CP BE A COUNTRY DRAFT FREEFORALL Pick At Your Leisure

[troutman]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

Well, if this is over, I clearly won. Between Machiavelli, Lenin and Alexander the Great, you will have all been bamboozled, exterminated, or driven from the field of battle. I hear the lamentation of your women.

Mine is the only country being fed, FTW.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by troutman

Mine is the only country being fed, FTW.

Not when we liberate your oppressed toilers, and they joyously welcome the liberating armies of the socialist motherland. They will then spontaneously volunteer 60% of their crops to sustain their brothers in the VUSSR...

[GirlySports]

You guys are free to complete your teams. First come first serve! I'll try my best to keep up and present a final analysis at the end!

We could have a war with 5 or 6 countries!

[VladtheImpaler]

Alright, to move things along, VUSSR is proud to select in the Writer category, the greatest Russian writer, and, arguably, the greatest novelist period...

LEO TOLSTOY


Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лeв Никола́евич Толсто́й​ (help·info), Russian pronunciation: [lʲev nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj]; September 9 [O.S. August 28] 1828 – November 20 [O.S. November 7] 1910), was a Russian writer whom many consider to be the world's greatest novelist.[1][2] His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction.[3]
Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer made him the most influential member of the aristocratic Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi[4] and Martin Luther King, Jr.[5]


His most famous works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as Hadji Murad and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His contemporaries paid him lofty tributes. Dostoevsky thought him the greatest of all living novelists, while Flaubert exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" on reading a translation of War and Peace. Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature."

Tolstoy in military uniform, by Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, 1856


Later critics and novelists continue to bear testament to Tolstoy's art. Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists. James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!". Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature". Such sentiments were shared by the likes of Proust, Faulkner and Nabokov. The latter heaped superlatives upon The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of War and Peace, and sharply criticized Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata.
Tolstoy's earliest works, the autobiographical novels Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the chasm between himself and his peasants. Though he later rejected them as sentimental, a great deal of Tolstoy's own life is revealed. They retain their relevance as accounts of the universal story of growing up.


Tolstoy at his desk, 1870.


War and Peace is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonski's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider War and Peace to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written at that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life.[13]War and Peace (which is to Tolstoy really an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that Anna Karenina was his first true novel.[14]
After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) and What Is to Be Done? develop a radical anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.[15] For all the praise showered on Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Tolstoy rejected the two works later in his life as something not as true of reality.[16] Such an argument is supported in The Death of Ivan Ilyich, whose main character continually battles with his family and servants, demanding honesty above the water and food needed to sustain him.

[VladtheImpaler]

To further cement my victory, in the Scientist category (apologize if fata)...

CHARLES DARWIN



Charles Robert Darwin FRS (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist[I] who established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.[1][2] The scientific community and much of the general public came to accept evolution as a fact in his lifetime,[3] but it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed that natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution.[4] In modified form, Darwin's scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.[5][6]
Darwin's early interest in nature led him to neglect his medical education at the University of Edinburgh; instead, he helped to investigate marine invertebrates. Studies at the University of Cambridge encouraged his passion for natural science.[7] His five-year voyage on HMS Beagle established him as an eminent geologist whose observations and theories supported Charles Lyell's uniformitarian ideas, and publication of his journal of the voyage made him famous as a popular author.[8]
Puzzled by the geographical distribution of wildlife and fossils he collected on the voyage, Darwin investigated the transmutation of species and conceived his theory of natural selection in 1838.[9] Although he discussed his ideas with several naturalists, he needed time for extensive research and his geological work had priority.[10] He was writing up his theory in 1858 when Alfred Russel Wallace sent him an essay which described the same idea, prompting immediate joint publication of both of their theories.[11] Darwin's work established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.[3] In 1871, he examined human evolution and sexual selection in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, followed by The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. His research on plants was published in a series of books, and in his final book, he examined earthworms and their effect on soil.[12]
In recognition of Darwin's pre-eminence as a scientist, he was one of only five nineteenth-century non-royal personages from the United Kingdom to be honoured by a state funeral,[13] and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to John Herschel and Isaac Newton.[14]

[VladtheImpaler]

The triumphant march of the VUSSR continues (someone else feel free to pick), as we go off the board in the Athlete category to select...

VSEVOLOD BOBROV

Who the fata, you might say. Well, this chap is considered one of the greatest Soviet/Russian hockey players of all time AND one of the greatest Soviet football (soccer) players as well, having been the star of both hockey and football national teams at the same time! An amazing achievement and amazing athletic ability...



Vsevolod Mikhailovich Bobrov (Russian: Всеволод Михайлович Бобров; December 1, 1922 – July 1, 1979) was a Soviet athlete, who excelled in both football (soccer), bandy, and ice hockey. He is considered one of the best Russians ever in all of those sports.
[edit] Biography


Russian commemorative coin celebrating Bobrov


Bobrov was born in Morshansk. After serving in the Soviet Army during World War II he was invited to play football for the Army club CSKA Moscow in 1945. Playing until 1953 for CSKA, VVS, and Spartak, he would go on to win the Soviet Championship three times, scoring 97 goals in only 116 games. Bobrov led the country in goals in 1945 with 24 and 1947 with 14. In 1945, Vsevolod was a guest player for Dynamo Moscow's tour of Great Britain, and drew rave reviews after scoring six goals as the Russian club played such teams as Chelsea, Arsenal, and Rangers. He was capped three times for the Soviet Union national team representing them in the 1952 Summer Olympics. He scored five goals in total, including a hat trick against Yugoslavia.
Bobrov began playing hockey for CSKA a year after his football start, in 1946. His playing career in this sport lasted until 1957, with the years between 1950 and 1953 spent with VVS. Although football was Bobrov's first sport, his success in hockey was even greater. In 1950, a plane crash almost killed the entire Soviet national hockey team, though it had been suppressed by the Soviet government. Bobrov survived the crash by traveling by rail than by air. In the Soviet Championship, that his teams won seven times, Vsevolod scored an amazing 254 goals in only 130 games. He played for the Soviet national team in the 1956 Winter Olympics, becoming one of the few athletes to participate in both the Summer and Winter games. Bobrov proceeded to lead his country to the gold medal, and also won the World Championship in 1954 and 1956. Overall, he scored 89 goals in 59 games for his country. In Russian hockey, his name was given to an exclusive list of players, the Bobrov Club, who scored over 250 goals during their career.
Bobrov, who served as a player-coach in both sports during his time with VVS, would go on to coach various teams after retiring as a player in both football and hockey. In the latter, he coached the USSR in the 1972 Summit Series and then led them to the World Championship in 1974 and 1975.

[troutman]

I move Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui (or Pachacutec) to Monarch.

Our new military leader has The Right Stuff:



Charles Elwood "Chuck" Yeager (born February 13, 1923) English pronunciation: /ˈjeɪgər/ is a retired major general in the United States Air Force and noted test pilot. He was the first pilot to travel faster than sound (1947). Originally retiring as a brigadier general, Yeager was promoted to major general on the Air Force's retired list 20 years later for his military achievements.

His career began in World War II as a private in the United States Army Air Forces. After serving as an aircraft mechanic, in September 1942 he entered enlisted pilot training and upon graduation was promoted to the rank of flight officer (the World War II USAAF equivalent to warrant officer) and became a P-51 Mustangfighter pilot. After the war he became a test pilot of many kinds of aircraft and rocket planes. Yeager was the first man to break the sound barrier on October 14, 1947, flying the experimental Bell X-1 at Mach 1 at an altitude of 13,700 m (45,000 ft). Although Scott Crossfield was the first man to fly faster than Mach 2 in 1953, Yeager shortly thereafter set a new record of Mach 2.44.[1] He later commanded fighter squadrons and wings in Germany and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, and in recognition of the outstanding performance ratings of those units he then was promoted to brigadier general. Yeager's flying career spans more than sixty years and has taken him to every corner of the globe, including the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager

[VladtheImpaler]

To ensure that the rampaging VUSSR armies do not go hungry, in the Chef category, we are proud to select the greatest Iron Chef of all:

Hiroyuki Sakai




Hiroyuki Sakai (坂井 宏行, Sakai Hiroyuki?, born April 2, 1942 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan) is a well-known Japanese chef who specializes in French cuisine. Sakai is most famous for being the second, and last, Iron Chef French on the Japanese television show Iron Chef, first appearing at the beginning of 1994 (after Yutaka Ishinabe retired) and continued his appearance in shows over nine seasons. Sakai has the second best winning percentage of the Iron Chefs, trailing only his Iron Chef French predecessor, Ishinabe. His stature as the top chef on the show was formalized when he was named the "King of Iron Chefs" after emerging victorious from the show's grand finale, a tournament involving all the active Iron Chefs. He went on to defeat the top chef in the world, Alain Passard, in the grand finale Long-Gang Chicken battle prior to the closure of the Iron Chef series. His record on Iron Chef is 70-15-1.
Over the course of the series, Sakai became famous for being a ladies man; his smooth personality and friendly attitude certainly helped in this regard. His television trademark is a red French chef's costume; he rises into Kitchen Stadium holding a nashi pear in his hand. He is often described as the "Delacroix of French cuisine" because of the presentation of his dishes.
Sakai was originally asked to be on Iron Chef by the producer Toshihiko Matsuo following the recommendation from hotel restaurateur Kihachi Kumagai. Sakai agreed after being convinced by his staff, believing the impression that the show would air for another six months, giving him two or three appearances. The six-month tenure, as it turned out, turned into six years. The early era of Iron Chef saw Sakai being the "middle Iron Chef" along with Rokusaburo Michiba, a chef twelve years his senior, and Chen Kenichi, the youngest and least experienced of the three Iron Chefs at the time. It is often viewed by fans as the period when Iron Chef had the strongest Iron Chefs.
Reactions to Sakai's appointment to Iron Chef were largely negative amongst chefs circles, largely because of the low stature of Iron Chef among chefs at the time which led many to believe would ruin their reputations as chefs, but others also believing that there was no possibility that any French dish would take less than one hour to prepare. However, as the show became more popular, chefs, judges, and fans became more supportive. It was said that Sakai's son's employer had his employees frequent the restaurant as a show of support.
Like many chefs, Sakai did not take to losing very well. Upon his first loss, he had tried to be cheerful in explaining his loss to a younger chef who also owned his own restaurant, but his entire staff was mortified upon hearing the news. His daughter was teased in school whenever Sakai had lost - although this was a fairly rare occurrence. In an effort to learn from others, Sakai often tasted food opponents had prepared, or grabbed assistants and asked them questions after the battle was over.
Outside of Iron Chef, Sakai is the owner and head chef of the restaurant La Rochelle, originally in Aoyama but now in Shibuya. The restaurant was named after La Rochelle, a city in France where Sakai had spent some time as an apprentice. Sakai is a member of the Club des Trente, an organization of French chefs in Japan. Sakai was mentored by the Japan's pioneer of French Cooking, Fujio Shido for three years.
After the series' run, Sakai appeared in several Iron Chef specials. In the "New York Special," he gave a presentation to the Culinary Institute of America on the preparation of salmon, assisted by Iron Chef Italian Masahiko Kobe. He also appeared on Iron Chef America : Battle of the Masters, where he lost a trout battle to Bobby Flay (during which he created a trout-flavored ice cream) and teamed up with Mario Batali in a seafood battle.
In 2009, Sakai was named a recipient of the Gendai no Meiko (Contemporary Master Craftsmen) awards, honoring Japan's foremost artisans in various fields.
In 2004, developers of several American institutions named the new open source course management software after Chef Sakai. The naming of the new software (See Sakai Project)[1] was intended as a pun on the acronym of the old program it was designed to replace - the CompreHensive collaborativE Framework (CHEF).[2]
In 2010, Sakai was a guest judge for the Masterchef Australia Season 2 finals week.

[troutman]

Rebel = Pancho Villa



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Villa

José Doroteo Arango Arámbula (5 June 1878 – 20 July 1923), better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa, was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionarygenerals.

As commander the División del Norte (Division of the North), he was the veritable caudillo of the Northern Mexican state of Chihuahua which, given its size, mineral wealth, and proximity to the United States of America, provided him with extensive resources. Villa was also provisional Governor of Chihuahua in 1913 and 1914. Although he was prevented from being accepted into the "panteón" of national heroes until some 20 years after his death, today his memory is honored by Mexicans, Americans, and many people around the world. In addition, numerous streets and neighborhoods in Mexico are named in his honor.

Villa and his supporters seized hacienda land for distribution to peasants and soldiers. He robbed and commandeered trains, and, like the other revolutionary generals, printed fiat money to pay for his cause. Villa's men and supporters became known as Villistas during the revolution from 1910 to roughly 1920.

[VladtheImpaler]

The benevolent dictatorship of the VUSSR values its citizens' well-being, and so selects in the Doctor category....

SIGMUND FREUD



Sigmund Freud (German pronunciation: [ˈsiːɡmʊnd ˈfʁɔʏd]), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychiatry. Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient, technically referred to as an "analysand", and a psychoanalyst. Freud redefined sexual desire as the primary motivational energy of human life, developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association, created the theory of transference in the therapeutic relationship, and interpreted dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, and a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.
While many of Freud's ideas have fallen out of favor or been modified by Neo-Freudians, and modern advances in the field of psychology have shown flaws in some of his theories, Freud's work remains influential in clinical approaches, and in the humanities and social sciences. He is considered one of the most prominent thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, in terms of originality and intellectual influence.

[troutman]

With a middle name like Schlomo, no wonder he was preoccupied with dicks.