Archive · Mores · People · Humour

At Least Come Out of the Water to Eat! Look, You've Gone Quite Blue

At least come out of the water to eat! Look, you've gone quite blue - the deafening cries of the public, to the accompaniment of which Salvador Dalí took his rest in Venice

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Observations

I don't know about you, but to me this 1967 photograph, showing the "book" towers going up on Novy Arbat, taken from the Church of the Saviour on Spasopeskovskaya Square, is a very sad sight

I don't know about you, but to me this 1967 photograph, showing the "book" towers going up on Novy Arbat, taken from the Church of the Saviour on Spasopeskovskaya Square, is a very sad sight. They have no business being here; they ought to have been

NB! · Archive · Monarchies

Grand Duchess Anastasia in a special basket saddle during an outing at Kuntsevo

Archive · Cinema · Moscow · People · Pop Culture

Robert De Niro's visits to Moscow from 1982 to 2015 and Kozakov's recollections

Robert De Niro first visited Moscow in February 1982, on the eve of filming Emil Loteanu's "Anna Pavlova", in a cameo as the ballerina's impresario Solomon Yurok. The participation of a Hollywood star might have secured the film a release in the United States,

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Moscow

The Old Moskvoretsky Bridge and Zaryadye in 1898-99

NB! · Archive · Books · Mores

A Book Bazaar at the Cherepovets Market and on Sovetsky Prospekt in 1930

Almaty · Archive · The East · Society

The 2nd Semirechye Cossack Regiment in Persia and its return to Verny in 1918

The Semirechye Cossacks in Eastern Iran during the First World War. The photographs of the 2nd and 3rd Separate Sotnias of the 2nd Semirechye Cossack Regiment were taken in the vicinity of the city of Mashhad in the province of Khorasan. The Semireki knew the local realities perfectly well, drawing

Archive · Faith · The East · Books · Mores

Persian attitudes toward Christians and Jews in an old account

On the Treatment of Israelites in Persia, from the Observations of Gaspard Drouville during His Persian Journey of 1812 and 1813. The Persians live as good neighbours with all Christians; they even often go to them to drink wine, while they hate the J***s excessively. It is well known

Archive · Art · Books

The Birth of Merlin to a Demon and the Baptism That Foiled Evil's Plan

A late medieval miniature by the artist known as the Master of Adelaide of Savoy illustrates one of the most mysterious episodes of the Arthurian cycle: the supernatural conception of Merlin. According to the medieval legendarium, the wizard Merlin was begotten by a demon who visited a pious maiden, wishing

Archive · Geography · Mores · Nature

A tame raven chick in a geologists' camp in the Arkhangelsk region in summer 1982

The Children and the Young Raven. The children found an injured young raven in the forest and nursed it back to health. It became quite tame and lived in the geologists' camp until the middle of summer. Shortly before the camp was due to move from the Arkhangelsk Region

Archive · Observations · Science

Lieutenant Yevgeny Kolbasyev and Pyotr Koshka, the First Electric Submarine in Russia

If you wish to reflect on the development of the Russian Empire towards the end of its existence, imagine that by the 1900s Russia already had a submarine of its own and, in all likelihood, more than one. In the photograph, presumably of 1901, is Russia's first electrically

Archive · Books · Museums · Ethnography

Ryazan Kosobryukhie in an 1898 Photograph and Dal and Sakharov on the Nickname

There is in the collection of the Pushkin Museum a photograph of 1898, taken in the Bogorodsky District of Moscow Governorate by Dr Alexander Zhivago, entitled "Three Peasant Women. Ryazan Slanting-Bellies". What on earth are these slanting-bellies? Saltykov-Shchedrin writes of the slanting-bellies in "