title: Chechnya

text: According to the missionary Pian de Carpine, a part of the Alans had successfully resisted a Mongol siege on a mountain for 12 years:


title: Chechnya

text: This twelve year old siege is not found in any other report, however the Russian historian A.I. Krasnov connected this battle with two Chechen folktales he recorded in 1967 that spoke of an old hunter named Idig who with his companions defended the Dakuoh mountain for 12 years against Tatar-Mongols. He also reported to have found several arrowheads and spears from the 13th century near the very mountain at which the battle took place:


title: Chechnya

text: In the 14th and 15th centuries, there was frequent warfare between the Chechens, Tamerlan and Tokhtamysh, culminating in the Battle of the Terek River. The Chechen tribes built fortresses, castles, and defensive walls, protecting the mountains from the invaders. Part of the lowland tribes were occupied by Mongols. However, during the mid-14th century a strong Chechen kingdom called Simsir emerged under Khour Ela, a Chechen king that led the Chechen politics and wars. He was in charge of an army of Chechens against the rogue warlord Mamai and defeated him in the Battle of Tatar-tup in 1362. The kingdom of Simsir met its end during the Timurid invasion of the Caucasus, when Khour Ela allied himself with the Golden Horde Khan Tokhtamysh in the Battle of the Terek River. Timur sought to punish the highlanders for their allegiance to Tokhtamysh and as a consequence invaded Simsir in 1395.


title: Chechnya

text: The 16th century saw the first Russian involvement in the Caucasus. In 1558, Temryuk of Kabarda sent his emissaries to Moscow requesting help from Ivan the Terrible against the Vainakh tribes. Ivan the Terrible married Temryuk's daughter Maria Temryukovna. An alliance was formed to gain the ground in the central Caucasus for the expanding Tsardom of Russia against stubborn Vainakh defenders. Chechnya was a nation in the Northern Caucasus that fought against foreign rule continually since the 15th century. Several Chechen leaders such as the 17th century Mehk-Da Aldaman Gheza led the Chechen politics and fought off encroachments of foreign powers. He defended the borders of Chechnya from invasions of Kabardinians and Avars during the Battle of Khachara in 1667.


title: Chechnya

text: The Chechens converted over the next few centuries to Sunni Islam, as Islam was associated with resistance to Russian encroachment.


title: Chechnya

text: Peter the Great first sought to increase Russia's political influence in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea at the expense of Safavid Persia when he launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723. Notable in Chechen history, this particular Russo-Persian War marked the first military encounter between Imperial Russia and the Vainakh. Russian forces succeeded in taking much of the Caucasian territories from Iran for several years.


title: Chechnya

text: As the Russians took control of the Caspian corridor and moved into Persian-ruled Dagestan, Peter's forces ran into mountain tribes. Peter sent a cavalry force to subdue them, but the Chechens routed them. In 1732, after Russia already ceded back most of the Caucasus to Persia, now led by Nader Shah, following the Treaty of Resht, Russian troops clashed again with Chechens in a village called Chechen-aul along the Argun River. The Russians were defeated again and withdrew, but this battle is responsible for the apocryphal story about how the Nokchi came to be known as "Chechens"-the people ostensibly named for the place the battle had taken place. The name Chechen was however already used since as early as 1692.


title: Chechnya

text: Under intermittent Persian rule since 1555, in 1783 the eastern Georgians of Kartl-Kakheti led by Erekle II and Russia signed the Treaty of Georgievsk. According to this treaty, Kartl-Kakheti received protection from Russia, and Georgia abjured any dependence on Iran. In order to increase its influence in the Caucasus and to secure communications with Kartli and other Christian regions of the Transcaucasia which it considered useful in its wars against Persia and Turkey, the Russian Empire began conquering the Northern Caucasus mountains. The Russian Empire used Christianity to justify its conquests, allowing Islam to spread widely because it positioned itself as the religion of liberation from tsardom, which viewed Nakh tribes as "bandits". The rebellion was led by Mansur Ushurma, a Chechen Naqshbandi (Sufi) sheikh—with wavering military support from other North Caucasian tribes. Mansur hoped to establish a Transcaucasus Islamic state under sharia law. He was unable to fully achieve this because in the course of the war he was betrayed by the Ottomans, handed over to Russians, and executed in 1794.


title: Chechnya

text: Following the forced ceding of the current territories of Dagestan, most of Azerbaijan, and Georgia by Persia to Russia, following the Russo-Persian War of 1804–1813 and its resultant Treaty of Gulistan, Russia significantly widened its foothold in the Caucasus at the expense of Persia. Another successful Caucasus war against Persia several years later, starting in 1826 and ending in 1828 with the Treaty of Turkmenchay, and a successful war against Ottoman Turkey in 1828 and 1829, enabled Russia to use a much larger portion of its army in subduing the natives of the North Caucasus.


title: Chechnya

text: The resistance of the Nakh tribes never ended and was a fertile ground for a new Muslim-Avar commander, Imam Shamil, who fought against the Russians from 1834 to 1859 (see Murid War). In 1859, Shamil was captured by Russians at aul Gunib. Shamil left Baysangur of Benoa, a Chechen with one arm, one eye, and one leg, in charge of command at Gunib. Baysangur broke through the siege and continued to fight Russia for another two years until he was captured and killed by Russians. The Russian tsar hoped that by sparing the life of Shamil, the resistance in the North Caucasus would stop, but it did not. Russia began to use a colonization tactic by destroying Nakh settlements and building Cossack defense lines in the lowlands. The Cossacks suffered defeat after defeat and were constantly attacked by mountaineers, who were robbing them of food and weaponry.


title: Chechnya

text: The tsarists' regime used a different approach at the end of the 1860s. They offered Chechens and Ingush to leave the Caucasus for the Ottoman Empire (see Muhajir (Caucasus)). It is estimated that about 80% of Chechens and Ingush left the Caucasus during the deportation. It weakened the resistance which went from open warfare to insurgent warfare. One of the notable Chechen resistance fighters at the end of the 19th century was a Chechen abrek Zelimkhan Gushmazukaev and his comrade-in-arms Ingush abrek Sulom-Beck Sagopshinski. Together they built up small units which constantly harassed Russian military convoys, government mints, and government post-service, mainly in Ingushetia and Chechnya. Ingush aul Kek was completely burned when the Ingush refused to hand over Zelimkhan. Zelimkhan was killed at the beginning of the 20th century. The war between Nakh tribes and Russia resurfaced during the times of the Russian Revolution, which saw the Nakh struggle against Anton Denikin and later against the Soviet Union.


title: Chechnya

text: On 21 December 1917, Ingushetia, Chechnya, and Dagestan declared independence from Russia and formed a single state: "United Mountain Dwellers of the North Caucasus" (also known as the Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus) which was recognized by major world powers. The capital of the new state was moved to Temir-Khan-Shura (Dagestan). Tapa Tchermoeff, a prominent Chechen statesman, was elected the first prime minister of the state. The second prime minister elected was Vassan-Girey Dzhabagiev, an Ingush statesman, who also was the author of the constitution of the republic in 1917, and in 1920 he was re-elected for the third term. In 1921 the Russians attacked and occupied the country and forcefully absorbed it into the Soviet state. The Caucasian war for independence restarted, and the government went into exile.


title: Chechnya

text: During Soviet rule, Chechnya and Ingushetia were combined to form the Checheno-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In the 1930s, Chechnya was flooded with many Ukrainians fleeing from a famine. As a result, many of the Ukrainians settled in Chechen-Ingush ASSR permanently and survived the famine.


title: Chechnya

text: Although over 50,000 Chechens and over 12,000 Ingush were fighting against Nazi Germany on the front line (including Heroes of the USSR: Abukhadzhi Idrisov, Khanpasha Nuradilov, Movlid Visaitov), and although Nazi German troops advanced as far as the Ossetian ASSR city of Ordzhonikidze and the Chechen-Ingush ASSR city of Malgobek after capturing half of the Caucasus in less than a month, Chechens and Ingush were falsely accused as Nazi supporters and entire nations were deported during Operation Lentil to the Kazakh SSR (later Kazakhstan) in 1944 near the end of World War II where over 60% of Chechen and Ingush populations perished. American historian Norman Naimark writes: The deportation was justified by the materials prepared by NKVD officer Bogdan Kobulov accusing Chechens and Ingush in a mass conspiracy preparing rebellion and providing assistance to the German forces. Many of the materials were later proven to be fabricated. Even distinguished Red Army officers who fought bravely against Germans (e.g. the commander of 255th Separate Chechen-Ingush regiment Movlid Visaitov, the first to contact American forces at Elbe river) were deported. There is a theory that the real reason why Chechens and Ingush were deported was the desire of Russia to attack Turkey, an anti-communist country, as Chechens and Ingush could impede such plans. In 2004, the European Parliament recognized the deportation of Chechens and Ingush as an act of genocide.


title: Chechnya

text: The territory of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was divided between Stavropol Krai (where Grozny Okrug was formed), the Dagestan ASSR, the North Ossetian ASSR, and the Georgian SSR.


title: Chechnya

text: The Chechens and Ingush were allowed to return to their land after 1956 during de-Stalinisation under Nikita Khrushchev when the Chechen-Ingush ASSR was restored but with both the boundaries and ethnic composition of the territory significantly changed. There were many (predominantly Russian) migrants from other parts of the Soviet Union, who often settled in the abandoned family homes of Chechens and Ingushes. The republic lost its Prigorodny District which transferred to North Ossetian ASSR but gained predominantly Russian Naursky District and Shelkovskoy District that is considered the homeland for Terek Cossacks.


title: Chechnya

text: The Russification policies towards Chechens continued after 1956, with Russian language proficiency required in many aspects of life to provide Chechens better opportunities for advancement in the Soviet system.


title: Chechnya

text: On 26 November 1990, the Supreme Council of Chechen-Ingush ASSR adopted the "Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Chechen-Ingush Republic". This declaration was part of the reorganisation of the Soviet Union. This new treaty was to be signed 22 August 1991, which would have transformed 15 republic states into more than 80. The 19–21 August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt led to the abandonment of this reorganisation.


title: Chechnya

text: With the impending dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, an independence movement, the Chechen National Congress, was formed, led by ex-Soviet Air Force general and new Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev. It campaigned for the recognition of Chechnya as a separate nation. This movement was opposed by Boris Yeltsin's Russian Federation, which argued that Chechnya had not been an independent entity within the Soviet Union—as the Baltic, Central Asian, and other Caucasian States had—but was part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and hence did not have a right under the Soviet constitution to secede. It also argued that other republics of Russia, such as Tatarstan, would consider seceding from the Russian Federation if Chechnya were granted that right. Finally, it argued that Chechnya was a major hub in the oil infrastructure of Russia and hence its secession would hurt the country's economy and energy access.


title: Chechnya

text: In the ensuing decade, the territory was locked in an ongoing struggle between various factions, usually fighting unconventionally.


title: Chechnya

text: The First Chechen War took place from 1994 to 1996, when Russian forces attempted to regain control over Chechnya, which had declared independence in November 1991. Despite overwhelming numerical superiority in men, weaponry, and air support, the Russian forces were unable to establish effective permanent control over the mountainous area due to numerous successful full-scale battles and insurgency raids. The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in 1995 shocked the Russian public.


title: Chechnya

text: In April 1996 the first democratically elected president of Chechnya, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was killed by Russian forces using a booby trap bomb and a missile fired from a warplane after he was located by triangulating the position of a satellite phone he was using.


title: Chechnya

text: The widespread demoralisation of the Russian forces in the area and a successful offensive to re-take Grozny by Chechen rebel forces led by Aslan Maskhadov prompted Russian President Boris Yeltsin to declare a ceasefire in 1996, and sign a peace treaty a year later that saw a withdrawal of Russian forces.


title: Chechnya

text: After the war, parliamentary and presidential elections took place in January 1997 in Chechnya and brought to power new President Aslan Maskhadov, chief of staff and prime minister in the Chechen coalition government, for a five-year term. Maskhadov sought to maintain Chechen sovereignty while pressing the Russian government to help rebuild the republic, whose formal economy and infrastructure were virtually destroyed. Russia continued to send money for the rehabilitation of the republic; it also provided pensions and funds for schools and hospitals. Nearly half a million people (40% of Chechnya's prewar population) had been internally displaced and lived in refugee camps or overcrowded villages. There was an economic downturn. Two Russian brigades were permanently stationed in Chechnya.


title: Chechnya

text: In lieu of the devastated economic structure, kidnapping emerged as the principal source of income countrywide, procuring over US$200 million during the three-year independence of the chaotic fledgling state, although victims were rarely killed. In 1998, 176 people were kidnapped, 90 of whom were released, according to official accounts. President Maskhadov started a major campaign against hostage-takers, and on 25 October 1998, Shadid Bargishev, Chechnya's top anti-kidnapping official, was killed in a remote-controlled car bombing. Bargishev's colleagues then insisted they would not be intimidated by the attack and would go ahead with their offensive. Political violence and religious extremism, blamed on "Wahhabism", was rife. In 1998, Grozny authorities declared a state of emergency. Tensions led to open clashes between the Chechen National Guard and Islamist militants, such as the July 1998 confrontation in Gudermes.


title: Chechnya

text: The War of Dagestan began on 7 August 1999, during which the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade (IIPB) began an unsuccessful incursion into the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan in favor of the Shura of Dagestan which sought independence from Russia. In September, a series of apartment bombs that killed around 300 people in several Russian cities, including Moscow, were blamed on the Chechen separatists. Some journalists contested the official explanation, instead blaming the Russian Secret Service for blowing up the buildings to initiate a new military campaign against Chechnya. In response to the bombings, a prolonged air campaign of retaliatory strikes against the Ichkerian regime and a ground offensive that began in October 1999 marked the beginning of the Second Chechen War. Much better organized and planned than in the first Chechen War, the Russian armed forces took control of most regions. The Russian forces used brutal force, killing 60 Chechen civilians during a mop-up operation in Aldy, Chechnya on 5 February 2000. After the re-capture of Grozny in February 2000, the Ichkerian regime fell apart.


title: Chechnya

text: Chechen rebels continued to fight Russian troops and conduct terrorist attacks. In October 2002, 40–50 Chechen rebels seized a Moscow theater and took about 900 civilians hostage. The crisis ended with 117 hostages and up to 50 rebels dead, mostly due to an unknown aerosol pumped into the building by Russian special forces to incapacitate the people inside.


title: Chechnya

text: In response to the increasing terrorism, Russia tightened its grip on Chechnya and expanded its anti-terrorist operations throughout the region. Russia installed a pro-Russian Chechen regime. In 2003, a referendum was held on a constitution that reintegrated Chechnya within Russia but provided limited autonomy. According to the Chechen government, the referendum passed with 95.5% of the votes and almost 80% turnout. "The Economist" was skeptical of the results, arguing that "few outside the Kremlin regard the referendum as fair".


title: Chechnya

text: In September 2004, separatist rebels occupied a school in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia, demanding recognition of the independence of Chechnya and a Russian withdrawal. 1,100 people (including 777 children) were taken hostage. The attack lasted three days, resulting in the deaths of over 331 people, including 186 children. After the 2004 school siege, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced sweeping security and political reforms, sealing borders in the Caucasus region and revealing plans to give the central government more power. He also vowed to take tougher action against domestic terrorism, including preemptive strikes against Chechen separatists. In 2005 and 2006, separatist leaders Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev were killed.


title: Chechnya

text: Since 2007, Chechnya has been governed by Ramzan Kadyrov. Kadyrov's rule has been characterized by high-level corruption, a poor human rights record, widespread use of torture, and a growing cult of personality. Allegations of anti-gay purges in Chechnya were initially reported on 1 April 2017.


title: Chechnya

text: In April 2009, Russia ended its counter-terrorism operation and pulled out the bulk of its army. The insurgency in the North Caucasus continued even after this date. The Caucasus Emirate had fully adopted the tenets of a Salafist jihadist group through its strict adherence to the Sunni Hanbali obedience to the literal interpretation of the Quran and the Sunnah.


title: Chechnya

text: In June 2022, the US State Department advised citizens not to travel to Chechnya, due to terrorism, kidnapping, and risk of civil unrest.


title: Chechnya

text: Situated in the eastern part of the North Caucasus in Eastern Europe, Chechnya is surrounded on nearly all sides by Russian Federal territory. In the west, it borders North Ossetia and Ingushetia, in the north, Stavropol Krai, in the east, Dagestan, and to the south, Georgia. Its capital is Grozny. Chechnya is well known for being mountainous, but it is in fact split between the more flat areas north of the Terek, and the highlands south of the Terek.


title: Chechnya

text: Despite a relatively small territory, Chechnya is characterized by a significant variety of climate conditions. The average temperature in Grozny is 11.2 °C (52.1 °F).


title: Chechnya

text: There are no true districts of Chechnya, but the different dialects of the Chechen language informally define different districts. The main dialects are:


title: Chechnya

text: Grozny, also known as the Dzhokhar dialect, is the dialect of people who live in and in some towns around Grozny.


title: Chechnya

text: Naskhish, a dialect spoken to the northeast of Chechnya. The most notable difference in this dialect is the addition of the letters "ȯ", "ј" and "є"


title: Chechnya

text: Day, pronounced like the word 'die' is spoken in a small section of the south, around and in the town of Day.


title: Chechnya

text: There are other dialects which are believed to define districts, but because these areas are so isolated, not much research has been done on these areas.


title: Chechnya

text: According to the 2021 Census, the population of the republic is 1,510,824, up from 1,268,989 in the 2010 Census.


title: Chechnya

text: As of the 2010 Census, Chechens at 1,206,551 make up 95.3% of the republic's population. Other groups include Russians (24,382, or 1.9%), Kumyks (12,221, or 1%), Ingush (1,296 or 0.1%) and a host of other small groups, each accounting for less than 0.5% of the total population. The Armenian community, which used to number around 15,000 in Grozny alone, has dwindled to a few families. The Armenian church of Grozny was demolished in 1930. The birth rate was 25.41 in 2004. (25.7 in Achkhoi Martan, 19.8 in Groznyy, 17.5 in Kurchaloi, 28.3 in Urus Martan and 11.1 in Vedeno).


title: Chechnya

text: At the end of the Soviet era, ethnic Russians (including Cossacks) comprised about 23% of the population (269,000 in 1989), but now Russians number only about 16,400 people (about 1.2% of the population) and still some emigration is happening.


title: Chechnya

text: The languages used in the Republic are Chechen and Russian. Chechen belongs to the Vaynakh or North-central Caucasian language family, which also includes Ingush and Batsb. Some scholars place it in a wider North Caucasian languages.


title: Chechnya

text: Despite its difficult past, Chechnya has a high life expectancy, one of the highest in Russia. But the pattern of life expectancy is unusual, and in according to numerous statistics, Chechnya stands out from the overall picture. In 2020 Chechnya had the deepest fall in life expectancy, but in 2021 it had the biggest rise. Chechnya has the highest excess of life expectancy in rural areas over cities.


title: Chechnya

text: Islam is the predominant religion in Chechnya, practiced by 95% of those polled in Grozny in 2010. Most of the population follows either the Shafi'i or the Hanafi schools of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). The Shafi'i school of jurisprudence has a long tradition among the Chechens, and thus it remains the most practiced. Many Chechens are also Sufis, of either the Qadiri or Naqshbandi orders.


title: Chechnya

text: Following the end of the Soviet Union, there has been an Islamic revival in Chechnya, and in 2011 it was estimated that there were 465 mosques, including the Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque in Grozny accommodating 10,000 worshippers, as well 31 madrasas, including an Islamic university named Kunta-haji and a Center of Islamic Medicine in Grozny which is the largest such institution in Europe.


title: Chechnya

text: From the 11th to 13th centuries (i.e. before Mongol invasions of Durdzuketia), there was a mission of Georgian Orthodox missionaries to the Nakh peoples. Their success was limited, though a couple of highland teips did convert (conversion was largely by teip). However, during the Mongol invasions, these Christianized teips gradually reverted to paganism, perhaps due to the loss of trans-Caucasian contacts as the Georgians fought the Mongols and briefly fell under their dominion.


title: Chechnya

text: The once-strong Russian minority in Chechnya, mostly Terek Cossacks and estimated as numbering approximately 25,000 in 2012, are predominantly Russian Orthodox, although currently only one church exists in Grozny. In August 2011, Archbishop Zosima of Vladikavkaz and Makhachkala performed the first mass baptism ceremony in the history of the Chechen Republic in the Terek River of Naursky District in which 35 citizens of Naursky and Shelkovsky districts were converted to Orthodoxy. As of 2020, there are eight Orthodox churches in Chechnya, the largest is the temple of the Archangel Michael in Grozny.


title: Chechnya

text: Since 1990, the Chechen Republic has had many legal, military, and civil conflicts involving separatist movements and pro-Russian authorities. Today, Chechnya is a relatively stable federal republic, although there is still some separatist movement activity. Its regional constitution entered into effect on 2 April 2003, after an all-Chechen referendum was held on 23 March 2003. Some Chechens were controlled by regional teips, or clans, despite the existence of pro- and anti-Russian political structures.


title: Chechnya

text: The former separatist religious leader (mufti) Akhmad Kadyrov, looked upon as a traitor by many separatists, was elected president with 83% of the vote in an internationally monitored election on 5 October 2003. Incidents of ballot stuffing and voter intimidation by Russian soldiers and the exclusion of separatist parties from the polls were subsequently reported by Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitors. On 9 May 2004, Kadyrov was assassinated in Grozny football stadium by a landmine explosion that was planted beneath a VIP stage and detonated during a parade, and Sergey Abramov was appointed acting prime minister after the incident. However, since 2005 Ramzan Kadyrov (son of Akhmad Kadyrov) has been the caretaker prime minister, and in 2007 was appointed as the new president. Many allege he is the wealthiest and most powerful man in the republic, with control over a large private militia (the Kadyrovites). The militia, which began as his father's security force, has been accused of killings and kidnappings by human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch.


title: Chechnya

text: Ichkeria was a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation between 1991 and 2010. Former president of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia deposed in a military coup of 1991 and a participant of the Georgian Civil War, recognized the independence of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria in 1993. Diplomatic relations with Ichkeria were also established by the partially recognised Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the Taliban government on 16 January 2000. This recognition ceased with the fall of the Taliban in 2001. However, despite Taliban recognition, there were no friendly relations between the Taliban and Ichkeria—Maskhadov rejected their recognition, stating that the Taliban were illegitimate. Ichkeria also received vocal support from the Baltic countries, a group of Ukrainian nationalists, and Poland; Estonia once voted to recognize, but the act never was followed through due to pressure applied by both Russia and the EU.


title: Chechnya

text: The president of this government was Aslan Maskhadov, the foreign minister was Ilyas Akhmadov, who was the spokesman for Maskhadov. Aslan Maskhadov had been elected in an internationally monitored election in 1997 for four years, which took place after signing a peace agreement with Russia. In 2001 he issued a decree prolonging his office for one additional year; he was unable to participate in the 2003 presidential election since separatist parties were barred by the Russian government, and Maskhadov faced accusations of terrorist offenses in Russia. Maskhadov left Grozny and moved to the separatist-controlled areas of the south at the onset of the Second Chechen War. Maskhadov was unable to influence a number of warlords who retain effective control over Chechen territory, and his power was diminished as a result. Russian forces killed Maskhadov on 8 March 2005, and the assassination of Maskhadov was widely criticized since it left no legitimate Chechen separatist leader with whom to conduct peace talks. Akhmed Zakayev, deputy prime minister and a foreign minister under Maskhadov, was appointed shortly after the 1997 election and is currently living under asylum in England. He and others chose Abdul Khalim Saidullayev, a relatively unknown Islamic judge who was previously the host of an Islamic program on Chechen television, to replace Maskhadov following his death. On 17 June 2006, it was reported that Russian special forces killed Abdul Khalim Saidullayev in a raid in the Chechen town of Argun.


title: Chechnya

text: The successor of Saidullayev became Doku Umarov. On 31 October 2007, Umarov abolished the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and its presidency and in its place proclaimed the Caucasus Emirate with himself as its Emir. This change of status has been rejected by many Chechen politicians and military leaders who continue to support the existence of the republic.


title: Chechnya

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian parliament voted to recognize the "Chechen republic of Ichkeria as territory temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation".


title: Chechnya

text: The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reports that after hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians and Chechens fled their homes following inter-ethnic and separatist conflicts in Chechnya in 1994 and 1999, more than 150,000 people still remain displaced in Russia today.


title: Chechnya

text: Human rights groups criticized the conduct of the 2005 parliamentary elections as unfairly influenced by the central Russian government and military.


title: Chechnya

text: In 2006 Human Rights Watch reported that pro-Russian Chechen forces under the command of Ramzan Kadyrov, as well as federal police personnel, used torture to get information about separatist forces. "If you are detained in Chechnya, you face a real and immediate risk of torture. And there is little chance that your torturer will be held accountable", said Holly Cartner, Director of the Europe and Central Asia division of the Human Rights Watch.


title: Chechnya

text: In 2009, the US government financed American organization Freedom House included Chechnya in the "Worst of the Worst" list of most repressive societies in the world, together with Burma, North Korea, Tibet, and others.


title: Chechnya

text: On 1 February 2009, "The New York Times" released extensive evidence to support allegations of consistent torture and executions under the Kadyrov government. The accusations were sparked by the assassination in Austria of a former Chechen rebel who had gained access to Kadyrov's inner circle, 27-year-old Umar Israilov.


title: Chechnya

text: On 1 July 2009, Amnesty International released a detailed report covering the human rights violations committed by the Russian Federation against Chechen citizens. Among the most prominent features was that those abused had no method of redress against assaults, ranging from kidnapping to torture, while those responsible were never held accountable. This led to the conclusion that Chechnya was being ruled without law, being run into further devastating destabilization.


title: Chechnya

text: On 10 March 2011, Human Rights Watch reported that since Chechenization, the government has pushed for enforced Islamic dress code. The president Ramzan Kadyrov is quoted as saying "I have the right to criticize my wife. She doesn't [have the right to criticize me]. With us [in Chechen society], a wife is a housewife. A woman should know her place. A woman should give her love to us [men]... She would be [man's] property. And the man is the owner. Here, if a woman does not behave properly, her husband, father, and brother are responsible. According to our tradition, if a woman fools around, her family members kill her... That's how it happens, a brother kills his sister or a husband kills his wife... As a president, I cannot allow for them to kill. So, let women not wear shorts...". He has also openly defended honor killings on several occasions.


title: Chechnya

text: On 9 July 2017, Russian newspaper "Novaya Gazeta" reported that a number of people were subject to an extrajudicial execution on the night of 26 January 2017. It published 27 names of the people known to be dead, but stressed that the list is "not all [of those killed]"; the newspaper asserted that 50 people may have been killed in the execution. Some of the dead were gay, but not all; the deaths appeared to have been triggered by the death of a policeman, and according to the author of the report, Elena Milashina, were executed for alleged terrorism.


title: Chechnya

text: In December 2021, up to 50 family members of critics of the Kadyrov government were abducted in a wave of mass kidnappings beginning on 22 December.


title: Chechnya

text: On 1 September 1997, Criminal Code reportedly being implemented in the Chechen Republic-Ichkeriya, Article 148 punishes "anal sexual intercourse between a man and a woman or a man and a man". For first- and second-time offenders, the punishment is caning. A third conviction leads to the death penalty, which can be carried out in a number of ways including stoning or beheading.


title: Chechnya

text: In 2017, it was reported by "Novaya Gazeta" and human rights groups that Chechen authorities had set up concentration camps, one of which is in Argun, where gay men are interrogated and subjected to physical violence. On 27 June 2018, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe noted "cases of abduction, arbitrary detention and torture ... with the direct involvement of Chechen law enforcement officials and on the orders of top-level Chechen authorities" and expressed dismay "at the statements of Chechen and Russian public officials denying the existence of LGBTI people in the Chechen Republic". Kadyrov's spokesman Alvi Karimov told Interfax that gay people "simply do not exist in the republic" and made an approving reference to honor killings by family members "if there were such people in Chechnya". In a 2021 Council of Europe report into anti-LGBTI hate crimes, rapporteur Foura ben Chikha described the "state-sponsored attacks carried out against LGBTI people in Chechnya in 2017" as "the single most egregious example of violence against LGBTI people in Europe that has occurred in decades".


title: Chechnya

text: On 11 January 2019, it was reported that another 'gay purge' had begun in the country in December 2018, with several gay men and women being detained. The Russian LGBT Network believes that around 40 people were detained and two killed.


title: Chechnya

text: During the war, the Chechen economy fell apart. In 1994, the separatists planned to introduce a new currency, but the change did not occur due to the re-taking of Chechnya by Russian troops in the Second Chechen War.


title: Chechnya

text: The economic situation in Chechnya has improved considerably since 2000. According to the "New York Times", major efforts to rebuild Grozny have been made, and improvements in the political situation have led some officials to consider setting up a tourism industry, though there are claims that construction workers are being irregularly paid and that poor people have been displaced.


title: Chechnya

text: Total revenue of the budget of Chechnya for 2017 was 59.2 billion rubles. Of these, 48.5 billion rubles were grants from the federal budget of the Russian Federation.


title: Chechnya

text: In late 1970s, Chechnya produced up to 20 million tons of oil annually, production declined sharply to approximately 3 million tons in the late 1980s, and to below 2 million tons before 1994, first (1994–1996) second Russian invasion of Chechnya (1999) inflicted material damage on the oil-sector infrastructure, oil production decreased to 750,000 tons in 2001 only to increase to 2 million tons in 2006, by 2012 production was 1 million tons.


title: Tim Burton

text: Timothy Walter Burton (born August 25, 1958) is an American filmmaker and animator. He is known for his gothic fantasy and horror films such as "Beetlejuice" (1988), "Edward Scissorhands" (1990), "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993), "Ed Wood" (1994), "Sleepy Hollow" (1999), "Corpse Bride" (2005), "" (2007) and "Dark Shadows" (2012), as well as the television series "Wednesday "(2022). Burton also directed the superhero films "Batman" (1989) and "Batman Returns" (1992), the sci-fi film "Planet of the Apes" (2001), the fantasy-drama "Big Fish" (2003), the musical adventure film "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005), and the fantasy films "Alice in Wonderland" (2010) and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" (2016).


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton has often worked with actors Winona Ryder, Johnny Depp, Lisa Marie (former girlfriend), Helena Bonham Carter (his former domestic partner) and composer Danny Elfman, who made scores for all but three of Burton's films. Burton also wrote and illustrated the poetry book "The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories", published in 1997 by British publishing house Faber and Faber, and a compilation of his drawings, sketches, and other artwork, entitled "The Art of Tim Burton", was released in 2009. A follow-up to that book, entitled "The Napkin Art of Tim Burton: Things You Think About in a Bar", containing sketches made by Burton on napkins at bars and restaurants he visited, was released in 2015. His accolades include nominations for two Academy Awards and three BAFTA Awards, and wins for an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton was born on August 25, 1958, in Burbank, California, the son of Jean Burton (née Erickson, 1933–2002), later the owner of a cat-themed gift shop, and William "Bill" Burton (1930–2000), a former minor league baseball player who was working for the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department. As a preteen, Burton would make short films in his backyard at 2101 North Evergreen Street using crude stop motion animation techniques or shooting on 8 mm film without sound (one of his oldest known juvenile films is "The Island of Doctor Agor", which he made when he was 13 years old). Burton attended Burbank High School but was not a particularly good student. He played on the water polo team at Burbank High. Burton was an introspective person and found pleasure in artwork, painting, drawing, and watching movies. His future work would be heavily influenced by the works of such childhood heroes as Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl. After graduating from Burbank High School, Burton attended the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Santa Clarita, to study character animation. As a student at CalArts, Burton made the shorts "Stalk of the Celery Monster" and "King and Octopus".


title: Tim Burton

text: "Stalk of the Celery Monster" attracted the attention of Walt Disney Productions, which offered Burton an animator's apprenticeship at its animation division. He worked as an animator, storyboard artist, graphic designer, art director, and concept artist on films such as "The Fox and the Hound" (1981), "Tron" (1982), and "The Black Cauldron" (1985). His concept art never made it into the finished films.


title: Tim Burton

text: While at Disney in 1982, Burton made his first short, "Vincent", a six-minute black-and-white stop motion film based on a poem written by Burton, which depicts a young boy who fantasizes that he is his hero Vincent Price, with Price himself providing narration. The film was produced by Rick Heinrichs, whom Burton had befriended while working in the concept art department at Disney. The film was shown at the Chicago Film Festival and released, alongside the teen drama "Tex", for two weeks in one Los Angeles cinema. This was followed by Burton's first live-action production, "Hansel and Gretel", a Japanese-themed adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale for the Disney Channel, which climaxes in a kung fu fight between Hansel and Gretel and the witch. Having aired once in 1983 at 10:30 pm on Halloween and promptly shelved, prints of the film are extremely difficult to locate, fueling rumors that the project did not exist. The short would finally go on public display in 2009 at the Museum of Modern Art, and again in 2011 as part of the Tim Burton art exhibit at LACMA. It was again shown at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2012.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton's next live-action short film, "Frankenweenie", was released in 1984. It tells the story of a young boy who tries to revive his dog after it is run over by a car. Filmed in black-and-white, it stars Barret Oliver, Shelley Duvall (with whom he would work again in 1986, directing an episode of her television series "Faerie Tale Theatre"), and Daniel Stern. After "Frankenweenie" was completed, Disney fired Burton, under the pretext of him spending the company's resources on a film that would be too dark and scary for children to see.


title: Tim Burton

text: Actor Paul Reubens saw "Frankenweenie" and chose Burton to direct the cinematic spin-off of his popular character Pee-wee Herman, stating on the audio commentary of 2000 DVD release of "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" that as soon as the short began, he was sold on Burton's style. Pee-wee Herman gained mainstream popularity with a successful stage show at The Groundlings and the Roxy which was later turned into an HBO special. The film, "Pee-wee's Big Adventure", was made on a budget of $8 million and grossed more than $40 million at the North American box office. Burton, a fan of the eccentric musical group Oingo Boingo, asked songwriter Danny Elfman to provide the music for the film. Since then, Elfman has scored every film that Tim Burton has directed, except for "Ed Wood", "", and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children".


title: Tim Burton

text: After directing episodes for the revitalized version of '50s/'60s anthology horror series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and Shelley Duvall's "Faerie Tale Theatre", Burton directed his next big project: "Beetlejuice" (1988), a supernatural comedy horror about a young couple forced to cope with life after death and the family of pretentious yuppies who invade their treasured New England home. Their teenage daughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder), has an obsession with death which allows her to see the deceased couple. Starring Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, and featuring Michael Keaton as the obnoxious bio-exorcist Beetlejuice, the film grossed $80 million on a relatively low budget and won an Academy Award for Best Makeup. It would be converted into a cartoon of the same name, with Burton playing a role as executive producer, that ran on ABC and later Fox.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton's ability to produce hits with low budgets impressed studio executives, and he received his first big budget film, "Batman". The production was plagued with problems. Burton repeatedly clashed with the film's producers, Jon Peters and Peter Guber, but the most notable debacle involved casting. For the title role, Burton chose to cast Michael Keaton as Batman following their previous collaboration in "Beetlejuice", despite Keaton's average physique, inexperience with action films, and reputation as a comic actor. Although Burton won in the end, the furor over the casting provoked enormous fan animosity, to the extent that Warner Brothers' share price slumped. Burton had considered it ridiculous to cast a "bulked-up" ultra-masculine man as Batman, insisting that Batman should be an ordinary man who dressed up in an elaborate bat costume to frighten criminals. Burton cast Jack Nicholson as The Joker (Tim Curry being his second choice) in a move that helped assuage fans' fears, as well as attracting older audiences not as interested in a superhero film. When the film opened in June 1989, it was backed by the biggest marketing and merchandising campaign in film history at the time, and became one of the biggest box office hits of all time, grossing over $250 million in the U.S. and $400 million worldwide (numbers not adjusted for inflation) and earning critical acclaim for the performances of both Keaton and Nicholson, as well as the film's production aspects, which won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction. The success of the film helped establish Burton as a profitable director, and it proved to be a huge influence on future superhero films, which eschewed the bright, all-American heroism of Richard Donner's "Superman" for a grimmer, more realistic look and characters with more psychological depth. It also became a major inspiration for the successful 1990s cartoon "", as the darkness of Burton's film and its sequel allowed for a darker Batman on television.


title: Tim Burton

text: "I was never a giant comic book fan, but I've always loved the image of Batman and the Joker. The reason I've never been a comic book fan – and I think it started when I was a child – is because I could never tell which box I was supposed to read. I don't know if it was dyslexia or whatever, but that's why I loved "The Killing Joke", because for the first time I could tell which one to read. It's my favorite. It's the first comic I've ever loved. And the success of those graphic novels made our ideas more acceptable."


title: Tim Burton

text: In 1990, Burton co-wrote (with Caroline Thompson) and directed "Edward Scissorhands", re-uniting with Winona Ryder from "Beetlejuice". His friend Johnny Depp, a teen idol at the end of the 1980s due primarily to his work on the hit TV series "21 Jump Street", was cast in the title role of Edward, who was the creation of an eccentric and old-fashioned inventor (played by Vincent Price in one of his last screen appearances). Edward looked human, but was left with scissors in the place of hands due to the untimely death of his creator. Set in suburbia (and shot in Land o' Lakes, Florida), the film is largely seen as Burton's autobiography of his childhood in Burbank. Burton's idea for the character of Edward Scissorhands came from a drawing he created in high school. Depp wrote a similar comment in the foreword to Mark Salisbury's book, "Burton on Burton", regarding his first meeting with Burton over the casting of the film. "Edward Scissorhands" is considered one of Burton's best movies by some critics. Burton has stated that this is his most personal and meaningful film because it's a representation of him not being able to communicate effectively with others as a teenager.


title: Tim Burton

text: After the success of "Batman", Burton agreed to direct the sequel for Warner Bros. on the condition that he would be granted total control. The result was "Batman Returns", which featured Michael Keaton returning as Batman, and a new triad of villains: Danny DeVito (as the Penguin), Michelle Pfeiffer (as Catwoman) and Christopher Walken (as Max Shreck, an evil corporate tycoon and original character created for the film). Darker and considerably more personal than its predecessor, concerns were raised that the film was too scary for children. Audiences were more uncomfortable at the film's overt sexuality, personified by the sleek, fetish-inspired styling of Catwoman's costume. Burton made many changes to the Penguin which would subsequently be applied to the character in both comics and television. While in the comics, he was an ordinary man, Burton created a freak of nature resembling a penguin with webbed, flipper-like fingers, a hooked, beak-like nose, and a penguin-like body (resulting in a rotund, man). Released in 1992, "Batman Returns" grossed $282.8 million worldwide, making it a financial success, though not to the extent of its predecessor.


title: Tim Burton

text: Due to schedule constraints on "Batman Returns", Burton produced, but did not direct, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993) for Disney, originally meant to be a children's book in rhyme. The film was directed by Henry Selick and written by Caroline Thompson, based on Burton's original story, world, and characters. The film received positive reviews for the stop motion animation, musical score, and original storyline. It was a box office success, grossing $50 million. Because of the nature of the film, it was not produced under Disney's name, but rather Disney owned Touchstone Pictures. Disney wanted the protagonist to have eyes, but the final iteration did not. Over 100 people worked on this motion picture just to create the characters, and it took three years of work to produce the film. Burton collaborated with Selick again for "James and the Giant Peach" (1996), which Burton co-produced.


title: Tim Burton

text: In 1994, Burton and frequent co-producer Denise Di Novi produced the 1994 fantasy-comedy "Cabin Boy", starring comedian Chris Elliott and directed/written by Adam Resnick. Burton was originally supposed to direct the film after seeing Elliott perform on "Get a Life", but he handed the directing responsibility to Resnick once he was offered "Ed Wood". Burton's next film, "Ed Wood" (1994), was of a much smaller scale, depicting the life of infamous director Ed Wood. Starring Johnny Depp in the title role, the film is an homage to the low-budget science fiction and horror films of Burton's childhood and handles its comical protagonist and his motley band of collaborators with surprising fondness and sensitivity. Owing to creative squabbles during the making of "The Nightmare Before Christmas", Danny Elfman declined to score "Ed Wood", and the assignment went to Howard Shore. While a commercial failure at the time of its release, "Ed Wood" became a cult classic and was well received by critics. Martin Landau received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi, and the film received the Academy Award for Best Makeup.


title: Tim Burton

text: Despite Burton's intention to still lead the "Batman" franchise, Warner Bros. considered "Batman Returns" too dark and unsafe for children. To attract the young audience, it was decided that Joel Schumacher, who had directed films like "The Client", would lead the third film, while Burton would only produce it in conjunction with Peter MacGregor-Scott. Following this change and the changes made by the new director, Michael Keaton resigned from the lead role and was replaced by Val Kilmer. Filming for "Batman Forever" began in late 1994 with new actors: Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Dent/Two-Face, Nicole Kidman as Dr. Chase Meridian, Chris O'Donnell as Dick Grayson/Robin and Jim Carrey as Edward Nygma/The Riddler; the only two actors who returned after "Batman Returns" were Pat Hingle as Commissioner Gordon and Michael Gough as Alfred Pennyworth. The film, a combination of the darkness that characterized the saga and colors and neon signs proposed by Schumacher, was a huge box office success, earning $336 million. Warner Bros. demanded that Schumacher delete some scenes so the film did not have the same tone as its predecessor, "Batman Returns" (later they were added as deleted scenes on the 2005 DVD release).


title: Tim Burton

text: In 1996, Burton and Selick reunited for the musical fantasy "James and the Giant Peach", based on the book by Roald Dahl which contains magical elements and references to drugs and alcohol. The film, a combination of live action and stop motion footage, starred Richard Dreyfuss, Susan Sarandon, David Thewlis, Simon Callow and Jane Leeves among others, with Burton producing and Selick directing. The film was mostly praised by critics and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score (by Randy Newman).


title: Tim Burton

text: Elfman and Burton reunited for "Mars Attacks!" (1996). Based on a popular science-fiction trading card series, the film was a hybrid of 1950s science fiction and 1970s all-star disaster films. Coincidence made it an inadvertent spoof of the blockbuster "Independence Day", which had been released five months earlier. The film boasted an all-star cast, including Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Danny DeVito, Pierce Brosnan, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Natalie Portman, Lukas Haas, Martin Short, Rod Steiger, Christina Applegate, and Jack Black.


title: Tim Burton

text: "Sleepy Hollow", released in late 1999, had a supernatural setting and starred Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, a detective with an interest in forensic science rather than the schoolteacher of Washington Irving's original tale. With "Sleepy Hollow", Burton paid homage to the horror films of the English company Hammer Films. Christopher Lee, one of Hammer's stars, was given a cameo role. A host of Burton regulars appeared in supporting roles (Michael Gough, Jeffrey Jones, and Christopher Walken, among others), and Christina Ricci was cast as Katrina van Tassel. A well-regarded supporting cast was headed by Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Richard Griffiths and Ian McDiarmid. Mostly well received by critics, and with a special mention to Elfman's gothic score, the film has grossed $207 million worldwide and won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction, as well as two BAFTAs for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design. A box office success, "Sleepy Hollow" was also a turning point for Burton. Along with change in his personal life (separation from actress Lisa Marie), Burton changed radically in style for his next project, leaving the haunted forests and colorful outcasts behind to go on to directing "Planet of the Apes" which, as Burton had repeatedly noted, was "not a remake" of the earlier film.


title: Tim Burton

text: "Planet of the Apes" was a commercial success, grossing $68 million in its opening weekend and eventually earned $180 million in North America and $362 million worldwide. The film however has received mixed reviews and is widely considered inferior to the first adaptation of the novel. In 2003, Burton directed "Big Fish", based on the novel "" by Daniel Wallace. The film is about a father telling the story of his life to his son using exaggeration and color. Starring Ewan McGregor as young Edward Bloom and Albert Finney as an older Edward Bloom, the film also stars Jessica Lange, Billy Crudup, Danny DeVito, Alison Lohman and Marion Cotillard. "Big Fish" received four Golden Globe nominations as well as an Academy Award nomination for Elfman's score. The film was also the second collaboration between Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, who played the characters of Jenny and the Witch, and Burton and Danny DeVito, who played Amos Calloway the circus ringleader.


title: Tim Burton

text: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) is an adaptation of the book of the same name by Roald Dahl. Starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, and Deep Roy as the Oompa-Loompas, the film generally took a more faithful approach to the source material than the 1971 adaptation, "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", although some liberties were taken, such as adding Wonka's issue with his father (played by Christopher Lee). "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design. The film made over $207 million domestically. Filming proved difficult as Burton, Depp, and Danny Elfman had to work on this and Burton's "Corpse Bride" (2005) at the same time, which was Burton's first full-length stop motion film as a director, featuring the voices of Johnny Depp as Victor and Helena Bonham Carter as Emily.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton directed his first music video, "Bones", in 2006. "Bones" is the sixth overall single by American indie rock band The Killers and the second released from their second studio album, "Sam's Town". Starring in this video were actors Michael Steger and Devon Aoki. Burton went to direct a second music video for The Killers, "Here with Me", starring Winona Ryder, released in 2012.


title: Tim Burton

text: The DreamWorks/Warner Bros. production "", based on , was released on December 21, 2007 to critical acclaim and grossed $153 million worldwide. Burton's work on "Sweeney Todd" won the National Board of Review Award for Best Director, received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director, and won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction. The film blends explicit gore and Broadway tunes, and was well received by critics. Johnny Depp's performance as Sweeney Todd was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.


title: Tim Burton

text: In 2005, filmmaker Shane Acker released his short film "9", a story about a sentient rag doll living in a post-apocalyptic world who tries to stop machines from destroying the rest of his eight fellow rag dolls. The film won numerous awards and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. After seeing the short film, Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov, director of "Wanted", showed interest in producing a feature-length adaptation of the film. Directed by Acker, the full-length film was produced by Burton, written by Acker (story) and Pamela Pettler (screenplay, co-writer of "Corpse Bride"), and featured the voice work of Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, and Crispin Glover, among others.


title: Tim Burton

text: Tim Burton appeared at the 2009 Comic-Con in San Diego, California, to promote both "9" and "Alice in Wonderland"; the latter won two Academy Awards, for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. In Burton's version of "Alice in Wonderland", the story is set 13 years after the original Lewis Carroll tales. Mia Wasikowska was cast as Alice. The original start date for filming was May 2008. Torpoint and Plymouth were the locations used for filming from September 1 – October 14, and the film remains set in the Victorian era. During this time, filming took place in Antony House in Torpoint. 250 local extras were chosen in early August. Other production work took place in London. The film was originally to be released in 2009, but was pushed to March 5, 2010. The film starred Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter; Matt Lucas as both Tweedledee and Tweedledum; Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen; Stephen Fry as the Cheshire Cat; Anne Hathaway as the White Queen; Alan Rickman as Absolem the Caterpillar; Michael Sheen as McTwisp the White Rabbit; and Crispin Glover as the Knave of Hearts, with his face and voice added onto a CGI body. Despite mixed reviews, the film was a commercial success, grossing $1 billion worldwide, making it Burton’s highest grossing film of his career. Burton produced the film's sequel, "Alice Through the Looking Glass" (2016).


title: Tim Burton

text: "Dark Shadows" once again saw the collaboration of Burton with actors Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, composer Danny Elfman, and costume designer Colleen Atwood. The film was released on May 11, 2012. Burton co-produced "" with Timur Bekmambetov, who also served as director (they previously worked together in "9"). The film, released on June 22, 2012, was based on the novel by Seth Grahame-Smith, who wrote the film's screenplay and also authored "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies". The film starred Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln, Anthony Mackie as William H. Johnson, Joseph Mawle as Lincoln's father Thomas, Robin McLeavy as Lincoln's mother, Nancy, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lincoln's love interest (and later wife), Mary Ann Todd. The film received mixed reviews and performed poorly at the box office. He then remade his 1984 short film "Frankenweenie" as a feature-length stop motion film, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Burton has said, "The film is based on a memory that I had when I was growing up and with my relationship with a dog that I had." The film was released on October 5, 2012, and met with positive reviews.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton directed the 2014 biographical drama film "Big Eyes" about American artist Margaret Keane (Amy Adams), whose work was fraudulently claimed in the 1950s and 1960s by her then-husband, Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), and their heated divorce trial after Margaret accused Walter of stealing credit for her paintings. The script was written by the screenwriters behind Burton's "Ed Wood", Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Filming began in Vancouver, British Columbia, in mid-2013. The film was distributed by The Weinstein Company and released in U.S. theaters on December 25, 2014. It received generally positive reviews from critics. In September 2016, an adaptation of Ransom Riggs's novel "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children", directed by Burton, was released, starring Asa Butterfield and Eva Green. Burton also directed a live-action adaptation of "Dumbo", released in 2019, with Colin Farrell, Danny DeVito, Eva Green, and Michael Keaton starring.


title: Tim Burton

text: In February 2021, it was announced that Burton would be directing and producing "Wednesday", a series for Netflix based on the titular character from The Addams Family. This marked Burton's first foray into directing television since the 1980s. He helmed four episodes in the first season, which began production in September 2021 for a November 2022 release.


title: Tim Burton

text: After Kevin Smith had been hired to write a new "Superman" film, he suggested Burton to direct. Burton came on and Warner Bros. set a theatrical release date for the summer of 1998, the 60th anniversary of the character's debut in "Action Comics". Nicolas Cage was signed on to play Superman, Burton hired Wesley Strick to rewrite Smith's script, and the film entered pre-production in June 1997. For budgetary reasons, Warner Bros. ordered another rewrite from Dan Gilroy, delayed the film, and ultimately put it on hold in April 1998. Burton then left to direct "Sleepy Hollow". Burton has depicted the experience as a difficult one, citing differences with producer Jon Peters and the studio, stating, "I basically wasted a year. A year is a long time to be working with somebody that you don't really want to be working with."


title: Tim Burton

text: In 2001, The Walt Disney Company began to consider producing a sequel to "The Nightmare Before Christmas", but rather than using stop motion, Disney wanted to use computer animation. Burton convinced Disney to drop the idea. "I was always very protective of ['Nightmare'], not to do sequels or things of that kind," Burton explained. "You know, 'Jack visits Thanksgiving world' or other kinds of things, just because I felt the movie had a purity to it and the people that like it... Because it's a mass-market kind of thing, it was important to kind of keep that purity of it." Regardless, in 2009, Henry Selick stated that he could make a sequel to "Nightmare" if he and Burton could create a good story for it.


title: Tim Burton

text: In 2012, Shane Acker confirmed that Burton would work with Valve to create his next animated feature film, "Deep". Like "9", the film would take place in a post-apocalyptic world (although set in a different universe). "Deep" would be another darker animated film, as Shane Acker has expressed his interest in creating more PG-13 animated films. Since then, there have been no further mentions of "Deep", with Acker focusing on another project announced in 2013 ("Beasts of Burden").


title: Tim Burton

text: On January 19, 2010, it was announced that after "Dark Shadows", Burton's next project would be "Maleficent", a ""-like film that showed the origin and the past of "Sleeping Beauty"s antagonist Maleficent. In an interview with Fandango published February 23, 2010, however, Burton denied he was directing any upcoming "Sleeping Beauty" film. However, on November 23, 2010, in an interview with MTV, Burton confirmed that he was indeed putting together a script for "Maleficent". It was announced by "The Hollywood Reporter" on May 16, 2011, that Burton was no longer attached to "Maleficent".


title: Tim Burton

text: It was reported that Burton would direct a 3D stop motion animation adaptation of "The Addams Family", which was confirmed by Christopher Meledandri, but the project was scrapped on July 17, 2013. On July 19, 2010, Burton was announced as the director of the upcoming film adaptation of "Monsterpocalypse".


title: Tim Burton

text: In 2011, it was reported that Burton was working on a live-action adaptation of "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" starring Josh Brolin, who would also be co-producing. The project did not move forward.


title: Tim Burton

text: In July 2012, following the release of both "Dark Shadows" and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter", it was announced that screenwriter and novelist Seth Grahame-Smith was working alongside Burton on a potential "Beetlejuice" sequel. Actor Michael Keaton has also expressed interest in reprising his role as the title character along with Winona Ryder. In October 2017, "Deadline Hollywood" reported that Mike Vukadinovich was hired to write a script in time for the film's 30th anniversary. In April 2019, Warner Bros. stated the sequel had been shelved.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton was married to Lena Gieseke, a German-born artist. Their marriage ended in 1991 after four years. He went on to live with model and actress Lisa Marie; she acted in the films he made during their relationship from 1992 to 2001, most notably in "Sleepy Hollow", "Ed Wood", and "Mars Attacks!". Burton developed a romantic relationship with English actress Helena Bonham Carter, whom he met while filming "Planet of the Apes". Marie responded in 2005 by holding an auction of personal belongings that Burton had left behind, much to his dismay.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton and Bonham Carter have two children: a son, William Raymond, named after his and Bonham Carter's fathers, born in 2003; and a daughter born in 2007. Bonham Carter's representative said in December 2014 that she and Burton had broken up amicably earlier that year. It is unclear whether or not they were married; Bonham Carter has used the word divorce when discussing the end of their relationship while other news outlets state that they never married.


title: Tim Burton

text: On March 15, 2010, Burton received the insignia of Chevalier of Arts and Letters from then-Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand. The same year, Burton was the President of the Jury for the 63rd annual Cannes Film Festival, held from May 12 to 24 in Cannes, France.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton has a special relationship with Brazil, having visited the country on several occasions and expressing his love for various aspects of Brazilian culture, such as the Brazilian Carnival and the horror films produced in the country, especially those of Zé do Caixão (Real Name: José Mojica Marins), considered the main name of Brazilian horror cinema and in which Tim Burton declared himself to be a big fan.


title: Tim Burton

text: From November 22, 2009, to April 26, 2010, Burton had a retrospective at the MoMA in New York with over 700 "drawings, paintings, photographs, storyboards, moving-image works, puppets, maquettes, costumes and cinematic ephemera", including many from the filmmaker's personal collection.


title: Tim Burton

text: From MoMA, the "Tim Burton" exhibition traveled directly to Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. Running from June 24 to October 10, 2010, the ACMI exhibition incorporated additional material from Burton's "Alice in Wonderland", which was released in March 2010.


title: Tim Burton

text: "The Art of Tim Burton" was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from May 29 to October 31, 2011, in the Museum's Resnick Pavilion. LACMA also featured six films of Tim Burton's idol, Vincent Price.


title: Tim Burton

text: "Tim Burton, the exhibition/Tim Burton, l'exposition" was exhibited at the Cinémathèque Française from March 7 to August 5, 2012, in Paris, France. All of Tim Burton's movies were shown during the exhibition.


title: Tim Burton

text: "Tim Burton at Seoul Museum of Art" was exhibited as a promotion of Hyundai Card at Seoul Museum of Art from December 12, 2012, to April 15, 2013, in Seoul, South Korea. This exhibition featured 862 of Burton's works including drawings, paintings, short films, sculptures, music, and costumes that have been used in the making of his feature-length movies. The exhibition was divided into three parts: the first part, "Surviving Burbank", covered his younger years, from 1958 to 1976. The second, "Beautifying Burbank", covers 1977 to 1984, including his time with CalArts and Walt Disney. The last segment, "Beyond Burbank", covers 1985 onward.


title: Tim Burton

text: "Tim Burton and His World" was exhibited at the Stone Bell House from March 3 to August 8, 2014, in Prague, Czech Republic. The exhibition later premiered at the Museu da Imagem e do Som in São Paulo, Brazil, on February 4, 2016, and lasted until June 5. The exhibition was later held in Artis Tree in Taikoo Place, Hong Kong, from November 5, 2016, to January 23, 2017. The exhibition returned to Brazil from May 28 to August 11, 2019, being held at the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Brasília.


title: Tim Burton

text: Burton's first exhibition in the United States in nearly a decade, "", opened in October 2019 at The Neon Museum in Las Vegas.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North America—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (which upon Confederation was divided into Ontario and Quebec)—united to form a federation, becoming a fully independent country over the next century. Over its history, Canada's international borders have changed several times as it has added territories and provinces, making it the world's second-largest country by area.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The major difference between a Canadian province and a territory is that provinces receive their power and authority from the "Constitution Act, 1867" (formerly called the "British North America Act, 1867"), whereas territorial governments are creatures of statute with powers delegated to them by the Parliament of Canada. The powers flowing from the "Constitution Act" are divided between the Government of Canada (the federal government) and the provincial governments to exercise exclusively. A change to the division of powers between the federal government and the provinces requires a constitutional amendment, whereas a similar change affecting the territories can be performed unilaterally by the Parliament of Canada or government.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: In modern Canadian constitutional theory, the provinces are considered to be co-sovereign within certain areas based on the divisions of responsibility between the provincial and federal government within the "Constitution Act, 1867", and each province thus has its own representative of the Canadian Crown, the lieutenant governor. The territories are not sovereign, but instead their authorities and responsibilities are devolved directly from the federal level, and as a result, have a commissioner that represents the federal government.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: There are three territories in Canada. Unlike the provinces, the territories of Canada have no inherent sovereignty and have only those powers delegated to them by the federal government. They include all of mainland Canada north of latitude 60° north and west of Hudson Bay and all islands north of the Canadian mainland (from those in James Bay to the Queen Elizabeth Islands). The following table lists the territories in order of precedence (each province has precedence over all the territories, regardless of the date each territory was created).


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Another territory, the District of Keewatin, existed from October 7, 1876, until September 1, 1905, when it rejoined the Northwest Territories and became the Keewatin Region. It occupied the area that is now the Kenora District of Ontario, northern Manitoba, and mainland Nunavut. The government of Keewatin was based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The territory did not have any representation in federal parliament.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The vast majority of Canada's population is concentrated in areas close to the Canada–US border. Its four largest provinces by area (Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta) are also (with Quebec and Ontario switched in order) its most populous; together they account for 86% of the country's population. The territories (the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon) account for over a third of Canada's area but are only home to 0.3% of its population, which skews the national population density value.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Canada's population grew by 5.0% between the 2006 and 2011 censuses. Except for New Brunswick, all territories and provinces increased in population during this time. In terms of percent change, the fastest-growing province or territory was Nunavut with an increase of 12.7% between 2011 and 2016, followed by Alberta with 11.6% growth, while New Brunswick's population decreased by 0.5%.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Generally, Canadian provinces have steadily grown in population along with Canada. However, some provinces such as Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador have experienced long periods of stagnation or population decline. Ontario and Quebec have always been the two biggest provinces in Canada, with together over 60% of the population at any given time. The population of the West relative to Canada as a whole has steadily grown over time, while that of Atlantic Canada has declined.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were the original provinces, formed when several British North American colonies federated on July 1, 1867, into the Dominion of Canada and by stages began accruing the indicia of sovereignty from the United Kingdom. Prior to this, Ontario and Quebec were united as the Province of Canada. Over the following years, Manitoba (1870), British Columbia (1871), and Prince Edward Island (1873) were added as provinces.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The British Crown had claimed two large areas north-west of the Canadian colony, known as Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory, and assigned them to the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1870, the company relinquished its claims for £300,000 (CND$1.5 million), assigning the vast territory to the government of Canada. Subsequently, the area was re-organized into the province of Manitoba and the North-West Territories. The North-West Territories encompassed all of current northern and western Canada, except for the British holdings in the Arctic islands and the Colony of British Columbia. NWT included the northern two-thirds of Ontario and Quebec. After the province of Manitoba was established in 1870, in a small area in the south of today's province, almost all of present-day Manitoba was still contained in the NWT. (Manitoba expanded to its present size in 1912.)


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The British claims to the Arctic islands were transferred to Canada in 1880, adding to the size of the North-West Territories. In 1898 the Yukon Territory, later renamed "Yukon" in 2003, was carved from the area surrounding the Klondike gold fields. On September 1, 1905, a portion of the North-West Territories south of the 60th parallel north became the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. In 1912, the boundaries of Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba were expanded northward: Manitoba's to the 60° parallel, Ontario's to Hudson Bay and Quebec's to encompass the District of Ungava.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: In 1869, the people of Newfoundland voted to remain a British colony over fears that taxes would increase with Confederation, and that the economic policy of the Canadian government would favour mainland industries. In 1907, Newfoundland acquired dominion status. In the middle of the Great Depression in Canada, Newfoundland underwent a prolonged economic crisis, and the legislature turned over political control to the Newfoundland Commission of Government in 1933. Following Canada's participation in World War II, in a 1948 referendum, a narrow majority of Newfoundland citizens voted to join the Confederation, and on March 31, 1949, Newfoundland became Canada's tenth province. The province was officially renamed Newfoundland and Labrador in 2001.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Bermuda, the last British North American colony, which had been somewhat subordinated to Nova Scotia, was one of two Imperial fortress colonies in British North America - the other being Nova Scotia, and more particularly the city of Halifax. Halifax and Bermuda were the sites of the Royal Navy's North America Station (or, depending on the time period and the extent of the Western Hemisphere it included, the "River St. Lawrence and Coast of America and North America and West Indies Station", the "North America and Newfoundland Station", the "North America and West Indies Station", and finally the "America and West Indies Station") main bases, dockyards, and Admiralty Houses, and the squadron of the station was based at Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax during the summers and Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda in the winters until the 1820s, when Bermuda (which was better located to control the Atlantic Seaboard of the United States, impossible to attack over land, and almost impregnable against attack over water) became the main base year round. A large British Army garrison in Bermuda, which fell under the Commander-in-Chief in Nova Scotia, existed to defend the colony as a naval base (and to prevent it becoming as useful a base to the navy of an adversary), as well as to support amphibious operations throughout the region (such as the Chesapeake campaign during the American War of 1812). Bermuda was consequently the most important British naval and military base in the Americas. Canadian confederation resulted in the Canadian Militia becoming responsible for the defence of the Maritimes, the abolishment of the British Army's commander-in-chief there, and the reduction of British military forces in the Maritimes to a small garrison for the protection of the Halifax dockyard, which would be withdrawn when that dockyard was handed over to the Dominion government in 1905 for use by the new Canadian naval service. Britain retained control of Bermuda as an imperial fortress, with the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Bermuda (a military officer previously ranking between lieutenant-colonel and major-general) becoming a lieutenant-general termed a "General Officer Commanding" and the Bermuda garrison becoming a command in its own right. Bermuda was consequently left out of the confederation of Canada, though it retained naval links with Halifax and the state church (or "established church"), the Church of England, continued to place Bermuda under the Bishop of Newfoundland until 1919 (Bermuda also remained linked to the Maritimes under the Methodist and Roman Catholic churches).


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: In 1903, resolution of the Alaska Panhandle Dispute fixed British Columbia's northwestern boundary. This was one of only two provinces in Canadian history to have its size reduced. The second reduction, in 1927, occurred when a boundary dispute between Canada and the Dominion of Newfoundland saw Labrador enlarged at Quebec's expense; this land returned to Canada, as part of the province of Newfoundland, in 1949. In 1999, Nunavut was created from the eastern portion of the Northwest Territories. Yukon lies in the western portion of Northern Canada, while Nunavut is in the east.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: All three territories combined are the most sparsely populated region in Canada, covering in land area. They are often referred to as a single region, the North, for organisational and economic purposes. For much of the Northwest Territories' early history it was divided into several districts for ease of administration. The District of Keewatin was created as a separate territory from 1876 to 1905, after which, as the Keewatin Region, it became an administrative district of the Northwest Territories. In 1999, it was dissolved when it became part of Nunavut.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Theoretically, provinces have a great deal of power relative to the federal government, with jurisdiction over many public goods such as health care, education, welfare, and intra-provincial transportation. They receive "transfer payments" from the federal government to pay for these, as well as exacting their own taxes. In practice, however, the federal government can use these transfer payments to influence these provincial areas. For instance, in order to receive healthcare funding under Medicare, provinces must agree to meet certain federal mandates, such as universal access to required medical treatment.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Provincial and territorial legislatures have no second chamber like the Canadian Senate. Originally, most provinces had such bodies, known as legislative councils, with members titled councillors. These upper houses were abolished one by one, Quebec's being the last in 1968. In most provinces, the single house of the legislature is known as the Legislative Assembly; the exceptions are Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, where the chamber is called the House of Assembly, and Quebec where it is called the National Assembly. Ontario has a Legislative Assembly but its members are called Members of the Provincial Parliament or MPPs. The legislative assemblies use a procedure similar to that of the House of Commons of Canada. The head of government of each province, called the premier, is generally the head of the party with the most seats. This is also the case in Yukon, but the Northwest Territories and Nunavut have no political parties at the territorial level. The King's representative in each province is the Lieutenant Governor. In each of the territories there is an analogous Commissioner, but they represent the federal government rather than the monarch.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Most provinces have rough provincial counterparts to major federal parties. However, these provincial parties are not usually formally linked to the federal parties that share the same name. For example, no provincial Conservative or Progressive Conservative Party shares an organizational link to the federal Conservative Party of Canada, and neither do provincial Green Parties to the Green Party of Canada.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Provincial New Democratic Parties, on the other hand, are fully integrated with the federal New Democratic Party—meaning that provincial parties effectively operate as sections, with common membership, of the federal party.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The Liberal Party of Canada shares such an organizational integration with Atlantic Canada provincial Liberals in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Other provincial Liberal Parties are unaffiliated with their federal counterpart.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Some provinces have provincial political parties with no clear federal equivalent, such as the Alberta Party and Saskatchewan Party.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The provincial political climate of Quebec is different: the main split is between sovereignty, represented by the Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire, and federalism, represented primarily by the Quebec Liberal Party. The Coalition Avenir Québec, meanwhile, takes an abstentionist position on the question and does not support or oppose sovereignty.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: The Canadian National Vimy Memorial, near Vimy, Pas-de-Calais, and the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial, near Beaumont-Hamel, both in France, are ceremonially considered Canadian territory. In 1922, the French government donated the land used for the Vimy Memorial "freely, and for all time, to the Government of Canada the free use of the land exempt from all taxes". The site of the Somme battlefield near Beaumont-Hamel site was purchased in 1921 by the people of the Dominion of Newfoundland. These sites do not, however, enjoy extraterritorial status and are thus subject to French law.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: Since Confederation in 1867, there have been several proposals for new Canadian provinces and territories. The Constitution of Canada requires an amendment for the creation of a new province but the creation of a new territory requires only an act of Parliament, a legislatively simpler process.


title: Provinces and territories of Canada

text: In late 2004, Prime Minister Paul Martin surprised some observers by expressing his personal support for all three territories gaining provincial status "eventually". He cited their importance to the country as a whole and the ongoing need to assert sovereignty in the Arctic, particularly as global warming could make that region more open to exploitation leading to more complex international waters disputes.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in Europe, South America and Australia, and on February 22, 2014 in Japan. A console of the eighth generation, it competes with the Microsoft's Xbox One and the Nintendo's Wii U and Switch.


title: PlayStation 4

text: Moving away from the more complex Cell microarchitecture of its predecessor, the console features an AMD Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) built upon the x86-64 architecture, which can theoretically peak at 1.84 teraflops; AMD stated that it was the "most powerful" APU it had developed to date. The PlayStation 4 places an increased emphasis on social interaction and integration with other devices and services, including the ability to play games off-console on PlayStation Vita and other supported devices ("Remote Play"), the ability to stream gameplay online or to friends, with them controlling gameplay remotely ("Share Play"). The console's controller was also redesigned and improved over the PlayStation 3, with improved buttons and analog sticks, and an integrated touchpad among other changes. The console also supports HDR10 High-dynamic-range video and playback of 4K resolution multimedia.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The PlayStation 4 was released to critical acclaim, with critics praising Sony for acknowledging its consumers' needs, embracing independent game development, and for not imposing the restrictive digital rights management schemes like those originally announced by Microsoft for the Xbox One. Critics and third-party studios, before its launch, also praised the capabilities of the PlayStation 4 in comparison to its competitors; developers described the performance difference between the console and Xbox One as "significant" and "obvious". Heightened demand also helped Sony top global console sales. By October 2019, PS4 became the second-best-selling home game console of all time, behind the PlayStation 2.


title: PlayStation 4

text: On September 7, 2016, Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 Slim, a smaller version of the console; and a high-end version called the PlayStation 4 Pro, which features an upgraded GPU and a higher CPU clock rate to support enhanced performance and 4K resolution in supported games.


title: PlayStation 4

text: Its successor, the PlayStation 5, was released in November 2020, with Sony discontinuing in Japan all PlayStation 4 models except the Slim version in January 2021, with it still being produced in Western markets following their statement of 3-year support of PS4.


title: PlayStation 4

text: According to lead architect Mark Cerny, development of Sony's fourth video game console began as early as 2008.


title: PlayStation 4

text: Less than two years earlier, the PlayStation 3 had been launched after months of delays due to issues with production. The delay placed Sony almost a year behind Microsoft's Xbox 360, which was already approaching unit sales of 10million by the time the PS3 launched. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe CEO Jim Ryan said Sony wanted to avoid repeating the same mistake with PS3's successor.


title: PlayStation 4

text: In designing the system, Sony worked with software developer Bungie, who offered their input on the controller and how to make it better for shooting games. In 2012, Sony began shipping development kits to game developers, consisting of a modified PC running the AMD Accelerated Processing Unit chipset. These development kits were known as "Orbis".


title: PlayStation 4

text: In early 2013, Sony announced that an event known as PlayStation Meeting 2013 would be held in New York City, U.S., on February 20, 2013, to cover the "future of PlayStation". Sony officially announced the PlayStation 4 at the event. It revealed details about the console's hardware and discussed some of the new features it would introduce. Sony also showed off real-time footage of games in development, as well as some technical demonstrations. The design of the console was unveiled in June at E3 2013, and the initial recommended retail prices of $399 (NA), €399 (Europe), and £349 (UK) given. Sony took advantage of problems that Microsoft had been having with their positioning of their newly announced Xbox One, which included its higher price point ($499 in North America), as well as strict regulations on how users could share game media. Besides its lower price point, Sony focused on the ease one would have in sharing media with the PS4.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The company revealed release dates for North America, Central America, South America, Europe, and Australia, as well as final pieces of information, at a Gamescom press event in Cologne, Germany, on August 20, 2013. The console was released on November 15, 2013, in the United States and Canada, followed by further releases on November 29, 2013. By the end of 2013, the PS4 was launched in more European, Asian and South American countries. The PS4 was released in Japan at ¥39,980 on February 22, 2014.


title: PlayStation 4

text: Sony finalized a deal with the Chinese government in May 2014 to sell its products in mainland China, and the PS4 will be the first product to be released. Kazuo Hirai, chief executive officer of Sony, said in May: "The Chinese market, just given the size of it, is obviously potentially a very large market for video game products ... I think that we will be able to replicate the kind of success we have had with PS4 in other parts of the world in China."


title: PlayStation 4

text: In September 2015, Sony reduced the price of the PS4 in Japan to ¥34,980, with similar price drops in other Southeast Asian markets. The first official sub-£300 PS4 bundle was the £299.99 "Uncharted Nathan Drake Collection 500GB", and was released in the UK on October 9, 2015; a 1 TB £329.99 version was offered at the same time. On October 9, 2015, the first official price cut of the PS4 in North America was announced: a reduction of $50 to $349.99 (US) and by $20 to $429.99 (Canada). An official price cut in Europe followed in late October 2015, reduced to €349.99/£299.99.


title: PlayStation 4

text: On June 10, 2016, Sony confirmed that a hardware revision of the PlayStation 4, rumored to be codenamed "Neo", was under development. The new revision is a higher-end model that is meant to support gameplay in 4K. The new model will be sold alongside the existing model, and all existing software will be compatible between the two models. Layden stated that Sony has no plans to "bifurcate the market", only that gamers playing on the Neo will "have the same experience, but one will be delivered at a higher resolution, with an enhanced graphical experience, but everything else is going to be exactly as you'd expect". The high-end console was publicly revealed on September 7, 2016, as PlayStation 4 Pro. At the same time, Sony unveiled an updated version of the original PS4 model with a smaller form factor.


title: PlayStation 4

text: In May 2018, during a presentation to investors, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO John Kodera stated that the PlayStation 4 was heading into the end of its lifecycle and that the company was anticipating decreasing year-over-year hardware sales. He explained that Sony would be countering the expected decline by focusing on "strengthen[ing] user engagement" including continued investments into new first-party games and other online services for PS4. "We will use the next three years to prepare the next step, to crouch down so that we can jump higher in the future," Kodera added in an interview with the press the following day.


title: PlayStation 4

text: Following the launch of the PlayStation 5 in November 2020, Sony discontinued production in Japan of all but the 500GB Slim model of the PlayStation 4 on January 5, 2021, with the standard PS4 and PS4 Pro still being produced for western markets. According to a report from "Bloomberg News" in January 2022, Sony had been poised to discontinue the PlayStation 4 at the end of 2021 in favor of the PlayStation 5, but due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage that made it difficult for Sony to keep up with PlayStation 5 demand, the company instead planned to continue PlayStation 4 production. Besides helping to offset the PlayStation 5 shortage, this production method would help assure deals with its component providers for the PlayStation 5.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The technology in the PlayStation 4 is similar to the hardware found in modern personal computers. This familiarity is designed to make it easier and less expensive for game studios to develop games for the PS4.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The PlayStation 4 uses an Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) developed by AMD in cooperation with Sony. It combines a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), as well as other components such as a memory controller and video decoder. The CPU consists of two 28 nm quad-core Jaguar modules totaling 8 x86-64 cores, 7 of which are available for game developers to use. The GPU consists of 18 compute units to produce a theoretical peak performance of 1.84 TFLOPS. The system's GDDR5 memory is capable of running at a maximum clock frequency of 2.75 GHz (5500 MT/s) and has a maximum memory bandwidth of 176 GB/s. The console contains 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, 16 times the amount of RAM found in the PS3 and is expected to give the console considerable longevity. It also includes secondary custom chips that handle tasks associated with downloading, uploading, and social gameplay. These tasks can be handled seamlessly in the background during gameplay or while the system is in sleep mode. The console also contains an audio module, which can support in-game chat as well as "a very large number" of audio streams for use in-game. All PlayStation 4 models support high dynamic range (HDR) color profiles.


title: PlayStation 4

text: Its read-only optical drive is capable of reading Blu-ray Discs at speeds of up to three times that of its predecessor. The console features a hardware on-the-fly zlib decompression module. The original PS4 model supports up to 1080p and 1080i video standards, while the Pro model supports 4K resolution. The console includes a 500 gigabyte hard drive for additional storage, which can be upgraded by the user. System Software 4.50, which was released on March 9, 2017, enabled the use of external USB hard drives up to 8 TB for additional storage.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The PlayStation 4 features Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity, Bluetooth, and two USB 3.0 ports. An auxiliary port is also included for connection to the PlayStation Camera, a motion detection digital camera device first introduced on the PS3. A mono headset, which can be plugged into the DualShock 4, is bundled with the system. Audio/video output options include HDMI TV and optical S/PDIF audio. The console does not have an analog audio/video output.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The PS4 features a "Rest mode" feature. This places the console in a low-power state, while allowing users to immediately resume their game or app once the console is awoken. The console also is able to download content such as game and OS updates while it is in this state.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The DualShock 4 is PlayStation 4's primary controller; it maintains a similar design to previous iterations of the DualShock series, but with additional features and design refinements. Among other tweaks, the caps of the analog sticks were given a concave design (similar to the Xbox 360 controller), the shape of the triggers and shoulder buttons were refined, the D-pad buttons were given a steeper downward angle to provide a resting space in the center for the user's thumb, and the hand grips were made thicker and given microtexturing to improve their feel.


title: PlayStation 4

text: A major addition to the DualShock 4 is a touchpad; it is capable of detecting up to two simultaneous touch presses, and can also be pressed down as a button. The "Start" and "Select" buttons were replaced by "Options" and "Share" buttons; the latter is designed to allow access to the PlayStation 4's social features (including streaming, video recording, and screenshot tools). The DualShock 4 is powered by a non-removable, rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which can be charged using its micro USB connector. The controller also features an internal speaker, and a headphone jack for headsets or headphones; the console is bundled with a pair of headset earbuds.


title: PlayStation 4

text: The controller's motion tracking system is more sensitive than those of the PlayStation 3's controllers. An LED "light bar" was additionally added to the front of the controller; it is designed to allow the PlayStation Camera accessory to further track its motion, but can also be used to provide visual effects and feedback within games (such as, for instance, reflecting a player's low health by turning red).