Nobel Peace Prize Laureates
Recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize since its creation in 1901
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- Bertha von Suttner was born on 9 June 1843 in Prague, Bohemia, Austrian Empire [now Czech Republic]. She was a writer, known for Die Waffen nieder! (2014) and Down with Weapons (1914). She was married to Arthur Gundaccar von Suttner. She died on 21 June 1914 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria].
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Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 - January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or his initials T. R., was an American politician, statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously served as the 25th vice president under William McKinley from March to September 1901, and as the 33rd governor of New York from 1899 to 1900. Having assumed the presidency after McKinley's assassination, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.- Elihu Root was born on 15 February 1845 in Clinton, New York, USA. He was married to Clara Frances Wales. He died on 7 February 1937 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Thomas Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, Wilson changed the nation's economic policies and led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.
- Hjalmar Branting was born on 23 November 1860 in Klara, Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden. He died on 24 February 1925 in Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden.
- Fridtjof Nansen was born on 10 October 1861 in Store-Frøen, Norway. He was married to Sigrun Munthe and Eva Sars. He died on 13 May 1930 in Lysaker, Norway.
- Charles Dawes was born on 27 August 1865 in Marietta, Ohio, USA. He was married to Caro D. Blymver. He died on 23 April 1951 in Evanston, Illinois, USA.
- Aristide Briand was born on 28 March 1862 in Nantes, France. He died on 7 March 1932 in Paris, France.
- Gustav Stresemann was born on 10 May 1878 in Berlin, Germany. He was married to Käte Kleefeld. He died on 3 October 1929 in Berlin, Germany.
- Frank B. Kellogg was born on 22 December 1856 in Potsdam, New York, USA. He died on 21 December 1937 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA.
- Jane Addams was born on 6 September 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, USA. She was a writer, known for Shoes (1916), Votes for Women (1912) and Mutual Weekly, No. 16 (1915). She died on 21 May 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Nicholas Murray Butler was born on 2 April 1862 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA. He was married to Kate La Montagne and Susanna Edwards Schuyler. He died on 7 December 1947 in New York City, New York, USA.
- Carl von Ossietzky attended middle school in Hamburg. In 1904 he stopped his school education before reaching secondary school. From 1907 to 1914 he worked as an assistant clerk at the Hamburg district court. In 1908 he became a member of the Democratic Association and the German Peace Society. From 1911 he worked as a freelancer for the magazine "The Free People". Two years later he married the Englishwoman Maud Lichfield-Wood. A daughter was born from this union. As early as 1914, Carl von Ossietzky had to pay for his journalistic love of truth. A contribution from that year brought him a lawsuit for insulting military justice, which was accompanied by a fine of 200 Reichsmarks.
Ossietzky did his military service between 1916 and 1918. He was an infantryman on the Western Front. His experiences at the Battle of Verdun were so powerful that he subsequently wrote against the romanticized arrogance and progression of the First World War. During the November Revolution in 1918 he worked for the Hamburg Workers' and Soldiers' Council. In the same year, Carl von Ossietzky left Hamburg and moved to Berlin. There he became general secretary of the German Peace Society. During this time his work entitled "The Approach of the New Reformation" was also published. It represents Ossietzky's only independent work. In it he advocated for a civil and democratic state consciousness in order to strengthen the Weimar Republic.
From 1920 onwards, Carl von Ossietzky worked for the social democratic "Volks-Zeitung". In the same year he founded the peace movement "No More War!" He also met the writer Kurt Tucholsky. From 1922 to 1924, Ossietzky was the editor in charge of the "Volks-Zeitung". After he founded the Republican Party with others, he became an editorial staff member of the left-liberal newspaper "Das Diary" and "Montag-Morgen". In 1927, von Ossietzky became editor-in-chief of the magazine "Die Weltbühne" and thus a colleague of Kurt Tucholsky. Through this medium he became one of the most important journalists in the Weimar Republic. His articles against rearmament resulted in several accusations.
His contributions were critical of party political events and the weakening of the constitution. In 1931, an article in the "Weltbühne" in which he reported on the secret rearmament of the Reichswehr earned him a spectacular court sentence of 18 months in prison for high treason. He owed his early release in December 1932 to a Christmas amnesty. When the National Socialists took power in Germany in 1933, Ossietzky decided to stay. He was arrested by the Gestapo at the Reichstag fire on February 28th of the same year. In March 1933 the "Weltbühne" was banned. Ossietzky went to the Sonnenburg concentration camp near Küstrin in April 1933. The following year he was transferred to the Papenburg concentration camp in Emsland.
In 1935 Carl von Ossietzky was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. Hitler forbade him to accept the Nobel Prize; This was associated with a ban on leaving the country. The award was presented to him in absentia. The award, however, brought the Nazi regime under pressure in the world public. The following year he became seriously ill with tuberculosis. The publicist was transferred to the police state hospital in Berlin.
Carl von Ossietzky died on May 4, 1938 in the Nordend Hospital in Berlin as a result of tuberculosis and torture by the Gestapo. - Cordell Hull was born on 2 October 1871 in Olympus, Tennessee, USA. He was married to Rose Frances Whitney. He died on 23 July 1955 in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
- Ralph Bunche was born on 7 April 1904 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was married to Ruth Harris. He died on 9 December 1971 in New York City, New York, USA.
- León Jouhaux was born on 1 July 1879 in Paris, France. He died on 29 April 1954 in Paris, France.
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Albert Schweitzer was born on January 14, 1875, in Kaysersberg, near Strasbourg, Elsass-Lothringen, Germany (now in Alsace, France). His father and both grandfathers were pastors and organists. His family had been devoted to education, religion and music for generations.
Schweitzer took music lessons from his grandfather, a church organist. He spoke German and French in his bilingual Alsace family, and later added English to his studies. From 1893-1899 he studied philosophy and theology at the University of Strasbourg, University of Berlin and the Sorbonne. In 1899 he completed a doctorate dissertation on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. From 1905-1912 he studied medicine in Strasbourg and Paris, and received his MD degree in tropical medicine and surgery in 1912.
From the age of 9 Schweitzer started regular performances of organ music in his father's church and continued his organ recitals until the age of 89. In 1905 he wrote a biography of Johann Sebastian Bach, in French, then he rewrote and updated the Bach book--in German--in 1908, the version considered definitive. Schweitzer also published a book on organ building and playing in 1906. He was involved in the restoration of many valuable historic organs worldwide, including construction of the organ at his hospital in Lambarene, where he played music for his patients. He was described as the doctor who returns health to ill people and music to old organs. Albert Schweitzer made notable organ recordings of Bach's music in the 1940s and 1950s. Schweitzer based his interpretation on his profound knowledge of personality, education, religious and social life of Bach.
In 1905 he began his medical studies at the University of Strasbourg, because he decided to go to Africa as a medical doctor rather than a pastor. His medical knowledge was in urgent need during an epidemic of sleeping sickness there. In 1913 he obtained his MD degree, but was turned down by the Paris Missionary Society because his very liberal views of Christ's teachings did not conform to the Society's orthodox beliefs. Schweitzer and his wife went to Lambarene, French Equatorial Africa (now Gabon), and started a hospital in a tent, gradually adding rooms for special cases of sleeping sickness, leprosy, paediatrics and surgery. After his release from French internment Schweitzer practiced medicine in Strasbourg from 1918-1923. In 1924 he returned to his hospital in Lambarene, which was to be restored after years of decay during his absence. There his medical practice included paediatrics, infectious diseases and epidemiology, as well as surgery and traumatology. His versatility in medicine helped to save many thousands of lives. Schweitzer donated his royalties from public performances and book publications to the hospital, which expanded to 500 beds by the 1950s. "Everyone must have his 'Lambarene'", said Schweitzer.
Schweitzer gained great reputation for writing "The Quest of the Historical Jesus" (1906). He was acclaimed for his two concise books on in 1905-1908. In 1917 Schweitzer and his wife were arrested by the French administration in Africa for being Germans, and sent to a French internment camp at the St. Remy mental institution. There Schweitzer was kept at the same room where Vincent Van Gogh lived before his suicide. The Schweitzers were prisoners of war until the end of the First World War in 1918. After his release Schweitzer gave a major speech about his "Reverence for Life" (1920). He spent six years in Europe and published "The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization" (1923) and "Civilization and Ethics" (1923), which he drafted during his captivity in St. Remy.
Schweitzer saved lives by his medical work, by writing and teaching and by advocating for peace and nuclear control. He admittedly followed the similar line as that of the Russian humanitarian and writer Lev Tolstoy. As the founder of a free public hospital, a writer and humanitarian, Schweitzer became the leading proponent of accessible medicine for all. He was also involved in the foundation of the Goethe Institute. From 1952 until his death Schweitzer worked against nuclear weapons together with Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. On December 10, 1953, Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He donated his prize money to build a leprosy clinic in Lambarene. In 1957 Schweitzer co-founded The Committee for a sane Nuclear Policy.
As it was told, many girls adored Schweitzer, but Helene Bresslau offered him thoughtful partnership and practicality instead of flattery. Schweitzer and Helen began their relationship in 1898, as students. In many hundreds of their letters they only once used the word "love". Schweitzer called his medical work "the religion of love, actually put into practice." The disapproval, conservatism and shallowness of many Christian friends and even his own father did not stop him from his career change to medicine in 1905. Only Helene Bresslau understood him. In 1912 Schweitzer married her before they went to Equatorial Africa. It was a passionate, profound joining of souls. She trained as a nurse and became his assistant in medical work, in writing and in international public service. Their daughter, Rhena, was born in 1919, she later became the lab analyst at her father's hospital in Africa. His cousin Anne-Marie Schweitzer was the mother of Jean-Paul Sartre, who called Schweitzer 'Uncle Al'.
Schweitzer was a multifaceted person, a true Renessance man. He was a doctor, a pastor, a teacher, a writer, a musician, a father and husband, an international lecturer and the leading proponent of peace, all at the same time. He admired all people as brothers and sisters. His openness and helpfulness to strangers was disarming and ennobling. He was learning from simple people through his entire life, being himself patient, modest and humble. "Why are you traveling in the 4th class?" some official asked him - "Because there is no 5th class", answered Schweitzer.
His humor was legendary. His look resembled that of his friend Albert Einstein. Once on a train he was asked by two schoolgirls, "Dr. Einstein, will you give us your autograph?" He did not want to disappoint them, so he signed their autograph book: "Albert Einstein, by his friend Albert Schweitzer."
He died on September 4, 1965, in the hospital, which he founded in 1913, and was laid to rest in the ground of his hospital in Lambarene, Gabon.- George Catlett Marshall Jr. GCB (December 31, 1880 - October 16, 1959) was an American army officer and statesman. He rose through the United States Army to become Chief of Staff of the US Army under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, then served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under Truman. Winston Churchill lauded Marshall as the "organizer of victory" for his leadership of the Allied victory in World War II. After the war, he spent a frustrating year trying and failing to avoid the impending Chinese Civil War. As Secretary of State, Marshall advocated a U.S. economic and political commitment to post-war European recovery, including the Marshall Plan that bore his name. In recognition of this work, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
- Born in Newtonbrook, Ontario, Lester Bowles Pearson was the son of Annie Sarah Bowles and Edwin Arthur Pearson. Throughout World War I, Pearson volunteered for service and entered in it. He survived an aeroplane crash and Pearson went by the code name, "Mike".
After World War I, Pearson returned back to school and received his Bachelor of Arts in Toronto in 1919. In 1925, Pearson married Maryon Moody, who was from Winnipeg. Together, they had two children, Geoffrey and Patricia. In 1929, with the Stock Market Crash and Mackenzie King's defeat, Pearson entered his diplomatic career. During World War II, he served in the United Kingdom. After the war, Pearson served as the second Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations.
In 1957, Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Suez Canal Crisis. The following year, he became leader of the Liberal Party, after Louis St. Laurent retired. In 1963, Pearson defeated John Diefenbaker in the 1963 election. Pearson remained Prime Minister until April 20, 1968, when Pierre Trudeau defeated him.
Pearson remained active until he died from cancer on December 27, 1972. He was 75 years old. - Dag Hammarskjöld was born on 29 July 1905 in Jönköping, Jönköpings län, Sweden. He died on 18 September 1961 in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia [now Zambia].
- Linus Pauling was born on 28 February 1901 in Portland, Oregon, USA. He was married to Ava Helen Miller. He died on 19 August 1994 in Big Sur, California, USA.
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Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He was the son of Alberta Christine (Williams), a schoolteacher, and Martin Luther King Sr. a pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. For Martin the civil rights movement began one summer in 1935 when he was six years old. Two of his friends did not show up to play ball with him and Martin decided to go looking for them. When he went to one of the boys' house, their mother met him at the front door and told him in a rude tone that her son would not be coming out to play with him that day or any other day because they were white and he was black. Years later, Martin admitted that those cruel words altered the direction of his life. As a teenager, Martin went through school with great distinction. He skipped ninth and 12th grades, and excelled on the violin and as as a public speaker. One evening after taking top prize in a debate tournament, he and his teacher were riding home on the bus discussing the event when the driver ordered them to give up their seats for two white passengers who had just boarded. Martin was infuriated as he recalled, "I intended to stay right in my seat and protest," but his teacher convinced him to obey the law and they stood for the remainder of the 90-mile trip. "That night will never leave my memory as long as I live. It was the angriest I had ever been in my life. Never before, or afterward, can I remember myself being so angry," he later recalled.
Martin entered Morehouse College, his father's alma mater, when he was 15 with the intention of becoming a doctor or lawyer. After graduating from Morehouse at the age of 19, he decided to enter Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. This private nondenominational college had only 100 students at the time, and Martin was one of six black students. This was the first time that he had lived in a community that was mostly white. He won the highest class ranking and a $1,200 fellowship for graduate school. In 1951 he entered Boston University School of Theology to to pursue his Ph.D. While at Crozer Martin had attended a lecture by Howard University President Mordecai Johnson, who spoke about Mohandas K. Gandhi, India's spiritual leader whose nonviolent protests helped to free his country from British rule, and that gave Martin the basis for positive change. It was here that he met and married his wife Coretta Scott King, who was a soprano studying at the New England Conservatory of Music. In 1954 Martin accepted a call to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, to be its pastor. Despite Coretta's warning that it would not be safe for them in Alabama, the poorest and most racist state in the US, Martin insisted that they move there. Many local black ministers attended Martin's first sermon at the church, among them the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, who congratulated him on his speech. The two became fast friends and often discussed life in general and the challenges of desegregation in particular. Then an incident changed Martin's life forever.
On the cold winter night of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old black seamstress who worked in a downtown Montgomery department store, boarded a bus for home and sat in the back with the other black passengers. A few stops later, she was ordered to give up her seat to a white passenger who just boarded. She repeatedly refused, prompting the driver to call the police, who arrested her. In response to Mrs. Parks' courage, the town's black leaders formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected Martin as its leader. The first goal of the MIA was to boycott the city's bus system until public transportation laws were changed. The strike was long, bitter and violent, but eventually the city's white merchants began to complain that their businesses were suffering because of the strike, and the city responded by filing charges against Martin. While in court to appeal the charges, he learned that the U.S. Supreme Court had affirmed the decision by the Alabama Supreme Court that the local laws requiring segregation on buses were unconstitutional. The first civil rights battle was won, but for Martin it was the first of many more difficult ones. On November 29, 1959, he offered his resignation to the members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as several months earlier he had been elected leader of a new organization called the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He moved his family to Atlanta and began to establish a regional network of nonviolent organizations.
In April 1961 he coordinated the SCLC and other civil-rights organizations to take two busloads of white and black passengers through the South on a "freedom ride" for publicity reasons. In Virgina and North and South Carolina there were no incidents, but in Anniston, Alabama, the ride became a rolling horror when one bus was burned and its passengers beaten by an angry racist white mob. In Birmingham, angry mobs--with some policemen joining them--greeted the bus with more violence, which was broken up when state police intervened and stopped the chaos. The violence shook Martin and he decided to abandon the freedom rides before someone was killed, but the riders insisted they complete the ride to Montgomery, where they where greeted with more violence. In January 1963 Martin arrived in Birmingham with Ralph Abernathy to organize a freedom march aimed to end segregation. Despite an injunction issued by city authorities against the gathering, the protesters marched and were attacked by the police. Three months later another march was planned with the intent to "turn the other cheek" in response to the violence by the city's police force. As the marchers reached downtown Birmgingham, the police attacked the crowd with high-pressure fire hoses and attack dogs. This time, however, the incident was witnessed across the entire country, as many network TV crews were there and broadcasting live footage of unarmed marchers being blasted to the ground by high-pressure hoses and others being bitten and mauled by snarling attack dogs, and it sparked a national outrage.
The next day, more marchers repeated the walk and more policemen attacked with fire hoses and police dogs, leading to a total of 1,200 arrests. On the third day, Martin organized another march to the city jail. This time, when the marchers approached the police, none of them moved and some even let the marchers through to continue their march. The nonviolent strategy had worked--the strikes and boycotts were cutting deeply into the city merchants' revenues, and they called for negotiations and agreed with local black leaders to integrate lunch counters, fitting rooms, restrooms and drinking fountains within 90 days. Martin was then called for a rally in Washington, DC, near the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. Nearly 200,000 people stood in the intense heat listening to the speeches by the members and supporters of the NACCP. By the time Martin was called as the day's final speaker, the crowd was hot and tired. As he approached the podium, with his papers containing his prepared speech, he suddenly put them aside and decided to speak from the heart. He spoke of freedoms for blacks achieved and not yet achieved. He then spoke the words that echo throughout the world to this day: "I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.' I have that dream." By mid-October 1964 Martin had given 350 civil rights speeches and traveled 275,000 miles across the country and worked for 20 hours a day.
While in an Atlanta hospital after collapsing from exhaustion, his wife brought in his room a telegram notifying him that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 1, 1968, Martin traveled to Memphis, Tennessee to meet with two of his advisers, James Bevel and Jesse Jackson, to discuss organizing a march to Washington in support of a strike by Memphis' city's sanitation workers. In the late afternoon of April 4, he stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel where he was staying to speak with Andrew Young. As he saw Jackson and waved to him for a moment, a gunshot rang through the air and Martin Luther King Jr. was hit in the neck and fell dead from a sniper's bullet. He was dead, but the struggle that he started to continue to bring peace and end the racial conflict in the USA continues to this day.- Norman Borlaug was born on 25 March 1914 in Saude, Iowa, USA. He was married to Margaret Gibson. He died on 12 September 2009 in Dallas, Texas, USA.
- Willy Brandt was born on 18 December 1913 in Lübeck [now Schleswig-Holstein], Germany. He was married to Brigitte Seebacher, Rut Brandt and Carlota Thorkildsen. He died on 8 October 1992 in Unkel, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
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Heinz Alfred grew up in his hometown, where he attended school. When the persecution of the Jewish population in Germany intensified as a result of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in January 1933, he emigrated to the USA with his parents Paula Stern and Ludwig Kissinger in 1938. Kissinger attended high school in New York City. A little later he had to help support the family by working in a factory, which is why he switched to night school. In 1943 Kissinger received US citizenship. He then served in the Army until 1946, for which he was deployed in Germany. After the end of the war, Kissinger initially stayed in Europe, where he worked as a lecturer at the European Command Intelligence School in Oberammergau. In 1947, Kissinger returned to the United States to enroll at Harvard University. In 1952 he completed his master's degree there. Two years later he received his doctorate. phil.
From 1952 to 1969, Kissinger headed the summer university at his university called the Harvard International Seminar. Here he got to know many foreign authorities with whom he would later have to deal as a foreign policy expert. In 1957 he was appointed lecturer and in 1962 professor at Harvard, where he held a full teaching position until 1965. Kissinger's entry into a decidedly political activity dates back to the early 1960s. Under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, he served as an advisor to the National Security Council until 1962 and as an advisor on disarmament issues until 1967. In 1965 he was appointed as an advisor to the State Department, which had to deal with the situation in Vietnam. In the following two years, Kissinger visited Vietnam several times. In 1969, President Richard Nixon elevated the veteran foreign policy expert to head the National Security Council. In this position, which he held until 1975, Kissinger opposed the policy of reconciliation and rapprochement that Kennedy and Johnson had previously initiated towards the Soviet Union.
Nevertheless, as one of his first foreign policy successes, he contributed to the conclusion of the SALT negotiations with the USSR, which culminated in the signing of the treaty by Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. Kissinger also played a role in bringing about the agreement on the four-power status of West Berlin, which was reached on September 3, 1971 and contributed significantly to facilitating exchange and travel between both parts of the city. Kissinger also had a great influence on the secret diplomatic preparations that led to a rapprochement between the USA and the People's Republic of China under Nixon's presidency. When faced with the Vietnam problem, Kissinger sought to protect US interests with a policy of military strength, which brought him the most criticism. Nevertheless, he reached a ceasefire with Le Duc Tho in 1973, which earned both the Nobel Peace Prize and initiated the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. In 1973, Kissinger was promoted to Secretary of State under Nixon. After his resignation as a result of the Watergate affair, he was confirmed in this position for the entire term of office of the successor Gerald Rudolph Ford from 1974 to 1977.
As Foreign Minister, Kissinger tried to mediate between the Arab and Israeli sides, especially in the Middle East conflict, through intensive travel known as "shuttle diplomacy". This enabled him, among other things, In 1974 the conclusion of the troop disengagement agreement. After Kissinger left the ministerial office as a result of Ford's election defeat in 1977, he founded the consulting firm "Kissinger Associates, Inc." in 1982, which produces analyzes for governments and commercial companies worldwide. In 1987 Kissinger was awarded the International Charlemagne Prize of the city of Aachen. After the upheavals of 1989/90 in the former Eastern Bloc states, Kissinger campaigned for the maintenance of the transatlantic alliance systems between the USA and Europe, for the rapid reunification of Germany and the continuation of European unification. He continued to speak out through numerous publications. In 2001 his treatise "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" was published. In 2005 he received the Bavarian Order of Merit. In 2007, Kissinger was awarded the Baden-Württemberg Medal of Merit.
Henry Kissinger died on November 29, 2023 in Kent.- Duc Tho Le was born on 14 October 1911 in Nam Ha, Vietnam. He died on 13 October 1990 in Hanoi, Vietnam.
- Sean MacBride was born on 26 January 1904 in Paris, France. He died on 15 January 1988 in Dublin, Ireland.
- Andrey Dmitrievich Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921, in Moscow. His father, named Dmitri Ivanovich Sakharov, was a distinguished scientist, a writer of science, and a pedagogy. He also had a hobby of playing piano for silent films and at home. His mother, named Ekaterina Alekseevna was the daughter of a distinguished General, Aleksey Sophiano, who was a Greek-Russian aristocrat in Moscow. Young Andrey Sakharov was a voracious reader. He graduated from high school with excellence. From 1938, Sakharov studied physics at Moscow State University. He graduated 'cum laude' in 1942, while the university was evacuated in Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan during WWII. Sakharov made a number of inventions for the Soviet military industry during the Second World War. He earned his Ph. D. in 1947 and was included in the top-secret Soviet thermonuclear research group under Igor Tamm. In 1949-50 Sakharov became the co-inventor of the controlled hydrogen reaction. Today he is known as "the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb." He was secretly awarded the State Prize by Joseph Stalin, who had a personal meeting with Sakharov and Lavrenti Beria, the chief of NKVD/KGB. After giving the hydrogen bomb to Joseph Stalin Sakharov himself went through a dramatic moral transformation. He wrote in his 'Memoirs' that from 1952-1961 he grew to realization that his invention is extremely harmful in the hands of politicians, and it caused him a serious moral pain. Sakharov rose to become a staunch opponent of the nuclear tests and made a political statement in 1961, causing anger from Nikita Khrushchev. During the Cuban missile crisis, Sakharov had a clear vision of the danger that his mighty invention may cause in the hands of undereducated career politicians, who exterminated millions of their own people. Sakharov raised his voice in 1966-1967 in defense of the political prisoners in the USSR; at a time when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was terrorized by the KGB. Sakharov's integrity took him on a complicated political journey. As a conscientious scientist he made sincere statements in confrontations with the undereducated Nikita Khrushchev. In spite of being awarded in 1953, 1956, and 1962; as 'The Hero of Socialist Labor' Sakharov still ignored all the materialistic bribes from the Soviet government. A free thinker, Sakharov took the stand against the overpowering system he once used to be a part of. In 1968 he published his essay on 'Peaceful Co-existence and Intellectual Freedom', and was immediately cut off from the privileged food supplies; which he was entitled to as a top scientist. In 1969 he donated all his life savings to the Red Cross in Moscow. In 1970 he co-founded the Committee for Human Rights. In 1972, he married Yelena Bonner, also a co-founder. Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace (1975), but was not allowed to go to Norway to accept it. In 1979 he opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghahistan. He also joined the boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games in 1980. Sakharov wrote an open letter to Leonid Brezhnev, declaring that "Wars must stop during the Olympics. According to the tradition, the Soviet Union must remove the troops out of Afghanistan. Olympics cannot be in the country, which is at war." Soviet government retaliated immediately by canceling all his state awards, honors, and privileges. The totalitarian regime tried to break him by making his life miserable in exile at the sealed and controlled city of Gorky (now Nizhni Novgorod) from 1980-1986. There Sakharov lived in a small flat on the ground floor of a building, filled with his KGB opponents, who performed 24/7 surveillance of his life. Sakharov's case illustrated how Soviet dictatorship focused on victimization of the best, in order to control the rest. In December of 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev personally contacted Sakharov in his exile. Gorbachev ordered that the KGB should release Sakharov and return him to Moscow. Back in Moscow Sakharov continued his work as a humanitarian. A few months before his death, he was elected as a representative of the Academy of Sciences to the Supreme Soviet in 1989. Sakharov died of a heart failure on December 14, 1989, in Moscow, and was laid to rest at the Vostryakovskoe Cemetery in Moscow. Sakharov showed to the World what an independent thinker can do by going to the extremes of science. He invented a bomb that could bring the most horrible extermination of life, and then took a stand to ban his own invention for the salvation of planet Earth. This was regardless of the constant danger from the most powerful dictatorship on the planet.
- Betty Williams was born on 22 May 1943 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. She was married to James T. Perkins, James T Perkins, Ralph Williams and Ralph Williams. She died on 17 March 2020 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
- Mairead Corrigan was born on 27 January 1944 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
- Anwar Sadat was born on 25 December 1918 in Mit Abu al-Kum, Al-Minufiyah, Egypt. He was married to Jehan Sadat and Ehsan Madi. He died on 6 October 1981 in Cairo, Egypt.
- Menachem Begin was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. Before the creation of the state of Israel, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944, against the British mandatory government, which was opposed by the Jewish Agency. As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine. Later, the Irgun fought the Arabs during the 1947-48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine and its chief Begin was also noted as "leader of the notorious terrorist organization" by the British government and banned from entering the United Kingdom.
- Mother Teresa also known as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun who in 1950 founded and was an active member of the Missionaries of Charity. Although her passport name was Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, she was born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu (Skopje, capital of North Macedonia. After living in Skopje for eighteen years, she moved to Ireland and then to India, where she lived for most of her life.
- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel was born in 1931 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Alva Myrdal was born on 31 January 1902 in Uppsala, Sweden. She was married to Gunnar Myrdal. She died on 1 February 1986 in Danderyd, Sweden.
- Lech Walesa is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the President of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Walesa became the first democratically elected President of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish President elected in popular vote. A shipyard electrician by trade, Walesa became the leader of the Solidarity movement, and led a successful pro-democratic effort which in 1989 ended the Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
- Desmond Tutu was born on 7 October 1931 in Klerksdorp, Union of South Africa [now South Africa]. He was an actor, known for Our Story Our Voice (2007), 24 Peaces and Jock the Hero Dog (2011). He was married to Nomalizo Leah Shenxane. He died on 26 December 2021 in Cape Town, South Africa.
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Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928 in the Kingdom of Romania and emigrated after WWII to the United States. Wiesel is famous as a writer and human rights activist. He is a survivor of the Holocaust and his books often deal with this subject. In 1985 Wiesel was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor that the U.S. Congress can bestow. In 1986, he won the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize for his tireless campaigning for human rights. In addition to being a witness to the Shoah and a public supporter of the state of Israel, Wiesel's human rights activism included the Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's Desaparecidos, Cambodian refugees, the victims of war in former Yugoslavia and the cause of the Kurds. Wiesel opposed apartheid in South Africa, denounced genocide in Bosnia and called for an international intervention in Darfur, Sudan. Wiesel is the 'Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities' at Boston University. Now almost 80 years old, Elie Wiesel continues to teach, writer and give public speeches.- Óscar Arias was born on 13 September 1941 in Heredia, Costa Rica.
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His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama (born Lhamo Döndrub, also known by his religious name, Tenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso), is Tibet's head of state as well as the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people. He was recognized at age 2 as the reincarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In November 1950, His Holiness assumed full power of Tibet. He completed his Doctorate of Buddhist Philosophy in 1959, the same year that China attacked Tibet; after which he escaped to Dharamsala, India, where he has since led the Tibetan government in exile. On December 10th, 1989, His Holiness accepted the Nobel Peace Prize "on behalf of the oppressed everywhere and all those who struggle for freedom and work for world peace and the people of Tibet." In his acceptance statement, he declared, "This prize reaffirms our conviction that with truth, courage, and determination as our weapons, Tibet will be liberated. Our struggle must remain nonviolent and free of hatred."- Actor
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Mikhail Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Communist Party. He initiated the changes known as "perestroika" and "glasnost".
He was born Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev into a peasant family on March 2, 1931, in the village of Privolnoe, Stavropol province, Southern Russia. His father, named Sergei Gorbachev, was a tractor driver. His mother, named Maria Panteleyeva, was a peasant. His grandparents were deported and sentenced for nine years under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, for their success in becoming richer independent farmers known as kulaks. Young Gorbachev witnessed the destruction of traditional farming and degradation of villages, that caused massive exodus of people from their land and to gloomy industrial Soviet cities, where they were doomed to become brainwashed by propaganda and live in small flats under restricting political and economic conditions for the rest of their lives. During the Second World War Gorbachev survived the Nazi occupation of his land in Stavropol province in 1942-1943. After the war, Gorbachev chose to remain on his land, although it was now taken by the Communist Government, the ranks of which he would penetrate later. Gorbachev privately described his life and work on a Soviet collective farm as serfdom.
In 1947 Gorbachev shot to fame at the age of 16, after helping his father, a combine harvester operator, to harvest a record crop on a collective farm. For this achievement he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour and was promoted to the Communist Party at the age of 21. From 1950 - 1955 he studied law on a State scholarship at Moscow State University. There he met his future wife, Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva (nee Titarenko), they married in September 1953, and their daughter, Irina, was born in January 1957. After a brief stint as a Government Lawyer in Stavropol, Gorbachev made a career as a ranking leader of Komsomol (Union of Young Communists), then as a Communist Party leader of Stavropol province, climbing to the ranks as Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At that time Gorbachev made his first travels outside of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet leaders were manipulating their own people into submission through fear and control, the West Europeans enjoyed freedom and prosperity that attracted East Germans and other Soviet satellites. Gorbachev learned his first lesson on his tour in East Germany, witnessing their rapid recovery after the Second World War. At the same time, in 1956, Yuri Andropov and Georgi Zhukov led the attack on Hungarian Revolution, and killed thousands of Hungarians who opposed the Soviet-imposed regime. Then Soviet leadership made more aggressive international actions by spreading military support to pro-communist regimes across the world and also by building the Berlin Wall and enforcing Soviet military and political domination in Eastern Europe. These Soviet actions alienated Europeans.
Open political discussions in the Soviet Union were not allowed under threat of prosecution, freedom of speech was never guaranteed, all media was owned and controlled by the Soviet government and independent activity was suppressed, and only some fragmented information was made available to ranking provincial communists, such as Gorbachev. In 1961 he attended the important 22nd Congress of the Communist Party in Moscow, where Nikita Khrushchev announced his Utopian plan to surpass the USA per capita income in 20 years. At the same 22nd Congress, upon Khrushchev's instruction, Gorbachev, among other top communists received a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's anti-Stalin publication "One day of Ivan Denisovich" which criticized the brutality of Gulag prison-camps and the Soviet regime in general. That gave Gorbachev and some other young communists a hope that Khrushchev may change the brutal Soviet regime. However, in 1964, Nikita Khrushchev was arrested and dismissed by pro-Stalin group led by Leonid Brezhnev who eventually established a remake of Stalinism for the next 18 years, albeit in a more grotesque and senile version of Soviet regime. Then Brezhnev's regime crushed the Prague Spring of 1968, fought the Chinese Army over a border dispute in 1969, sent Soviet Tanks and Air Force to Egypt and Syria against Israel in the 1970s, as well as in North Vietnam against the French and Americans. At that time Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa Maksimovna, were allowed to travel to the Western Europe and see the difference between reality in European countries and its distorted depiction by the Soviet propaganda. In 1972 he headed the Soviet official delegation to Belgium, then, in 1974 was made Member of the Supreme Soviet in charge of the Commission on Youth Affairs. During the 1970s Gorbachev enjoyed a highly privileged life of a ranking communist, having many perks such as a villa in a suburb of Moscow, a special limo with a chauffeur and guards, and regular luxurious vacations in Italy and in the South of France, all at the expense of the Communist Party. However, this allowed him to see the striking difference between the quality of life in the Western Europe and gloomy survival of masses in the Soviet Union.
Gorbachev witnessed that people were living hopeless lives having no choice. Workers of collective farms lived without identification documents up until the 1970s. Undocumented citizens at collective farms were disposable. Migrants were used as industrial slaves, for symbolic pay. Wages were set by the state and did not depend on productivity or quality. The economy was governed by the state 5-year plan. This mostly ignored the world and domestic market signals; and lacked the incentives for innovation and efficiency. Teachers were forced to indoctrinate children of all ages from kindergartens through schools and universities. Total control and manipulation was demonstrated twice a year at annual May Day parades and Great Revolution parades on November 7. Military parades were accompanied by marching masses of industrial workers and managers, doctors and scientists, as well as teachers and students from all schools and universities. Exemplary obedient people were rewarded with better food and perks. Taming millions to obedience by fear and hunger led to a massive degradation of human rights, poor spirituality, lack of initiative and creativity, and the decay of public health and vitality. The country of almost three hundred million people was stuck in stagnation, inefficiency, and apathy. Brighter students were taken into the military-industrial system, brainwashed and locked there for life with little choices. Opponents were locked in the "Gulag" prison-camps, mostly in Siberia. There, millions were working various hard labor jobs in grand-scale economic projects; like the Baikal-Amur railroad (BAM). Since the Communist Revolution of 1917, people had been continually stripped of their land and property. Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev the destruction of independent farming was finalized. By the 1960s and 1970s massive poverty and anxiety pushed millions to migrate to cities. Mass-construction of cheap panel buildings was lagging behind. Millions of families shared poor housing, hostels, and dorms in cities. Villages were deserted. Collective farms decayed. Agricultural output fell below the levels of the Tsar's age. Tens of thousands of churches and monasteries were destroyed across the Soviet Union, and many churches were replaced by offices and halls of the Communist party. Spiritual life was dominated by ugly propaganda. People were blinded by fear and pushed to wrong values. Meaningful human virtues were replaced with fake ideals of ruthless Soviet communism. Propaganda idolized members of the Soviet Politburo, their portraits were decorating every school and factory along with countless portraits and statues of the first Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
In November 1979 Gorbachev was promoted Candidate Member of the Politburo, then less than a year later, he was made Full Member of Politbureau, the highest rank in the Communist Party which gave him unlimited direct access to Brezhnev and Andropov. The latter also promoted Gorbachev to sub for him at several Politburo meetings, and gave him a huge power in decision-making. Gorbachev developed a personal friendship with another Politburo member, Eduard Shevardnadze, and the two were vacationing together at the prestigious Black sea resort of Pitsunda. At that time the invasion of Afghanistan, ordered by senile Brezhnev in 1979, seriously undermined international credibility of the Soviet Union. Andrei Sakharov wrote an open letter to Brezhnev calling for a stop to the war. 50 nations boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Crackdown on intellectual freedom and human rights included the use of psychiatric terror, arrests, and the exile of dissidents. The head of the KGB Yuri Andropov declared Andrei Sakharov the "enemy No. 1." Sakharov was forcefully exiled from Moscow to the militarized 'closed' city of Gorky. He was placed under tight surveillance and restricted from any contacts. His wife was also under tight surveillance. By his 70th birthday Brezhnev's health declined dramatically; but he made himself a Generalissimus Marshal of the Soviet Union, similar to that of Joseph Stalin. Brezhnev accepted over 200 decorations and awards, including awards from all pro-Soviet governments, except China. Brezhnev accepted countless expensive gifts and amassed a collection of vintage cars and other bribes. His personal vanity and behavior was replicated at all levels of the Communist Party and led to massive corruption. The old Brezhnev lost his acting abilities and couldn't even read the script. Massive disillusionment was reflected in cynical jokes about the Soviet life. The ugly reality in the Soviet Union was reflected in its senile leader. Gorbachev saw that outdated economic and political system in the Soviet Union was doomed, but propaganda was still brainwashing the minds of millions, because it was controlled by the privileged few top communists who lived in denial of the big reality.
The youngest Politburo Member, Mikhail Gorbachev, was contemplating reforms. Leonid Brezhnev died on November 10, 1982, and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov who died just 16 months later. He was replaced by Konstantin Chernenko, who died in just 13 months. In 1983 Politbureau member Rashidov committed suicide, then, in 1984 the powerful Defence Minister Ustinov died. While the Soviet Union was in a dying mode, the real world was rapidly growing into computer age that reshaped global community. The rigid Soviet System was incompatible with the constantly innovating world. USSR failed to respond to rapidly changing reality and alienated forward-thinking people even in the pro-Soviet countries. During the early 1980s Soviet Politbureau was torn between two viciously fighting groups of Communists, one was made of the old hard-liners led by Andrei Gromyko, the apprentice of Joseph Stalin. The other, pro-democracy group, was made of the forward-thinking members of the Politbureau who chose Gorbachev as their leader along with Aleksandr Yakovlev who was the brain behind Gorbachev's moves. With Gorbachev's support Yakovlev managed to change all hard-liners in the Soviet media and propaganda system. In March 1985 Gorbachev was made the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, becoming the first Soviet leader to have been born after the disastrous Russian Revolution of 1917. He announced reforms called 'perestroika' (aka.. restructuring) and 'glasnost' (aka.. opening up), and lifted the walls of propaganda and denial. However, Gorbachev's first reform on regulations related to manufacturing and trade of alcohol became an economic disaster, causing a serious economic damage to the Soviet Union's State budget with annual losses exceeding tens of billions of dollars. Although his reforms were supported by public, many communist hard-liners openly opposed Gorbachev. Eventually, by the late 1980s Gorbachev's push for economic liberalization resulted in emergence of co-operatives and other forms of independent businesses, making the movement to freedom irreversible.
In December of 1986, Gorbachev personally contacted Andrei Sakharov in his exile. Gorbachev ordered that the KGB should release Sakharov and return him to Moscow. Back in Moscow Sakharov continued his work as a humanitarian. A few months before his death, he was elected as a representative of the Academy of Sciences to the Supreme Soviet in 1989. Sakharov showed to the World what an independent thinker can do by going to the extremes of science. He invented a bomb that could bring the most horrible extermination of life, and then took a stand to ban his own invention for the salvation of planet Earth. Gorbachev had important meetings with Ronald Reagan culminating in their summit in Reikjavik, Iceland, and leading to a more stable political and military situation in the world, that resulted in reunification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. At that time the Soviet hard-liners criticized Gorbachev's international moves, saying that he was not a leader, but rather a follower of Ronald Reagan's instruction: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall" when the state of world affairs did not allow Gorbachev to disobey without a risk of losing his face. He also followed recommendations by Margaret Thatcher on opening the "Iron Curtain" to allow the Russian people to see the world and learn about the diverse international reality and travel freely on their own. A first, Gorbachev skillfully used hidden buttons within the rigid structure of the Soviet power tainted by the long tradition of obedience, fear and intimidation, which was installed by dictator Joseph Stalin within the ranks of Communist bureaucracy. That fear of the man in Kremlin served Gorbachev's plans well, as he managed to overcome the resistance of hard liners in ending the ruling powers of the Communist Party. Soon Gorbachev began giving away many power buttons in Moscow, which allowed his rivals to gain strength and independently form opposition groups. Andrei Gromyko, the last living member of Joseph Stalin's old Politbureau, had criticized Gorbachev's methods as "weak leadership" and also said "He (Gorbachev) is unfit for the Hat" (where the Hat means Kremlin, or an allusion to the Tsar's crown of power). Such criticism was ignored by most of the younger members of the Communist Politbureau and Central Committee, because weak central leadership allowed provincial bosses to privatize state property at a fraction of its real value.
Gorbachev replaced his hard-line critic Andrei Gromyko with Eduard Shevardnadze as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, and both Gorbachev and Shevardnadze pushed for international détente and withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan. In another effort to add weight to his gradually eroding power, in March of 1990 Gorbachev updated his official title by adding a newly created post as President of the Soviet Union, albeit he was not really a democratically elected president. He surrounded himself with the political council of 15 top politicians, but he was lacking the grass-roots connections with masses and mid-level bureaucracy across the country. At that time Gorbachev began to experience powerlessness in his efforts to change the gigantic Soviet system, he was known for expressing his powerlessness by using profanities and anger at his meetings with the ranks of Soviet Government and industrial leaders. Gorbachev was facing an impossible task of modernizing the brittle structure of the Soviet Communism, especially the massive and inefficient Soviet military-industrial complex where opposition to reforms was the most organized, and inefficiency was dissembled as a military secret, like a catch-22, thus making it unreformable. Gorbachev himself was still perceived as the Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party, and that stigma became the weakest part of his image in the eyes of many open-minded and quickly learning people in the Soviet Union. His effort to gain political weight by adding a figure of Vice-President of the Soviet Union had failed and soon backfired. Gorbachev's fatal mistake was letting the Members of Politbureau to chose the Vice-President of the Soviet Union behind closed doors in Kremlin; the "chosen" one was a career communist Gennadi Yanayev who would very soon betray Gorbachev during the coup.
Eventually Gorbachev became overshadowed by a much stronger figure of Boris Yeltsin, who gained more popular support by pushing further economic and political reforms, and also criticized Gorbachev's manner of restructuring of the Soviet system as slow, indecisive and inefficient. The rivalry between two former Communist comrades ended in the August 1991 coup, when still powerful KGB and Soviet Army leaders tried to take the power away from both Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Their coup failed just a couple days later, after the entire country watched Gennady Yanayev and his coup members on TV. "Let me say that Mikhail Gorbachev is now on vacation. He is undergoing treatment, himself, in our country. He is very tired after all these years and he will need time to get better." said Gennadi Yanayev before the cameras, and his hands were visibly trembling from fear. Gorbachev's disappearance during the coup was also seen as his grave weakness. Boris Yeltsin disposed his Communist ID card in front of the cameras and publicly denounced Gorbachev. Then all ranks of communists deserted the Communist Party in a massive exodus, and that was the end of the Soviet Union. All regional leaders were anxious to rule as presidents of their own independent states, and Yeltsin was already elected the president of Russia, the biggest part of the Soviet Union. Yeltsin met with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus and they made a treaty as independent states. By the end of December 1991 the Soviet Union became obsolete and Gorbachev retired after a formal signing of dissolution of the USSR.
Mikhail Gorbachev is still regarded in the Western world for his input in ending the Cold War and helping the reunification of Germany. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1990) and received numerous international awards, decorations and privileges, such as the Honorary German Citizenship. However, in Russia Gorbachev's political standing failed to gain any substantial public support. He received less than 1% of popular vote in the 1996 presidential elections in Russia, when his former rival Boris Yeltsin was elected for his second presidential term. In 2001 Gorbachev founded the Social Democratic Party of Russia, but later, in 2003, he had resigned from the party leadership and stayed away from most of the current Russian political forces and media. In contrast to Gorbachev's popularity all over the world, he fell in obscurity in Russia, largely because in the new era of the wild Russian capitalism his outdated views and experience became obsolete. Instead he turned to business of giving lecture tours and speeches internationally and selling photo-ops with him for money that goes to humanitarian causes; he also sold his name and image to commercials such as the Pizza Hut and other businesses. He has been running the business of the Gorbachev Foundation, which handles his international appearances, while keeping a low profile in the current political life of Russia. In 2005 he was awarded the Point Alpha Prize for his role in re-unification of Germany. In 2006 Gorbachev underwent a carotid artery surgery in Munich, Germany.- Additional Crew
Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945 in Rangoon, Burma. She is known for Beyond Rangoon (1995), Burma: A Human Tragedy (2011) and They Call It Myanmar: Lifting the Curtain (2012). She was previously married to Michael Aris.- Rigoberta Menchú was born on 9 January 1959 in San Miguel de Uspantan, Guatemala.
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Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (July 18, 1918 - December 5, 2013) was the former leader of the African National Congress (ANC). He was known for his lifelong struggle against apartheid (enforced racial separation), which was instituted in South Africa in 1948. The ANC was soon declared a terrorist organization and banned by the South African government. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and imprisoned for life on "terrorist" charges, but in 1990, he was freed by South African president F.W. de Klerk. In 1994, Mandela was elected president of South Africa.
Two biographical films were made and Mandela and de Klerk (1997) focused on Mandela's life's struggles.- F.W. de Klerk was born on 18 March 1936 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was married to Elita Georgiades and Marike de Klerk. He died on 11 November 2021 in Cape Town, South Africa.
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Yasir Arafat was born Muhammad 'Abd Ar-Ra'uf Al-Qudwah Al-Husayni on August 24, 1929 in Cairo, Egypt, to a Palestinian father and an Egyptian mother. He was raised in Cairo but always considered himself Palestinian. In the late 1940s, while a student in Egypt, he became an ardent Arab nationalist and adopted the name Yasir, after Yasir al Birah, a famous Arab resistance leader. When Arafat as 14, he was involved in gunrunning for Arab guerrillas in Gaza, a task he continued to perform during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. After the war, Arafat entered the University of Cairo, earning a degree in engineering in 1955.
During his student days, he began to train secretly as a guerrilla, becoming an expert in demolitions and taking part in raids on British installations near the Suez Canal. After his graduation from the university, Arafat was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Egyptian army. He saw some combat at Port Said and Abu Kabir during the Suez war of October 29-November 6, 1956. In the mid-1960s, Arafat emerged as the chief military and political leader of the Palestinian homeland movement. From his residence in Kuwait where he ran a successful engineering concern, he published the major nationalist organ, Our Palestine, and established Al Fatah, an acronym for the Movement for the Liberation of Palestine.
In 1967, after the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War, he became the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) where throughout the 1970s he directed the PLO in a series of terrorist attacks against Israel and its Western allies. In an effort to garner broader support for his movement in the 1980s he began to distance himself from the PLO's more violent factions like the Abu Nidal group, but has not firmly renounced terrorism as a means of achieving his goals to create a Palestinian state within Israel. He had residences in Gaza and Tunis, where the PLO has its headquarters. He died after a short illness in November 2004, aged 75.- Cinematographer
Yitzhak Rabin was an Israeli politician, statesman and general. He was the fifth Prime Minister of Israel, serving two terms in office, 1974-77, and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995.
Rabin was born in Jerusalem to Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe and was raised in a Labor Zionist household. He learned agriculture in school and excelled as a student. He led a 27-year career as a soldier and ultimately attained the rank of Rav Aluf. As a teenager he joined the Palmach, the commando force of the Yishuv. He eventually rose through its ranks to become its chief of operations during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He joined the newly formed Israel Defense Forces in late 1948 and continued to rise as a promising officer. He helped shape the training doctrine of the IDF in the early 1950s, and led the IDF's Operations Directorate from 1959 to 1963. He was appointed Chief of the General Staff in 1964 and oversaw Israel's victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Rabin served as Israel's ambassador to the United States from 1968 to 1973, during a period of deepening U.S.-Israel ties. He was appointed Prime Minister of Israel in 1974 after the resignation of Golda Meir. In his first term, Rabin signed the Sinai Interim Agreement and ordered the Entebbe raid. He resigned in 1977 in the wake of a financial scandal. Rabin was Israel's minister of defense for much of the 1980s, including during the outbreak of the First Intifada.
In 1992, Rabin was re-elected as prime minister on a platform embracing the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He signed several historic agreements with the Palestinian leadership as part of the Oslo Accords. In 1994, Rabin won the Nobel Peace Prize together with long-time political rival Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Rabin also signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994. In November 1995, he was assassinated by an extremist named Yigal Amir, who opposed the terms of the Oslo Accords. Amir was convicted of Rabin's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Rabin was the first native-born prime minister of Israel and was the only prime minister to be assassinated and the second to die in office after Levi Eshkol. Rabin has become a symbol of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.- Shimon Peres was born on 2 August 1923 in Wiszniewo, Poland [now Vishnyeva, Belarus]. He was married to Sonya Gelman. He died on 28 September 2016 in Ramat Gan, Israel.
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Joseph Rotblat was born on 4 November 1908 in Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire [now Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland]. He is known for Oppenheimer (1980), Threads (1984) and Play for Today (1970). He was married to Tola Gryn. He died on 31 August 2005 in Hampstead, London, England, UK.- C.F. Ximenes Belo was born on 3 February 1948 in Vila Salazar, Portuguese Timor [now Baucau, Timor-Leste].
- José Ramos Horta was born on 26 December 1949 in Dili, East Timor. He is known for Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), The Diplomat (2000) and Landline (1991).
- Jody Williams was born on 9 October 1950 in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA.
- John Hume was born on 18 January 1937 in Derry, Northern Ireland, UK. He was married to Pat Hone. He died on 3 August 2020 in Derry, Northern Ireland, UK.
- David Trimble was born on 15 October 1944 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK. He was married to Daphne Elizabeth Orr and Heather McComb. He died on 25 July 2022 in London, England, UK.
- Kim Dae-jung was born on 6 January 1924 in Hauido, Sinan, Jeollanam-do, Korea. He was married to Lee Hee-ho. He died on 18 August 2009 in Seoul, South Korea.
- Kofi Atta Annan was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.
Annan studied economics at Macalester College, international relations at the Graduate Institute Geneva, and management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization's Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. He was appointed secretary-general on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a second term in 2001, and was succeeded as secretary-general by Ban Ki-moon in 2007.
As secretary-general, Annan reformed the UN bureaucracy, worked to combat HIV/AIDS (especially in Africa), and launched the UN Global Compact. He was criticized for not expanding the Security Council and faced calls for his resignation after an investigation into the Oil-for-Food Programme, but was largely exonerated of personal corruption. After the end of his term as secretary-general, he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 to work on international development. In 2012, Annan was the UN-Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to the ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UN's lack of progress with regards to conflict resolution. In September 2016, Annan was appointed to lead a UN commission to investigate the Rohingya crisis. He died in 2018 and was given a state funeral. - Actor
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James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American former politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975 and as a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967. Since leaving office, Carter has remained engaged in political and social projects, receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.- Shirin Ebadi was born on 21 June 1947 in Tehran, Iran.
- Wangari Maathai was born on 1 April 1940 in Nyeri, Kenya. She was an actress, known for The Challenge for Africa (2009), The 11th Hour (2007) and Earth Keepers (2009). She was married to Mwangi Mathai. She died on 25 September 2011 in Nairobi, Kenya.
- Mohamed el Baradei was born on 17 June 1942 in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt [now Egypt].
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Muhammad Yunus was born on 28 June 1940 in Chittagong, Bangladesh. He is an actor, known for Ajwan, Mansour (2012) and One Peace at a Time (2009). He is married to Afrozi Yunus. They have one child. He was previously married to Vera Forostenko.- Actor
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Former Vice President Al Gore is a founding partner and chairman of Generation Investment Management, and the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis. He is also a senior partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a member of Apple Inc.'s board of directors.
Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982 and to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was inaugurated as the 45th vice president of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.
He is the author of the #1 New York Times best-sellers "An Inconvenient Truth" and "The Assault on Reason," and the best-sellers "Earth in the Balance," "Our Choice: A Plan To Solve the Climate Crisis," "The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change," and most recently, The New York Times best-seller "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power."
He is the subject of the documentary movie "An Inconvenient Truth," which won two Oscars in 2006 - and a second documentary in 2017, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power." In 2007, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for "informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change."- Martti Ahtisaari was born on 23 June 1937 in Viipuri, Finland. He was married to Eeva Ahtisaari. He died on 16 October 2023 in Helsinki, Finland.
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U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama II was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was a white American from Wichita, Kansas. His father, Barack Obama Sr., who was black, was from Alego, Kenya. They were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, his mother and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten. Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School, and married Michelle Robinson (now Michelle Obama, a fellow attorney; their daughters are Sasha Obama and Malia Obama. Eventually, he was elected to the Illinois state senate, where his district included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side. In 2004, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and he gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for President, and despite having only four years of national political experience, he won. In January 2009, he was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, and the first African-American ever elected to that position. Obama was re-elected to a second term in November 2012 - and was sworn in in January 2013. His presidential term ended in January 2017- Liu Xiaobo was born on 28 December 1955 in Changchun, Jilin, China. He was married to Liu Xia and Tao Li. He died on 13 July 2017 in Shenyang, Liaoning, China.
- Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a Liberian politician who served as the 24th President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018. Sirleaf was the first elected female head of state in Africa.
Ellen Eugenia Johnson was born in Monrovia. She was educated at the College of West Africa. She completed her education in the United States, where she studied at Madison Business College and Harvard University. She returned to Liberia to work in William Tolbert's government as Deputy Minister of Finance from 1971 to 1974. Later she worked again in the West, for the World Bank in the Caribbean and Latin America. In 1979 she received a cabinet appointment as Minister of Finance, serving to 1980.
In 1980 Sirleaf fled to the United States. She worked for Citibank and then the Equator Bank. She returned to Liberia to contest a senatorial seat for Montserrado County in 1985, an election that was disputed.
Sirleaf continued to be involved in politics. She finished in second place at the 1997 presidential election, which was won by Charles Taylor.
She won the 2005 presidential election and took office on 16 January 2006. She was re-elected in 2011. She was the first woman in Africa elected as president of her country. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, in recognition of her efforts to bring women into the peacekeeping process. She has received numerous other awards for her leadership.
In June 2016, Sirleaf was elected as the Chair of the Economic Community of West African States, making her the first woman to hold the position since it was created. - Additional Crew
Leymah Gbowee was born in Liberia. She is known for Women, War & Peace (2011), Small Small Thing (2013) and Prophets of Change.- Kailash Satyarthi was born on 11 January 1954 in Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, India.
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Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997 in Pakistan. She is a human rights activist who advocates for the rights of women and girls and worldwide access to education. She survived an assassination attempt in 2012 and continued her activism. She is the co-founder of the Malala Fund, an organization to empower girls through education in developing countries. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.- Juan Manuel Santos was born on 10 August 1951 in Bogotá, Colombia. He is an actor, known for Parásitos (2011), Foreign Wars (2016) and Port of Destiny: Peace (2018). He has been married to María Clemencia Rodríguez since 1987. They have three children. He was previously married to Silvia Amaya.
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Dmitry Muratov was born on 29 October 1961 in Kuybyshev, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Samara, Russia]. He is a producer, known for Leningrad: Dorozhnaya (2013), Zhivaya poeziya. Granatovyye sny (2021) and Killing the Messenger: The Deadly Cost of News (2013).- Maria Ressa was born on 2 October 1963 in Manila, Philippines.
- Ales Bialiatski has been married to Natallia Pinchuk since 1987. They have one child.
- Narges Mohammadi is married to Taghi Rahmani. They have two children.