Sedia gestatoria an elaborate variation on the sedan chair. Two large fans ("flabella") made of white ostrich feathers —a relic of the ancient liturgical use of the "flabellum", mentioned in the "Constitutiones Apostolicae"— were carried at either side of the "sedia gestatoria". The ceremonial throne was mainly used to carry popes to and from papal ceremonies in the Basilica of St. John Lateran and St. Peter's Basilica. The "sedia" was used as part of papal ceremony for nearly a millennium. Its origins are sometimes thought to date back to the Byzantine Empire where Byzantine emperors were carried along in a similar manner,
Religion in the Soviet Union were traditionally responsible for maintaining synagogues. They created a special Jewish section of the party, whose tasks included propaganda against Jewish clergy and religion. To offset Jewish national and religious aspirations, and to reflect the Jewish national movement's role in the socialist movement of the Russian Empire (for example, Trotsky was first a member of the Jewish Bund, not the Social Democratic Labour Party), an alternative to the Land of Israel was established in 1934. The Jewish Autonomous Oblast, created in 1928 by Stalin, with Birobidzhan in the Russian Far East as its administrative center, was to become a "Soviet