PRIZE WINNERS AND THE SOVIETS

Carol Reed (right) with Orson Wells
on the Third Man set.

There are two birthdays to celebrate today 30^th December. On this day in 1865 Rudyard Kipling was born, and on this day in 1906 Carol Reed was born. Kipling won a Nobel Prize and Carol Reed, although nominated for an Oscar in 1951 for The Third Man (1949), was awarded the Oscar for Best Picture in 1969 for Oliver (1968). Musicals seem to be in the news again and we have had a biography of Lionel Bart, composer of Oliver, being read on Radio 4.

In addition another alliance was signed on the 30^th December 1922. On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were confirmed by the 1^st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations, Mikhail Kalinin, Mikha Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petyrovsky, and Aleksandr Chervyakov, on 30 December 1922.

Kalinin

Frunze

Petrovsky

Chervyakov

In the late 1980s, the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the state with his policies of perestroika and glasnost, but the Soviet Union collapsed and was formally dissolved in December 1991 after the abortive August coup attempt.  The Russian Federation assumed its rights and obligations.