1.
Supreme Soviet of Russia
In the 1940s, the Supreme Soviet Presidium and the Council of Ministers of the Russian SFSR were located in the former mansion of counts Osterman, which was in 1991 given to a museum. The sessions were held in Grand Kremlin Palace, in 1981 the Supreme Soviet was moved to a specially constructed building on Krasnopresnenskaya embankment, The House of Soviets. The Supreme Soviet was abolished in October 1993 and replaced by the Federal Assembly of Russia, in contrast to other Soviet republics of the Soviet Union, the Russian SFSR did not have its own Communist Party and did not have its own first secretaries until 1990. From 1990–1993 the Supreme Soviet consisted of 252 deputies in the two equal chambers—the Soviet of the Republic and the Soviet of Nationalities, the Supreme Soviet of Russia ceased to exist after the events of September–October 1993
2.
Red Army
The Workers and Peasants Red Army was the army and the air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and after 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established immediately after the 1917 October Revolution, the Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. The Red Army is credited as being the land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II. During operations on the Eastern Front, it fought 75%–80% of the German land forces deployed in the war, inflicting the vast majority of all German losses and ultimately capturing the German capital. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote, There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, at the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters,1.8 million dead,5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners and he estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million.
Therefore, the Council of Peoples Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918 and they envisioned a body formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes. All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible, in the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary. Because the Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations, some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages, in some cases the money they earned would go towards tanks for the Army. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy, Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko, commissar for the fleet. Proshyan, Steinberg were specified as peoples commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars, at a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked, We have no army.
The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies and we have no power to stay the enemy, only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction. This provoked the insurrection of General Alexey Maximovich Kaledins Volunteer Army in the River Don region, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk aggravated Russian internal politics. The situation encouraged direct Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, a series of engagements resulted, amongst others, the Czechoslovak Legion, the Polish 5th Rifle Division, and the pro-Bolshevik Red Latvian Riflemen. The Whites defeated the Red Army on each front, Leon Trotsky reformed and counterattacked, the Red Army repelled Admiral Kolchaks army in June, and the armies of General Denikin and General Yudenich in October. By mid-November the White armies were all almost completely exhausted, in January 1920, Budennys First Cavalry Army entered Rostov-on-Don. 1919 to 1923 At the wars start, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments, Civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved the Russian Constituent Assembly and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, removing Russia from the Great War
3.
Pavlov's House
Pavlovs House was a fortified apartment building in which Red Army defenders held for 60 days against a heavy Wehrmacht offensive during the Battle of Stalingrad. The siege lasted from 27 September to 25 November 1942 and eventually the Soviet forces managed to relieve it from the siege and it gained its popular name from Sergeant Yakov Pavlov, who commanded the platoon that seized the building and defended it during the long battle. In late September 1942 between 30 and 50 soldiers of the 42nd Guards Regiment, 13th Guards Division secured the large apartment blocks from German control, the position was quickly fortified under the command of Lieutenant Ivan F. The Soviets had large amounts of support from the opposite side of the Volga. The strategic benefit of the house was that it defended a key section of the Volga bank, the tactical benefit of the house was its position on a cross-street, giving the defenders a 1 km line of sight to the north and west. In keeping with Stalins Order No, Pavlov was ordered to fortify the building and defend it to the last bullet and the last man.
Taking this advice to heart, Pavlov ordered the building to be surrounded with four layers of barbed wire and minefields, for better internal communication, Pavlovs soldiers breached the walls in the basement and upper floors, and dug a communications trench to Soviet positions outside. Supplies were brought in via the trench or by crossing the river, defying German air raids. Nevertheless and especially water was in short supply, lacking beds, the soldiers tried to sleep on insulation wool torn off pipes but were subjected to harassing fire every night in order to try to break their resistance. The Germans attacked the building several times a day, sources conflict on the date at which the siege began, and the date at which the Soviet reinforcements reached the building and lifted the siege. On September 27, a 30-man Russian platoon was ordered to retake an apartment building the Germans had just captured. Until November 25,1942 the defenders of Pavlovs House who participated in its defense from 26 September 1942 till 25 November 1942, the defense of the house lasted for 58 days and nights.
Vasily Chuikov, commanding general of the Soviet forces in Stalingrad, Pavlovs House was rebuilt after the battle and is still used as an apartment building today. There is a memorial constructed from bricks picked up after the battle on the East side facing the Volga. Pavlov was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union for his actions, a Russian TV documentary in 2009, Legendary Redoubt, on Russian Channel One reported on Pavlovs House. According to the documentary, the defense was in fact led by Lieutenant Ivan F. Afanasiev. This report does not discount Pavlovs efforts, which led to his earning the Hero of the Soviet Union, the last member of Pavlovs group, K. Turgunov from Turakurgan District, Namangan Province, Uzbekistan died on 16 March 2015, aged 93. Sihang Warehouse Pavlovs House - Stalingrad, September-November 1942 Map of Pavlovs House and the defenders of the house
4.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx.
The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War.
On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain
5.
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history.
Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost.
The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
6.
Order of Lenin
The Order of Lenin, named after the leader of the Russian October Revolution, was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union. Those who were awarded the titles Hero of the Soviet Union and it was bestowed on cities, factories, military units and ships. Corporate entities, various institutions and military units who received the said Order applied the full name of the order into their official titles. The order was established by the Central Executive Committee on April 6,1930, the first design of the Order of Lenin was sculpted by Pyotr Tayozhny and Ivan Shadr based on sketches by Ivan Dubasov. It was made by Goznak of silver with some lightly gold-plated features and it was a round badge with a central disc featuring Vladimir Lenins profile surrounded by smokestacks, a tractor and a building, possibly a power plant. A thin red-enamelled border and a circle of wheat panicles surrounded the disc, at the top was a gold-plated hammer and sickle emblem, and at the bottom were the Russian initials for USSR in red enamel.
Only about 800 of this design were minted, the second design was awarded from 1934 until 1936. This was a gold badge, featuring an silver plated disc bearing Lenins portrait. The disc is surrounded by two golden panicles of wheat, and a red flag with LENIN in Cyrillic script, a red star is placed on the left and the hammer and sickle emblem at the bottom, both in red enamel. The third design was awarded from 1936 till 1943, design was same as previous, but central disc was gray enamelled and Lenins portrait was separate piece made of platinum fixed by rivets. The fourth design was awarded from 1943 till 1991, design was same as previous, but was worn as a medal suspended from a ribbon. The badge was worn by screwback on the left chest without ribbon. Later it was worn as a suspended from a red ribbon with pairs of yellow stripes at the edges. The ribbon bar is of the same design, the portrait of Lenin was originally a riveted silver piece. For a time it was incorporated into a gold badge. The first Order of Lenin was awarded to the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on 23 May 1930, among the first ten recipients were five industrial companies, three pilots, and the Secretary to the Central Executive Committee Avel Enukidze.
The first person to be awarded a second Order of Lenin was the pilot Valery Chkalov in 1936, another pilot, Vladimir Kokkinaki, became the first to receive a third Order in 1939. The first five recipients, a German and four Americans, received the award for helping in the reconstruction of Soviet industry
7.
13th Guards Rifle Division
The 13th Guards Rifle Division was a Soviet Union Red Army infantry division that served with distinction during the Second World War. The 13th Guards Rifle Division was formed on 19 January 1942, the 87th Rifle Division itself had seen action fighting against the Second Polish Republic in the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. Later that year, the division was sent northwards to Finland to serve as reinforcements in the Winter War against the Finnish defences, as the division was transferred to the Finnish Front, it escaped the fate of many Red Army units during the conflict. After the Soviets conquered the areas demanded from Finland, the unit was transferred to Soviet Ukraine in early 1940, on 22 June 1941, the German Wehrmacht launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union from the German–Soviet frontier in occupied Poland. During the opening hours of the German offensive, the 87th Rifle Division, a part of the 5th Army, at least a portion of the division was encircled during the opening day of the war.
Their involvement in heavy fighting seems to have continued as their recently appointed commander, three months later, in the fighting that ended with the encirclement of Kiev, the 87th Rifle Division was still a component of the 5th Army. Amongst the survivors of the encirclement of Kiev was Colonel Alexander Rodimtsev, the commander of the 5th Army Brigade, on 6 November, the 87th Rifle Division was re-formed around the survivors of the 3rd Airborne corps and placed under the command of Col. Rodimtsev. On 19 January 1942, the 87th Rifle was officially awarded Guards status and was re-designated as the 13th Guards, during this offensive, the division suffered more than fifty-percent casualties, most of which were sustained in the repelling of fierce German counter-attacks. It was during one of these attacks that an Artillery Captain of the 13th earned the first Order of the Great Patriotic War 1st Class to be awarded, following his units success during this offensive, Colonel Rodimtsev was subsequently promoted to Major General.
After the Kharkov operation, the 13th Guards were pulled from the line to be refitted, resupplied, by the end of the day the German 71st Infantry Division had reached the city center, north of the Tsaritsa Gorge. A Stavka directive ordered the 13th Guards Division to the Volga River, due to being in the midst of re-fit and resupply, one thousand of the divisions men were unarmed, and nearly all of the rest were short of ammunition. After being briefed by Lieutenant General Vasily Chuikov, the commander of the 62nd Army, on his assignment, Rodimtsev famously and determinedly declared, I have no intention of abandoning the city. Immediately, Chuikov decided to send this poorly armed yet determined unit straight into the midst of the battle, Major General Rodimtsev thanks to his experience fighting in the Spanish Civil War was well versed in urban warfare. At 17.00,14 September, the elements of the 13th Guards swiftly crossed the river to reinforce a line that was being held by a mere 15 tanks.
It is estimated more than half of the first wave perished during the river crossing. Ultimately, after heavy losses on both sides, the German advance was repelled. Rodimtsevs soldiers recaptured the Mill and secured the river crossing for other regiments of the 13th Guards. Dragan proceeded to gather a platoon of less than fifty men, the small but determined force prepared itself for the German attack
8.
Battle of France
The Battle of France, known as the Fall of France, was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries in 1940 during the Second World War. Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940 and attempted an invasion of France, the German plan for the invasion of France consisted of two main operations. After the withdrawal of the BEF, the German forces began Fall Rot on 5 June, the sixty remaining French divisions made a determined resistance but were unable to overcome the German air superiority and armoured mobility. German tanks outflanked the Maginot Line and pushed deep into France, German forces occupied Paris unopposed on 14 June after a chaotic period of flight of the French government that led to a collapse of the French army. German commanders met with French officials on 18 June with the goal of forcing the new French government to accept an armistice that amounted to surrender and this led to the end of the French Third Republic. France was not liberated until the summer of 1944, in 1939, Britain and France offered military support to Poland in the likely case of a German invasion.
In the dawn of 1 September 1939, the German Invasion of Poland began and the United Kingdom declared war on 3 September, after an ultimatum for German forces to immediately withdraw their forces from Poland was met without reply. Following this, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, on 7 September, in accordance with their alliance with Poland, France began the Saar Offensive with an advance from the Maginot Line 5 km into the Saar. France had mobilised 98 divisions and 2,500 tanks against a German force consisting of 43 divisions, the French advanced until they met the thin and undermanned Siegfried Line. On 17 September, the French supreme commander, Maurice Gamelin gave the order to withdraw French troops to their starting positions, following the Saar Offensive, a period of inaction called the Phoney War set in between the belligerents. Adolf Hitler had hoped that France and Britain would acquiesce in the conquest of Poland, on 6 October, he made a peace offer to both Western powers. On 9 October, Hitler issued a new Führer-Directive Number 6, the plan was based on the seemingly more realistic assumption that German military strength would have to be built up for several years.
For the moment only limited objectives could be envisaged and were aimed at improving Germanys ability to survive a long war in the west. Hitler ordered a conquest of the Low Countries to be executed at the shortest possible notice to forestall the French and it would provide the basis for a long-term air and sea campaign against Britain. On 10 October 1939, Britain refused Hitlers offer of peace and on 12 October, colonel-General Franz Halder, presented the first plan for Fall Gelb on 19 October. This was the codename of plans for a campaign in the Low Countries. Halders plan has been compared to the Schlieffen Plan, the given to the German strategy of 1914 in the First World War. It was similar in both plans entailed an advance through the middle of Belgium
9.
Eastern Front (World War II)
The battles on the Eastern Front constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterized by unprecedented ferocity, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, exposure and massacres. The Eastern Front, as the site of nearly all extermination camps, death marches, ghettos, of the estimated 70 million deaths attributed to World War II, over 30 million, many of them civilian, occurred on the Eastern Front. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome of the European portion of World War II and it resulted in the destruction of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany for nearly half a century and the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower. The two principal belligerent powers were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though never engaged in action in the Eastern Front, the United Kingdom. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front, in addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front.
Despite their ideological antipathy, both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union shared a dislike for the outcome of World War I. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I status quo by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union, Estonia and Lithuania would return to Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided. I need the Ukraine so that they cant starve us out, the two powers invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939. The annexations were never recognized by most Western states, the annexed Romanian territory was divided between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics. Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum, acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, Wehrmacht officers told their troops to target people who were described as Jewish Bolshevik subhumans, the Mongol hordes, the Asiatic flood and the red beast.
The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, Hitler referred to the war in unique terms, calling it a war of annihilation which was both an ideological and racial war. In addition, the Nazis sought to wipe out the large Jewish population of Central, after Germanys initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. On 3 October 1941, he announced, We have only to kick in the door, Germany expected another short Blitzkrieg and made no serious preparations for prolonged warfare. Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialization and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, Stalins central tenet, Socialism in one country, manifested itself as a series of nationwide centralized Five-Year Plans from 1929 onwards. It served as a testing ground for both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army to experiment with equipment and tactics that they would employ on a wider scale in the Second World War
10.
Valdaysky District
Valdaysky District is an administrative and municipal district, one of the twenty-one in Novgorod Oblast, Russia. The area of the district is 2,701.63 square kilometers and its administrative center is the town of Valday. The population of Valday accounts for 60. 8% of the total population. Valdaysky District is located in the Valdai Hills and is notable for having many lakes, the biggest lakes in the district are Lakes Valdayskoye and Velyo. The whole district belongs to the basin of the Volkhov River, the western and northwestern parts of the district lie within the basin of the tributaries of the Pola River, including the Polomet. The Polomet itself has its source in the district, the center and the east of the district, including Lake Valdayskoye, belong to the basin of the Berezayka River, a left tributary of the Msta. The divide between the basins of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caspian Sea thus crosses the district in its southern part. The central part of the district, including the town of Valday, Valday was first mentioned in a chronicle in 1495.
At the time, the area was a part of Derevskaya Pyatina of the Novgorod Lands, in the course of the administrative reform carried out in 1708 by Peter the Great, the area was included into Ingermanland Governorate. In 1727, separate Novgorod Governorate was split off, in 1770, Valday was chartered and became the seat of Valdaysky Uyezd of Novgorod Viceroyalty. In 1796, the viceroyalty was transformed into Novgorod Governorate, the area was located along the road connecting Moscow and St. Petersburg, and Valday developed as a major trade center. It became a pilgrim destination, between April 1,1919 and October 1920, the uyezd center was transferred to the town of Bologoye, but soon after it was moved back to Valday again. In December 1926, three of the selsoviets in Valdaysky Uyezd were granted Estonian ethnic status, in August 1927, the governorates and uyezds were abolished. Valdaysky District, with the center in the town of Valday, was established within Borovichi Okrug of Leningrad Oblast effective October 1,1927.
It included parts of former Valdaysky Uyezd, on July 23,1930, the okrugs were abolished, and the districts were directly subordinated to the oblast. In 1931, Yakonovsky Selsoviet was granted Karelian ethnic status, the district was not occupied during World War II, although it was located close to the front line. On July 5,1944, Valdaysky District was transferred to newly established Novgorod Oblast, the industry of the district is predominantly timber industry and food industry. In Valday, there are enterprises producing optical devices and pumps
11.
Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It.
Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing.
The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
Soviet Union
