Word: baranov
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...Ukraine, the action was old-time Blitzkrieg in reverse, with the Red Army's performance as spectacular as anything the Wehrmacht has yet shown. Thus, Zhitomir fell to a cavalry corps of three divisions under Lieut. General Victor Baranov (who, for the feat, received the coveted Order of Suvorov, First Class) and a tank army under Lieut. General Pavel Rybalko, who won fame in last winter's campaign. So fast were these generals moving (120 miles in nine days) that happy Moscow gave their chief, General Nikolai Vatutin, a fond nickname: Molnya -Lightning...
...Baranov made money for his company from the start. Hundreds of canoes, manned by Aleutian islanders, scoured the shores for sea otter, seals and foxes. At the cost of hundreds of lives, the precious skins found their way to Siberia, were traded to eager Chinese for copper goods, tea, cloth...
...Baranov's disciplinary rules were rigid. There was a parade before the flag every Sunday. Gambling was sternly forbidden. Baranov forbade prostitution, encouraged his men to live with the Aleutian girls. Men with venereal disease were banished to the woods to treat themselves with "mercurials dissolved in vodka." Moonshining was also banned, but Baranov himself kept "a vat of crab apples, rye meal, and cranberries fermenting with kvass-yeast. Any man off duty was welcome to as much of the stuff as he could hold." This brew supposedly prevented scurvy, certainly helped morale. Said Washington Irving: "He is continually...
...last Russian missionaries and naval officers arrived in Alaska. The missionaries hated Baranov for allowing his men to live with Aleutian women, haunted his own "wife" so unmercifully that she threw Baranov's child into the sea. The officers despised Baranov because he was a merchant. Intrigues and revolts were started against him. At last he received the title of Governor and a decoration from the new Emperor, Alexander...
...Baranov longed to go home. "The place," he wrote, "has made me old before my time. . . ." But by then the Russian Government wanted him to stay in Alaska. The writings of Explorers Vancouver and Puget had opened the eyes of his Government. The Northwest became officially Russian and was ruled by Baranov until a few months before his death in 1819. He left behind 24 settlements, "ranging in size from simple hunting stations to New Archangel, whose worth alone was estimated at two million, five hundred thousand rubles...