The essence of the Kunstkamera, Peter's legendary cabinet of curiosities, in a single sentence

Our museum is about the culture and way of life of the peoples of the world, and therefore it does not display the freaks, dwarfs, giants and other monsters who amused the grandees of the eighteenth century

This notice hung on the doors of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography at least in the 1980s.

The museum administration's message is clear, but one could still be more consistent and, to begin with, not call the remains that form part of the exhibition monsters, for example

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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

The essence of the Kunstkamera, Peter's legendary cabinet of curiosities, in a single sentence

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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