of Poland after the Soviet takeover of the country in the aftermath of World War II.
Bierut was born in Rury Jezuickie, now a part of Lublin, as the son of Henryk Rutkowski, a village teacher, and his wife Barbara Biernacka (Wojciech and Maria, according to IPN source). He later adopted the surname "Bierut" combining the first syllables of his parents' surnames. In 1918 he took courses at the Warsaw School of Economics, and in 1924–1930 went to Moscow, to be trained at the school of the Communist International.
In 1930–1931 Bierut was sent by the Comintern to Austria, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria. In 1933 he became an agent of Soviet military intelligence, the GRU, and subsequently, was sentenced in Poland to 10 years in prison for his anti-state activities (incarcerated between 1933–1938). The pro-Soviet Communist Party of Poland was dissolved by Joseph Stalin in 1938. Bierut was fortunate to avoid being caught in the Great Purge, which led to the execution of most of the leaders of the Communist Party of Poland in the USSR. After an amnesty from the Polish government in 1938 Bierut settled down in Warsaw and worked as a bookkeeper in a cooperative.
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Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin (Russian: Бори́с Никола́евич Е́льцин; IPA: [bɐˈrʲis nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ ˈjelʲtsɨn] ( listen); 1 February 1931 – 23 April 2007) was the President of Russia, serving from 1991 to 1999.
Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of the Russian Supreme Soviet. On 12 June 1991 he was elected by popular vote to the newly created post of President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR), at that time one of the 15 constituent republics of the Soviet Union. He won 57% of the vote in a six-candidate contest and became the second democratically elected leader of Russia in history. Upon the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and the final dissolution of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, Yeltsin remained in office as the President of the Russian Federation, the USSR's successor state. Yeltsin was reelected in the 1996 election; in the second round of the election Yeltsin defeated Gennady Zyuganov from the revived Communist Party by a margin of 13%. However, Yeltsin never recovered his early popularity after a series of economic and political crises in Russia in the 1990s.
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Brian Mulroney
Martin Brian Mulroney, PC CC GOQ (born March 20, 1939) was the 18th Prime Minister of Canada from September 17, 1984, to June 25, 1993 and was leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada from 1983 to 1993. His tenure as Prime Minister was marked by the introduction of major economic reforms, such as the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the Goods and Services Tax, and the rejection of constitutional reforms such as the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord. Prior to his political career, he was a prominent lawyer and businessman in Montreal.
Mulroney was born on March 20, 1939, in Baie-Comeau, Quebec, a remote and isolated town in the eastern part of the province. He is the son of Irish Canadian Catholic parents, Mary Irene (née O'Shea) and Benedict Martin Mulroney, who was a paper mill electrician. Six of the couple's children survived infancy. As there was no English-language Catholic high school in Baie-Comeau, Mulroney completed his high school education at a Roman Catholic boarding school in Chatham, New Brunswick operated by St. Thomas University (in 2001, St. Thomas University named its newest academic building in his honour). Benedict Mulroney worked overtime and ran a repair business to earn extra money for his children's education, and he encouraged his oldest son to attend university.
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Bruce Cumings
Bruce Cumings (born 1943) is an American academic and author. He is the Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in History and the chair of the history department at the University of Chicago. He specializes in modern Korean history and contemporary international relations in East Asia.
Bruce Cumings was born in Rochester, New York on 5 September 1943. He grew up in Iowa and Ohio, where his father was a college administrator before joining the Central Intelligence Agency. He worked summers for five years, three of them at the Republic Steel plant in Cleveland, to put himself through Denison University, with further help from a baseball scholarship. He graduated with a degree in Psychology in 1965, then served in the Peace Corps in Korea in 1967-68 before taking an MA at Indiana University. He then earned a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University in 1975. He taught at Swarthmore College, University of Washington, Northwestern University, and University of Chicago. In 1999 he was elected Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
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Cambodian Civil War
The Cambodian Civil War was a conflict that pitted the forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (known as the Khmer Rouge) and their allies the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Viet Cong against the government forces of Cambodia (after October 1970, the Khmer Republic), which were supported by the United States (U.S.) and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).
The struggle was exacerbated by the influence and actions of the allies of the two warring sides. People's Army of Vietnam (North Vietnamese Army) involvement was designed to protect its Base Areas and sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia, without which the prosecution of its military effort in South Vietnam would have been more difficult. Then following the Cambodian coup of 1970, the North Vietnamese Army's attempt to overrun the entire country in March–April 1970 plunged Cambodia into civil war. The U.S. was motivated by the need to buy time for its withdrawal from Southeast Asia and to protect its ally, the South Vietnamese regime. American and both South and North Vietnamese forces directly participated (at one time or another) in the fighting. The central government was mainly assisted by the application of massive U.S. aerial bombing campaigns and direct material and financial aid.
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Caspar Weinberger
Caspar Willard "Cap" Weinberger (August 18, 1917 – March 28, 2006), was an American politician and businessman. He served in a variety of prominent state and federal positions for three decades, most prominently as Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1987.
Born in San Francisco, California, Weinberger served in the 41st Infantry Division in the Pacific theater of World War II. His entry into politics was as a California State Assemblyman from 1953 to 1959, and he would go on to serve as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. An accomplished private sector businessman, he later became vice president and general counsel of Bechtel Corporation, and still later Chairman of Forbes.
His tenure as Secretary of Defense is the third longest in U.S. history, and spanned the final years of the Cold War. He is also known for his key role in the administration's Strategic Defense Initiative and later indictments in the Iran-Contra affair. He was awarded both the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987 and an honorary British knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.
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Chai Ling
Chai Ling (Chinese: 柴玲; Pinyin: Chǎi Líng) (born April 15, 1966 in Rizhao, Shandong Province, People's Republic of China) was one of the student leaders in the Tian'anmen Square protests of 1989. Today she is Founder of All Girls Allowed, a humanitarian organization working to restore value to girls in China.
Chai Ling's parents were members of the Communist Party. As a young student Chai herself joined the Central Communist Youth League, which named her a "model student" during high school for her "good health, grades and moral character," reported Paula Chin of People magazine.
Chai Ling graduated from Peking University in 1987 and then undertook graduate study in Beijing Normal University concentrating on child psychology.
She participated in demonstrations asking the government for democratic reforms in 1987, even though she realized that speaking out could have enormous implications. Chai Ling emerged as one of the student leaders on the Square at a later stage of the movement. Chai Ling along with other student leaders such as Wuerkaixi and Wang Dan "led six weeks of protests." The movement was the biggest threat ever to Communist Party rule."
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Chang Sung-taek
Jang Sung-taek, (born 2 February 1946; alternatively Jang Song-thaek or Chang Sung-taek) is a North Korean politician and the uncle of Kim Jong-un, the Supreme Leader of North Korea. He is a leading figure in the North Korean government, and South Korean government officials and academic North Korea watchers suggested that he may have taken on de facto leadership over North Korea due to Kim Jong-il's ailing health, and later death. Jang is currently Vice-Chairman of the National Defence Commission, a position considered second only to that of the Supreme Leader. He is a four star general and is thought to have been promoted to that position around the time of Kim Jong-il's death as his first appearance in uniform was while visiting Kim's lying in state.
Jang was born in Kangwon-do. He graduated from the Kim Il-sung Senior High School before leaving for Moscow, where he studied between 1968 and 1972. Upon his return, he married Kim Kyong-hui, the younger sister of Kim Jong-il. The couple had a daughter, Jang Kum-song (1977–2006), who lived overseas in Paris as an international student; she refused an order to return to Pyongyang and then committed suicide in September 2006, reportedly due to Jang and his wife Kim's opposition to her relationship with her boyfriend.
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Charles Bettelheim
Charles Bettelheim (November 20, 1913, Paris - July 20, 2006, Paris) was a French economist and historian, founder of the Center for the Study of Modes of Industrialization (CEMI : Centre pour l'Étude des Modes d'Industrialisation) at the Sorbonne), economic advisor to the governments of several developing countries during the period of decolonization. He was very influential in France's New Left, and considered one of "the most visible Marxists in the capitalist world" (Le Monde, April 4, 1972), in France as well as in Spain, Italy, Latin America, and India.
Henri Bettelheim, the father of Charles Bettelheim, was a Viennese Austrian of Jewish origin, and a representative of a Swiss bank in Paris. The family had to leave France after the beginning of the First World War in 1914. The Bettelheims lived in Switzerland then in Egypt. In 1922, Charles Bettelheim returned to Paris with his French mother, during which time his father, who was living in Egypt, committed suicide.
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Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (/ˈtʃɑrlz/ or /ˈʃɑrl dəˈɡɔːl/; French: [ʃaʁl də ɡol] ( listen); 22 November 1890 – 9 November 1970) was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969.
A veteran of World War I, in the 1920s and 1930s de Gaulle came to the fore as a proponent of mobile armoured divisions, which he considered would become central in modern warfare. During World War II, he earned the rank of brigadier general (retained throughout his life), leading one of the few successful armoured counter-attacks during the 1940 Battle of France in May in Montcornet, and then briefly served in the French government as France was falling. De Gaulle was the most senior French military officer to reject the June 1940 armistice to Nazi Germany right from the outset.
He escaped to Britain and gave a famous radio address, broadcast by the BBC on 18 June 1940, exhorting the French people to resist Nazi Germany and organised the Free French Forces with exiled French officers in Britain. As the war progressed de Gaulle gradually gained control of all French colonies except Indochina most of which had at first been controlled by the pro-German Vichy regime. Despite earning a reputation for being a difficult man to do business with, by the time of the Allied invasion of France in 1944 he was heading what amounted to a French government in exile, but although he insisted that France be treated as a great independent power by the other Allies, the Americans in particular remained deeply suspicious of his motives. De Gaulle became prime minister in the French Provisional Government, resigning in 1946 because of political conflicts.
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Charu Majumdar
Charu Majumdar (Bengali: চারু মজুমদার; 1918–1972) was a communist revolutionary from India. Charu Majumdar's life is a story of "riches to rags". Born in a progressive landlord family in Siliguri in 1918, he later joined the militant Naxalite cause. He also authored the historic 1968 Naxalbari uprising, the ideology behind which guides red radicals even today.
He was born in 1918 at Siliguri, West Bengal. His father was a freedom fighter. Majumdar dropped out of college in 1938. In 1946, he joined the Tebhaga movement. He was briefly imprisoned in 1962.
Dropping out of college in 1937-38 he joined Congress and tried to organise bidi workers. He later crossed over to CPI to work in its peasant front. Soon an arrest-warrant forced him to go underground for the first time as a Left activist. Although CPI was banned at the outbreak of World War II, he continued CPI activities among peasants and was made a member of CPI Jalpaiguri district committee in 1942. The promotion emboldened him to organise a 'seizure of crops' campaign in Jalpaiguri during the Great Famine of 1943, more or less successfully. In 1946, he joined Tebhaga movement and embarked on a proletariat militant struggle in North Bengal. The stir shaped his vision of a revolutionary struggle. Later he worked among tea garden workers in Darjeeling.
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Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃe ɣeˈβaɾa]; June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967), commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia within popular culture.
As a young medical student, Guevara traveled throughout Latin America and was radically transformed by the endemic poverty and alienation he witnessed. His experiences and observations during these trips led him to conclude that the region's ingrained economic inequalities were an intrinsic result of capitalism, monopolism, neocolonialism, and imperialism, with the only remedy being world revolution. This belief prompted his involvement in Guatemala's social reforms under President Jacobo Arbenz, whose eventual CIA-assisted overthrow solidified Guevara's political ideology. Later, while living in Mexico City, he met Raúl and Fidel Castro, joined their 26th of July Movement, and sailed to Cuba aboard the yacht, Granma, with the intention of overthrowing U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Guevara soon rose to prominence among the insurgents, was promoted to second-in-command, and played a pivotal role in the victorious two-year guerrilla campaign that deposed the Batista regime.
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Chechnya
The Chechen Republic ( /ˈtʃɛtʃɨn/; Russian: Чече́нская Респу́блика, Chechenskaya Respublika; Chechen: Нохчийн Республика, Noxçiyn Respublika), commonly referred to as Chechnya (/ˈtʃɛtʃniə/; Russian: Чечня́, Chechnya; Chechen: Нохчийчоь, Noxçiyçö), also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria (English: Land of Minerals), is a federal subject of Russia (a republic). It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny. Population: 1,268,989 (2010 Census).
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was split into two: the Republic of Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic. The latter proclaimed the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which sought independence. Following the First Chechen War with Russia, Chechnya gained de facto independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Russian federal control was restored during the Second Chechen War. Since then there has been a systematic reconstruction and rebuilding process, though sporadic fighting continues in the mountains and southern regions of the republic.
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Chen Boda
Chen Boda (simplified Chinese: 陈伯达; traditional Chinese: 陳伯達; pinyin: Chén Bódá) was born in 1904 in Hui'an (Fujian province, China) and died on 20 September 1989 in Beijing.
He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party, a secretary to Mao Zedong and a prominent member of the leadership during the Cultural Revolution, chairing the Cultural Revolution Group.
Chen Boda was born Chen Shangyu in 1904 to peasant parents. During his childhood, his family moved to Jimei, likely to facilitate young Chen's enrollment at the Jimei Normal School. In 1925, Chen enrolled at Shanghai Labor University, and in 1927 he joined the Communist Party of China. After returning to Fujian, he was hired as the personal secretary of General Zhang Zhen, helping to prepare for the 1926–1927 Northern Expedition from the CCP side of the First United Front. When the Front collapsed, Chen fled and was eventually arrested in Nanjing. He was released after a month on General Zhang's recommendation. Shortly thereafter, Chen was selected to study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow for four years.
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Chiang Ching-kuo
Chiang Ching-kuo (traditional Chinese: 蔣經國; simplified Chinese: 蒋经国; pinyin: Jiǎng Jīngguó; Wade–Giles: Chiang Ching-kuo; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Chiúⁿ Keng-kok; Shanghai/Ningbo dialect: [tɕiã.tɕiŋ.koʔ]) (April 27,1 1910 – January 13, 1988), Kuomintang (KMT) politician and leader, was the son of President Chiang Kai-shek and held numerous posts in the government of the Republic of China (ROC). He succeeded his father to serve as Premier of the Republic of China between 1972 and 1978, and was the President of the Republic of China from 1978 until his death in 1988. Under his tenure, the government of the Republic of China, while authoritarian, became more open and tolerant of political dissent. Towards the end of his life, Chiang relaxed government controls on the media and speech and allowed native Taiwanese into positions of power, including his successor Lee Teng-hui.
The son of President Chiang Kai-shek and his first wife Mao Fumei, Chiang Ching-kuo was born in Fenghua, Zhejiang, with the courtesy name of Jiànfēng (建豐). He had an adopted brother, Chiang Wei-kuo. "Ching" literally means "longitude" while "kuo" means "nation"; in his brother's name, "wei" literally means "parallel (of latitude)". The names are inspired by the references in Chinese classics such as the Guoyu, in which "to draw the longitudes and latitudes of the world" is used as a metaphor for a person with great abilities, especially in managing a country.
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Chiang Kai-shek
Chiang Kai-shek (October 31, 1887 – April 5, 1975) was a political and military leader of 20th-century China. He is known as Jiǎng Jièshí (蔣介石) or Jiǎng Zhōngzhèng (蔣中正) in Mandarin.
Chiang was an influential member of the Nationalist Party, the Kuomintang (KMT), and was a close ally of Sun Yat-sen. He became the Commandant of the Kuomintang's Whampoa Military Academy, and took Sun's place as leader of the KMT when Sun died in 1925. In 1926, Chiang led the Northern Expedition to unify the country, becoming China's nominal leader. He served as Chairman of the National Military Council of the Nationalist government of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 to 1948. Chiang led China in the Second Sino-Japanese War, during which the Nationalist government's power severely weakened, but his prominence grew. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek was socially conservative, promoting traditional Chinese culture in the New Life Movement and rejecting western democracy and the nationalist democratic socialism that Sun Yat-sen and some other members of the KMT embraced in favor of a nationalist authoritarian government.
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Choi Yong-kun
Choi Yong-kun (최용건, June 21, 1900 - September 19, 1976) was the Korean People's Army chief commander from 1948 to 1953 North Korean defence minister from 1953 to 1957, and the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea from 1957 to 1972.
Choi Yong-kun was born in T'aech'ŏn County (태천군, 泰川郡) in North Pyongan, Korea, in 1900. After having attended two military academies, he fought in the Chinese Northern Expedition of 1927 and took part in the Canton Communist riots in December later that year. He led a guerrilla unit against the Japanese after they occupied Manchuria in September 1931.
In August 1936, Choi became an officer in the Korean People's Revolutionary Army. In 1946, he became the chairman of the Korean Democratic Party and led this organization to a pro-communist course. Afterwards, he came into more promotions and by February 1948, he was appointed the commander-in-chief for all the armies of the Democratic Republic of Korea. He was in fact the senior field commander for all the North Korean armies during the Korean War, from the first invasion of South Korea in June 1950 till the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed in July 1953.
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Christian Kracht
Christian Kracht (German pronunciation: [ˈkʁaxt]; born 29 December 1966) is a Swiss novelist and journalist.
Kracht was born in Saanen. His father, Christian Kracht Sr., was chief representative for the Axel Springer publishing company in the 1960s. Kracht attended Schule Schloss Salem in Baden and Lakefield College School in Ontario, Canada. He graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, New York, in 1989.
Kracht worked as a journalist for a number of magazines and newspapers in Germany, including Der Spiegel. In the mid-1990s he went to New Delhi as Spiegel's Indian correspondent, as successor of Tiziano Terzani. He subsequently lived for several years in Bangkok, in the former Yugoslavian embassy, and from there he visited various other Asian countries. His travel reports were published in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, and subsequently appeared as a book, Der Gelbe Bleistift ("The Yellow Pencil"), in 2000. Between September 2004 and June 2006 he published the magazine Der Freund in collaboration with the writer Eckhart Nickel. Initially he lived in Kathmandu while working as editor; however he left this position, and vacated Nepal, when political unrest in the country made working conditions too difficult. The magazine was finally completed in San Francisco; eight editions were published, as originally planned.
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Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS (3 January 1883 – 8 October 1967) was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He was also the first person to hold the office of Deputy Prime Minister, under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill's Conservative Party in 1945. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term, and the first to command a Labour majority in Parliament.
The government he led put in place the post-war settlement, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that a greatly enlarged system of social services would be created – aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service. After initial Conservative opposition to Keynesian fiscal policy, this settlement was broadly accepted by all parties until Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979.
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Congo Crisis
The Congo Crisis (1960–1966) was a period of turmoil in the First Republic of the Congo that began with national independence from Belgium and ended with the seizing of power by Joseph Mobutu. At various points, it had the characteristics of anti-colonial struggle, a secessionist war with the province of Katanga, a United Nations peacekeeping operation, and a Cold War proxy battle between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Crisis resulted in the deaths of some 100,000 people (King Léopold II’s rule had resulted in the deaths of around 10,000,000 Congolese people). It led to the assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, as well as a traumatic setback to the United Nations following the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in a plane crash as he sought to mediate.
Prior to the establishment of the First Republic in 1960, the native Congolese elites had formed semi-political organizations which gradually evolved into the main parties striving for independence. These organizations were formed on one of three foundations: ethnic kinship, connections formed in schools, and urban intellectualism[citation needed].
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Corazon Aquino
Maria Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco-Aquino (January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009) was the 11th President of the Philippines and the first woman to hold that office. She led the 1986 People Power Revolution, which toppled Ferdinand Marcos and restored democracy in the Philippines. She was named "Woman of the Year" in 1986 by Time Magazine.
A self-proclaimed "plain housewife", Aquino was married to Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., the staunchest critic of then President Ferdinand Marcos. Senator Aquino was assassinated on August 21, 1983 upon returning to the Philippines after three years in exile in the United States. After her husband's assassination, Corazon Aquino emerged as the leader of the opposition against the Marcos administration. In late 1985, when President Marcos called for a snap election, Aquino ran for president with former senator Salvador Laurel as her vice-presidential running mate. After the elections were held on February 7, 1986, and the Batasang Pambansa proclaimed Marcos the winner in the elections, she called for massive civil disobedience protests, declaring herself as having been cheated and as the real winner in the elections. Filipinos enthusiastically heeded her call and rallied behind her. These events eventually led to the ousting of Marcos and the installation of Aquino as President of the Philippines on February 25, 1986 through the "People Power Revolution".
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Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, commonly known as the Cultural Revolution (Chinese: 文化大革命; pinyin: Wénhuà Dàgémìng), was a social-political movement that took place in the People's Republic of China from 1966 through 1976. Set into motion by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to enforce socialism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society, and to impose Maoist orthodoxy within the Party. The revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of absolute power after the failed Great Leap Forward. The movement politically paralyzed the country and significantly affected the country economically and socially.
The Revolution was launched in May 1966. Mao alleged that bourgeois elements were infiltrating the government and society at large, aiming to restore capitalism. He insisted that these "revisionists" be removed through violent class struggle. China's youth responded to Mao's appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country. The movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in widespread factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a mass purge of senior officials who were accused of taking a "capitalist road", most notably Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. During the same period Mao's personality cult grew to immense proportions.
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Daniel Ortega
José Daniel Ortega Saavedra (Spanish pronunciation: [xo̞ˈse̞ ðaˈnje̞l o̞rˈte̞ɣa saˈβe̞ðɾa]; born 11 November 1945) is a Nicaraguan politician. He is the current President of Nicaragua (since 2007), a position he has held previously between 1985 and 1990. A leader in the socialist Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN), his policies in government have seen the implementation of leftist reforms across Nicaragua.
Born into a working class family, from an early age Ortega developed a hatred of the ruling President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who was widely seen as a dictator, and became involved in the underground movement to oppose Somoza's regime. Joining the Sandinistas, he also travelled to Cuba to receive training in guerilla warfare from Fidel Castro's Marxist-Leninist government. After the Nicaraguan Revolution resulted in the overthrow and exile of the Somoza's government in 1979, Ortega became a member of the ruling multipartisan Junta of National Reconstruction and was later elected president, serving from 1985 to 1990. At the time a Marxist-Leninist, his first period in office was characterized by a controversial program of land reform, wealth redistribution and literacy programs. Such leftist reforms damaged U.S. economic interests in the country, gaining hostility from the U.S.'s governing Reagan administration, who funded a right wing militia, the Contras, to overthrow Ortega's government.
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Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (IPA: [tə̂ŋ ɕjɑ̀ʊpʰǐŋ] ( listen); 22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (historically the highest position in Communist China), he nonetheless served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1992. As the core of the second generation leaders Deng shared his power with the two most powerful men after him: Li Xiannian and Chen Yun.
Born into a peasant background in Guang'an, Sichuan, China, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he was influenced by Marxism. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1923. Upon his return to China he worked as a political commissar in rural regions and was considered a "revolutionary veteran" of the Long March. Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Deng worked in Tibet and other southwestern regions to consolidate Communist control. He was also instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s. His economic policies were at odds with the political ideologies of Chairman Mao Zedong. As a result, he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution but regained prominence in 1978 by outmaneuvering Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng.
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Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (pronounced /ˈaɪzənhaʊər/, EYE-zən-how-ər; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was the 34th President of the United States from 1953 until 1961. He had previously been a five-star general in the United States Army during World War II, and served as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe; he had responsibility for planning and supervising the invasion of North Africa in Operation Torch in 1942–43 and the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944–45, from the Western Front. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO.
Eisenhower was of Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry, and was reared in a large family in Kansas, by parents with a robust work ethic and religious background. As one of five sons, he was conditioned by a competitive atmosphere which instilled self-reliance. He attended and graduated from West Point, and later was married with two sons. After World War II Eisenhower served as Chief of Staff under President Harry S. Truman, then assumed the post of President at Columbia University.
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Eduard Shevardnadze
Eduard Shevardnadze (Georgian: ედუარდ შევარდნაძე [ɛduard ʃɛvardnad͡zɛ]; born 25 January 1928) is a former Soviet, and later, Georgian statesman from the height to the end of the Cold War. He served as President of Georgia from 1995 to 2003, and as First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party (GPC, the de facto leader of Soviet Georgia), from 1972 to 1985. Shevardnadze was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy in the Gorbachev Era. He was forced to retire in 2003 as a consequence of the bloodless Rose Revolution.
Shevardnadze's political career started in the late 1940s as a leading member of his local Komsomol organisation. He was later appointed its Second Secretary, and even First Secretary. His rise up the Georgian Soviet hierarchy continued until 1961 when he was demoted after he insulted a senior official. After spending two years in obscurity, Shevardnadze's returned as a First Secretary of a Tbilisi city district, and was able to charge the Tbilisi First Secretary at the time for corruption. His anti-corruption work quickly garnered the interest of the Soviet government, and Shevardnadze was appointed to First Deputy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Georgian SSR. He would later become the head of the internal affairs ministry and was able to charge First Secretary (leader of Soviet Georgia) Vasil Mzhavanadze for corruption charges.
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Edward Gierek
Edward Gierek (Polish pronunciation: [ˈɛdvart ˈɡʲɛrɛk]; January 6, 1913 – July 29, 2001) was a Polish communist politician.
He was born in Porąbka, outside of Sosnowiec. He lost his father to a mining accident in a pit at the age of four. His mother married again and emigrated to northern France, where he was raised. He joined the French Communist Party in 1931 and was later deported to Poland for organizing a strike. After his military service in Stryj, Galicia, Gierek went to Belgium in 1934, where he joined the Communist Party of Belgium while working in the coal mines of Waterschei. During World War II, he remained activist of the Communist Party of Belgium. He returned to Poland in 1948 and rose through the party ranks to become by 1957 a member of the Polish parliament. As first secretary of the Katowice voivodship party organization (1957–70), Gierek created a personal power base and became the recognized leader of the young technocrat faction of the party. When rioting over economic conditions broke out in late 1970, Gierek replaced Władysław Gomułka as party first secretary. Gierek promised economic reform and instituted a program to modernize industry and increase the availability of consumer goods, doing so mostly through foreign loans. His good relations with Western politicians, especially France's Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and West Germany's Helmut Schmidt, were a catalyst for his receiving western aid and loans.
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Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC (9 July 1916 – 17 July 2005) was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–74) and as Leader of the Conservative Party (1965–75).
Born in Broadstairs, Kent, Heath studied at Oxford and served in the Second World War. He was first elected in the 1950 general election, for Bexley and was government Chief Whip during the 1950s. Entering the Cabinet as Minister of Labour in 1959, he was then Lord Privy Seal responsible for Macmillan's unsuccessful EEC entry negotiations, then President of the Board of Trade. In 1965 Heath won the leadership of the Conservative Party against Reginald Maudling and Enoch Powell. The general election of 1966 saw the Labour government of Harold Wilson achieve a large increase in seats, however Heath remained Conservative leader.
Heath became Prime Minister after winning the 1970 general election. In 1971, Heath oversaw the decimalisation of British coinage and in 1972, he implemented major reform to the UK's system of local government. In foreign policy, Heath took the UK into the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973. Heath's premiership oversaw the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, with the suspension of the Stormont parliament and the imposition of direct British rule. Unofficial talks with IRA delegates were unsuccessful, as was the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, which caused Ulster Unionists to withdraw from the Conservative whip.
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Egon Krenz
Egon Krenz (born 19 March 1937) is a former politician from East Germany (the German Democratic Republic), and that country's last communist leader. He succeeded Erich Honecker as leader of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and head of state in October 1989, but was ousted just under three months later amid the collapse of the communist regime.
Throughout his career, Krenz held a number of prominent positions in the communist regime. He was Honecker's deputy from 1984 onward, until he succeeded Honecker in 1989 amid protests against the regime. Krenz was unsuccessful in his attempt to retain the communist regime's grip on power, and was forced to resign some weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
After the German reunification in 1990 he was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for manslaughter, for his role in the crimes of the regime.
Krenz was born in Kolberg in what was then Germany, now Poland. His family were resettled in Damgarten in 1944, when Germans were expelled from Farther Pomerania.
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Enrico Berlinguer
Enrico Berlinguer (Italian pronunciation: [berliŋˈɡwɛr]) (25 May 1922 – 11 June 1984) was an Italian politician; he was national secretary of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano or PCI) from 1972 until his death.
The son of Mario Berlinguer and Maria Loriga, Enrico Berlinguer was born in Sassari, Italy to a noble and important Sardinian family, in a notable cultural context, with family ties and political contacts that would heavily influence his life and career. His surname 'Berlinguer' is of Catalan origin, a reminder of the period when Sardinia was part of the dominions of the Crown of Aragon.
He was a cousin of Francesco Cossiga (who was a leader of the Italian Christian Democrats and later became a President of the Italian Republic), and both were relatives of Antonio Segni, another Christian Democrat leader and President of the Republic. Enrico's grandfather, Enrico Berlinguer Sr., was the founder of La Nuova Sardegna, an important Sardinian newspaper, and a personal friend of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini, whom he had helped in his attempts through his parliamentary work to improve the sad conditions on the island.
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Enver Hoxha
Enver Hoxha ( pronunciation (help·info); 16 October 1908 – 11 April 1985) was the leader of Albania from the end of World War II until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of Labour of Albania. He also served as Prime Minister of Albania from 1944 to 1954, Minister of Defence, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chairman of the Democratic Front from 1945 to his death, and as Commander-in-Chief of the Albanian armed forces from 1944 to his death. Hoxha's leadership was characterized by his proclaimed firm adherence to anti-revisionist Marxism–Leninism from the mid-1970s onwards. After his break with Maoism in the 1976–1978 period, numerous Maoist parties declared themselves Hoxhaist. The International Conference of Marxist–Leninist Parties and Organizations (Unity & Struggle) is the most well known collection of these parties today.
Hoxha was born in Gjirokastër, a city in southern Albania (then under the Ottoman Empire) that has been home to many prominent families. He was the son of Halil Hoxha, a BektashiTosk cloth merchant who travelled widely across Europe and the United States of America, and Gjylihan (Gjylo) Hoxha. At age 16 he helped found and became secretary of the Students Society of Gjirokastër, which protested against the monarchist government. After the Society was closed down by the government, he left his hometown and moved to Korçë, continuing his studies in a French secondary school. There he learned French history, literature and philosophy. In this city he read for the first time the Communist Manifesto.
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Erich Honecker
Erich Honecker (German: [ˈeːʁɪç ˈhɔnɛkɐ]; 25 August 1912 – 29 May 1994) was a German socialist politician who led the German Democratic Republic as General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until 1989, serving as Head of State as well after Willi Stoph's relinquishment of that post in 1976.
Following the definite end of the Cold War, Honecker refused all but cosmetic changes and was ousted by the party in late 1989 and removed from power. Following the German reunification he successfully evaded prosecution for human rights abuses committed under his regime, finally settling down with his family in Chile in 1993, dying the following year from liver cancer.
Honecker was born on Max-Braun-Straße in Neunkirchen, now Saarland, as the son of Wilhelm Honecker, a coal miner and political activist, who in 1905 had married Caroline Catharina Weidenhof. There were six children born to the family: Katharina (Käthe), Wilhelm (Willi), Frieda, Erich, Gertrud (b. 1917; m. Hoppstädter), and Karl-Robert.
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Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin (9 March 1881 – 14 April 1951) was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. He co-founded and served as general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1940, as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, and as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government he supported the creation of NATO.
Bevin was born in the village of Winsford in Somerset, England, to Diana Bevin who, since 1877, had described herself as a widow. His father is unknown. After his mother's death in 1889, the young Bevin lived with his half-sister's family, moving to Morchard Bishop in Devon. He had little formal education, having briefly attended two village schools and then Hayward's School, Crediton, starting in 1890 and leaving in 1892. He later recalled being asked as a child to read the newspaper aloud for the benefit of adults in his family who were illiterate. At the age of eleven, he went to work as a labourer, then as a lorry driver in Bristol, where he joined the Bristol Socialist Society. In 1910 he became secretary of the Bristol branch of the Dockers' Union, and in 1914 he became a national organiser for the union.
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Ethiopian Civil War
The Ethiopian Civil War began on November 28, 1974 when the Marxist Derg staged a coup d'état against Emperor Haile Selassie, and lasted until the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of rebel groups, overthrew the government in 1991. The war overlapped other Cold War conflicts in Africa, such as the Angolan Civil War (1975–2002). The war left between 230,000-1.4 million dead.
The revolutionaries abolished the monarchy in March 1975 and Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen settled permanently in London, England where several other members of the Imperial family were already based. The other members of the Imperial family who were still in Ethiopia at the time of the revolution were imprisoned, including Amha Selassie's father the Emperor, his daughter by his first marriage, Princess Ijigayehu, his sister Princess Tenagnework and many of his nephews, nieces, relatives and in-laws. In 1975, first his father Emperor Haile Selassie then in 1977, his daughter Princess Ijigayehu died in detention. Members of the Imperial family remained imprisoned until 1988 (for the women) and 1989 (for the men).
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Faiz Ahmad
Dr. Faiz Ahmad (1946 – November 12, 1986) (Persian: داکتر فیض احمد) was the founding leader of the Afghanistan Liberation Organization (ALO), a Marxist-Leninist organization established in Kabul.
Ahmad was born in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He attended primary and secondary schools in Kandahar before coming to Kabul to enter Naderia High School where he became involved in the far-left movement after reading some works of Marx and Lenin.
Akram Yari, a leader of the Maoist movement in Afghanistan, was Ahmad's teacher in Naderia High School; he deeply influenced Ahmad. [1] Yari was leader of Progressive Youth Organization (PYO), a Maoist organization which was formed on October 6, 1965. Later, Ahmad broke with PYO and formed the Revolutionary Group of People of Afghanistan.
After graduating from high school, Ahmad entered the Medical Faculty of Kabul University. It was in those years that he established the Revolutionary Group of People of Afghanistan which was later named Afghanistan Liberation Organization (ALO).
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Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (born 5 March 1942) is a Spanish socialist politician. He was the General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) from 1974 to 1997. To date, he remains the longest-serving Prime Minister of Spain, after having served four successive mandates from 1982 to 1996.
Felipe was born in Seville, son of a farmer who had a small dairy. He has a sister named Lola González y Márquez, married to Francisco Germán Palomino y Romera, by whom she has two sons, Felipe and Germán Palomino y González. He studied Law at Seville University and started his career as attorney specialising in labour. While at the University he met members of the socialist trade union Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) that was clandestine at the time. He also contacted members of the PSOE and started taking part in the party's clandestine activity. During that time he adopted the nom de guerre Isidoro and moved to Madrid. He was elected Secretary General of the Party at the Suresnes Congress, in France.
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Feng Congde
Feng Congde(封从德) (born 1967) is a Chinese dissident. He was a student leader in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests. He was on the Chinese Government's list of the 21 most wanted leaders of the protests.
Feng married the student leader Chai Ling in May 1989, but they divorced later.
He runs the website 64memo.com, a website that documents the history of the movement and provides research information, audio-visual reports and first hand accounts of the June Fourth massacre.
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Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos (September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino politician who held the title of President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He was a lawyer, member of the Philippine House of Representatives (1949–1959) and a member of the Philippine Senate (1959–1965). He was Senate President from 1963–1965.
While in power he implemented wide-ranging programs of infrastructure development and economic reform. However, his administration was marred by massive authoritarian corruption, despotism, nepotism, political repression, and human rights violations.
In 1983, his government was accused of being involved in the assassination of his primary political opponent, Benigno Aquino, Jr. Public outrage over the assassination served as the catalyst for the People Power Revolution in February 1986 that led to his removal from power and eventual exile in Hawaii. It was later discovered that, during his 20 years in power, he and his wife Imelda Marcos had moved billions of dollars of embezzled public funds to accounts and investments in the United States, Switzerland, and other countries.
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Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (Spanish: [fiˈðel ˈkastro]; born August 13, 1926) is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011. Politically a Marxist-Leninist, under his administration the Republic of Cuba was converted into a one-party socialist state, with industry and business being nationalized under state ownership and socialist reforms implemented in all areas of society. On the international stage, he also served as the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983 and 2006 to 2008.
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Fidel V. Ramos
Fidel "Eddie" Valdez Ramos, GCMG (born March 18, 1928), popularly known as FVR, was the 12th President of the Philippines from 1992 to 1998. During his six years in office, Ramos was widely credited and admired by many for revitalizing and renewing international confidence in the Philippine economy.
Prior to his election as president, Ramos served in the Cabinet of President Corazon Aquino first as chief-of-staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and, later on, as Secretary of National Defense from 1986 to 1991.
During the historic 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution, Ramos upon the invitation of then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, was hailed as a hero even though he was not part of the plan by many Filipinos for his decision to break away from the administration of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and pledge allegiance and loyalty to the newly established revolutionary government of President Aquino, following the downfall of Marcos from power in February 1986. Previously, he was the AFP vice chief-of-staff, chief of PC/INP under President Marcos.
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Francesco Cossiga
Francesco Cossiga (26 July 1928 – 17 August 2010) was an Italian politician, the 43rd Prime Minister and the eighth President of the Italian Republic. He was also a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sassari.
Cossiga was born in Sassari in the north of Sardinia. He started his political career during World War II. His name is now usually pronounced Italian pronunciation: [kosˈsiːɡa], but it was originally pronounced Italian pronunciation: [ˈkɔssiɡa], with the stress on the first syllable, meaning "Corsica". He was the cousin of Enrico Berlinguer.
He was a minister several times for the Democrazia Cristiana party (DC), notably during his stay at Viminale (Ministry for internal affairs) where he re-structured the Italian police, civil protection and secret services. In 1977, when Cossiga was minister of internal affairs, police squads organized by Cossiga shot against a demonstration in Rome, killing student Giorgiana Masi. Cossiga for many years stated that she was killed by her companions.
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Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, better known under the name of Franco, (Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko ˈfɾaŋko]; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general, dictator and the leader of the Nationalist military rebellion in the Spanish Civil War, and totalitarian head of state of Spain, from October 1936 (as a unified nation from 1939 onwards) until his death in November 1975. He came to power while recognizing the principles of the far-right Falange movement, although this was for propaganda reasons, as he belonged to no political party before becoming Head of State. As head of state, Franco used the titles Caudillo de España and Generalísimo, but also was called formally as His Excellency, The Head of State.
Franco was from a military family, and although originally intent on entering the Spanish Navy, he instead became a soldier. He participated in the Rif War in Morocco, becoming the youngest general in Europe by 1926. After returning to the Spanish mainland, he saw service suppressing an anarchist-led strike in 1934, defending the stability of Alcalá-Zamora's conservative government. Following the formation of a Popular Front government, made up of various left-wing factions, instability heightened. Violence between militant groups rose sharply with assassination of conservative parliamentary leader José Calvo Sotelo, in retaliation for the killing of José Castillo. Franco and his co-conspirators used Calvo's death as their pretext for war, as they had already initiated the plan for their rebellion.
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François Mitterrand
François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand (French: [fʁɑ̃swa mɔʁis mitɛˈʁɑ̃] ( listen); 26 October 1916 – 8 January 1996) was the 21st President of the French Republic and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, serving from 1981 until 1995. He is the longest-serving President of France and, as leader of the Socialist Party, the first figure from the left elected President under the Fifth Republic.
Reflecting family influences, Mitterrand started political life on the Catholic nationalist right. He served under the Vichy Regime in its earlier years. Subsequently, however, he joined the Resistance, moved to the left, and held ministerial office repeatedly under the Fourth Republic. He opposed de Gaulle's establishment of the Fifth Republic. Although at times a politically isolated figure, Mitterrand outmanoeuvred rivals to become the left's standard bearer in every presidential election from 1965 to 1988, except 1969. Elected President in the May 1981 presidential election, he was re-elected in 1988 and held office until 1995.
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Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein (Arabic: جمال عبد الناصر حسين, IPA: [ɡæˈmæːl ʕæbdenˈnɑːsˤeɾ ħeˈseːn]; 15 January 1918 – 28 September 1970) was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of modernization, and socialist reform in Egypt together with a profound advancement of pan-Arab nationalism, including a short-lived union with Syria.
Nasser is seen as one of the most important political figures in both modern Arab history and politics in the 20th century. Under his leadership, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal Company and came to play a central role in anti-imperialist efforts in the Arab World and Africa. The imposed ending to the Suez Crisis made him a hero throughout the Arab world. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the international Non-Aligned Movement. He is well known for his nationalist policies and version of pan-Arabism, also referred to as Nasserism, which won a great following in the Arab World during the 1950s and 1960s. Although his status as "leader of the Arabs" was badly damaged by the Israeli victory over the Arab armies in the Six-Day War, as well as Egypt's failure to win the subsequent War of Attrition against Israel, many in the general Arab population still view Nasser as a symbol of Arab dignity and freedom.
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Gennady Yanayev
Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (Russian: Генна́дий Ива́нович Яна́ев; 26 August 1937 – 24 September 2010) was a Soviet Russian politician and statesman whose career spanned the rules of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, and culminated during the Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.
Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions he gained a seat in the Politburo. During the 1990 July plenum he was elected to the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee. Later that year, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually leading, the Gang of Eight, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August coup of 1991. After three days the coup collapsed due to the popularity of Boris Yeltsin, but during its brief grip of power Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned by the State Duma. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010.
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George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush (born June 12, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States (1989–93). He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States (1981–89), a congressman, an ambassador, a Director of Central Intelligence, and is currently the oldest surviving president.
Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to Senator Prescott Bush and Dorothy Walker Bush. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Bush postponed going to college, enlisted in the US Navy on his 18th birthday, and became the youngest aviator in the Navy at the time. He served until the end of the war, then attended Yale University. Graduating in 1948, he moved his family to West Texas and entered the oil business, becoming a millionaire by the age of 40.
He became involved in politics soon after founding his own oil company, serving as a member of the House of Representatives, among other positions. He ran unsuccessfully for president of the United States in 1980, but was chosen by party nominee Ronald Reagan to be the vice presidential nominee, and the two were subsequently elected. During his tenure, Bush headed administration task forces on deregulation and fighting drug abuse.
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George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall (December 31, 1880 – October 16, 1959) was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense. Once noted as the "organizer of victory" by Winston Churchill for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II, Marshall served as the United States Army Chief of Staff during the war and as the chief military adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As Secretary of State, his name was given to the Marshall Plan, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
George Catlett Marshall was born into a middle-class family in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the son of George Catlett Marshall, Sr. and Laura Emily (Bradford) Marshall. Marshall was a scion of an old Virginia family, as well as a distant relative of former Chief Justice John Marshall. Marshall graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), where he was initiated into the Kappa Alpha Order, in 1901.
Following graduation from VMI, Marshall was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Until World War I, he was posted to various positions in the US and the Philippines. He served as an infantry platoon leader and company commander in the Phillipines during the Phillipine-American War and several other guerilla uprisings. He was schooled and trained in modern warfare. His pre-war service included a tour at Fort Leavenworth, KS from 1906 to 1910 as both a student and an instructor.
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George P. Shultz
George Pratt Shultz (born December 13, 1920) is an American economist, statesman, and businessman. He served as the United States Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970, as the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974, and as the U.S. Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989. Before entering politics, he was professor of economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business from 1962 to 1969. Between 1974 and 1982, Shultz was an executive at Bechtel, eventually becoming the firm's president. He is currently a distinguished fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
George Shultz was born in New York City, the only child of Margaret Lennox (née Pratt) and Birl Earl Shultz. He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey.
In 1938, Shultz graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. He earned a bachelor's degree, cum laude, at Princeton University, in economics with a minor in public and international affairs. His senior thesis examined the Tennessee Valley Authority's effect on local agriculture, for which he conducted on-site research. Shultz graduated with honors in 1942.
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Georges Pompidou
Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ pɔ̃pidu]; 5 July 1911 – 2 April 1974) was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968, holding the longest tenure in this position, and later President of the French Republic from 1969 until his death in 1974.
He was born in the commune of Montboudif, in the department of Cantal in central France. After his khâgne at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he befriended Senegalese future poet and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor, he graduated from the École Normale Supérieure with a degree of Agrégation in literature.
He first taught literature at the lycée Henri IV in Paris until hired in 1953 by Guy de Rothschild to work at Rothschild. In 1956, he was appointed the bank's general manager, a position he held until 1962. Later, he was hired by Charles de Gaulle to manage the Anne de Gaulle Foundation for Down's Syndrome (de Gaulle's daughter Anne had Down's Syndrome).
He served as prime minister under de Gaulle after Michel Debré resigned, from 16 April 1962 to 21 July 1968, and to this day is the longest serving French prime minister under the Fifth Republic. His nomination was controversial because he was not a member of the National Assembly. In October 1962, he was defeated by a vote of non-confidence, but de Gaulle dissolved the National Assembly. The Gaullists won the legislative election and Pompidou was reappointed as Prime Minister. In 1964, he was faced with a miners' strike. He led the 1967 legislative campaign of the Union of Democrats for the Fifth Republic to a narrow victory. Pompidou was widely regarded as being responsible for the peaceful resolution of the student uprising of May 1968. His strategy was to break the coalition of students and workers by negotiating with the trade-unions and employers (Grenelle conference). Until this crisis, he was the Prime Minister of a quiet and prosperous France.
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Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. (born Leslie Lynch King, Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974. As the first person appointed to the vice-presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment (after Spiro Agnew had resigned), when he became President upon Richard Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, he became the only President of the United States who was never elected President nor Vice-President by the Electoral College. Before ascending to the vice-presidency, Ford served nearly 25 years as the Representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district, eight of them as the Republican Minority Leader.
As President, Ford signed the Helsinki Accords, marking a move toward détente in the Cold War. With the conquest of South Vietnam by North Vietnam nine months into his presidency, U.S. involvement in Vietnam essentially ended. Domestically, Ford presided over arguably the weakest economy since the Great Depression, with growing inflation and a recession during his tenure. One of his more controversial acts was to grant a presidential pardon to President Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandal. During Ford's incumbency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the President. In 1976, Ford narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan for the Republican nomination, but lost the presidential election to Democrat Jimmy Carter.
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Getúlio Vargas
Getúlio Dornelles Vargas (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒeˈtuliu doɾˈnɛlis ˈvaɾɡɐs]; 19 April 1882 – 24 August 1954) served as President of Brazil, first as dictator, from 1930 to 1945, and in a democratically elected term from 1951 until his suicide in 1954. Vargas led Brazil for 18 years, the most for any President, and second in Brazilian history only to Emperor Pedro II among heads of government. He favored nationalism, industrialization, centralization, social welfare and populism – for the latter, Vargas won the nickname "O Pai dos Pobres" (Portuguese for "The Father of the Poor"). Despite his promotion of workers' rights, Vargas was a staunch anti-communist.
Vargas was brought to power by political outsiders and the rank and file of the Armed Forces in the Revolution of 1930, a reaction to his loss in rigged elections earlier that year. His ascent marked the end of the Brazilian oligarchic Old Republic and states' dominated café com leite politics. He successfully influenced the outcome of the Brazilian presidential election of 1934, and instituted an authoritarian corporatist regime in 1937 known as the Estado Novo ("New State"), prolonging his hold onto power. Vargas went on to appease and eventually dominate his supporters, and pushed his political agenda as he built a propaganda machine around his figure.
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Giulio Andreotti
Giulio Andreotti (Italian pronunciation: [ˈʤuːljo andreˈɔtti]; born January 14, 1919) is an Italian politician of the now dissolved centrist Christian Democracy party. He served as the 42nd Prime Minister of Italy from 1972 to 1973, from 1976 to 1979 and from 1989 to 1992. He also served as Minister of the Interior (1954 and 1978), Defense Minister (1959–1966 and 1974) and Foreign Minister (1983–1989) and he has been a senator for life since 1991. He is also a journalist and author.
He is sometimes called Divo Giulio (from Latin Divus Iulius, "divine Julius", an epithet of Julius Caesar). The movie Il Divo tells about Andreotti's links with the Mafia and won the Prix du Jury at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.
Andreotti was born in Rome into a family from Segni. He studied law in Rome, during which time he was member of the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI, or Italian Catholic University Federation), which was then the only Catholic university association allowed by the Fascist government. Its members included many of the future leaders of the Italian Democrazia Cristiana (or DC, the Christian Democracy party). In July 1939, while Aldo Moro was president of FUCI, Andreotti became director of its magazine Azione Fucina. In 1942, when Moro was enrolled in the Italian Army, Andreotti succeeded him as president of FUCI, a position he held until 1944.
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Goulash Communism
Goulash Communism (Hungarian: gulyáskommunizmus) or Kádárism (after János Kádár) refers to the variety of communism as practised in the Hungarian People's Republic from the 1960s until the collapse of Communism in Hungary in 1989. With elements of free market economics and an improved human rights record, it represented a quiet reform and deviation from the Stalinist principles Hungary clung to in the previous decade.
The name is a semi-humorous metaphor derived from "goulash", a popular Hungarian dish. As goulash is made with an assortment of unlike ingredients, it represents how Hungarian communism was a mixed ideology and no longer strictly communist. Sometimes described as "the happiest barrack in the socialist camp", Hungary in this particular period enjoyed many amenities not available to other communist countries in the Eastern bloc.
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Gregorio Honasan
Gregorio Ballesteros Honasan II (born March 14, 1948), better known as Gringo Honasan, is a Filipino political figure. He played a key role in the 1986 EDSA Revolution that toppled the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. He led a series of coup attempts against the administration of Corazon Aquino. President Fidel Ramos granted him amnesty in 1992. He entered politics and became a senator from 1995 to 2004 and again since 2007.
Gregorio Honasan was born in Baguio City to Colonel Romeo Honasan and Alice Ballesteros, both from Sorsogon province. Honasan spent his elementary days at San Beda College from Kindergarten to Grade 6. After which, he went to Taiwan and studied at the Dominican School, Taipei, Taiwan. He then returned to the Philippines and finished his high school at Don Bosco Mandaluyong. He attained his Bachelor of Science degree at the Philippine Military Academy, where he received the title of "Class Baron", the academy's highest leadership award.
After graduating in 1971, he joined the Philippine Army and went into combat duty against separatist and communist insurgents in Luzon and Mindanao. He was wounded in action at battles in Lebak and Jolo. Making his way up through the armed forces, he became aide-de-camp to Secretary of National Defense Juan Ponce Enrile in 1974, and later became the department's Chief of Security.
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Hafez al-Assad
Hafez ibn 'Ali ibn Sulayman al-Assad or more commonly Hafez al-Assad (Arabic: حافظ الأسد Ḥāfiẓ al-Asad, 6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was the President of Syria for three decades.
Born to a poor family of minority Alawite background, he served in the Syrian air force, before rising through the ranks of the Syrian-led branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and seizing power in the 1970 Corrective Revolution. He purged the party, introducing Alawite rule of Syria, who came to occupy leading positions in every sector of Syrian society.
On the one hand, Assad's rule consolidated the power of the central government, bringing stability after decades of coups and counter-coups, and continued foreign influence related to the cold war. His rule brought changes, including the 1973 constitution which stated that it guaranteed women's "equal status in society". Assad attempted to industrialize the country, and it was opened up to foreign markets. Oil was discovered, and some degree of the revenue invested in infrastructure, education, medicine, literacy and urban construction.
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Hafizullah Amin
Hafizullah Amin (1 August 1929 – 27 December 1979) was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Amin was born in Paghman and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his career as a teacher. After a few years in that occupation, he went to the United States to study. He would visit the United States a second time before moving permanently to Afghanistan, and starting his career in radical politics. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 parliamentary election but failed to secure a seat. Amin was the only Khalqist elected to parliament in the 1969 parliamentary election, thus increasing his standing within the party. He was one of the leading organisers of the Saur Revolution which overthrew the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan.
Amin's short-lived presidency was marked by controversies from beginning to end. He came to power by killing his predecessor Nur Muhammad Taraki. The revolt against communist rule which had begun under Taraki worsened under Amin, and was a problem that his government was unable to solve. The Soviet Union, which alleged that Amin was an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, intervened in Afghanistan on behalf of the Twenty-Year Treaty of Friendship between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Amin was assassinated by the Soviets in December 1979 as part of Operation Storm-333, having ruled for slightly longer than three months.
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Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC, FRS (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963.
Nicknamed 'Supermac' and known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability, Macmillan achieved notoriety before the Second World War as a Tory radical and critic of appeasement. Rising to high office as a protégé of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, he believed in the post-war settlement and the necessity of a mixed economy, and in his premiership pursued corporatist policies to develop the domestic market as the engine of growth. During his time as prime minister, average living standards steadily rose while numerous social reforms were carried out such as the 1956 Clean Air Act, the 1957 Housing Act, the 1960 Offices Act, the 1960 Noise Abatement Act, the Factories Act 1961, and the introduction of a graduated pension scheme to provide an additional income to retirees.
As a One Nation Tory of the Disraelian tradition, haunted by memories of the Great Depression, he championed a Keynesian strategy of public investment to maintain demand, winning a second term in 1959 with an increased majority on an electioneering budget. Benefiting from favourable international conditions, he presided over an age of affluence, marked by low unemployment and high if uneven growth. In his Bedford speech of July 1957 he told the nation they had 'never had it so good', but warned of the dangers of inflation, summing up the fragile prosperity of the 1950s.
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Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC (11 March 1916 – 24 May 1995) was a British Labour politician and Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the February 1974 general election resulted in a hung parliament. He is the most recent British Prime Minister to have served non-consecutive terms.
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Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd President of the United States (1945–1953). As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States (1945), he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his unprecedented fourth term.
During World War I, Truman served in combat in France as an artillery officer in his National Guard unit. After the war, he joined the Democratic Party political machine of Tom Pendergast in Kansas City, Missouri. He was elected a county official and in 1934 United States senator. After he had gained national prominence as head of the wartime Truman Committee, Truman replaced vice president Henry A. Wallace as Roosevelt's running mate in 1944.
Truman faced many challenges in domestic affairs. The disorderly postwar reconversion of the economy of the United States was marked by severe shortages, numerous strikes, and the passage of the Taft–Hartley Act over his veto. He confounded all predictions to win election in 1948, helped by his famous Whistle Stop Tour of rural America. After his election, he passed only one of the proposals in his liberal Fair Deal program. He used executive orders to end racial discrimination in the armed forces and created loyalty checks that dismissed thousands of communist supporters from office.
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Helmut Kohl
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛlmuːt ˈkoːl]; born 3 April 1930) is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 (of West Germany between 1982 and 1990 and of the reunited Germany between 1990 and 1998) and the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. His 16-year tenure was the longest of any German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck and oversaw the end of the Cold War and the German reunification. Kohl is widely regarded as one of the main architects of the German reunification and, together with French President François Mitterrand, the Maastricht Treaty, which contributed to the creation of the European Union.
Kohl and Mitterrand were the joint recipients of the Karlspreis in 1988. In 1998, Kohl was named Honorary Citizen of Europe by the European heads of state or government for his extraordinary work for European integration and cooperation, an honour previously only bestowed on Jean Monnet. In 1996, he won the prestigious Prince of Asturias Award in International Cooperation.
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Helmut Schmidt
Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt (German pronunciation: [ˈhɛlmʊt ˈʃmɪt]; born 23 December 1918) is a German Social Democratic politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1974 to 1982. Prior to becoming chancellor, he had served as Minister of Defence and Minister of Finance. He had also served briefly as Minister of Economics and as acting Foreign Minister. He is the oldest surviving German Chancellor and the last surviving person to have been solely Chancellor of West Germany (Helmut Kohl was Chancellor of both West Germany and reunified Germany). He is also the oldest living Federal German Minister, after the death of his Interior Minister Werner Maihofer.
Helmut Schmidt was born in Hamburg, as son of two teachers. He studied at Hamburg Lichtwark School, graduating in 1937. He was conscripted into military service and began serving with an anti-aircraft battery at Vegesack near Bremen during World War II. After brief service on the Eastern Front he returned to Germany in 1942 to work as a trainer and advisor at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium. Also in 1942, on 27 June, he married his childhood sweetheart Hannelore "Loki" Glaser (3 March 1919 – 21 October 2010), with whom he fathered two children: Helmut Walter (26 June 1944–February 1945, died of meningitis), and Susanne (b. 1947), who works in London for Bloomberg Television. Toward the end of the war, from December 1944 onwards, he served as an Oberleutnant in the artillery on the Western Front. He was captured by the British in April 1945 on Lüneburg Heath and was a prisoner of war until August. During his service in World War II Schmidt was awarded the Iron Cross.
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Heng Samrin
Heng Samrin (Khmer: ហេង សំរិន; born 1934) is a Cambodian politician. He was the chairman of the People's Republic of Kampuchea and the State of Cambodia (1979–1993), and later vice chairman (1998–2006) and chairman of the National Assembly of Cambodia since 2006.
Heng was born in Prey Veng Province, Cambodia. He became a member of the Khmer Rouge communist movement led by Pol Pot, and became a political commisar and army division commander when the Khmer Rouge took over the government in 1975. In 1978, he defected from the Khmer Rouge, which was backed by China, and fled to Vietnam. There he became one of the founding members of the Kampuchean United Front for National Salvation (FUNSK). Later that year, Heng returned to Cambodia, leading a rebellion which was backed by Vietnam and the Soviet Union.
The Cambodian People's Party recently released a book about him called, A Man of the People, dedicated to him as a hero.
The Khmer Rouge collapsed in 1979, and Heng set up a new Communist government, the People's Republic of Kampuchea. He became chairman of the People's Revolutionary Council of the PRK in 1979. In 1981 he became chairman of the Council of State and secretary-general of the People's Revolutionary Party. Though at first he was the effective leader of the government, he quickly lost much of his power when the more moderate Hun Sen became Prime Minister in 1985. As Vietnamese influence declined, Heng began losing his posts, including the post of secretary-general in 1991 and chairman of the council of state in 1992. When King Norodom Sihanouk was restored in 1993, Heng was given the honorary title of Sâmdech, and was made honorary chairman of Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party.
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Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger ( /ˈkɪsɪndʒər/; born May 27, 1923) is a German-born American writer, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, he served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. After his term, his opinion was still sought by many subsequent presidents and many world leaders.
A proponent of Realpolitik, Kissinger played a dominant role in United States foreign policy between 1969 and 1977. During this period, he pioneered the policy of détente with the Soviet Union, orchestrated the opening of relations with the People's Republic of China, and negotiated the Paris Peace Accords, ending American involvement in the Vietnam War. Various American policies of that era, including the bombing of Cambodia, remain controversial to many.
Kissinger is still a controversial figure today. He is the founder and chairman of Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm.
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Hirohito
Hirohito (裕仁?), posthumously in Japan officially called Emperor Shōwa or the Shōwa Emperor (昭和天皇, Shōwa tennō?), (April 29, 1901 – January 7, 1989) was the 124th Emperor of Japan according to the traditional order, reigning from December 25, 1926, until his death in 1989. Although better known outside of Japan by his personal name Hirohito, in Japan he is now referred to exclusively by his posthumous name Emperor Shōwa. The word Shōwa is the name of the era that corresponded with the Emperor's reign, and was made the Emperor's own name upon his death.
At the start of his reign, Japan was already one of the great powers—the ninth largest economy in the world after Italy, the third largest naval country, and one of the five permanent members of the council of the League of Nations. He was the head of state under the limitation of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan during Japan's imperial expansion, militarization, and involvement in World War II. After the war, he was not prosecuted for war crimes as many other leading government figures were. During the postwar period, he became the symbol of the new state.
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Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh (Vietnamese pronunciation: [hô cǐ miɲ] (Vietnamese pronunciation: [hô̤ tɕǐmɪŋ] ( listen)); 19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Tất Thành and Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Stalinist revolutionary leader who was prime minister (1945–1955) and president (1945–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). He was a key figure in the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Việt Cộng (NLF or VC) during the Vietnam War.
He led the Việt Minh independence movement from 1941 onward, establishing the communist-governed Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945 and defeating the French Union in 1954 at Điện Biên Phủ. He officially stepped down from power in 1955 due to health problems, but remained a highly visible figurehead and inspiration for Vietnamese fighting for his cause – a united, independent Vietnam – until his death. After the war, Saigon, the capital of Republic of Vietnam, was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City in his honor.
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Hong Song-nam
Hong Song-nam (2 October 1929 – 31 March 2009) was the Premier of North Korea from 1997 to 2003. He succeeded Kang Song-san. Born in Kangwon Province, he graduated from Kim il sung University and studied in Czechoslovakia.
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Hua Guofeng
Su Zhu (16 February 1921 – 20 August 2008), better known by the nom de guerre Hua Guofeng, was Mao Zedong's designated successor as the Paramount Leader of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China.
A regional official in Hunan between 1949 and 1971, he became the head of the party leadership in the province during the latter stages of the Cultural Revolution. Hua was elevated to the national stage in early 1976, and was known for his loyalty to Mao. Upon Zhou Enlai's death in January 1976, Hua succeeded Zhou as Premier of the People's Republic of China. After Mao's death, Hua took on the titles of Chairman of the Communist Party of China and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, to the surprise and dismay of Jiang Qing and the rest of the Gang of Four. Hua is the only leader to have simultaneously held the three highest offices of the PRC - leading the Party, State Council, and the Central Military Commission.
Hua brought the Cultural Revolution to an end and ousted the Gang of Four from political power by staging their arrests in Beijing. He attempted moderate reforms and reversing some of the excesses of Cultural Revolution-era policies. However, because of his insistence on continuing the Maoist line, he was himself outmaneuvered a few years later by Deng Xiaoping, a pragmatic reformer, who forced Hua into early retirement. As Hua faded into political obscurity, he continued to insist on the correctness of Maoist principles. He is remembered as a largely benign transitional figure in modern Chinese political history.
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İbrahim Kaypakkaya
İbrahim Kaypakkaya (1949 - May 18, 1973) was a leader of the Turkish communist movement. He was a former member of the Revolutionary Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey. He later split from this party and established the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML.)
Following the military memorandum of 1971 the Turkish government cracked down on the communist movement in Turkey, and was successful in destroying the machinery of the TKP/ML. Kaypakkaya and several of his colleagues were arrested. Kaypakkaya died in prison in 1973 where he was tortured, and finally, shot in the head by his interrogator.
His doctrinal views were based on splitting away from the neighboring Soviet Union's ideology and taking up Maoism and supporting the Cultural Revolution. As such, Kaypakkaya's life was heavily shaped by the Sino-Soviet split.
Kaypakkaya also took the position that there is a national question involved with the Kurdish people.
Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist re-organized between 1973 and 1978. The first party congress took place in 1978 (TKP/ML I. Kongresi in Turkish). In 1981 the second congress was organized (TKP/ML II. Kongresi). The party split following the second congress, the splinter taking up the name Bolshevik Party (North Kurdistan-Turkey).
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Idi Amin
Idi Amin Dada (c. 1924 – 16 August 2003) was the military dictator and third President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colonial regiment, the King's African Rifles in 1946. Eventually he held the rank of Major General in the post-colonial Ugandan Army and became its Commander before seizing power in the military coup of January 1971, deposing Milton Obote. He later promoted himself to Field Marshal while he was the head of state. While serving in the British Regiment he toured Kenya.
Amin's rule was characterised by gross human rights abuse, political repression, ethnic persecution, extrajudicial killings, nepotism, corruption, and gross economic mismanagement. The number of people killed as a result of his regime is estimated by international observers and human rights groups to range from 100,000 to 500,000. During his years in power, Amin shifted in allegiance from being a pro-Western ruler enjoying considerable Israeli support to being backed by Libya's Muammar al-Gaddafi, the Soviet Union and East Germany.
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Igor Gouzenko
Igor Sergeyevich Gouzenko (January 13, 1919 – June 28, 1982) was a cipher clerk for the Soviet Embassy to Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. He defected on September 5, 1945, with 109 documents on Soviet espionage activities in the West. This forced Prime Minister Mackenzie King to call a Royal Commission to investigate espionage in Canada.
Gouzenko exposed Joseph Stalin's efforts to steal nuclear secrets, and the technique of planting sleeper agents. The "Gouzenko Affair" is often credited as a triggering event of the Cold War.
Gouzenko was born to a Ukrainian family on January 26, 1919, in the village of Rogachevo not far from Moscow. At the start of World War II, he joined the military where he trained as a cipher clerk. In 1943, he was stationed in Ottawa, where for two years he enciphered outgoing messages and deciphered incoming messages for the GRU. His position gave him knowledge of Soviet espionage activities in the West.
In 1945, hearing that he and his family were to be sent home to the Soviet Union and dissatisfied with the quality of life and the politics of his homeland, he decided to defect. Gouzenko walked out of the embassy door carrying with him a briefcase with Soviet code books and deciphering materials. He initially went to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but the RCMP officers on duty refused to believe his story. He then went to the Ottawa Journal newspaper, but the paper's night editor was not interested, and suggested he go to the Department of Justice – however nobody was on duty at night when he arrived. Terrified that the Soviets had discovered his duplicity, he went back to his apartment and hid his family in the apartment across the hall for the night. Gouzenko, hidden by a neighbour, watched through the keyhole as a group of Soviet agents broke into his apartment. They began searching through his belongings, and only left when confronted by Ottawa police.
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Imelda Marcos
Imelda R. Marcos (born Imelda Remedios Visitasion Romualdez on July 2, 1929) is a Filipino politician and widow of 10th Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Upon the ascension of her husband to political power, she held various positions to the government until 1986. She is the first politician elected as member of the Philippine legislature in three geographical locations (Manila, Leyte, Ilocos Norte). In 2010, she was elected to become a member of the House of Representatives to represent Ilocos Norte's second district. She is sometimes referred to as the Steel Butterfly or the Iron Butterfly. She is often remembered for symbols of the extravagance of her husband's political reign, including her collection of 2,700 pairs of shoes.
Her paternal ancestors, the Lopezes of Leyte, were wealthy, landed and prominent, and claimed to have founded the town of Tolosa, Leyte. Spanish mestizos, the Lopezes were descended from the Spanish friar and silversmith Don Francisco Lopez, originally from Granada in the Andalusian region of Spain. Together with Fray Salustiano Buz, he arrived by way of Acapulco to build Roman Catholic missions in the island provinces of Samar and Leyte (Buz would establish his home base in Palapag, Samar, the exit-entry point of the Manila Galleons in the Visayas islands). It was common then for Spanish friars to take mistresses, and Lopez's life-long relationship with a Chinese mestiza, Maria Crisostomo y Talentin of Basey, Samar, produced seven children. The eldest of them was Trinidad Lopez, or Doña Tidad in later years.
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Imre Nagy
Imre Nagy (7 June 1896 – 16 June 1958) was a Hungarian communist politician who was appointed Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary on two occasions. Nagy's second term ended when his non-Soviet-backed government was brought down by Soviet invasion in the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956, resulting in Nagy's execution on charges of treason two years later.
Nagy (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈnɒɟ]) was born in Kaposvár, to a peasant family and was apprenticed to a locksmith. He enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and served on the Eastern Front. He was taken prisoner in 1915. He became a member of the Russian Communist Party, and joined the Red Army.
Nagy returned to Hungary in 1921. In 1930 he travelled to the Soviet Union and joined the communist party. He was engaged in agricultural research, and also worked in the Hungarian section of the Comintern. He was expelled from the party in 1936 and later worked for the Soviet Statistical Service. Rumours that he was an agent of the Soviet secret service surfaced later, begun by Hungarian party-leader Károly Grósz in 1989 in an attempt to discredit Nagy. There is evidence, however, that Nagy did serve as an informant for the NKVD during his time in Moscow and provided names to the secret police as a way to prove his loyalty (not an uncommon tactic for foreign communists in the Soviet Union at the time).
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Indira Gandhi
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Hindi: इंदिरा प्रियदर्शिनी गांधी Indirā Priyadarśinī Gāndhī listen (help·info), née Nehru; 19 November 1917 – 31 October 1984) was an Indian politician who served as the third Prime Minister of India for three consecutive terms (1966–77) and a fourth term (1980–84). Gandhi was the second female head of government in the world after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka, and she remains as the world's second longest serving female Prime Minister as of 2012. She was the first woman to become prime minister in India.
Gandhi was the only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India. She adhered to the quasi-socialist policies of industrial development that had been begun by her father. Gandhi established closer relations with the Soviet Union, depending on that nation for support in India’s long-standing conflict with Pakistan. She was also the only Indian Prime Minister to have declared a state of emergency in order to 'rule by decree' and the only Indian Prime Minister to have been imprisoned after holding that office. She was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in retaliation for ordering Operation Blue Star.
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James Callaghan
Leonard James Callaghan, Baron Callaghan of Cardiff, KG, PC (27 March 1912 – 26 March 2005), was a British Labour politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980. Commonly known as Jim Callaghan (and nicknamed "Sunny Jim", "Gentleman Jim", "Lucky Jim" or "Big Jim"), Callaghan is the only person to have served in all four of the Great Offices of State: Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary.
Callaghan was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1964 to 1967 during a turbulent period in the British economy in which he had to wrestle with a balance of payments deficit and speculative attacks on the pound sterling. In November 1967, the Government was forced to devalue the pound sterling despite having already denied this would be done, both publicly and to the House of Commons. Callaghan offered to resign, but was persuaded to swap his ministerial post with Roy Jenkins, becoming Home Secretary from 1967 to 1970. In that capacity, Callaghan took the decision to use the Army to support the police in Northern Ireland, after a request from the Northern Ireland Government.
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Jasper Becker
Jasper Becker is an author, commentator and journalist who has spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in China.
In 1995, he joined the staff of the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post. He was later promoted to the senior position of Beijing bureau chief, which meant he was in charge of all mainland context. In 2002, he lost his job, in an experience he writes about in a Washington Post column headlined "Why I Was Fired in Hong Kong."
Given his often critical views of China, his abrupt removal was considered by some to be a sign of deteriorating press freedoms in Hong Kong.Becker’s dismissal for “insubordination” was widely reported in the international media. He was sacked after commenting that the paper was restricting his reporting and downplaying coverage on AIDS and labour disturbances on the Mainland.
Becker's books include "China's Hungry Ghosts" (John Murray, 1996), which was about the Great Famine, and "Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea" (Oxford University Press, 2005). Becker has published both reportage and commentary for many news publications, including The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail in Canada, Business Week, the London Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.
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Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru (IPA: [dʒəʋaːɦərˈlaːl ˈneːɦru] ( listen), Hindi: जवाहरलाल नेहरू; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964), often referred to with the epithet of Panditji, was an Indian lawyer, politician and statesman who became the first Prime Minister of independent India (1947–64) and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India’s independence movement in the 1930s and ’40s. Nehru was elected by the Indian National Congress to assume office as independent India's first Prime Minister, and re-elected when the Congress Party won India's first general election in 1951 and 1952. Nehru contributed to the establishment of a parliamentary democracy in India and was one of the founders of the international Non-Aligned Movement.
The son of moderate nationalist leader and Congressman Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru became a leader of the left wing of the Congress when fairly young. Rising to become Congress President under the mentorship of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Nehru was a charismatic leader, advocating complete independence for India from the British Empire. Throughout his life, Nehru advocated Democratic Socialism/Fabian Socialism and a strong public sector as the means by which economic development could be pursued by poorer nations. He was the father of Indira Gandhi and the maternal grandfather of Rajiv Gandhi, who would later serve as the third and sixth Prime Ministers of India respectively.
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Jiang Qing
Jiang Qing (pinyin: Jiāng Qīng; Wade–Giles: Chiang Ch'ing; IPA: [tɕjɑ́ŋ tɕʰíŋ]; 20 March 1914 – 14 May 1991) was the pseudonym that was used by Chinese leader Mao Zedong's last wife and major Communist Party of China power figure. She went by the stage name Lan Ping (Chinese: 蓝苹) during her acting career, and was known by various other names during her life. She married Mao in Yan'an in November 1938, and is sometimes referred to as Madame Mao in Western literature, serving as Communist China's first first lady. Jiang Qing was most well known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) and for forming the radical political alliance known as the "Gang of Four". She was named the "Great Flag-carrier of the Proletarian Culture" (无产阶级文艺伟大旗手/無產階級文藝偉大旗手).
Jiang Qing served as Mao's personal secretary in the 1940s and was head of the Film Section of the CPC Propaganda Department in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, she made a bid for power during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), which resulted in widespread chaos within the communist party. In 1966 she was appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and claimed real power over Chinese politics for the first time. She became one of the masterminds of the Cultural Revolution, and along with three others, held absolute control over all of the national institutions.
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Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States (1977–1981) and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office. Before he became President, Carter served as a U.S. Naval officer, was a peanut farmer, served two terms as a Georgia State Senator and one as Governor of Georgia (1971–1975).
During Carter's term as President, two new cabinet-level departments were created: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. He established a national energy policy that included conservation, price control, and new technology. In foreign affairs, Carter pursued the Camp David Accords, the Panama Canal Treaties, the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II), and returned the Panama Canal Zone to Panama. Throughout his career, Carter strongly emphasized human rights. He took office during a period of international stagflation, which persisted throughout his term. The end of his presidential tenure was marked by the 1979–1981 Iran hostage crisis, the 1979 energy crisis, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (at the end of 1979), 1980 Summer Olympics boycott by the United States of the Moscow Olympics and the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
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Joachim Gauck
Joachim Gauck pronounced [joːˈʔaxiːm ɡaʊ̯k] (born 24 January 1940 in Rostock) is the current President of Germany (since 18 March 2012). A former Lutheran pastor, he came to prominence as an anti-communist civil rights activist in East Germany.
During the Peaceful Revolution, he was a co-founder of the New Forum opposition movement in East Germany, which contributed to the downfall of the Soviet-backed dictatorship of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1990 he served as a member of the only freely elected People's Chamber for the Alliance 90. Following German reunification, he was elected by the Bundestag as the first Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives, serving from 1990 to 2000. As Federal Commissioner, he earned recognition as a "Stasi hunter" and "tireless pro-democracy advocate," exposing the crimes of the former communist secret police.
He was nominated as the candidate of the SPD and the Greens for President of Germany in the 2010 election, but narrowly lost to Christian Wulff, the candidate of the government coalition. His candidacy was met by significant approval of the population and the media; Der Spiegel described him as "the better President" and the Bild called him "the president of hearts." After Christian Wulff had stepped down, Gauck was elected President with 991 of 1228 votes in the Federal Convention in the 2012 election, as a nonpartisan consensus candidate of the CDU, the CSU, the FDP, the SPD and the Greens.
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Joe Clark
Charles Joseph "Joe" Clark, PC CC AOE (born June 5, 1939) is a Canadian statesman, businessman, and university professor, and former journalist and politician. He served as the 16th Prime Minister of Canada, from June 4, 1979, to March 3, 1980.
Despite his relative inexperience, Clark rose quickly in federal politics, entering the House of Commons in the 1972 election and winning the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1976. He came to power in the 1979 election, defeating the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and ending sixteen continuous years of Liberal rule. Taking office the day before his 40th birthday, Clark is the youngest person to become Prime Minister. His tenure was brief as he only won a minority government, and it was defeated on a motion of non-confidence. Clark subsequently lost the 1980 election and the leadership of the party in 1983.
He returned to prominence in 1984 as a senior cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney's cabinet, retiring from politics after not standing for re-election for the House of Commons in 1993. He made a political comeback in 1998 to lead the Progressive Conservatives before its dissolution, serving his final term in Parliament from 2000 to 2004. Clark today is recognized as a distinguished scholar and statesman, and serves as a university professor and as president of his own consulting firm.
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John Diefenbaker
John George Diefenbaker, PC, CH, QC (September 18, 1895 – August 16, 1979) was the 13th Prime Minister of Canada, serving from June 21, 1957, to April 22, 1963. He was the only Progressive Conservative (PC or Tory) party leader between 1930 and 1979 to lead the party to an election victory, doing so three times, although only once with a majority of seats in the Canadian House of Commons.
Diefenbaker was born in southwestern Ontario in 1895. In 1903, his family migrated west to the portion of the Northwest Territories which would shortly thereafter become the province of Saskatchewan. He grew up in the province, and was interested in politics from a young age. After brief service in World War I, Diefenbaker became a lawyer. He contested elections through the 1920s and 1930s with little success until he was finally elected to the House of Commons in 1940.
In the House of Commons, Diefenbaker was repeatedly a candidate for the PC leadership. He attained leadership of the party in 1956, leading it for eleven years. In 1957, he led the party to its first electoral victory in 27 years; a year later he called a snap election and spearheaded the Tories to one of their greatest triumphs. Diefenbaker appointed the first female minister in Canadian history to his Cabinet, as well as the first aboriginal member of the Senate. During his six years as Prime Minister, his government obtained passage of the Canadian Bill of Rights and granted the vote to the First Nations and Inuit peoples. In foreign policy, his stance against apartheid helped secure the departure of South Africa from the Commonwealth of Nations, but his indecision on whether to accept Bomarc nuclear missiles from the United States led to his government's downfall. Diefenbaker is also remembered for his role in the 1959 cancellation of the Avro Arrow project.
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John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
pronunciation (help·info) (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.
After military service as commander of the Motor Torpedo Boats PT-109 and PT-59 during World War II in the South Pacific, Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. Thereafter, he served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated then Vice President and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. He was the youngest elected to the office, at the age of 43, the second-youngest President (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president. Kennedy is the only Catholic president, and is the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize. Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the African American Civil Rights Movement, and early stages of the Vietnam War.
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John Foster Dulles
John Foster Dulles (February 25, 1888 – May 24, 1959) served as U.S. Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959. He was a significant figure in the early Cold War era, advocating an aggressive stance against communism throughout the world. He advocated support of the French in their war against the Viet Minh in Indochina and it is widely believed that he refused to shake the hand of Zhou Enlai at the Geneva Conference in 1954. He also played a major role in the Central Intelligence Agency operation to overthrow the democratic Mossadegh government of Iran in 1953 (Operation Ajax) and the democratic Arbenz government of Guatemala in 1954 (Operation PBSUCCESS).
Born in Washington, D.C., he was one of five children and the eldest son born to Presbyterian minister Allen Macy Dulles and his wife Edith (Foster). His paternal grandfather, John Welsh Dulles, had been a Presbyterian missionary in India. He attended public schools in Watertown, New York. After graduating from Princeton University (Phi Beta Kappa, 1908), where he competed on the American Whig-Cliosophic Society debate team, and graduating from The George Washington University Law School, he joined the New York City law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, where he specialized in international law. He tried to join the United States Army during World War I but was rejected because of poor eyesight. Instead, Dulles received an Army commission as Major on the War Industries Board.
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John Turner
John Napier Wyndham Turner, PC, CC, QC (born June 7, 1929) is an English Canadian lawyer and retired politician, who served as the 17th Prime Minister of Canada from June 30 to September 17, 1984.
In his political career, Turner held several prominent Cabinet posts, including minister of justice and minister of finance, under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau from 1968 to 1975. Amid a world recession and the prospect of having to implement the unpopular wage and price controls, Turner surprisingly resigned his position in 1975. After a hiatus from politics from 1975 to 1984, Turner returned and successfully contested the Liberal leadership. Turner held the office of Prime Minister for 79 days (the second shortest tenure in Canadian history after Charles Tupper), as he dissolved Parliament immediately after being sworn in as Prime Minister, and went on to lose the 1984 election in a landslide. Turner stayed on as Liberal leader and headed the Official Opposition for the next six years, leading his party to a modest recovery in the 1988 campaign, resigning from politics in 1990.
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Jonas Savimbi
Jonas Malheiro Savimbi (August 3, 1934 – February 22, 2002) was an Angolan political leader. He founded and led UNITA, a movement that first waged a guerrilla war against Portuguese colonial rule, 1966–1974, then confronted the rival MPLA during the decolonization conflict, 1974-75, and after independence in 1975 fought the ruling MPLA in the Angolan Civil War until his death in a clash with government troops in 2002.
Savimbi was born on August 3, 1934, in Munhango, Moxico Province, a small town on the Benguela Railway, and raised in Bié Province. Savimbi's father, Lote, was a stationmaster on Angola's Benguela railway line and a preacher of the Protestant "Igreja Evangélica Congregacional de Angola", founded and maintained by American missionaries. Both his parents were members of the Bieno group of the Ovimbundu, the people who later served as Savimbi's major political base.
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Jorge Rafael Videla
Jorge Rafael Videla Redondo (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxorxe rafaˈel βiˈðela]; born 2 August 1925) is a former senior commander in the Argentine Army who was the de facto President of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. He came to power in a coup d'état that deposed Isabel Martínez de Perón. After the return of a representative democratic government, he was prosecuted for large-scale human rights abuses and crimes against humanity that took place under his rule, including kidnappings or forced disappearance, widespread torture and extrajudicial murder of activists, political opponents (either real, suspected or alleged) as well as their families, at secret concentration camps. The accusations also included the theft of many babies born during the captivity of their mothers at the illegal detention centres. He was under house arrest until 10 October 2008, when he was sent to a military prison. On 5 July 2010, Videla took full responsibility for his army's actions during his rule. "I accept the responsibility as the highest military authority during the internal war. My subordinates followed my orders," he told an Argentine court. On 22 December 2010, Videla was sentenced to life in a civilian prison for the deaths of 31 prisoners following his coup d'état.
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Jose Maria Sison
Jose Maria Sison (born February 8, 1939, Cabugao, Commonwealth of the Philippines) is a writer and activist who reorganized the Communist Party of the Philippines and added elements of Maoism to its philosophy.
Since August 2002, he has been classified as a "person supporting terrorism" by the United States. The European Union's second highest court ruled to delist him as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze assets.
Jose Maria Sison was born at Cabugao, Ilocos Sur on February 8, 1939. Also a member of a prominent family with the connections to other prominent personalities like the Crisologos, Sison affirmed his background as a member of a landowning family. But during his childhood days, his inclination to the left began by listening to his barber discussing him about the Hukblahap in Ilocos (kwentong barbero), as well as studying in a public school in Ilocos (unlike his relatives) before entering Ateneo de Manila, then in Colegio de San Juan de Letran. A 1959 graduate of the University of the Philippines, Sison studied in Indonesia, before returning to the Philippines to settle as a university professor of literature. Sison also joined the Lavaite Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas as well as one of the founding members of the Socialist Party and Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism. And in 1964, he co-founded the Kabataang Makabayan or Patriotic Youth with Nilo S. Tayag. This organization rallied Filipino youth against the Vietnam war, against the Marcos presidency and corrupt politicians alongside Imperialism, Bureaucrat Capitalism and Feudalism. The organization also spearheaded the studying of Maoism as part of the struggle.
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Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, McCarthy's tactics and his inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate.
The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more generally in reference to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character and/or patriotism of political opponents.
Born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, McCarthy earned a law degree at Marquette University in 1935 and was elected as a circuit judge in 1939, the youngest in state history. At age 33, McCarthy volunteered for the United States Marine Corps and served during World War II. He successfully ran for the United States Senate in 1946, defeating Robert M. La Follette, Jr. After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department. McCarthy was never able to prove his sensational charge.
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Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин; born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Джугашвили; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 and later held the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee from 1922 until his death in 1953. While the office of the General Secretary was officially elective and not initially regarded as the top position in the Soviet state, Stalin managed to use it to consolidate more and more power in his hands after the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924 and gradually put down all opposition groups within the Communist Party. This included Leon Trotsky, a socialist theorist and the principal critic of Stalin among the early Soviet leaders, who was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929. Whereas Trotsky was an exponent of permanent revolution, it was Stalin's concept of socialism in one country that became the primary focus of Soviet politics.
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Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito (Serbo-Croatian pronunciation: [jɔ̂sip brɔ̂ːz tîtɔ]; born Josip Broz; Cyrillic: Јосип Броз Тито; 7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, serving in various roles from 1945 until his death in 1980. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, due to his successful economic and diplomatic policies, Tito was seen by most as a benevolent dictator, and was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Viewed as a unifying symbol, his internal policies successfully maintained the peaceful coexistence of the nations of the Yugoslav federation. He gained international attention as the chief leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, working with Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.
Josip was born as the seventh child of Franjo and Marija Broz in the village of Kumrovec within Austria-Hungary (modern-day Croatia). Drafted into the army, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest Sergeant Major in the Austro-Hungarian Army. After being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians, Josip was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains. He participated in the October Revolution, and later joined a Red Guard unit in Omsk. Upon his return home, Broz found himself in the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
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José María Sison
Jose Maria Sison (born February 8, 1939, Cabugao, Commonwealth of the Philippines) is a writer and activist who reorganized the Communist Party of the Philippines and added elements of Maoism to its philosophy.
Since August 2002, he has been classified as a "person supporting terrorism" by the United States. The European Union's second highest court ruled to delist him as a "person supporting terrorism" and reversed a decision by member governments to freeze assets.
Jose Maria Sison was born at Cabugao, Ilocos Sur on February 8, 1939. Also a member of a prominent family with the connections to other prominent personalities like the Crisologos, Sison affirmed his background as a member of a landowning family. But during his childhood days, his inclination to the left began by listening to his barber discussing him about the Hukblahap in Ilocos (kwentong barbero), as well as studying in a public school in Ilocos (unlike his relatives) before entering Ateneo de Manila, then in Colegio de San Juan de Letran. A 1959 graduate of the University of the Philippines, Sison studied in Indonesia, before returning to the Philippines to settle as a university professor of literature. Sison also joined the Lavaite Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas as well as one of the founding members of the Socialist Party and Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism. And in 1964, he co-founded the Kabataang Makabayan or Patriotic Youth with Nilo S. Tayag. This organization rallied Filipino youth against the Vietnam war, against the Marcos presidency and corrupt politicians alongside Imperialism, Bureaucrat Capitalism and Feudalism. The organization also spearheaded the studying of Maoism as part of the struggle.
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João Goulart
João Belchior Marques Goulart (gaúcho Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈʒu.ɐ̃w bewˈki.ɔɾ ˈmarkis ɡuˈlaɾ], or [ˈʒwɐ̃w ˈbɛwkjɔʁ ˈmaʁkiʒ ɡuːˈlaʁ] in the standard fluminense dialect; March 1, 1919 – December 6, 1976) was a Brazilian politician and the 24th President of Brazil until a military coup d'état deposed him on April 1, 1964. He is considered to have been the last left-wing President of the country until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in 2003.
João Goulart is nicknamed "Jango" ([ˈʒɐ̃gu]). The Jânio Quadros–João Goulart presidential bid was thus called "Jan–Jan" ([ʒɐ̃.ʒɐ̃], an amalgamation of Jânio and Jango).
His childhood hypocoristics was "Janguinho" (little Jango), which came from an uncle named Jango. Years later, when he entered the world of politics, supported and advised by Getúlio Vargas, his friends and colleagues started to call him Jango.
His grandfather, Belchior Rodrigues Goulart, descended from Portuguese immigrants from Azores who arrived at Rio Grande do Sul in the second half of the 18th century. In the group of first Azoreans established in the state there were at least three immigrants with the surname Govaert (latter adapted to Goulart or Gularte in Portuguese) of Flemish-Azorean ancestors; the surname Goulart originates from France.
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Juan Domingo Perón
Juan Domingo Perón (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxwan doˈmiŋɡo peˈɾon]; October 8, 1895 – July 1, 1974) was an Argentine military officer and politician. After serving in several government positions, including those of Minister of Labor and Vice President of the Republic, he was three times elected as President of Argentina although he managed to serve only one full term in this function. Perón's last term as President of the Republic began in 1973 and lasted for just nine months, until his death in 1974, whereupon he was succeeded by his third wife, the Vice President of the Republic, María Estela Martínez.
Perón and his second wife, Eva Duarte, were immensely popular among many Argentines. They are still considered icons by the Peronists. The Peróns' followers praised their efforts to eliminate poverty and to dignify labor, while their detractors considered them demagogues and dictators. The Peróns gave their name to the political movement known as Peronism, which in present-day Argentina is represented mainly by the Justicialist Party.
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Juan Ponce Enrile
Juan Ponce Enrile (born February 14, 1924) is a Filipino politician. As a protege of President Ferdinand Marcos, he served as Justice Secretary and then Defense Secretary under the Marcos regime. He later became one of the leaders (along with General Fidel V. Ramos) of the 1986 People Power Movement that drove Marcos from power. Enrile has continued to be a prominent politician since then; he has been President of the Senate of the Philippines since November 2008.
Juan Ponce Enrile was born Juanito Furagganan in Gonzaga, Cagayan, to Petra Furagganan, the daughter of a poor fisherman. He was born out of wedlock—his father was the already married powerful regional politician and renowned lawyer Alfonso Ponce Enrile. He is the second great-nephew of Mariano Ponce. He was reunited with his father by the time he reached his high school years.
He graduated cum laude in 1949 with an Associate of Arts degree at the Ateneo de Manila University. Afterward, he attended the University of the Philippines College of Law and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Laws degree. While in law school, he joined the Sigma Rho fraternity. Upon graduation, he was elected to the prestigious Pi Gamma Mu and Phi Kappa Phi international honor societies. He achieved the 11th highest score in the 1953 bar examinations with a 91.72% rating and a perfect score in mercantile law. As a scholar at the Harvard Law School, he earned a Master of Laws degree with specialized training in international tax law.
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Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere (13 April 1922 – 14 October 1999) was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985.
Born in Tanganyika to Nyerere Burito (1860–1942), Chief of the Zanaki, Nyerere was known by the Swahili name Mwalimu or 'teacher', his profession prior to politics. He was also referred to as Baba wa Taifa (Father of the Nation). Nyerere received his higher education at Makerere University in Kampala and the University of Edinburgh. After he returned to Tanganyika, he worked as a teacher. In 1954, he helped form the Tanganyika African National Union.
In 1961, Nyerere was elected Tanganyika's first Prime Minister, and following independence, in 1962, the country's first President. In 1964, Tanganyika became politically united with Zanzibar and was renamed to Tanzania. In 1965, a one-party election returned Nyerere to power. During the first years Nyerere created a single-party system and used "preventive detention" to eliminate trade unions and opposition.
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János Kádár
János Kádár (26 May 1912 – 6 July 1989) was a Hungarian communist leader and the General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, presiding over the country from 1956 until his retirement in 1988. His thirty-two year term as General Secretary makes Kádár the longest ruler of the People's Republic of Hungary. During Kádár's rule, Hungary was stabilized and liberalized to an extent never before seen in any Eastern Bloc country until Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary. Due to his age and declining health, he decided to retire as Secretary-General of the party in 1988, and a younger generation consisting mostly of reformers took over.
Kádár was born in Fiume to a poor family, his father left his mother and him when he was very young, and he never met his father. After living in the countryside for some years, Kádár and his mother moved to Budapest. After quitting school, Kádár joined the Communist Party of Hungary's youth organisation, KIMSZ. Kádár would go on to become a notable figure of the pre-World War II communist party, even becoming First Secretary. As leader he dissolved the party, and reorganised it as the Peace Party. This new party failed to win any popular support for the communist cause, and he would later be accused, of dissolving the Hungarian communist party. With the German invasion of Hungary, the Peace Party tried again to win support from the Hungarian populace, but failed. At the time of the Soviet occupation, the communists led by Kádár were very small in size.
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Kang Sheng
Kang Sheng (Chinese: 康生; pinyin: Kāng Shēng; c. 1898–December 16, 1975), Communist Party of China official, oversaw the work of the People's Republic of China's security and intelligence apparatus at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s. He was a close associate of Mao Zedong and remained at or near the pinnacle of power for decades. After his death, Kang Sheng was accused of sharing responsibility with the Gang of Four for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution and expelled posthumously from the Communist Party in 1980.
Kang Sheng (康生) was born in Dataizhuang (Chinese: 大臺莊; pinyin: Dà Tái Zhuāng) (administrated under Jiaonan County since 1946), Zhucheng County (Chinese: 諸城; pinyin: Zhū Chéng) to the northwest of Qingdao in Shandong Province to a landowning family, some of whom had been Confucian scholars. Kang was born Zhang Zongke (simplified Chinese: 张宗可; traditional Chinese: 張宗可; pinyin: Zhāng Zōngkě) but he adopted a number of pseudonyms – most notably Zhao Rong, but also (for his painting) Li Jushi—before settling on Kang Sheng in the 1930s. Some sources give his year of birth as being as early as 1893, but it has also been variously given as 1898, 1899 and 1903.
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Kang Song-san
Kang Song-san (born 1931) was the Premier of North Korea from 1984 to 1986 and again from 1992 to 1997. He succeeded Li Jong-ok in his first term and Yon Hyong-muk in his second term. He was born in North Hamgyong.
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Kim Campbell
Avril Phædra Douglas "Kim" Campbell, PC CC OBC QC (born March 10, 1947) is a Canadian politician, lawyer, university professor, diplomat, and writer. She served as the 19th Prime Minister of Canada, from June 25, 1993 to November 4, 1993. Campbell was the first and to date the only female Prime Minister of Canada, the first baby boomer to hold that office, and the only PM to have been born in British Columbia.
Campbell was born in Port Alberni, British Columbia to George Thomas Campbell (1920–2002) and Phyllis "Lisa" Cook. Her mother left the family when Campbell was 12, leaving Kim and her sister Alix to be raised by their father. As a teenager, Campbell permanently nicknamed herself Kim, perhaps for actress Kim Novak.
While in her pre-teens, Campbell was a host and reporter on the CBC children's program Junior Television Club.
Campbell and her family moved to Vancouver, where she attended Prince of Wales Secondary School, and was a top student. She became the school's first female student president, and graduated in 1964.
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Kim Hyŏng-jik
Kim Hyŏng-jik (July 10, 1884 – June 5, 1926) was a Korean independence activist and Communist politician. Hyŏng-jik is the father of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, grandfather of the late leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, and great-grandfather of the current leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.
Little is known about Kim. He was the son of Kim Bo-hyon (金輔鉉, 1859–1955), attended Sungshil school, which was run by American missionaries, and became a teacher and later an herbal pharmacist. He died as a result of numerous medical problems, including third-degree frostbite.
Kim and his wife attended Christian churches. It was reported that his son, Kim Il-sung attended church services during his teenage years before becoming an atheist later in life.
Kim Il-sung spoke a lot of his father's idea of chiwŏn (righteous aspirations).
Kim and his family were active in opposition to the Japanese, who controlled Korea at the time, and in 1920, when Kim Il-sung was eight, they fled to Manchuria for safety.
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Kim Il (politician)
Kim Il (1910–1984) was a North Korean politician. He was Prime Minister from 28 December 1972 to 29 April 1976.
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Kim il-sung
Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as "North Korea", from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994 (titled as chairman from 1949 to 1966 and as general secretary after 1966).
His tenure as leader of North Korea has often been described as autocratic, and he established an all-pervasive cult of personality. From the mid-1960s, he promoted his self-developed Juche variant of communist national organization, which later replaced Marxism-Leninism as the ideology of the state in 1972. In the Library of Congress Country Study on North Korea in 2009, he was described as "one of the most intriguing figures of the twentieth century". He outlived Joseph Stalin by four decades, Mao Zedong by two, and remained in power during the terms of office of six South Korean presidents, 7 Soviet leaders, ten U.S. presidents, and twenty-one Japanese prime ministers.
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Kim Il-sung
Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as "North Korea", from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994 (titled as chairman from 1949 to 1966 and as general secretary after 1966).
His tenure as leader of North Korea has often been described as autocratic, and he established an all-pervasive cult of personality. From the mid-1960s, he promoted his self-developed Juche variant of communist national organization, which later replaced Marxism-Leninism as the ideology of the state in 1972. In the Library of Congress Country Study on North Korea in 2009, he was described as "one of the most intriguing figures of the twentieth century". He outlived Joseph Stalin by four decades, Mao Zedong by two, and remained in power during the terms of office of six South Korean presidents, 7 Soviet leaders, ten U.S. presidents, and twenty-one Japanese prime ministers.
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Kim Jong-chul
Kim Jong-chul (born September 25, 1981) is the middle son of Kim Jong-il, the late leader of North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea). His older half-brother is Kim Jong-nam. His younger brother is Kim Jong-un, now the de facto leader of North Korea.
In 2007, Jong-chul was appointed deputy chief of a leadership division of the Workers' Party. However, on January 15, 2009, the South Korean News Agency reported that Kim Jong-il appointed his youngest son, Jong-un, to be his successor, passing over Jong-nam and Jong-chul.
These reports were supported in April 2009 when Kim Jong-un assumed a low-level position within the ruling Workers' Party of Korea as Kim Jong-il was groomed by his own father, Kim Il-sung, in a similar way before becoming North Korean leader in 1994.
Until 2001, it was assumed that Kim Jong-il's eventual heir would be his eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, whose mother was Song Hye-rim. But in May 2001, Kim Jong-nam was arrested at New Tokyo International Airport, Japan, travelling on a forged Dominican Republic passport. He was held and then deported to the People's Republic of China. The incident caused Kim Jong-il to cancel a planned visit to China because of the embarrassment to both countries. As a result of this incident, Kim Jong-nam has fallen from favour. He was later reported to be living in Macau.
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Kim Jong-Il
Kim Jong-il (born Yuri Irsenovich Kim; 16 February 1941; official biography claims 1942 – 17 December 2011) was the supreme leader of North Korea (DPRK) from 1994 to 2011. He succeeded his father and founder of the DPRK Kim Il-sung following the elder Kim's death in 1994. Kim Jong-il was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world.
In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended to refer to him as the "supreme leader". He was also referred to as the "Dear Leader", "our Father", and "the General", among others. His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and is his successor. In 2010, he was ranked 31st in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People. The North Korean government announced his death on 19 December 2011.
Following his demise, he was succeeded by his third son Kim Jong-un. He was proclaimed the Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission in 2012. His birthday is a public holiday in the country.
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Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il (born Yuri Irsenovich Kim; 16 February 1941; official biography claims 1942 – 17 December 2011) was the supreme leader of North Korea (DPRK) from 1994 to 2011. He succeeded his father and founder of the DPRK Kim Il-sung following the elder Kim's death in 1994. Kim Jong-il was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world.
In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended to refer to him as the "supreme leader". He was also referred to as the "Dear Leader", "our Father", and "the General", among others. His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and is his successor. In 2010, he was ranked 31st in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People. The North Korean government announced his death on 19 December 2011.
Following his demise, he was succeeded by his third son Kim Jong-un. He was proclaimed the Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission in 2012. His birthday is a public holiday in the country.
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Kim Jong-nam
Kim Jong-nam (Korean: 김정남, Hanja: 金正男) (born May 10, 1971), is the eldest son of the late Kim Jong-il, former leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. From roughly 1998 to 2001, he was widely considered to be the heir-apparent to his father and the next leader of North Korea. Following a much-publicized botched attempt to secretly enter Japan using a fake passport and visit Disneyland in May 2001, he was thought to have fallen out of favor with his father. Kim Jong-nam's younger paternal half-brother Kim Jong-un was named heir apparent in September 2010. In exile, Jong-nam has become known as a sometime critic of his family's regime and an advocate for reform.
Kim Jong-nam was born in Pyongyang, to Song Hye-rim, one of three women known to have had children with Kim Jong-il. Because Kim Jong-il aimed to keep his affair with Song a secret due to the disapproval of his father Kim Il-sung, he initially kept Jong-nam out of school, instead sending him to live with Song's older sister Song Hye-rang, who tutored him at home.
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Kim Jong-suk
Kim Jong-suk (December 24, 1917 – September 22, 1949) was a Korean independence activist and Communist politician. She was North Korean leader Kim Il-sung's first wife and Kim Jong-il's mother.
Kim Jong-suk was born December 24, 1917 to Kim Chun San and Oh Ssi, who were poor farmers in Osan-dong, Hoeryong County, in the North Hamgyong Province of Japanese Korea. In 1922 her family abandoned Korea to live in China. Kim Jong-suk joined the Young Communist League of Korea, led by Kim Il-sung, on July 10, 1932.
Later, on April 25, 1936, she was assigned to the KPRA main unit directly under the command of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-suk was formally admitted into the Communist Party on January 25, 1937. Kim Jong-suk gave birth to Kim Jong-il on February 16, 1941 in the Soviet village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk.[citation needed]
On September 22, 1949, Kim Jong-suk died at the age of 31 while giving birth to a stillborn baby girl.
Other unconfirmed reports suggest that she might have been shot and left to bleed to death.
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Kim Jong-un
Kim Jong-un also romanised as Kim Jong-eun or Kim Jung-eun, (born 8 January 1983 or 1984), is the current supreme leader of North Korea. He has held the titles of the First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, First Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and also a presidium member of the Central Politburo of the Workers' Party of Korea. He was officially declared the supreme leader following the state funeral for his father, Kim Jong-il on 28 December 2011. He is the third and youngest son of his deceased predecessor Kim Jong-il and his consort Ko Young-hee. From late 2010, Kim Jong-un was viewed as heir apparent to the leadership of the nation, and following his father's death, he was announced as the "Great Successor" by North Korean state television. At Kim Jong-il's memorial service, North Korean Chairman of Congress Kim Yong-nam declared that "Respected Comrade Kim Jong-un is our party, military and country’s supreme leader who inherits great comrade Kim Jong-il’s ideology, leadership, character, virtues, grit and courage". On 30 December 2011 the Politburo of the Workers' Party of Korea formally appointed Kim as the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army. On 11 April 2012, the 4th Party Conference elected him to the newly-created post of First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea.
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Kim Ok
Kim Ok (김옥) is a North Korean government employee who served as Kim Jong-il's personal secretary from the 1980s until his death. After the death of Ko Young-hee, she regularly met with foreign officials as de facto first lady, and was rumored to be his fourth wife.
Kim was previously a musician and was a piano major at Pyongyang University of Music and Dance.
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Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby (1 January 1912–11 May 1988) was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union. He served as both an NKVD and KGB operative.
In 1963, Philby was revealed to be a member of the spy ring now known as the Cambridge Five, the other members of which were Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross. Of the five, Philby is believed to have been most successful in providing secret information to the Soviet Union. His activities were moderated only by Joseph Stalin's fears that he was secretly on Britain's side. Philby was an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) from 1946 to 1965.
Philby was born at Ambala in the Punjab while it was a province of British India. His father, St. John Philby, a well-known author, orientalist, and convert to Islam, was a member of the Indian Civil Service and later a civil servant in Mesopotamia and advisor to King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia.
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Kim Pyong-il
Kim Pyong-il (Korean: 김평일, Hanja: 金平一) (born 10 August 1954) is the younger paternal half-brother of the former leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, and the son of former leader Kim Il-sung.
Kim was born to Kim Il-sung and Kim Song-ae, Kim Il-sung's former secretary. Kim had one younger brother, Yong-il (not to be confused with Kim Yong-il, Premier of the DPRK Cabinet from April 2007 to June 2010), and one younger half-sister, Kyung-hee (who would go on to marry senior official Chang Sung-taek). He was named after another son with the same name, who was born in Vyatskoye in 1944; that son, also known as Shura Kim, allegedly drowned in Pyongyang in 1947. He graduated from Kim Il-sung University with a major in economics, and later attended the Kim Il-sung National War College, following which he was appointed a battalion commander.
In 1979, Kim began a series of diplomatic postings to several countries in Europe so that he could not influence politics in his home country. His first overseas assignment was in the Socialist Federal Republic Yugoslavia. He was promoted to the position of ambassador to People's Republic of Hungary in 1988, but was transferred to People's Republic of Bulgaria in response to Hungary's opening of diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1989. This was followed by a posting in Finland. In 1998, after North Korea closed its embassy in Finland to save money and prevent defections, he was posted to Poland. His ambassadorship was initially suggested to be in limbo, as nine months after his posting he had yet to formally present his credentials to the Polish president. However, he remained as ambassador in Poland, and his daughter Kim Eun-song and son Kim In-kang went on to attend university there.
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Kim Song-ae
Kim Sŏng-ae (born 1928) was the second wife of the late North Korean leader, president Kim Il-sung. They became husband and wife in 1952, following the death of Kim Il-sung's first wife in 1949, although due to the Korean War no formal ceremony was held. One source indicates Kim Il Sung had had an affair with her even before his first wife died. She gave birth to a daughter (Kim Kyong-jin, 1953) and two sons (Kim Pyong-il, 1955; Kim Yong-il, 1957). She later rose in political power, becoming vice-chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Korean Women's Association (조선여성총동맹) in the mid-1960s and chairwoman in the 1970s. She held that post until resigning in 1998; since that time, little information about her has reached the outside world.
There are rumors that she was killed in car accident in Beijing in June 2001. Other reports claim she is still alive as of July 2011, though in poor health, and that Kim Pyong-il returned to Pyongyang from his posting in Poland to visit her.
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Kim Sul-song
Kim Sul-song, or Kim Seol-song (born December 30, 1974), is the daughter of North Korea's former leader Kim Jong-Il and Kim Young-sook. She has reportedly been active within the propaganda department, been in charge of literary affairs, and in charge of security and schedule of her father as his secretary.
"Seol-song" literally means "snow pine", and the name was reportedly given by her grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
Reportedly, she was a favourite of her father. She attended the same school as her father, graduated from Kim Il-sung University's Economics Department and was assigned to the propaganda department of the Workers' Party Central Committee. She is also reported to have been in charge of literary affairs: according to reports, all the signatures on works of literature coming into the department were signed by her.
According to a North Korean defector, who used to be a high-ranking official in Pyongyang, Seol-song was in charge of security and schedule for Kim Jong-Il since the late 1990s. In this capacity, she accompanied her father during trips to North Korean Army units and local villages. During these trips, she has been observed wearing the uniform of a lieutenant colonel of the North Korean People's Army.
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Kim Sung-ae
Kim Sŏng-ae (born 1928) was the second wife of the late North Korean leader, president Kim Il-sung. They became husband and wife in 1952, following the death of Kim Il-sung's first wife in 1949, although due to the Korean War no formal ceremony was held. One source indicates Kim Il Sung had had an affair with her even before his first wife died. She gave birth to a daughter (Kim Kyong-jin, 1953) and two sons (Kim Pyong-il, 1955; Kim Yong-il, 1957). She later rose in political power, becoming vice-chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Korean Women's Association (조선여성총동맹) in the mid-1960s and chairwoman in the 1970s. She held that post until resigning in 1998; since that time, little information about her has reached the outside world.
There are rumors that she was killed in car accident in Beijing in June 2001. Other reports claim she is still alive as of July 2011, though in poor health, and that Kim Pyong-il returned to Pyongyang from his posting in Poland to visit her.
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Kim Sŏng-ae
Kim Sŏng-ae (born 1928) was the second wife of the late North Korean leader, president Kim Il-sung. They became husband and wife in 1952, following the death of Kim Il-sung's first wife in 1949, although due to the Korean War no formal ceremony was held. One source indicates Kim Il Sung had had an affair with her even before his first wife died. She gave birth to a daughter (Kim Kyong-jin, 1953) and two sons (Kim Pyong-il, 1955; Kim Yong-il, 1957). She later rose in political power, becoming vice-chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Korean Women's Association (조선여성총동맹) in the mid-1960s and chairwoman in the 1970s. She held that post until resigning in 1998; since that time, little information about her has reached the outside world.
There are rumors that she was killed in car accident in Beijing in June 2001. Other reports claim she is still alive as of July 2011, though in poor health, and that Kim Pyong-il returned to Pyongyang from his posting in Poland to visit her.
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Kim Tu-bong
Kim Tu-bong (March 16, 1886 – 1957?) was a Korean linguist and politician. He formed the New People's Party. After the New People's Party merged into the Workers Party of North Korea in 1946, he became Chairman of the Workers Party. He was the first head of state (Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly) of North Korea from 1948 to 1957. He preceded Choi Yong-kun.
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Kim Yong-il
Kim Yong-il (born 2 May 1944) was the Premier of North Korea from April 2007 to 7 June 2010. He was elected as Premier by the 5th session of the 11th Supreme People's Assembly (SPA) in April 2007, replacing Pak Pong-ju. He was then replaced by Choe Yong-rim after a rare parliamentary session on 7 June 2010.
He served in the Korean People's Army from 1960 to 1969, and then graduated from the Rajin University of Marine Transport as a navigation officer. He worked as instructor and deputy director of a general bureau of the Ministry of Land and Marine Transport for 14 years.
He was the Minister of Land and Marine Transport from 1994 until his election as Premier in 2007. He oversaw the construction of new facilities at the Ryongnam Ship Repair Factory near the western port of Nampo, at the mouth of the Taedong River.
As Premier, Kim Yong-il was the head of government in the DPRK, which means he appointed ministers and vice-premiers, who were confirmed by the SPA, and he was also responsible for economic and domestic policy. Officially, Kim was part of a triumvirate that heads the executive branch of North Korea, each with powers equivalent to one-third of those held by a president in presidential systems. Kim Yong-il headed the government, parliament chairman Kim Yong-nam handled foreign relations, and National Defense Commission, Chairman Kim Jong-il commanded the armed forces.
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Kim Yong-nam
Kim Yong-nam (born 4 February 1928) is the North Korean Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, a position held since 1998. He was elected a member of the presidium of the politburo of the central committee of the Workers' Party of Korea in 2010.
He was born in the Central District, Heijo (now called Pyongyang), on February 4, 1928. After graduating from a university, he worked as a teacher at the central party School, vice-department director of the WPK Central Committee, vice-minister of foreign affairs, and first vice-department director, department director and secretary of the WPK Central Committee, vice-premier of the administration council and concurrently minister of Foreign Affairs.
As chairman of the Presidium, he is considered the de facto head of state of North Korea. Although he is not de jure head of state of North Korea (as no such office exists), he accepts the credentials of ambassadors, conducts foreign relations and signs treaties. He has held this office since 5 September 1998, and he previously served as foreign minister from 1983 to 1998. Kim represents North Korea on all state visits and receives visiting heads of state. In theory, he, Premier Choe Yong-rim, and National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-un form a tripartite executive, each having powers equal to a third of a president's in Presidential systems, controlling foreign relations, government and domestic affairs, and defense, respectively. In practice, Kim Jong-un, like his father, Kim Jong-il, before him, exercises absolute control over the country, and the Chairman of the Presidium is considered a junior position.
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Kim Young-sook
Kim Young-sook (Hangul: 김영숙; Hanja: 金英淑, born 1947), was the first wife of Kim Jong-il. She was the daughter of a high-ranking military official. Kim-Jong-il's father, Kim Il-Sung, handpicked her to marry his son. The two had been estranged for some years before his death. Kim Young-sook has a daughter from this marriage, Kim Sul-song (born 1974). She was First Lady of North Korea between 1994 till late 2011.
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Ko Young-hee
Ko Young-hee (c. 16 June 1953 – c. 13 August 2004), also known as Ko Yong-hui, was the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-il's consort and mother of North Korea's Supreme Commander, Kim Jong-un. Within North Korea she is known as "The Respected Mother who is the Most Faithful and Loyal 'Subject' to the Dear Leader Comrade Supreme Commander".
Ko was born in Ikuno, Osaka, Japan to parents of Korean descent.At the age of 8, her family moved to North Korea in May, 1961. In the early 1970s, she began to work as a dancer for the Mansudae Art Troupe in Pyongyang. It seems that her father Ko Gyon-tek worked in Osaka in a sewing factory run by Japan's ministry of war.
In 1981 Ko gave birth to son Kim Jong-chul, her first child with Kim Jong-il. It was Kim's third child, after son Kim Jong-nam (b. 1971 to Song Hye-rim), and daughter Kim Sul-song (b. 1974 to Kim Young-sook). Kim Jong-il's second child with Ko, present North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un, followed between one to three years later after Jong-chul.
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Konrad Adenauer
Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (German pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈhɛɐman ˈjoːzɛf ˈaːdənaʊɐ]; 5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman. As Chancellor of Germany (West Germany) from 1949 to 1963, he led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that forged close relations with old enemies France and the United States. In his years in power Germany achieved prosperity, democracy, stability and respect. He was the first chancellor (head of government) of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, called West Germany), 1949–63. He was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a coalition of Catholics and Protestants that under his leadership became and has since remained the most dominant in Germany.
Adenauer, dubbed "Der Alte" ("the old one"), belied his age as the oldest elected leader in world history by his intense work habits and his uncanny political instinct. He displayed a strong dedication to a broad vision of democracy, capitalism, and anti-Communism. A shrewd politician, Adenauer was deeply committed to a Western-oriented foreign policy and restoring the position of West Germany on the world stage. He worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction in World War II to a central position in Europe, rebuilt its army and came to terms with France, helped make possible Western European unification, opposed rival East Germany, and made his nation a member of NATO and a firm ally of the United States.
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Konstantin Chernenko
Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko (24 September 1911 – 10 March 1985) was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He led the Soviet Union from 13 February 1984 until his death thirteen months later, on 10 March 1985. Chernenko was also Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 11 April 1984 until his death.
Chernenko was born to a poor family in the village of Bolshaya Tes (now in Novosyolovsky District, Krasnoyarsk Krai). His father, Ustin Demidovich (of Ukrainian origin),[citation needed] worked in copper and gold mines while his mother took care of the farm work.
Chernenko joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) in 1929, and became a full member of the Communist Party in 1931. From 1930 to 1933, he served in the Soviet frontier guards on the Soviet-Chinese border. After completing his military service, he returned to Krasnoyarsk as a propagandist. In 1933 he worked in the Propaganda Department of the Novosyolovsky District Party Committee. A few years later he was promoted head of the same department in Uyarsk Raykom. Chernenko then steadily rose through the Party ranks, becoming the Director of the Krasnoyarsk House of Party Enlightenment then in 1939, the Deputy Head of the AgitProp Department of Krasnoyarsk Territorial Committee and finally, in 1941 he was appointed Secretary of the Territorial Party Committee for Propaganda. It was in the 1940s that Chernenko established a close-knit relationship with Fyodor Kulakov. In 1945, he acquired a diploma from a party training school in Moscow, and in 1953 he finished a correspondence course for schoolteachers.
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Korean War
The Korean War (Korean: 한국전쟁 or 조선전쟁, Hanja: 韓國戰爭 or 朝鮮戰爭; 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953) was a war between the Republic of Korea (supported primarily by the United States of America, with contributions from allied nations under the aegis of the United Nations) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (supported by the People's Republic of China, with military and material aid from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The Korean War was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in September 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half.
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Kwame Nkrumah
The Rt. Hon. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909 – 27 April 1972), P.C., was the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1951 to 1966. Overseeing the nation's independence from British colonial rule in 1957, Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana and the first Prime Minister of Ghana. An influential 20th-century advocate of Pan-Africanism, he was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and was the winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963.
Kwame Nkrumah was born in 1909 to Madam Nyaniba in Nkroful, Gold Coast. Nkrumah trained to be a teacher at Achimota School in Accra from 1927 to 1930 . For the following 5 years he worked as a teacher in several schools in the Gold Coast including a Catholic school in Axim, whilst saving money to continue his education in the USA. In 1935 he sailed from Takoradi, the Gold Coast's main port, to Liverpool in England, and made his way to London where he obtained his student visa from the US Embassy. It was while he was in London in late 1935 thet he heard the news of Fascist Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, an event that outraged the young Nkrumah and influenced his political development. In October 1935 Nkrumah sailed from Liverpool to the United States and enrolled in Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He graduated with a BA in 1939, and received a Bachelor of Sacred Theology in 1942. Nkrumah earned a Master of Science in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942, and a Master of Arts in philosophy the following year. While lecturing in political science at Lincoln he was elected president of the African Students Organization of America and Canada. As an undergraduate at Lincoln he participated in at least one student theater production and published an essay on European government in Africa in the student newspaper, The Lincolnian.
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Károly Grósz
Károly Grósz (August 1, 1930 - January 7, 1996) was a Hungarian communist politician.
Grósz was born in Miskolc, Hungary. He joined the Communist Party in 1945 at the age of 14. Soon the Communists had established a regime in Hungary, and Grósz rose through the party ranks, becoming an important party leader in his native region. In 1974 he was appointed head of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda of the governing Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party.
In 1979 Grósz was elected first secretary of the party committee of his home county. In 1984 he returned to national prominence as the head of the party committee in Budapest. At the next Party Congress in 1985, he became a member of the Politburo. In 1987, he was appointed (Prime Minister of Hungary (Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People's Republic of Hungary) to succeed György Lázár, who had filled the post for more than eleven years. The appointment of the younger and more energetic Grósz was acclaimed both at home and abroad. As the country was facing economic troubles and growing discontent, the aging party leader János Kádár decided to resign, although originally he had planned to remain in office until 1990. In May 1988 a party conference was convened, which elected Károly Grósz as general secretary of the party at Kádár's recommendation on May 22, 1988.
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Lavrenty Beria
Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus (NKVD) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years (1946–1953).
Beria was the longest lived and most influential of Stalin's secret police chiefs, wielding his most substantial influence during and after World War II. He simultaneously administered vast sections of the Soviet state and served as de facto Marshal of the Soviet Union in command of the NKVD field units responsible for anti-partisan operations on the Eastern Front during World War II, as well as for acting as barrier troops and the apprehension of thousands of "turncoats, deserters, cowards and suspected malingerers". Beria administered the vast expansion of the Gulag labor camps and was primarily responsible for overseeing the secret defense institutions known as sharashkas, critical to the war effort. He also played the decisive role in coordinating the Soviet partisans, developing an impressive intelligence and sabotage network behind German lines. He attended the Yalta Conference with Stalin, who introduced him to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "our Himmler". After the war, he organized the communist takeover of the countries of Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Beria's uncompromising ruthlessness in his duties and skill at producing results culminated in his success in overseeing the Soviet atomic bomb project. Stalin gave it absolute priority and the project was completed in under five years in no small part due to Soviet espionage against the West organized by Beria's NKVD.
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Le Duan
Lê Duẩn (7 April 1907 – 10 July 1986) was a Vietnamese communist politician. He rose in the party hierarchy in the late 1950s, and was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam at the 3rd Party Congress. Le Duan continued Hồ Chí Minh's policy of ruling through collective leadership. From 1958 until his death in 1986, Le Duan was the top decision-maker in Vietnam.
Born into a lower class family in Quảng Trị province, French Indochina, little is known about Le Duan's family and childhood; his birthname remains unknown. He first came in contact with Marxist literature in the 1920s through his work as a railway clerk. Le Duan was a founding member of the Indochina Communist Party (the future Communist Party of Vietnam) in 1930, but was arrested the following year, in 1931. He spent six years in jail until he was released in 1937. From 1937 to 1939 he worked himself up the party ladder; but he was rearrested in 1939, this time for fomenting an uprising in the South. Le Duan was released from jail following the successful communist-led August Revolution.
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Lech Wałęsa
Lech Wałęsa (commonly rendered Walesa) (Polish: [ˈlɛx vaˈwɛ̃sa] ( listen), English: /ˌlɛk vəˈwɛnsə/ or /wɔːˈlɛnsə/; born 29 September 1943) is a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, and human-rights activist. A charismatic leader, he co-founded Solidarity (Solidarność), the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and served as President of Poland between 1990 and 1995.
Wałęsa was an electrician by trade, with no higher education. Soon after beginning work at the Gdańsk (then, "Lenin") Shipyards, he became a trade-union activist. For this he was persecuted by the Polish communist government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980 he was instrumental in negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdańsk Agreement between striking workers and the government, and he became a co-founder of the Solidarity trade-union movement. Arrested again after martial law was imposed and Solidarity was outlawed, upon release he continued his activism and was prominent in the establishment of the 1989 Round Table Agreement that led to semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 and to a Solidarity-led government.
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Leonel Brizola
Leonel de Moura Brizola (January 22, 1922 – June 21, 2004) was a Brazilian politician. Launched in politics by Getúlio Vargas, Brizola was the only politician to serve as governor of two different states in the whole history of Brazil. In 1959 he was elected governor of Rio Grande do Sul, and in 1982 and 1990 he was elected governor of Rio de Janeiro. He was also vice-president of the Socialist International, as well as Honorary President of that organization for a few months, from October 2003 until his death. Brizola and his party (Democratic Labour Party) preached and practiced a kind of social democratic left-wing policy.
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Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev (Russian: Леони́д Ильи́ч Бре́жнев; IPA: [lʲɪɐˈnʲid ɪlʲˈjitɕ ˈbrʲeʐnʲɪf] ( listen); Ukrainian: Леоні́д Іллі́ч Бре́жнєв, 19 December 1906 (O.S. 6 December) – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee (CC) of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in length. During Brezhnev's rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time, but his tenure as leader has often been criticised for marking the beginning of a period of economic stagnation in which serious economic problems were overlooked, problems which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoe into a Russian worker's family. After graduating from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum, he became a metallurgical engineer in the iron and steel industry, in Ukraine. He joined Komsomol in 1923, and in 1929 became an active member of the Communist Party. He was drafted into immediate military service during World War II and left the army in 1946 with the rank of Major General. In 1952 Brezhnev became a member of the Central Committee, and in 1964, Brezhnev succeeded Nikita Khrushchev as First Secretary. Alexei Kosygin succeeded Khrushchev in his post as Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
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Leopoldo Galtieri
Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri Castelli (July 15, 1926 – January 12, 2003) was an Argentine general and President of Argentina from December 22, 1981 to June 18, 1982, during the last military dictatorship (known officially as the National Reorganization Process). The death squad Intelligence Battalion 601 directly reported to him. He was removed from power soon after the British retook the Falklands Islands, whose invasion he had ordered.
Galtieri was the child of working class parents who were poor Italian immigrants. At 17 he enrolled at the National Military Academy to study civil engineering, and his early military career was as an officer in the engineering branch.
In 1975, after more than 25 years as a combat engineer, he became commander of the Argentine engineering corps. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the military coup that started the self-styled National Reorganisation Process in 1976 and rose further, becoming a major general in 1977, and commander-in-chief in 1980 with the rank of lieutenant general.
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Lester B. Pearson
Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson, PC, OM, CC, OBE (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian professor, historian, civil servant, statesman, diplomat, and politician, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis. He was the 14th Prime Minister of Canada from 22 April 1963 to 20 April 1968, as the head of two back-to-back minority governments following elections in 1963 and 1965.
During Pearson's time as Prime Minister, his minority government introduced universal health care, student loans, the Canada Pension Plan, the Order of Canada, and the current Canadian flag. During his tenure, Prime Minister Pearson also convened the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. With these accomplishments, together with his ground-breaking work at the United Nations and in international diplomacy, Pearson is generally considered among the most influential Canadians of the 20th century.
Pearson was born in the town of Newtonbrook (now part of Toronto), the son of Annie Sarah (née Bowles) and Edwin Arthur Pearson, a Methodist (later United Church of Canada) minister. He was brother to Vaughan Whitier Pearson and Marmaduke Pearson. He graduated from Hamilton Collegiate Institute in Hamilton, Ontario in 1913 at the age of 16. Later that same year, he entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he lived in residence in Gate House and shared a room with his brother Duke. While at the University of Toronto, he joined the Delta Upsilon Fraternity. He was subsequently elected to the Pi Gamma Mu social science honour society's chapter at the University of Toronto for his outstanding scholastic performance in history and sociology.
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Li Gun-mo
Li Gun-mo (born 1924) is a North Korean politician (CND). He was Prime Minister from 29 December 1986 to 12 December 1988, when he was replaced, reportedly due to poor health. He succeeded Kang Song-san. His successor was Yon Hyong Muk.
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Li Jong-ok
Li Jong-ok (1916-1999) was the Premier of North Korea from 1977 to 1984. He succeeded Park Sung-chul.
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Li Minqi
Minqi Li is a Chinese Political Economist, world-systems analyst, and historical social scientist, currently an associate professor of Economics at the University of Utah. Li is known as an advocate of the Chinese New Left and a Neo-Marxist economist.
Li was a student at the Economic Management Department of Beijing University during the period 1987–90. There he studied and became convinced of neoliberal 'Chicago School' economics. He engaged in many protests of the existing economic system, and engaged in much activism after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Li was arrested after advocating free market principles in 1990, and made a vast switch to become a Marxist after extensive reading of the works of Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and others while a political prisoner until his release in 1992. Li spent the next two years traveling in China, debating with remaining liberal dissident activists and conducting his own research into political,economic, and social development in modern China, using fake identification to visit provincial and city libraries. His view became one opposed to the mainstream, being that Mao Zedong's influence was a "revolutionary legacy rather than a historical burden for future socialist revolutionaries."
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Lin Biao
Lin Biao (pinyin: Lín Biāo; IPA: [lǐn pjɑ́ʊ]; December 5, 1907– September 13, 1971) was a major Chinese Communist military leader who was pivotal in the communist victory in the Chinese Civil War, especially in Northeastern China. Lin was the general who commanded the decisive Liaoshen Campaign and Pingjin Campaign, co-led the Northeast battlefield army of the People's Liberation Army into Beijing, and crossed the Yangtze River in 1949. He ranked third among the Ten Marshals. Zhu De and Peng Dehuai were considered senior to Lin, and Lin ranked ahead of He Long and Liu Bocheng.
Lin abstained from taking an active role in politics after the civil war, but became instrumental in creating the foundations for Mao Zedong's cult of personality in the early 1960s. Lin was rewarded for his service to Mao by being named Mao's designated successor during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 until his death.
Lin died in September 1971 when his plane crashed in Mongolia, following what appeared to be a failed coup to oust Mao. Because little inside information is available to the public on this "Lin Biao incident", the exact events preceding Lin's death have been a source of speculation among China scholars ever since. Following Lin's death, he was officially condemned as a traitor by the Communist Party of China. He and Jiang Qing are still considered to be the two "major Counter-revolutionary cliques" blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
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Louis St. Laurent
Louis Stephen St. Laurent, PC, CC, QC (Saint-Laurent or St-Laurent in French, baptized Louis-Étienne St-Laurent), (1 February 1882 – 25 July 1973) was the 12th Prime Minister of Canada from 15 November 1948, to 21 June 1957.
Louis St-Laurent (French pronunciation: [lwi sɛ̃ loʁɑ̃]) was born on 1 February 1882 in Compton, Quebec, a village in the Eastern Townships to Jean-Baptiste-Moïse Saint-Laurent, a French-Canadian, and Mary Anne Broderick, an Irish-Canadian. He grew up fluently bilingual. His English had a noticeable Irish brogue, while his gestures (such as a hunch of the shoulders) were French.
He received degrees from St. Charles Seminary (B.A. 1902) and Université Laval (LL.L. 1905). He was offered, but declined, a Rhodes Scholarship upon this graduation from Laval in 1905. In 1905 he married Jeanne Renault (1886–1966) with whom he had two sons and three daughters.
St-Laurent worked as a lawyer from 1905 to 1941, also becoming a professor of law at Université Laval in 1914. St-Laurent practised corporate and constitutional law in Quebec and became one of the country's most respected counsels. He served as President of the Canadian Bar Association from 1930 to 1932.
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Luís Carlos Prestes
Luís Carlos Prestes (January 3, 1898 – March 7, 1990) was a leader of the 1920s tenente rebellion and the Communist opposition to the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas in Brazil.
Known as the "Knight of Hope" - title of a biography written by Jorge Amado - Prestes helped organize the failed tenente rebellion of 1922, a revolt by the largely middle class officer corps and poor conscripted servicemen against the agrarian oligarchies that dominated Brazil's Old Republic (1889–1930). As he was sick with typhoid fever, he was not able to fight on the day of the rebellion. From 1924 Prestes was one of the leaders of the insurrectionary movement, leading the Coluna Prestes Prestes' column on a 25,000 km (15,534 mi) march through the rural Brazilian countryside, aiming not to defeat the enemy forces of the Federal government, but keep the column in being and continue to threaten the enemy.
The tenente revolt heralded the end of the politics of coffee and milk and coronelism and the beginning of social reforms. Years later, in 1930 the Revolution of 1930 would bring down the Old Republic. Joined by many moderate tenentes, but not Prestes, the Revolution of 1930 installed Getúlio Vargas as provisional president. Although the tenentes sympathized with him, Vargas was a far more conservative figure. As the tenentes wanted Prestes to join Vargas, Prestes decided to meet him in Porto Alegre and explained his idea of socialist revolution for around two hours. Vargas was highly impressed by him, and even donated 800 contos de réis, around 400,000 USD, but Prestes viewed Vargas as the leader of a bourgeois revolution, and decided to donate most of the money to the Latin American branch of the Comintern, which financed the group for a few years. Another part of the money was given to the tenente Siqueira Campos, who died in a plane crash while flying from Argentina to Brazil. His body was discovered three days later, but the money was never found.
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Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States (1963–1969), a position he assumed after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States (1961–1963). He is one of only four people who served in all four elected federal offices of the United States: Representative, Senator, Vice President, and President. Johnson, a Texas Democrat, served as a United States Representative from 1937–1949 and as a Senator from 1949–1961, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip. After campaigning unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1960, Johnson was asked by John F. Kennedy to be his running mate for the 1960 presidential election.
Johnson succeeded to the presidency following the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, completed the rest of Kennedy's term and was elected President in his own right, winning by a large margin in the 1964 election. Johnson was greatly supported by the Democratic Party and as President, he was responsible for designing the "Great Society" legislation that included laws that upheld civil rights, public broadcasting, Medicare, Medicaid, environmental protection, aid to education, and his "War on Poverty." He was renowned for his domineering personality and the "Johnson treatment," his coercion of powerful politicians in order to advance legislation.
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Manuel Noriega
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈnwel noˈɾjeɣa]; born February 11, 1934) is a former Panamanian politician and soldier. He was military governor of Panama from 1983 to 1989.
In the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States he was removed from power, captured, detained as a prisoner of war, and flown to the United States. Noriega was tried on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering in April 1992. Noriega's U.S. prison sentence ended in September 2007; pending the outcome of extradition requests by both Panama and France, for convictions in absentia for murder in 1995 and money laundering in 1999. France was granted its extradition request in April 2010. He arrived in Paris on April 27, 2010, and after a re-trial as a condition of the extradition, he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in jail in July 2010. A conditional release was granted on September 23, 2011 for Noriega to be extradited to serve 20 years in Panama. He arrived in Panama on December 11, 2011.
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Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung listen (help·info), and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976), was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution. He was the architect and founding father of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from its establishment in 1949, and held authoritarian control over the nation until his death in 1976. His theoretical contribution to Marxism–Leninism, along with his military strategies and brand of policies, are collectively known as Maoism.
Mao rose to power by commanding the Long March, forming a Second United Front with Kuomintang (KMT) during the Second Sino-Japanese War to repel a Japanese invasion, and leading the Communist Party of China (CPC) to victory against Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) in the Chinese Civil War. After solidifying the reunification of China through his Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, Mao enacted sweeping land reform, by using violence and terror to overthrow the feudal landlords before seizing their large estates and dividing the land into people's communes. During the years when Mao was China’s 'Great Helmsman', a range of positive changes came to China. These included promoting the status of women, improving popular literacy, doubling the school population, providing universal housing, abolishing unemployment and inflation, increasing health care access, and dramatically raising life expectancy. In addition, China's population almost doubled during the period of Mao's leadership (from around 550 to over 900 million). As a result, Mao is still officially held in high regard by many in China as a great political strategist, military mastermind, and savior of the nation. Maoists further promote his role as a theorist, statesman, poet, and visionary, while anti-revisionists continue to defend most of his policies.
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Marcelo Caetano
Marcelo José das Neves Alves Caetano, GCTE, GCC, also spelled Marcello Caetano (Portuguese pronunciation: [mɐɾˈsɛlu kɐiˈtɐnu]; Lisbon, 17 August 1906 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 26 October 1980), was a Portuguese politician and scholar, who was the last prime minister of the Estado Novo regime, from 1968 until his overthrow in the Carnation Revolution of 1974.
He was a son of José Maria de Almeida Alves Caetano and his first wife Josefa Maria das Neves. Graduated as a Licentiate and later a Doctorate in Law, Caetano was a Cathedratic Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon, where he graduated and of which he would also become the 9th Dean or Rector. An ultraconservative politician and a self-proclaimed reactionary in his youth, Caetano started his political career in the 1930s under the authoritarian regime of António de Oliveira Salazar. He soon became an important figure in the "Estado Novo" government, and in 1940 was appointed chief of the Portuguese Youth organisation. Caetano progressed in his academic career at the university, publishing several works and lecturing law. While in jail due to political causes, Álvaro Cunhal, law student, the future leader and founder of the Portuguese Communist Party, submitted his final thesis on the topic of abortion before a faculty jury that included Marcelo Caetano. Between 1944 and 1947 Caetano was Minister of the Colonies and since 1947 President of the Executive Board of the National Union. He served as President of the Corporative Chamber between 1949 and 1955.
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Marcos Pérez Jiménez
Marcos Evangelista Pérez Jiménez (Michelena, Táchira, April 25, 1914 – Alcobendas, Spain, September 20, 2001) was a Venezuelan military and general officer of the Army of Venezuela, engineer and politician.
His period in charge of the country is characterized by a marked improvement and development, with the rise of oil prices due to conflicts like the Korean War, its ambitious policy of public works and building could be executed to perfection. Also achieved an imminent development of industries such as hydropower, mining, steel, real estate sector and of course the building itself, all these bases, the high level of economic prosperity that is lived in the country.
Not go unnoticed, the progress in the military, which included the final professionalization of the armed forces, and increased sophistication of equipment, raising the level of armaments, and in general, the modernized undertaken in the area, while in with regard to domestic policy, the country experienced a state of order, high safety standards, but the negative side, said highly repressive character, with the National Security (Seguridad Nacional, secret police), as the spearhead and the almost complete concentration of power in his hands, turning his presidency into a dictatorial regime.
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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS, née Roberts (born 13 October 1925) is a British politician and the longest-serving (1979–1990) British prime minister of the 20th century, and the only woman ever to have held the post. A Soviet journalist nicknamed her the "Iron Lady", which later became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. As prime minister, she implemented conservative policies that have come to be known as Thatcherism.
Originally a research chemist before becoming a barrister, Thatcher was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Finchley in 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his 1970 government. In 1975 Thatcher defeated Heath in the Conservative Party leadership election and became Leader of the Opposition, as well as the first woman to lead a major political party in the United Kingdom. She became prime minister after winning the 1979 general election.
After entering 10 Downing Street, Thatcher introduced a series of political and economic initiatives to reverse what she perceived as Britain's precipitous national decline. Her political philosophy and economic policies emphasised deregulation (particularly of the financial sector), flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies, and reducing the power and influence of trade unions. Thatcher's popularity during her first years in office waned amid recession and high unemployment, until economic recovery and the 1982 Falklands War brought a resurgence of support, resulting in her re-election in 1983. Thatcher was re-elected for a third term in 1987, but her Community Charge (popularly referred to as "poll tax") was widely unpopular and her views on the European Community were not shared by others in her Cabinet. She resigned as Prime Minister and party leader in November 1990, after Michael Heseltine launched a challenge to her leadership.
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Mathieu Kérékou
Mathieu Kérékou, (born 2 September 1933) was President of Benin from 1972 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2006. After seizing power in a military coup, he ruled the country for 17 years, for most of that time under an officially Marxist-Leninist ideology, before he was stripped of his powers by the National Conference of 1990. He was defeated in the 1991 presidential election, but was returned to the presidency in the 1996 election and controversially re-elected in 2001.
Kérékou was born in 1933 in Kouarfa, in the north-west of the country. After having studied at military schools in Mali and Senegal, Kérékou served in the military. Following independence, from 1961 to 1963 he was an aide-de-camp to President Hubert Maga; following Maurice Kouandété's seizure of power in December 1967, Kérékou, who was his cousin, was made chairman of the Military Revolutionary Council. After Kérékou attended French military schools from 1968 to 1970, Maga made him a major, deputy chief of staff, and commander of the Ouidah paratroop unit.
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Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin (help·info) (Hebrew: מְנַחֵם בֵּגִין, Polish: Mieczysław Biegun, Arabic: مناحيم بيغن Munahayyim Beeghin, Russian: Менахем Вольфович Бегин Menakhem Vol'fovich Begin, 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944, against the British mandatory government, which was opposed by the Jewish Agency. As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine.
Begin was elected to the first Knesset, as head of Herut, the party he founded, and was at first on the political fringe, embodying the opposition to the Mapai-led government and Israeli establishment. He remained in opposition in the eight consecutive elections (except for a national unity government around the Six-Day War), but became more acceptable to the political center. His 1977 electoral victory and premiership ended three decades of Labour Party political dominance. He probably served as Opposition Leader longer than anyone in the history of modern democratic politics.
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Michel Aflaq
Michel Aflaq (Arabic: ميشيل عفلق, Damascus, 1910 – Paris, 23 June 1989) was a Syrian philosopher, sociologist and Arab nationalist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of Ba'athism and its political movement; he is considered by several Ba'athists to be the principal founder of Ba'athist thought. He published various books during his lifetime, the most notable being The Battle for One Destiny (1958) and The Struggle Against Distorting the Movement of Arab Revolution (1975).
Born into a middle class family in Damascus, Syria, Aflaq studied at the Sorbonne, where he met his future political companion Salah al-Din al-Bitar. He returned to Syria in 1932, and began his political career in communist politics. Aflaq became a communist activist, but broke his ties with the communist movement when the Syrian–Lebanese Communist Party supported France's colonial policies. Later in 1940 Aflaq and al-Bitar established the Arab Ihya Movement (later renaming itself the Arab Ba'ath Movement, taking the name from Zaki al-Arsuzi's group by the same name). The movement proved successful, and in 1947 the Arab Ba'ath Movement merged with al-Arsuzi's Arab Ba'ath organisation to establish the Arab Ba'ath Party. Aflaq was elected to the party's executive committee and was elected "'Amid" (meaning the party's leader).
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: Михаи́л Серге́евич Горбачёв, tr. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov; IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil sʲɪrˈɡʲejəvʲɪtɕ ɡərbɐˈtɕof] ( listen); born 2 March 1931) is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the Soviet Union, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991. He was the only general secretary in the history of the Soviet Union to have been born during the Communist rule.
Gorbachev was born in Stavropol Krai into a peasant Ukrainian–Russian family, and in his teens operated combine harvesters on collective farms. He graduated from Moscow State University in 1955 with a degree in law. While he was at the university, he joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and soon became very active within it. In 1970, he was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Kraikom, First Secretary to the Supreme Soviet in 1974, and appointed a member of the Politburo in 1979. Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985. Before he reached the post, he had occasionally been mentioned in western newspapers as a likely next leader and a man of the younger generation at the top level.
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Milouš Jakeš
Miloš Jakeš (born August 12, 1922 in České Chalupy near České Budějovice, as Milouš Jakeš) was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1987 until 1989. He resigned from his position in late November 1989, during the so-called "Velvet Revolution".
Jakeš grew up in a poor village family in the Šumava borderlands before working in Bata Shoes factory in Zlín between 1937 and 1950. He joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia soon after World War II, triggering his steady rise within the party ranks. In 1955 he began his studies at Moscow's Party's Higher College and, after obtaining his degree in 1958, his career continued without interruption, undisturbed even during the 1968 Prague Spring period. After the Soviet invasion, Jakeš became one of the main initiators of the political purges carried out in the name of "normalization".
Following the ouster of Gustáv Husák at a dramatic party meeting in December 1987, Jakeš was nominated for the position of General Secretary by the various competing factions within the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Following his rise to power, Jakeš began to promote himself as a reformer by verbally advocating the concept of "perestroika." Yet, despite the Communist Party's attempt to appease the public's demand for reform, Jakeš remained staunchly opposed to any dialogue with the growing opposition movement in the country. However, he would eventually resign along with other members of the Politburo in November, 1989, when the Communist Party was ousted from government during the "Velvet Revolution."
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Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga (born Joseph-Desiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997), commonly known as Mobutu or Mobutu Sese Seko ( /məˈbuːtuː ˈsɛseɪ ˈsɛkoʊ/), was the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (also known as Zaire for much of his rule) from 1965 to 1997. While in office, he formed an authoritarian regime, amassed vast personal wealth, and attempted to purge the country of all colonial cultural influence, while also maintaining an anti-communist stance.
Mobutu, a member of the Ngbandi ethnic group, was born in Lisala, Belgian Congo. Mobutu's mother Marie Madeleine Yemo, was a hotel maid who fled to Lisala to escape the harem of a local village chief. There she met and married Albéric Gbemani, a cook for a Belgian judge. Shortly she gave birth to Mobutu. The name "Mobutu" was selected by an uncle. Gbemani died when Mobutu was eight.
The wife of the Belgian judge took a liking to Mobutu and taught him to speak, read and write fluently. Yemo relied on the help of relatives to support her four children, and the family moved often. Mobutu's earliest studies were in Léopoldville, but his mother eventually sent him to an uncle in Coquilhatville, where he attended the Christian Brothers School, a Catholic mission boarding school. A physically imposing figure, he dominated school sports. He also excelled in academics and ran the class newspaper. He was also known for his pranks and impish sense of humor. A classmate recalled that when the Belgian priests, whose first language was Dutch, misspoke in French, Mobutu would leap to his feet in class and point out the mistake. In 1949 Mobutu stowed away aboard a boat to Léopoldville and met a girl. The priests found him several weeks later, and at the end of the school year he was sent to the Force Publique (FP), the Belgian Congolese army. Enlistment, which came with a seven-year commitment, was a punishment for rebellious students.
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Mohammad Hatta
Mohammad Hatta (help·info) (12 August 1902 – 14 March 1980) was born in Bukittinggi, West Sumatra, Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). He was Indonesia's first vice president, later also serving as the country's Prime Minister. Known as "The Proclamator", he and a number of Indonesians, including the first president of Indonesia, Sukarno, fought for the independence of Indonesia from the Dutch. Despite his efforts to gain Indonesian independence, he studied in the Netherlands from 1921 until 1932. Moreover, after his early education, he studied in Dutch schools in Indonesia.
Mohammad Hatta is often remembered as Bung Hatta ('Bung' is an affectionate title used to address colleagues, popular in the early 1900s and is still used by Indonesians).
Hatta was born in Bukittinggi on 12 August 1902 into a prominent and strongly Islamic family. His grandfather was a respected ulema in Batuhampar, near Payakumbuh. His father, Haji Mohammad Djamil, died when he was eight months old and he was left with his six sisters and his mother. As in the matrilineal society of Minangkabau tradition, he was then raised in his mother's family. His mother's family was wealthy, and Hatta was able to study Dutch as well as finishing Qur'an after school.
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Mohammad Mosaddegh
Mohammad Mosaddegh or Mosaddeq (Persian: محمد مصدق, IPA: [mohæmˈmæd(-e) mosædˈdeɣ] ( listen)*), also spelled Mossadegh, Mossadeq, Mosadeck, or Musaddiq (16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967), was the Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 until being overthrown in a coup d'état in 1953.
His administration introduced a wide range of social and political reforms but is most notable for its nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC) (later British Petroleum or BP).
Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the United States CIA at the request of the British MI6 which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh.
The coup is sometimes known as the TPAJAX Project after its CIA cryptonym, however, in Iran it is referred to as the 28 Mordad 1332 coup, after its date on the Iranian calendar., which is incorrect as the Operation's proper name was TPAjax (TP standing for Tudeh Party of Iran the Russian backed communist party of Iran} Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death.
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Mohammad Najibullah
Mohammad Najibullah Ahmadzai (February 1947 – 28 September 1996), better known mononymously as Najibullah or Najib, was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Najibullah was born in Gardiz and educated at Kabul University, after which he began his career in the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). He became a member of the Parcham faction led by Babrak Karmal. Following the Saur Revolution Najibullah was a low profile bureaucrat, who was sent into exile during Hafizullah Amin's rise to power as Afghan ambassador to Iran. He returned to Afghanistan following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan which toppled Amin's rule, and placed Karmal as head of state, party and government. During Karmal's rule, Najibullah became head of the KHAD, the Afghan equivalent to the Soviet KGB.
During Najibullah's tenure as KHAD head, it became one of the most efficient governmental organs. Because of this he gained the attention of several leading Soviet officials, such as Yuri Andropov, Dmitriy Ustinov and Boris Ponomarev. In 1981, Najibullah was appointed to the PDPA Politburo. Because of its efficiency, the KHAD was turned into the Ministry of State Security in 1985. On 21 September 1985 Najibullah stepped down as state security minister to focus on PDPA politics; he had just recently been appointed to the PDPA Secretariat. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, was able to get Karmal to step down as PDPA General Secretary on 4 May 1986, and replace him with Najibullah. From then, until November, Najibullah was locked in a power struggle against Karmal, who still retained his post of Chairman of the Revolutionary Council. Najibullah accused Karmal of trying to wreck his policy of National Reconciliation.
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Mozambican Civil War
The Mozambican Civil War began in 1977, two years after the end of the war of independence. The ruling party, Front for Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the national armed forces FAM (Armed Forces of Mozambique), was violently opposed from 1977 by the Rhodesian- and (later) South African-funded Mozambique Resistance Movement (RENAMO). About 1 000 000 people died in fighting and from starvation, five million civilians were displaced, many were made amputees by landmines, a legacy from the war that continues to plague Mozambique. Fighting ended in 1992 and the country's first multi-party elections were held in 1994.
Mozambican resistance began to surface, as some groups within the Mozambican society eventually started to blame the Portuguese authorities for centuries of exploitation, oppression and neglect.[citation needed] After a successful wave of independence movements in other African territories, cold war powers and the international community started to suggest that Portugal should leave its territories in Africa. Sentiment for Mozambique's own national independence developed and on 25 June 1962 several Mozambican anti-Portuguese political groups formed the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.
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Muammar Gaddafi
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi (Arabic: معمر محمد أبو منيار القذافي) (June 1942 – 20 October 2011), commonly known as Muammar Gaddafi /ˈmoʊ.əmɑr ɡəˈdɑːfi/ (Arabic: مُعَمَّر القَذَّافِي Muʿammar al-Qaḏḏāfī audio (help·info)) or Colonel Gaddafi, was the official ruler of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and then the "Brother Leader" of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya from 1977 to 2011. Gaddafi seized power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 and served as the country's head of state until 1977, when he stepped down from his official executive role as Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council of Libya, and claimed subsequently to be merely a symbolic figurehead. He styled himself as "Leader of the Revolution"; in 2008 a meeting of traditional African rulers bestowed on him the title "King of Kings". A leading advocate for a United States of Africa, he served as Chairperson of the African Union (AU) from 2 February 2009 to 31 January 2010.
Gaddafi replaced the Libyan Constitution of 1951 with laws based on the political ideology he had formulated, which he called the Third International Theory and published in The Green Book. After establishing the Jamahiriya (جماهيرية, "state of the masses") system in 1977, he officially stepped down from power and after that time held a largely symbolic role within the country's official governance structure. Rising oil prices and extraction in Libya led to increasing revenues. By exporting as much oil per capita as Saudi Arabia and through various welfare programs, Libya achieved the highest living standards in Africa; Libya remained debt-free.
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Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (Punjabi, Urdu: محمد ضياء الحق; August 12, 1924 – August 17, 1988), was the 4th Chief Martial Law Administrator and the sixth President of Pakistan from July 1977 to his death in August 1988. Distinguished by his role in the Black September in Jordan military operation in 1970, he was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto after Bhutto forcefully retired seven senior lieutenant-generals who were tainted with their role in the East-Pakistan war in order to bring and promote Zia to four star rank. After widespread civil disorder, he planned and overthrew ruling Prime Minister Bhutto in a bloodless coup d'état on July 5, 1977, code name Fair Play, and became the state's third military ruler to impose martial law. Zia's idea of religious conservatism in Pakistan became the primary line of his military government. Throughout the 1980s, Zia managed to consolidate more and more power in his hands, gradually putting down all opposition groups in Pakistan.
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Mário Soares
Mário Alberto Nobre Lopes Soares, GColTE, GCC, GColL, KE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈmaɾiu suˈaɾɨʃ]; born 7 December 1924), Portuguese politician, served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 1976 to 1978 and from 1983 to 1985, and subsequently as the 17th President of Portugal from 1986 to 1996.
Soares is the son of João Lopes Soares (Leiria, Arrabal, 17 November 1878 - Lisbon, Campo Grande, 31 July 1970), Founder of the Colégio Moderno in Lisbon, Minister and then anti-fascist republican activist who had been a Priest for some time before marrying Elisa Nobre Baptista (Santarém, Pernes, 8 September 1887 - Lisbon, Campo Grande, 28 February 1955), Mário Soares's mother, at the 7th Conservatory of the Civil Register of Lisbon on 5 September 1934. His father also had another son by an unknown mother named Tertuliano Lopes Soares. His mother had previously been married and had two children, J. Nobre Baptista and Cândido Nobre Baptista. Mário Soares was raised as a Roman Catholic, but came to identify himself as a laic, agnostic and atheist.
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Mátyás Rákosi
Mátyás Rákosi (March 9, 1892 – February 5, 1971) was a Hungarian communist politician. He was born Mátyás Rosenfeld in present-day Serbia. He was the de facto ruler of communist Hungary between 1945 and 1956 — first in his capacity as General Secretary of the Hungarian Communist Party (1945–1948) and later as General Secretary of the Hungarian Working People's Party (1948–1956). His rule was aligned with USSR politics during Joseph Stalin's government.
Rákosi was born in Ada, a village in Bács County in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Vojvodina, Serbia). Born into a Jewish family, the fourth son of a grocer (his mother would give birth to seven more children) he later repudiated religion and totally repudiated Judaism.
He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during the First World War and was captured on the Eastern Front. After returning to Hungary, he participated in the communist government of Béla Kun; after its fall he fled, eventually to the Soviet Union. After returning to Hungary in 1924 he was imprisoned, and was released to the Soviet Union in 1940, in exchange for the Hungarian revolutionary banners captured by the Russian troops at Világos in 1849. In the Soviet Union, he became leader of the Comintern. He returned to Debrecen, Hungary, on January 30, 1945, sent by Soviet leadership, to organize the Communist Party.
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Natacha Michel
Natacha Michel is a French political activist, militant and writer, born in 1941. She has published a dozen novels and a growing body of literary criticism.
Michel was program director at the College International de Philosophie (1995–2001). She is the daughter of French film director and screenwriter André Michel.
Following the student uprisings of May 1968 in France, Michel was a founding member of the Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste (UCFml). To quote Alain Badiou, the UCFml is "the Maoist organization established in late 1969 by Natacha Michel, Sylvain Lazarus, myself and a fair numher of young people". Michel's commitment to political intervention did not waver in the following decades. She is a founding member (along with Badiou and Lazarus) of the militant French political organisation "L'Organisation Politique" which called itself a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). In addition to numerous writings and interventions since the 1980s, L'Organisation Politique has stressed the importance of developing political prescriptions concerning undocumented migrants (in France referred to as les sans papiers) and stresses that they must be conceived primarily as workers and not immigrants.
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Ne Win
Ne Win (Burmese: နေဝင်း IPA: [nè wɪ́ɴ]; born on 24 May or 14 May 1911 or 10 July 1910 – 5 December 2002) was a Burmese politician and military commander. He was Prime Minister of Burma from 1958 to 1960 and 1962 to 1974 and also head of state from 1962 to 1981. He also was the founder and from 1962 to 1988 the chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party, which from 1964 until 1988 was the sole political party in the Burmese nation state.
Ne Win's date of birth is not known with certainty. The English language publication Who's Who in Burma published in 1961 by People's Literature House, Rangoon, stated that Ne Win was born on 24 May 1911. Dr. Maung Maung stated in the Burmese version of his book Burma and General Ne Win, also published in English, that Ne Win was born on 14 May 1911. However, in a book written in Burmese titled The Thirty Comrades, the author Kyaw Nyein gave Ne Win's date of birth as 10 July 1910.
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New Democracy
New Democracy or the New Democratic Revolution is a Maoist concept based on Mao Zedong's "Bloc of Four Social Classes" theory during post-revolutionary China which argues that democracy in China will take a decisively distinct path from either the liberal capitalist and/or parliamentary democratic systems in the western world, or Soviet-style communism in Eastern Europe and similar states.
The New Democracy concept still aims to overthrow feudalism and/or achieve a country's national independence from colonialism, but it bypasses the rule of the capitalist class that Marx and Lenin predicted would usually follow such a struggle, claiming instead to seek to enter directly into socialism through a coalition of classes fighting the old ruling order. The coalition is subsumed under the leadership and guidance of the working class and its communist party, working with the communists irrespective of their competing ideologies, in order to achieve the more immediate goal of a "new democratic order" that the Chinese communists of course hoped would then lead to full-blown socialism and communism, in spite of the competing class interests of the social classes of the "bloc".
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Ngo Dinh Diem
Ngô Đình Diệm ( listen; 3 January 1901 – 2 November 1963) was the first president of South Vietnam (1955–1963). In the wake of the French withdrawal from Indochina as a result of the 1954 Geneva Accords, Diệm led the effort to create the Republic of Vietnam. Accruing considerable U.S. support due to his staunch anti-Communism, he achieved victory in a 1955 plebiscite that was widely considered fraudulent. A Roman Catholic, Diệm pursued biased and religiously oppressive policies against the Republic's Montagnard natives and its Buddhist majority, epitomized in Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức in 1963.
Amid religious protests that garnered worldwide attention, Diệm lost the backing of his U.S. patrons and was assassinated, along with his brother, Ngô Đình Nhu by Nguyễn Văn Nhung, the aide of ARVN General Dương Văn Minh on 2 November 1963, during a coup d'état that deposed his government.
Diệm was born in Huế, the original capital of the Vietnamese Nguyễn Dynasty. His family originated in the central Vietnamese village of Phú Cẩm. Portuguese missionaries had converted his family to Roman Catholicism in the 17th century, so Diệm was given a saint's name at birth, following the custom of the Catholic Church. His full name was Jean Baptiste Ngô Đình Diệm. He would often claim that he had descended from a blue-blooded family of mandarins who were so revered that people believed that it was a great honour and good luck to be buried alongside his ancestors. Most historians dismiss this as false and believe that his family were of low rank until his father passed the imperial examinations.[citation needed]
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Nicolae Ceauşescu
Nicolae Ceauşescu (Romanian pronunciation: [nikoˈla.e t͡ʃe̯a.uˈʃesku]; 26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989) was a Romanian Communist politician. He was General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989.
His rule was marked in the first decade by an open policy towards Western Europe and the United States, which deviated from that of the other Warsaw Pact states during the Cold War. He continued a trend first established by his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who had tactfully coaxed the Soviet Union into withdrawing its troops from Romania in 1958.
Ceauşescu's second decade was characterized by an increasingly brutal and repressive regime—by some accounts, the most Stalinist regime in the Soviet bloc. It was also marked by an ubiquitous personality cult, nationalism and a deterioration in foreign relations with the Western powers as well as the Soviet Union. Ceauşescu's government was overthrown in the December 1989 revolution, and he and his wife were executed following a televised and hastily organised two-hour court session.
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Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (April 15 [O.S. April 3] 1894, – September 11, 1971) led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, or Premier, from 1958 to 1964. Khrushchev was responsible for the partial de-Stalinization of the Soviet Union, for backing the progress of the early Soviet space program, and for several relatively liberal reforms in areas of domestic policy. Khrushchev's party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Khrushchev was born in the Russian village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the present-day border between Russia and Ukraine. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar. With the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalin's purges, and approved thousands of arrests. In 1939, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War (Eastern Front of World War II), Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers.
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Nur Misuari
Nur Misuari (Bahasa Sūg: Nūr Miswāri) (born in 1942 in Jolo, Sulu, Philippines) is a Moro politician and former leader of the Moro National Liberation Front. He completed his education through academic scholarships at the University of the Philippines and became a student activist. Misuari was a lecturer at the University of the Philippines in political science and in the 1960s, he established the Mindanao Independence Movement which aimed to organize an independent state in southern Philippines. The Mindanao Independence Movement formed the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) that sought political reforms from the Government of the Philippines. Unable to gain reforms, the MNLF engaged in military conflict against the Philippine government and its supporters between 1972 to 1976 under the leadership of Misuari. The military resistance to the government of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos did not produce autonomy for the Moro people. He departed to Saudi Arabia in exile. He returned to the Philippines after Marcos was removed from office during the People Power Revolution in 1986.
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Nur Muhammad Taraki
Nur Muhammad Taraki (15 July 1917, or 1913 – 14 September 1979) was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Taraki was born near Kabul and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his political career as a journalist. He later became one of the founding members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and was elected as the party's General Secretary at its first congress. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 Afghan parliamentary election but failed to secure himself a seat. In 1966 he published the first issue of Khalq, a party newspaper, but it was closed down shortly afterwards by the Afghan Government. The assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber led Taraki, along with Hafizullah Amin (the organiser of the revolution) and Babrak Karmal, to initiate the Saur Revolution and establish the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
The presidency of Taraki, albeit short-lived, was marked by controversies from beginning to end. Taraki launched a land reform on 1 January 1978 which proved to be highly unpopular and, along with his government's other reforms, led to a popular backlash which initiated the Afghan civil war. Despite repeated attempts throughout his reign, Taraki proved unable to persuade the Soviet Union to intervene in support of the restoration of civil order.
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Omar Torrijos
Omar Efraín Torrijos Herrera (February 13, 1929 – July 31, 1981) was the Commander of the Panamanian and National Guard and the de facto leader of Panama from 1968 to 1981. Torrijos was never officially the president of Panama, but instead held titles including "Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution" and "Supreme Chief of Government." Although he was considered a leftist dictator, he simultaneously had the support of the United States as he opposed communism. His politics were based instead on progressivism.
Torrijos is best known for negotiating the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties that eventually gave Panama full sovereignty over the Panama Canal, at noon on December 31, 1999. His son Martín Torrijos was elected president and served from 2004 to 2009.
Torrijos was born in Santiago in the province of Veraguas, the sixth of twelve children. His father, José Maria Torrijos, was originally from Colombia, and was employed as a teacher. He was educated at the local Juan Demóstenes Arosemena School and won a scholarship to the military academy in San Salvador. He graduated with a commission as a second lieutenant. He joined the Panamanian army, the National Guard (Guardia Nacional), in 1952. He was promoted to captain in 1956 and took a cadet course at the School of the Americas in 1965.
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Pak Pong-ju
Pak Pong-ju (born October 24, 1939, in North Hamgyong) served as the Premier of North Korea since elected by the DPRK's Supreme People's Assembly on September 3, 2003, until April 11, 2007.
Pak began his career in 1962 as manager of the Yongchon food factory in North Pyong'an Province. He became an alternative member of the ruling Korean Workers' Party (KWP) Central Committee in October 1980, and chief of the Namhung Youth Chemical Combine Committee in July 1983. In May 1993, he became vice director of the KWP's Light Industries Department, and in March 1994, he was the vice director of the party's Economic Policy Supervisory Department. In July of that year, Pak ranked 188th out of 273 members on the funeral committee of the late leader Kim Il-sung, indicating that he was on the periphery of the elite hierarchy. However, in September 1998, he was appointed to the chemical-industries portfolio under premier Hong Song-nam, and replaced him five years later.
On April 11, 2007, the Korean Central News Agency reported that during the 5th session of the 11th Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK, Pak Pong-ju was "relieved … of premiership" and Kim Yong-il elected the new premier. He had not been seen in public since May 2006. It is rumoured that his was removed from office because he misused oil funds to be used for the farming sector, or that he was too heavily focused on economic development suggestions from the People's Republic of China, instead of home-grown ideas.
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Pak Song-chol
Pak Song-chol or Park Sung-chul (September 2, 1913 – October 28, 2008) was the Premier of North Korea from 1976 to 1977. He succeeded Kim Il. He also served as foreign minister from 1959 to 1970.
His last public appearance was in September 2003 in the viewing box at the 55th anniversary commemoration inspection ceremonies in North Korea.
He was one of the oldest former heads of government in the world.
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Palmiro Togliatti
Palmiro Togliatti (Italian pronunciation: [palˈmiro toʎˈʎatti]; 26 March 1893 - 21 August 1964) was an Italian politician and leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1927 until his death.
Born in Genoa to a middle class family, Togliatti began his political life in the Italian Socialist Party prior to the First World War. He served as a volunteer officer during the war, and was wounded in action and sent home for illness. Returning at the end of the conflict, he was a part of the group around Antonio Gramsci's L'Ordine Nuovo paper in Turin, while working as a tutor.
He was a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy (PCd'I, later PCI) and, after Gramsci was jailed by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime, he became the senior leader of the PCd'I until his death, for which he also directed Il Comunista.
When the party was banned by the Italian Fascist government in 1926, Togliatti was one of few leaders not to be arrested, as he was attending a meeting of the Comintern in Moscow. In exile during the late 1920s and the 1930s, he organized clandestine meetings of the PCd'I at Lyon (1926) and Cologne (1931). In 1927 he took the position of Secretary of the party.
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Patrice Lumumba
Patrice Émery Lumumba (2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961) was a Congolese independence leader and the first legally elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo after he helped win its independence from Belgium in June 1960. Only twelve weeks later, Lumumba's government was deposed in a coup during the Congo Crisis. He was subsequently imprisoned and executed by firing squad, an act that was committed with the assistance of the government of Belgium, for which the Belgian government officially apologized in 2002.
Lumumba was born in Onalua in the Katakokombe region of the Kasai province of the Belgian Congo, a member of the Tetela ethnic group. Raised in a Catholic family as one of four sons, he was educated at a Protestant primary school, a Catholic missionary school, and finally the government post office training school, passing the one-year course with distinction. He subsequently worked in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) and Stanleyville (now Kisangani) as a postal clerk and as a travelling beer salesman. In 1951, he married Pauline Opangu. In 1955, Lumumba became regional head of the Cercles of Stanleyville and joined the Liberal Party of Belgium, where he worked on editing and distributing party literature. After traveling on a three-week study tour in Belgium, he was arrested in 1955 on charges of embezzlement of post office funds. His two-year sentence was commuted to twelve months after it was confirmed by Belgian lawyer Jules Chrome that Lumumba had returned the funds, and he was released in July 1956. After his release, he helped found the broad-based Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) in 1958, later becoming the organization's president. Lumumba and his team represented the MNC at the All-African Peoples' Conference in Accra, Ghana, in December 1958. At this international conference, hosted by influential Pan-African President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Lumumba further solidified his Pan-Africanist beliefs.
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Peaceful coexistence
Peaceful coexistence was a theory developed and applied by the Soviet Union at various points during the Cold War in the context of its ostensibly Marxist–Leninist foreign policy and was adopted by Soviet-influenced "Communist states" that they could peacefully coexist with the capitalist bloc (i.e., non-communist states). This was in contrast to the antagonistic contradiction principle that Communism and capitalism could never coexist in peace. The Soviet Union applied it to relations between the western world and in particular, the United States and NATO countries and the nations of the Warsaw Pact.
Debates over differing interpretations of peaceful coexistence were one aspect of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s and 1960s. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the People's Republic of China under the leadership of its founder, Mao Zedong, argued that a belligerent attitude should be maintained towards capitalist countries, and so initially rejected the peaceful coexistence theory as essentially Marxist revisionism. However, their decision in 1972 to establish a trade relationship with the United States also saw China cautiously adopting a version of the theory to relations between itself and non-socialist countries in the developing world. From that point through to the early 1980s and Socialism with Chinese characteristics, China increasingly extended its own peaceful coexistence concept to include all nations. Enver Hoxha also denounced this and turned against China as a result of China growing closer ties to the West such as 1972 Nixon visit to China and today Hoxhaist parties continue to denounce the concept of peaceful coexistence.
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People's war
People's War (simplified Chinese: 人民战争; traditional Chinese: 人民戰爭), also called protracted people's war, is a military-political strategy first developed by the Chinese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and political leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976). The basic concept behind People's War is to maintain the support of the population and draw the enemy deep into the interior where the population will bleed them dry through a mix of Mobile Warfare and Guerrilla warfare.
The term is used by Maoists for their strategy of long-term armed revolutionary struggle. After the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, Deng Xiaoping abandoned People's War for "People's War under Modern Conditions," which moved away from reliance on troops over technology. With the adoption of "socialism with Chinese characteristics", economic reforms fueled military and technological investment. Troop numbers were also reduced and professionalisation encouraged.
The strategy of people's war was used heavily by the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam. However protracted war should not be confused with the "foco" theory employed by Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution.
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Pierre Mulele
Pierre Mulele (August 11, 1929, Isulu-Matende - October 3 [or October 9, depending on the source], 1968) was a Congolese rebel who was briefly minister of education in Patrice Lumumba's cabinet. With the assassination of Lumumba in January 1961 and the arrest of his recognised deputy Antoine Gizenga one year later, Mulele became one of the top Lumumbists determined to continue the struggle. He went to Cairo, Egypt as the representative of the Lumumbists' Congo National Liberation Committee based in Brazzaville. From Cairo he proceeded to China in 1963 to receive military training, and also took a group of Congolese youths with him, who received training in guerrilla tactics. He was member of the Bapende ethnic group.
In January 1964, a new conflict broke out as Congolese rebels calling themselves "Simba" (Swahili for "Lion") rebelled against the government. They were led by Mulele, Gaston Soumialot and Christophe Gbenye, who were former members of Gizenga's Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA). During the Simba rebellions, Mulele, who had previously undergone training in the Eastern bloc as well as Red China, led a Maoist faction in the Kwilu District. This came to be known as the Kwilu Rebellion. Mulele was an avowed Maoist, and for this reason his insurgency was supported by communist China. By the end of April 1964, Mulele's rebellion had been rendered somewhat less dangerous by the government. The USSR, with an embassy in the national capital of Leopoldville, did not support Mulele's Kwilu revolt and had no part in its preparation: lack of support from the Soviets was in the first place responsible for Mulele turning to China as his patron.
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Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau CC, CH, PC, QC, FSRC ( /truːˈdoʊ/; French pronunciation: [tʁydo]; October 18, 1919 – September 28, 2000), usually known as Pierre Trudeau or Pierre Elliott Trudeau, was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.
Trudeau began his political career campaigning for socialist ideals, but he eventually joined the Liberal Party of Canada when he entered federal politics in the 1960s. He was appointed as Lester Pearson's Parliamentary Secretary, and later became his Minister of Justice. From his base in Montreal, Trudeau took control of the Liberal Party and became a charismatic leader, inspiring "Trudeaumania". From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, he dominated the Canadian political scene and aroused passionate reactions. "Reason before passion" was his personal motto. He retired from politics in 1984, and John Turner succeeded him as Prime Minister.
Admirers praise the force of Trudeau's intellect and they salute his political acumen in preserving national unity against Quebec separatists, suppressing a violent revolt, and establishing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms within Canada's constitution. Critics accuse him of arrogance, economic mismanagement, and unduly favouring the federal government relative to the provinces, especially in trying to control the oil wealth of the Prairies.
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Ping Pong Diplomacy
Ping pong diplomacy refers to the exchange of table tennis (ping-pong) players between the United States and People's Republic of China (PRC) in the early 1970s. The event marked a thaw in U.S.–China relations that paved the way to a visit to Beijing by President Richard Nixon.
The U.S. Table Tennis team was in Nagoya, Japan in 1971 for the 31st World Table Tennis Championship on April 6 when they received an invitation to visit China. From the early years of the People's Republic, sports had played an important role in diplomacy, often incorporating the slogan "Friendship First, Competition Second". On April 10, 1971, the team and accompanying journalists became the first American sports delegation to set foot in the Chinese capital since 1949. The meeting was facilitated by the National Committee on United States – China Relations. Prior to the visit by the American table tennis players, eleven Americans were admitted into the PRC for one week because they all professed affiliation with the international Black Panther Party and China viewed the international organization as an organization fighting for human equality. This was unusual, given that high-profile American citizens such as Senator Eugene McCarthy expressed interest in visiting China after the 1968 presidential election, but even he could not have a trip arranged for him despite his office.
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Pol Pot
Saloth Sar (19 May 1925 – 15 April 1998), better known as Pol Pot (Khmer: ប៉ុល ពត), was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1963 to 1981, he served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. From 1976 to 1979, he also served as the prime minister of Democratic Kampuchea. Pol Pot became leader of Cambodia on April 17, 1975. During his time in power he imposed agrarian socialism, forcing urban dwellers to relocate to the countryside to work in collective farms and forced labor projects. The combined effects of forced labor, malnutrition, poor medical care, and executions resulted in the deaths of approximately 21% of the Cambodian population. In all, an estimated 1.7 to 2.5 million people (out of a population of slightly over 8 million) died as a result of the policies of his three-year premiership.
In 1979, after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Pol Pot fled to the jungles of southwest Cambodia, and the Khmer Rouge government collapsed. From 1979 to 1997, he and a remnant of the old Khmer Rouge operated near the border of Cambodia and Thailand, where they clung to power, with nominal United Nations recognition as the rightful government of Cambodia. Pol Pot died in 1998 while under house arrest by the Ta Mok faction of the Khmer Rouge. Since his death, rumours that he was poisoned have persisted.
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Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Italian: Giovanni Paolo II, Polish: Jan Paweł II), born Karol Józef Wojtyła (Polish: [ˈkarɔl ˈjuzɛf vɔjˈtɨwa]; 18 May 1920, Wadowice, Republic of Poland – 2 April 2005, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City), reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 1978 until his death in 2005. He was the second-longest serving Pope in history and the first non-Italian since 1523.
John Paul II was acclaimed as one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century. He was instrumental in ending communism in his native Poland and eventually all of Europe. John Paul II significantly improved the Catholic Church's relations with Judaism, Islam, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the Anglican Communion. Though criticised by progressives for upholding the Church's teachings against artificial contraception and the ordination of women, and by traditionalists for his support of the Church's Second Vatican Council and its reform, he was also widely praised for his firm, orthodox Catholic stances.
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Prachanda
Puspa Kamal Dahal (Nepali: पुष्पकमल दाहाल, born Chhabilal Dahal on 11 December 1954, also known as Prachanda (Nepali: प्रचण्ड [pɾətsəɳɖə] is a former guerrilla leader and chairman of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (CPN). Prachanda led the CPN (M) as it launched an insurgency on 13 February 1996. In 2008 the ensuing civil war culminated in the overthrow of the Shah dynasty in favor of a communist leadership. More than 15,000 Nepalese died in this conflict.
The Constituent Assembly elected Prachanda Prime Minister of Nepal on 16 August 2008. He was sworn in as Prime Minister on 18 August, 2008. Prachanda resigned from the post on 4 May, 2009 after his attempt to sack the army chief, General Rookmangud Katawal, was opposed by President Ram Baran Yadav. Prachanda remained in office until 23 May, 2009, when his successor was elected.
Prachanda was born in Dhikur Pokhari, a village in Kaski District, some 140 kilometres (87 mi) west of Nepal's capital Kathmandu. Prachanda spent much of his childhood in Chitwan District. He is from a landlord family. He received a diploma of Science in Agriculture (ISc-Ag) from the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science (IAAS) in Rampur, Chitwan, and was once employed at a rural development project sponsored by USAID: the project site was Jajarkot. Prachanda's brother, Dr. Ganga Ram Dahal, graduated from the University of Reading, UK and is currently a Research Scientist at 'Rights to Resources International' based in Bangkok.
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Ramiz Alia
Ramiz Tafë Alia (help·info) (18 October 1925 – 7 October 2011) was the second and last communist leader of Albania from 1985 to 1991, and the President of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania from 1991 to 1992, and also the first President of the post communist Albania elected in 1991–92. He had been designated as successor by Enver Hoxha and took power after Hoxha died. Alia died on 7 October 2011 in Tirana due to lung disease, aged 85.
Alia was born in 1925. In the early part of World War II he was a member of a Fascist youth organization but joined the underground Albanian Communist Youth Organization in 1941. In 1943, he became member of the Albanian Communist Party. He had risen rapidly under Hoxha's patronage and by 1961 was a full member of the ruling Political Bureau (Politburo of the Party of Labour of Albania).[citation needed]
Hoxha chose Alia for several reasons. First, Alia had long been a militant follower of Marxism-Leninism and supported Hoxha's policy of national self-reliance. Alia also was favored by Hoxha's wife Nexhmije, who had once been his instructor at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism. His political experience was similar to that of Hoxha; and inasmuch as he appeared to share Hoxha's views on most foreign and domestic issues, he accommodated himself to the totalitarian mode of ruling.[citation needed]
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Red Guards (China)
Red Guards (simplified Chinese: 红卫兵; traditional Chinese: 紅衛兵; pinyin: Hóng Wèibīng) were a mass paramilitary social movement of young people in the People's Republic of China (PRC), who were mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Cultural Revolution.
According to a Red Guard leader, the movement's aims were as follows:
The first students to call themselves "Red Guards" in China were a group of students at the Tsinghua University Middle School who used the name Red Guards to sign two big-character posters issued on May 25 and June 2 of 1966. The students believed that the criticism of the play Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was a political issue and needed greater attention. The group of students, led by Zhang Chengzhi at Tsinghua University Middle School and Nie Yuanzi at Peking University, originally wrote the posters as a constructive criticism of Tsinghua University and Peking University's administration, which were accused of harboring "intellectual elitism" and "bourgeois" tendencies. However, they were denounced as "counter-revolutionaries" and "radicals" by the school administration and fellow students, and were forced to secretly meet amongst the ruins of the Old Summer Palace. Nevertheless, Chairman Mao Zedong ordered that the manifesto of the Red Guards be broadcast on national radio and published in the People's Daily newspaper. This action gave the Red Guards political legitimacy, and student groups quickly began to appear across China.
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Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961.
Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California. After completing his undergraduate work at Whittier College, he graduated from Duke University School of Law in 1937, and returned to California to practice law. He and his wife, Pat Nixon, moved to Washington to work for the federal government in 1942. He subsequently served in the United States Navy during World War II. Nixon was elected to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1950. His pursuit of the Hiss Case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist, and elevated him to national prominence. He was the running mate of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican Party presidential nominee in the 1952 election. Nixon served for eight years as vice president. He waged an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1960, narrowly losing to John F. Kennedy, and lost a race for Governor of California in 1962. In 1968, he ran again for the presidency and was elected.
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Robert McNamara
Robert Strange McNamara (June 9, 1916 – July 6, 2009) was an American business executive and the eighth Secretary of Defense, serving under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1968, during which time he played a large role in escalating the United States involvement in the Vietnam War. Following that, he served as President of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981. McNamara was responsible for the institution of systems analysis in public policy, which developed into the discipline known today as policy analysis.
Prior to public service, McNamara was one of the "Whiz Kids" who helped rebuild Ford Motor Company after World War II, and briefly served as Ford's President before becoming Secretary of Defense.
Robert McNamara was born in San Francisco, California. His father was Robert James McNamara, sales manager of a wholesale shoe company. His mother was Clara Nell Strange McNamara. His father's family was Irish and in about 1850, following the Great Irish Famine, had emigrated to Massachusetts and later to California. He graduated from Piedmont High School in Piedmont, California in 1933 where he was president of the Rigma Lions boys club and earned the rank of Eagle Scout. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1937 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics with minors in mathematics and philosophy. He was a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa his sophomore year and earned a varsity letter in crew. He was also a member of the UC Berkeley's Order of the Golden Bear which was a fellowship of students and leading faculty members formed to promote leadership within the student body. He earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1939.
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Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( /ˈrɒnəld ˈwɪlsən ˈreɪɡən/; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States, serving from 1981 to 1989. Prior to that, he was the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975 and a radio, film and television actor.
Born in Tampico, Illinois and raised in Dixon, Reagan was educated at Eureka College, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology. After his graduation, Reagan moved first to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in to Los Angeles in 1937 where he began a career as an actor, first in films and later television. Some of his most notable films include Knute Rockne, All American, Kings Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo. Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later as a spokesman for General Electric (GE); his start in politics occurred during his work for GE. Originally a member of the Democratic Party, his positions began shifting rightward in the late 1950s, and he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After delivering a rousing speech in support of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but won both the nomination and general election in 1980, defeating incumbent Jimmy Carter.
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Ruhollah Khomeini
Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (روحاللّه مصطفوی موسوی خمینی, Persian pronunciation: [ruːholˈlɑːhe muːsæˈviːje xomeiˈniː], 22 or 24 September 1902 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian religious leader and politician, and leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. Following the revolution, Khomeini became the country's Supreme Leader — a position created in the constitution as the highest ranking political and religious authority of the nation – until his death.
Khomeini was a marja ("source of emulation") in Twelver Shi'a Islam, author of more than forty books, but is primarily known for his political activities. He spent more than 15 years in exile for his opposition to the last Shah. In his writings and preachings he expanded the Shi'a Usuli theory of velayat-e faqih, the "guardianship of the jurisconsult (clerical authority)" to include theocratic political rule by the Islamic jurists. This principle (though not known to the wider public before the revolution) was installed in the new Iranian constitution after being put to a referendum.
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Rómulo Betancourt
Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (22 February 1908 – 28 September 1981), known as "The Father of Venezuelan Democracy", was President of Venezuela from 1945 to 1948 and again from 1959 to 1964, as well as leader of Accion Democratica, Venezuela's dominant political party in the 20th century. He survived an assassination attempt ordered by Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic. Betancourt, one of Venezuela's most important political figures, led a tumultuous and highly controversial career in Latin American politics. Periods of exile brought Betancourt in contact with various Latin American countries as well as the United States, securing his legacy as one of the few real international leaders to emerge from 20th-century Latin America. Scholars credit Betancourt as the Founding Father of modern democratic Venezuela.
Rómulo Betancourt was born in Guatire, a town near Caracas, son of Luis Betancourt Bello (from Canary origins) and Venezuelan Virginia Bello Milano, being the middle brother between his older sister Teresa and younger sister Helena. Living along with his maternal grandmother Maria Milano Bello and his uncle Luis Bello Milano.
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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (Arabic: صدام حسين عبد المجيد التكريتي Ṣaddām Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Maǧīd al-Tikrītī; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, which espoused ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup, later referred to as the 17 July Revolution, that brought the party to long-term power of Iraq.
As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflict between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalized oil and other industries. The state-owned banks were put under his control, leaving the system eventually insolvent mostly due to the Iran–Iraq War, the Gulf War, and UN sanctions. Through the 1970s, Saddam cemented his authority over the apparatuses of government as oil money helped Iraq's economy to grow at a rapid pace. Positions of power in the country were filled with Sunnis, a minority that made up only a fifth of the population.
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Salah Jadid
Salah Jadid (1926 – 19 August 1993, Arabic: صلاح جديد) was a Syrian general and political figure in the Arab Socialist Baath Party in Syria, and the country's de facto leader from 1966 until 1970.
Jadid was born in 1926 in the village of Duwayr B'abda, near the coastal city of Jableh, which in turn was close to Lattakia, to a Alawite family. He studied at the Homs Military Academy, and entered the Syrian Army in 1946. Jadid was originally a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), but later became a member of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, led by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, in the 1950s through an associate of Akram al-Hawrani. Even so, Jadid remained close to the SNPP; his brother, Ghassan, was one of its most prominent members in Syria. He changed allegiance again in the 1950s, when he became a member of the Arab Liberation Movement, a party supporting Gamal Abdel Nasser's ideological beliefs. Jadid supported Syria's ascension into the United Arab Republic (UAR), a union republic consisting of Egypt and Syria.
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Salgueiro Maia
Fernando José Salgueiro Maia, GOTE, GCL (born July 1, 1944 in Castelo de Vide, Portugal; died April 4, 1992 in Santarém), commonly known just by Salgueiro Maia (Portuguese pronunciation: [saɫˈɡɐjɾu ˈmajɐ]) was a captain of the Portuguese army. He made a significant contribution to the Carnation Revolution, which resulted in the fall of the then ruling dictatorship.
Salgueiro Maia was one of the captains of the Portuguese Army who led the revolutionary forces during the Carnation Revolution. He was a son of Francisco da Luz Maia, a railway worker, and Francisca Silvéria Salgueiro. He attended the Primary School in São Torcato, Coruche, and would later relocate to Tomar where he studied at Colégio Nun'Álvares, but would finish his Secondary School education in the National Liceu of Leiria. Maia later graduated in Social and Political Sciences and Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences.
In 1983 he received the Grand Cross of the Order of Liberty; in 1992, posthumously, the degree of Grand Officer of the Military Order of the Tower and of the Sword, of Valour, Loyalty and Merit; and in 2007, the Gold Medal of the city of Santarém.
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Sali Berisha
Sali Ram Berisha (help·info), (Albanian pronunciation: [saˈli bɛˈɾiʃa]; born 15 October 1944) is an Albanian politician and incumbent prime minister since 2005. A cardiologist by profession, Berisha leads the Democratic Party of Albania (PD) and served as President of Albania from 1992 to 1997. To date, he is the longest-serving democratically-elected leader and the only President of the Republic elected to a second term.
A former secretary of the committee of the Party of Labor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tirana, he abandoned his career as a cardiologist and university professor to become the leader of the Democratic Party in the 1990s. From 1992, after the fall of communism, he served as the President of Albania until his government collapsed in 1997 in the wake of the collapse of pyramid schemes. From 1997 to 2005, Albania was governed by the Socialist Party (PS) for two mandates, while he stayed in opposition.
In 2005, the Democratic Party won the general elections, and he became the Prime Minister after his coalition formed the new government. In 2009, he was re-elected Prime Minister, after the Democrats declared a narrow win of general elections but were forced into a coalition with the Socialist Movement for Integration (LSI) through not winning enough seats on its own for the first time since the start of multi-party democracy in 1991.
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Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens (Spanish pronunciation: [salβaˈðoɾ aˈʝende ˈɣosens]; 26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America.
Allende's involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race, formally elected by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority.
Allende adopted the policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization. On 11 September 1973 the military, citing a call by the Chilean Congress to end his presidency, staged a coup against Allende. As the armed forces surrounded La Moneda Palace, Allende gave his last speech vowing not to resign, and committed suicide thereafter. After Allende's ouster, Chile was led by a military junta, and then as a dictatorship by General Augusto Pinochet.
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Samir Amin
Samir Amin (Arabic: سمير أمين) (born 3 September 1931) is an Egyptian economist. He lives in Dakar, Senegal.
Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother (both medical doctors). He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat. From 1947 to 1957 he studied in Paris, gaining a diploma in political science (1952) before graduating in statistics (1956) and economics (1957). In his autobiography Itinéraire intellectuel (1990) he wrote that in order to spend a substantial amount of time in "militant action" he could devote only a minimum of time to preparing for his university exams.
Arriving in Paris, Amin joined the French Communist Party (PCF), but he later distanced himself from Soviet Marxism and associated himself for some time with Maoist circles. With other students he published a magazine entitled;Étudiants Anticolonialistes. In 1957 he presented his thesis, supervised by François Perroux among others, originally titled The origins of underdevelopment - capitalist accumulation on a world scale but retitled The structural effects of the international integration of precapitalist economies. A theoretical study of the mechanism which creates so-called underdeveloped economies.
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Saparmurat Niyazov
Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov (19 February 1940 – 21 December 2006; Russian: Сапармурат Атаевич Ниязов; Turkmen: Saparmyrat Ataýewiç Nyýazow) was a Turkmen politician who served as President (later President for Life) of Turkmenistan from 2 November 1990 until his death in 2006. He was First Secretary of the Turkmen Communist Party from 1985 until 1991 and continued to lead Turkmenistan for 15 years after independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. His name in English is a romanization of the Russian spelling Сапармурат Атаевич Ниязов, his Turkmen name.
Turkmen media referred to him using the title "His Excellency Saparmurat Türkmenbaşy, President of Turkmenistan and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers".[citation needed] His self-given title Türkmenbaşy, or Turkmenbashi (pronounced [tyɾkmenbaʃɯ]), meaning Leader of Turkmens, referred to his position as the founder and president of the Association of Turkmens of the World.
Foreign media criticized him as one of the world's most totalitarian and repressive dictators, highlighting his reputation of imposing his personal eccentricities upon the country, which extended to renaming months, which had been borrowed Russian words, after members of his family.Global Witness, a London-based human rights organization, reported that money under Niyazov's control and held overseas may be in excess of US$3 billion, of which between $1.8–$2.6 billion was supposedly situated in the Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund at Deutsche Bank in Germany.
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Siad Barre
Mohamed Siad Barre (Somali: Maxamed Siyaad Barre, Arabic: محمّد زياد بري) (October 6, 1919 – January 2, 1995) was the military dictator and President of the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 to 1991. During his rule, he styled himself as Jaalle Siyaad ("Comrade Siad").
At the time of independence in 1960, Somalia was touted in the West as the model of a democracy in Africa. However, clanism and extended family loyalties and conflicts were social problems the civilian government failed to eradicate and eventually succumbed to itself.
The Barre-led military junta that came to power after a coup d'état in 1969 said it would adapt scientific socialism to the needs of Somalia. It drew heavily from the traditions of China. Volunteer labour harvested and planted crops, and built roads and hospitals. Almost all industry, banks and businesses were nationalised, and cooperative farms were promoted. The government forbade clanism and stressed loyalty to the central authorities. A new writing script for the Somali language was also adopted. To spread the new language and the methods and message of the revolution, secondary schools were closed in 1974 and 25,000 students from fourteen to sixteen years of age and an additional 3,000 military and civil service employees were sent to rural areas to educate their nomadic relatives.
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Silla
Silla (57 BC – 935 AD) (Korean pronunciation: [ɕilːa]) was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, and one of the longest sustained dynasties in Asian history. Although it was founded by King Park Hyeokgeose, who is also known to be the originator of the Korean family name Park (박, 朴), the dynasty was to see the Gyeongju Kim (김, 金) clan hold rule for most of its 992-year history. What began as a chiefdom in the Samhan confederacies, once allied with China, Silla eventually conquered the other two kingdoms, Baekje in 660 and Goguryeo in 668. Thereafter, Unified Silla or Later Silla, as it is often referred to, occupied most of the Korean Peninsula, while the northern part re-emerged as Balhae, a successor-state of Goguryeo. After nearly 1000 years of rule, Silla fragmented into the brief Later Three Kingdoms, handing over power to its successor dynasty Goryeo in 935.
From its founding until its growth into a full-fledged kingdom, Silla was recorded with various hanja phonetically approximating its native Korean name: 斯盧 (사로, Saro), 斯羅 (사라, Sara), 徐那(伐) (서나[벌], Seona[beol]), 徐耶(伐) (서야[벌], Seoya[beol]), 徐羅(伐) (서라[벌], Seora[beol]), and 徐伐 (서벌, Seobeol). In 503, King Jijeung standardized on the characters 新羅(신라), which in Modern Korean is pronounced "Shilla".
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Sino-Albanian split
The Sino-Albanian split (Chinese: 中阿破裂; pinyin: Zhōng-Ā pòliè) in 1978 saw the parting of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and People's Socialist Republic of Albania, which was the only Eastern European nation to side with the PRC in the Sino-Soviet split of the early 1960s.
The relations between Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Party of Labour of Albania (PPSh) had stagnated by 1970. When China began to reemerge from isolation in the early 1970s, Mao Zedong and other Communist Chinese leaders reassessed their commitment to Albania. In response, Tirana, led by Enver Hoxha, began broadening its international position. Albania opened trade negotiations with France, Italy and the newly independent Asian and African states, and later in 1971 it normalized relations with Yugoslavia and Greece. Albania's leaders abhorred the PRC's rapprochement with the United States in the early 1970s. Tirana press and radio ignored President Richard Nixon's trip to Beijing in 1972. Nevertheless, Albania proposed the key resolution in the UN General Assembly which enabled the PRC to replace the Republic of China in the United Nations.
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Sino-Indian War
The Sino-Indian War (Hindi: भारत-चीन युद्ध Bhārat-Chīn Yuddh), also known as the Sino-Indian Border Conflict (simplified Chinese: 中印边境战争; traditional Chinese: 中印邊境戰爭; pinyin: Zhōng-Yìn Biānjìng Zhànzhēng), was a war between China and India that occurred in 1962. A disputed Himalayan border was the main pretext for war, but other issues played a role. There had been a series of violent border incidents after the 1959 Tibetan uprising, when India had granted asylum to the Dalai Lama. India initiated a Forward Policy in which it placed outposts along the border, including several north of the McMahon Line, the eastern portion of a Line of Actual Control proclaimed by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1959.
Unable to reach political accommodation on disputed territory along the 3,225-kilometer-long Himalayan border, the Chinese launched simultaneous offensives in Ladakh and across the McMahon Line on 20 October 1962, coinciding with the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chinese troops advanced over Indian forces in both theatres, capturing Rezang la in Chushul in the western theatre, as well as Tawang in the eastern theatre. The war ended when the Chinese declared a ceasefire on 20 November 1962, and simultaneously announced its withdrawal from the disputed area.
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Sino-Vietnamese War
The Sino–Vietnamese War (Vietnamese: Chiến tranh biên giới Việt-Trung), also known as the Third Indochina War, known in the PRC as Chinese: 对越自卫反击战; pinyin: duì yuè zìwèi fǎnjī zhàn; literally "Defensive Counterattack against Vietnam" and in Vietnam as Chiến tranh chống bành trướng Trung Hoa (War against Chinese expansionism), was a brief but bloody border war fought in 1979 between the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The PRC launched the offensive in response to Vietnam's 1978 invasion and occupation of Cambodia, which ended the reign of the PRC-backed Khmer Rouge.
The Chinese invaded Northern Vietnam and captured some of the northernmost cities in Vietnam. On March 6 China declared that the gate to Hanoi was open and that their punitive mission had been achieved and retreated back to China. Both China and Vietnam claimed victory in the last of the Indochina Wars of the 20th century; as Vietnamese troops remained in Cambodia until 1989 it can be said that the PRC failed to achieve the goal of dissuading Vietnam from involvement in Cambodia. China achieved its strategic objective of reducing the offensive capability of Vietnam along the Sino-Vietnam border by implementing a scorched earth policy. China also achieved another strategic objective of demonstrating to its Cold War foe, the Soviet Union, that they were unable to protect their Vietnamese ally. As many as 1.5 million Chinese troops were stationed along China's borders with the USSR at the time and were prepared for a full-scale war.
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Social-imperialism
Social-imperialism is a Marxist expression, typically used in a derogatory fashion, to describe people, parties, or nations that are "socialist in words, imperialist in deeds". The phrase was first used in Marxist circles during the early 20th century discussions on the position of the international workers' movement towards the impending European war and particularly in regards to the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In this context it is very similar to, but not interchangeable with, the terms social chauvinism and social patriotism.
In the later decades the most significant use of the phrase has been in the Maoist critique of the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong argued that the Soviet Union had itself become an imperialist power while maintaining a socialist façade.Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha agreed with Mao in this analysis, before later using the expression to also condemn China's Three Worlds Theory.
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Song Hye-rim
Song Hye-rim (成蕙琳, January 24, 1937 - May 18, 2002) was a North Korean actress and one-time favored mistress of Kim Jong-il. She was born in present-day South Korea, in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang.
Song was born in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang, during a time when Korea was under the rule of the Empire of Japan.
Song entered Pyongyang Movie College in 1955, but left the following year to give birth to a daughter. She later re-enrolled and graduated, having her film debut in 1960. She became a popular actress in the 1960s, appearing in movies including Onjŏngryŏng (온정령) and Baek Il-hong (백일홍).
Song began dating Kim Jong-il in 1968, after divorcing her first husband; she is believed to have been his first mistress. In 1971, she gave birth to Kim Jong-nam, who at one time was believed to be favoured to succeed Kim Jong-il. The birth of this son is said to have been kept secret from Kim Il-sung until 1975.
Beginning in the early 1980s Song travelled to Ulan Bator frequently for medical care. In 1996 Song was reported to have defected to the west, but intelligence officials in South Korea denied the story. She is reported to have died on May 18, 2002. Some reports say she died in Ulan Bator.
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Suharto
Suharto (help·info) (8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was the second President of Indonesia, having held the office for 31 years from 1967 following Sukarno's removal until his resignation in 1998.
Suharto was born in a small village, Kemusuk, in the Godean area near Yogyakarta, during the Dutch colonial era. He grew up in humble circumstances. His Javanese peasant parents divorced not long after his birth, and he was passed between foster parents for much of his childhood. During the Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Suharto served in Japanese-organised Indonesian security forces. Indonesia's independence struggle saw him joining the newly formed Indonesian army. Suharto rose to the rank of Major General following Indonesian independence. An attempted coup on 30 September 1965 was countered by Suharto-led troops and was blamed on the Indonesian Communist Party. The army subsequently led an anti-communist purge, and Suharto wrested power from Indonesia's founding president, Sukarno. He was appointed acting president in 1967 and President the following year. Support for Suharto's presidency was strong throughout the 1970s and 1980s but eroded following a severe financial crisis that led to widespread unrest and his resignation in May 1998. Suharto died in 2008.
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Sukarno
Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo (6 June 1901 – 21 June 1970) was the first President of Indonesia.
Sukarno was the leader of his country's struggle for independence from the Netherlands and was Indonesia's first President from 1945 to 1967. He was replaced by one of his generals, Suharto (see Transition to the New Order), and remained under house arrest until his death.
The spelling "Sukarno" is frequently used in English as it is based on the newer official spelling in Indonesia since 1947 but the older spelling Soekarno, based on Dutch orthography, is still frequently used, mainly because he signed his name in the old spelling. Official Indonesian presidential decrees from the period 1947–1968, however, printed his name using the 1947 spelling. The Soekarno–Hatta International Airport which serves near Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia for example, still uses the older spelling.
Indonesians also remember him as Bung Karno or Pak Karno. Like many Javanese people, he had only one name; in religious contexts, he was occasionally referred to as "Achmed Sukarno". The name Soekarno means "Good Karna" in Javanese.
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Sylvain Lazarus
Sylvain Lazarus (born 1943) is a French sociologist, anthropologist and political theorist. He has also written under the pseudonym Paul Sandevince. Lazarus is a Professor at the Paris 8 University.
Sylvain Lazarus worked out a theory of the social function of political categorizations (cf. The Anthropology of the Name, 1996), exploring in the anthropological field what his Lacanian friends Alain Badiou (Being and Event, 1988) and Jean-Claude Milner (The Indistinct Names, 1983) worked out, respectively, in the fields of philosophy, of linguistics and of psychoanalytic theory.
Lazarus's 1996 book 'Anthropologie du nom' (The Anthropology of the Name) has not yet been translated into English. It was discussed at length by Alain Badiou in his Abrégé de Métapolitique (1998), now translated into English as Metapolitics (2005).
Following the student uprisings of May 1968 in France, Lazarus was a founding member of the Union des communistes de France marxiste-léniniste (UCFml). To quote Badiou himself, the UCFml is "the Maoist organization established in late 1969 by Natacha Michel, Sylvain Lazarus, myself and a fair number of young people". Fifteen year's later, Lazarus was a founding member (along with Badiou and Michel) of the militant French political organisation "L'Organisation Politique" which called itself a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). In addition to numerous writings and interventions since the 1980s, L'Organisation Politique has stressed the importance of developing political prescriptions concerning undocumented migrants (in France referred to as les sans papiers) and stresses that they must be conceived primarily as workers and not immigrants.
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Syngman Rhee
Syngman Rhee or Yi Seungman (Hangul: 이승만; Hanja: 李承晩; Korean pronunciation: [i sɯŋman]; March 26, 1875 – July 19, 1965) was the first president of South Korea. His presidency, from August 1948 to April 1960, remains controversial, affected by Cold War tensions on the Korean peninsula and elsewhere.
Rhee was regarded as an anti-Communist and a strongman, and he led South Korea through the Korean War. His presidency ended in resignation following popular protests against a disputed election. He died in exile in Hawaii.
Syngman Rhee was born on March 26, 1875 into a rural family of modest means in Hwanghae Province, Korea. Rhee was the youngest of five siblings, though his elder brothers died prematurely. Rhee's family traced its lineage back to the third king of the Chosŏn Dynasty. When Rhee was two years old, the family moved to Seoul. His early education involved primarily classic Chinese literature; though he attempted civil service examinations, he failed them multiple times. When reforms abolished traditional systems of education, Rhee enrolled in Paejae School, an institution which had been established by a missionary from the United States. Rhee learned English and began a school newspaper, Maeil Sinmun.
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Tank Man
Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel, is the nickname of an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks the morning after the Chinese military forcibly removed protestors from in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. The man achieved widespread international recognition due to the videotape and photographs taken of the incident. Despite his anonymity, he is commonly (though not necessarily correctly) referred to in Chinese as Wang Weilin (王維林), as dubbed by a Sunday Express article.
The incident took place near Tiananmen on Chang'an Avenue, which runs east-west along the south end of the Forbidden City in Beijing, on June 5, 1989, one day after the Chinese government's violent crackdown on the Tiananmen protests. The man placed himself alone in the middle of the street as the tanks approached, directly in the path of the armored vehicles (39°54′23.5″N 116°23′59.8″E / 39.906528°N 116.399944°E / 39.906528; 116.399944). He held two shopping bags, one in each hand. As the tanks came to a stop, the man gestured towards the tanks with his bags. In response, the lead tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action. After repeatedly attempting to go around rather than crush the man, the lead tank stopped its engines, and the armored vehicles behind it seemed to follow suit. There was a short pause with the man and the tanks having reached a quiet, still impasse.
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Todor Zhivkov
Todor Hristov Zhivkov (Bulgarian: Тодор Христов Живков); IPA: [ˈtɔdɔr ˈxristɔf ˈʒifkɔf]) (7 September 1911 – 5 August 1998) was the communist president of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB) from March 4, 1954 until November 10, 1989.
He became First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1954 and remained on this position for 35 years, until 1989, thus becoming the longest-serving leader of any Eastern Bloc nation, and one of the longest ruling non-royal leaders in history. His rule marked a period of unprecedented political and economic stability for Bulgaria, marked both by complete submission of Bulgaria to Soviet rule and a desire for expanding ties with the West. His rule remained unchallenged until the deterioration of East-West relations in the 1980s, when a stagnating economic situation, a worsening international image and growing careerism and corruption in the BCP weakened his positions. He resigned on November 10, 1989, under pressure by senior BCP members due to his refusal to recognize problems and deal with public protests. Only two months later, in January 1990, the People's Republic of Bulgaria and its Communist system ceased to exist.
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Toshiki Kaifu
Toshiki Kaifu (海部 俊樹, Kaifu Toshiki?, born 2 January 1931) is a Japanese politician who was the 76th and 77th Prime Minister of Japan from 1989 to 1991.
He was born in Nagoya City, Aichi Prefecture, and was educated at Chuo University and Waseda University. A member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Kaifu ran successfully for the Diet in 1960 and served for sixteen terms totaling 49 years. He was education minister before rising to lead the party after the resignations of Takeshita Noboru and Sōsuke Uno, elected on the platform of "clean leadership." Kaifu became the 76th Prime Minister of Japan in August 1989, but his faction was too small to push through the reforms Kaifu sought, and the continuing repercussions of the Sagawa Express scandal caused problems. He resigned in February 1991 and was replaced by Kiichi Miyazawa.
In 1994, he left the LDP to become head of the newly founded Shinshinto (New Frontier Party). He left Shinshinto in 1998, then returned to LDP in 2003. He was defeated in the election of 2009 by DPJ candidate Mitsunori Okamoto, which witnessed the end of almost uninterrupted LDP dominance since 1955. At the time of his defeat, he was the longest-serving member of the lower house of the Diet, and he was also the first former prime minister to be defeated at a re-election since 1963.
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Tôn Đức Thắng
Tôn Đức Thắng (August 20, 1888 - March 30, 1980) was the second and final president of North Vietnam and the first president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam under the rule of Lê Duẩn. The position of president is ceremonial and Thắng was never a major policymaker or even a member of the Politburo, North Vietnam's ruling council. He served as president, initially of North Vietnam from September 2, 1969, and later of a united Vietnam, until his death in 1980. He was a key Vietnamese nationalist and Communist political figure, was chairman of the National Assembly's Standing Committee 1955–1960 and served as the vice president to Hồ Chí Minh from 1960 to 1969. At the time of death at age 91, he was the oldest ever head of a country with the title "president".
Thắng was born to Tôn Văn Đề and Nguyễn Thị Di on Ông Hô Island along the Mekong River, roughly four kilometres from Long Xuyên, the capital of An Giang Province . From 1897 to 1901, Thắng received his education in Chinese script, history and philosophy from a private tutor in Long Xuyên. This tutor, an anti-colonialist, carried a heavy influence on the early development of Thắng’s political beliefs . Afterwards, he learned French at an elementary school in Long Xuyên. Thắng lived with his parents until 1906, when he moved to Saigon.
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U Nu
U Nu (Burmese: ဦးနု; pronounced: [ʔú nṵ]; also Thakin Nu; 25 May 1907 – 14 February 1995) was a leading Burmese nationalist and political figure of the 20th century. He was the first Prime Minister of Burma under the provisions of the 1947 Constitution of the Union of Burma, from 4 January 1948 to 12 June 1956, again from 28 February 1957 to 28 October 1958, and finally from 4 April 1960 to 2 March 1962.
He was born to U San Tun and Daw Saw Khin of Wakema, Myaungmya District, British Burma. He attended Myoma High School in Yangon. In 1929 he got a B.A. from Rangoon University. In 1935 he married Mya Yi while entering the exam of LLB.
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Urho Kekkonen
Urho Kaleva Kekkonen (Finnish pronunciation: [urhɔ kɑlɛʋɑ kekːɔnɛn] ( listen); 3 September 1900 - 31 August 1986), was a Finnish politician who served as Prime Minister of Finland (1950–1953, 1954–1956) and later as the eighth and longest-serving President of Finland (1956–1982). Kekkonen continued the “active neutrality” policy of his predecessor President Juho Kusti Paasikivi, a doctrine which came to be known as the “Paasikivi–Kekkonen line”. Under it, Finland retained its independence while being able to trade with both NATO members and those of the Warsaw Pact.
The son of Juho Kekkonen and Emilia Pylvänäinen, Kekkonen was born in Pielavesi, in the Savo region of Finland and spent his childhood in Kainuu. His family were farmers (though not poor tenant farmers, as some of his supporters later claimed). His father was originally a farm-hand and forestry worker who rose to become a forestry manager and stock agent at Halla Ltd. Claims made that Kekkonen's family had lived in a rudimentary farmhouse with no chimney were later proved to be false—a photograph of Kekkonen's childhood home had been retouched to remove the chimney. His school years did not go smoothly. During the Finnish Civil War, Kekkonen fought for the White Guard (Kajaani chapter), fighting in Kuopio, Varkaus, Mouhu and Viipuri, and taking part in mop-up operations, including leading a firing squad in Hamina. He later admitted to having killed a man in battle, but wrote in his memoirs that he was randomly selected by his company commander to follow a squad escorting ten prisoners, where the squad turned out to be a firing squad, and then to give the actual order to aim and fire.
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Viacheslav Chornovil
Viacheslav Chornovil (Ukrainian: В'ячесла́в Макси́мович Чорнові́л) (born December 24, 1937 in Yerky, Katerynopil Raion, Kiev Oblast - died March 25, 1999, near Boryspil, Kiev Oblast) was a Ukrainian politician. A prominent Ukrainian dissident to the Soviet policies, he was arrested multiple times in the 1960s and 1970s for his political views. A long-time advocate of Ukrainian independence, he was one of the most prominent political figures of the late 1980s and early 1990s who paved the path of the contemporary Ukraine to its independence.
Chornovil enrolled into the University of Kiev initially at the College of Philology (faculty), but after the first semester transferred to the College of Journalism. In 1958 due to conflict in the university he took a break from studying and went for construction project in Zhdanov of a blast furnace and later worked for the "Kiev Komsomolets". Chornovil was a member of the Komsomol of Ukraine. He graduated in 1960 with honors and defended his diploma with a thesis "Publicistic work of Borys Hrinchenko".
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Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United States and other anti-communist countries. The Viet Cong (also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerrilla war against anti-communist forces in the region. The Vietnam People's Army (North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes.
The U.S. government viewed involvement in the war as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment. The North Vietnamese government and Viet Cong viewed the conflict as a colonial war, fought initially against France, backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S. puppet state. American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina beginning in 1950. U.S. involvement escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962. U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Operations spanned international borders, with Laos and Cambodia heavily bombed. American involvement in the war peaked in 1968, at the time of the Tet Offensive. After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy known as Vietnamization. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued.
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Violeta Chamorro
Violeta Barrios Torres de Chamorro (born October 18, 1929) is a Nicaraguan political leader, former president and publisher. She became president of Nicaragua on April 25, 1990, when she unseated Daniel Ortega. She was supported by many, including a fourteen-party anti-Sandinista alliance known as the National Opposition Union (Unión Nacional Oppositora, UNO), an alliance that ranged from conservatives and liberals to communists. She left office on January 10, 1997. Chamorro was the first and only woman to hold that position in Nicaragua. Chamorro was the first elected female head of state in the Americas, the second in the Western Hemisphere after Iceland's Vigdís Finnbogadóttir and the fifth in the world after the elections of Agatha Barbara in Malta, Elisabeth Kopp in Switzerland and Corazon Aquino in the Philippines. She is the first and only woman in the world to defeat an incumbent president.
Chamorro was born in 1929 to a wealthy family in Rivas, a small city near the Nicaraguan border with Costa Rica. She was educated in private Catholic schools in Granada and Managua. Chamorro's parents wanted her to perfect her English and sent her to an American boarding school. She first attended Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas, and then transferred to Blackstone College for Girls in Virginia. In June 1947, her father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and after her father's death she returned to Nicaragua, cutting her schooling in the United States short. She met Pedro Joaquín Chamorro in 1949 and they married in 1950, with whom she had five children. In 1952, Chamorro's husband, Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, took over the anti-Somoza newspaper La Prensa and was frequently jailed for its content. She took over the newspaper after her husband's assassination on January 10, 1978.
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Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov (Russian: Вячесла́в Миха́йлович Мо́лотов; 9 March [O.S. 25 February] 1890 – 8 November 1986) was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium (Politburo) of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev. He served as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (Premier) from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. Molotov served for several years as First Deputy Premier in Joseph Stalin's cabinet. He retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity.
Molotov was the principal Soviet signatory of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939 (also known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), after Britain and France repeatedly failed to join the Soviets in an anti-Nazi alliance, was involved in post-war negotiations where he became noted for his diplomatic skills, and knew of the Katyn massacre committed by the Soviet authorities. Following the aftermath of World War II (Great Patriotic War) Molotov kept his place, until 1949, as a leading Soviet diplomat and politician. In March 1949, after losing Stalin's favour, he lost the foreign affairs ministry to Andrei Vyshinsky. Molotov's relationship with Stalin deteriorated further, with Stalin complaining about Molotov's mistakes in a speech to the 19th Party Congress. However, after Stalin's death in 1953 Molotov was staunchly opposed to Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation policy. He defended his policies and the legacy of Stalin until his death in 1986, and harshly criticized Stalin's successors, especially Nikita Khrushchev.
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Václav Havel
Václav Havel (Czech pronunciation: [ˈvaːt͡slaf ˈɦavɛl] ( listen); 5 October 1936 – 18 December 2011) was a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician.
Havel was the ninth and last president of Czechoslovakia (1989–1992) and the first president of the Czech Republic (1993–2003). He wrote more than 20 plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally.
Havel was voted 4th in Prospect magazine's 2005 global poll of the world's top 100 intellectuals. At the time of his death he was Chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation. He was the founder of the VIZE 97 Foundation and the principal organizer of the Forum 2000 annual global conference.
Havel was one of the signatories of the Charter 77 manifesto, a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, and a council member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Havel received many recognitions, including the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Philadelphia Liberty Medal, the Order of Canada, the freedom medal of the Four Freedoms Award, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award.
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Walter Hallstein
Walter Hallstein (17 November 1901 – 29 March 1982) was a German politician and professor.
He was one of the key figures of European integration after World War II, becoming the first President of the Commission of the European Economic Community, serving from 1958 to 1967. He famously defined his position as "a kind of Prime Minister of Europe". His name is associated with the Hallstein Doctrine, a key doctrine in West German foreign policy during the Cold War.
Hallstein was born in Mainz, Germany, the son of a government building officer. He studied law in Bonn, Munich and Berlin and graduated in 1925 with a doctoral dissertation on the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles with regard to insurance policies. From 1926 he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign Private and International Private Law in Berlin. In 1930, at the age of 28, he was appointed professor for private law and company law at the University of Rostock (Rostock), where he remained until 1941. During Nazism Hallstein was a member of National Socialist People's Welfare and national socialist professional associations for lawyers and judges. In 1941 he was appointed professor of civil law at the University of Frankfurt (Frankfurt am Main). He was also, at the same time, director of the university's Institute for Comparative Law and Commercial Law.
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Walter Ulbricht
Walter Ulbricht (30 June 1893 – 1 August 1973) was a German communist politician. As First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party from 1950 to 1971 (and then Honorary "Chairman" until his death), he played a leading role in the creation of the Weimar-era Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later (spending the years of Nazi rule in exile in the Soviet Union) in the early development and establishment of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). From President Wilhelm Pieck's death in 1960 he was the East German head of state until his own death in 1973.
Ulbricht was born in Leipzig, Saxony, where his father worked as a tailor. He spent eight years in primary school (Volksschule). After leaving school, he trained to be a joiner. Both his parents worked actively for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Walter Ulbricht joined the party in 1912.
Ulbricht served in World War I from 1915 to 1917 in Galicia on the Eastern Front, and in the Balkans. He deserted in 1917, as he had opposed the war from the beginning. Imprisoned in Charleroi, in 1918 he was released during the German Revolution of 1918–1919. In 1917 he became a member of the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) after it split off from the Social Democratic Party (SPD) over support of Germany's participation in World War I. During the German Revolution he became a member of the soldier's soviet of his army corps and later a member of the KPD in 1920, joining its Central Committee in 1923. Ulbricht attended the International Lenin School of the Comintern in Moscow in 1924/1925. The electors subsequently voted him into the regional parliament of Saxony (Sächsischer Landtag) in 1926. He became a Member of the Reichstag for South Westphalia from 1928 to 1933 and served as KPD chairman in Berlin from 1929.
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Warsaw Pact
The Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance (1955–1991), more commonly referred to as the Warsaw Pact, was a mutual defense treaty between eight communist states of Eastern Europe in existence during the Cold War. The founding treaty was established under the initiative of the Soviet Union and signed on 14 May 1955, in Warsaw. The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CoMEcon), the regional economic organization for the communist states of Eastern Europe. The Warsaw Pact was a Soviet military response to the integration of West Germany into NATO in 1955, per the Paris Pacts of 1954.
In the West, the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance is often called the Warsaw Pact military alliance; abbreviated WAPA, Warpac, and WP. Elsewhere, in the former member states, the Warsaw Treaty is known as:
The Warsaw Treaty’s organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Furthermore, the Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR, and the head of the Warsaw Treaty Combined Staff also was a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the USSR. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces.
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Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt (born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; German pronunciation: [ˈvɪli ˈbʁant]; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician, Mayor of West Berlin 1957–1966, Chancellor of West Germany 1969–1974, and leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 1964–1987.
Brandt's most important legacy was Ostpolitik, a policy aimed at improving relations with East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. This policy caused considerable controversy in West Germany, but won Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971.
In 1974, Brandt resigned as Chancellor after Günter Guillaume, one of his closest aides, was exposed as an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret service.
Willy Brandt was born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm in the Free City of Lübeck (German Empire) to Martha Frahm, an unwed mother who worked as a cashier for a department store. His father was an accountant from Hamburg named John Möller, whom Brandt never met. As his mother worked six days a week, he was mainly brought up by his mother's stepfather Ludwig Frahm and his second wife Dora.
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Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, Hon. RA (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British Conservative politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century, he served as Prime Minister twice (1940–45 and 1951–55). A noted statesman and orator, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer, and an artist. He is the only British prime minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
Churchill was born into the aristocratic family of the Dukes of Marlborough. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a charismatic politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer; his mother, Jenny Jerome, was an American socialite. As a young army officer, he saw action in British India, the Sudan, and the Second Boer War. He gained fame as a war correspondent and wrote books about his campaigns.
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Wojciech Jaruzelski
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (pronounced [ˈvɔi̯t͡ɕɛx jaruˈzɛlskʲi] ( listen); born 6 July 1923) is a retired Polish military officer and Communist politician. He was the last Communist leader of Poland from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country's head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People's Army (LWP). He resigned from power after the Polish Round Table Agreement in 1989 led to democratic elections in Poland.
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was born on 6 July 1923 in Kurów, into a family of gentry. He was raised on the family estate near Wysokie (in the vicinity of Białystok). He was educated in a Catholic school during the 1930s.
On 1 September 1939, the September Campaign started when Poland was invaded by Germany, with the latter country aided by another invasion begun sixteen days later by the Soviet Union. The invasions resulted in the defeat of Poland by the following month, and its partition between Soviet and German control. Jaruzelski and his family fled to Lithuania and stayed with some friends there. However, a few months later, after Lithuania and the other Baltic states were forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, Jaruzelski and his family were captured by the army of the Soviet Union, and deported to Siberia. In 1940 at the age of sixteen, Jaruzelski was sent to the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic, where he performed forced labour in the Karaganda coal mines. During his labour work, having experienced snow blindness, developed permanent damage to his eyes and back. The damage to his eyes forced him to wear dark sunglasses most of the time, which became his trademark.
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Wu'erkaixi
Wu'erkaixi (Uyghur: ئۆركەش دۆلەت; Chinese: 吾尔开希; born 17 February 1968) was a Uyghur student leader in the Tiananmen protests of 1989. He was born in Beijing, with the origin of Yili, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, Uyghur ethnicity. He achieved prominence while studying at Beijing Normal University as a hunger striker who rebuked Chinese Premier Li Peng on national television. He now resides in Taiwan as a political commentator.
Wu'erkaixi arrived on scene in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, in late April 1989, after he founded an independent student’s association at Beijing Normal University. He quickly emerged as one of the most outspoken student leaders as the size of crowds increased. According to Eddie Cheng, at a hastily convened meeting to form the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation and elect its leader, Zhou Yongjun of the University of Political Science and Law narrowly defeated Wu'erkaixi to be its first president.
Upon meeting Premier Li Peng for the first time in May 1989, in an encounter recorded on national television, Wu'erkaixi interrupted Li during his introduction, saying “I understand it is quite rude of me to interrupt you, Premier, but there are people sitting out there in the square, being hungry, as we sit here and exchange pleasantries. We are only here to discuss concrete matters, sir.” After being interrupted by Li, who said that he was being somewhat impolite, Wu'erkaixi continued. “Sir, you said you are here late [because of traffic congestion]... we’ve actually been calling you to talk to us since 22 April. It’s not that you are late, it’s that you’re here too late. But that’s fine. It’s good that you are able to come here at all...”
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Władysław Gomułka
Władysław Gomułka (Polish pronunciation: [vwaˈdɨswaf ɡɔˈmuwka]; 6 February 1905, Krosno – 1 September 1982, Konstancin) was a Polish Communist leader. He was the de facto leader of Poland from 1945 to 1948, and again from 1956 to 1970.
Gomułka was a member of the Communist Party of Poland (Komunistyczna Partia Polski, KPP) starting in 1926.
In 1934 Gomułka went to Moscow, where he lived for a year. Upon his return to Poland he was arrested and spent most of his time in prison until the beginning of World War II. During the war, Gomułka became an influential Polish Communist and in 1943 convinced Stalin to allow the reformation of the local Communist party under the name Polish Workers' Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza). He was a Deputy Prime Minister in the Provisional Government of Republic of Poland - Rząd Tymczasowy Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, from January to June 1945, and in the Provisional Government of National Unity (Tymczasowy Rząd Jedności Narodowej), from 1945 to 1947. Using his position in the government, he crushed all meaningful resistance to the Communists. He also helped the Communists in winning the 3 x Tak (3 Times Yes) referendum of 1946. A year later, he played a key role in the 1947 parliamentary elections, which saw the Communists and their allies win an overwhelming majority. It later emerged that the Communists had only won both of these votes through massive fraud.
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Yang Hyong-sop
Yang Hyong-sop (born October 1, 1925, Hamhung) is a North Korean politician. He was elected chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly in 1983, and served until 1998. He is currently vice president of the Presidium of the SPA. Yang attended Moscow State University and Kim Il-sung University, and is married to Kim Shin-sook, a cousin of Kim Il sung.
According to the official biography released by the Korean Central News Agency, he joined the Korean People's Army in June 1950 (approximately when the Korean War started); after graduating from the Kim Il-sung University, he served as section chief and then secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, director of the Central Party School, minister of Higher Education, and president of the Academy of Social Sciences.
He was elected President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly in 1983, after having been a vice-president since 1962; in this capacity, he assumed the functions of de facto head of State after Kim Il-sung's death in 1994, as the post of President of the DPRK was never re-assigned; he was however under the actual leadership of the new leader Kim Jong-il. In 1998, a new Constitution passed the President's powers to the President of the Presidium; in the same year, Yang was replaced by Kim Yong-nam in that capacity, but continued to serve as vice-president again.
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Yao Wenyuan
Yao Wenyuan (pinyin: Yáo Wényuán; IPA: [jɑ̌ʊ wə̌nɥǎn]; 1931 Zhuji, Shaoxing, Zhejiang – December 23, 2005) was a Chinese literary critic, a politician, and a member of the "Gang of Four" during China's Cultural Revolution.
Yao Wenyuan was born to an intellectual family of China. His father, Yao Pengzi (姚蓬子) was a writer, translator and art critic.
He began his career in Shanghai as a literary critic, where he became known for his sharp attacks against colleagues, such as in June 1957 against the newspaper Wenhuibao. Since that time, he began to closely collaborate with leftist Shanghai politicians, including the head of the city's Propaganda Department, Zhang Chunqiao. His article "On the New Historical Beijing Opera 'Hai Rui Dismissed from Office'" (Chinese: 海瑞罢官; pinyin: Hăi Ruì bà guān), published in the Shanghai daily Wenhuibao on November 10, 1965, launched the Cultural Revolution.
The article was about a popular opera by Wu Han, who was deputy mayor of Beijing. Zhang Chunqiao and Jiang Qing feared the play could be counter-revolutionary because parallels could be drawn between the characters in the play and officials in the communist government.
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Yon Hyong-muk
Yon Hyong-muk, also spelt as Yong Hyong-muk (November 3, 1931 – October 23, 2005) was a longserving politician in North Korea and at the height of his career the most powerful person in that country outside the Kim family. He was premier of North Korea from 1989 until 1992 .
He was born in Kyongwon County and had a strong revolutionary background in his family. Although details about his early childhood are not well known, it is known than Yon was educated in Czechoslovakia and by the 1950s he was firmly established within the hierarchy of the Korea Workers' Party, which became the only political party in North Korea after the Korean War ended. By 1968, after one of several purges to occur during Kim Il Sung's long reign, Yon was established as one of Kim's most trusted comrades and had become a secretary of the Central Committee of the Party.
During the 1970s, Yon further advanced in the Party and by the middle 1980s he was regarded as the fourth most powerful person in North Korea after Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong-Il, and veteran marshal and defence minister O Chin-u. He was a candidate member of the Politburo from the early 1980s and became premier of North Korea in 1989 . During this era, Yon served as Minister of Heavy Industry and this cemented his major role in the North's large armaments sector.
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Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (Russian: Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов, tr. Yuriy Vladimirovich Andropov; IPA: [ˈjʉrʲɪj vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ɐnˈdropəf]; 15 June [O.S. 2 June] 1914 – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.
Andropov was the son of a railway official Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov, who was a member of a Don Cossack noble family. His mother was Yevgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein, a daughter of a wealthy Moscow businessman, Karl Franzovich Fleckenstein, a German Russian from Vyborg. Andropov was educated at the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical College.
Andropov joined the Komsomol in 1930. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1939 and was First Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol in the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic from 1940 to 1944.
During World War II, Andropov took part in partisan guerrilla activities in Finland. From 1944 onwards, he left Komsomol for Communist Party work. In 1947, he was elected Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish SSR.
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Zhang Chunqiao
Zhang Chunqiao (pinyin: Zhāng Chūnqiáo; Wade-Giles: Chang Ch'un-ch'iao; IPA: [tʂɑ́ŋ tʂʰúntɕʰjɑ̌ʊ]; 1917 Juye County, Heze, Shandong –April 21, 2005) was a prominent Chinese political theorist, writer, and politician. He came to the national spotlight during the late stages of the Cultural Revolution, and was a member of the Maoist radical group dubbed the "Gang of Four".
He worked as a writer in Shanghai in the 1930s. After the Yan'an conference in 1938, he joined the Communist Party of China. With the creation of the People's Republic of China, he became a prominent journalist in Shanghai in charge of the Liberation Daily (Jiefang Ribao). He met Jiang Qing in Shanghai and helped to launch the Cultural Revolution.
Zhang first came to prominence as the result of his October 1958 Jiefang ("Liberation") magazine entitled “Destroy the Ideas of Bourgeois Legal Ownership.” Mao Zedong ordered the reproduction of the article in Renmin Ribao ("People’s Daily"), and personally wrote an accompanying “Editor’s Note” giving mild approval. He was seen as one of Mao Zedong's full supporters as he was starting a struggle with rival leader Liu Shaoqi.
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Zhao Ziyang
Zhao Ziyang (pronounced [tʂɑ̂ʊ tsɨ̀jɑ̌ŋ]; 17 October 1919 – 17 January 2005) was a high-ranking politician in the People's Republic of China (PRC). He was the third Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1980 to 1987, and General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1987 to 1989.
As a senior government official, Zhao was critical of Maoist policies and instrumental in implementing free-market reforms, first in Sichuan, subsequently nationwide. He emerged on the national scene due to support from Deng Xiaoping after the Cultural Revolution. He also sought measures to streamline the bureaucracy and fight corruption, which was severely affecting the Party's legitimacy in the 1980s. Zhao Ziyang was also an advocate of the privatization of state-owned enterprises, the separation of the Party and the state, and general market economic reforms. Many of these views were shared by then-General Secretary Hu Yaobang.
His economic reform policies and sympathies to student demonstrators during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 placed him at odds with some members of the party leadership, including Premier Li Peng. Zhao also began to lose favour with paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. In the aftermath of the events, Zhao was purged politically and effectively placed under house arrest for the next 15 years. He died in Beijing in 2005, but because of his political fall from grace he was not given the funeral rites generally accorded to senior Chinese officials.
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Zhou Baozhong
Zhou Baozhong (Chinese: 周保中; pinyin: Zhōu Bǎozhōng; 1902–1964) was a commander of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army resisting the pacification of Manchukuo by the Empire of Japan.
After the Chinese Civil War he was made Vice chairman of Yunnan People's Government in 1949. In February 1964 he died in Beijing.
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Zhou Enlai
Zhou Enlai (pinyin: Zhōu Ēnlái; Wade-Giles: Chou En-lai; IPA: [tʂóʊ ə́nlǎɪ]; 5 March 1898 – 8 January 1976) was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976. Zhou served under Mao Zedong and was instrumental in consolidating the control of the Communist Party's rise to power, forming foreign policy, and developing the Chinese economy.
A skilled and able diplomat, Zhou served as the Chinese foreign minister from 1949 to 1958. Advocating peaceful coexistence with the West after the stalemated Korean War, he participated in the 1954 Geneva Conference and helped orchestrate Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. He helped devise policies regarding the bitter disputes with the U.S., Taiwan, the Soviet Union (after 1960), India and Vietnam. Zhou is best known as the long-time top aide to Mao Zedong, specializing in foreign policy. Their contrasting personalities made them an effective team, according to Henry Kissinger, the American diplomat who had extensive dealings with both men:
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Zianon Pazniak
Zianon Pazniak (Belarusian: Зянон Пазьняк, born April 24, 1944) is a Belarusian nationalist politician, one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front and leader of the Christian Conservative Party of the BPF. He has lived in emigration since 1996.
Zianon Pazniak was born in the village of Subotniki in Grodno region.
He graduated from the Belarusian State Institute of Theatre and Arts in 1967 and completed his postgraduate studies at the Institute of Ethnography, Art and Folklore in 1972. In 1981, Pazniak defended his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Belarusian theatre in Leningrad. He worked as a manager of village club, photographer, scientific worker at the Institute of History.
In 1988, Zianon Pazniak made public his researches of alleged NKVD mass executions in the forest of Kurapaty near Minsk. At that time, he became a leader of the Belarusian nationalistic movement. In 1988, he was one of the founders of the Belarusian Popular Front and the Belarusian Martyrologue.
From May 1990 until January 1996, Pazniak was a deputy of the Belarusian parliament. As parliamentary deputy, he was the leader of the fraction of the BPF. In 1996, Zianon Pazniak chose to leave Belarus after his party had suffered a devastating defeat in parliamentary elections. He was granted political asylum in the United States.
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Zulfikar Ali Bhutto
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Urdu: ذوالفقار علی بھٹو, Sindhi: ذوالفقار علي ڀُٽو, IPA: [zʊlfɪqɑːɾ ɑli bʱʊʈːoː]) (5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979) was 9th Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1973 to 1977, and prior to that, 4th President of Pakistan from 1971 to 1973. Bhutto was the founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and served as its chairman until his execution in 1979. His elder daughter, Benazir Bhutto, later also served as Prime Minister, while his son Murtaza Bhutto served as member of Parliament of Pakistan.
Educated at the University of Southern California and University of California, Berkeley in the United States and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, Bhutto was noted for his progressive economic initiatives, industrialisation, education, and foreign policy, and his intellectualism. In addition to national security issues, Bhutto promoted his policies on nationalisation, health care, and social reforms. Under his premiership, Pakistan's Parliament gave approval and passed unanimously the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan, a supreme law that provides a parliamentary system to Pakistan, strengthened Sino-Pakistani and Saudi-Pakistani relations, recognised East-Pakistan as Bangladesh, and hosted the second Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in 1974 where he delegated and invited leaders from the Muslim world to Lahore, Punjab Province of Pakistan. In July 1972, Bhutto successfully proceeded the Shimla treaty, signed with Indira Gandhi of India, brought 93,000 Prisoners of War back to Pakistan, and secured 5,000 sq mi (13,000 km2) held by India. In 20 January 1972, weeks after the Indo-Pakistani 1971 winter war, Bhutto orchestrated, authorised, and administrated the scientific research on nuclear weapons; for this, he is colloquially known in the world as "Father of the Pakistan's nuclear deterrent programme".
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Álvaro Cunhal
Álvaro Barreirinhas Cunhal, who used the name Álvaro Cunhal (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈaɫvɐɾu kuˈɲaɫ]; Sé Nova, Coimbra, 10 November 1913 — Lisbon, 13 June 2005), was a Portuguese politician. He was one of the major opponents of the dictatorial regime of Estado Novo. He served as secretary-general of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) from 1961 to 1992. He was one of the most pro-Soviet of all western Europe communist leaders, often supporting USSR world policies, including the intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Cunhal was born in Coimbra, the third child of Avelino Henriques da Costa Cunhal (Seia, Seia, October 28, 1887 – Coimbra, Sé Nova, December 19, 1966) and wife (m. Coimbra, Sé Nova, August 22, 1908) Mercedes Simões Ferreira Barreirinhas (Coimbra, Sé Nova, May 5, 1888 – Lisbon, September 12, 1971). His father was a lawyer in Coimbra and Seia, and later on in Lisbon, and came from a family of rural bourgeoisie, related to a rich and more aristocratic family, the Cunhal Patrício. His mother was a devout Catholic who wished her son had also become one. He also studied Law at the University of Lisbon, where he joined the PCP, then an illegal organization, in 1931. The deaths of his younger sister Maria Mansueta Barrerinhas Cunhal (Coimbra – Seia, January 13, 1921) and of his older brother António José Barreirinhas Cunhal (Coimbra, 1910 – Lisbon, 1932) struck the grief of both his parents and brothers, but specially of his mother and Álvaro, of whom they had always been close. He visited the Soviet Union for the first time in 1935 to attend the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in Moscow. He joined the Central Committee of the PCP in 1936 at the age of 24. His first arrest occurred in 1937.
wn.com/Álvaro_Cunhal
Famous quotes by Kim Il-Sung:
"The first thing I want to ask him is: What happened to the other family members? Then I would ask how he endured through all those difficult years,"
"South Koreans who have seen and praised the mass games should remember the hardship of tearful children, ... Teachers drive them hard with curses and orders to repeat and repeat. When the children return home in the evening, they can hardly walk."
"It was chilling. I felt so sorry for the children who were forced to perform."
"Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live."
"Basically, the North Koreans indicated their willingness to have talks, but exactly what that means -- exactly when, how, that sort of thing"
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Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il made Korea into a paradise
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:13
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
English Narration Kim Jong Il said he would make flowers bloom on a rock if that is the wish of people From the documentary: "Always Working Together for the People" 1994 First song is "The party is our bosom"
http://wn.com/Kim_Il_Sung_and_Kim_Jong_Il_made_Korea_into_a_paradise
English Narration Kim Jong Il said he would make flowers bloom on a rock if that is the wish of people From the documentary: "Always Working Together for the People" 1994 First song is "The party is our bosom"
Kim Il Sung will Always be with Us
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:28
- Updated: 12 Dec 2012
Official music of the DPRK: The Korean Friendship Association (KFA) was founded on November of the year 2000 with the purpose of building international ties with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It has members from 120 countries. The KFA has full recognition from the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and is the world-wide leading organization of its supporters. It has offices in DPR Korea, Spain, Norway and Thailand. www.kfausa.org | http
http://wn.com/Kim_Il_Sung_will_Always_be_with_Us
Official music of the DPRK: The Korean Friendship Association (KFA) was founded on November of the year 2000 with the purpose of building international ties with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It has members from 120 countries. The KFA has full recognition from the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and is the world-wide leading organization of its supporters. It has offices in DPR Korea, Spain, Norway and Thailand. www.kfausa.org | http
- published: 10 Dec 2012
- views: 149
- author: North Korea
David Kang Excerpt -- How Kim Il Sung Came to Power
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:58
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
outtake from upcoming documentary on North Korean propaganda apparatus. juchestrong.com juchestrong@gmail.com
http://wn.com/David_Kang_Excerpt_-_How_Kim_Il_Sung_Came_to_Power
outtake from upcoming documentary on North Korean propaganda apparatus. juchestrong.com juchestrong@gmail.com
- published: 07 Dec 2012
- views: 45
- author: Rob Montz
Death of the Father of the Socialist Homeland (1/3)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 9:47
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
Great Leader Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) The respected leader commrade Kim Il Sung whom the Korean and world people hold in high esteem is revered today as the greatest leader of the working class who with extradordinary wisdom,outstanding ablity of leadership and lofty communist virtues,has been devoting all his life to the sacred cause of the revolution for the independence of the working masses During the long period since he embarked on the road of revolution at an early age,the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung led the unprecedently arduous and complex Korean revolution to victory and made a great contribution to the world revolution. "The revolutionary peoples, communists and revolutionaries of all the world are calling Comrade Kim Il Sung, the great Leader of the 40 million Korean people, 'an outstanding strategist of the international revolutionary movement,' 'the leader of the liberation movement of the whole world,' 'a distinguished leader of the tricontinental peoples' and 'a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle.' They speak of him with boundless respect and veneration. video by todou.com
http://wn.com/Death_of_the_Father_of_the_Socialist_Homeland_1_3
Great Leader Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) The respected leader commrade Kim Il Sung whom the Korean and world people hold in high esteem is revered today as the greatest leader of the working class who with extradordinary wisdom,outstanding ablity of leadership and lofty communist virtues,has been devoting all his life to the sacred cause of the revolution for the independence of the working masses During the long period since he embarked on the road of revolution at an early age,the great leader comrade Kim Il Sung led the unprecedently arduous and complex Korean revolution to victory and made a great contribution to the world revolution. "The revolutionary peoples, communists and revolutionaries of all the world are calling Comrade Kim Il Sung, the great Leader of the 40 million Korean people, 'an outstanding strategist of the international revolutionary movement,' 'the leader of the liberation movement of the whole world,' 'a distinguished leader of the tricontinental peoples' and 'a symbol of anti-imperialist struggle.' They speak of him with boundless respect and veneration. video by todou.com
- published: 07 Feb 2008
- views: 599993
- author: rodrigorojo1
Kim Il Sung´s Africa and Europe visit 1975
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:24
- Updated: 05 Dec 2012
He visited Romania, Algeria, Mauritania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia
http://wn.com/Kim_Il_Sung´s_Africa_and_Europe_visit_1975
He visited Romania, Algeria, Mauritania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia
- published: 18 Dec 2007
- views: 30978
- author: grungergeez
Kim Jong Un and his wife visiting Kim Il Sung's and Kim Jong Il's Mausoleum - July 2012
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:57
- Updated: 24 Nov 2012
Kim Jong Un visits the Kumsusan Meomorial Palace of the Sun on the 18th anniversary of Death of Kim Il Sung at July 8th, 2012. North Korea Nordkorea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 Kim Il Sung - 김일성 Kim Jong Il - 김정일 Kim Jong Un - 김정은 Ri Sol Ju
http://wn.com/Kim_Jong_Un_and_his_wife_visiting_Kim_Il_Sung's_and_Kim_Jong_Il's_Mausoleum_July_2012
Kim Jong Un visits the Kumsusan Meomorial Palace of the Sun on the 18th anniversary of Death of Kim Il Sung at July 8th, 2012. North Korea Nordkorea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 Kim Il Sung - 김일성 Kim Jong Il - 김정일 Kim Jong Un - 김정은 Ri Sol Ju
- published: 09 Jul 2012
- views: 12176
- author: stimmekoreas
President Kim Il Sung Met Foreign Heads of State and Prominent Figures April 1970-December 1975.
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 56:22
- Updated: 09 Dec 2012
Д/ф "President Kim Il Sung Met Foreign Heads of State and Prominent Figures April 1970-December 1975" (КНДР, 1976 г., на английском языке). О встречах президента КНДР Ким Ир Сена с иностранными государственными и политическими деятелями.
http://wn.com/President_Kim_Il_Sung_Met_Foreign_Heads_of_State_and_Prominent_Figures_April_1970-December_1975
Д/ф "President Kim Il Sung Met Foreign Heads of State and Prominent Figures April 1970-December 1975" (КНДР, 1976 г., на английском языке). О встречах президента КНДР Ким Ир Сена с иностранными государственными и политическими деятелями.
- published: 11 Dec 2011
- views: 16319
- author: mavp1917
Thank you, Father Kim Il Sung
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:59
- Updated: 07 Dec 2012
Video Footage: KCTV
http://wn.com/Thank_you,_Father_Kim_Il_Sung
Children visiting Kim Il Sung University
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:08
- Updated: 24 Sep 2012
Pyongyang, June 5 (KCNA) -- South Hwanghae provincial delegates to the celebrations of the 66th anniversary of the Korean Children's Union (KCU) on Tuesday visited Kim Il Sung University, the parent body of the Juche-based education. The visitors laid bouquets at the statue of President Kim Il Sung on Ryongnam Hill on the campus and paid homage to him. After being briefed on the leadership exploits performed by President Kim Il Sung, leader Kim Jong Il and anti-Japanese war hero Kim Jong Suk for the development of the university, they toured the e-library and swimming complex built on a modern basis. Han Un Sim, KCU instructor at Anak Primary School in Anak County, told KCNA: "The visit to the university made our schoolchildren get a lot of fresh feelings. In particular, they were deeply impressed by the autograph of Generalissimo Kim Jong Il displayed at the e-library. The autograph clearly shows his strong will to turn our country into a sci-tech giant." Kim Chong Hyang, a delegate from Sinhung Secondary School in Sinchon County, said: "With the autograph kept deep in my mind, I will study harder for Korea and top the list in all class results. Thus, I will prepare myself to be an able worker for the country as wished by the dear respected Kim Jong Un." So Kyong Son, a chief KCU instructor at Sinwon Secondary School in Sinwon County, said: "Many delegates have expressed their desire to study at this university during their visit. I told them that they can materialize ...
http://wn.com/Children_visiting_Kim_Il_Sung_University
Pyongyang, June 5 (KCNA) -- South Hwanghae provincial delegates to the celebrations of the 66th anniversary of the Korean Children's Union (KCU) on Tuesday visited Kim Il Sung University, the parent body of the Juche-based education. The visitors laid bouquets at the statue of President Kim Il Sung on Ryongnam Hill on the campus and paid homage to him. After being briefed on the leadership exploits performed by President Kim Il Sung, leader Kim Jong Il and anti-Japanese war hero Kim Jong Suk for the development of the university, they toured the e-library and swimming complex built on a modern basis. Han Un Sim, KCU instructor at Anak Primary School in Anak County, told KCNA: "The visit to the university made our schoolchildren get a lot of fresh feelings. In particular, they were deeply impressed by the autograph of Generalissimo Kim Jong Il displayed at the e-library. The autograph clearly shows his strong will to turn our country into a sci-tech giant." Kim Chong Hyang, a delegate from Sinhung Secondary School in Sinchon County, said: "With the autograph kept deep in my mind, I will study harder for Korea and top the list in all class results. Thus, I will prepare myself to be an able worker for the country as wished by the dear respected Kim Jong Un." So Kyong Son, a chief KCU instructor at Sinwon Secondary School in Sinwon County, said: "Many delegates have expressed their desire to study at this university during their visit. I told them that they can materialize ...
- published: 05 Jun 2012
- views: 1433
- author: stimmekoreas
Kim Il Sung and Nicolae Ceaușescu (1975)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:21
- Updated: 30 Nov 2012
Don't forget to rate :) A video of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Kim Il Sung of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea together in Romania in 1975. ☭ Related Links ☭ My Channel: www.youtube.com North Korea Playlist: www.youtube.com My Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/Kim_Il_Sung_and_Nicolae_Ceaușescu_1975
Don't forget to rate :) A video of Nicolae Ceaușescu and Kim Il Sung of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea together in Romania in 1975. ☭ Related Links ☭ My Channel: www.youtube.com North Korea Playlist: www.youtube.com My Twitter: twitter.com
- published: 26 Jan 2012
- views: 1774
- author: CommunistWarrior1917
Rare: North Korean ad starring Kim il Sung !
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:18
- Updated: 11 Dec 2012
A 2001 Dutch commercial for Delta lloyd. North Korea movie ! Time to smile ! More commercials : www.youtube.com .. All rights reserved. For all inquiries, please mail to culturepub@wizdeo.com
http://wn.com/Rare_North_Korean_ad_starring_Kim_il_Sung_!
A 2001 Dutch commercial for Delta lloyd. North Korea movie ! Time to smile ! More commercials : www.youtube.com .. All rights reserved. For all inquiries, please mail to culturepub@wizdeo.com
- published: 09 Dec 2010
- views: 100099
- author: CulturePub
North Korea - Gigantic Parade with Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 10:43
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
Mass Parade for the 40th anniversary of the DPRK.
http://wn.com/North_Korea_Gigantic_Parade_with_Kim_Il_Sung_and_Kim_Jong_Il
Mass Parade for the 40th anniversary of the DPRK.
- published: 22 Jun 2010
- views: 32848
- author: stimmekoreas
Statues of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il unveiled in Kanggye City, Jagang Province
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 11:09
- Updated: 02 Dec 2012
Pyongyang, October 11 (KCNA) -- Statues of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il were erected in Kanggye City, Jagang Province. The statue of Kim Il Sung depicts him standing in his military uniform whose coat flying in the wind, his right hand held high and left hand taking a pair of binoculars. He seems to dynamically arouse the army and people of the DPRK to provide a turning-point in the Fatherland Liberation War. The statue of Kim Jong Il imposingly standing in his padded dress conveying so many stories about the Songun revolution depicts him with one of his hands placed on his waist. His face beaming with a broad smile looks as if he were wishing the great Paektusan power a rosy future. An unveiling ceremony took place on Thursday. North Korea (DPRK - Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) Nordkorea (DVRK - Demokratische Volksrepublik Korea) Corea del Nord - Repubblica Democratica Popolare di Corea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國
http://wn.com/Statues_of_Kim_Il_Sung_and_Kim_Jong_Il_unveiled_in_Kanggye_City,_Jagang_Province
Pyongyang, October 11 (KCNA) -- Statues of President Kim Il Sung and leader Kim Jong Il were erected in Kanggye City, Jagang Province. The statue of Kim Il Sung depicts him standing in his military uniform whose coat flying in the wind, his right hand held high and left hand taking a pair of binoculars. He seems to dynamically arouse the army and people of the DPRK to provide a turning-point in the Fatherland Liberation War. The statue of Kim Jong Il imposingly standing in his padded dress conveying so many stories about the Songun revolution depicts him with one of his hands placed on his waist. His face beaming with a broad smile looks as if he were wishing the great Paektusan power a rosy future. An unveiling ceremony took place on Thursday. North Korea (DPRK - Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) Nordkorea (DVRK - Demokratische Volksrepublik Korea) Corea del Nord - Repubblica Democratica Popolare di Corea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國
- published: 13 Oct 2012
- views: 673
- author: stimmekoreas
DPRK Movie Scene: Kim Il Sung head of anti-Japanese Guerilla Forces [Film: "Star of Korea"]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:37
- Updated: 10 Dec 2012
www.youtube.com 항일유격대 창건의 노래(예술영화《조선의 별》중에서) North Korea (DPRK - Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) Nordkorea (DVRK - Demokratische Volksrepublik Korea) Corea del Nord - Repubblica Democratica Popolare di Corea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國
http://wn.com/DPRK_Movie_Scene_Kim_Il_Sung_head_of_anti-Japanese_Guerilla_Forces_Film_Star_of_Korea_
www.youtube.com 항일유격대 창건의 노래(예술영화《조선의 별》중에서) North Korea (DPRK - Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) Nordkorea (DVRK - Demokratische Volksrepublik Korea) Corea del Nord - Repubblica Democratica Popolare di Corea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國
- published: 26 Sep 2012
- views: 1579
- author: stimmekoreas
North Koreans Mourn Death of Kim Il-Sung
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:23
- Updated: 01 Dec 2012
IF YOU LIKE THIS SUBSCRIBE On July 8, 1994, the Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il-Sung died. This video shows the mourning of the North Korean people after hearing of their fathers death. This video comes from atiu88 channel.
http://wn.com/North_Koreans_Mourn_Death_of_Kim_Il-Sung
IF YOU LIKE THIS SUBSCRIBE On July 8, 1994, the Great Leader, Comrade Kim Il-Sung died. This video shows the mourning of the North Korean people after hearing of their fathers death. This video comes from atiu88 channel.
- published: 18 May 2008
- views: 140088
- author: StalinLeninMao
![Song of General Kim Il Sung [Subtitles]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121213034109im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pwE10Uo_kgs/default.jpg "Song of General Kim Il Sung [Subtitles]")
Song of General Kim Il Sung [Subtitles]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:12
- Updated: 26 Nov 2012
Korean title: 김일성장군의 노래 Lyrics : Ri Chan (리찬) Composition : Kim Wong Gyun (김원균) 1946 Korean lyrics: www.big.or.jp English Lyrics: en.wikipedia.org MP3 download: dprkmusic.ath.cx Rodong Sinmun Apr. 15, Juche 101 (2012) Sunday Immortal Revolutionary Hymn Over 60 years have passed since "Song of General Kim Il Sung", an immortal revolutionary hymn was created. But today, too, the song is sung by all Korean people to praise their leader and by all other people of the world to praise the great man. Singing the song, the people of the DPRK greeted the spring of the liberation from the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists, plowing fields and operating factories for state building. The heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army achieved a great victory in the hard-fought Fatherland Liberation War. With the song, the people of the DPRK, firmly united around President Kim Il Sung, realized the socialist industrialization in a matter of only 14 years and demonstrated the might of the powerful socialist state of independence, self-sufficiency and self-reliant defense. The "Song of General Kim Il Sung", an immortal revolutionary hymn, touches the heartstrings of not only the Korean people, but all other people of the world. During the 8th FIFA World Cup in 1966 British spectators cheered the Korean team with flags of the DPRK, singing the "Song of General Kim Il Sung". Welcoming President Kim Il Sung on a visit to China, Beijing citizens sang the song. The "Song of ...
http://wn.com/Song_of_General_Kim_Il_Sung_Subtitles_
Korean title: 김일성장군의 노래 Lyrics : Ri Chan (리찬) Composition : Kim Wong Gyun (김원균) 1946 Korean lyrics: www.big.or.jp English Lyrics: en.wikipedia.org MP3 download: dprkmusic.ath.cx Rodong Sinmun Apr. 15, Juche 101 (2012) Sunday Immortal Revolutionary Hymn Over 60 years have passed since "Song of General Kim Il Sung", an immortal revolutionary hymn was created. But today, too, the song is sung by all Korean people to praise their leader and by all other people of the world to praise the great man. Singing the song, the people of the DPRK greeted the spring of the liberation from the colonial rule of the Japanese imperialists, plowing fields and operating factories for state building. The heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army achieved a great victory in the hard-fought Fatherland Liberation War. With the song, the people of the DPRK, firmly united around President Kim Il Sung, realized the socialist industrialization in a matter of only 14 years and demonstrated the might of the powerful socialist state of independence, self-sufficiency and self-reliant defense. The "Song of General Kim Il Sung", an immortal revolutionary hymn, touches the heartstrings of not only the Korean people, but all other people of the world. During the 8th FIFA World Cup in 1966 British spectators cheered the Korean team with flags of the DPRK, singing the "Song of General Kim Il Sung". Welcoming President Kim Il Sung on a visit to China, Beijing citizens sang the song. The "Song of ...
- published: 15 Apr 2012
- views: 4294
- author: tyrlop
Worldwide support for Kim Il Sung
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 70:07
- Updated: 05 Dec 2012
North Korea Nordkorea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 Kim Il Sung - 김일성 Kim Jong Il - 김정일 Kim Jong Un - 김정은
http://wn.com/Worldwide_support_for_Kim_Il_Sung
North Korea Nordkorea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 Kim Il Sung - 김일성 Kim Jong Il - 김정일 Kim Jong Un - 김정은
- published: 27 Jun 2012
- views: 1395
- author: stimmekoreas
Song of General Kim Il Sung
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:49
- Updated: 11 Nov 2012
Tribute to Kim Il Sung, the Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). ☭ Related Links ☭ My Channel: www.youtube.com North Korea Playlist: www.youtube.com Tribute Video's Playlist: www.youtube.com My blog: criticalmarxism.blogspot.com My Twitter: twitter.com
http://wn.com/Song_of_General_Kim_Il_Sung
Tribute to Kim Il Sung, the Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). ☭ Related Links ☭ My Channel: www.youtube.com North Korea Playlist: www.youtube.com Tribute Video's Playlist: www.youtube.com My blog: criticalmarxism.blogspot.com My Twitter: twitter.com
- published: 11 Jul 2012
- views: 395
- author: CommunistWarrior1917
Muammar al Gaddafi and Kim Il Sung - antiimperialist friendship!
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:58
- Updated: 09 Dec 2012
North Korea Nordkorea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 Kim Il Sung - 김일성 Kim Jong Il - 김정일 Kim Jong Un - 김정은 معمر القذافي الجماهيرية العربية الليبية الشعبية الاشتراكية العظمى
http://wn.com/Muammar_al_Gaddafi_and_Kim_Il_Sung_antiimperialist_friendship!
North Korea Nordkorea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 Kim Il Sung - 김일성 Kim Jong Il - 김정일 Kim Jong Un - 김정은 معمر القذافي الجماهيرية العربية الليبية الشعبية الاشتراكية العظمى
- published: 03 Jul 2012
- views: 2138
- author: stimmekoreas
The tower of Kim Il Sung´s Juche idea (DPRK)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:49
- Updated: 12 Dec 2012
Visiting the Juche Tower in Pyongyang. A wonderful view of the silent city. The tower is 150 m high (170 m incl the torch). It contains 25.550 blocks of stone, one for each day of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung´s life until his 70th birthday. (2011-07-27) I also recommend: "Mighty North Korean ten lane highway" youtu.be "From Beijing to Pyongyang (DPRK)" youtu.be "Passing through Nampo" youtu.be
http://wn.com/The_tower_of_Kim_Il_Sung´s_Juche_idea_DPRK
Visiting the Juche Tower in Pyongyang. A wonderful view of the silent city. The tower is 150 m high (170 m incl the torch). It contains 25.550 blocks of stone, one for each day of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung´s life until his 70th birthday. (2011-07-27) I also recommend: "Mighty North Korean ten lane highway" youtu.be "From Beijing to Pyongyang (DPRK)" youtu.be "Passing through Nampo" youtu.be
- published: 11 Dec 2012
- views: 12
- author: nilov71
![Kim Il Sung - liberator of Korea [Voice of Korea]](http://web.archive.org./web/20121213034109im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/D0kF3tBiIkc/default.jpg "Kim Il Sung - liberator of Korea [Voice of Korea]")
Kim Il Sung - liberator of Korea [Voice of Korea]
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:56
- Updated: 04 Nov 2012
Kim Il Sung - the liberator of Korea from Japanese Imperialism North Korea (DPRK - Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) Corea del Nord - Repubblica Democratica Popolare di Corea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國
http://wn.com/Kim_Il_Sung_liberator_of_Korea_Voice_of_Korea_
Kim Il Sung - the liberator of Korea from Japanese Imperialism North Korea (DPRK - Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) Corea del Nord - Repubblica Democratica Popolare di Corea Corea del Norte Corée du Nord Koreańska Republika Ludowo-Demokratyczna Корейская Народно-Демократическая Республика Kuzey Kore كوريا الشمالية 조선민주주의인민공화국 朝鮮民主主義人民共和國
- published: 16 Aug 2012
- views: 376
- author: stimmekoreas
KCNA (Floral Baskets Laid before Statues of Kim Il Sung)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:21
- Updated: 24 Oct 2012
Korean Central News Agency Copyright © 2000-2012 DPR of Korea
http://wn.com/KCNA_Floral_Baskets_Laid_before_Statues_of_Kim_Il_Sung
Korean Central News Agency Copyright © 2000-2012 DPR of Korea
- published: 09 Jul 2012
- views: 302
- author: rodrigorojo1
Kim Il Sung Eternal Sun Of Mankind
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:49
- Updated: 04 Dec 2012
Video Footage: KCTV Kim Il Sung Eternal Sun Of Mankind Today the entire Korean people and other world progressive humankind are significantly marking the Day of the Sun with the most humble reverence for President Kim Il Sung. April 15 when President Kim Il Sung, the eternal sun of Juche, was born is the greatest auspicious day that the Korean nation acclaimed the peerlessly great man for the first time in its thousands-long history and a day of a splendid stroke of luck that a new era of humankind and the dawn of Juche era were breaking. The whole life of President Kim Il Sung is a history of the brilliant sun who performed immortal exploits, no great men could make, by devoting his all for the fatherland and nation, the era and humankind upholding the banner of Juche. President Kim Il Sung is the benefactor of the national liberation, father of nation building and founder of socialist Korea. President Kim Il Sung, who embarked on the road of revolution in his early teens shouldering the destiny of the country and the nation, created the immortal Juche idea which constituted the highest stage in history of human ideology, thus opening a new era of the development of history, the Juche era, in which the oppressed and maltreated popular masses emerged as masters of the world. President Kim Il Sung is the pioneer of the revolutionary cause of Songun, benefactor of the national liberation who defeated Japanese imperialism and saved the country and nation by arms and ...
http://wn.com/Kim_Il_Sung_Eternal_Sun_Of_Mankind
Video Footage: KCTV Kim Il Sung Eternal Sun Of Mankind Today the entire Korean people and other world progressive humankind are significantly marking the Day of the Sun with the most humble reverence for President Kim Il Sung. April 15 when President Kim Il Sung, the eternal sun of Juche, was born is the greatest auspicious day that the Korean nation acclaimed the peerlessly great man for the first time in its thousands-long history and a day of a splendid stroke of luck that a new era of humankind and the dawn of Juche era were breaking. The whole life of President Kim Il Sung is a history of the brilliant sun who performed immortal exploits, no great men could make, by devoting his all for the fatherland and nation, the era and humankind upholding the banner of Juche. President Kim Il Sung is the benefactor of the national liberation, father of nation building and founder of socialist Korea. President Kim Il Sung, who embarked on the road of revolution in his early teens shouldering the destiny of the country and the nation, created the immortal Juche idea which constituted the highest stage in history of human ideology, thus opening a new era of the development of history, the Juche era, in which the oppressed and maltreated popular masses emerged as masters of the world. President Kim Il Sung is the pioneer of the revolutionary cause of Songun, benefactor of the national liberation who defeated Japanese imperialism and saved the country and nation by arms and ...
- published: 16 Mar 2010
- views: 25636
- author: rodrigorojo1
photo: AP / Reed Saxon
10 Dec 2012
The wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying Mexican-American singing superstar Jenni Rivera has been found in northern Mexico and there are no apparent survivors, authorities said. Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said on Sunday that "everything points toward" it being the US-registered Learjet 25 carrying Rivera and six other people from Monterrey en route to Toluca, Mexico ... 192 Source. ... Share ... ....(size: 17.5Kb)
photo: AP / Bullit Marquez
11 Dec 2012
The death toll brought about by typhoon “Pablo” continued to rise with 714 persons confirmed dead by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) yesterday while those missing ballooned to 890 as massive search, retrieval and relief operations continue in the typhoon-ravaged areas in Mindanao ... 4 ... They were subsequently brought to Caraga Regional Hospital ... (NHMFC) (P100,000) ... With AFP ....(size: 5.4Kb)
photo: AP / Ahn Young-joon
12 Dec 2012
South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told a nationally televised news conference that a South Korean ... Kim said ... South Korean President Lee Myung-bak planned an emergency national security council meeting on Wednesday, and the country’s Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan warned that North Korea will face grave consequences....(size: 2.7Kb)
photo: USAF / Staff Sgt. Jonathan Lovelady
10 Dec 2012
Article by WN.com Correspondent Dallas Darling. In the desert of central Australia still resides a primitive tribe known as the Arunta. This non-technological and stateless group, which mainly depends on hunting and gathering, had suffered several inexplicable deaths ... Therefore, they organized an atinga, or revenge group ... When the guiltless tribe learned of their approach, they sent out a delegation of young women as a token of peace....(size: 5.8Kb)
photo: AP / Todd Williamson
10 Dec 2012
MÉXICO, D.F., diciembre 9 (EL UNIVERSAL).- La Voz México, programa de talentos de Televisa, confirmó la muerte de la cantante Jenni Rivera, a través de su Twitter. "Que toquen fuerte las bandas, suelten por mí mariposas, apláudanme con sus palmas... http.//twitpic.com/bkmhl0 .Descanse en paz Jenni Rivera" ... Además, anunció un homenaje luctuoso dedicado a la cantante ... Descanse en Paz" ... ....(size: 2.1Kb)
The Los Angeles Times
13 Dec 2012
Kim Jong Un has been out in public far more often than his reclusive father, often showing off the broad, dimpled smile that makes him resemble his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder ... of Kim Il Sung's birth, giving the young leader credit for what, in fact, was done by his father ... "And we like it that he looks like Kim Il Sung."....(size: 37.3Kb)
Lexington Herald-Leader
13 Dec 2012
Director Kim Hye Jin said the satellite was broadcasting "Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung" and "Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il" in space ... the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder, and the inaugural year of leadership under his grandson, Kim Jong Un ... 17, North Korea will mark the anniversary of the death of leader Kim Jong Il. "How happy would our General (Kim Jong Il) have been," Pyongyang resident Rim Un Hui said....(size: 8.3Kb)
Seattle Post
13 Dec 2012
Director Kim Hye Jin said the satellite was broadcasting "Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung" and "Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il" in space ... the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder, and the inaugural year of leadership under his grandson, Kim Jong Un ... 17, North Korea will mark the anniversary of the death of leader Kim Jong Il. "How happy would our General (Kim Jong Il) have been," Pyongyang resident Rim Un Hui said....(size: 8.2Kb)
Sacramento Bee
13 Dec 2012
Director Kim Hye Jin said the satellite was broadcasting "Song of Gen. Kim Il Sung" and "Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il" in space ... the centenary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder, and the inaugural year of leadership under his grandson, Kim Jong Un ... 17, North Korea will mark the anniversary of the death of leader Kim Jong Il. "How happy would our General (Kim Jong Il) have been," Pyongyang resident Rim Un Hui said....(size: 7.9Kb)
Irish Times
13 Dec 2012
... yet 30 and who took over the reins of power a year ago after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, is keeping up the secretive state’s efforts to boost its military capabilities ... KCNA said the launch was also timed to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of President Kim Il-sung, Mr Kim’s grandfather, who founded North Korea in 1948....(size: 2.9Kb)
The New York Times
13 Dec 2012
SEOUL, South Korea — For North Korea’s inexperienced young leader, Kim Jong-un, the largely successful launching on Wednesday of a long-range rocket could not have come too soon ... Kim took over after the death last December of his father, the longtime North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, he has been trying to show himself to be a worthy successor to his father and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the North Korean founder....(size: 11.4Kb)
Voa News
13 Dec 2012
U.N ... South Korea's foreign minister, Kim Sung-hwan, criticized Pyongyang for ignoring repeated warnings and requests to cancel the launch ... x ... North Korea's news agency later gave further details, saying the satellite, orbiting between 500 and 584 kilometers above the Earth, helps mark the 100th birth anniversary of the country's founding leader, Kim Il Sung ... Youmi Kim in the VOA Seoul bureau contributed to this report. ....(size: 6.3Kb)
STL Today
13 Dec 2012
North Korea's successful launch of a satellite into space after several failures, including one in April. was met with cheers in Pyongyang and trepidation almost everywhere else ... GETTING INTO ORBIT ... The launch helped North Koreans mark the first anniversary of the death of leader Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17, the end of a year celebrating the centenary of the birth of national founder Kim Il Sung, and the rise of young leader Kim Jong Un ... ....(size: 6.0Kb)
Star Tribune
13 Dec 2012
North Korea's successful launch of a satellite into space after several failures, including one in April. was met with cheers in Pyongyang and trepidation almost everywhere else ... GETTING INTO ORBIT ... The launch helped North Koreans mark the first anniversary of the death of leader Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17, the end of a year celebrating the centenary of the birth of national founder Kim Il Sung, and the rise of young leader Kim Jong Un ... ....(size: 6.3Kb)
US News
12 Dec 2012
It's been 100 years since the birth of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung; nearly a year since the death of his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, and the first year in power for young leader Kim Jong Un ... This year, two days before Kim Il ... If the April launch attempt was seen as a gift to Kim Il Sung, the December success may be an homage to Kim Jong Il....(size: 4.4Kb)
Tampa Bay Online
12 Dec 2012
It's been 100 years since the birth of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung; nearly a year since the death of his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, and the first year in power for young leader Kim Jong Un ... This year, two days before Kim Il ... If the April launch attempt was seen as a gift to Kim Il Sung, the December success may be an homage to Kim Jong Il....(size: 7.4Kb)
Sacramento Bee
12 Dec 2012
It's been 100 years since the birth of North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung; nearly a year since the death of his son and successor, Kim Jong Il, and the first year in power for young leader Kim Jong Un ... This year, two days before Kim Il ... If the April launch attempt was seen as a gift to Kim Il Sung, the December success may be an homage to Kim Jong Il....(size: 7.2Kb)
The Guardian
12 Dec 2012
... and grandfather, Kim Il-sung ... "At a time when great yearnings and reverence for Kim Jong-il pervade the whole country, its scientists and technicians brilliantly carried out his behests to launch a scientific and technological satellite in 2012, the year marking the 100th birth anniversary of President Kim Il-sung," the KCNA news agency said....(size: 7.1Kb)
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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2012) |
| Kim II-sung 김일성 金日成 |
|
|---|---|
 |
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| Official Kim Il-sung portrait. | |
| Eternal President of the Republic (Appellation) | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 8 July 1994 (&1000000000000001700000017 years, &10000000000000354000000354 days) |
|
| President of North Korea | |
| In office 28 December 1972 – 8 July 1994 (&1000000000000002100000021 years, &10000000000000192000000192 days) |
|
| Preceded by | Position created Choi Yong-kun, Head of State as President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished (Proclaimed Eternal President of the Republic after his death) |
| Prime Minister of North Korea | |
| In office 9 September 1948 – 28 December 1972 |
|
| Preceded by | Position created |
| Succeeded by | Kim Il (Premier) |
| General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea | |
| In office 11 October 1966 – 8 July 1994 |
|
| Preceded by | Himself as Chairman |
| Succeeded by | Kim Jong-il |
| Chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea | |
| In office 30 June 1949 – 11 October 1966 |
|
| Preceded by | Kim Tu-bong |
| Succeeded by | Himself as General Secretary |
| Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of North Korea | |
| In office 28 August 1946 – 30 June 1949 |
|
| Chairman | Kim Tu-bong |
| Preceded by | Position created |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Chairman of the North Korea Bureau of the Communist Party of Korea | |
| In office 17 December 1945 – 28 August 1946 |
|
| Preceded by | Kim Yong-bom |
| Succeeded by | Position abolished |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kim Sŏng-ju (1912-04-15)15 April 1912 Mangyŏngdae, Heian-nandō, Japanese Korea |
| Died | 8 July 1994(1994-07-08) (aged 82) Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea |
| Resting place | Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea |
| Nationality | North Korean |
| Political party | Workers’ Party of Korea |
| Spouse(s) | Kim Jong-suk (d. 1949) Kim Song-ae |
| Children | Kim Jong-il Kim Man-il Kim Kyong-hui Kim Kyong-jin Kim Pyong-il Kim Yong-il |
| Residence | Pyongyang, North Korea |
| Occupation | Eternal President of the Republic |
| Profession | President of North Korea |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  Soviet Union Democratic People's Republic of Korea |
| Service/branch | Soviet Armed Forces Korean People's Army |
| Years of service | 1941–1945 1948–1994 |
| Rank | Dae wonsu (Grand Marshal) |
| Commands | All (supreme commander) |
| Battles/wars | World War II Korean War |
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This article contains Korean text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hangul or Hanja. |
| Korean name | |
|---|---|
| Chosŏn'gŭl | 김일성 |
| Hancha | 金日成 |
| McCune–Reischauer | Kim Il-sŏng |
| Revised Romanization | Gim Il-seong |
| North Korea |
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Kim Il-sung (15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, commonly referred to as "North Korea", from its establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994.[1] He held the posts of Prime Minister from 1948 to 1972 and President from 1972 to his death. He was also the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea from 1949 to 1994 (titled as chairman from 1949 to 1966 and as general secretary after 1966).
His tenure as leader of North Korea has often been described as autocratic, and he established an all-pervasive cult of personality. From the mid-1960s, he promoted his self-developed Juche variant of communist national organization,[2] which later replaced Marxism-Leninism as the ideology of the state in 1972. In the Library of Congress Country Study on North Korea in 2009, he was described as "one of the most intriguing figures of the twentieth century". He outlived Joseph Stalin by four decades, Mao Zedong by two, and remained in power during the terms of office of six South Korean presidents, 7 Soviet leaders, ten U.S. presidents, and twenty-one Japanese prime ministers.
Following his death in 1994, he was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il, who in turn was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-un. North Korea officially refers to Kim Il-sung as the "Great Leader" (Suryong in Korean 수령) and he is designated in the North Korean constitution as the country's "Eternal President". His birthday is a public holiday in North Korea.
Contents |
Life[link]
Early years[link]
Many of the early records of his life come from his own personal accounts and official North Korean government publications, which often conflict with external sources. Nevertheless, there is some consensus on at least the basic story of his early life, corroborated by witnesses from the period.
Kim was born to Kim Hyŏng-jik and Kang Pan-sŏk, who gave him the name Kim Sŏng-ju; he had two younger brothers, Ch’ŏl-chu and Yŏng-ju. The ancestral seat (pon’gwan) of Kim's family is Chŏnju, North Chŏlla Province, and, if the legend of the Chŏnju Kim is true, he was a descendant of King Gyeongsun of Silla.[3] What little that is known about the family contends that sometime around the time of the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592–1598), a direct ancestor moved north. The claim may be understood in light of the fact that the early Chosŏn government’s policy of populating the north resulted in mass resettlement of southern farmers in Pyŏngan and Hamgyŏng regions in the 15th and 16th centuries. At any rate, the majority of the Chŏnju Kim today live in North Korea, and extant Chŏnju Kim genealogies provide spotty records.
The exact history of Kim's family is somewhat obscure. According to Kim himself the family was neither very poor nor comfortably well-off, but was always a step away from poverty. Kim claims he was raised in a Presbyterian family, that his maternal grandfather was a Protestant minister, that his father had gone to a missionary school and was an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and that his parents were very active in the religious community.[4][5][6] According to the official version, Kim’s family participated in anti-Japanese activities and in 1920 they fled to Manchuria. Another view seems to be that his family settled in Manchuria like many Koreans at the time to escape famine. Nonetheless, Kim’s parents apparently did play a minor role in some activist groups, though whether their cause was missionary, nationalist, or both is unclear.[7][8]
Kim's father died in 1926, when Kim was fourteen years old. In October 1926, Kim founded the Down-With-Imperialism Union. Kim attended Whasung Military Academy in 1926, but when later finding the academy's training methods outdated, he quit in 1927. From that time, he attended Yuwen Middle School in Jilin up to 1930,[9] where he rejected the feudal traditions of older generation Koreans and became interested in Communist ideologies; his formal education ended when he was arrested and jailed for his subversive activities. At seventeen, Kim had become the youngest member of an underground Marxist organization with fewer than twenty members, led by Hŏ So, who belonged to the South Manchurian Communist Youth Association. The police discovered the group three weeks after it was formed in 1929, and jailed Kim for several months.[10][11]
Communist and guerrilla activities[link]
The Communist Party of Korea had been founded in 1925, but had been thrown out of the Comintern in the early 1930s for being too nationalist. In 1931, Kim had joined the Communist Party of China. He joined various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and in 1935 he became a member of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by the Communist Party of China. Kim was appointed the same year to serve as political commissar for the 3rd detachment of the second division, around 160 soldiers.[7] It was here that Kim met the man who would become his mentor as a Communist, Wei Zhengmin, Kim’s immediate superior officer, who was serving at the time as chairman of the Political Committee of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. Wei reported directly to Kang Sheng, a high-ranking party member close to Mao Zedong in Yan'an, until Wei’s death on 8 March 1941.[12]
Also in 1935 Kim took the name Kim Il-sung, meaning "become the sun."[13] Several sources indicate that the Kim Il-sung name had previously been used by a prominent early leader of the Korean resistance.[8] Grigory Mekler, who claims to have prepared Kim to lead North Korea, says that Kim assumed this name while in the Soviet Union in the early 1940s from a former commander who had died.[14] Additionally, a number of Koreans simply did not believe that Kim, in his 30s at the time of the DPRK's founding, could have done everything that state propaganda claimed.[15] Historian Andrei Lankov has stated that the claim that the name Kim Il-sung was somehow switched with the name of the “original” Kim is unlikely to be true. Several witnesses knew Kim before and after his time in the Soviet Union, including his superior, Zhou Baozhong, who dismissed the claim of a “second” Kim in his diaries.[16]
Kim was appointed commander of the 6th division in 1937, at the age of 24, controlling a few hundred men in a group that came to be known as “Kim Il Sung’s division.” It was while he was in command of this division that he executed a raid on Poch’onbo, on 4 June. Although Kim’s division only captured a small Japanese-held town just across the Korean border for a few hours, it was nonetheless considered a military success at this time, when the guerrilla units had experienced difficulty in capturing any enemy territory. This accomplishment would grant Kim some measure of fame among Chinese guerrillas, and North Korean biographies would later exploit it as a great victory for Korea. Kim was appointed commander of the 2nd operational region for the 1st Army, but by the end of 1940, he was the only 1st Army leader still alive. Pursued by Japanese troops, Kim and what remained of his army escaped by crossing the Amur River into the Soviet Union.[17] Kim was sent to a camp near Khabarovsk, where the Korean Communist guerrillas were retrained by the Soviets. Kim became a Major in the Soviet Red Army and served in it until the end of World War II.
In later years, Kim would heavily embellish his guerrilla feats in order to build up his personality cult. He was portrayed as a boy-conspirator who joined the resistance at 14 and had founded a battle-ready army at 19.[8]
Historian Bruce Cumings concludes:
There are ridiculous myths about this guerrilla resistance in both Koreas today: the North claims that Kim single-handedly defeated the Japanese, and the South claims that Kim is an imposter who stole the name of a revered patriot.[18]
Return to Korea[link]
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This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011) |
When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan in August 1945, it fully expected a long, drawn-out conflict. However, much to Stalin's surprise, the Red Army churned into Pyongyang with almost no resistance on 15 August. Stalin realized he needed someone to head a new government so he asked Lavrenty Beria to recommend possible candidates. Beria met Kim several times before recommending him to Stalin.
Kim arrived in North Korea on 22 August after 26 years in exile. According to Leonid Vassin, an officer with the Soviet MVD, Kim was essentially "created from zero." For one, his Korean was marginal at best; he'd only had eight years of formal education, all of it in Chinese. He needed considerable coaching to read a speech the MVD prepared for him at a Communist Party congress three days after he arrived. They also systematically destroyed most of the true leaders of the resistance who ended up north of the 38th parallel.[8]
After independence[link]
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This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011) |
In September 1945, Kim was installed by the Soviets as head of the Provisional People’s Committee. He was not, at this time, the head of the Communist Party, whose headquarters were in Seoul in the US-occupied south. During his early years as leader, he assumed a position of influence largely due to the backing of the Korean population which was supportive of his fight against Japanese occupation.
One of Kim’s accomplishments was his establishment of a professional army, the Korean People's Army (KPA) aligned with the Communists, formed from a cadre of guerrillas and former soldiers who had gained combat experience in battles against the Japanese and later Nationalist Chinese troops. From their ranks, using Soviet advisers and equipment, Kim constructed a large army skilled in infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare. Before the outbreak of the Korean War, Joseph Stalin equipped the KPA with modern heavy tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms. Kim also formed an air force, equipped at first with ex-Soviet propeller-driven fighter and attack aircraft. Later, North Korean pilot candidates were sent to the Soviet Union and China to train in MiG-15 jet aircraft at secret bases.[19]
Prime Minister of North Korea[link]
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This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2011) |
Although original plans called for all-Korean elections sponsored by the United Nations, in May 1948 the South declared statehood as the Republic of Korea, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed on 9 September, with Kim as premier. On 12 October, the Soviet Union recognized Kim's government as the only lawful government on the peninsula. The Communist Party merged with the New People's Party to form the Workers Party of North Korea (of which Kim was vice-chairman). In 1949, the Workers Party of North Korea merged with its southern counterpart to become the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) with Kim as party chairman.
By 1949, the communists had consolidated their authority in North Korea. All parties and mass organizations were members the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, a popular front but in which the Workers Party predominated. Around this time, the first statues of Kim appeared, and he began calling himself "Great Leader."[8]
Korean War[link]
Main article: Korean War
Archival material suggests[20][21][22] that North Korea's decision to invade South Korea was Kim's initiative, not a Soviet one. Evidence suggests that Soviet intelligence, through its espionage sources in the US government and British SIS, had obtained information on the limitations of US atomic bomb stockpiles as well as defense program cuts, leading Stalin to conclude that the Truman administration would not intervene in Korea.[23]
The People’s Republic of China acquiesced only reluctantly to the idea of Korean reunification after being told by Kim that Stalin had approved the action.[20][21][22] The Chinese did not provide North Korea with direct military support (other than logistics channels) until United Nations troops, largely US forces, had nearly reached the Yalu River late in 1950. At the outset of the war in June and July, North Korean forces captured Seoul and occupied most of the South, save for a small section of territory in the southeast region of the South which was called the Pusan Perimeter. But in September, the North Koreans were driven back by the US-led counter attack which started with the UN landing in Incheon, followed by a combined South Korean-US-UN offensive from the Pusan Perimeter. North Korean history emphasizes that the United States had previously invaded and occupied the South, allegedly with the intention to push further north and into the Asian continent. Based on these assumptions, it portrays the KPA invasion of the South as a counter-attack.[24] By October, UN forces had retaken Seoul and invaded the North to reunify the country under the South. On 19 October, US and South Korean troops captured P’yŏngyang, forcing Kim and his government to flee north, first to Sinuiju and eventually into China.
On 25 October 1950, after sending various warnings of their intent to intervene if UN forces did not halt their advance,[25] Chinese troops in the thousands crossed the Yalu River and entered the war as allies of the KPA. There were nevertheless tensions between Kim and the Chinese government. Kim had been warned of the likelihood of an amphibious landing at Incheon, which was ignored. There was also a sense that the North Koreans had paid little in war compared to the Chinese who had fought for their country for decades against foes with better technology.[26] The UN troops were forced to withdraw and Chinese troops retook P’yŏngyang in December and Seoul in January 1951. In March, UN forces began a new offensive, retaking Seoul and advanced north once again halting at a point just north of the 38th Parallel. After a series of offensives and counter-offensives by both sides, followed by a grueling period of largely static trench warfare which lasted from the summer of 1951 to July 1953, the front was stabilized along what eventually became the permanent "Armistice Line" of 27 July 1953. During the stalemate warfare, North Korea was devastated by US air raids with very few buildings left standing in the capital and elsewhere in the country. By the time of the armistice, upwards of 3.5 million Koreans on both sides had died in the conflict.
During the war, Kim Il-sung was said to have traveled extensively to China and the Soviet Union seeking a way to end the war with his nation and government intact as heavy US and UN aerial bombing of North Korea was reducing his country to one that resembled a wasteland. Chinese and Russian documents from that time reveal that while Kim became increasingly desperate to establish a truce, since the likelihood that further fighting would successfully unify Korea under his rule became more remote with the UN and US presence. Kim also resented the Chinese taking over the majority of the fighting in his country, with Chinese forces stationed at the center of the front line, and the Korean Peoples Army being mostly restricted to the coastal flanks of the front.
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Leader of North Korea[link]
Prime Minister[link]
Restored as the leader of North Korea, Kim returned to the country after war's end and immediately embarked on a large reconstruction effort for the country devastated by the war. He launched a five-year national economic plan to establish a command economy, with all industry owned by the state and all agriculture collectivised. The nation was founded on egalitarian principles intent on eliminating class differences and the economy was based upon the needs of workers and peasants. The economy was focused on heavy industry and arms production. Both South and North Korea retained huge armed forces to defend the 1953 Demilitarized Zone, although no foreign troops were permanently stationed in North Korea. All Chinese troops that fought alongside the North Korean army during the war were removed from North Korea by 1957.
Kim's hold on power was rather shaky. To strengthen it, he claimed that the United States deliberately spread diseases among the North Korean population. While Moscow and Beijing later determined that these charges were false, they continued to help spread this rumour for many years to come. He also conducted North Korea's first large-scale purges in part to scare the people into accepting this false account. Unlike Stalin's Great Purge, these took place without even the formalities of a trial. Victims often simply disappeared into the growing network of prison camps.[8]
During the late 1950s, Kim was seen as an orthodox Communist leader, and an enthusiastic satellite of the Soviet Union. His speeches were liberally sprinkled with praises to Stalin. However, he sided with China during the Sino-Soviet split, opposing the reforms brought by Nikita Khrushchev, whom he believed was acting in opposition to Communism. He distanced himself from the Soviet Union, removing mention of his Red Army career from official North Korean history, and began reforming the country to his own radical Stalinist tastes. Kim was seen by many in North Korea, and in some parts elsewhere in the world, as an influential anti-revisionist leader in the communist movement. In 1956, anti-Kim elements encouraged by de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union emerged within the Party to criticize Kim and demand reforms.[27] After a period of vacillation, Kim instituted a purge, executing some who had been found guilty of treason and forcing the rest into exile.[27]
By the 1960s, Kim's relationship with the great Communist powers in the region had become difficult. Despite his opposition to de-Stalinization, Kim never severed his relations with the Soviets. He found the Chinese unreliable allies due to the unstable state of affairs under Mao, leaving the DPRK somewhere in between the two sides. The Cultural Revolution in China, however, prompted Kim to side with the Soviets, the decision reinforced by the policies of Leonid Brezhnev. This infuriated Mao and the anti-Soviet Red Guards. As a result, the PRC immediately denounced Kim's leadership, produced anti-Kim propaganda, and subsequently began reconciliation with the United States.[citation needed]
President of North Korea[link]
At the same time, Kim reinstated relations with most of Eastern Europe's communist countries, primarily Erich Honecker's East Germany and Nicolae Ceauşescu's Romania. Ceauşescu, in particular, was heavily influenced by Kim's ideology, and the personality cult that grew around him in Romania was very similar to that of Kim. However, Kim and Albania's Enver Hoxha (another independent-minded Stalinist) would remain fierce enemies[28] and relations between North Korea and Albania would remain cold and tense up until Hoxha's death in 1985. At the same time, Kim was establishing an extensive personality cult. North Koreans were taught that Kim was the "Sun of the Nation" and could do no wrong. Kim developed the policy and ideology of Juche (self-reliance 주체 사상) rather than having North Korea become a Soviet satellite state.
In the mid-1960s, Kim became impressed with the efforts of North Vietnam's Hồ Chí Minh to reunify Vietnam through guerilla warfare and thought something similar might be possible in Korea. Infiltration and subversion efforts were thus greatly stepped up against US forces and the leadership that they supported. These efforts culminated in an attempt to storm the Blue House and assassinate President Park Chung-hee. North Korean troops thus took a much more aggressive stance toward US forces in and around South Korea, engaging US Army troops in fire-fights along the Demilitarized Zone. The 1968 capture of the crew of the spy ship USS Pueblo was a part of this campaign.
A new constitution was proclaimed in December 1972, under which Kim became President of North Korea. In 1980, he had decided that his son Kim Jong-il would succeed him, and increasingly delegated the running of the government to him. The Kim family was supported by the army, due to Kim Il-sung’s revolutionary record and the support of the veteran defense minister, O Chin-u. At the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim publicly designated his son as his successor.
Later years[link]
From about this time, however, North Korea encountered increasing economic difficulties. The practical effect of Juche was to cut the country off from virtually all foreign trade to be entirely self reliant. The economic reforms of Deng Xiaoping in China from 1979 onward meant that trade with the moribund economy of North Korea held decreasing interest for China. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, during 1989–1991, completed North Korea's virtual isolation. These events led to mounting economic difficulties as Kim refused to issue any kind of economic or democratic reforms.[citation needed]
North Korea repeatedly predicted that Korea would be re-united before Kim’s 70th birthday in 1982, and there were fears in the West that Kim would launch a new Korean War. But by this time, the disparity in economic and military power between the North and the South (where the US military presence continues) made such a venture impossible.[citation needed]
As he aged, starting in the late 1970s, Kim developed a growth on the right-back of his neck which was a calcium deposit. Its close location near his brain and spinal cord made it inoperable. Because of its unappealing nature, North Korean reporters and photographers, from then on, always shot and filmed Kim while standing from his same slight-left angle to hide the growth from official photographs and newsreels, which became an increasingly difficult task as the growth reached the size of a baseball by the late 1980s.[29]
To ensure a full succession of leadership to his son and designated successor Kim Jong Il, Kim turned over his chairmanship of North Korea's National Defense Commission- the body mainly responsible for control of the armed forces as well as the supreme commandership of the country's now million-man strong military force, the Korean People's Army to his son in 1991 and 1993.
So far, the elder Kim remained as the country's president, general-secretary of its ruling communist Worker's Party of Korea and the chairman of the Party's Central Military Commission- the party's organization that has supreme supervision and authority over military matters.
In early 1994, Kim began investing in nuclear power to offset energy shortages brought on by economic problems. This was the first of many "nuclear crises". On 19 May 1994, Kim ordered spent fuel to be unloaded from the already disputed nuclear research facility in Yongbyon. Despite repeated chiding from Western nations, Kim continued to conduct nuclear research and carry on with the uranium enrichment program. In June 1994, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter travelled to Pyongyang for talks with Kim. To the astonishment of the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Kim agreed to stop his nuclear research program and seemed to be embarking upon a new opening to the West.[citation needed]
Death[link]
Main article: Death and funeral of Kim Il-sung
By the early 1990s, North Korea was isolated from the outside world, except for limited trade and contacts with China, Russia, Vietnam and Cuba. Its economy was crippled by huge expenditures on armaments, and the agricultural sector was unable to feed its population. At the same time, the state-run North Korean media continued to praise Kim.
On 8 July 1994, at age 82, Kim Il-sung collapsed from a sudden heart attack. After the heart attack, Kim Jong-il ordered the team of doctors who were constantly at his father's side to leave, and for the country's best doctors to be flown in from Pyongyang. After several hours, the doctors from Pyongyang arrived, and despite their efforts to save him, Kim Il-sung died. After the traditional Confucian Mourning period, his death was declared thirty hours later.[30]
Kim Il-sung's death resulted in nationwide mourning and a ten-day mourning period was declared by Kim Jong-il. His funeral in Pyongyang was attended by hundreds of thousands of people from all over North Korea, many of whom were mourning dramatically. Kim Il-sung's body was placed in a public mausoleum at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his preserved and embalmed body lies under a glass coffin for viewing purposes. His head rests on a Korean-style pillow and he is covered by the flag of the Workers Party of Korea. Newsreel video of the funeral at Pyongyang was broadcast on several networks, and can now be found on various websites.[31]
Family life[link]
Kim Il-sung married twice. His first wife, Kim Jong-suk, gave birth to two sons and a daughter. Kim Jong-il was his oldest son. The other son (Kim Man-il, or Shura Kim) of this marriage died in 1947 in a swimming accident and his wife Kim Jong-suk died at the age of 31 while giving birth to a stillborn baby girl. Kim married Kim Sŏng-ae in 1951, and it is believed he had three children with her: Kim Yŏng-il (not to be confused with the former Premier of North Korea of the same name), Kim Kyŏng-il and Kim Pyong-il. Kim Pyong-il was prominent in Korean politics until he became ambassador to Hungary. Since 1998 he has been ambassador to Poland.
Kim was reported to have other illegitimate children, as he was well known for having numerous affairs and secret relationships. They included Kim Hyŏn-nam (born 1972, head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party since 2002).[32]
Ancestry[link]
Names of Supreme Leaders of the DPRK are highlighted in bold.
Name and image[link]
There are over 500 statues of Kim Il-sung in North Korea.[33] The most prominent are at Kim Il-sung University, Kim Il-sung Stadium, Kim Il-sung Square, Kim Il-sung Bridge and the Immortal Statue of Kim Il-sung. Some statues have been reported to have been destroyed by explosions or damaged with graffiti by North Korean activists.[34] Yeong Saeng ("eternal life") monuments have been erected throughout the country, each dedicated to the departed "Eternal Leader", at which citizens are expected to pay annual tribute on his official birthday or the commemoration of his death.[35] It is also traditional that North Korean newly weds, immediately after their wedding, go to the nearest statue of Kim Il Sung to lay flowers at his feet.[citation needed]
Kim Il-sung's image is prominent in places associated with public transportation, hanging at every North Korean train station and airport.[33] It is also placed prominently at the border crossings between China and North Korea. His portrait is featured on the front of all recent North Korean won banknotes. Thousands of gifts to Kim Il-sung from foreign leaders are housed in the International Friendship Exhibition.
Works[link]
Kim Il-sung was the author of many works and they are published in books. His works are published by the Workers' Party of Korea Publishing House and among them are the 100-volume Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works (김일성전집)[36] and his Selected Works. These include new year speeches, and other speeches delivered on different occasions. Shortly before his death, he also published an autobiography entitled "With the Century" in 8 volumes.
According to official North Korean sources, Kim Il-sung was also the original writer of The Flower Girl, a revolutionary theatrical opera, which was made into a film adaptation in 1972.[37][38][39]
Gallery[link]
Paintings and Murals of Kim Il-sung[link]
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A propaganda painting of Kim Il-sung, commonly found around North Korean cities.
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A painting of Kim Il-sung meeting up with farmers.
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A mural dedicated to Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang.
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A mural of Kim Il-sung giving a speech in Pyongyang.
Portraits of Kim Il-sung[link]
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A portrait of Kim Il-sung.
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Portraits of North Korean leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in Chongryon school, Tokyo, Japan.
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A North Korean voting booth containing portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il under the national flag. Below the portraits is the ballot box
See also[link]
|
This article contains Korean text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hangul or Hanja. |
References[link]
- ^ "김일성, 쿠바의 ‘혁명영웅’ 체게바라를 만난 날" (in Korean). DailyNK. 15 April 2008. http://www.dailynk.com/korean/read.php?cataId=nk00500&num=55181.
- ^ Herman, Steve (13 July 2004). "North Korea: ten years later". Asian Research. http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2209.html. Retrieved 2 November 2008.
- ^ "모악산 전주 김씨 시조묘를 찾아서" (in Korean). Tongilnews. 29 January 2002. http://www.tongilnews.com/news/quickViewArticleView.html?idxno=15495. Retrieved 25 April 2011.
- ^ Kimjongilia – The Movie – Learn More
- ^ "PETER HITCHENS: North Korea, the last great Marxist bastion, is a real-life Truman show". Daily Mail (London). 8 October 2007. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486079/PETER-HITCHENS-North-Korea-great-Marxist-bastion-real-life-Truman-show.html.
- ^ Byrnes, Sholto (7 May 2010). "The Rage Against God, By Peter Hitchens". The Independent (London). http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-rage-against-god-by-peter-hitchens-1965109.html.
- ^ a b Lankov, Andrei, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea 1945–1960, Rutgers University Press (2002), p. 53.
- ^ a b c d e f Becker, Jasper (2005). Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517044-3.
- ^ Sang-Hun, Choe; Lafraniere, Sharon (27 August 2010). "Carter Wins Release of American in North Korea". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/28/world/asia/28korea.html?_r=1&hp.
- ^ Lankov, Andrei, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea 1945–1960, Rutgers University Press (2002), p. 52.
- ^ Suh Dae-Sook, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader, Columbia University Press (1998) p. 7.
- ^ Suh Dae-Sook, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader, Columbia University Press (1998) pp. 8–10.
- ^ Bradley K. Martin (2004). Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. Thomas Dunne Books. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-312-32322-6.
- ^ Staff writer. "Soviets groomed Kim Il Sung for leadership". Vladivostok News. http://vn.vladnews.ru/Arch/2003/ISS345/News/upd10.HTM.
- ^ Hong An. (Interview). The Cold War. CNN. Washington, DC. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-5/hong1.html.
- ^ Lankov, Andrei (2002). From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea 1945–1960. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. p. 55. ISBN 0-8135-3117-9.
- ^ Lankov, Andrei (2002). From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea 1945–1960. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 53–54. ISBN 0-8135-3117-9.
- ^ Cumings, Bruce (1997). Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History. New York: W W Norton & Co. p. 160. ISBN 0-393-04011-9.
- ^ Blair, Clay, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, Naval Institute Press (2003).
- ^ a b Weathersby, Kathryn, The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 2, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 432
- ^ a b Goncharov, Sergei N., Lewis, John W. and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (1993)
- ^ a b Mansourov, Aleksandr Y., Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China’s Decision to Enter the Korean War, 16 September – 15 October 1950: New Evidence from the Russian Archives, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issues 6–7 (Winter 1995/1996): 94–107
- ^ Sudoplatov, Pavel Anatoli, Schecter, Jerrold L., and Schecter, Leona P., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness — A Soviet Spymaster, Little Brown, Boston (1994)
- ^ Ho Jong-ho et al. (1977) The US Imperialists Started the Korean War
- ^ David Halberstam. Halberstam, David (25 September 2007). The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (p. 23). Hyperion. Kindle Edition.
- ^ Halberstam, David (25 September 2007). The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (pp. 335–336). Hyperion. Kindle Edition.
- ^ a b Lankov, Andrei N., Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956, Honolulu: Hawaii University Press (2004), ISBN 978-0-8248-2809-7
- ^ CEU.hu, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research 17 December 1979 quoting Hoxha's Reflections on China Volume II: "In Pyongyang, I believe that even Tito will be astonished at the proportions of the cult of his host, which has reached a level unheard of anywhere else, either in past or present times, let alone in a country which calls itself socialist."[dead link]
- ^ Cumings, Bruce, North Korea: Another Country, The New Press, New York, 2003, p. xii.
- ^ Demick, Barbara: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.
- ^ Scenes of lamentation after Kim Il-sung’s death
- ^ Henry, Terrence (May 2005). After Kim Jong Il, The Atlantic Monthly.
- ^ a b Portal, Jane; British Museum (2005). Art under control in North Korea. Reaktion Books. p. 82. ISBN 978-1-86189-236-2.
- ^ Becker, Jasper (2007). Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford University Press US. p. 201. ISBN 978-0-19-530891-4.
- ^ "Controversy Stirs Over Kim Monument at PUST" NK Daily.. Retrieved 24 April 2010.
- ^ "Complete Collection of Kim Il Sung's Works" Off Press
- ^ 가극 작품 – NK Chosun
- ^ 2008年03月26日, 金日成原创《卖花姑娘》5月上海唱响《卖花歌》 – 搜狐娱乐
- ^ "With the Century" – Complete biography of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung – Korea-DPR.com
Further reading[link]
- Blair, Clay, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, Naval Institute Press (2003)
- Goncharov, Sergei N., Lewis, John W. and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (1993)
- Kim Il-sung (1993). With the Century. Korean Friendship Association. http://www.korea-dpr.com/lib/202.pdf.
- Mansourov, Aleksandr Y., Stalin, Mao, Kim, and China's Decision to Enter the Korean War, 16 September – 15 October 1950: New Evidence from the Russian Archives, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, Issues 6–7 (Winter 1995/1996)
- Martin, Bradley (2004). Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty. St. Martins.
- Sudoplatov, Pavel Anatoli, Schecter, Jerrold L., and Schecter, Leona P., Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness — A Soviet Spymaster, Little Brown, Boston (1994)
- Suh, Dae-Sook, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press (1988)
- Weathersby, Kathryn, The Soviet Role in the Early Phase of the Korean War, The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 2, no. 4 (Winter 1993)
- Christian Kracht, Eva Munz, Lukas Nikol, "The Ministry Of Truth. Kim Jong Ils North Korea", Feral House, October 2007, 132 pages, 88 color photographs, ISBN 978932595277
- NKIDP: Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula: 1968–1969, A Critical Oral History
- Baik Bong, "From Birth to Triumphant Return to Homeland," "From Building Democratic Korea to Chollima Flight," and "From Independent National Economy to 10-Point Political Programme"
External links[link]
| Find more about Kim Il-sung on Wikipedia's sister projects: | |
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Textbooks from Wikibooks |
- The Personality Cult in North Korea – Photos
- Kumsusan Memorial Palace – Kim Il-Sungs Mausoleum
- Kim's resting place
- North Korea Uncovered, (North Korea Google Earth)
- Korean Unification Studies
- North Korean International Documentation Project (NKIDP)
- A State of Mind, a documentary movie by Daniel Gordon, chronicles everyday life in North Korea in 2003
- Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, a book by Barbara Demick
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| New title | Prime Minister of the DPRK 1949–1972 |
Succeeded by Kim Il (As Premier) |
| Preceded by Choi Yong-kun as President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly |
President of the DPRK (Eternal President of the Republic since 5 September 1998) 1972–1994 |
Succeeded by Yang Hyong-sop as President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly |
| Party political offices | ||
| New title | Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea 1949–1966 |
Himself as General Secretary |
| Chairman of the Central Military Commission of Worker's Party 1950–1994 |
Succeeded by Kim Jong-il Vacant until 1997 |
|
| General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea 1966–1994 |
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| Military offices | ||
| New title | Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army 1948–1991 |
Succeeded by Kim Jong-il |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Kim, Il-sung |
| Alternative names | Kim Ilsong, Gim Il-seong, 김일성, 金日成 |
| Short description | President of North Korea |
| Date of birth | (1912-04-15)15 April 1912 |
| Place of birth | Pyongyang, North Korea |
| Date of death | 8 July 1994(1994-07-08) |
| Place of death | Pyongyang, North Korea |
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 |
Look up kim in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Kim may refer to:
|
Names[link]
- Kim (given name)
- Kim (surname)
- Kim (Korean name)
- Kim, Vietnamese form of Jin (surname)
Places[link]
- Kim, Colorado, United States
- Camp Kim, Seoul, South Korea, a military facility
- Kimberley Airport, IATA code KIM
- Kim, a town near Surat, Gujarat, India
Media[link]
- Kim (novel), by Rudyard Kipling
- Kim (film), a 1950 American adventure film
- Kim (TV film), a 1984 British film
- "Kim" (song), by Eminem
Other uses[link]
- Kim (food)
- Kim people
- Kim language
- Tropical Storm Kim (disambiguation), eight tropical Pacific Ocean cyclones
- KIM-1, a microcomputer
- Kingdom Identity Ministries, a Christian organization
See also[link]
 |
This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. |
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This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
| Kim Jong-il 김정일 |
|
|---|---|
| File:Portrait of Kim Jong Il released by state media.jpg | |
| Official portrait | |
| Supreme Leader of North Korea | |
| In office 8 July 1994 – 17 December 2011[1] |
|
| Premier | Hong Song-nam Pak Pong-ju Kim Yong-il Choe Yong-rim |
| Preceded by | Kim Il-sung (as President) |
| Succeeded by | Kim Jong-un |
| General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea | |
| In office 8 July 1994 – 17 December 2011 (Eternal General Secretary since 11 April 2012) |
|
| Deputy | Kim Yong-nam Choe Yong-rim Jo Myong-rok Ri Yong-ho |
| Preceded by | Kim Il-sung |
| Succeeded by | Kim Jong-un (as First Secretary) (Position abolished as Kim Jong-il was declared as the Eternal General Secretary on 11 April 2012.) |
| Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea | |
| In office 9 April 1993 – 17 December 2011 (Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission since 13 April 2012) |
|
| Deputy | Jo Myong-rok |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Kim Jong-un (as First Chairman) (Position abolished as Kim Jong-il was declared as the Eternal Chairman on 13 April 2012) |
| Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army | |
| In office 24 December 1991 – 17 December 2011 |
|
| Preceded by | Kim Il-sung |
| Succeeded by | Kim Jong-un[2] |
| Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party | |
| In office 8 October 1997 – 17 December 2011 |
|
| Deputy | Kim Jong-un Ri Yong-ho |
| Preceded by | Kim Il-sung |
| Succeeded by | Kim Jong-un |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Yuri Irsenovich Kim (1941-02-16)16 February 1941 Vyatskoye, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (Soviet records) (1942-02-16)16 February 1942 Baekdu Mountain, Japanese Korea (North Korean biography) Disputed, see section Birth. |
| Died | 17 December 2011(2011-12-17) (aged 70) (suspected heart attack) Democratic People's Republic of Korea |
| Resting place | Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, Pyongyang, Democratic People's Republic of Korea |
| Political party | Workers' Party of Korea |
| Spouse(s) | Kim Young-sook (1974–2011) |
| Domestic partner | Song Hye-rim (1968–2002) Ko Young-hee (1977–2004) Kim Ok (2004–2011) |
| Children | Kim Sul-song Kim Jong-nam Kim Jong-chul Kim Jong-un |
| Alma mater | Kim Il-sung University |
| Signature |  |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | North Korea |
| Service/branch | Korean People's Army |
| Years of service | 1991–2011 |
| Rank | Wonsu (Marshal) |
| Commands | Supreme Commander |
|
This article contains Korean text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Hangul or Hanja. |
| Kim Jong-il | |
|---|---|
| Chosŏn'gŭl | 김정일 |
| Hancha | 金正日 |
| McCune–Reischauer | Kim Chŏngil |
| Revised Romanization | Gim Jeong(-)il |
Kim Jong-il (born Yuri Irsenovich Kim;[3] 16 February 1941; official biography claims 1942[4] – 17 December 2011[5]) was the supreme leader of North Korea (DPRK) from 1994 to 2011. He succeeded his father and founder of the DPRK Kim Il-sung following the elder Kim's death in 1994. Kim Jong-il was the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea, and the supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth-largest standing army in the world.
In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended to refer to him as the "supreme leader".[6] He was also referred to as the "Dear Leader", "our Father", and "the General", among others.[7] His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and is his successor.[8] In 2010, he was ranked 31st in Forbes Magazine's List of The World's Most Powerful People.[9] The North Korean government announced his death on 19 December 2011.[5]
Following his demise, he was succeeded by his third son Kim Jong-un. He was proclaimed the Eternal General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and Eternal Chairman of the National Defence Commission in 2012. His birthday is a public holiday in the country.
Contents |
Childhood[link]
Birth[link]
Soviet records show that Kim was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in 1941,[10] where his father, Kim Il-sung, commanded the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade, made up of Chinese and Korean exiles. Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, was Kim Il-sung's first wife.
However, Kim Jong-il's official biography[11] states he was born in a secret military camp on Baekdu Mountain (Korean: 백두산밀영고향집) in Japanese-occupied Korea on 16 February 1942.[12] Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow across the sky over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.[13]
In 1945, Kim was four years old when World War II ended and Korea regained independence from Japan. His father returned to Pyongyang that September, and in late November Kim returned to Korea via a Soviet ship, landing at Sonbong (선봉군, also Unggi). The family moved into a former Japanese officer's mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il's brother, "Shura" Kim (the first Kim Pyong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that five-year-old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident.[14]
In 1949, his mother died in childbirth.[15] Unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.[14]
Education[link]
According to his official biography, Kim completed the course of general education between September 1950 and August 1960. He attended Primary School No. 4 and Middle School No. 1 (Namsan Higher Middle School) in Pyongyang.[citation needed] This is contested by foreign academics, who believe he is more likely to have received his early education in the People's Republic of China as a precaution to ensure his safety during the Korean War.[16]
Throughout his schooling, Kim was involved in politics. He was active in the Children's Union[17] and the Democratic Youth League (DYL), taking part in study groups of Marxist political theory and other literature. In September 1957 he became vice-chairman of his middle school's DYL branch. He pursued a programme of anti-factionalism and attempted to encourage greater ideological education among his classmates.
Kim is also said to have received English language education at the University of Malta in the early 1970s,[18] on his infrequent holidays in Malta as guest of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.[19]
The elder Kim had meanwhile remarried and had another son, Kim Pyong-il (named after Kim Jong-il's drowned brother). Since 1988, Kim Pyong-il has served in a series of North Korean embassies in Europe and is the North Korean ambassador to Poland. Foreign commentators suspect that Kim Pyong-il was sent to these distant posts by his father in order to avoid a power struggle between his two sons.[20]
Presidium member and party secretary (1980–1994)[link]
By the time of the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim Jong-il's control of the Party operation was complete. He was given senior posts in the Politburo, the Military Commission and the party Secretariat. When he was made a member of the Seventh Supreme People's Assembly in February 1982, international observers deemed him the heir apparent of North Korea.
At this time Kim assumed the title "Dear Leader" (친애하는 지도자, ch'inaehanŭn jidoja)[21] the government began building a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader". Kim Jong-il was regularly hailed by the media as the "fearless leader" and "the great successor to the revolutionary cause". He emerged as the most powerful figure behind his father in North Korea.
On 24 December 1991, Kim was also named supreme commander of the North Korean armed forces. Since the Army is the real foundation of power in North Korea, this was a vital step. Defence Minister Oh Jin-wu, one of Kim Il-sung's most loyal subordinates, engineered Kim Jong-il's acceptance by the Army as the next leader of North Korea, despite his lack of military service. The only other possible leadership candidate, Prime Minister Kim Il (no relation), was removed from his posts in 1976. In 1992, Kim Il-sung publicly stated that his son was in charge of all internal affairs in the Democratic People's Republic.
In 1992, radio broadcasts started referring to him as the "Dear Father", instead of the "Dear Leader", suggesting a promotion. His 50th birthday in February was the occasion for massive celebrations, exceeded only by those for the 80th birthday of Kim Il Sung himself on 15 April that same year.
According to defector Hwang Jang-yop, the North Korean government system became even more centralized and autocratic during the 1980s and 1990s under Kim Jong-il than it had been under his father. In one example explained by Hwang, although Kim Il-sung required his ministers to be loyal to him, he nonetheless and frequently sought their advice during decision-making. In contrast, Kim Jong-il demanded absolute obedience and agreement from his ministers and party officials with no advice or compromise, and he viewed any slight deviation from his thinking as a sign of disloyalty. According to Hwang, Kim Jong-il personally directed even minor details of state affairs, such as the size of houses for party secretaries and the delivery of gifts to his subordinates.[22]
By the 1980s, North Korea began to experience severe economic stagnation. Kim Il-sung's policy of juche (self-reliance) cut the country off from almost all external trade, even with its traditional partners, the Soviet Union and China.
South Korea accused Kim of ordering the 1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), which killed 17 visiting South Korean officials, including four cabinet members, and another in 1987 which killed all 115 on board Korean Air Flight 858.[23] A North Korean agent, Kim Hyon Hui, confessed to planting a bomb in the case of the second, saying the operation was ordered by Kim Jong-il personally.[24]
In 1992, Kim Jong-il's voice was broadcast within North Korea for the first time during a military parade for the KPA's 60th year anniversary in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square, in which Kim Il-sung attended with Kim Jong-il by his side. After Kim Il-sung's speech, and the parade inspection his son approached the microphone at the grandstand in response to the report of the parade inspector and simply said: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" Everyone in the audience applauded and the parade participants at the square grounds (which included veteran soldiers and officers of the KPA) shouted "ten thousand years" three times after that.
Ruler of North Korea[link]
On 8 July 1994, Kim Jong-il's father, Kim Il-sung, died at the age of 82 from a heart attack. However, it took three years for Kim Jong-il to consolidate his power. On 1 January 1995, Kim Jong Il inspected a unit of the Korean People’s Army, which was his first official action as the supreme leader of the DPRK in the first year after the President died. It was also an official act done amid various conjectures on the future of the DPRK and his political direction.[25] On 10 Oct Kim reviewed a massive military parade and a procession of 1 million people in Pyongyang, marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the country's ruling Workers' Party of Korea in what was his first major public appearance after his father's death.
He officially took the titles of General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea on 8 October 1997 and Chairman of the National Defence Commission on 9 April 1993. In 1998, his Defence Commission chairmanship was declared to be "the highest post of the state", so Kim may be regarded as North Korea's head of state from that date. Also in 1998, the Supreme People's Assembly wrote the president's post out of the constitution in memory of Kim Il-Sung, who was designated the country's "Eternal President". It can be argued, though, that he became the country's leader when he became leader of the Workers' Party; in most Communist countries the party leader is the most powerful person in the country.
Officially, Kim was part of a triumvirate heading the executive branch of the North Korean government along with Premier Choe Yong-rim and parliament chairman Kim Yong-nam (no relations). Each nominally held powers equivalent to a third of a president's powers in most other presidential systems. Kim Jong-il was commander of the armed forces, Choe Yong-rim headed the government and Kim Yong-nam handled foreign relations. In practice, however, Kim Jong-il exercised absolute control over the government and the country. Although not required to stand for popular election to his key offices, he was unanimously elected to the Supreme People's Assembly every five years, representing a military constituency, due to his concurrent capacities as KPA Supreme Commander and Chairman of the DPRK NDC.[citation needed]
Economic policies[link]
The state-controlled economy of North Korea struggled throughout the 1990s, primarily due to mismanagement. In addition, North Korea experienced severe floods in the mid-1990s, exacerbated by poor land management.[26][27][28] This, compounded with only 18% arable land[29] and an inability to import the goods necessary to sustain industry,[30] led to an immense famine and left North Korea in economic shambles. Faced with a country in decay, Kim adopted a "Military-First" policy (선군정치, Sŏn'gun chŏngch'i) to strengthen the country and reinforce the regime.[31] On the national scale, a North Korean spokesman has claimed that this has resulted in a positive growth rate for the country since 1996, with the implementation of "landmark socialist-type market economic practices" in 2002 keeping the North afloat despite a continued dependency on foreign aid for food.[32]
In the wake of the devastation of the 1990s, the government began formally approving some activity of small-scale bartering and trade. As observed by Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Stanford University Asia-Pacific Research Center, this flirtation with capitalism was "fairly limited, but — especially compared to the past — there are now remarkable markets that create the semblance of a free market system."[33]
In 2002, Kim Jong-il declared that "money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities."[34] These gestures toward economic reform mirror similar actions taken by China's Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s and early 90s. During a rare visit in 2006, Kim expressed admiration for China's rapid economic progress.[35]
Foreign relations[link]
In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung implemented the "Sunshine Policy" to improve North-South relations and to allow South Korean companies to start projects in the North. Kim Jong-il announced plans to import and develop new technologies to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry. As a result of the new policy, the Kaesong Industrial Park was constructed in 2003 just north of the de-militarized zone, with the planned participation of 250 South Korean companies, employing 100,000 North Koreans, by 2007.[36] However, by March 2007, the Park contained only 21 companies — employing 12,000 North Korean workers.[37] As of May 2010 the park employs over 40,000 North Korean workers.[38]
In 1994, North Korea and the United States signed an Agreed Framework which was designed to freeze and eventually dismantle the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid in producing two power-generating nuclear reactors.[39] In 2002, Kim Jong-il's government admitted to having produced nuclear weapons since the 1994 agreement. Kim's regime argued the secret production was necessary for security purposes — citing the presence of United States-owned nuclear weapons in South Korea and the new tensions with the United States under President George W. Bush.[40] On 9 October 2006, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency announced that it had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test.
Cult of personality[link]
Kim Jong-il was the centre of an elaborate personality cult inherited from his father and founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. Defectors have been quoted as saying that North Korean schools deify both father and son.[41][page needed] He was often the centre of attention throughout ordinary life in the DPRK. On his 60th birthday (based on his official date of birth), mass celebrations occurred throughout the country on the occasion of his Hwangab.[42] Many North Koreans believed that he had the "magical" ability to "control the weather" based on his mood.[41] In 2010, the North Korean media reported that Kim's distinctive clothing had set worldwide fashion trends.[43]
One point of view is that Kim Jong Il's cult of personality was solely out of respect for Kim Il-sung or out of fear of punishment for failure to pay homage.[44] Media and government sources from outside of North Korea generally support this view,[45][46][47][48][49] while North Korean government sources aver it was a genuine hero worship.[50] The song "No Motherland Without You", sung by the KPA State Merited Choir, was created especially for Kim in 1992 and is frequently broadcast on the radio and from loudspeakers on the streets of Pyongyang.[51]
Human rights record[link]
See also: Human rights in North Korea
According to a 2004 Human Rights Watch report, the North Korean government under Kim was "among the world's most repressive governments", having up to 200,000 political prisoners according to U.S. and South Korean officials,[52] and no freedom of the press or religion, political opposition or equal education:[53] "Virtually every aspect of political, social, and economic life is controlled by the government."
2008 health and waning power rumors[link]
In an August 2008 issue of the Japanese newsweekly Shūkan Gendai, Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, an authority on the Korean Peninsula,[54] claimed that Kim Jong-il died of diabetes in late 2003 and had been replaced in public appearances by one or more stand-ins previously employed to protect him from assassination attempts.[55] In a subsequent best-selling book, The True Character of Kim Jong-il, Shigemura cited apparently unnamed people close to Kim's family along with Japanese and South Korean intelligence sources, claiming they confirmed Kim's diabetes took a turn for the worse early in 2000 and from then until his supposed death three and a half years later he was using a wheelchair. Shigemura moreover claimed a voiceprint analysis of Kim speaking in 2004 did not match a known earlier recording. It was also noted that Kim Jong-il did not appear in public for the Olympic torch relay in Pyongyang on 28 April 2008. The question had reportedly "baffled foreign intelligence agencies for years."[56]
On 9 September 2008, various sources reported that after he did not show up that day for a military parade celebrating North Korea's 60th anniversary, United States intelligence agencies believed Kim might be "gravely ill" after having suffered a stroke. He had last been seen in public a month earlier.[57]
A former CIA official said earlier reports of a health crisis were likely accurate. North Korean media remained silent on the issue. An Associated Press report said analysts believed Kim had been supporting moderates in the foreign ministry, while North Korea's powerful military was against so-called "Six-Party" negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States aimed towards ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. Some United States officials noted that soon after rumours about Kim's health were publicized a month before, North Korea had taken a "tougher line in nuclear negotiations." In late August North Korea's official news agency reported the government would "consider soon a step to restore the nuclear facilities in Nyongbyon to their original state as strongly requested by its relevant institutions." Analysts said this meant "the military may have taken the upper hand and that Kim might no longer be wielding absolute authority." By 10 September, there were conflicting reports. Unidentified South Korean government officials said Kim had undergone surgery after suffering a minor stroke and had apparently "intended to attend 9 September event in the afternoon but decided not to because of the aftermath of the surgery." High ranking North Korean official Kim Yong-nam said, "While we wanted to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the country with General Secretary Kim Jong-Il, we celebrated on our own." Song Il-Ho, North Korea's ambassador said, "We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot." Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that "the South Korean embassy in Beijing had received an intelligence report that Kim collapsed on 22 August."[58] The New York Times reported Kim was "very ill and most likely suffered a stroke a few weeks ago,[when?] but United States intelligence authorities do not think his death is imminent."[59] The BBC noted that the North Korean government denied these reports, stating that Kim's health problems were "not serious enough to threaten his life",[60][61] although they did confirm that he had suffered a stroke on 15 August.[62]
Japan's Kyodo News agency reported on 14 September, that "Kim collapsed on 14 August due to stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage, and that Beijing dispatched five military doctors at the request of Pyongyang. Kim will require a long period of rest and rehabilitation before he fully recovers and has complete command of his limbs again, as with typical stroke victims." Japan's Mainichi Shimbun claimed Kim had occasionally lost consciousness since April.[63] Japan's Tokyo Shimbun on 15 September, added that Kim was staying at the Bongwha State Guest House. He was apparently conscious "but he needs some time to recuperate from the recent stroke, with some parts of his hands and feet paralyzed". It cited Chinese sources which claimed that one cause for the stroke could have been stress brought about by the United States delay to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.[64]
On 19 October, North Korea reportedly ordered its diplomats to stay near their embassies to await "an important message", according to Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun,[65] setting off renewed speculation about the health of the ailing leader.
By 29 October 2008, reports stated Kim suffered a serious setback and had been taken back to hospital.[66] The New York Times reported that Taro Aso, on 28 October 2008, stated in a parliamentary session that Kim had been hospitalized: "His condition is not so good. However, I don't think he is totally incapable of making decisions." Aso further said a French neurosurgeon was aboard a plane for Beijing, en route to North Korea. Further, Kim Sung-ho, director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers in a closed parliamentary session in Seoul that "Kim appeared to be recovering quickly enough to start performing his daily duties."[67] The Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported "a serious problem" with Kim's health. Japan's Fuji Television network reported that Kim's eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, traveled to Paris to hire a neurosurgeon for his father, and showed footage where the surgeon boarded flight CA121 bound for Pyongyang from Beijing on 24 October. The French weekly Le Point identified him as Francois-Xavier Roux, neurosurgery director of Paris' Sainte-Anne Hospital, but Roux himself stated he was in Beijing for several days and not North Korea.[68] On 19 December 2011 Roux confirmed that Kim suffered a debilitating stroke in 2008 and was treated by himself and other French doctors at Pyongyang's Red Cross Hospital. Roux said Kim suffered few lasting effects.[69]
On 5 November 2008, the North's Korean Central News Agency published 2 photos showing Kim posing with dozens of Korean People's Army (KPA) soldiers on a visit to military Unit 2200 and sub-unit of Unit 534. Shown with his usual bouffant hairstyle, with his trademark sunglasses and a white winter parka, Kim stood in front of trees with autumn foliage and a red-and-white banner.[70][71][72][73][74] The Times questioned the authenticity of at least one of these photos.[75]
In November 2008, Japan's TBS TV network reported that Kim had suffered a second stroke in October, which "affected the movement of his left arm and leg and also his ability to speak."[76][77] However, South Korea's intelligence agency rejected this report.[77]
In response to the rumors regarding Kim's health and supposed loss of power, in April 2009, North Korea released a video showing Kim visiting factories and other places around the country between November and December 2008.[78] In 2010, documents released by WikiLeaks purportedly attested that Kim suffered from epilepsy.[79]
According to The Daily Telegraph, Kim was a chain-smoker.[80]
Successor[link]
Kim's three sons and his brother-in-law, along with O Kuk-ryol, an army general, had been noted as possible successors, but the North Korean government had for a time been wholly silent on this matter.[81]
Kim Yong Hyun, a political expert at the Institute for North Korean Studies at Seoul's Dongguk University, has said, "Even the North Korean establishment would not advocate a continuation of the family dynasty at this point."[82] Kim's eldest son Kim Jong-nam was earlier believed to be the designated heir but he appears to have fallen out of favor after being arrested at Narita International Airport near Tokyo in 2001 while traveling on a forged passport.[83]
On 2 June 2009, it was reported that Kim Jong-il's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, was to be North Korea's next leader.[84] Like his father and grandfather, he has also been given an official sobriquet, The Brilliant Comrade.[85] Prior to his death, it had been reported that Kim Jong Il was expected to officially designate the son as his successor in 2012. However, there are reports that if leadership passes to one of the sons, Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, Jang Sung-taek, could attempt to seize power.[citation needed]
Re-election as DPRK leader[link]
On 9 April 2009, Kim was re-elected as chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission,[86] and made an appearance at the Supreme People's Assembly. This was the first time Kim was seen in public since August 2008. He was unanimously re-elected and given a standing ovation.[87]
On 28 September 2010, Kim was re-elected as General secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea.
2010 and 2011 foreign visits[link]
Kim reportedly visited the People's Republic of China in May 2010. He entered the country via his personal train on 3 May, and stayed in a hotel in Dalian.[88] In May 2010, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell told South Korean officials that Kim had only three years to live.[89] Kim travelled to China again in August 2010, this time with his son, fueling speculation that he is ready to hand over power to his son, Kim Jong-un.[90]
He returned to China again in May 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between China and the DPRK.[91] In late August 2011, he traveled by train to the Russian Far East to meet with President Dmitry Medvedev for unspecified talks.[92]
Personal life[link]
Family[link]
There is no official information available about Kim Jong-il's marital history, but he is believed to have been officially married once and to have had three mistresses.[93] He has four known children:
- Kim Jong-nam (son)
- Kim Sul-song (daughter)
- Kim Jong-chul (son)
- Kim Jong-un (son)[94]
Kim's first mistress, Song Hye-rim, was a star of North Korean films. She was already married to another man and with a child when they met;[95] Kim is reported to have forced her husband to divorce her. This relationship, started in 1970, was not officially recognized. They had one son, Kim Jong-nam (born 1971) who is Kim Jong-il's eldest son. Kim kept both the relationship and the child a secret (even from his father Kim Il Sung) until Kim ascended to power in 1994.[95][96] However, after years of estrangement, Song is believed to have died in Moscow in the Central Clinical Hospital in 2002.[97]
Kim's official wife, Kim Young-sook, was the daughter of a high-ranking military official. His father Kim Il-Sung handpicked her to marry his son.[93] The two have been estranged for some years. Kim has a daughter from this marriage, Kim Sul-song (born 1974).[94]
His second mistress, Ko Young-hee, was a Japanese-born ethnic Korean and a dancer. She had taken over the role of First Lady until her death — reportedly of cancer — in 2004. They had two sons, Kim Jong-chul, in 1981, and Kim Jong-un (also "Jong Woon" or "Jong Woong"), in 1983.[96][98]
After Ko's death, Kim lived with Kim Ok, his third mistress, who had served as his personal secretary since the 1980s. She "virtually acts as North Korea's first lady" and frequently accompanied Kim on his visits to military bases and in meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries. She traveled with Kim Jong Il on a secretive trip to China in January 2006, where she was received by Chinese officials as Kim's wife.[99]
He reportedly had a younger sister, Kim Kyong-hui (김경희).[100]
| Kim Bo-hyon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kim Hyŏng-jik | Kang Pan-sŏk | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kim Jong-suk | Kim Il-sung | Kim Sŏng-ae | Kim Yong-ju | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kim Young-sook | Song Hye-rim | Kim Jong-il | Ko Young-hee | Kim Ok | Kim Kyong-hui | Chang Sung-taek | Kim Pyong-il | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kim Sul-song | Kim Jong-nam | Kim Jong-chul | Kim Jong-un | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kim Han-sol | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Personality[link]
Like his father, Kim had a pteromerhanophobia (fear of flying),[101] and always traveled by private armored train for state visits to Russia and China. The BBC reported that Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian emissary who traveled with Kim across Russia by train, told reporters that Kim had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day.[102]
Kim was said to be a huge film fan, owning a collection of more than 20,000 video tapes and DVDs.[103] His reported favorite movie franchises included Friday the 13th, Rambo, Godzilla, and Hong Kong action cinema,[104] and any movie starring Elizabeth Taylor.[105] He authored On the Art of the Cinema. In 1978, on Kim's orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry.[106] In 2006 he was involved in the production of the Juche-based movie, Diary of a Girl Student, which depicted the life of a young girl whose parents are scientists, with a KCNA news report stating that Kim "improved its script and guided its production".[107]
In a 2011 news story, The Sun reported, "Kim Jong-il was obsessed with Elvis Presley. His mansion was crammed with his idol's records and his collection of 20,000 Hollywood movies included Presley's titles — along with Rambo and Godzilla. He even copied the King's Vegas-era look of giant shades, jumpsuits and bouffant hairstyle. It was reported in 2003 that Kim Jong-il had a huge porn film collection."[108]
Although Kim enjoyed many foreign forms of entertainment, according to former bodyguard Lee Young Kuk, he refused to consume any food or drink not produced in North Korea, with the exception of wine from France.[109] His former chef Kenji Fujimoto, however, has stated that Kim sometimes sent him around the world to purchase a variety of foreign delicacies.[110]
Kim reportedly enjoyed basketball. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended her summit with Kim by presenting him with a basketball signed by NBA legend Michael Jordan.[111] Also an apparent golfer, North Korean state media reports that Kim routinely shot three or four holes-in-one per round.[112] His official biography also claims that Kim composed six operas and enjoys staging elaborate musicals.[113] Kim referred to himself as an Internet expert.[114]
United States Special Envoy for the Korean Peace Talks, Charles Kartman, who was involved in the 2000 Madeleine Albright summit with Kim, characterised Kim as a reasonable man in negotiations, to the point, but with a sense of humor and personally attentive to the people he was hosting.[115] However, psychological evaluations conclude that Kim Jong-il's antisocial features, such as his fearlessness in the face of sanctions and punishment, served to make negotiations extraordinarily difficult.[116]
The field of psychology has long been fascinated with the personality assessment of dictators, a notion that resulted in an extensive personality evaluation of Kim Jong-il. The report, compiled by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal (with the assistance of a South Korean psychiatrist considered an expert on Kim Jong-il's behavior), concluded that the "big six" group of personality disorders shared by dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein (sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal) were also shared by Kim Jong-il — coinciding primarily with the profile of Saddam Hussein.[116]
The evaluation found Kim Jong-il appeared to pride himself on North Korea's independence, despite the extreme hardships it appears to place on the North Korean people — an attribute appearing to emanate from his antisocial personality pattern.[116] This notion also encourages other cognitive issues, such as self-deception, as subsidiary components to Kim Jong-il's personality.
Defectors claimed that Kim had 17 different palaces and residences all over North Korea, including a private resort near Baekdu Mountain, a seaside lodge in the city of Wonsan, and a palace complex northeast of Pyongyang surrounded with multiple fence lines, bunkers and anti-aircraft batteries.[117]
Finances[link]
According to the Sunday Telegraph, Kim had US$4 billion on deposit in European banks in case he ever needed to flee North Korea. The Sunday Telegraph reported that most of the money was in banks in Luxembourg.[118]
Death[link]
Main article: Death and funeral of Kim Jong-il
Kim Jong-il died of a suspected heart attack on 17 December 2011 at 08:30 while travelling by train to an area outside Pyongyang.[5][119] He was succeeded by his youngest son Kim Jong-un, who was hailed by the Korean Central News Agency as the "Great Successor".[120][121][122][123] The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report that during his death, a fierce snowstorm paused and the sky glowed red above the sacred Mount Paektu. The ice on a famous lake also cracked so loud, it seemed to shake the Heavens and the Earth.[124]
Kim Jong-il's funeral took place on 28 December in Pyongyang, with a mourning period lasting until the following day. South Korea's military was immediately put on alert after the announcement and its National Security Council convened for an emergency meeting, out of concern that political jockeying in North Korea could destabilise the region. Asian stock markets fell soon after the announcement, due to similar concerns.[5]
On 12 January 2012 North Korea called Kim Jong-il the "eternal leader" and announced that his body will be preserved and displayed at Pyongyang's Kumsusan Memorial Palace. Officials will also install statues, portraits, and "towers to his immortality" across the country.[125][126] His birthday of 16 February has been declared "the greatest auspicious holiday of the nation", and has been named the Day of the Shining Star.[127]
Official titles[link]
Main article: List of Kim Jong-il's titles
- Party Center of the WPK and Member, Central Committee of the WPK (1970s)
- Dear Leader (Chinaehaneun Jidoja) (late 1970s–1994)
- Member, Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK
- Secretary, Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (1974–1997)
- Presidium Member of the Politburo, WPK Central Committee (1980–2011)
- Supreme Commander, Korean People's Army (25 December 1991 – 17 December 2011)
- Marshal of the DPRK (1993–2011)
- Chairman, National Defence Commission of North Korea (1993–2011)
- Great Leader (Widehan Ryongdoja) (July 1994 – December 2011)
- General Secretary, Workers' Party of Korea (October 1997 – December 2011)
- Chairman, Central Military Commission (DPRK) (October 1997 – December 2011)
- Eternal Leader (posthumous) (January 2012 – present)
- Grand Marshal of the DPRK (posthumous) (January 2012 – present)
- Eternal General Secretary, Worker's Party of Korea (posthumous) (11 April 2012 – present)
- Eternal Chairman of the National Defence of Commission (posthumous) (13 April 2012 - present)
See also[link]
Notes and references[link]
- ^ "North Korea backs son after Kim Jong-Il death". Agence France-Presse. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ggTRbHnVT9qA8_cbG0p5dkbChBvA?docId=CNG.f422d650d5b8ced9ed3fbdc8e3558b87.e1. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ "North Korea: Kim Jong-un hailed 'supreme commander'". BBC News. 24 December 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16325390. Retrieved 24 December 2011.
- ^ Chung, Byoung-sun (22 August 2002). "Sergeyevna Remembers Kim Jong Il". The Chosun Ilbo. http://nk.chosun.com/english/news/news.html?ACT=detail&res_id=7283. Retrieved 19 February 2007.
Sheets, Lawrence (12 February 2004). "A Visit to Kim Jong Il's Russian Birthplace". National Public Radio. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1671983. Retrieved 19 February 2007.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0607/05/i_ins.01.html
"Kim Jong-Il, Kim Il-Sung – In the Family Business – North Korea: Secrets and Lies – Photo Gallery". LIFE. http://www.life.com/gallery/26532/image/51407067/north-korea-secrets-and-lies#index/7. Retrieved 19 December 2011. - ^ North Korean biographies give his birth as 16 February 1942, but are generally not considered to be factually reliable. See http://slide.news.sina.com.cn/w/slide_1_27293_20570.html#p=8 with Kim Jong-il lying in state, where the podium reads 1942–2011
- ^ a b c d "N Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies". BBC News. 19 December 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16239693. Retrieved 19 December 2011. "died on Saturday"
- ^ McGivering, Jill (29 September 2009). "N Korea constitution bolsters Kim". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8279830.stm. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ A State of Mind at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ "NKorea prints photos of heir apparent Kim Jong Un". AP News. 30 September 2010. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_NKOREA_SUCCESSION?SITE=CAVEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT. Retrieved 30 September 2010.
- ^ The 100 Most Powerful People in the World, Forbes Magazine
- ^ "Profile: Kim Jong-il". BBC News. 16 January 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1907197.stm. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Biography of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il". Korea-dpr.com. Archived from the original on 12 June 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080612161628/http://www.korea-dpr.com/articles-ng/biography-kimjongil.htm. Retrieved 5 December 2008.
- ^ Kim Jong Il – Short Biography. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Press, 1998, p. 1.
- ^ Korea North General Secretary Kim Jong Il. USA International Business Publications. 2002. p. 37. ISBN 0-7397-1197-0.
- ^ a b Post, Jerrold M.; Alexander George (2004). Leaders and their followers in a dangerous world: the psychology of political behavior. Cornell University Press. pp. 243–244. ISBN 978-0-8014-4169-1.
- ^ "The Kims' North Korea". Atimes.com. 4 June 2005. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GF04Dg03.html. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Martin, Bradley K. (2004). Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-32221-6.
- ^ Kim Jong Il – Short Biography. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Press, 1998, p. 4.
- ^ Calleja, Stephen (7 February 2010). "1982 Labour government "secret" agreement with North Korea – 'Times change' – Alex Sceberras Trigona". The Malta Independent. http://www.independent.com.mt/news2.asp?artid=101298. Retrieved 15 September 2010.
- ^ Preston, Peter (30 December 2002). "Kim is a baby rattling the sides of a cot". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,866479,00.html. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Happy Birthday, Dear Leader – who's next in line?". Atimes.com. 14 February 2004. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/FB14Dg04.html. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "North Korea's dear leader less dear", Fairfax Digital, 19 November 2004.
- ^ "Testimony of Hwang Jang-yop". http://www.fas.org/irp/world/rok/nis-docs/hwang2.htm.
- ^ "North Korea: Nuclear Standoff", The Online NewsHour, PBS, 19 October 2006.
- ^ Fake ashes, very real North Korean sanctions, Asia Times Online, 16 December 2004.
- ^ http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/pym/Nr0904/Nr0904-1/def.htm
- ^ Noland, Marcus (2004). "Famine and Reform in North Korea". Asian Economic Papers 3 (2): 1–40. DOI:10.1162/1535351044193411?journalCode=asep.
- ^ Haggard, Nolan, Sen (2009). Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform. p. 209. ISBN 978-0-231-14001-0. "This tragedy was the result of a misguided strategy of self-reliance that only served to increase the country's vulnerability to both economic and natural shocks ... The state's culpability in this vast misery elevates the North Korean famine to a crime against humanity"
- ^ "North Korea: A terrible truth". The Economist. 17 April 1997. http://www.economist.com/node/147613. Retrieved 24 September 2011.
- ^ "North Korea Agriculture", Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. Retrieved 11 March 2007.
- ^ "Other Industry – North Korean Targets" Federation of American Scientists, 15 June 2000.
- ^ "North Korea's Military Strategy", Parameters, U.S. Army War College Quarterly, 2003.
- ^ "Kim Jong-il's military-first policy a silver bullet", Asia Times Online, 4 January 2007.
- ^ "North Korea's Capitalist Experiment", Council on Foreign Relations, 8 June 2006.
- ^ "On North Korea's streets, pink and tangerine buses", Christian Science Monitor, 2 June 2005.
- ^ "Inside North Korea: A Joint U.S.-Chinese Dialogue", United States Institute of Peace, January 2007.
- ^ "Asan, KOLAND Permitted to Develop Kaesong Complex", The Korea Times, 23 April 2004.
- ^ "S. Korea denies U.S. trade pact will exclude N. Korean industrial park", Yonhap News, 7 March 2007.
- ^ "South Korea dials back tough talk over Cheonan sinking", Christian Science Monitor, 31 May 2010.
- ^ "History of the 'Agreed Framework' and how it was broken", About: U.S. Gov Info/Resources, 12 March 2007.
- ^ "Motivation Behind North Korea's Nuclear Confession", GLOCOM Platform, 28 October 2002.
- ^ a b Chol-hwan Kang and Pierre Rigoulot (2005). The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag, Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-01104-7.
- ^ "North Korea marks leader's birthday". BBC. 16 February 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1823713.stm. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ "N.Korea leader sets world fashion trend: Pyongyang". FRANCE 24. 7 April 2010. http://www.france24.com/en/20100407-nkorea-leader-sets-world-fashion-trend-pyongyang. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ Mansourov, Alexandre. ""Korean Monarch Kim Jong Il: Technocrat Ruler of the Hermit Kingdom Facing the Challenge of Modernity", The Nautilus Institute". Archived from the original on 16 August 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20070816180527/http://nautilus.org/DPRKbriefingbook/negotiating/issue.html. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ Scanlon, Charles (16 February 2007). "Nuclear deal fuels Kim's celebrations". BBC. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6368203.stm. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ Coonan, Clifford (21 October 2006). "Kim Jong Il, the tyrant with a passion for wine, women and the bomb". The Independent (London). http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1916374.ece. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ Richard Lloyd Parry. "'Dear Leader' clings to power while his people pay the price", The Times. 10 October 2006. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ "North Korea's 'Dear Leader' flaunts nuclear prowess". The New Zealand Herald. Reuters. 10 October 2006. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=340&ObjectID=10405224. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
- ^ Compiled by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" United States Department of State. 25 February 2004. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ Jason LaBouyer "When friends become enemies — Understanding left-wing hostility to the DPRK" Lodestar. May/June 2005: pp. 7–9. Korea-DPR.com. Retrieved 18 December 2007.
- ^ Marshall Cavendish Corporation (2007). World and Its Peoples: Eastern and Southern Asia. Marshall Cavendish. p. 929. ISBN 978-0-7614-7631-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=YG2AFyFppJQC&pg=PA929.
- ^ McDonald, Mark. "North Korean Prison Camps Massive and Growing" The New York Times. 4 May 2011
- ^ "Human Rights in North Korea". Human Rights Watch. July 2004. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/08/nkorea9040.htm. Retrieved 2 August 2007.
- ^ Sheridan, Michael (7 September 2008). "North Korea 'uses doubles to hide death of Kim'". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4692472.ece. Retrieved 5 December 2008.
- ^ "N Korea's Kim died in 2003; replaced by lookalike, says Waseda professor", Japan Today, 24 August 2008.
- ^ Sheridan, Michael, "North Korea 'uses doubles to hide death of Kim'", Sunday Times, 7 September 2008. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
- ^ Pamela Hess and Matthew Lee (10 September 2008). "North Korea's Kim Jong Il may be gravely ill, jeopardizing progress on halting nukes". Star Tribune. Archived from the original on 11 September 2008. http://web.archive.org/web/20080911223358/http://www.startribune.com/nation/28048604.html?. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ "NKorean leader suffered stroke: Seoul intelligence". Agence France-Presse. 9 September 2008. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j2zReXndGtxbEQ9gsY3SWxImKHHw.
- ^ http://english.kbs.co.kr/news/newsview_sub.php?menu=8&key=2008091021
- ^ "Mystery has surrounded Kim Jong Il". CNN. 10 September 2008. http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/09/nkorea.kim. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ "N Korea insists Kim is not unwell". BBC News. 10 September 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7607513.stm. Retrieved 5 January 2010.
- ^ Jae-Soon Chang (11 September 2008). "N Korea: Kim Had Brain Surgery". Time. Associated Press. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1840419,00.html. Retrieved 11 September 2008.
- ^ "N. Korean Kim Having Trouble Using Limbs". The Seoul Times. http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=7245. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AS_JAPAN_NORTH_KOREA_ASOL-?SITE=YOMIURI&SECTION=HOSTED_ASIA&TEMPLATE=ap_national.html
- ^ "Report sparks more speculation on Kim Jong Il's health". http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breaking-news/world/asia/report-sparks-more-speculation-on-kim-jong-ils-health-14018927.html.
- ^ Onishi, Norimitsu (29 October 2008). "Kim Jong-Il Hospitalized but at Helm, Japan Says". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/world/asia/29kim.html. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ "LCI, Corée du Nord: Le chirurgien français dément toute visite à Kim Jong II". http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/monde/asie/0,,4141229,00-le-chirurgien-francais-dement-tout-visite-a-kim-jong-ii-.html.
- ^ French doctor confirms Kim had stroke in 2008 (Associated Press, 19 December 2011)
- ^ http://afp.google.com/media/ALeqM5ikrDW2BrCj5Y3MTang70ZE_smGwQ?size=s
- ^ "French brain surgeon admits visiting Pyongyang: report". Agence France-Presse. Google. 4 November 2008. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gBLJIU2BX0waPQyOREz9HYBInH8g. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
- ^ http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/04/nkorea.kim.ap/art.korea.ap.jpg
- ^ "Kim Jong Il watches army training". News.xinhuanet.com. 5 November 2008. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/05/content_10310320.htm. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
- ^ [2][dead link]
- ^ Hamilton, Fiona (7 November 2008). "Kim Jong Il: digital trickery or an amazing recovery from a stroke?". The Times (London). http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5101905.ece. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ Shears, Richard (11 November 2008). "North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il 'suffers second stroke'". Daily Mail (London). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1084685/North-Korean-leader-Kim-Jong-Il-suffers-second-stroke.html.
- ^ a b "Kim Jong-il had possible second stroke". Reuters. 11 November 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AA0GS20081111.
- ^ "Video of Kim Jong-il". BBC News. 7 April 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7988096.stm. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ Hutchison, Peter (28 November 2010). "WikiLeaks: US referred to Ahmadinejad as 'Hitler'". The Daily Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/8166248/WikiLeaks-US-referred-to-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-as-Hitler.html. Retrieved 30 December 2010.
- ^ Fife-Yeomans, Janet (20 December 2011). "Kim Jong-il – the high life of an evil dictator". The Daily Telegraph. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/kim-jong-il-the-high-life-of-an-evil-dictator/story-e6freuy9-1226226187550. Retrieved 20 December 2011. "When North Korea's Dear Leader, the chain-smoking Kim Jong-il, 69, died on Saturday"
- ^ "Possible successors to North Korea's Kim". Reuters. 10 September 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSSEO30011320080910.
- ^ "North Korea silent over Kim Jong Il successor". Indiaenews.com. 14 February 2007. http://www.indiaenews.com/asia/20070214/39480.htm. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Japan deports man claiming to be Kim Jong-Nam", ABC News: The World Today, 4 May 2001 (see Family tree)
- ^ Associated Press (2 June 2009). "North Korean leader Kim Jong-il 'names youngest son as successor'". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/02/kim-jong-il-names-son-successor. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "North Korea: A 'Brilliant Comrade'". The New York Times. 12 June 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/world/asia/13briefs-NKOREAKIM.html. Retrieved 13 June 2009.
- ^ "KCNA.co.jp". KCNA.co.jp. 9 April 2009. http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200904/news09/20090409-04ee.html. Retrieved 11 March 2010.
- ^ "N. Korea leader appears in public". BBC News. 9 April 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7991151.stm. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "North Korea's Kim 'visits China'". BBC News. 3 May 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8657688.stm. Retrieved 7 May 2010.
- ^ "Kim Jong-il 'Has 3 Years to Live'", Chosun Ilbo, 17 March 2010.
- ^ McCurry, Justin; Watts, Jonathan (26 August 2010). "North Korean leader Kim Jong-il 'visiting China with his son'". London: BBC News. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/26/north-korean-leader-china. Retrieved 28 August 2010.
- ^ 颜筱箐 (27 May 2011). "DPRK leader Kim Jong-Il visits China". China.org.cn. http://www.china.org.cn/video/2011-05/27/content_22651894.htm. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ Schwirtz, M. "Kim Il-Jong Visits Russia to Meet with President Medvedev", The New York Times. 21 August 2011
- ^ a b The Women in Kim's Life[dead link]
- ^ a b "Kim Jong-Il's Daughter Serves as His Secretary". Theseoultimes.com. http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=3052. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ a b "North Korean defector says Kim Jong Il stole her life", Los Angeles Times, 21 December 2011.
- ^ a b "Kim's Secret Family", Time Asia, 23 June 2003 (archive).
- ^ Martin, Bradley K. (2004). Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books. pp. 693–694. ISBN 0-312-32322-0. "Although a flurry of press dispatches at the time her sister defected claimed that Hye-rim had gone with Hye-rang, in fact, [Hye-rim] continued to live in Moscow until she died in May 2002."
- ^ "N. Korea Heir Apparent 'Given More Auspicious Birthday". The Chosun Ilbo. 11 December 2009.
- ^ "Report: Kim Jong Il Living With Former Secretary". Fox News. 24 July 2006. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,205287,00.html. Retrieved 28 December 2011. [dead link]
- ^ "Dictator Kim Jong-il's younger sister makes comeback to power in North Korea". Daily Mail (London). 19 February 2010. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1251955/Dictator-Kim-Jong-ils-younger-sister-makes-comeback-power-North-Korea.html. Retrieved 25 February 2010.
- ^ Swift, Andrew (4 May 2010). "Profiles in Phobia". Foreign Policy. The Washington Post Company. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/04/profiles_in_phobia. Retrieved 6 May 2010.
- ^ "Profile: Kim Jong-il". BBC News. 16 January 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1907197.stm. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "North Korean leader loves Hennessey, Bond movies", CNN Washington, 8 January 2003.
- ^ Gourevitch, Philip (2 November 2003). "The madness of Kim Jong Il". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2003/nov/02/features.magazine37. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ "Movie-buff Kim Jong-Il seeks joint foreign film ventures". Worldtribune.com. http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/front2453662.077777778.html. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Thomson, Mike (5 March 2003). "Kidnapped by North Korea". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/2821221.stm. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "Film 'Diary of a Girl Student', Close Companion of Life", Korea News Service, 10 August 2006.
- ^ "Kim Jong-il's body on display as nation 'mourns'". The Sun. December 20, 2011
- ^ Macintyre, Donald (18 February 2002). "The Supremo in His Labyrinth". Time Magazine. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,201976-1,00.html. Retrieved 9 June 2010.
- ^ "Kim Jong-il Satisfies his Gourmet Appetite while his People Starve". The Chosun Ilbo. 27 June 2004.
- ^ "The oddest fan", San Diego Union-Tribune, 29 October 2006.
- ^ "Move over Tiger: N. Korea's Kim shot 38 under par his 1st time out", World Tribune, 16 June 2004.
- ^ "ASIA-PACIFIC | Profile: Kim Jong-il". BBC News. 9 June 2000. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/783967.stm. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ "North Korea Kim Jong Il an Internet Expert", FOX News, 5 October 2007.
- ^ "Interview: Charles Kartman". Frontline (Public Broadcasting Service). 20 February 2003. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/interviews/kartman.html. Retrieved 14 April 2010.
- ^ a b c "Is Kim Jong-il like Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler? A personality disorder evaluation" by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal, 2008.
- ^ "Kim Jong Il, Where He Sleeps and Where He Works", Daily NK, 15 March 2005.
- ^ Arlow, Oliver, "Kim Jong-il keeps $4bn 'emergency fund' in European banks", Sunday Telegraph, 14 March 2010.
- ^ "North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dead". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). 19 December 2011. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-19/north-korean-leader-kim-jong-il-dead/3738526?WT.svl=news0. Retrieved 19 December 2011.
- ^ "Kim Jong Il's youngest son dubbed 'great successor'". msnbc.com. 19 December 2011
- ^ Thomas Durante; Jennifer Madison; Lee Moran (20 December 2011). "U.S. senator says the world is better off without Kim Jong Il, North Korea's Dear Leader, who 'is joining Gaddafi, Bin Laden and Hitler in hell'". Mail Online. Daily Mail (London). http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2075987/Kim-Jong-Il-dead-North-Korea-mourn-West-fear-rogue-nuclear-state.html. Retrieved 20 December 2011.
- ^ "Kim Jong-il's son Kim Jong-un poised to lead North Korea". National Post (Canada). 10 October 2010. http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/18/kim-jong-ils-son-kim-jong-un-poised-to-lead-north-korea. Retrieved 20 December 2011.
- ^ Demick, Barbara (19 December 2011). "Kim Jong Il death: Powerful uncle could overshadow Kim's son". Los Angeles Times. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/12/kim-jong-un-overshadow-uncle-kim-jong-il-dead.html.
- ^ "Kim Jong-il death: 'Nature mourns' N Korea leader". BBC. 22 December 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16297811. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Kim Jong Il to be enshrined as "eternal leader" (CBS News, 12 January 2012)
- ^ North Korea to Display Dead Leader’s Body (New York Times, 12 January 2012)
- ^ "Kim Jong-il to be put on display". ABC Sydney. 13 January 2012. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-13/north-korea-to-embalm-kim-jong-il/3770662/?site=sydney. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
Further reading[link]
- Jasper Becker, "Rogue Regime: Kim John Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea", Oxford University Press (October 2006), Softcover, 328 pages, ISBN 0-19-530891-3
- Michael Breen, Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader, John Wiley and Sons (January 2004), hardcover, 228 pages, ISBN 0-470-82131-0
- Bradley Martin, Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty, St. Martins (October 2004), hardcover, 868 pages, ISBN 0-312-32221-6
- Kim Chol U, Army-Centred Politics Of Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2002, Softcover, 98 pages
- Kim Jong Il Brief History, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1998, Hardcover, 149 pages
- Kim Jong Il Short Biography, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2001, Hardcover, 215 pages
- Pae Kyong Su, Kim Jong Il The Individual Thoughts And Leadership Vol. 1, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1993, Softcover, 225 pages
- Pae Kyong Su, Kim Jong Il The Individual Thoughts And Leadership Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1995, Softcover, 164 pages
- Nada Takashi, Korea In Kim Jong Il's Era, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2000, Softcover, 163 pages
- Li Il Bok, The Great Man Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1989, Softcover, 167 pages
- Ri Il Bok, The Great Man Kim Jong Il Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1995, Softcover, 84 pages
- Jo Song Baek, The Leadership Philosophy Of Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1999, Softcover, 261 pages
- Guiding Light General Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1997, Softcover, 357 pages
External links[link]
| Find more about Kim Jong-il on Wikipedia's sister projects: | |
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Definitions and translations from Wiktionary |
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Images and media from Commons |
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Learning resources from Wikiversity |
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News stories from Wikinews |
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Quotations from Wikiquote |
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Source texts from Wikisource |
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Textbooks from Wikibooks |
- Kim Jong-il collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Works by or about Kim Jong-il in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Kim Jong Il: Brief HistoryPDF (893 KB) – Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang DPR Korea (1998)
- Born in the USSR – Kim Jong-il's childhood.
- The many family secrets of Kim Jong Il
- "Hidden Daughter" Visits Kim Jong-il Every Year (also includes photos of Kim during his youth)
- Kim's family tree (Korean)
- BBC, North Korea's secretive 'first family'
- Obituary: Kim Jong-il, BBC News, 19 December 2011
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Kim Yong-ju |
Head of the Organisation and Guidance Department 1974–2011 |
Succeeded by TBD |
| Vacant
Title last held by
Kim Il-sung |
General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (Eternal General Secretary since 11 April 2012) 1997–2011 |
Succeeded by Kim Jong-un as First Secretary |
| Chairman of the WPK Central Military Commission 1997–2011 |
Succeeded by Kim Jong-un |
|
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by |
First Vice Chairman of the National Defence Commission 1990–1993 |
Vacant
Title next held by
Jo Myong-rok |
| New office | Chairman of the National Defence Commission (Eternal Chairman since 13 April 2012) 1993–2011 |
Succeeded by Kim Jong-un as First Chairman |
| Military offices | ||
| Preceded by Kim Il-sung |
Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army 1991–2011 |
Succeeded by Kim Jong-un |
|
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Kim Jong-il |
| Alternative names | Yuri Irsenovich Kim |
| Short description | Leader of Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) |
| Date of birth | 16 February 1941 (or 1942) |
| Place of birth | Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk Krai, Soviet Union (present-day Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk, Russia) |
| Date of death | 2011-12-17 |
| Place of death | near Pyongyang, North Korea |
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http://pl.wn.com/Kim Dzong Il
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 |
This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (November 2008) |
David Kang (born 1971) is an Australian barrister. In 1994, while a student at Macquarie University, he fired a starting pistol at the Prince of Wales during an Australia Day speech at Tumbalong Park, Darling Harbour, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 26 January 1994. His father is Robert Kang, a former Republic of Korea Air Force helicopter pilot.[1][2]
Kang jumped a small fence at the front of the stage and ran onto the stage, firing the first shot with his pistol as he rushed towards the Prince, who had just risen to approach the lectern on the stage. He was wrestled to the ground by police after crashing into the lectern as he fired the second shot. At least 15 people jumped onto the assailant, while another man shielded the Prince, who was removed from the stage.
One police officer received a cut hand while tackling Kang. The Prince's Senior Personal Protection Officer, Superintendent Bob Trimming, excited admiration for the speed with which he rose to protect the Prince of Wales. The personal bravery of the Prince was also remarked upon since Charles reacted as a soldier would to the situation.
Others on the stage included Rear Admiral Peter Sinclair, AO (the Governor of New South Wales), John Fahey (the Premier of New South Wales), Frank Sartor (the Lord Mayor of Sydney), and Tony Lauer (the New South Wales Commissioner of Police).
Kang was arrested and taken to Sydney Police Centre. He appeared in Court on the following day, and remanded in custody until 4 February 1994. He faced six charges, including two under the Federal Crimes (Internationally Protected Persons) Act, including attacking an internationally protected person, as well as charges of illegally using a firearm, possessing a firearm, affray, and assault - if convicted on all counts, Kang could have received a 20 year sentence. In court, Kang testified that he was suffering from depression and was protesting the plight of Cambodian refugees in Australia. He was found guilty of threatening unlawful violence and sentenced to 500 hours of community service.[2]
Kang has a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in anthropology from Macquarie University, Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney, and Master of Business Administration from University of Technology, Sydney. In February 2005, he became a barrister in Sydney.[3][2]
References[link]
- ^ Cambodian Refugees - 12/05/1994 - PRIV - NSW Parliament
- ^ a b c Benns, Matthew (5 February 2005). "Man who shot at Prince Charles becomes barrister". The Age. http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Man-who-shot-at-Prince-Charles-becomes-barrister/2005/02/05/1107476854102.html. Retrieved 26 April 2011.
- ^ David Kang - Barrister at Law
|
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| Name | Kang, David |
| Alternative names | |
| Short description | |
| Date of birth | 1971 |
| Place of birth | |
| Date of death | |
| Place of death | |
http://wn.com/David_Kang
This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kang
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
Revisions and sourced additions are welcome; please only include historical figures.
The following is a list of significant men and women known for being the father, mother, or considered the founders mostly in Western socities in a field, listed by category. In most non-science fields, the title of being the "father" is debatable.
|
Church[link]
Main article: Church Fathers
Games[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Miniature wargaming | H.G. Wells[1] | |
| The modern video game industry | Nolan Bushnell | Creator of Pong and founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese's |
| Modern video game | Shigeru Miyamoto[2] | Creator of many successful Nintendo franchises |
| Role-playing game | Gary Gygax[3] | Creator of Dungeons & Dragons |
| Stealth game | Hideo Kojima[4] | Creator of the Metal Gear stealth-action games |
| Video game | Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. | Inventor of the First video game |
| Wargaming | Charles S. Roberts[5] |
Humanities[link]
Military[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Aerial warfare | Oswald Boelcke[6] | The first to formalize rules of air fighting, which he presented as the Dicta Boelcke, also credited as being the first pilot to shoot down an aircraft. |
| Atomic bomb | Robert Oppenheimer[7] Leó Szilárd[8] Enrico Fermi[9] |
|
| Blitzkrieg | Heinz Guderian[10][11] | |
| The West's Hydrogen bomb | Edward Teller[12] | |
| Atomic submarine and "nuclear navy" | Hyman G. Rickover[13][14][15] | |
| Fourth Generation Warfare | William S. Lind[citation needed] | |
| French sailing navy | Jean-Baptiste Colbert[16] | Built on the fleet of France inherited from Cardinal Richelieu. |
| Naval Special Warfare | Phil H. Bucklew[17] | US Naval Officer and First Commanding Officer of Navy SEAL Team One |
| Naval tactical studies | Paul Hoste[18] | Jesuit Professor of Mathematics at the Royal College of the Marine in Toulon; wrote L'Art des Armées Navales (1697) |
| Luftwaffe and Luftstreitkräfte | Oswald Boelcke[19] | |
| The Soviet Union's Hydrogen Bomb | Andrei Sakharov[20] | |
| United States Airborne | William C. Lee[21] | First commander of the parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia. |
| United States Cavalry | Kazimierz Pułaski[22] | Brigadier-general and commander of the cavalry of the Continental Army (1770s). |
| United States Navy | Commodore John Barry[23] Captain John Paul Jones[24] |
Nations[link]
Natural and social sciences[link]
Sports[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| American football | Walter Camp[25] | |
| American motocross | Edison Dye[26] | Introduced motorcross to American riders. |
| American road racing | Cameron Argetsinger[27] | Introduced the first US auto race that was dedicated to road courses at Watkins Glen. |
| American soccer | Steve Ross[28] | Godfather, created the New York Cosmos soccer team and imported a number of well known international footballers to the team in an attempt to bring interest to soccer in the US. |
| Angling | Izaak Walton[29] | Author of The Compleat Angler. |
| Argentine football | Alexander Watson Hutton[30] | |
| Argentine professional golf | José Jurado[31] | |
| Argentine winter sports | Otto Meiling[32] | |
| Association football | Ebenezer Cobb Morley[33] | |
| Baseball | Henry Chadwick[34][35][36][37] | |
| Basketball | James Naismith | Left many diaries and interviews that explain how and when he created basketball. |
| BMX | Scot Breithaupt[38] | |
| Brazilian football | Charles William Miller[39] | |
| Camel Lights | Jim Downing | Built a racecar a season before it became the basis of a new lightweight prototype class in |
| Canadian rodeo | O. Raymond Knight[41] | Coined the rodeo term "stampede" and was world's first rodeo producer, rodeo stock contractor, and rodeo champion in 1902. |
| Drag racing | Wally Parks[42] | Founder of the NHRA and organized the first legitimate drag race. |
| Don Garlits[43] | Considered to be one of the innovators of drag racing safety. | |
| Eddie Hill[44] | Regarded as the forefather of drag racing. | |
| Drifting | Kunimitsu Takahashi[45] | Introduced an aggressive high speed cornering technique that became widely used for illicit purposes which eventually became a sport. |
| East Coast skateboarding | Vinny Raffa (godfather)[46] | |
| Florida skateboarding | Bruce Walker (godfather)[47] | |
| Modern football | Ebenezer Cobb Morley[48] | |
| Freestyle BMX | Bob Haro[49][50] | |
| Freestyle Motocross | Mike Metzger[51] | Godfather. |
| Funny Car | Dick Landy[52] | |
| Ice Hockey | James Creighton (ice hockey) | Captained of one of the two teams that participated in the first indoor hockey game on March 3, 1875 in Montreal. |
| Import drag racing | Frank Choi[53] | Hosted one of the first events specifially for import cars in the mid-1990s to keep drivers out of street racing that progressed into a professional category. |
| Italian football | James Richardson Spensley[54] | Given due to his association with Genoa CFC and his contribution to the modern day variation of the game in Italy. |
| William Garbutt[55] | Laying the foundations of skilled coaching in Italian football. | |
| Japanese baseball | Horace Wilson[56] | Credited for introducing baseball in Japan. |
| Hiroshi Hiraoka[57] | Credited for establishing the first baseball team. | |
| Jogging | Jim Fixx[58] | Founding father. |
| Kart racing | Art Ingels[59] | Developed the world's first kart (1956). |
| Lacrosse | William George Beers[60][61][62][63] | Codified the sport. |
| Mixed martial arts | Bruce Lee[64] | Called so by Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. For his experimentation into other styles and invention of Jeet Kune Do. |
| Modern bodybuilding | Eugen Sandow[65] | |
| Harold Zinkin[66] | Called so by Arnold Schwarzenegger during a press statement on his passing in 2004. Inventor of the modern exercise machines. | |
| Modern boxing | James Figg[67] | |
| James J. Corbett[citation needed] | ||
| Modern figure skating | Jackson Haines[68] | "Jackson Haines - The Father of Figure Skating," according to Roy Blakey |
| Modern football in Japan | Dettmar Cramer[69] | |
| Modern rodeo | Earl W. Bascom[70] | Bascom's many equipment innovations pioneered the sport starting in 1916. |
| Modern sabre fencing | Italo Santelli[71] | |
| Modern surfing | Duke Kahanamoku[72] | |
| Rodeo bareback bronc riding | Earl W. Bascom[70] | Bascom designed and made the first one-hand rigging in 1924. |
| Rugby union | A. G. Guillemard[73] | |
| William Webb Ellis[74] | "Who with a fine disregard for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it thus originating the distinctive feature of the rugby game". | |
| Scuba diving | Jacques Cousteau[75] | Developed the aqua-lung jointly with Émile Gagnan; popularized scuba diving as a research diver, writer, and film and television producer and personality. |
| Skateboarding | Skip Engblom (godfather)[76] | |
| Tony Hawk (godfather)[77] | ||
| Snowboarding | Jake Burton Carpenter[78] | |
| Stock car racing | Bill France, Sr.[79][80] | Foundation of the sanctioning body for stock car racing |
| Supercross | Mike Goodwin[81] | Organized the first supercross race. |
| Televised golf | Frank Chirkinian[82][83] | Personally responsible for much of the production conventions of modern golf broadcasting. |
Technology[link]
Fields[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Aerodynamics (modern) | Sir George Cayley [84][85] | Founding father of modern Aerodynamics. The first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight—weight, lift, drag, and thrust. Modern airplane design is based on those discoveries. |
| Architecture | Imhotep[86] | Built the first pyramid |
| Astronautics | Konstantin Tsiolkovsky[87] |
|
| Aviation | Father Francesco Lana-Terzi[90] | Book: Prodromo alla Arte Maestra (1670). First to describe the geometry and physics of a flying vessel. |
| British watchmaking | Thomas Tompion[91] | |
| Clinical trials | James Lind[92] | Conducted the first controlled clinical trial in the modern era of medicine, an investigation on using citrus food as a treatment for scurvy aboard HMS Salisbury in 1747 |
| Computing | Charles Babbage[93] | Inventor of the Analytical Engine which was never constructed in his lifetime. |
| Cybernetics | Norbert Wiener[94][95] | |
| Genetics | Gregor Mendel | Founder of the Genetics[96] |
| Modern Bladesmithing | William F. Moran | Founder of the American Bladesmith Society |
| Modern Kinematics | Ferdinand Freudenstein | Applied digital computation to the kinematic synthesis of mechanisms.[97] |
| Modern Knifemaking | Bob Loveless | Founder of the Knifemakers' Guild |
| Photography | Louis Daguerre[98] Nicéphore Niépce[99] William Henry Fox Talbot[100] Thomas Wedgwood[101] |
Inventions[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Air conditioning | Willis Carrier | [102] |
| C (programming language) | Dennis Ritchie | |
| Chronograph | George Graham[91][103] | Referred so by Bernard Humbert of the Horology School of Bienne on his 1990 book he Chronograph as Graham was the first to construct a horological mechanism |
| Compact Disc | Kees Immink[104] | |
| Compiler | Grace Hopper | |
| Computer | Konrad Zuse[105] | Invented world's first functional program-controlled computer. |
| Alan Turing[106][107] | Was a secret code breaker during WWII and invented the Turing machine (1936). | |
| John von Neumann[108] | Became "intrigued" with Turing's universal machine and later emphasised the importance of the stored-program concept for electronic computing (1945), including the possibility of allowing the machine to modify its own program in useful ways while running. | |
| John V. Atanasoff[109] | Invented the digital computer in the 1930s | |
| John W. Mauchly [110] J.Presper Eckert[111] |
Invented the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) in 1946. ENIAC was the first general-purpose electronic computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. | |
| Computer Program | Ada Lovelace[112] | Recognized by historians as the writer of the world's first computer program which was for the Charles Babbage Analytical Engine, but was never complete within either her or his lifetime. |
| Ekranoplan | Rostislav Alexeev | |
| Helicopter | Igor Sikorsky [113] | Invented the first successful helicopter, upon which further designs were based. |
| Internet | Vint Cerf[114][115] Bob Kahn[116] [117] |
Co-invented Internet protocol (IP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) in 1973, the two original protocols of the Internet protocol suite.[118] |
| Instant noodle | Momofuku Ando[119] | Inventor of the instant noodle, also founder of Nissin Foods to produce and market them. |
| Japanese television | Kenjiro Takayanagi[120][121] | |
| Jet engine | Frank Whittle[122][123] | |
| Karaoke | Daisuke Inoue[124] | Inventor of the machine as a means of allowing people to sing without the need of a live back-up. |
| Laser | Charles Hard Townes | |
| Lightning prediction system | Alexander Stepanovich Popov | The first lightning prediction system, the Lightning detector, was invented in 1894 by Alexander Stepanovich Popov. |
| Marine chronometer | John Harrison[125] | |
| Microprocessor | Marcian Hoff[126] Masatoshi Shima[127] |
|
| Mobile phone | Martin Cooper[128] | He is the main brainchild of hand-held phone and with the help of Motorola team he developed the first handset in 1973 weighing in at two kilos. |
| Pentium microprocessor | Vinod Dham[129][130] | The original Pentium (P5) was developed by a team of engineers, including John H. Crawford, chief architect of the original 386,[131] and Donald Alpert, who managed the architectural team. Dror Avnon managed the design of the FPU.[132] Dham was general manager of the P5 group.[133] Some media sources have called him the "father of the Pentium". |
| Personal computer | Chuck Peddle[134] | Developed the 6502 microprocessor, the KIM-1 and the Commodore PET |
| Henry Edward "Ed" Roberts[135] André Truong Trong Thi[136] |
||
| Programmable logic controller | Dick Morley[citation needed] | |
| Radio | Alexander Stepanovich Popov [137] Lee De Forest[138][139][140] Guglielmo Marconi[141] Jagdish Chandra Bose[142] Nikola Tesla[143] |
The research of these pioneers led to the development of the radio |
| Radio (Radio broadcasting) | Reginald Fessenden[citation needed] David Sarnoff[citation needed] |
Fessenden is credited as the first to broadcast radio signals on Christmas Eve, 1906. Sarnoff proposed a chain of radio stations to Marconi's associates in 1915. |
| Radio (FM radio) | Edwin H. Armstrong[citation needed] | Obtained the first Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license to operate an FM station in Alpine, New Jersey at approximately 50 megahertz (1939) |
| Radiotelephony | Reginald Fessenden[144][145] | |
| Search Engine | Alan Emtage[146][147][148] | Created Archie, a pre-Web search engine which pioneered many of the techniques used by subsequent search engines |
| SGML | Charles Goldfarb[149] | |
| Telephone | Alexander Graham Bell[150] | See Invention of the telephone |
| Television | Philo T. Farnsworth[151] | Co-Inventors of the Electronic Television. Farnsworth invented the Image dissector while Zworykin created the Iconoscope, both fully electronic forms of television. Logie Baird invented the world's first working television system, also the first electronic color television system. |
| Tokamak | Lev Artsimovich | |
| Tube structure | Fazlur Khan[156] | Invented the tube structural system and first employed it in his designs for the DeWitt-Chestnut Apartments, John Hancock Center and Sears Tower. |
| World Wide Web | Tim Berners-Lee[157] | |
| Visual Basic | Alan Cooper[158] | |
| XML | Jon Bosak[159] |
Towns, cities and regions[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| British Columbia | James Douglas[160] | Fur trader and manager for the North West Company and Hudson's Bay Company, Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island and first Governor of the Colony of British Columbia. |
| Lan Kwai Fong | Allan Zeman[161] | Noted for turning a small square of streets in Central, into a thriving bar and night life districts in Hong Kong. |
Transport[link]
| Subject | Father/Mother | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| 20th century American car industry | Henry Ford[162] | Noted for introducing a simple and affordable car for the ordinary American masses. |
| American Interstate Highway System | Dwight D. Eisenhower[163] | |
| High-performance VW industry | Gene Berg[164] | |
| Hot rod | Ed Winfield[165] | |
| Import Car Culture | RJ DeVera[166] | Influential for popularising the import car scene in the mid-1990s. |
| Kustom Kulture | Von Dutch[167] | |
| Monster truck | Bob Chandler[168] | Famed for building Bigfoot, which was the first to be capable of driving over cars and subsequently became one of the most famous monster truck in history |
| Mountain bike | Gary Fisher[169] | |
| Rotary engine | Felix Wankel[170][171] | |
| Route 66 | Cyrus Avery[172] | |
| Tailfin | Harley Earl[173][174][175] | |
| Traffic safety | William Phelps Eno[176] | |
| Yellow school bus | Frank W. Cyr[177] |
See also[link]
References[link]
- ^ The Miniatures Page. The World of Miniatures - An Overview.
- ^ "Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, 'The Father of Modern Video Games,' Receives The Jim". Reuters. 2009-01-15. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS218035+15-Jan-2009+PRN20090115.
- ^ Rausch, Allen (August 15, 2004). "Gary Gygax Interview - Part I". GameSpy. http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/538/538817p1.html. Retrieved 2005-01-03.
- ^ "Hideo Kojima 'GDC 2009 Keynote' video Part 2 of 4". 1UP.com. March 26, 2009. http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/24175. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
- ^ "Charles S. Roberts: The Founding Father"
- ^ http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8194
- ^ J Robert Oppenheimer
- ^ Bernstein, Barton J: "Introduction" to The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories (expanded edition), by Leo Szilard. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992, p.5: "Its author, Leo Szilard, now dead nearly three decades, was a Hungarian émigré scientist and one of many putative fathers of the A-bomb."
- ^ Lichello, R. (1971). Enrico Fermi: Father of the Atomic Bomb. SamHar Press. ISBN 978-0-87157-011-6. http://books.google.com/?id=Xh8eKgAACAAJ&dq=Lichello.
- ^ Chris Trueman. "Heinz Guderian". http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/heinz_guderian.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-26.
- ^ Chris Shimp (March 1, 2001). "General Heinz Guderian: The Father of Blitzkrieg". http://history.sandiego.edu/GEN/st/~cshimp/guderian.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-26.
- ^ "'Father of H-Bomb' Agrees to Rally Scientific Talent." The New York Times, December 31, 1965, p.19. Story opens: "Albany, December 30—Governor Rockefeller will make an intensified attack on air pollution with the help of Dr. Edward Teller, the 'father of the hydrogen bomb.'"
- ^ Jeffries, John (2001). Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. Fordham Univ Press. ISBN 0-8232-2110-5. , p.162: "'Admiral Rickover', said Powell, '"father of the atomic submarine", is a great naval officer... It is not equally clear that he is a careful and thorough student of American education.'"
- ^ "Submarine Range Called Unlimited; Rickover Says Atomic Craft Can Cruise Under Ice To North Pole and Beyond," The New York Times, December 6, 1957, p.33: "The admiral, who is often called the 'Father of the Atomic Submarine'..."
- ^ Galantin, I. J. (1997). Submarine Admiral: From Battlewagons to Ballistic Missiles. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06675-8. , p. 217: "Chet Holifield... member of the JCAE... said 'Of all the men I dealt with in public service, at least one will go down in history: Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy.'"
- ^ Warner, Oliver (1973). Great Battle Fleets. Hamlyn. p. 98. ISBN 0-600-33913-0 ISBN 978-0-600-33913-7.
- ^ Lanning, Col. Michael Lee (October 29, 2002). Blood Warriors: American Military Elites. New York: Ballantine. pp. 368. ISBN 978-0-345-44891-0.
- ^ Warner, Oliver (1973). Great Battle Fleets. Hamlyn. p. 96. ISBN 0-600-33913-0 ISBN 978-0-600-33913-7.
- ^ http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWboelcke.htm
- ^ "Andrei Sakharov: Soviet Physics, Nuclear Weapons, and Human Rights". Center for the History of Physics. American Institute of Physics. http://www.aip.org/history/sakharov/. Retrieved 2007-03-03.
- ^ "General William C. Lee: Father of the Airborne". Archived from the original on 2008-06-12. http://web.archive.org/web/20080612100930/http://www.screamingeagle.org/WilliamLeeChapter/williamclee.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-12.
- ^ Yale Richmond (1995). From Da to Yes: understanding the East Europeans. Intercultural Press. p. 72. ISBN 1-877864-30-7, ISBN 978-1-877864-30-8. http://books.google.com/?id=2Y8GNIp42ysC&printsec=frontcover.
- ^ John Barry Kelly. "Commodore Barry". http://www.ushistory.org/people/commodorebarry.htm. Retrieved 2007-06-16.
- ^ Hoover Library, "Revolutionary America! Where Did We Go From There? The Continental Navy -- John Paul Jones"
- ^ http://www.collegefootball.org/famersearch.php?id=88004
- ^ http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/hofbiopage.asp?id=163
- ^ http://www.wheels.ca/newsFeatures/article/485678
- ^ http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=cosmos
- ^ New International Encyclopedia. New York City: Dodd, Mead and Company. 1914. pp. Fathers.
- ^ "32". International Federation of Football History & Statistics. http://www.iffhs.de/?29dad5a85ad4a91b972b9815e85fdcdc3bfcdc0aec28d6eda0a70c. Retrieved November 9, 2011. "Arnoldo Pencliffe Watson Hutton (20.8.1886-29.7.1951), popularly known as "El Fantástico", was the son of Scotsman Alexander (Alejandro) Watson Hutton, who was a football pioneer and is considered the father of Argentine football."
- ^ "Pro Shop & Clubhouse". Algodon Wine Estates. InvestProperty Group, LLC. http://www.algodonwineestates.com/en_US/tourism/golf/proshop/_view/lang=en_US. Retrieved November 9, 2011. "Only at our pro shop can you find unique AWE merchandise, as well as memorabilia of the legends who inspire us; José Jurado, "The Father of Argentine Professional Golf", and José Luis Clerc ("Batata"), one of the most important Argentine tennis players in history."
- ^ Mirodan, Seamus (February 14, 2004). "Nazis' Argentine village hide-out pulls in tourists". The Sunday Telegraph (London). http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/1454352/Nazis-Argentine-village-hide-out-pulls-in-tourists.html. Retrieved November 9, 2011. "Across the road from Priebke's delicatessen is the Club Andino Bariloche, a mountaineering association set up in 1931 by Otto Meiling, the father of Argentine winter sports and a former member of the Hitler Youth."
- ^ http://www.sportsbooks.net/soccer/history.html
- ^ "Henry Chadwick, Chad, The Father of Base Ball [sic]"; National Baseball Hall of Fame bio,[1]. Not a player, but a journalist and organizer, the Hall of Fame credits him as "inventor of the box score" and "author of the first rule-book."
- ^
- 'Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889, ed. Henry Chadwick at Project Gutenberg: "Henry Chadwick, the veteran journalist, upon whom the honored sobriquet of 'Father of Base Ball[sic]' rests so happily and well, appears in portraiture, and so well preserved in his physical manhood that his sixty-three years rest lightly upon his well timed life."
- ^ "Matty" at Harvard; The New York Times, February 16, 1909, p. 7: "Charles H. Ebbets, Chairman of the Chadwick Monument Committee, has announced that the contract has been awarded for a suitable monument to be placed on the plot in Greenwood[sic] Cemetery where the remains of the late Henry Chadwick, 'the Father of Baseball,' repose."
- ^ Collins, Glen (2004): "Ground as Hallowed as Cooperstown," The New York Times, April 1, 2004. (Article on baseball notables interred in the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn) "Among the nearly 600,000 people buried there are no less than four pioneers who were accorded the title 'Father of Baseball' in the popular press: Henry Chadwick, Duncan Curry, William Tucker and William Wheaton....The memorial for Henry Chadwick bears a 'Father of Base Ball' inscription.... [Duncan] Curry, first president of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club, is immortalized with a monument that proudly dubs him 'Father of Baseball' because he headed the club that scholars say first codified many of the game's rules...."
- ^ http://citracycling.multiply.com/journal/item/27
- ^ Hamilton, Aidan (1998). An Entirely Different Game, The British Influence on Brazilian Football. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 1-84018-041-2.
- ^ Goudinoff, Connie (1992). Mazda Motorsports: 20 Victorious Years in America. Motorbooks International. p. 96. ISBN 0-87938-582-0.
- ^ Hicken, J.O. Ed. "Raymond Roundup 1902–1967". Lethbridge, Alberta Canada: The Lethbridge Herald Company, Ltd., 1967. pp. 243, 519.
- ^ http://www.mshf.com/hof/parks_wally.htm
- ^ http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091003/A_SPORTS/910030344#STS=g0jw5l2c.1e6j
- ^ http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=30337&FS=NHRA
- ^ http://ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-Drifting&id=875478
- ^ http://boarding.com/skate/video/totalvid/2/7.html
- ^ http://www.skaterlegends.com/skaters/bruce_walker.htm
- ^ http://www.hull.co.uk/websitefiles/Did%20You%20Know.pdf
- ^ http://www.pinkbike.com/news/article1273.html
- ^ http://www.23mag.com/com/haro/haro.htm
- ^ http://www.freestyle-motocross.co.uk/top3-freestyle-motocross-riders
- ^ http://www.mopar.com/life/legends/dicklandy.html
- ^ "Frank Choi, the father of import drag racing, has done it again..." http://turbohightechperformance.automotive.com/65970/turp-0311-battle-in-virginia-drag-race/index.html
- ^ "English Players in Italy". RSSSF.com. http://www.rsssf.com/players/eng-players-in-it.html. Retrieved August 2007.
- ^ http://www.target.com/William-Garbutt-Father-Italian-Football/dp/1899807829
- ^ http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/16820/the_social_impact_of_japanese_baseball_pg2_pg2.html?cat=9
- ^ Klein, Christopher (2006-10-01). "A passion for the Sox in Kyoto's Fenway Park". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/travel/articles/2006/10/01/a_passion_for_the_sox_in_kyotos_fenway_park/?page=2.
- ^ "Fathers (and mothers) of invention: ultimate victims of their own success". The Independent (London). 2004-02-12. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fathers-and-mothers-of-invention-ultimate-victims-of-their-own-success-569681.html. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
- ^ http://www.vintagekarts.com/ingels.htm - vintagekarts.com
- ^ STX Lacrosse
- ^ HickokSports.com - History - Lacrosse
- ^ Lacrosse History. Historical Facts About Lacrosse
- ^ http://www.schoolnet.ca/aboriginal/handbook/arts_lacrosse.html
- ^ Wickert, Marc. 2004. Dana White and the future of UFC. kucklepit.com. See Wikiquotes for the text.
- ^ http://www.musclepowershop.com/2009/04/eugene-sandow-father-of-bodybuilding.html
- ^ http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/2761/
- ^ http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=4864&more=1
- ^ Roy Blakey's Icestage Archive, accessed December 15, 2011.
- ^ http://www.worldsoccer.com/blogs/the-football-professor-a-profile-of-dettmar-cramer
- ^ a b Elgin, Fran, et al. Editors. "Mohahve VI, A Collection of Histories", Hesperia, California, USA: Mohahve Historical Society, 2011. pp.77.
- ^ Santelli bio including several references backing up the statement, including a quote from Dr. William Gaugler December 1997: "I am, in fact, only two generations removed from the 'father of modern sabre' [referring to Santelli]".
- ^ http://www.surfingmuseum.org/collection/duke/duke.html
- ^ http://www.basicbloganomics.com/2009/03/first-fa-cup-final-on-march-16-1872.html
- ^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WWEplaque_700.jpg
- ^ Diving Almanac article.
- ^ http://www.kontinent.se/slideshow.php?story=70
- ^ http://www.danshamptons.com/content/hamptonstyle/2008/july_11/11.html
- ^ http://www.nestle.bg/news.details.asp?lang=1&nid=48&page=1
- ^ "The Hall dinner and ceremony that also would include induction of William H.G. France, the father of stock car racing" http://books.simonandschuster.com/Wildest-Ride/Joe-Menzer/9780743226257/excerpt_with_id/14145
- ^ http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19920609&id=KFAeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YscEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1892,1191270
- ^ http://www.drivingtoday.com/wcco/features/archive/thompson/index.html
- ^ Dolch, Craig (March 4, 2011). "Chirkinian's impact on televised golf can't be overstated". PGATOUR.com. http://www.pgatour.com/2011/r/03/04/dolch-column-chirkinian/index.html. Retrieved July 15, 2011. "Bringing sounds to golf is just part of the reason why Chirkinian — who is considered "the father of televised golf" — was elected February 9 into the World Golf Hall of Fame on an emergency vote."
- ^ Goldstein, Richard (March 5, 2011). "Frank Chirkinian, the Father of Televised Golf, Dies at 84". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/sports/golf/06chirkinian.html. Retrieved July 15, 2011. "Frank is universally regarded as the father of golf television,” Jim Nantz, CBS’s longtime lead golf announcer, told the PGA Tour Web site this year. “He invented it. He took a sport that no one knew how to televise and made it interesting. He brought the Masters tournament to life."
- ^ "Sir George Carley (British Inventor and Scientist)". Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/100795/Sir-George-Cayley-6th-Baronet. Retrieved 2009-07-26. "English pioneer of aerial navigation and aeronautical engineering and designer of the first successful glider to carry a human being aloft."
- ^ "The Pioneers: Aviation and Airmodelling". http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/cayley.html. Retrieved 2009-07-26. "Sir George Cayley, is sometimes called the 'Father of Aviation'. A pioneer in his field, he is credited with the first major breakthrough in heavier-than-air flight. He was the first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight—weight, lift, drag, and thrust—and their relationship and also the first to build a successful human carrying glider."
- ^ Albert Gallatin Mackey, The Builder Magazine, December 1922, Volume VIII, Number 12, Part XVI.
- ^ Tsiolkovskiy
- ^ Goddard
- ^ Oberth
- ^ Woods, Thomas. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, p 36. (Washington, DC: Regenery, 2005); ISBN 0-89526-038-7.
- ^ a b . http://www.watchtime.com/2010/03/the-man-behind-the-brand-george-graham/.
- ^ Twyman, Richard (22 September 2004). "A brief history of clinical trials". The Human Genome. Wellcome Trust. http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD020948.html. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
- ^ Lee, J.A.N. (1995). International Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 1-884964-47-8.
- ^ Belzer, Belzer (1977). Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology: Volume 7 - Curve Fitting to Early Development.... Marcel Dekker. ISBN 0-262-73009-X. , p. 55: "It is probably not an accident that the 'father of cybernetics,' Norbert Wiener, ..."
- ^ Wiener, Norbert (1965) [1948]. Cybernetics, Second Edition: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press. ISBN 0-8247-2257-4. (Wiener is credited with coining the term in its common modern usage)
- ^ Bowler, Peter J. (2003). Evolution: the history of an idea. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-23693-9.
- ^ http://www.springerlink.com/content/p68g683357756307/fulltext.pdf?page=1 Life and career of Ferdinand Freudenstein
- ^ Barger, M. Susan; William B. White (2000). The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6458-5. p. 20, "Louis Jacques Monde Daguerre: The second father of photography is Daguerre..."
- ^ Barger, M. Susan; William B. White (2000). The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6458-5. p. 17, "The first father of photography was Nicéphore Niépce...."
- ^ Ellis, Roger (2001). Who's Who in Victorian Britain. Stackpole Books. ISBN 0-8117-1640-6. , p. 116: cites book title: "A. H. Booth: William Henry Fox Talbot: father of photography, 1965".
- ^ Booth, Martin (1999). Opium: A History. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-20667-4. p. 30 "Robert Hall, the divine, was addicted [to opium], as was Thomas Wedgwood, the father of photography."
- ^ The Father of Cool - Willis Haviland Carrier and Air Conditioning
- ^ http://www.thetimetv.com/news-brawn-announces-new-team-partnership-with-graham-london-859-133
- ^ Untitled Document
- ^ Konrad Zuse's versus John von Neumann's Computer Concepts
- ^ Gray, Paul (1999-03-29). "Alan Turing - Time 100 People of the Century". Time. http://www.time.com/time/time100/scientist/profile/turing.html. Retrieved 2009-06-13. "The fact remains that everyone who taps at a keyboard, opening a spreadsheet or a word-processing program, is working on an incarnation of a Turing machine"
- ^ 'Father of the computer' honoured - BBC News, Monday, 7 June 2004
- ^ The Modern History of Computing - Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^ Bruner, Jeffrey. "Atanasoff, father of the computer, dies at 91". Rebuilding the ABC. Ames Laboratory. http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/ABC/Articles/Register6-95.html. Retrieved 2006-07-28.
- ^ "Inventor Profile: John Mauchly". Invent Now - Hall of Fame. North Canton, OH, USA: National Inventors Hall of Fame. March 29, 2004. http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/182.html. Retrieved December 12, 2011.
- ^ "Inventor Profile: J. Presper Eckert". Invent Now - Hall of Fame. North Canton, OH, USA: National Inventors Hall of Fame. March 29, 2004. http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/181.html. Retrieved December 12, 2011.
- ^ Ada Lovelace
- ^ Igor Sikorsky is considered to be the "father" of helicopters not because he invented the first. He is called that because he invented the first successful helicopter, upon which further designs were based, an article from inventors.About.com by Mary Bellis
- ^ Making Televised Emergency Information Accessible from the Gallaudet University website
- ^ Although it's a title he objects to (see Interview with Vinton Cerf, from a January 2006 article in Government Computer News), Cerf is willing to call himself one of the Internet's fathers, citing Bob Kahn in particularly as being someone with whom he should share that title.
- ^ Kahn do, No (2007). " Father of internet warns against Net Neutrality", The Register, Thursday 18 January
- ^ Louis Pouzin
- ^ "Fascinating facts about the invention of the Internet by Vinton Cerf in 1973". The Great Idea Finder. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/internet.htm.
- ^ http://www.wakin-web.com/Wakin/NewsVault/InstantNoodles.html
- ^ "Kenjiro Takayanagi: The Father of Japanese Television". NHK Science & Technical Research Laboratories. http://www.nhk.or.jp/strl/aboutstrl/evolution-of-tv-en/p05/. Retrieved 2006-12-09.
- ^ "Kenjiro Takayanagi, Electrical Engineer, 91 (obituary)". New York Times. 1990-07-25. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE6D61231F936A15754C0A966958260. Retrieved 2006-12-09.
- ^ "Sculpture to jet engine inventor". BBC News. 2005-10-20. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/4362374.stm. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
- ^ Aircraft Engine
- ^ http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-234142.html
- ^ . http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/clocks-n-watches/watch/watches/harrison/index.htm.
- ^ http://www.rpi.edu/about/hof/hoff.html
- ^ "Kosaku Inagaki’s Home Page". Kyoto University. http://inagaki.ist.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp. Retrieved 2010-04-01.
- ^ "Meet the man who invented the mobile phone". BBC News. 2010-04-23. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8639590.stm. Retrieved 2010-05-08.
- ^ The Technology Trailblazer: Vinod Dham. University of Cincinnati.
- ^ Priya Ganapati at Techfest 99, IIT Bombay. Rediff.com.
- ^ p. 54, "Intel Turns 35: Now What?", David L. Margulius, InfoWorld, July 21, 2003, ISSN 0199-6649.
- ^ p. 21, "Architecture of the Pentium microprocessor", D. Alpert and D. Avnon, IEEE Micro, 13, #3 (June 1993), pp. 11–21, doi:10.1109/40.216745.
- ^ p. 90, "Inside Intel", Business Week, #3268, June 1, 1992.
- ^ Commodore History: Chuck Peddle
- ^ "Microsoft founders lead tributes to 'father of the PC'". BBC News. April 2, 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8600493.stm. Retrieved April 2, 2010.
- ^ A Talk with the Father of Computing, Wired Magazine
- ^ The "The First Electronic Church of America" website poses the question: "Russia's Popov: Did he 'invent' radio?" According to this account, Alexander Popov is the "radio man." Among other things, it notes that Popov reported sending and receiving a wireless signal across a 600 yards distance in 1895. Two years later, it says, he set up a shore station at Kronstadt and equipped the Russian navy cruiser Africa with his wireless communications apparatus to provide ship-to-shore communication., an article by Stan Horzepa wondering who is the father of the radio
- ^ De Forest, Lee (1950). Father of Radio: The Autobiography of Lee de Forest. Chicago: Wilcox & Follett. (This book sold fewer than a thousand copies and is accordingly rare and expensive today).
- ^ Dennis, Everette E..; Edward Pease (1994). Radio—The Forgotten Medium. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56593-873-9. , p. 198: "the egotistical Lee De Forest who discovered, however unwittingly, the audion tube that allowed him to proclaim himself 'the father of radio'"
- ^ Shurkin, Joseph (1996). Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from the Mainframes to Microprocessors. W. W. Norton and Company. ISBN 0-393-31471-5. , p. 132: "De Forest, who was not a modest man, called himself the 'Father of Radio,' an epithet whose accuracy is debatable."
- ^ Guglielmo Marconi - the "father of radio"
- ^ A. K. Sen (1997). "Sir J.C. Bose and radio science", Microwave Symposium Digest 2 (8-13), pp. 557-560.
- ^ Ask the average person "Who invented radio?" and the average answer will be "Marconi." Ask the same question on the Internet, and the average answer will not likely be "Marconi." Instead, try one of the following on for size: Nikola Tesla, Alexander Popov, Oliver Lodge, Reginald Fessenden, Heinrich Hertz, Mahlon Loomis, Nathan Stubblefield, James Clerk Maxwell and even Thomas Edison, among others, an article by Stan Horzepa wondering who is the father of the radio
- ^ McLuhan, Marshall; Barrington Nevitt (1972). Take Today; the Executive as Dropout. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN 0-15-187830-7. "Fessenden, the Forgotten Father of 'Wireless' Telephony" (section heading)[2]
- ^ Zuill, William S. (2001): The Forgotten Father of Radio", American Heritage of Science and Technology, 17(1)40–47, as cited in Silverman, Steve (2003). Lindbergh's Artificial Heart: More Fascinating True Stories From Einstein's Refrigerator. Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN 0-7407-3340-0. p. 160
- ^ [3] from the Eweek website
- ^ [4] History of the Internet
- ^ [5] History of the Search Engine - What Came Before Google?
- ^ XML for Newcomers and Managers - Part I
- ^ Van Meggelen, Jim; Jared Smith, Leif Madsen (2005). Asterisk: The Future of Telephony. O'Reilly. ISBN 0-596-00962-3. , p.190: "Although Alexander Graham Bell is most famously remembered as the father of the telephone, the reality is that during the latter half of the 1800s dozens of minds were at work on the project of carrying voice over telegraph lines."
- ^ http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/F/htmlF/farnsworthp/farnsworthp.htm
. Society of Television Engineers. URL accessed January 20, 2008. "Isn't it about time that Philo Farnsworth gets some credit??? - ^ "Zworykin at IEEE Global History Network". http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Vladimir_Zworykin. Retrieved 2008-03-03. ""the oft-called Father of Television Vladimir Zworykin""
- ^ "Zworykin at Museum.TV". http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/Z/htmlZ/zworykinvla/zworykinvla.htm. Retrieved 2008-03-03. ""inventor Vladimir Zworykin is often described as "the father of television". ""
- ^ "John Logie Baird: TV Inventor". http://www.sydenham.org.uk/john_logie_baird.html. Retrieved 2009-07-26. "John Logie Baird invented Television in 1926. His initial TV system was electro-mechanical. He (later) embraced electronic TV and developed the world's first color television system."
- ^ "The World's First High Definition Color Television System". http://www.bairdtelevision.com/colour.html. Retrieved 2009-07-26.
- ^ Weingardt, Richard (2005). Engineering Legends. ASCE Publications. p. 75. ISBN 0-7844-0801-7.
- ^ Three loud cheers for the father of the web, 28 January 2005, Telegraph.co.uk
- ^ Cooper, Alan, Why I am called "the Father of Visual Basic" "Mitchell Waite called me the "father of Visual Basic" in the foreword to what I believe was the first book ever published for VB, called the Visual Basic How-To (now in its second edition, published by The Waite Group Press). I thought the appellation was an appropriate one, and frequently use the quoted phrase as my one-line biography."
- ^ XML.com: "XML Father" leaves W3C for OASIS
- ^ BC Archives: Sir James Douglas
- ^ http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_429594.html
- ^ http://trendsupdates.com/henry-ford-father-of-20th-century-american-industry/
- ^ Federal Highway Administration [6]. URL accessed July 21, 2006.
- ^ http://www.vwtrendsweb.com/features/0106vwt_people/index.html
- ^ http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/2008/02/01/hmn_feature17.html
- ^ http://www.versusmotorsport.com/about_us.php
- ^ http://www.hotrod.com/eventcoverage/kustom_kulture_tribute/index.html
- ^ http://mthof.angelfire.com/CLASS2008.html
- ^ http://www.bvv.cz/i2000/Akce/b-slife.nsf/WWWAllPDocsID/BEXP-7L6PQ9?OpenDocument&LANG=GB&NAV=1&ID=0
- ^ http://irishcar.com/wankelge.htm
- ^ http://www.rotorhead.ca/articles/2002/12/22/felix-wankel-bio/
- ^ Steil, Tim (2000). Route 66. MBI Publishing Company. p. 18. ISBN 0-7603-0747-4. "Avery, though dubbed the 'Father of Route 66' by some, was a political appointee who also left office the next year."
- ^ http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X91l3wqJnikC&pg=PA179&lpg=PA179&dq=%22father+of+the+tail+fin%22&source=bl&ots=0R7qHrSvev&sig=NllowJaW5UQa_SJB7MZgZOoVbWA&hl=en&ei=xTYaTZ2WKIa4hAeOj_W3Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22father%20of%20the%20tail%20fin%22&f=false
- ^ McCosh, Dan (2003-03-07). "DRIVING; Most Cars Are Born As Models of Clay". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/07/travel/driving-most-cars-are-born-as-models-of-clay.html?src=pm.
- ^ http://www.retrofuture.com/index.php/2009/01/24/harley-earls-dream-car-the-firebird-iii/
- ^ Eno Transportation Foundation [7]. URL accessed August 23, 2006.
- ^ Watson, Rollin J. (2002). The School As a Safe Haven. Bergen Garvey/Greenwood. p. 30. ISBN 0-89789-900-8. http://books.google.com/?id=uNbd6oIXm0MC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30. "The modern school bus began in a conference in 1939 called by Frank W. Cyr, the 'Father of the Yellow School' bus, who was a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. At that meeting, Cyr urged the standardization of the school bus. Participants came up with the standard yellow color and some basic construction standards. Cyr had... found that children were riding in all sorts of vehicles—one district, he found, was painting their buses red, white, and blue to instill patriotism."
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