As I am not a professional collector but a simple lover of valuables, I too failed to realise unaided that I had become the owner of a specimen of such secret production from the era of the NEP

As I am not a professional collector but a simple lover of valuables, I too failed to realise unaided that I had become the owner of a specimen of such secret production from the era of the NEP. Apart from slight traces of the shaving off of surplus gold, nothing in this coin betrays its membership of the million-strong print run of the Tsarist-Soviet forgery. But on the whole this is no new practice for Russia: in the eighteenth century in Saint Petersburg an entire industry turning out Dutch ducats was actually set up.

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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

As I am not a professional collector but a simple lover of valuables, I too failed to realise unaided that I had become the owner of a specimen of such secret production from the era of the NEP

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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