Calendar Briefs

175 years ago Father of Vodka

On January 27, 1834, Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev was born. A prolific chemist and inventor, he is perhaps best known as the inventor of the Periodic Table of Elements, which he designed in order to predict the atomic properties of elements that would yet be discovered. Yet, to Russians, he is equally famous for his work on the Russian national drink: vodka. In 1894, Tsar Alexander III asked the chemist (who the previous year had been appointed to head the Bureau of Weights and Measures) to create a vodka standard. Through his research, he decided that the optimal alcohol content in the beverage was 38%. But the number was rounded up to 40%, because at the time taxes on vodka were based on their strength, and a round number was easier on the computation skills of tax officials. A founder of the Russian Chemical Society, Mendeleyev also helped found Russia’s first oil refinery. He died in 1907 from influenza.

55 years ago Nikita’s Gift

On February 19, 1954, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, who was Ukrainian, gifted the Crimean peninsula from Russia to Ukraine. Eleven years prior, on May 18, 1944, when the Soviet Union was at war with Germany, Stalin had all 193,865 Crimean Tatars rounded up and forcibly exiled to Siberia for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis (the region had been occupied for two years, and a few leaders did collaborate). Half the deportees died of sickness or in transit. In June 1945, the region was changed from an autonomous republic to an oblast of the Russian Republic, a demotion in polito-geographic terms. The transfer to Ukraine of this popular resort region still irks many Russians to this day, including current Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

135 years ago Theatrical Master

On January 28, 1874 (February 9, New Style), legendary director Vsevolod Emilyevich Meyerhold was born in Penza, to a family of winemakers. Christened Karl, he converted to Orthodox Christianity at 21 and took the name Vsevolod. He left the study of law to become an actor, studying under Nemirovich-Danchenko. By early in the 20th century, he was a staunch advocate of new, experimentalist theater, and he welcomed the arrival of Soviet power, joining the Bolshevik Party in 1918. He sought to radicalize theaters, but lost out to more conservative forces. In 1922 he set up his own theater, which survived until 1938, staging some of the most avant garde productions in Soviet history. He was arrested in 1939 on trumped-up charges, tortured, then shot in February 1940.

50 years ago First Lunar Satellite

Launched on January 2, 1959, Luna-1 was to be the first man-made object on the moon. But, due to communication errors during its flight, it missed its target by about 6000 kilometers. Still, Luna-1 was a pathbreaking spacecraft. Among its achievements: it was the first man-made object to achieve escape velocity; one day out, when it was 120,000 kilometers from Earth, it released a stream of sodium gas, making it the first man-made comet; it discovered that the Moon had no detectable magnetic field; when it missed the Moon, it fell into a heliocentric orbit, making it the first man-made planet, to this day continuing to orbit the Sun between the Earth and Mars; it was the first object to directly measure the Solar Wind; it discovered high-energy particles in the Van Ellen radiation belt.  

The name Luna-1 was actually given to the craft later. Upon its launch it was known as Mechta (“Dream”) or The First Cosmic Rocket.

80 years ago Trotskyism Rooted Out

On January 29, 1929, almost five years to the day from the death of Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky (above, center), the charismatic speaker and skilled organizer behind the victory of the Red Army in the Civil War, was expelled from the Soviet Union. Trotsky had radically underestimated the threat Stalin posed. Trotsky survived just over 10 years in exile, before being murdered in Mexico by an assassin sent by Stalin.