Black and white photo of a man in a suit and a blonde woman with a guitar sitting close together in front of a carpet, with two glasses on the table.

Archive · Cinema · Observations

Retouching in a photograph from the film “Once Again About Love” with Lazarev and Doronina

Can anyone explain why half of this photograph has been painted in? The hand has come out very strangely, both on Alexander Lazarev and on Tatyana Doronina. From the film "Once More About Love" by Georgy Natanson

NB! · Archive · Mores

May Festivities in the Kuban Region in 1910

Cinema · Science · People · Nature

On 8 May David Attenborough turns one hundred

On 8 May David Attenborough turns one hundred. No one in history has shown the whole world for so long how life on this planet is put together. At 99 he managed, last year, to make one more film, Ocean, in which for the first time he spoke openly of

Faith · Cinema · Books · Observations

The Russian title “Project End of the World” loses the meaning of Project Hail Mary

Several acquaintances, having read my complaint about the Russian title of Project Hail Mary, have written to say that it is not actually "Ave Maria" but sporting slang, meaning a desperate pass in American football, or a last hope. My dear Ted Lassos, my very own Utkins! The

Archive · The East · Books · Moscow · Science

The Fundamental Library of INION RAS opens trial access to the largest archive of digitised Chinese newspapers, the Contemporary Chinese Newspaper Full-Text Database, to a reprint database of the social sciences, and to Artron, with its albums and images

The Fundamental Library of INION RAS has opened trial access to the largest archive of digitised Chinese newspapers, the Contemporary Chinese Newspaper Full-Text Database, to a reprint database of the social sciences, and to Artron, with its albums and images on art. Until 30 June all of this may

Art · Society · Society Pages

Disputes over the Russian pavilion and the jury's resignation at the 61st Venice Biennale

The 61st Venice Biennale is due to open on 9 May, this time wreathed in scandal, protest and cancellation. Allow me to recall a brief chronology of unprecedented contradictions and squabbles. 💀In February 2026 the Biennale's curator, Koyo Kouoh, dies at the age of 57, without having brought

Archaeology · The East · Science · Nature

Georgia Yields the Earliest Physical Evidence of Bread Wheat Anywhere in the World

On the hills of Shulaveri and Gadachrili in Georgia, archaeologists led by David Lordkipanidze have found charred grains, impressions of ears in mudbricks and seeds of wild goat grass some eight thousand years old. A laboratory at the Weizmann Institute has confirmed the radiocarbon dating: 5800-6000 BC. The point

NB! · Observations · Society · Humour

If only one could now be cheerfully applauding the wise policy of Lenin and Stalin, instead of all this

Archive · Faith · The East · Society · People

Saint Gabriel (Urgebadze) of Georgia burns a 12-metre portrait of the godless Lenin during a May Day demonstration in Tbilisi in 1965

After he burned the portrait of Lenin, he was arrested, beaten and declared mentally ill, then dispatched for compulsory treatment to a psychiatric hospital. He died in 1995 and was later canonised as a saint.

Observations · Science · Society

On 28 April the Trump administration dismissed the entire US National Science Board with a single letter: 22 scientists who oversaw the National Science Foundation, with its budget of 9 billion dollars a year

On 28 April the Trump administration dismissed the entire US National Science Board with a single letter: 22 scientists who oversaw the National Science Foundation, with its budget of 9 billion dollars a year. The NSF has been without a director since the spring of 2025, and Trump's

Observations · Society

Social guarantees of the Soviet May Day and the meaning of the holiday in Russia after 1991

What exactly are we celebrating today? It is a question to which, by and large, nobody has a coherent answer. In the calendar the day is called “Spring and Labour Day”. To quarrel over spring seems odd, particularly since everyone marks its arrival on 22 March already, while the notion

Archaeology · Archive · Faith · Books · Moscow · Museums · Science · Education · Ethnography

April's main publications on “Three Sisters”, the Shroud of Turin, Losev and Oxyrhynchus

From the famous Prigov: “Just stepped out of the bath, and already I remember nothing.” A month is built much the same way. So let me propose recalling the main things from April's publications in the digest. 🎭 At the Taganka Theatre, Alexander Zolotovitsky has staged “Three Sisters”, in

Alexandr Radayev