NB!
Alexandr Radayev
Science · Society
How the Soviet Electoral System Changed from Open Voting to the 1989 Elections
Until 1936, Soviet citizens directly elected only the representatives of local town and village soviets, which in turn sent delegates to the higher congresses, all the way up to the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. In the 1920s voting was open and conducted by a show of hands. The
NB! · Architecture · Heritage · Society
A historically accurate reconstruction, though the contractor has connections at City Hall
Archive · Architecture · Monarchies · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg
Alexander III ten years behind a grille in Ivan Fomin's design, then in the Russian Museum basement
It turns out that for the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, in 1927, the monument to Alexander III on Uprising Square was put in a cage. The project was devised by the architect Ivan Fomin, author of the concept of proletarian classicism, known for the NKVD building on Lubyanka
NB! · Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Heritage
Lenin’s Study at the Gorki Estate Museum Keeps the Furnishings of Zinaida Morozova
Lenin's study at the Lenin Museum-Estate at Gorki. The handsomeness of the furnishings owes everything to the fact that they survive from the estate's pre-revolutionary mistress, Zinaida Morozova, with the exception of the clothed office desk delivered specially for Ilyich
NB! · Archive · Geography · Mores
Camel train carrying goods at Kurgan station of the South Ural Railway in the 1890s
Delivery of goods by camel. Kurgan station on the South Ural Railway, 1890s
Archive · People · Pop Culture · Nature
The life and career of Irina Bugrimova, the first woman lion tamer in the USSR
The lion tamer Irina Bugrimova with a lion in the early 1960s. Photograph by Semyon Mishin-Morgenstern. Irina Bugrimova was the first woman lion tamer in the USSR and a People's Artist of the Soviet Union. She was born on 13 March 1910 in Kharkiv, into the family
Archive · Art · Moscow · Society
OURS: The Turbulent Growth of Socialist Construction, Tens of Millions of Collective Farmers, the Energy and Enthusiasm of Millions, the Creative Enthusiasm of the Masses
THEIRS: Crisis, unemployment, hunger, destitution and the preparation of war against the USSR. And mind you don't mix them up! A two-part poster by the artists Gleb Grigoryev and Boris Iordansky on the not yet demolished Iverskaya or Voskresenskiye Gates in the wall of Kitay-gorod. Photograph
NB!
Page 209 with a Russian translation of the Poor Man of Nippur tale
Archaeology · Archive · The East · Books
The Babylonian poem “The Poor Man of Nippur” on hospitality and revenge for an insult
The Babylonian poem "The Poor Man of Nippur", composed around 701 BC and devoted to the duty of hospitality and to vengeance for an undeserved insult. A poor man from the city of Nippur gives up his last possession and brings a goat as a gift to the
NB! · Books · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
Found an Alla Pugacheva Easter egg in a 1990s edition of "Crocodile Gena and His Friends"
Art · Books · Observations
Marcus Aurelius in his “Meditations” on retreating into one's own soul
They seek retreats for themselves in the wilderness, by the seashore, in the mountains. You too pine for this. But how very commonplace it all is, when at any hour you please you may withdraw into yourself. For nowhere does a man retire more quietly and peacefully than into his