title: Rheumatism

text: Initial therapy of the major rheumatological diseases is with analgesics, such as paracetamol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Steroids, especially glucocorticoids, and stronger analgesics are often required for more severe cases.


title: Rheumatism

text: The term "rheumatism" stems from the Late Latin "rheumatismus", ultimately from Greek ῥευματίζομαι "to suffer from a flux", with "rheum" meaning bodily fluids, i.e. any discharge of blood or bodily fluid.


title: Rheumatism

text: Before the 17th century, the joint pain which was thought to be caused by viscous humours seeping into the joints was always referred to as gout, a word adopted in Middle English from Old French "gote" "a drop; the gout, rheumatism", not to be confused with the present day specific term referring to excess of uric acid.


title: Rheumatism

text: The English term "rheumatism" in the current sense has been in use since the late 17th century, as it was believed that chronic joint pain was caused by excessive flow of "rheum" which means bodily fluids into a joint.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: The pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is a large, mostly black woodpecker native to North America. An insectivore, it inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the Pacific Coast. It is the largest confirmed extant woodpecker species in North America, with the possible exception of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed be reclassified as extinct. It is also the third largest species of woodpecker in the world, after the great slaty woodpecker and the black woodpecker. "Pileated" refers to the bird's prominent red crest, from the Latin meaning "capped".


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: The English naturalist Mark Catesby described and illustrated the pileated woodpecker in his book "The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands" which was published between 1729 and 1732. Catesby used the English name "The larger red-crested Wood-pecker" and the Latin "Picus niger maximus capite rubro". When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his "Systema Naturae" for the tenth edition, he included the pileated woodpecker, coined the binomial name "Picus pileatus" and cited Catesby's book. The specific epithet "pileatus" is a Latin word meaning "-capped". The type locality is South Carolina. The pileated woodpecker is now one of six species placed in the genus "Dryocopus" that was introduced by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie in 1826.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: Adults are long, span across the wings, and weigh . The average weight of females and males combined is about , with males weighing about and females weighing about in mean body mass. The wing chord measures , the tail measures , the bill is and the tarsus measures . The northern subspecies is generally slightly larger than the southern. Pileated woodpeckers are mainly black with a red crest, and have a white line down the sides of the throat. Younger specimens tend to have less curved crests, or "mohawks" as some refer to them. They show white on the wings in flight. The flight of these birds is strong and direct, but undulates in the way characteristic of woodpeckers. Adult males have a red line from the bill to the throat; in adult females these are black. Two species found in the Old World, the white-bellied woodpecker ("D. javensis") and black woodpeckers ("D. martius"), are closely related and occupy the same ecological niche in their respective ranges that the pileated occupies in North America. The only North American birds of similar plumage and size were the ivory-billed woodpecker of the southeastern United States and Cuba, and the related imperial woodpecker of Mexico, both of which have been declared probably extinct.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: The pileated woodpecker's breeding habitat is forested areas across Canada, the eastern United States, and parts of the Pacific Coast. This bird favors mature forests and heavily wooded parks. They specifically prefer mesic habitats with large, mature hardwood trees, often being found in large tracts of forest. However, they also inhabit smaller woodlots as long as they have a scattering of tall trees. Efforts to restore woodland by removing invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn seem to benefit them, as the removal of brush and shrubbery facilitates their foraging on the ground and in the lower stratum. From 1966 to 2015 the population of pileated woodpecker has, on average, increased by greater than 1.5% per year throughout the northeastern U.S., the Maritimes, the Ohio River Valley, and around the Great Lakes.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: Pileated woodpeckers mainly eat insects, especially carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle larvae. They also eat fruits, nuts, and berries, including poison ivy berries. Pileated woodpeckers often chip out large and roughly rectangular holes in trees while searching out insects, especially ant colonies. They also lap up ants by reaching with their long tongues into crevices. They are self-assured on the vertical surfaces of large trees, but can seem awkward while feeding on small branches and vines. They may also forage on or near the ground, especially around fallen, dead trees, which can contain a variety of insect life. They may forage around the sides of human homes or even cars, and can be observed feeding at suet-type feeders. Although they are less likely feeder visitors than smaller woodpeckers, pileateds may regularly be attracted to them in areas experiencing harsh winter conditions.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: Usually, pileated woodpeckers excavate their large nests in the cavities of dead trees. Woodpeckers make such large holes in dead trees that the holes can cause a small tree to break in half. The roost of a pileated woodpecker usually has multiple entrance holes. In April, the hole made by the male attracts a female for mating and raising their young. Once the brood is raised, the birds abandon the hole and do not use it the next year. When abandoned, these holes—made similarly by all woodpeckers—provide good homes in future years for many forest songbirds and a wide variety of other animals. Owls and tree-nesting ducks may largely rely on holes made by pileateds in which to lay their nests. Even mammals such as raccoons may use them. Other woodpeckers and smaller birds such as wrens may be attracted to pileated holes to feed on the insects found in them. Ecologically, the entire woodpecker family is important to the well being of many other bird species. The pileated woodpecker also nests in boxes about off the ground.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: A pileated woodpecker pair stays together on its territory all year round and is not migratory. They defend the territory in all seasons, but tolerate floaters during the winter. When clashing with conspecifics, they engage in much chasing, calling, striking with the wings, and jabbing with the bill. Drumming is most common during courtship and to proclaim a territory. Hollow trees are often used to make the most resonant sound possible. The pattern is typically a fairly slow, deep rolling that lasts about three seconds.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: Pileated woodpeckers have been observed to move to another site if any eggs have fallen out of the nest—a rare habit in birds. The cavity is unlined except for wood chips. Both parents incubate three to five eggs for 12 to 16 days. The average clutch size is four per nest. The young may take a month to fledge. The oldest known pileated woodpecker was 12 years and 11 months old. Predators at the nest can include American and Pacific martens, weasels, squirrels, rat snakes, and gray foxes. Free-flying adults have fewer predators, but can be taken in some numbers by Cooper's hawks, northern goshawks, red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, bald eagles, golden eagles and barred owls.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: The pileated woodpecker occupies a large range and is quite adaptable. Its ability to survive in many wooded habitat types has allowed the species to survive human habitation of North America much better than the more specialized ivory-billed woodpecker. Pileated woodpeckers have a large population size, and despite being nonmigratory, are protected under the U.S. Migratory Bird Act. While the large birds control many insect populations, especially tree beetles, that may otherwise experience outbreaks, some people may consider them harmful if found on their property due to the considerable damage that pileated woodpeckers can do to trees and homes.


title: Pileated woodpecker

text: Cartoonist Walter Lantz is believed to have based the appearance of his creation, Woody Woodpecker on the pileated woodpecker; while patterning the call on the acorn woodpecker.


title: Malayali

text: The Malayali people () (also spelt Malayalee and also known by the demonym Keralite) are a Dravidian ethnolinguistic group originating from the present-day state of Kerala in India, occupying its southwestern Malabar coast. They are predominantly native speakers of the Malayalam language, one of the six Classical languages in India. The state of Kerala was created in 1956 through the States Reorganisation Act. Prior to that, since the 1800s existed the Kingdom of Cochin, the Kingdom of Travancore, Malabar District, and South Canara of the British India. The Malabar District was annexed by the British through the Third Mysore War (1790–92) from Tipu Sultan. Before that, the Malabar District was under various kingdoms including the Zamorins of Calicut, Kingdom of Tanur, Arakkal kingdom, Kolathunadu, Valluvanad, and Palakkad Rajas.


title: Malayali

text: According to the Indian census of 2011, there are approximately 33 million Malayalis in Kerala, making up 97% of the total population of the state. Malayali minorities are also found in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, mainly in Kanyakumari district and Nilgiri district and Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu districts of Karnataka and also in other metropolitan areas of India. Over the course of the later half of the 20th century, significant Malayali communities have emerged in Persian Gulf countries, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait and to a lesser extent, other developed nations with a primarily immigrant background such as Malaysia, Singapore, the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, New Zealand and Canada. As of 2013, there were an estimated 1.6 million ethnic Malayali expatriates worldwide. The estimated population of Malayalees in Malaysia in year 2020 is approximately 348,000, which makes up 12.5% of the total number of Indian population in Malaysia that makes them the second biggest Indian ethnic group in Malaysia, after the Tamils. Most of the Malayalee population in Malaysia aged 18 to 30 are known to be either the third, fourth, or fifth generation living as a Malaysian citizen. According to A. R. Raja Raja Varma, Malayalam was the name of the place, before it became the name of the language spoken by the people.


title: Malayali

text: Malayalam, the native language of Malayalis, has its origin from the words "mala" meaning "mountain" and "alam" meaning "land" or "locality". Kerala was usually known as "Malabar" in the foreign trade circles in the medieval era. Earlier, the term "Malabar" had also been used to denote Tulu Nadu and Kanyakumari which lie contiguous to Kerala in the southwestern coast of India, in addition to the modern state of Kerala. The people of Malabar were known as "Malabars". Until the arrival of the East India Company, the term "Malabar" was used as a general name for Kerala, along with the term "Kerala". From the time of Cosmas Indicopleustes (6th century CE) itself, the Arab sailors used to call Kerala as "Male". The first element of the name, however, is attested already in the "Topography" written by Cosmas Indicopleustes. This mentions a pepper emporium called "Male", which clearly gave its name to Malabar ('the country of Male'). The name "Male" is thought to come from the Malayalam word "Mala" ('hill'). Al-Biruni () is the first known writer to call this country "Malabar". Authors such as Ibn Khordadbeh and Al-Baladhuri mention Malabar ports in their works. The Arab writers had called this place "Malibar", "Manibar", "Mulibar", and "Munibar". "Malabar" is reminiscent of the word "Malanad" which means "the land of hills". According to William Logan, the word "Malabar" comes from a combination of the Malayalam word "Mala" (hill) and the Persian/Arabic word "Barr" (country/continent). Hence the natives of Malabar Coast were known as "Malabarese" or "Malabari" in the foreign trade circles. The words "Malayali" and "Malabari" are synonymous to each other.


title: Malayali

text: The "Skanda Purana" mentions the ecclesiastical office of the Thachudaya Kaimal who is referred to as "Manikkam Keralar" (The Ruby King of Kerala), synonymous with the deity of the Koodalmanikyam temple. Hence the term Keralar seem to precede the usage of the word Malayala/Malayalam.


title: Malayali

text: Malayalam is a language spoken by the native people of southwestern India (from Mangalore to Kanyakumari) and the islands of Lakshadweep in Arabian Sea. According to the Indian census of 2001, there were 30,803,747 speakers of Malayalam in Kerala, making up 93.2% of the total number of Malayalam speakers in India, and 96.7% of the total population of the state. There were a further 701,673 (2.1% of the total number) in Tamil Nadu, 557,705 (1.7%) in Karnataka and 406,358 (1.2%) in Maharashtra. The number of Malayalam speakers in Lakshadweep is 51,100, which is only 0.15% of the total number, but is as much as about 84% of the population of Lakshadweep. In all, Malayalis made up 3.22% of the total Indian population in 2001. Of the total 33,066,392 Malayalam speakers in India in 2001, 33,015,420 spoke the standard dialects, 19,643 spoke the "Yerava" dialect and 31,329 spoke non-standard regional variations like "Eranadan". As per the 1991 census data, 28.85% of all Malayalam speakers in India spoke a second language and 19.64% of the total knew three or more languages. Malayalam was the most spoken language in erstwhile Gudalur taluk (now Gudalur and Panthalur taluks) of Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu which accounts for 48.8% population and it was the second most spoken language in Mangalore and Puttur taluks of South Canara accounting for 21.2% and 15.4% respectively according to 1951 census report. 25.57% of the total population in the Kodagu district of Karnataka are Malayalis, in which Malayalis form the largest linguistic group in Virajpet Taluk. Around one-third of the Malayalis in Kodagu district speak the Yerava dialect according to the 2011 census, which is native to Kodagu and Wayanad.


title: Malayali

text: Just before independence, Malaya attracted many Malayalis. Large numbers of Malayalis have settled in Chennai (Madras), Delhi, Bangalore, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Mumbai (Bombay), Ahmedabad and Chandigarh. Many Malayalis have also emigrated to the Middle East, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. As of 2009-2013, there were approximately 146,000 people with Malayali heritage in the United States, with an estimated 40,000 living in the New York tri-state area. There were 7,093 Malayalam speakers in Australia in 2006. The 2001 Canadian census reported 7,070 people who listed Malayalam as their mother tongue, mostly in the Greater Toronto Area and Southern Ontario. In 2010, the Census of Population of Singapore reported that there were 26,348 Malayalees in Singapore. The 2006 New Zealand census reported 2,139 speakers. 134 Malayalam speaking households were reported in 1956 in Fiji. There is also a considerable Malayali population in the Persian Gulf regions, especially in Bahrain, Muscat, Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and European region mainly in London. The city of Chennai has the highest population of Malayalis in a metropolitan area outside Kerala, followed by Bangalore.


title: Malayali

text: Besides, the Malayalee citizens in Malaysia are estimated to be 229,800 in the year 2020 whereas the population of the Malayalee expatriates is approximately 2,000. They make up around 10 percent of the total number of Indians in Malaysia.


title: Malayali

text: During the ancient period, the people of present-day Kerala were ruled by the Chera dynasty of Tamilakam, with their capital at Vanchi. The dynasty lent the region its name, uniting the entire coast under their suzerainty. The fall of the Cheras in the 15th century CE at the hands of the Cholas proved to be the catalyst of a distinct Malayali identity, wading away from the Tamil cultural sphere of influence over several millennia.


title: Malayali

text: The Malayalis live in a historic area known as the Malabar coast, which for thousands of years has been a major center of the international spice trade, operating at least from the Roman era with Ptolemy documenting it on his map of the world in 150 AD. For that reason, a highly distinct culture was created among the Malayali due to centuries of contact with foreign cultures through the spice trade. The arrival of the Cochin Jews, the rise of Saint Thomas Christians, and the growth of Mappila Muslim community, in particular, were very significant in shaping modern-day Malayali culture. Later, Portuguese Latin Christians, Dutch Malabar, French Mahe, and British English, which arrived after 1498 left their mark through colonialism and pillaging their resources.


title: Malayali

text: In 2017, a detailed study of the evolution of the Singapore Malayalee community over a period of more than 100 years was published as a book: From Kerala to Singapore: Voices of the Singapore Malayalee Community. It is believed to be the first in-depth study of the presence of a NRI Malayalee community outside of Kerala.


title: Malayali

text: According to some scholars, the Malayalam language is descended from a dialect of the Tamil Language spoken on the Malabar coast, and largely arose because of its geographical isolation from the rest of the Tamil speaking areas. The Sangam literature can be considered as the ancient predecessor of Malayalam. Malayalam literature is ancient in origin, and includes such figures as the 14th century Niranam poets (Madhava Panikkar, Sankara Panikkar and Rama Panikkar), whose works mark the dawn of both modern Malayalam language and indigenous Keralite poetry. Some linguists claim that an inscription found from Edakkal Caves, Wayanad, which belongs to 3rd century CE (approximately 1,800 years old), is the oldest available inscription in Malayalam, as they contain two modern Malayalam words, "Ee" (This) and "Pazhama" (Old), those are not found even in the Oldest form of Tamil. The origin of Malayalam calendar dates back to year 825 CE. It is generally agreed that the Quilon Syrian copper plates of 849/850 CE is the available oldest inscription written in Old Malayalam. For the first 600 years of Malayalam calendar, the literature mainly consisted of the oral Ballads such as "Vadakkan Pattukal" (Northern Songs) in North Malabar and "Thekkan Pattukal" (Southern songs) in Southern Travancore. The earliest known literary works in Malayalam are "Ramacharitam" and "Thirunizhalmala", two epic poems written in Old Malayalam. Malayalam literature has been presented with 6 Jnanapith awards, the second-most for any Dravidian language and the third-highest for any Indian language.


title: Malayali

text: Designated a "Classical Language in India" in 2013, it developed into the current form mainly by the influence of the poets Cherusseri Namboothiri (Born near Kannur), Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan (Born near Tirur), and Poonthanam Nambudiri (Born near Perinthalmanna), in the 15th and the 16th centuries of Common Era. Kunchan Nambiar, a Palakkad-based poet also influnced a lot in the growth of modern Malayalam literature in its pre-mature form, through a new literary branch called "Thullal". The prose literature, criticism, and Malayalam journalism, began following the latter half of 18th century CE. The first travelogue in any Indian language is the Malayalam "Varthamanappusthakam", written by Paremmakkal Thoma Kathanar in 1785.


title: Malayali

text: The Triumvirate of poets ("Kavithrayam": Kumaran Asan, Vallathol Narayana Menon and Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer) are recognized for moving Keralite poetry away from archaic sophistry and metaphysics and towards a more lyrical mode. In 19th century Chavara Kuriakose Elias, the founder of Carmelites of Mary Immaculate and Congregation of Mother of Carmel congregations, contribute different streams in the Malayalam Literature. All his works are written between 1829 and 1870. Chavara's contribution to Malayalam literature includes, Chronicles, Poems – athmanuthapam (compunction of the soul), Maranaveettil Paduvanulla Pana (Poem to sing in the bereaved house) and Anasthasiayude Rakthasakshyam – and other Literary works . Contemporary Malayalam literature deals with social, political, and economic life context. The tendency of the modern poetry is often towards political radicalism. The writers like Kavalam Narayana Panicker have contributred much to Malayalam drama. In the second half of the 20th century, Jnanpith winning poets and writers like G. Sankara Kurup, S. K. Pottekkatt, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, O. N. V. Kurup, and Akkitham Achuthan Namboothiri, had made valuable contributions to the modern Malayalam literature. Later, writers like O. V. Vijayan, Kamaladas, M. Mukundan, Arundhati Roy, and Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, have gained international recognition.


title: Malayali

text: Arabi Malayalam (also called Mappila Malayalam and Moplah Malayalam) was the traditional Dravidian language of the Mappila Muslim community in Malabar Coast. The poets like Moyinkutty Vaidyar and Pulikkottil Hyder have made notable contributions to the Mappila songs, which is a genre of the Arabi Malayalam literature. The Arabi Malayalam script, otherwise known as the Ponnani script, is a writing system - a variant form of the Arabic script with special orthographic features - which was developed during the early medieval period and used to write Arabi Malayalam until the early 20th century CE. Though the script originated and developed in Kerala, today it is predominantly used in Malaysia and Singapore by the migrant Muslim community.


title: Malayali

text: The modern Malayalam grammar is based on the book "Kerala Panineeyam" written by A. R. Raja Raja Varma in late 19th century CE. World Malayali Council with its sister organisation, International Institute for Scientific and Academic Collaboration (IISAC) has come out with a comprehensive book on Kerala titled 'Introduction to Kerala Studies,’ specially intended for the Malayali diaspora across the globe. J.V. Vilanilam, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Kerala; Sunny Luke, medical scientist and former professor of Medical Biotechnology at Adelphi University, New York; and Antony Palackal, professor of Sociology at the Loyola College of Social Sciences in Thiruvananthapuram, have edited the book, besides making other contributions to it.


title: Malayali

text: Tharavadu is a system of joint family practiced by Malayalis, especially castes that belong to Namboothiris, Nairs, Thiyyar, Ambalavasis and Christians other prominent ethnoreligious groups. Each Tharavadu has a unique name. The Tharavadu was administered by the "Karanavar", the oldest male member of the family. He would be the eldest maternal uncle of the family as well. The members of the Tharavadu consisted of mother, daughters, sons, sisters and brothers. The fathers and husbands had a very minimal role to play in the affairs of the Tharavadu. It was a true matrilineal affair. The Karanavar took all major decisions. He was usually autocratic. However, the consent of the eldest female member of the family was taken before implementing the decisions. This eldest female member would be his maternal grandmother, own mother, mother's sister, his own sister or a sister through his maternal lineage. Since the lineage was through the female members, the birth of a daughter was always welcomed. Each Tharavadu also has a "Para Devatha" (clan deity) revered by those in the particular Tharavadu. Temples were built to honour these deities.


title: Malayali

text: Kerala's society is less patriarchal than the rest of India. Certain Hindu communities such as the Nairs, and Muslims around Kannur, and Ponnani in Malappuram, and Varkala and Edava in Thiruvananthapuram used to follow a traditional matrilineal system known as "marumakkathayam" which has in the recent years (post-Indian independence) ceased to exist. Christians, majority of the Muslims, and some Hindu castes such as the Namboothiris and some Ezhavas follow "makkathayam", a patrilineal system. Kerala's gender relations are among the most equitable in India and the Majority World.


title: Malayali

text: Kerala, the ancestral land of the Malayali people, has a tropical climate with excessive rains and intensive solar radiation. The architecture of this region has evolved to meet these climatic conditions by having the form of buildings with low walls, sloping roof and projecting caves. The setting of the building in the open garden plot was again necessitated by the requirement of wind for giving comfort in the humid climate.


title: Malayali

text: Timber is the prime structural material abundantly available in many varieties in Kerala. Perhaps the skillful choice of timber, accurate joinery, artful assembly, and delicate carving of the woodwork for columns, walls and roofs frames are the unique characteristics of Malayali architecture. From the limitations of the materials, a mixed-mode of construction was evolved in Malayali architecture. The stonework was restricted to the plinth even in important buildings such as temples. Laterite was used for walls. The roof structure in timber was covered with palm leaf thatching for most buildings and rarely with tiles for palaces or temples. The "Kerala murals" are paintings with vegetable dyes on wet walls in subdued shades of brown. The indigenous adoption of the available raw materials and their transformation as enduring media for architectural expression thus became the dominant feature of the Malayali style of architecture.


title: Malayali

text: Nalukettu was a housing style in Kerala. Nalukettu is a quadrangular building constructed after following the "Tachu Sastra" (Science of Carpentry). It was a typical house that was flanked by out-houses and utility structures. The large house-Nalukettu is constructed within a large compound. It was called Nalukettu because it consisted of four wings around a central courtyard called "Nadumuttom". The house has a quadrangle in the center. The quadrangle is in every way the center of life in the house and very useful for the performance of rituals. The layout of these homes was simple, and catered to the dwelling of numerous people, usually part of a tharavadu. "Ettukettu" (eight halls with two central courtyards) or "Pathinarukettu" (sixteen halls with four central courtyards) are the more elaborate forms of the same architecture.


title: Malayali

text: Malayalis use two words to denote dance, which is "attom" and "thullal". The art forms of Malayalis are classified into three types: "religious", such as Theyyam and Bhagavatipattu; "semi religious", like Sanghakali and Krishnanattom; and "secular", such as Kathakali, Mohiniyattam, and Thullal. "Kathakali" and "Mohiniyattam" are the two classical dance forms from Kerala. Kathakali is actually a "dance-drama". Mohiniyattam is a very sensual and graceful dance form that is performed both solo and in a group by women. Kutiyattam is a traditional performing art form from Kerala, which is recognised by UNESCO and given the status "Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity". Ottamthullal is another performing art, which is also known as the "poor man's Kathakali", which was created by the poet Kunchan Nambiar as an alternative to "Chakiarkooth" (another performing art), which was open only for higher castes to see. Theyyam is a ritualistic art form of Malayalis, which is thought to predate hinduism and to have developed from folk dances performed in conjunction with harvest celebrations. Theyyam is performed as an offering to gods so as to get rid of poverty and illness. Velakali is another ritualistic art form, mainly performed at temples in the festival time. Kolkali is a folk art in which dance performers move in a circle, striking small sticks and keeping rhythm with special steps.


title: Malayali

text: Many ancient Malayali family houses in Kerala have special snake shrines called "Kavu". Sarpam Thullal is usually performed in the courtyard of houses having snake shrines. This is a votive offering for family wealth and happiness. Kerala Natanam ( കേരള നടനം ) (Kerala Dance) is a new style of dance that is now recognized as a distinct classical art form evolved from Kathakali. The Indian dancer Guru Gopinath ( ഗുരു ഗോപിനാഥ് ) a well-trained Kathakali artist and his wife Thankamani Gopinath developed this unique form of dance.


title: Malayali

text: Performing arts in Kerala is not limited to a single religion of the Malayali society. Muslim Mappilas, Nasranis and Latin Christians have their own unique performing art forms. Duff Muttu, also known as "Dubh Muttu/Aravanamuttu" is a performing art form prevalent among the Muslim community. It is a group performance, staged as a social event during festivals and nuptial ceremonies.


title: Malayali

text: Oppana is a popular form of social entertainment among the Muslim community. It is a form accompanied by clapping of hands, in which both men and women participate.


title: Malayali

text: Margamkali is a performing art which is popular among the Saint Thomas Christians. It combines both devotion and entertainment, and was performed by men in groups. Since 1980's women also have found groups. The dancers themselves sing the "margamkali songs" in unison call and response form. "Parichamuttukali" is another performing art which is popular among Saint Thomas Christians. This is an artistic adaptation of the martial art of Kerala, Kalaripayattu. "Chavittu nadakom" is a theatrical art form observed mainly by Kerala Latin Christians, dating back to the second half of the 16th century.


title: Malayali

text: However, many of these native art forms largely play to tourists or at youth festivals, and are not as popular among ordinary Keralites. Thus, more contemporary forms – including those heavily based on the use of often risqué and politically incorrect mimicry and parody – have gained considerable mass appeal in recent years. Indeed, contemporary artists often use such modes to mock socioeconomic elites. Since 1930 when the first Malayalam film Vigathakumaran was released and over the following decade or two, Malayalam Cinema had grown to become one of the popular means of expression for both works of fiction and social issues, and it remains so.


title: Malayali

text: Music formed a major part of early Malayalam literature, which is believed to have started developing by 9th century CE. The significance of music in the culture of Kerala can be established just by the fact that in Malayalam language, musical poetry was developed long before prose. Kerala is musically known for Sopanam. Sopanam is religious in nature, and developed through singing invocatory songs at the Kalam of Kali, and later inside temples. Sopanam came to prominence in the wake of the increasing popularity of Jayadeva's Gita Govinda or Ashtapadis. Sopana "sangeetham" (music), as the very name suggests, is sung by the side of the "holy steps" (sopanam) leading to the sanctum sanctorum of a shrine. It is sung, typically employing plain notes, to the accompaniment of the small, hourglass-shaped ethnic drum called "idakka", besides the chengila or the handy metallic gong to sound the beats.


title: Malayali

text: Sopanam is traditionally sung by men of the Maarar and Pothuval community, who are Ambalavasi (semi-Brahmin) castes engaged to do it as their hereditary profession. Kerala is also home of Carnatic music. Legends like Swati Tirunal, Shadkala Govinda Maarar, Sangitha Vidwan Gopala Pillai Bhagavathar, Chertala Gopalan Nair, M. D. Ramanathan, T.V.Gopalakrishnan, M.S. Gopalakrishnan, L. Subramaniam T.N. Krishnan & K. J. Yesudas are Malayali musicians. Also among the younger generations with wide acclaim and promise is Child Prodigy Violinist L. Athira Krishna etc., who are looked upon as maestros of tomorrow.


title: Malayali

text: Kerala also has a significant presence of Hindustani music as well. The king of Travancore, Swathi Thirunal patronaged and contributed much to the Hindustani Music. The pulluvar of Kerala are closely connected to the serpent worship. One group among these people consider the snake gods as their presiding deity and performs certain sacrifices and sing songs. This is called "Pulluvan Pattu". The song conducted by the pulluvar in serpent temples and snake groves is called Sarppapaattu, Naagam Paattu, Sarpam Thullal, Sarppolsavam, Paambum Thullal or Paambum Kalam. Mappila Paattukal or "Mappila Songs" are folklore Muslim devotional songs in the Malayalam language. Mappila songs are composed in colloquial Malayalam and are sung in a distinctive tune. They are composed in a mixture of Malayalam and Arabic.


title: Malayali

text: Film music, which refers to playback singing in the context of Indian music, forms the most important canon of popular music in India. Film music of Kerala in particular is the most popular form of music in the state.


title: Malayali

text: Vallam Kali, is the race of country-made boats. It is mainly conducted during the season of the harvest festival Onam in Autumn. Vallam Kali include races of many kinds of traditional boats of Kerala. The race of Chundan Vallam (snake boat) is the major item. Hence Vallam Kali is also known in English as Snake Boat Race and a major tourist attraction. Other types of boats which do participate in various events in the race are "Churulan Vallam", "Iruttukuthy Vallam", "Odi Vallam", "Veppu Vallam (Vaipu Vallam)", "Vadakkanody Vallam", and "Kochu Vallam". Nehru Trophy Boat Race is one of the famous Vallam Kali held in Punnamada Lake in Alappuzha district of Kerala. Champakulam Moolam Boat Race is the oldest and most popular Vallam Kali in Kerala. The race is held on river Pamba on the moolam day (according to the Malayalam Era) of the Malayalam month Midhunam, the day of the installation of the deity at the Ambalappuzha Sree Krishna Temple. The Aranmula Boat Race takes place at Aranmula, near a temple dedicated to Lord Krishna and Arjuna. The President's Trophy Boat Race is a popular event conducted in Ashtamudi Lake in Kollam.


title: Malayali

text: Thousands of people gather on the banks of the river Pamba to watch the snake boat races. Nearly 50 snake boats or chundan vallams participate in the festival. Payippad Jalotsavam is a three-day water festival. It is conducted in Payippad Lake which is 35 km from Alappuzha district of Kerala state. There is a close relation between this Payippad boat race and Subramanya Swamy Temple in Haripad. Indira Gandhi Boat Race is a boat race festival celebrated in the last week of December in the backwaters of Kochi, a city in Kerala. This boat race is one of the most popular Vallam Kali in Kerala. This festival is conducted to promote Kerala tourism.


title: Malayali

text: Malayali cuisine is not homogeneous and regional variations are visible throughout. Spices form an important ingredient in almost all curries. Kerala is known for its traditional , a vegetarian meal served with boiled rice and a host of side-dishes. The is complemented by , a sweet milk dessert native to Kerala. The is, as per custom, served on a banana leaf. Traditional dishes include , , , , , , , , (tapioca), (steamed rice powder), and . Coconut is an essential ingredient in most of the food items and is liberally used.


title: Malayali

text: Muslim cuisine or Mappila cuisine is a blend of traditional Kerala, Persian, Yemenese and Arab food culture. This confluence of culinary cultures is best seen in the preparation of most dishes. "Kallummakkaya" (mussels) curry, "Irachi Puttu" ("Irachi" means meat), parottas (soft flatbread), "Pathiri" (a type of rice pancake) and ghee rice are some of the other specialties. The characteristic use of spices is the hallmark of Mappila cuisine. spices like black pepper, cardamom and clove are used profusely. The Kerala Biryani, is also prepared by the community.


title: Malayali

text: The snacks include "Unnakkaya" (deep-fried, boiled ripe banana paste covering a mixture of cashew, raisins and sugar), pazham nirachathu (ripe banana filled with coconut grating, molasses or sugar), "Muttamala" made of eggs, "Chattipathiri", a dessert made of flour, like baked, layered "Chapati"s with rich filling, "Arikkadukka" and so on.


title: Malayali

text: Malayalis have their own form of martial arts called Kalaripayattu. This type of martial arts was used as a defensive mechanism against intruders. In ancient times, disputes between nobles ("naaduvazhis" or "Vazhunors") were also settled by the outcome of a Kalaripayattu tournament. This ancient martial art is claimed as "the mother of all martial arts". The word "kalari" can be traced to ancient Sangam literature.


title: Malayali

text: Anthropologists estimate that Kalarippayattu dates back to at least the 12th century CE. The historian Elamkulam Kunjan Pillai attributes the birth of Kalaripayattu to an extended period of warfare between the Cheras and the Cholas in the 11th century CE. What eventually crystallized into this style is thought to have been a product of existing South Indian styles of combat, combined with techniques brought by other cultures. Kalaripayattu may be one of the oldest martial arts in existence. The oldest western reference to Kalaripayattu is a 16th-century travelogue of Duarte Barbosa, a Portuguese explorer. The southern style, which stresses the importance of hand-to-hand combat, is slightly different than Kalari in the north.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: "Akínwándé Olúwọlé Babátúndé Ṣóyíinká"; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka (), is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route." Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. In December 2020, Soyinka described 2020 as the most challenging year in the nation's history. He said: "With the turbulence that characterised year 2020, and as activities wind down, the mood has been repugnant and very negative. I don’t want to sound pessimistic but this is one of the most pessimistic years I have known in this nation and it wasn’t just because of COVID-19. Natural disasters had happened elsewhere, but how have you managed to take such in their strides?"


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale. Soyinka was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".


title: Wole Soyinka

text: A descendant of the rulers of Isara, Soyinka was born the second of seven children, in the city of Abẹokuta, Ogun State, in Nigeria, at that time a British Dominion. His siblings were Atinuke "Tinu" Aina Soyinka, Femi Soyinka , Yeside Soyinka, Omofolabo "Folabo" Ajayi-Soyinka and Kayode Soyinka. His younger sister Folashade Soyinka died on her first birthday. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka (whom he called S.A. or "Essay"), was an Anglican minister and the headmaster of St. Peters School in Abẹokuta. Having solid family connections, the elder Soyinka was a cousin of the Odemo, or King, of Isara-Remo Samuel Akinsanya, a founding father of Nigeria. Soyinka's mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka (née Jenkins-Harrison) (whom he dubbed the "Wild Christian"), owned a shop in the nearby market. She was a political activist within the women's movement in the local community. She was also Anglican. As much of the community followed indigenous Yorùbá religious tradition, Soyinka grew up in a religious atmosphere of syncretism, with influences from both cultures. He was raised in a religious family, attending church services and singing in the choir from an early age; however, Soyinka himself became an atheist later in life. His father's position enabled him to get electricity and radio at home. He writes extensively about his childhood in his memoir "" (1981).


title: Wole Soyinka

text: His mother was one of the most prominent members of the influential Ransome-Kuti family: she was the granddaughter of Rev. Canon J. J. Ransome-Kuti as the only daughter of his first daughter Anne Lape Iyabode Ransome-Kuti, and was therefore a niece to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti, Oludotun Ransome-Kuti and niece in-law to Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Among Soyinka's first cousins once removed were the musician Fela Kuti, the human rights activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti. His second cousins include musicians Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti, and dancer Yeni Kuti. His younger brother Femi Soyinka became a medical doctor and a university professor.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1940, after attending St. Peter's Primary School in Abeokuta, Soyinka went to Abeokuta Grammar School, where he won several prizes for literary composition. In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in Ibadan, at that time one of Nigeria's elite secondary schools.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: After finishing his course at Government College in 1952, he began studies at University College Ibadan (1952–54), affiliated with the University of London. He studied English literature, Greek, and Western history. Among his lecturers was Molly Mahood, a British literary scholar. In the year 1953–54, his second and last at University College, Soyinka began work on "Keffi's Birthday Treat", a short radio play for Nigerian Broadcasting Service that was broadcast in July 1954. While at university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, an anti-corruption and justice-seeking student organisation, the first confraternity in Nigeria.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Later in 1954, Soyinka relocated to England, where he continued his studies in English literature, under the supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight at the University of Leeds (1954–57). He met numerous young, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A., Soyinka began publishing and working as editor for a satirical magazine called "The Eagle"; he wrote a column on academic life, in which he often criticised his university peers.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: After graduating with an upper second-class degree, Soyinka remained in Leeds and began working on an MA. He intended to write new works combining European theatrical traditions with those of his Yorùbá cultural heritage. His first major play, "The Swamp Dwellers" (1958), was followed a year later by "The Lion and the Jewel", a comedy that attracted interest from several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka moved to London, where he worked as a play reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan. They dealt with the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1957, his play "The Invention" was the first of his works to be produced at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour", which were published in the Nigerian magazine "Black Orpheus". This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the University of Ibadan since 1950.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship from University College in Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre, and he returned to Nigeria. After its fifth issue (November 1959), Soyinka replaced Jahnheinz Jahn to become coeditor for the literary periodical "Black Orpheus" (its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to "Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache", edited by Léopold Senghor). He produced his new satire, "The Trials of Brother Jero" in the dining hall at Mellanby Hall of University College Ibadan, in April 1960. That year, his work "A Dance of The Forest", a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a contest that year as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past. Also in 1960, Soyinka established the "Nineteen-Sixty Masks", an amateur acting ensemble to which he devoted considerable time over the next few years.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerian television. Entitled "My Father's Burden" and directed by Segun Olusola, the play was featured on the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on 6 August 1960. Soyinka published works satirising the "Emergency" in the Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal government. The political tensions arising from recent post-colonial independence eventually led to a military coup and civil war (1967–70).


title: Wole Soyinka

text: With the Rockefeller grant, Soyinka bought a Land Rover, and he began travelling throughout the country as a researcher with the Department of English Language of the University College in Ibadan. In an essay of the time, he criticised Leopold Senghor's Négritude movement as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernisation. He is often quoted as having said, "A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces." But in fact, Soyinka wrote in a 1960 essay for the "Horn": "the duiker will not paint 'duiker' on his beautiful back to proclaim his duikeritude; you'll know him by his elegant leap." In "Death and the King's Horsemen" he states: "The elephant trails no tethering-rope; that king is not yet crowned who will peg an elephant."


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In December 1962, Soyinka's essay "Towards a True Theater" was published. He began teaching with the Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ifẹ. He discussed current affairs with "négrophiles," and on several occasions openly condemned government censorship. At the end of 1963, his first feature-length movie, "Culture in Transition", was released. In 1965 "The Interpreters", "a complex but also vividly documentary novel", was published in London by André Deutsch.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: That December, together with scientists and men of theatre, Soyinka founded the Drama Association of Nigeria. In 1964 he also resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behaviour by the authorities. A few months later, in 1965, he was arrested for the first time, charged with holding up a radio station at gunpoint (as described in his 2006 memoir "You Must Set Forth at Dawn") and replacing the tape of a recorded speech by the premier of Western Nigeria with a different tape containing accusations of election malpractice. Soyinka was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he wrote two more dramatic pieces: "Before the Blackout" and the comedy "Kongi's Harvest." He also wrote "The Detainee", a radio play for the BBC in London. His play "The Road" premiered in London at the Commonwealth Arts Festival, opening on 14 September 1965, at the Theatre Royal. At the end of the year, he was promoted to headmaster and senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at University of Lagos.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka's political speeches at that time criticised the cult of personality and government corruption in African dictatorships. In April 1966, his play "Kongi's Harvest" was produced in revival at the World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. "The Road" was awarded the Grand Prix. In June 1965, his play "The Trials of Brother Jero" was produced at the Hampstead Theatre Club in London, and in December 1966 "The Lion and the Jewel" was staged at the Royal Court Theatre.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: After becoming Chair of Drama at the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically active. Following the military coup of January 1966, he secretly and unofficially met with the military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in the Southeastern town of Enugu (August 1967), to try to avert the Nigerian civil war. As a result, he had to go into hiding.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: He was imprisoned for 22 months as civil war ensued between the Federal government of Nigeria and the Biafrans. Though refused materials such as books, pens, and paper, he still wrote a significant body of poems and notes criticising the Nigerian government while in prison.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Despite his imprisonment, his play "The Lion and The Jewel" was produced in Accra, Ghana, in September 1967. In November that year, "The Trials of Brother Jero" and "The Strong Breed" were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York City. Soyinka also published a collection of his poetry, "Idanre and Other Poems", which was inspired by his visit to the sanctuary of the Yorùbá deity Ogun, whom he regards as his "companion" deity, kindred spirit, and protector.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1968, the Negro Ensemble Company in New York produced "Kongi's Harvest". While still imprisoned, Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel by his compatriot D. O. Fagunwa, entitled "".


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other political prisoners were freed. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend's farm in southern France, where he sought solitude. He wrote "The Bacchae of Euripides" (1969), a reworking of the Pentheus myth. He soon published in London a book of poetry, "Poems from Prison". At the end of the year, he returned to his office as Chair of Drama at Ibadan.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1970, he produced the play "Kongi's Harvest", while simultaneously adapting it as a film of the same title. In June 1970, he finished another play, called "Madmen and Specialists". Together with the group of 15 actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he went on a trip to the United States, to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut, where his latest play premiered. It gave them all experience with theatrical production in another English-speaking country.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1971, his poetry collection "A Shuttle in the Crypt" was published. "Madmen and Specialists" was produced in Ibadan that year. Soyinka travelled to Paris to take the lead role as Patrice Lumumba, the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, in the production of his "Murderous Angels".


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In April 1971, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began years of voluntary exile. In July in Paris, excerpts from his well-known play "The Dance of The Forests" were performed.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1972, his novel "Season of Anomy" and his "Collected Plays" were both published by Oxford University Press. His powerful autobiographical work "The Man Died", a collection of notes from prison, was also published that year. He was awarded an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Leeds in 1973. In the same year the National Theatre, London, commissioned and premiered the play "The Bacchae of Euripides", and his plays "Camwood on the Leaves" and "Jero's Metamorphosis" were also first published. From 1973 to 1975, Soyinka spent time on scientific studies. He spent a year as a visiting fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University 1973–74 and wrote "Death and the King's Horseman", which had its first reading at Churchill College (which Dapo Ladimeji and Skip Gates attended), and gave a series of lectures at a number of European universities.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1974, his "Collected Plays, Volume II" was issued by Oxford University Press. In 1975 Soyinka was promoted to the position of editor for "Transition", a magazine based in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where he moved for some time. He used his columns in "Transition" to criticise the "negrophiles" (for instance, his article "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition") and military regimes. He protested against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria and the subversion of Gowon's military regime in 1975, Soyinka returned to his homeland and resumed his position as Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1976, he published his poetry collection "Ogun Abibiman", as well as a collection of essays entitled "Myth, Literature and the African World". In these, Soyinka explores the genesis of mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from both European and African literature, compares and contrasts the cultures. He delivered a series of guest lectures at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. In October, the French version of "The Dance of The Forests" was performed in Dakar, while in Ife, his play "Death and The King's Horseman" premièred.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1977, "Opera Wọnyọsi", his adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera", was staged in Ibadan. In 1979 he both directed and acted in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton's drama "The Biko Inquest", a work based on the life of Steve Biko, a South African student and human rights activist who was beaten to death by apartheid police forces. In 1981 Soyinka published his autobiographical work "", which won a 1983 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka founded another theatrical group called the Guerrilla Unit. Its goal was to work with local communities in analysing their problems and to express some of their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 his play "Requiem for a Futurologist" had its first performance at the University of Ife. In July, one of his musical projects, the Unlimited Liability Company, issued a long-playing record entitled "I Love My Country", on which several prominent Nigerian musicians played songs composed by Soyinka. In 1984, he directed the film "Blues for a Prodigal", which was screened at the University of Ife. His "A Play of Giants" was produced the same year.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: During the years 1975–84, Soyinka was more politically active. At the University of Ife, his administrative duties included the security of public roads. He criticized the corruption in the government of the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. When he was replaced by the army general Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka was often at odds with the military. In 1984, a Nigerian court banned his 1972 book "The Man Died: Prison Notes". In 1985, his play "Requiem for a Futurologist" was published in London by Rex Collings.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate. He was described as one "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Soyinka is "likely to prove quite controversial and thoroughly deserved". He also notes that "it is the first Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer or to any writer from the 'new literatures' in English that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire." His Nobel acceptance speech, "This Past Must Address Its Present", was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the National South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 1988, his collection of poems "Mandela's Earth, and Other Poems" was published, while in Nigeria another collection of essays, entitled "Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture", appeared. In the same year, Soyinka accepted the position of Professor of African Studies and Theatre at Cornell University. In 1989, a third novel, inspired by his father's intellectual circle, "Ìsarà: A Voyage Around Essay", appeared. In July 1991 the BBC African Service transmitted his radio play "A Scourge of Hyacinths", and the next year (1992) in Siena (Italy), his play "From Zia with Love" had its premiere.Both works are very bitter political parodies, based on events that took place in Nigeria in the 1980s. In 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. The next year another part of his autobiography appeared: "Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946–1965)". The following year his play "The Beatification of Area Boy" was published. In October 1994, he was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African culture, human rights, freedom of expression, media and communication.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In November 1994, Soyinka fled from Nigeria through the border with Benin and then to the United States. In 1996 his book "The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis" was first published. In 1997 he was charged with treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. The International Parliament of Writers (IPW) was established in 1993 to provide support for writers victimized by persecution. Soyinka became the organization's second president from 1997 to 2000. In 1999 a new volume of poems by Soyinka, entitled "Outsiders", was released. That same year, a BBC-commissioned play called "Document of Identity" aired on BBC Radio 3, telling the lightly-fictionalized story of the problems his daughter's family encountered during a stopover in Britain when they fled Nigeria for the US in 1996; her son, Oseoba Airewele was born in Luton and became a stateless person.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka's play "King Baabu" premièred in Lagos in 2001, a political satire on the theme of African dictatorship. In 2002, a collection of his poems entitled "Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known" was published by Methuen. In April 2006, his memoir "You Must Set Forth at Dawn" was published by Random House. In 2006 he cancelled his keynote speech for the annual S.E.A. Write Awards Ceremony in Bangkok to protest the Thai military's successful coup against the government.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In April 2007, Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks earlier, beset by widespread fraud and violence. In the wake of the attempting bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight to the United States by a Nigerian student who had become radicalised in Britain, Soyinka questioned the British government's social logic in allowing every religion to openly proselytise their faith, asserting that it was being abused by religious fundamentalists, thereby turning England into, in his view, a cesspit for the breeding of extremism. He supported the freedom of worship but warned against the consequence of the illogic of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In August 2014, Soyinka delivered a recording of his speech "From Chibok with Love" to the World Humanist Congress in Oxford, hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the British Humanist Association. The Congress theme was "Freedom of thought and expression: Forging a 21st Century Enlightenment". He was awarded the 2014 International Humanist Award. He served as scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute of African American Affairs.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka opposes allowing Fulani herdsmen the ability to graze their cattle on open land in southern, Christian-dominated Nigeria and believes these herdsmen should be declared terrorists to enable the restriction of their movements.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: September 2021 saw the publication of "Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth", Soyinka's first novel in almost 50 years, described in the "Financial Times" as "a brutally satirical look at power and corruption in Nigeria, told in the form of a whodunnit involving three university friends." Reviewing the book in "The Guardian", Ben Okri said: "It is Soyinka's greatest novel, his revenge against the insanities of the nation's ruling class and one of the most shocking chronicles of an African nation in the 21st century. It ought to be widely read."


title: Wole Soyinka

text: The film adaptation by Biyi Bandele of Soyinka's 1975 stage play "Death And The King's Horseman", co-produced by Netflix and Ebonylife TV, titled "Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman", premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2022. It is Soyinka's first work to be made into a feature film, and the first Yoruba-language film to premiere at TIFF.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: Soyinka has been married three times and divorced twice. He has eight children from his three marriages and two other daughters. His first marriage was in 1958 to the late British writer Barbara Dixon, whom he met at the University of Leeds in the 1950s. Barbara was the mother of his first son, Olaokun. Then his daughter Morenike. His second marriage was in 1963 to Nigerian librarian Olaide Idowu, with whom he had three daughters – Moremi, Iyetade (deceased), Peyibomi – and a second son, Ilemakin. Soyinka youngest daughter is Amani. Soyinka married Folake Doherty in 1989. They have three sons, Tunlewa, Bojode and Eniara.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: The Wole Soyinka Annual Lecture Series was founded in 1994 and "is dedicated to honouring one of Nigeria and Africa's most outstanding and enduring literary icons: Professor Wole Soyinka". It is organised by the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity), which organisation Soyinka with six other students founded in 1952 at the then University College Ibadan.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 2011, the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre built a writers' enclave in his honour. It is located in Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Programme that enables writers to stay for a period of two, three or six months, engaging in serious creative writing. In 2013, he visited the Benin Moat as the representative of UNESCO in recognition of the Naija seven Wonders project. He is currently the consultant for the Lagos Black Heritage Festival, with the Lagos State deeming him as the only person who could bring out the aims and objectives of the Festival to the people. He was appointed a patron of Humanists UK in 2020.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 2014, the collection "Crucible of the Ages: Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80", edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah and Ogochwuku Promise, was published by Bookcraft in Nigeria and Ayebia Clarke Publishing in the UK, with tributes and contributions from Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Margaret Busby, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ali Mazrui, Sefi Atta, and others.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: In 2018, Henry Louis Gates, Jr tweeted that Nigerian filmmaker and writer Onyeka Nwelue visited him in Harvard and was making a documentary film on Wole Soyinka. As part of efforts to mark his 84th birthday, a collection of poems titled "84 Delicious Bottles of Wine" was published for Wole Soyinka, edited by Onyeka Nwelue and Odega Shawa. Among the notable contributors was Adamu Usman Garko, award-winning teenage essayist, poet and writer.


title: Wole Soyinka

text: On Sunday, 20th November, 2022; during a public presentation of his two-volume collection of essays, Soyinka disclosed his religion as Mythologist from his statement which reads:


title: Wole Soyinka

text: “But religion? No, I don’t worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real world and the imaginative world,” he said.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: The Hundred-Foot Journey is a 2014 American comedy-drama film directed by Lasse Hallström from a screenplay written by Steven Knight, adapted from Richard C. Morais' 2010 novel of the same name. It stars Helen Mirren, Om Puri, Manish Dayal, and Charlotte Le Bon, and is about a battle in a French village between two restaurants that are directly across the street from each other: a new Indian restaurant owned by an Indian emigrant family and an established French restaurant with a Michelin star owned by a French woman.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: Produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey for DreamWorks Pictures through their respective production companies, Amblin Entertainment and Harpo Films (first relaunch film), in association with Participant Media and Reliance Entertainment, the film was released by Touchstone Pictures on August 8, 2014, and grossed $94 million at the worldwide box office.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: The Muslim Konkani Kadam family runs a restaurant in Mumbai. As a child, the second-oldest son, Hassan, would shop with his mother at the market, where he was adept at picking the highest-quality food. Now a young man, he is in training to replace her as the restaurant's main cook. When a mob attacks and burns down the restaurant after a disputed election, his mother dies in the fire. Seeking asylum in Europe, the Kadams first settle in London, but they dislike the climate and their house, which is right next to Heathrow, so they depart for mainland Europe.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: Near St. Antonin in the Midi-Pyrénées in France, the brakes on the Kadam's van fail. Marguerite, a local woman, passes by and helps tow the van to town. She invites the family into her apartment while they deal with the auto repair shop and arrange lodgings for the night, and she treats them to a tray of delicious food she made using fresh, local ingredients.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: The next morning, Hassan follows his father, Abbu, to an abandoned property they passed the night before. A restaurant had been there, but it failed because Le Saule Pleureur ("The Weeping Willow"), an upscale French restaurant with a Michelin star, is located just across the street, a hundred feet away. Abbu buys the land anyway, as he is confident the Indian food Hassan will cook for their restaurant will attract customers.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: Naming their restaurant Maison Mumbai, the Kadam family renovates the property. One day, Madame Mallory, the proprietor of Saule Pleureur, visits and asks to see their menu. Abbu hesitates, but Hassan gladly gives it to her in case she wishes to dine with them sometime. When she buys all of the ingredients the Kadams need from the local market on the day of their grand opening, a war of sabotage and complaints to the mayor of the village erupts between Abbu and Mallory. While this is going on, Hassan asks Marguerite, who is a sous chef at Saule Pleureur, to help him learn about French cooking, and they develop feelings for each other.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: The war between the restaurants peaks on Bastille Day, when one of Mallory's chefs, Jean-Pierre, and two others spray-paint "La France aux Français" ("France to the French") on the outer wall of Maison Mumbai and firebomb the covered outdoor eating area. Hassan catches them in the act and scares them off, but his hands get burned. Mallory, deducing who is responsible, dismisses Jean-Pierre and personally scrubs the graffiti off the wall. While she is cleaning, Hassan offers to make her an omelette, which is how Marguerite said Mallory interviews potential chefs. As his hands are bandaged, Hassan instructs Mallory how to make the omelet his way, which uses unusual spices and ingredients. She is so impressed by the result that she invites him to work at Saule Pleureur so he can get a more classical training to supplement his natural ability. Abbu is initially against the move, but ultimately allows Hassan to go.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: Marguerite accuses Hassan of using her to help him get his new position, and they compete for Mallory's approval in the kitchen. Hassan outshines Marguerite, and his cooking, which evolves into a unique French-Indian fusion, results in Saule Pleureur receiving a second Michelin star. The award gets him national attention, and he accepts a job at a fancy Parisian molecular cuisine restaurant. While he is gone, Abbu and Mallory begin seeing each other.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: In Paris, Hassan's style quickly draws attention, and there is speculation that he may bring his new restaurant a third Michelin star. Over time, however, he becomes increasingly lonely and distracted by thoughts of his family and Marguerite, so one day he returns to St. Antonin. He tells Marguerite he has a business proposition for her and asks her to help him cook a dish he has not made for a long time. They prepare it in the kitchen at Saule Pleureur, and, when the Kadams and some friends arrive for dinner, everyone is surprised to see Hassan. Mallory announces she is giving him control of Saule Pleureur, and he says he is moving back to the village to run the restaurant with Marguerite. Hassan does not answer the call that will reveal whether the restaurant in Paris received a third Michelin star, saying he will earn a third star with his friends and family. The group carries their meal across the road to eat at Maison Mumbai.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: Prior to filming, actors Manish Dayal and Charlotte Le Bon spent a considerable amount of time going to restaurants and observing and learning in kitchens. To create the food featured in the film, producer Juliet Blake consulted Indian-born chef Floyd Cardoz, who practiced "fusing together two cultures through cooking."


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: Principal photography for the film began on September 23, 2013, in Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, and there was extensive filming at scenic locales in Midi-Pyrénées. Some scenes were shot in the Cité du Cinéma studio complex, located in Saint-Denis, north of Paris. After nine weeks of shooting in France, the production moved to The Netherlands.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: To make Indian actress Juhi Chawla, who plays the wife of Om Puri's character at the start of the film, look 15 years older than her actual age, the filmmakers aged her digitally in post-production using techniques such as visual refactoring.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: A.R. Rahman composed the music for the film. Hollywood Records released a soundtrack on August 12, 2014.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: The first trailer for the film was released on May 13, 2014. Its New York premiere was held at the Ziegfeld Theatre on August 4, 2014, and it was released in the United States on August 8. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributed "The Hundred-Foot Journey" globally through its Touchstone Pictures label, except for territories in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, where rights were sold by Mister Smith Entertainment to independent distributors. Reliance Entertainment distributed the film in India. In France, the film was released as "Les recettes du bonheur" ("Recipes for Happiness").


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: "The Hundred-Foot Journey" grossed $10,979,290 in the U.S. its opening weekend, finishing in 4th place at the box office. It went on to earn $54,240,821 in the U.S. and $35,273,632 internationally for a worldwide box office total of $89,514,453.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 68% based on reviews from 148 critics, with an average score of 6.2/10; the site's critics consensus reads: "Director Lasse Hallström does lovely work and Helen Mirren is always worth watching, but "The Hundred-Foot Journey" travels predictable ground already covered by countless feel-good dramedies." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 55 out of 100 based on reviews from 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: "The Wrap's" Alonso Duralde called the film "a surprisingly bland slumgullion of food porn and emotional manipulation, filtered through the middlebrow sensibilities of director Lasse Hallström." "Variety"'s Justin Chang called it "the most soothing brand of cinematic comfort food." Edwin Arnaudin of the "Asheville Citizen-Times" gave the film a "B-plus".


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: NPR's film critic Kenneth Turan said the film was entertaining, while criticizing the predictability of the story and "wish[ing] that the film had more of the messy juices of life flowing through its veins".


title: The Hundred-Foot Journey (film)

text: For her performance in the film, Helen Mirren was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the category Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical.


title: Comecon

text: The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (, ; English abbreviation , , , or ) was an economic organization from 1949 to 1991 under the leadership of the Soviet Union that comprised the countries of the Eastern Bloc along with a number of socialist states elsewhere in the world.


title: Comecon

text: The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. This usage was sometimes extended as well to bilateral relations among members because in the system of communist international economic relations, multilateral accords typically of a general nature tended to be implemented through a set of more detailed, bilateral agreements.


title: Comecon

text: Comecon was the Eastern Bloc's response to the formation in Western Europe of the Marshall Plan and the OEEC, which later became the OECD.


title: Comecon

text: The Comecon was founded in 1949 by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The primary factors in Comecon's formation appear to have been Joseph Stalin's desire to cooperate and strengthen the international relationships at an economic level with the smaller states of Central Europe, and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in the rest of Europe. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and market economies. These requirements, which would inevitably have resulted in stronger economic ties to free European markets than to the Soviet Union, were not acceptable to Stalin, who in July 1947, ordered these communist governments to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme. This has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post-World War II division of Europe. According to the Soviet view the "Anglo-American bloc" and "American monopolists ... whose interests had nothing in common with those of the European people" had spurned East-West collaboration within the framework agreed within the United Nations, that is, through the Economic Commission for Europe.


title: Comecon

text: As always, Stalin's precise motives are "inscrutable" They may well have been "more negative than positive", with Stalin "more anxious to keep other powers out of neighbouring buffer states… than to integrate them." Furthermore, GATT's notion of ostensibly nondiscriminatory treatment of trade partners was thought to be incompatible with notions of socialist solidarity. In any event, proposals for a customs union and economic integration of Central and Eastern Europe date back at least to the Revolutions of 1848 (although many earlier proposals had been intended to stave off the Russian and/or communist "menace") and the state-to-state trading inherent in centrally planned economies required some sort of coordination: otherwise, a monopolist seller would face a monopsonist buyer, with no structure to set prices.


title: Comecon

text: Comecon was established at a Moscow economic conference January 5–8, 1949, at which the six founding member countries were represented; its foundation was publicly announced on January 25; Albania joined a month later and East Germany in 1950.


title: Comecon

text: Recent research by the Romanian researcher Elena Dragomir suggests that Romania played a rather important role in the Comecon's creation in 1949. Dragomir argues that Romania was interested in the creation of a "system of cooperation" to improve its trade relations with the other people's democracies, especially with those able to export industrial equipment and machinery to Romania. According to Dragomir, in December 1948, the Romanian leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej sent a letter to Stalin, proposing the creation of the Comecon.


title: Comecon

text: At first, planning seemed to be moving along rapidly. After pushing aside Nikolai Voznesensky's technocratic, price-based approach (see further discussion below), the direction appeared to be toward a coordination of national economic plans, but with no coercive authority from Comecon itself. All decisions would require unanimous ratification, and even then governments would separately translate these into policy. Then in summer 1950, probably unhappy with the favorable implications for the effective individual and collective sovereignty of the smaller states, Stalin "seems to have taken [Comecon's] personnel by surprise," bringing operations to a nearly complete halt, as the Soviet Union moved domestically toward autarky and internationally toward an "embassy system of meddling in other countries' affairs directly" rather than by "constitutional means". Comecon's scope was officially limited in November 1950 to "practical questions of facilitating trade."


title: Comecon

text: One important legacy of this brief period of activity was the "Sofia Principle", adopted at the August 1949 Comecon council session in Bulgaria. This radically weakened intellectual property rights, making each country's technologies available to the others for a nominal charge that did little more than cover the cost of documentation. This, naturally, benefited the less industrialized Comecon countries, and especially the technologically lagging Soviet Union, at the expense of East Germany and Czechoslovakia and, to a lesser extent, Hungary and Poland. (This principle would weaken after 1968, as it became clear that it discouraged new research—and as the Soviet Union itself began to have more marketable technologies.)


title: Comecon

text: After Stalin's death in 1953, Comecon again began to find its footing. In the early 1950s, all Comecon countries had adopted relatively autarkic policies; now they began again to discuss developing complementary specialties, and in 1956, ten permanent standing committees arose, intended to facilitate coordination in these matters. The Soviet Union began to trade oil for Comecon manufactured goods. There was much discussion of coordinating five-year plans.


title: Comecon

text: However, once again, trouble arose. The Polish protests and Hungarian uprising led to major social and economic changes, including the 1957 abandonment of the 1956–60 Soviet five-year plan, as the Comecon governments struggled to reestablish their legitimacy and popular support. The next few years saw a series of small steps toward increased trade and economic integration, including the introduction of the "", revised efforts at national specialization, and a 1959 charter modeled after the 1957 Treaty of Rome.


title: Comecon

text: Once again, efforts at transnational central planning failed. In December 1961, a council session approved the Basic Principles of the International Socialist Division of Labour, which talked of closer coordination of plans and of "concentrating production of similar products in one or several socialist countries." In November 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev followed this up with a call for "a common single planning organ." This was resisted by Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, but most emphatically by increasingly nationalistic Romania, which strongly rejected the notion that they should specialize in agriculture. In Central and Eastern Europe, only Bulgaria happily took on an assigned role (also agricultural, but in Bulgaria's case this had been the country's chosen direction even as an independent country in the 1930s). Essentially, by the time the Soviet Union was calling for tight economic integration, they no longer had the power to impose it. Despite some slow headway—integration increased in petroleum, electricity, and other technical/scientific sectors—and the 1963 founding of an International Bank for Economic Co-operation, Comecon countries all increased trade with the West relatively more than with one another.


title: Comecon

text: From its founding until 1967, Comecon had operated only on the basis of unanimous agreements. It had become increasingly obvious that the result was usually failure. In 1967, Comecon adopted the "interested party principle", under which any country could opt out of any project they chose, still allowing the other member states to use Comecon mechanisms to coordinate their activities. In principle, a country could still veto, but the hope was that they would typically choose just to step aside rather than either veto or be a reluctant participant. This aimed, at least in part, at allowing Romania to chart its own economic course without leaving Comecon entirely or bringing it to an impasse (see de-satellization of Communist Romania).


title: Comecon

text: Also until the late 1960s, the official term for Comecon activities was "cooperation". The term "integration" was always avoided because of its connotations of monopolistic capitalist collusion. After the "special" council session of April 1969 and the development and adoption (in 1971) of the Comprehensive Program for the Further Extension and Improvement of Cooperation and the Further Development of Socialist Economic Integration by Comecon Member Countries, Comecon activities were officially termed "integration" (equalization of "differences in relative scarcities of goods and services between states through the deliberate elimination of barriers to trade and other forms of interaction"). Although such equalization had not been a pivotal point in the formation and implementation of Comecon's economic policies, improved economic integration had always been Comecon's goal.


title: Comecon

text: While such integration was to remain a goal, and while Bulgaria became yet more tightly integrated with the Soviet Union, progress in this direction was otherwise continually frustrated by the national central planning prevalent in all Comecon countries, by the increasing diversity of its members (which by this time included Mongolia and would soon include Cuba) and by the "overwhelming asymmetry" and resulting distrust between the many small member states and the Soviet "superstate" which, in 1983, "accounted for 88 percent of Comecon's territory and 60 percent of its population."


title: Comecon

text: In this period, there were some efforts to move away from central planning, by establishing intermediate industrial associations and combines in various countries (which were often empowered to negotiate their own international deals). However, these groupings typically proved "unwieldy, conservative, risk-averse, and bureaucratic," reproducing the problems they had been intended to solve.


title: Comecon

text: One economic success of the 1970s was the development of Soviet oil fields. While doubtless "(Central and) East Europeans resented having to defray some of the costs of developing the economy of their hated overlord and oppressor," they benefited from low prices for fuel and other mineral products. As a result, Comecon economies generally showed strong growth in the mid-1970s. They were largely unaffected by the 1973 oil crisis. Another short-term economic gain in this period was that "détente" brought opportunities for investment and technology transfers from the West. This also led to an importation of Western cultural attitudes, especially in Central Europe. However, many undertakings based on Western technology were less than successful (for example, Poland's Ursus tractor factory did not do well with technology licensed from Massey Ferguson); other investment was wasted on luxuries for the party elite, and most Comecon countries ended up indebted to the West when capital flows died out as "détente" faded in the late 1970s, and from 1979 to 1983, all of Comecon experienced a recession from which (with the possible exceptions of East Germany and Bulgaria) they never recovered in the Communist era. Romania and Poland experienced major declines in the standard of living.


title: Comecon

text: The 1985 Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress and the rise to power of Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev increased Soviet influence in Comecon operations and led to attempts to give Comecon some degree of supranational authority. The Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technical Progress was designed to improve economic cooperation through the development of a more efficient and interconnected scientific and technical base. This was the era of "perestroika" ("restructuring"), the last attempt to put the Comecon economies on a sound economic footing. Gorbachev and his economic mentor Abel Aganbegyan hoped to make "revolutionary changes" in the economy, foreseeing that "science will increasingly become a 'direct productive force', as Marx foresaw… By the year 2000… the renewal of plant and machinery… will be running at 6 percent or more per year."


title: Comecon

text: The program was not a success. "The Gorbachev regime made too many commitments on too many fronts, thereby overstretching and overheating the Soviet economy. Bottlenecks and shortages were not relieved but exacerbated, while the (Central and) East European members of Comecon resented being asked to contribute scarce capital to projects that were chiefly of interest to the Soviet Union…" Furthermore, the liberalization that by June 25, 1988 allowed Comecon countries to negotiate trade treaties directly with the European Community (the renamed EEC), and the "Sinatra doctrine" under which the Soviet Union allowed that change would be the exclusive affair of each individual country marked the beginning of the end for Comecon. Although the Revolutions of 1989 did not formally end Comecon, and the Soviet government itself lasted until 1991, the March 1990 meeting in Prague was little more than a formality, discussing the coordination of non-existent five-year plans. From January 1, 1991, the countries shifted their dealings with one another to a hard currency market basis. The result was a radical decrease in trade with one another, as "(Central and) Eastern Europe… exchanged asymmetrical trade dependence on the Soviet Union for an equally asymmetrical commercial dependence on the European Community."


title: Comecon

text: The final Comecon council session took place on June 28, 1991, in Budapest, and led to an agreement to dissolve in 90 days. The Soviet Union was dissolved on December 26, 1991.


title: Comecon

text: After the fall of the Soviet Union and communist rule in Eastern Europe, East Germany (now unified with West Germany) automatically joined the European Union (then the European Community) in 1990. The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the EU in 2004, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 and Croatia in 2013. To date, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany (former GDR), Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia are now members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. All four Central European states are now members of the Visegrád Group.


title: Comecon

text: Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union along with Ukraine and Belarus founded the Commonwealth of Independent States which consists of the ex-Soviet republics. The country also leads the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and the Eurasian Economic Union with Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Along with Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova are also part of the GUAM.


title: Comecon

text: Vietnam and Laos joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995 and 1997 respectively.


title: Comecon

text: Albania had stopped participating in Comecon activities in 1961 following the Soviet–Albanian split, but formally withdrew in 1987. East Germany reunified with the West in 1990.


title: Comecon

text: In the late 1950s, a number of communist-ruled non-member countries the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia were invited to participate as observers in Comecon sessions. Although Mongolia and Vietnam later gained full membership, China stopped attending Comecon sessions after 1961. Yugoslavia negotiated a form of associate status in the organization, specified in its 1964 agreement with Comecon. Collectively, the members of the Comecon did not display the necessary prerequisites for economic integration: their level of industrialization was low and uneven, with a single dominant member (the Soviet Union) producing 70% of the community national product.


title: Comecon

text: In the late 1980s, there were ten full members: the Soviet Union, six East European countries, and three extra-regional members. Geography, therefore, no longer united Comecon members. Wide variations in economic size and level of economic development also tended to generate divergent interests among the member countries. All these factors combined to give rise to significant differences in the member states' expectations about the benefits to be derived from membership in Comecon. Unity was provided instead by political and ideological factors. All Comecon members were "united by a commonality of fundamental class interests and the ideology of Marxism-Leninism" and had common approaches to economic ownership (state versus private) and management (plan versus market). In 1949 the ruling communist parties of the founding states were also linked internationally through the Cominform, from which Yugoslavia had been expelled the previous year. Although the Cominform was disbanded in 1956, interparty links continued to be strong among Comecon members, and all participated in periodic international conferences of communist parties. Comecon provided a mechanism through which its leading member, the Soviet Union, sought to foster economic links with and among its closest political and military allies. The East European members of Comecon were also militarily allied with the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact.


title: Comecon

text: Working with neither meaningful exchange rates nor a market economy, Comecon countries had to look to world markets as a reference point for prices, but unlike agents acting in a market, prices tended to be stable over a period of years, rather than constantly fluctuating, which assisted central planning. Also, there was a tendency to underprice raw materials relative to the manufactured goods produced in many of the Comecon countries.


title: Comecon

text: International barter helped preserve the Comecon countries' scarce hard currency reserves. In strict economic terms, barter inevitably harmed countries whose goods would have brought higher prices in the free market or whose imports could have been obtained more cheaply and benefitted those for whom it was the other way around. Still, all of the Comecon countries gained some stability, and the governments gained some legitimacy, and in many ways this stability and protection from the world market was viewed, at least in the early years of Comecon, as an advantage of the system, as was the formation of stronger ties with other socialist countries.


title: Comecon

text: Within Comecon, there were occasional struggles over just how this system should work. Early on, Nikolai Voznesensky pushed for a more "law-governed" and technocratic price-based approach. However, with the August 1948 death of Andrei Zhdanov, Voznesensky lost his patron and was soon accused of treason as part of the Leningrad Affair; within two years he was dead in prison. Instead, what won out was a "physical planning" approach that strengthened the role of central governments over technocrats. At the same time, the effort to create a single regime of planning "common economic organization" with the ability to set plans throughout the Comecon region also came to nought. A protocol to create such a system was signed January 18, 1949, but never ratified. While historians are not unanimous on why this was stymied, it clearly threatened the sovereignty not only of the smaller states but even of the Soviet Union itself, since an international body would have had real power; Stalin clearly preferred informal means of intervention in the other Comecon states. This lack of either rationality or international central planning tended to promote autarky in each Comecon country because none fully trusted the others to deliver goods and services.


title: Comecon

text: With few exceptions, foreign trade in the Comecon countries was a state monopoly, and the state agencies and captive trading companies were often corrupt. Even at best, this tended to put several removes between a producer and any foreign customer, limiting the ability to learn to adjust to foreign customers' needs. Furthermore, there was often strong political pressure to keep the best products for domestic use in each country. From the early 1950s to Comecon's demise in the early 1990s, intra-Comecon trade, except for Soviet petroleum, was in steady decline.


title: Comecon

text: Beginning no later than the early 1970s, Soviet petroleum and natural gas were routinely transferred within Comecon at below-market rates. Most Western commentators have viewed this as implicit, politically motivated subsidization of shaky economies to defuse discontent and reward compliance with Soviet wishes. Other commentators say that this may not have been deliberate policy, noting that whenever prices differ from world market prices, there will be winners and losers. They argue that this may have been simply an unforeseen consequence of two factors: the slow adjustment of Comecon prices during a time of rising oil and gas prices, and the fact that mineral resources were abundant in the Comecon sphere, relative to manufactured goods. A possible point of comparison is that there were also winners and losers under EEC agricultural policy in the same period. Russian and Kazakh oil kept the Comecon countries' oil prices low when the 1973 oil crisis quadrupled Western oil prices.