If any of us is in want, great or small, and we know of it, we share all we have with him

If any of us is in want, great or small, and we know of it, we share all we have with him. We hold it a law that no one should ever be acquainted with loss. In our possessions we are equal to one another. Riches have been dealt out evenly to us all. In this life we all count alike, and among us no one laughs at another's tears. We know no thieves; we need no guard in the mountains. What have we to fear? No dweller of our land will go out to plunder. From nowhere will a robber find his way into our country...
We have not been taught slander, O great one. We forgive people and meet them with love. If someone fails in his task, we do not withhold good counsel from him. There are no troublemakers among us, and we shall shed no blood. Our whole family shares grief with one another, and in every joy we are friends to one another. Silver we do not prize, nor gold either. Here they are not current, and are worth no more than sand...

Nizami Ganjavi, Iskandar-Nama, translated into Russian by K. A. Lipskerov

At the very beginning of the 1200s Nizami describes Alexander the Great's visit to the land of plenty, Khirkhiz, in the upper reaches of the Yenisei. In this country Iskandar finds a society that has need of neither rulers nor gold.

Illustration: Iskandar as a guest of the Chinese khagan, from the "Iskandar-nama" of 1582.

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

If any of us is in want, great or small, and we know of it, we share all we have with him

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s