... Send me some little keepsake: a spoon, or a bowl, or some such thing. Or have you nothing of your own either? My poor dear fathers! Well, bear it, for Christ's sake! So be it! For I am rich: I have fish and milk aplenty, by the grace of Christ and the mercy of the Most Pure Mother of God and the prayers of all the saints. Amen.
Archpriest Avvakum, Letter to the Fathers in Pomorye»
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, King of Poland, Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russias Just a reminder of Russia's borders before 1918: in 1815 the greater part of the Duchy of Warsaw became part of the Russian Empire as the Kingdom of Poland, or the Vistula Land, until everything fell
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
From a guidebook to Syria. Photographs by Félix Bonfils (1831-1885)