Russia as USSR Russia – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Series: Architectural Monuments of Russia The Museum-Estate of Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov, Tula Region 2012 Proof Silver 25 Roubles 60mm (169.00 grams) 0.925 Silver (5.026 oz. ASW) Reference: Y# 1335 ДВАДЦАТЬ ПЯТЬ РУБЛЕЙ БАНК РОССИИ • Ag 925 • 2012 г. • 155,5 ММД •, Emblem of Russian bank: two-headed eagle. МУЗЕЙ-ЗАПОВЕДНИК В.Д. Поленова, The Museum Estate of V.D. Polenov against the background of trees framed by a stylized floral ornamental pattern.
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Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov (Russian: Васи́лий Дми́триевич Поле́нов; 1 June 1844 – 18 July 1927) was a Russian landscape painter associated with the Peredvizhniki movement of realist artists. His contemporaries would call him the “Knight of Beauty” as he embodied both European and Russian traditions of painting. His vision of life was summarized as following: “Art should promote happiness and joy”. As a painter and a humanist, he would truly believe in the civilizing mission of Art, Culture and Education.
In the late 1880s, Polenov dreamed of a house-museum in the countryside in order to spread the benefits of a rich cultural life. He wanted to create his own place of creation and education but also a place where he could expose the archaeological and artistic collections gathered by his family along the decades. In 1889, he made a trip to the area of Taroussa, 130 km south of Moscow, with his friend and disciple Constantin Korovine. Struck by the beauty of the place, he decided that he will make his dream true there, on the banks of the river Oka. Thanks to the purchase by Tsar Alexander III of his painting Christ and the sinner (1884) for the amount, huge at the time, of 30 000 rubles, he bought a sandy hill overlooking the river, not far from the small village of Bekhovo.
The house, built based on the model his childhood’s house in Imotchentsy, was completed in 1892. It is a large three-storey wooden building. He realized himself the plans the design of it and the general style approaches Art Nouveau, which he himself called “Scandinavian”, mixing Romanesque and Gothic architecture but also Western medieval style. From the outside, the house remains very original by multiplying volumes and facades, varying the roofs’ shapes and sizes. The ground floor is occupied by common rooms (library, dining room, games room). On the upper floors are the living rooms, Polenov’s workshop and his wife’s office. Large windows are arranged to admire the view of the Oka and Taroussa at the time. Since then, the trees planted by the artist, his children and local peasants, are closing a little bit the view but offers a dense forest. Pines mainly grew up on this sandy land. Little by little, he also built annexes: a cart shed, stables, a house for the workers, “the admiralty”, intended to be the house for the boats (today the room is dedicated to the diorama), a small isba for children, and finally Polenov’s final workshop, “the abbey” a large brick building to be his last studio (it was also used for theatrical performances).
Paying tribute to the family’s humanist tradition, the Polenov improved the living conditions of the surroundings ‘populations. Struck by the pitiful state of schools and the difficult living conditions of the teachers, with his wife they built two schools and organized cultural trips to Moscow for the instructors. To meet the needs of the peasants, they also build a church of which Polenov is the architect. Children from surrounding villages are regularly invited to theatrical performances at the estate, “Old Borok”. In 1918, after the Revolution, the house-museum became the first national museum and was renamed Polenovo after the death of the artist, in 1927. Polenov’s great-granddaughter Natalia Polenova has been a director of Polenovo since 2011.
Russia (Russian: Росси́я, tr. Rossiya), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr. Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is a country in Eurasia. At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia’s capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world; other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa and Kazan.
Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait.
The East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of Rus arose in the 9th century. In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus’ ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus’ lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic Golden Horde in the 13th century. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of Kievan Rus’. By the 18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland on the west to Alaska on the east.
Following the Russian Revolution, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s first constitutionally socialist state. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in the Allied victory in World War II, and emerged as a recognized superpower and rival to the United States during the Cold War. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the world’s first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the world’s second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, twelve independent republics emerged from the USSR: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and the Baltic states regained independence: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; the Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality and sole successor state of the Soviet Union. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic.
The Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russia’s extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the leading producers of oil and natural gas globally. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. It is permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, as well as a member of the G20, the Council of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as being the leading member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and one of the five members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), along with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
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