My favourite monument to Leo Tolstoy stands in the courtyard of his museum on Prechistenka

My favourite monument to Leo Tolstoy stands in the courtyard of his museum on Prechistenka. It is the work of Sergey Merkurov, who, incidentally, took the death mask of Lev Nikolayevich.

The monument, completed in 1913, could not be erected in Moscow: the Black Hundreds threatened to blow it up. Until 1928 it was kept in the sculptor's studio, but the Soviet authorities remembered the statue and resolved to put Tolstoy up on Devichye Pole, where since 1972 another Tolstoy, the work of Alexey Portyanko, has been seated.

Since then Merkurov's monument has stood in the courtyard of the Tolstoy Museum

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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

My favourite monument to Leo Tolstoy stands in the courtyard of his museum on Prechistenka

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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