title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: An RSA user creates and publishes a public key based on two large prime numbers, along with an auxiliary value. The prime numbers are kept secret. Messages can be encrypted by anyone, via the public key, but can only be decoded by someone who knows the prime numbers.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The security of RSA relies on the practical difficulty of factoring the product of two large prime numbers, the "factoring problem". Breaking RSA encryption is known as the RSA problem. Whether it is as difficult as the factoring problem is an open question. There are no published methods to defeat the system if a large enough key is used.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: RSA is a relatively slow algorithm. Because of this, it is not commonly used to directly encrypt user data. More often, RSA is used to transmit shared keys for symmetric-key cryptography, which are then used for bulk encryption–decryption.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The idea of an asymmetric public-private key cryptosystem is attributed to Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, who published this concept in 1976. They also introduced digital signatures and attempted to apply number theory. Their formulation used a shared-secret-key created from exponentiation of some number, modulo a prime number. However, they left open the problem of realizing a one-way function, possibly because the difficulty of factoring was not well-studied at the time.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology made several attempts over the course of a year to create a one-way function that was hard to invert. Rivest and Shamir, as computer scientists, proposed many potential functions, while Adleman, as a mathematician, was responsible for finding their weaknesses. They tried many approaches, including "knapsack-based" and "permutation polynomials". For a time, they thought what they wanted to achieve was impossible due to contradictory requirements. In April 1977, they spent Passover at the house of a student and drank a good deal of Manischewitz wine before returning to their homes at around midnight. Rivest, unable to sleep, lay on the couch with a math textbook and started thinking about their one-way function. He spent the rest of the night formalizing his idea, and he had much of the paper ready by daybreak. The algorithm is now known as RSA the initials of their surnames in same order as their paper.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Clifford Cocks, an English mathematician working for the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), described an equivalent system in an internal document in 1973. However, given the relatively expensive computers needed to implement it at the time, it was considered to be mostly a curiosity and, as far as is publicly known, was never deployed. His discovery, however, was not revealed until 1997 due to its top-secret classification.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Kid-RSA (KRSA) is a simplified, insecure public-key cipher published in 1997, designed for educational purposes. Some people feel that learning Kid-RSA gives insight into RSA and other public-key ciphers, analogous to simplified DES.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A patent describing the RSA algorithm was granted to MIT on 20 September 1983: "Cryptographic communications system and method". From DWPI's abstract of the patent:


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A detailed description of the algorithm was published in August 1977, in Scientific American's Mathematical Games column. This preceded the patent's filing date of December 1977. Consequently, the patent had no legal standing outside the United States. Had Cocks's work been publicly known, a patent in the United States would not have been legal either.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: When the patent was issued, terms of patent were 17 years. The patent was about to expire on 21 September 2000, but RSA Security released the algorithm to the public domain on 6 September 2000.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A basic principle behind RSA is the observation that it is practical to find three very large positive integers , , and , such that with modular exponentiation for all integers (with ):


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: and that knowing and , or even , it can be extremely difficult to find . The triple bar (≡) here denotes modular congruence (which is to say that when you divide by and by , they both have the same remainder).


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: In addition, for some operations it is convenient that the order of the two exponentiations can be changed and that this relation also implies


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: RSA involves a "public key" and a "private key". The public key can be known by everyone and is used for encrypting messages. The intention is that messages encrypted with the public key can only be decrypted in a reasonable amount of time by using the private key. The public key is represented by the integers and , and the private key by the integer (although is also used during the decryption process, so it might be considered to be a part of the private key too). represents the message (previously prepared with a certain technique explained below).


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The "public key" consists of the modulus and the public (or encryption) exponent . The "private key" consists of the private (or decryption) exponent , which must be kept secret. , , and must also be kept secret because they can be used to calculate . In fact, they can all be discarded after has been computed.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: In the original RSA paper, the Euler totient function is used instead of for calculating the private exponent . Since is always divisible by , the algorithm works as well. The possibility of using Euler totient function results also from Lagrange's theorem applied to the multiplicative group of integers modulo "pq". Thus any satisfying also satisfies . However, computing modulo will sometimes yield a result that is larger than necessary (i.e. ). Most of the implementations of RSA will accept exponents generated using either method (if they use the private exponent at all, rather than using the optimized decryption method based on the Chinese remainder theorem described below), but some standards such as FIPS 186-4 may require that . Any "oversized" private exponents not meeting this criterion may always be reduced modulo to obtain a smaller equivalent exponent.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Since any common factors of and are present in the factorisation of = = , it is recommended that and have only very small common factors, if any, besides the necessary 2.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Note: The authors of the original RSA paper carry out the key generation by choosing and then computing as the modular multiplicative inverse of modulo , whereas most current implementations of RSA, such as those following PKCS#1, do the reverse (choose and compute ). Since the chosen key can be small, whereas the computed key normally is not, the RSA paper's algorithm optimizes decryption compared to encryption, while the modern algorithm optimizes encryption instead.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Suppose that Bob wants to send information to Alice. If they decide to use RSA, Bob must know Alice's public key to encrypt the message, and Alice must use her private key to decrypt the message.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: To enable Bob to send his encrypted messages, Alice transmits her public key to Bob via a reliable, but not necessarily secret, route. Alice's private key is never distributed.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: To do it, he first turns (strictly speaking, the un-padded plaintext) into an integer (strictly speaking, the padded plaintext), such that by using an agreed-upon reversible protocol known as a padding scheme. He then computes the ciphertext , using Alice's public key , corresponding to


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: This can be done reasonably quickly, even for very large numbers, using modular exponentiation. Bob then transmits to Alice. Note that at least nine values of will yield a ciphertext equal to


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Here is an example of RSA encryption and decryption. The parameters used here are artificially small, but one can also .


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Both of these calculations can be computed efficiently using the square-and-multiply algorithm for modular exponentiation. In real-life situations the primes selected would be much larger; in our example it would be trivial to factor (obtained from the freely available public key) back to the primes and . , also from the public key, is then inverted to get , thus acquiring the private key.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Practical implementations use the Chinese remainder theorem to speed up the calculation using modulus of factors (mod "pq" using mod "p" and mod "q").


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Here is how , and are used for efficient decryption (encryption is efficient by choice of a suitable and pair):


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Suppose Alice uses Bob's public key to send him an encrypted message. In the message, she can claim to be Alice, but Bob has no way of verifying that the message was from Alice, since anyone can use Bob's public key to send him encrypted messages. In order to verify the origin of a message, RSA can also be used to sign a message.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Suppose Alice wishes to send a signed message to Bob. She can use her own private key to do so. She produces a hash value of the message, raises it to the power of (modulo ) (as she does when decrypting a message), and attaches it as a "signature" to the message. When Bob receives the signed message, he uses the same hash algorithm in conjunction with Alice's public key. He raises the signature to the power of (modulo ) (as he does when encrypting a message), and compares the resulting hash value with the message's hash value. If the two agree, he knows that the author of the message was in possession of Alice's private key and that the message has not been tampered with since being sent.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Thus the keys may be swapped without loss of generality, that is, a private key of a key pair may be used either to:


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The proof of the correctness of RSA is based on Fermat's little theorem, stating that for any integer and prime , not dividing .


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: To check whether two numbers, such as and , are congruent , it suffices (and in fact is equivalent) to check that they are congruent and separately.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Although the original paper of Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman used Fermat's little theorem to explain why RSA works, it is common to find proofs that rely instead on Euler's theorem.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: We want to show that , where is a product of two different prime numbers, and and are positive integers satisfying . Since and are positive, we can write for some non-negative integer . "Assuming" that is relatively prime to , we have


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: More generally, for any and satisfying , the same conclusion follows from Carmichael's generalization of Euler's theorem, which states that for all relatively prime to .


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: When is not relatively prime to , the argument just given is invalid. This is highly improbable (only a proportion of numbers have this property), but even in this case, the desired congruence is still true. Either or , and these cases can be treated using the previous proof.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: To avoid these problems, practical RSA implementations typically embed some form of structured, randomized padding into the value before encrypting it. This padding ensures that does not fall into the range of insecure plaintexts, and that a given message, once padded, will encrypt to one of a large number of different possible ciphertexts.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Standards such as PKCS#1 have been carefully designed to securely pad messages prior to RSA encryption. Because these schemes pad the plaintext with some number of additional bits, the size of the un-padded message must be somewhat smaller. RSA padding schemes must be carefully designed so as to prevent sophisticated attacks that may be facilitated by a predictable message structure. Early versions of the PKCS#1 standard (up to version 1.5) used a construction that appears to make RSA semantically secure. However, at Crypto 1998, Bleichenbacher showed that this version is vulnerable to a practical adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack. Furthermore, at Eurocrypt 2000, Coron et al. showed that for some types of messages, this padding does not provide a high enough level of security. Later versions of the standard include Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding (OAEP), which prevents these attacks. As such, OAEP should be used in any new application, and PKCS#1 v1.5 padding should be replaced wherever possible. The PKCS#1 standard also incorporates processing schemes designed to provide additional security for RSA signatures, e.g. the Probabilistic Signature Scheme for RSA (RSA-PSS).


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Secure padding schemes such as RSA-PSS are as essential for the security of message signing as they are for message encryption. Two USA patents on PSS were granted ( and ); however, these patents expired on 24 July 2009 and 25 April 2010 respectively. Use of PSS no longer seems to be encumbered by patents. Note that using different RSA key pairs for encryption and signing is potentially more secure.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: For efficiency, many popular crypto libraries (such as OpenSSL, Java and .NET) use for decryption and signing the following optimization based on the Chinese remainder theorem. The following values are precomputed and stored as part of the private key:


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: This is more efficient than computing exponentiation by squaring, even though two modular exponentiations have to be computed. The reason is that these two modular exponentiations both use a smaller exponent and a smaller modulus.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The security of the RSA cryptosystem is based on two mathematical problems: the problem of factoring large numbers and the RSA problem. Full decryption of an RSA ciphertext is thought to be infeasible on the assumption that both of these problems are hard, i.e., no efficient algorithm exists for solving them. Providing security against "partial" decryption may require the addition of a secure padding scheme.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The RSA problem is defined as the task of taking th roots modulo a composite : recovering a value such that , where is an RSA public key, and is an RSA ciphertext. Currently the most promising approach to solving the RSA problem is to factor the modulus . With the ability to recover prime factors, an attacker can compute the secret exponent from a public key , then decrypt using the standard procedure. To accomplish this, an attacker factors into and , and computes that allows the determination of from . No polynomial-time method for factoring large integers on a classical computer has yet been found, but it has not been proven that none exists; see integer factorization for a discussion of this problem.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The first RSA-512 factorization in 1999 used hundreds of computers and required the equivalent of 8,400 MIPS years, over an elapsed time of approximately seven months. By 2009, Benjamin Moody could factor an 512-bit RSA key in 73 days using only public software (GGNFS) and his desktop computer (a dual-core Athlon64 with a 1,900 MHz CPU). Just less than 5 gigabytes of disk storage was required and about 2.5 gigabytes of RAM for the sieving process.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman noted that Miller has shown that – assuming the truth of the extended Riemann hypothesis – finding from and is as hard as factoring into and (up to a polynomial time difference). However, Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman noted, in section IX/D of their paper, that they had not found a proof that inverting RSA is as hard as factoring.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: , the largest publicly known factored RSA number had 829 bits (250 decimal digits, RSA-250). Its factorization, by a state-of-the-art distributed implementation, took approximately 2700 CPU years. In practice, RSA keys are typically 1024 to 4096 bits long. In 2003, RSA Security estimated that 1024-bit keys were likely to become crackable by 2010. As of 2020, it is not known whether such keys can be cracked, but minimum recommendations have moved to at least 2048 bits. It is generally presumed that RSA is secure if is sufficiently large, outside of quantum computing.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: If is 300 bits or shorter, it can be factored in a few hours in a personal computer, using software already freely available. Keys of 512 bits have been shown to be practically breakable in 1999, when RSA-155 was factored by using several hundred computers, and these are now factored in a few weeks using common hardware. Exploits using 512-bit code-signing certificates that may have been factored were reported in 2011. A theoretical hardware device named TWIRL, described by Shamir and Tromer in 2003, called into question the security of 1024-bit keys.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: In 1994, Peter Shor showed that a quantum computer – if one could ever be practically created for the purpose – would be able to factor in polynomial time, breaking RSA; see Shor's algorithm.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Finding the large primes and is usually done by testing random numbers of the correct size with probabilistic primality tests that quickly eliminate virtually all of the nonprimes.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: The numbers and should not be "too close", lest the Fermat factorization for be successful. If is less than (, which even for "small" 1024-bit values of is ), solving for and is trivial. Furthermore, if either or has only small prime factors, can be factored quickly by Pollard's "p" − 1 algorithm, and hence such values of or should be discarded.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: It is important that the private exponent be large enough. Michael J. Wiener showed that if is between and (which is quite typical) and , then can be computed efficiently from and .


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: There is no known attack against small public exponents such as , provided that the proper padding is used. Coppersmith's attack has many applications in attacking RSA specifically if the public exponent is small and if the encrypted message is short and not padded. 65537 is a commonly used value for ; this value can be regarded as a compromise between avoiding potential small-exponent attacks and still allowing efficient encryptions (or signature verification). The NIST Special Publication on Computer Security (SP 800-78 Rev. 1 of August 2007) does not allow public exponents smaller than 65537, but does not state a reason for this restriction.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: In October 2017, a team of researchers from Masaryk University announced the ROCA vulnerability, which affects RSA keys generated by an algorithm embodied in a library from Infineon known as RSALib. A large number of smart cards and trusted platform modules (TPM) were shown to be affected. Vulnerable RSA keys are easily identified using a test program the team released.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A cryptographically strong random number generator, which has been properly seeded with adequate entropy, must be used to generate the primes and . An analysis comparing millions of public keys gathered from the Internet was carried out in early 2012 by Arjen K. Lenstra, James P. Hughes, Maxime Augier, Joppe W. Bos, Thorsten Kleinjung and Christophe Wachter. They were able to factor 0.2% of the keys using only Euclid's algorithm.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: They exploited a weakness unique to cryptosystems based on integer factorization. If is one public key, and is another, then if by chance (but is not equal to '), then a simple computation of factors both and ', totally compromising both keys. Lenstra et al. note that this problem can be minimized by using a strong random seed of bit length twice the intended security level, or by employing a deterministic function to choose given , instead of choosing and independently.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Nadia Heninger was part of a group that did a similar experiment. They used an idea of Daniel J. Bernstein to compute the GCD of each RSA key against the product of all the other keys ' they had found (a 729-million-digit number), instead of computing each separately, thereby achieving a very significant speedup, since after one large division, the GCD problem is of normal size.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Heninger says in her blog that the bad keys occurred almost entirely in embedded applications, including "firewalls, routers, VPN devices, remote server administration devices, printers, projectors, and VOIP phones" from more than 30 manufacturers. Heninger explains that the one-shared-prime problem uncovered by the two groups results from situations where the pseudorandom number generator is poorly seeded initially, and then is reseeded between the generation of the first and second primes. Using seeds of sufficiently high entropy obtained from key stroke timings or electronic diode noise or atmospheric noise from a radio receiver tuned between stations should solve the problem.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Strong random number generation is important throughout every phase of public-key cryptography. For instance, if a weak generator is used for the symmetric keys that are being distributed by RSA, then an eavesdropper could bypass RSA and guess the symmetric keys directly.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Kocher described a new attack on RSA in 1995: if the attacker Eve knows Alice's hardware in sufficient detail and is able to measure the decryption times for several known ciphertexts, Eve can deduce the decryption key quickly. This attack can also be applied against the RSA signature scheme. In 2003, Boneh and Brumley demonstrated a more practical attack capable of recovering RSA factorizations over a network connection (e.g., from a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-enabled webserver). This attack takes advantage of information leaked by the Chinese remainder theorem optimization used by many RSA implementations.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: One way to thwart these attacks is to ensure that the decryption operation takes a constant amount of time for every ciphertext. However, this approach can significantly reduce performance. Instead, most RSA implementations use an alternate technique known as cryptographic blinding. RSA blinding makes use of the multiplicative property of RSA. Instead of computing , Alice first chooses a secret random value and computes . The result of this computation, after applying Euler's theorem, is , and so the effect of can be removed by multiplying by its inverse. A new value of is chosen for each ciphertext. With blinding applied, the decryption time is no longer correlated to the value of the input ciphertext, and so the timing attack fails.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: In 1998, Daniel Bleichenbacher described the first practical adaptive chosen-ciphertext attack against RSA-encrypted messages using the PKCS #1 v1 padding scheme (a padding scheme randomizes and adds structure to an RSA-encrypted message, so it is possible to determine whether a decrypted message is valid). Due to flaws with the PKCS #1 scheme, Bleichenbacher was able to mount a practical attack against RSA implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer protocol and to recover session keys. As a result of this work, cryptographers now recommend the use of provably secure padding schemes such as Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding, and RSA Laboratories has released new versions of PKCS #1 that are not vulnerable to these attacks.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A variant of this attack, dubbed "BERserk", came back in 2014. It impacted the Mozilla NSS Crypto Library, which was used notably by Firefox and Chrome.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A side-channel attack using branch-prediction analysis (BPA) has been described. Many processors use a branch predictor to determine whether a conditional branch in the instruction flow of a program is likely to be taken or not. Often these processors also implement simultaneous multithreading (SMT). Branch-prediction analysis attacks use a spy process to discover (statistically) the private key when processed with these processors.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: Simple Branch Prediction Analysis (SBPA) claims to improve BPA in a non-statistical way. In their paper, "On the Power of Simple Branch Prediction Analysis", the authors of SBPA (Onur Aciicmez and Cetin Kaya Koc) claim to have discovered 508 out of 512 bits of an RSA key in 10 iterations.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: A power-fault attack on RSA implementations was described in 2010. The author recovered the key by varying the CPU power voltage outside limits; this caused multiple power faults on the server.


title: RSA (cryptosystem)

text: There are many details to keep in mind in order to implement RSA securely (strong PRNG, acceptable public exponent...) . This makes the implementation challenging, to the point the book Practical Cryptography With Go suggests avoiding RSA if possible.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (January 5, 1928 – April 19, 2021) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. A U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1964 to 1976, he was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1984 presidential election, but lost to incumbent Ronald Reagan in an Electoral College and popular vote landslide. Reagan won 49 states while Mondale carried his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. His vice presidential nominee, U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro from New York, was the first female vice-presidential nominee of any major party in U.S. history.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1951 after attending Macalester College. He then served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before earning a law degree in 1956. He married Joan Adams in 1955. Working as a lawyer in Minneapolis, Mondale was appointed Minnesota Attorney General in 1960 by Governor Orville Freeman and was elected to a full term as attorney general in 1962 with 60% of the vote. He was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Karl Rolvaag upon the resignation of Senator Hubert Humphrey following Humphrey's election as vice president in 1964. Mondale was elected to a full Senate term in 1966 and reelected in 1972, resigning in 1976 as he prepared to succeed to the vice presidency in 1977. While in the Senate, he supported consumer protection, fair housing, tax reform and the desegregation of schools; he served on the Church Committee.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 1976, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic presidential nominee, chose Mondale as his vice-presidential running mate. The Carter–Mondale ticket defeated incumbent president Gerald Ford and his running mate Bob Dole. The economy worsened during Carter and Mondale's time in office, and they lost the 1980 election to Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. In 1984, Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination and campaigned for a nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, an increase in taxes, and a reduction of U.S. public debt. Mondale and Ferraro lost the election to the incumbents Reagan and Bush.


title: Walter Mondale

text: After his defeat, Mondale joined the Minnesota-based law firm Dorsey & Whitney and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (1986–1993). President Bill Clinton appointed Mondale U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 1993; he retired from that post in 1996. In 2002, Mondale became the last-minute choice of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party to run for Senate after Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash less than two weeks before the election. Mondale narrowly lost the race to Saint Paul mayor Norm Coleman. He then returned to working at Dorsey & Whitney and remained active in the Democratic Party. Mondale later took up a part-time teaching position at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Walter Frederick Mondale was born on January 5, 1928, in Ceylon, Minnesota, to Theodore Sigvaard Mondale, a Methodist minister, and Claribel Hope (née Cowan), a part-time music teacher. Walter's half-brother Lester Mondale became a Unitarian minister. Mondale also has two brothers, Clarence, known as Pete (1926–2014), and William, known as Mort. His paternal grandparents were Norwegian immigrants, with some distant German ancestry. Mondale's paternal grandfather Frederik Mundal had emigrated from Norway with his family in 1856, eventually settling in southern Minnesota in 1864. The surname "Mondale" derives from that of Mundal, a valley and town in the Fjærland region of Norway. His mother was born in Iowa, the daughter of an immigrant father, Robert Cowan, who was born in Seaforth, Ontario; she was of Scottish and English descent.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In his youth, Mondale's family thought the names "Walter" and "Frederick" were too stilted for a boy, so they called him "Fritz", a common German and Scandinavian diminutive form of Friedrich or Frederick. Due to the Great Depression, Mondale grew up in poverty. His family moved from Ceylon to Heron Lake in 1934, and to Elmore in 1937. Throughout his youth, Mondale was influenced heavily by his father's religious beliefs, including support for the civil rights movement. In 1948, his father died of a stroke. Mondale attended public schools and then Macalester College for two years before transferring to the University of Minnesota, from which he graduated "cum laude" with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1951.


title: Walter Mondale

text: As Mondale could not afford to attend law school, he enlisted in the United States Army in 1951, shortly after graduating. He served with the 3rd Armored Division Artillery at Fort Knox, Kentucky, during the Korean War, first as an armored reconnaissance vehicle crewman, and later as an education programs specialist and associate editor of the unit's newsletter, "Tanker's Dust". He attained the rank of corporal and was discharged in 1953. Mondale enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School, aided by the G.I. Bill, and graduated "cum laude" with a Bachelor of Laws in 1956. In law school, he served on the "Minnesota Law Review" and as a law clerk for Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Thomas F. Gallagher. In 1955, Mondale married Joan Adams, whom he met on a blind date. He then practiced law in Minneapolis for four years before entering politics.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale became involved in national politics in the 1940s. At age 20, he was visible in Minnesota politics by helping organize Hubert Humphrey's successful Senate campaign in 1948. Humphrey's campaign assigned Mondale to cover the staunchly Republican 2nd district. Mondale, who had grown up in the region, was able to win the district for Humphrey by a comfortable margin.


title: Walter Mondale

text: After working with Humphrey, Mondale went on to work on several campaigns for Orville Freeman. Mondale worked on Freeman's unsuccessful 1952 campaign for the governorship as well as his successful campaign in 1954 and his 1958 reelection campaign.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 1960, Freeman appointed Mondale Minnesota Attorney General following the resignation of Miles Lord. At the time he was appointed, Mondale was 32 years old and had been practicing law for four years. He was elected to the post in his own right in 1962.


title: Walter Mondale

text: During his tenure as Minnesota Attorney General, the case "Gideon v. Wainwright" (which ultimately established the right of defendants in state courts to have a lawyer) was being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. When those opposed to the right to counsel organized a friend of the court brief representing several state attorneys general for that position, Mondale organized a countering friend of the court brief from many more state attorneys general, arguing that defendants must be allowed a lawyer. He also continued the investigation of former Minneapolis mayor Marvin L. Kline and the mismanagement of the Sister Kenny Foundation.


title: Walter Mondale

text: At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Mondale played a major role in the proposed but ultimately unsuccessful compromise by which the national Democratic Party offered the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party two at-large seats.


title: Walter Mondale

text: On December 30, 1964, Minnesota Governor Karl Rolvaag appointed Mondale to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy created by Hubert Humphrey's resignation; Humphrey had stepped down after being elected Vice President of the United States. Mondale was elected to the Senate for the first time in 1966, defeating Republican candidate Robert A. Forsythe by a margin of 53.9% to 45.2%.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern offered Mondale an opportunity to be his vice-presidential running mate; he declined. That year, Mondale was re-elected to the Senate with over 57% of the vote, even as Republican President Richard Nixon carried Minnesota. He served in the 88th, 89th, 90th, 91st, 92nd, 93rd, and 94th congresses.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale worked hard to build up the center of the party on economic and social issues. Unlike his father, a fervent liberal, he was not a crusader for the New Deal. Instead, he realized that the Democratic base (especially ethnic blue-collar workers) was gradually moving to the right, and he worked to keep their support. Mondale showed little or no interest in foreign policy until about 1974, when he realized that some foreign policy knowledge was necessary if he had loftier aspirations than the Senate. He developed a centrist position, avoiding alignment with either the party's hawks (such as Henry M. Jackson) or its doves (such as McGovern). Mondale took a liberal position on civil rights, which proved acceptable in Minnesota, a state with "a minuscule black population". Mondale was a chief sponsor of the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination in housing and created the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity as the primary enforcer of the law.


title: Walter Mondale

text: During Lyndon Johnson's presidency, Mondale supported the Vietnam War. After Nixon became president in 1969, Mondale began to oppose the war and participated in legislation to restrict Nixon's ability to prolong it. Mondale supported abortion rights.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale rotated on and off numerous committees, including the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee; the Finance Committee; the Labor and Public Welfare Committee; the Budget Committee; and the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. He also served as chairman of the Select Committee on Equal Education Opportunity and the Intelligence Committee's Domestic Task Force. He additionally served as chairman of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee's subcommittee on Children and Youth and the Senate subcommittee on social security financing.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 1975, Mondale served on the Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, that investigated alleged abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Documents declassified in 2017 show that the National Security Agency had created a file on Mondale as part of its monitoring of prominent U.S. citizens whose names appeared in Signals intelligence.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 1967, Mondale served on the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, then chaired by Clinton P. Anderson, when astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire on January 27 while testing the Apollo 204 (later renumbered Apollo 1) spacecraft. NASA Administrator James E. Webb secured President Lyndon Johnson's approval for NASA to internally investigate the cause of the accident according to its established procedures, subject to Congressional oversight. NASA's procedure called for Deputy Administrator (and de facto general manager) Robert C. Seamans to appoint and oversee an investigative panel.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In February, a reporter leaked to Mondale the existence of an internal NASA report issued in 1965 by Apollo program director Samuel C. Phillips, detailing management, cost, delivery, and quality problems of the Apollo prime contractor North American Aviation. In the February 27 hearing, Mondale asked Webb if he knew of such a report. Webb had not yet seen the December 1965 written report, so he responded in the negative. Seamans had passed along to Webb neither the written report nor the briefing presentation made to him in January 1966 by Phillips and Phillips's boss, Manned Space Flight Administrator George Mueller.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Both Seamans and Mueller had also been called to testify at this session. Mueller denied the report's existence, though he must have been aware of it, as he had appended his own strongly worded letter to the copy sent to North American Aviation president Lee Atwood.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Seamans was afraid Mondale might be in possession of a copy (he was not), so he admitted that NASA often reviewed its contractors' performance, with both positive and negative results, but claimed that was nothing extraordinary. Under repeated questioning from Mondale, Webb promised that he would investigate whether the "Phillips Report" existed, and if so, whether a controlled release could be made to Congress. Immediately after the hearing, Webb saw the Phillips report for the first time.


title: Walter Mondale

text: The controversy spread to both houses of Congress and grew (through the efforts of Mondale's fellow committee member, Republican Margaret Chase Smith to include the second-guessing of NASA's original selection in 1961 of North American as the prime Apollo spacecraft contractor, which Webb became forced to defend). The House NASA oversight committee, which was conducting its own hearings and had picked up on the controversy, was ultimately given a copy of the Phillips report.


title: Walter Mondale

text: While the committee, as a whole, believed that NASA should have informed Congress of the Phillips review results in 1966, its final report issued on January 30, 1968, concluded (as had NASA's own accident investigation completed on April 5, 1967) that "the findings of the [Phillips] task force had no effect on the accident, did not lead to the accident, and were not related to the accident". Yet Mondale wrote a minority opinion accusing NASA of "evasiveness... lack of candor, ... patronizing attitude exhibited toward Congress, ... refusal to respond fully and forthrightly to legitimate congressional inquiries, and ... solicitous concern for corporate sensitivities at a time of national tragedy".


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale explained his actions in a 2001 interview: "I think that by forcing a public confrontation about these heretofore secret and deep concerns about the safety and the management of the program, it forced NASA to restructure and reorganize the program in a way that was much safer."


title: Walter Mondale

text: When Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for president in 1976, he chose Mondale as his running mate. Mondale campaigned for the ticket in various states. While campaigning in Toledo, Ohio he said that the country needed a strong president to stop inflation and added that President Gerald Ford did not have the guts to stand up to big businesses. The ticket was narrowly elected on November 2, 1976, and Mondale was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1977.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Under Carter, Mondale traveled extensively throughout the nation and the world advocating the administration's foreign policy. His travels also included a visit to the , which was on station at the time in the Indian Ocean, during the Iran hostage crisis. Mondale was the first vice president to have an office in the White House and established the concept of an "activist Vice President". He began the tradition of weekly lunches with the president, which continues to this day. More importantly, he expanded the vice president's role from figurehead to presidential advisor, full-time participant, and troubleshooter for the administration. Subsequent vice presidents have followed this model. In 1979, Twin Cities Public Television produced a documentary about his trip to Norway, titled "Walter Mondale: There's a Fjord in Your Past", a play on the well-known advertising slogan "There's a Ford in Your Future".


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale cast one tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate on November 4, 1977, allowing the Social Security financing bill to be passed.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Carter and Mondale were renominated at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, but soundly lost to the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. That year, Mondale opened the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Carter and Mondale were the longest-living post-presidential team in American history. On May 23, 2006, they had been out of office for 9,254 days (25 years, 4 months and 3 days), surpassing the former record established by President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson, both of whom died on July 4, 1826. On September 8, 2012, Carter surpassed Herbert Hoover as the president with the longest retirement from office. On April 23, 2014, Mondale surpassed Richard Nixon as the vice president with the longest retirement from office at 12,146 days (33 years, 3 months and 3 days). At the time of his death, Mondale was the oldest living U.S. vice president and Carter was (and remains) the oldest living U.S. president.


title: Walter Mondale

text: After losing the 1980 election, Mondale returned briefly to the practice of law at Winston and Strawn, a large Chicago-based law firm, but he intended to return to politics before long.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the Democratic presidential primaries preceding the 1984 election, and was soon the front-runner. His opposition included Reverend Jesse Jackson and Senator Gary Hart from Colorado. Hart won the New Hampshire primary in March, but Mondale had much of the party leadership behind him. To great effect, Mondale used the Wendy's slogan "Where's the beef?" to describe Hart's policies as lacking depth. Jackson, widely regarded as the first serious African-American candidate for president, held on longer, but Mondale gained the nomination with the majority of delegates.


title: Walter Mondale

text: At the Democratic National Convention, Mondale chose U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro from New York as his running mate, making her the first woman nominated for that position by a major party. Aides later said that Mondale was determined to make a historic choice with his vice presidential candidate, having considered San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein (female and Jewish); Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African American; and San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, a Mexican American, as finalists. Others preferred Senator Lloyd Bentsen because he would appeal to the Deep South, or even nomination rival Gary Hart. Ferraro, as a Catholic, was criticized by some Catholic Church leaders for being pro-choice. Much more controversy erupted over her changing positions about the release of her husband's tax returns, and her own ethics record in the House. Ferraro was on the defensive throughout much of the campaign, largely negating her breakthrough as the first woman on a major national ticket. She was also the first Italian American to reach that level in American politics.


title: Walter Mondale

text: When Mondale made his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, he said: "By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two‑thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." While this was meant to show that Mondale would be honest with voters, it was instead largely interpreted as a campaign pledge to raise taxes to spend on domestic programs, which was unappealing to many voters.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale ran a liberal campaign, supporting a nuclear freeze and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). He spoke against Reagan's economic policies and in support of reducing federal budget deficits. However, the incumbent was popular, and Mondale's campaign was widely considered ineffective. Mondale was also perceived as supporting the poor at the expense of the middle class. In the first televised debate he performed unexpectedly well, which led many to question Reagan's age and capacity to endure the grueling demands of the presidency (Reagan was the oldest person to serve as president—73 at the time—while Mondale was 56). In the next debate on October 21, 1984, Reagan deflected the issue by quipping, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale was defeated in a landslide, receiving 37,577,352 votes (40.6% of the popular vote), and winning only the District of Columbia and his home state of Minnesota (even there his margin of victory was fewer than 3,800 votes), securing only 13 electoral votes to Reagan's 525. The result was the worst electoral college defeat for any Democratic Party candidate in history, and the worst for any major-party candidate since Alf Landon's loss to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale returned to private law practice with Dorsey & Whitney in Minneapolis in 1987. From 1986 to 1993, he chaired the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. During Bill Clinton's presidency, he was United States Ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, chaired a bipartisan group to study campaign finance reform, and was Clinton's special envoy to Indonesia in 1998.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Until his appointment as Ambassador to Japan, Mondale was a Distinguished University Fellow in Law and Public Affairs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In 1990, he established the Mondale Policy Forum at the Humphrey Institute. The forum has brought together leading scholars and policymakers for annual conferences on domestic and international issues.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale spoke before the U.S. Senate on September 4, 2002, delivering a lecture on his service, with commentary on the transformation of the office of the vice president during the Carter administration, the Senate cloture rule for ending debate, and his view of the future of the Senate. The lecture was a part of a continuing Senate "Leaders Lecture Series" that ran from 1998 to 2002.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 2002, Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota, who was running for reelection, died in a plane crash 11 days before the November 5 election. Mondale replaced Wellstone on the ballot at the urging of Wellstone's relatives. The Senate seat was the one Mondale had held before resigning to become vice president in 1977.


title: Walter Mondale

text: During his debate with the Republican nominee, former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, Mondale emphasized his experience, while painting Coleman as right-wing partisan in-line with then-president Bush.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale unexpectedly lost the election, receiving 1,067,246 votes (47.34%) to Coleman's 1,116,697 (49.53%). Upon conceding defeat, Mondale said, "At the end of what will be my last campaign, I want to say to Minnesota, you always treated me well, you always listened to me."


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 2004, Mondale became co-chairman of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Right to Counsel Committee. He endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton for president in 2008. On June 3, 2008, following the final primary contests, Mondale endorsed Senator Barack Obama, who had clinched the nomination the previous evening, and won the presidency.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Following the presidential election of 2004 and the midterm elections of 2006, Mondale is seen in the documentary "" talking with Al Franken about the possibility of the latter running against Coleman for U.S. Senate in 2008. In the film, Mondale encourages Franken to run, but cautions him, saying that Coleman's allies and the Republican Party would look for anything they could use against him. Franken ultimately ran and won the 2008 Senate election by 312 votes, with Coleman contesting the election results until June 30, 2009. Mondale and Senator Amy Klobuchar stood with Franken in the United States Senate chamber when Franken was sworn in on July 7, 2009.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale then stood again with Senator Klobuchar when Tina Smith was sworn in on January 3, 2018. He endorsed Klobuchar for president in February 2019.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale's wife, Joan Mondale, was a national advocate for the arts and was the Honorary Chairman of the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities during the Carter Administration. On February 3, 2014, she died at a hospice in Minneapolis surrounded by family members.


title: Walter Mondale

text: The Mondales' eldest son, Ted, is an entrepreneur and the CEO of Nazca Solutions, a technology fulfillment venture. He is also a former Minnesota state senator. In 1998, Ted Mondale unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Minnesota governor, running as a fiscal moderate who had distanced himself from labor.


title: Walter Mondale

text: The Mondales' daughter, Eleanor, was a television personality. She also had radio talk shows in Chicago and a long-running program on WCCO (AM) in Minneapolis. She died of brain cancer at her home in Minnesota on September 17, 2011, at the age of 51.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale had a residence near Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis. He was a Presbyterian. He enjoyed fishing, reading Shakespeare and historical accounts, barbecuing, skiing, watching "Monty Python", and playing tennis.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale was the recipient of numerous distinctions. He was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa as an honoris causa initiate at the University of South Carolina in 1981. Mondale also maintained strong ties to the University of Minnesota Law School. In 2002 the school renamed its building Walter F. Mondale Hall. Mondale contributed cameo appearances to the law school's annual T.O.R.T. ("Theater of the Relatively Talentless") productions and allowed his name to be used as the nickname of the school's hockey team: the "Fighting Mondales".


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale had deep connections to his ancestral Norway. Upon entering the Senate in 1964, he took over the seat of vice president Hubert Humphrey, another Norwegian-American. In later years, Mondale served on the executive committee of the Peace Prize Forum, an annual conference co-sponsored by the Norwegian Nobel Institute. On December 5, 2007, Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre announced that Mondale would be named Honorary Consul-General of Norway, representing the Norwegian state in Minnesota.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In 2015, Mondale was awarded the Public Leadership in Neurology Award from the American Academy of Neurology for raising awareness for brain health, having lost both his wife and daughter to brain diseases.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Mondale died of natural causes in his sleep at his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 19, 2021, at the age of 93. On the day before his death, he had several phone conversations with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Mondale also emailed a final message to his staff, as he and his family had come to the conclusion that "his death was imminent". At the time of his death, Mondale was the oldest living former U.S. vice president.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Carter said in a statement: "Today I mourn the passing of my dear friend Walter Mondale, who I consider the best vice president in our country's history [...] Rosalynn and I join all Americans in giving thanks for his exemplary life, and we extend our deepest condolences to his family." Carter had last seen Mondale in person at the Carter Center in June 2019.


title: Walter Mondale

text: President Biden paid tribute to Mondale in a public statement, calling him a "dear friend and mentor" who had "defined the vice presidency as a full partnership, and helped provide a model for my service". On April 20, 2021, Biden ordered all flags at government properties, office buildings and public grounds to be flown at half-staff until that Tuesday evening in honor of Mondale.


title: Walter Mondale

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, funeral services for Mondale were delayed. Two public services were initially planned for September 2021, one in his home state of Minnesota and the other in Washington D.C.; both were later postponed.


title: Walter Mondale

text: A memorial service was later held on May 1, 2022, at the Northrop Auditorium on the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. Attendees included family, friends, state and national leaders, including President Joe Biden.


title: Walter Mondale

text: In the "Walter F. Mondale Papers" at the Minnesota Historical Society, digital content is available for research use. Contents include speech files, handwritten notes, memoranda, annotated briefings, schedules, correspondence, and visual materials. The collection includes senatorial, vice presidential, ambassadorial, political papers and campaign files, and personal papers documenting most aspects of Mondale's 60‑year-long career, including all of his public offices, campaigns, and Democratic Party and other non-official activities.


title: Walter Mondale

text: The University of Minnesota Law Library's Walter F. Mondale website is devoted to Mondale's senatorial career. Mondale's work is documented in full text access to selected proceedings and debates on the floor of the Senate as recorded in the "Congressional Record".


title: Marcel Proust

text: Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel "In Search of Lost Time" ("À la recherche du temps perdu"; with the previous English title translation of "Remembrance of Things Past"), originally published in French in seven volumes between 1913 and 1927. He is considered by critics and writers to be one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust was born on 10 July 1871 at the home of his great-uncle in the Paris Borough of Auteuil (the south-western sector of the then-rustic 16th arrondissement), two months after the Treaty of Frankfurt formally ended the Franco-Prussian War. His birth took place at the very beginning of the Third Republic, during the violence that surrounded the suppression of the Paris Commune, and his childhood corresponded with the consolidation of the Republic. Much of "In Search of Lost Time" concerns the vast changes, most particularly the decline of the aristocracy and the rise of the middle classes, that occurred in France during the "fin de siècle."


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust's father, Adrien Proust, was a prominent French pathologist and epidemiologist, studying cholera in Europe and Asia. He wrote numerous articles and books on medicine and hygiene. Proust's mother, Jeanne Clémence (Weil), was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from Alsace. Literate and well-read, she demonstrated a well-developed sense of humour in her letters, and her command of the English language was sufficient to help with her son's translations of John Ruskin. Proust was raised in his father's Catholic faith. He was baptized (on 5 August 1871, at the church of ) and later confirmed as a Catholic, but he never formally practised that faith. He later became an atheist and was something of a mystic.


title: Marcel Proust

text: By the age of nine, Proust had had his first serious asthma attack, and thereafter he was considered a sickly child. Proust spent long holidays in the village of Illiers. This village, combined with recollections of his great-uncle's house in Auteuil, became the model for the fictional town of Combray, where some of the most important scenes of "In Search of Lost Time" take place. (Illiers was renamed Illiers-Combray in 1971 on the occasion of the Proust centenary celebrations.)


title: Marcel Proust

text: In 1882, at the age of eleven, Proust became a pupil at the Lycée Condorcet; however, his education was disrupted by his illness. Despite this, he excelled in literature, receiving an award in his final year. Thanks to his classmates, he was able to gain access to some of the salons of the upper bourgeoisie, providing him with copious material for "In Search of Lost Time".


title: Marcel Proust

text: In spite of his poor health, Proust served a year (1889–90) in the French army, stationed at Coligny Barracks in Orléans, an experience that provided a lengthy episode in "The Guermantes' Way", part three of his novel. As a young man, Proust was a dilettante and a social climber whose aspirations as a writer were hampered by his lack of self-discipline. His reputation from this period, as a snob and an amateur, contributed to his later troubles with getting "Swann's Way", the first part of his large-scale novel, published in 1913. At this time, he attended the "salons" of Mme Straus, widow of Georges Bizet and mother of Proust's childhood friend Jacques Bizet, of Madeleine Lemaire and of Mme Arman de Caillavet, one of the models for Madame Verdurin, and mother of his friend Gaston Arman de Caillavet, with whose fiancée (Jeanne Pouquet) he was in love. It is through Mme Arman de Caillavet, he made the acquaintance of Anatole France, her lover.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust had a close relationship with his mother. To appease his father, who insisted that he pursue a career, Proust obtained a volunteer position at Bibliothèque Mazarine in the summer of 1896. After exerting considerable effort, he obtained a sick leave that extended for several years until he was considered to have resigned. He never worked at his job, and he did not move from his parents' apartment until after both were dead.


title: Marcel Proust

text: His life and family circle changed markedly between 1900 and 1905. In February 1903, Proust's brother, Robert Proust, married and left the family home. His father died in November of the same year. Finally, and most crushingly, Proust's beloved mother died in September 1905. She left him a considerable inheritance. His health throughout this period continued to deteriorate.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust spent the last three years of his life mostly confined to his bedroom, sleeping during the day and working at night to complete his novel. He died of pneumonia and a pulmonary abscess in 1922. He was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust was involved in writing and publishing from an early age. In addition to the literary magazines with which he was associated, and in which he published while at school ("La Revue verte" and "La Revue lilas"), from 1890 to 1891 he published a regular society column in the journal "Le Mensuel". In 1892, he was involved in founding a literary review called "Le Banquet" (also the French title of Plato's "Symposium"), and throughout the next several years Proust published small pieces regularly in this journal and in the prestigious "La Revue Blanche".


title: Marcel Proust

text: In 1896 "Les plaisirs et les jours", a compendium of many of these early pieces, was published. The book included a foreword by Anatole France, drawings by Mme Lemaire in whose "salon" Proust was a frequent guest, and who inspired Proust's Mme Verdurin. She invited him and Reynaldo Hahn to her château de Réveillon (the model for Mme Verdurin's La Raspelière) in summer 1894, and for three weeks in 1895. This book was so sumptuously produced that it cost twice the normal price of a book its size.


title: Marcel Proust

text: That year Proust also began working on a novel, which was eventually published in 1952 and titled "Jean Santeuil" by his posthumous editors. Many of the themes later developed in "In Search of Lost Time" find their first articulation in this unfinished work, including the enigma of memory and the necessity of reflection; several sections of "In Search of Lost Time" can be read in the first draft in "Jean Santeuil". The portrait of the parents in "Jean Santeuil" is quite harsh, in marked contrast to the adoration with which the parents are painted in Proust's masterpiece. Following the poor reception of "Les Plaisirs et les Jours", and internal troubles with resolving the plot, Proust gradually abandoned "Jean Santeuil" in 1897 and stopped work on it entirely by 1899.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Beginning in 1895 Proust spent several years reading Thomas Carlyle, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Ruskin. Through this reading, he refined his theories of art and the role of the artist in society. Also, in "Time Regained" Proust's universal protagonist recalls having translated Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies". The artist's responsibility is to confront the appearance of nature, deduce its essence and retell or explain that essence in the work of art. Ruskin's view of artistic production was central to this conception, and Ruskin's work was so important to Proust that he claimed to know "by heart" several of Ruskin's books, including "The Seven Lamps of Architecture", "The Bible of Amiens", and "Praeterita".


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust set out to translate two of Ruskin's works into French, but was hampered by an imperfect command of English. To compensate for this he made his translations a group affair: sketched out by his mother, the drafts were first revised by Proust, then by Marie Nordlinger, the English cousin of his friend and sometime lover Reynaldo Hahn, then finally polished by Proust. Questioned about his method by an editor, Proust responded, "I don't claim to know English; I claim to know Ruskin". "The Bible of Amiens", with Proust's extended introduction, was published in French in 1904. Both the translation and the introduction were well-reviewed; Henri Bergson called Proust's introduction "an important contribution to the psychology of Ruskin", and had similar praise for the translation. At the time of this publication, Proust was already translating Ruskin's "Sesame and Lilies", which he completed in June 1905, just before his mother's death, and published in 1906. Literary historians and critics have ascertained that, apart from Ruskin, Proust's chief literary influences included Saint-Simon, Montaigne, Stendhal, Flaubert, George Eliot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Leo Tolstoy.


title: Marcel Proust

text: 1908 was an important year for Proust's development as a writer. During the first part of the year he published in various journals pastiches of other writers. These exercises in imitation may have allowed Proust to solidify his own style. In addition, in the spring and summer of the year Proust began work on several different fragments of writing that would later coalesce under the working title of "Contre Sainte-Beuve". Proust described his efforts in a letter to a friend: "I have in progress: a study on the nobility, a Parisian novel, an essay on Sainte-Beuve and Flaubert, an essay on women, an essay on pederasty (not easy to publish), a study on stained-glass windows, a study on tombstones, a study on the novel".


title: Marcel Proust

text: From these disparate fragments Proust began to shape a novel on which he worked continually during this period. The rough outline of the work centred on a first-person narrator, unable to sleep, who during the night remembers waiting as a child for his mother to come to him in the morning. The novel was to have ended with a critical examination of Sainte-Beuve and a refutation of his theory that biography was the most important tool for understanding an artist's work. Present in the unfinished manuscript notebooks are many elements that correspond to parts of the "Recherche", in particular, to the "Combray" and "Swann in Love" sections of Volume 1, and to the final section of Volume 7. Trouble with finding a publisher, as well as a gradually changing conception of his novel, led Proust to shift work to a substantially different project that still contained many of the same themes and elements. By 1910 he was at work on "À la recherche du temps perdu".


title: Marcel Proust

text: Begun in 1909, when Proust was 38 years old, "À la recherche du temps perdu" consists of seven volumes totaling around 3,200 pages (about 4,300 in The Modern Library's translation) and featuring more than 2,000 characters. Graham Greene called Proust the "greatest novelist of the 20th century", and W. Somerset Maugham called the novel the "greatest fiction to date". André Gide was initially not so taken with his work. The first volume was refused by the publisher Gallimard on Gide's advice. He later wrote to Proust apologizing for his part in the refusal and calling it one of the most serious mistakes of his life. Finally, the book was published at the author's expense by Grasset and Proust paid critics to speak favorably about it.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust died before he was able to complete his revision of the drafts and proofs of the final volumes, the last three of which were published posthumously and edited by his brother Robert.


title: Marcel Proust

text: The book was translated into English by C. K. Scott Moncrieff, appearing under the title "Remembrance of Things Past" between 1922 and 1931. Scott Moncrieff translated volumes one through six of the seven volumes, dying before completing the last. This last volume was rendered by other translators at different times. When Scott Moncrieff's translation was later revised (first by Terence Kilmartin, then by D. J. Enright) the title of the novel was changed to the more literal "In Search of Lost Time".


title: Marcel Proust

text: In 1995 Penguin undertook a fresh translation of the book by editor Christopher Prendergast and seven translators in three countries, based on the latest, most complete and authoritative French text. Its six volumes, comprising Proust's seven, were published in Britain under the Allen Lane imprint in 2002.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust is known to have been homosexual, and his sexuality and relationships with men are often discussed by his biographers. Although his housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, denies this aspect of Proust's sexuality in her memoirs, her denial runs contrary to the statements of many of Proust's friends and contemporaries, including his fellow writer André Gide as well as his valet Ernest A. Forssgren.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust never openly admitted to his homosexuality, though his family and close friends either knew or suspected it. In 1897, he even fought a duel with writer Jean Lorrain, who publicly questioned the nature of Proust's relationship with his (Proust's) lover Lucien Daudet (both duellists survived). Despite Proust's own public denial, his romantic relationship with composer Reynaldo Hahn, and his infatuation with his chauffeur and secretary, Alfred Agostinelli, are well documented. On the night of 11 January 1918, Proust was one of the men identified by police in a raid on a male brothel run by Albert Le Cuziat. Proust's friend, the poet Paul Morand, openly teased Proust about his visits to male prostitutes. In his journal, Morand refers to Proust, as well as Gide, as "constantly hunting, never satiated by their adventures ... eternal prowlers, tireless sexual adventurers."


title: Marcel Proust

text: The exact influence of Proust's sexuality on his writing is a topic of debate. However, "In Search of Lost Time" discusses homosexuality at length and features several principal characters, both men and women, who are either homosexual or bisexual: the Baron de Charlus, Robert de Saint-Loup, Odette de Crécy, and Albertine Simonet. Homosexuality also appears as a theme in "Les plaisirs et les jours" and his unfinished novel, "Jean Santeuil".


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust inherited much of his mother's political outlook, which was supportive of the French Third Republic and near the liberal centre of French politics. In an 1892 article published in "Le Banquet" entitled "L'Irréligion d'État", Proust condemned extreme anti-clerical measures such as the expulsion of monks, observing that "one might just be surprised that the negation of religion should bring in its wake the same fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution as religion itself." He argued that socialism posed a greater threat to society than the Church. He was equally critical of the right, lambasting "the insanity of the conservatives," whom he deemed "as dumb and ungrateful as under Charles X," and referring to Pope Pius X's obstinacy as foolish. Proust always rejected the bigoted and illiberal views harbored by many priests at the time, but believed that the most enlightened clerics could be just as progressive as the most enlightened secularists, and that both could serve the cause of "the advanced liberal Republic". He approved of the more moderate stance taken in 1906 by Aristide Briand, whom he described as "admirable".


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust was among the earliest Dreyfusards, even attending Émile Zola's trial and proudly claiming to have been the one who asked Anatole France to sign the petition in support of Dreyfus's innocence. In 1919, when representatives of the right-wing Action Française published a manifesto upholding French colonialism and the Catholic Church as the embodiment of civilised values, Proust rejected their nationalism and chauvinism in favor of a liberal pluralist vision which acknowledged Christianity's cultural legacy in France. Julien Benda commended Proust in "La Trahison des clercs" as a writer who distinguished himself from his generation by avoiding the twin traps of nationalism and class sectarianism.


title: Marcel Proust

text: Proust was considered a hypochondriac by his doctors. His correspondence provides clue on his symptoms. According to J. Yellowlees Douglas, Proust suffered from the vascular subtype of Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), or Ukrainian National Republic (UNR), was a country in Eastern Europe that existed between 1917 and 1920. It was declared following the February Revolution in Russia by the First Universal. In March 1917, the National Congress in Kyiv elected the Central Council composed of socialist parties on the same principles as throughout the rest of the Russian Republic. The republic's autonomy was recognized by the Russian Provisional Government. Following the October Revolution, it proclaimed its independence from the Russian Republic on 22 January 1918 by the Fourth Universal.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: During its short existence, the republic went through several political transformations – from the socialist-leaning republic headed by the Central Council of Ukraine with its general secretariat to the socialist republic led by the Directorate and by Symon Petliura. Between April and December 1918, the socialist authority of the Ukrainian People's Republic was suspended, having been overthrown by the pro-German Ukrainian State of Pavlo Skoropadskyi, who was elected as a Hetman by a congress of peasants. From late 1919, the UNR operated as an ally of the Second Polish Republic. On 10 November 1920, the state lost the remainder of its territory to the Bolsheviks. The 18 March 1921 Peace of Riga between the Second Polish Republic, Soviet Russia (acting also on behalf of Soviet Belarus), and Soviet Ukraine sealed the fate of the Ukrainian People's Republic.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After the October Revolution, many governments formed in Ukraine, most notably the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets (1917–1918) based in Kharkiv, and its Soviet successors. This force, along with the Ukrainian Republic (based in Kyiv), plus the White Movement, Poland, Green armies, and the Anarchists, fought constantly with each other, which resulted in many casualties among Ukrainians fighting in a 1917–21 Ukrainian Civil War as part of the wider Russian Civil War of 1917–23. The Russian SFSR would (after the 1921 Treaty of Riga) extend control over what would ultimately become the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and (in 1922) a founding member of the Soviet Union.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: On 10 June 1917, the Central Council of Ukraine declared its autonomy as part of the Russian Republic by its First Universal at the All-Ukrainian Military Congress. The highest governing body of the Ukrainian People's Republic became the General Secretariat headed by Volodymyr Vynnychenko. The Prime Minister of Russia Alexander Kerensky recognized the Secretariat, appointing it as the representative governing body of the Russian Provisional Government and limiting its powers to five governorates: Volyn, Kyiv, Podolia, Chernigov, and Poltava. At first Vynnychenko protested and left his post as Secretariat leader, but eventually returned to reassemble the Secretariat after the Tsentralna Rada accepted the "Kerensky Instruktsiya" and issued the Second Universal.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After the October Revolution the Kyivan faction of the Bolshevik Party instigated the uprising in Kyiv on 8 November 1917 in order to establish Soviet power in the city. Kyiv Military District forces attempted to stop it, but after the Tsentralna Rada threw its support behind the Bolsheviks, the Russian forces were eliminated from Kyiv. After expelling the government forces, the Rada announced a wider autonomy for the Ukrainian Republic, still maintaining ties to Russia, on 22 November 1917. The territory of the republic was proclaimed by the Third Universal 20 November 1917 (7 November by Old Style) of the Tsentralna Rada encompassing the governorates: Volyn, Kyiv, Podolie, Chernigov, Poltava, Kharkov, Yekaterinoslav, Kherson, Taurida (not including Crimea). It also stated that the people of the governorates: Voronezh, Kholm, and Kursk were welcome to join the republic through a referendum. Further the Tsentralna Rada in its Universal stated that because there was no Government in the Russian Republic after the October Revolution it proclaimed itself the Supreme governing body of the territory of Ukraine until order in the Russian republic could be restored. The Central Council of Ukraine called all revolutionary activities such as the October Revolution a civil war and expressed its hopes for the resolution of the chaos.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After a brief truce, the Bolsheviks realized that the Rada had no intention of supporting the Bolshevik Revolution. They re-organized into an All-Ukrainian Council of Soviets in December 1917 in an attempt to seize power. When that failed due to the Bolsheviks' relative lack of popularity in Kyiv, they moved to Kharkiv. The Bolsheviks of Ukraine declared the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic outlawed and proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets with capital in Kyiv, claiming that the government of the People's Secretaries of Ukraine was the only government in the country. The Bolshevik Red Army entered Ukraine from the Russian SFSR in support of the local Soviet government. As the relationships between members within the Tsentralna Rada soured, a series of regional Soviet republics on the territory of Ukraine proclaimed their independence and allegiance to the Petrograd sovnarkom (Odessa Soviet Republic (southern Ukraine), Donetsk-Krivoi Rog Soviet Republic (eastern Ukraine)). The Donetsk-Kryvoi Rog Republic was created by a direct decree of Lenin as part of the Russian SFSR with its capital in Kharkiv. That decree was successfully implemented by Fyodor Sergeyev who became the chairman of the local government as well as joining the Soviet government of Ukraine, simultaneously. Unlike "Fyodor Sergeyev's" Republic, the Odessa Republic was not recognized by any other Bolshevik governments and on its own initiative had entered a military conflict with Romania for control over the Moldavian Democratic Republic, whose territory it was contesting.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The following information is based on the exposition of the Museum of Soviet occupation in Kyiv (Memorial in Kyiv).


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: (Each deputy represents 100,000 of population, a right of vote have citizens of 20 years and older; established the Central Election Commission to the Ukrainian Constituent Assembly)


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: In April 1918 troops loyal to the Ukrainian People's Republic take control of several cities in the Donbass region.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: Due to the aggression from Soviet Russia, on 22 January 1918, the Tsentralna Rada issued its Fourth Universal (dated 22 January 1918), breaking ties with Bolshevik Russia and proclaiming a sovereign Ukrainian state. Less than a month later, on 9 February 1918, the Red Army seized Kyiv.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: Besieged by the Bolsheviks and having lost much territory, the Rada was forced to seek foreign aid, and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 9 February 1918 to obtain military help from the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Germany helped the Ukrainian Army force the Bolsheviks out of Ukraine. On 20 February 1918 the council of the Kuban People's Republic accepted the resolution for a federal union of Kuban with Ukraine as Bolshevik forces pushed towards Yekaterinodar. It was agreed to forward the resolution for ratification to the Ukrainian government.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Ukraine became a virtual protectorate of the German Empire which at that time seemed more favorable than being overrun by the Soviet forces that were spreading havoc in the country. Germany was anxious about losing the war and was trying to speed up the process of food extraction from Ukraine, so it decided to install its own administration in the person of Generalfeldmarschall von Eichhorn who replaced the Colonel General Alexander von Linsingen. On 6 April the commander of the Army group "Kijew" issued an order in which he explained his intentions to execute the conditions of the treaty. That, of course, conflicted with the laws of the Ukrainian government, which annulled his order. By April 1918 the German-Austrian Operation Faustschlag offensive had completely removed the Bolsheviks from Ukraine. The German/Austro-Hungarian victories in Ukraine were due to the apathy of the locals and the inferior fighting skills of Bolsheviks troops compared to their Austro-Hungarian and German counterparts.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The Germans arrested and disbanded the Tsentralna Rada on 29 April 1918 to stop the social reforms that were taking place and restarted the process of food supply transfer to Germany and Austria-Hungary. The German authorities also arrested the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Vsevolod Holubovych, on terrorist charges, and thus disbanded the Council of People's Ministers. Prior to this, the Rada had approved the Constitution of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Concurrently with all these events and a few days prior to the change of powers in the country on 24 April 1918 the government of Belarus confirmed the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce in Kyiv headed by Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapolsky on the initiative of the Belarusian secretary of finance Pyotr Krechevsky.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After the coup, the Rada was replaced by the conservative government of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky, the Hetmanate, and the Ukrainian People's Republic by a "Ukrainian State" ("Ukrayinska derzhava"). Skoropadsky, a former officer of the Russian Empire, established a regime favoring large landowners and concentrating power at the top. The government had little support from Ukrainian activists, but unlike the socialist Rada, it was able to establish an effective administrative organization, established diplomatic ties with many countries, and concluded a peace treaty with Soviet Russia. In a few months, the Hetmanate also printed millions of Ukrainian language textbooks, established many Ukrainian schools, two universities, and the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The Hetmanate government also supported the confiscation of previously-nationalized peasant lands by wealthy estate owners, often with the help of German troops. This led to unrest, the rise of a peasant partisan (guerrilla) movement, and a series of large-scale popular armed revolts. Negotiations were held to garner support from previous Rada members Petliura and Vynnychenko, but these activists worked to overthrow Skoropadsky. On 30 July, a Russian Left Socialist-Revolutionary, Boris Mikhailovich Donskoy, with help from the local USRP succeeded in assassinating von Eichhorn, blowing him up in downtown Kyiv at a broadlight.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: Due to the impending loss of World War I by Germany and Austria-Hungary, Skoropadsky's sponsors, the Hetman formed a new cabinet of Russian Monarchists and committed to federation with a possible future non-Bolshevik Russia. In response, the Ukrainian socialists announced a new revolutionary government, the Directorate, on 14 November 1918.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The Directorate gained massive popularity, and the support of some of Skoropadsky's military units including the Serdiuk Division. Their insurgent army encircled Kyiv on 21 November. After a three-week-long stalemate Skoropadsky abdicated in favor of the Council of Ministers who surrendered to the Revolutionary forces. On 19 December 1918, the Directorate took control of Kyiv.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine from Kursk in late December 1918 where the new Ukrainian Soviet government was reestablished earlier in November of the same year. On 16 January 1919 Ukraine officially declared a war on Russia while the Russian Soviet government continued to deny all claims of invasion. On 22 January 1919, the Directorate was officially united with the West Ukrainian People's Republic, although the latter entity "de facto" maintained its own army and government. On 5 February, the Bolsheviks captured Kyiv.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: Throughout 1919, Ukraine experienced chaos as the armies of the Ukrainian Republic, the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the foreign powers of the Entente, and Poland, as well as anarchist forces such as that of Nestor Makhno tried to prevail. The subsequent Kyiv Offensive, staged by the Polish army and allied Ukrainian forces, was unable to change the situation. On 10 November 1920, the Directorate lost the remainder of its territory to the Bolsheviks in Volhynia as it crossed into Poland to accept internment. In March 1921, the Peace of Riga sealed a shared control of the territory by Poland, the Russian SFSR, and the Ukrainian SSR.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: As the result, the lands of Galicia ("Halychyna") as well as a large part of the Volhynian territory were incorporated into Poland, while the areas to the east and south became part of Soviet Ukraine.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After its military and political defeat, the Directorate continued to maintain control over some of its military forces. Preempting a planned invasion by its rival Archduke Wilhelm of Austria, in October 1921 the Ukrainian National Republic's government-in-exile launched a series of guerrilla raids into central Ukraine that reached as far east as Kyiv Oblast. On 4 November, the Directorate's guerrillas captured Korosten and seized much military supplies. But on 17 November 1921, this force was surrounded by Bolshevik cavalry and destroyed.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The following is the list of numerous uprisings that took place during the formation of the Ukrainian People's Republic. Some of them were in opposition to the Petlyura's government (such as the Oskilko's Affair), some were against the establishment of the Soviet regime, some took place to eliminate the Entente forces. According to Cheka documentation, in Ukraine took place 268 uprisings from 1917 through 1932, where in over 100 raions the mutinied peasants were killing chekists, communists, and prodotryads that were requisitioning food by force which more resembled expropriation.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The government of Ukrainian People's Republic operated in Warsaw, Paris, Weimar, Kissingen, Munich, and Philadelphia.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: After the beginning of the World War II Taras Bulba-Borovets, with the support of the President of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile Andrii Livytskyi, crossed the German-Soviet border and started organizing UPA military units subordinate to the UPR Government.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The 10th Emergency Session of the Ukrainian National Council recognized the state of Ukraine as the successor of the Ukrainian People's Republic in exile and agreed to transfer the powers and attributes of state power to the newly elected President of Ukraine in 1991.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The Ukrainian People's Republic was recognized "de jure" in February 1918 by the Central Powers of World War I (Austria-Hungary, Germany, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria) and by Bolshevik Russia, the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Georgia, Azerbaijan, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and the Holy See. "De facto" recognition was granted by Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Persia. Partial de facto recognition was received from the Belarusian Democratic Republic (see Belarus–Ukraine relations).


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: Later in 1918 Russia chose to withdraw its recognition of independent Ukraine, representing the protocols of the Versailles Treaty as justification for its action. In 1920 Symon Petliura and Józef Piłsudski signed the Warsaw Treaty in which both countries established their borders along the Zbruch River. The states that previously recognized the Ukrainian People's Republic ceased any relationships with its Government-in-exile after they recognized the Soviet Government in Kyiv.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: According to the latest census that was taken 1897, the republic was accounted for over 20 million population in seven former Russian guberniyas, plus three uyezds of the Taurida Governorate that were located on the mainland.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: On 4 March 1918 the Ukrainian government accepted the law about the administrative-territorial division of Ukraine. The law stated that Ukraine is divided into 32 zemlia ("land") which are administrated by their respective zemstvo. This law was not fully implemented as on 29 April 1918 there was the anti-socialist coup in Kyiv, after which Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky reverted the reform back to the guberniya-type administration.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The headquarters of the republic's armed forces was called the General Bulawa and was considered to be located in Kyiv. Of course, due to constant intervention from the Petrograd sovnarkom and the German Empire the physical location of it was changing (Kamyanets-Podilsky, Bila Tserkva, others).


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: The following three Zaporizhian infantry regiments and the 3 Haidamaka Regiment of the biggest Ukrainian military formation, the Zaporizhian Corps, later were reorganized into the 1 Zaporizhian Division.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: In December 1918 a temporary law about the issue of state banknotes by the UPR was adopted. According to this law: "Bank-notes must be issued in karbovanets" (Ukrainian: Карбованець). Each karbovanets contains 17.424 parts of pure gold and is divided into two "hrivnas" (Ukrainian: Гривня) or 200 "shahs" (Ukrainian: Шаг).


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: There were numerous banks in the republic among the most popular ones were the "Ukrainabank" and the "Soyuzbank" that were created by Khrystofor Baranovsky, the leader of a cooperative movement.


title: Ukrainian People's Republic

text: Green indicates UPR-controlled territory, red indicates the Red Army control, light yellow for the White Army control, dark yellow for Germany, blue for Poland, and brown for Romania. Bold black line indicates the borders of modern Ukraine.


title: Big Tech

text: Big Tech, also known as the Tech Giants, is a grouping of the most dominant companies in the information technology industry, mostly centered in the United States. The term also can refer to the four or five largest American tech companies, sometimes referred to as the Big Four or Big Five, which presently consist of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, and Meta (Facebook)—with Microsoft completing the Big Five.


title: Big Tech

text: The tech giants are dominant players in their respective areas of technology: artificial intelligence, e-commerce, online advertising, consumer electronics, cloud computing, computer software, media streaming, smart home, self-driving cars, and social networking. They are among the most valuable public companies globally, each having had a maximum market capitalization ranging from around $1 trillion to above $3 trillion. In December 2021 and November 2022 respectively, Meta Platforms and Amazon.com Inc. fell below their $1 trillion market caps. They are also considered among the most prestigious employers in the world, especially Google.


title: Big Tech

text: The Big Five are incredibly powerful corporations in structural and relational terms. As such, they have been criticized for creating a new economic order called surveillance capitalism. They typically offer services to millions of users, and thus can hold sway on user behavior as well as control of user data. Concerns over monopolistic practices have led to antitrust investigations from the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission in the United States, and the European Commission. Commentators have questioned the impact of these companies on privacy, market power, free speech, censorship, national security and law enforcement. It has been speculated that it may not be possible to live in the digital world day-to-day outside of the ecosystem created by the companies.


title: Big Tech

text: The concept of Big Tech is analogous to the consolidation of market dominance by a few companies in other market sectors such as Big Oil and Big Media. Big Tech's definition has also grown to include smaller tech companies which themselves have larger caps, as well as non-tech companies which mirror some of the practices or results of Big Tech, notably Tesla and Netflix. Companies like Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba Group, and Xiaomi serve as the equivalent to the Big Four in Asia. "Big Tech" may also refer to historical versions of this concept, with IBM and AT&T considered dominant in the 20th century American technology industry.


title: Big Tech

text: The idea of "big" technology companies had entered the public consciousness around 2013, as some economists saw signs of these companies gaining appreciable dominance without any regulation, and were no longer considered disruptive start-up companies following the early 2000s dot-com bubble. The term became popularized and labeled as "Big Tech" around 2017 in the wake of the investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, as the roles that these technology companies has played with access to wide amounts of user data or big data and ability to influence their users came under Congressional review. The use of "Big Tech" was similar to how the largest oil companies were grouped under Big Oil following the 1970s energy crisis, or how the major cigarette producers were grouped as Big Tobacco as Congress began seeking regulation on that industry. or how, at the turn of the 21st century, the global commercial media system came to be dominated by a small number (around nine or ten) of extremely powerful and mainly U.S.-based transnational media corporations called collectively the "Big Media" or global "Media Giants".


title: Big Tech

text: The Big Five tech companies is often broken down into more specific sub-groupings, often referred to by the following names or acronyms. Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, may be represented by "G" in these acronyms, while Meta Platforms, the rebranding of Facebook, Inc., may be represented by "F".


title: Big Tech

text: Google (Alphabet), Amazon, Facebook (Meta), and Apple are commonly referred to as Big Four or GAMA. They have also been referred to as "The Four", "Gang of Four", and as the "Four Horsemen". The GAMA were known as GAFA before Facebook rebranded its name to Meta in 2021.


title: Big Tech

text: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, author Phil Simon, and NYU professor Scott Galloway have each grouped these four companies together, on the basis that those companies have driven major societal change via their dominance and role in online activities. This is unlike other large tech companies such as Microsoft and IBM, according to Simon and Galloway. In 2011, Eric Schmidt excluded Microsoft from the grouping, saying ""Microsoft is not driving the consumer revolution in the minds of the consumers.""


title: Big Tech

text: A more inclusive grouping, referred to as Big Five, GAMAM or GAMMA defines Google, Amazon, Meta, Apple, and Microsoft as the tech giants. The GAMAM were known as GAFAM before Facebook rebranded its name to Meta in 2021.


title: Big Tech

text: All five of the GAMAM companies except Meta were the five most valuable public corporations in the world in January 2020 as measured by market capitalization, with Meta ranking 6th.


title: Big Tech

text: FANG was an acronym first coined by Jim Cramer, the television host of CNBC's "Mad Money", in 2013 to refer to Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Cramer called these companies "totally dominant in their markets". Cramer considered that the four companies were poised "to really take a bite out of" the bear market, giving double meaning to the acronym, according to Cramer's colleague at RealMoney.com, Bob Lang. Cramer expanded FANG to FAANG in 2017, adding Apple to the other four companies due to its revenues placing it as a potential "Fortune" 50 company.


title: Big Tech

text: Following Facebook, Inc.'s name change to Meta Platforms Inc. in October 2021, Cramer suggested replacing FAANG with MAMAA; this included replacing Netflix with Microsoft among the five companies represented as Netflix's valuation had not kept up with the other companies included in his acronym; with Microsoft, these new five companies each had market caps of at least compared to Netflix's at the time of Meta's rebranding. Others have suggested MAGMA or MANGA. In November 2021, The Motley Fool blog semi-humorously suggested MANAMANA as a replacement, an acronym that stands for Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Nvidia, and Adobe, and is also meant to recall the 1968 song "Mah Nà Mah Nà".


title: Big Tech

text: The Big Five tech giants have replaced the energy giants such as ExxonMobil, BP, Gazprom, PetroChina, Chevron, and Shell ("Big Oil") from the first decade of the 21st century at the top of the NASDAQ stock index. They have also outpaced the traditional big media companies such as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Comcast by a factor of 10. In 2017, the five biggest American IT companies had a combined valuation of over $3.3 trillion, and made up more than 40 percent of the value of the Nasdaq 100. It has been observed that the companies remain popular by providing some of their services to consumers for free.


title: Big Tech

text: Google is the leader in online search (Google Search), online video sharing (YouTube), email services (Gmail), web browsing (Google Chrome) and online mapping-based navigation (Google Maps and Waze), mobile operating systems (Android) and online storage (Google Drive) as well as a variety of other popular tech services. Google Cloud is the third largest player in the cloud computing market after Amazon and Microsoft. Google and Facebook hold a duopoly over the digital advertising market. Google's advertising business makes up 82% of its revenues and most of its profit.


title: Big Tech

text: Alphabet has emerged among tech firms as the global leader in artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and quantum computing. Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car subsidiary, is considered to be the leader in autonomous vehicle technology and was the first self-driving company to offer a publicly available robo-taxi service in 2021. With its Sycamore processor, Google is seen as the leader in quantum computing and in 2019, it claimed Sycamore had achieved quantum supremacy.


title: Big Tech

text: By 2017, Amazon was the dominant market leader in e-commerce with 40.4% market share; cloud computing, with nearly 32% market share, and live-streaming with Twitch owning 75.6% market share. With Amazon Alexa and Echo, Amazon is additionally the market leader in the area of artificial intelligence-based personal digital assistants and smart speakers (Amazon Echo) with 69% market share followed by Google (Google Nest) at 25% market share.