Stalin in the Kremlin in August 1941, when he learned of the German advance on Kyiv. The photograph was taken by Boris Burkov, editor-in-chief of Komsomolskaya Pravda, and preserved in defiance of an order to destroy the frame as showing the leader in an unflattering light. It is sometimes said to have been taken on the day Stalin learned of the attack on the USSR, but this is highly unlikely
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)