Nestor Lakoba (1893–1936) was an Abkhaz Communist leader. In the
aftermath of the Russian Revolution, Lakoba helped establish Bolshevik
power in Abkhazia in the Caucasus region of the Soviet Union. As the
head of Abkhazia after its conquest by the Bolshevik Red Army in 1921,
Lakoba saw that Abkhazia was initially given autonomy as the Socialist
Soviet Republic of Abkhazia. Though nominally a part of the Georgian
Soviet Socialist Republic with a special status of "union republic",
Abkhazia was effectively a separate republic, made possible by Lakoba's
close relationship with Joseph Stalin. In 1931 Lakoba was forced to
accept a downgrade of Abkhazia's status to that of an autonomous
republic within Georgia. Another confidant of Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria,
summoned Lakoba to visit him in Tbilisi in December 1936. Lakoba was
poisoned, allowing Beria to consolidate his control over Abkhazia and
all of Georgia.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestor_Lakoba>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1795:
French Revolutionary Wars: Off the coast of Brittany, a Royal
Navy squadron commanded by William Cornwallis fended off a numerically
superior French Navy fleet.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornwallis%27s_Retreat>
1940:
Second World War: RMS Lancastria was sunk by German aircraft
near Saint-Nazaire, France, causing thousands of fatalities in Britain's
worst maritime disaster.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Lancastria>
1952:
Guatemalan Revolution: The Guatemalan Congress passed
Decree 900, redistributing unused land greater than 224 acres
(0.91 km2) in area to local peasants.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_900>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
gastrodiplomacy:
A type of cultural diplomacy where relations between representatives of
different cultures are improved by the means of gastronomy and the
promotion of national cuisines.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gastrodiplomacy>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The politicians' stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes
averted from the reality of war — to make us imagine heroic young men
marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and bringing peace and
democracy to the world. But war is something quite different from that.
It is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're even
fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. It is your
brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people — and to hate
people who are just like themselves and who don't want to kill anyone
either. It is your children seeing their buddies' limbs blown off their
bodies. It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before
their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the ones
they love. It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for
decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as your
career means to you. It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on
other Americans and on people in other countries — taxes that remain
long after the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the
jailing of people who criticize the government. It is the imposition of
slavery by forcing young men to serve in the military. It is goading
the public to hate foreign people and races — whether Arabs or
Japanese or Cubans or Serbs. It is numbing our sensibilities to
cruelties inflicted on foreigners. It is cheering at the news of enemy
pilots killed in their planes, of young men blown to bits while trapped
inside tanks, of sailors drowned at sea. Other tragedies inevitably
trail in the wake of war. Politicians lie even more than usual.
Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule rather than the exception. The
press becomes even less reliable. War is genocide, torture, cruelty,
propaganda, and slavery. War is the worst cruelty government can
inflict upon its subjects. It makes every other political crime —
corruption, bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty — seem
petty.
--Harry Browne
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Harry_Browne>