Mir

Mir,

Soviet and Russian space station: see space explorationspace exploration,
the investigation of physical conditions in space and on stars, planets, and other celestial bodies through the use of artificial satellites (spacecraft that orbit the earth), space probes (spacecraft that pass through the solar system and that may or may not
..... Click the link for more information. ; space stationspace station
or space platform,
artificial earth satellite, usually manned, that is placed in a fixed orbit and can serve as a base for astronomical observations; zero-gravity materials processing; satellite assembly, refueling, and repair; or, possibly, as weapons
..... Click the link for more information. .

mir

(mēr), former Russian peasant community. The mir, which antedated serfdom (16th cent.) in Russia, persisted in its primitive form until after the Russian Revolution of 1917. In a community of free peasants the land was owned jointly by the mir; in a community of serfs, lands reserved for serf use were assigned to the mir for allocation. The mir, like a corporate body, had an assembly, obligations, and rights; it was responsible for allocating the arable land to its members and for reallocating such lands periodically. Woodlands, pastures, and waters were used jointly. With the abolition of serfdom in 1861 (see Emancipation, Edict ofEmancipation, Edict of,
1861, the mechanism by which Czar Alexander II freed all Russian serfs (one third of the total population). All personal serfdom was abolished, and the peasants were to receive land from the landlords and pay them for it.
..... Click the link for more information. ) land was allotted, not to individual peasants, but to the mir. The amount of land allotted, however, was insufficient to support the number of people on the land. Also, retention of the mir perpetuated archaic agricultural methods. After the Revolution of 1905, StolypinStolypin, Piotr Arkadevich
, 1862–1911, Russian premier and minister of the interior (1906–11) for Czar Nicholas II. He sought to fight the revolutionary movement with both severe repression and social reform.
..... Click the link for more information. introduced reforms that he hoped would lead to the breakup of the mir. The reforms (1908) were not wholly effective, but many mirs were broken into individual holdings. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the mir remained the basis for local administration and tax collection in the rural areas. With the imposition of collectivization in 1928–9, the mir was abolished and the collective farmcollective farm,
an agricultural production unit including a number of farm households or villages working together under state control. The description of the collective farm has varied with time and place.
..... Click the link for more information. was introduced.

Mir

(meer) (from the Russian for ‘Peace’ or ‘World’) The Soviet space station of modular design that superseded Salyut 7 (see Salyut). The Soviet authorities announced the launch of Mir on Feb 20. 1986, and the first crew, cosmonauts Leonid Kizim and Vladimir Soloviev, arrived there Mar 13. 1986. The 20-tonne core unit was about 17.4 meters long by 4 meters wide and had large winglike solar panels. Permanently attached to this was a docking module with five ports, four in a cruciform arrangement and one aft. Large pressurized research modules, or transient spacecraft, could be docked to these ports. Each research module was dedicated to a different scientific or technical field; for example, the Kvant and Kristall modules were dedicated to astrophysical observations and experiments in Earth sciences, life sciences, and space-based materials-processing technologies. Kvant 1 and Kvant 2 were the first two modules to be added to the core unit in 1987 and 1989 respectively. Kristall followed in 1990. Then came Spektr (1995) and Priroda (1996).

Two cosmonauts routinely occupied Mir, although it could take six cosmonauts/scientists. Very extended tours of duty by the cosmonauts and overlapping of successive crews ensured a virtually continuous presence on Mir. The cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov set a space endurance record of 438 days aboard Mir between January 1994 and March 1995. Mir frequently hosted foreign crew members, and as time went on efforts were made to commercialize the station. In 1987, a Syrian spaceman briefly joined Mir's occupants. He was followed over the years by crew members from Bulgaria, Afghanistan, France, Austria, and Germany. In 1990, a Japanese journalist, Toyohiro Akiyama, joined the crew and broadcast live television reports from Mir. In 1991, Helen Sharman, the first UK citizen to travel in space, visited the station on the privately sponsored Juno mission.

Mir continued to operate right through the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. From 1995, when a module allowing the Space Shuttle to dock with the station was added, to 1998, seven US astronauts served with Russian crews aboard Mir. But by now Mir was aging. Accidents had dogged it throughout its career, many to do with the robotic Progress supply craft, which crashed into the station more than once. A few were due to human error. After a series of mishaps, Mir was finally abandoned in 1999. A commercial venture to reactivate it in 2000 came to nothing. Mir was destroyed in a controlled reentry into the Earth's atmosphere on Mar. 28 2001.

Mir

an urban-type settlement in Korelichi Raion, Grodno Oblast, Byelorussian SSR, 17 km from the Gorodeia railroad station (on the Minsk-Baranovichi line). A distillery is located in Mir. The settlement’s architectural monuments include the castle of the Illinichi feudal family (early 16th century) and its stone palace (late 16th century).

Mir

the name given the rural peasant commune, as well as the posad (urban) commune in Russia from the 13th to the early 20th century. Initially from the 13th century, the mir existed in villages and settlements on state, palace, boyar, and monasterial lands. The members of the mir gathered in the skhod (assembly) to apportion and collect taxes and redistribute communal lands lying fallow. In its administrative-legal aspect, the term mir was equivalent to the term obshchina.

Mir

(Peace), the integrated electric power grids of European member countries of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). The organization of parallel operation of the power grids making up Mir is a main trend in the development of the international socialist division of labor in power engineering. Such division is brought about mainly by the uneven distribution of natural fuel and energy resources. The provisions for parallel operation of the national power grids make possible an increase in the exchange of electric power among the member countries, a reduction in the general reserves in the power systems, and an increase in the economy of operation and the reliability of power supply to the consumer.

Recommendations for implementation of the initial stage of parallel operation of the Mir power grids and for construction of intersystem transmission lines were developed by the COMECON Permanent Committee on Electric Power on the basis of proposals by member countries and were approved by the 11th session of COMECON in 1959. In 1972 there were 22 electric power transmission lines operating at voltages of 110–400 kilo-volts (kV), connecting the power grids of Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Rumania, the USSR (the L’vov Power Grid), and Czechoslovakia; their total transmission capacity was about 7,200 megavolt-amperes. In 1963 a 220/400-kV intersystem transformer substation was built in Mukachevo (USSR). It connects the power grids of Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia and the L’vov Power Grid of the USSR. To achieve better use of the technical and economic advantages of parallel operation in the Mir power grids and to coordinate the operation of the state traffic-control centers, an agreement creating the Central Traffic-control Office (in Prague) was signed in 1962 by the governments of Bulgaria, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Rumania, the USSR, and Czechoslovakia.

As of the end of 1972, the total rated power of the power plants in the Mir grids (including the L’vov Power Grid of the USSR) was more than 62 gigawatts (GW). This represents an increase by a factor of about 2.4 for the ten years of existence of the Central Traffic-control Office. The total production of electric power in the integrated power grids increased by the same factor (to about 302 billion kW-hr in 1972). The growth rate of intergovernmental exchange of electric power for 1962–72 was twice the growth rate of power consumption. In 1972, power exchange was approximately 16 billion kW-hr. The economy of parallel operation of power grids results from mutual assistance in case of breakdowns, a reduction in generating capacity in each of the member countries (made possible by noncoincidence of load peaks in individual national power grids located in different time zones), and a reduction in total standby power capacity. In 1972, during the annual peak load period, the net effect of combining the load charts of the individual national power grids was a peak load saving of more than 1 GW. Nonscheduled deliveries of electric power to affected systems (as mutual assistance measures) reached a total of about 850 million kW-hr in 1972.

The development of the Mir power grids is continuing. The possibility of adding newly developed intersystem high-voltage power transmission lines is being studied. The determination of basic promising trends for the future growth of the Mir power grids and work on proposals aimed at broader and more intensive cooperation in this direction are two problems provided for in a comprehensive program. The goal of the program is ever-improving, far-reaching cooperation in achieving the growth of socialist economic integration of the COMECON countries in managing their power requirements and production.

IU. N. SAVENKO

Mir

the scientific and technical publishing house of the State Committee for Publishing, Printing, and the Book Trade of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. It is located in Moscow. Founded in 1946 as the Publishing House for Foreign Literature, it was renamed Mir in 1964 after it and the State Publishing House of Foreign-Language Literature were reorganized. It publishes Russian translations of foreign scientific monographs, textbooks, and collections of articles in mathematics, theoretical mechanics, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geophysics, space research, geology, and new technology, including problems of new energy sources, materials technology, and rocket technology. It also publishes popular-science works and science fiction. Mir issues English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Arabic translations of Soviet scientific and technical works, including monographs and textbooks for higher and specialized secondary schools in the natural and applied sciences and medicine, as well as translations of Soviet popular science and science fiction.

In 1972, Mir published 540 book and pamphlet titles (108 million printers’ sheets) totaling 5.7 million copies. The books issued by the publishing house are distributed in more than 100 countries. In addition to books, Mir publishes the critical-bibliographical monthly New Books Abroad (three series) and the collections of translated articles Matematika (Mathematics), Mekhanika (Mechanics), and Voprosy raketnoi tekhniki (Problems of Rocket Technology).

N. T. BOZHKO

MIR

(Music Information Retrieval) See music search.

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