paragraph_text: In February 20, 1988, after a week of growing demonstrations in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (the Armenian majority area within Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic), the Regional Soviet voted to secede and join with the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. This local vote in a small, remote part of the Soviet Union made headlines around the world; it was an unprecedented defiance of republic and national authorities. On February 22, 1988, in what became known as the "Askeran clash", two Azerbaijanis were killed by Karabakh police. These deaths, announced on state radio, led to the Sumgait Pogrom. Between February 26 and March 1, the city of Sumgait (Azerbaijan) saw violent anti-Armenian rioting during which 32 people were killed. The authorities totally lost control and occupied the city with paratroopers and tanks; nearly all of the 14,000 Armenian residents of Sumgait fled.

paragraph_text: Syktyvkar Southwest is an unfinished and abandoned airport in Komi, Russia located 19 km southwest of Syktyvkar. It was intended to be a civilian airport and was partially constructed in the 1980s, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting drop in air passenger traffic, the plans to complete it were dropped. Today, the existing Syktyvkar Airport within city limits continues to serve as the city's air transport gateway.

paragraph_text: Vertov's feature film, produced by the film studio VUFKU, presents urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Odessa. It has no actors. From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have "characters", they are the cameramen of the title, the film editor, and the modern Soviet Union they discover and present in the film.

paragraph_text: What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-1933 is a book of reportage by the Austrian writer Joseph Roth from the era of the Weimar Republic. The selection of pieces from Roth's large journalistic output was made by Michael Bienert and published in German in 1996. The English translation with the present title was made by Michael Hofmann and appeared in 2003. The pieces in the book "record the violent social and political paroxysms that constantly threatened to undo the fragile democracy" of those years, but some of them also report on more prosaic aspects of life in Berlin in those years, such as the public parks and the rising entertainment industry.

paragraph_text: The Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union () was the highest body of state authority of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991.

paragraph_text: There are differing interpretations for verses 6 and 7. The phrase "the Path journeyed by those upon whom You showered blessings" is usually seen as referring to Muslims. The phrase "those who made themselves liable to criminal cognizance/arrest" (more clearly translated as "those who have incurred Your wrath") is usually seen as referring to the Jews and the phrase "those who are the neglectful wanderers" (more clearly translated as "those who have gone astray") is seen as referring to the Christians. The Quran: An Encyclopedia, authored by 43 Muslim and non-Muslim academics says, "The Prophet interpreted those who incurred God’s wrath as the Jews and the misguided as the Christians".Australian pastor and scholar in linguistics and theology Mark Durie says,

paragraph_text: The language was first introduced in North America when Russian explorers voyaged into Alaska and claimed it for Russia during the 1700s. Although most colonists left after the United States bought the land in 1867, a handful stayed and preserved the Russian language in this region to this day, although only a few elderly speakers of this unique dialect are left. Sizable Russian-speaking communities also exist in North America, especially in large urban centers of the U.S. and Canada, such as New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane, Toronto, Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Denver and Cleveland. In a number of locations they issue their own newspapers, and live in ethnic enclaves (especially the generation of immigrants who started arriving in the early 1960s). Only about 25% of them are ethnic Russians, however. Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the overwhelming majority of Russophones in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in New York City were Russian-speaking Jews. Afterward, the influx from the countries of the former Soviet Union changed the statistics somewhat, with ethnic Russians and Ukrainians immigrating along with some more Russian Jews and Central Asians. According to the United States Census, in 2007 Russian was the primary language spoken in the homes of over 850,000 individuals living in the United States.

paragraph_text: The Wandering Jews is a short non-fiction book (1926–27) by Joseph Roth about the plight of the Jews in the mid-1920s who, with other refugees and displaced persons in the aftermath of the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the redrawing of national frontiers following the Treaty of Versailles, had fled to the West from the Baltic States, Poland and Russia. "They sought shelter in cities and towns where most of them had never been and, unfortunately, where they were made despicably unwelcome." Poverty stricken villagers, they were set apart by their origins, their piety and their dress. In the last five months of 1926 he visited the Soviet Union where he wrote the final section, "The Condition of the Jews in Soviet Russia". Walter Jens called it the best book on its subject in German. An English translation by Michael Hofmann was published in 2001.

paragraph_text: Glamorgan Wanderers are a Welsh rugby union club based in Ely, west Cardiff in Wales. The club is located just to the north of Western Cemetery. They currently play in WRU division 1 East central, having been relegated from the Welsh Championship in the 2016-2017 season.

paragraph_text: Rimma Fyodorovna Kazakova (; 27 January 1932 in Sevastopol, Soviet Union – 19 May 2008 in Perkhushkovo, Odintsovo District of Moscow Oblast, Russia) was a Soviet/Russian poet. She was known as an author of many popular songs of the Soviet era.

paragraph_text: Mark Seal is an American journalist and author. Seal worked as a journalist in Texas before becoming a freelance magazine writer in 1984, a contributing editor at "Vanity Fair" since 2003, and has written and co-written about 15 books.

paragraph_text: Gosbank (, "Gosudarstvenny bank SSSR"—the State Bank of the USSR) was the central bank of the Soviet Union and the only bank whatsoever in the entire Union from the 1930s to 1987. Gosbank was one of the three Soviet economic authorities, the other two being "Gosplan" (the State Planning Committee) and "Gossnab" (the State Committee for Material Technical Supply). The Gosbank closely collaborated with the Ministry of Finance of the USSR to prepare the national state budget.

paragraph_text: West Berlin was 100 miles (161 kilometres) east and north of the Inner German border and only accessible by land from West Germany by narrow rail and highway corridors. It consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors established in 1945. It was, however, a de facto part of West Germany. It had a special and unique legal status because its administration was formally conducted by the Western Allies. At the same time, East Berlin, de jure occupied and administered by the Soviet Union, was the de facto capital of East Germany. The Berlin Wall, built in 1961, physically separated West Berlin from its East Berlin and East German surroundings until it fell in 1989.

paragraph_text: Janusz Magnuski (1933–1999) was a Polish author and military historian. His principal works document the development and deployment of Polish and Soviet armor utilized during World War II and he has been called "the world's most noted historian of Soviet tank history". He was one of the authoritative sources for documentation of the hardware on display in the Museum of the Polish Army located in Warsaw.

paragraph_text: For its part, the Soviet Union harbored fears of invasion. Having suffered at least 27 million casualties during World War II after being invaded by Nazi Germany in 1941, the Soviet Union was wary of its former ally, the United States, which until late 1949 was the sole possessor of atomic weapons. The United States had used these weapons operationally during World War II, and it could use them again against the Soviet Union, laying waste its cities and military centers. Since the Americans had a much larger air force than the Soviet Union, and the United States maintained advance air bases near Soviet territory, in 1947 Stalin ordered the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in order to counter the perceived American threat.

paragraph_text: Vecheslav Frantsevich Zagonek (; December 19, 1919, city of Irkutsk, Soviet Russia – June 24, 1994, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation) was a Soviet, Russian painter, People's Artist of the USSR, Member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, who lived and worked in Leningrad. He was a member of the Leningrad Union of Artists and regarded as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his lyrical landscapes and genre paintings.

paragraph_text: Alena Vinnitskaya ( "Aliona Vinnytska"; born Olha Viktorivna Vinnytska () on 27 December 1974, Kiev, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union – in present-day Ukraine) is a Ukrainian singer. She is an author and performer.

paragraph_text: Peter Gedge was a Scottish rugby union player. He was capped once in 1933 for . He also played for Edinburgh Wanderers.

paragraph_text: Armenia was annexed by Bolshevist Russia and along with Georgia and Azerbaijan, it was incorporated into the Soviet Union as part of the Transcaucasian SFSR (TSFSR) on 4 March 1922. With this annexation, the Treaty of Alexandropol was superseded by the Turkish-Soviet Treaty of Kars. In the agreement, Turkey allowed the Soviet Union to assume control over Adjara with the port city of Batumi in return for sovereignty over the cities of Kars, Ardahan, and Iğdır, all of which were part of Russian Armenia.

paragraph_text: Hector Hamilton was a British-born architect working in New York City for "Hamilton and Green" during the 1930s. He became prominent in 1932 when the Soviet Union awarded him first prize alongside two Soviet architects for his design for the Palace of the Soviets in the second round of a public design competition, only to cancel the award without explanation a few months later. He also designed the grade II listed "San Remo Towers" block of flats in Boscombe, England, built between 1935 and 1938.

Question: When did the soviet Union seal off the city where the author of The Wandering Jews worked?
Answer: 1961