The 1488 Church of Saint George at Voroneț Monastery and Voroneț blue

The most beautiful of Romania's churches, a pearl of Moldavian architecture, the Church of Saint George, built in 1488 and painted both inside and out. It stands in the Voroneț convent for women. A UNESCO World Heritage Site. The chief distinguishing feature of the frescoes is held to be the predominance of a special blue, the Voroneț blue; the other colours are white, yellow, ochre, rust, violet and five shades of green.

Photographs by the Canadian photographer Bronwyn Cragg

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Letter from the Decembrist Mikhail Lunin to his sister, written in the village of Urik on 29 September 1836

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 as King of Poland and the Incorporation of the Duchy of Warsaw into the Russian Empire in 1815

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A 1930 photograph showing the eviction of a kulak and his family during dekulakisation.

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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