On March 4, 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the Oval Office as the 32nd President of the United States. By the time he took office, the Depression had deepened and people were besieging the crumbling banks across the nation trying desperately to salvage their accounts. On the night from March 3rd to 4th - the day Roosevelt took office, cash-starved banks in the country's two major financial centers, New York and Chicago, were forced to suspend operations virtually paralyzing the economy. President Roosevelt had virtually no time to get used to his new job. Securing congressional support, the decisive and unorthodox-thinking President started off by enacting several conservative measures to inspire confidence among businessmen and bankers. First of all, he ended depositors' runs on banks by closing all banks until Congress could pass a cautious measure allowing those in a sound condition to reopen. As a result, the battered economy started looking up and the country gradually hoisted itself out of crisis. The miraculous recovery pushed Roosevelt's rating sky high. To many Americans he was the man who saved the nation.
In the Soviet Union, 1933 was the final year of the first five-year plan of economic development. The country was fast becoming a major industrial superpower. A number of giant steel mills and machine-building plants were built in one year alone, the first Soviet liquid-fuel rocket took to the skies and the country's first trolleybus rolled off the assembly line. In 1933 the Soviet Union was actively mending fences with the world, resuming diplomatic relations with the United States, and signing friendship and non-aggression pacts with Italy and France. Relations with Germany had somewhat cooled because the Soviet leaders feared that, with Adolf Hitler already in power, Germany might be a threat to this country.
January 20, 1933 is a sad date not only to Germany but to the whole mankind. On this day Adolf Hitler became Chancellor. The Nazis made full use of the power they now possessed over the apparatus of the state to unravel the country's entire system of democratic governance.
On the night of February 27th the Reichstag was put on fire by a mentally deranged lone arsonist caught carrying a Communist party membership card. On the pretext of a Communist plot to seize power, the Nazis unleashed a vicious campaign of terror and intimidation against their political opponents. The much-feared Gestapo secret police was using torture and executions to consolidate Nazi power. In 1933 they started building concentration camps all across the country to isolate dissidents. Fundamental liberties such as the freedom of speech and gatherings and privacy rights. The Nazi regime showed particular hostility towards the Jews, forcing thousands to leave the country for fear of arrest and pogroms. Protesting against the Nazi terror, the great physicist Albert Einstein gave up his German citizenship and quit the Academy ranks. During the winter of 1933 he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and settled there for the rest of his life.
In 1933 the Danish-built Soviet steamship Chelyuskin cast off from Murmansk for her maiden voyage having only one short navigation season to cover the entire length of the northern sea route to Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. The expedition was led by the famous scientist and polar explorer Otto Shmidt. Unfortunately, the whole undertaking fell through after the Chelyuskin became ice-bound and went under in the Bering Strait. All the 111 scientists and crew members made it just in time to disembark the doomed vessel and, within a month, they were all ferried safely to the mainland.
In 1933 the Russian poet and novelist Ivan Bunin became the first Russian to receive the Nobel prize for literature. Bunin was then living in Paris where he had settled after the October 1917 revolution in Russia. One of the greatest authors of the 20th century, Ivan Bunin is also widely admired as the best stylist Russia has ever had. His books are often published in Russia and elsewhere in the world.
And there is one more thing we'd like to say about the year 1933. It is the birth year of one of the greatest operatic singers of all time, Montserrat Caballe. She has sung on the world's best stages and is widely admired for her extensive charity work. Montserrat Caballe is an honorary UN Ambassador and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNESCO. Several years ago she was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship .

THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.


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