Aksinya and Darya veil their faces with scarves in the haymaking scene of “And Quiet Flows the Don”

Strange, really, that with the epidemic upheavals in fashion no designer has borrowed the manner of swathing the whole face in a headscarf from Aksinya and Darya in the haymaking scene of "Quiet Flows the Don". How elegant, and how wonderfully original!

The text describes it simply, without any particular explanation of exactly how the scarf was tied, but no explanation was needed; everyone knew it anyway: "Behind, on the cart, sat Aksinya, her whole face wrapped against the sun in a headscarf. Through the narrow slit left for her eyes she looked at Grigory, sitting opposite her, with indifference and severity."

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Letter from the Decembrist Mikhail Lunin to his sister, written in the village of Urik on 29 September 1836

I live among people who see me and do not understand me, or with the Invisible One whom I cannot comprehend. The darkness of my sins veils him, even when the deadly lead had grown numb in my body; a gleam of his gaze flashed before me when the blade

Alexander I as King of Poland and the Incorporation of the Duchy of Warsaw into the Russian Empire in 1815

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A 1930 photograph showing the eviction of a kulak and his family during dekulakisation.

How Many Suffered in Dekulakisation: Estimates by Zemskov, Ivnitsky and Conquest

A photograph of 1930 showing the deportation of a kulak and his family The number of victims of dekulakisation has still not been established and can hardly be stated unambiguously, since the figure includes both those directly repressed (stripped of their property, evicted, exiled, arrested) and, on occasion, the victims

Félix Bonfils, photographs of a dragoman and guide for travellers in Syria

From a guidebook to Syria. Photographs by Félix Bonfils (1831-1885)

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Letter from the Decembrist Mikhail Lunin to his sister, written in the village of Urik on 29 September 1836

Alexander I as King of Poland and the Incorporation of the Duchy of Warsaw into the Russian Empire in 1815

How Many Suffered in Dekulakisation: Estimates by Zemskov, Ivnitsky and Conquest

Félix Bonfils, photographs of a dragoman and guide for travellers in Syria