title: Neo-fascism

text: In 1946, a group of Italian fascist soldiers founded the Italian Social Movement (MSI) to continue advocating the ideas of Benito Mussolini. The leader of the MSI was Giorgio Almirante, who remained at the head of the party until his death in 1988. Despite attempts in the 1970s towards a "historic compromise" between the PCI and the DC, the PCI did not have a role in executive power until the 1980s. In December 1970, Junio Valerio Borghese attempted, along with Stefano Delle Chiaie, the "Borghese Coup" which was supposed to install a neo-fascist regime. Neo-fascist groups took part in various false flag terrorist attacks, starting with the December 1969 Piazza Fontana massacre, for which Vincenzo Vinciguerra was convicted, and they are usually considered to have stopped with the 1980 Bologna railway bombing.


title: Neo-fascism

text: In 1987, the reins of the MSI party were taken by Gianfranco Fini, under whom in 1995 it was dissolved and transformed into the National Alliance (AN). The party led by Fini distanced itself from Mussolini and fascism and made efforts to improve its relations with the Jewish community, becoming a conservative right-wing party until its merger with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia into the centre-right party The People of Freedom in 2009. Neo-fascist parties in Italy include the Tricolour Flame ("Fiamma Tricolore"), the New Force ("Forza Nuova"), the National Social Front ("Fronte Sociale Nazionale"), and CasaPound. The national-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI), main heirs of MSI and AN, has been described as neo-fascist by several academics, and it has some neo-fascist factions within their internal organization. The results of the 2022 Italian general election, in which FdI became the first party, have been variously described as Italy's first far-right-led government in the republican era and its most right-wing government since World War II.


title: Neo-fascism

text: After the onset of the Great Recession and economic crisis in Greece, a movement known as the Golden Dawn, widely considered a neo-Nazi party, soared in support out of obscurity and won seats in Greece's parliament, espousing a staunch hostility towards minorities, illegal immigrants and refugees. In 2013, after the murder of an anti-fascist musician by a person with links to Golden Dawn, the Greek government ordered the arrest of Golden Dawn's leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos and other Golden Dawn members on charges related to being associated with a criminal organization. In October, 2020, the court declared Golden Dawn to be a criminal organization, convicting 68 members of various crimes including murder. However, far-right politics continue to be strong in Greece, such as Ilias Kasidiaris' Greeks for the Fatherland, an Ultranationalist party. In 2021, Greek neo-Nazi youth attacked a rival group at a school in Greece.


title: Neo-fascism

text: After the fall of authoritarianism in Portugal after the Carnation Revolution of 1974, several neo-fascist groups arose such as the New Order (Portugal) which was created in 1978. A report by the European Parliament defined the ideology of the New Order as revolutionary fascist and hyper-nationalist. The group also had connections to Fuerza Nueva in Spain. The New Order was disbanded in 1982, however its activities continued to as late as 1985.


title: Neo-fascism

text: In Romania, the ultra-nationalist movement which allied itself with the Axis powers and German National Socialism was the Iron Guard, also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael. There are some modern political organisations which consider themselves heirs of Legionarism, this includes Noua Dreaptă and the Everything For the Country Party, founded by former Iron Guard members. The latter organisation was outlawed in 2015. Aside, from these Romanian organisations, the Sixty-Four Counties Youth Movement representing ultra-nationalism from the Hungarian minority is also present, especially in Transylvania. Other nationalistic and irredentist groups such as the Greater Romania Party do not originate from Legionarism, but in fact grew out of national communist tendencies from the era of Nicolae Ceaușescu (the party was founded by his "court poet" Corneliu Vadim Tudor).


title: Neo-fascism

text: In 1990, Vladimir Zhirinovsky founded the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Its leader opposes democratic values, the rights of man, a multiparty system, and the rule of law. Encyclopedia Britannica considers Zhirinovsky to be a neo-fascist. Zhirinovsky endorsed the forcible re-occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and suggested nuclear waste should be dumped there. During the First Chechen War in the mid-1990s, he advocated hitting some Chechen villages with tactical nuclear weapons.


title: Neo-fascism

text: The Russian National Unity was a paramilitary organization which was founded by Alexander Barkashov in 1990. It used a left-pointed swastika and emphasizes the "primary importance" of Russian blood. Concerning Adolf Hitler, the organizations's leader Barkashov declared: "I consider [Hitler] a great hero of the German nation and of all white races. He succeeded in inspiring the entire nation to fight against degradation and the washing away of national values." Before it was banned in 1999, and breakup in late 2000, the group estimated to have had approximately 20,000 to 25,000 members. Alexander Barkashov along with other members of the Russian National Unity have engaged in religious activities and pro-Russian activism in the Russian-Ukrainian War.


title: Neo-fascism

text: Kotleba – People's Party Our Slovakia is a far-right political party with views that are considered extremist and fascist. The Party's leader, Marian Kotleba, is a former neo-Nazi, who once wore a uniform modelled on that of the Hlinka Guard, the militia of the 1939–45 Nazi-sponsored Slovak State. He opposes Romani people, immigrants, the Slovak National Uprising, NATO, the United States, and the European Union. The party also endorses the clerical fascist war criminal and former Slovak President Jozef Tiso.


title: Neo-fascism

text: In 2003, Kotleba founded the far-right political party Slovak Community (Slovak: "Slovenská Pospolitosť"). In 2007, the Slovak interior ministry banned the party from running and campaigning in elections. In spite of this ban, Kotleba's party got 8.04% of votes in the Slovak 2016 parliamentary elections, and voter support of the party continues to increase.


title: Neo-fascism

text: Grey Wolves is a Turkish ultranationalist and neo-fascist youth organization. It is the "unofficial militant arm" of the Nationalist Movement Party. The Grey Wolves have been accused of terrorism. According to Turkish authorities, the organization carried out 694 murders during the late-1970s political violence in Turkey, between 1974 and 1980.


title: Neo-fascism

text: The nationalist political party MHP founded by Alparslan Türkeş is also sometimes described as neo-fascist.


title: Neo-fascism

text: The British National Party (BNP) is a nationalist party in the United Kingdom which espoused the ideology of fascism and anti-immigration. In the 2009 European elections, it gained two members of the European Parliament (MEPs), including former party leader Nick Griffin. Other British organisations described as fascist or neo-fascist include the National Front, Combat 18, the English Defence League, and Britain First.


title: Neo-fascism

text: Groups which are identified as neo-fascist in the United States generally include neo-Nazi organizations and movements such as the Proud Boys, the National Alliance, and the American Nazi Party. The Institute for Historical Review publishes negationist historical papers which are often of an antisemitic nature. The alt-right—a loosely connected coalition of individuals and organizations which advocates a wide range of far-right ideas, from neoreactionaries to white nationalists—is often included under the umbrella term "neo-fascist", because alt-right individuals and organizations advocate a radical form of authoritarian ultranationalism.


title: Neo-fascism

text: The Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro is cited as the rising point of neo-fascism in South America in the 21st century, based on the denial of science, bellicose rhetoric and authoritarian measures that withdraw rights from the population linked to a strongly neoliberal economic policy. As a result of factors such as opposition to Workers' Party, fear and reaction to the 2013 insurgency, as well as the economic crises of 2008 and 2014, Jair Bolsonaro emerged as a viable option, not because of a well-defined strategic project, but almost accidentally. In this way, the multiplicity of groups that make up the Bolsonarism, the different wings (military, ideological, religious, capital, etc.) present pragmatic disagreements, strategies, objectives and distinct methods. The core of this Brazilian neo-fascism converged its interests and rhetoric with Pentecostal religious fundamentalism and both allied themselves with military sectors and liberal think tanks, so that within bolsonarism there is a power bloc made up of non-fascist conservatives and far-right neo-fascists; although still without the support of the broad and fanatical mass movement which was the basis of European fascism.


title: Neo-fascism

text: The Bolivian Socialist Falange party founded in 1937 played a crucial role in mid-century Bolivian politics. Luis García Meza Tejada's regime took power during the 1980 "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia with the help of Italian neo-fascist Stefano Delle Chiaie, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and the Buenos Aires junta. That regime has been accused of neo-fascist tendencies and of admiration for Nazi paraphernalia and rituals. Hugo Banzer Suárez, who preceded Tejada, also displayed admiration for Nazism and fascism.


title: Neo-fascism

text: Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the Australian perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, was an admitted fascist who followed eco-fascism and admired Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British fascist organization British Union of Fascists (BUF), who is quoted in the shooter's manifesto "The Great Replacement" (named after the French far-right theory of the same name).


title: Neo-fascism

text: The Economic Freedom Fighters are a self-described pan-Africanist political party founded in 2013 by the expelled former African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President Julius Malema, and his allies. Malema and the party have frequently courted controversy for engaging in anti-White and anti-Indian racism. In November 2019, the Professor of International Relations at University of the Witwatersrand, Vishwas Satgar, defined them as a manifestation of a new phenomena, 'Black Neofascism'.


title: Neo-fascism

text: With Mongolia located between the larger nations Russia and China, ethnic insecurities have driven many Mongolians to neo-fascism, expressing nationalism centered around Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler. Groups advocating these ideologies include Blue Mongolia, Dayar Mongol, and Mongolian National Union.


title: Neo-fascism

text: Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is considered fascist by some analysts because of its engagement in Islamic extremism.


title: Neo-fascism

text: The National Socialism Association (NSA) is a neo-fascist political organization founded in Taiwan in September 2006 by Hsu Na-chi (許娜琦), a 22-year-old female political science graduate of Soochow University. The NSA views Adolf Hitler as its leader and often uses the slogan "Long live Hitler". This has brought them condemnation from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights centre.


title: Neo-fascism

text: Adolf Hitler's propaganda which advocated the hegemony of "Greater Germany" inspired similar ideas of "Indonesia Mulia" (esteemed Indonesia) and "Indonesia Raya" (great Indonesia) in the former Dutch colony. The first fascist party was the Partai Fasis Indonesia (PFI). Sukarno admired Nazi Germany under Hitler and its vision of happiness for all: "It's in the Third Reich that the Germans will see Germany at the apex above other nations in this world," he said in 1963. He stated that Hitler was 'extraordinarily clever' in 'depicting his ideals': he spoke about Hitler's rhetorical skills, but denied any association with Nazism as an ideology, saying that Indonesian nationalism was not as narrow as Nazi nationalism.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The Visegrád Group (also known as the Visegrád Four, the V4, or the European Quartet) is a cultural and political alliance of four Central European countries: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The alliance aims to advance co-operation in military, economic, cultural and energy affairs, and to further their integration with the EU. All four states are also members of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).


title: Visegrád Group

text: The alliance traces its origins to the summit meetings of leaders of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, held in the Hungarian castle town of Visegrád on 15 February 1991. Visegrád was chosen as the location for the summits as an intentional allusion to the medieval Congress of Visegrád between John I of Bohemia, Charles I of Hungary, and Casimir III of Poland in 1335.


title: Visegrád Group

text: After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia became independent members of the alliance, incrementing the number of members from three to four. All four members of the Visegrád Group joined the European Union on 1 May 2004.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The name of the group is derived from the place of meeting selected by the 1335 Congress of Visegrád held by the Bohemian (Czech), Polish, and Hungarian rulers in Visegrád. Charles I of Hungary, Casimir III of Poland, and John I of Bohemia agreed to create new commercial routes to bypass the city of Vienna, a staple port, which required goods to be offloaded and offered for sale in the city before they could be sold elsewhere, and to obtain easier access to other European markets. The recognition of Czech sovereignty over the Duchy of Silesia was also confirmed. The second Congress took place in 1339 and decided that if Casimir III of Poland died without a son, which actually happened, the King of Poland would be the son of Charles I of Hungary, Louis I of Hungary.


title: Visegrád Group

text: From the 16th century, large parts of the present-day territories of the group's members became part of or were influenced by the Vienna-based Habsburg monarchy until the end of World War I and the dissolution of the Habsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary. After World War II, the countries became satellite states of the Soviet Union, as the Polish People's Republic, the Hungarian People's Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. In 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of communism in central and eastern Europe enabled the three countries to embrace capitalism and democracy. In December 1991, the fall of the Soviet Union occurred, further allowing the three countries to look westward.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The Visegrád Group was established on 15 February 1991 at a meeting between the President of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic, Václav Havel, the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, and the Prime Minister of the Republic of Hungary, József Antall, in the Hungarian town of Visegrád. The group was created with the aim of moving away from communism and implementing the reforms required for full membership of the Euro-Atlantic institutions, such as NATO and the EU.


title: Visegrád Group

text: All four nations in the Visegrád Group are high-income countries with a very high Human Development Index. V4 countries have experienced more or less steady economic growth for over a century. In 2009, Slovakia adopted the euro as its official currency, being the only member of the group to have done so. All four countries are eventually obliged to adopt the euro in the future and to join the Eurozone once they have satisfied the euro convergence criteria by the Treaty of Accession since they joined the EU.


title: Visegrád Group

text: If counted as a single country, the Visegrád Group's GDP would be the 4th in the EU, 5th in Europe and 15th in the world. In terms of international trade, the V4 is not only at the forefront of Europe, but also of the world (4th in the EU, 5th in Europe and 8th in the world).


title: Visegrád Group

text: Based on gross domestic product per capita (PPP) estimated figures for the year 2020, the most developed country in the group is the Czech Republic (US$40,858 per capita), followed by Slovakia (US$38,321 per capita), Hungary (US$35,941 per capita) and Poland (US$35,651 per capita). The average GDP (PPP) in 2019 for the entire group is estimated at around US$34,865.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Within the EU, the V4 countries are pro-nuclear-power, and are seeking to expand or found (in the case of Poland) a nuclear-power industry. They have sought to counter what they see as an anti-nuclear-power bias within the EU, believing their countries would benefit from nuclear power.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The economy of the Czech Republic is the group's second largest (GDP PPP of US$432.346 billion total, ranked 36th in the world).


title: Visegrád Group

text: Within the V4, the Czech Republic has the highest Human Development Index, Human Capital Index, nominal GDP per capita as well as GDP at purchasing power parity per capita.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Hungary has the group's third largest economy (total GDP of US$350.000 billion, 53rd in the world). Hungary was one of the more developed economies of the Eastern bloc. With about $18 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) since 1989, Hungary has attracted over one-third of all FDI in central and eastern Europe, including the former Soviet Union. Of this, about $6 billion came from American companies. Now it is an industrial agricultural state. The main industries are engineering, mechanical engineering (cars, buses), chemical, electrical, textile, and food industries. The services sector accounted for 64% of GDP in 2007 and its role in the Hungarian economy is steadily growing.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The main sectors of Hungarian industry are heavy industry (mining, metallurgy, machine and steel production), energy production, mechanical engineering, chemicals, food industry, and automobile production. The industry is leaning mainly on processing industry and (including construction) accounted for 29.32% of GDP in 2008. The leading industry is machinery, followed by the chemical industry (plastic production, pharmaceuticals), while mining, metallurgy and textile industry seemed to be losing importance in the past two decades. In spite of the significant drop in the last decade, the food industry still contributes up to 14% of total industrial production and amounts to 7–8% of the country's exports.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Agriculture accounted for 4.3% of GDP in 2008 and along with the food industry occupied roughly 7.7% of the labour force.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Tourism employs nearly 150,000 people and the total income from tourism was 4 billion euros in 2008. One of Hungary's top tourist destinations is Lake Balaton, the largest freshwater lake in Central Europe, with 1.2 million visitors in 2008. The most visited region is Budapest; the Hungarian capital attracted 3.61 million visitors in 2008. Hungary was the world's 24th most visited country in 2011.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Poland has the region's largest economy (GDP PPP total of US$1.353 trillion, ranked 22nd in the world). According to the United Nations and the World Bank, it is a high-income country with a high quality of life and a very high standard of living. The Polish economy is the fifth-largest in the EU and one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe, with a yearly growth rate of over 3.0% between 1991 and 2019. Poland is the only European Union member to have avoided a decline in GDP during the late-2000s recession, and in 2009 created the most GDP growth of all countries in the EU. The Polish economy had not entered recession nor contracted. According to Poland's Central Statistical Office, in 2011 the Polish economic growth rate was 4.3%, the best result in the entire EU. The largest component of its economy is the service sector (67.3%), followed by industry (28.1%) and agriculture (4.6%). Since increased private investment and EU funding assistance, Poland's infrastructure has developed rapidly.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Poland's main industries are mining, machinery (cars, buses, ships), metallurgy, chemicals, electrical goods, textiles, and food processing. The high-technology and IT sectors are also growing with the help of investors such as Google, Toshiba, Dell, GE, LG, and Sharp. Poland is a producer of many electronic devices and components.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The smallest, but still considerably powerful V4 economy is that of Slovakia (GDP of US$209.186 billion total, 68th in the world).


title: Visegrád Group

text: The population is 64,301,710 inhabitants, which would rank 22nd largest in the world and 4th in Europe (similar in size to France, Italy or the UK) if V4 were a single country. The most populated country in the group is Poland (38 million), followed by the Czech Republic (∼11 million), Hungary (∼10 million), and Slovakia (5.5 million).


title: Visegrád Group

text: The International Visegrád Fund (IVF) is the only institutionalized form of regional cooperation of the Visegrád Group countries.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The main aim of the fund is to strengthen the ties among people and institutions in Central and Eastern Europe through giving support to regional non-governmental initiatives.


title: Visegrád Group

text: On 12 May 2011, Polish Defence Minister Bogdan Klich said that Poland will lead a new EU Battlegroup of the Visegrád Group. The decision was made at the V4 defence ministers' meeting in Levoča, Slovakia, and the battlegroup became operational and was placed on standby in the first half of 2016. The ministers also agreed that the V4 militaries should hold regular exercises under the auspices of the NATO Response Force, with the first such exercise to be held in Poland in 2013. The battlegroup included members of V4 and Ukraine.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Another V4 EU Battlegroup was formed in the second semester of 2019 (V4 + Croatia) and another will be on standby in the first semester of 2023.


title: Visegrád Group

text: On 14 March 2014, in response to the 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine, a pact was signed for a joint military body within the European Union.


title: Visegrád Group

text: "V4 Joint Logistics Support Group Headquarters" (V4 JLSG HQ) was established in 2020 and will reach the full operational capability by the beginning of 2023.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Created by an agreement signed in Bratislava on 26 February 2015, the Institute aims at operating as an International Searching Authority (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authorities (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) as from 1 July 2016.


title: Visegrád Group

text: All members of the V4 have been member states of the European Union since the EU's enlargement in 2004, and members of the Schengen Area since 2007.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Austria is the Visegrád Group's southwestern neighbor. The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria launched the Austerlitz format for the three countries in early 2015. The first meeting in this format took place on 29 January 2015 in Slavkov u Brna (Austerlitz) in the Czech Republic. Petr Drulák, the deputy foreign minister of the Czech Republic, emphasized that the Austerlitz format was not a competitor, but an addition to the Visegrád group.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The leadership of the Freedom Party of Austria, the junior partner in the former Austrian coalition government, has expressed its willingness to closely cooperate with the Visegrád Group. Former Chancellor and leader of the Austrian People's Party Sebastian Kurz wanted to act as a bridge builder between the east and the west.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Germany, Visegrád Group's western neighbor, is a key economic partner of the group and vice versa. As of 2018, Germany's trade and investment flows with the V4 are greater than with China.


title: Visegrád Group

text: On 24 April 2015, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia established the Craiova Group. The idea came from Victor Ponta, the then Romanian Prime Minister, who said he was inspired by the Visegrád Group. Greece joined the group in October 2017.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Romania has been invited to participate in the Visegrád Group on previous occasions. However, several accidents, such as the Black March Accident, made this impossible.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia border Ukraine on their east. Poland additionally borders Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast to the northeast. The Czech Republic is fully surrounded by other EU members. Hungary borders Serbia, a candidate for EU accession, in the south.


title: Visegrád Group

text: Ukraine, an eastern neighbor of the V4 that is not a member of the EU, is one of largest recipients of the International Visegrád Fund support and receives assistance from the Visegrád Group for its aspirations to European integration. Ukraine joined the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the EU and therefore with the V4 in 2016.


title: Visegrád Group

text: The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to tensions within the Visegrád Group, with Hungary under Viktor Orban opposed to harsher sanctions against Russia and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland strongly supporting Ukraine. In November 2022, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala stated, “This is not the best of times for the (Visegrád) format, and Hungary’s different attitudes are significantly influencing and complicating the situation.”


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt (pronounced "cute") is cross-platform software for creating graphical user interfaces as well as cross-platform applications that run on various software and hardware platforms such as Linux, Windows, macOS, Android or embedded systems with little or no change in the underlying codebase while still being a native application with native capabilities and speed.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt is currently being developed by The Qt Company, a publicly listed company, and the Qt Project under open-source governance, involving individual developers and organizations working to advance Qt. Qt is available under both commercial licenses and open-source GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, and LGPL 3.0 licenses.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt is used for developing graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and multi-platform applications that run on all major desktop platforms and most mobile or embedded platforms.


title: Qt (software)

text: Most GUI programs created with Qt have a native-looking interface, in which case Qt is classified as a "widget toolkit". Non-GUI programs can also be developed, such as command-line tools and consoles for servers. An example of such a non-GUI program using Qt is the Cutelyst web framework.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt supports various compilers, including the GCC C++ compiler, the Visual Studio suite, PHP via an extension for PHP5, and has extensive internationalization support. Qt also provides Qt Quick, that includes a declarative scripting language called QML that allows using JavaScript to provide the logic. With Qt Quick, rapid application development for mobile devices became possible, while logic can still be written with native code as well to achieve the best possible performance.


title: Qt (software)

text: Other features include SQL database access, XML parsing, JSON parsing, thread management and network support.


title: Qt (software)

text: Also still supported, for commercial users, are 5.15 LTS, released on 26 May 2020, and 6.2 LTS, released on 30 September 2021 – long-term support (LTS) versions are generally supported for three years, with a commercial license, while 5.15 support was extended to five years, so it is supported for longer or until 26 May 2025. In addition the KDE project provides unofficial support for, at least, Qt 5.15, i.e. not just for commercial users.


title: Qt (software)

text: In 2017, the Qt Company estimated a community of about 1 million developers worldwide in over 70 industries.


title: Qt (software)

text: Starting with Qt 4.0 the framework was split into individual modules. With Qt 5.0 the architecture was modularized even further. Qt is now split into "essential" and "add-on" modules.


title: Qt (software)

text: There are four editions of Qt available: "Community", "Indie Mobile", "Professional" and "Enterprise". The Community version is under the open source licenses, while the Indie Mobile, Professional and Enterprise versions, which contain additional functionality and libraries, e.g. Enterprise Controls are commercially sold by The Qt Company.


title: Qt (software)

text: After Nokia opened the Qt source code to the community on Gitorious, various ports appeared. There are also some ports of Qt that may be available, but are not supported anymore. These platforms are listed in List of platforms supported by Qt. See also there for current community support for other lesser known platforms, such as SailfishOS.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt is available under the following free software licenses: GPL 2.0, GPL 3.0, LGPL 3.0 and LGPL 2.1 (with Qt special exception). Note that some modules are available only under a GPL license, which means that applications which link to these modules need to comply with that license.


title: Qt (software)

text: In addition, Qt has always been available under a commercial license, like the Qt Commercial License, that allows developing proprietary applications with no restrictions on licensing.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt comes with its own set of tools to ease cross-platform development, which can otherwise be cumbersome due to different set of development tools.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt Creator is a cross-platform IDE for C++ and QML. Qt Designer's GUI layout/design functionality is integrated into the IDE, although Qt Designer can still be started as a standalone tool.


title: Qt (software)

text: In addition to Qt Creator, Qt provides qmake, a cross-platform build script generation tool that automates the generation of Makefiles for development projects across different platforms.


title: Qt (software)

text: There are other tools available in Qt, including the Qt Designer interface builder and the Qt Assistant help browser (which are both embedded in Qt Creator), the Qt Linguist translation tool, uic (user interface compiler), and moc (Meta-Object Compiler).


title: Qt (software)

text: In the summer of 1990, Haavard Nord and Eirik Chambe-Eng (the original developers of Qt and the CEO and President, respectively, of Trolltech) were working together on a database application for ultrasound images written in C++ and running on Mac OS, Unix, and Microsoft Windows. They began development of "Qt" in 1991, three years before the company was incorporated as Quasar Technologies, then changed the name to Troll Tech and then to Trolltech.


title: Qt (software)

text: The toolkit was called Qt because the letter Q looked appealing in Haavard's Emacs typeface, and "t" was inspired by Xt, the X toolkit.


title: Qt (software)

text: On 20 May 1995 Troll Tech publicly released Qt 0.90 for X11/Linux with the source code under the "Qt Free Edition License". This license was viewed as not compliant with the free software definition by Free Software Foundation because, while the source was available, it did not allow the redistribution of modified versions. Trolltech used this license until version 1.45. Controversy erupted around 1998 when it became clear that the K Desktop Environment was going to become one of the leading desktop environments for Linux. As it was based on Qt, many people in the free software movement worried that an essential piece of one of their major operating systems would be proprietary.


title: Qt (software)

text: The Windows platform was available only under a proprietary license, which meant free/open source applications written in Qt for X11 could not be ported to Windows without purchasing the proprietary edition.


title: Qt (software)

text: With the release of version 2.0 of the toolkit in mid-1999, the license was changed to the Q Public License (QPL), a free software license, but one regarded by the Free Software Foundation as incompatible with the GPL. Compromises were sought between KDE and Trolltech whereby Qt would not be able to fall under a more restrictive license than the QPL, even if Trolltech was bought out or went bankrupt. This led to the creation of the KDE Free Qt foundation, which guarantees that Qt would fall under a BSD-style license should no free/open source version of Qt be released during 12 months.


title: Qt (software)

text: In 2000, Qt/X11 2.2 was released under the GPL v2, ending all controversy regarding GPL compatibility.


title: Qt (software)

text: At the end of 2001, Trolltech released Qt 3.0, which added support for Mac OS X (now known as macOS). The Mac OS X support was available only in the proprietary license until June 2003, when Trolltech released Qt 3.2 with Mac OS X support available under the GPL.


title: Qt (software)

text: In 2002, members of the KDE on Cygwin project began porting the GPL licensed Qt/X11 code base to Windows. This was in response to Trolltech's refusal to license Qt/Windows under the GPL on the grounds that Windows was not a free/open source software platform. The project achieved reasonable success although it never reached production quality.


title: Qt (software)

text: This was resolved when Trolltech released Qt 4.0 also for Windows under the GPL in June 2005. Qt 4 supported the same set of platforms in the free software/open source editions as in the proprietary edition, so it is possible, with Qt 4.0 and later releases, to create GPL-licensed free/open source applications using Qt on all supported platforms. The GPL v3 with special exception was later added as an added licensing option. The GPL exception allows the final application to be licensed under various GPL-incompatible free software/open source licenses such as the Mozilla Public License 1.1.


title: Qt (software)

text: Nokia acquired Trolltech ASA on 17 June 2008 and changed the name first to Qt Software, then to Qt Development Frameworks.


title: Qt (software)

text: Nokia focused on turning Qt into the main development platform for its devices, including a port to the Symbian S60 platform. Version 1.0 of the Nokia Qt SDK was released on 23 June 2010. The source code was made available over Gitorious, a community oriented git source code repository, with a goal of creating a broader community using and improving Qt.


title: Qt (software)

text: On 14 January 2009, Qt version 4.5 added another option, the LGPL, to make Qt more attractive for both non-GPL open source projects and closed applications.


title: Qt (software)

text: In February 2011, Nokia announced its decision to drop Symbian technologies and base their future smartphones on the Windows Phone platform instead (and since then support for that platform has also been dropped). One month later, Nokia announced the sale of Qt's commercial licensing and professional services to Digia, with the immediate goal of taking Qt support to Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms, and to continue focusing on desktop and embedded development, although Nokia was to remain the main development force behind the framework at that time.


title: Qt (software)

text: In March 2011, Nokia sold the commercial licensing part of Qt to Digia, creating Qt Commercial. In August 2012, Digia announced that it would acquire Qt from Nokia. The Qt team at Digia started their work in September 2012. They released Qt 5.0 within a month and newer versions every six months with new features and additional supported platforms.


title: Qt (software)

text: In September 2014, Digia transferred the Qt business and copyrights to their wholly owned subsidiary, The Qt Company, which owns 25 brands related to Qt. In May 2016, Digia and Qt demerged completely into two independent companies.


title: Qt (software)

text: Qt 5 was officially released on 19 December 2012. This new version marked a major change in the platform, with hardware-accelerated graphics, QML and JavaScript playing a major role. The traditional C++-only QWidgets continued to be supported, but did not benefit from the performance improvements available through the new architecture. Qt 5 brings significant improvements to the speed and ease of developing user interfaces.


title: Qt (software)

text: Framework development of Qt 5 moved to open governance at qt-project.org, which made it possible for developers outside Digia to submit patches for review.


title: Qt (software)

text: Aside from The Qt Company, many organizations and individuals using Qt as their development platform participate in the open development of Qt via the Qt Project.


title: Qt (software)

text: One such Qt contributor is Klarälvdalens Datakonsult AB, a Swedish Qt consulting company. KDAB is involved in many areas, including maintenance of several components.


title: Qt (software)

text: Another participator is Intel, contributing for example Wayland support. AudioCodes maintains IBM ClearCase support in Qt Creator.


title: Qt (software)

text: As a heavy user of Qt, the KDE project submits many patches and features from its developer library KDE Frameworks back to Qt.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (commonly shortened to The 7 Day Theory or Makaveli) is the fifth studio album by American rapper Tupac Shakur, his first posthumous album and the last released with his creative input. Recorded in seven days in August 1996, it was released on November 5, 1996, almost two months after his death, under the stage name of Makaveli, through Death Row Records, Makaveli Records and Interscope Records.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: It is his only album released under the new alternative stage name and features guest appearances from his rap group Outlawz and rapper Bad Azz, as well as R&B singers Aaron Hall, Danny Boy, K-Ci and JoJo, Val Young and Tyrone Wrice, along with uncredited vocal contributions from reggae musician Prince Ital Joe.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: Originally intended as an underground release and preceded by the release of "Toss It Up" as the lead single, the album peaked at number one on the "Billboard" 200 and sold 664,000 copies within its first week of release. By 1999, it was certified four times platinum by the RIAA. "To Live & Die in L.A." and "Hail Mary" were released later as singles and both garnered praise as standout tracks from the album. None of its singles charted within the "Billboard" Hot 100, but all charted within the top twenty of UK Singles chart.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The album received polarizing reviews from critics with praise directed at his vocal performance and its production and criticism directed towards its lyrical content and inferior quality in comparison to his previous albums. Critical reception has improved in later years and it is now ranked as one of Shakur's greatest albums, as well as one of the greatest rap albums of all time.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" was completely finished in seven days during the first week of August 1996. The lyrics were written and the songs were recorded in only three days and mixing took an additional four days. These are some of the last songs Shakur recorded before he was shot on September 7, 1996. The album's preliminary title was "The 3 Day Theory" and it originally consisted of around 14 tracks. In a 2014 interview, E.D.I. Mean of the Outlawz rap group and Ronald "Riskie" Brent revealed that the official name of the album was mixed up in the rush to release the album following Tupac's death. Tupac wanted the album to be called "Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" with Makaveli the Don as the artist name.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: Many of Shakur's usual producers were not involved with the project. The only producer with whom Shakur had worked prior to this album was QD3, the son of Quincy Jones and half-brother of Kidada Jones, Shakur's girlfriend. Shakur also co-produces four tracks on the album. The other two producers were Hurt-M-Badd and Darryl "Big D" Harper. E.D.I. Mean of the Outlawz recalls: "At the time Hurt-M-Badd, who was just an up-and-coming producer at Death Row, and Darryl Harper, who was an R&B producer – Suge had him working on all the R&B projects – they had a green room up in Can-Am [Studios] which everybody around Death Row called the 'wack room' because they said 'Ain't nothing but wack shit come out of there.' But we was up in the studio one day and we trying to get music done – ain't none of us producers – we see them two niggas in the 'Wack room' and 'Pac like, 'Go get them niggas.' So niggas go bring them, 'Pac just putting niggas to work like, 'I need a beat here, I need y'all to do this, do that.' And these are niggas that nobody at Death Row was fucking with. They'll tell you themselves."


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The album was recorded at Can-Am Studios in Tarzana during August 1996. During those days, 21 songs were completed with 12 of them making the final track listing. The album did not feature the star-studded guest list that "All Eyez on Me" did. Most of the guest verses are supplied by Shakur's Outlawz rap group. The only verse that was not from one of the Outlawz was from Bad Azz, a member of tha Dogg Pound Gangsta Crips, while the album also features vocals from Death Row R&B singer Danny Boy, Aaron Hall, Val Young and multi-platinum R&B duo K-Ci & JoJo. Credited as Tyrone Wrice, Hurt-M-Badd, a rapper, singer and the lead producer for the album, provided vocals for "Hold Ya Head"'s hook. Young Noble of the Outlawz recalled: We had started writing the shit and we was taking long. 'Pac was like, "Who got something? Bad Azz you got something?" and it fit perfect, so it was meant for Bad Azz to be on that song. We had already been on a million 'Pac songs. That was his way of motivating us like, "If y'all ain't ready, then you don't make the song."


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: While "All Eyez on Me" was considered by Shakur "a celebration of life", "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" is much darker. Shakur's rapping is still emotional, but is intensified throughout. Some songs on the album contain both subtle and direct insults to Shakur's rivals at the height of the East Coast–West Coast feud. Rappers insulted include The Notorious B.I.G., Junior M.A.F.I.A., Puff Daddy, De La Soul, Jay-Z, Mobb Deep, Nas, Xzibit and former Death Row label-mate Dr. Dre, as well as New York hip hop executives Jimmy "Henchman" Rosemond, Jacques "Haitian Jack" Agnant and Walter "King Tut" Johnson, accused of being associates of Puff Daddy and Bad Boy Records in orchestrating the 1994 Quad Studio assault.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: Although Shakur insulted Nas on "Intro/Bomb First (My Second Reply)" and "Against All Odds", rapper Young Noble, who appeared on several songs on "The 7 Day Theory", stated in an interview that Nas's "I Gave You Power" was the main inspiration for Shakur's "Me and My Girlfriend". Shakur and Nas squashed their beef at the 1996 MTV Video Music Awards days before Shakur was murdered. They were scheduled to meet in Las Vegas but never had the chance. Death Row associate Kurt "Kobane" Couthon revealed in an interview in 2016 that Shakur was listening to Nas's "It Was Written" the day he got shot—September 7, 1996—on his way to Las Vegas.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" was released on November 5, 1996, and debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200. It sold 664,000 copies within a week of release and achieved the second-highest first week sales of the year. On June 15, 1999, the album was certified quadruple platinum for sales of over four million copies in the United States.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: George "Papa G" Pryce, former head of publicity for Death Row, claimed that "Makaveli which we did was a sort of tongue-in-cheek, and it was not ready to come out, [but] after Tupac was murdered, it did come out... Before that, it was going to be a sort of an underground [release]."


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The first two singles, "Toss It Up" and "To Live & Die in L.A", were released on September 26 and November 16, 1996 respectively. Dr. Dre's former Death Row colleagues, including Shakur, recorded and attempted to release "Toss It Up", containing numerous insults aimed at Dr. Dre, and using a deliberately similar instrumental to Dre's production on "No Diggity" by Blackstreet, but were forced to replace the production after Blackstreet issued the label with a cease and desist order stopping them from distributing the song. The "Toss It Up" music video features Shakur, Danny Boy, K-Ci & JoJo, and Aaron Hall, and was directed by Lionel C. Martin. According to Death Row Records, it was the last music video Shakur filmed. The video also includes an appearance from actress LisaRaye McCoy. An unreleased version of the video was leaked some years later and is known as the "Toss It Up Beach Version".


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: "To Live & Die in L.A" was produced by QDIII who was the only outside Death Row producer on the album besides Demetrius Shipp, the producer of "Toss It Up". QDIII was one of Shakur's favorite producers. QDIII told XXL Magazine:


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: A music video for "To Live & Die in L.A" was shot in July 1996. It features Shakur working at a fruit stand and driving around Los Angeles in a car filled with women, and also features various scenes and pictures of notable places and events in Los Angeles. It was the first video shot for the album.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The album's final single, "Hail Mary" was released on February 11, 1997. The videos for "Hail Mary" and "To Live & Die in L.A can be found on the DualDisc of "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory".


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The album cover for "The Don Killuminati" was done by Compton based artist Ronald "Riskie" Brent, known artistically as "Riskie Forever." According to Riskie, Death Row Records C.E.O Marion "Suge" Knight introduced Riskie to Tupac on the set of the California Love (Remix) video shoot in Compton, California. Riskie, while in Tupac's trailer showed him his art portfolio, impressing Tupac with his artwork. Upon seeing his artwork Tupac agreed that Riskie had good artistic talent and requested for Riskie to do his next album cover. Riskie received a phone call from the then President of Death Row Norris Anderson with Tupac's request that he be drawn on a cross for his next album cover.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The Don Killuminati album cover draws on Renaissance portrayals of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Tupac is by himself in the image with his head tilted to the side, possessing the classic wound in his right side similar to the wound of Jesus as depicted in the accounts of his crucifixion. There is a bandana covering the head of Tupac and barbed-wire covering both his hands and his feet. Absent from the painting is Tupac's iconic "Thug Life" tattoo as it is covered up by the parental advisory sticker. On the cross of Tupac there is a map connecting various cities from across the country. The cities listed have large African-American populations, including the major urban centers of the East, West, and Southern parts of the United States. The color pattern of the cultural production is a gloomy red and black. The only light in the artistry is the moon and the few beams of light that emerge from the cracks on the cross. Near the bottom of the image is a written disclaimer: "In no way is this portrait an expression of disrespect for Jesus Christ. —Makaveli"


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: There are many interpretations of this album cover, the primary theme communicates that through depiction, Tupac is highlighting what he perceives to be his being vilified by the media and left alone to suffer his fate. The parental advisor sticker could be a reference to both what he perceived to be his demonization due to his promiscuous lifestyle, but also and most importantly, it could be a reference to his conviction of sexual assault, a charge in which he maintained his innocence against. The names of the cities that are on the album cover may be a representation of Tupac's belief that he represents the entirety of the African-American community in his public vilification, that he, like African-American people as a whole, is on display to be gazed upon and judged through the Euro-American racial prism. Furthermore, this theme of representation is also connected to the political commitments of Tupac Shakur as he was in the midst of deepening his political activity in the form of the creation of a Hip-Hop political party prior his murder.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: Upon release, "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" polarized critics, but has retrospectively been met with critical acclaim. "Muzik" called the record one of the year's most important and noted that it "perfectly captures the dark tensions arising from the centre of the vicious heat that is the City of Angels". "XXL" awarded the album a perfect five-star rating. "The Source", the leading hip hop magazine in the United States, has called the record better than Shakur's critically acclaimed "All Eyez on Me" album. Critic Cheo H. Coker of the Los Angeles Times saw "power and poignancy" in "The Don Killuminati", but noted that it lacks the epic scope of Shakur's previous "Me Against the World" and "All Eyez on Me" albums. "It's in those albums – and songs such as "Brenda's Got a Baby", "Lord Knows" and "Only God Can Judge Me" – that the legacy of this tortured, talented artist will be best found".


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: Richard Harrington of the Washington Post felt that "Shakur's voice sounds like blood boiling at times". "It would be easy to dismiss all this as rapper braggadoccio", he concluded his review, "but the heartfelt rage and aggression and Shakur's fate -- he was gunned down two months ago at the age of 25 -- suggest this music is dead serious".


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: In a more critical review, writing for the New York Times, Neil Strauss singled out "Hail Mary" and "Krazy" as the album's standout tracks and praised its dark tone, but noted that both "The Don Killuminati" and Snoop Dogg's Tha Doggfather suffer from Dr. Dre 's departure from Death Row and that the album is inferior to "All Eyez on Me". "This one was clearly meant as filler, a way to burn off creative energy, put down his rivals at Bad Boy Entertainment and tide fans over until the next album". While praising the production and Shakur's vocals, "Rolling Stone" felt the album had nothing to offer lyrically. "The tracks are fat with funky menace and the choral-vocal effect in many of the raps has a street-corner, pass-the-bottle charge. Alas, the record – issued just two months after 2Pac's murder – merely perpetuates Los Angeles hip-hop gangland stereotypes, in particular the East Coast/West Coast feud that has gone beyond pointless all the way to deadly."


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: Some reviewers commented negatively on the album. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album 2.5 stars out of 5.


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: "Everything about "The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory" smacks of exploitation..." he observed. "Released only eight weeks after Tupac Shakur died from gunshot wounds, Death Row released this posthumous album under the name of Makaveli, a pseudonym derived from the Italian politician Niccolo Machiavelli, who advocated using deception and fear on one's enemies. Naturally, the appearance of "Don Killuminati" so shortly after Tupac's death led many conspiracy theorists to surmise the rapper was still alive, but it was all part of a calculated marketing strategy by Death Row – the label needed something to sustain interest in the album, since the music here is so shoddy." He also condemned the record for concentrating on "nothing but tired G-funk beats and back-biting East Coast-West Coast rivalries". In a negative review from "People", they commented saying: "In light of how he died, all the bloodletting seems both preordained and sad. At the same time, Don Killuminati may be seen as Tupac's last grand artistic statement. Quite frankly, the CD is not that good."


title: The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory

text: The emotion, anger and eerie nature showcased on the album has been admired by a large part of the hip-hop community, including other rappers. "There are a lot of 2Pac records I like," said 50 Cent, "but this is consistent all the way through. You could put this on and clean your whole house." Rapper J. Cole named it one of his favorite albums of all time, he commented on the album saying, "Collectively, from 'Hail Mary' to 'Krazy' to 'Against All Odds,' it's deep. This album gets better for me as time goes on. "Me Against the World" is like that too, but "Makaveli" is really the one where the older I get, the more of it I get. Every year that I get older, I hear this album differently. I know more about life, so I'm like, 'Oh shit, this is what he meant.' So "Makaveli" is super special."


title: Alex G

text: Alexander Giannascoli (born February 3, 1993), better known by his stage names Alex G or, formerly, (Sandy) Alex G, is an American musician, producer, and singer-songwriter. He started his career with DIY self-releases on Bandcamp and began building up an audience with his label debut, "DSU" (2014), released on Orchid Tapes to critical acclaim from various publications. He later signed with Lucky Number, who reissued his earlier releases, "Rules" and "Trick" (2012). In 2015, he signed with Domino Recording Company and released his sixth studio album, "Beach Music". He followed it in 2017 with "Rocket", which received further acclaim and recognition. Giannascoli's eighth studio album, "House of Sugar", was released in 2019, and his ninth album "God Save the Animals" was released on September 23, 2022.


title: Alex G

text: Giannascoli was born in 1993 in Havertown, Pennsylvania At age 11 when his parents bought an Apple computer, he learned how to play his brother's guitar and began recording music. While attending Haverford High School, Giannascoli made two albums that he shared with friends. He experimented with different musical styles while making collaborative music, which included the "goth techno" he made with his sister in their band MOTHER, as well as the projects involving his high school band The Skin Cells, described as "pop rock that accidentally ended up being punk". In 2011, Giannascoli enrolled at Temple University, where he studied English in hopes to become a teacher, but eventually dropped out to pursue a musical career.


title: Alex G

text: After self-releasing various albums, EPs, and singles on Bandcamp from 2010–2012, Giannascoli's popularity spread through word of mouth, blogs, and reverence by other musicians. "The Fader" called Giannascoli "the internet's secret best songwriter." This led to Orchid Tapes signing Giannascoli to their roster, as well as the release of his label debut, "DSU" (2014), which garnered acclaim from music critics. Following the release of the album, Giannascoli went on tour throughout North America and Europe. In November, "DSU" was released by Lucky Number in Europe on all formats with two new bonus tracks. The label later also reissued his two preceding releases, 2012's "Rules" and "Trick".


title: Alex G

text: In 2015, Giannascoli signed with Domino Recording Company and released his debut with the label and sixth overall studio album, "Beach Music", on October 9. The following year, Giannascoli worked with Frank Ocean on his albums "Endless" and "Blonde", providing guitars and arrangements for several songs.


title: Alex G

text: On March 2, 2017, Giannascoli announced that his second album with Domino, entitled "Rocket", would be released on May 19 and shared the first two singles, "Bobby" and "Witch". On April 4, Giannascoli announced the change of his stage name from Alex G to (Sandy) Alex G, with no further explanation, and shared another single from the album, "Proud". The music publication "Spin" attributed the name change to a legal conflict with singer and YouTuber Alex Blue, who was operating at the time under the trademarked name "Alex G". On choosing the name 'Sandy', Giannascoli said it "was the first thing [he] put on Bandcamp" and that he had "just used that ‘Sandy’ as a sort of [social media] tag" since then. On May 4, he released two more singles, "Brick" and "Sportstar", before the release of the album. "Rocket" received further acclaim from music critics and appeared on multiple publications' year-end lists of the best albums of 2017.


title: Alex G

text: Giannascoli's eighth studio album, "House of Sugar", was released on September 13, 2019. The album received positive reviews and placed 17th on Pitchfork's year-end best albums list. In June 2020, he dropped "(Sandy)" from his stage name, returning to going by Alex G.


title: Alex G

text: Giannascoli's music is often characterized as indie rock with a lo-fi aesthetic due to him recording all of his music by himself in his home. He is frequently compared to singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, who is an influence of his. Other comparisons include Built to Spill and The Martinis. "The Philadelphia Inquirer" praised him as "a particularly gifted melody writer" whose "fuzzy, sometimes distorted songs, which hark back to slightly askew 1990s bands such as Pavement, can't hide his skill as a pop craftsman and a constructor of elliptical narratives that call for repeated listening." He stated that his creative process consists of him usually working alone in his room with his guitar and adding other instruments later. When asked about working in a professional recording studio, he replied, "I feel like I'm eventually going to have to do that, but I just don't want to. Because I don't know how to work all that stuff, and I don't want anyone else to have control. I just want to follow my own ideas, and I'm uncomfortable doing it any other way." Despite being formerly hesitant to record his music in professional studios, Giannascoli's ninth album "God Save the Animals" was entirely studio-recorded with help from Jacob Portrait during the pandemic.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Anna Stanislavovna Shcherbakova (, born 28 March 2004) is a Russian figure skater. She is the 2022 Olympic champion, the 2021 World champion, a two-time European silver medalist (2020 and 2022), the 2019 Grand Prix Final silver medalist, the 2019 Skate America champion, the 2019 Cup of China champion, the 2021 Internationaux de France champion, the 2021 Gran Premio d'Italia champion, the 2019 CS Lombardia Trophy champion, and a three-time Russian national champion (2019–21). In her senior career, she has finished on the podium in every single competition she has entered.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: At the junior level, Shcherbakova is the 2019 World Junior silver medalist, 2018 JGP Slovakia champion, 2018 JGP Canada champion, 2019 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival champion, and 2019 Russian junior national bronze medalist.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova currently has the third highest free skating score of any female skater, with 175.75 points, behind only compatriots Kamila Valieva and Alexandra Trusova. She was the first senior woman to land a quad Lutz (the first woman to land it is training mate Alexandra Trusova) and the first woman to land two quad Lutz jumps in a single program. Shcherbakova is also one of the few female skaters to have landed a quad flip, both internationally and domestically. She is the first woman to land a quad flip in combination with a triple toe.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova was born in Moscow on 28 March 2004 to parents Stanislav and Julia. She has an older sister, Inna, and a younger sister, Yana. In 2007, at age three, Shcherbakova began learning to skate under Oksana Bulycheva at the Khrustalnyi rink of the Olympic Reserve Sports School No. 37 (later renamed "Sambo 70") in Moscow. Shcherbakova expressed interest in going to university to study Physical Education after graduating from high school.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: In an interview on Russian television following the 2021 World Championships, Shcherbakova stated her admiration of Nathan Chen's figure skating technique after he surprised her with a cake on her 17th birthday during the closing program of the championships.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova parted ways with Oksana Bulycheva in 2013 and began training in the most advanced group at the same rink, led by Eteri Tutberidze and Sergei Dudakov.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova won gold at the 2016 Russian Youth Championships – Younger Age. She missed the 2017 Russian Junior Championships, held in February, after breaking her arm. Returning to competition, she won the silver medal at the 2017 Russian Youth Championships – Younger Age in March.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: In the summer of 2017, Shcherbakova broke her leg while performing a triple loop in combination at a training camp. As a result, she missed most of the 2017–18 season, including her planned Junior Grand Prix debut. She placed thirteenth at the 2018 Russian Junior Championships.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova debuted internationally on the Junior Grand Prix circuit in August. She was assigned to events in Slovakia and Canada. At JGP Slovakia, she placed first in both the short program and free skate, winning the gold medal by a margin of over 18 points over the silver medalist and fellow Russian competitor Anna Tarusina. Shcherbakova's scores at the competition were among the highest achieved in an international junior ladies competition, after teammate Alexandra Trusova in the short program, and Trusova and teammate Alena Kostornaia in the free skate.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: At JGP Canada, Shcherbakova again placed first in both the short program and free skate and won the gold medal by a margin of five points over the silver medalist, former teammate Anastasia Tarakanova. With two gold medals on the Junior Grand Prix, she qualified for the 2018–19 Junior Grand Prix Final. At the final, Shcherbakova placed last in the short program after falling on her attempted double Axel and stepping out of a triple Lutz, missing the planned combination. In the free skate, she fell on both quad attempts, placing fifth in the segment and overall. Speaking to the media afterward, Shcherbakova said she "really wanted to land my quad Lutzes" but "couldn't do them cleanly ... so I'll try to do it next time".


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: At the 2019 Russian Championships, Shcherbakova placed fifth in the short program and first in the free skate, winning the national title over Trusova by 0.07 points. Shcherbakova expressed surprise at the victory, noting that it was "very unexpected for me to win and I still haven't realized what just happened".


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: In December, Shcherbakova competed at the 2019 Russian Junior National Championships, where she was expected to vie for the title again with her teammates Trusova and Kostornaia. After placing second in the short program and third in the free skate, Shcherbakova won the bronze medal behind Trusova and Kostornaia. In the free program, Shcherbakova attempted a quad Lutz jump but fell.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: In March, Shcherbakova was selected by the Russian Figure Skating Federation to compete at the 2019 Junior World Championships in Zagreb, Croatia, alongside Trusova and Ksenia Sinitsyna. She placed first in short program after receiving a score of 72.86. In the free skate, she landed her quad Lutz jump with a minor error in landing position, receiving a negative grade of execution. Her score of 147.08 was the highest she had ever attained at an international competition but was not enough to overtake Trusova, who had landed two quad jumps in the free program. Shcherbakova won the silver medal.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: In September, Shcherbakova entered her first international senior competition in Italy at the ISU Challenger Series event, the 2019 Lombardia Trophy. After the short program, she was in third place behind Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and You Young. Her free program saw her become the first senior woman to land a quad Lutz in senior competition, ensuring the gold medal in her senior debut.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova made her ISU Grand Prix debut at the 2019 Skate America, where she won the gold medal after placing fourth in the short program and first in the free skate. At the competition she became the first woman to land two quadruple Lutz jumps in the free skate in international competition and the first woman to land a quadruple Lutz-triple jump combination in international competition. In the free skate, she became the second lady after Trusova to achieve a score above 160 points under the current GOE system when she scored her personal best score of 160.16 points, only three points short of Trusova's world record. Shcherbakova also set new records for the highest valued single jump, earning 14.79 points for her quadruple Lutz, and for the highest valued jump combinations, when she earned 18.66 points for her quad Lutz-triple toe loop combination. Shcherbakova also won her second event, the 2019 Cup of China, albeit by a smaller margin.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova's results qualified her for the Grand Prix Final in Torino, where she placed third in the short program. In the free skate, she landed two quad Lutzes (one deemed underrotated) and attempted for the first time, but fell on, the quad flip. She nevertheless placed first in the free skate and won the silver medal behind Kostornaia.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: At the 2020 Russian Championships, Shcherbakova skated cleanly to place second in the short program behind Kostornaia, who was ten points ahead going into the free skate. Shcherbakova won the free skate, landing two quad Lutzes and the quad flip for the first time, and won her second national title by just under two points overall. She also outscored senior men's champion Dmitri Aliev, despite ladies' components scoring value being only four-fifths of that of men.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova competed at the 2020 European Championships, delivering a clean short program skate to place second. In the free skate, Shcherbakova landed the quad Lutz-triple toe loop combination to start, followed by a quad flip. However, she fell on the second planned quad Lutz. Despite the fall, she placed first in the free skate and settled for a silver medal behind Kostornaia. Together with Kostornaia and Trusova, who took the bronze, the trio made for an all-Russian podium in the ladies' singles event. They were assigned to compete at the World Championships in Montreal, which were later cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequent coaching changes by Trusova and Kostornaia resulted in Shcherbakova briefly being the only one of the trio still training at the Sambo 70 rink under Tutberidze until Kostornaia returned in March 2021.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova debuted both of her programs at the Russian senior test skates, overcoming a difficult practice session to deliver a free skate with only one fall on her quad Lutz attempt, which she called "a good starting point". In August, it was announced that Shcherbakova would compete in the first and third stages of the 2020–21 Russian Cup series. She won the first stage in Syzran with a score of 246.40 and the third stage in Sochi with 239.91 points.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: She was assigned, as with other prominent Russian skaters, to the 2020 Rostelecom Cup after the ISU decided to base the Grand Prix primarily on geographic location. However, she withdrew on the day of the event due to illness, later revealed to be pneumonia.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: After recovering from pneumonia, Shcherbakova had somewhat limited ability to train in advance of the 2021 Russian Championships. She won the short program with a score of 80.31, ahead of fellow Sambo 70 skater Kamila Valieva. In the free skate, she landed both a quad Lutz and quad flip and won the segment with a score of 183.79, with Valieva as the silver medalist and Trusova taking the bronze medal. Shcherbakova became the first woman to win three consecutive Russian titles since Irina Slutskaya from 1999 to 2001. Shcherbakova was assigned to the Russian team for the 2021 World Championships in Stockholm.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Prior to the World Championships, Shcherbakova participated in the televised 2021 Channel One Trophy as part of the Red Machine team captained by Alina Zagitova. She placed second in both segments of the competition, and the Red Machine won the trophy. She opted not to participate in the Russian Cup Final.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Heading into the World Championships, Shcherbakova was considered one of the frontrunners for the World title alongside Trusova and Rika Kihira of Japan. In the short program, Shcherbakova skated a personal best for the ladies short program, scoring 81.00 to place first ahead of Kihira. She then placed second in the free program with a score of 152.17 points in spite of falling during the execution of one of her quad jumps, within one point of Trusova's 152.38 points. Shcherbakova then won the competition on combined totals to become the world champion. Shcherbakova, Elizaveta Tuktamysheva and Trusova's podium placements made this only the second time, after the United States in 1991, that a single country had swept the ladies' podium at the World Championships. Shcherbakova and silver medalist Tuktamysheva's podium placements qualified three berths for Russian ladies at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova competed as part of the Russian team for the 2021 World Team Trophy in April, winning the short program on the opening day within one point ahead of Russian teammate Elizaveta Tuktamysheva. Shcherbakova finished in first place and won a gold medal with Russia.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova debuted her Olympic season programs at the 2021 Russian test skate event in September and later opened her competitive season in October at the 2021 Budapest Trophy. At the Budapest Trophy, Shcherbakova led after the short program, but was later overtaken in the free skate by training-mate Maiia Khromykh after falling on her opening quad flip and receiving a number of edge and quarter calls. She placed second in the free skate to finish narrowly behind Khromykh and take the silver medal overall.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova's first Grand Prix assignment was initially the 2021 Cup of China, but following its cancellation she was reassigned to the 2021 Gran Premio d'Italia in Turin. After an error on her jump combination in the short program, she placed third in that segment behind Belgium's Loena Hendrickx and Khromykh. She came back in the free skate to win both that segment and the gold medal. She successfully landed a quad flip in the free skate and said afterward that demonstrating its return had been her main goal going into the event. Shcherbakova went on to win her second event, the 2021 Internationaux de France, defeating Kostornaia by almost eight points. She fell on her attempted quad Lutz in the free skate, but landed the quad flip. Her results qualified her to the Grand Prix Final, which was subsequently cancelled due to restrictions prompted by the Omicron variant.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: At the 2022 Russian Championships, Shcherbakova placed second in the short program behind Valieva. She fell on her only quad attempt in the free skate, placing fourth in that segment, but took the bronze medal overall behind Valieva and Trusova. Assigned to the 2022 European Championships in Tallinn, Shcherbakova placed fourth in the short program after falling on her triple Lutz and failing to execute a jump combination. Mounting a comeback in the free skate with a quad flip and seven triple jumps, she placed second in the segment and took the silver medal. On January 20, she was officially named to the Russian Olympic team. Making her debut at the 2022 Winter Olympics in the women's event, she skated cleanly and placed second in the short program with a score of 80.20, 1.94 points behind segment leader Valieva and 0.36 points ahead of third-place Kaori Sakamoto. In the free skate, Shcherbakova skated cleanly once again, scoring a 175.75, 1.38 points behind segment leader Trusova, but putting Shcherbakova in the lead overall before the last skater, Valieva. After gold medal favourite Valieva failed to deliver a clean free skate, Shcherbakova won the event with an overall score of 255.95. During an interviews at the Olympics, Shcherbakova indicated her intention to compete at the ISU World Championships in March.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: In early March 2022, the ISU banned all figure skaters and officials from Russia and Belarus from attending the World Championships due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, therefore Shcherbakova was not allowed to participate and defend her title. Instead, Russia organized the Channel One Trophy to occur during the World Championships. Shcherbakova was named the captain of the Red Machine team. The first day of the competition was a jumping competition, and Shcherbakova led her team to victory. In the short program, she scored 82.90 and placed second behind Kamila Valieva. Then in the free skate, she scored 176.12 and finished first overall, and the Red Machine team won the competition.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova's skating has been distinguished by her high consistency in the performance of her skating programs, and she is the third woman since Irina Slutskaya and Adelina Sotnikova to win three Russian national titles. Her performances and technique are also highlighted by her ability to consistently land quad jumps—specifically, the quad Lutz and quad flip—as part of the Tutberidze skating team. Shcherbakova's quad jumping ability is often compared to those of her teammates Kamila Valieva and Alexandra Trusova. Olympic gold medalist Tara Lipinski complimented Shcherbakova's skating, praising "her incredible consistency and tenacity she's shown throughout this season" leading up to the 2021 World Championships. However, Shcherbakova's consistency appeared to have wavered slightly in the beginning of 2022 with falls in some of her combination jumps and her quads at the 2022 Russian Championships and the 2022 European Championships. During the Beijing Olympics she executed two quad jumps consistently in her free skate performance.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Since March 2020, Shcherbakova has endorsed Nike. She has featured in several video advertisements for their "Break It Down" campaign, speaking English and promoting exercise techniques in the brand's sportswear.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: Shcherbakova is a brand ambassador for the futuristic Chinese car “OMODA 5”, a seemingly futuristic car set to arrive in Russia soon. It is seemingly a very small car brand with an Instagram following of only 935. Shcherbakova has been an ambassador since May of 2022.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: "Small medals for short and free programs awarded only at ISU Championships. Personal bests highlighted in" bold.


title: Anna Shcherbakova

text: "Small medals for short and free programs awarded only at ISU Championships. Previous ISU world best highlighted in" bold.


title: Long March

text: The Long March (, lit. "Long Expedition") was a military retreat undertaken by the Red Army of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the forerunner of the People's Liberation Army, to evade the pursuit of the National Army of the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP/KMT). Strictly speaking, the Long March was a series of marches, as various Communist armies in the south escaped to the north and west. However, the most famous began in the Jiangxi (Jiangxi) province in October 1934 and ended in the Shaanxi province in October 1935. The First Front Army of the Chinese Soviet Republic, led by an inexperienced military commission, was on the brink of annihilation by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's troops in their stronghold in Jiangxi province. The CCP, under the eventual command of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai, escaped in a circling retreat to the west and north, which reportedly traversed over over 370 days. The route passed through some of the most difficult terrain of western China by traveling west, then north, to Shaanxi.


title: Long March

text: The Long March began the ascent to power of Mao Zedong, whose leadership during the retreat gained him the support of the members of the party. The bitter struggles of the Long March, which was completed by only about one-tenth of the force that left Jiangxi (about eight thousand of some hundred thousand), would come to represent a significant episode in the history of the CCP, and would seal the personal prestige of Mao and his supporters as the new leaders of the party in the following decades.


title: Long March

text: Although the literal translation of the Chinese "Cháng Zhēng" is "Long March", official publications of the People's Republic of China refer to it as "The Long March of the Red Army" (). The Long March most commonly refers to the transfer of the main group of the First (or Central) Red Army, which included the leaders of the CCP, from Yudu in the province of Jiangxi to Yan'an in Shaanxi. In this sense, the Long March lasted from October 16, 1934, to October 19, 1935. In a broader view, the Long March included two other forces retreating under pressure from the Kuomintang: the Second Red Army and the Fourth Red Army. The retreat of all the Red Armies was not complete until October 22, 1935, when the three forces linked up in Shaanxi.


title: Long March

text: The divisions of the "Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army" (中國工農紅軍) were named according to historical circumstances, not by chronological order. Indeed, early Communist units would often form by defection from existing Kuomintang forces, and they kept their original designations. By the time of the Long March, numerous small units had been organized into three unified groups: the First Red Army (紅一方面軍/红一方面军/Hóng Yī Fāngmiàn Jūn), the Second Red Army (紅二方面軍/红二方面军/Hóng Èr Fāngmiàn Jūn), and the Fourth Red Army (紅四方面軍/红四方面军/Hóng Sì Fāngmiàn Jūn). Some translations refer to these same units as the "First Front Red Army", "Second Front Red Army", and "Fourth Front Red Army" to distinguish them from earlier organizational divisions.


title: Long March

text: The First Red Army formed from the First, Third and Fifth Army Groups in southern Jiangxi under the command of Bo Gu and Otto Braun. When several smaller units formed the Fourth Red Army under Zhang Guotao in the Sichuan–Shaanxi border area, no standard nomenclature of the armies of the CCP existed; moreover, during the Chinese Civil War, central control of separate Communist-controlled enclaves within China was limited. After the organization of these first two main forces, the Second Red Army formed in eastern Guizhou by unifying the Second and Sixth Army Groups under He Long and Xiao Ke. In this case, a "Third Red Army" was led by He Long, who established his base area in the Hunan–Hubei border. The defeat of his forces in 1932 led to a merge in October 1934 with the 6th Army Corps, led by Xiao Ke, to form the Second Red Army. These three armies would maintain their historical designation as the First, Second and Fourth Red Armies until Communist military forces were nominally integrated into the National Revolutionary Army, forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.


title: Long March

text: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921 by Chen Duxiu with Soviet support. The CCP initially collaborated with the Chinese Nationalist Party or Kuomintang (KMT), founded by the revolutionary republican Sun Yat-sen. However, after the unexpected death of Sun in March 1925, a power struggle within the KMT led to the shift in the party's authority to Chiang Kai-shek, whose Northern Expedition forces succeeded in wresting control of large areas of China from local warlords and establishing a unified government in Nanjing in April 1927. Unlike other nationalist leaders, like Wang Jingwei, Chiang was opposed to the idea of continued collaboration with the CCP. The initial period of cooperation to unify China and end the unequal treaties broke up in April 1927 when Chiang Kai-shek struck out against the Communists. Unsuccessful urban insurrections (in Nanchang, Wuhan and Guangzhou) and the suppression of the CCP in Shanghai and other cities drove many party supporters to rural strongholds such as the Jiangxi Soviet, which was organized by Mao Zedong. By 1928, deserters and defecting Kuomintang army units, supplemented by peasants from the Communist rural soviets, formed the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. The ideological confrontation between the CCP and the KMT soon evolved into the first phase of the Chinese Civil War.


title: Long March

text: By 1930, the Communist Red Army had established the Chinese Soviet Republic in the provinces of Jiangxi and Fujian around the city of Ruijin, including industrial facilities.


title: Long March

text: After the establishment of the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao's status within the Party declined. In 1930, Mao claimed a need to eliminate alleged KMT spies and Anti-Bolsheviks operating inside the Jiangxi Soviet and began an ideological campaign featuring torture and guilt by association, in order to eliminate his enemies. The campaign continued until the end of 1931, killing approximately 70,000 people and reducing the size of the Red Army from 40,000 to less than 10,000. The "de facto" leader of the party at the time, Zhou Enlai, originally supported Mao's purges as necessary to eliminate KMT spies. After Zhou arrived in Jiangxi in December 1931, he criticized Mao's campaigns for being directed more against anti-Maoists than legitimate threats to the Party, for the campaign's general senselessness, and for the widespread use of torture to extract confessions. During 1932, following Zhou's efforts to end Mao's ideological persecutions, the campaigns gradually subsided.


title: Long March

text: In December, of 1931 Zhou replaced Mao Zedong as Secretary of the First Front Army and political commissar of the Red Army. Liu Bocheng, Lin Biao and Peng Dehuai all criticized Mao's tactics at the August 1932 Ningdu Conference. The most senior leaders to support Mao in 1932 were Zhou Enlai, who had become disillusioned with the strategic leadership of other senior leaders in the Party, and Mao's old comrade, Zhu De. Zhou's support was not enough, and Mao was demoted to being a figurehead in the Soviet government, until he regained his position later, during the Long March.


title: Long March

text: In early 1933, Bo Gu arrived in Jiangxi with the German Comintern adviser Otto Braun and took control of Party affairs. Zhou at this time, apparently with strong support from Party and military colleagues, reorganized and standardized the Red Army. Under Zhou, Bo, and Braun, the Red Army defeated four attacks by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops.


title: Long March

text: Chiang's fifth campaign was much more difficult to contain. In September 1933, the National Revolutionary Army under Chiang Kai-shek eventually completely encircled Jiangxi, with the advice and tactical assistance of his German adviser, Hans von Seeckt. A fortified perimeter was established by Chiang's forces, and Jiangxi was besieged in an attempt to destroy the Communist forces trapped within. In July 1934, the leaders of the Party, dominated by the "Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks", a militant group formed in Moscow by Wang Ming and Bo Gu, forced Mao from the Politburo of the CCP in Ruijin and placed him briefly under house arrest. Mao was replaced by Zhou Enlai as leader of the military commission.


title: Long March

text: Chiang's strategy of slowly constructing a series of interlinking blockhouses (resembling medieval castles) was successful, and Chiang's army was able to capture several major Communist strongholds within months. Between January and March 1934, the Nationalists advanced slowly. Bo and Braun continued to employ orthodox military tactics, resulting in a series of Kuomintang advances and heavy Communist casualties. In October 1934 KMT troops won a decisive battle and drove deep into the heart of the Central Soviet Area. When Ruijin became exposed to KMT attack, Party leaders faced the choice of either remaining and perishing or of abandoning the base area and attempting to break through the enemy encirclement.


title: Long March

text: In August 1934, with the Red Army depleted by the prolonged conflict, a spy, Mo Xiong, who had been placed by Zhou Enlai in the KMT army headquarters in Nanchang, brought news that Chiang Kai-shek was preparing a major offensive against the Communist capital, Ruijin. The Communist leadership decided on a strategic retreat to regroup with other Communist units, and to avoid annihilation. The original plan was to link up with the Second Red Army commanded by He Long, thought to be in Hubei to the west and north. Communications between divided groups of the Red Army had been disrupted by the Kuomintang campaign. During the planning to evacuate Jiangxi, the First Red Army was unaware that these other Communist forces were also retreating westward.


title: Long March

text: Since the Central Base Area could not be held, the Standing Committee appointed Bo (responsible for politics), Braun (responsible for military strategy), and Zhou (responsible for the implementation of military planning) to organize the evacuation. Since the enemy was close, Zhou, in charge of logistics, made his plans in complete secrecy. It was not disclosed who was to leave or when: even senior leaders were only at the last moments told of the Army's movements. It is not known what criteria were used to determine who would stay and who would go, but 16,000 troops and some of the Communists' most notable commanders at the time (including Xiang Ying, Chen Yi, Tan Zhenlin, and Qu Qiubai) were left to form a rear guard, to divert the main force of Nationalist troops from noticing, and preventing, the general withdrawal.


title: Long March

text: The first movements to screen the retreat were undertaken by forces led by Fang Zhimin, breaking through Kuomintang lines in June 1934. Although Fang Zhimin's troops were soon destroyed, these movements surprised the Kuomintang, who were numerically superior to the Communists at the time and did not expect an attack on their fortified perimeter.


title: Long March

text: The early troop movements were actually a diversion to allow the retreat of more important leaders from Jiangxi. On October 16, 1934, a force of about 130,000 soldiers and civilians under Bo Gu and Otto Braun attacked the line of Kuomintang positions near Yudu. More than 86,000 troops, 11,000 administrative personnel and thousands of civilian porters actually completed the breakout; the remainder, largely wounded or ill soldiers, continued to fight a delaying action after the main force had left, and then dispersed into the countryside. Several prominent members of the Chinese Soviet who remained behind were captured and executed by the Kuomintang after the fall of Ruijin in November 1934, including Qu Qiubai and the youngest brother of Mao Zedong, Mao Zetan.


title: Long March

text: The withdrawal began in early October 1934. Zhou's intelligence agents were successful in identifying a large section of Chiang's blockhouse lines that were manned by troops under General Chen Jitang, a Guangdong warlord who Zhou identified as being likely to prefer preserving the strength of his troops over fighting. Zhou sent Pan Hannian to negotiate for safe passage with General Chen, who subsequently allowed the Red Army to pass through the territory that he controlled without fighting. The Red army successfully crossed the Xinfeng River and marched through the province of Guangdong and into Hunan before encountering the last of Chiang's fortifications at the Xiang River.


title: Long March

text: After passing through three of the four blockhouse fortifications needed to escape Chiang's encirclement, the Red Army was finally intercepted by regular Nationalist troops, and suffered heavy casualties. Of the 86,000 Communists who attempted to break out of Jiangxi with the First Red Army, only 36,000 successfully escaped. Due to the low morale within the Red Army at the time, it is not possible to know what proportion of these losses were due to military casualties, and which proportion were due to desertion. The conditions of the Red Army's forced withdrawal demoralized some Communist leaders (particularly Bo Gu and Otto Braun), but Zhou remained calm and retained his command. Most Communist losses occurred over only two days of heavy fighting, from November 30 to December 1, 1934.


title: Long March

text: After escaping Chiang's encirclement, it was obvious to Party leaders that Chiang was intent on intercepting what remained of the Red Army in Hunan, and the direction of the Red Army's movements had to be reconsidered. The plan to rendezvous and join He Long's army in Hunan had become too risky. Mao suggested to Zhou that the Red Army change direction, towards Guizhou, where Mao expected enemy defenses to be weak.


title: Long March

text: A meeting at Tongdao, close to the border of Hunan and Guizhou, was convened to discuss the direction of the Red Army on December 12, 1934. Zhou endorsed Mao's proposal, encouraging other leaders to overrule the objections of Bo and Braun. Another dispute of the direction of the Red Army occurred soon after, once the Red Army reached Liping, in the mountains of southeast Guizhou. Braun believed that they should travel to eastern Guizhou, but Mao wanted to go to western Guizhou, where he expected KMT forces to be lighter and which borders Sichuan, and to establish a base area there. In a meeting to decide the army's direction, Zhou sided with Mao, making Braun "fly into a rage because he was overruled in the debate." At the meeting it was decided that the Red Army would travel towards Zunyi, in western Guizhou.


title: Long March

text: On January 1, 1935, the Red Army reached the Wu River. Bo and Braun again insisted the Red Army move back to western Hunan to join other Communist troops in the area, but their prestige had considerably declined by that point, and their suggestion was rejected. Even Zhou had become impatient, and proposed a new rule which was put into effect immediately: that all military plans had to be submitted to the Politburo for approval. The movement passed, clearly depriving Braun of the right to direct military affairs. On January 15 the Red Army captured Zunyi, the second largest city in Guizhou. As Mao had predicted, the city was weakly defended, and was too far from Nationalist forces to be under immediate threat of attack. By the time the Red Army occupied Zunyi, it was highly depleted, and counted little more than 10,000 men. Zhou used the peace afforded in Zunyi to call an enlarged Politburo meeting, in order to examine the causes of the Communists' repeated defeats.


title: Long March

text: The Communists' Zunyi Conference lasted from January 15–17, 1935, and resulted in a reshuffling of the Party politburo. Zhou intended the conference to draw lessons from the Red Army's past failures, and to develop strategies for the future. Much of the discussion revolved around whether the defeats of the Red Army were due to unavoidable circumstances, or inadequacies of leadership. Bo Gu, the first speaker, attributed the Red Army's losses to "objective" causes, particularly the enemy's overwhelming numerical superiority, and poor coordination of Communist forces. Braun's interpreter, Wu Xiuquan, later recalled that Bo's arguments did not impress his audience, and that Bo came across as someone attempting to avoid responsibility.


title: Long March

text: Zhou Enlai was the next to speak. Zhou blamed the Red Army's failures on poor decisions at the leadership level, and blamed himself as one of the three people most responsible. Zhou's willingness to accept responsibility was well received. Zhang Wentian, basing many of his conclusions on recent discussions with Mao, attacked Bo and Braun directly, criticizing them for numerous strategic and tactical errors.


title: Long March

text: After Zhang, Mao gave a speech in which he analyzed the poor tactics and strategies of the two leaders. With Zhou's explicit backing, Mao won over the meeting. Seventeen of the meeting's twenty participants (the exceptions being Bo, Braun, and He Kequan) argued in his favor.


title: Long March

text: Of the three leaders who had controlled the Party before the Zunyi Conference, only Zhou Enlai's political career survived. Zhou was held partially responsible for the Red Army's defeat, but was retained at the top level of Party leadership because of his differences with Bo and Braun at Ningdu, his successful tactics in defeating Chiang's fourth Encirclement Campaign, and his resolute support of Mao. Although the failed leadership of Bo Gu and Otto Braun was denounced, Mao was not able to win the support of a sufficient number of Party leaders to gain outright power at the conference.


title: Long March

text: A major shift in the Party's leadership occurred two months later, in March 1935. Mao was passed over for the position of General Secretary by Zhang Wentian, but gained enough influence to be elected one of three members of Military Affairs Commission. The other two members were Zhou Enlai, who retained his position as Director of the commission, and Wang Jiaxiang, whose support Mao had enlisted earlier. Within this group, Zhou was empowered to make the final decisions on military matters, while Mao was Zhou's assistant. Wang was in charge of Party affairs.


title: Long March

text: When the army resumed its march northward, the direct route to Sichuan was blocked by Chiang's forces. Mao's forces spent the next several months maneuvering to avoid direct confrontation with hostile forces, but still attempting to move north to join Zhang Guotao's Fourth Red Army. While Chiang's armies approached Mao in northern Guizhou from three directions, Mao maneuvered out of the encirclement by crossing the Chishui River four times. Then, Mao led the Red Army, crossing the Wu River and marching towards Guiyang. He feigned an attack to this city when Chiang was visiting. Chiang ordered his army in Kunming to move eastward to save Guiyang, but the Red Army turned towards Kunming immediately and entered Yunnan, where the Yangtze River was lightly guarded.


title: Long March

text: In February 1935, Mao's wife, He Zizhen, gave birth to a daughter. Because of the harsh conditions, the infant was left with a local family.


title: Long March

text: The Communist forces were harassed by both the Kuomintang and local warlords. To avoid a fatal confrontation, Zhou and Mao maneuvered the Red army south and west, through Guizhou, Sichuan, and Yunnan, feigning attacks on Guiyang and Kunming to disguise their movements. The First Red Army crossed the Yangtze (the section of Jinsha River) on May 9, 1935, finally escaping determined pursuit, but still had to deal with dangerous mountain passes at heights of up to 4,000 meters, rough climatic conditions, shortages of food, clothing, and equipment, and tribes of local ethnic groups hostile to Chinese encroachment. The Red Army had to capture river crossings defended by warlords and Nationalist troops. The most famous was Luding Bridge, extolled in official history as an heroic triumph, although many historians now believe that the difficulty of the battle was exaggerated or that the incident was fabricated for propaganda purposes.


title: Long March

text: Warlords often refused to help out the Kuomintang against the Communist Red Army, preferring to save their own forces.


title: Long March

text: 300 "Khampa bandits" were enlisted into the Kuomintang's Consolatory Commission military in Sichuan, where they were part of the effort of the central government of China to penetrate and destabilize the local Han warlords such as Liu Wenhui. The Chinese government sought to exercise full control over frontier areas against the warlords. Liu had refused to do battle with the Red Army, to save his own military from destruction. The Consolatory Commission forces were used to battle the Communist Red Army, but were defeated when their religious leader was captured by Communist forces.


title: Long March

text: Communist forces on the Long March clashed against Kham rebels in the 1934 Khamba Rebellion, who were fleeing from Tibetan government forces.