Metropolitan Platon of Moscow on the New Year in his 1766 sermon

The continuation of time is the continuation of God's goodness to us. This divine benefaction we must glorify at this hour. For now we enter the doors of the new year. The new year is, for everyone, a propitious occasion for new endeavours and new merits, a blessed occasion for the pursuit of good intentions, for the showing of zeal, for the amendment of faults; for the young, to acquire enlightenment; for the old, to prepare themselves for the unageing life; for sinners, to repent; for the righteous, to advance further in virtue; for all, to fulfil their duty.

Metropolitan Platon of Moscow, Sermon for the New Year 1766

I wish you all to enter the new year with good thoughts!

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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