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Choosing 21st century essay topics.

As we navigate through the 21st century, the world around us is constantly evolving, and this evolution comes with a plethora of complex issues and topics that are ripe for exploration and discussion. When it comes to selecting an essay topic for your academic assignments, it's important to choose a subject that is not only relevant but also engaging and thought-provoking. In this article, we will delve into the importance of choosing a 21st-century essay topic, provide advice on how to select a topic, and offer a detailed list of recommended essay topics across various categories.

The Importance of the Topic

Choosing a relevant and impactful essay topic is crucial for several reasons. Firstly, it allows you to engage with current events and trends, fostering a deeper understanding of the world around us and its complexities. Secondly, a well-chosen topic can spark meaningful discussions and debates, both within academic circles and in society at large. Additionally, selecting a 21st-century essay topic can help you develop critical thinking and analytical skills, as you navigate through the complexities of contemporary issues.

Advice on Choosing a Topic

When it comes to selecting an essay topic, it's important to consider your interests, as well as the relevance and significance of the subject matter. Start by brainstorming a list of topics that intrigue you and align with your academic goals. Consider the potential impact of the topic and its relevance to modern society. Research the latest developments and debates surrounding the topic to ensure that you have access to current and credible sources. Lastly, make sure the topic is broad enough to provide you with ample research material, but also specific enough to allow for in-depth exploration.

Recommended Essay Topics

Social issues.

• The impact of social media on mental health
• Income inequality in the 21st century
• The rise of fake news and its implications
• The role of activism in contemporary society

Technology and Innovation

• The ethical implications of artificial intelligence
• The future of renewable energy sources
• Privacy and data protection in the digital age
• The impact of technology on the job market

Environmental Concerns

• The effects of climate change on global communities
• Sustainable practices for a greener future
• The role of activism in environmental conservation
• The intersection of environmentalism and social justice

Global Politics

• International responses to humanitarian crises
• Nationalism and its impact on global diplomacy
• The role of the United Nations in the 21st century
• The rise of populism and its implications for global governance

Cultural Identity

• The impact of globalization on cultural diversity
• The portrayal of gender and race in contemporary media
• The intersection of technology and cultural heritage
• The role of art and literature in shaping cultural identities

These are just a few examples of the myriad of topics that you can explore for your 21st-century essay. Remember to choose a topic that resonates with you and aligns with your academic interests. By delving into the complexities of contemporary issues, you can develop a deeper understanding of the world around us and contribute to meaningful discussions and debates.

Reflections on a Half-century: The World 50 Years Ago

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A Look at Racism in The 21st Century and Efforts to Stop It

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Geothermal Energy as The Solution to The 21st Century Problem of Energy

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Comparison of Online Dating and Traditional Dating

Comic books in the 21st century, a lesson to never give up in "the odyssey", a poem by homer, organizational structure and management: alibaba and the 21st century, challenges faced by native americans in 21str century, trump and the rise of 21st century fascism, princess diana’s memoir, a study on the impact of corporate accountability, understanding the craze behind esports, the changing role of accountants in the 21st century, sylvia plath’s presentation of feelings and standards on women as described in her book, the bell jar, analysis on communication as a factor in relationships, understanding the representation of black females sexual desirability in the u.s, how lucky i am to be born in this century, consensual cannibalism in the 21st century.

The beginning of the 21st century was the rise of a global warming, global economy and Third World consumerism, increased private enterprise and terrorist attacks. Many great and many bad things happened in the current century. Many natural and man-made disasters made their impact on the world.

In the 21st century the effects of social development have affected different countries and different social groups differently. Although social development upgraded life standards of population.

The main challenges in the 21st century are: climate change, plastic pollution in the oceans, natural hazards, air pollution, hunger and increased inequalities.

Technology in the 21st century has enabled to humans to make strides that our ancestors could only dream of. People in the 21st century live in a technology and media-suffused environment.

The world population was about 6.1 billion at the start of the 21st century and reached 7.8 billion by March 2020.

Economically and politically, the United States and Western Europe were dominant at the beginning of the century. By the 2010s, China became an emerging global superpower and the world's largest economy. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasing in popularity worldwide.

The 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers, Hurricane Katrina, Same-Sex Marriage Legalisation, Haiti Earthquake, The Arab Spring, Brexit

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Essay Samples on 21St Century

Navigating the 21st century: understanding of modern learning.

The 21st century has ushered in a new era of unprecedented change, progress, and innovation. As the world evolves at an astonishing pace, so too must the methods of learning and education. This essay delves into the essence of the 21st century as it pertains...

• 21St Century

The Essential Role of Human Values in the 21st Century

The 21st century presents a myriad of challenges and opportunities that call for a renewed emphasis on human values as guiding principles to shape individual behaviors, societal norms, and global interactions. In an era marked by technological advancements, cultural diversification, and interconnectedness, the role of...

The Dynamic Role of Media in the 21st Century

The 21st century has ushered in a new era of media that transcends traditional boundaries, transforming the way information is disseminated, consumed, and shared. In this age of digitalization and connectivity, media in the 21st century holds unprecedented power to shape public opinion, influence cultural...

• Role of Media

Human Values in 21st Century: A Blueprint for a Better World

The 21st century presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities that demand a reevaluation of the values that guide human behavior. In this era of rapid technological advancements, cultural diversification, and interconnectedness, the importance of human values in the 21st century cannot be overstated....

Feminism in the 21st Century: Empowerment and Progress

The 21st century has witnessed a remarkable evolution in the feminist movement, with women and gender equality advocates making significant strides towards dismantling barriers, challenging stereotypes, and reshaping societal norms. Feminism in the 21st century is characterized by a global and intersectional approach that transcends...

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Education in the 21st Century: Navigating a Transformative Landscape

The 21st century has brought about profound changes in every aspect of human life, including education. The traditional classroom model is being reshaped by rapid technological advancements, shifts in pedagogical approaches, and evolving societal demands. Education in the 21st century is not only about imparting...

• Technology in Education

Communication in the 21st Century: Navigating the Digital Age

The 21st century has witnessed an unprecedented transformation in the way people communicate. Rapid technological advancements have reshaped the landscape of communication in the 21st century, enabling instant global connectivity, diverse modes of expression, and new challenges and opportunities. This essay explores the multifaceted nature...

• Communication

Beauty in the 21st Century: Embracing Diversity and Empowerment

The concept of beauty has evolved significantly in the 21st century, reflecting a cultural shift towards inclusivity, diversity, and empowerment. No longer confined to narrow standards, beauty in the 21st century celebrates individuality, challenges stereotypes, and embraces a broader range of ideals. This essay explores...

Advantages of 21st Century Learning: A Transformative Educational Landscape

The 21st century has brought about a paradigm shift in education, ushering in a new era of learning that is characterized by innovation, technology integration, and a focus on holistic skill development. The advantages of 21st century learning are manifold, revolutionizing the educational landscape and...

Exploring the Impact of 21st Century Technology

The 21st century has witnessed a technological revolution that has reshaped every facet of human existence. From communication to commerce, education to entertainment, the influence of 21st century technology is pervasive and transformative. This essay delves into the profound impact of technology in this era,...

• Modern Technology

The 21st Century Teacher: Education's Transformative

The role of a teacher has evolved significantly in the 21st century, reflecting the dynamic changes in education, technology, and the needs of modern learners. The 21st century teacher is not merely an instructor but a guide, mentor, and facilitator of learning. This essay delves...

Nurturing 21st Century Skills: Preparing for Success in the Modern World

The 21st century is characterized by rapid technological advancements, shifting global dynamics, and a growing need for individuals to possess a distinct set of skills that go beyond traditional academics. The acquisition of 21st century skills has become a critical component of education, enabling individuals...

Transforming Education in the 21st Century

Education in the 21st century has undergone a profound transformation, driven by the rapid advancement of technology, changing societal demands, and a growing recognition of the need for holistic skill development. This essay delves into the landscape of 21st century education, exploring the key features...

The 2020 Mark: Reflecting on a New Decade of Transformation

The transition into the new decade marked by 2020 was a moment of anticipation and reflection. As the previous decade drew to a close, and the dawn of the 2020s emerged, I found myself looking both backward and forward, considering the lessons learned and the...

Digital Piracy as Main Crime of 21st-Century

Humans have been performing illegal activities for years. With today’s 21st-century society being technology, illegal activity within the technological/internet-based realm is a major occurrence. Digital piracy is the illegal trade in software, videos, digital video devices, and music. Piracy occurs when someone other than the...

• Digital Era

John Dewey, and the 21st Century Cinematic Aesthetic Experience 

John Dewey in his tenth volume written in 1934, Art as Experience, gave his theory on the arts and created a change in the way people viewed aesthetics and how artists created. Even though Dewey does not talk about film in his volume, except briefly...

To What Extent is NATO Still Relevant in the 21st Century

Introduction In 1949 a new military alliance was finalised bringing together 12 nations for mutual defence. However, now in the 21st century, the world has changed and it is time to re-evaluate NATO’s relevance. President Trump has already questioned the commitment of other countries to...

Gun Control: The Controversial Issue of the 21st Century

Do you want a safer future for both you and your family? Do you want America to actually be great again? Then help solve one of America’s biggest problems since it declared its independence in 1776: Guns. This topic is considered one of the most...

• Controversial Issue
• Gun Control

China's Vision of the Silk Road for the 21st Century

Since the break-up of the Soviet Union and the establishment of the independent Central Asian States, China has been extremely active in its effort to rehabilitate the concept of the “Silk Road”. This endeavour eventually helped shaped the Chinese government’s grand initiative “One Belt and...

“To Be Or Not To Be?” How Relevant Is Shakespeare

Shakespeare has been dead for over four hundred years now. Four hundred two years now to be exact. Many people recognize the name William Shakespeare but when was the last time you have read one of his poems or stories or even watched one of...

• William Shakespeare

Data In The 21St Century And Its Importance

In the 21st century, globalization is the spreading of everything around the world, especially the internet. Now, internet has become an important tool for the business success. The internet has helped the organizations to gathers and records data. In the 21st century, data is the...

• Data Collection
• Effects of Technology

Obsolescence Of Major War Between Great Powers In The 21st Century

Ever since the collapse of Communism in 1991, the international society has been experiencing perhaps the most peaceful era in history. However, others argue that threats to national security have not yet been completely eliminated and the potential for the next major war still prevails....

• Separation of Powers

Anthropological Pieces To Understand A Culture

More Than Just Words If you were asked to define your culture in one sentence, what would you say? Would you mention the food, clothing, or beliefs? Would you feel satisfied with your answer, or feel the need to add more? Describing your culture to...

• Anthropology

Best topics on 21St Century

1. Navigating the 21st Century: Understanding of Modern Learning

2. The Essential Role of Human Values in the 21st Century

3. The Dynamic Role of Media in the 21st Century

4. Human Values in 21st Century: A Blueprint for a Better World

5. Feminism in the 21st Century: Empowerment and Progress

6. Education in the 21st Century: Navigating a Transformative Landscape

7. Communication in the 21st Century: Navigating the Digital Age

8. Beauty in the 21st Century: Embracing Diversity and Empowerment

9. Advantages of 21st Century Learning: A Transformative Educational Landscape

10. Exploring the Impact of 21st Century Technology

11. The 21st Century Teacher: Education’s Transformative

12. Nurturing 21st Century Skills: Preparing for Success in the Modern World

13. Transforming Education in the 21st Century

14. The 2020 Mark: Reflecting on a New Decade of Transformation

15. Digital Piracy as Main Crime of 21st-Century

• Civil Rights Movement
• American History
• African American History
• African Diaspora
• Manifest Destiny
• Christopher Columbus
• Genghis Khan
• Adolf Hitler
• Mesopotamia

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Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century

Doing Race focuses on race and ethnicity in everyday life: what they are, how they work, and why they matter. Going to school and work, renting an apartment or buying a house, watching television, voting, listening to music, reading books and newspapers, attending religious services, and going to the doctor are all everyday activities that are influenced by assumptions about who counts, whom to trust, whom to care about, whom to include, and why. Race and ethnicity are powerful precisely because they organize modern society and play a large role in fueling violence around the globe. Doing Race is targeted to undergraduates; it begins with an introductory essay and includes original essays by well-known scholars. Drawing on the latest science and scholarship, the collected essays emphasize that race and ethnicity are not things that people or groups have or are, but rather sets of actions that people do. Doing Race provides compelling evidence that we are not yet in a “post-race” world and that race and ethnicity matter for everyone. Since race and ethnicity are the products of human actions, we can do them differently. Like studying the human genome or the laws of economics, understanding race and ethnicity is a necessary part of a twenty first century education.

About the Author

PAULA M. L. MOYA, is the Danily C. and Laura Louise Bell Professor of the Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University. She is the Burton J. and Deedee McMurtry University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and a 2019-20 Fellow at the Center for the Study of Behavioral Sciences.

Moya’s teaching and research focus on twentieth-century and early twenty-first century literary studies, feminist theory, critical theory, narrative theory, American cultural studies, interdisciplinary approaches to race and ethnicity, and Chicanx and U.S. Latinx studies.

She is the author of  The Social Imperative: Race, Close Reading, and Contemporary Literary Criticism  (Stanford UP 2016) and  Learning From Experience: Minority Identities, Multicultural Struggles  (UC Press 2002) and has co-edited three collections of original essays,  Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century  (W.W. Norton, Inc. 2010),  Identity Politics Reconsidered  (Palgrave 2006) and  Reclaiming Identity: Realist Theory and the Predicament of Postmodernism  (UC Press 2000). 

Previously Moya served as the Director of the Program of Modern Thought and Literature, Vice Chair of the Department of English, Director of the Research Institute of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and also the Director of the Undergraduate Program of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. 

She is a recipient of the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, a Ford Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, the Outstanding Chicana/o Faculty Member award. She has been a Brown Faculty Fellow, a Clayman Institute Fellow, a CCSRE Faculty Research Fellow, and a Clayman Beyond Bias Fellow. 

21st Century Essays Edited by David Lazar and Patrick Madden

New & forthcoming 21st century essays titles:.

Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir

Mako Yoshikawa

Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist

Marlena Williams

The Hunger Book: A Memoir from Communist Poland

Agata Izabela Brewer

Twenty Square Feet of Skin

Megan Baxter

Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues

Christine Imperial

Winner of the Gournay Prize

Everything I Never Wanted to Know

Christine Hume

Engine Running: Essays

Ripe: Essays

Negesti Kaudo

Dark Tourist: Essays

Hasanthika Sirisena

Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir of a Day

Sonya Huber

Art for the Ladylike: An Autobiography through Other Lives

Whitney Otto

The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here

Susanne Paola Antonetta

Don’t Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn’t Seen

Edited by Kristen Iversen and David Lazar

How to Make a Slave and Other Essays

JeraldWalker

My Private Lennon Explorations from a Fan Who Never Screamed

Sibbie O’Sullivan

Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing

Julie Marie Wade

Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry: Art, America, and the Mom in Pop

M. I. Devine

The Trouble with Men Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power

David Shields

This One Will Hurt You

Paul Crenshaw

On Our Way Home from the Revolution: Reflections on Ukraine

Sonya Bilocerkowycz

Echo's Fugue

Desirae Matherly

Fear Icons Essays

Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel

Hummingbirds Between the Pages

Chris Arthur

Sustainability A Love Story

Nicole Walker

Love’s Long Line

Sophfronia Scott

The Real Life of the Parthenon

Patricia Vigderman

Curiouser and Curiouser Essays

Nicholas Delbanco

You, Me, and the Violence

Catherine Taylor

A Mother's Tale

Phillip Lopate

Don't Come Back

Lina María Ferreira Cabeza-Vanegas

This series from Mad Creek Books is a vehicle to discover, publish, and promote some of the most daring, ingenious, and artistic nonfiction. This is the first and only major series that announces its focus on the essay—a genre whose plasticity, timelessness, popularity, and centrality to nonfiction writing make it especially important in the field of nonfiction literature. In addition to publishing the most interesting and innovative books of essays by American writers, the series publishes extraordinary international essayists and reprint works by neglected or forgotten essayists, voices that deserve to be heard, revived, and reprised. The series is a major addition to the possibilities of contemporary literary nonfiction, focusing on that central, frequently chimerical, and invariably supple form: The Essay.

All submissions should come through Submittable, but for other queries about the series, please email [email protected] . Submissions to the series will be accepted annually from March 1st-April 30th, when we also read for the Gournay Prize .

About the Series Editors

DavidLazar ’sbooks include Celeste Holm Syndrome, Don’t Look Now: Things We Wish We Hadn’t Seen (co-edited with Kristen Iversen), I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms, Occasional Desire: Essays, Who’s Afraid of Helen of Troy, The Body of Brooklyn, Truth in Nonfiction, Essaying the Essay, Powder Town, AfterMontaigne (co-edited with Patrick Madden), and many more. A frequent Best American Essays honoree, he is Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, where he created the MFA program in nonfiction, having previously created the PhD, MA and undergraduate programs in nonfiction at Ohio University, where he taught from 1990–2006. Lazar is founding editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika and was a Guggenheim Fellow in Nonfiction for 2015-16.

Patrick Madden is the author of three books of essays:  Disparates, Sublime Physick, and Quotidiana . He is coeditor (with David Lazar) of After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays and cotranslator (with John Oliver Simon and Steven Stewart) of the Selected Poems of Eduardo Milán. His essays have appeared in Fourth Genre , Hotel Amerika , the Iowa Review , the Normal School , River Teeth , and other journals, as well as in the Best Creative Nonfiction and Best American Spiritual Writing . His books have won Independent Publisher, Foreword Indies, and Association of Mormon Letters awards, among others. A two-time Fulbright fellow to Uruguay, he teaches at Brigham Young University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. He currently serves as vice president of the NonfictionNOW conference and coeditor of Fourth Genre, and he curates the online anthology and essay resource Quotidiana .

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Editorial Advisory Board

Robert Atwan

Mary Cappello

John D’Agata

Wayne Koestenbaum

Maggie Nelson

Lia Purpura

Claudia Rankine

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21st Century - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas

The 21st century is characterized by rapid technological advancements, globalization, and a greater emphasis on social awareness and environmental sustainability. It is a time of increasing interconnectedness through the internet and social media, leading to a more diverse and varied cultural landscape. The world is facing new challenges, such as climate change and geopolitical instabilities, which require innovative solutions and cooperation among nations. Despite these challenges, the 21st century offers unprecedented opportunities for creativity, innovation, and growth.

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People line up as they wait to enter a soup kitchen in Athens, Greece, 15 February 2017. Photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

Liberal socialism now

As the crisis of democracy deepens, we must return to liberalism’s revolutionary and egalitarian roots.

by Matthew McManus   + BIO

Very few of us expected liberalism to have such a rocky 21st century. At the turn of the 20th, liberal ideology and liberal democratic political institutions seemed more legitimate and secure than ever before. Liberals had defeated their great geopolitical rivals on the fascist Right and the communist Left. How things change.

Over the past few decades, discontent and disdain for liberalism have spread across huge swathes of the globe, led by a resurgent Right-wing populism that denounced its materialism, universalism and libertine decadence. Wannabe strongmen like Victor Orban declared they were constructing new kinds of ‘illiberal democracy’ – a half truth, since the regimes would be illiberal, but not particularly democratic. Books flooded the market with alarmist or triumphalist titles such as Why Liberalism Failed (2018) or A World After Liberalism (2021), all of which diagnosed its failures with relish or fear. Theories about what had gone wrong multiplied. Liberalism was too atomistic, too alienating, too antidemocratic, too democratic for its own good, too beholden to the ignorant masses, too elitist, even too boring and politically correct for its own good.

What was often lost in the discourse around liberalism in the 21st century was whether it could simultaneously be worth saving while also having deserved the ignominy into which it was falling. From the 1970s onwards, many liberal politicians and theorists had backed away from the more progressive and transformative propensities of the tradition. The era of big liberal dreams about establishing a ‘great’ or ‘just’ society was over.

Internalising a host of conservative arguments, liberals like Isaiah Berlin or Friedrich Hayek argued that big dreams were dangerous and contrary to liberalism, its revolutionary past aside. The best one could hope for was a competitive and highly inequitable neoliberal society defined by ordered liberty and at most a minimal welfare state. That such a consciously deflated vision became associated with technocratic aloofness, a lack of principled conviction and a wariness of democratic accountability came as a surprise only to neoliberals c 2016. More thoughtful commentators followed Samuel Moyn’s claim in Liberalism Against Itself (2023) that if liberals couldn’t rediscover how to not just fearmonger, but inspire, they were unlikely to see their doctrine survive much longer and, ‘anyway, survival is not good enough.’

Moyn is right that, if liberals trade off presenting an inspiring vision of the future for mere survival, they are unlikely to get either. The existential woes of 21st-century liberalism require we do more than return to the forms of neoliberal governance that generated discontent in the first place. It requires retrieving the revolutionary emancipatory and egalitarian ethos that defined liberalism at its revolutionary best to offer a new deal to citizens of liberal states. The strand of liberal political theory that offers the richest guidance on what form this new deal should take is liberal socialism.

T he idea of ‘liberal socialism’ might appear odd and even oxymoronic. This is especially true for those on the Right and the Left who regard liberalism as the philosophy of market capitalism. Of course, there are many classical and neoliberal thinkers for whom that is true. From John Locke ’s emphatic defence of life, liberty and property to Hayek’s declaration that state planning in the economy was the road to serfdom, liberal defences of the ethics of capitalism are easy to find. The economist Ludwig von Mises no doubt spoke for many (including plenty on the Left) when, in his polemical tract Liberalism (1927), he proudly declared that:

[The] programme of liberalism … if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property , that is, private ownership of the means of production … All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Adam Smith , artist unknown, painted posthumously c 1795. Courtesy the National Gallery of Scotland

But this would be to ignore the reality that many great liberal thinkers have historically been wary (to downright critical) of capitalism. This goes far back. Adam Smith may have been an enthusiast for free trade and market liberties, but in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) he also decried how:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

This was reiterated in Smith’s polemics against monopolisation and the alienating effects of the division of labour in The Wealth of Nations (1776) . By the industrial era, some of the greatest liberal thinkers expressed sympathy and even came to align themselves with socialism. John Stuart Mill , the greatest liberal philosopher of the 19th century, openly declared himself a socialist in his Autobiography (1873) and stressed in Socialism (1879) how ‘great poverty, and that poverty very little connected with desert – are the first grand failure of the existing arrangements of society.’

Mill was hardly alone in sympathising with such a fusion of liberalism and socialism. In his essay collection Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (1973), the political theorist C B Macpherson coined the term ‘retrieval’ to refer to getting ‘clear of the disabling central defect of current liberal-democratic theory, while holding on to, or recovering, the humanistic values which liberal democracy has always claimed.’ We must now make an effort to retrieve the political theory of liberal socialism and make the case for its salience in the 21st century (a project I continue in my forthcoming book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism ).

L iberal socialism is a political ideology that combines support for many liberal political institutions and rights with a socialist desire to establish far more equitable and democratic economic arrangements. The latter point is put plainly by Michael Walzer in his book The Struggle for a Decent Politics (2023), in which he writes that, while ‘liberal socialists are not “egalitarianist”, they are serious about equality – more so, generally, than liberal democrats.’ This deeper concern for equality relative to classical liberals becomes apparent when we look at when liberal socialism emerged and how its major figures defended its core arguments.

There is extensive debate over periodising classical liberal theory. Many date its origins to the 17th century and the writings of Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Hugo Grotius among others. Whether or not these thinkers can be correctly labelled ‘liberals’ full stop, they undoubtedly developed or systematised a lot of the theoretical architecture that later liberals would rely on. By contrast, in Liberalism (2nd ed, 2014) Edmund Fawcett insists that mature liberal political philosophy only really appeared on the scene in the 19th century, when the term itself became popularised, and self-described ‘liberal’ parties and movements began to appear.

Whoever you agree with, there’s no doubt that liberal socialism emerged later than classical liberalism, extending the latter’s antipathy to the hierarchical ancien régimes of Europe to demand more radical changes still. While mature forms of liberal socialist political theory didn’t appear until the mid-19th century, there were important precursor figures. Two of the most influential predecessors to liberal socialism were Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft .

Thomas Paine insists that property is an eminently social phenomenon

Paine remains most famous for his stirring rhetorical defences of the American and French revolutions and his acidic polemics against Edmund Burke and conservatism in the Rights of Man (1791) . Until recently, Paine was largely viewed as an extraordinary pamphleteer for the classical liberal and republican viewpoint, while not being an especially original thinker or theorist. That appraisal has since undergone a major shift, with Robert Lamb in 2015 stressing Paine’s importance as a theorist whose ‘every instinct’ was egalitarian.

Thomas Paine ( c 1806-07) by John Wesley Jarvis. Courtesy the NGA, Washington

Paine is an important precursor to liberal socialism because he embraced the importance of individual flourishing and rights, while becoming increasingly sceptical that this could be achieved without a major redistribution of wealth and privilege. In the pamphlet ‘Agrarian Justice’ (1797), he rejects the methodological individualism of classical liberal approaches to property rights, and insists that property is an eminently social phenomenon:

Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property.

He goes on to suggest that, since many wealthy people monopolise productive land and capital without giving anything back, they owe a major debt to the poor as a matter of right. In the second part of the Rights of Man and in ‘Agrarian Justice’, Paine develops these arguments into a call for redistribution, sketching out an early scheme for the welfare state. This includes providing money for education, guaranteed employment for those who want it, a stipend for every child born, and a prototype of an old-age pension.

Mary Wollstonecraft ( c 1797) by John Opie. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, London

Wollstonecraft was less policy-minded than her contemporary Paine, but even more scathing in her contempt for the corrosive effect of the inequities of property that defined aristocratic and early capitalist societies. In her classic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft insisted that:

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. For it is in the most polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it ripens into virtue. One class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property: and property, once gained, will procure the respect due only to talents and virtue.

In her later Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), she lambasts the nouveaux riches as a ‘fungus’ with the criticism that:

An ostentatious display of wealth without elegance, and a greedy enjoyment of pleasure without sentiment, embrutes them till they term all virtue of a heroic cast, romantic attempts at something above our nature, and anxiety about the welfare of others, a search after misery in which we have no concern.

Wollstonecraft believed in private property, arguing it was a just reward for labour. But even this had a radical connotation, as she was critical of those who lived in luxury or defended privilege while ignoring the ‘women who gained a livelihood by selling vegetables or fish, who never had had any advantages of education…’ Her critique of the idle or undeserving rich both echoes Locke’s condemnation of aristocracy and anticipates later Ricardian socialist and Marxist condemnations of the parasitic wealthy.

Much like Paine, Wollstonecraft had an unfailingly egalitarian instinct (including, of course, on gender relations) insisting there ‘must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground…’ In her ideal society there would be neither rich nor poor, and the competitive race to accumulate private property would be a far less significant social priority than the relatively equal development of human intellectual, artistic and moral powers. It’s this solidaristic emphasis on the development of human powers in a society of equals that makes Wollstonecraft such an important figure in the movement towards liberal socialism.

L iberal socialism reached its maturity in the 19th century with John Stuart Mill, its most articulate and well-known spokesman. Early in his career, Mill had been a more conventional supporter of the free market. But, later in life, mostly under the influence of the utopian socialist St Simonians, he shifted his views markedly. In his Autobiography , Mill declared that his ‘ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists.’ While being critical of statist forms of socialism and expressing a wariness of the threat they posed to liberty, he claimed to look ‘forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all.’

This shift towards socialism was reflected in later editions of the Principles of Political Economy (1848) . Mill defended extensive experiments with workplace democracy and cooperatives, arguing that they would potentially be less domineering, more economically efficient, and more conducive to the flourishing of workers. As Helen McCabe traces in her excellent book John Stuart Mill: Socialist (2021), he also came to advocate for wealth redistribution through:

state ownership of railways and roads, and municipal ownership (and provision) of utilities such as gas and water. He also at least suggested it would be permissible for the government to provide public hospitals; national banks; a postal service; ‘manufactories’; and a corps of civil engineers, so long as the government did not maintain a monopoly on these professions or services.

Mill’s flavour of liberal socialism based around cooperatives and a generous welfare state anticipated many contemporary forms of market socialism, as well as being a direct inspiration to important ethical and Christian socialists such as R H Tawney.

‘Socialism … is liberalism in action; it means that liberty comes into the life of poor people’

In the early to mid-20th century, an impressive array of authors came to endorse liberal socialism. In a 1939 interview with The New Statesman and Nation , John Maynard Keynes proposed:

[A move out of the] 19th-century laissez-faire state into an era of liberal socialism … where we can act as an organised community for common purposes and to promote economic and social justice, whilst respecting and protecting the individual – his freedom of choice, his faith, his mind and its expression, his enterprise and his property.

A variety of European democratic socialists such as Eduard Bernstein and Carlo Rosselli worked to theorise closer connections between liberalism and socialism, echoing Mill’s claim that socialists were the more ‘far-sighted successors’ of liberalism. Bernstein’s classic The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) offered a sustained critique of orthodox Marxist revolutionary theory and proposed a conciliation with liberalism. He insisted that ‘with respect to liberalism as a historical movement, socialism is its legitimate heir, not only chronologically, but also intellectually’, and stressed that there is ‘no liberal thought that is not also part of the intellectual equipment of socialism.’ Rosselli made similar claims in his book Liberal Socialism (1930), holding that:

Socialism is nothing more than the logical development, taken to its extreme consequences, of the principle of liberty. Socialism, when understood in its fundamental sense and judged by its results – as the concrete movement for the emancipation of the proletariat – is liberalism in action; it means that liberty comes into the life of poor people.

While he never identified with the label, I’d argue that Macpherson can also be correctly characterised as a liberal socialist, given his lifelong effort to ‘retrieve’ a radical democratic and egalitarian core to the liberal tradition.

Finally, in the United States John Dewey worked hard to extend American conceptions of democracy beyond the horizon of the state. His most famous contributions were of course in education, where Dewey insisted on the pedagogical superiority a more egalitarian classroom where students actively participated in their learning, rather than being regarded as passive recipients of knowledge delivered by an intellectual superior. But Dewey was also keen to extend democratic principles to the workplace, becoming president of the League for Industrial Democracy in 1939 and advocating for the labour movement.

I n the postwar era, there have been several prominent figures aligned with liberal socialism, including Irving Howe, Michael Walzer and Chantal Mouffe. But by far the most significant figure to express sympathy for liberal socialism was John Rawls . For a long time, Rawls’s brick-like Theory of Justice (1971) was taken as an apologia for the welfare state system that, tragically, began to decline right about when the book was published. But this understates Rawls’s radicalism. In his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (2000), Rawls described Karl Marx as ‘heroic’ and praised his ‘marvellous’ intellectual gifts. By the time of his swan song Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001), Rawls insisted that welfarism did not do a good enough job of realising liberal principles of justice. Only a property-owning democracy or ‘liberal socialism’ would be sufficient. While Rawls himself wrote more about property-owning democracy, Edmundson’s book John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (2017) makes a powerful case for why the most rigorous interpretation of justice as fairness would require liberal socialism instead.

As history shows, liberal socialists are not a monolith. They disagree on many core points. Some of these are theoretical: is the strongest basis for liberal socialism some kind of utilitarianism, deontology or pragmatism? Other divides are over practical questions such as the relationship between statist welfarism and bottom-up democratisation of the economy; Mill famously vested his hopes in worker co-ops where many modern liberal socialists focus on social programmes. Nevertheless, all liberal socialists are committed to three central principles, which I’ve arranged from the more abstract to the more concrete.

First, liberal socialists are committed to methodological collectivism and normative individualism. They believe that the wellbeing and free development of individual persons (and, for a growing number, nonhuman animals) is the highest moral priority. However, they disagree with many classical liberals’ insular and competitive conception of human nature and their individualist approach to conceiving social relations. Liberal socialists hold that, to properly think through how individuals will best thrive, one must recognise their embeddedness in society, and how it can improve or disrupt their capacity to lead a good life.

Taking seriously commitments to liberty, equality and solidarity requires going beyond the social hierarchies established under capitalism

Secondly, liberal socialists are committed to each person having as equal an opportunity to lead as good a life as possible through the provision of shared resources for the development and expression of their human powers. To put it another way, liberal socialists focus on the free development of human powers or capabilities along a wide array of metrics. What Macpherson calls this developmental ethic can be contrasted with the extractive and possessive ethic characteristic of classical liberalism and hedonistic forms of utilitarianism. Where the extractive/possessive ethic holds that the good life comes from production and consumption, the developmental ethic of liberal socialism emphasises the equal development and application of each individual’s powers as a condition for their flourishing.

Thirdly, liberal socialists are committed to instituting a basic social structure characterised by highly participatory liberal-democratic political institutions and protections for liberal rights concurrent with the extension of liberal democratic principles into the economy and family to establish more egalitarian economic arrangements free of domination and exploitation. This also means that liberal socialists do not ascribe the same weight of private property rights to the means of production that many classical liberals do. While all liberal socialists believe in rights to personal property, this doesn’t extend to rights to acquire forms of property that would enable forms of workplace domination or political plutocracy to develop. In these instances, what impacts all should, in part, be decided upon by all.

Liberal socialist authors will defend and articulate these principles in various idioms, and emphasise one or another to various degrees. This testifies to the internal diversity of the tradition, if nothing else. Macpherson was very critical of atomistic ‘possessive individualism’ but supported a liberal humanist ethic of developing people’s capacities or powers. Nevertheless, he had comparatively little to say about what kind of social structure could realise this ethic. In The Socialist Decision (1933), Paul Tillich offers a theological defence of liberal democratic socialism, which obviously runs counter to the secular approaches of Mill and Rawls. Mouffe’s agonistic liberal socialism foregrounds the importance of political contestation far more than Rawls’s temperate insistence that a pluralistic society needs to unite around an ‘overlapping consensus’. Charles Mill’s ‘black radical liberalism’ rightly takes many Left-liberals to task for ignoring, or even supporting, imperialism and racism. But behind this variety is a core conviction that taking seriously commitments to liberty, equality and solidarity requires going beyond the social hierarchies established under capitalism.

Given the eminence of many of the figures attracted to liberal socialism, it is somewhat perplexing that the term can seem oxymoronic. The explanation probably has more to do with politics than philosophy, especially in the US. As Moyn points out in Liberalism Against Itself , throughout the mid-20th century, many prominent ‘Cold War’ liberals turned against the more progressive and egalitarian elements in the tradition. This led to the banishing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G W F Hegel and Marx to the fringes, and the dilution of the more radical arguments of prominent liberals like Mill. By the time liberal egalitarians began to marshal formidable theoretical arguments for welfarism and social democracy in the 1970s, the time to realise such an agenda had passed. Neoliberalism had taken hold across much of the world, further squeezing out progressive forms of liberalism and liberal socialism.

Nevertheless, the future for liberal socialist political theory is bright. While not everyone listed below would identify with the label (and some might reject it), a considerable number of prominent and up-and-coming theorists have been working to bring out the affinities between the two traditions and canonise (or re-canonise) the major figures. These include Helen McCabe, Michael Walzer, James Crotty, Chantal Mouffe, Igor Shoikhedbrod, Lillian Cicerchia, Samuel Moyn, Daniel Chandler, William Edmundson, Elizabeth Anderson, Tony Smith, Rodney Peffer and many more.

It isn’t hard to see why the prospect of liberal socialism would be appealing today. Liberalism remains in or near crisis, and vast numbers express discontent with the neoliberal status quo. At the same time, there are very good reasons to reject revisiting forms of authoritarian ‘real existing socialism’ and communism. Liberal socialism offers the prospect of combining respect for liberal rights, checks and balances on state power, and participatory democracy with socialist concerns for the equal flourishing of all in a sustainable environment, the extension of democratic concerns into the workplace and ‘private government’, and pushing back on plutocratic rule. It also philosophically aligns well with concrete democratic socialist and radical movements appearing in the US, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere that want radical economic change but align with liberal values. Whether liberal socialism can transition from being a theoretical tradition and become a popular political ideology is a hard question. But, in a world defined by growing anger at inequality and plutocracy, liberal socialism is worthy of our loyalty.

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What Is a 21st-Century ‘Writer’s Home’?

Twain had a billiard room. hemingway had a cuban abode. st. vincent millay had pool parties. but nowadays poetry won’t pay the mortgage.

Is having a writer’s home—”a domicile where an author sets up permanent shop”—an antiquated idea? Poet Derek Mong just bought a house, but he still wonders. Ernest Hemingway’s library at his home Finca Vigía, in Havana, Cuba. Photo by Talib Jabbar.

by Derek Mong | August 13, 2024

In my many pilgrimages to writers’ homes, I’ve felt two responses, often simultaneously. There’s excitement about my proximity to creation. About the whiff of genius that lingers—like lavender, like music—beyond a study’s velvet rope. But then I feel comforted, too. That my literary heroes were, in the sunny patois of supermarket tabloids, “just like us.” Folks who fretted over floorboards and flashing. Who had toilets, toasters, and trash.

Robert Frost’s Stone House in Shaftsbury, Vermont is just that—a stone house—but it’s also where he wrote “The Road Not Taken.” That poem’s lines fill the rooms like winter light. Emily Dickinson’s Homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts, stunned me into a reverential silence until I saw it for its component parts: beds and windows, beams and bricks.

Another way to think about all this is personification. A writer’s home personifies its owner, giving visitors the sense of “knowing” a person (usually dead) who held the pen. It personifies their writing too. Here’s their typewriter, here’s their table, here’s something tactile on which to ground an artform that can, at its best, hang words in air.

This holds true for writers we admire and those we don’t. When I spiral up the stone steps of Hawk Tower, the poet Robinson Jeffers’ oceanside eyrie in Carmel, California, I feel like I am Jeffers, or at least his houseguest. No such joy accompanied my daily walks around the General Lew Wallace Study & Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana. I rack this up to the badness of Ben-Hur. My dog shared my disdain, peeing frequently on old Lew’s trees.

Lately, when I pass a sign for a writer’s home or peek into J.D. McClatchy’s coffee table book, American Writers at Home , I feel something sour. Like the foxing of a frontispiece. Like crawl space mold. At first, I thought it simple envy. We writers are envious creatures. We envy each other’s sentences. We envy each other’s successes. We even envy our predecessors’ sentences and successes, which surround us in their homes.

This stirring, though, was different, and newer, dating back to 2022, when my wife and I sold our home of six years in Crawfordsville, just across the street from Lew Wallace. It deepened in the year we spent in Portland, Oregon—lucky beneficiaries of my sabbatical—and even after we returned to a new Hoosier zip code. By then the very idea of a writer’s home, a domicile where an author sets up permanent shop, struck me as antiquated. Even privileged. What changed?

Well, we did. From 2022 to 2024, we bounced among three houses, returning to what was, for the majority of our marriage, native ground: the rental market. My perspective on housing shifted. Renting was flexible and maintenance-free. Ownership was permanent and bougie. Mortgage rates rose while the number of active listings plummeted. Prices ballooned, inflation flattened (or shrank) buying power. It felt like a bad time to buy a home.

And yet last fall my wife and I started haunting Zillow and pouncing on early showings. We chatted up our elderly neighbor’s sons—I’m not proud of this—when that neighbor died. (They were selling, but for more than we had.) Throughout it all, I thought about the writers’ homes I’d visited, and if those writers’ lives bore any resemblance to my own. Did I secretly hope, in buying a home, to mimic their lifestyle? Was that possible in 2024?

Not if I wanted to emulate Mark Twain, whose Hartford mansion boasts a billiard parlor and a fireplace with a fluted flue. Ditto Edna St. Vincent Millay, who’d ask the swimmers in her outdoor pool to splash about nude. Even the more modest homes, like Walt Whitman’s row house in Camden, New Jersey, reek of entitlement and stability. Photographs show the elderly poet’s floors there bestrewn with papers—like a hoarder clinging to a golden past.

Of course, this is all unfair—to these writers and to me. The economics of literature has shifted. Its cultural capital too. (Besides, it’s masochistic to compete with someone whose home address is a historic landmark.) As the internet makes writing more democratic, writers’ homes feel elite or off-limits. Don’t touch anything! isn’t just a warning about rarified artifacts; it’s a reminder that this is all out of reach. Today, writers’ homes represent twin goals that remain, for most working writers, distant or divorced: financial security and geographic certainty.

I’ve met few writers who publish their way to a down payment, and if the AI innovators have their way, I’ll meet fewer still. Most writers I know are peripatetic, moving toward the promise of a paycheck, which they often teach to secure. A “room of one’s own” was Virginia Woolf’s metaphor for the solitude needed by (and denied to) women writers. But as the local Starbucks and public library, the soccer sideline and the playground can attest, solitude is a luxury that many writers can’t afford. What plaque will hang over these sites of hurried composition? Who’ll tour them, 50 years hence, to pay homage to the novels being written there right now?

If I’m still alive then, two things will be true: my poetry still won’t make money, and my mortgage will be paid off. That’s right, Dear Reader, we did buy a home, though not—at least in my case—because pride of ownership or wealth building held much allure. Nor did the promise of a home office, its shelves sagging with books. No, I bought a house to retain a feeling, however misguided or intangible, that I have some control over my own life. That my loves were perpetually protected. That we’re safe inside our weatherproof ark.

The history of writers’ homes reminds me that this is a delusion, and one we sign for on the dotted line. Ernest Hemingway lost his Havana residence, Finca Vigía, to the Cuban Revolution. Ralph Waldo Emerson watched his Concord home burn; he was so beset by despair or dementia that he tossed a few belongings back into the flames. The poet Anne Bradstreet, who wrote “Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House (July 10th, 1666),” suffered much the same:

Here stood that trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best. My pleasant things in ashes lie, And them behold no more shall I.

It doesn’t take a coup or conflagration to remind us that our lives are fragile and that our “pleasant things” are bound, like our bodies, for ash. We can install smoke detectors, map the flood plains, and test for radon. (God knows, I’ve done all three.) But catastrophe will inevitably find—if not our actual houses—then everything they represent: family, contentment, a quiet place in the world.

Owning a home helps us to forget that fact, however briefly, as we arrange new furniture and mow the lawn. I’d almost forgotten it myself, tucked away in my new basement study, until I looked out my only window to see the bees, right at eye level, pollinating the front yard. Then I remembered the siding needs painting. Then I remembered that I’m already halfway underground.

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The War-Prone and Chaotic 21st Century Essay

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Introduction

Weapons and mass destruction, the gap between the south and the north.

Bibliography

A number of challenges, ranging from economic, political to social, characterize the 21 st century. The main problems that confront all states in the global system are the preservation of sovereignty and promotion of national interests. In fact, states are concerned more with the promotion of national security.

Research shows that states would do everything within their power to protect their national borders. The emergence of global problems is indeed the main issue that threatens human life. The security of many states is at stake due to terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

Powerful states are threatened just as the weak states because terrorism does not spare any state. Moreover, there is always tension between the developed and the developing countries because of issues surrounding resource distribution. This article looks at some of the factors that have contributed to the prevalence of problems in the 21 st century. The article invokes a number of theories and incorporates the views of international relations scholars.

In the current international system, terrorism is the major threat facing all states. Countries are faced with both internal and external threats, but terrorism remains the major threat. Terrorism is a problem that cannot be resolved unless states delve into its origins.

Terrorists use violence to frustrate governments, irrespective of whether the country is developed or poor. In other words, no country or individual is spared by the heinous acts of terrorists. In the modern international system, there are various categories of terrorists, each with its own mode of operation.

Some terrorists threaten to use weapons of mass destruction while others resort to suicide bombing. Scholars argue that terrorism is a result of depression, melancholy, hopelessness, helplessness, and defeat. Before the Cold War era, terrorism was not a big issue in the international system because extremist organizations were under the control of the US and the Soviet Union. The hostilities between the US and the Soviet Union could not give room to terrorism. In fact, countries that were suspected to support terrorism were constantly frustrated.

It should be noted that there is no Leviathan in the international system, which is compared to the centralized government. This gives state and non-state actors an opportunity to act in a manner that is beneficial to them. Moreover, there are weak and powerful states in the international system. Powerful states are well off in terms of military technology and development. In this regard, weak states feel threatened, which inspires them to develop some of the sophisticated weapons to counter the influence of powerful states.

Availability of weapons of mass destruction is another threat to the world security in the current international system, which has made the 21 st century the most disordered century in the human history. It is upon this that the Atomic Agency was created to supervise the production and distribution of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the Cold War, only powerful states, such as Russia and the US, had the capability of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. However, these weapons could not be used to destroy life and property. In fact, the superpowers wanted to prove to each other that they were technologically competent.

They could not engage in war because they were mutually assured of destruction. Currently, a number of states have the ability to produce weapons of mass destruction. For instance, countries such as India and Pakistan have the ability to produce nuclear energy. This is very dangerous to the world security, especially when such weapons get into the hands of terrorism.

The ideas of Mearsheimer support the fact that the international system exists according to the Hobbestian state of nature meaning that life is short-lived, anarchic, brutal, and nasty. This implies that each state is concerned with its national security. States would do everything to ensure that they achieve their national interests.

The third problem facing the world in the 21 st century is the increasing economic gap between poor and rich states. Studies show that the gap between the south and the north is always in the increase. The problems facing countries of the south is how to initiate development projects.

However, scholars blame colonialism for the problems that are currently facing developing countries, particularly in Africa. The effects of neocolonialism are severe in the 21 st century meaning that even the few available solutions are inapplicable. For instance, the issue of anger and insecurity cannot be resolved through provision of aid and monetary assistance.

Neocolonialists focus so much on establishing a cash economy by emphasizing on cash crops such as coffee and tea. This has always affected the agricultural policies of developing countries. Moreover, the infrastructural development was tempered with during colonialism, which is now haunting poor states in the 21 st century.

This explains the reasons why weak states attempt to acquire nuclear energy. In the third assumption, Mearsheimer was of the view that states would always suspect the actions of each other because one state will never understand the intentions of the other. Due to this, states try as much as possible to match the policies of their counterparts in terms of economic and military development.

Since powerful states struggle to maintain their influence globally, they always apply repressive rules, which force weak states to repel. This has even complicated the situation in the 21 st century because weak states are forced to adopt policies that do not support their domestic economic policies.

Mearsheimer seems to agree with the ideas of liberalist scholars such as Aart Scholte and Brent Steele because actors in the international system are rational actors meaning that they understand the external environment. This view is misplaced because states cooperate only to achieve their national interests.

Steele suggests that states respect the internationally recognized laws. This view is actually inaccurate because powerful states are not even members of the internationally established organizations such as the International Criminal Court. Scholte analyzed the role of global civil societies in the 21 st century.

Similarly, his analysis was misplaced because the activities of the civil groups are not always similar in all societies. Globalization is a political concept that is used to suppress and dictate policies to the poor states in the international system. This means that globalization benefits only the rich states.

Mearsheimer, John. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics . New York: Norton & Company, 2001.

Scholte, Aart. The Political Economy of Globalization . London: Macmillan, 2000.

Sciolino, Elaine. Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Steele, Brent. “Liberal-Idealism: A constructivist Critique.” International Studies Review 9.1 (2007): 23–52.

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Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century: Essays on the Novels, Children's Stories, Online Writings, Comics and Other Works Paperback – Illustrated, March 19, 2015

Neil Gaiman has emerged as one of the most influential literary figures of the 21st century. To borrow a phrase from his viral 2012 University of the Arts commencement speech, Gaiman "makes good art," from his graphic novels to his social media collaborations, award-winning fantasy fiction and beloved children's books.

This collection of new essays examines a range of Gaiman's prolific output, with readings of the novels American Gods, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book and The Ocean at the End of the Lane . Children's books The Wolves in the Walls and Blueberry Girl and the online short story collection A Calendar of Tales are discussed. Gaiman's return to the serial comic book form with Sandman: Overture is covered, and artist JH Williams III contributes an exclusive interview about his collaboration with Gaiman on Overture . Cartoonist Judd Winick offers a personal essay on his connection to Gaiman's work.

• Print length 272 pages
• Language English
• Publisher McFarland & Company
• Publication date March 19, 2015
• Reading age 18 years and up
• Dimensions 6 x 0.54 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0786494778
• ISBN-13 978-0786494774
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ McFarland & Company; Illustrated edition (March 19, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0786494778
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About the author

Tara prescott-johnson.

Tara Prescott-Johnson is a Lecturer in Writing Programs and Faculty in Residence at UCLA. She has a Ph.D. in English, specializing in twentieth-century American literature, from Claremont Graduate University, and a M.A. from The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy (Bucknell University Press), editor of Neil Gaiman in the 21st Century (McFarland Press) and co-editor of Gender and the Superhero Narrative (University Press of Mississippi) and Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman (McFarland Press). Her recent publications can be found in Firefly Revisited (Rowman & Littlefield Press), Critical Insights: James Joyce (Salem Press), Critical Insights: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Salem Press), European Joyce Studies, and Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

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Sherlock Holmes for the 21st century : essays on new adaptations

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Essay on 21st Century Learners

Students are often asked to write an essay on 21st Century Learners in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on 21st Century Learners

Who are 21st century learners.

21st century learners are students who live in today’s world. They use modern tools like computers, smartphones, and the internet to learn new things. They are not only learning from books but also from online resources. They are curious, creative, and always ready to learn.

Learning Tools of 21st Century Learners

The tools used by 21st century learners are different from the past. They use laptops, tablets, and smartphones for learning. They also use the internet to find information. These tools help them to learn anytime and anywhere.

Skills of 21st Century Learners

21st century learners have unique skills. They are good at problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication. They also know how to work in teams. These skills help them to be successful in the future.

Challenges for 21st Century Learners

Learning in the 21st century also has challenges. Sometimes, too much information can be confusing. Also, not everyone has access to the internet or modern tools. So, it’s important to find ways to help all students learn.

The Future of 21st Century Learning

The future of learning in the 21st century is exciting. With more technology, students will have more ways to learn. They will be able to explore new ideas and solve complex problems. This will prepare them for a bright future.

250 Words Essay on 21st Century Learners

21st Century Learners are students who learn in ways that are different from how their parents or grandparents did. They use digital tools like computers, tablets, and smartphones to learn new things. They like to learn at their own pace and in their own time.

Learning Tools

Today’s learners use a lot of technology. They use the internet to find information. They also use apps and games to learn new things. For example, they might use an app to learn a new language or a game to learn math. These digital tools make learning fun and engaging for them.

Learning Styles

21st Century Learners also have different learning styles. Some like to learn by watching videos. Others prefer to read or write. There are also those who learn best by doing things. This is why many schools now use a mix of teaching methods to help all students learn.

Skills for the Future

21st Century Learners are also learning skills that will help them in the future. They are learning how to think critically, solve problems, and work well with others. These skills are important in a world that is changing fast.

In conclusion, 21st Century Learners are different from learners of the past. They use technology to learn and have different learning styles. They are also learning important skills for the future. This makes them ready for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

500 Words Essay on 21st Century Learners

Introduction, characteristics of 21st century learners.

The 21st Century Learners are tech-savvy. They use the internet, smartphones, and computers with ease. They are often called ‘digital natives’ because they are comfortable with technology. This is different from previous generations who had to learn these skills as adults.

These learners also like to learn at their own pace. They enjoy using online resources to study. They can watch a video, read a blog, or join an online discussion to understand a topic. They don’t just learn from books and teachers. They learn from a wide range of sources.

Learning Style of 21st Century Learners

They also like to learn in a fun and engaging way. They enjoy games, videos, and interactive activities. They prefer learning methods that are interesting and enjoyable.

21st Century Learners need to have certain skills. These are often called ’21st Century Skills’. They include things like critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. These skills are needed to succeed in today’s world.

Creativity is the ability to think of new and original ideas. It is important for innovation and problem-solving.

Communication is the ability to share ideas and information effectively. This can be through writing, speaking, or using digital tools.

Collaboration means being able to work well with others. It involves teamwork and cooperation.

In conclusion, 21st Century Learners are different from learners in the past. They are tech-savvy, prefer active learning, and need to develop certain skills. As we move further into the 21st century, it is important for educators to understand these learners and adapt their teaching methods accordingly. This will help to prepare these learners for the future and ensure they are able to succeed in a rapidly changing world.

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Orenburg Oblast

Orenburg Oblast ( Russian : Оренбургская область , romanized :   Orenburgskaya oblast' ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast ), mainly located in Eastern Europe . Its administrative center is the city of Orenburg . From 1938 to 1957, it bore the name Chkalov Oblast ( Russian : Чка́ловская о́бласть ) in honor of Valery Chkalov . Population: 1,862,767 ( 2021 Census ). [9]

Administrative divisions

Demographics, settlements, external links.

Orenburg Oblast's internal borders are with the republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan to the north, Chelyabinsk Oblast to the north-east, and with Samara and Saratov oblasts to the west. Orenburg Oblast also shares an international border with Kazakhstan to the east and south. The oblast is situated on the boundary between Europe and Asia . The majority of its territory lies west of the continental divide in European Russia and smaller sections in the east situated on the Asian side of the divide. The most important river of the oblast is the Ural and the largest lake Shalkar-Yega-Kara . Orenburg is traversed by the northeasterly line of equal latitude and longitude. The highest point of the oblast is the 668   m (2,192   ft) -high Nakas . [10]

In the first half of the 18th century, the Russian Empire constructed the Irtysh line   [ ru ] , a series of forty-six forts, including Orenburg, [11] to prevent Kazakh and Dzungar nomads from raiding Russian territory. [12]

Orenburg played a major role in Pugachev's Rebellion (1773–1774), the largest peasant revolt in Russian history.

During the Russian Civil War , the region was heavily affected by the Russian famine of 1921–1922 .

During World War II , in 1941, the command and staff of the newly formed Polish Anders' Army was based in Buzuluk , [13] and in 1942, the First Czechoslovak Independent Field Battalion was based there. Both formations afterwards fought against Nazi Germany .

On 26 May 2024, a Ukrainian drone attacked the Voronezh M long-range radar station near Orsk . [14]

Population : 1,862,767   ( 2021 Census ) ; [9] 2,033,072   ( 2010 Russian census ) ; [15] 2,179,551   ( 2002 Census ) ; [16] 2,174,459   ( 1989 Soviet census ) . [17]

Ethnic composition (2021) [18]

Vital statistics for 2022: [19] [20]

• Births: 16,216 (8.4 per 1,000)
• Deaths: 25,590 (13.3 per 1,000)

Total fertility rate (2022): [21] 1.46 children per woman

Life expectancy (2021): [22] Total — 68.21 years (male   — 63.91, female   — 72.48)

As of a 2012 survey, [23] 40.2% of the population of Orenburg Oblast adheres to the Russian Orthodox Church , 3% declare themselves to be generic nondenominational Christians (excluding the Protestant definition), 2% are Orthodox Christian believers who do not belong to any church or belong to non-Russian Orthodox churches . Muslims constitute 13% of the population. 3% of the population are followers of the Slavic native faith (Rodnovery), 6.8% are followers of other religions or did not give an answer to the survey. In addition, 20% of the population declares to be " spiritual but not religious " and 12% to be atheist . [23]

Orenburg Oblast is one of the major agricultural areas of Russia. Its climate is favorable to farming with a humid spring, dry summer and many sunny days, which make perfect conditions for cultivating hard wheat and rye , sunflowers , potatoes , peas , beans , corn , and gourds .

The range of the oblast's export commodities includes oil and oil products, gas and gas produced products, rolled ferrous and non-ferrous metals, nickel , asbestos , chromium compounds, rough copper, electric engines, and radiators, which are used to make products from the machine-building industry.

• Ashchebutak (air base)
• List of Chairmen of the Legislative Assembly of Orenburg Oblast
• Black Dolphin Prison

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Tomsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. It lies in the southeastern West Siberian Plain, in the southwest of the Siberian Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Tomsk. Population: 1,047,394.

Kemerovo Oblast , also known as Kuzbass , after the Kuznetsk Basin, is a federal subject of Russia. Kemerovo is the administrative center and largest city of the oblast. Kemerovo Oblast is one of Russia's most urbanized regions, with over 70% of the population living in its nine principal cities. Its ethnic composition is predominantly Russian, but native Shors and Kalmak Siberian Tatars also live in the oblast, along with Ukrainians, Volga Tatars, and Chuvash. The population recorded during the 2021 Census was 2,600,923.

Alexandrov is a town and the administrative center of Alexandrovsky District in Vladimir Oblast, Russia. It is located 120 kilometers (75 mi) northeast of Moscow and has a population of 57,053 (2021 Census) ; 61,551 (2010 Russian census) ; 64,824 (2002 Census) ; 68,220 (1989 Soviet census) . It was previously known as Alexandrovskaya Sloboda . It operates on the EEST time zone, with the same time zone as Vladimir.

Ivanovo Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. It had a population of 927,828 as of the 2021 Russian Census.

Voronezh Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Voronezh. Its population was 2,308,792 as of the 2021 Census.

Chelyabinsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia in the Ural Mountains region, on the border of Europe and Asia. Its administrative center is the city of Chelyabinsk.

Kirov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia located in Eastern Europe. Its administrative center is the city of Kirov. As of the 2010 census, the population is 1,341,312.

Volgograd Oblast is a federal subject of Russia, located in the lower Volga region of Southern Russia. Its administrative center is Volgograd. The population of the oblast was 2,500,781 in the 2021 Census.

Kursk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Kursk. As of the 2021 Census, Kursk Oblast has a population of 1,082,458.

Lipetsk Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Lipetsk. As of the 2021 Census, its population was 1,143,224.

Tambov Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Tambov. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,091,994.

Smolensk Oblast , informally also called Smolenshchina (Смоленщина), is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative centre is the city of Smolensk. As of the 2021 Census, its population was 888,421.

Ryazan Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Ryazan, which is also the oblast's largest city.

Penza Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Penza. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,266,348.

Kurgan Oblast is a federal subject of Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Kurgan. According to the 2021 Census, the population was 776,661, down from 910,807 recorded in the 2010 Census.

Zabaykalsky Krai is a federal subject of Russia, located in the Russian Far East. Its administrative center is Chita. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 1,107,107.

Akbulaksky District , also known as Ak-Bulaksky District , is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the thirty-five in Orenburg Oblast, Russia. The area of the district is 5,000 square kilometers (1,900 sq mi). Its administrative center is the rural locality of Akbulak. Population: 25,606 ; 30,723 (2002 Census) ; 29,683 (1989 Soviet census) . The population of Akbulak accounts for 54.4% of the total district's population.

Svetlinsky District is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the thirty-five in Orenburg Oblast, Russia. It is located in the east of the oblast. The area of the district is 5,608 square kilometers (2,165 sq mi). Its administrative center is the rural locality of Svetly. Population: 13,876 ; 18,356 (2002 Census) ; 19,664 (1989 Soviet census) . The population of Svetly accounts for 57.6% of the total district's population.

Vagaysky District is an administrative district (raion), one of the twenty-two in Tyumen Oblast, Russia. As a municipal division, it is incorporated as Vagaysky Municipal District . It is located in the east of the oblast. The area of the district is 18,400 square kilometers (7,100 sq mi). Its administrative center is the rural locality of Vagay. Population: 22,539 ; 24,561 (2002 Census) ; 27,801 (1989 Soviet census) . The population of Vagay accounts for 22.2% of the district's total population.

Selivanovsky District is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the sixteen in Vladimir Oblast, Russia. It is located in the east of the oblast. The area of the district is 1,388 square kilometers (536 sq mi). Its administrative center is the urban locality of Krasnaya Gorbatka. Population: 17,201 (2021 Census) ; 18,610 (2010 Russian census) ; 21,330 ; 24,767 (1989 Soviet census) . The population of Krasnaya Gorbatka accounts for 46.5% of the district's total population.

• ↑ Президент Российской Федерации.   Указ   №849   от   13 мая 2000 г. «О полномочном представителе Президента Российской Федерации в федеральном округе». Вступил в силу   13 мая 2000 г. Опубликован: "Собрание законодательства РФ", No.   20, ст. 2112, 15 мая 2000 г. (President of the Russian Federation.   Decree   # 849   of   May 13, 2000 On the Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in a Federal District . Effective as of   May 13, 2000.).
• ↑ Госстандарт Российской Федерации.   №ОК 024-95   27 декабря 1995 г. «Общероссийский классификатор экономических регионов. 2.   Экономические районы», в ред. Изменения №5/2001 ОКЭР. ( Gosstandart of the Russian Federation.   # OK 024-95   December 27, 1995 Russian Classification of Economic Regions. 2.   Economic Regions , as amended by the Amendment   # 5/2001 OKER. ).
• ↑ Official website of Orenburg Oblast. Governor of Orenburg Oblast (in Russian)
• ↑ "Оценка численности постоянного населения по субъектам Российской Федерации" . Federal State Statistics Service . Retrieved 1 September 2022 .
• ↑ "26. Численность постоянного населения Российской Федерации по муниципальным образованиям на 1 января 2018 года" . Federal State Statistics Service . Retrieved 23 January 2019 .
• ↑ "Об исчислении времени" . Официальный интернет-портал правовой информации (in Russian). 3 June 2011 . Retrieved 19 January 2019 .
• ↑ Official throughout the Russian Federation according to Article   68.1 of the Constitution of Russia .
• 1 2 Russian Federal State Statistics Service. Всероссийская перепись населения 2020 года. Том 1 [ 2020 All-Russian Population Census, vol. 1 ] (XLS) (in Russian). Federal State Statistics Service .
• ↑ Google Earth
• ↑ " Russian Colonization and the Genesis of Kazak National Consciousness ". S. Sabol (2003). Springer. p.27 ISBN   0230599427
• ↑ " Central Asia, 130 Years of Russian Dominance: A Historical Overview ". Edward A. Allworth, Edward Allworth (1994). Duke University Press. p. 10. ISBN   0822315211
• ↑ Ocaleni z "nieludzkiej ziemi" (in Polish). Łódź: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej . 2012. p.   43. ISBN   978-83-63695-00-2 .
• ↑ "Ukraine Strikes Russian Early-Warning System in Orenburg – Report" . The Moscow Times . 27 May 2024.
• ↑ Russian Federal State Statistics Service (2011). Всероссийская перепись населения 2010 года. Том   1 [ 2010 All-Russian Population Census, vol.   1 ] . Всероссийская перепись населения 2010   года [2010 All-Russia Population Census] (in Russian). Federal State Statistics Service .
• ↑ Federal State Statistics Service (21 May 2004). Численность населения России, субъектов Российской Федерации в составе федеральных округов, районов, городских поселений, сельских населённых пунктов   – районных центров и сельских населённых пунктов с населением 3   тысячи и более человек [ Population of Russia, Its Federal Districts, Federal Subjects, Districts, Urban Localities, Rural Localities—Administrative Centers, and Rural Localities with Population of Over 3,000 ] (XLS) . Всероссийская перепись населения 2002   года [All-Russia Population Census of 2002] (in Russian).
• ↑ Всесоюзная перепись населения 1989   г. Численность наличного населения союзных и автономных республик, автономных областей и округов, краёв, областей, районов, городских поселений и сёл-райцентров [ All Union Population Census of 1989: Present Population of Union and Autonomous Republics, Autonomous Oblasts and Okrugs, Krais, Oblasts, Districts, Urban Settlements, and Villages Serving as District Administrative Centers ] . Всесоюзная перепись населения 1989   года [All-Union Population Census of 1989] (in Russian). Институт демографии Национального исследовательского университета: Высшая школа экономики [Institute of Demography at the National Research University: Higher School of Economics]. 1989 – via Demoscope Weekly .
• ↑ "Национальный состав населения" . Federal State Statistics Service . Retrieved 29 August 2023 .
• ↑ "Information on the number of registered births, deaths, marriages and divorces for January to December 2022" . ROSSTAT . Archived from the original on 2 March 2023 . Retrieved 21 February 2023 .
• ↑ "Birth rate, mortality rate, natural increase, marriage rate, divorce rate for January to December 2022" . ROSSTAT . Archived from the original on 2 March 2023 . Retrieved 21 February 2023 .
• ↑ Суммарный коэффициент рождаемости [ Total fertility rate ] . Russian Federal State Statistics Service (in Russian). Archived from the original (XLSX) on 10 August 2023 . Retrieved 10 August 2023 .
• ↑ "Демографический ежегодник России" [ The Demographic Yearbook of Russia ] (in Russian). Federal State Statistics Service of Russia (Rosstat) . Retrieved 1 June 2022 .
• 1 2 3 "Arena: Atlas of Religions and Nationalities in Russia" . Sreda, 2012.
• ↑ 2012 Arena Atlas Religion Maps . "Ogonek", № 34 (5243), 27 August 2012. Retrieved 21 April 2017. Archived .
• Kropotkin, Peter Alexeivitch ; Bealby, John Thomas (1911). "Orenburg (government)"   . Encyclopædia Britannica . Vol.   20 (11th   ed.). p.   252.

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Orenburg city, Russia

The capital city of Orenburg oblast .

Orenburg - Overview

Orenburg is a city in Russia located in the Southern Urals, at the junction of Europe and Asia, about 1,455 km south-east of Moscow. This city is the administrative center of Orenburg Oblast.

The population of Orenburg is about 572,300 (2022), the area - 259 sq. km.

The phone code - +7 3532, the postal codes - 460000-460056.

Orenburg city flag

Orenburg city coat of arms.

Orenburg city map, Russia

Orenburg city latest news and posts from our blog:.

22 February, 2024 / The Dolgiye Mountains - One of the Most Beautiful Places in Orenburg Oblast .

4 April, 2019 / Cities of Russia at Night - the Views from Space .

15 March, 2014 / Novotroitsk - industrial city .

News, notes and thoughts:

10 October, 2012   / On Tuesday, powerful explosion occurred about 20 km from Orenburg. The power of the explosion was 3-4 kilotons of TNT, which is equal to the blast of 300 train cars with shells. This is not the first such incident in Russia in recent years - explosions at ammunition depots occur with surprising regularity.

History of Orenburg

Foundation of orenburg.

In October 1715, a significant part of the meeting of Kazakh elders headed by Abulkhair Khan spoke out in favor of adopting an act on the voluntary annexation of the Younger Zhuz of Kazakhs (a significant part of today’s western Kazakhstan) to the Russian Empire. In 1734, Abulkhair Khan pledged to protect the security of the Russian borders and merchant caravans passing through the Kazakh steppes.

As a reward for this, he asked to approve the khan’s succession to the throne for his family and build a town with a fortress on the Or River, where he could find refuge in case of danger. In 1735, the Orenburg fortress was laid at the confluence of the Or and Yaik (Ural) rivers.

In 1739, river floods in this place forced preparations for the construction of a new town with the same name downstream of the Yaik River, on Krasnaya (Red) Mountain. In 1741, it was founded. The old town was named the Orsk fortress (the present city of Orsk), but the construction of the new town did not begin as the chosen place was treeless, rocky and remote from the river - unsuitable for town construction.

In 1743, Orenburg was founded for the third time, on the site of the former Berd fortress, at the confluence of the Sakmara River with the Yaik. Today, it is the historic center of the city. Since Orenburg was originally founded on the Or River, it was named Orenburg - a town on the Or. In connection with such a confusing history of founding, Orenburg is called three times conceived and once born.

In 1744, it became the center of the Orenburg Governorate stretching from the Volga River to Siberia, from the Kama River to the Caspian Sea. Orenburg was built as a fortress town guarding the southeastern border of the Russian Empire. At the same time, it was supposed to serve as a center of trade with the peoples of the East. Therefore Orenburg had both military and commercial significance.

More Historical Facts…

Orenburg in the late 18th - 19th centuries

During the peasant war of 1773-1775, Orenburg underwent a long siege under the leadership of Yemelyan Pugachev. At that time, it was the main fortress in the south-east of the country. Powerful fortifications allowed Orenburg to withstand a six-month siege. After the suppression of the uprising, as punishment, Empress Catherine II renamed the Yaitsk Cossacks into the Ural Cossacks, the Yaitsk town - into Uralsk, the Yaik River - into the Ural River.

For the successful defense of the fortress, the townspeople of Orenburg were presented with the cross of St. Andrew the First-Called (X). Today, this cross is depicted on the flag and coat of arms of Orenburg.

In 1811, the population of Orenburg was about 5,400 people. At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries, the first Catholics appeared in Orenburg, since after the divisions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth a large number of Poles were exiled here. In the 19th century, the Polish diaspora in Orenburg increased because of the exiled participants of the Polish uprisings. In 1847, a Catholic church was built and consecrated in Orenburg (this building has been preserved and can be found at 8th Marta Street, 24).

In 1862, the Orenburg fortress was officially abolished due to the loss of its strategic importance. The functions of a border outpost on the southern borders of the Russian Empire were transferred to Tashkent. The liquidation of the fortress coincided with the abolition of serfdom and the development of capitalism in the country, which gave a powerful impetus to the development of Orenburg. In 1863, its population was about 27,600 people.

The town was a major center of trade between the Russian Empire and Central Asia. The local industry (production of flour, oil, leather) began to develop rapidly with the construction of the Samara - Orenburg railway in 1877. The Orenburg region also became famous for its downy shawls knitted from the down of specially bred Orenburg goats.

Orenburg also became a major trade and distribution center for livestock and meat coming from the Kazakh steppes. In 1881, the first in the Russian Empire plant for the production of condensed milk was opened in Orenburg. In 1894, the construction of the Kazan Cathedral was completed - one of the main symbols of the city (destroyed in the 1930s).

Orenburg in the first half of the 20th century

At the beginning of the 20th century, Orenburg was a major trade and economic center. In 1905, the construction of the Tashkent railway was completed, which opened the way to Central Asia and made the city an important transport hub.

In 1914, the population of Orenburg, the largest city in the Urals, was about 100 thousand people. During the anti-German campaign in connection with the outbreak of the First World War, the Orenburg City Duma considered the issue of renaming the city (at the same time Saint Petersburg was renamed Petrograd). Here are some of the proposed new names: Oriengrad, Oriendar, Yaitsk, Priuralsk, Neplyuevsk, Sakmaro-Uralsk. However, the renaming did not take place at that time.

Interesting fact. Orenburg was the first capital of Soviet Kazakhstan. In 1920, this city became the administrative center of the created Kyrgyz Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic (the Kazakhs were officially called the Kyrgyz at that time). In April 1925, the Kyrgyz ASSR was renamed the Kazakh ASSR, and its capital was moved from Orenburg to Ak-Mechet, renamed Kzyl-Orda.

Orenburg became part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. In December 1934, it became the capital of Orenburg Oblast. In the 1930s, almost all of its more than 40 Orthodox religious buildings were demolished. Without these architectural dominants, Orenburg largely lost its unique and attractive historical appearance.

On December 26, 1938, Orenburg was renamed Chkalov in honor of the deceased test pilot V.P. Chkalov, despite the fact that Chkalov had never visited this city. The renaming was also explained by the fact that there were plans to make Orenburg “the aviation capital of the USSR”. In 1939, a downy shawl factory was opened. The population of Orenburg was about 172 thousand people.

During the Second World War, about 40 factories were evacuated to Orenburg and it became an industrial center. By May 1942, the number of people evacuated here reached 75 thousand. By 1943, the gross industrial output of the Orenburg region increased more than 4 times since the beginning of the war.

Orenburg in the second half of the 20th century and beyond

On November 7, 1953, a monument to Valery Chkalov was unveiled. On December 4, 1957, the original name was returned to the city - Orenburg. In 1959, its population was 267 thousand people.

Yuri Gagarin, the first human to journey into outer space, trained as a pilot at the Orenburg Military Aviation Flight School. Gagarin is an honorary citizen of Orenburg. In 1961, the MiG-15 - a fighter jet that cadet Gagarin flew on - was installed on a pedestal near the aviation school. The House-Museum of Cosmonautics was also opened there with some of Gagarin’s personal belongings.

In November 1966, on the left bank of the Ural River, not far from the city, a large Orenburg oil and gas condensate field was discovered. A new Orenburg territorial-industrial complex of all-Union significance began to form. It was based on gas production, processing and transportation enterprises. This event can be called the second birth of Orenburg. In less than 10 years, it became one of the largest natural gas suppliers in Russia.

In 1979, according to the All-Union census, the population of Orenburg was 458 thousand people. In connection with the development of the Orenburg gas condensate field, urban planning activities received a powerful impetus for rapid development. About 30 kilometers from Orenburg, a unique gas processing plant, the largest in Europe, was built according to the project of French specialists.

In 1989, the population of Orenburg was about 546 thousand people. After the collapse of the USSR, Orenburg experienced some depopulation in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, the gas field began to run out.

At the beginning of the 21st century, the development of the city began again, associated primarily with the activities of the enterprise “Gazprom dobycha Orenburg”.

Orenburg views

General view of Orenburg

Author: Boris Yartsev

On the street in Orenburg

Author: Kiyanovsky Dmitry

Orenburg architecture

Orenburg - Features

According to popular belief, Orenburg is located both in Europe and Asia. On the pedestrian bridge across the Ural River you can see a symbolic sign of the border between Europe and Asia. However, this border was not officially recognized by the International Geographical Union in 1959, when the opinion of Soviet scientists was accepted about the border between Europe and Asia.

By their definition, the Ural River is a natural water border between Asia and Europe only in its upper reaches on the territory of Russia. In the place where Orenburg is located, it is a completely European river and from a geographical point of view Orenburg can be considered a European city.

The climate of Orenburg is moderately continental transitional to sharply continental. Summers are hot and dry, winters are moderately cold. Temperatures fluctuate greatly depending on the time of day and wind direction. In summer, the temperature can rise to plus 40 degrees Celsius or drop to plus 5 degrees Celsius.

In winter, the weather ranges from mild frosts to severe cold weather, sometimes mild thaws or severe colds down to minus 40 degrees Celsius. The average temperature in January is minus 11.8 degrees Celsius, in July - plus 22.3 degrees Celsius.

On the coat of arms of Orenburg repeating the historical coat of arms adopted at the end of the 18th century, you can see a schematic representation of the Ural River. The Azure Cross of St. Andrew (X) is an award given to the garrison of Orenburg for its successful defense during the siege by the troops of Yemelyan Pugachev (the peasant war of 1773-1775).

In the industry of Orenburg, the leading places belong to the gas production and gas processing industries, mechanical engineering and metalworking. The enterprises of the chemical industry, food and light industries are also developed.

Orenburg is a large railway junction where the railway lines to Samara, Orsk, Ufa, Uralsk (Kazakhstan), Aktobe (Kazakhstan) intersect. The federal highway R239 Kazan - Orenburg - Akbulak - the border with the Republic of Kazakhstan passes through the city. Orenburg Central International Airport named after Yuri Gagarin offers regular flights to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Ufa, Novy Urengoy.

One of the symbols of this city are unique Orenburg shawls made of goat down, which are distinguished by fine workmanship, original pattern, beauty of decoration, durability, and ability to keep warm.

Remarkable architectural monuments that have survived since the founding of the city, monumental art, local traditions create a special unique atmosphere of the city and rightfully allow Orenburg to be considered a unique city with a rich culture and history.

Main Attractions of Orenburg

Sovetskaya Street - the main tourist alley of Orenburg, about 3 km long; part of it is completely pedestrian. An interesting story can be told about almost every building located on this street: the house #1 is the aviation school, which Yuri Gagarin graduated from; the house #2 - the former residence of the military governors of Orenburg; in the house #3, the Decembrists lived in the 1820s; the house #4 - one of the oldest buildings in Orenburg, constructed in the middle of the 18th century; the house #23 - Orenburg Gostiny Dvor; the house #26 - the drama theater named after Maxim Gorky (one of the oldest theaters in the Urals); the house #27 - a picturesque clock tower; the house #28 - Orenburg Museum of History and Local Lore.

Pedestrian “White Bridge” from Europe to Asia . The first wooden bridge across the Ural River was built in 1835. Every year, after the spring flood, it had to be repaired. The modern metal structure was built only in 1982. The bridge has a certain symbolic meaning, as it allows pedestrians to travel from Europe to Asia and back. The bridge leads from the historic center of Orenburg to the park “Zauralnaya Roscha”.

Aerial Lift “Europe-Asia” . In 2006, parallel to “White Bridge”, a 233-meter aerial lift (cable car) was opened, along which you can get from Europe to Asia by air in cozy translucent cabins. During the trip, which takes about 5 minutes, you can take pictures of the Ural River, the bridge and the Orenburg embankment from a height of 70 meters. It can be found opposite the house #16 on Naberezhnaya Street.

Museum of the History of Orenburg - a local history museum located next to the aerial lift “Europe-Asia” in a picturesque red brick building constructed in the middle of the 19th century, an interesting architectural monument resembling a medieval castle. Its clock tower looks especially impressive. Initially, this building housed the city treasury and archive. The diverse exposition of the museum covers all periods of the history of Orenburg. One of the halls is devoted to the life of A.S. Pushkin in Orenburg. Naberezhnaya Street, 29.

Orenburg Museum of History and Local Lore . The main expositions of this museum are located in a luxurious merchant mansion in the city center, an architectural monument of the 19th century. Its archaeological collection of great interest, the pearl of which is the “Sarmatian gold” - a collection of objects found in the process of researching burial mounds and burial grounds in the Orenburg region, dating back to the 4th century BC.

In addition to archaeological monuments, the museum has interesting ethnographic exhibits, art metal products, a numismatic collection, a collection of textiles and embroidery. The expositions of the museum also tell about the nature and history of the Orenburg region. Sovetskaya Street, 28.

Orenburg Regional Museum of Fine Arts . The collection of this museum, located in a mansion of the early 19th century, includes works of Old Russian, Russian, Bashkir, Soviet, and Western European art created from the end of the 16th century: graphics, paintings, sculptures, icons, decorative and applied art, etc. Kashirina Lane, 29. The gallery “Orenburg downy shawl”, a branch of this museum, is located at Volodarskogo Street, 13.

Cultural Complex “National Village” - a museum and ethnographic complex built near Yuri Gagarin public garden in the 2000s. It represents the national farmsteads of the peoples living in the Orenburg region: Russians, Tatars, Kazakhs, Ukrainians, Bashkirs, Mordvinians, Belarusians, Armenians, Germans, Chuvash. On the territory of the complex there are museums of everyday life and culture, restaurants of national cuisine, libraries with literature in different languages, and souvenir shops.

Various events are often held here, including performances by folklore ensembles, traditional festivities. This is a great place to see a variety of architectural styles, get to know the traditions and cultures of different nations. Altayskaya Street, 5.

Cathedral of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker (1883-1886) - the only church in Orenburg not demolished in the 1930s. Divine services in the church began to be held again in 1944. In the 1980s-1990s, the building was restored and expanded. Today, it is one of the most visited churches in Orenburg. Chkalova Street, 8.

Historical and Architectural Complex “Caravanserai” (1837-1846) - one of the most important sights of the southern Urals embodying the most striking national and stylistic features of the architecture of the Orenburg region of the 19th century, an architectural monument consisting of the main building, a mosque, and a minaret. It was used as the administrative building of the Bashkir Cossack army and the governor of the region. Parkovyy Avenue, 6.

Frunze Garden . In 2005, a memorial complex and an open-air museum “Salute, Victory!” was opened here. It consists of expositions of military equipment, weapons and thematic sculptural compositions. One of the most interesting exhibits is the huge Voevoda (SS-18) intercontinental ballistic missile. Kirova Street, 1.

Orenburg Water Tower (1927-1929) - a picturesque 28 meters high monument of urban planning and architecture of regional significance built in the style of classicism. Later, some elements in the constructivist style were added. Pobedy Avenue, 14/1.

Orenburg Children’s Railway (1953) - one of the longest railways for children in Russia (about 6 km). The train stops at three stations - Komsomolskaya, Kirovskaya, Dubki. If you get off at Komsomolskaya station, you will get to the Orenburg city center near the pedestrian bridge across the Ural River. Kirovskaya and Dubki stations lead to children’s health camps. Throughout the entire route, the railway runs in the floodplain of the Ural River. Kirova Street, 37. You can ride the train only in summer, on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Private Museum-Shop of the Orenburg Downy Shawl . The museum displays historical exhibits that tell about the emergence and development of this unique craft. Znamenskiy Proyezd, 1/1.

Orenburg city of Russia photos

Streets of orenburg.

Busy street in Orenburg

Past and present of Orenburg

Winter in Orenburg

Author: Shamil Kazakbaev

Monuments of Orenburg

Stele Europe-Asia in Orenburg

Monument to the Orenburg Cossacks

Monument to A.S. Pushkin in Orenburg

Pictures of Orenburg

Sberbank building in Orenburg

Author: Sergey Berezin

The building of the Bank of the Mutual Credit Society at Leninskaya Street, 28 in Orenburg

The sign at the entrance to Orenburg

The questions of our visitors

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Category : Orenburg Oblast in the 21st century

Subcategories

This category has the following 3 subcategories, out of 3 total.

• Orenburg Oblast in the 2000s ‎ (5 C, 1 F)
• Orenburg Oblast in the 2010s ‎ (9 C)
• Orenburg Oblast in the 2020s ‎ (5 C)

• Russia in the 21st century
• Orenburg Oblast by century

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