title: Gross margin

text: Most people find it easier to work with gross margin because it directly tells you how much of the sales revenue, or price, is profit:


title: Gross margin

text: If an item costs to produce and is sold for a price of , the price includes a 100% markup which represents a 50% gross margin. Gross margin is just the percentage of the selling price that is profit. In this case, 50% of the price is profit, or .


title: Gross margin

text: In a more complex example, if an item costs to produce and is sold for a price of , the price includes a 67% markup ($136) which represents a 40% gross margin. This means that 40% of the is profit. Again, gross margin is just the direct percentage of profit in the sale price.


title: Gross margin

text: In accounting, the gross margin refers to sales minus cost of goods sold. It is not necessarily profit as other expenses such as sales, administrative, and financial costs must be deducted. And it means companies are reducing their cost of production or passing their cost to customers. The higher the ratio, all other things being equal, the better for the retailer.


title: Gross margin

text: Given the cost of an item, one can compute the selling price required to achieve a specific gross margin. For example, if your product costs $100 and the required gross margin is 40%, then


title: Gross margin

text: In some industries, like clothing for example, profit margins are expected to be near the 40% mark, as the goods need to be bought from suppliers at a certain rate before they are resold. In other industries such as software product development the gross profit margin can be higher than 80% in many cases.


title: Gross margin

text: In the agriculture industry, particularly the European Union, Standard Gross Margin is used to assess farm profitability.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Donnell M. Rawlings (born December 6, 1968) is an American comedian, actor, and radio host. He is best known as a cast member on the Comedy Central sketch comedy TV series "Chappelle's Show" and the HBO drama "The Wire".


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Donnell Rawlings was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, with his mother. He attended T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Rawlings served in the United States Air Force. He was stationed in South Korea and at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., in the late 1980s and early 1990s.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Rawlings is most notable for frequently appearing in sketches on "Chappelle's Show" and hosting the third season along with Charlie Murphy. His catchphrase on the show was ""I'm rich, biaaaaatch!"" (which is played at the end of every episode as part of Dave Chappelle's vanity card) as well as frequently adding "Son!" at the end of each sentence.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: He demonstrates his knowledge of broken Korean he learned in the Air Force in the sketches "Player Hater's Ball" and "The Time Haters", the latter of which was featured in the "Failures" episode. Rawlings reprises his role as the hater "Beautiful", known for wearing a Jheri curl and a suit similar to ones that Little Richard has worn. In the sketches, he responds to the comments of Korean hater "Mr. Roboto" with insults in Korean. He reprised the role of Beautiful on Chappelle's episode of "Saturday Night Live".


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: On Heavy.com, Rawlings stars in a series of sketch comedy clips portraying his character Ashy Larry, from "Chappelle's Show", called "From Ashy to Classy". Ashy Larry dreams of how his life would be if he were classy and dreams up a character who he calls Ashford Lawrence, a supposed reporter for heavy.com. Ashy Larry goes to different high-class establishments posing as a reporter, where eventually his girl comes and pulls him out at the end of each clip.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Rawlings also made appearances on HBO drama series The Corner, playing Bread the dope fiend next to Fat Curt and "The Wire", playing Damien Lavelle 'Day-Day' Price, an ex-convict who is hired as a legislative aide and driver for corrupt state senator Clay Davis. Price's character appears unrefined on several occasions, contemplating heists in public and stating things in court such as "Y'all tryin' to 'criminate me" while on the stand. Davis is played by fellow "Chappelle's Show" co-star Isiah Whitlock, Jr.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Rawlings appears in Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 2" and in a cameo appearance in the music video for Jim Jones' "We Fly High" (Ballin' Remix). He was a regular on "The Ricki Lake Show" mostly as a judge on various challenge episodes.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: In summer 2007, Rawlings was featured on the cover of the one-year anniversary issue of "Beyond Race" magazine. Rawlings was removed from his morning show post at Power 105's "Ed Lover Show with Egypt and Ashy" for a controversial comment the comedian made during the aftermath of the Don Imus controversy, responding to Ed Lover's comment "That's a cheap black man, Nickel-Black" with "that's a Jewish black guy."


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Rawlings was also a contestant in the Comedy Central show "Reality Bites Back". He appeared in sketches on "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News" and in Howard Stern's Howard TV On Demand original series, "Show in the Hallway".


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: In July 2009, Rawlings recorded a clip imitating Stephon Marbury crying on his live webcast. Rawlings was a co-host on the "Big Tigger Morning Show" on Washington, D.C.'s radio station WPGC 95.5 from April 2010 to January 2011.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: In 2011, Rawlings appeared on the MTV2 show "Guy Code" which he has done two seasons, as well as the show "Hip Hop Squares". He is also the judge for a "Guy Code" spin-off, "Guy Court".


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: Rawlings provided the voice of A Cat Named Rollo's brother A Cat Named Rallo in the Adult Swim show based on the 2009 R-rated movie "Black Dynamite".


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: He also appeared on the April 23, 2014 episode of the "Dr. Zoe Today" show discussing his recent appearances with MTV and his comedy work.


title: Donnell Rawlings

text: In 2015, he guest starred as an angel that took Jesus' divinity during his time of doubt in the "A Very Special Christmas in Compton" episode of "Black Jesus".


title: Titoism

text: Titoism is a political philosophy most closely associated with Josip Broz Tito during the Cold War. It is characterized by a broad Yugoslav identity, workers' self-management, a political separation from the Soviet Union, and leadership in the Non-Aligned Movement.


title: Titoism

text: Tito led the Communist Yugoslav Partisans during World War II in Yugoslavia. After the war, tensions arose between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Although these issues diminished over time, Yugoslavia still remained relatively independent in thought and policy. Tito led Yugoslavia until his death in 1980.


title: Titoism

text: Today, the term "Titoism" is sometimes used to refer to Yugo-nostalgia, a longing for reestablishment or revival of Yugoslavism or Yugoslavia by the citizens of Yugoslavia's successor states.


title: Titoism

text: When the rest of Eastern Europe became satellite states of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia refused to accept the 1948 "Resolution of the Cominform" and the period from 1948 to 1955, known as the Informbiro, was marked by severe repression of opponents and many others accused of pro-Stalin attitudes being sent to the penal camp on Goli Otok.


title: Titoism

text: Elements of Titoism are characterized by policies and practices based on the principle that in each country the means of attaining ultimate communist goals must be dictated by the conditions of that particular country, rather than by a pattern set in another country. It is distinct from Joseph Stalin's "socialism in one country" theory, as Tito advocated cooperation between nations through the Non-Aligned Movement while at the same time pursuing socialism in whatever ways best suited particular nations. In contrast, "socialism in one country" focused on fast industrialisation and modernisation, in order to compete with what Stalin perceived as the more advanced nations of the West. During Tito's era, his ideas specifically meant that the communist goal should be pursued independently of (and often in opposition to) what he referred to as the Stalinist and imperialist policies of the Soviet Union.


title: Titoism

text: Throughout his time in office, Tito prided himself on Yugoslavia's independence from the Soviet Union, with Yugoslavia never accepting full membership in Comecon and Tito's open rejection of many aspects of Stalinism as the most obvious manifestations of this. The Soviets and their satellite states often accused Yugoslavia of Trotskyism and social democracy, charges loosely based on Tito's (self-management), attempts at greater democratization, and the theory of associated labor (profit sharing policies and worker-owned industries initiated by him, Milovan Đilas and Edvard Kardelj in 1950). It was in these things that the Soviet leadership accused of harboring the seeds of council communism or even corporatism.


title: Titoism

text: The propaganda attacks centered on the caricature of "Tito the Butcher" of the working class, aimed to pinpoint him as a covert agent of Western imperialism.


title: Titoism

text: Initially a personal favourite of USSR, Tito led the national liberation war to the Nazi occupation during the war, then met with the Soviet leadership several times immediately after the war to negotiate the future of Yugoslavia. Over time, these negotiations became less cordial because Tito had the intention neither of handing over executive power nor of accepting foreign intervention or influence (a position Tito later continued within the Non-Aligned Movement).


title: Titoism

text: Tito angered Stalin by agreeing with the projects of Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov, which meant to merge the two Balkan countries into a Balkan Federal Republic according to the projects of Balkan Communist Federation. This led to the 1947 cooperation agreement signed in Bled (Dimitrov also pressured Romania to join such a federation, expressing his beliefs during a visit to Bucharest in early 1948). The Bled agreement, also referred to as the "Tito-Dimitrov treaty", was signed 1 August 1947 in Bled, Slovenia. It foresaw also unification between Vardar Macedonia and Pirin Macedonia and return of Western Outlands to Bulgaria. The policies resulting from the agreement were reversed after the Tito-Stalin split in June 1948, when Bulgaria was being subordinated to the interests of the Soviet Union and took a stance against Yugoslavia.


title: Titoism

text: The policy of regional blocs had been the norm in Comintern policies, displaying Soviet resentment of the nation state in Eastern Europe and of the consequences of Paris Peace Conference. With the 1943, dissolution of Comintern and the subsequent advent of the Cominform came Stalin's dismissal of the previous ideology, and adaptation to the conditions created for Soviet hegemony during the Cold War.


title: Titoism

text: Titoism has sometimes been referred to as a form of "national communism", a variant of nationalism. However, Walker Connor says that Titoism is more akin to "state communism", as the loyalty is to a state comprising multiple nations. Nationalism was a threat to Titoism.


title: Titoism

text: The League of Communists of Yugoslavia retained solid power; the legislature did little more than rubber stamp decisions already made by the LCY's Politburo. The secret police, the State Security Administration (UDBA), while operating with considerably more restraint than its counterparts in the rest of Eastern Europe, was nonetheless a feared tool of government control. UDBA was particularly notorious for assassinating suspected "enemies of the state" who lived in exile overseas. The media remained under restrictions that were onerous by Western standards, but still had more latitude than their counterparts in other Communist countries. Nationalist groups were a particular target of the authorities, with numerous arrests and prison sentences handed down over the years for separatist activities.


title: Titoism

text: Although the Soviets revised their attitudes under Nikita Khrushchev during the process of de-Stalinization and sought to normalize relations with the Yugoslavs while obtaining influence in the Non-Aligned Movement, the answer they got was never enthusiastic and the Soviet Union never gained a proper outlet to the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, the Non-Aligned states failed to form a third Bloc, especially after the split at the outcome of the 1973 oil crisis.


title: Titoism

text: Leonid Brezhnev's conservative attitudes yet again chilled relations between the two countries (although they never degenerated to the level of the conflict with Stalin). Yugoslavia backed Czechoslovakia's leader Alexander Dubček during the 1968 Prague Spring and then cultivated a special (albeit incidental) relation with the maverick Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu. Titoism was similar to Dubček's socialism with a human face while Ceaușescu attracted sympathies for his refusal to condone (and take part in) the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which briefly seemed to constitute a "casus belli" between Romania and the Soviets. However, Ceaușescu was an unlikely member of the alliance since he profited from the events in order to push his authoritarian agenda inside Romania.


title: Titoism

text: After Brezhnev brought Czechoslovakia to heel in 1968, Romania and Yugoslavia maintained privileged connections up to the mid-1980s. Ceaușescu adapted the part of Titoism that made reference to the "conditions of a particular country", but merged them with Romanian nationalism and contrasting North Korean Juche beliefs while embarking on a particular form of Cultural Revolution. The synthesis can be roughly compared with the parallel developments of Hoxhaism and found Ceaușescu strong, perhaps unsought, supporters in National Bolshevism theorists such as the Belgian Jean-François Thiriart.


title: Titoism

text: Tito's own ideology became less clear with the pressures of various nationalisms within Yugoslavia and the problems posed by the 1970s Croatian Spring. In terms of economics, Yugoslavia became somewhat closer to a free-market, neatly separated from other Socialist regimes in Eastern Europe (and marked by a permissive attitude towards seasonal labor of Yugoslav citizens in Western Europe). At the same time, the leadership did put a stop to overt capitalist attempts (such as Stjepan Mesić's experiment with privatization in Orahovica) and crushed the dissidence of liberal thinkers such as former leader Milovan Đilas while it also clamped down on centrifugal attempts, promoting a Yugoslav patriotism.


title: Titoism

text: Although still claimed as official policies, virtually all aspects of Titoism went into rapid decline after Tito's death in 1980, being replaced by the rival policies of constituent republics. During the late 1980s, with nationalism on the rise, revised Titoism was arguably kept as a point of reference by political movements caught disadvantaged by the main trends, such as civic forums in Bosnia and Herzegovina and North Macedonia.


title: Titoism

text: Muammar Gaddafi's Third International Theory, outlined in Gaddafi's Green Book which informed Libyan national policy from its formation in 1975 until Gaddafi's downfall in 2011, was heavily inspired by and shared many similarities with Titoism and Yugoslav workers' self-management.


title: Titoism

text: Although Tito’s economic model did promote Workplace Democracy and gave workers more control over the economic management of enterprises, it also caused extreme regional inequality, with Slovenia’s GDP Per Capita being as high as 12383$ and Kosovo’s GDP Per Capita only 1592$ by 1989. The Gini index of SFRY ranged between 0.32 to 0.35, mainly due to the high regional inequality. Unemployment rates were also disproportionately high in poorer Yugoslavian republics. Such a sizeable regional disparity gave rise to separatism and eventually led to increased intra-state tensions in the Yugoslavian republics. However, the economic transition of Slovenia was very successful, and it retained many institutional elements of the Former Yugoslavian economy, such as self-management and partial worker-controlled enterprises. The Slovenian Model can be seen as a reconciliation of Western European social democracy and Tito’s market socialism. The large-scale privatization of state assets, banks, and shock therapy in other former Yugoslavian republics, such as Serbia, are, in contrast, unsuccessful. The economies of these states stagnate with a generally high level of corruption compared to the more successful Slovenian model.


title: Sandpiper

text: Sandpipers are a large family, Scolopacidae, of waders. They include many species called sandpipers, as well as those called by names such as curlew and snipe. The majority of these species eat small invertebrates picked out of the mud or soil. Different lengths of bills enable different species to feed in the same habitat, particularly on the coast, without direct competition for food.


title: Sandpiper

text: Sandpipers have long bodies and legs, and narrow wings. Most species have a narrow bill, but otherwise the form and length are quite variable. They are small to medium-sized birds, measuring in length. The bills are sensitive, allowing the birds to feel the mud and sand as they probe for food. They generally have dull plumage, with cryptic brown, grey, or streaked patterns, although some display brighter colours during the breeding season.


title: Sandpiper

text: Most species nest in open areas, and defend their territories with aerial displays. The nest itself is a simple scrape in the ground, in which the bird typically lays three or four eggs. The young of most species are precocial.


title: Sandpiper

text: The family Scolopacidae was introduced (as Scolopacea) by the French polymath Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. The family contains 98 extant or recently extinct species divided into 15 genera. For more details, see the article List of sandpiper species.


title: Sandpiper

text: The early fossil record is scant for a group that was probably present at the non-avian dinosaur's extinction. ""Totanus" teruelensis" (Late Miocene of Los Mansuetos (Spain) is sometimes considered a scolopacid – maybe a shank – but may well be a larid; little is known of it.


title: Sandpiper

text: "Paractitis" has been named from the Early Oligocene of Saskatchewan (Canada), while "Mirolia" is known from the Middle Miocene at Deiningen in the Nördlinger Ries (Germany). Most living genera would seem to have evolved throughout the Oligocene to Miocene with the waders perhaps a bit later; see the genus accounts for the fossil record.


title: Sandpiper

text: In addition there are some indeterminable remains that might belong to extant genera or their extinct relatives:


title: Sandpiper

text: The sandpipers exhibit considerable range in size and appearance, the wide range of body forms reflecting a wide range of ecological niches. Sandpipers range in size from the least sandpiper, at as little as and in length, to the Far Eastern curlew, at up to in length, and the Eurasian curlew, at up to . Within species there is considerable variation in patterns of sexual dimorphism. Males are larger than females in ruffs and several sandpipers, but are smaller than females in the knots, curlews, phalaropes and godwits. The sexes are similarly sized in the snipes, woodcock and tringine sandpipers. Compared to the other large family of wading birds, the plovers (Charadriidae), they tend to have smaller eyes, more slender heads, and longer thinner bills. Some are quite long-legged, and most species have three forward pointing toes with a smaller hind toe (the exception is the sanderling, which lacks a hind toe).


title: Sandpiper

text: Sandpipers are more geared towards tactile foraging methods than the plovers, which favour more visual foraging methods, and this is reflected in the high density of tactile receptors in the tips of their bills. These receptors are housed in a slight horny swelling at the tip of the bill (except for the surfbird and the two turnstones). Bill shape is highly variable within the family, reflecting differences in feeding ecology. Bill length relative to head length varies from three times the length of the head in the long-billed curlew to just under half the head length in the Tuamotu sandpiper. Bills may be straight, slightly upcurled or strongly downcurved. Like all birds, the bills of sandpipers are capable of cranial kinesis, literally being able to move the bones of the skull (other than the obvious movement of the lower jaw) and specifically bending the upper jaw without opening the entire jaw, an act known as rhynchokinesis. It has been hypothesized this helps when probing by allowing the bill to be partly opened with less force and improving manipulation of prey items in the substrate. Rhynchokinesis is also used by sandpipers feeding on prey in water to catch and manipulate prey.


title: Sandpiper

text: The sandpipers have a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring across most of the world's land surfaces except for Antarctica and the driest deserts. A majority of the family breed at moderate to high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, in fact accounting for the most northerly breeding birds in the world. Only a few species breed in tropical regions, ten of which are snipes and woodcocks and the remaining species being the unusual Tuamotu sandpiper, which breeds in French Polynesia (although prior to the arrival of humans in the Pacific there were several other closely related species of Polynesian sandpiper).


title: Sandpiper

text: There are broadly four feeding styles employed by the sandpipers, although many species are flexible and may use more than one style. The first is pecking with occasional probing, usually done by species in drier habitats that do not have soft soils or mud. The second, and most frequent, method employed is probing soft soils, muds and sands for prey. The third, used by "Tringa" shanks, involves running in shallow water with the bill under the water chasing fish, a method that uses sight as well as tactile senses. The final method, employed by the phalaropes and some "Calidris" sandpipers, involves pecking at the water for small prey. A few species of scolopacids are omnivorous to some extent, taking seeds and shoots as well as invertebrates.


title: Sandpiper

text: Many sandpipers form monogamous pairs, but some sandpipers have female-only parental care, some male-only parental care, some sequential polyandry and other compete for the mate on the lek. Sandpipers lay three or four eggs into the nest, which is usually a vague depression or scrape in the open ground, scarcely lined with soft vegetation. In species where both parents incubate the eggs, females and males share their incubation duties in various ways both within and between species. In some pairs, parents exchange on the nest in the morning and in the evening so that their incubation rhythm follows a 24-hour day, in others each sex may sit on the nest continuously for up to 24 hours before it is exchanged by its partner. In species where only a single parent incubates the eggs, during the night the parent sits on the eggs nearly continuously and then during the warmest part of a day leaves the nest for short feeding bouts. Chicks hatch after about three weeks of incubation and are able to walk and forage within a few hours of hatching. A single parent or both parents guide and brood the chicks.


title: Berger Paints

text: Berger Paints Ltd is an Indian multinational paint company, based in Kolkata, Bengal, India. This company has 16 manufacturing units in India, 2 in Nepal, 1 each in Poland and Russia. It has manufacturing units at Howrah and Rishra, Arinso, Taloja, Naltoli, Goa, Devla, Hindupur, Jejuri, Jammu, Puducherry and Udyognagar. The company has presence in five countries – India, Russia, Poland, Nepal and Bangladesh. They have an employee strength of over 3,600 and a countrywide distribution network of 25,000+ dealers.


title: Berger Paints

text: In 1760, Louis Berger, started a dye and pigment manufacturing business in England, which later changed to Louis Berger & Sons Limited. In 1770, Louis Steigenberger shifted from Frankfurt to London to sell a Prussian blue colour, which was made using his own formula. Mr. Berger perfected this process & art of the blue colour, which was the colour of most military uniforms of that time. He then changed his name to Lewis Berger. By 1870, Berger Paints was selling 19 different pigments such as black lead, sulphur, sealing wax and mustard. After his demise, his sons took over the business.


title: Berger Paints

text: On 17 December 1923, Mr. Hadfield set up Hadfield's (India) Ltd., a small paint company in Calcutta. Towards the end of 1947, British Paints acquired Hadfield's (India) Ltd and thus British Paints (India) Ltd was incorporated in the State of West Bengal. In 1951, sales offices were opened in Delhi and Bombay and a depot was started in Guwahati. In 1969, Berger Jenson Nicholson Limited, UK bought British Paints (India) Ltd. This marked the beginning of Lewis Berger's legacy in India. In the year 1973, D. Madhukar took over as the managing director. Sales figures reached over 16 crore by 1978. The 80s and the 90s saw the launch of many new products such as emulsions and distempers. In 1991, UB group sold the company to Kuldip Singh Dhingra (Chairman) and Gurbachan Singh Dhingra (Vice Chairman). Subir Bose took over as managing director on 1 July 1994. Bose retired on 30 June 2012, handing over the company to Abhijit Roy, the current managing director. On Mar 13, 2013, Berger Paints has acquired the Mumbai-based architectural paints division of Sherwin Williams. In the year 2021, Berger Paints set up their plant in Sandila in the state of Uttar Pradesh.


title: Berger Paints

text: On 25 March 1950, Berger Paints Pakistan Limited was incorporated in Pakistan. In 1955, the Karachi factory was established. In 1974, Berger Pakistan became a public limited company. In 1974, Berger Pakistan 50.62% shares were held by Jenson & Nicholson Limited (U.K. parent company), 49.38% shares were held by Pakistani investors. In 1991, Slotrapid Limited, a British Virgin Island company, acquired control of Berger Paints Pakistan Limited by purchasing 50.62% shares of the company.


title: Berger Paints

text: In the geographical region of Bangladesh, Berger Paints were imported from Berger UK and then from Berger Pakistan. In 1970, the Kalurghat, Chittagong factory was inaugurated. In 1980, the name of the company changed from J&N (Bangladesh) Limited to Berger Paints Bangladesh Limited.


title: Berger Paints

text: Apart from operations in Russia and a production facility at the Berger manufacturing unit at Krasnodar, Berger Paints India also has an operational unit in Nepal. They have also acquired Bolix SA of Poland, a provider of External Insulation Finishing Systems (EIFS) in Eastern Europe.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon is the daughter of French writer/director Jacques Doillon and English actress/singer Jane Birkin. She has six brothers and sisters: Kate Barry and Charlotte Gainsbourg on her mother's side, and Lola Doillon, Lili Doillon, Lina Doillon and Lazare Doillon on her father's side. Doillon spent her school years between France and Saint Barthélemy until the age of 15, when she dropped out to become a full-time actress. In 2002, at the age of 19, she gave birth to Marlowe Mitchell, her son with musician Thomas-John Mitchell. Marlowe is named after Christopher Marlowe.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon is vocal about her support for women's choice for abortions. She has spoken about her history of abortions, both by personal choice and for medical reasons.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon started acting at the age of 5, starring in "Kung Fu Master" directed by Agnès Varda. She has since worked with directors including Jean Pierre Améris, Jacques Doillon, Guillaume Canet, Abel Ferrara and Maïwenn.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon started modelling at the age of 16, becoming the ambassador of Givenchy. She has since been the face of Vanessa Bruno, Eres, Mango, H&M, Miu Miu, JBrand, Barney's, Gap, Maje and Chloé. She was featured alongside Sophia Loren and Penélope Cruz in the Pirelli Calendar. Doillon has worked with photographers Inez and Vinoodh, Mario Sorrenti, Mario Testino, Terry Richardson, Bruce Webber, Paolo Reversi, Corinne Day, Mert and Marcus, Ryan McGinley and Glen Lunchford. She has collaborated with Lee Cooper and La Redoute as a creative consultant and designer for six collections.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon, alongside director Michel Didym, created a show based on letters written by French authors and singers (Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Marcel Proust and Édith Piaf), and monologues. She toured French-speaking theatres throughout Europe by herself for over two years.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In 2010, Doillon started working with director on Samuel Beckett's one sentence monologue "L'Image" in the National Theatre of Orléans. Alongside dancer Damien Jalet and conceptual musician Meelice, they performed throughout France and in New York for the Crossing the Line Festival. In 2017, for the National Theatre of Rennes, Doillon performed "L'Image" directed by Nauzyciel for a week.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon has also collaborated on various performances (Paroles d'Exil/Musique Interdite with the French National Orchestra, Calamity Jane with singer/ musician John Mitchell and as a reader for many French-literature festivals).


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon has been drawing since she was 10 and has often included her drawings in her other crafts (the vinyl edition of her album in 2016 and most of her merchandise on tour is drawn by her). She has been keeping a drawn and written diary since the age of 12. She works with an extra fine Sailor Pen on Sennelier paper or Moleskine diaries.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In September 2017, Doillon released a book, including 80 ink and pencil drawings, alongside diary drawings with Astier de Villatte. The release was followed by an exhibit of the original drawings at La maison Molière in Paris. She has also, for the brand Astier de Villatte, collaborated on a project of 18 different types of hand backed ceramic mugs and 15 unique pieces, presented and sold in Tokyo during the launch of the collaboration in November 2017 with creative duo Benoit Astier de Villatte and Ivan Pericoli.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon's love for music was enkindled by her father: "When my parents split, I discovered with Jacques, his taste for eclectic and a strange form of radicalness in music. He would say: 'sit down, shut up and listen to the music' while playing records from Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Patti Smith and Nick Drake." She often quotes Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lhasa, Lead Belly, Fiona Apple, Cat Power, Nina Simone, Tim Buckley and Bobbie Gentry amongst others as her influences.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon recorded with many musicians in New York and Paris during the 2000s before starting a solo career in 2010. Her voice has been described as "equal parts Marianne Faithfull, Nina Simone, Anohni and Joanna Newsom." Her genre is described as haunted folk. She writes her songs on Canadian Guild guitars (D55) or the piano and performs on an Eko electric guitar.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In 2012, Doillon signed her first recording deal for three albums with Barclay (Universal Music France). Her first EP "I.C.U" came out in June and was produced by Étienne Daho and mixed by Philippe Zdar from the band Cassius.


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon's first album was recorded in France over a 15 day period in the Studio La Seine with French musicians François Poggio, Marcello Guliani, Alexis Anérilles and Philippe Entressangle. Her debut album "Places" reached number three on the French charts. It also reached number one on Canadian iTunes, number two on French iTunes and was released through Verve in the US and decca in the UK. The artwork for the cover was done by Inez and Vinoodh. Doillon was on the cover of influential magazines "Magic", "Telerama" and "Les Inrockuptibles". The first single, "I.C.U", was followed by a video directed by Antoine Carlier, reconstituting her wanderings through Paris. Then came "Questions and Answers" directed by Gaetan Chataigner while Doillon was on tour and "Devil or Angel" directed by Christophe Acker in Scotland.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In October 2012, Doillon started her first tour at French rock club La Flèche d'Or and played France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and England. This tour also played at Paris's Le Trianon venue. On 8 February 2013 during the Victoires de la musique ceremony (French equivalent of the Grammy's) at the Zenith of Paris, she was awarded "Best Female Performer of the year", competing alongside prestigious artists such as Françoise Hardy and Celine Dion. It was the first time a newcomer English-speaking performer won in that category. Doillon toured for the rest of 2013, including many festivals (Eurockéennes de Belfort, Francofolies de la Rochelle and Osheaga festival).


title: Lou Doillon

text: In January 2015, Doillon started recording and co-producing, alongside Timber Timbre frontman Taylor Kirk, her second album in Canada. She recorded in the Montreal mythical studio Hotel2Tango, over a period of a month, with fellow band members of Timber Timbre. She completed the recording between Studio la Seine in Paris and RAK Studios in London. "Lay Low" was mixed by Nick Launey and Adam Greenspan in Los Angeles in April. The album came out on 9 October, preceded by the first single "Where to Start", which was featured in Jean-Marc Vallée's' movie "Demolition" (starring Naomi Watts and Jake Gyllenhaal) soundtrack. Doillon was nominated for best rock album of the year at Les Victoires de la musique. The album received critical acclaim in France, Belgium, England, Canada and the US and was released through Verve in the US and decca in the UK. The front cover for the album is a selfie shot by Doillon in bed, and inner pictures were shot during the recording in Canada by French photographer Zelie Noreda.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In 2016, Doillon started a world tour, performing in the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Korea, Germany, Poland, England and France. She performed on Jools Holland, alongside Iggy Pop and Graham Nash. As a final touch to her world tour, she performed two sold out concerts in La Flèche D'or, named Kitchen Acoustic and Lou Doillon and Friends (performed with fellow musicians Woodkid and Keren Ann).


title: Lou Doillon

text: Doillon's band includes François Poggio on the guitar, Nicolas Subrechicot on keys, Pierre Lavandon on bass and Franck M'Bouéké on the drums.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In May 2016, Doillon was chosen by John Cale to perform "Femme Fatale" during his tribute show to the Velvet Underground at the Philharmonie de Paris, alongside Mark Lanegan, Saul Williams, Animal Collective, Étienne Daho and The Libertines.


title: Lou Doillon

text: In 2017, Doillon participated in the homage to Leonard Cohen at the MAC, alongside Jarvis Cocker, Chilly Gonzales and Half Moon Run, producing a cover of "Famous Blue Raincoat".


title: Lou Doillon

text: On 3 October 2017, for the 3 Ring Circus with John Grant and Richard Hawley, Doillon performed three acoustic sets by herself at three different venues. On 6 October 2017, she repeated this performance in Sheffield, with Hawley and James Dean Bradfield.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: José Luis Félix Chilavert González (; born 27 July 1965) is a Paraguayan former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper for Sportivo Luqueño, Guaraní, San Lorenzo de Almagro, Real Zaragoza, Vélez Sarsfield, RC Strasbourg, Peñarol, and the Paraguayan national football team.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert won 12 club titles, including the 1994 Copa Libertadores and the 1994 Intercontinental Cup, while playing for Vélez Sarsfield, and is a three-time IFFHS World's Best Goalkeeper award winner. A fast and agile shot-stopper, known for his leadership, strong personality, and goalkeeping ability, he was regarded as one of the best goalkeepers in the world in his prime; outside of his goalkeeping position, Chilavert was also known for his outfield skills and ability as a free kick specialist, and often took penalties. He scored 67 goals in his professional career, many of them crucial, including eight in international matches. Four of his international goals were scored during Paraguay's qualification for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Chilavert is the second-highest goalscoring goalkeeper of all time, surpassed only by Brazilian keeper Rogerio Ceni, and is one of only three goalkeepers to score a hat-trick. Chilavert was also known for his eccentricity and his fiery temper, which brought him his fair share of controversies; most notorious among them was his being sent off in 1997 for brawling with Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla. He was nicknamed ""El Buldog"" ("The Bulldog") and often wore a cartoon bulldog on his goalkeeper jersey.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert appeared for the Paraguay national football team 74 times from 1989 to 2003, scoring 8 goals and representing the team at five major tournaments. Chilavert appeared for Paraguay at two FIFA World Cup tournaments (1998 and 2002), where he served as captain on both occasions, and appeared in three Copa América tournaments (1991, 1993, and 1997). Chilavert was also included in the 1998 FIFA World Cup Team of the Tournament.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert grew up in Luque, Gran Asunción, in a poor family, and walked barefoot until the age of seven. His parents were Catalino Chilavert, a state bureaucrat, and Nicolasa González. At the age of five, he had three siblings and two responsibilities: to milk cows and sell the milk in Ñu Guazú, a rural suburb of Luque. One of his siblings, Rolando Chilavert, is also a football player.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert made his footballing debut with Sportivo Luqueño, where he was trained by Modesto Sandoval. In 1989, he played for the Paraguayan national team for the first time.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: He later moved to Spain, where he played for Real Zaragoza. In 1988, whilst Chilavert played for Real Zaragoza, he stated that "the fans used to freak out" when he would come out with the ball at his feet and "scream at me to get back in goal. I've never stopped to think about what others are saying. I just rely on my abilities. Later on, I started to practice penalties and free kicks until they gave me the job for real". Chilavert admitted to staying behind after training to practice 80 to 120 free kicks, which in his opinion was how he got better.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: In the 2001 Coupe de France Final, Chilavert scored the winning penalty in the shootout victory over Amiens SC.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert was voted "World Goalkeeper of the Year" by the IFFHS in 1995, 1997, and 1998. He was sent off alongside Faustino Asprilla in the qualifiers, in which Asprilla had to convince a hitman to not murder Chilavert afterwards. Chilavert participated in the 1998 World Cup, where he became the first goalkeeper ever to take a direct free kick in the World Cup finals, almost scoring against Bulgaria. With two clean sheets in the first round, he helped take Paraguay to the round of sixteen, where the team lost to France on a golden goal scored by Laurent Blanc. Chilavert had made boasts about being the Cup's best goalkeeper before the tournament, and after the tournament, FIFA indeed named Chilavert on the tournament All-Star Squad for his performances, alongside French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert refused to take part in the 1999 Copa América, angering the Paraguayan government, as he claimed funding should be used for education.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: FIFA gave Chilavert a four-game suspension (later reduced to three) for spitting on Brazil's Roberto Carlos at the conclusion of a 2002 FIFA World Cup qualification game. As a result, he watched Paraguay's first game of the 2002 World Cup against South Africa from the stands.<ref name="cnn/si">"Flamboyant Chilavert still Paraguay's biggest star". "CNN Sports Illustrated". 25 April 2002.</ref> Chilavert accused Roberto Carlos of racism and of making obscene gestures during the match. Chilavert later claimed that Roberto Carlos came up to him after the match and said "Indian, we have won 2–0, you are a disaster". He also justified his action by saying he had been provoked by the Brazilians, who had called him the weakest link of Paraguay before the match, and also claimed the match was like a war and that Brazil should return land to Paraguay lost in the War of the Triple Alliance in the 19th century.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Before the 2002 FIFA World Cup, Paraguay manager Cesare Maldini had faced criticism in Paraguay, but Chilavert defended Maldini for his experience. He also expressed great confidence in the ability of the Paraguayan team and downplayed his role on the team. During the World Cup, Chilavert made an error against Spain on Morientes's 2–1 goal as Paraguay lost 3–1. Chilavert almost redeemed himself later with a good free kick attempt, but the shot was saved by Casillas. Before the match, Chilavert had vowed to score against Spain if Paraguay got a free kick "within range". Before the last match in the group stage, Paraguay had to beat Slovenia and Spain had to beat South Africa, with a combined margin of three goals, for Paraguay to go through to the last 16. The match started badly for Paraguay, with Carlos Paredes sent off in the 21st minute, and continued with Milenko Ačimovič taking the lead for the Slovenians right before half-time after Chilavert failed to grip the ball and allowed it to slip between his legs into the goal. But Paraguay – inspired by substitutes Nelson Cuevas and Jorge Campos – recovered to defeat Slovenia 3–1, scoring three times in the last 25 minutes, and when Spain also defeated South Africa 3–2, that victory meant that Paraguay was through to the next round, where they would play Germany. In their second-round match against Germany, despite several saves from Chilavert, Paraguay lost 1–0, courtesy of a late Oliver Neuville goal.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: In total, Chilavert earned 74 international caps for Paraguay and achieved a goalkeeper record of eight international goals. He retired from international football in 2003.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert announced his retirement from football in December 2003, but decided to come out of retirement to return to Vélez. Chilavert had just won the Uruguayan league with Peñarol when he initially retired. He finally retired permanently in 2004, playing his last match, a farewell testimonial, on 11 November of that year – fittingly, he scored a goal.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: In 2005, Chilavert received a suspended six-month prison sentence in France for the use of false documents related to the compensation for the end of his contract with Strasbourg.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert was a commentator for American television network Univision during the 2006 FIFA World Cup and 2010 FIFA World Cup, alongside Jorge Pérez-Navarro. Chilavert vowed that if he had gone to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, he would have tried again to become the first goalkeeper to score a goal.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert is married to Marcela, an English language teacher he met in Buenos Aires while playing for San Lorenzo de Almagro. In 1998, they had a daughter named Anahí.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert has allegedly thrown punches at Faustino Asprilla and Diego Maradona. He was suspended for four matches for his altercation with the former that occurred during a World Cup qualifier in 1997.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert was a guest commentator for Univision during the Copa América Centenario but was removed from the broadcasts after CONMEBOL President Alejandro Dominguez told the network to remove Chilavert. Chilavert had criticized Dominguez and called him corrupt on the air during Paraguay's Group A match against Colombia.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: In 2018, Chilavert called for the expulsion of the British ambassador to Paraguay Matthew Hedges after the latter made controversial statements about the conviction of 12 farmers in a case relating to the violent deaths of six police officers and 11 rural workers in 2012. During the altercation, Chilavert made anglophobic and homophobic comments, the latter referencing Hedges's homosexuality, calling him 'anormal'.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Chilavert defended Cesare Maldini from the members of the Paraguayan press who criticized Maldini when he was appointed as Paraguay's coach for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. Chilavert stated that "About 90% of sports journalists in Paraguay are incompetent" and welcomed criticism following Paraguay's performance in Korea and Japan if they were to perform poorly.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: During his career, Chilavert was being touted as Paraguay's future president. Chilavert was labelled "a revolutionary the kind of which South America has not seen since the days of Che Guevara."


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: Off the field, Chilavert refused to participate at the 1999 Copa América, held in Paraguay, complaining about the incompetence of the local directors. Despite being officially honored by the government, he said that his country should invest money in education rather than football. Chilavert also routinely dismissed his country's politicians as corrupt, incompetent, and responsible for keeping many Paraguayans in poverty. Chilavert claimed that when his playing days were over, he would stand for president and enforce his own brand of law and order.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: During 2008 and 2009, the former goalkeeper demonstrated his support for Paraguayan Olympic thrower Edgar Baumann against corruption in Paraguayan sport when the athlete had been robbed of his right to compete at the 2000 Sydney Olympics due to a scandal from the Paraguayan Olympic Committee. Chilavert supported Baumann during the lawsuit which had been filed against the Olympic Committee with Chilavert stated that the then president of the Olympic Committee, Ramón Zubizarreta, should be expulsed for hurting athletes and not giving them benefits.


title: José Luis Chilavert

text: In 2009, Chilavert, along with Claudio Escauriza, Tomás Orué and lawyer Alejandro Rubin, attended a Press Conference at Asunción Shopping Centre Shopping del Sol, in support Edgar Baumann, who had received a favourable ruling from the Paraguay Supreme Court in a case against the Paraguay Olympic Committee president Ramón Zubizarreta for robbing him the right of competing at the 2000 Summer Olympics and also taking his sums of money that he earned from his scholarship.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people (LGBT) in Russia and its historical antecedents (the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire) has largely been influenced by the political leanings of its rulers. Medieval Catholic-Protestant Europe had the largest influence on Russian attitude towards homosexuality. Russian LGBT history was influenced by the ambivalent attitude of the Russian Orthodox religiosity regarding sexuality.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Homosexuality has been documented in Russia for centuries. The earliest documented bans on homosexuality date to the early-mid 17th century. Grigory Kotoshikhin recorded during the reign of Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich, who began the process of the Europeanization and modernization of Russia, that male homosexuals were put to death and also states that female homosexuals are also put to death by burning. Government attempts at preventing homosexual practices began in the 18th century, with Tsar Peter the Great banning homosexual relations in the armed forces in 1716 as a part of his attempt to modernise the country. In 1832, further laws were enacted criminalising certain sexual acts between two males, but an LGBT subculture developed in Russia during that century.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1917, the Russian Revolution saw the overthrow of the Tsarist government and the subsequent foundation of the Russian SFSR, the world's first socialist state, followed by the founding of the Soviet Union after the end of the civil war in 1922. The Bolsheviks rewrote the constitution and "produced two Criminal Codes – in 1922 and 1926 – and an article prohibiting homosexual sex was left off both." The new Communist Party government eradicated the old laws regarding sexual relations, effectively legalising homosexual and transgender activity within Russia, although it remained illegal in other former territories of the Russian Empire. Yet homosexuals were still persecuted and sacked from their jobs.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1933, the Soviet government under the leadership of Joseph Stalin recriminalised homosexual activity, resulting in thousands of homosexuals being sent to the Gulag. A 1934 article in the new Criminal Code outlawed 'homosexuality'. Following Stalin's death, there was a liberalisation of attitudes toward sexual issues in the Soviet Union, but homosexual acts remained illegal.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The Austrian royal councilor Sigismund von Herberstein described in his report "Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii" (Notes on Muscovite Affairs) his observations during his travels in Moscow in 1517 and 1526. He stated that homosexuality was prevalent among all social classes. The English poet George Turberville who visited Moscow in 1568 when Ivan IV ruled Russia during a bloody phase, was not shocked by the carnage, but about the open homosexuality of the Russian peasants. Adam Olearius also reported that homosexuality among men existed on all levels of society and was not treated as a crime. There are also reports of homosexual relationships between women.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Prior to Tsarist policy, homosexuality and cross-dressing were punished by religious authorities or militias. Ivan the Terrible was accused of being homosexual in an attempt to discredit him. When Tsar False Dmitry I was overthrown, his broken body was dragged through the streets by his genitals alongside his reputed male lover.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1716, Tsar Peter the Great enacted a ban on male homosexuality in the armed forces. The prohibition on sodomy was part of a larger reform movement designed to modernize Russia and efforts to extend a similar ban to the civilian population were rejected until 1835.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1832, Tsar Nicholas I added Article 995 which outlawed "muzhelozhstvo". While this could have created a ban on all forms of private adult voluntary homosexual behavior, the courts tended to limit its interpretation to anal sex between men, thus making private acts of oral sex between consenting men legal. The law did not explicitly address female homosexuality or cross-dressing, although both behaviors were considered to be equally immoral and may have been punished under other laws (similar to how the Church would punish girls for being "tomboys") as lesbians were previously punished by law in the 17th century and prior. Persons convicted under Article 995 were to be stripped of their rights and relocated to Siberia for four to five years. It is unknown how many Russians were sentenced under this law, although there were a number of openly gay and bisexual Russians during this era and homoerotic rites were popular among some religious dissidents in the far north of Russia. The relatively high number of openly gay or bisexual artists and intellectuals continued on into the late 19th century.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Author and critic Konstantin Leontiev was bisexual and one of the most famous couples in the late 19th century Russian literary world were the lesbians Anna Yevreinova (a lawyer) and Maria Feodorova (an author). Another notable Russian lesbian couple were author Polyxena Soloviova and Natalia Manaseina. Other notables included poet Alexei Apukhtin, Peter Tchaikovsky, conservative author and publisher Prince Vladimir Meshchersky, Sergei Diaghilev, who had an affair with his cousin Dmitry Filosofov and after the breakup with Vaslav Nijinsky. Mikhail Kuzmin's novel "Wings" (1906) became one of the first "coming out" stories to have a happy ending and his private journals provide a detailed view of a gay subculture, involving men of all classes.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: While there was a degree of government tolerance extended to certain gay or bisexual artists and intellectuals, especially if they were on friendly terms with the Imperial family, the pervasive public opinion, greatly influenced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, was that homosexuality was a sign of corruption, decadence and immorality. Russian author Alexander Amfiteatrov's novel titled "People of the 1890s" (1910), reflected this prejudice with two gay characters: a masculine lesbian attorney and a decadent gay poet.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Leo Tolstoy's "Resurrection" introduces a Russian artist, convicted for having sex with his students, but given a lenient sentence; and a Russian activist for gay rights as examples of the widespread corruption and immorality in Tsarist Russia.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: These depictions of gay men and women in literature suggest that the government's selective tolerance of homosexuality was not widely expressed among the Russian people and that it was also divorced from any endorsement of LGBT rights. While other nations, most notable Germany, had an active gay rights movement during this era, the most visible example of Russian homosexuality aside from literature was prostitution.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Russian urbanization had helped to ensure that Saint Petersburg and Moscow both had gay brothels, along with many public places where men would buy and sell sexual services for or from other men. While there certainly was lesbian prostitution and some alleged lesbian affairs, less was publicly said, good or bad, about gay or bisexual women. Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich Romanov (the younger brother and uncle, respectively, of Russian Emperors Alexander III and Nicholas II) served as the Governor of Moscow from 1891 to 1905. His homosexual relationships were widely famous in Moscow.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Anarchist Alexander Berkman softened his prejudice against homosexuality through his relationship with Emma Goldman and his time spent in jail, where he learned that working-class men could be gay, thus debunking the idea that homosexuality was a sign of upper middle class or wealthy exploitation or decadence.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: One of the founders of the Kadets, Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov, had written a research paper on the legal status of homosexuality in Russia, published by early gay rights advocate Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin. In addition to the legal research, the paper argued that the anti-gay criminal law should be repealed, making him the first Russian politician to public express support for gay rights.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The Soviet government of the Russian Soviet Republic (RSFSR) decriminalised homosexuality in December 1917, following the October Revolution and the discarding of the Legal Code of Tsarist Russia.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The legalisation of homosexuality was confirmed in the RSFSR Penal Code of 1922, and following its redrafting in 1926. According to Dan Healey, archival material that became widely available following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 "demonstrates a principled intent to decriminalize the act between consenting adults, expressed from the earliest efforts to write a socialist criminal code in 1918 to the eventual adoption of legislation in 1922."


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The legalisation of private, adult and consensual homosexual relations only applied to the Russian SFSR and the Ukrainian SSR. Homosexuality or sodomy remained a crime in Azerbaijan (officially criminalised in 1923) as well as in the Transcaucasian and Central Asian Soviet Republics throughout the 1920s. Similar criminal laws were enacted in Uzbekistan in 1926 and in Turkmenistan the following year.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Despite decriminalising homosexuality in 1917, wider Soviet social policy on the matter of wider homosexual rights and the treatment of homosexual people in the 1920s was often mixed. Official Soviet policy in both the RSFSR and the wider USSR in the 1920s on homosexuality fluctuated between toleration and support, attempts at legal equality and social rights for homosexual people, to open examples of state hostility against homosexuals and state attempts to classify homosexuality as "a mental disorder to be cured". In the Communist Party itself during this period of the 1920s, such divergences of opinion and policy on Soviet treatment of homosexuality was also common, ranging from positive, to negative, to ambivalent over views about homosexuals and homosexual rights. Some sections and factions of the Bolshevik government attempted to improve rights and social conditions for homosexuals based on further legal reforms in 1922 and 1923 while others opposed such moves. In the early 1920s, Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko for example was sympathetic to homosexual emancipation "as part of the [sexual] revolution" and attempted such reforms for homosexual rights in the area of civil and medical areas. According to Wayne R. Dynes, some sections of the Bolsheviks of the 1920s actively considered homosexuality a "[social] illness to be cured" or an example of "bourgeois degeneracy" while other Bolsheviks believed it should be legally/socially tolerated and legally/socially respected in the new socialist society.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The Bolsheviks also rescinded Tsarist legal bans on homosexual civil and political rights, especially in the area of state employment. In 1918, Georgy Chicherin, a homosexual man who kept his homosexuality hidden, was appointed as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR. In 1923, Chicherin was also appointed People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR, a position he held until 1930.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In the early 1920s, the Soviet government and scientific community took a great deal of interest in sexual research, sexual emancipation and homosexual emancipation. In January 1923, the Soviet Union sent delegates from the Commissariat of Health led by Commissar of Health Semashko to the German Institute for Sexual Research as well as to some international conferences on human sexuality between 1921 and 1930, where they expressed support for the legalisation of adult, private and consensual homosexual relations and the improvement of homosexual rights in all nations. In both 1923 and 1925, Dr. , director of the Institute for Social Hygiene in Moscow, published a report, "The Sexual Revolution in Russia", which stated that homosexuality was "perfectly natural" and should be legally and socially respected. In the Soviet Union itself, the 1920s saw developments in serious Soviet research on sexuality in general, sometimes in support of the progressive idea of homosexuality as a natural part of human sexuality, such as the work of Dr. Batkis prior to 1928. Such delegations and research were sent and authorised and supported by the People's Commissariat for Health under Commissar Semashko.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: However, in the late 1920s and early 1930s Soviet policy and attitudes on homosexuality and homosexual rights changed, alongside wider social backlashes against homosexual rights in general in the USSR. Along with increased repression of political dissidents and non-Russian nationalities under Stalin, LGBT themes and issues faced increasing official government censorship and a uniformly harsher policy across the entire Soviet Union. Homosexuality was officially labelled a disease and a mental disorder in the late 1920s (specifically over a period from 1927 to 1930). In this climate, Commissar Semashko reduced his support for homosexual rights and Dr. Batkis and other sexual researchers repudiated (in 1928) their own earlier scientific reports of homosexuality as a natural human sexuality. This followed earlier Soviet tendencies in sections of the medical and health communities, even in the early 1920s, to classify homosexuality, if not as a crime, then as an example of mental or physical illness. Earlier examples of this type of hardening Soviet attitude towards homosexuality include the 1923 report from the People's Commissariat for Health entitled "The Sexual Life of Contemporary Youth", authored by Izrail Gel'man, which stated: "Science has now established, with precision that excludes all doubt, that homosexuality is not ill will or crime but sickness. The world of a female or male homosexual is perverted, it is alien to the normal sexual attraction that exists in a normal person". The official stance from the late 1920s could be summarised in an article of the "Great Soviet Encyclopedia" of 1930 written by medical expert Sereisky (based on a report written in the 1920s): Soviet legislation does not recognise so-called crimes against morality. Our laws proceed from the principle of protection of society and therefore countenance punishment only in those instances when juveniles and minors are the objects of homosexual interest


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1933, the Soviet government under Stalin recriminalised sex between men. On 7 March 1934, Article 121 was added to the criminal code for the entire Soviet Union that expressly prohibited only male homosexuality, with up to five years of hard labour in prison. There were no criminal statutes regarding sex between women. During the Soviet regime, Western observers believed that between 800 and 1,000 men were imprisoned each year under Article 121.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Some historians have noted that it was during this time that Soviet propaganda began to depict homosexuality as a sign of fascism and that Article 121 may have a simple political tool to use against dissidents, irrespective of their true sexual orientation and to solidify Russian opposition to Nazi Germany, who had broken its treaty with Russia.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1993, declassified Soviet documents revealed that Stalin had personally demanded the introduction of an anti-gay law, in response to a report from deputy secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda, who had conducted a raid on the residence of hundreds of homosexuals in Moscow and Leningrad in August 1933, about "Pederast activists" engaging in orgies and espionage activities. Beyond expressed fears of a vast "counterrevolutionary fascist homosexual conspiracy", there were several high-profile arrests of Russian men accused of being pederasts. In 1933, 130 men "were accused of being 'pederasts' – adult males who have sex with boys. Since no records of men having sex with boys at that time are available, it is possible this term was used broadly and crudely to label homosexuality". Whatever the precise reason, homosexuality remained a serious criminal offense until it was repealed in 1993.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The Soviet government refrained from publicizing the new law outside of the USSR, and there was little international response. In 1934, the British communist Harry Whyte wrote a long letter to Stalin condemning the law and its prejudicial motivations. He laid out a Marxist position against the oppression of homosexuals as a social minority and compared homophobia to racism, xenophobia and sexism. Stalin did not reply to the letter, but ordered it to be archived, and added a note describing Whyte as "An idiot and a degenerate."


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: A few years later in 1936, Justice Commissar Nikolai Krylenko publicly stated that the anti-gay criminal law was correctly aimed at the decadent and effete old ruling classes, thus further linking homosexuality to a right-wing conspiracy, i.e. Tsarist aristocracy and German fascists.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: When Stalin came to power, homosexuality became a topic unfit for public depiction, defense or discussion. Homosexual or bisexual Soviets who wanted a position within the Communist Party were expected to marry a person of the opposite sex, regardless of their actual sexual orientation. A notable example was the Russian film director Sergei Eisenstein, who despite his homosexuality managed to survive by leading a double life, having affairs with men while married to a woman, producing films that were politically pleasing to Stalin.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: After Stalin died in 1953, he was replaced by Nikita Khrushchev, who proceeded to liberalize the Stalin era laws regarding marriage, divorce and abortion, but the anti-gay criminal law remained. The Khrushchev government believed that absent of a criminal law against homosexuality, the sex between men that occurred in the prison environment would spread into the general population as they released many Stalin-era prisoners. Whereas the Stalin government conflated homosexuality with pedophilia, the Khrushchev government conflated homosexuality with the situational, sometimes forced, sex acts between male prisoners.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Although the topic of homosexuality was practically unmentionable, some references to homosexuality could be found in Soviet sex education manuals for young people and their parents. These manuals were published from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in the hope of restricting the sexual activity of Soviet people and to raise their awareness of venereal diseases. These manuals mentioned homosexuality to prevent Soviet children and youth from engaging in it. The first Khrushchev-era sex education manual to mention homosexuality was "The Youth Becomes a Man" (1960) and described homosexuals as child molesters:


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: "...homosexuals are aroused by and satisfy themselves with adolescents and youngsters, even though the latter have a normal interest towards girls. Homosexuals go all out to gain the affection of the youngsters' society; they buy sweets and cigarettes for youngsters, tickets to the cinema, give them money, help to do home assignments and generally pretend that they unselfishly love youngsters. However, after such preparation, they sooner or later proceed to act. Do not let them touch you! Do not be shy about reporting them to your parents or educators, do not hesitate to report such attempts aimed at you or other young men! Both parents and educators will willingly help: homosexuality is a punishable crime, homosexuals are perfectly aware of that: that is why it is not difficult to get rid of them..".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1958, the Interior Ministry sent a secret memo to law enforcement ordering them to step up enforcement of the anti-gay criminal law. Yet during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Aline Mosby, a foreign reporter in Russia at the time, attributed to the more liberal attitude of the Khrushchev government to the fact that she did see some gay couples in public and that it was not uncommon to see men waiting outside of certain theaters looking for dates with male performers.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In the late 1950s some Soviet jurists attempted to decriminalise consensual sodomy. On 23 July 1959 a committee of Soviet jurists convened to discuss and propose changes to the new RSFSR republican criminal code. Two members of the committee proposed to eliminate the law penalising consensual sodomy, yet their proposal was not supported by other members of the committee.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Discussions between Soviet legal scholars on the value of the anti-sodomy law continued under Brezhnev. Those legal scholars, who believed that consensual homosexuality should not be a crime, argued that it was a disease, which had to be dealt with by medical knowledge. They also contended that homosexuality was a congenital condition and therefore gay people were not guilty of being different from others. Finally, these scholars argued that investigating sodomy cases, where both partners had consensual sex, was not only pointless, but technically difficult. Other legal scholars, mainly those who worked for the Interior Ministry educational institutions, opposed the idea of decriminalising consensual homosexuality. They criticised their pro-decriminalisation colleagues and argued that such propositions were ill-timed and dangerous, since homosexuality could easily spread if not controlled by the law. Likewise, they believed that homosexuality was inconsistent with the Communist Morality.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Brezhnev-era police often prosecuted homosexuals using concocted evidence and intimidating witnesses. If the witnesses were reluctant to testify against the presumed suspect, they could face criminal charges themselves. Once a sodomy case was initiated, pressure from the Party made it impossible to drop and the defendant would most likely end up in jail. Soviet advocates could do very little to help their clients in such cases despite their appeals to the General Procuracy.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Thousands of people were imprisoned for homosexuality and government censorship of homosexuality and gay rights did not begin to slowly relax until the early 1970s, allowing for brief statements. Kozlovsky was permitted to include a brief interior monologue about homosexuality in "Moscow to the End of the Line" (1973). Perhaps the first public endorsement of gay rights since Stalin was a brief statement, critical of Article 121 and calling for its repeal, made in the "Textbook of Soviet Criminal Law" (1973).


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: These references were characterized as being brief statements in a novel or textbook and were made by heterosexuals. Vicktor Sosnora was allowed to write about witnessing an elderly gay actor being brutally murdered in a Leningrad bar in "The Flying Dutchman" (1979), but the book was only allowed to be published in East Germany. When the author was gay and in particular if they were seen as supporting gay rights, the censors tended to be much harsher.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Russian gay author Yevgeny Kharitonov illegally circulated some gay fiction before he died of heart failure in 1981. Author Gennady Trifonov served four years of hard labour for circulating his gay poems and upon his release was allowed to write and publish only if he avoided depicting or making reference to homosexuality.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Despite sodomy being a punishable crime, the practitioners of new sexological science ("sexopathology"), which emerged in the 1960s, argued that homosexuality should be treated with psychotherapy. They provided such treatment to homosexual men in the privacy of their consultation rooms and went to great lengths to preserve their patients' anonymity. Some of these doctors even went as far as to suggest that the sodomy law should be abolished altogether so that homosexuals could resort to medical help without fear of prosecution. Their calls, however, fell on deaf ears.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1983, a group of 30 Russian gay men met and attempted to organize a gay rights organization under the name «Гей-лаборатория» («Голубая лаборатория») "Gay lab" / ("Blue lab"). At this point, homosexual relations were still punishable by a term of up to five years in prison. The group was put under pressure by the KGB and finally broke up in 1986. It was not until later in the "glasnost" period that public discussion was permitted about re-legalizing private, consensual adult homosexual relations.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: A poll conducted in 1989 reported that homosexuals were the most hated group in Russian society and that 30 percent of those polled felt that homosexuals should be liquidated. In a 1991 public opinion poll conducted in Chelyabinsk, 30 percent of the respondents aged 16 to 30 years old felt that homosexuals should be "isolated from society", 5 percent felt they should be "liquidated", 60 percent had a "negative" attitude toward gay people and 5 percent labeled their sexual orientation "unfortunate".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1989–1990, the Moscow gay rights organization «Ассоциация сексуальных меньшинств» ("Association of Sexual Minorities") led by Evgenia Debryanskaya was permitted to exist, with Roman Kalinin given permission to publish a gay newspaper, "Tema".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: There were at least 25,688 recorded convictions of men under Article 121 during the 59 years between 1934 and 1993, but that figure is incomplete because it does not include all jurisdictions, and there are no records for 22 years in which the law was in effect. The highest estimate is 250,000 convictions, but LGBT rights groups in the Russian Federation tend to estimate 60,000 convictions. The first official information was released only in 1988, but it is believed to be about 1,000 convicted a year. According to official data, the number of men convicted under Article 121 had been steadily decreasing during the "glasnost" period. In 1987, 831 men were sentenced under Article 121; in 1989, 539; in 1990, 497; and in 1991, 462.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The International Gay and Lesbian Symposium and Film Festival took place in Moscow and Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) from 23 July to 2 August 1991.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: On 27 May 1993, homosexual acts between consenting males were legalised. However, there have been reports that by 13 August 1993 "not all persons serving sentences under the old legislation have been released from jail" and there have been "cases of homosexuals being re-sentenced and kept in jail, cases of imprisoned homosexuals who cannot be located and of missing files". The reform was largely the result of pressure from the Council of Europe. While President Boris Yeltsin signed the bill into law on 29 April 1993, neither he nor the parliament had any interest in LGBT rights legislation.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1996, a Russian LGBT human rights organization called Triangle was formed, with several new LGBT themed publications and local organizations arising in light of the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet as was the case with the groups that arose during 1989–1990, many of these organizations, including Triangle, folded due to lack of funding as well as legal and social harassment.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 1999, homosexuality was formally removed from the list of Russian mental disorders (due to endorsing ICD-10, which removed homosexuality in 1990).


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 2002, Gennady Raikov, who led a conservative pro-government group in the Russian Duma, suggested outlawing homosexual acts. His proposal failed to generate enough votes, but the suggestion generated public support from many conservative religious leaders and medical doctors.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 2003, a new statute about military and medical expertise was adopted (1 July 2003) and it contained a clause of "deviations of gender identification and sexual preferences" among the reasons of disability for military service [...] this clause irritated the proponents of having equal rights for people of different sexual orientation [...] [while] another clause said that different sexual orientation should not be considered a deviation". Finally, Valery Kulikov, the Major-General of the Medical Service, announced:


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In May 2005, LGBT human rights project Gayrussia.ru was founded by Nikolai Alekseev to fight discriminations on the basis of sexual orientation and raise awareness of LGBT issues in Russia. In July 2005, Alekseev launched the Moscow Pride initiative which has been organized every year since May 2006. As of July 2009, Gayrussia.ru is a transnational organization promoting LGBT rights in Russia and Belarus.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 2006, Grand Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin was quoted as saying about Moscow Pride marchers: "If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that – Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike". Similar comments were made by one of Russia's Chief Rabbis, Berl Lazar, who joined Tadzhuddin in condemning the march, saying that it "would be a blow for morality".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Russian LGBT network was founded in May 2006. As of July 2009, this was the first and only interregional LGBT organization in Russia.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In late April and early May 2006, protesters blockaded some popular gay clubs in Moscow. After initial complaints that police had failed to intervene, later blockade attempts were met with arrests.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In May 2006, a gay rights forum was held in Moscow. An accompanying march was banned by the mayor in a decision upheld by the courts. Some activists, head of them Nikolai Alekseev, tried to march despite the ban and attempted to lay flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This march is known as the first Moscow Pride. This act and the presence of non-Russian activists aroused a nationalist reaction in addition to a religious condemnation of homosexuality, leading to the presence of both nationalist groups and Orthodox protesters threatening the gay activists. Anti-march protesters beat the marchers and about 50 marchers and 20 protesters were arrested when riot police moved in to break up the conflict. The documentary "Moscow Pride '06" featured the events that took place from 25 to 27 May that year in Moscow. It contains a vivid testimony of the first attempt to stage a gay pride march in Russia as well as the festival organized around it.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: On 27 May 2007, Moscow Pride was banned again by the former Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who had earlier branded it as "satanic", was held in Moscow again and for the second year running degenerated into violent clashes with anti-gay protestors. For the second time, police failed to protect gay rights activists. Italian MP Marco Cappato was kicked by an anti-gay activist and then detained when he demanded police protection. British gay rights veteran Peter Tatchell and Russian gay leader Nikolai Alekseev were detained as well. The march is documented in the 2008 film "East/West - Sex & Politics".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: On 1 June 2008, Moscow Pride again attempted to hold a gay parade. Some 13 Orthodox opposers were held by police for violent actions against protesters.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In February 2009 at the final press conference in Moscow, the Russian LGBT Network and the Moscow Helsinki Group published a paper titled "The Situation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People in Russian Federation". This is the first complex study of the legal situation of LGBT people in the history of Russia. The 100-page paper contained the analysis of relevant Russian laws and also assembles and generalizes specific instances of infringement of rights and discrimination.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: On 8 May, Russian Duma rejected a bill criminalizing gay "propaganda" in Russia (with only 90 votes in favor against 226 minimum required). This bill was initiated in 2007 by a Fair Russia party member and suggested depriving those who "openly demonstrated a homosexual way of life and a homosexual orientation" of the right to hold posts in educational establishments or in the army for a term from 2 to 5 years. According to Interfax, the parliamentarians decided that gay "propaganda" was not dangerous for society and thus could not be punished under the criminal code. Nikolai Alekseev, Chief organizer of the Moscow Pride, commented that with parliament rejecting this bill, it is likely that the Constitutional Court of Russia follows their request to cancel a similar law that is in force in the Ryazan Region.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: On 16 May, the Moscow Pride timed to coincide with Moscow's hosting of the 2009 Eurovision song contest finals was broken up by police, with all 30 participants – including British human rights activist Peter Tatchell – arrested.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: On 17 May, for the International Day Against Homophobia Russian LGBT network organized the Rainbow Flash Mob in Saint Petersburg; this event brought together from 100 to 250 people by various estimations and the organizers consider it to be the most large-scale action in the whole history of Russia dedicated to the problem of LGBT rights. The action in smaller scales has also passed in more than 30 cities of Russia.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In 2010, Russia was fined by the European Court of Human Rights under allegations by Nikolay Alexeyev that cities were discriminating against gays by refusing to approve pride parades. Although they claimed a risk of violence, the court ruled that their decision "effectively approved of and supported groups who had called for [their] disruption". He considered the ruling to be a "crippling blow to Russian homophobia on all accounts". In August 2012, contravening the previous ruling, Moscow upheld a ruling blocking Nikolay Alexeyev's request for permission to organize Moscow Pride for the next 100 years, citing the possibility of public disorder.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In March 2012, an attempt to organize a Pride House at the 2014 Winter Olympics was struck down by the Ministry of Justice, which refused to approve the registration of the NGO set up to run it on the basis of the Pride House inciting "propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation which can undermine the security of the Russian society and the state, provoke social-religious hatred, which is the feature of the extremist character of the activity".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: In June 2013, Russia passed a federal law banning the distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships" to minors. Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses was approved by the State Duma in a 436–0 vote prior to being signed in by Vladimir Putin. Putin's justifications for it are to promote "traditional Russian values" in opposition of Western state liberalism in regards to homosexuality, "protect the children" and to boost Russia's falling birthrate. Much of the support for the "propaganda" law comes from the Russian Orthodox Church and other conservative groups. This support is so intense that the only Parliament member to abstain was one Ilya Ponomarev, who has history of supporting pro-LGBT protests. Earlier, the Duma's final vote had been 388–1–1. This level of state support reflects the opinions of the general Russian population: polls conducted by the Levada Center indicate that nearly two-thirds of Russians consider "morally unacceptable and worth condemning". The same research indicates that half of Russians are against gay rallies and same-sex marriage and approximately a third of them think homosexuality results from "a sickness or a psychological trauma". Vitaly Milonov, a heavily conservative Russian Orthodox politician who was and is one of the main driving forces behind Russian anti-LGBT legislation, claimed that "only a man and a woman can be a family" and that the "propaganda" covered by the law is "dangerous" as "children are very vulnerable to manipulation" and could be led to believe that "only homosexuals experience true feelings".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Offenses deems the following as a punishable offense: "Propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among minors, manifested in the distribution of information aimed at forming non-traditional sexual orientations, the attraction of non-traditional sexual relations, distorted conceptions of the social equality of traditional and non-traditional sexual relations among minors, or imposing information on non-traditional sexual relations which evoke interest in these kinds of relations".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Distributing any such "propaganda" is punishable by fining: 4,000 to 5,000 rubles for individuals (about $120–$150 U.S. dollars) and up to 800,000 to 1 million rubles (about $24,000–$30,000 U.S. dollars) for corporations and other legal entities. Foreigners are also subject to Article 6.21 and violation results in up to fifteen days of incarceration and/or deportation. Such strict enforcement has been heavily criticized due to Article 6.21's vague wording as prior its officiation the law's wording was changed from addressing "homosexual propaganda" to "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations", which is nebulous enough to leave the definition up to police and courts to interpret when detaining LGBT activists. It has also been noted that the wording essentially equates homosexuality with paedophelia as the latter also falls under the "nontraditional sexual relations" category. Despite such criticisms, President Putin has stated that "homosexuals are equal citizens enjoying full rights" and Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev has said that he "[believes] that only a negligible part of the Russian population is actually concerned about [the new law]".


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Following Article 6.21's passage, there has been an increase in violence and harassment towards LGBT individuals in Russia. People have been subject to smear campaigns from homophobic civilians and administrative fines, some even had to resign from their jobs to lessen the load. Two vigilante groups in particular have been conducting extensive anti-LGBT campaigns, infringing the privacy of thousands of Russian youth: Occupy Gerontophilia, which targets gay teenagers; and Occupy Paedophilia, which focuses on gay adults (equating homosexuality with pedophelia all the while). These groups often operate by "ambushing" LGBT adults and youth by contacting them online and attempt to convince them to come to allegedly gay-friendly meetings. Once the victims arrive, they are viciously harassed and humiliated on-camera. Occupy Gerontophilia posted dozens of videos to the social network VKontakte before it was shut down for infringing the privacy of minors—but not before the organizations page got 170,000 subscribers. Occupy Gerontophilia and Occupy Paedophilia are not the only ones hostile towards the LGBT community: in May 2013, a 23-year-old man was brutally beaten and killed in the city of Volgograd not long after the "propaganda" law's passage, all because he had admitted his status as a gay man to his friends. Despite the severe situation, Russian law "[does] not outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation", leaving millions of people without any kind of widespread protection. Though Maxim Martsinkevich, the founder of Occupy Pedophilia, was arrested and convicted on charges of "inciting and fomenting cases of extremism", in his videos and postings on VKontakte the prosecution did not actually include any of his homophobic videos or statements as evidence in its case against Martsinkevich.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: The sole public support and safe space for LGBT youth is a group called Deti-404 (Children-404), founded by LGBT activist Lena Klimova, which has active pages on Facebook and VKontakte. On Deti-404, LGBT youth can share and discuss their experiences in their country's hostile environment. However, the group has already faced bureaucratic violence from the Russian government. On 31 January 2014, Klimova was charged for the "promotion of nontraditional sexual relations to minors" under the new law, potentially facing a fine of up to 100,000 rubles ($2,800). The case against Klimova was eventually dismissed due to "absence of an administrative offence", but Christian conservative politician Vitaly Milonov, who was the one to originally urge the case, has stated his intention to appeal.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: Since before Article 6.21's passage, the number of Russian asylum seekers has been dramatically increasing and since the law's passage that number has increased still more. It has been speculated that the greater number of asylum seekers is due to the aforementioned rise in anti-LGBT harassment and violence. Even in 2012, in the time leading up to Article 6.21's passage the advocacy group Immigration Equality stated that had it won more gay and lesbian asylum cases for Russians than from any other country other than Jamaica in the previous two years. By 2013, the United States had received 837 new asylum applications from Russian nationals and in 2014 this number rose to 969 new applications. According to Immigration Equality, the majority of the inquiries come from young (under the age of 30) Russians who fear being harassed, beaten, or even killed by homophobic groups like Occupy Paedophilia. Spectrum Human Rights, a Virginia-based advocacy group, has received double the amount of enquiries from the Russian LGBT community since last year.


title: LGBT history in Russia

text: As the situation has worsened, protests from the LGBT community have continued despite the fact that President Putin has passed a law outlawing repeated street protests. Notably, the Russian LGBT Network has "53 events to spread information about LGBT rights and problems, 144 events for the members of LGBT community, [and] 33 street actions and 21 advocacy events" on record for 2014. However, participants in pro-LGBT events have faced heavy opposition. In October 2013, a pro-LGBT rally meant to observe National Coming Out Day in Saint Petersburg consisting of roughly 15 people had been accosted and harassed by about 200 conservative and religious protestors. The situation escalated to violence after one of the religious protesters tore a rainbow flag out of a woman's hands—at which point the police, which remained passive up to this point, arrested 67 people on both sides.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: In the context of the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states were slave states that did not secede from the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union and to their south they bordered slave states of the Confederacy, with Delaware being an exception to the latter.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: Of the 34 U.S. states in 1861, nineteen were free states and fifteen were slave including the four border states; each of the latter held a comparatively low percentage of slaves. Delaware never declared for secession. Maryland was largely prevented from seceding by local unionists and federal troops. Two others, Kentucky, and Missouri saw rival governments, although their territory mostly stayed in Union control. Four others did not declare for secession until after the Battle of Fort Sumter and were briefly considered to be border states: Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. They are referred to as the Upper South. A new border state was created during the war, West Virginia, which was formed from 50 counties of Virginia and became a new state in the Union in 1863 (with, initially, gradual abolition law).


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: In civil war Kentucky, and Missouri, there were both pro-Confederate and pro-Union governments. West Virginia was formed in 1862–63 after Virginia Unionists from the northwestern counties of the state, then occupied by the Union Army consisting of many newly-formed West Virginia regiments, had set up a loyalist "restored" state government of Virginia. Lincoln recognized this government and allowed them to divide the state. Kentucky and Missouri had adopted secession ordinances by their pro-Confederate governments (see Confederate government of Kentucky and Confederate government of Missouri), but they never fully were under official Confederate control, though at various points Confederate armies did enter those states and controlled certain parts of them.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: Besides formal combat between regular armies, the border region saw large-scale guerrilla warfare and numerous violent raids, feuds, and assassinations. Violence was especially severe in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky and western Missouri. The single bloodiest episode was the 1863 Lawrence Massacre in Kansas, in which at least 150 civilian men and boys were killed. It was launched in retaliation for an earlier, smaller raid into Missouri by Union men from Kansas.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to the border states. Of the states that were exempted from the proclamation, Maryland (1864),


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: and Tennessee (January 1865), and West Virginia (February 1865) abolished slavery before the war ended. However, Delaware and Kentucky, while they saw a substantial reduction in slavery, did not see the abolition of slavery until December 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: With geographic, social, political, and economic connections to both the North and the South, the border states were critical to the outcome of the war. They are considered still to delineate the cultural border that separates the North from the South. Reconstruction, as directed by Congress, did not apply to the border states because they never seceded from the Union. They did undergo their own process of readjustment and political realignment after passage of amendments abolishing slavery and granting citizenship and the right to vote to freedmen. After 1880 most of these jurisdictions were dominated by white Democrats, who passed laws to impose the Jim Crow system of legal segregation and second-class citizenship for blacks. However, in contrast to the Confederate States, where almost all blacks were disenfranchised during the first half to two-thirds of the twentieth century, for varying reasons blacks remained enfranchised in the border states despite movements for disfranchisement during the 1900s.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: In the border states, slavery was already dying out in urban areas and the regions without cotton, especially in cities that were rapidly industrializing, such as Baltimore, Louisville, and St. Louis. By 1860, more than half of the African Americans in Delaware were free, as were a high proportion in Maryland.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: Some slaveholders made a profit by selling surplus slaves to traders for transport to the markets of the Deep South, where the demand was still high for field hands on cotton plantations. In contrast to the near-unanimity of voters in the seven cotton states in the lower South, which held the highest number of slaves, the border slave states were bitterly divided about secession and were not eager to leave the Union. Border Unionists hoped that a compromise would be reached, and they assumed that Lincoln would not send troops to attack the South. Border secessionists paid less attention to the slavery issue in 1861, since their states' economies were based more on trade with the North than on cotton. Their main concern in 1861 was federal coercion; some residents viewed Lincoln's call to arms as a repudiation of the American traditions of states' rights, democracy, liberty, and a republican form of government. Secessionists insisted that Washington had usurped illegitimate powers in defiance of the Constitution, and thereby had lost its legitimacy. After Lincoln issued a call for troops, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina promptly seceded and joined the Confederacy. A secession movement began in western Virginia, where most farmers were yeomen and not slaveholders, to break away and remain in the Union.


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, which had many areas with much stronger cultural and economic ties to the South than the North, were deeply divided; Kentucky tried to maintain neutrality. Union military forces were used to guarantee that these states remained in the Union. The western counties of Virginia rejected secession, set up a loyal government of Virginia (with representation in the U.S. Congress), and created the new state of West Virginia (although it included many counties which had voted for secession).


title: Border states (American Civil War)

text: Though every slave state except South Carolina contributed white battalions to both the Union and Confederate armies (South Carolina Unionists fought in units from other Union states), the split was most severe in these border states. Sometimes men from the same family fought on opposite sides. About 170,000 border state men (including African Americans) fought in the Union Army and 86,000 in the Confederate Army.