title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Yiddish, rather than Hebrew, would be the national language, and proletarian socialist literature and arts would replace Judaism as the quintessence of culture. The use of Yiddish was strongly encouraged in the 1920s in areas of the USSR with substantial Jewish populations, especially in the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republics. Yiddish was one of the Belarusian SSR's four official languages, alongside Belarusian, Russian, and Polish. The equality of the official languages was taken seriously. A visitor arriving at main train station of the Belarusian capital Minsk saw the city's name written in all four languages above the main station entrance. Yiddish was a language of newspapers, magazines, book publishing, theater, radio, film, the post office, official correspondence, election materials, and even a Central Jewish Court. Yiddish writers like Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Mocher Seforim were celebrated in the 1920s as Soviet Jewish heroes.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Minsk had a public, state-supported Yiddish-language school system, extending from kindergarten to the Yiddish-language section of the Belarusian State University. Although Jewish students tended to switch to studying in Russian as they moved on to secondary and higher education, 55.3 percent of the city's Jewish primary school students attended Yiddish-language schools in 1927. At its peak, the Soviet Yiddish-language school system had 160,000 students in it. Such was the prestige of Minsk's Yiddish scholarship that researchers trained in Warsaw and Berlin applied for faculty positions at the university. All this leads historian Elissa Bemporad to conclude that this “very ordinary Jewish city” was in the 1920s “one of the world capitals of Yiddish language and culture."


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Jews also played a disproportionate role in Belarusian politics and Soviet politics more generally in the 1920s, especially through the Bolshevik Party's Yiddish-language branch, the Yevsekstsia. Because there were few Jewish Bolsheviks before 1917 (with a few prominent exceptions like Zinoviev and Kamenev), the Yevsekstia's leaders in the 1920s were largely former Bundists, who pursued as Bolsheviks their campaign for secular Jewish education and culture. Although for example only a bit over 40 percent of Minsk's population was Jewish at the time, 19 of its 25 Communist Party cell secretaries were Jewish in 1924. Jewish predominance in the party cells was such that several cell meetings were held in Yiddish. In fact, Yiddish was spoken at citywide party meetings in Minsk into the late 1930s.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: To offset the growing Jewish national and religious aspirations of Zionism and to successfully categorize Soviet Jews under Stalin's definition of nationality, an alternative to the Land of Israel was established with the help of Komzet and OZET in 1928. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast with its center in Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East was to become a "Soviet Zion". Despite a massive domestic and international state propaganda campaign, however, the Jewish population in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast never reached 30% (in 2003 it was only about 1.2%). The experiment ground to a halt in the mid-1930s, during Stalin's first campaign of purges.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In fact the Bolshevik Party's Yiddish-language Yevsekstia was dissolved in 1930, as part of the regime's overall turn away from encouraging minority languages and cultures and towards Russification. Many Jewish leaders, especially those with Bundist backgrounds, were arrested and executed in the purges later in the 1930s, and Yiddish schools were shut down. The Belasusian SSR shut down its entire network of Yiddish-language schools in 1938.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In his January 12, 1931, letter "Antisemitism: Reply to an Inquiry of the Jewish News Agency in the United States" (published domestically by "Pravda" in 1936), Stalin officially condemned antisemitism:


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In answer to your inquiry: National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Antisemitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Molotov–Ribbentrop pact—the 1939 non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany—created further suspicion regarding the Soviet Union's position toward Jews. According to the pact, Poland, the nation with the world's largest Jewish population, was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939. While the pact had no basis in ideological sympathy (as evidenced by Nazi propaganda about "Jewish Bolshevism"), Germany's occupation of Western Poland was a disaster for Eastern European Jews. Evidence suggests that some, at least, of the Jews in the eastern Soviet zone of occupation welcomed the Russians as having a more liberated policy towards their civil rights than the preceding antisemitic Polish regime. Jews in areas annexed by the Soviet Union were deported eastward in great waves; as these areas would soon be invaded by Nazi Germany, this forced migration, deplored by many of its victims, paradoxically also saved the lives of several hundred thousand Jewish deportees.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Jews who escaped the purges include Lazar Kaganovich, who came to Stalin's attention in the 1920s as a successful bureaucrat in Tashkent and participated in the purges of the 1930s. Kaganovich's loyalty endured even after Stalin's death, when he and Molotov were expelled from the party ranks in 1957 due to their opposition to destalinization.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Beyond longstanding controversies, ranging from the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact to anti-Zionism, the Soviet Union did grant official "equality of all citizens regardless of status, sex, race, religion, and nationality". The years before the Holocaust were an era of rapid change for Soviet Jews, leaving behind the dreadful poverty of the Pale of Settlement. Forty percent of the population in the former Pale left for large cities within the USSR.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Emphasis on education and movement from countryside "shtetls" to newly industrialized cities allowed many Soviet Jews to enjoy overall advances under Stalin and to become one of the most educated population groups in the world.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Because of Stalinist emphasis on its urban population, interwar migration inadvertently rescued countless Soviet Jews; Nazi Germany penetrated the entire former Jewish Pale—but were kilometers short of Leningrad and Moscow. The migration of many Jews farther East from the Jewish Pale, which would become occupied by Nazi Germany, saved at least 40 percent of the Pale's original Jewish population.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: By 1941, it was estimated that the Soviet Union was home to 4.855 million Jews, around 30% of all Jews worldwide. However, the majority of these were residents of rural western Belarus and Ukraine—populations that suffered greatly due to the German occupation and the Holocaust. Only around 800,000 Jews lived outside the occupied territory, and 1,200,000 to 1,400,000 Jews were eventually evacuated eastwards. Of the three million left in occupied areas, the vast majority is thought to have perished in German extermination camps.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Over two million Soviet Jews are believed to have died during the Holocaust, second only to the number of Polish Jews to have fallen victim to Hitler. Among some of the larger massacres in 1941 were: 33,771 Jews of Kiev shot in ditches at Babi Yar; 100,000 Jews and Poles of Vilnius killed in the forests of Ponary, 20,000 Jews killed in Kharkiv at Drobnitzky Yar, 36,000 Jews machine-gunned in Odessa, 25,000 Jews of Riga killed in the woods at Rumbula, and 10,000 Jews slaughtered in Simferopol in the Crimea. Although mass shootings continued through 1942, most notably 16,000 Jews shot at Pinsk, Jews were increasingly shipped to concentration camps in German Nazi-occupied Poland.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Local residents of German-occupied areas, especially Ukrainians, Lithuanians, and Latvians, sometimes played key roles in the genocide of other Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Slavs, Romani, homosexuals and Jews alike. Under the Nazi occupation, some members of the Ukrainian and Latvian Nazi police carried out deportations in the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lithuanians marched Jews to their death at Ponary. Even as some assisted the Germans, a significant number of individuals in the territories under German control also helped Jews escape death ("see Righteous Among the Nations"). In Latvia, particularly, the number of Nazi-collaborators was only slightly more than that of Jewish saviours. It is estimated that up to 1.4 million Jews fought in Allied armies; 40% of them in the Red Army. In total, at least 142,500 Soviet soldiers of Jewish nationality lost their lives fighting against the German invaders and their allies


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The typical Soviet policy regarding the Holocaust was to present it as atrocities against Soviet citizens, not emphasizing the genocide of the Jews. For example, after the liberation of Kiev from the Nazi occupation, the "Extraordinary State Commission" (Чрезвычайная Государственная Комиссия; "Chrezv'chaynaya Gosudarstvennaya Komissiya") was set out to investigate Nazi crimes. The description of the Babi Yar massacre was officially censored as follows:


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The revival of Jewish identity after the war, stimulated by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, was cautiously welcomed by Stalin as a means to put pressure on Western imperialism in the Middle East, but when it became evident that many Soviet Jews expected the revival of Zionism to enhance their own aspirations for separate cultural and religious development in the Soviet Union, a wave of repression was unleashed.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In January 1948 Solomon Mikhoels, a popular actor-director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, was killed in a suspicious car accident. Mass arrests of prominent Jewish intellectuals and suppression of Jewish culture followed under the banners of campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans" and anti-Zionism. On August 12, 1952, in the event known as the Night of the Murdered Poets, thirteen of the most prominent Yiddish writers, poets, actors and other intellectuals were executed on the orders of Joseph Stalin, among them Peretz Markish, Leib Kvitko, David Hofstein, Itzik Feffer and David Bergelson. In the 1955 United Nations General Assembly's session a high Soviet official still denied the "rumors" about their disappearance.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Doctors' Plot allegation in 1953 was a deliberately antisemitic policy: Stalin targeted "corrupt Jewish bourgeois nationalists", eschewing the usual code words like "rootless cosmopolitans" or "cosmopolitans". Stalin died, however, before this next wave of arrests and executions could be launched in earnest. A number of historians claim that the Doctors' Plot was intended as the opening of a campaign that would have resulted in the mass deportation of Soviet Jews had Stalin not died on March 5, 1953. Days after Stalin's death the plot was declared a hoax by the Soviet government.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: These cases may have reflected Stalin's paranoia, rather than state ideology—a distinction that made no practical difference as long as Stalin was alive, but which became salient on his death.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In April 1956, the Warsaw Yiddish language Jewish newspaper "Folkshtimme" published sensational long lists of Soviet Jews who had perished before and after the Holocaust. The world press began demanding answers from Soviet leaders, as well as inquiring about the current condition of the Jewish education system and culture. The same autumn, a group of leading Jewish world figures publicly requested the heads of Soviet state to clarify the situation. Since no cohesive answer was received, their concern was only heightened. The fate of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Marxist anti-nationalism and anti-clericalism had a mixed effect on Soviet Jews. Jews were the immediate benefactors, but they were also long-term victims, of the Marxist notion that any manifestation of nationalism is "socially retrogressive". On one hand, Jews were liberated from the religious persecution of the Tsarist years of "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality". On the other, this notion was threatening to Jewish cultural institutions, the Bund, Jewish autonomy, Judaism and Zionism.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Political Zionism was officially stamped out as a form of bourgeois nationalism during the entire history of the Soviet Union. Although Leninism emphasizes the belief in "self-determination", this fact did not make the Soviet state more accepting of Zionism. Leninism defines self-determination by territory or culture, rather than by religion, which allowed Soviet minorities to have separate oblasts, autonomous regions, or republics, which were nonetheless symbolic until its later years. Jews, however, did not fit such a theoretical model; Jews in the Diaspora did not even have an agricultural base, as Stalin often asserted when he attempted to deny the existence of a Jewish nation, and they certainly did not have a territorial unit. Marxist notions even denied the existence of a Jewish identity beyond the existence of a religion and caste; Marx defined Jews as a "chimerical nation".


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Lenin, who claimed to be deeply committed to egalitarian ideals and the universality of all humanity, rejected Zionism as a reactionary movement, "bourgeois nationalism", "socially retrogressive", and a backward force that deprecates class divisions among Jews. Moreover, Zionism entailed contact between Soviet citizens and westerners, which was dangerous in a closed society. Soviet authorities were likewise fearful of any mass-movement which was independent of the monopolistic Communist Party, and not tied to the state or the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Without changing his official anti-Zionist stance, from late 1944 until 1948 Joseph Stalin adopted a "de facto" pro-Zionist foreign policy, apparently believing that the new country would be socialist and hasten the decline of British influence in the Middle East.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In a May 14, 1947 speech during the UN Partition Plan debate, published in "Izvestiya" two days later, the Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromyko announced:


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Soviet approval in the United Nations Security Council was critical to the UN partitioning of the British Mandate of Palestine, which led to the founding of the State of Israel.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Three days after Israel declared its independence, the Soviet Union legally recognized it de jure. In addition, the USSR allowed Czechoslovakia to continue supplying arms to the Jewish forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, even though this conflict took place after the Soviet-supported Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948. At the time, the U.S. maintained an arms embargo on both sides in the conflict. See Arms shipments from Czechoslovakia to Israel 1947–1949.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: By the end of 1957 the USSR switched sides in the Arab–Israeli conflict and throughout the course of the Cold War unequivocally supported various Arab regimes against Israel. The official position of the Soviet Union and its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism".


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: As Israel was emerging as a close Western ally, the specter of Zionism raised fears of internal dissent and opposition. During the later parts of the Cold War, Soviet Jews were suspected of being possible traitors, Western sympathisers, or a security liability. The Communist leadership closed down various Jewish organizations and declared Zionism an ideological enemy. Synagogues were often placed under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: As a result of the persecution, both state-sponsored and unofficial, antisemitism was ingrained in the society and remained for years: ordinary Soviet Jews often suffered hardships, epitomized by often not being allowed to enlist in universities, work in certain professions, or participate in government. However, it should be mentioned that this was not always the case and this kind of persecution varied depending on the region. Still many Jews felt compelled to hide their identities by changing their names.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The word "Jew" was also avoided in the media when criticising undertakings by Israel, which the Soviets often accused of racism, chauvinism etc. Instead of "Jew", the word "Israeli" was used almost exclusively, so as to paint its harsh criticism not as antisemitism but anti-Zionism. More controversially, the Soviet media, when depicting political events, sometimes used the term 'fascism' to characterise Israeli nationalism (e.g. calling Jabotinsky a 'fascist', and claiming 'new fascist organisations were emerging in Israel in the 1970s' etc.).


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: According to the census of 1959 the Jewish population of the city Leningrad numbered 169,000 and the Great Choral synagogue was open in the 1960s with some 1,200 seats. The rabbi was Avraham Lubanov. This synagogue has never been closed. The great majority of the Leningrad Jews were not religious, but several thousand used to visit the synagogue on great holidays, mostly on Simchat Torah.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: A mass emigration was politically undesirable for the Soviet regime. As increasing numbers of Soviet Jews applied to emigrate to Israel in the period following the 1967 Six-Day War, many were formally refused permission to leave. A typical excuse given by the "OVIR" (ОВиР), the MVD department responsible for the provisioning of exit visas, was that persons who had been given access at some point in their careers to information vital to Soviet national security could not be allowed to leave the country.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: After the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair in 1970 and the crackdown that followed, strong international condemnations caused the Soviet authorities to increase the emigration quota. From 1960 to 1970, only 4,000 people left the USSR; in the following decade, the number rose to 250,000.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In 1972, the USSR imposed the so-called "diploma tax" on would-be emigrants who received higher education in the USSR. In some cases, the fee was as high as twenty annual salaries. This measure was possibly designed to combat the brain drain caused by the growing emigration of Soviet Jews and other members of the intelligentsia to the West. Although Jews now made up less than 1% of the population, some surveys have suggested that around one-third of the emigrating Jews had achieved some form of higher education. Furthermore, Jews holding positions requiring specialized training tended to be highly concentrated in a small set of specialties, including medicine, mathematics, biology and music. Following international protests, the Kremlin soon revoked the tax, but continued to sporadically impose various limitations. Besides, an unofficial Jewish quota was introduced in the leading institutions of higher education by subjecting Jewish applicants to harsher entrance examinations.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: At first almost all of those who managed to get exit visas to Israel actually made aliyah, but after the mid-1970s, most of those allowed to leave for Israel actually chose other destinations, most notably the United States.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In 1989 a record 71,000 Soviet Jews were granted exodus from the USSR, of whom only 12,117 immigrated to Israel. At first, American policy treated Soviet Jews as refugees and allowed unlimited numbers to emigrate, but this policy eventually came to an end. As a result, more Jews began moving to Israel, as it was the only country willing to take them unconditionally.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In the 1980s, the liberal government of Mikhail Gorbachev allowed unlimited Jewish emigration, and the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991. As a result, a mass emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union took place. Since the 1970s, over 1.1 million Russians of Jewish origin immigrated to Israel, of whom 100,000 emigrated to third countries such as the United States and Canada soon afterward and 240,000 were not considered Jewish under "Halakha", but were eligible under the Law of Return due to Jewish ancestry or marriage. Since the adoption of the Jackson–Vanik amendment, over 600,000 Soviet Jews have emigrated.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Judaism today is officially designated as one of Russia's four "traditional religions", alongside Orthodox Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Jews make up about 0.16% of the total population of Russia, which would be 232,267 people, according to the 2002 census. Most Russian Jews are secular and identify themselves as Jews via ethnicity rather than religion, although interest about Jewish identity as well as practice of Jewish tradition amongst Russian Jews is growing. The Lubavitcher Jewish Movement has been active in this sector, setting up synagogues and Jewish kindergartens in Russian cities with Jewish populations. In addition, most Russian Jews have relatives who live in Israel.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: There are several major Jewish organizations in the territories of the former USSR. The central Jewish organization is the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS under the leadership of Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: A linguistic distinction remains to this day in the Russian language where there are two distinct terms that correspond to the word "Jew" in English. The word "еврей" ("yevrey" – Hebrew) typically denotes a Jewish ethnicity, as "Hebrew" did in English up until the early 20th century. The word "иудей" ("iudey" – Judean, etymologically related to the English "Jew") is reserved for denoting a follower of the Jewish religion, whether he or she is ethnically Jewish or ethnically Gentile; this term has largely fallen out of use in favor of the equivalent term "иудаист" ("iudaist"-Judaist). For example, according to a 2012 Russian survey, "евреи" account for only 32.2% of "иудаисты" in Russia, with nearly half (49.8%) being Ethnic Russians ("русские"). An ethnic slur, жид (borrowed from the Polish "Żyd", Jew), also remains in widespread use in Russia.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Antisemitism is one of the most common expressions of xenophobia in post-Soviet Russia, even among some groups of politicians. Despite stipulations against fomenting hatred based on ethnic or religious grounds (Article 282 of Russian Federation Penal Code), In 2002, the number of anti-Semitic neo-Nazi groups in the republics of the former Soviet Union, led "Pravda" to declare in 2002 that "Anti-Semitism is booming in Russia". In January 2005, a group of 15 Duma members demanded that Judaism and Jewish organizations be banned from Russia. In 2005, 500 prominent Russians, including some 20 members of the nationalist Rodina party, demanded that the state prosecutor investigate ancient Jewish texts as "anti-Russian" and ban Judaism. An investigation was in fact launched, but halted after an international outcry.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Overall, in recent years, particularly since the early 2000s, levels of anti-semitism in Russia have been reportedly low, and steadily decreasing. In 2019, Ilya Yablogov wrote that many Russians were keen on antisemitic conspiracy theories in 1990s but it declined after 2000 and many high-ranking officials were forced to apologize for the antisemitic behavior.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In Russia, both historical and contemporary antisemitic materials are frequently published. For example, a set (called "Library of a Russian Patriot") consisting of twenty five antisemitic titles was recently published, including "Mein Kampf" translated to Russian (2002), which although was banned in 2010, "The Myth of Holocaust" by Jürgen Graf, a title by Douglas Reed, "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and others.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Antisemitic incidents are mostly conducted by extremist, nationalist, and Islamist groups. Most of the antisemitic incidents are against Jewish cemeteries and building (community centers and synagogues) such as the assault against the Jewish community's center in Perm in March 2013 and the attack on Jewish nursery school in Volgograd in August 2013. Nevertheless, there were several violent attacks against Jews in Moscow in 2006 when a neo-Nazi stabbed 9 people at the Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue, the failed bomb attack on the same synagogue in 1999.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Attacks against Jews made by extremist Islamic groups are rare in Russia although there has been increase in the scope of the attacks mainly in Muslim populated areas. On July 25, 2013, the rabbi of Derbent was attacked and badly injured by an unknown person near his home, most likely by a terrorist. The incident sparked concerns among the local Jews of further acts against the Jewish community.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: After the passage of some anti-gay laws in Russia in 2013 and the incident with the "Pussy-riot" band in 2012 causing a growing criticism on the subject inside and outside Russia a number of verbal anti-Semitic attacks were made against Russian gay activists by extremist activists and anti-Semitic writers such as Israel Shamir who viewed the "Pussy-riot" incident as the war of Judaism on the Christian Orthodox church.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Jewish Autonomous Oblast continues to be an autonomous oblast of the Russian state. The Chief Rabbi of Birobidzhan, Mordechai Scheiner, says there are 4,000 Jews in the capital city. Governor Nikolay Mikhaylovich Volkov has stated that he intends to "support every valuable initiative maintained by our local Jewish organizations". The Birobidzhan Synagogue opened in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of the regions founding in 1934.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Today, the Jewish population of Russia is shrinking due to small family sizes, and high rates of assimilation and intermarriage. This shrinkage has been slowed by some Russian-Jewish emigrants having returned from abroad, especially from Germany. The great majority of up to 90% of children born to a Jewish parent are the offspring of mixed marriages, and most Jews have only one or two children. The majority of Russian Jews live in the Moscow metropolitan area, with another 20% in the Saint Petersburg area, and the rest in large cities with a population of at least 1 million.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Jewish population in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast of the Russian Far East in 2002 was 2,327 (1.22%).


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Bukharan Jews, self-designating as "Yahudi", "Isroel" or "Banei Isroel", live mainly in Uzbek cities. The number of Central Asian Jews was around 20,800 in 1959. Before mass emigration, they spoke a dialect of the Tajik language.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Caucasian Mountain Jews, also known as Tats or Dagchufuts, live mostly in Israel and the United States, with a scattered population in Dagestan and Azerbaijan. In 1959, they numbered around 15,000 in Dagestan and 10,000 in Azerbaijan. Their Tat language is a dialect of Middle Persian.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Crimean Jews, self-designating as Krymchaks, traditionally lived in the Crimea, numbering around 5,700 in 1897. Due to a famine, a number emigrated to Turkey and the U.S. in the 1920s. The remaining population was virtually annihilated in the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation of the Crimea, but Krymchaks re-settled the Crimea after the war, and in 1959, between 1,000 and 1,800 had returned.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The EuroStars young adults program provides Jewish learning and social activities in 32 cities across Russia. Some have described a 'renaissance' in the Jewish community inside Russia since the beginning of the 21st century.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In present times, the largest number of Russian Jews are "olim" (עוֹלים) and "sabras". In 2011 Russians were around 15% of Israel's 7.7 million population (including Halakhally non-Jews who constituted about 30% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union). The Aliyah in the 1990s accounts for 85–90% of this population.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The population growth rate for Former Soviet Union (FSU)-born "olim" were among the lowest for any Israeli groups, with a Fertility rate of 1.70 and natural increase of just +0.5% per year. The increase in Jewish birth rate in Israel during the 2000–2007 period was partly due to the increasing birth rate among the FSU "olim", who now form 20% of the Jewish population of Israel.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: 96.5% of the enlarged Russian Jewish population in Israel either belong to Judaism or are non-religious, while 3.5% (35,000) belong to other religions (mostly Christianity) and about 10,000 identifying as Messianic Jews separate from Jewish Christians.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The Total Fertility Rate for FSU-born "olim" in Israel is given in the table below. The TFR increased with time, peaking in 1997, then slightly decreased after that and then again increased after 2000.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In 1999, about 1,037,000 FSU-born "olim" lived in Israel, of whom about 738,900 made aliyah after 1989. The second largest "oleh" (עוֹלֶה) group (Moroccan Jews) numbered just 1,000,000. From 2000 to 2006, 142,638 FSU-born "olim" moved to Israel, while 70,000 of them emigrated from Israel to countries like the U.S. and Canada—bringing the total population to 1,150,000 by


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: January 2007. The natural increase was around 0.3% in the late 1990s. For example, 2,456 in 1996 (7,463 births to 5,007 deaths), 2,819 in 1997 (8,214 to 5,395), 2,959 in 1998 (8,926 to 5,967) and 2,970 in 1999 (9,282 to 6,312). In 1999, the natural growth was +0.385%. (Figures only for FSU-born "olim" moved in after 1989).


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: An estimated 45,000 illegal immigrants from the Former Soviet Union lived in Israel at the end of 2010, but it is not clear how many of them are actually Jews.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In 2013, 7,520 people, nearly 40% of all "olim", made "aliyah" from the Former Soviet Union. In 2014 4,685 Russian citizens relocated to Israel, more than double than usual in any of the previous 16 years. In 2015, nearly 7,000 or just over twenty percent of all olim came from the former Soviet Union.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Recent "olim" and "olot" (עוֹלות) from the Former Soviet Union include notables such as Anna Zak, Natan Sharansky, Yuri Foreman, Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, Ze'ev Elkin, Nachman Dushanski, Boris Gelfand, Natasha Mozgovaya, Avigdor Lieberman, Roman Dzindzichashvili, Anastassia Michaeli, Haim Megrelashvili, Victor Mikhalevski, Evgeny Postny, Maxim Rodshtein, Tatiana Zatulovskaya, Maria Gorokhovskaya, Katia Pisetsky, Aleksandr Averbukh, Anna Smashnova, Jan Talesnikov, Vadim Alexeev, Michael Kolganov, Alexander Danilov, Evgenia Linetskaya, Marina Kravchenko, David Kazhdan, Leonid Nevzlin, Vadim Akolzin, Roman Bronfman, Michael Cherney, Arcadi Gaydamak, Sergei Sakhnovski, Roman Zaretski, Alexandra Zaretski, Larisa Trembovler, Boris Tsirelson, Ania Bukstein, and Margarita Levieva.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The second largest Russian Jewish population is in the United States. According to RINA, there is a core Russian Jewish population of 350,000 in the U.S. The enlarged Russian Jewish population in the U.S. is estimated to be 700,000.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Notable Russia, Imperial Russia, Soviet Union, and former Soviet Union, born Jewish Americans (living and deceased) include Alexei Abrikosov, Isaac Asimov, Leonard Blavatnik, Sergey Brin, Joseph Brodsky, Sergei Dovlatov, Anthony Fedorov, Israel Gelfand, Emma Goldman, Vladimir Horowitz, Gregory Kaidanov, Avi Kaplan, Anna Khachiyan, Jan Koum, Savely Kramarov, Mila Kunis, Leonid Levin, Lev Loseff, Alexander Migdal, Eugene Mirman, Alla Nazimova, Ayn Rand, Markus Rothkovich (Mark Rothko), Dmitry Salita, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Yakov Sinai, Mikhail Shifman, Mikhail Shufutinsky, Regina Spektor, Willi Tokarev, and Arkady Vainshtein.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Large Russian Jewish communities include Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay in the Brooklyn Borough of New York City; Fair Lawn and nearby areas in Bergen County, New Jersey; Bucks and Montgomery Counties near Philadelphia; Pikesville, Maryland, a predominantly-Jewish suburb of Baltimore; Washington Heights in the Sunny Isles Beach neighborhood of South Florida; Skokie and Buffalo Grove, suburbs of Chicago; and West Hollywood, California.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The fourth largest Russian-Jewish community exists in Germany with a core Russian-Jewish population of 119,000 and an enlarged population of 250,000.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: In the 1991–2006 period, approximately 230,000 ethnic Jews from the FSU immigrated to Germany. In the beginning of 2006, Germany tightened the immigration program. A survey conducted among approximately 215,000 enlarged Russian Jewish population (taking natural decrease into consideration) indicated that about 81% of the enlarged population was religiously Jewish or Atheist, while about 18.5% identified as Christian. That gives a core Russian Jewish population of 111,800 (religiously Jewish, 52%) or 174,150 (religiously Jewish or Atheist).


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Notable Russian Jews in Germany include Valery Belenky, Maxim Biller, Friedrich Gorenstein, Wladimir Kaminer, Lev Kopelev, Elena Kuschnerova, Alfred Schnittke, Vladimir Voinovich, and Lilya Zilberstein.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: The fifth largest Russian Jewish community is in Canada. The core Russian Jewish population in Canada numbers 30,000 and the enlarged Russian Jewish population numbered 50,000+, mostly in Montreal and Toronto. Notable Russian Jewish residents include judoka Mark Berger, ice hockey player Eliezer Sherbatov, voice actress Tara Strong, and the musical group Tasseomancy.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Jews from the former Soviet Union settled in Australia in two migration waves in the 1970s and 1990s. About 5,000 immigrated in the 1970s and 7,000 to 8,000 in the 1990s. The estimated population of Jews from the former Soviet Union in Australia is 10,000 to 11,000, constituting about 10% of the Australian Jewish population. About half of the Jews from the former Soviet Union are from Ukraine and a third from the Russian Federation.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Hundreds of Russian Jews have moved to Finland since 1990 and have helped to stem the negative population growth of the Jewish community there. The total number of Jews in Finland have grown from 800 in 1980 to 1,200 in 2006. Of all the schoolgoing Jewish children, 75% have at least one Russian born parent.


title: History of the Jews in Russia

text: Austria, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland also have small populations of Russian Jews. The addition of Russian Jews have neutralized the negative Jewish population trends in some European countries like the Netherlands and Austria. Notable Russian Jews in France include Léon Bakst, Marc Chagall, Leon Poliakov, Evgeny Kissin, Alexandre Koyré, Ida Rubinstein, Lev Shestov, and Anatoly Vaisser. Some other notable Russian Jews are Roman Abramovich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Boris Berezovsky, and Maxim Vengerov (United Kingdom), Gennadi Sosonko (Netherlands), Viktor Korchnoi (Switzerland), and Maya Plisetskaya (Spain).


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Barbarella is a 1968 science fiction film directed by Roger Vadim, based on the French comic series of the same name by Jean-Claude Forest. The film stars Jane Fonda as the title character, a space-traveller and representative of the United Earth government sent to find scientist Durand Durand, who has created a weapon that could destroy humanity. The supporting cast includes John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau, David Hemmings, Ugo Tognazzi and Claude Dauphin.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Having expressed an interest in comics and science fiction, Vadim was hired to direct "Barbarella" after producer Dino De Laurentiis purchased the film rights to the comic series. Vadim attempted to cast several actresses—Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren—in the title role before choosing Fonda, his then-wife. A friend of Vadim's, Terry Southern, wrote the initial screenplay, which changed considerably during filming and led to seven other writers credited in the final release, including Vadim and Forest, the latter of whom also worked on the film's production design. The film began shooting immediately following the completion of another De Laurentiis comic adaptation, "", with both films sharing several cast and crew members.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: The film was particularly popular in the United Kingdom, where it was the year's second-highest-grossing film. Contemporary film critics praised "Barbarella" visuals and cinematography, but found its storyline weak after the first few scenes. Although several attempts at sequels, remakes, and other adaptations have been planned, none of these have entered production.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: In an unspecified future, space adventurer Barbarella is sent by the Earth's president to retrieve Durand Durand from the Tau Ceti planetary system. Durand is the inventor of a laser-powered weapon, the positronic ray, which Earth's leaders fear will cause mass destruction. Barbarella crash-lands on Tau Ceti's 16th planet and is knocked unconscious by two children. They bring her to the wreckage of a spaceship, where they bind and attack her using mechanical dolls with razor-sharp teeth. Barbarella is rescued by Mark Hand, the Catchman who patrols the ice looking for errant children. Hand tells her that Durand is in the city of Sogo and offers her a ride to her ship in his ice boat. When Barbarella offers to repay him, Hand asks her to make love to him. Barbarella is confused, since Earthlings no longer have intimate physical contact; instead they take pills "until full rapport is achieved." Hand suggests having sex in his bed instead. Barbarella relents and enjoys it but admits that she understands why sex is considered primitive and distracting on Earth.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Barbarella leaves the planet and crashes into a labyrinth inhabited by outcasts exiled from Sogo. She is found by Pygar, a blind angel who has lost the will to fly. Pygar introduces her to Professor Ping, who offers to repair her ship. Pygar flies Barbarella to Sogo, a den of violence and debauchery, after she restores his will to fly by having sex with him. Pygar and Barbarella are captured by Sogo's Black Queen and her concierge. The concierge describes the Mathmos: living energy in liquid form, powered by evil thoughts and used as an energy source in Sogo, which sits atop it. Pygar endures a mock crucifixion and Barbarella is placed in a cage, where hundreds of birds prepare to attack her. She is rescued by Dildano, leader of the local underground, who joins in her pursuit of Durand. Dildano gives her an invisible key to the Black Queen's chamber of dreams, where she sleeps.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: After returning to Sogo, Barbarella is promptly recaptured by the concierge. He places her in the "Exsexsive Machine" which induces fatal sexual pleasure. She outlasts the machine and makes it go haywire. The concierge, shocked at its destruction, reveals himself as Durand Durand. Barbarella is surprised since he is only 25 years old but has aged tremendously—a side-effect of the Mathmos. Durand wants to overthrow the Black Queen and become Sogo's new leader, which requires using his positronic ray and gaining access to the Queen's chamber of dreams. Durand takes Barbarella to the chamber and locks her inside with the invisible key. She sees the Queen, who warns that if two people are in the chamber, the Mathmos will devour them. Durand seizes control of Sogo as Dildano and his rebels begin their attack on the city. The Black Queen retaliates by releasing the Mathmos to destroy Sogo. Because of Barbarella's innocence, the Mathmos forms a protective bubble around her and the Black Queen and safely expels them. They find Pygar, who clutches them in his arms and flies off. When Barbarella asks Pygar why he saved a tyrant, he tells her that an angel has no memory of the past.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Having bought the film rights to Jean-Claude Forest's "Barbarella" comics, producer Dino De Laurentiis secured a distribution deal in the United States between France's Marianne Productions and Paramount Pictures. He planned to film "", a less-expensive feature, to help cover production costs. In 1966 Roger Vadim expressed an admiration for comics (particularly Charles Schulz's "Peanuts"), saying that he liked "the wild humor and impossible exaggeration of comic strips" and wanted to "do something in that style myself in my next film, "Barbarella"." Vadim saw the film as a chance to "depict a new futuristic morality ... Barbarella has [no] guilt about her body. I want to make something beautiful out of eroticism." His wife, actress Jane Fonda, noted that Vadim was a fan of science fiction; according to the director, "In science fiction, technology is everything ... The characters are so boring—they have no psychology. I want to do this film as though I had arrived on a strange planet with my camera directly on my shoulder—as though I was a reporter doing a newsreel."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: After Terry Southern finished writing Peter Sellers' dialogue for "Casino Royale", he flew to Paris to meet Vadim and Fonda. Southern, who had known Vadim in Paris during the early 1950s, saw writing a science-fiction comedy based on a comic book as a new challenge. He enjoyed writing the script, particularly the opening striptease and the scenes with tiny robotic toys pursuing Barbarella to bite her. Southern enjoyed working with Vadim and Fonda, but he felt that De Laurentiis was intent only on making a cheap film that was not necessarily good. Southern said later, "Vadim wasn't particularly interested in the script, but he was a lot of fun, with a discerning eye for the erotic, grotesque, and the absurd. And Jane Fonda was super in all regards." Southern was surprised to see his screenplay credited to Vadim and several Italian screenwriters in addition to himself. Credited screenwriters included Claude Brulé, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, and Forest; Degas and Gates were hired by De Laurentiis after he was impressed with their work on "Danger: Diabolik". Charles B. Griffith later said that he had done uncredited work on the script; the production team "hired fourteen other writers" after Southern "before they got to me. I didn't get credit because I was the last one." According to Griffith, he "rewrote about a quarter of the film that was shot, then re-shot, and I added the concept that there had been thousands of years since violence existed, so that Barbarella was very clumsy all through the picture. She shoots herself in the foot and everything. It was pretty ludicrous. The stuff with Claude Dauphin and the suicide room were also part of my contribution to the film."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Several actresses were approached before Jane Fonda was cast as Barbarella. Brigitte Bardot, who was not interested in a sexualized role. Sophia Loren, who was pregnant and felt that she would not fit the role. Fonda was uncertain about the film, but Vadim convinced her by saying that science fiction was a rapidly-evolving genre. Before filming "Barbarella", she was the subject of two sex scandals: the first when her nude body was displayed across an eight-story billboard promoting the premiere of "Circle of Love" in 1965, and the second when several candid nude photos from Vadim's closed set for "The Game Is Over" were sold to "Playboy" the following year. According to biographer Thomas Kiernan, the billboard incident made her a sex symbol in the United States. Vadim said he did not want the actress to play Barbarella "tongue in cheek", and he saw the character as "just a lovely, average girl with a terrific space record and a lovely body. I am not going to intellectualise her. Although there is going to be a bit of satire about our morals and our ethics, the picture is going to be more of a spectacle than a cerebral exercise for a few way-out intellectuals." Fonda felt her priority for Barbarella was to "keep her innocent"; the character "is not a vamp and her sexuality is not measured by the rules of our society. She is not being promiscuous but she follows the natural reaction of another type of upbringing. She is not a so-called 'sexually liberated woman' either. That would mean rebellion against something. She is different. She was born free".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Fonda personally recommended John Phillip Law as Pygar to Vadim following their work on "Hurry Sundown"; for the duration of his stay in Rome, the actor lived with Fonda, Vadim and Forest in their rented villa on Appian Way. Law, an avid comic book reader since childhood, read the Forest comics and studied the DC Comics character Hawkman for inspiration. The delayed pre-production of "Barbarella" allowed Law to film two roles before committing to the film: as Bill Meceita in the Spaghetti Western "Death Rides a Horse", and as the title character in "Danger: Diabolik". For the role of the Black Queen, Southern recommended model Anita Pallenberg, the then-girlfriend of The Rolling Stones member Brian Jones; Southern had befriended her while working with the band on an adaptation of "A Clockwork Orange". On the English-language prints of the film, Pallenberg's voice was dubbed by English actress Joan Greenwood.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: French mime Marcel Marceau had his first speaking role in the film as Professor Ping. Comparing Ping to his stage persona Bip the Clown and Harpo Marx, he said that he did not "forget the lines, but I have trouble organising them. It's a different way of making what's inside come out. It goes from the brain to the vocal chords, and not directly to the body."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: All costumes in the film, including Fonda's, were designed by French costume designer Jacques Fonteray and manufactured by Sartoria Farani, with Barbarella's costume in the final scenes being, as the credits put it, "inspired by ideas of" fashion designer Paco Rabanne. Barbarella's outfits were Fonteray's interpretation of Forest's vision, combining Orientalist and medieval aesthetics with samurai armors. Forest also worked on the film's production design, and was credited in the film as its "artistic consultant". In a 1985 interview, he said that during production he did not care about his original comic strip and was more interested in the film industry: "The Italian artists were incredible; they could build anything in an extremely short time. I saw all the daily rushes, an incredible amount of film. The choices that were made for the final cut from those images were not the ones I would have liked, but I was not the director. It wasn't my affair."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: According to Law, "Barbarella" began shooting after production on "Danger: Diabolik" ended on 18 June 1967; sets such as Valmont's night club in "Danger: Diabolik" were used in both films. "Barbarella" was shot at Cinecittà in Rome. To film the striptease titles sequence, Fonda said that the set was turned upward to face the ceiling of the soundstage. A pane of thick glass was laid across the opening of the set, with the camera hung from the rafters above it. Fonda then climbed onto the glass to perform the scene. Other scenes involved hanging Fonda upside down in an enormous vat of oil and dry ice, and her stomach being skinned when being shot through a plastic tube. For the scenes involving the Excessive Pleasure Machine, Fonda and Milo O'Shea were not told of explosions that would happen on set since the prop was rigged with flares and smoke bombs. Fonda explained that "Vadim wanted us to look natural, so he didn't tell us what a big explosion there would be. When the machine blew up, flames and smoke were everywhere, and sparks were running up and down the wires. I was frightened to death, and poor Milo was convinced something had really gone wrong and I was being electrocuted."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: For the scene involving Barbarella being attacked by hummingbirds, wrens and lovebirds were used as it was illegal to ship hummingbirds overseas. The birds were not behaving as Vadim had expected, which led to him employing a large fan to blow them at Fonda, who had birdseed in her costume. Film critic Roger Ebert, after visiting the set, wrote that the fan led to birds "losing control over natural body functions, so it was all a little messy". Ebert concluded that "After two weeks of this, [Fonda] got a fever and was hospitalized. I can't reveal here how they finally did the scene".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: The actress later described her discomfort on the film's set. In her autobiography, Fonda said that Vadim began drinking during lunch; his words slurred, and "his decisions about how to shoot scenes often seemed ill-considered". Fonda was bulimic and, at the time, was "a young woman who hated her body...playing a scantily clad, sometimes-naked sexual heroine". Photographer David Hurn echoed Fonda, noting that she was insecure about her appearance during the production's photo shoots. The actress took sick days so the film's insurance policy would cover the cost of a shutdown while the script was edited. Vadim would later state in his memoir that Fonda "didn't enjoy shooting "Barbarella"", specifically that she "disliked the central character for her lack of principle, her shameless exploitation of her sexuality and her irrelevance to contemporary social and political realities."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Michel Magne was commissioned to score "Barbarella", but his effort was discarded. The film's soundtrack, completed by composer-producers Bob Crewe and Charles Fox, has been described as lounge or exotica. Crewe was known for composing 1960s songs such as the Four Seasons' "Big Girls Don't Cry". Some of the music is credited to the Bob Crewe Generation, a group of session musicians who contributed to the soundtrack. Crewe invited the New York-based group The Glitterhouse, whom he knew through his production work, to provide vocals for the songs. He reflected on the soundtrack in his autobiography, saying that it "clearly needed to have a fun and futuristic approach to it, with sixties-music sensibility".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: "Barbarella" opened in New York on 11 October 1968 and earned $2.5 million in North American theaters that year. It was the second-most-popular film in general release in the United Kingdom in 1968, after "The Jungle Book". The film was shown in Paris that month, and was released in Italy on 18 October. It was released on 25 October throughout France, where it was distributed by Paramount. "Barbarella" received a "condemned" rating from the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, which called the film a "sick, heavy-handed fantasy with nudity and graphic representations of sadism" and criticized the Production Code Administration for approving it. Following the success of "Star Wars", Paramount theatrically re-released the film in 1977; for this release, which was referred to in promotional materials as "Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy", the scenes of nudity were removed.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Despite frequently using the "Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy" title and promotional art, home media releases of the film have been of the uncut 1968 version rather than the edited 1977 version. In 1994, the film's LaserDisc presented it in widescreen for the first time on home video. Reviewing this release for "Video Watchdog", Tim Lucas noted that the film was presented with an incorrect aspect ratio of 2.47:1, resulting in the cropping of visual information that was present in the earlier pan and scan VHS releases, but noted that "many of Claude Renoir's "psychedelia" images work on video only in this widescreen setting".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: "Barbarella" was released on DVD on 22 June 1999, and on Blu-ray in July 2012, with the 1968 theatrical trailer the disc's only bonus feature. According to Charles Taylor of "The New York Times", home media releases of the film before the Blu-ray version were "murky". Chris Nashawaty ("Entertainment Weekly"), Sean Axmaker ("Video Librarian") and Glenn Erickson ("DVD Talk") called "Barbarella" Blu-ray transfer "breathtaking", "superb-looking" and "really good", respectively.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Some contemporary publications reported that the film's first scenes were enjoyable, but its quality declined thereafter. According to Wendy Michener's review in "The Globe and Mail", after the striptease scene "we are plunged back into the mundane, not to say inane world, of the spy thriller with a dreary overlay of futuristic science-fiction" and it "just lies there, with all its psychedelic plastic settings". "Barbarella" script and humor were criticized; a reviewer in "Variety" described the writing as "flat" with only "a few silly-funny lines of dialog" for a "cast that is not particularly adept at comedy". Dan Bates wrote in "Film Quarterly" that "sharp satiric moments ... are welcome and refreshing but are rather infrequent", and Renata Adler of "The New York Times" noted that "there is the assumption that just mentioning a thing (sex, politics, religion) makes it funny".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Critics praised the film's design and cinematography. "Variety" mainly negative review noted "a certain amount of production dash and polish" and, according to Derek Malcolm of "The Guardian", "Claude Renoir's limpid colour photography and August Lohman's eye-catching special effects are what save the movie time and again". A "Monthly Film Bulletin" reviewer wrote that "Barbarella" decor is "remarkably faithful to Jean-Claude Forest's originals", noting a "major contribution of Claude Renoir as director of photography" and "Jacques Fonterary's and Paco Rabanne's fantastic costumes". James Price ("Sight & Sound") agreed, citing "the inventiveness of the decors and the richness of Claude Renoir's photography".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Malcolm and Lohman criticized "Barbarella" nature, themes and tone, with Malcolm calling it a "nasty kind of film", "modish to the core" and "essentially just a shrewd piece of exploitation". Lohman suggested the film's humor was "not jokes, but hard-breathing, sadistic thrashings." Bates called it "pure sub-adolescent junk" and "bereft of redeeming social or artistic importance".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Michener praised "Barbarella" as part of "the first female sci-fi". Its shaggy gold rugs, impressionist paintings and spaceship were "unquestionably female in design compared with any of today's projectiles"; Barbarella is "no man-challenging superwoman, but a sweet soft creature who's always willing to please a man who's king to her". According to Price, "There is a real fascination in its basic idea, which is a happy belief in the survival of sexuality... The idea fascinates, but the execution somehow disappoints (how often one has to say that about Vadim)." Bates' review concluded, "In the year that Stanley Kubrick and Franklin Schaffner finally elevated the science-fiction movie beyond the abyss of the kiddie show, Roger Vadim has knocked it right back down."


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Numerous retrospective reviews have discussed "Barbarella" plot and design. While noting that "Barbarella" "hardly ranks with "Blood and Roses" or "Charlotte" as one of Vadim's best", Lucas noted that "Whatever charm the film still holds is entirely due to its visual imagination and highly over-done, Felliniesque artifice". According to "The A.V. Club"s Keith Phipps, "Mario Garbuglia keeps throwing inventive visuals and remarkable sets at the heroine" but "the journey itself is an unrelenting trudge". Sean Axmaker of "Video Librarian" called the film's "set design and wild color triumphing over story and character". Taylor noted a lack of "plot impetus", suggesting that Vadim may have been "preoccupied with the special effects, though they are [and were] rather cheesy". Kim Newman ("Empire") gave "Barbarella" three stars out of five, calling the film "literally episodic" and writing that the episodes spend "more time on the art direction, the costuming and the psychedelic music track than the plot".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: About its sexual elements, Brian J. Dillard wrote that the film's gender roles were not "particularly progressive, especially given the running gag about Barbarella getting her first few tastes of physical copulation after a lifetime of 'advanced' virtual sex" in his review on AllMovie. Phipps found the film "a missed opportunity", noting that the source material was part of "an emerging wave of European comics for adults" which "Vadim film[ed] indifferently." David Kehr of the "Chicago Reader" found the film "ugly" on several levels, particularly its "human values". Newman summarized the film as "cheerful, kitsch and camp", with "a succession of truly amazing fashion creations with all the confidence of a generation that thought sex was, above all, fun". Newman compared the film to "" and "Star Wars", writing that "Barbarella" makes them seem "stuffy" by comparison. Charles Webb's review for MTV noted that "Barbarella" suffers when described as a "camp classic", since there was "so much to like about Fonda's work here and the movie as a whole"; "Fonda brings naivete and sweetness to a part that requires a certain level of comfort going bare onscreen, while the hostile planet Lythion is a parade of inventive and odd ways to imperil our heroine." Similarly, Lucas declared that "Fonda's performance, which the silly persist in finding controversial or compromising, has dated better than 90% of her 'serious' work; without her centrifugal, wide-eyed presence and suspenseful costume changes, one gets the impression that the whole production might spin madly out of control and off the screen".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: "Barbarella" and "Danger: Diabolik" were both part of a minor trend of Italian film adaptations of European comics (known in Italy as "fumetti") that emphasized mild sadomasochism and late 1960s fetish gear; aside from these two films, 1968 saw the release of Piero Vivarelli's similarly-themed "Satanik". These were followed by Bruno Corbucci's "Ms. Stiletto" in 1969, and Corrado Farina's "Baba Yaga" in 1973. The production and costume design of both films also reflected a larger movement of retrofuturism seen in European genre films of the 1960s and 1970s. These include Pasquale Festa Campanile's "The Libertine" and "Check to the Queen", Umberto Lenzi's "So Sweet... So Perverse", Tinto Brass' "Col cuore in gola", Lucio Fulci's "One on Top of the Other" and "A Lizard in a Woman's Skin", Elio Petri's "The 10th Victim", Piero Schivazappa's "The Laughing Woman" and Radley Metzger's "Camille 2000" and "The Lickerish Quartet".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: According to the "Los Angeles Times", "Barbarella" may seem "quaint" to modern audiences but its "imagery has echoed for years in pop culture." Lisa Eisner of "The New York Times" called Barbarella "the most iconic sex goddess of the '60s." The film's costumes influenced Jean-Paul Gaultier's designs in "The Fifth Element", and Gaultier noted Paco Rabanne's metallic dress that was worn by Fonda.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: "Barbarella" was later called a cult film. Author Jerry Lembcke noted the film's popularity; it was available in small video stores, and was familiar beyond the film buff community. According to Lembcke, any "doubt about its cult status was dispelled when "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it number 40 on its list of top 50 cult movies" in 2003. He cited the film's popularity on the internet, with fansites ranging from a Barbarella festival in Sweden to memorabilia sales and reviews. Lembcke writes that the websites focus on the character of Barbarella.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: "Barbarella" has influenced popular music, with English new wave band Duran Duran taking its name from the film's antagonist. The group later released a concert film, "Arena (An Absurd Notion)", with Milo O'Shea reprising his role from "Barbarella".


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Music videos influenced by "Barbarella" include Kylie Minogue's "Put Yourself In My Place," Katy Perry's "E.T.,", "Break Free" by Ariana Grande.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: A sequel to "Barbarella" was planned in November 1968. Producer Robert Evans said that its working title would be "Barbarella Goes Down", with the character having undersea adventures. Terry Southern said that he was contacted by de Laurentiis in 1990 to write a sequel "on the cheap ... but with plenty of action and plenty of sex", and possibly starring Fonda's daughter.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: A new version of "Barbarella" was proposed in the 2000s, and director Robert Rodriguez was interested in developing a version after the release of "Sin City". Universal Pictures planned to produce the film, with Rose McGowan playing Barbarella. Dino and Martha De Laurentiis signed on with writers Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, who had worked on "Casino Royale". When the film's budget exceeded $80 million, Universal withdrew. According to Rodriguez, he did not want his film to look like Vadim's. He searched for alternate financing when Universal did not meet his budget, and found a studio in Germany which would provide a $70 million budget. Rodriguez eventually left the project, since using that studio would require a long separation from his family. Joe Gazzam was then approached to write a screenplay, with Robert Luketic directing and Dino and Martha De Laurentiis still credited as producers.


title: Barbarella (film)

text: Gaumont International Television announced a pilot for a TV series based on the film by Amazon Studios in 2012. The pilot would be written by Purvis and Wade and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, and the series would be set in Asia. Refn spoke about the show in 2016 where he discussed about having a greater interest on developing "The Neon Demon" than "Barbarella", concluding that "certain things are better left untouched. You don't need to remake everything." On October 11, 2022, Deadline reports that Sydney Sweeney will star as the titular character and will also produce the film.


title: Paul Biya

text: Paul Biya (born Paul Barthélemy Biya'a bi Mvondo; 13 February 1933) is a Cameroonian politician who has served as the president of Cameroon since 6 November 1982. He is the second-longest-ruling president in Africa and the oldest head of state in the world.


title: Paul Biya

text: A native of Cameroon's south, Biya rose rapidly as a bureaucrat under President Ahmadou Ahidjo in the 1960s, serving as Secretary-General of the Presidency from 1968 to 1975 and then Prime Minister of Cameroon from 1975 to 1982. He succeeded Ahidjo as president upon the latter's surprise resignation in 1982 and consolidated power in a 1983–1984 staged attempted coup in which he eliminated all of his major rivals.


title: Paul Biya

text: Biya introduced political reforms within the context of a one-party system in the 1980s, later accepting the introduction of multiparty politics in the early 1990s under serious pressure. He won the contentious 1992 presidential election with 40% of the plural, single-ballot vote and was re-elected by large margins in 1997, 2004, 2011, and 2018. Opposition politicians and Western governments have alleged voting irregularities and fraud on each of these occasions. Many independent sources have provided evidence that he did not win the elections in 1992 and that subsequent elections suffered from rampant fraud.


title: Paul Biya

text: His regime is supported by France, one of the former colonial powers in Cameroon, which supplies it with weapons and trains its military forces. France is also the leading foreign investor in Cameroon, ahead of the United States.


title: Paul Biya

text: Paul Biya was born in the village of Mvomeka'a in what is now the South Region of Cameroon. He studied at the Lycée General Leclerc, Yaoundé, and in France at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Paris, going on to the Institut des hautes études d'Outre-Mer, where he graduated in 1961 with a higher education diploma in public law.


title: Paul Biya

text: As an official in post-independence 1960s Cameroon, Biya rose to prominence under President Ahmadou Ahidjo. After becoming director of the Cabinet of the minister of national education in January 1964 and secretary-general of the ministry of national education in July 1965, he was named director of the civil cabinet of the president in December 1967 and secretary-general of the presidency (while remaining director of the civil cabinet) in January 1968. He gained the rank of minister in August 1968 and the rank of minister of state in June 1970, while remaining secretary-general of the presidency. Following the creation of a unitary state in 1972, he became Prime Minister of Cameroon on 30 June 1975. In June 1979, a new law designated the prime minister as the president's constitutional successor. Ahidjo unexpectedly announced his resignation on 4 November 1982, and Biya accordingly succeeded him as president of Cameroon on 6 November.


title: Paul Biya

text: Because Biya is a Christian from the southern region of Cameroon, it was considered surprising that he was chosen by Ahidjo, a Muslim from the north, as his successor. His father, who was a catechist, wanted him to join the clergy, but at the age of 16 while in Catholic school, he was expelled. After Biya became President, Ahidjo initially remained head of the ruling Cameroon National Union (CNU). Biya was brought into the CNU Central Committee and Political Bureau and was elected as the Vice-President of the CNU. On 11 December 1982, he was placed in charge of managing party affairs in Ahidjo's absence. During the first months after Biya's succession, he continued to show loyalty to Ahidjo, and Ahidjo continued to show support for Biya, but in 1983 a deep rift developed between the two. Ahidjo went into exile in France, and from there he publicly accused Biya of abuse of power and paranoia about plots against him. After Ahidjo resigned as CNU leader, Biya took the helm of the party at an "extraordinary session" of the CNU party held on 14 September 1983.


title: Paul Biya

text: In November 1983, Biya announced that the next presidential election would be held on 14 January 1984; it had been previously scheduled for 1985. He was the sole candidate in this election and won 99.98% of the vote. In February 1984, Ahidjo was put on trial "in absentia" for alleged involvement in a 1983 coup plot, along with two others; they were sentenced to death, although Biya commuted their sentences to life in prison. Biya survived a military coup attempt on 6 April 1984, following his decision on the previous day to disband the Republican Guard and disperse its members across the military. Estimates of the death toll ranged from 71 (according to the government) to about 1,000. Northern Muslims were the primary participants in this coup attempt, which was seen by many as an attempt to restore that group's supremacy; Biya, however, chose to emphasize national unity and did not focus blame on northern Muslims. Ahidjo was widely believed to have orchestrated the coup attempt, and Biya is thought to have learned of the plot in advance and to have disbanded the Republican Guard in response, forcing the coup plotters to act earlier than they had planned, which may have been a crucial factor in the coup's failure.Under his rule, the country adopted a structural adjustment plan submitted to it by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, which involved privatization, opening up to competition, and reducing social spending. Civil servants' salaries were reduced by 60%, and the informal sector increased very significantly.


title: Paul Biya

text: In 1985, the CNU was transformed into the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement, in Bamenda and Biya was unlawfully elected as its president. He was also re-elected as President of Cameroon on 24 April 1988.


title: Paul Biya

text: Biya initially took some steps to open up the regime, culminating in the decision to legalize opposition parties in 1990. According to official results, Biya won the first multiparty presidential election, held on 11 October 1992, with about 40% of the vote. There was no provision for a runoff; the opposition was unable to unite around a single candidate. The second placed candidate, John Fru Ndi of the opposition Social Democratic Front (SDF), officially received about 36%. The results were strongly disputed by the opposition, which alleged fraud.


title: Paul Biya

text: In the October 1997 presidential election, which was boycotted by the main opposition parties, Biya was re-elected with 92.6 percent of the vote; he was sworn in on 3 November.


title: Paul Biya

text: He has been consistently re-elected as the National President of the RDPC; he was re-elected at the party's second extraordinary congress on 7 July 2001 and its third extraordinary congress on 21 July 2006.


title: Paul Biya

text: Biya won another seven-year term in the 11 October 2004 presidential election, officially taking 70.92 percent of the vote, although the opposition again alleged widespread fraud. Biya was sworn in on 3 November.


title: Paul Biya

text: After being re-elected in 2004, Biya was barred by a two-term limit in the 1996 Constitution from running for President again in 2011, but he sought to revise this, to allow him to run again. In his 2008 New Year's message, Biya expressed support for revising the Constitution, saying that it was undemocratic to limit the people's choice. The proposed removal of term limits was among the grievances expressed during violent protests in late February 2008. Nevertheless, on 10 April 2008, the National Assembly voted to change the Constitution to remove term limits. Given the RDPC's control of the National Assembly, the change was overwhelmingly approved, with 157 votes in favor and five opposed; the 15 deputies of the SDF chose to boycott the vote in protest. The change also provided for the President to enjoy immunity from prosecution for his actions as President after leaving office.


title: Paul Biya

text: On 12 June 2006, he signed the Greentree Agreement with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo which formally put an end to the Bakassi peninsula border dispute.


title: Paul Biya

text: In February 2008, riots broke out, calling for lower prices and the departure of Paul Biya as president. The demonstrators were severely repressed with reports of a hundred dead and thousands of arrests.


title: Paul Biya

text: In the October 2011 presidential election, Biya secured a sixth term in office, polling 77.9% of votes cast. John Fru Ndi was his nearest rival, polling 10%. Biya's opponents alleged wide-scale fraud in the election and procedural irregularities were noted by the French and US governments. In his victory speech, Biya promised to stimulate growth and create jobs with a programme of public works which would "transform our country into a vast construction site". On 3 November 2011, he was sworn in for another term as President.


title: Paul Biya

text: Biya won the 2018 presidential election with 71.3% of the vote. The election was marred by violence and low voter turnout.


title: Paul Biya

text: As of 2022, he is the longest serving non-royal head of state, having been in power since June 30, 1975.


title: Paul Biya

text: Biya makes relatively few public appearances, and is sometimes characterized as aloof. Since the early 1990s, he has faced his strongest opposition from the Anglophone population of the former Southern Cameroons in the western part of the country.


title: Paul Biya

text: Although Biya made some efforts to open up the political environment, his regime still retains clear authoritarian characteristics and has largely bucked the trend toward democracy in Africa since the 1990s. Under the constitution, Biya has sweeping executive and legislative powers. He even has considerable authority over the judiciary; the courts can only review a law's constitutionality at his request. The RDPC continues to dominate the National Assembly, which does little more than approve his policies.


title: Paul Biya

text: "Tyrants, the World's 20 Worst Living Dictators", by David Wallechinsky, ranked Biya together with three other leaders in sub-Saharan Africa: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, and King Mswati of Swaziland (now Eswatini). He describes Cameroon's electoral process in these terms: "Every few years, Biya stages an election to justify his continuing reign, but these elections have no credibility. In fact, Biya is credited with a creative innovation in the world of phony elections. In 2004, annoyed by the criticisms of international vote-monitoring groups, he paid for his own set of international observers, six ex-U.S. congressmen, who certified his election as free and fair." In a 2005 interview William Quantrill, a retired member of the British Diplomatic Service, argued that the reluctance of Biya to delegate responsibility seriously hampered the quality of governance, with trivial decisions often delayed until he got round to delivering them, and that there was too much government interference in the economy in general.


title: Paul Biya

text: Biya regularly spends extended periods of time in Switzerland at the Hotel InterContinental Geneva where the former director Herbert Schott reportedly said he comes to work without being disturbed. These extended stays away from Cameroon – while sometimes as short as two weeks and sometimes as long as three months – are almost always referred to as "short stays" in the state-owned press and other media. In February 2008, he passed a bill that allows for having an additional term in office as president which was followed by civil unrests throughout the country. The main violent riots took place in the Western, English-speaking part of the country starting with a "strike" initiated by taxi drivers in Douala, allegedly causing more than 200 casualties in the end. In 2009, his holiday in France allegedly cost $40,000 a day spent on 43 hotel rooms.In 2009, Biya was ranked 19th in "Parade Magazine's" Top 20 list of "The World's Worst Dictators".


title: Paul Biya

text: In November 2010, Bertrand Teyou published a book titled "La belle de la république bananière: Chantal Biya, de la rue au palais" (English: ""The beauty of the banana republic: Chantal Biya, from the streets to the palace""), tracing Chantal Biya's rise from humble origins to become Paul Biya's First Lady. He was subsequently given a two-year prison term on charges of "insult to character" and organizing an "illegal demonstration" for attempting to hold a public reading. Amnesty International and International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee both protested his arrest and issued appeals on his behalf; Amnesty International also named him a prisoner of conscience. He was freed on 2 May 2011 when the London chapter of International PEN agreed to pay his fine in order that he might seek treatment for his worsening health condition.


title: Paul Biya

text: In February 2014, French citizen Michel Thierry Atangana was released from a makeshift Yaoundé prison where, under Biya's orders, he had been arbitrarily detained for 17 years under false claims of embezzlement because of supposed closeness to presidential candidate Titus Edzoa. Considered a political prisoner and prisoner of conscience by the United States Department of State, Amnesty International, Freedom House, and the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention since 2005, Michel was released under Biya's personal decree but the Working Group's tripartite demands remain unfulfilled.


title: Paul Biya

text: In 2016, Cameroonians in the nation's capital city of Yaoundé criticized Biya's reaction to the country's worst train crash in which 79 people died. Critics included government officials who remained anonymous, fearing a backlash.


title: Paul Biya

text: The Anglophone protests in late 2016 were led by English-speaking lawyers in protest against the use of French in Cameroonian courts, which led to violent clashes with police. Opposition party leader Edna Njilin of the Cameroon People's Party spoke out against the enforced use of French in the classroom. In January 2017, the government ordered a suspension of Internet services in the Northwest and Southwest provinces. Criticism of the suspension and increased opposition led to resumption of services in late April.


title: Paul Biya

text: By June 2017, protests in Cameroon's English-speaking provinces and cities led to police responding with force, with 4 protesters killed and over 100 arrested. International criticism has been levied at the United States for their lack of response to the growing Cameroonian crisis.


title: Paul Biya

text: In April 2017, a Cameroonian journalist working for Radio France Internationale, Ahmed Abba, was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment by a military tribunal for failing to report acts of terrorism. The judgement was severely criticized by human rights groups including Amnesty International.


title: Paul Biya

text: On 7 November 2018, another Cameroonian journalist, Mimi Mefo, was arrested after reporting on social media that the Cameroonian military was behind the murder of an American missionary in the country, Charles Trumann, in October of that year. Mefo was charged with "publishing and propagating information that infringes on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Cameroon," but was released and charges were dropped on 12 November after her arrest was condemned by both local and international media groups.


title: Paul Biya

text: During 2016 and 2017, under Paul Biya's reign, large scale protests broke out among Anglophone Cameroonians in the area of the formerly British Southern Cameroons. Protestors complained that Anglophone regions in Cameroon (the Northwest Region and the Southwest Region) were neglected by Biya's government, and excluded from power. During this time, Anglophone separatists claim that government forces murdered protestors en masse, and committed crimes against humanity, including genocide. Certain protestors had called upon Biya and the Cameroonian government to grant them independence.


title: Paul Biya

text: Eventually, separatists declared independence in October 2017 under the name Ambazonia. Numerous civilians and activists have accused Biya's government forces of burning villages, raping women, extrajudicial killings of civilians, and acts of genocide. A petition to the United Nations gave details of police raping students at a university. The National Commission for Human Rights and Freedoms embarked on a fact-finding mission in Buea to investigate allegations of human rights abuses in the region.


title: Paul Biya

text: A June 2018 report by the BBC News found a widespread pattern of villages throughout the Southwest Region being burnt, including one video of men wearing government-issued BIR (Bataillon d'Intervention Rapide) equipment. The BIR is a special force body that reports directly to President Biya. The report also included a video of a man being tortured by men appearing to be Cameroonian gendarmes. Biya's Minister of Communication, Issa Tchiroma, responded by stating that anyone can use government equipment to commit false flag attacks, and said that Biya's government would investigate.


title: Paul Biya

text: Individual sources testify that all of those sent to fight the secessionist militia are French speaking, thus widening the linguistic division between local residents.


title: Paul Biya

text: On 14 November 2019, Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya admitted in a Paris forum of trying to assimilate former British Southern Cameroons into the majority Francophone system, formerly East Cameroon State but failed, due to identity differences, thus triggering the Ambazonia War of independence in 2017.


title: Paul Biya

text: In 1961, he married Jeanne-Irène Biya, who did not have any children, though she adopted Franck Biya, who had been born previously from a relationship between Paul Biya and another woman. After Jeanne-Irène Biya died on 29 July 1992, Paul Biya married Chantal Biya, who is 36 years younger, on 23 April 1994, and had two more children with her.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Neo (born as Thomas A. Anderson, also known as The One, an anagram for Neo) is a fictional character and the protagonist of "The Matrix" franchise, created by the Wachowskis. He was portrayed as a cybercriminal and computer programmer by Keanu Reeves in the films, as well as having a cameo in "The Animatrix" short film "Kid's Story". Andrew Bowen provided Neo's voice in "". In 2021, Reeves reprised his role in "The Matrix Resurrections" with what "Vulture" calls "his signature John Wick look".


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: In 2008, Neo was selected by "Empire" as the 68th Greatest Movie Character of All Time... Neo is also an anagram of "one", a reference to his destiny of being "The One" who would bring peace. There are claims that a nightclub in Chicago inspired the name of the character. Neo is considered to be a superhero.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Thomas A. Anderson was born in Lower Downtown, Capital City, USA on March 11, 1962, according to his criminal record, or September 13, 1971 according to his passport (both seen in the film). His mother was Michelle McGahey (the name of the first film's art director) and his father was John Anderson. He attended Central West Junior High and Owen Patterson High (named after the film's production designer). In high school, he excelled at science, math and computer courses, and displayed an aptitude for literature and history. Although he had disciplinary troubles when he was thirteen to fourteen years old, Anderson went on to become a respected member of the school community through his involvement in football and hockey.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: At the start of the series, Neo is one of billions of humans neurally connected to the Matrix, unaware that the world he lives in is a simulated reality.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: In his normal life, he is a quiet programmer for the "respectable software company" Meta Cortex; while in private, he is a computer hacker who penetrates computer systems illicitly and steals information under his hacker alias "Neo". He also sells illegal untraceable computer systems and hacking programs along with controlling computer viruses stashed on CDs and diskettes. During his time as a hacker, Anderson has learned about something known only as "The Matrix".


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: During the years prior to the events of "The Matrix", Neo has spent his time trying to find the one man who he thought could tell him what the Matrix was; a supposed terrorist known only as Morpheus. After an encounter with another hacker, Trinity, Anderson is suddenly contacted by Morpheus via a cell phone mailed to his office, but is almost immediately captured by the virtual reality's Agents, led by Agent Smith. After refusing to cooperate with the agents, Neo has an electronic bug implanted within his Matrix-simulated body so that his actions can be tracked and those seeking to make contact from the free world can be traced and destroyed. He is then contacted by Trinity, freed from the bug, and taken to meet Morpheus.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Neo is offered a choice to remain in his everyday life and forget about the Matrix or to learn what the Matrix really is. Choosing to learn what the Matrix really is, he takes a drug (commonly called the "red pill") which is actually a program designed to disrupt his mind's neural connection to the Matrix and make it easier for his real body to be found and awakened in the real world. He wakes up disoriented and alarmed to find himself naked, weak, and hairless in a pod full of what can be assumed to be an artificial amniotic fluid. He also discovers that he is connected to a series of thick cables, by way of a number of plugs that are grafted to his body, including one plugged directly into the base of his skull which is later explained as the means through which his mind was connected to the Matrix. Upon his "birthing" into the real world, he is discovered by a machine which grabs him by the neck and removes all of his plugs and cables before flushing him out of his fluid tank down into the cold sewers below the Earth's surface.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Neo is rescued by Morpheus and his body is healed of the effects of his atrophy incurred while inside the pod. Once Neo regains consciousness and is able to walk, Morpheus tells Neo the truth about the Matrix; that it is a simulated world to which humans are connected, "a prison for your mind", as stated by Morpheus, while unknown to them, their bodies are used as a power source for a race of sentient machines which, ironically, mankind created. He also tells Neo about the One, a human with the power to manipulate the Matrix, who has been foretold to end the war between humans and machines, and says that he believes Neo is The One.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: The next day, Neo begins his "training" and becomes knowledgeable in many forms of combat, as well as vehicle and weapons operations, by having various training programs uploaded directly into his brain. He also receives further instruction from Morpheus on subjects such as "freeing his mind" from the restrictions of the Matrix, essentially overcoming the physics engine the Matrix operates on. He is also made aware of the existence of its agents, programs designed by the machines to maintain order and dominance over the human race, created with abilities such as dodging bullets, running at high speeds, jumping great distances, and physically possessing people in the Matrix. If killed, they simply find a new host to overcome.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: After several days aboard Morpheus' hovercraft, the "Nebuchadnezzar", Neo is taken to meet the Oracle, who has the power of foresight within the simulated world. She tells him that he has the "gift", but appeared to be waiting for something, and that in his present life he is not the one. The Oracle warns him that a situation will arise when he will have to choose between saving his own life or that of Morpheus.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Returning from the Oracle to a landline phone, which serves as the exit for "red pills" to leave the Matrix, the crew of Morpheus's ship is betrayed by Cypher, a "red pill" who is willing to give the agents Morpheus in exchange for the promise of being mentally erased and reconnected permanently to the Matrix as an escape from the real world's bleakness. In the Matrix, SWAT troops kill Mouse. Cypher jacks out, and grabs a real-world lightning gun, injuring Tank and killing Dozer. He kills Apoc and Switch; who remain jacked in, by prematurely terminating their connections. In the Matrix, Smith defeats and captures Morpheus. Neo and Trinity try to jack out but Cypher threatens to unplug them too, however, he is thwarted when Tank recovers, killing Cypher, and helping Neo and Trinity jack out.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Neo learns the Agents seek to hack into Morpheus's brain in order to force him to tell them the access codes to the mainframe computer within humanity's last refuge, the city of Zion. After refusing to sacrifice Morpheus to prevent this, Neo decides to jack in and attack the building where he is being held. He and Trinity proceed to fight their way to the roof level of the building, where they are confronted by agent Jones. Neo unloads two entire magazines on Jones as he dodges each bullet effortlessly. When Jones returns fire, Neo proves capable of dodging bullets himself, fluidly moving in a way only an agent was thought to be capable of, although he is not yet as fast as them, as his leg is grazed by a bullet. Trinity then shoots Jones at point-blank range. Using an armed chopper, Neo and Trinity successfully rescue Morpheus. As Neo has just successfully rescued comrades from a building protected by heavily armed guards and agents (thought to be an unprecedented feat) Tank and Morpheus both believe Neo is indeed the One. Neo tries to tell Morpheus what the Oracle told him, but Morpheus explains that she merely told Neo what he needed to hear; had he believed himself to be the One, he would likely not have attempted the rescue, which was a necessary step to his emergence as the One.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Reaching the landline phone, Morpheus and Trinity return to the real world, but Neo is trapped by agent Smith. Trinity admonishes Neo to run, but he stands his ground, having begun to believe that he may be the One. The two of them draw guns and fire them empty, but are able to effortlessly dodge each other's fire. Neo skillfully engages Smith in hand-to-hand combat, almost seeming to be Smith's equal. In the end Neo is briefly incapacitated and held by Smith as a subway train approaches, but at the last minute, he is able to get free and backflip up onto the platform, leaving Smith to be run over. However, the agent possesses the body of the conductor, and emerges from the train and Neo, realizing that the agents' ability to possess other bodies makes this a fight he cannot win, flees the subway station.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Pursued by Smith and his fellow agents, Neo is able to evade them and reach the location of the landline phone, just to be ambushed and fatally shot in the chest by Smith. Trinity, seeing Neo die in the real world while his mind is still in the Matrix, tells his evidently lifeless body that the Oracle had foretold that she would fall in love with the One. When kissed by Trinity, Neo comes back to life, finally fully emerging as the One. When the agents try to kill him again, Neo simply raises his hand and the bullets freeze in mid-air, then drop harmlessly to the ground. It is then shown that he is able to perceive, interpret and alter the computer code of the Matrix. Completely believing in his new-found powers, he effortlessly fends off agent Smith before forcing himself into the agent's body and destroying it from within. The other two agents quickly flee.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Neo is then seen leaving a message for the machines via phone; a warning that he plans to oppose the machines by freeing as many human minds as possible. He then hangs up and flies into the sky, now having completely made his final metamorphosis into becoming the One.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Approximately six months have passed since the events of the first film, and Neo is now fully confident in his powers as the One, is able to manipulate the artificial world within the Matrix to a tremendous degree. He no longer requires firearms, relying solely on hand-to-hand combat. His ability to influence the coding of the Matrix allows him to stop incoming fire from multiple attackers. Dispensing with the long black trenchcoat and black shirt he wears at the conclusion of "The Matrix", Neo now prefers a cassock with a high-rise mandarin collar giving the appearance of a priest or Bishop. He and Trinity are now lovers. Neo seeks more advice from the Oracle, unsure of his purpose, while Zion prepares for a massive attack by the Machines from over 250,000 Sentinels, numbered precisely relative to the population of Zion of 250,000 people. The Oracle directs him on a quest to find the Keymaker, a personified program that has access to numerous backdoors within the system. The Keymaker will be able to lead Neo safely to the Source, the programming heart of the machine world, which contains the programs sustaining the Matrix.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: After the Oracle leaves, agent Smith (aka Smith) appears and it is revealed that Neo had separated Smith from the rest of the Matrix code by shattering him, giving him a life independent of the machine's systems and now the two of them share a "connection" to each other. Smith is no longer an agent of the Matrix, but has become more virus-like, he is able to insert his code into other systems, and infect other programs and human minds to make copies of himself. Neo fends off hundreds of these Smiths and escapes. Later, he, Morpheus and Trinity steal the Keymaker from his keeper, the Merovingian. During this time, Neo stays behind to fight off the Merovingian's men and becomes separated from the others, being trapped in the Merovingian's mansion five hundred miles away in the mountains. He flies off to help them and only arrives in time to save Morpheus and the Keymaker from two agents crashing two trucks together.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: The Keymaker explains that two power stations elsewhere in the Matrix must be disabled in a short time window to successfully disable the security system of a building where the door to the Source will appear; allowing Neo to reach it. This task is accomplished; but the Keymaker is killed, a hovercraft is destroyed and Trinity is put in jeopardy by the agents of the Matrix; a vision that Neo has seen earlier in his dreams. Entering the door, Neo finds himself confronted by the Architect, a program which created and designed the Matrix and also ensures its constant stability.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: The Architect presents Neo with a radically different explanation of his origins and purpose, claiming that Neo is actually the sixth "One". He goes on to say that Zion has been destroyed by the machines five times before; faced with the dilemma of allowing humanity to be destroyed or allowing the machines' preferred status quo to be reconstructed, Neo's five predecessors have helped reload or restart the Matrix, before being allowed to rebuild Zion with a handful of freed humans. The productive output of the Matrix is based upon this repeated cycle of destruction and recreation, to keep the human minds which power it in a stable structure because not every human accepts the simulated reality and if enough of them accumulate, it could lead to a catastrophic system crash of the Matrix and subsequent extinction of both humanity and the Machines. The Oracle is as much part of that self-perpetuating design as the Architect, Neo is told and the prophecy of the One is designed to ensure it runs smoothly each time.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: The Architect warns of the annihilation of all human life in and out of the Matrix if he does not enter the Source door to reload the Matrix, but unlike his predecessors, Neo does not enter the door to the Source; he chooses not to believe the Architect's dire warnings of consequences and to save Trinity instead. Returning to the Matrix, he catches Trinity as she falls from an upper-story window of a power plant. She dies of a gunshot wound to the heart that she sustains during the fall, but Neo brings her back to life by reaching into her virtual body, removing the bullet and restarting her heart.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: Together, they exit the Matrix and return to the real world. Neo tells Morpheus that the prophecy was merely another system of control and that Zion's destruction is imminent. A group of sentinels begin to converge on their hovercraft, so Neo, and the others are forced to abandon it and flee as it is destroyed. As they flee, Neo suddenly discovers that he can now sense the sentinels and shuts them down telepathically; however, the effort causes him to fall unconscious. He and the crew are rescued by the hovercraft "Mjolnir" (also known as the "Hammer") whose crew is dealing with a mystery in the form of Bane, a crew member from another ship; who is the only survivor of an ill-fated attack by the Zion fleet. Unbeknown to anyone, Bane's mind was destroyed by Smith at some point during the movie's events during which Smith overwrote himself over Bane's avatar, effectively killing Bane and once he was unplugged, he took over Bane's real body.


title: Neo (The Matrix)

text: "The Matrix Revolutions" begins immediately after the events of the second movie; as a result of his struggle with the sentinels, Neo returns to consciousness finding himself caught in an isolated train station-like limbo only accessible by order of the Merovingian, from which his mind is unable to free itself. It is here that he meets Sati, a young program created without a purpose, who is being smuggled into the Matrix by her parents, also programs in the machine world. Neo remains trapped until he is freed by Trinity (assisted by Morpheus and Seraph). who threatens the Merovingian in a Mexican standoff.