Russian abacus

The Russian abacus, the schoty ( счёты ), usually has a single slanted deck, with ten beads on each wire ( except one wire which has four beads, for quarter-ruble fractions.

) The Russian abacus is often used vertically, with wires from left to right in the manner of a book.

As a simple, cheap and reliable device, the Russian abacus was in use in all shops and markets throughout the former Soviet Union, and the usage of it was taught in most schools until the 1990s.

Russian abacus began to lose popularity only after the mass production of microcalculators had started in the Soviet Union in 1974.

In Western countries, a bead frame similar to the Russian abacus but with straight wires and a vertical frame has been common ( see image ).

To consolidate what her Navy had won, the Czarina was fortunate that, for the first time in Russian history, her land forces enjoyed absolute unity of command under her favorite Giaour.

Some people thought he lacked both ability and character, but most agreed that he was noble in appearance and, for a Russian, humane.

England contributed a young subaltern named Newton and the naval architect Samuel Bentham, brother to the economist, who for his colonel's commission was proving a godsend to the Russian fleet.

It was probably at this period that Littlepage got his first good look at the ordinary Russian soldier.

There was, it seems to me, enough in the openly declared principles and intentions of Russian leaders to alienate honorable men without their having to wait to see how it would turn out.

The reason was to speed up domestic production in the USSR, which Khrushchev promised upon grabbing power, and try to end the permanent recession in Russian living standards.

His visit to Warsaw, Poland, after the Russian journey in the summer of 1959 was expected to win the Polish vote which, in several cities, is substantial.

The weekly loss is partly counterbalanced by 500 arrivals each week from West Germany, but the hard truth, says Crossman, is that `` The closing off of East Berlin without interference from the West and with the use only of East German, as distinct from Russian, troops was a major Communist victory, which dealt West Berlin a deadly, possibly a fatal, blow.

By late afternoon the train inched into the marshaling yards in the railhead at Lublin, which was filled with lines of cars poised to pour the tools of war to the Russian front.

Once the full extent of this Russian military penetration of Cuba was clear, President Kennedy announced we would take whatever action was appropriate to prevent this, even if we had to go it alone.

Nevertheless, Prokofieff was much influenced by Paris during the Twenties: the Paris which was the artistic center of the Western World -- the social Paris to which Russian aristocracy migrated -- the chic Paris which attracted the tourist dollars of rich America -- the avant-garde Paris of Diaghileff, Stravinsky, Koussevitzky, Cocteau, Picasso -- the laissez-faire Paris of Dadaism and ultramodern art -- the Paris sympathique which took young composers to her bosom with such quick and easy enthusiasms.

The savage barbarian hordes of red Russian Communism descended on the Athens that was mighty Metronome, sacking and despoiling with their Bolshevistic battle cry of `` Soak the rich '!!

She did not go so far as to say, as was done on other occasions, that Abstraction as well as Impressionism were a Russian invention that had been discarded as unwanted by the people of the U.S.S.R.

To everyone's astonishment he seemed no more like the run-of-the-mine Russian ambassador than George Babbitt was like Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov.

At the State Department, hard-bitten Russian experts complained that the Capitol was out of its wits.

Russian tanks and artillery parading through the streets of Havana, Russian intrigue in the Congo, and Russian arms drops in Laos ( using the same Ilyushin transports that were used to carry Communist agents to the Congo ) made it plain once more that the cold war was all of a piece in space and time.

Since Russian was being spoken instead of Spanish, there is no violation of artistry or logic here.

The second half of her program was devoted to Russian composers of this century.

The name " Alaska " ( Аляска ) was already introduced in the Russian colonial period, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning " the mainland " or, more literally, " the object towards which the action of the sea is directed ".

Somehow, the pictures and stories of Soviet T-34 tanks on Cuban beaches and Russian Mig jet fighters strafing rebel troops has brought home to all of us the stark, blunt truth of what it means to have a Russian military base 90 miles away from home.

After eight months of liberal rule, the October Revolution brought Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks to power, leading to the creation of the Soviet Union in place of the disintegrated Russian Empire.

It was brought under control and followed in 1772 by the First Partition of the Commonwealth, a permanent encroachment on the outer Commonwealth provinces by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and Habsburg Austria.

The Russian Revolution in 1917 was triggered by a combination of economic breakdown, war weariness, and discontent with the autocratic system of government, and it first brought a coalition of liberals and moderate socialists to power, but their failed policies led to seizure of power by the Communist Bolsheviks on 25 October.

Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the Russian Revolution in 1917, Stalin held the position of General Secretary of the party's Central Committee from 1922 until his death.

The increasing social problems and rising discontent which this brought meant that Riga also played a leading role in the 1905 Russian Revolution.

Opera was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 ( and similar, albeit less successful, revolutions in many other European countries ) brought communism-and in particular the political theory of Leninism, but also on a smaller level Luxemburgism ( gradually )-on the world stage.

Prince Ivan III introduced Renaissance architecture to Russia by inviting a number of architects from Italy, who brought new construction techniques and some Renaissance style elements with them, while in general following the traditional designs of the Russian architecture.

The Russian Revolution of October 1917 brought about the definitive ideological division between Communists as denoted with a capital " С " on the one hand and other communist and socialist trends such as anarcho-communists and social democrats, on the other.

In the Russian military, the right hand, palm down, is brought to the right temple, almost, but not quite, touching ; the head has to be covered.

He brought the tradition of radicalism in Russian literature to prominence.

His Uyezdnoye ( A Provincial Tale ) in 1913, which satirized life in a small Russian town, brought him a degree of fame.

Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in the Russian resort town of Oranienbaum and was brought up in Saint Petersburg.

As a child, he was brought up by his parents in the Russian Orthodox Church.

In the chaos brought by the Russian revolution of October 1917, a National Council ( Sfatul Ţării ) was established in Bessarabia, with 120 members elected from Bessarabia by some political and professional organizations and 10 elected from Transnistria ( the left bank of the Dniester River where Moldovans and Romanians accounted for less than a third and the majority of the population was Ukrainian.

On April 1, 2010, Daimler AG's German and Russian subsidiaries each plead guilty to two counts of bribery charges brought by the U. S. Justice Department and the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The adoption of Latvian by minorities was brought about by its status as the only official language of the country, its prominence in the education system, its sole use in the public sector and by changes in the society after the fall of the Soviet Union that shifted linguistic focus away from Russian.

Afterwards, the Treaty of Pereyaslav brought most of the Ukrainian Cossack state under Russian rule for the next 300 years.

Over a million Russian Jews emigrated to Israel during and after the Refusenik movements ; some brought ethnic Russian relatives along with them.

The Allied battle plan prior to the war had been based on France and the United Kingdom halting the German armies in the West while the huge Russian armies could be organized and brought to the Eastern front.

The Russian spear into the sphere also brought about the ensuing struggle with Russia for dominance in Korea and Manchuria.