Archive · Cinema · Mores · Saint Petersburg

It's a Proper Circus!

Such was the look of the wooden structure that housed theatrical and circus performances at public festivities: the booth, or balagan. This one is the celebrated balagan of the merchant Nikolaev, set up in the Admiralty District of Saint Petersburg. It was called the "Great Roller Coaster" (Bolshoy

Archive · Books · Observations

A 1945 children's book, "Five Stamps", by the Soviet poet Vladimir Lifshits: a tale in verse about how a boy's father led his rifle battalion through five different countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland and Germany

It may be noted that in 1945 the expression "Russian soldier" was not yet taboo.

Archive · Art · Society · Humour

Uncle Sam has long had his eye on this morsel, and it seems he will have to eat it!

“Trouble in Cuba”: satirical illustration by Bernhard Gillam for the cover of the American magazine Judge, August 1895

Archive · In the Press · Science · Society

Sedov's Copenhagen promise and American newspapers on the first satellite in 1957

On 29 July 1955 American scientists announced their intention to launch the first artificial satellite of the Earth within the next two years. On 2 August, at the Sixth Congress of the International Astronautical Federation in Copenhagen, Academician Sedov promised that the USSR would launch an Earth satellite before the

Archive · Museums · Heritage

Landscape with a Mill at the Pushkin Memorial Museum-Reserve "Mikhailovskoye" in the 1990s

Yury Sadovnikov

Archive · Moscow

Snow on Leninsky Prospekt in 1962

Photo by Boris Kosarev

Archive · Faith · The East · Heritage

Otto of St Blasien on the removal of treasures and relics from Constantinople in 1204

The Greatest Robbery of All Time. So wrote the German Benedictine chronicler Otto of St Blasien of the sack of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204. He describes how the sack of Constantinople sent enormous Greek riches, above all the sacred treasures of the Cathedral of Saint Sophia and countless

Black-and-white photograph of a smiling woman in an embroidered blouse with a flower in her hair, sitting in tall grain with a sickle on her shoulder and a clay jug in her hands.

Archive · Ethnography

Woman with a sickle in a field of the Komintern collective farm in Mogilev Region in the 1950s

A Belarusian Beauty in the Field. Komintern Collective Farm, Mogilev Region, 1950s

Almaty · Archive · Books · Observations · Mores

I happened to read a fragment of the memoirs of Lyubov and Boris Fedotov, animal trainers quite well known in the USSR

I happened to read a fragment of the memoirs of Lyubov and Boris Fedotov, animal trainers quite well known in the USSR. It is a very sad story, I say at once. So if you fear pain, do not read the text that follows. The Fedotovs write of the hardships

NB! · Archive · Cinema

The Brides of Count Dracula, 1931

Archive · Books · Heritage · Rome

The bombing of Rome on 19 July 1943 and Julien Green's diary entry

It was with a heavy heart that I learned that Rome had been bombed. Yet this was news I had been expecting for several months. Can there really be so many military objectives in Rome? I did not remember it so. Perhaps the railway station is of the utmost importance