title: Sex-positive feminism

text: The issue of pornography was perhaps the first issue to unite sex-positive feminists, though current sex-positive views on the subject are wide-ranging and complex. During the 1980s, Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, as well as activists inspired by their writings, worked in favor of anti-pornography ordinances in a number of U.S. cities, as well as in Canada. The first such ordinance was passed by the city council in Minneapolis in 1983. MacKinnon and Dworkin took the tactic of framing pornography as a civil rights issue, arguing that showing pornography constituted sex discrimination against women. The sex-positive movement response to this argument was that legislation against pornography violates women's right to free speech. Soon after, a coalition of anti-porn feminists and right-wing groups succeeded in passing a similar ordinance in Indianapolis. This ordinance was later declared unconstitutional by a Federal court in "American Booksellers v. Hudnut".


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Rubin writes that anti-pornography feminists exaggerate the dangers of pornography by showing the most shocking pornographic images (such as those associated with sadomasochism) out of context, in a way that implies that the women depicted are actually being raped, rather than emphasizing that these scenes depict fantasies and use actors who have consented to be shown in such a way. Sex-positive feminists argue that access to pornography is as important to women as to men and that there is nothing inherently degrading to women about pornography. However, anti-pornography feminists disagree, often arguing that the very depiction of such acts leads to the actual acts being encouraged and committed.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Feminist curators such as Jasmin Hagendorfer organize feminist and queer porn film festivals (e.g. "PFFV" in Vienna).


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Some sex-positive feminists believe that women and men can have positive experiences as sex workers and that where it is illegal, prostitution should be decriminalized. They argue that prostitution is not necessarily bad for women if prostitutes are treated with respect and if the professions within sex work are destigmatized.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Other sex-positive feminists hold a range of views on prostitution, with widely varying views on prostitution as it relates to class, race, human trafficking, and many other issues. All feminists generally agree that prostitutes themselves should not be criminalized or penalized.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Sadomasochism (BDSM) has been criticized by anti porn feminists for eroticizing power and violence and for reinforcing misogyny (Rubin, 1984). They argue that women who choose to engage in BDSM are making a choice that is ultimately bad for women. Sex-positive feminists argue that consensual BDSM activities are enjoyed by many women and validate these women's sexual inclinations. They argue that feminists should not attack other women's sexual desires as being "anti-feminist" or internalizing oppression and that there is no connection between consensual sexually kinky activities and sex crimes.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: While some anti-porn feminists suggest connections between consensual BDSM scenes and rape and sexual assault, sex-positive feminists find this to be insulting to women. It is often mentioned that in BDSM, roles are not fixed to gender, but personal preferences. Furthermore, many argue that playing with power (such as rape scenes) through BDSM is a way of challenging and subverting that power, rather than reifying it.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: While the negativities about BDSM are discussed a lot, sex-positive feminists are focusing on safety in the BDSM community. Consent is the most important rule when it comes to BDSM.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Cara Dunkley and Lori Brotto discuss the importance of consent in their journal:Consent represents an ongoing interactive and dynamic process that entails several precautionary measures, including negotiations of play, open communication of desires and boundaries, mutually defining terms, the notion of responsibility and transparency, and ensuring protection from harm through competence and skill.Critics discuss that communication with sexual partners is very important.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Sex workers are adults who receive money( or other goods) in exchange for consensual sexual services. In the United States, sex work is legal. The sex workers' rights movement started in the 1970s, and one of the founding groups was COYOTE. The goal of the sex workers activist is to fight for workers by having a better work environment/ conditions, reducing negative fed back, and stopping prohibition.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Carol Leigh is an American woman who is an artist, filmmaker, and sex worker rights activist. Carol Leigh was the first woman to use the term “sex worker.” She wanted to educate others about the understanding of sex workers as well as the rights they should have. In an interview, she stated how she sees her own sex work and the sex work of others as having the possibility to serve a higher, spiritual function in society.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: McElroy argues that many feminists have been afraid of being associated with homosexuality. Betty Friedan, one of the founders of second-wave feminism, warned against lesbianism and called it "the lavender menace" (a view she later renounced). Sex-positive feminists believe that accepting the validity of all sexual orientations is necessary in order to allow women full sexual freedom. Rather than distancing themselves from homosexuality and bisexuality because they fear it will hurt mainstream acceptance of feminism, sex-positive feminists believe that women's liberation cannot be achieved without also promoting acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Some feminists, such as Germaine Greer, have criticized transgender women (male-to-female) as men attempting to appropriate female identity while retaining male privilege, and transgender men (female-to-male) as women who reject solidarity with their gender. One of the main exponents of this point of view is Janice Raymond. In "The Whole Woman", Greer went so far as to explicitly compare transgender women to rapists for forcing themselves into women's spaces.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Many transgender people see gender identity as an innate part of a person. Some feminists also criticize this belief, arguing instead that gender roles are societal constructs, and are not related to any natural factor. Sex-positive feminists support the right of all individuals to determine their own gender and promote gender fluidity as one means for achieving gender equality. Patrick Califia has written extensively about issues surrounding feminism and transgender issues, especially in "Sex Changes: Transgender Politics".


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Like feminism itself, sex-positive feminism is difficult to define, and few within the movement (particularly the academic arm of the movement) agree on any one ideology or policy agenda.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: An example of how feminists may disagree on whether a particular cultural work exemplifies sex-positivity is Betty Dodson's critique of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues". Dodson argues that the play promotes a negative view of sexuality, emphasizing sexual violence against women rather than the redemptive value of female sexuality. Many other sex-positive feminists have embraced Ensler's work for its encouragement of openness about women's bodies and sexuality.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: There is debate among sex-positive feminists about whether statutory rape laws are a form of sexism. As illustrated by the controversy over "The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could" from the Vagina Monologues, some sex-positive feminists do not consider all consensual activity between young adolescents and older people as inherently harmful. There has been debate among feminists about whether statutory rape laws benefit or harm teenage girls and about whether the gender of participants should influence the law's treatment of sexual encounters. Some sex-positive feminists argue that statutory rape laws were made with non-gender neutral intentions and are presently enforced as such, with the assumption that teenage girls are naive, nonsexual, and in need of protection.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Sex-positive feminists with this view believe that "teen girls and boys are equally capable of making informed choices in regard to their sexuality" and that statutory rape laws are actually meant to protect "good girls" from sex. Other feminists are opposed or ambivalent about strengthening statutory rape statutes because these preclude young women from entering consensual sexual relationships, even if competent to consent.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: These feminists view statutory rape laws as more controlling than protective – and of course part of the law's historic role was protecting the female's chastity as valuable property. One writer also noted that, at that time, in some states, the previous sexual experience of a teenager could be used as a defense by one accused of statutory rape. She argued that this showed that the laws were intended to protect chastity rather than consent.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Works that critique sex-positive feminism includes those of Catharine A. MacKinnon, Germaine Greer, Andrea Dworkin, and the essays by Dorchen Leidholdt, among others. Their main arguments are that certain sexual practices (such as prostitution and pornography) exploit women and have historically benefited men rather than women and that the indiscriminate promotion of all kinds of sexual practices merely contributes to female oppression.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Catharine A. MacKinnon, for example, argues that any concept of sexual liberation must be understood within the framework of male domination in society, in the context of an imbalance of power between men and women, and with due regard to the history of male and female sexuality; she writes: "Men have eroticized the idea that their sexuality has been denied, but their sexuality has been nothing but expressed and expressed and expressed. Sexual liberation, from this perspective, looks like a male rationalization for forcing sex on women." Andrea Dworkin argues thusly: "Lost in the simple-minded prosex chauvinism of Right and Left is the real meaning of affirmation, or any consciousness of the complexity—the emotional tangledness—of a human life... There is no imagination in fetishlike sexual conformity; and no questions are being asked in political discourse on sex about hope and sorrow, intimacy and anguish, communion and loss."


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: In her 2005 book "Female Chauvinist Pigs", Ariel Levy also critiques sex-positive feminism. While not opposed to sex-positive feminism per se, nor wishing specifically to prescribe certain forms of sexual behavior, she sees a popularized form of sex-positivity as constituting a kind of "raunch culture" in which women internalize objectifying male views of themselves and other women. Levy believes it is a mistake to see this as empowering and further holds that women should develop their own forms of sexual expression. The response by sex-positive feminists to Levy's book has been mixed; Susie Bright viewed the book quite favorably, stating that much of what can be seen as "raunch culture" represents a bastardization of the work of earlier sex-positive feminists such as herself.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Others, such as Rachel Kramer Bussel, see Levy as largely ignoring much of the female-empowered sexual expression of the last 20 years, or misinterpreting it as internalization of male fantasy. Kara Jesella argued that sex-positivity may not necessarily be empowering, but it may also not be disempowering.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Dorchen Leidholdt argues that "sex" (the way sexuality is expressed in society) must be understood as a social construct defined by patriarchal social structures, and therefore must be scrutinized; she writes, "If you understand that sex is socially constructed—which we do—and if you see that male supremacy does the constructing—which we see—and if the sex in question is the sex men use to establish their dominance over women, then yes we're against it." According to Ann Ferguson, sex-positive feminists' only restriction on sexual activity should be the requirement of consent, yet she argues that sex-positive feminism has provided inadequate definitions of consent. Criticism of the consent paradigm is that the idea that consent is not only necessary but also sufficient to legitimize a practice is a fallacy, and is not applicable in other areas of life (eg. people cannot consent to give themselves into slavery) because consent does not make an inherently exploitative practice acceptable.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Also, in an effort to reconcile radical and libertarian feminism, Ferguson argues that sexual behavior should be either basic, risky, or forbidden, specifying that forbidden sexual practices "include incest, rape, domestic violence, and sexual relations between very young children and adults," as well as any other activities for which there is evidence of resulting subordination. This evidence is key for Ferguson in identifying a forbidden sexual activity.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Sheila Jeffreys argues that the "sexual revolution" on men's terms has contributed less to women's freedom than to their continued oppression. She argues that existing traditional ideas about heterosexual sexual relations, such as male sexual entitlement within marriage, are aggravated by sex-positive ideology. Criticism of sex-positive feminism includes the fact that sex-positive feminism purports to be progressive, and to promote practices that are new and revolutionary, when in fact many of the practices that it promotes are actually traditional, conservative and even religious, such as a man having sexual relations with several women (polygyny, which is an archaic practice), or other forms of male sexual libertine behaviors that women are expected to approve of, which are in fact practices that were accepted in the past; for example, before 1923, in the UK, a woman could not divorce her husband solely on the ground of adultery; she had to prove additional fault e.g. adultery "and" cruelty (while a man could divorce her only due to adultery).


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: bell hooks argues that one problem with sexual liberation movements is that they focus on the right to engage in sexual activity, but often ignore the right to refuse to engage in sexual acts. Another criticism is that what is often presented as feminist ideas are in fact ideas originating in male-dominated sexology. Sex-positive feminism is criticized for focusing on young women, but ignoring middle-aged and elderly women who are unable or unwilling to direct most of their energy into sexuality.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: One criticism of unrestrained sexual liberation is that it may have unintended severe consequences, by opening the door to serious forms of sexual abuse, as has been the case with the placing of foster children in the homes of convicted pedophiles in the late 20th century in Germany, and to the proliferation of sexual abuse of children in countries that have libertarian social views on sexuality; in 2019, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) found that the Netherlands hosted 71% of the child pornography URLs content found by the IWF. In the 1970s, large amount of child pornography was produced in Scandinavia, and "[t]he relaxed and tolerant policies of the Swedish government towards pornography occasionally create embarrassments for the nation."


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Authors and activists who have written important works about sex-positive feminism, and/or contributed to educating the public about it, include Kathy Acker, Megan Andelloux, Susie Bright, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Diana Cage, Avedon Carol, Patrick Califia, Betty Dodson, Nancy Friday, Jane Gallop, Nina Hartley, Josephine Ho, Amber L. Hollibaugh, Brenda Howard, Laura Kipnis, Wendy McElroy, Inga Muscio, Joan Nestle, Erika Lust, Carol Queen, Candida Royalle, Gayle Rubin, Annie Sprinkle, Tristan Taormino and Ellen Willis. Several of these have written from the perspective of feminist women working in the sex industry.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Information on formal organizations that endorse sex-positive feminism seems lacking but one major outpost of sex-positive feminism is the former cooperative business Good Vibrations founded by Joani Blank in 1977 in order to sell sex toys and publications about sex in an environment welcoming to women. Blank also founded Down There Press which has published various educational publications inspired by sex-positivity. There are a number of other sex-positive feminist businesses who thrive on a combination of sex toy sales and distribution of educational materials. Good For Her, a woman-owned sex-toy shop in Toronto, Ontario, holds an annual Feminist Porn Awards.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Nonprofit groups supporting sex-positive feminism include the currently defunct Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force associated with Carole Vance and Ann Snitow, Feminists for Free Expression, founded by Marcia Pally, and Feminists Against Censorship associated with anti-censorship and civil liberties campaigner Avedon Carol.


title: Sex-positive feminism

text: Feminist pornography is a small but growing segment of the pornography industry. A Feminist Porn Award was established in 2006. The equivalent in Europe is the PorYes award for feminist porn, established in 2009. The magazine "On Our Backs" was founded in 1986 to promote a more positive attitude towards erotica within the community of lesbian and bisexual women. It flourished until 1994, struggled with financial problems and changing ownership and the final edition was published in 2006.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The rise of the Ottoman Empire is a period of history that started with the emergence of the Ottoman principality (Osmanlı Beyliği) in , and ended circa 1453. This period witnessed the foundation of a political entity ruled by the Ottoman Dynasty in the northwestern Anatolian region of Bithynia, and its transformation from a small principality on the Byzantine frontier into an empire spanning the Balkans, Anatolia, Middle East and North Africa. For this reason, this period in the empire's history has been described as the ""Proto-Imperial Era"". Throughout most of this period, the Ottomans were merely one of many competing states in the region, and relied upon the support of local warlords Ghazis and vassals (Beys) to maintain control over their realm. By the middle of the fifteenth century the Ottoman sultans were able to accumulate enough personal power and authority to establish a centralized imperial state, a process which was brought to fruition by Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481). The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 is seen as the symbolic moment when the emerging Ottoman state shifted from a mere principality into an empire therefore marking a major turning point in its history.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The cause of Ottoman success cannot be attributed to any single factor, and they varied throughout the period as the Ottomans continually adapted to changing circumstances.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The earlier part of this period, the fourteenth century, is particularly difficult for historians to study due to the scarcity of sources. Not a single written document survives from the reign of Osman I, and very little survives from the rest of the century. The Ottomans, furthermore, did not begin to record their own history until the fifteenth century, more than a hundred years after many of the events they describe. It is thus a great challenge for historians to differentiate between fact and myth in analyzing the stories contained in these later chronicles, so much so that one historian has even declared it impossible, describing the earliest period of Ottoman history as a "black hole".


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: At the beginning of the thirteenth century Anatolia was divided between two relatively powerful states: the Byzantine Empire in the west and the Anatolian Seljuks in the central plateau. Equilibrium between them was disrupted by the Mongol invasion and conquest of the Seljuks following the Battle of Köse Dağ in 1243, and the reconquest of Constantinople by the Byzantine Palaiologos dynasty in 1261, which shifted Byzantine attention away from the Anatolian frontier. Mongol pressure pushed nomadic Turkish tribes to migrate westward, into the now poorly-defended Byzantine territory.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: For the next two centuries, Anatolian Beyliks were under the suzerainty of the Mongols, especially the Ilkhanate. All coins minted during this period in Anatolia show Ilkhanate rulers.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: From the 1260s onward Anatolia increasingly began to slip from Byzantine control, as Turkish Anatolian beyliks were established both in formerly Byzantine lands and in the territory of the fragmenting Seljuk Sultanate.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Political authority in western Anatolia was thus extremely fragmented by the end of the thirteenth century, split between locally established rulers, tribal groups, holy figures, and warlords, with Byzantine and Seljuk authority ever present but rapidly weakening. The fragmentation of authority has led several historians to describe the political entities of thirteenth and fourteenth-century Anatolia as Taifas, or "petty kings", a comparison with the history of late-medieval Muslim Spain. The power of these groups was largely dependent upon their ability to attract military manpower. Western Anatolia was then a hotbed of raiding activity, with warriors switching allegiance at will to whichever chief seemed most able to provide them with opportunities for plunder and glory.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman dynasty is named after the first ruler of the Ottoman polity, Osman I. According to later Ottoman tradition, he was descended from a Turkic tribe which migrated out of Central Asia in the wake of the Mongol Conquests. As evidenced by coins minted during his reign, Osman's father was named Ertuğrul, but beyond this the details "are too mythological to be taken for granted."


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The origin of the Ottoman dynasty isn't known for sure but it is known that it was established by Turks from Central Asia, who migrated to Anatolia and were under Mongol suzerainty.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Likewise, nothing is known about how Osman first established his principality ("beylik") as the sources, none of them contemporary, provide many different and conflicting origin stories. What is certain is that at some point in the late thirteenth century Osman emerged as the leader of a small principality centered on the town of Söğüt in the north-western Anatolian region of Bithynia. The emergence of Osman as a leader is marked by him issuing coins in his name, unlike his predecessors in the last two centuries who issued coins in the name of the Illkhanates. Osman's principality was initially supported by the tribal manpower of nomadic Turkish groups, whom he led in raids against the Byzantine territories of the region. This Ottoman tribe was based not on blood-ties, but on political expedience. Thus it was inclusive of all who wished to join, including people of Byzantine origin. The Ottoman enterprise came to be led by several great warrior families, including the family of Köse Mihal, which had a Greek Christian origin


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: and the family of Hranislav, which was Bulgarian. Islam and Persian culture were part of Ottoman self-identity from the start, as evidenced by a land grant issued by Osman's son Orhan in 1324, describing him as "Champion of the Faith".


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1938 the Austrian historian Paul Wittek published an influential work entitled "The Rise of the Ottoman Empire", in which he put forth the argument that the early Ottoman state was constructed upon an ideology of Islamic holy war against non-Muslims. Such a war was known as "gaza", and a warrior fighting in it was called a "gazi". Wittek's formulation, subsequently known as the "Gaza Thesis," was influential for much of the twentieth century, and led historians to portray the early Ottomans as zealous religious warriors dedicated to the spread of Islam. Beginning in the 1980s, historians increasingly criticized Wittek's thesis. Scholars now recognize that the terms "gaza" and "gazi" did not have strictly religious connotations for the early Ottomans, and were often used in a secular sense to simply refer to raids. Additionally, the early Ottomans were neither strict orthodox Muslims nor were they unwilling to cooperate with non-Muslims, and several of the companions of the first Ottoman rulers were either non-Muslims or recent converts. The idea of holy war existed during the fourteenth century, but it was only one of many factors influencing Ottoman behavior. It was only later, in the fifteenth century, that Ottoman writers retroactively began to portray the early Ottomans as zealous Islamic warriors, in order to provide a noble origin for their dynasty which, by then, had constructed an intercontinental Islamic empire.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Anatolia and the Balkans were greatly impacted by the arrival of the Black Death after 1347. Urban centers and settled regions were devastated, while nomadic groups suffered less of an impact. The first Ottoman incursions into the Balkans began shortly thereafter. Depopulation resulting from the plague was thus almost certainly a major factor in the success of early Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, and contributed to the weakening of the Byzantine Empire and the depopulation of Constantinople.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: During this early period, before the Ottomans were able to establish a centralized system of government in the middle of the fifteenth century, the rulers' powers were "far more circumscribed, and depended heavily upon coalitions of support and alliances reached" among various power-holders within the empire, including Turkic tribal leaders and Balkan allies and vassals.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: When the Ottoman polity first emerged at the end of the thirteenth century under the leadership of Osman I, it had a tribal organization without a complex administrative apparatus. As Ottoman territory expanded, its rulers were faced with the challenge of administering an ever-larger population. Early on, the Ottomans adopted the Seljuks of Rum as models for administration and the Illkhanates as models for military warfare, and by 1324 were able to produce Persian-language bureaucratic documents in the Seljuk style.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The early Ottoman state's expansion was fueled by the military activity of frontier warriors (), of whom the Ottoman ruler was initially merely "primus inter pares". Much of the state's centralization was carried out in opposition to these frontier warriors, who resented Ottoman efforts to control them. Ultimately, the Ottomans managed to harness "gazi" military power while increasingly subordinating them.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The early Ottomans were noteworthy for the low tax rates which they imposed on their subjects. This reflected both an ideological concern for the well-being of their subjects, and also a pragmatic need to earn the loyalty of newly conquered populations. In the fifteenth century, the Ottoman state became more centralized and the tax burden increased, prompting criticism from writers.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: An important factor in Ottoman success was their ability to preserve the empire across generations. Other Turkic groups frequently divided their realms between the sons of a deceased ruler. The Ottomans consistently kept the empire united under a single heir.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The process of centralization is closely connected with an influx of Muslim scholars from Central Anatolia, where a more urban and bureaucratic Turkish civilization had developed under the Seljuks of Rum. Particularly influential was the Çandarlı family, which supplied several Grand Viziers to the early Ottomans and influenced their institutional development. Some time after 1376, Kara Halil, the head of the Çandarlı family, encouraged Murad I to institute a tax of one-fifth on slaves taken in war, known as the "pençik". This gave the Ottoman rulers a source of manpower from which they could construct a new personal army, known as the Janissaries ("yeniçeri"). Such measures frustrated the "gazi", who sustained Ottoman military conquests, and created lasting tensions within the state. It was also during the reign of Murad I that the office of military judge ("Kazasker") was created, indicating an increasing level of social stratification between the emerging military-administrative class ("askeri") and the rest of society. Murad I also instituted the practice of appointing specific frontier warriors as "Lords of the Frontier" ("uc begleri"). Such power of appointment indicates that the Ottoman rulers were no longer merely "primus inter pares". As a way of openly declaring this new status, Murad became the first Ottoman ruler to adopt the title of sultan.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Beginning in the 1430s, but most likely earlier, the Ottomans conducted regular cadastral surveys of the territory under their rule, producing record-books known as "tahrir defter"s. These surveys enabled the Ottoman state to organize the distribution of agricultural taxation rights to the military class of timariots, cavalrymen who collected revenue from the land in exchange for serving in the Ottoman army. Timariots came from diverse backgrounds. Some achieved their position as a reward for military service, while others were descended from the Byzantine aristocracy and simply continued to collect revenue from their old lands, now serving in the Ottoman army as well. Of the latter, many were converts to Islam, while others remained Christian.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Of great symbolic importance for Ottoman centralization was the practice of Ottoman rulers to stand upon hearing martial music, indicating their willingness to participate in "gaza". Shortly after the Conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II discontinued this practice, indicating that the Ottoman ruler was no longer a simple frontier warrior, but the sovereign of an empire. The empire's capital shifted from Edirne, the city symbolically connected with the frontier warrior ethos of "gaza", to Constantinople, a city with deeply imperial connotations due to its long history as the capital of the Byzantine Empire. This was seen, both symbolically and practically, as the moment of the empire's definitive shift from a frontier principality into an empire.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Osman's army at the beginning of the fourteenth century consisted largely of mounted warriors. These he used in raids, ambushes, and hit-and-run attacks, allowing him to control the countryside of Bithynia. However, he initially lacked the means to conduct sieges. Bursa, the first major town conquered by the Ottomans, surrendered under threat of starvation following a long blockade rather than from an assault. It was under Orhan (r. 1323/4-1362) and Murad I (r. 1362-1389) that the Ottomans mastered the techniques of siege warfare.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The warriors in Osman's service came from diverse backgrounds. Known variously as "gazi"s and (raiders), they were attracted to his success and joined out of a desire to win plunder and glory. Most of Osman's early followers were Muslim Turks of tribal origin, while others were of Byzantine origin, either Christians or recent converts to Islam.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottomans began employing gunpowder weapons in the 1380s at the latest. By the 1420s they were regularly using cannons in siege warfare. Cannons were also used for fortress defense, and shore batteries allowed the Ottomans to bypass a Crusader blockade of the Dardanelles in 1444. By that time, handheld firearms had also come into use, and were adopted by some of the janissaries.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: By the early fifteenth century, the Ottoman court was actively fostering literary output, much of it borrowing from the longstanding literary tradition of other Islamic courts further east. The first extant account of Ottoman history ever written was produced by the poet Ahmedi, originally meant to be presented to Sultan Bayezid I but, following the latter's death in 1402, written for his son Süleyman Çelebi instead. This work, entitled the "İskendernāme," ("The Book of Alexander") was part of a genre known as "mirror for princes" ("naṣīḥatnāme"), meant to provide advice and guidance to the ruler with regard to statecraft. Thus rather than providing a factual account of the dynasty's history, Ahmedi's goal was to indirectly criticize the sultan by depicting his ancestors as model rulers, in contrast to the perceived deviance of Bayezid. Specifically, Ahmedi took issue with Bayezid's military campaigns against fellow Muslims in Anatolia, and thus depicted his ancestors as totally devoted to holy war against the Christian states of the Balkans.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Osman's origins are extremely obscure, and almost nothing is known about his career before the beginning of the fourteenth century. The date of 1299 is frequently given as the beginning of his reign, however this date does not correspond with any historical event, and is purely symbolic. By 1300 he had become the leader of a group of Turkish pastoral tribes, through which he ruled over a small territory around the town of Söğüt in the north-western Anatolian region of Bithynia. He led frequent raids against the neighboring Byzantine Empire. Success attracted warriors to his following, particularly after his victory over a Byzantine army in the Battle of Bapheus in 1301 or 1302. Osman's military activity was largely limited to raiding because, by the time of his death, in 1323-4, the Ottomans had not yet developed effective techniques for siege warfare. Although he is famous for his raids against the Byzantines, Osman also had many military confrontations with Tatar groups and with the neighboring principality of Germiyan.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Osman was adept at forging political and commercial relationships with nearby groups, Muslim as well as Christian. Early on, he attracted several notable figures to his side, including Köse Mihal, a Byzantine village headman whose descendants (known as the Mihaloğulları) enjoyed primacy among the frontier warriors in Ottoman service. Köse Mihal was noteworthy for having been a Christian Greek; while he eventually converted to Islam, his prominent historical role indicates Osman's willingness to cooperate with non-Muslims and to incorporate them in his political enterprise.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Osman I strengthened his legitimacy by marrying the daughter of Sheikh Edebali, a prominent local religious leader who was said to have been at the head of a community of dervishes on the frontier. Later Ottoman writers embellished this event by depicting Osman as having experienced a dream while staying with Edebali, in which it was foretold that his descendants would rule over a vast empire.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Upon Osman's death his son Orhan succeeded him as leader of the Ottomans. Orhan oversaw the conquest of Bithynia's major towns, as Bursa (Prusa) was conquered in 1326 and the rest of the region's towns fell shortly thereafter. Already by 1324, the Ottomans were making use of Seljuk bureaucratic practices, and had developed the capacity to mint coins and utilize siege tactics. It was under Orhan that the Ottomans began to attract Islamic scholars from the east to act as administrators and judges, and the first medrese (University) was established in Iznik in 1331.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In addition to fighting the Byzantines, Orhan also conquered the Turkish principality of Karesi in 1345-6, thus placing all potential crossing points to Europe in Ottoman hands. The experienced Karesi warriors were incorporated into the Ottoman military, and were a valuable asset in subsequent campaigns into the Balkans.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Orhan married Theodora, the daughter of Byzantine prince John VI Cantacuzenus. In 1346 Orhan openly supported John VI in the overthrowing of the emperor John V Palaeologus. When John VI became co-emperor (1347–1354) he allowed Orhan to raid the peninsula of Gallipoli in 1352, after which the Ottomans gained their first permanent stronghold in Europe at Çimpe Castle in 1354. Orhan decided to pursue war against Europe, Anatolian Turks were settled in and around Gallipoli to secure it as a springboard for military operations in Thrace against the Byzantines and Bulgarians. Most of eastern Thrace was overrun by Ottoman forces within a decade and was permanently brought under Orhan's control by means of heavy colonization. The initial Thracian conquests placed the Ottomans strategically astride all of the major overland communication routes linking Constantinople to the Balkan frontiers, facilitating their expanded military operations. ln addition, control of the highways in Thrace isolated Byzantium from direct overland contact with any of its potential allies in the Balkans and in Western Europe. Byzantine Emperor John V was forced to sign an unfavorable treaty with Orhan in 1356 that recognized his Thracian losses. For the next 50 years, the Ottomans went on to conquer vast territories in the Balkans, reaching as far north as modern-day Serbia.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In taking control over the passageways to Europe, the Ottomans gained a significant advantage over their rival Turkish principalities in Anatolia, as they now could gain immense prestige and wealth from conquests carried out on the Balkan frontier.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad's first major offensive was the conquest of the Byzantine city of Adrianople in 1362. He renamed it to Edirne and made it his new capital in 1363. By transferring his capital from Bursa in Anatolia to that newly won city in Thrace, Murad signaled his intentions to continue Ottoman expansion in Southeast Europe. Before the conquest of Edirne, most Christian Europeans regarded the Ottoman presence in Thrace as merely the latest unpleasant episode in a long string of chaotic events in the Balkans. After Murad I designated Edirne as his capital, they realized that the Ottomans intended to remain in Europe.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Balkan states of Byzantium, Bulgaria, and Serbia were frightened by Ottoman conquests in Thrace, and were ill-prepared to deal with the threat. Byzantine territory was reduced and fragmented. It consisted mostly of the capital, Constantinople and its Thracian environs, the city of Thessaloniki and its immediate surroundings, and the Despotate of the Morea in the Peloponnese. Contact between Constantinople and the two other regions was only feasible via a tenuous sea route through the Dardanelles, kept open by the Italian maritime powers of Venice and Genoa. The weakened Byzantine Empire no longer possessed the resources to defeat Murad on its own. Concerted action on the part of the Byzantines, often divided by civil war, was impossible. The survival of Constantinople itself depended on its legendary defensive walls, the lack of an Ottoman navy, and the willingness of Murad to honor provisions in the 1356 treaty, which permitted the city to be provisioned.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Bulgaria under Tsar Ivan Aleksandar was expanding and prosperous. However, at the end of his rule, the Bulgarian Tsar made the fatal mistake to divide the Second Bulgarian Empire into three appanages held by his sons. Bulgaria's cohesion was shattered further in the 1350s by a rivalry between the holder of Vidin, Ivan Sratsimir, Ivan Aleksandar's sole surviving son by his first wife, and Ivan Shishman, the product of Aleksandar's second marriage and the "tsar's" designated successor. In addition to internal problems, Bulgaria was further crippled by a Hungarian attack. In 1365 Hungarian King Louis I invaded and seized Vidin province, whose ruler Ivan Sratsimir was taken captive. Despite the concurrent loss of most Bulgarian Thracian holdings to Murad, Ivan Aleksandar became fixated on the Hungarians in Vidin. He formed a coalition against them with the Bulgarian ruler of Dobrudja Dobrotitsa and Voievod Vladislav I Vlaicu of Wallachia. Although the Hungarians were repulsed and Ivan Sratsimir restored to his throne, Bulgaria emerged more intensely divided. Ivan Sratsimir proclaimed himself tsar of an "Empire" of Vidin in 1370, and Dobrotitsa received de facto recognition as independent despot in Dobrudzha. Bulgaria's efforts were squandered to little domestic purpose and against the wrong enemy.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Given Serbia's preeminence in the Balkans under Tsar Stefan Dušan, its rapid dissolution following his death in 1355 was dramatic. The powerful regional Serb nobles demonstrated little respect for his successor, Stefan Uroš V. Young, weak Uroš was incapable of ruling as his father had. The separatist-minded "bojars" were quick to take advantage of the situation, and Serbia fragmented.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: First to throw off Serbian control were the Greek provinces of Thessaly and Epiros as well as Dušan's former Albanian holdings. A series of small independent principalities arose in western and southern Macedonia, while the Hungarians encroached deeper into Serb lands in the north. Uros held only the core Serbian lands, whose nobles, although more powerful than their prince, generally remained loyal. These core lands consisted of: The western lands, including Montenegro (Zeta); the southern lands, held by Jovan Uglješa in Serres, encompassing all of eastern Macedonia; and the central Serbian lands, stretching from the Danube south into central Macedonia, co-ruled by Uroš and the powerful noble Vukasin Mrnjavcevic, who held Prilep in Macedonia. Far from preserving Serb unity, Uroš's loosely amalgamated domains were wracked by constant civil war among the regional nobles, leaving Serbia vulnerable to the rising Ottoman threat.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: By 1370 Murad controlled most of Thrace, bringing him into direct contact with Bulgaria and the southeastern Serbian lands ruled by Uglješa. Uglješa, the most powerful Serb regional ruler, unsuccessfully attempted to forge an anti-Ottoman alliance of Balkan states in 1371. Byzantium, vulnerable to the Turks because of its food supply situation, refused to cooperate. Bulgaria, following Ivan Aleksandar's death early that year, lay officially divided into the "Empire" of Vidin, ruled by Stratsimir (1370–96), and Aleksandar's direct successor Tsar Ivan Shishman (1371–95), who ruled central Bulgaria from Turnovo. Young, his hold on the throne unsteady, threatened by Stratsimir, and probably pressured by the Turks, Shishman could not afford to participate in Uglješa's scheme. Of the regional Serb "bojars", only Vukašin, protector of Uroš and Uglješa's brother, joined in the effort. The others either failed to recognize the Ottoman danger or refused to participate lest competitors attacked while they were in the field.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Battle of Maritsa took place at the Maritsa River near the village of Chernomen on September 26, 1371 with sultan Murad's lieutenant Lala Shahin Pasha and the Serbs numbering some 70,000 men under the command of the Serbian king of Prilep Vukašin Mrnjavčević and his brother despot Uglješa. Despot Uglješa wanted to make a surprise attack in their capital city, Edirne, while Murad I was in Asia Minor. The Ottoman army was much smaller, but due to superior tactics (night raid on the allied camp), Şâhin Paşa was able to defeat the Christian army and kill King Vukašin and despot Uglješa. Macedonia and parts of Greece fell under Ottoman power after this battle. Both Uglješa and Vukašin perished in the carnage. So overwhelming was the Ottoman victory that the Turks referred to the battle as the Rout (or Destruction) of the Serbs.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: What little unity Serbia possessed collapsed after the catastrophe at Ormenion (Chernomen). Uroš died before the year was out, ending the Nemanjić dynasty, and large areas of central Serbia broke away as independent principalities, reducing it to half of its former size. No future ruler ever again officially held the office of "car", and no single "bojar" enjoyed enough power or respect to gain recognition as a unifying leader. Vukasin's son, Marko, survived the slaughter and proclaimed himself Serbian "king" ("kralj") but was unable to enforce his claim beyond his lands around Prilep, in central Macedonia. Serbia slipped into accelerated fragmentation and internecine warfare among the proliferating regional princes.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In the aftermath of the Ormenion battle, Ottoman raids into Serbia and Bulgaria intensified. The enormity of the victory and the incessant raids into his lands convinced Turnovo Bulgarian Tsar Shishman of the necessity for coming to terms with the Ottomans. By 1376 at the latest, Shishman accepted vassal status under Murad and sent his sister as the sultan's "wife" to the harem at Edirne. The arrangement did not prevent Ottoman raiders from continuing to plunder inside Shishman's borders. As for Byzantium, Emperor John V definitively accepted Ottoman vassalage soon after the battle, opening the door to Murad's direct interference in Byzantine domestic politics.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Bulgarians and Serbs enjoyed a brief respite during the 1370s and into the 1380s when matters in Anatolia and increased meddling in Byzantium's political affairs kept Murad preoccupied. In Serbia, the lull permitted the northern Serb ‘’bojar’’ Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic (1371-89), with the support of powerful Bulgarian and Montenegrin nobles and the backing of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate of Pec, to consolidate control over much of the core Serbian lands. Most of the Serb regional rulers in Macedonia, including Marko, accepted vassalage under Murad to preserve their positions, and many of them led Serb forces in the sultan's army operating in Anatolia against his Turkish rivals.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: By the mid-1380s Murad's attention once again focused on the Balkans. With his Bulgarian vassal Shishman preoccupied by a war with Wallachian Voievod Dan I of Wallachia (ca. 1383-86), in 1385 Murad took Sofia, the last remaining Bulgarian possession south of the Balkan Mountains, opening the way toward strategically located Niš, the northern terminus of the important Vardar-Morava highway.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Savra field battle was fought on 18 September 1385 between Ottoman and Serbian forces. The Ottomans were victorious and most of the local Serbian and Albanian lords became vassals.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad captured Niš in 1386, perhaps forcing Lazar of Serbia to accept Ottoman vassalage soon afterward. While he pushed deeper into the north—central Balkans, Murad also had forces moving west along the ‘’Via Ingatia’’ into Macedonia, forcing vassal status on regional rulers who until that time had escaped that fate. One contingent reached the Albanian Adriatic coast in 1385. Another took and occupied Thessaloniki in 1387. The danger to the continued independence of the Balkan Christian states grew alarmingly apparent.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: When Anatolian affairs forced Murad to leave the Balkans in 1387, his Serbian and Bulgarian vassals attempted to sever their ties to him. Lazar formed a coalition with Tvrtko I of Bosnia and Stratsimir of Vidin. After he refused an Ottoman demand that he live up to his vassal obligations, troops were dispatched against him. Lazar and Tvrtko met the Turks and defeated them at Plocnik, west of Niš. The victory by his fellow Christian princes encouraged Shishman to shed Ottoman vassalage and reassert Bulgarian independence.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad returned from Anatolia in 1388 and launched a lightning campaign against the Bulgarian rulers Shishman and Sratsimir, who swiftly were forced into vassal submission. He then demanded that Lazar proclaim his vassalage and pay tribute. Confident because of the victory at Plocnik, the Serbian prince refused and turned to Tvrtko of Bosnia and Vuk Brankovic, his son-in-law and independent ruler of northern Macedonia and Kosovo, for aid against the certain Ottoman retaliatory offensive.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: On St. Vitus' Day, June 15, 1389, the Ottoman army, personally commanded by Sultan Murad, fought the Serbian army led by Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, which also included contingents led by Vuk Branković, and a contingent sent from Bosnia by King Tvrtko I, commanded by Vlatko Vuković. Estimates of army sizes vary, with the Ottomans having greater numbers (27,000–40,000) than the Orthodox army (12,000–30,000). The battle resulted in a draw. Both armies were mostly wiped out. Both Lazar and Murad lost their lives. Although the Ottomans managed to annihilate the Serbian army, they also suffered high casualties which delayed their progress. The Serbs were left with too few men to effectively defend their lands, while the Turks had many more troops in the east. Consequently, one after the other, the Serbian principalities that were not already Ottoman vassals became so in the following years. The Battle of Kosovo is particularly important to modern Serbian history, tradition, and national identity. Lazar's young and weak successor Stefan Lazarević (1389–1427) concluded a vassal agreement with Bayezid in 1390 to counter Hungarian moves into northern Serbia, while Vuk Branković, the last independent Serb prince, held out until 1392.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Bayezid I (often given the epithet "Yıldırım", "the Thunderbolt") succeeded to the sultanship upon the assassination of his father Murad. In a rage over the attack, he ordered all Serbian captives killed; Beyazid became known as "Yıldırım", the lightning bolt, for the speed with which his empire expanded.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Bayezid, "the Thunderbolt", lost little time in expanding Ottoman Balkan conquests. He followed up on his victory by raiding throughout Serbia and southern Albania, forcing most of the local princes into vassalage. Both to secure the southern stretch of the Vardar-Morava highway and to establish a firm base for permanent expansion westward to the Adriatic coast, Bayezid settled large numbers of ‘’yürüks’’ along the Vardar River valley in Macedonia.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The appearance of Turk raiders at Hungary's southern borders awakened the Hungarian King Sigismund of Luxemburg (1387–1437) to the danger that the Ottomans posed to his kingdom, and he sought out Balkan allies for a new anti-Ottoman coalition.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: By early 1393 Turnovo Bulgaria's Ivan Shishman, hoping to throw off his onerous vassalage, was in secret negotiations with Sigismund, along with Wallachian Voievod Mircea the Old (1386–1418) and, possibly, Vidin's Ivan Sratsimir. Bayezid got wind of the talks and launched a devastating campaign against Shishman. Turnovo was captured after a lengthy siege, and Shishman fled to Nikopol. When that town fell to Bayezid, Shishman was captured and beheaded. All his lands were annexed by the sultan, and Sratsimir, whose Vidin holdings had escaped Bayezid's wrath, was forced to reaffirm his vassalage.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Having dealt harshly and effectively with his disloyal Bulgarian vassals, Bayezid then turned his attention south to Thessaly and the Morea, whose Greek lords had accepted Ottoman vassalage in the 1380s. Their incessant bickering among themselves, especially those of the Greek Morean magnates, required Bayezid's intervention. He summoned a meeting of all his Balkan vassals at Serres in 1394 to settle these and other outstanding matters. Among the sultan's attending vassals were the Thessalian and Morean nobles, Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos (1391–1425), and Serbian Prince Lazarevic. At the meeting, Bayezid acquired possession of all disputed territories, and all of the attendees were required to reaffirm their vassal status.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: When the Moreans later reneged on their Serres agreement with Bayezid, the angered Ottoman ruler blockaded the Morean despot's imperial brother Manuel II in Constantinople and then marched southward and annexed Thessaly. The Duchy of Athens accepted Ottoman overlordship when Turkish forces appeared on its border. Although a massive Ottoman punitive raid into the Peloponnese in 1395 netted much booty, events in the Balkans’ northeast saved Morea from further direct attack at the time.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: While Bayezid was occupied in Greece, Mircea of Wallachia conducted a series of raids across the Danube into Ottoman territory. In retaliation, Bayezid's forces, which included Serb vassal troops led by Lazarevic and Kralj Marko, struck into Wallachia in 1395 but were defeated at Rovine, where Marko was killed. The victory saved Wallachia from Turkish occupation, but Mircea accepted vassalage under Bayezid to avert further Ottoman intervention. The sultan took consolation for his less than victorious efforts in annexing Dobrudzha and in supporting a pretender, Vlad I (1395–97), to the Wallachian throne. Two years of civil war ensued before Mircea regained complete control of the principality.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1396 Hungarian King Sigismund finally pulled together a crusade against the Ottomans. The crusader army was composed primarily of Hungarian and French knights, but included some Wallachian troops. Though nominally led by Sigismund, it lacked command cohesion. The crusaders crossed the Danube, marched through Vidin, and arrived at Nikopol, where they met the Turks. The headstrong French knights refused to follow Sigismund's battle plans, resulting in their crushing defeat. Because Sratsimir had permitted the crusaders to pass through Vidin, Bayezid invaded his lands, took him prisoner, and annexed his territories. With Vidin's fall, Bulgaria ceased to exist, becoming the first major Balkan Christian state to disappear completely by direct Ottoman conquest.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Following Nikopol, Bayezid contented himself with raiding Hungary, Wallachia, and Bosnia. He conquered most of Albania and forced the remaining northern Albanian lords into vassalage. A new, halfhearted siege of Constantinople was undertaken but lifted in 1397 after Emperor Manuel II, Bayezid's vassal, agreed that the sultan should confirm all future Byzantine emperors. Soon thereafter Bayezid was called back to Anatolia to deal with continuing problems with the Ottomans’ Turkish rivals and never returned to the Balkans.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Bayezid took with him an army composed primarily of Balkan vassal troops, including Serbs led by Lazarevic. He soon faced an invasion of Anatolia by the Central Asian ruler Timur Lenk. Around 1400, Timur entered the Middle East. Timur Lenk pillaged a few villages in eastern Anatolia and commenced the conflict with the Ottoman Empire. In August, 1400, Timur and his horde burned the town of Sivas to the ground and advanced into the mainland. Their armies met outside of Ankara, at the Battle of Ankara, in 1402. The Ottomans were routed and Bayezid was taken prisoner, later dying in captivity. A civil war, lasting from 1402 to 1413, broke out among Bayezid's surviving sons. Known in Ottoman history as the Interregnum, that struggle temporarily halted active Ottoman expansion in the Balkans.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: After the defeat at Ankara followed a time of total chaos in the Empire. Mongols roamed free in Anatolia and the political power of the sultan was broken. After Beyazid was captured, his remaining sons, Suleiman Çelebi, İsa Çelebi, Mehmed Çelebi, and Musa Çelebi fought each other in what became known as the Ottoman Interregnum.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The Ottoman Interregnum brought a brief period of semi-independence to the vassal Christian Balkan states. Suleyman, one of the late sultan's sons, held the Ottoman capital at Edirne and proclaimed himself ruler, but his brothers refused to recognize him. He then concluded alliances with Byzantium, to which Thessaloniki was returned, and with Venice in 1403 to bolster his position. Suleyman's imperious character, however, turned his Balkan vassals against him. In 1410 he was defeated and killed by his brother Musa, who won the Ottoman Balkans with the support of Byzantine Emperor Manuel II, Serbian Despot Stefan Lazarevic, Wallachian Voievod Mircea, and the two last Bulgarian rulers’ sons. Musa then was confronted for sole control of the Ottoman throne by his younger brother Mehmed, who had freed himself of Mongol vassalage and held Ottoman Anatolia.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Concerned over the growing independence of his Balkan Christian vassals, Musa turned on them. Unfortunately, he alienated the Islamic bureaucratic and commercial classes in his Balkan lands by continually favoring the lower social elements to gain wide popular support. Alarmed, the Balkan Christian vassal rulers turned to Mehmed, as did the chief Ottoman military, religious, and commercial leaders. In 1412 Mehmed invaded the Balkans, took Sofia and Nis, and joined forces with Lazarevicys Serbs. In the following year, Mehmed decisively defeated Musa outside of Sofia. Musa was killed, and Mehmed I (1413–21) emerged as the sole ruler of a reunited Ottoman state.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: When Mehmed Çelebi stood as victor in 1413 he crowned himself in Edirne (Adrianople) as Mehmed I. His was the duty to restore the Ottoman Empire to its former glory. The Empire had suffered hard from the interregnum; the Mongols were still at large in the east, even though Timur had died in 1405; many of the Christian kingdoms of the Balkans had broken free of Ottoman control; and the land, especially Anatolia, had suffered hard from the war.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Mehmed moved the capital from Bursa to Adrianople. He faced a delicate political situation in the Balkans. His Bulgarian, Serbian, Wallachian, and Byzantine vassals were virtually independent. The Albanian tribes were uniting into a single state, and Bosnia remained completely independent, as did Moldavia. Hungary retained territorial ambitions in the Balkans, and Venice held numerous Balkan coastal possessions. Prior to Bayezid's death, Ottoman control of the Balkans appeared a certainty. At the end of the interregnum, that certainty seemed open to question.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Mehmed generally resorted to diplomacy rather than militancy in dealing with the situation. While he did conduct raiding expeditions into neighboring European lands, which returned much of Albania to Ottoman control and forced Bosnian King-Ban Tvrtko II Kotromanić (1404–09, 1421–45), along with many Bosnian regional nobles, to accept formal Ottoman vassalage, Mehmed conducted only one actual war with the Europeans — a short and indecisive conflict with Venice.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The new sultan had grave domestic problems. Musa's former policies sparked discontent among the Ottoman Balkans’ lower classes. In 1416 a popular revolt of Muslims and Christians broke out in Dobruja, led by Musa's former confidant, the scholar-mystic Şeyh Bedreddin, and supported by Wallachian voivode Mircea I. Bedreddin preached such concepts as merging Islam, Christianity, and Judaism into a single faith and the social betterment of free peasants and nomads at the expense of the Ottoman bureaucratic and professional classes. Mehmed crushed the revolt and Bedreddin died. Mircea then occupied Dobruja, but Mehmed wrested the region back in 1419, capturing the Danubian fort of Giurgiu and forcing Wallachia back into vassalage.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Mehmed spent the rest of his reign reorganizing Ottoman state structures disrupted by the interregnum. When Mehmed died in 1421, one of his sons, Murad, became sultan.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad II spent his early years on the throne disposing of rivals and rebellions, most notably the revolts of the Serbs. He also had problems at home. He subdued the rebels of his uncle Mustafa Çelebi and brother Küçük Mustafa.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1422, Murad II laid siege to Constantinople for several months and lifted it only after forcing the Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos to pay additional tribute.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1422 the first regular war against Venice began with the Siege of Thessalonica (1422–30). Byzantine involvement in the war ended with the transfer of the city to the Venetian Republic in 1423, which ended Murad's siege of Constantinople. Thessalonica continued to be under siege until 1430, with the Turkish sack of the city.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: On the request of its inhabitants, Venetian troops took control of the city of Salonika (Thessaloniki). The Ottoman army that laid siege to the city knew nothing of the transfer of power, and a number of Venetian soldiers were killed by Ottoman troops, believing them to be Greeks. Murad II had been on peaceful terms with Venice, so the Venetians deemed the act unacceptable and declared full war.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad acted swiftly, besieging Constantinople and sending his armies to Salonika. The Venetians had gained reinforcements by sea but, when the Ottomans stormed the city, the outcome was forgone and the Venetians fled to their ships. But when the Turks entered and began plundering the city, the Venetian fleet started bombarding the city from the sea-side. The Ottomans fled and the fleet was able to hold off the Ottomans until new Venetian reinforcements arrived to recapture the city. The outcome of the Battle of Salonika was a setback for Murad. Serbia and Hungary allied themselves with Venice. Pope Martin V encouraged other Christian states to join the war against the Ottomans, though only Austria ever sent troops to the Balkans.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: The war in the Balkans began as the Ottoman army moved to recapture Wallachia, which the Ottomans had lost to Mircea I of Wallachia during the Interregnum and that now was a Hungarian vassal state. As the Ottoman army entered Wallachia, the Serbs started attacking Bulgaria and, at the same time, urged by the Pope, the Anatolian emirate of Karamanid attacked the Empire from the back. Murad had to split his army. The main force went to defend Sofia and the reserves had to be called to Anatolia. The remaining troops in Wallachia were crushed by the Hungarian army that was now moving south into Bulgaria where the Serbian and Ottoman armies battled each other. The Serbs were defeated and the Ottomans turned to face the Hungarians who fled back into Wallachia when they realized they were unable to attack the Ottomans from the back. Murad fortified his borders against Serbia and Hungary but did not try to retake Wallachia. Instead, he sent his armies to Anatolia where they defeated Karaman in 1428.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In 1430 a large Ottoman fleet attacked Salonika by surprise. The Venetians signed a peace treaty in 1432. The treaty gave the Ottomans the city of Salonika and the surrounding land. The war by Serbia and Hungary against the Ottoman Empire had come to a standstill in 1441, when the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Albania, and the Jandarid and Karamanid emirates (in violation of the peace treaty) intervened against the Ottomans. Niš and Sofia fell to the Christians in 1443. In 1444, the Empire suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Jalowaz. On July 12, 1444, Murad signed a treaty which gave Wallachia and the Bulgarian province of Varna to Hungary and gave western Bulgaria (including Sofia) to Serbia. It forced Murad to abdicate in favor of his twelve-year-old son Mehmed. Later the same year the Christians violated the peace treaty and attacked anew.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: On November 11, 1444, Murad defeated the Polish–Hungarian army of Wladislaus III of Poland led by Janos Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad was reinstated with the help of the Janissaries in 1446. Another peace treaty was signed in 1448 giving the Empire Wallachia and Bulgaria and a part of Albania. After the Balkan front was secured, Murad turned east and defeated Timur Lenk's son, Shah Rukh, and the emirates of Candar and Karaman in Anatolia.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: At 1448, John Hunyadi saw the right moment to lead a campaign against the Ottoman Empire. After the Defeat of Varna (1444), he raised another army to attack the Ottomans. His strategy based on possible revolt of Balkan people and the surprise attack, also the assumption to destroy the main force of the Ottomans in a single battle. Hunyadi was totally immodest and led his forces without leaving any escort behind.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Murad died in the winter 1450–1451 in Edirne. Some have it that he was wounded in a battle against Skanderbeg's Albanian guerillas.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Mehmed II (called "Fatih", the Conqueror) again came to the Ottoman throne following Murad's death in 1451. But by conquering and annexing the emirate of Karamanid (May–June, 1451) and by renewing the peace treaties with Venice (September 10) and Hungary (November 20) Mehmed II proved his skills both on the military and the political front and was soon accepted by the noble class of the Ottoman court.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Older and a good deal wiser, he made capturing Constantinople his first priority, believing that it would solidify his power over the high military and administrative officials who had caused him such problems during his earlier reign. Good reasons underlay his decision. So long as Constantinople remained in Christian hands, his enemies could use it as either a potential base for splitting the empire at its center or as an excuse for the Christian West's continued military efforts. Constantinople's location also made it the natural "middleman" center for both land and sea trade between the eastern Mediterranean and central Asia, possession of which would ensure immense wealth. Just as important, Constantinople was a fabled imperial city, and its capture and possession would bestow untold prestige on its conqueror, who would be seen by Muslims as a hero and by Muslims and Christians alike as a great and powerful emperor.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Mehmed spent two years preparing for his attempt on the Byzantine capital. He built a navy to cut the city off from outside help by sea; he purchased an arsenal of large cannons from the Hungarian gunsmith Urban; he sealed the Bosphorus north of the city by erecting a powerful fortress on its European shore to prevent succor arriving from the Black Sea; and he meticulously concentrated in Thrace every available military unit in his lands. A trade agreement with Venice prevented the Venetians from intervening on behalf of the Byzantines, and the rest of Western Europe unwittingly cooperated with Mehmed's plans by being totally absorbed in internecine wars and political rivalries.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: When in 1451 the bankrupt Byzantines asked Mehmed to double the tribute for holding an Ottoman pretender for the throne, he used the request as a pretext for annulling all treaties with the Byzantine Empire. Nevertheless, when he proposed in 1452 to siege Constantinople most of the divan, and especially the Grand Vizier, Çandarlı Halil Pasha, was against it and criticized the Sultan for being too rash and overconfident in his abilities. On April 15, 1452, Mehmed ordered preparations to be made for the siege of Constantinople.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: In April 1453, Mehmed laid siege to Constantinople. Although the city's defenders, led by Giovanni Giustiniani under Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos's (1448–53) authority, put up a heroic defense, without the benefit of outside aid their efforts were doomed. The formerly impregnable land walls were breached after two months of constant pounding by Mehmed's heavy artillery. In the predawn hours of 29 May 1453, Mehmed ordered an all-out assault on the battered ramparts. After a brief but vicious melee at the walls in which Giustiniani was severely injured coupled with Ottoman troops breaching the walls through a sally port door left open, the Ottoman troops were able to breach the walls and rout the defenders. According to Christian sources, Emperor Constantine died bravely rushing into the oncoming Ottoman troops not to be seen again. However, according to Ottoman sources such as Tursun Beg he threw off his mantle and attempted to flee before being cut down by an injured Ottoman soldier. The Ottoman Army broke through and swept over the city. Constantinople, for a millennium considered by many Europeans the divinely ordained capital of the Christian Roman Empire, fell to Mehmed and was transformed into what many Muslims considered the divinely ordained capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The fabled city's imperial legacy lived on. After the conquest, the sultan had his grand vizier Çandarlı Halil Pasha killed. His following four granviziers were of devshirme origin. During the growth of the Empire Turks seldom were appointed to the high positions.


title: Rise of the Ottoman Empire

text: Following the capture of Constantinople, Mehmed built the Topkapı Palace in 1462 and moved the Ottoman capital there from Adrianople. Mehmed had himself titled "Kaiser-i-Rum", or "Roman Caesar", and modelled the state after the old Byzantine Empire, thinking of himself as the successor to the Roman throne. Later, when he invaded Otranto, his goal was to capture Rome and reunite the Roman Empire for the first time since 751. Justinian's cathedral of Hagia Sophia was converted into an imperial mosque, as eventually were numerous other churches and monasteries. The rights of non-Muslim inhabitants were protected to ensure continuity and stability for commercial activities. Never fully recovered from the sack of 1204, and suffering from Byzantium's two centuries of near poverty, Constantinople by the time of Mehmed's conquest was but a hollow shell of its former self. Its population had dwindled, and much property was either abandoned or in a state of disrepair. The sultan immediately began to repopulate the city. Civic and private properties were offered to the public to entice much-needed skilled artisans, craftsmen, and traders of all religions and ethnicities back to the city. Newly conquered Constantinople rapidly grew into a multiethnic, multicultured, and bustling economic, political, and cultural center for the Ottoman state, whose distant frontiers guaranteed it peace, security, and prosperity.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The five-year plans for the development of the national economy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (, "Pyatiletniye plany razvitiya narodnogo khozyaystva SSSR") consisted of a series of nationwide centralized economic plans in the Soviet Union, beginning in the late 1920s. The Soviet state planning committee Gosplan developed these plans based on the theory of the productive forces that formed part of the ideology of the Communist Party for development of the Soviet economy. Fulfilling the current plan became the watchword of Soviet bureaucracy.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Several Soviet five-year plans did not take up the full period of time assigned to them: some were pronounced successfully completed earlier than expected, some took much longer than expected, and others failed altogether and had to be abandoned. Altogether, Gosplan launched thirteen five-year plans. The initial five-year plans aimed to achieve rapid industrialization in the Soviet Union and thus placed a major focus on heavy industry. The first five-year plan, accepted in 1928 for the period from 1929 to 1933, finished one year early. The last five-year plan, for the period from 1991 to 1995, was not completed, since the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Other communist states, including the People's Republic of China, and to a lesser extent, the Republic of Indonesia, implemented a process of using five year plans as focal points for economic and societal development.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Joseph Stalin inherited and upheld the New Economic Policy (NEP) from Vladimir Lenin. In 1921, Lenin had persuaded the 10th Party Congress to approve the NEP as a replacement for the War Communism that had been set up during the Russian Civil War. In War Communism, the state had assumed control of all means of production, exchange and communication. All land had been declared nationalized by the Decree on Land, finalized in the 1922 Land Code, which also set collectivization as the long-term goal. Although the peasants had been allowed to work the land they held, the production surplus was bought by the state (on the state's terms), the peasants cut production; whereupon food was requisitioned. Money gradually came to be replaced by barter and a system of coupons.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: When the war ended, the NEP took over from War Communism. During this time, the state had controlled all large enterprises (i.e. factories, mines, railways) as well as enterprises of medium size, but small private enterprises, employing fewer than 20 people, were allowed. The requisitioning of farm produce was replaced by a tax system (a fixed proportion of the crop), and the peasants were free to sell their surplus (at a state-regulated price) - although they were encouraged to join state farms (Sovkhozes, set up on land expropriated from nobles after the 1917 revolution), in which they worked for a fixed wage like workers in a factory. Money came back into use, with new bank notes being issued and backed by gold.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The NEP had been Lenin's response to a crisis. In 1920, industrial production had been 13% and agricultural production 20% of the 1913 figures. Between February 21 and March 17, 1921, the sailors in Kronstadt had mutinied. In addition, the Russian Civil War, which had been the main reason for the introduction of War Communism, had virtually been won; and so controls could be relaxed.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: In the 1920s, there was a great debate between Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov on the one hand, and Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev on the other. The former group considered that the NEP provided sufficient state control of the economy and sufficiently rapid development, while the latter argued in favour of more rapid development and greater state control, taking the view, among other things, that profits should be shared among all people, and not just among a privileged few. In 1925, at the 14th Party Congress, Stalin, as he usually did in the early days, stayed in the background but sided with the Bukharin group. However, later, in 1927, he changed sides, supporting those in favour of a new course, with greater state control.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Each five-year plan dealt with all aspects of development: capital goods (those used to produce other goods, like factories and machinery), consumer goods (e.g. chairs, carpets, and irons), agriculture, transportation, communications, health, education, and welfare. However, the emphasis varied from plan to plan, although generally the emphasis was on power (electricity), capital goods, and agriculture. There were base and optimum targets. Efforts were made, especially in the third plan, to move industry eastward to make it safer from attack during World War II. Soviet planners declared a need for "constant struggle, struggle, and struggle" to achieve a Communist society. These five-year plans outlined programs for huge increases in the output of industrial goods. Stalin warned that without an end to economic backwardness "the advanced countries...will crush us."


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: From 1928 to 1940, the number of Soviet workers in industry, construction, and transport grew from 4.6 million to 12.6 million and factory output soared. Stalin's first five-year plan helped make the USSR a leading industrial nation.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: During this period, the first purges were initiated targeting many people working for Gosplan. These included Vladimir Bazarov, the 1931 Menshevik Trial (centered on Vladimir Groman).


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Stalin announced the start of the first five-year plan for industrialization on October 1, 1928, and it lasted until December 31, 1932. Stalin described it as a new revolution from above. When this plan began, the USSR was fifth in industrialization, and with the first five-year plan moved up to second, with only the United States in first.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: This plan met industrial targets in less time than originally predicted. The production goals were increased by a reported 50% during the initial deliberation of industrial targets. Much of the emphasis was placed on heavy industry. Approximately 86% of all industrial investments during this time went directly to heavy industry. Officially, the first five-year plan for industry was fulfilled to the extent of 93.7% in just four years and three months. The means of production in regards to heavy industry exceeded the quota, registering 103.4%. The light, or consumer goods, industry reached up to 84.9% of its assigned quota. However, there is some speculation regarding the legitimacy of these numbers as the nature of Soviet statistics are notoriously misleading or exaggerated. Another issue was that quality was sacrificed in order to achieve quantity, and production results generated wildly varied items. Consequently, rationing was implemented to solve chronic food and supply shortages.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Propaganda used before, during and after the first five-year plan compared industry to battle. This was highly successful. They used terms such as "fronts," "campaigns," and "breakthroughs," while at the same time workers were forced to work harder than ever before and were organized into "shock troops," and those who rebelled or failed to keep up with their work were treated as traitors. The posters and flyers used to promote and advertise the plan were also reminiscent of wartime propaganda. A popular military metaphor emerged from the economic success of the first five-year plan: "There are no fortresses Bolsheviks cannot storm." Stalin especially liked this.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The first five-year plan was not just about economics. This plan was a revolution that intended to transform all aspects of society. The way of life for the majority of the people changed drastically during this revolutionary time. The plan was also referred to as the "Great Turn". Individual peasant farming gave way to a more efficient system of collective farming. Peasant property and entire villages were incorporated into the state economy which had its own market forces.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: There was, however, a strong resistance to this at first. The peasants led an all-out attack to protect individual farming; however, Stalin rightly did not see the peasants as a threat. Despite being the largest segment of the population they had no real strength, and thus could pose no serious threat to the state. By the time this was done, the collectivization plan resembled a very bloody military campaign against the peasant's traditional lifestyle. This social transformation along with the incredible economic boom occurred at the same time that the entire Soviet system developed its definitive form in the decade of 1930.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Many scholars believe that a few other important factors, such as foreign policy and internal security, went into the execution of the five-year plan. While ideology and economics were a major part, preparation for the upcoming war also affected all of the major parts of the five-year plan. The war effort really picked up in 1933 when Hitler came to power in Germany. The stress this caused on internal security and control in the five-year plan is difficult to document.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: While most of the figures were overstated, Stalin was able to announce truthfully that the plan had been achieved ahead of schedule; however the many investments made to the west were excluded. While many factories were built and industrial production did increase exponentially, they were not close to reaching their target numbers.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: While there was great success, there were also many problems with not just the plan itself, but how quickly it was completed. Its approach to industrialization was very inefficient and extreme amounts of resources were put into construction that, in many cases, was never completed. These resources were also put into equipment that was never used, or not even needed in the first place. Many of the consumer goods produced during this time were of such low quality that they could never be used and were wasted.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: A major event during the first Five Year-Plan was the famine of 1932–33. The famine peaked during the winter of '32–'33 claiming the lives of an estimated 3.3 to 7 million people, while millions more were permanently disabled. The famine was the direct result of the industrialization and collectivization implemented by the first Five Year-Plan. Many of the peasants who were suffering from the famine began to sabotage the fulfilment of their obligations to the state and would, as often as they could, stash away stores of food. Although Stalin was aware of this, he placed the blame of the hostility onto the peasants, saying that they had declared war against the Soviet government.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Because of the successes made by the first plan, Stalin did not hesitate with going ahead with the second five-year plan in 1932, although the official start-date for the plan was 1933. The second five-year plan gave heavy industry top priority, putting the Soviet Union not far behind Germany as one of the major steel-producing countries of the world. Further improvements were made in communications, especially railways, which became faster and more reliable. As was the case with the other five-year plans, the second was not as successful, failing to reach the recommended production levels in such areas as the coal and oil industries. The second plan employed incentives as well as punishments and the targets were eased as a reward for the first plan being finished ahead of schedule in only four years. With the introduction of childcare, mothers were encouraged to work to aid in the plan's success. By 1937 the tolkachi emerged occupying a key position mediating between the enterprises and the commissariat.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Consistent with the Soviet doctrine of state atheism ("gosateizm"), this five-year plan from 1932 to 1937 also included the liquidation of houses of worship, with the goals of closing churches between 1932–1933 and the elimination of clergy by 1935–1936.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The third five-year plan ran for only 3½ years, up to June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union during the Second World War. As war approached, more resources were put into developing armaments, tanks and weapons, as well as constructing additional military factories east of the Ural mountains.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The first two years of the third five-year plan proved to be even more of a disappointment in terms of proclaimed production goals. Still, a reported 12% to 13% rate of annual industrial growth was attained in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The plan had intended to focus on consumer goods. The Soviet Union mainly contributed resources to the development of weapons and constructed additional military factories as needed. By 1952, industrial production was nearly double the 1941 level ("five-year plans"). Stalin's five-year plans helped transform the Soviet Union from an untrained society of peasants to an advanced industrial economy.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The USSR at this stage had been devastated by the war. Officially, 98,000 collective farms had been ransacked and ruined, with the loss of 137,000 tractors, 49,000 combine harvesters, 7 million horses, 17 million cattle, 20 million pigs, 27 million sheep; 25% of all capital equipment had been destroyed in 35,000 plants and factories; 6 million buildings, including 40,000 hospitals, in 70,666 villages and 4,710 towns (40% urban housing) were destroyed, leaving 25 million homeless; about 40% of railway tracks had been destroyed; officially 7.5 million servicemen died, plus 6 million civilians, but perhaps 20 million in all died. In 1945, mining and metallurgy were at 40% of the 1940 levels, electric power was down to 52%, pig-iron 26% and steel 45%; food production was 60% of the 1940 level. After Poland, the USSR had been the hardest hit by the war. Reconstruction was impeded by a chronic labor shortage due to the enormous number of Soviet casualties in the war (between 20 and 30 million). Moreover, 1946 was the driest year since 1891, and the harvest was poor.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The USA and USSR were unable to agree on the terms of a US loan to aid reconstruction, and this was a contributing factor in the rapid escalation of the Cold War. However, the USSR did gain reparations from Germany, and made Eastern European countries make payments in return for the Soviets having liberated them from the Nazis. In 1949, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) was set up, linking the Eastern bloc countries economically. One-third of the fourth plan's capital expenditure was spent on Ukraine, which was important agriculturally and industrially, and which had been one of the areas most devastated by war.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The sixth five-year plan was launched in 1956 during a period of dual leadership under Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin, but it was abandoned after two years due to over-optimistic targets.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Unlike other planning periods, 1959 saw the announcement of a seven-year plan (, "semiletka"), approved by the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1959. This was merged into a seventh five-year plan in 1961, which was launched with the slogan "catch up and overtake the USA by 1970." The plan saw a slight shift away from heavy industry into chemicals, consumer goods, and natural resources.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The plan also intended to establish 18 new institutes by working with the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: About 14.5 million tonnes of grain were imported by the USSR. Détente and improving relations between the Soviet Union and the United States allowed for more trade. The plan's focus was primarily on increasing the amount of consumer goods in the economy so as to improve Soviet standards of living. While largely failing at that objective it managed to significantly improve Soviet computer technology.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: During the eleventh five-year plan, the country imported some 42 million tons of grain annually, almost twice as much as during the tenth five-year plan and three times as much as during the ninth five-year plan (1971–1975). The bulk of this grain was sold by the West; in 1985, for example, 94% of Soviet grain imports were from the non-socialist world, with the United States selling 14.1 million tons. However, total Soviet export to the West was always almost as high as import: for example, in 1984 total export to the West was 21.3 billion rubles, while total import was 19.6 billion rubles.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The last, 12th plan started with the slogan of "uskoreniye "(acceleration), the acceleration of economic development (quickly forgotten in favor of a vaguer motto "perestroika") ended in a profound economic crisis in virtually all areas of the Soviet economy and a drop in production.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The 1987 "Law on State Enterprise" and the follow-up decrees about "khozraschyot" and self-financing in various areas of the Soviet economy were aimed at the decentralization to overcome the problems of the command economy.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: Most other communist states, including the People's Republic of China, adopted a similar method of planning. Although the Republic of Indonesia under Suharto is known for its anti-communist purge,


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: his government also adopted the same method of planning because of the policy of its socialist predecessor, Sukarno. This series of five-year plans in Indonesia was termed REPELITA ("Rencana Pembangunan Lima Tahun"); plans I to VI ran from 1969 to 1998.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: State planning of the economy required processing large amounts of statistical data. The Soviet State had nationalized the Odhner arithmometer factory in Saint Petersburg after the revolution. The state began renting tabulating equipment later on. By 1929, it was a very large user of statistical machines, on the scale of the US or Germany. The State Bank had tabulating machines in 14 branches. Other users included the Central Statistical Bureau, the Soviet Commissariat of Finance, Soviet Commissariat of Inspection, Soviet Commissariat of Foreign Trade, the Grain Trust, Soviet Railways, Russian Ford, Russian Buick, the Karkov tractor factory, and the Tula Armament Works. IBM also did a good deal of business with the Soviet State in the 1930s, including supplying punch cards to the Stalin Automobile Plant.


title: Five-year plans of the Soviet Union

text: The minor planet 2122 Pyatiletka discovered in 1971 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova is named in honor of five-year plans of the USSR.


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: Michael Hogan (born 1949) is a Canadian actor best known for playing Colonel Saul Tigh in the 2004 "Battlestar Galactica" series. Other notable roles include Billy in "The Peanut Butter Solution" and villainous werewolf hunter Gerard Argent in "Teen Wolf". He also lent his voice to Armando-Owen Bailey in the "Mass Effect" series and General Tullius in "" game.


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: Michael Hogan was born in Kirkland Lake, Ontario in 1949, raised in North Bay, Ontario and studied at National Theatre School of Canada.


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: Hogan began his career in 1978 and has starred in numerous TV shows, plays, radio dramas and operas. He started in plays at the Shaw Festival.


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: He made his film debut in the Peter Fonda trucker picture "High-Ballin'" (1978). He and his wife soon became a popular television couple, as the stars of the 1983 Canadian series "Vanderberg" and the 1986 Canadian-German series "The Little Vampire". In 1985, he also starred in the children's film "The Peanut Butter Solution".


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: Hogan portrayed Jack Budyansky in "Diplomatic Immunity" (1990) and in "Solitaire" (1991). He was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor for the former role and won it for the latter. In 1998, he portrayed Tony Logozzo in "Cold Squad" (1998). Hogan was nominated for the Gemini Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Program or Miniseries, for the 2003 telefilm "Betrayed".


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: From 2003 to 2009, Hogan starred as Colonel Saul Tigh, Executive Officer of the Battlestar "Galactica" on the Sci Fi Channel television program "Battlestar Galactica". He portrayed Irwin Fairbanks in "The L Word" (2004–2006). He also had a recurring role on the hit MTV show "Teen Wolf" (2012-2017) as Gerard Argent, the werewolf-hunting grandfather of Allison Argent and the latest nemesis of main protagonist, Scott McCall.


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: He made guest appearances on "Millennium" (1997), "The Outer Limits" (1997), "Andromeda" (2002), in the two-hour premiere of "Monk" (2002),"Dollhouse" (2009), "Numb3rs" (2009), "Warehouse 13" (2009), "Psych" (2010) and the third season of the sitcom "Husbands".


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: Hogan's movies include "Road to Saddle River", "Clearcut", "Stella", "Cowboys Don't Cry" and "The Cutting Edge" and the telefilms "Dead Man's Gun", "Shadow Lake", "Scorn", "Shadow Realm" and "Nights Below Station Street", for which he received the Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association's Blizzard Award for Best Leading Actor. He appeared in the romance horror film "Red Riding Hood" (2011).


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: Hogan has also lent his voice to the video game industry, providing the voice of Captain Armando-Owen Bailey in the role-playing games (RPG), "Mass Effect 2" and "Mass Effect 3", as well as the opening character, Doc Mitchell, in "". Hogan also voiced the character General Tullius in the RPG, "". Most recently, he lent his voice as Samael in the American release of the Korean massively multiplayer online role-playing game, "TERA" (2012).


title: Michael Hogan (Canadian actor)

text: On February 17, 2020, Hogan sustained a brain injury after falling and hitting his head. This caused paralysis of his left side, memory loss, and dysphagia.


title: Ileus

text: Ileus is a disruption of the normal propulsive ability of the intestine. It can be caused by lack of peristalsis or by mechanical obstruction.


title: Ileus

text: The word 'ileus' is from Ancient Greek "eileós" (, "intestinal obstruction"). The term 'subileus' refers to a partial obstruction.


title: Ileus

text: Decreased propulsive ability may be broadly classified as caused either by bowel obstruction or intestinal atony or paralysis. However, instances with symptoms and signs of a bowel obstruction occur, but with the absence of a mechanical obstruction, mainly in acute colonic pseudo-obstruction, Ogilvie's syndrome.


title: Ileus

text: Paralysis of the intestine is often termed paralytic ileus, in which the intestinal paralysis need not be complete, but it must be sufficient to prohibit the passage of food through the intestine and lead to intestinal blockage. Paralytic ileus is a common side effect of some types of surgery, commonly called postsurgical ileus. It can also result from certain drugs and from various injuries and illnesses, such as acute pancreatitis. Paralytic ileus causes constipation and bloating. On listening to the abdomen with a stethoscope, no bowel sounds are heard because the bowel is inactive.


title: Ileus

text: A temporary paralysis of a portion of the intestines occurs typically after abdominal surgery. Since the intestinal content of this portion is unable to move forward, food or drink should be avoided until peristaltic sound is heard, by auscultation (use of a stethoscope) of the area where this portion lies. Intestinal atony or paralysis may be caused by inhibitory neural reflexes, inflammation or other implication of neurohumoral peptides.


title: Ileus

text: Traditionally, nothing by mouth was considered to be mandatory in all cases, but gentle feeding by enteral feeding tube may help to restore motility by triggering the gut's normal feedback signals, so this is the recommended management initially. When the patient has severe, persistent signs that motility is completely disrupted, nasogastric suction and parenteral nutrition may be required until passage is restored. In such cases, continuing aggressive enteral feeding causes a risk of perforating the gut.


title: Ileus

text: Several options are available in the case of paralytic ileus. Most treatment is supportive. If caused by medication, the offending agent is discontinued or reduced. Bowel movements may be stimulated by prescribing lactulose, erythromycin or, in severe cases that are thought to have a neurological component (such as Ogilvie's syndrome), neostigmine. There is also evidence from a systematic review of randomized controlled trials that chewing gum, as a form of 'sham feeding', may stimulate gastrointestinal motility in the post-operative period and reduce the duration of postoperative ileus.