title: Hermaphroditus

text: We find in Alciphron that there was at Athens a temple of Hermaphroditus. The passage proposes that he might be considered as the deity who presided over married people; the strict union between husband and wife being aptly represented by a deity, who was male and female inseparably blended together.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: In Greek Anthology, at the chapter in which describe the statues in the Baths of Zeuxippus, it also mention and describe a statue of Hermaphroditus.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: The earliest mention of Hermaphroditus in Greek literature is by the philosopher Theophrastus (3rd century BC), in his book "The Characters", XVI The Superstitious Man, in which he portrays various types of eccentric people.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: The first mention of Hermes and Aphrodite as Hermaphroditus's parents was by the Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus (1st century BC), in his book "Bibliotheca historica", book IV, 4.6.5.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: The only full narration of his myth is that of Ovid's "Metamorphoses", IV.274–388 (8 AD), where the emphasis is on the feminine snares of the lascivious water-nymph Salmacis and her compromising of Hermaphroditus' erstwhile budding manly strength, detailing his bashfulness and the engrafting of their bodies.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: A rendering of the story into an "epyllion", published anonymously in 1602, was later (1640) attributed by some to Francis Beaumont.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: Ausonius in his "Epigramata de diversis rebus / Epigrams on various matters" (4th century), also tells of Hermaphroditus' parentage and union with the nymph Salmacis.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: In the "Palatine Anthology", IX.783 (980 AD), there is a reference to a sculpture of Hermaphroditus which was placed in a bath for both sexes. The passage IX.317 is in dialogue form, based on the dialogue between Hermaphroditus and Silenus. The latter claims that he has had sexual intercourse with Hermaphroditus three times. Hermaphroditus complains and objects to the fact by invoking Hermes in an oath, while Silenus invokes Pan for the reliability of his allegations.


title: Hermaphroditus

text: Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "Hermaphroditus" in "Poems and Ballads" is subscribed "Au Musée du Louvre, Mars 1863", leaving no doubt that it was the Borghese Hermaphroditus that had inspired his ode.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid ibn Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (; 64611 November 683), commonly known as Yazid I, was the second caliph of the Umayyad Caliphate. He ruled from April 680 until his death in November 683. His appointment was the first hereditary succession to the caliphate in Islamic history. His caliphate was marked by the death of Muhammad's grandson Husayn ibn Ali and the start of the crisis known as the Second Fitna.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid's nomination as heir apparent in (56 AH) by his father Mu'awiya I was opposed by several Muslim grandees from the Hejaz region, including Husayn and Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr. The two men refused to recognize Yazid following his accession and took sanctuary in Mecca. When Husayn left for Kufa in Iraq to lead a revolt against Yazid, he was killed with his small band of supporters by Yazid's forces in the Battle of Karbala. Husayn's death caused resentment in the Hejaz, where Ibn al-Zubayr called for a consultative assembly to elect a new caliph. The people of Medina, who supported Ibn al-Zubayr, held other grievances toward the Umayyads. After failing to gain the allegiance of Ibn al-Zubayr and the people of the Hejaz through diplomacy, Yazid sent an army to suppress their rebellion. The army defeated the Medinese in the Battle of al-Harra in August 683 and the city was sacked. Afterward, Mecca was besieged for several weeks until the army withdrew as a result of Yazid's death in November 683. The Caliphate fell into a nearly decade-long civil war, ending with the establishment of the Marwanid dynasty (the Umayyad caliph Marwan I and his descendants).


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid continued Mu'awiya's decentralized model of governance, relying on his provincial governors and the tribal nobility. He abandoned Mu'awiya's ambitious raids against the Byzantine Empire and strengthened Syria's military defences. No new territories were conquered during his reign. Yazid is considered an illegitimate ruler and a tyrant by many Muslims due to his hereditary succession, the death of Husayn, and his attack on Medina. Modern historians take a milder view, and consider him a capable ruler, albeit less successful than his father.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid was born in Syria. His year of birth is uncertain, placed between 642 and 649. His father was Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan, then governor of Syria under Caliph Uthman (). Mu'awiya and Uthman belonged to the wealthy Umayyad clan of the Quraysh tribe, a grouping of Meccan clans to which the Islamic prophet Muhammad and all the preceding caliphs belonged. Yazid's mother, Maysun, was the daughter of Bahdal ibn Unayf, a chieftain of the powerful Bedouin tribe of Banu Kalb. She was a Christian, like most of her tribe. Yazid grew up with his maternal Kalbite kin, spending the springs of his youth in the Syrian Desert; for the remainder of the year he was in the company of the Greek and native Syrian courtiers of his father, who became caliph in 661.


title: Yazid I

text: During his father's caliphate, Yazid led several campaigns against the Byzantine Empire, which the Caliphate had been trying to conquer, including an attack on the Byzantine capital, Constantinople. Sources give several dates for this between 49 AH (669–70 CE) and 55 AH (674–5 CE). Muslim sources offer few details of his role in the campaigns, possibly downplaying his involvement due to the controversies of his later career. He is portrayed in these sources as having been unwilling to participate in the expedition to the chagrin of Mu'awiya, who then forced him to comply. However, two eighth-century non-Muslim sources from al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), the Chronicle of 741 and the Chronicle of 754, both of which likely drew their material from an earlier Arabic work, report that Yazid besieged Constantinople with a 100,000-strong army. Unable to conquer the city, the army captured adjacent towns, acquired considerable loot, and retreated after two years. Yazid also led the hajj (the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca) on several occasions.


title: Yazid I

text: The third caliph Uthman drew the ire of the Muslim settlers of the conquered lands as a consequence of his controversial policies, which were seen by many as nepotistic and interfering in provincial affairs. In 656 he was killed by the provincial rebels in Medina, then capital of the Caliphate, after which Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, was recognized as caliph by the Medinese people and the rebels. In the consequent first Islamic civil war (656–661), Mu'awiya opposed Ali from his stronghold in Syria, fighting him to a stalemate at the Battle of Siffin in 657. In January 661 Ali was assassinated by a Kharijite (a faction opposed to Ali and Mu'awiya), after which his son Hasan was recognized as his successor. In August, Mu'awiya, who had already been recognized as caliph by his partisans in Syria, led his army toward Kufa, the capital of Hasan and Ali in Iraq, and gained control over the rest of the Caliphate by securing a peace treaty with Hasan. The terms of the treaty stipulated that Mu'awiya would not nominate a successor. Although the treaty brought a temporary peace, no framework of succession was established.


title: Yazid I

text: Mu'awiya was determined to install Yazid as his successor. The idea was scandalous to Muslims, as hereditary succession had no precedent in Islamic history—earlier caliphs had been elected either by popular support in Medina or by the consultation of the senior companions of Muhammad—and according to Islamic principles, the position of ruler was not the private property of a ruler to award to his descendants. It was also unacceptable by Arab custom, according to which the rulership should not pass from father to son but within the wider clan. According to the orientalist Bernard Lewis, the "only precedents available to Mu'āwiya from Islamic history were election and civil war. The former was unworkable; the latter had obvious drawbacks." Mu'awiya passed over his eldest son Abd Allah, who was from his Qurayshite wife, perhaps due to the stronger support Yazid had in Syria because of his Kalbite parentage. The Banu Kalb was dominant in southern Syria and led the larger tribal confederation of Quda'a. The Quda'a were established in Syria long before Islam and had acquired significant military experience and familiarity with hierarchical order under the Byzantines, as opposed to the more free-spirited tribesmen of Arabia and Iraq. Northern Syria, on the other hand, was dominated by the tribal confederation of Qays, which had immigrated there during Mu'awiya's reign, and resented the privileged position of the Kalb in the Umayyad court. By appointing Yazid to lead campaigns against the Byzantines, Mu'awiya may have sought to foster support for Yazid from the northern tribesmen. The policy had limited success as the Qays opposed the nomination of Yazid, at least in the beginning, for he was "the son of a Kalbi woman". In the Hejaz (western Arabia, where Medina and Mecca are located and where the old Muslim elite resided), Yazid had support among his Umayyad kinsmen, but there were other members of the Hejazi nobility whose approval was important. By appointing Yazid to lead the hajj rituals there, Mu'awiya may have hoped to enlist support for Yazid's succession and elevate his status as a Muslim leader. According to Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani (d. 967), Mu'awiya had also employed poets to influence public opinion in favour of Yazid's succession.


title: Yazid I

text: According to the account of Ibn Athir (d. 1233), Mu'awiya summoned a (consultative assembly) of influential men from all of the provinces to his capital, Damascus, in 676 and won their support through flattery, bribes, and threats. He then ordered his Umayyad kinsman Marwan ibn al-Hakam, the governor of Medina, to inform its people of his decision. Marwan faced resistance, especially from Ali's son and Muhammad's grandson Husayn, and Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Abd Allah ibn Umar, and Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, all sons of prominent companions of Muhammad, who, by virtue of their descent, could also lay claim to the caliphal office. Mu'awiya went to Medina and pressed the four dissenters to accede, but they fled to Mecca. He followed and threatened some of them with death, but to no avail. Nonetheless, he was successful in convincing the people of Mecca that the four had pledged their allegiance, and received the Meccans' allegiance for Yazid. On his way back to Damascus, he secured allegiance from the people of Medina. General recognition of the nomination thus forced Yazid's opponents into silence. The orientalist Julius Wellhausen doubted the story, holding that the reports of the nomination's rejection by prominent Medinese were a back-projection of the events that followed Mu'awiya's death. A similar opinion is held by the historian Andrew Marsham. According to the account of al-Tabari (d. 923), Mu'awiya announced the nomination in 676 and only received delegations from the Iraqi garrison town of Basra, which pledged allegiance to Yazid in Damascus in 679 or 680. According to Ya'qubi (d. 898), Mu'awiya demanded allegiance for Yazid on the occasion of the hajj. All, except the four prominent Muslims mentioned above, complied. No force was used against them. In any case, Mu'awiya arranged a general recognition for Yazid's succession before his death.


title: Yazid I

text: Mu'awiya died in April 680. According to al-Tabari, Yazid was at his residence in Huwwarin, located between Damascus and Palmyra, at the time of his father's death. According to verses of Yazid preserved in Isfahani's , a collection of Arabic poetry, Yazid was away on a summertime expedition against the Byzantines when he received the news of Mu'awiya's final illness. Based on this and the fact that Yazid arrived in Damascus only after Mu'awiya's death, the historian Henri Lammens has rejected the reports of Yazid being in Huwwarin. Mu'awiya entrusted supervision of the government to his most loyal associates, Dahhak ibn Qays al-Fihri and Muslim ibn Uqba al-Murri, until Yazid's return. He left a will for Yazid, instructing him on matters of governing the Caliphate. He was advised to beware Husayn and Ibn al-Zubayr, for they could challenge his rule, and instructed to defeat them if they did. Yazid was further advised to treat Husayn with caution and not to spill his blood, since he was the grandson of Muhammad. Ibn al-Zubayr, on the other hand, was to be treated harshly, unless he came to terms.


title: Yazid I

text: Upon his accession, Yazid requested and received oaths of allegiance from the governors of the provinces. He wrote to the governor of Medina, his cousin Walid ibn Utba ibn Abi Sufyan, informing him of Mu'awiya's death and instructing him to secure allegiance from Husayn, Ibn al-Zubayr, and Ibn Umar. The instructions contained in the letter were:


title: Yazid I

text: Walid sought the advice of Marwan, who suggested that Ibn al-Zubayr and Husayn be forced to pay allegiance as they were dangerous, while Ibn Umar should be left alone as he posed no threat. Husayn answered Walid's summon, meeting Walid and Marwan in a semi-private meeting where he was informed of Mu'awiya's death and Yazid's accession. When asked for his oath of allegiance, Husayn responded that giving his allegiance in private would be insufficient and suggested the oath be made in public. Walid agreed, but Marwan insisted that Husayn be detained until he proffered allegiance. Husayn scolded Marwan and left to join his armed retinue, who were waiting nearby in case the authorities attempted to apprehend him. Immediately following Husayn's exit, Marwan admonished Walid, who in turn justified his refusal to harm Husayn by dint of the latter's close relation to Muhammad. Ibn al-Zubayr did not answer the summons and left for Mecca. Walid sent eighty horsemen after him, but he escaped. Husayn too left for Mecca shortly after, without having sworn allegiance to Yazid. Dissatisfied with this failure, Yazid replaced Walid with his distant Umayyad kinsman Amr ibn Sa'id. Unlike Husayn and Ibn al-Zubayr, Ibn Umar, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr, and Abd Allah ibn Abbas, who had also previously denounced Mu'awiya's nomination of Yazid, paid allegiance to him.


title: Yazid I

text: In Mecca Husayn received letters from pro-Alid Kufans, inviting him to lead them in revolt against Yazid. Husayn subsequently sent his cousin Muslim ibn Aqil to assess the situation in the city. He also sent letters to Basra, but his messenger was handed over to the governor Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad and killed. Ibn Aqil informed Husayn of the large-scale support he found in Kufa, signalling that the latter should enter the city. Informed by some Kufan tribal chiefs () of the goings-on, Yazid replaced the governor of Kufa, Nu'man ibn Bashir al-Ansari, who had been unwilling to take action against pro-Alid activity, with Ibn Ziyad, whom he ordered to execute or imprison Ibn Aqil. As a result of Ibn Ziyad's suppression and political maneuvering, Ibn Aqil's following began to dissipate and he was forced to declare the revolt prematurely. It was suppressed and Ibn Aqil was executed.


title: Yazid I

text: Encouraged by Ibn Aqil's letter, Husayn left for Kufa, ignoring warnings from Ibn Umar and Ibn Abbas. The latter reminded him, to no avail, of the Kufans' previous abandonment of his father Ali and his brother Hasan. On the way to the city, he received news of Ibn Aqil's death. Nonetheless, he continued his march towards Kufa. Ibn Ziyad's 4,000-strong army blocked his entry into the city and forced him to camp in the desert of Karbala. Ibn Ziyad would not let Husayn pass without submitting, which Husayn refused to do. Week-long negotiations failed, and in the ensuing hostilities on 10 October 680, Husayn and 72 of his male companions were slain, while his family was taken prisoner. The captives and Husayn's severed head were sent to Yazid. According to the accounts of Abu Mikhnaf (d. 774) and Ammar al-Duhni (d. 750–51), Yazid poked Husayn's head with his staff, although others ascribe this action to Ibn Ziyad. Yazid treated the captives well and sent them back to Medina after a few days.


title: Yazid I

text: Following Husayn's death, Yazid faced increased opposition to his rule from Ibn al-Zubayr who declared him deposed. Although publicly he called for a to elect a new caliph, in secret Ibn al-Zubayr let his partisans pay allegiance to him. At first, Yazid attempted to placate him by sending gifts and delegations in an attempt to reach a settlement. After Ibn al-Zubayr's refusal to recognize him, Yazid sent a force led by Ibn al-Zubayr's estranged brother Amr to arrest him. The force was defeated and Amr was taken captive and executed. As well as Ibn al-Zubayr's growing influence in Medina, the city's inhabitants were disillusioned with Umayyad rule and Mu'awiya's agricultural projects, which included the confiscation of their lands to boost government revenue. Yazid invited the notables of Medina to Damascus and tried to win them over with gifts. They were unpersuaded and on their return to Medina narrated tales of Yazid's lavish lifestyle. Accusations included Yazid drinking wine, hunting with hounds, and his love for music. The Medinese, under the leadership of Abd Allah ibn Hanzala, renounced their allegiance to Yazid and expelled the governor, Yazid's cousin Uthman ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Sufyan, and the Umayyads residing in the city. Yazid dispatched a 12,000-strong army under the command of Muslim ibn Uqba to reconquer the Hejaz. After failed negotiations, the Medinese were defeated in the Battle of al-Harra. According to the accounts of Abu Mikhnaf and al-Samhudi (d. 1533), the city was sacked, whereas per the account of Awana (d. 764) only the ringleaders of the rebellion were executed. Having forced the rebels to renew their allegiance, Yazid's army headed for Mecca to subdue Ibn al-Zubayr. Ibn Uqba died on the way to Mecca and command passed to Husayn ibn Numayr al-Sakuni, who besieged Mecca in September 683. The siege lasted for several weeks, during which the Ka'ba, the sacred Muslim shrine at the center of the Mecca Mosque, caught fire. Yazid's sudden death in November 683 ended the campaign and Ibn Numayr retreated to Syria with his army.


title: Yazid I

text: The style of Yazid's governance was, by and large, a continuation of the model developed by Mu'awiya. He continued to rely on the governors of the provinces and , as Mu'awiya had, instead of relatives. He retained several of Mu'awiya's officials, including Ibn Ziyad, who was Mu'awiya's governor of Basra, and Sarjun ibn Mansur, a native Syrian Christian, who had served as the head of the fiscal administration under Mu'awiya. Like Mu'awiya, Yazid received delegations of tribal notables () from the provinces to win their support, which would also involve distributing gifts and bribes. The structure of the caliphal administration and military remained decentralised as in Mu'awiya's time. Provinces retained much of their tax revenue and forwarded a small portion to the Caliph. The military units in the provinces were derived from local tribes whose command also fell to the .


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid approved a decrease in taxes on the Arab Christian tribe of Najran upon their request, but abolished the special tax exemption of the ethno-religious community of Samaritans, which had been granted to them by previous caliphs as a reward for their aid to the Muslim conquerors. He improved the irrigation system of the fertile lands of the Ghouta near Damascus by digging a canal that became known as .


title: Yazid I

text: Toward the end of his reign, Mu'awiya reached a thirty-year peace agreement with the Byzantines, obliging the Caliphate to pay an annual tribute of 3,000 gold coins, 50 horses, and 50 slaves, and to withdraw Muslim troops from the forward bases they had occupied on the island of Rhodes and the Anatolian coast. Under Yazid, Muslim bases along the Sea of Marmara were abandoned. In contrast to the far-reaching raids against the Byzantine Empire launched under his father, Yazid focused on stabilizing the border with Byzantium. In order to improve Syria's military defences and prevent Byzantine incursions, Yazid established the northern Syrian frontier district of Qinnasrin from what had been a part of Hims, and garrisoned it.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid reappointed Uqba ibn Nafi, the conqueror of the central North African region of Ifriqiya whom Mu'awiya had deposed, as governor of Ifriqiya. In 681, Uqba launched a large-scale expedition into western North Africa. Defeating the Berbers and the Byzantines, Uqba reached the Atlantic coast and captured Tangier and Volubilis. He was unable to establish permanent control in these territories. On his return to Ifriqiya, he was ambushed and killed by a Berber–Byzantine force at the Battle of Vescera, resulting in the loss of the conquered territories. In 681 Yazid appointed Ibn Ziyad's brother Salm ibn Ziyad as the governor of the northeastern border province of Khurasan. Salm led several campaigns in Transoxiana (Central Asia) and raided Samarqand and Khwarazm, but without gaining a permanent foothold in any of them. Yazid's death in 683 and the subsequent chaos in the east ended the campaigns.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid died on 11 November 683 in the central Syrian desert town of Huwwarin, his favourite residence, aged between 35 and 43, and was buried there. Early annalists like Abu Ma'shar al-Madani (d. 778) and al-Waqidi (d. 823) do not give any details about his death. This lack of information seems to have inspired fabrication of accounts by authors with anti-Umayyad leanings, which detail several causes of death, including a horse fall, excessive drinking, pleurisy, and burning. According to the verses by a contemporary poet Ibn Arada, who at the time resided in Khurasan, Yazid died in his bed with a wine cup by his side.


title: Yazid I

text: Ibn al-Zubayr subsequently declared himself caliph and Iraq and Egypt came under his rule. In Syria, Yazid's son Mu'awiya II, whom he had nominated, became caliph. His control was limited to parts of Syria as most of the Syrian districts (Hims, Qinnasrin, and Palestine) were controlled by allies of Ibn al-Zubayr. Mu'awiya II died after a few months from an unknown illness. Several early sources state that he abdicated before his death. Following his death, Yazid's maternal Kalbite tribesmen, seeking to maintain their privileges, sought to install Yazid's son Khalid on the throne, but he was considered too young for the post by the non-Kalbites in the pro-Umayyad coalition. Consequently, Marwan ibn al-Hakam was acknowledged as caliph in a of pro-Umayyad tribes in June 684. Shortly after, Marwan and the Kalb routed the pro-Zubayrid forces in Syria led by Dahhak at the Battle of Marj Rahit. Although the pro-Umayyad stipulated that Khalid would succeed Marwan, the latter nominated his son Abd al-Malik as his heir. Thus the Sufyanid house, named after Mu'awiya I's father Abu Sufyan, was replaced by the Marwanid house of the Umayyad dynasty. By 692 Abd al-Malik had defeated Ibn al-Zubayr and restored Umayyad authority across the Caliphate.


title: Yazid I

text: The killing of Muhammad's grandson Husayn caused widespread outcry among Muslims and the image of Yazid suffered greatly. It also helped crystallize opposition to Yazid into an anti-Umayyad movement based on Alid aspirations, and contributed to the development of Shi'a identity, whereby the party of Alid partisans was transformed into a religious sect with distinct rituals and memory. After the Battle of Karbala, Shi'a imams from Husayn's line adopted the policy of political quietism.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid is considered an evil figure by many Muslims to the present day, not only by the Shi'a, who hold that the ruling position rightly belonged to Husayn's father Ali and his descendants, including Husayn, whom Yazid killed to strip him of his right, but also by many Sunnis, to whom he was an affront to Islamic values. For the Shi'a, Yazid is an epitome of evil. He is annually reviled in the Ashura processions and passion plays, and rulers considered tyrannical and oppressive are often equated with him. Before the Iranian Revolution, the Shah of Iran was called the "Yazid of his time" by the Iranian cleric Rouhollah Khomeini, as was the Iraqi president Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Shi'a during the Iran–Iraq War for his ban on pilgrimages to the holy sites of Shi'a Islam. Among the Sunnis, the Hanafi school allows cursing of Yazid, whereas the Hanbali school and many in the Shafi'i school maintain that no judgment should be passed on Yazid, rather tyrants in general should be cursed. However, the Hanbali scholar Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1201) encouraged the cursing. According to al-Ghazali (d. 1111), cursing Yazid is prohibited, for he was a Muslim and his role in the killing of Husayn is unverified.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid was the first person in the history of the Caliphate to be nominated as heir based on a blood relationship, and this became a tradition afterwards. As such, his accession is considered by the Muslim historical tradition as the corruption of the caliphate into a kingship. He is depicted as a tyrant who was responsible for three major crimes during his caliphate: the death of Husayn and his followers at Karbala, considered a massacre; the aftermath of the Battle of al-Harra, in which Yazid's troops sacked Medina; and the burning of the Ka'ba during the siege of Mecca, which is blamed on Yazid's commander Husayn ibn Numayr. The tradition stresses his habits of drinking, dancing, hunting, and keeping pet animals such as dogs and monkeys, portraying him as impious and unworthy of leading the Muslim community. Extant contemporary Muslim histories describe Yazid as "a sinner in respect of his belly and his private parts", "an arrogant drunken sot", and "motivated by defiance of God, lack of faith in His religion and hostility toward His Messenger". Baladhuri (d. 892) described him as the "commander of the sinners" (), as opposed to the title commander of the faithful () usually applied to the caliphs. Nevertheless, some historians have argued that there is a tendency in early Muslim sources to exonerate Yazid of blame for Husayn's death, and put the blame squarely on Ibn Ziyad. According to the historian James Lindsay, the Syrian historian Ibn Asakir (d. 1176) attempted to stress Yazid's positive qualities, while accepting the allegations that are generally made against him. Ibn Asakir thus emphasised that Yazid was a transmitter of "hadith" (the sayings and traditions attributed to Muhammad), a virtuous man "by reason of his connection to the age of the Prophet", and worthy of the ruling position.


title: Yazid I

text: Despite his reputation in religious circles, academic historians generally portray a more favourable view of Yazid. According to Wellhausen, Yazid was a mild ruler, who resorted to violence only when necessary, and was not the tyrant that the religious tradition portrays him to be. He further notes that Yazid lacked interest in public affairs as a prince, but as a caliph "he seems to have pulled himself together, although he did not give up his old predilections,—wine, music, the chase and other sport". In the view of the historian Hugh N. Kennedy, despite the disasters of Karbala and al-Harra, Yazid's rule was "not devoid of achievement". His reputation might have improved had he lived longer, but his early death played a part in sticking of the stigma of "the shocks of the early part of his reign". According to the Islamicist G. R. Hawting, Yazid tried to continue the diplomatic policies of his father but, unlike Mu'awiya, he was not successful in winning over the opposition with gifts and bribes. In Hawting's summation, "the image of Muʿāwiya as operating more like a tribal than a traditional Middle Eastern despot ... also seems applicable to Yazīd". In the view of Lewis, Yazid was a capable ruler "with much of the ability of his father" but was overly criticized by later Arab historians. Expressing a viewpoint similar to Wellhausen's, Lammens remarked, "a poet himself, and fond of music, he was a Maecenas of poets and artists".


title: Yazid I

text: The characterization of Yazid in the Muslim sources has been attributed to the hostility of the Abbasid dynasty, during whose rule the histories were written, toward the Umayyads, whom they toppled in 750. Most reports in the traditional Muslim sources focus on the revolts against Yazid, and usually lack detail on his public life in Syria and his activities other than the suppression of the revolts. Lammens has attributed this to the tendency of the Iraq-based, Abbasid-era chroniclers to portray a caliph, under whom Husayn was killed and the holy cities of Islam were attacked, only as an impious drunkard. In contrast, a Syrian source preserved in the Chronicle of 741 describes the Caliph as "a most pleasant man and deemed highly agreeable by all the peoples subject to his rule. He never, as is the wont of men, sought glory for himself because of his royal rank, but lived as a citizen along with all the common people."


title: Yazid I

text: In the Yazidi religion, practiced by the mainly Iraq-based Kurdish-speaking ethno-religious community of Yazidis, Sultan Ezid is a highly revered divine figure. Most modern historians hold that the name Ezid derives from the name of Caliph Yazid. In Yazidi religious lore, there is no trace of any link between Sultan Ezid and the second Umayyad caliph. A pro-Umayyad movement particularly sympathetic towards Yazid existed in the Kurdish mountains before the 12th century, when Shaykh Adi, a Sufi of Umayyad descent venerated by Yazidis to this day, settled there and attracted a following among the adherents of the movement. The name Yazidi seems to have been applied to the group because of his Umayyad origins.


title: Yazid I

text: A Sasanian-style silver coin bearing the mint date as "Year I of Yazid" has been reported. The obverse side shows the portrait of the Sasanian king Khosrow II () and his name in the Pahlavi script. The reverse has the usual Zoroastrian fire altar surrounded by attendants. The margins, however, contain the inscription that it was minted during the first year of Yazid's reign. An anonymous coin from the Nishapur mint bearing the mint date 60, which is assumed to be the Hijri year, is also thought to be from Yazid's first regnal year. Other coins from his reign usually have only the name of the governor of the province where the coin originated. Coins bearing the name of the counter-caliph Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr have also been found from the provinces of Fars and Kirman, dated between 61 and 63 (681–683 CE), although Ibn al-Zubayr did not publicly claim the caliphate until after the death of Yazid. This may show that as well as the challenges to his rule in Arabia and Iraq, Yazid's authority was also challenged in southern Persia from roughly the time of his accession. The coins were probably minted in the name of Ibn al-Zubayr to lend legitimacy to the challengers of the Umayyads by using a suitable Qurayshite name.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid married three women and had several concubines. The names of two of his wives are known: Umm Khalid Fakhita bint Abi Hisham and Umm Kulthum, a daughter of the veteran commander and statesman Abd Allah ibn Amir. Fakhita and Umm Kulthum both hailed from the Abd Shams, the parent clan of the Umayyads.


title: Yazid I

text: Yazid had three sons from his wives. His eldest, Mu'awiya II, was between 17 and 23 years old at the time of Yazid's death. The name of Mu'awiya II's mother is unknown, but she was from the Banu Kalb. Ill health prevented him from carrying out the caliphal duties and he rarely left his residence. He survived his father only by a few months and died without leaving any offspring. Yazid's second son, Khalid, was from Fakhita, and was born circa 668. Marwan married Fakhita after becoming caliph, to foster an alliance with the Sufyanid house and neutralize her son Khalid's claim to the caliphate. He remained quiet about being sidelined from the succession, although a legendary report says that he protested to Marwan, who in turn insulted him. He had friendly relations with Abd al-Malik, whose daughter he married. Several legendary accounts report Khalid being interested in alchemy and having ordered the translation of Greek works on alchemy, astronomy, and medicine into Arabic. Yazid's daughter Atika was the favourite wife of Abd al-Malik. She bore him several children, including the future Caliph Yazid II (). Yazid's son Abd Allah, from Umm Kulthum, was a famed archer and horseman. Yazid had several other sons from slave women.


title: Keiko Agena

text: Christine Keiko Agena (born October 3, 1973) is an American actress. She is mostly known for playing Lane Kim in "Gilmore Girls" and NYPD medical examiner Dr. Edrisa Tanaka on FOX's crime drama "Prodigal Son" (2019–2021).


title: Keiko Agena

text: Agena, of Japanese descent, was born in Honolulu, and began acting at the age of 10. She attended Mid-Pacific Institute preparatory school in Oʻahu, and Whitman College for one year as a drama major.


title: Keiko Agena

text: Agena is best known for her role in "Gilmore Girls", where she played Lane Kim, a Korean-American teenager who is the best friend of Rory Gilmore, one of the lead characters. Agena played this role despite being significantly older than her character, who was 16 at the start of the series when Agena was 27. Agena has also played the role of Mearing's Aide, Mearing being played by Frances McDormand, in "". Agena also appeared in three episodes of "Felicity" as Leila Foster, a girl who comes to the lead character for assistance in acquiring the morning-after pill and participates in a protest when denied the medication. She was a recipient of the Best Female Actor award in the Ammy Awards, which honor Asian and Asian-American achievement in film or television. She also provided the voice of Yori in the Disney cartoon series "Kim Possible" in seasons 2, 3, and 4 of the show. Also, Agena played Jun Ni in the movie "Hair Show" starring Mo'Nique. She guest-starred on "Private Practice", "Castle", and episode 12 of the final season of "ER". She also appeared in "Private Valentine: Blonde & Dangerous" alongside Jessica Simpson as an army private. In 2010 she appeared onstage in "No-No Boy" in Santa Monica, California. She later appeared in an episode of "House" as Dr. Cheng.


title: Keiko Agena

text: While in Austin, Texas for the "Gilmore Girls" reunion panel at the 2015 ATX Television Festival, she also participated in two live tapings of the podcast "Gilmore Guys", as well as a live performance by Lane Kim's band Hep Alien.


title: Keiko Agena

text: In September 2015, Agena launched "Drunk Monk Podcast" with fellow improv comedian Will S. Choi, wherein they watch every episode of the television series, "Monk", while consuming alcohol. Agena plays a high school teacher in the Netflix series "13 Reasons Why".


title: Keiko Agena

text: She was featured in commercials for Verizon Wireless ("Flipside Testimonials: Apartment") in 2015 and UnitedHealthcare ("Pool Vault") in 2016.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: Ophelia is an 1851-52 painting by British artist Sir John Everett Millais in the collection of Tate Britain, London. It depicts Ophelia, a character from William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", singing before she drowns in a river.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: The work encountered a mixed response when first exhibited at the Royal Academy, but has since come to be admired as one of the most important works of the mid-nineteenth century for its beauty, its accurate depiction of a natural landscape, and its influence on artists from John William Waterhouse and Salvador Dalí to Peter Blake, Ed Ruscha and Friedrich Heyser.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: The painting depicts Ophelia singing while floating in a river just before she drowns. The scene is described in Act IV, Scene VII of "Hamlet" in a speech by Queen Gertrude.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: The episode depicted is not usually seen onstage, as in Shakespeare's text it exists only in Gertrude's description. Out of her mind with grief, Ophelia has been making garlands of wildflowers. She climbs into a willow tree overhanging a brook to dangle some from its branches, and a bough breaks beneath her. She lies in the water singing songs, as if unaware of her danger ("incapable of her own distress"). Her clothes, trapping air, have allowed her to temporarily stay afloat ("Her clothes spread wide, / And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up."). But eventually, "her garments, heavy with their drink, / Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay" down "to muddy death".


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: Ophelia's pose—her open arms and upwards gaze—also resembles traditional portrayals of saints or martyrs, but has also been interpreted as erotic.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: The painting is known for its depiction of the detailed flora of the river and the riverbank, stressing the patterns of growth and decay in a natural ecosystem. Despite its nominal Danish setting, the landscape has come to be seen as quintessentially English. "Ophelia" was painted along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey, near Tolworth. Barbara Webb, a resident of nearby Old Malden, devoted much time to finding the exact placement of the picture, and according to her research, the scene is located at Six Acre Meadow, alongside Church Road, Old Malden. Millais Road is now nearby. Millais's close colleague William Holman Hunt was at the time working on his "The Hireling Shepherd" nearby.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: The flowers shown floating on the river were chosen to correspond with Shakespeare's description of Ophelia's garland. They also reflect the Victorian interest in the "language of flowers", according to which each flower carries a symbolic meaning. The prominent red poppy—not mentioned by Shakespeare's description of the scene—represents sleep and death.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: At an early stage in the painting's creation, Millais painted a water vole—which an assistant had fished out of the Hogsmill—paddling next to Ophelia. In December 1851, he showed the unfinished painting to Holman Hunt's relatives. He recorded in his diary, "Hunt's uncle and aunt came, both of whom understood most gratifyingly every object except my water rat. The male relation, when invited to guess at it, eagerly pronounced it to be a hare. Perceiving by our smiles that he had made a mistake, a rabbit was then hazarded. After which I have a faint recollection of a dog or a cat being mentioned." Millais painted the water vole out of the final picture, although a rough sketch of it still exists in an upper corner of the canvas hidden by its frame.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: In keeping with the tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), of which he was a member, Millais used bright colours, gave high attention to detail and faithful truth to nature. This rendition of Ophelia is the epitome of the PRB style; first, because of the subject matter, depicting a woman who has lived a life awaiting happiness, only to find her destiny on the verge of death: the vulnerable woman is a popular subject among Pre-Raphaelite artists. Also, Millais utilizes bright, intense colours in the landscape to make the pale Ophelia contrast with the nature behind her. All this is evident in the vivid attention to detail in the brush and trees around Ophelia, the contouring of her face, and the intricate work Millais did on her dress.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: Millais produced "Ophelia" in two separate stages: He first painted the landscape, and secondly the figure of Ophelia. Having found a suitable setting for the picture, Millais remained on the banks of the Hogsmill River in Ewell—within a literal stone's throw of where fellow Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt painted "The Light of the World"—for up to 11 hours a day, six days a week, over a five-month period in 1851.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: This allowed him to accurately depict the natural scene before him. Millais encountered various difficulties during the painting process. He wrote in a letter to a friend, "The flies of Surrey are more muscular, and have a still greater propensity for probing human flesh. I am threatened with a notice to appear before a magistrate for trespassing in a field and destroying the hay ... and am also in danger of being blown by the wind into the water. Certainly the painting of a picture under such circumstances would be greater punishment to a murderer than hanging." By November 1851, the weather had turned windy and snowy. Millais oversaw the building of a hut "made of four hurdles, like a sentry-box, covered outside with straw". According to Millais, sitting inside the hut made him feel like Robinson Crusoe. William Holman Hunt was so impressed by the hut that he had an identical one built for himself.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: Ophelia was modelled by artist and muse Elizabeth Siddall, then 19 years old. Millais had Siddall lie fully clothed in a full bathtub in his studio at 7 Gower Street in London. As it was now winter, he placed oil lamps under the tub to warm the water, but was so intent on his work that he allowed them to go out. As a result, Siddall caught a severe cold, and her father later sent Millais a letter demanding £50 for medical expenses. According to Millais's son, he eventually accepted a lower sum.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: When "Ophelia" was first publicly exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1852, it was not universally acclaimed. A critic in "The Times" wrote that "there must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty", while a further review in the same newspaper said that "Mr. Millais's Ophelia in her pool ... makes us think of a dairymaid in a frolic". Even the great art critic John Ruskin, an avid supporter of Millais, while finding the technique of the painting "exquisite", expressed doubts about the decision to set it in a Surrey landscape and asked, "Why the mischief should you not paint pure nature, and not that rascally wirefenced garden-rolled-nursery-maid's paradise?"


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: In the 20th century, Salvador Dalí wrote glowingly in an article published in a 1936 edition of the French Surrealist journal "Minotaure" about the artistic movement that inspired the painting. "How could Salvador Dalí fail to be dazzled by the flagrant surrealism of English Pre-Raphaelitism. The Pre-Raphaelite painters bring us radiant women who are, at the same time, the most desirable and most frightening that exist." He later went on to re-interpret Millais's painting in a 1973 work entitled "Ophelia's Death."


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: In 1906, Japanese novelist Natsume Sōseki called the painting "a thing of considerable beauty" in Kusamakura (novel); since then, the painting has been highly popular in Japan. It was exhibited in Tokyo in 1998 and travelled there again in 2008.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: The painting has been widely referred to and pastiched in art, film, and photography, notably in Laurence Olivier's "Hamlet" where it formed the basis for the portrayal of Ophelia's death. A scene in Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left" was modelled on the painting, while the video for Nick Cave's song "Where the Wild Roses Grow" depicts Kylie Minogue mimicking the pose of the image. The artwork is also referenced in "Fire With Fire", a 1986 film in which a schoolgirl is replicating the central image as the protagonists meet. The imagery of the painting is evoked in the prologue of Lars von Trier's "Melancholia", where Kirsten Dunst's character Justine floats in a slow-moving stream.


title: Ophelia (painting)

text: "Ophelia" was purchased from Millais on 10 December 1851 by the art dealer Henry Farrer for 300 guineas, approximately equal to £40,000 in 2020. Farrer sold the painting to B. G. Windus, an avid collector of Pre-Raphaelite art, who sold it on in 1862 for 748 guineas. The painting is held at Tate Britain, London, and is valued by experts as worth at least £30 million.


title: Holiday

text: A holiday is a day set aside by custom or by law on which normal activities, especially business or work including school, are suspended or reduced. Generally, holidays are intended to allow individuals to celebrate or commemorate an event or tradition of cultural or religious significance. Holidays may be designated by governments, religious institutions, or other groups or organizations. The degree to which normal activities are reduced by a holiday may depend on local laws, customs, the type of job held or personal choices.


title: Holiday

text: The concept of holidays often originated in connection with religious observances or associated with traditions. The intention of a holiday was typically to allow individuals to tend to religious duties associated with important dates on the calendar. In most modern societies, however, holidays serve as much of a recreational functions as any other weekend days or activities.


title: Holiday

text: In many societies, there are important distinctions between holidays designated by governments and holidays designated by religious institutions. For example, in many predominantly Christian nations, government-designed holidays may center on Christian holidays, though non-Christians may instead observe religious holidays associated with their faith. In some cases, a holiday may only be nominally observed. For example, many people in England treat Bank Holiday as a "working holiday", changing very little of their daily routines for this day.


title: Holiday

text: The word "holiday" has differing connotations in different regions. In the United States the word is used exclusively to refer to the nationally, religiously or culturally observed day(s) of rest or celebration, or the events themselves, whereas in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth nations, the word may refer to the period of time where leave from one's duties has been agreed, and is used as a synonym to the US preferred "vacation". This time is usually set aside for rest, travel or the participation in recreational activities, with entire industries targeted to coincide or enhance these experiences. The days of leave may not coincide with any specific customs or laws. Employers and educational institutes may designate ‘holidays’ themselves which may or may not overlap nationally or culturally relevant dates, which again comes under this connotation, but it is the first implication detailed that this article is concerned with.


title: Holiday

text: The word "holiday" comes from the Old English word "hāligdæg" ("hālig" "holy" + "dæg" "day"). The word originally referred only to special religious days. The modern use varies geographically. In North America, it means any dedicated day or period of celebration. In the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, "holiday" is often used instead of the word "vacation".


title: Holiday

text: Sovereign nations and territories observe holidays based on events of significance to their history. For example, the American Independence Day celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.


title: Holiday

text: Other secular (non-religious) holidays are observed nationally, internationally (often in conjunction with organizations such as the United Nations), and across multi-country regions. The United Nations Calendar of Observances dedicates decades to a specific topic, but also a complete year, month, week and days. Holidays dedicated to an observance such as the commemoration of the ending of World War II, or the Shoah, can also be part of the reparation obligation as per UN General Assembly Resolution 60/147 Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.


title: Holiday

text: Another example of a major secular holiday is the Lunar New Year, which is celebrated across East Asia and South East Asia. Many other days are marked to celebrate events or people, but are not strictly holidays as time off work is rarely given; examples include Arbor Day (originally U.S.), Labor Day (celebrated sometimes under different names and on different days in different countries), and Earth Day (22 April).


title: Holiday

text: These are holidays that are not traditionally marked on calendars. These holidays are celebrated by various groups and individuals. Some promote a cause, others recognize historical events not officially recognized, and others are "funny" holidays celebrated with humorous intent. For example, Monkey Day is celebrated on December 14, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is observed on September 19, and Blasphemy Day is held on September 30. Other examples are April Fools' Day on April 1 and World No Tobacco Day on May 31. Various community organizers and marketers promote odd social media holidays.


title: Holiday

text: Many holidays are linked to faiths and religions (see etymology above). Christian holidays are defined as part of the liturgical year, the chief ones being Easter and Christmas. The Orthodox Christian and Western-Roman Catholic patronal feast day or "name day" are celebrated in each place's patron saint's day, according to the Calendar of saints. Jehovah's Witnesses annually commemorate "The Memorial of Jesus Christ's Death", but do not celebrate other holidays with any religious significance such as Easter, Christmas or New Year. This holds especially true for those holidays that have combined and absorbed rituals, overtones or practices from non-Christian beliefs into the celebration, as well as those holidays that distract from or replace the worship of Jehovah. In Islam, the largest holidays are Eid al-Fitr (immediately after Ramadan) and Eid al-Adha (at the end of the Hajj). Ahmadi Muslims additionally celebrate Promised Messiah Day, Promised Reformer Day, and Khilafat Day, but contrary to popular belief, neither are regarded as holidays. Hindus, Jains and Sikhs observe several holidays, one of the largest being Diwali (Festival of Light). Japanese holidays as well as few Catholic holidays contain heavy references to several different faiths and beliefs. Celtic, Norse, and Neopagan holidays follow the order of the Wheel of the Year. For example, Christmas ideas like decorating trees and colors (green, red, and white) have very similar ideas to modern Wicca (a modern Pagan belief) Yule which is a lesser Sabbat of the wheel of the year. Some are closely linked to Swedish festivities. The Baháʼí Faith observes 11 annual holidays on dates determined using the Baháʼí calendar. Jews have two holiday seasons: the Spring Feasts of Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot (Weeks, called Pentecost in Greek); and the Fall Feasts of Rosh Hashanah (Head of the Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Sukkot (Tabernacles), and Shemini Atzeret (Eighth Day of Assembly).


title: Holiday

text: If a holiday coincides with another holiday or a weekend day a substitute holiday may be recognised in lieu. In the United Kingdom the government website states that "If a bank holiday is on a weekend, a 'substitute' weekday becomes a bank holiday, normally the following Monday.", and the list of bank holidays for the year 2020 includes Monday 28 December as "Boxing Day (substitute day)", as 26 December is a Saturday. The process of moving a holiday from a weekend day to the following Monday is known as Mondayisation in New Zealand.


title: The Hype House

text: The Hype House is a collective of teenage TikTok personalities based in Moorpark, California, as well as the name of the mansion where some of the creators live. It is a collaborative content creation house, allowing the different influencers and content creators to make videos together easily. Current members include Thomas Petrou and Mia Hayward.


title: The Hype House

text: The house itself is a Spanish-style mansion perched at the top of a gated street. The mansion itself includes a palatial backyard, pool, outdoor gym, jacuzzi and a large kitchen and dining quarters. The Hype House location has changed twice; the collaborative originally used a series of two different houses in Los Angeles proper before moving to their current house in Moorpark. The membership of the collaborative has also evolved over time.


title: The Hype House

text: The collective formed in December 2019, and includes around twenty rising or established Gen Z influencers from TikTok. Most of its funding for creation came from Daisy Keech, Chase Hudson and Thomas Petrou, Charli D'Amelio, Dixie D'Amelio, and Addison Rae. During its peak in membership, it had twenty-one members until founding member Daisy Keech left in March 2020, citing internal disputes with other members as the reason for her departure. In May 2020, the D'Amelios' representative confirmed the sisters also left the collective when "The Hype House started to become more of a business." Larray, who was already an established YouTuber and TikTok personality, joined in January 2020, but confirmed in his livestream that he had left later that year. Vinnie Hacker, an internet sensation, joined the house in January 2021, which was a surprise to a lot of the Hype House's fan base. Russian model Renata Valliulina (also known as Renata Ri) joined the house in December of that year.


title: The Hype House

text: After being interviewed by Thomas Petrou, leader of the house, popular content creator Tabitha Swatosh was accepted into the house and became a Hype House member on January 28, 2022. Sam Dezz and Brooke Monk joined the house as of April 1, 2022. Paige Taylor officially became a member on May 14, 2022. Throughout May of 2022, the Hype House frequently collabed with Breezy Boys LA, another content house. Then, on June 3, 2022, all the previous Breezy Boy members (Ace Akers, Bryce Parker, Eddie Preciado, Jacob Day, Jackson Dean, and Kristian Ramey) became official Hype House members.


title: The Hype House

text: On April 22, 2021, Netflix announced that they would be airing a reality series at The Hype House, starring Annon, Dragun, Hacker, Hayward, Hudson, Merritt, Petrou, Warren, and Wright. "Hype House" premiered on Netflix on January 7, 2022.


title: The Hype House

text: On July 21, 2020, Nikita Dragun held a surprise birthday party for Larray during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Hype House mansion. The party included internet celebrities such as James Charles and others. At the time of the party, California's COVID-19 cases had just surpassed New York's cases. There was an estimated 67 people in attendance, many of whom were seen without face masks despite local health laws. Photos and videos of the event appeared on social media sites such as Instagram. These posts drew criticism from the public, including other influencers like Elijah Daniel and Tyler Oakley. Merritt, and some of the other attendees of the party later apologized. Residents of The Hype House later tested negative for COVID-19.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Charles Elmer "Rip" Taylor Jr. (January 13, 1931 – October 6, 2019) was an American actor and comedian, known for his exuberance and flamboyant personality, including his wild moustache, toupee, and his habit of showering himself (and others) with confetti. "The Hollywood Reporter" called him "a television and nightclub mainstay for more than six decades" who made thousands of nightclub and television appearances.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Charles Elmer Taylor Jr. was born in Washington, D.C., on January 13, 1931, the son of Elizabeth Sue Evans (1911–2000), a waitress and former government clerk, and Charles Elmer Taylor (died 1933), a musician. His father died when he was two years old. As described in his 2010 one-man show "It Ain't All Confetti", Taylor had a tough childhood, which included being molested while in foster care and having to deal with bullies in school. As a teenager he attended Capitol Page School. Taylor worked as a congressional page before serving in the Korean War; he was in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Although assigned to the Corps, he was sent to Special Services, the entertainment wing of the military, where he performed for the troops in Tokyo and Korea.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Taylor's career in show business began when he joined the U.S. Army, where he started performing stand-up in clubs and restaurants abroad while also performing for the troops. After his military service, and back in the U.S., he focused on a nightclub career. His mainstay material was "pantomiming records, his favorites were Yiddish folk songs and Spike Jones tunes." He said that ended one day when the record player broke, "I haven't shut up since." In the mid-1950s he worked the strip clubs all along the Eastern coast of the U.S. Although much of his material included jokes stolen from acts he saw in USO shows, his first signature piece would be to pretend to cry while begging the audience for laughs. He found he could get a bigger response that way. His bookings started to get more upscale and he played all over Miami Beach, Florida, which had become a winter destination for the wealthy. Taylor was also a mainstay in the summer playground of the wealthy in the Catskills Mountains. A booking agent from "The Ed Sullivan Show" attended his show one night. Taylor would spend a week's salary on champagne to get the audience boisterous. He first appeared on the show in 1961 and made about twenty appearances. Sullivan would forget his name, saying "Get me the crying comedian."


title: Rip Taylor

text: In addition to the "Ed Sullivan Show", Taylor appeared on "The Jackie Gleason Show" in several guest appearances during the 1963–1964 season as "the crying comedian". Taylor's signature confetti tossing gag came from an appearance in the 1960s "The Merv Griffin Show" where he was bombing as a stand-up comedian. "I did props and I was 'The Prop Comedian.' I was dying like hell on Merv Griffin's show. The jokes were dumb, and I tore the five by eight cards, threw them up in the air and it became confetti," he recalled. "I knocked over his desk, walked up the aisle, went to Sardi's and said, 'Well, that's the end of my television career.' I went home that night. Their switchboard had lit up. They said, 'Get the guy that went crazy!'"


title: Rip Taylor

text: Taylor became somewhat of a fixture in Las Vegas. He was the opener for Eleanor Powell's dance-focused revue, and would go on to warm up audiences for headliners "Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Ann-Margret, Debbie Reynolds, Frankie Laine, Judy Garland and The Kingston Trio". In the 1970s he won Las Vegas Entertainer of the Year three times.


title: Rip Taylor

text: He appeared in two 1968 episodes of "The Monkees" as well as having a cameo in their 1969 special " Revolutions per Monkee". He continued to work as a voice performer in the 1970s cartoon series "Here Comes the Grump", as the title character, and in the second edition of "The Addams Family" cartoon series in 1992, as the voice of Uncle Fester.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Throughout the 1970s, Taylor was a frequent celebrity guest panelist on television game shows such as "Hollywood Squares", "To Tell the Truth", and "The Gong Show", and substituted for Charles Nelson Reilly on "Match Game." He became a regular on Sid and Marty Krofft's "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters", playing Sheldon, a sea-genie who lived in a conch shell. In addition, Taylor was also a regular on "The Brady Bunch Hour", playing the role of neighbor/performer Jack Merrill. He also hosted a short-lived send-up of beauty pageants titled "The $1.98 Beauty Show", created by Chuck Barris in 1978, producer/host of "The Gong Show". Taylor appeared as a celebrity on the 1990 version of "Match Game". In 1979, he was the voice of C.J. from the Hanna-Barbera television movie "Scooby Goes Hollywood". Taylor's other appearances also include "The Kids in the Hall"; referred to as Uncle Rip by Buddy Cole, the show's most flamboyantly gay character. He also appeared as himself in the movie "Wayne's World 2", one of the special guests invited to "WayneStock" after being visited in a dream by Jim Morrison. Taylor made "dozens of mayhem-filled appearances" on both "The Tonight Show" and "The Mike Douglas Show."


title: Rip Taylor

text: In 1990, he voiced the genie in "". Taylor appeared uncredited on a December 1994 edition of "WWF Monday Night Raw". He assisted another wrestler and they pushed Jeff Jarrett.


title: Rip Taylor

text: In 1997, Taylor appeared in a segment on the show "". He played the role of Elmo Middleton in the segment "The Man in the Model T". Also in 1997, he appeared as himself on the sitcom "Brotherly Love" in the episode "Easy Come Easy Go". He also portrayed Chief Undersecretary Wartle in the graphical adventure game "" in 1997. In 2003, Taylor also appeared as himself on "Will & Grace". In 2005, he appeared as himself on an episode of "George Lopez". Taylor guest-starred as chef "Rappin' Rip" in four episodes of "Life with Bonnie". He guest starred in "The Suite Life of Zack & Cody" episode "Loosely Ballroom" as Leo. He is also in some episodes of "The Emperor's New School" as the voice of the Royal Record Keeper. He was also in the Jetix animated series "Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!". He made a special guest appearance at the end of the 1,000th episode of G4's video game review show "X-Play". He made a guest appearance on a 2012 episode of "The Aquabats! Super Show!", where he played a genie reminiscent of his character on "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters".


title: Rip Taylor

text: In 1995, Taylor performed the intro for the Bloodhound Gang's "Use Your Fingers" album. In the early 2000s, Johnny Knoxville asked Taylor to be in the film "" (2002). and in the final scene, he wielded a pistol that, when fired, released a sign that read "The End." He did the same thing at the ending of "Jackass Number Two", and "Jackass 3D". In the credits of the 2005 remake of "The Dukes of Hazzard", Taylor shows up in the blooper reel.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Taylor made occasional appearances in movies, usually in broad comedies like "The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington" (1977) and the R-rated "Deep Throat" parody "Chatterbox" (1977). In Cheech & Chong's "Things Are Tough All Over" (1982), he picks them up in the middle of nowhere driving a convertible full of props. He then proceeds to drive them to Las Vegas and telling jokes the whole way and moving Chong to tears from laughter (and, later, tears because he won't stop). In "Amazon Women on the Moon" (1987) a funeral service turns into a celebrity roast when guest Rip Taylor shows up to "honor" the deceased. In 1992, Taylor voiced Captain Kiddie in "" (1992) and appeared in "Wayne's World 2". In 1993's "Indecent Proposal", he appeared as Demi Moore's boss, Mr. Langford.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Taylor's first big live show was in 1966, when he went on a tour with Judy Garland and Eleanor Powell in Las Vegas. In 1981, Taylor appeared on Broadway when he replaced Mickey Rooney in the burlesque-themed musical comedy "Sugar Babies". He was a frequent co-star with Debbie Reynolds in her live shows in Las Vegas; Reno, Nevada; and Lake Tahoe. Taylor performed frequently in Atlantic City as well. In 2010, he appeared in the one-man show "It Ain't All Confetti" in North Hollywood, where he shared personal stories about his life and career.


title: Rip Taylor

text: In 2005, Taylor appeared as the grand marshal of the Washington, D.C., Capital Pride parade. When Taylor had been referred to as "openly gay" in a 2009 interview for "Ask the Flying Monkey", Brent Hartinger recalled receiving an email from Taylor stating, "You don't know me to summarize I am openly gay. I don't know you're not an open heroin user. You see how that works? Think before you write." Taylor was married for a number of years to Las Vegas showgirl Rusty Rowe, whom he divorced in the early 1960s.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Taylor was a close friend of entertainer Liberace. Taylor cut the ribbon at the Las Vegas estate auction of Liberace's belongings and personal effects in 1988.


title: Rip Taylor

text: According to his publicist, at the time of Taylor's death he was in a long-term relationship with Robert Fortney.


title: Rip Taylor

text: Taylor died on October 6, 2019, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, having been hospitalized for an epileptic seizure the week prior. His death certificate listed heart failure as a contributing cause. While Taylor often gave his birth year as 1935, his death certificate and census records confirm he was born in 1931. His ashes were scattered at sea in Hawaii.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: The United Kingdom, France, and Italy signed the Munich Agreement with Germany on 30 September 1938, an agreement which "provided 'cession to Germany of the Sudeten German territory' of Czechoslovakia (despite the existence of the 1924 alliance agreement and the 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic, for which it is also known as the Munich Betrayal). Almost a year later the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany on 23 August 1939. In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, the treaty included a secret protocol that divided territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland into German and Soviet Union "spheres of influence", anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries. In October and November 1940, German-Soviet talks about the potential of joining the Axis took place in Berlin, but nothing came from the talks since Hitler's Ideological goal was "Lebensraum" in the East.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, starting World War II, Stalin waited until September 17 before launching his own invasion of Poland. Part of the Karelia and Salla regions of Finland were annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania (Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region). It was known at the Nuremberg trials the existence of the secret protocol of the German–Soviet pact regarding the planned divisions of these territories. The invasion of Bukovina violated the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with Germany.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: On 22 June 1941, Hitler launched an invasion of the Soviet Union. This began the bloodiest part of the conflict as millions of Axis soldiers crossed the Soviet border as the largest force in history. Operation Barbarossa compromised most of European nations into three army groups along with Finland attack from up North. The Soviets were eventually able to stop the Germans at the gates of Moscow. At that time the Soviets lost most of its professional army along with most equipment, by the end of 1941 Soviets went from having tank corps to tank brigades. The Soviets stopped the Wehrmacht some 30 kilometers (or 18.6 miles) during the Battle of Moscow, this was the beginning of the end for the Nazis. Famously during the Nuremberg trials, Wilhelm Keitel the head of the German armed forces admitted that it was Moscow when he and other generals knew the war was lost. Marshal Georgy Zhukov along with other Soviet generals launched the Moscow counter offensive 2 days before the attack on pearl harbor. Stalin was confident that the total Allied war machine would eventually stop Germany, and with Lend Lease, which constituted no more than 5% of the total Soviet war production from the West, Over the next four years, the Soviet Union repulsed Axis offensives, such as at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk, and pressed forward to victory in large Soviet offensives, such as the Vistula–Oder Offensive.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: The bulk of Soviet fighting took place on the Eastern Front—including a continued war with Finland—but it also invaded Iran (August 1941) in cooperation with the British and late in the war attacked Japan (August 1945), with which the Soviets had border wars earlier up until in 1939.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Stalin met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference and began to discuss a two-front war against Germany and the future of Europe after the war. Berlin finally fell in April 1945. Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union, which suffered the highest casualties in the war, losing more than 20 million citizens, about a third of all World War II casualties. The full demographic loss to the Soviet peoples was even greater.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: During the 1930s, Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov emerged as a leading voice for the official Soviet policy of collective security with the Western powers against Nazi Germany. In 1935, Litvinov negotiated treaties of mutual assistance with France and with Czechoslovakia with the aim of containing Hitler's expansion. After the Munich Agreement, which gave parts of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, the Western democracies' policy of appeasement led the Soviet Union to reorient its foreign policy towards a rapprochement with Germany. On 3 May 1939, Stalin replaced Litvinov, who was closely identified with the anti-German position, with Vyacheslav Molotov.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In August 1939, Stalin accepted Hitler's proposal into a non-aggression pact with Germany, negotiated by the foreign ministers Vyacheslav Molotov for the Soviets and Joachim von Ribbentrop for the Germans. Officially a non-aggression treaty only, an appended secret protocol, also reached on 23 August, divided the whole of eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence. The USSR was promised the eastern part of Poland, then primarily populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians, in case of its dissolution, and Germany recognised Latvia, Estonia and Finland as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence, with Lithuania added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. Another clause of the treaty was that Bessarabia, then part of Romania, was to be joined to the Moldovan SSR, and become the Moldovan SSR under control of Moscow.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: The pact was reached two days after the breakdown of Soviet military talks with British and French representatives in August 1939 over a potential Franco-Anglo-Soviet alliance. Political discussions had been suspended on 2 August, when Molotov stated that they could not be resumed until progress was made in military talks late in August, after the talks had stalled over guarantees for the Baltic states, while the military talks upon which Molotov insisted started on 11 August. At the same time, Germany—with whom the Soviets had started secret negotiations on 29 July – argued that it could offer the Soviets better terms than Britain and France, with Ribbentrop insisting, "there was no problem between the Baltic and the Black Sea that could not be solved between the two of us." German officials stated that, unlike Britain, Germany could permit the Soviets to continue their developments unmolested, and that "there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies of the West". By that time, Molotov had obtained information regarding Anglo-German negotiations and a pessimistic report from the Soviet ambassador in France.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: After disagreement regarding Stalin's demand to move Red Army troops through Poland and Romania (which Poland and Romania opposed), on 21 August, the Soviets proposed adjournment of military talks using the pretext that the absence of the senior Soviet personnel at the talks interfered with the autumn manoeuvres of the Soviet forces, though the primary reason was the progress being made in the Soviet-German negotiations. That same day, Stalin received assurance that Germany would approve secret protocols to the proposed non-aggression pact that would grant the Soviets land in Poland, the Baltic states, Finland and Romania, after which Stalin telegrammed Hitler that night that the Soviets were willing to sign the pact and that he would receive Ribbentrop on 23 August. Regarding the larger issue of collective security, some historians state that one reason that Stalin decided to abandon the doctrine was the shaping of his views of France and Britain by their entry into the Munich Agreement and the subsequent failure to prevent the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Stalin may also have viewed the pact as gaining time in an eventual war with Hitler in order to reinforce the Soviet military and shifting Soviet borders westwards, which would be militarily beneficial in such a war.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Stalin and Ribbentrop spent most of the night of the pact's signing trading friendly stories about world affairs and cracking jokes (a rarity for Ribbentrop) about Britain's weakness, and the pair even joked about how the Anti-Comintern Pact principally scared "British shopkeepers." They further traded toasts, with Stalin proposing a toast to Hitler's health and Ribbentrop proposing a toast to Stalin.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: On 1 September 1939, the German invasion of its agreed upon portion of Poland started the Second World War. On 17 September the Red Army invaded eastern Poland and occupied the Polish territory assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. Eleven days later, the secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was modified, allotting Germany a larger part of Poland, while ceding most of Lithuania to the Soviet Union. The Soviet portions lay east of the so-called Curzon Line, an ethnographic frontier between Russia and Poland drawn up by a commission of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: After taking around 300,000 Polish prisoners in 1939 and early 1940, NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed. On March 5, 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo (including Stalin) signed and 22,000 military and intellectuals were executed - They were labelled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries", kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus. This became known as the Katyn massacre. Major-General Vasili M. Blokhin, chief executioner for the NKVD, personally shot 6,000 of the captured Polish officers in 28 consecutive nights, which remains one of the most organized and protracted mass murders by a single individual on record. During his 29-year career Blokhin shot an estimated 50,000 people, making him ostensibly the most prolific official executioner in recorded world history.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In August 1939, Stalin declared that he was going to "solve the Baltic problem, and thereafter, forced Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to sign treaties for "mutual assistance."


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In November 1939, the Soviet Union invaded Finland. The Finnish defensive effort defied Soviet expectations, and after stiff losses, as well as the unsuccessful attempt to install a puppet government in Helsinki, Stalin settled for an interim peace granting the Soviet Union parts of Karelia and Salla (9% of Finnish territory). Soviet official casualty counts in the war exceeded 200,000, while Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later claimed the casualties may have been one million. After this campaign, Stalin took actions to modify training and improve propaganda efforts in the Soviet military.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In mid-June 1940, when international attention was focused on the German invasion of France, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in the Baltic countries. Stalin claimed that the mutual assistance treaties had been violated, and gave six-hour ultimatums for new governments to be formed in each country, including lists of persons for cabinet posts provided by the Kremlin. Thereafter, state administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, followed by mass repression in which 34,250 Latvians, 75,000 Lithuanians and almost 60,000 Estonians were deported or killed. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed, the official results of which showed pro-Soviet candidates approval by 92.8 percent of the voters of Estonia, 97.6 percent of the voters in Latvia and 99.2 percent of the voters in Lithuania. The resulting peoples' assemblies immediately requested admission into the USSR, which was granted. In late June 1940, Stalin directed the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, proclaiming this formerly Romanian territory part of the Moldavian SSR. But in annexing northern Bukovina, Stalin had gone beyond the agreed limits of the secret protocol.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: After the Tripartite Pact was signed by Axis Powers Germany, Japan and Italy, in October 1940, Stalin personally wrote to Ribbentrop about entering an agreement regarding a "permanent basis" for their "mutual interests." Stalin sent Molotov to Berlin to negotiate the terms for the Soviet Union to join the Axis and potentially enjoy the spoils of the pact. At Stalin's direction, Molotov insisted on Soviet interest in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Greece, though Stalin had earlier unsuccessfully personally lobbied Turkish leaders to not sign a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France. Ribbentrop asked Molotov to sign another secret protocol with the statement: "The focal point of the territorial aspirations of the Soviet Union would presumably be centered south of the territory of the Soviet Union in the direction of the Indian Ocean." Molotov took the position that he could not take a "definite stand" on this without Stalin's agreement. Stalin did not agree with the suggested protocol, and negotiations broke down. In response to a later German proposal, Stalin stated that the Soviets would join the Axis if Germany foreclosed acting in the Soviet's sphere of influence. Shortly thereafter, Hitler issued a secret internal directive related to his plan to invade the Soviet Union.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, Stalin oversaw the signing of a neutrality pact with Japan. Since the Treaty of Portsmouth, Russia had been competing with Japan for spheres of influence in the Far East, where there was a power vacuum with the collapse of Imperial China. Although similar to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with the Third Reich, that Soviet Union signed Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with the Empire of Japan, to maintain the national interest of Soviet's sphere of influence in the European continent as well as the Far East conquest, whilst among the few countries in the world diplomatically recognizing Manchukuo, and allowed the rise of German invasion in Europe and Japanese aggression in Asia, but the Japanese defeat of Battles of Khalkhin Gol was the forceful factor to the temporary settlement before Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945 as the result of Yalta Conference. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany, before military confrontation when Hitler controlled Western Europe and for Soviet Union to take control Eastern Europe. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union, though Stalin was not aware of Hitler's further military ambition.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: During the early morning of 22 June 1941, Hitler terminated the pact by launching Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of Soviet-held territories and the Soviet Union that began the war on the Eastern Front. Before the invasion, Stalin thought that Germany would not attack the Soviet Union until Germany had defeated Britain. At the same time, Soviet generals warned Stalin that Germany had concentrated forces on its borders. Two highly placed Soviet spies in Germany, "Starshina" and "Korsikanets", had sent dozens of reports to Moscow containing evidence of preparation for a German attack. Further warnings came from Richard Sorge, a Soviet spy in Tokyo working undercover as a German journalist who had penetrated deep into the German Embassy in Tokyo by seducing the wife of General Eugen Ott, the German ambassador to Japan.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Seven days before the invasion, a Soviet spy in Berlin, part of the "Rote Kapelle" (Red Orchestra) spy network, warned Stalin that the movement of German divisions to the borders was to wage war on the Soviet Union. Five days before the attack, Stalin received a report from a spy in the German Air Ministry that "all preparations by Germany for an armed attack on the Soviet Union have been completed, and the blow can be expected at any time." In the margin, Stalin wrote to the people's commissar for state security, "you can send your 'source' from the headquarters of German aviation to his mother. This is not a 'source' but a "dezinformator."" Although Stalin increased Soviet western border forces to 2.7 million men and ordered them to expect a possible German invasion, he did not order a full-scale mobilisation of forces to prepare for an attack. Stalin felt that a mobilization might provoke Hitler to prematurely begin to wage war against the Soviet Union, which Stalin wanted to delay until 1942 in order to strengthen Soviet forces.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In the initial hours after the German attack began, Stalin hesitated, wanting to ensure that the German attack was sanctioned by Hitler, rather than the unauthorized action of a rogue general. Accounts by Nikita Khrushchev and Anastas Mikoyan claim that, after the invasion, Stalin retreated to his dacha in despair for several days and did not participate in leadership decisions. But, some documentary evidence of orders given by Stalin contradicts these accounts, leading historians such as Roberts to speculate that Khrushchev's account is inaccurate.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Stalin soon quickly made himself a Marshal of the Soviet Union, then country's highest military rank and Supreme Commander in Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces aside from being Premier and General-Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union that made him the leader of the nation, as well as the People's Commissar for Defence, which is equivalent to the U.S. Secretary of War at that time and the U.K. Minister of Defence and formed the State Defense Committee to coordinate military operations with himself also as chairman. He chaired the Stavka, the highest defense organisation of the country. Meanwhile, Marshal Georgy Zhukov was named to be the Deputy Supreme Commander in Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In the first three weeks of the invasion, as the Soviet Union tried to defend itself against large German advances, it suffered 750,000 casualties, and lost 10,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft. In July 1941, Stalin completely reorganized the Soviet military, placing himself directly in charge of several military organizations. This gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans overran each of the resulting small, newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties. The most notable example of this was the Battle of Kiev, where over 600,000 Soviet troops were quickly killed, captured or missing.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: By the end of 1941, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties and the Germans had captured 3.0 million Soviet prisoners, 2.0 million of whom died in German captivity by February 1942. German forces had advanced c. 1,700 kilometres, and maintained a linearly-measured front of 3,000 kilometres. The Red Army put up fierce resistance during the war's early stages. Even so, according to Glantz, they were plagued by an ineffective defence doctrine against well-trained and experienced German forces, despite possessing some modern Soviet equipment, such as the KV-1 and T-34 tanks.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: While the Germans made huge advances in 1941, killing millions of Soviet soldiers, at Stalin's direction the Red Army directed sizable resources to prevent the Germans from achieving one of their key strategic goals, the attempted capture of Leningrad. They held the city at the cost of more than a million Soviet soldiers in the region and more than a million civilians, many of whom died from starvation.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: While the Germans pressed forward, Stalin was confident of an eventual Allied victory over Germany. In September 1941, Stalin told British diplomats that he wanted two agreements:


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: (1) a mutual assistance/aid pact and (2) a recognition that, after the war, the Soviet Union would gain the territories in countries that it had taken pursuant to its division of Eastern Europe with Hitler in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The British agreed to assistance but refused to agree to the territorial gains, which Stalin accepted months later as the military situation had deteriorated somewhat by mid-1942. On 6 November 1941, Stalin rallied his generals in a speech given underground in Moscow, telling them that the German "blitzkrieg" would fail because of weaknesses in the German rear in Nazi-occupied Europe and the underestimation of the strength of the Red Army, and that the German war effort would crumble against the Anglo-American-Soviet "war engine".


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Correctly calculating that Hitler would direct efforts to capture Moscow, Stalin concentrated his forces to defend the city, including numerous divisions transferred from Soviet eastern sectors after he determined that Japan would not attempt an attack in those areas. By December, Hitler's troops had advanced to within of the Kremlin in Moscow. On 5 December, the Soviets launched a counteroffensive, pushing German troops back c. from Moscow in what was the first major defeat of the Wehrmacht in the war.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: In early 1942, the Soviets began a series of offensives labelled "Stalin's First Strategic Offensives". The counteroffensive bogged down, in part due to mud from rain in the spring of 1942. Stalin's attempt to retake Kharkov in the Ukraine ended in the disastrous encirclement of Soviet forces, with over 200,000 Soviet casualties suffered. Stalin attacked the competence of the generals involved. General Georgy Zhukov and others subsequently revealed that some of those generals had wished to remain in a defensive posture in the region, but Stalin and others had pushed for the offensive. Some historians have doubted Zhukov's account.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: At the same time, Hitler was worried about American popular support after the U.S. entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which did not occur until the summer of 1944). He changed his primary goal from an immediate victory in the East, to the more long-term goal of securing the southern Soviet Union to protect oil fields vital to the long-term German war effort. While Red Army generals correctly judged the evidence that Hitler would shift his efforts south, Stalin thought it a flanking move in the German attempt to take Moscow.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: The German southern campaign began with a push to capture the Crimea, which ended in disaster for the Red Army. Stalin publicly criticised his generals' leadership. In their southern campaigns, the Germans took 625,000 Red Army prisoners in July and August 1942 alone. At the same time, in a meeting in Moscow, Churchill privately told Stalin that the British and Americans were not yet prepared to make an amphibious landing against a fortified Nazi-held French coast in 1942, and would direct their efforts to invading German-held North Africa. He pledged a campaign of massive strategic bombing, to include German civilian targets.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Estimating that the Russians were "finished," the Germans began another southern operation in the autumn of 1942, the Battle of Stalingrad. Hitler insisted upon splitting German southern forces in a simultaneous siege of Stalingrad and an offensive against Baku on the Caspian Sea. Stalin directed his generals to spare no effort to defend Stalingrad. Although the Soviets suffered in excess of more than 2 million casualties at Stalingrad, their victory over German forces, including the encirclement of 290,000 Axis troops, marked a turning point in the war.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Within a year after Barbarossa, Stalin reopened the churches in the Soviet Union. He may have wanted to motivate the majority of the population who had Christian beliefs. By changing the official policy of the party and the state towards religion, he could engage the Church and its clergy in mobilising the war effort. On 4 September 1943, Stalin invited the metropolitans Sergius, Alexy and Nikolay to the Kremlin. He proposed to reestablish the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been suspended since 1925, and elect the Patriarch. On 8 September 1943, Metropolitan Sergius was elected Patriarch. One account said that Stalin's reversal followed a sign that he supposedly received from heaven.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Over 75% of Red Army divisions were listed as "rifle divisions" (as infantry divisions were known in the Red Army). In the Imperial Russian Army, the "strelkovye" (rifle) divisions were considered more prestigious than "pekhotnye" (infantry) divisions, and in the Red Army, all infantry divisions were labeled "strelkovye" divisions. The Soviet rifleman was known as a "peshkom" ("on foot") or more frequently as a "frontovik" (—front fighter; plural —"frontoviki"). The term "frontovik" was not equivalent to the German term "Landser", the American "G.I Joe" nor the British "Tommy Atkins", all of which referred to soldiers in general, as the term "frontovik" applied only to those infantrymen who fought at the front. All able-bodied males in the Soviet Union became eligible for conscription at the age of 19—those attending a university or a technical school were able to escape conscription, and even then could defer military service for a period ranging from 3 months to a year. Deferments could be only offered three times. The Soviet Union comprised 20 military districts, which corresponded with the borders of the "oblasts", and were further divided into "raions" (counties). The "raions" had assigned quotas specifying the number of men they had to produce for the Red Army every year. The vast majority of the "frontoviks" had been born in the 1920s and had grown up knowing nothing other than the Soviet system. Every year, men received draft notices in the mail informing to report at a collection point, usually a local school, and customarily reported to duty with a bag or suitcase carrying some spare clothes, underwear, and tobacco. The conscripts then boarded a train to a military reception center where they were issued uniforms, underwent a physical test, had their heads shaven and were given a steam bath to rid them of lice. A typical soldier was given ammo pouches, shelter-cape, ration bag, cooking pot, water bottle and an identity tube containing papers listing pertinent personal information.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: During training, conscripts woke up between 5 and 6 a.m.; training lasted for 10 to 12 hours—six days of the week. Much of the training was done by rote and consisted of instruction. Before 1941 training had lasted for six months, but after the war, training was shorted to a few weeks. After finishing training, all men had to take the Oath of the Red Army which read:


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Tactics were based on the 1936 training manual and on the revised edition of 1942. Small-unit movements and how to build defensive positions were laid out in a manner that was easy to understand and memorize. The manuals had the force of law and violations of the manuals counted as legal offenses. Soviet tactics always had the platoons attacking in the same way—with the platoons usually broken into four sections occupying about on average. The only complex formation was the diamond formation—with one section advancing, two behind and one in the rear. Unlike the Wehrmacht, the Red Army did not engage in leap-frogging of sections with one section providing fire support to the sections that were advancing: instead all of the sections and platoons attacked "en masse". The other only variation was for the sections to "seep" into a position by infiltration.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: When the order "Na shturm, marshch!" (Assault, march!) was given, the Soviet infantry would charge the enemy while shouting the traditional Russian battle cry "Urra!" (, pronounced oo-rah), the sound of which many German veterans found terrifying. During the charge, the riflemen would fire with rifles and submachine guns while throwing grenades before closing in for "blizhnii boi" (—close combat—close-quarter fighting with guns, bayonets, rifle butts, knives, digging tools and fists), a type of fighting at which the Red Army excelled. On the defensive, the "frontoviki" had a reputation for their skill at camouflaging their positions and for their discipline in withholding fire until Axis forces came within close range. Before 1941 Red Army doctrine had called for opening fire at maximum range, but experience quickly taught the advantages of ambushing the enemy with surprise fire at close ranges from multiple positions.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: The typical "frontovik" during the war was an ethnic Russian aged 19–24 with an average height of . Most of the men were shaven bald to prevent lice and the few who did grow their hair kept it very short. The American historian Gordon Rottman describes the uniforms as "simple and functional". In combat, the men wore olive-brown helmets or the "pilotka" (side cap). Officers wore a "shlem" (helmet) or a (—peaked cap), a round service-hat with a black visor and a red star. Rottman described Soviet weapons as "...known for their simplicity, ruggedness and general reliability". The standard rifle, a Mosin-Nagant 7.62 mm M 1891/30, although heavy, was an effective weapon that crucially was not affected by the cold. Every rifle section had one or two 7.62 mm Degtyaryov DP light machine guns to provide fire support. By 1944, one of every four "frontoviki" was armed with the 7.62 mm PPSh-41 ("Pistolet-pulemet Shapagina"-Pistol Automatic Shpagin), a type of submachine gun known as a "rugged and reliable weapon", if somewhat underpowered.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: The "frontovik" usually carried all he had in a simple bag. Most of the "frontoviki" had a "perevyazochny paket" (wound dressing packet), a razor, a shovel and would be very lucky to have a towel and toothbrush. Toothpaste, shampoo and soap were extremely rare. Usually sticks with chewed ends were used for brushing teeth. Latrine pits were dug, as portable toilets were rare in the Red Army. Soldiers frequently slept outdoors, even during the winter. Food was usually abysmal and often in short supply, especially in 1941 and 1942. The "frontoviki" detested the rear-service troops who did not face the dangers of combat as "krysy" (—rats; singular: ). The "frontovik" lived on a diet of black rye bread; canned meats like fish and "tushonka" (stewed pork); "shchi" (cabbage soup) and "kasha" (porridge).". "Kasha" and "shchi" were so common that a popular slogan in the Red Army was ""shchi da kasha, pisha nasha"" (""schchi" and "kasha", that's our fare"). "Chai" (—hot sugared tea) was an extremely popular beverage, along with beer and vodka. "Makhorka", a type of cheap tobacco rolled into handmade cigarettes, was the standard for smoking.


title: Soviet Union in World War II

text: Rottmann describes medical care as "marginal". A shortage of doctors, medical equipment and drugs meant those wounded often died, usually in immense pain. Morphine was unknown in the Red Army. Most Red Army soldiers had not received preventive inoculations, and diseases became major problems—with malaria, pneumonia, diphtheria, tuberculosis, typhus, dysentery, and meningitis in particular regularly sickening Red-Army men. In the winter frostbite often sent soldiers to the medical system, while in the spring and fall rains made trench foot a common ailment. The "frontoviki" had a pay day once every month, but often did not receive their wages. All soldiers were exempt from taxes. In 1943 a private was paid 600 roubles per month, a corporal 1,000 roubles, a junior sergeant 2,000 roubles and a sergeant 3,000 roubles. Special pay accrued to those serving in guards units, tanks, and anti-tank units, to paratroopers and to those decorated for bravery in combat. Those units that greatly distinguished themselves in combat had the prefix "Guards" () prefixed to their unit title, a title of great respect and honor that brought better pay and rations. In the Imperial Russian Army, the elite had always been the Imperial Guards regiments, and the title "Guards" when applied to a military unit in Russia still has elitist connotations.