text:
Surakarta

Surakarta (Javanese: ꦯꦸꦫꦏꦂꦠ, Pegon: سوراكارتا), known colloquially as Solo (Javanese: ꦱꦭ; Sálá), is a major city in Central Java, Indonesia. The 46.72 km2 city adjoins Karanganyar Regency and Boyolali Regency to the north, Karanganyar Regency and Sukoharjo Regency to the east and west, and Sukoharjo Regency to the south. On the eastern side of Solo lies Solo River (Bengawan Solo). Its metropolitan area, consisting of Surakarta City and the surrounding six regencies ("Greater Solo Area", formerly Special Region of Surakarta), was home to 6,837,753 inhabitants according to the official estimates for mid 2023, 526,870 of whom reside in the city proper.

Surakarta is the birthplace of the current President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo. He served as Mayor of Surakarta from 2005 to 2012.

History
Hominid habitation in the region of Surakarta is evidenced from roughly one million years ago, the age of the "Java Man" skeleton found 80 kilometres upstream. Another famous early hominid from this area is called "Solo Man".

The Surakarta area was part of the Mataram Kingdom and at this time a village called Wulayu seems to have already existed in or around the present-day city of Surakarta, as evidenced by a ferry charter issued by Balitung in A.D. 904. The Majapahit Empire renewed this ferry charter in 1358.

By the 18th century, the village had acquired the name of Sala. This name is said to be derived from the sala tree. As the Javanese pronunciation "Sala" ([sɔlɔ]) was considered difficult to pronounce by the Dutch, the name later morphed into "Solo" ([solo]).

In 1745, based on astrological calculations and Dutch commercial interest, Surakarta was chosen to be the new capital of the Mataram Sultanate which was on the verge of becoming a vassal state of the Dutch East India Company. The formal name is derived from the previous capital Kartasura. The official court history claims that Surakarta originally stood on a lake, which was drained by the favor of the mythical queen of the southern sea, Kanjeng Ratu Kidul.

In the ensuing colonial era, the kingdom of Mataram was divided into the Surakarta Sunanate (northern court) and the Yogyakarta Sultanate (southern court). Surakarta was ruled by hereditary monarchs, who were given the unique Javanese cultural title Susuhunan. Since both Surakarta and Yogyakarta had become vassal states of the Dutch, traditional court arts, notably gamelan, were developed to demonstrate cultural power instead of developing military power.

Pakubuwono X
Perhaps the most significant ruler of the 20th century was Pakubuwono X. His relationship with the Dutch, his large family, and his popularity contributed to perhaps the largest funeral procession that ever occurred in Surakarta. He had spent a large amount of money on the Royal Graveyard at Imogiri, both the main sections of the graveyard and the new section where he was buried. In the era just before independence, Surakarta had European, Chinese, and Arab quarters.

Struggle for independence
After hearing the proclamation of Indonesian Independence, Pakubuwono XII declared Surakarta a part of the Republic of Indonesia. Because of this support, President Sukarno declared Surakarta a Special Region with the Susuhunan, Pakubuwono XII, continuing as governor. This terminology was also used for the Special Region of Yogyakarta, which continues to be legally governed by its sultan to this day. However, unlike Yogyakarta, Surakarta had intense, organized resistance to the continuation of the monarchy. In October 1945, a republican movement was established in Surakarta led by Tan Malaka, a member of the Indonesian Communist Party. On 17 October, the vizier of Surakarta, KRMH Sosrodiningrat V (a member of the BPUPK), was kidnapped. The new vizier, KRMT Yudonagoro, and 9 other court officials were also kidnapped by the same movement in March 1946, including the heir to the viziership KRMTH Wuryaningrat.

In response, Prime Minister of Indonesia Sutan Syahrir met with Wuryaningrat and other Surakarta leaders in May and agreed to abolish the established government entirely.

On 16 June 1946, the Surakarta "special region" was abolished and replaced with a regency (kabupaten), administered by a republican government outside the control of the Susuhunan and his court. This event is commemorated as the birthday of the city of Surakarta.

On 26 June Prime Minister Sutan Syahrir was kidnapped in Surakarta by a rebel movement led by Major General Soedarsono, the commander of the 3rd division. President Sukarno was angry at this kidnapping and on 1 July 1946, 14 communist leaders including Tan Malaka were arrested by Indonesian police on Sukarno's instructions. However, Soedarsono freed the rebel leaders immediately. Sukarno asked the local military commander in Surakarta, Lieutenant Colonel Suharto to arrest Major General Soedarsono and the rebel group.

Suharto refused to follow this command unless it was given directly by the Military Chief of Staff, General Soedirman. Sukarno was angry at this rejection of his commanding authority and called Suharto a stubborn (koppig) officer.

Suharto pretended to support the rebellion and persuaded Soedarsono and his group to stay at his headquarters at Wiyoro, Surakarta for their safety. Later that night he persuaded Soedarsono to meet President Sukarno at his palace the next morning. Suharto secretly informed the presidential guard troops about Soedarsono's plan on the next morning. On July 3, 1946, Soedarsono and his group were arrested by the presidential guard near the palace. Prime Minister Syahrir was released unharmed. Several months later, Maj. Gen. Soedarsono and his group were pardoned and released from prison. However, this did not halt the ascendancy of the Communist Party in Surakarta. In November 1946, the communists kidnapped the regent and vice-regent and seized power for themselves, a coup quickly legitimated after the fact by Sukarno. In 1947, Amir Sjarifuddin appointed Wikana, a communist, as Surakarta's military governor.

In December 1948, the Dutch attacked and occupied the cities of Yogyakarta and Surakarta as part of Operation Kraai. The Indonesian Army, led by General Soedirman, started a guerrilla war in surrounding areas. The Dutch declared that the Republic had been destroyed and no longer existed. To disprove this, the Indonesian army conducted large-scale raids into the cities of Yogyakarta and Surakarta, called Serangan Oemoem. On 7 August 1949, Indonesian troops led by Slamet Riyadi managed to defeat the Dutch troops and occupied the city for several hours. To  commemorate this event, the main street of the city of Surakarta was renamed Brigadier General Slamet Riyadi Street. Surakarta remained under communist control until October 1965. Local government was unclear about how to proceed after the 30 September Movement and went about business as usual. As a result, Suharto's forces entered Surakarta without resistance, mobilized local youth paramilitaries, and indiscriminately slaughtered the entire local government.

Administrative divisions
After Surakarta became a city, it was divided into five districts (kecamatan), each led by a camat, and subdivided into 51 kelurahan (now 54), each led by a lurah. The districts of Surakarta City are tabulated below with their areas and their populations at the 2010 Census and 2020 Census together with the latest official estimates as at mid 2023. The table also includes the locations of the district administrative centres, the number of administrative villages in each district (all classed as urban kelurahan), and the district postal codes:

Notes: (a) also spelled "Lawiyan". (b) except the kelurahan of Jagalan, which has the postcode of 57162.

Greater Surakarta
Surakarta as a densely-populated core city in Central Java, and its second city, spills considerably into neighboring regencies. Surakarta City and its surrounding regencies, Karanganyar, Sragen, Wonogiri, Sukoharjo, Klaten, and Boyolali, are collectively called the ex-Surakarta Residency (Dutch: Residentie Soerakarta).

Though a traffic study quotes the population as 1,158,000 as of 2008, this reflects only the continuously built-up area, as the city affects entire neighboring regencies by significantly driving up overall population densities in Sukoharjo Regency and Klaten Regency over the already dense countryside. Furthermore, the government of Indonesia officially defines a broader region as Surakarta's extended metropolitan zone, with the acronym "Subosukawonosraten" (for SUrakarta, BOyolaki, SUkoharjo, KAranganyar, WONOgiri, SRAgen, KlaTEN) as the city and the entire 6 surrounding regencies, which reflects a broader planning region, though not a core metropolitan area as some of its regencies are not particularly suburbanized. Both the metropolitan area and extended areas border Yogyakarta's metropolitan area, while only the extended metropolitan area borders Kedungsapur or Greater Semarang.

Hydrogeology
The water sources for Surakarta are in the valley of Merapi, a total of 19 locations, with a capacity of 3,404 L/second (899.2 U.S. gal/sec). The average source water height is 800 – above sea level. In 1890–1927 there were only 12 wells in Surakarta. Today, underground water wells in 23 locations produce about 45 L/second (11.9 U.S. gal/sec).

In March 2006, Surakarta's state water company (PDAM) had a production capacity of 865.02 L/second (228.5 U.S. gal/sec): from Cokrotulung, Klaten, 27 km from Surakarta, 387 L/s (102.2 U.S. gal/sec); and from 26 deep wells, with a total capacity of 478.02 L/second (126.3 U.S. gal/sec). The total reservoir capacity is 9,140 m3 (,414,533 U.S. gala) nd can serve 55,22% of the population.

Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, Surakarta features a tropical monsoon climate. with a lengthy wet season spanning from October through May, and a relatively short dry season covering the remaining four months (June through September). On average Surakarta receives just under 2200 mm of rainfall annually, with its wettest months being December, January, and February. As is common in areas featuring a tropical monsoon climate, temperatures are relatively consistent throughout the year. Surakarta's average temperature is roughly 30 °C every month (86 °F).

Demography
One of the earliest censuses held in Surakarta Residency (Residentie Soerakarta) was in 1885. At that time, with an area of about 5,677 km2, there were 1,053,985 people in Surakarta Residency, including 2,694 Europeans and 7,543 Indonesian-Chinese. The area, 130 times the current area of Surakarta, had a population density of 186 /km2. The capital of the residency itself (roughly the size of the City of Solo proper) in 1880 had 124,041 people living in it.

According to the 2009 estimate, there were 245,043 males and 283,159 females (a sex ratio of 86.54) in Surakarta. 119,951 of the population were 14 years or younger, 376,180 were between 15 and 64, and 32,071 were above 65. The number of households was 142,627 and the average number of household members was 3.7. The population growth in the last 10 years was about 0.565% per year.

The labor force of Solo in 2009 was 275,546, of whom 246,768 were working, while 28,778 were seeking work. Another 148,254 people aged 15 and above were not in the labor force. Based on employment numbers, the most common work in Solo was worker/paid employee (112,336), followed by self-employee (56,112), self-employee assisted by temporary employee (32,769), unpaid employee (20,193), self-employee assisted by permanent employee (14,880), freelance employee in non-agricultural work (10,241), and freelance employee in agricultural work (237). Based on the industry, most people in Solo worked in trade (106,426), services (59,780), manufacturing (42,065), communication (16,815), construction (9,217), financing (9,157), or agriculture (2,608), and the rest in mining, electricity, gas, and water companies (700).

The mean working week in Solo was 47.04 hours (47.74 for men and 46.13 for women), and 212,262 people worked more than 35 hours per week compared to 34,506 who worked less than that.

Education
According to 2009 statistics, 242,070 people above 15 in the city had finished high school, while 86,890 had only finished junior high school, and 94,840 were still in school or had only finished elementary school. The percentage of high-school graduates was the highest of the cities and regencies in Central Java.

According to the statistics of Data Pokok Pendidikan (Dapodik), in the 2010/2011 school year, there were 68,153 students and 853 schools in Surakarta. There are two big universities possessing more than 20.000 students: Sebelas Maret University (UNS) and Muhammadiyah University of Surakarta (UMS), both are recognised as among Indonesia's 50 best universities according to the Directorate of Higher Education, Ministry of Education RI. There is also arts concentrated university Art Institute of Surakarta (ISI), religious studies State Islamic Institute (IAIN Surakarta). There are around 52 private universities and colleges such as STIKES Muhammadiyah, Universitas Tunas Pembangunan, Universitas Slamet Riyadi, Universitas Surakarta, Universitas Setia Budi, etc.

Economy
The per capita GDP of Surakarta in 2009 was 16,813,058.62 IDR, the fourth highest in Central Java after Kudus, Cilacap, and Semarang. The living standard in 2009 was 723,000 IDR. The Consumer price index in January 2011 was 119.44.

Religion
Most people in the city are Muslims, followed by Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians.

Sports
Surakarta has a long sport history and tradition. In 1923 Solo already had a football club, one of the earliest clubs in Indonesia (at that time still the Dutch Indies), called Persis Solo. Persis Solo was a giant club in the Dutch Indies and still exists, but is past its heyday. During the Perserikatan tournament, Persis became seven-time champion. Currently it plays in the Liga 1 Indonesia. Other than Persis, several clubs have existed in Solo: Arseto, Pelita Solo, Persijatim Solo FC, and lastly Solo FC played in the Indonesian Premier League in 2011. Both clubs that still exist, Persis and Solo FC, have made Manahan Stadium their home ground. Manahan Stadium is one of the best sports stadiums in Central Java, with more than 25,000 seats, and has several times hosted national and international matches. It was recently the venue for the AFC Champions Cup 2007, the final venue of the Indonesian Cup 2010, and the opening venue for the Indonesian Premiere League on January 15, 2011.

Surakarta is also home to the West Bandits Solo of the Indonesian Basketball League. They play their home games in the Sritex Arena.

Disabled sports
Surakarta is the first to host National Paralympic Week in 1957 and hosted several of the subsequent games. As a result, Surakarta has sport facilities sufficient for holding international disabled sports games.

In 1986, Surakarta hosted the 4th FESPIC Games, making the games the first in Indonesian para-sport history in which international disabled sports games were held. The city is also the host city of the 2011 ASEAN Para Games, instead of Jakarta and Palembang, where the main games were held, as well as the 2022 ASEAN Para Games where the original host, Vietnam, only held the 2021 Southeast Asian Games due to COVID-19 crisis.

Air
Adisumarmo International Airport (IATA code: SOC) has direct flights to Kuala Lumpur by Malaysia Airlines and during the hajj season, Saudi Arabia, as well as regular flights to Jakarta by Garuda Indonesia, Sriwijaya Air, Lion Air and Citilink. The airport is located 14 km north of the city. In 2009 Adisumarmo had 2,060 outbound domestic flights and 616 outbound international flights.

Rail
Surakarta has four train stations: Solo Balapan, Purwosari, Solo Jebres, and Solo Kota (Sangkrah). Solo Balapan is the largest station in Surakarta, and is the junction between Yogyakarta (westward), Semarang (northward), and Surabaya (eastward), while Purwosari is the junction located west of Solo Balapan, and has a connection to Wonogiri (southward). There are several direct lines to other cities, such as Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Semarang, Ngawi and Malang. For regional traffic, a commuter train KRL Commuterline Yogyakarta–Solo connects Surakarta and Yogyakarta.

On July 26, 2011, the Bathara Kresna Rail Bus has been launched to serve Purwosari–Wonogiri route, but for the moment only Purwosari-Sukoharjo trackage was ready due to there are 99 bridges should be strengthen between Sukoharjo-Wonogiri. Until April 2012, Surakarta-Wonogiri railbus is still in a big question mark due to the 12 tons railbuses are considered too heavy for existing railroad track that only has the capacity of accommodating 10-ton vehicles, furthermore PT KAI have proposed a fare between Rp30,000 ($3.27) and Rp40,000 ($4.36) per passenger, while Surakarta administration wants tickets to be priced much lower between Rp5,000 ($0.54) and Rp7,000 ($0,76).

In 2019, Adisumarmo Airport Rail Link began operation, linking Solo Balapan Station to a station inside Adisumarmo International Airport complex.

Road
Tirtonadi Terminal is the largest bus terminal in Surakarta. Surakarta is situated on Indonesian National Route 15, which connects it to Yogyakarta and Waru (Sidoarjo). Semarang–Solo Toll Road connects the city with provincial capital Semarang. In 2009 the total extent of roadways in the city was 705.34 km: 13.15 km state road, 16.33 km province road, and 675.86 km local road. The number of bus companies was 23, and the total number of buses operating was 1,115 intra-provincial buses and 1,107 inter-provincial.

In 2010, the government of Surakarta launched a new bus service named Batik Solo Trans (BST), which resembles TransJakarta bus rapid transit service. As of 2017, it has only three routes. A single trip costs Rp.3000, Rp.1500 for students. A special ticket for the trip from or to the airport costs Rp.7000.

Tourism
One main tourist attraction of Surakarta is the Keraton Surakarta, the palace of Susuhunan Pakubuwono, also the Princely Javanese court of Mangkunegaran. Pasar Gede market is often visited by tourists, mostly for its unique architecture and fame as the biggest traditional market in the Solo area. The Pasar Klewer is famous for its batiks in all prices and qualities, while the Pasar Triwindhu located near Mangkunegaran palace specialises in antiques. Taman Sriwedari is a popular local entertainment park featuring a children's playground, dangdut music performance and Wayang Wong traditional Javanese dance performance almost every night. Near the park is Radyapustaka Museum, one of the oldest museums in Indonesia, with a collection of Javanese cultural artefacts. The traditional batik village of Laweyan and Kampung Batik Kauman, located in the southwest part of the city and the city centre respectively, are famous for producing fine quality Javanese batik.

Within Surakarta tourists can also use the Jaladara old steam train which was launched on in September 2009 for 5.6 km connecting Purwosari Station and Solo Kota Station. In 2011 there were 60 trips and in 2012 will be 80 trips.

On November 14, 2022, President Widodo and his Emirati counterpart, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, inaugurated the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Built at a cost of $20 million, it is a smaller replica of the grand mosque in Abu Dhabi, and is named in honour of the UAE's founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Construction for the mosque began on Monday the 8th of March, 2021. Sheikh Mohamed had offered it to President Widodo when the former visited Indonesia in July 2019.

Notable people

 * Agung Setyabudi, football player
 * Basuki, actor and comedian
 * Diah Permatasari, actress and model
 * Didi Kempot, singer
 * F. X. Hadi Rudyatmo, former mayor of Surakarta
 * Fred van der Poel, Dutch footballer
 * Gesang, singer-songwriter
 * Gibran Rakabuming Raka, Mayor of Surakarta, current vice president-elect of Indonesia
 * Icuk Sugiarto, former badminton player
 * Joko Suprianto, former badminton player
 * Joko Widodo, former Mayor of Surakarta, Governor of Jakarta and the current President of Indonesia
 * Pakubuwono X, 9th monarch of Surakarta Sunanate, one of National Hero of Indonesia
 * Rio Haryanto, Indonesia's first Formula One driver
 * Rudy Gunawan, former badminton player
 * Sapardi Djoko Damono, poet
 * Siti Hartinah, former First Lady of Indonesia
 * Suryo Agung Wibowo, sprinter
 * Waldjinah, singer
 * Widji Thukul, poet
 * Wynne Prakusya, former tennis player

Sister cities

 * 🇧🇬 Montana, Bulgaria.
 * 🇪🇸 Bilbao, Spain
 * 🇩🇿 Algiers, Algeria

title: Surakarta


text:
Dori

Dori may refer to:

Places

 * Dori, Burkina Faso, a city
 * Dori Department
 * Roman Catholic Diocese of Dori
 * Dori Airport
 * Dori River, in Afghanistan and Pakistan
 * Dori, Dharwad, India, a village

Given name, nickname or stage name

 * Dori of Yejju (died 1831), a chief of one of the tribes of the Oromo people in Ethiopia
 * Dori Arad (born 1982), Israeli footballer
 * Dori Caymmi (born 1943), Brazilian singer, guitarist, songwriter, arranger and producer
 * Dori Dorika (1913–1996), Russian-born Italian actress born Dorotea Massa
 * Izidor Kürschner (ca. 1885–1940), Hungarian footballer
 * Dori J. Maynard (born 1958), President of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, California
 * Dori Monson (1961–2022), American radio personality
 * Dorielton Gomes Nascimento (born 1990), Brazilian footballer
 * Dori Parra de Orellana (1923–2007), Venezuelan politician
 * Teodora Ruano (born 1969), Spanish racing cyclist
 * Dori Seda (1951–1988), American artist
 * Dori Sanders (born 1934), African-American novelist and food writer

Last name

 * Dov Dori (born 1953), Israeli-American computer scientist
 * Fabrizio Dori, Italian comics artist
 * Franco Dori (1943–1987), Italian footballer
 * Leonora Dori (1571–1617), a favourite of Queen Marie de Médici of France; executed for witchcraft
 * Sandro Dori (1938–2021), Italian actor
 * Yaakov Dori (1899–1973), first Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces

Fictional or mythological characters

 * One of the dwarves in the Old Norse poem Völuspá
 * Dori (Middle-earth), a dwarf of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium
 * Dori and Gura, twin archers serving under Oboro in the anime and manga series Utawarerumono
 * Dori Graham, a main protagonist in 1956 musical drama Rock, Rock, Rock!, portrayed by Tuesday Weld
 * Rainbow Girl (Dori Aandraison), a DC Comics heroine
 * Dori Duz, a minor character in the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
 * Dori,, a character in the role-playing video game Genshin Impact

Other uses

 * SS Dori, a cargo liner in service from 1965 to 1967

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Dori


text:
Talk:Red states

Is this salvageable? Jwrosenzweig 04:52, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)

 * Considering how close the 2000 presidential election was, isn't it a bit silly to make a big to-do over a map which shows which states supported Bush or Gore? I mean, when you have to count every last vote down to the wire, that's not exactly solid support either way. I'm not saying that certain sections of the country don't vote a certain way, but a map based on the last presidential election seems like the one of the worst ways to make assumptions about voting patterns in the U.S. ~ FriedMilk 01:57, Sep 20, 2004 (UTC)

 * No, because there certainly are trends in the way that states vote over many elections. If you want more information see this site run by someone keeping track of electoral votes in 2004.  He has a brief background and history on each state that is sometimes illuminating.  (For instance, Kansas is a 'red state' because it has voted republican tons of times in the past few years. -SocratesJedi 04:35, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

title: Talk:Red states


text:
Shiso

Perilla frutescens var. crispa, also known by its Japanese name shiso, is a cultigen of Perilla frutescens, a herb in the mint family Lamiaceae. It is native to the mountainous regions of China and India, but is now found worldwide. The plant occurs in several forms, as defined by the characteristics of their leaves, including red, green, bicolor, and ruffled. Shiso is perennial and may be cultivated as an annual in temperate climates. Different parts of the plant are used in East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisine.

Names
The herb is known in Chinese as zǐsū ( "purple perilla"), which is the origin of the Japanese name shiso (/) and the Vietnamese name tía tô. It is also called huíhuísū ( "Muslim perilla") in Chinese. In Korean, it is known as soyeop or chajogi (차조기). In ancient Japan, it was called inue ("pseudo-perilla"), though this name is no longer used.

In English, it is sometimes called the "beefsteak plant", because purple-leaf varieties resemble the blood-red color of meat. Other common names include "perilla mint", "Chinese basil", and "wild basil". The alias "wild coleus" or "summer coleus" probably describe ornamental varieties. Red-leaf varieties are sometimes called "purple mint". In the Ozarks, it is called "rattlesnake weed", because the sound the dried stalks make when disturbed along a footpath is similar to a rattlesnake's rattle. The Japanese name shiso became part of the English lexicon in the 1990s, owing to the growing popularity of sushi.

The plant is sometimes referred to by its genus name, Perilla, but this is ambiguous as perilla could also refer to a different cultigen (Perilla frutescens var. frutescens). To avoid confusion, Perilla frutescens var. frutescens is called egoma ("perilla sesame") in Japan and deulkkae ("wild sesame") in Korea.

When red-leaf shiso was introduced into the West in the 1850s, it was given the scientific name Perilla nankinensis, after the city of Nanking. This name is now less common than Perilla frutescens.

Origins and distribution
It is suggested that the native origins of the plant are mountainous regions of India and China, although other sources point to Southeast Asia.

History
Perilla frutescens was cultivated in ancient China. One of the early mentions comes from the Supplementary Records of Renowned Physicians (名醫別錄 Míng Yī Bié Lù), written around 500 AD, where it is listed as su, and some of its uses are described. The plant was introduced into Japan around the eighth to ninth centuries.

Red shiso became available to gardening enthusiasts in England around 1855. By 1862, the English were reporting overuse of this plant, and proposing Coleus vershaeffeltii or Amaranthus melancholicus var. ruber made available by J.G. Veitch as an alternative. It was introduced later in the United States, perhaps in the 1860s. Today, it is considered a weed or invasive species.

Description
Shiso grows to 40 - 100 cm tall. It has broad ovate leaves with pointy ends and serrated margins, arranged oppositely with long leafstalks. Shiso seeds are about 1mm in size, and are smaller and harder compared to other perilla varieties. Seeds weigh about 1.5 g per 1000 seeds. The plants are not frost hardy. In USDA zones 11 and above, they grow as perennials.

Varieties
Several forms of shiso exist. They are defined by the color and morphology of the leaves, though coloring is also found on the stalk and flower buds. Redness in shiso is caused by shisonin, an anthocyanin pigment found in perilla. Ruffled red shiso was the first form examined by Western botanists, and Carl Peter Thunberg named it P. crispa (meaning "wavy" or "curly"). That Latin name crispa was later retained when shiso was reclassified as a cultigen.

 * Red shiso (f. purpurea): Leaves red on both sides, flat surface. Often called simply "shiso".
 * Ruffled red shiso (f. crispa): Leaves red on both sides, ruffled surface.
 * Green shiso (f. viridis): Leaves green on both sides, flat surface.
 * Ruffled green shiso (f. viridi-crispa): Leaves green on both sides, ruffled surface. Cultivar.
 * Bicolor shiso (f. discolor): Leaves green on top side, red on back side, flat surface. Cultivar.
 * Variegated shiso (f. rosea): Leaves a mix of green and red on both sides, flat surface.

Culinary use
Cultivated shiso is eaten in many East and Southeast Asian countries. Wild, weedy shiso are not suitable for eating, as they do not have the characteristic shiso fragrance, and are high in perilla ketone, which is potentially toxic.

China
Chinese cuisine also utilizes shiso, named zi su (紫苏), bai su (白苏), or huihui su (回回苏) in Chinese. It is sometimes used as a decorative ingredient, and is sometimes eaten to reduce grease (as with barbecue). It is common practice to accompany fish and crab dishes with zisu, as it is believed that zisu leaves can offset the toxins in seafood.

Japan
Shiso (紫蘇) is extensively used in Japanese cuisine. Red, green, and bicolor varieties are used for different purposes.

Red shiso is called akajiso (赤紫蘇). It is used in the making of umeboshi (pickled plums) to give the plums a red color. The leaves turns bright red when steeped in umezu, the vinegary brine that results as a byproduct of pickling plums. It can also be combined with umezu to make certain types of sushi. In the summer, it is used to make a sweet, red juice. In Kyoto, red shiso and its seeds are used to make shibazuke, a type of fermented eggplant.

Red leaves are dried and pulverized into flakes, then mixed with salt to make a seasoning called yukari. The word yukari is an ancient term for the color purple, and was first used by Mishima Foods Co. to describe their shiso product, though the word is now used to refer to shiso salt in general. Red shiso leaf flakes are a common ingredient in furikake seasonings, meant to be sprinkled over rice or mixed into onigiri (rice balls).

Green shiso is called aojiso (青紫蘇) or ōba (大葉 "big leaf"). It is used to garnish noodle dishes like hiyamugi or sōmen, meat dishes like sashimi, tataki and namerō, and tofu dishes like hiyayakko. Whitebait (shirasu) sashimi is often garnished with green shiso. Whole leaves are also used as receptacles to hold wasabi, or tsuma (garnishes). Leaves can also be battered on one side and fried to make tempura, and are served with other fried items. Chopped leaves are used to flavor any number of fillings or batter to be cooked, for use in warm dishes. In Japan, pasta is sometimes topped with dried or freshly chopped shiso leaves, which is often combined with raw tarako (pollock roe). Originally, green shiso was used in place of basil, and has even been used in pizza toppings. In the summer of 2009, Pepsi Japan released a seasonal flavored beverage, the green colored Pepsi Shiso.

Shiso seed pods (fruits) are called shiso no mi, and are salted and preserved like a spice. They can be combined with fine slivers of daikon (radish) to make a simple salad. Oil pressed from the seeds was once used for deep-frying.

Shiso sprouts, buds and cotyledons are all called mejiso (芽紫蘇), and used as garnish. Red sprouts are called murame, and green sprouts are called aome. Although not often served in restaurants, mejiso are used as microgreens.

Shiso flowers are called hojiso (穂紫蘇), and used as garnish for sashimi. They are intended to be scraped off the stalk with chopsticks, and added as flavoring to the soy sauce dip. The flowers can also be pickled.

Korea
In Korean cuisine, shiso is called soyeop (소엽) or chajogi (차조기). It is less popular than the related cultigen, P. frutescens (deulkkae). Soyeop is commonly seen as a wild plant, and the leaves are occasionally used as a ssam vegetable. Red leaves are sometimes pickled in soy sauce or soybean paste as a jangajji, or deep-fried as bugak with a thin coat of rice-flour batter.

Laos
In Laos, red shiso leaves are called pak maengda (ຜັກແມງດາ). They are used to add fragrance to khao poon (ເຂົ້າປຸ້ນ), a rice vermicelli dish that is similar to the Vietnamese bún.

Vietnam
In Vietnam, shiso is called tía tô. Compared to Japanese shiso, it has slightly smaller leaves but a much stronger aromatic flavor. Vietnamese tía tô are often bicolored, with leaves that are red on the backside.

Tía tô leaves are used in Vietnamese cuisine for salads, soups, or stir-fried dishes. The strong flavors are perfect for cooking seafoods such as shrimp and fish dishes. They are eaten as a garnish with bún (rice vermicelli). Leaves are also pickled.

Biochemistry
Shiso's distinctive flavor comes from perillaldehyde, which is found only in low concentrations in other perilla varieties, including Perilla frutescens. The oxime of perillaldehyde, perillartine, is about 2,000 times sweeter than sucrose. However, perillartine has a bitter aftertaste and is not soluble in water, and is only used in Japan as an artificial sweetener to sweeten tobacco.

Wild shiso is rich in perilla ketone, which is a potent lung toxin to some livestock. When consumed by cattle and horses, it causes pulmonary edema, leading to a condition sometimes called perilla mint toxicosis. Effects on humans remain to be studied.

The plant produces the natural product perilloxin, which is built around a 3-benzoxepin moiety. Like aspirin, perilloxin inhibits the enzyme cyclooxygenase with an IC50 of 23.2 μM.

Other chemotypes include eschscholzia ketone, perillene, and the phenylpropanoids myristicin, dillapiole, elemicin, citral, and a type rich in rosefuran.

Shiso contains only about 25.2–25.7% lipid, but still contains a comparable 60% ratio of ALA. Aromatic essential oils present are limonene, caryophyllene, and farnesene.

Bactericidal and preservative effects of shiso, due to the presence of terpenes such as perilla alcohol, have been noted.

Cultivation
In temperate climates, the plant is self-sowing, but the seeds are not viable after long storage, and germination rates are low after a year.

Japan
The bar graph shows the trend in total production of shiso in Japan, as given by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries

The biggest producer of shiso for the food market is Aichi Prefecture, boasting 3,852 tons, or 37.0% of national production (2008 data). Data for greenhouse production, which is a better indicator of crop yield, gives 3,528 tons for Aichi Prefecture, or 56% share of national production. The difference in percentage is an indicator that in Aichi, the leaves are 90% greenhouse produced, whereas nationwide the ratio is 60:40 in favor of indoors over open fields. In Aichi Prefecture, the city of Toyohashi produces the most shiso in Japan. They are followed in ranking by Namegata, Ibaraki.

There seems to be a growth spurt for shiso crops grown for industrial use. The data shows the following trend for crops targeted for oil and perfumery.

History
Green shiso was not industrially grown until the 1960s. Production volume remained negligible until 1976. Several accounts exist regarding the beginnings of shiso production.

According to one anecdote, in 1961, a food co-operative from Shizuoka specializing in tsuma (garnishes) began shipping green shiso to the Osaka market, where it grew so popular the name ōba (大葉 "big leaf") became the trade name for bunches of picked green leaves.

Another account places the start of green shiso production origin in the city of Toyohashi, the foremost ōba producer in the country. It claims that the Toyohashi Greenhouse Horticultural Agricultural Cooperative experimented with planting green shiso around 1955, and started merchandising the leaves as ōba around 1962. In 1963 they organized "cooperative sorting and sales" of the crop, and achieved year-round production around 1970.

In the 1970s refrigerated storage and transport became available, bringing fresh produce and seafood to areas away from farms or seaports. Foods like sashimi became daily fare, and so too did sashimi garnishes like green shiso.

The word ōba was originally a trade name and was not listed in the popular dictionary Shin Meikai Kokugo Jiten as "green shiso" until its 5th edition (1997).

title: Shiso


text:
Genrikh Yagoda

Genrikh Grigoryevich Yagoda (Ге́нрих Григо́рьевич Яго́да, born Yenokh Gershevich Iyeguda; 7 November 1891 – 15 March 1938) was a Soviet secret police official who served as director of the NKVD, the Soviet Union's security and intelligence agency, from 1934 to 1936. Appointed by Joseph Stalin, Yagoda supervised arrests, show trials, and executions of the Old Bolsheviks Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, climactic events of the Great Purge. Yagoda also supervised construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal with Naftaly Frenkel, using penal labor from the gulag system, during which 12,000–25,000 laborers died.

Like many Soviet NKVD officers who conducted political repression, Yagoda himself ultimately became a victim of the Purge. He was demoted from the directorship of the NKVD in favor of Nikolai Yezhov in 1936 and arrested in 1937. Charged with crimes of wrecking, espionage, Trotskyism and conspiracy, Yagoda was a defendant at the Trial of the Twenty-One, the last of the major Soviet show trials of the 1930s. Following his confession at the trial, Yagoda was found guilty and shot.

Early life
Yagoda was born in Rybinsk into a Jewish family. The son of a jeweller, trained as a statistician, who worked as a pharmacist's assistant, he claimed that he was an active revolutionary from the age of 14 when he worked as a compositor on an underground printing press in Nizhny Novgorod, and that at the age of 15 he was a member of a fighting squad in the Sormovo district of Nizhny Novgorod, during the violent suppression of the 1905 revolution. He said he joined the Bolsheviks in Nizhny Novgorod at the age of 16 or 17 and was arrested and sent into exile in 1911. In 1913, he moved to St. Petersburg to work at the Putilov steel works. After the outbreak of war, he joined the army, and was wounded in action.

There is another version of his early career, told in the memoirs of the former NKVD officer Aleksandr M. Orlov, who alleged that Yagoda invented his early revolutionary career and did not join the Bolsheviks until 1917, and that his deputy Mikhail Trilisser was dismissed from service for trying to expose the lie.

Political career
After the October Revolution of 1917, Yagoda rose rapidly through the ranks of the Cheka (the predecessor of the OGPU and NKVD) to become the second deputy of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, in September 1923. After Dzerzhinsky's appointment as chairman of the Supreme Council of National Economy in January 1924, Yagoda became the deputy chief and the real manager of the State Political Directorate (OGPU), as the chairman Vyacheslav Menzhinsky had little authority because of his serious illness. In 1924, he joined the USSR's head of government, Alexei Rykov on a ship tour of the Volga. An American journalist who was allowed to join them on the trip described Yagoda as "a spare, slightly-tanned, trim looking, youngish officer" adding that it was "difficult to associate terror with the affable and modest person". By contrast, the chemist Vladimir Ipatieff met Yagoda briefly in Moscow in 1918 and later recorded that he had thought that "it was unusual for a young man in his early twenties to be so unpleasant. I felt then that it would be unlucky for me or anyone else ever to fall into his hands." When he saw him again in 1927, "his appearance had changed considerably: he had grown fatter and looked much older and very dignified and important."

Though Yagoda appears to have known Joseph Stalin since 1918, when they were both stationed in Tsaritsyn during the civil war, "he was never Stalin's man". When Stalin ordered that the Soviet Union's entire rural population were to be forced onto collective farms, Yagoda is reputed to have sympathised with Bukharin and Rykov, his opponents on the right of the communist party. Nikolai Bukharin claimed in a leaked private conversation in July 1928 that "Yagoda and Trilisser are with us", but once it became apparent that the right was losing the power struggle, Yagoda switched allegiance. In the contemptuous opinion of Bukharin's widow, Anna Larina, Yagoda "traded his personal views for the sake of his career" and degenerated into a "criminal" and a "miserable coward". Yagoda continued to be an effective head of the OGPU until July 1931, when the Old Bolshevik Ivan Akulov was appointed First Deputy Chairman, and Yagoda was demoted to the post of Second Deputy. Akulov was dismissed and Yagoda reinstated in October 1932, After Yagoda's fall, one of his former colleagues confessed: "We met Akulov with violent hostility ... the entire party organisation in the OGPU was devoted to sabotaging Akulov." Stalin must have agreed to his reinstatement with ill grace, because four years later he accused the OGPU/NKVD of being four years behind in rooting out the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc, although Yagoda had been complicit in the execution of one of Trotsky's sympathisers, Yakov Blumkin, and in sending others to the GULAG, the system of forced labour created under his supervision.

Prior to 1929, the only labor camp in the USSR was the Solovki Special Purpose Camp, which fell under the purview of the OGPU. As deputy head of the OGPU, Yagoda organized construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal using forced labor at breakneck speed between 1931 and 1933, though at the cost of huge casualties. The construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal was started under his watch, but completed only after his fall by his successor Nikolai Yezhov. For his contribution to the Baltic canal's construction, he was later awarded the Order of Lenin. Yagoda greatly expanded the use of prison labor to assist with the building of the Berezniki Works chemical plant and other projects. From 1929 to 1930, the number of prison laborers in OGPU camps expanded from 22,848 to 155,000, and after November 1930 became known as the Main Camp Administration, or GULAG system.

Yagoda had founded a secret poison laboratory of OGPU that was at Stalin's disposal. It was later alleged during the later show-trial of Yagoda that his former NKVD boss, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky, was slowly poisoned during two weeks by two assistants of Yagoda. However, Menzhinsky was ill for several years before he died; this may have been a false testimony. Menhzinsky's death was followed one day later by the death of Max Peshkov, the son of Maxim Gorky, the doyen of Soviet literature. Yagoda had been cultivating Gorky as a potentially useful contact since 1928 and employed Gorky's secretary, Pyotr Kryuchkov, as a spy. "Whenever Gorky met Stalin or other members of the Politburo, Yagoda would visit Kryuchkov's flat afterward, demanding a full account of what had been said. He took to visiting public baths with Kryuchkov. One day in 1932, Yagoda handed his valuable spy $4,000 to buy a car." He had developed an obsession with Max Peshkov's wife, Timosha, and visited her daily when she was newly widowed, though her mother denied that they were ever lovers. According to Arkady Vaksberg and other researchers, Yagoda poisoned Maxim Gorky and his son on the orders of Joseph Stalin.

NKVD Chief
On 10 July 1934, two months after Menzhinsky's death, Joseph Stalin appointed Yagoda People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, a position that included oversight of both the regular and the secret police, the NKVD. He was in charge of investigating the Kirov assassination. At some point, it was discovered by the NKVD that a conspiratorial Opposition Bloc had been formed in 1932, by Leon Trotsky and various other soviet politicians like Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev. Yagoda then worked closely with Andrei Vyshinsky in organizing the first Moscow Show Trial, which resulted in prosecution and subsequent execution of Zinoviev and Kamenev in August 1936, beginning the Great Purge.

The Red Army high command was not spared and its ranks were thinned by Yagoda, as a precursor to the later and more extensive purge in the Soviet military. More than a quarter of a million people were arrested during the 1934–1935 period; the GULAG system was vastly expanded under his stewardship, and penal labor became a major developmental resource in the Soviet economy.

Stalin became increasingly disillusioned with Yagoda's performance. In the middle of 1936, Stalin received a report from Yagoda detailing the unfavorable public reaction abroad to the show trials and the growing sympathy among the Soviet population for the executed defendants. The report enraged Stalin, interpreting it as Yagoda's advice to stop the show trials and in particular to abandon the planned purge of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Marshal of the Soviet Union and the former commander in chief of the Red Army. Stalin was already unhappy with Yagoda's services, mostly due to mismanagement of Kirov's assassination and his failure to fabricate "proofs" of ties between Kamenev and Zinoviev and the Okhrana (the tsarist security organization). As one Soviet official put it, "The Boss forgets nothing."

Another possible reason Stalin did not trust Yagoda was his failure to report the existence of the Bloc of Oppositions earlier. On 25 September 1936, Stalin sent a telegram (co-signed by Andrei Zhdanov) to the members of the Politburo. The telegram read: "We consider it absolutely necessary and urgent that Comrade Yezhov be appointed to head the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs. Yagoda has obviously proved unequal to the task of exposing the Trotskyite-Zinovievite bloc. The GPU was four years late in this matter. All party heads and most of the NKVD agents in the region are talking about this." A day later, he was replaced by Nikolai Yezhov. There are two theories as to why Yagoda did not report on the bloc earlier. He may have found out about it only in 1936, or he knew about its activities for some time but covered it up because of his sympathies to the opposition. According to the anti-communist soviet defector Grigori Tokaev, who was an underground participant in an oppositional group, the opposition was working with parts of the police and Yagoda himself:"He [Yagoda] was removed from the NKVD, and we lost a strong link in our opposition intelligence service. ... The NKVD, now headed by Yezhov, took another step forward. The Little Politbureau had penetrated the Yenukidze-Sheboldayev and the Yagoda-Zelinsky conspiracies and broken through the opposition's links within the central institutions of the political police."Yagoda was demoted to the post of People's Commissar for Post and Telegraph.

Arrest, trial and execution
In March 1937, Yagoda was arrested on Stalin's orders. Yezhov announced Yagoda's arrest for diamond smuggling, corruption and working as a German agent since joining the party in 1917. Yezhov even blamed Yagoda for an attempt to assassinate him by sprinkling mercury around his office. He was accused of poisoning Maxim Gorky and his son. It was discovered that Yagoda's two Moscow apartments and his dacha contained, besides a large collection of female clothing and apparel, 3,904 pornographic photos, 11 pornographic films, 165 pornographically carved pipes and cigarette holders, one rubber dildo, the two bullets that killed Zinoviev and Kamenev and 549 books—some of which were trotskyist works. Yezhov took over the apartments. He had spent four million rubles decorating his three homes, boasting that his garden had "2,000 orchids and roses".

Yagoda was found guilty of treason and conspiracy against the Soviet government at the Trial of the Twenty-One in March 1938. He denied he was a spy, but admitted most other charges. Solzhenitsyn describes Yagoda as expecting clemency from Stalin after the show trial: "Just as though Stalin had been sitting right there in the hall, Yagoda confidently and insistently begged him directly for mercy: 'I appeal to you! For you I built two great canals!' And a witness reports that at just that moment a match flared in the shadows behind a window on the second floor of the hall, apparently behind a muslin curtain, and, while it lasted, the outline of a pipe could be seen."

Yagoda was summarily shot after the trial. During the execution, Yagoda and Bukharin were seated on chairs and forced to watch the execution of others sentenced to death; they were last to be shot. Before the execution Yagoda was also beaten by Izrail Dagin by the order of Yezhov. In 1988, on the 50th anniversary of the trial, the Soviet authorities belatedly cleared all of the other 20 defendants of any criminal offence, admitting that the entire trial was built on false confessions. Yagoda was the only defendant not to be posthumously rehabilitated.

Family
Yagoda's father, Grigori, the jeweller, who was aged 78 in 1938, wrote directly to Stalin disowning "our only surviving son" because of "his grave crimes". This contrition was not enough to save him, or his wife, from being arrested and dying in labour camps. He had two brothers. One was killed during the suppression of the revolt in Sormovo in 1905; the other was shot for taking part in a mutiny in a regiment during the war with Germany. Their sister, Lilya, was arrested on 7 May 1937, and shot on 16 July. She was photographed before her execution, as was normal for condemned prisoners. That photograph was retrieved from KGB archives and published in the book Ordinary Citizens by David King.

Yagoda's wife was Ida Averbakh (Russian Wikipedia), one of whose uncles, Yakov Sverdlov, was a prominent Bolshevik, and another, Zinovy Peshkov, was the adopted son of the writer Maxim Gorky. She was shot on 16 July 1938. Her brother, Leopold Averbakh, was shot in August 1937. Their father was also shot.

Honours and awards

 * Order of Lenin ribbon bar.png Order of Lenin
 * Order of Red Banner ribbon bar.png Order of the Red Banner, twice (1927, 1930)
 * Orderredbannerlabor rib.png Order of the Red Banner of Labour of the RSFSR (1932)

title: Genrikh Yagoda


text:
Query language

A query language, also known as data query language or database query language (DQL), is a computer language used to make queries in databases and information systems. In database systems, query languages rely on strict theory to retrieve information. A well known example is the Structured Query Language (SQL).

Types
Broadly, query languages can be classified according to whether they are database query languages or information retrieval query languages. The difference is that a database query language attempts to give factual answers to factual questions, while an information retrieval query language attempts to find documents containing information that is relevant to an area of inquiry. Other types of query languages include:

 * Full-text. The simplest query language is treating all terms as bag of words that are to be matched with the postings in the inverted index and where subsequently ranking models are applied to retrieve the most relevant documents. Only tokens are defined in the CFG. Web search engines often use this approach.
 * Boolean. A query language that also supports the use of the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT.
 * Structured. A language that supports searching within (a combination of) fields when a document is structured and has been indexed using its document structure.
 * Natural language. A query language that supports natural language by parsing the natural language query to a form that can be best used to retrieve relevant documents, for example with Question answering systems or conversational search.

Examples

 * Attempto Controlled English is a query language that is also a controlled natural language.
 * AQL is a query language for the ArangoDB native multi-model database system.
 * .QL is a proprietary object-oriented query language for querying relational databases; successor of Datalog;
 * CodeQL is the analysis engine used by developers to automate security checks, and by security researchers to perform variant analysis on GitHub.
 * Contextual Query Language (CQL) a formal language for representing queries to information retrieval systems such as web indexes or bibliographic catalogues.
 * Cypher is a query language for the Neo4j graph database;
 * DMX is a query language for data mining models;
 * Datalog is a query language for deductive databases;
 * F-logic is a declarative object-oriented language for deductive databases and knowledge representation.
 * FQL enables you to use a SQL-style interface to query the data exposed by the Graph API. It provides advanced features not available in the Graph API.
 * Gellish English is a language that can be used for queries in Gellish English Databases, for dialogues (requests and responses) as well as for information modeling and knowledge modeling;
 * Gremlin is an Apache Software Foundation graph traversal language for OLTP and OLAP graph systems.
 * GraphQL is a data query language developed by Facebook as an alternate to REST and ad-hoc webservice architectures.
 * HTSQL is a query language that translates HTTP queries to SQL;
 * ISBL is a query language for PRTV, one of the earliest relational database management systems;
 * Jaql is a functional data processing and query language most commonly used for JSON query processing;
 * jq is a functional programming language often used for processing queries against one or more JSON documents, including very large ones;
 * JSONiq is a declarative query language designed for collections of JSON documents;
 * LDAP is an application protocol for querying and modifying directory services running over TCP/IP;
 * LogiQL is a variant of Datalog and is the query language for the LogicBlox system.
 * M Formula language, a mashup query language used in Microsoft's Power Query
 * MQL is a cheminformatics query language for a substructure search allowing beside nominal properties also numerical properties;
 * MDX is a query language for OLAP databases;
 * N1QL is a Couchbase's query language finding data in Couchbase Servers;
 * Object Query Language
 * OCL (Object Constraint Language). Despite its name, OCL is also an object query language and an OMG standard;
 * OPath, intended for use in querying WinFS Stores;
 * Poliqarp Query Language is a special query language designed to analyze annotated text. Used in the Poliqarp search engine;
 * PQL is a special-purpose programming language for managing process models based on information about scenarios that these models describe;
 * PRQL PRQL (Pipelined Relational Query Language) is a modern language for transforming data. Consists of a curated set of orthogonal transformations, which are combined together to form a pipeline.
 * PTQL based on relational queries over program traces, allowing programmers to write expressive, declarative queries about program behavior.
 * QUEL is a relational database access language, similar in most ways to SQL;
 * RDQL is a RDF query language;
 * SMARTS is the cheminformatics standard for a substructure search;
 * SPARQL is a query language for RDF graphs;
 * SQL is a well known query language and data manipulation language for relational databases;
 * XQuery is a query language for XML data sources;
 * XPath is a declarative language for navigating XML documents;
 * YQL is an SQL-like query language created by Yahoo!
 * Search engine query languages, e.g., as used by Google or Bing

title: Query language


text:
Pig (musical project)

Raymond Watts (also known by his former stage names Nainz, Nainz Watts and Ray Scaballero) is an English musician, the founding and sole member of the industrial music project PIG, sometimes written as <PIG>.

Watts was an early member and periodic collaborator of KMFDM, and has been a visible part of the industrial music scene since the early 1980s. He has toured with KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, Schaft, Schwein, and Einstürzende Neubauten.

Recent activity (2010–present)
Watts, Dr. Shinto and John Gosling released a four-song EP titled Mellan Rummen on 15 November 2010 on Amazon.com.

On 8 June 2012, Marc Heal revealed a demo version of "the first new PIG track in eight years" titled "Drugzilla (Rough As A Hog's Arse Mix)" via Cubanate's Official Facebook page and providing their followers a link to his personal SoundCloud page. The link was reposted by Watts a few hours later. A second demo titled "Shake" was released on 15 July 2012; again via Heal's Soundcloud page, this time also noting Dan Abela as engineer. In November 2014, Watts approved mixes for an upcoming joint-release EP.

In March 2015, another collaborative EP was announced with Primitive Race titled Long in the Tooth with a worldwide release date of 5 June 2015 through Metropolis Records. Later that month in an interview, Watts revealed a new PIG album has been written and recorded. Former KMFDM bandmate En Esch will be providing final touches to the album.

On 15 June 2016, the official PIG Facebook page announced that the new PIG album titled The Gospel would be released on 9 September 2016 on Metropolis. Soon after. tour dates were announced The American Excess tour with opening bands En Esch & Peter Turns Pirate. The North American tour takes place in September and October 2016. A remix album, Swine & Punishment, was released in 2017.

In 2018, PIG released the album Risen, supported by another North American tour. 2019 saw the release of a collection of cover songs on an LP titled Candy. The release of Candy was followed in the fall of the same year by the Divine Descent North American Tour, supported by Cyanotic and A Primitive Evolution. The Divine Descent Tour concluded on 6 October 2019 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A brief tour of the United Kingdom followed.

In 2020, PIG released a compilation album, Pain Is God, which featured some new tracks and included songs from prior tour EPs dating back to the previous year. The album was released digitally, and on CD and vinyl, including special edition packages with unique 3D features in the digipack or record sleeve.

Musical style
PIG tends to sound more orchestral than KMFDM, with darker, more complex, more ambient beats. His album and song titles tend to be witty, rife with alliteration ("Prayer Praise & Profit") or are plays on the titles of popular works or phrases (The Swining / "Symphony for the Devil"). He also manages to work food, heroin or pork related terms into his albums. Like KMFDM, humor features prominently in PIG's lyrics, although they tend towards a darker/grittier tone than KMFDM's.

Collaboration with KMFDM
Because Raymond Watts is a central figure in both PIG and KMFDM, the two projects have seen much crossover. Watts has contributed his skills as a songwriter and vocalist to several KMFDM albums, including their first album Opium in 1984, and has a heavy presence on their 1995 album Nihil, which spawned the hit "Juke Joint Jezebel". A collaborative EP titled Sin Sex & Salvation was released in 1994 under the moniker "PIG vs. KMFDM". KMFDM has in turn assisted Watts with his PIG projects in production and personnel. Current KMFDM guitarists Steve White and Jules Hodgson (as well as former KMFDM guitarist Günter Schulz) and drummer Andy Selway have been involved with PIG. Watts has performed with KMFDM as part of the touring lineup, with the concerts billed as "KMFDM featuring PIG". The setlists for those shows feature KMFDM songs alongside Pig songs. A live CD from the 2002 "Sturm & Drang" tour was released on Metropolis Records that same year.

Watts was given a tongue-in-cheek description in the lyrics to the KMFDM song "Intro" from the 2003 album WWIII:

Other collaborations
Watts has worked with several industrial and avant-garde artists, receiving credits as PIG and Raymond Watts interchangeably. He has also been credited as "Nainz Watts" or "Nains Watts" on several early releases.

 * From 1984 to 1986 Watts was sound engineer for Mona Mur.
 * From 1985 to 1989 Watts was a sound engineer for Einstürzende Neubauten.
 * Watts has occasionally collaborated with J. G. Thirlwell, briefly playing bass in Foetus Corruptus and co-writing songs for Steroid Maximus on the album Gondwanaland. Thirlwell, in turn, has cowritten and remixed songs for PIG.
 * Watts recorded music for ex-girlfriend spoken-word artist Sow (born Anna Wildsmith)'s 1994 album Je M'Aime and again for her 1998 album Sick and 2010 album Dog. "Je M'aime" was reissued under the name "Pig/Sow" in 1999.
 * PIG's 1995 album Sinsation was released in the US on Trent Reznor's label Nothing Records. PIG also toured with Reznor's band Nine Inch Nails in the UK.
 * Japanese-based band Schaft employed Watts as a lyricist/vocalist for the 1994 album Switchblade and companion remix collection Switch.
 * In 2001, Watts and KMFDM frontman Sascha Konietzko teamed up with Japanese musicians Atsushi Sakurai (Buck-Tick) and Hisashi Imai (Schaft and Buck-Tick) to form the project super group Schwein. Schwein released two albums Schweinstein and Son of Schweinstein ; the latter being remixes from the first.
 * Watts has also provided production, mixing, remixing, and/or vocals for Psychic TV, Chemlab, Haloblack, 2-Kut, Hoodlum Priest, Steroid Maximus, H3llb3nt, The Hit Parade, Brain Drive, Buck-Tick, D.I.E., Atsushi Sakurai, Sprung aus den Wolken, The Megaton Men, Mortiis, Judda], Tweaker, Prong, West End and Zos Kia.
 * Watts contributed an original composition to the soundtrack of the computer game MDK2. It plays on the title screen and one of Max's levels.
 * Watts has composed music for several Alexander McQueen fashion shows.
 * Watts has contributed vocals to the track "Second Coming" by Team Cybergeist
 * In 2020 Watts became a member of industrial supergroup The Joy Thieves by contributing vocals to "Empty Spaces", a song the band recorded for Riveting Music's Tear Down the Walls: A Riveting Tribute to Pink Floyd's The Wall.

Current members

 * Raymond Watts – vocals, keyboards, programming, guitars (1987–present)
 * En Esch – vocals, guitars, programming (2016–present)
 * Steve White – guitars, programming (1993–2007, 2018–present)
 * Galen Waling – drums (2016–2018, 2019–present)

Former members

 * Steve Crittel – live guitars (1991–1992)
 * Jim McKenchnie – live keyboards (1991–1992)
 * Kevin Bass – live drums (1991–1992)
 * Michael Watts – keyboards, organ, vocals (1991–1993, 1998–2006, 2016–2019)
 * Karl Hyde – guitars (1993–1994)
 * Santos De Castro – drums (1993, 1994, 1996)
 * Imai Hisashi – guitars, noises (1994–1998)
 * Olivier Grasset – drums, percussion, programming, production (1994, 2002, 2010)
 * Joanna Peacock – bass (1994)
 * Günter Schulz – guitars, programming (1994–1999, 2006, 2016–2017, 2019–2020)
 * Jules Hodgson – guitars, bass, keyboards (1997–2006)
 * Andy Selway – drums (1997–2006)
 * Jason Knotek – live guitars (2006)
 * Angel Bartolotta – live drums (2006)
 * Mark Gemini Thwaite – guitars, bass, synthesizers, programming (2015–2017)
 * Gregory "Z. Marr" Steward – guitars, keyboards, programming, production (2016–2018)
 * Eric Gottesman – live keyboards (2016–2017)
 * Luke Dangler – live guitars (2017)
 * Ben Christo – guitars (2018–2019)
 * Martin Eden – guitars, bass, keyboards, programming, production, mixing (2004–2010, 2016–2019)
 * Jan-Vincent Velazco – drums (2018–2019)

Guest members

 * Alex Hacke – guitars (1988)
 * Nikkolai Weidemann – guitars, piano, saxophone (1988)
 * Axel Dill – drums, piano, mixing (1988)
 * Achim Mennicken – guitars (1988–1989; died 2014)
 * Uwe Wüst – guitars (1988)
 * Remo Park – guitars (1988)
 * Christian Graupner – percussion, programming (1988–1989)
 * J.G. Thirlwell – production (1988–1992)
 * John Caffery – production, recording (1989–1991)
 * Roli Mosimann – mixing (1989)
 * Martin Hawkes – recording, mixing (1991)
 * Paul Kendall – mixing (1991)
 * Siewert Johannsen – engineering (1992)
 * Anna Wildsmith – vocals (1989–1992, 1995–1996, 1998–1999, 2003–2006, 2010; died 2016)
 * John Gosling – programming, engineering, mixing (1993, 2010, 2018)
 * Enrico Thomaso – flugelhorn (1993–1994)
 * Sascha Konietzko – vocals, synthesizers, production, engineering, mixing, programming (1994, 1997, 1998, 2020)
 * Jennifer Ginsberg – vocals (1994)
 * Julian Beeston – programming, mixing (1995–1997)
 * Carol Anne Reynolds – vocals (1995, 1997–1999)
 * Sakurai Atsushi – vocals (1997–1998)
 * Chris Shepard – (1997–1998)
 * Giles Littlefield – production, noises, programming (1996–1997)
 * Rob Henry – programming (1996–1999, 2018)
 * Jennie Bellestar – vocals (1996–1997)
 * Ruth McArdle – vocals (1996–1997)
 * Lian Warmington – vocals (1996–1997)
 * James Reynolds – engineering (1996–1997)
 * Ben Drakeford – engineering (1996–1997)
 * Jo Maskell – vocals (1997)
 * Andrew Bennett – guitars (1999)
 * Lisa Millet – vocals (1999)
 * Andy Cooke – programming (1999)
 * Arianne Schreiber – vocals (2001–2006)
 * Bryan Black – vocals, production, mixing (2001–2006)
 * Marc Heal – vocals, keyboards, programming (2004–2006, 2015–2019)
 * Dan Abela – guitars, engineering (2015–2016)
 * Nathan Cavaleri – guitars (2010, 2016)
 * Tim Skold – vocals, keyboards, guitars, programming, production (2018)
 * Anita Sylph – vocals (2018)
 * Joshua Broughton – guitars (2018)
 * Emre Ramazanoglu – keyboards, programming (2018)
 * Phil Barry – guitars (2018)
 * Ben Lee – violin (2018)
 * Sasha Grey – vocals (2018–2019)
 * Michelle Martinez – vocals (2018–2019)
 * Susannah Doyle – vocals (2018)

Discography (partial)
Several of his albums were originally released in Japan, where he enjoyed considerably more success than in the United States and United Kingdom, but some of those albums were eventually released in the US.

In 2004 he signed to Grand Recordings for distribution in the UK, under the name "Watts". The All Hamerican Pig Show was released in 2011 as a DVD via the Pig website, featuring performances from Pig's 2006 U.S. tour and a complete live performance from Osaka, Japan, 1999. The DVD also included the music videos for Painiac and Everything.

Studio albums

 * A Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick (1988)
 * Praise the Lard (1991)
 * The Swining (1993) – Japan only release; reissued in 1999 in the US as The Swining/Red Raw & Sore
 * Sinsation (1995) – US release in 1996
 * Wrecked (1996) – Japanese release; US release in 1997 has somewhat different track listing
 * Genuine American Monster (1999) – US release in 2002
 * Pigmartyr (2004) – UK only release, using the "Watts" name, although it was re-released in 2005 as Pigmata under the "PIG" moniker
 * The Gospel (2016) – co-written and co-produced by Z. Marr
 * Risen (2018)
 * Candy (2019) – album of covers
 * Pain Is God (2020)
 * The Merciless Light (2022)
 * Red Room (2024)

Remix albums

 * Swine & Punishment (2017) – remixes of songs from The Gospel
 * Stripped & Whipped (2019) – remixes of songs from Risen

EPs

 * Hello Hooray (1992)
 * A Stroll in the Pork (1992)
 * Sin Sex & Salvation (as PIG vs KMFDM) (1994) – collaborative EP with KMFDM
 * Red Raw & Sore (1994) – Japan only release; reissued in 1999 in America on The Swining/Red Raw & Sore (1999)
 * Painiac (1995) – Japan only release
 * Prime Evil (1997) – Japan only release
 * No One Gets Out of Her Alive (1998) – Japan only release
 * Disrupt Degrade & Devastate (1999) – Japan only release
 * Compound Eye Sessions (2015) – with Marc Heal
 * Long in the Tooth (2015) – with Primitive Race
 * The Diamond Sinners (2016) – digital only release
 * The Redeemer (2016) – tour only release
 * Prey & Obey (2017) – digital only release
 * Second Coming (2017) – tour only release
 * Hell to Pay... in the USA (2018) – tour only release
 * That's the Way (I Like It) (2018) – with Sasha Grey
 * Mobocracy (2019) – tour only release
 * The Wages of Sin (2019) – digital only release available only with purchase of Ultra Limited Edition "Hogtags"
 * Sex & Death (2020) – digital only release

Singles

 * "Never For Fun" (1988)
 * "Sick City" / "Shit for Brains" (1989)
 * "Shit for Brains" – Germany-only release
 * "The Fountain of Miracles" (1993)
 * "Black Mass" (2018)- (Free Digital only album of Christmas Covers)
 * "Seed of Evil" (2019) – with Black Needle Noise

Video releases

 * The All Hamerican Pig Show (2011)

Book releases

 * PIG - The Word of the Lard: The Scripture of Raymond Watts (2017) – book compiling all of Raymond Watts' lyrics to date

Music videos
Several music videos have been filmed, but most remain unreleased outside Japan. Most videos have surfaced online on YouTube in questionable quality. The video for Arbor Vitate is actually a re-cut version of the Schaft video of the same song.

 * "Shit for Brains" (1988)
 * "The Fountain of Miracles" (1993)
 * "The Seven Veils" (1993)
 * "Painiac" (1995)
 * "Everything" (1996)
 * "Arbor Vitate" (2004)
 * "Long in the Tooth" (2015)
 * "The Diamond Sinners" (2016)
 * "Found in Filth" (2016)
 * "Prey & Obey" (2017)
 * "The Chosen Few" (2018)
 * "The Revelation" (2018)
 * "That's The Way (I Like It)" (2018)
 * "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (2018)
 * "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (2019)
 * "Mobocracy" (2019)
 * "Sex & Death" (2020)
 * "Rock 'n' Roll Refugee" (2020)

title: Pig (musical project)


text:
Homosexual sexual practices

Homosexual sexual practices are sexual practices within the context of homosexuality. These include:
 * Sexual practices between men
 * Sexual practices between women

title: Homosexual sexual practices


text:
Subprefectures of Japan

Subprefecture of Japan (支庁) are a Japanese form of self-government which focuses on local issues below the prefectural level. It acts as part of the greater administration of the state and as part of a self-government system.

History
They were given a definite form in 1878 (Meiji 11).

The Meiji government established the sub-prefecture (郡) as an administrative unit.

In 1888 (Meiji 21), the sub-prefecture as a form of self-government was officially recognized as more general than civic corporations like cities, towns and villages. Certain prefectures of Japan are now, or once were, divided into subprefectures. The subprefecture is the jurisdiction surrounding a "branch office" of the prefectural government. Normally, the area of a subprefecture consists of a few to a dozen cities, towns, and/or villages. Subprefectures are formed to provide services of the prefectural government in geographically remote areas. They are usually not used in postal addresses.

Existing subprefectures

 * Hokkaidō, the largest prefecture by area in Japan, was divided into fourteen subprefectures. These were formed in 1897. The subprefectures did not include major cities, such as Sapporo and Hakodate, until 1922. In 2010 they were replaced by 9 General Subprefectural Bureaus and 5 Subprefectural Bureaus. See: Subprefectures in Hokkaidō
 * Kagoshima has two subprefectures, Ōshima and Kumage, located in Amami and Nishinoomote respectively. They cover the islands between Kagoshima and Okinawa.
 * Miyazaki contains a single subprefecture, Nishiusuki, a remote mountain district in the northwest corner of the prefecture.
 * Tokyo contains four subprefectures that provide administrative services to residents of outlying islands under the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. The four branch offices are located at Hachijō, Miyake, Ogasawara and Ōshima.
 * Shimane contains one subprefecture governing the Oki Islands. This is the closest Japanese government office to Liancourt Rocks, a small island group held by South Korea but claimed by Japan.
 * Yamagata is divided into four subprefectures, each of which is located in one of the four main urban areas of the prefecture (Yamagata, Shinjo, Yonezawa and Shonai plains).

Historical subprefectures

 * Hyōgo, another geographically large prefecture, was divided into ten subprefectures, but these are now known as citizen's bureaus (県民局).
 * Chiba was divided into five subprefectures until 2003, when the branch offices were renamed citizens' centers (県民センター).
 * Nagasaki had three subprefectures that provide services to the outlying islands of Tsushima, Iki and Gotō. They were replaced by Regional Offices and then by District Offices.
 * Okinawa had two subprefectures, Miyako and Yaeyama, located on the islands of Miyakojima and Ishigaki respectively. These offices provided prefectural government services to the isolated archipelagos surrounding both islands. They were abolished in March 2009 and duties taken over by the governments of Miyakojima City, Miyako District, Ishigaki City, and Yaeyama District.

In addition, in 1907 Japan formed Karafuto Prefecture to govern the island of Sakhalin. Karafuto was divided into four subprefectures: Toyohara (in present-day Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), Maoka (in present-day Kholmsk), Esutoru (in present-day Uglegorsk) and Shikuka (in present-day Makarov).

A number of islands gained by Japan in the Treaty of Versailles were placed under the direction of a South Pacific Prefecture (南洋庁) from 1922 to 1945. This was divided into six subprefectures, on the islands of Saipan, Yap, Palau, Truk, Pohnpei and Jaluit. In November 1943, the six subprefectures were merged into "eastern", "western" and "northern" subprefectures, which remained in place until the Surrender of Japan in 1945.

Taiwan during Japanese rule initially had its prefectures – ken (県), later termed shū (州) and chō (庁) – subdivided into shichō. Most of the later subprefectures were named gun (郡). Some English texts translate "sub-prefecture" differently, using it instead for the chō of Taiwan, which were remote prefectures that were much less populated, once considered "sub-", or "lesser", prefectures, i.e., Hōko (the Pescadores), Karenkō (Hualien) and Taitō (Taitung). The offshore Hōko was home to the last two remaining subprefectures named shichō: Makō (馬公支廳) and Mōan (望安支廳).

title: Subprefectures of Japan


text:
Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov (Николай Иванович Ежов; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the NKVD from 1936 to 1938, during the height of the Great Purge. Yezhov organized mass arrests, torture and executions during the Great Purge, but he fell from Stalin's favour and was arrested, subsequently admitting in a confession to a range of anti-Soviet activity including "unfounded arrests" during the Purge. He was executed in 1940 along with others who were blamed for the Purge.

Early life and career
Yezhov was born either in Saint Petersburg, according to his official Soviet biography, or in southwest Lithuania (probably Veiveriai, Marijampolė or Kaunas). Although Yezhov claimed to be born in Saint Petersburg, hoping to "portray (himself) in the guise of a deeply-rooted proletarian", he confessed when interrogated that his father Ivan Yezhov came from a well-off Russian peasant family from the village of Volkhonshino. He worked as a musician, railroad switchman, forest warden, head of a brothel, and as a housepainting contractor employing a couple of hired workers. His mother Anna Antonovna Yezhova was Lithuanian. Despite writing in his official biographical forms that he knew Lithuanian and Polish, he denied this in his later interrogations.

He completed only his elementary education. From 1909 to 1915, he worked as a tailor's assistant and factory worker. From 1915 until 1917, Yezhov served in the Imperial Russian Army. He joined the Bolsheviks on 5 May 1917, in Vitebsk, six months before the October Revolution. During the Russian Civil War (1917–1922), he fought in the Red Army. After February 1922, he worked in the political system, mostly as a secretary of various regional committees of the Communist Party. In 1927, he was transferred to the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Party where he worked as an instructor and acting head of the department. From 1929 to 1930, he was the Deputy People's Commissar for Agriculture. In November 1930, he was appointed to the Head of several departments of the Communist Party: department of special affairs, department of personnel and department of industry. In 1934, he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party; in the next year he became a secretary of the Central Committee. From February 1935 to March 1939, he was also the Chairman of the Central Commission for Party Control.

In the "Letter of an Old Bolshevik" (1936), written by Boris Nicolaevsky, there is Bukharin's description of Yezhov: "In the whole of my—now, alas, already long—life, I had to meet few people who, by their nature, were as repellent as Yezhov. Watching him, I am frequently reminded of those evil boys from Rasteryayeva Street workshops, whose favorite form of entertainment was to light a piece of paper tied to the tail of a cat drenched with kerosene, and relish in watching the cat scamper down the street in maddening horror, unable to rid itself of the flames that are getting closer and closer. I have no doubt that Yezhov, in fact, utilized this type of entertainment in his childhood, and he continues to do that in a different form in a different field at present." Nadezhda Mandelstam, in contrast, who met Yezhov at Sukhum in the early thirties, did not perceive anything ominous in his manner or appearance; her impression of him was that of a "modest and rather agreeable person". Yezhov was very short, standing 151 cm, and that, combined with his perceived sadistic personality, led to his nickname "The Poison Dwarf" or "The Bloody Dwarf".

Personal life

Yezhov married Antonina Titova (Антонина Алексеевна Титова), a minor Communist Party clerk, in 1917, but he later divorced her and married Yevgenia Feigenberg (Khayutina-Yezhova), a Soviet publishing worker and Chief Editor of USSR in Construction magazine who was known for her friendship with many Soviet writers and actors. Yezhov and Feigenburg had an adopted daughter, Natalia, an orphan from a children's home. After Yevgenia's and Yezhov's deaths in late 1938 and 1940 respectively, Natalia was sent back to a local orphanage and was forced to relinquish the Yezhov surname. Subsequently, she was known by the name Natalia Khayutina.

Accusation of homosexuality
Yezhov was accused of homosexual acts. When Yezhov was arrested in 1939, he stated during his interrogation that he had many lovers, including Filipp Goloshchyokin, then party functionary in Kazakh ASSR, during the latter half of 1925, and that they had shared an apartment in Kyzylorda.

Head of the NKVD
A turning point for Yezhov came with Stalin's response to the 1934 murder of the Bolshevik chief of Leningrad, Sergei Kirov. Stalin used the murder as a pretext for further purges and he personally handpicked Yezhov to carry out the task. Yezhov oversaw falsified accusations in the Kirov murder case against opposition leaders Kamenev, Zinoviev and their supporters. Yezhov's success in this task led to his further promotion and ultimately to his appointment as head of the NKVD.

He was appointed People's Commissar for Internal Affairs (head of the NKVD) and a member of the Central Committee on 26 September 1936, following the dismissal of Genrikh Yagoda. This appointment did not at first seem to suggest an intensification of the purge: "Unlike Yagoda, Yezhov did not come out of the 'organs', which was considered an advantage".

Party leadership revocation and executions of those found guilty during the Moscow Trials was not a problem for Yezhov. Seeming to be a devout admirer of Stalin and not a member of the organs of state security, Yezhov was just the man Stalin needed to lead the NKVD and rid the government of potential opponents. Yezhov's first task from Stalin was to personally investigate and conduct prosecution of his long-time Chekist mentor Yagoda, which he did with remorseless zeal. Yezhov ordered the NKVD to sprinkle mercury on the curtains of his office so that the physical evidence could be collected and used to support the charge that Yagoda was a German spy, sent to assassinate Yezhov and Stalin with poison and restore capitalism. Yezhov later admitted under interrogation on 5 May 1939 that he had fabricated the mercury poisoning to "raise his authority in the eyes of the leadership of the country". It is also claimed that he personally tortured both Yagoda and Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky to extract their confessions. Yagoda was but the first of many to die by Yezhov's orders. Under Yezhov, the Great Purge reached its height during 1937–1938. 50–75% of the members of the Supreme Soviet and officers of the Soviet military were stripped of their positions and imprisoned, exiled to the Gulag in Siberia, or executed. In addition, a much greater number of ordinary Soviet citizens were accused (usually on flimsy or nonexistent evidence) of disloyalty or "wrecking" by local Chekist troikas and similarly punished to fill Stalin and Yezhov's arbitrary quotas for arrests and executions. Yezhov also conducted a thorough purge of the security organs, both NKVD and GRU, removing and executing not only many officials who had been appointed by his predecessors Yagoda and Menzhinsky, but even his own appointees as well. He admitted that innocents were being falsely accused, but dismissed their lives as unimportant so long as the purge was successful: "There will be some innocent victims in this fight against Fascist agents. We are launching a major attack on the Enemy; let there be no resentment if we bump someone with an elbow. Better that ten innocent people should suffer than one spy get away. When you chop wood, chips fly." In 1937 and 1938 alone, at least 1.3 million were arrested and 681,692 were shot for 'crimes against the state'. The Gulag population swelled by 685,201 under Yezhov, nearly tripling in size in just two years, with at least 140,000 of these prisoners (and likely many more) dying of malnutrition, exhaustion and the elements in the camps (or during transport to them).

Fall from power
Yezhov was appointed People's Commissar for Water Transport on 6 April 1938. During the Great Purge, acting on the orders from Stalin, he had accomplished liquidation of Old Bolsheviks and other potentially "disloyal elements" or "fifth columnists" within the Soviet military and government prior to the onset of war with Germany. The defection to Japan of the Far Eastern NKVD chief, Genrikh Lyushkov, on 13 June 1938, rightly worried Yezhov, who had earlier protected Lyushkov from the purges and now feared that he would be blamed for disloyalty.

Final days
On 22 August 1938, NKVD leader Lavrenty Beria was named as Yezhov's deputy. Beria had managed to survive the Great Purge and the "Yezhovshchina" during the years 1936–1938, even though he had almost become one of its victims. Earlier in 1938, Yezhov had even ordered the arrest of Beria, who was party chief in Georgia. However, Georgian NKVD chief Sergei Goglidze warned Beria, who immediately flew to Moscow to see Stalin personally. Beria convinced Stalin to spare his life and reminded Stalin how efficiently he had carried out party orders in Georgia and Transcaucasia. In a twist of fate, it was Yezhov who eventually fell in the struggle for power, and Beria who became the new NKVD chief.

Over the following months, Beria (with Stalin's approval) began to usurp Yezhov's governance of the Commissariat for Internal Affairs. As early as 8 September, Mikhail Frinovsky, Yezhov's first deputy, was relocated from under his command into the Navy. Stalin's penchant for periodically executing and replacing his primary lieutenants was well known to Yezhov, as he had previously been the man most directly responsible for orchestrating such actions.

Well acquainted with typical Stalinist bureaucratic precursors to eventual dismissal and arrest, Yezhov recognized Beria's increasing influence with Stalin as a sign that his downfall was imminent, and he plunged headlong into alcoholism and despair. Already a heavy drinker, in the last weeks of his service, he reportedly was disconsolate, slovenly, and drunk nearly all of his waking hours, rarely bothering to show up to work. As anticipated, Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov, in a report dated November 11, sharply criticised the work and methods of the NKVD during Yezhov's tenure as chief, thus establishing the bureaucratic pretense necessary to remove him from power.

On 14 November, another of Yezhov's protégés, the Ukrainian NKVD chief Aleksandr Uspensky, disappeared after being warned by Yezhov that he was in trouble. Stalin suspected that Yezhov was involved in the disappearance and told Beria, not Yezhov, that Uspensky must be caught (he was arrested on 14 April 1939). Yezhov had told his wife, Yevgenia, on 18 September that he wanted a divorce, and she had begun writing increasingly despairing letters to Stalin, none of which were answered. She was particularly vulnerable because of her many lovers, and for months people close to her were being arrested. On 19 November 1938, Yevgenia committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.

At his own request, Yezhov was officially relieved of his post as the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs on 25 November, succeeded by Beria, who had been in complete control of the NKVD since the departure of Frinovsky on 8 September. He attended his last Politburo meeting on 29 January 1939.

Stalin was evidently content to ignore Yezhov for several months, finally ordering Beria to denounce him at the annual Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. On 3 March 1939, Yezhov was relieved of all his posts in the Central Committee but retained his post as People's Commissar of Water Transportation. His last working day was 9 April, at which time the "People’s Commissariat was simply abolished by splitting it into two, the People’s Commissariats of the River Fleet and the Sea Fleet, with two new People’s Commissars, Z. A. Shashkov and S. S. Dukel’skii."

Arrest
On 10 April, Yezhov was arrested and imprisoned at the Sukhanovka prison; the "arrest was painstakingly concealed, not only from the general public but also from most NKVD officers... It would not do to make a fuss about the arrest of 'the leader’s favourite,' and Stalin had no desire to arouse public interest in NKVD activity and the circumstances of the conduct of the Great Terror." A letter from Beria, Andreyev and Malenkov to Stalin, dated 29 January 1939, accused the NKVD of allowing "massive, unfounded arrests of completely innocent persons", and stated that the leadership of Yezhov "did not put a stop to this kind of arbitrariness and extremism...but sometimes itself abetted it."

In his confession, Yezhov admitted to the standard litany of state crimes necessary to mark him as an "enemy of the people" prior to execution, including "wrecking", official incompetence, theft of government funds, and treasonous collaboration with German spies and saboteurs. Apart from these political crimes, he was also accused of and confessed to a humiliating history of sexual promiscuity, including homosexuality, rumors that were later deemed true by some post-Soviet examinations of the case.

Trial
On 2 February 1940, Yezhov was tried by the Military Collegium, chaired by Soviet judge Vasiliy Ulrikh, behind closed doors. Yezhov, like his predecessor Yagoda, maintained to the end his love for Stalin. Yezhov denied being a spy, a terrorist, or a conspirator, stating that he preferred "death to telling lies". He maintained that his previous confession had been obtained under torture, admitted that he had purged 14,000 of his fellow Chekists, but said that he was surrounded by "enemies of the people".

Yezhov's determination of his innocence was a distinction few of the victims of the Stalinist purges shared. In his final statement at his trial, he defended his record vehemently, though it did not save his life.

"I am charged with corruption as pertaining to my morals and my private life. But where are the facts? I have been in the public eye of the Party for 25 years. During these 25 years everyone saw me, everyone loved me for my modesty and honesty. I do not deny that I drank heavily, but I worked like a horse. Where is my corruption? I understand and honestly declare that the only cause for sparing my life would be for me to admit that I am guilty of the charges brought against me, to repent before the Party and to implore it to spare my life. Perhaps the Party will spare my life when taking my services into account. But the Party has never had any need of lies, and I am once again declaring to you, that I was not a Polish spy, and I do not want to admit guilt to that charge because such an admission would only be a gift to the Polish landowners, just as admitting guilt to espionage activity for England and Japan would only be a gift to the English lords and Japanese samurai. I refuse to give such gifts to those gentlemen..."

"I’ll now finish my final address. I ask the Military Collegium to grant me the following requests: 1. My fate is obvious. My life, naturally, will not be spared since I myself have contributed to this at my preliminary investigation. I ask only one thing: Shoot me quietly, without putting me through any agony. 2. Neither the Court nor the CC will believe in my innocence. If my mother is alive, I ask that she be provided for in her old age, and that my daughter be taken care of. 3. I ask that my nephews not be subjected to punitive measures because they are not guilty of anything. 4. I ask that the Court investigate thoroughly the case of Zhurbenko, whom I considered and still consider to be an honest man devoted to the Leninist-Stalinist cause. 5. I request that Stalin be informed that I have never in my political life deceived the Party, a fact known to thousands of persons, who know my honesty and modesty. I request that Stalin be informed that I am a victim of circumstances and nothing more, yet here enemies I have overlooked may have also had a hand in this. Tell Stalin that I shall die with his name on my lips."

After the secret trial, Yezhov was allowed to return to his cell; half an hour later, he was called back and told that he had been condemned to death. On hearing the verdict, Yezhov became faint and began to collapse, but the guards caught him and removed him from the room. An immediate appeal for clemency was denied, and Yezhov became hysterical and wept. He soon had to be dragged out of the room, struggling with the guards and screaming.

Execution
On 4 February 1940, Yezhov was shot by future KGB chairman Ivan Serov (or by Vasily Blokhin, in the presence of N. P. Afanasev, according to one book source ) in the basement of a small NKVD station on Varsonofevskii Lane (Varsonofyevskiy pereulok) in Moscow. The basement had a sloping floor so that it could be hosed down after executions and had been built according to Yezhov's own specifications near the Lubyanka. The main NKVD execution chamber in the basement of the Lubyanka was deliberately avoided to ensure total secrecy.

Yezhov's body was immediately cremated, and his ashes dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoye Cemetery. The execution remained secret and as late as 1948, Time reported "Some think he is still in an insane asylum".

Legacy
In Russia, Yezhov remains mostly known as the person who was responsible for atrocities of the Great Purge that he conducted on Stalin's orders. Among art historians, he also has the nickname "The Vanishing Commissar" because after his execution, his likeness was retouched out of an official press photo; he is among the best-known examples of the Soviet press making someone who had fallen out of favour "disappear".

Due to his role in the Great Purge, Yezhov has not been officially rehabilitated by the Soviet and Russian authorities.

Honors and awards

 * Order of Lenin
 * Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia)
 * Badge of "Honorary Security Officer"

A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet on 24 January 1941 deprived Yezhov of all state and special awards.

title: Nikolai Yezhov