Moscow Gallery

Marshall Plan Convention 1948

US Secretary of State George C. Marshall (L, 1880-1959) is pictured during a reception at London US embassy on November 02, 1948 with (L to R) Mrs Churchill, wife of US Ambassador in Great Britain Mrs Lewis Douglas, Mrs James Douglas, US Ambassador in Great Britain Lewis Douglas, Miss Sharman Douglas, James Douglas, Mrs George Marshall and former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.
After the conference in Moscow with British, French, and Soviet counterparts in March-April 1947, US Secretary of State George C. Marshall had observed the growing economic collapse of Europe and the obvious intent of Soviet Russia to benefit from that collapse. He had returned to Washington thinking that the best way to avoid this was to prevent Europe's economic, social, and political deterioration by creating a European program with massive assistance from the United States. One year later, in April 1948, President Truman, a Democratic president, signed the Foreign Assistance Act, passed by a Republican controlled Congress, to establish what became known as the Marshall Plan. / AFP PHOTO / RENE HELIER

© Copyright Agence France-Presse (AFP) - All Rights Reserved

'The Cossacks' Reply to the Sultan (Zaporozhtsy)', c1890, (1939). Creator: Il'ya Repin

'The Cossacks' Reply to the Sultan (Zaporozhtsy)', c1890, (1939). 'Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey', also known as 'Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto', 19th-century imagining of a supposed historical event of 1676, based on the legend of Cossacks sending an apparently rude and insulting reply to an ultimatum from Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire. 'On the right is Taras Bulba (in a white cap), the hero of Gogol's tale of the same name; on the left is Andrei, Taras Bulba's son; almost in the centre sits Ataman (Chief) Serko with a pipe in his mouth'. Ilya Repin (1844-1930) took nearly 20 years to paint the picture, for which Tsar Alexander III paid him 35, 000 rubles, at the time the greatest sum ever paid for a Russian painting. In the collection of The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, Russia. From "The Russian State Museum". [State Art Publishers, Moscow and Leningrad, 1939]

© The Print Collector / Heritage-Images

Tokamak-15 fusion research reactor, Kurchatov Inst

Nuclear fusion research. View of Tokamak 15, a nuclear fusion research reactor. The ring-shaped tokamak design (also known as a torus) is most favoured by nuclear fusion researchers. The ring contains a plasma, a mixture of deuterium and tritium at a temperature of up to 100 million Celsius. To keep the plasma confined and away from the walls of the tokamak, very powerful magnets enclose the reactor vessel. At sufficiently high temperatures, the deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse, generating helium and energetic neutrons. It is these neutrons which carry energy out of the reactor. Photographed at the Kurchatov Institute, Moscow

© RIA NOVOSTI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY