paragraph_text: The Black Death, also known as the Great Plague, the Black Plague, or simply the Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 75 to 200 million people in Eurasia and peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351. The bacterium Yersinia pestis, which results in several forms of plague, is believed to have been the cause. The plague created a series of religious, social and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history.

paragraph_text: Sir Ian Brownlie (19 September 1932, Liverpool – 3 January 2010, Cairo) was a British practising barrister, specialising in international law. After an education at Hertford College, Oxford, he was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn in 1958 and was a tenant at Blackstone Chambers from 1983 until his death on 3 January 2010. He was a member of the Communist Party until the Soviet Union's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

paragraph_text: The most widely accepted estimate for the Middle East, including Iraq, Iran and Syria, during this time, is for a death rate of about a third. The Black Death killed about 40% of Egypt's population. Half of Paris's population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, the population of Florence was reduced from 110–120 thousand inhabitants in 1338 down to 50 thousand in 1351. At least 60% of the population of Hamburg and Bremen perished, and a similar percentage of Londoners may have died from the disease as well. Interestingly while contemporary reports account of mass burial pits being created in response to the large numbers of dead, recent scientific investigations of a burial pit in Central London found well-preserved individuals to be buried in isolated, evenly spaced graves, suggesting at least some pre-planning and Christian burials at this time. Before 1350, there were about 170,000 settlements in Germany, and this was reduced by nearly 40,000 by 1450. In 1348, the plague spread so rapidly that before any physicians or government authorities had time to reflect upon its origins, about a third of the European population had already perished. In crowded cities, it was not uncommon for as much as 50% of the population to die. The disease bypassed some areas, and the most isolated areas were less vulnerable to contagion. Monks and priests were especially hard hit since they cared for victims of the Black Death.

paragraph_text: In an effort to demonstrate peaceful intentions toward Germany, on 13 April 1941, the Soviets signed a neutrality pact with Axis power Japan. While Stalin had little faith in Japan's commitment to neutrality, he felt that the pact was important for its political symbolism, to reinforce a public affection for Germany. Stalin felt that there was a growing split in German circles about whether Germany should initiate a war with the Soviet Union. Stalin did not know that Hitler had been secretly discussing an invasion of the Soviet Union since summer 1940, and that Hitler had ordered his military in late 1940 to prepare for war in the east regardless of the parties' talks of a potential Soviet entry as a fourth Axis Power.

paragraph_text: Consequences of the Black Death included a series of religious, social, and economic upheavals, which had profound effects on the course of European history. The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1347 and 1350 with 30% to 65% of the population killed. It reduced world population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million. It took 80 and in some areas more than 150 years for Europe's population to recover.

paragraph_text: The Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation began on 9 August 1945, with the Soviet invasion of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo and was the last campaign of the Second World War and the largest of the 1945 Soviet–Japanese War which resumed hostilities between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace. Soviet gains on the continent were Manchukuo, Mengjiang (Inner Mongolia) and northern Korea. The rapid defeat of Japan's Kwantung Army has been argued to be a significant factor in the Japanese surrender and the end of World War II, as Japan realized the Soviets were willing and able to take the cost of invasion of its Home Islands, after their rapid conquest of Manchuria and Invasion of South Sakhalin island.

paragraph_text: Nazi Germany terminated the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact at 03:15 on 22 June 1941 by launching a massive attack on the Soviet positions in eastern Poland which marked the beginning of the invasion of the Soviet Union known as Operation Barbarossa. Stalin had ignored several warnings that Germany was likely to invade, and ordered no 'full-scale' mobilization of forces although the mobilization was ongoing. After the launch of the invasion, the territories gained by the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact were lost in a matter of weeks. Within six months, the Soviet military had suffered 4.3 million casualties, and Germany had captured three million Soviet prisoners. The lucrative export of Soviet raw materials to Nazi Germany over the course of the Nazi–Soviet economic relations (1934–41) continued uninterrupted until the outbreak of hostilities. The Soviet exports in several key areas enabled Germany to maintain its stocks of rubber and grain from the first day of the invasion until October 1941.

paragraph_text: Fear of a Black Hat is a 1993 American mockumentary film on the evolution and state of American hip hop music. The film's title is derived from the 1990 Public Enemy album "Fear of a Black Planet". First screened at Sundance Film Festival on January 24, 1993, and later released on June 3, 1994, "Fear of a Black Hat" was written, produced and directed by, and co-stars Rusty Cundieff.

paragraph_text: Kortelisy is a village in Ukraine which was destroyed on September 23, 1942 by Germany during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. Almost the entire population of 2,892 people were killed.

paragraph_text: By the end of May, drafts were formally presented. In mid-June, the main Tripartite negotiations started. The discussion was focused on potential guarantees to central and east European countries should a German aggression arise. The USSR proposed to consider that a political turn towards Germany by the Baltic states would constitute an "indirect aggression" towards the Soviet Union. Britain opposed such proposals, because they feared the Soviets' proposed language could justify a Soviet intervention in Finland and the Baltic states, or push those countries to seek closer relations with Germany. The discussion about a definition of "indirect aggression" became one of the sticking points between the parties, and by mid-July, the tripartite political negotiations effectively stalled, while the parties agreed to start negotiations on a military agreement, which the Soviets insisted must be entered into simultaneously with any political agreement.

paragraph_text: Seven months later, the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov accused the Baltic states of conspiracy against the Soviet Union. On June 16, 1940, threatening an invasion, Soviet Union issued an ultimatum demanding that the government be replaced and that an unlimited number of Soviet troops be admitted. Knowing that the Red Army had entered Lithuania a day before, that its troops were massed along the eastern border and mindful of the Soviet military bases in Western Latvia, the government acceded to the demands, and Soviet troops occupied the country on June 17. Staged elections were held July 14 -- 15, 1940, whose results were announced in Moscow 12 hours before the polls closed; Soviet documents show the election results were forged. The newly elected ``People's Assembly ''declared Latvia a Socialist Soviet Republic and applied for admission into the Soviet Union on July 21. Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union on August 5, 1940. Latvian diplomatic service continued to function in exile while the republic was under the Soviet control.

paragraph_text: Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. Joseph Stalin waited until 17 September before launching his own invasion of Poland. Part of southeastern (Karelia) and the Salla region of Finland were annexed by the Soviet Union after the Winter War. This was followed by Soviet annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania (Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina and the Hertza region). It was only in 1989 that the Soviet Union admitted the existence of the secret protocol of the Nazi - Soviet pact regarding the planned divisions of these territories. The invasion of Bukovina violated the Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere agreed with the Axis.

paragraph_text: The Soviets had 411 T-28 tanks when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. A large majority of these were lost during the first two months of the invasion, many of them abandoned after mechanical breakdown. Some T-28s took part in the 1941 winter defence of Leningrad and Moscow, but after late 1941, they were rare in Red Army service; a few were operated by enemy forces.

paragraph_text: It is possible that around 62 million people died in the war; estimates vary greatly. About 60% of all casualties were civilians, who died as a result of disease, starvation, genocide (in particular, the Holocaust), and aerial bombing. The former Soviet Union and China suffered the most casualties. Estimates place deaths in the Soviet Union at around 23 million, while China suffered about 10 million. No country lost a greater portion of its population than Poland: approximately 5.6 million, or 16%, of its pre-war population of 34.8 million died.

paragraph_text: 1941 - 06 - 22 Nazi Germany Italy Romania Soviet Union A timed - declaration of war was given by Germany at the time of the attack Invasion

paragraph_text: The 1980 Summer Olympics boycott was one part of a number of actions initiated by the United States to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union, which hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics, and other countries would later boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

paragraph_text: The strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet Union to dominate Central and Eastern Europe. This policy was driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement. A corollary to this idea was the necessity of intervention if a country appeared to be violating core socialist ideas and Communist Party functions, which was explicitly stated in the Brezhnev Doctrine. Geostrategic principles also drove the Soviet Union to prevent invasion of its territory by Western European powers.

paragraph_text: The Chinese intervention in late October 1950 bolstered the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) of North Korea with the MiG-15, one of the world's most advanced jet fighters. The fast, heavily armed MiG outflew first-generation UN jets such as the F-80 (United States Air Force) and Gloster Meteors (Royal Australian Air Force), posing a real threat to B-29 Superfortress bombers even under fighter escort. Fearful of confronting the United States directly, the Soviet Union denied involvement of their personnel in anything other than an advisory role, but air combat quickly resulted in Soviet pilots dropping their code signals and speaking over the wireless in Russian. This known direct Soviet participation was a casus belli that the UN Command deliberately overlooked, lest the war for the Korean peninsula expand to include the Soviet Union, and potentially escalate into atomic warfare.

paragraph_text: As a result of the magnitude 7.9 earthquake and the many strong aftershocks, many rivers became blocked by large landslides, which resulted in the formation of "quake lakes" behind the blockages; these massive amounts of water were pooling up at a very high rate behind the natural landslide dams and it was feared that the blockages would eventually crumble under the weight of the ever-increasing water mass, potentially endangering the lives of millions of people living downstream. As of May 27, 2008, 34 lakes had formed due to earthquake debris blocking and damming rivers, and it was estimated that 28 of them were still of potential danger to the local people. Entire villages had to be evacuated because of the resultant flooding.

paragraph_text: The first half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a succession of wars, famines and other disasters, each accompanied by large-scale population losses. Stephen J. Lee estimates that, by the end of World War II in 1945, the Russian population was about 90 million fewer than it could have been otherwise.

Question: By approximately what percentage did the Black Death reduce the population of the region that the Soviet Union feared invasion from?
Answer: 30% to 65%