Harvey

Question #103: What image is this? Who does it belong to?

Ok, this question is a good example of why I'm rapidly losing interest in this quiz. Buildings are not people, and to use personal pronouns, i.e. "I have lived... My boss was... Who am I?" is entirely misleading. I've overlooked it in other questions because usually there were other clues or hints in the original question that made it abundantly clear that we were talking about an inanimate object, not a person. But to wait til Hint #4 or 5? Well, I stuck around for over 100 questions, but I think the time has come for me to unfollow this particular thread.

Christophe, I'm afraid these hints are too vague to provide much assistance.

1) What is my full name? Lee Harvey Oswald 2) What was the nature of my stay in the USSR? Wanted to renounce US citizenship & become Soviet citizen (but was denied) 3) In which city did I live and where did I work in the USSR? Worked as a lathe operator at the Gorizont Electronics Factory in Minsk. 4) What did I write about life in USSR? "I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough." 5) What did I do that would make me infamous and shroud me in conspiracy? Shot and killed President John F. Kennedy. 6) How did I die? Shot by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Fellow Soviet quiz members- As I am in the midst of preparing for imminent overseas deployment, I find that I am unable to devote any time to coming up with questions to keep this quiz running. Unlike JimZ and others on here, I do not have a great wealth of knowledge of the subject off-hand, so it takes me a bit to come up with something good. Accordingly, I will take a backseat here and let others come up with challenging questions, as Christophe and UB6365 have been doing. With Jim's permission, I may still pop in from time to time (as the deployment allows) to answer questions, but will try to limit that as well out of fairness to the others on here. -Dave Harvey Battalion Chaplain 1-126th Aviation Bn

Question#93 I am not a nonsense. I am not a fish. (sharks aren't fish) I am not a Lycanthrope. (2nd prototype was called the "Werewolf") I am a movie star. (Starred in the movie Чёрная акула/Black Shark, where it got its name) My brother is not Crocodilia. (Kamov also developed the Ka-52 "Alligator") I am very expensive (16 Mln USD). (Unit cost is 500 million rubles (approx. $16 million) as of May 2011) I was designed to fight with one of "native americans." (U.S. AH-64 "Apache" helicopter) You are the Ka-50 "Black Shark" helicopter. http://en.wikipedia....iki/Kamov_Ka-50

UB6365 is correct!

Gunner- True, it did fulfill the original points in my question, but if it's not the correct answer then the question continues, right? Another hint: it's not an aircraft.

Gunner- You're on the right track, but it's not the Tupolev. Think smaller.

Question 84: I am 50 years old this year and am one of the rarest of all. Only those who have "touched the face of God" will ever see me. What am I?

Apologies for the delay - will have a question posted this afternoon!

You are the Order of Friendship of Peoples/Order of Friendship. Originally established 17 December 1972 in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the USSR. Awarded to Soviet nationals, foreigners, establishments, institutions, organizations, military units, union and autonomous republics, provinces, autonomous provinces, national districts, and cities for distinguished services to the cause of strengthening friendship and fraternal cooperation between the socialist nations and peoples, and for significant contributions to the economic, sociopolitical, and cultural development of the USSR and its Union Republics. After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a new order was established by decree # 442 of March 2, 1994 by the President of the Russian Federation.

Yeah, I think I'm with Gunner on this - the recent series of questions have become so obtuse and confusing that it's no longer enjoyable for me either. For instance - on this last question - what did California, Texas or Afghanistan have to do with the answer? Nothing! This has gotten bogged down to thempoint where it takes numerous "hints" over many days just to get in the ballpark. Not fun.

Yeah, ok - I've officially lost interest in this question now...

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov (from "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexander Solzhenitsyn)

Is it Alexander Solzhenitsyn?

That is Nikolai Yezhov, the former head of the NKVD under Stalin during the Great Purge. Yezhov was appointed to the post of People's Commissar for Water Transport on April 6, 1938. Though he retained his other posts, his role as grand inquisitor and extractor of confessions gradually diminished as Stalin retreated from the worst excesses of the Great Purge. By charging him with the extra job, Stalin killed two birds with one stone: Yezhov could correct the water transportation situation with tough Chekist methods, and his transfer to the terra incognita of economic tasks would leave him less time for the NKVD and weaken his position there, thus creating the possibility that in due course he could be removed from the leadership of the punitive apparatus and replaced by fresh people. Contrary to Stalin's expectations, the vast number of party officials and military officers lost during Yezhov's purges had been only partially made good by replacement with trusted Stalinist functionaries, and he eventually correctly recognized that the disruption was severely affecting the country's ability to coordinate industrial production and defend its borders from the growing threat of Nazi Germany. Yezhov had accomplished Stalin's intended task for the Great Purge: the public liquidation of the last of his Old Bolshevik political rivals and the elimination of any possibility of "disloyal elements" or "fifth columnists" within the Soviet military and government prior to the onset of war with Germany. From Stalin's perspective, Yezhov (like Yagoda) had served his purpose but had seen too much and wielded too much power for Stalin to allow him to live. On August 22, 1938 Georgian NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began increasingly to usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. As early as September 8, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yezhov's first deputy, was relocated from under his command into the Navy. Stalin's penchant for periodically executing and replacing his primary lieutenants was well known to Yezhov, as he had previously been the man most directly responsible for orchestrating such actions. Well acquainted with the typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, Yezhov recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as a sign his downfall was imminent, and plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair. Already a heavy drinker, in the last weeks of his service he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work. As anticipated, Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in a report dated November 11, sharply criticized the work and methods of the NKVD during Yezhov's tenure as chief, thus creating the bureaucratic pretense necessary to remove him from power. At his own request, Yezhov was officially relieved of his post as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on November 25, succeeded by Beria, who had been in complete control of the NKVD since the departure of Yezhov’s deputy Frinovskii on 8 September (Frinovskii was appointed People’s Commissar of the Navy).He attended his last Politburo meeting on January 29, 1939. On April 10, he was arrested and imprisoned at the Sukhanovka prison; the "arrest was painstakingly concealed, not only from the general public but also from most NKVD officers... It would not do to make a fuss about the arrest of 'the leader’s favorite,' and Stalin had no desire to arouse public interest in NKVD activity and the circumstances of the conduct of the Great Terror." Amongst his main accusations the former Narkom was accused in accordance with Article 154 of the Soviet Criminal Code ("sodomy, committed with violence or the use of the dependent status of the victim"). Yezhov supposedly broke quickly under torture, and confessed to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to firmly establish a Soviet political prisoner's status as an "enemy of the people" prior to execution, including "wrecking", official incompetence, theft of government funds and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs, none of which were likely or supported by evidence. Apart from these unlikely political crimes, he also confessed to a humiliating history of sexual deviancy, both homosexual and heterosexual, that was (unusually, in contrast with other condemned Bolshevik officials) later corroborated by witness reports and deemed mostly true in post-Soviet examinations of the case. Among the many people dragged down in Yezhov's fall was Isaak Babel: "In May 1939 Ezhov confessed that Babel’ had committed espionage together with [Yezhov's wife] Evgeniia. Within a week the writer was arrested; during interrogation he in his turn testified against the Ezhovs." However, Yezhov's first wife, Antonina Titova, his sister, Evdokiia, and his mother all survived. On February 2, 1940, Soviet judge Vasily Ulrikh tried Yezhov in Beria's office. Yezhov was nearly incoherent, and, like his predecessor Yagoda, mournfully maintained to the end his love for Stalin. Apparently still hoping for a show trial, Beria suggested once again that Yezhov confess to a plot to kill Stalin but was flatly refused, with Yezhov maintaining that "it is better to leave this earth as an honorable man." Yezhov begged Beria on his knees for a few minutes with Stalin to explain himself, and was repeatedly ignored, finally vowing he would "die with Stalin's name on his lips". When the sentence of death was read, Yezhov fainted and had to be carried from the room. Just before the execution, Yezhov was ordered to undress himself and then was brutally beaten by guards at the order of Beria, the new NKVD Chief, just as Yezhov had ordered the guards to beat and humiliate his predecessor Yagoda before his execution only two years prior. Yezhov had to be carried into the execution chamber semi-conscious, hiccuping and weeping uncontrollably. On February 4, he was executed by the Chief Executioner and Commandant of Lubyanka, NKVD Major-General Vasily Blokhin, probably in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane in Moscow. The main NKVD execution chamber in the basement of the Lubyanka was deliberately avoided to ensure total secrecy. His body was immediately cremated and his ashes dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoi Cemetary. The execution remained secret, and as late as 1948, Time reported that “ome think he is still in an insane asylum.″ Yezhov's refusal to admit to a conspiracy against Stalin's life and his long, verifiable history as Stalin's primary inquisitor during the Great Purge made him too dangerous to risk at a public show trial where he might betray Stalin's secrets or successfully expose Stalin's orchestration of the Purge. In addition, the scapegoating of Yezhov allowed Stalin to end the Great Purge while still retaining plausible deniability of his direction over it. This was further reinforced by Stalin's decision to declare damnatio memoriae on Yezhov, a fate normally reserved for only the highest-ranking and most prominent of Stalin's political enemies, and all evidence of his existence was quietly censored from State records and publications. Though his daughter Natalia Khayutina has fought for a revision of the case, Yezhov has not been rehabilitated (the Procuracy decided that because of the serious consequences of Yezhov’s activity as NKVD chief and the casualties he inflicted upon the country, he was not subject to rehabilitation, and the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court concurred on June 4, 1998). The full Wikipedia link to Yezhov is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Yezhov

Good job, Gunner - your point!

In honor of the 50th question, here's a stumper (hopefully) for you all: Our legacies are well-known to all Soviets. We were buried side by side, comrades in death. 50 years ago this month, one of us suffered an indignity. The following month, the other of us suffered an indignity. Who are we, and what happened to us?

Additionally, the ship on the right must be the USS Belknap (DLG-26/CG-26), named for Rear Admiral George Eugene Belknap. She collided with the USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) on 22 November 1975 - 14 (not 24) years before the summit. Following the collision, a fire broke out on Belknap during which her aluminum superstructure was melted, burned and gutted to the deck level. She was eventually repaired and converted to a flagship from May 1985 to February 1986.

1) Which event does this memorial commemorate? It commemorates the historic 1989 Malta Summit between U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. 2) What does the memorial symbolise? It symoblizes "THE END OF THE COLD WAR," according to the inscription at the base of the monument. (See, I did find it!) 3) In which country is it located? The island of Malta, along the Birzebbuga promenade. The summit was held aboard the cruise ship SS Maxim Gorkiy in Marsaxlokk Bay. 4) Why is this event so significant? Because it marked the end of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

Yeah, I got nothin' at this point... can't even read the inscription on the monument!

And I see that once again I am a few moments too late in providing the answer... :D

The Orzeł was in the Baltic Sea when Nazi Germany attacked Poland, setting off World War II. Unable to reach a Polish naval base and with the captain, LCDR Henryk Kłoczkowski, seriously ill, the decision was made to head for Tallinn, which was reached on 14 September 1939. Kłoczkowski was taken to a hospital the next day for treatment of the unidentified illness from which he had been suffering since 8 September. Section XIII, Article 8 of the Hague Convention of 1907 required that a neutral government had a duty "to prevent the departure from its jurisdiction of any vessel intended to cruise, or engage in hostile operations"against another government with which the neutral was at peace. At the insistence of the Germans, the Estonian military authorities boarded the ship, interned the crew, confiscated all the navigation aids and maps, and commenced dismantling all the armaments. The crew of ORP Orzeł conspired to escape under the new command of its chief officer, LCDR Jan Grudzinski. On 18 September, the partially submerged Orzeł slipped out of the harbour under the cover of a foggy night, with the two on-board Estonian guards taken hostage. The Estonian and German press covering the incident declared the two captured guards missing at sea. However, they were deposited on the Swedish coast and provided with clothing, money and food for their safe return home. The Polish crew believed that those returning from the underworld "deserve to travel first class only". Orzeł headed to the Royal Navy base at Rosyth in Scotland. The Soviet Union, which invaded Poland itself on 17 September 1939, accused Estonia of conspiring with the Polish seamen and "aiding them to escape", challenging the neutrality of Estonia. The Soviets demanded to be allowed to place military bases on Estonian soil, threatening war if Estonia did not comply. This was simply a convenient pretext; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact had already given German agreement to the Soviet Union taking over the Baltic countries. The Orzeł incident was used to force a "pact of defence and mutual assistance" on Estonia, which was signed on 28 September 1939, and led to the occupation and annexation of Estonia by the Soviet Union in 1940. Orzeł sank no enemy vessels during her journey from Estonia to Britain, although Soviet authorities blamed her for sinking the Soviet tanker Metallist in Narva Bay on 26 September, the incident being used as a pretext for the Soviet invasion of the Baltic states.

Gunner1, you are correct!