Leningrad in the context of "Winter War"

The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Russian SFSR), previously known as the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) and the Russian Soviet Republic, and unofficially as Soviet Russia, was a socialist state from 1917 to 1922, and afterwards the largest and most populous constituent republic of the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1922 to 1991, until becoming a sovereign part of the Soviet Union with priority of Russian laws over Union-level legislation in 1990 and 1991, the last two years of the existence of the USSR. The Russian SFSR was composed of sixteen smaller constituent units of autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group. The capital of the Russian SFSR and the USSR as a whole was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad (Petrograd until 1924), Stalingrad (Volgograd after 1961), Novosibirsk, Sverdlovsk, Gorky and Kuybyshev.

On 7 November 1917 [O.S. 25 October], as a result of the October Revolution, the Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed as a sovereign state and the world's first constitutionally socialist state guided by communist ideology. The first constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922, the Russian SFSR signed a treaty officially creating the USSR. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty. On 12 June 1991, Boris Yeltsin, supported by the Democratic Russia pro-reform movement, was elected the first and only President of the RSFSR, a post that would later become the Presidency of the Russian Federation. The August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt in Moscow with the temporary brief internment of President Mikhail Gorbachev destabilised the Soviet Union. Following these events, Gorbachev lost all his remaining power, with Yeltsin superseding him as the pre-eminent figure in the country. On 8 December 1991, the heads of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed the Belovezha Accords declaring dissolution of the USSR and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a loose replacement confederation. On 12 December, the agreement was ratified by the Supreme Soviet (the parliament of the Russian SFSR); therefore the Russian SFSR had renounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russia's independence from the USSR itself and the ties with the other Soviet republics.

The Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line, or A–A line for short, was the military goal of Operation Barbarossa. It is also known as the Volga–Arkhangelsk line, as well as (more rarely) the Volga–Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line. It was first mentioned on 18 December 1940 in Führer Directive 21 (Fall Barbarossa) which enunciated the set goals and conditions of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, describing the attainment of the "general line Volga–Arkhangelsk" as its overall military objective.

The 1991 Leningrad municipal elections took place on June 12, 1991 in the city of Leningrad (modern-day Saint Petersburg), located in the then-Soviet republic of Russia. The elections included the city's first popular mayoral election and a non-binding referendum on whether to change the city's name to its historic name of "Saint Petersburg". The elections coincided with the 1991 Russian presidential election.

Roughly two-thirds of the city's approximately three million eligible voters participated in the election.

The ruble or rouble (/ˈruːbəl/; Russian: рубль, romanized: rubl', IPA: [rublʲ]) was the currency of the Soviet Union. It was introduced in 1922 and replaced the Imperial Russian ruble. One ruble was divided into 100 kopecks (копейка, pl. копейки – kopeyka, kopeyki). Soviet banknotes and coins were produced by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise (or Goznak) in Moscow and Leningrad.

In addition to regular cash rubles, other types of rubles were also issued, such as several forms of convertible ruble, transferable ruble, clearing ruble, Vneshtorgbank cheque, etc.; also, several forms of virtual rubles (called "cashless ruble", безналичный рубль) were used for inter-enterprise accounting and international settlement in the Comecon zone.

The Leningrad Codex (Latin: Codex Leningradensis [Leningrad Book]; Hebrew: כתב יד לנינגרד) is the oldest known complete manuscript of the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew, using the Masoretic Text and Tiberian vocalization. According to its colophon, it was made in Cairo in AD 1008 (or possibly 1009).

Some have proposed that the Leningrad Codex was corrected against the Aleppo Codex, a slightly earlier manuscript that was partially lost in the 20th century. However, Paul E. Kahle argues that the Leningrad manuscript was more likely based on other, lost manuscripts by the ben Asher family. The Aleppo Codex is several decades older, but parts of it have been missing since the 1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo, making the Leningrad Codex the oldest complete codex of the Tiberian mesorah that has survived intact to this day.

Alexander Sergeyevich Zarudny (Russian: Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Зару́дный, 31 August [O.S. 19 August] 1863 in Tsarskoye Selo, Russia – 30 November 1934 in Leningrad, Soviet Union) was a Russian lawyer and politician. In 1887 he was arrested regarding the assassination of Alexander II of Russia but was released due to lack of evidence. In 1902-1917 he worked as a lawyer and a judge. Soon he found that his conscience did not square well with the work of a prosecutor or a judge, and devoted himself to defense work in political cases involving miscarriage of justice, press censorship, or mistreatment of ethnic minorities. His colleague, Oskar Grusenberg, likened him to "a one-man rescue squad." Grusenberg recounts that Zarudny once compiled a list of 157 cases he handled all over Russia, from Eastern Siberia to the Caucasus and Moldavia, in the period 1885-1917, and then added, "there were also 265 other cases." He was one of several Russian lawyers who stepped forward gratis to defend Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Jew accused of ritual murder in the infamous Beilis trial. In 1917 he was the Minister for Justice in the Russian Provisional Government but resigned twice. After the October Revolution he was protected by his election as an honorary member of a prestigious Association of Political Convicts, and did some defense work, but soon stopped in frustration and made his living giving lectures throughout the Soviet Union about his courtroom career, to large, enthusiastic audiences.

In Petersburg society in the 1890s, Zarudny was known as "Zarudny furioso" because he was always the life of a party. He was briefly married and had one son, Sergey. Zarudny was remembered fondly by his niece, who recounts his visit to Harbin during a lecture tour. He was a wonderful sleight-of-hand magician, and a natural with young children.When his son married, Zarudny gave the newlyweds his apartment and lived the rest of his life in housing devoted to former political prisoners.Zarudny mentioned in a letter that he had written memoirs, but these memoirs have not yet been found.