NB! · Archive · Art · Cinema

Drawings by Mikhail Nikolayevich Romadin with scenes for Andrei Tarkovsky's film Solaris

Archive · Education · Society · Saint Petersburg · Humour

Latin in Soviet schools from 1948 as recalled by the historian Mark Botvinnik

Homo homini amicus, collega et frater est: Man Is to Man a Friend, Comrade and Brother. The historian of antiquity Mark Naumovich Botvinnik (1917-1994) recalls Stalin's post-war reforms as an attempt by an ageing leader to bring back the feeling of youth. Old people begin to

An open Delacroix sketchbook with watercolour sketches of horsemen and mountains and handwritten notes in French.

NB! · Archive · The East · Art · Museums

Four surviving Delacroix notebooks from his 1832 journey to Morocco

Eugène Delacroix's album and notes from his journey to Morocco in 1832. Delacroix brought back from Morocco 800 sheets of sketches and seven notebooks making up the diary of his travels, of which only four have survived: three are kept in the Louvre, and one in the Musée

Old sepia photograph of a man in a rooster costume bent over beside a wall, with a chair and branches on the left.

Archive · Faith · Ethnography

Bear Games of the Mansi and Khanty in a photo with rooster and cuckoo costumes

The Theatrical Performance of the Bear Games "The Cuckoo and the Cock" in 1936. The bear games are an ancient ritual of the Mansi and Khanty peoples, devoted to the cult of the bear, a sacred animal regarded as the brother and son of the supreme deity. In

Archive · Moscow · Society · Nature

Moscow flood in which the water rose to 9 metres and inundated Zamoskvorechye

On 11 April 1908, Good Friday, the most famous Moscow flood began, inundating a quarter of the city, an area of 16 square kilometres. A sharp thaw after the snowiest winter in 18 years filled the Moskva River and its tributaries, and in just twenty-four hours the water level

Archive · Monarchies · Observations · Society · Humour

Russia Threatened with Isolation from European Civilisation

In short, nothing new. A piece on Russo-German relations, a sort of Telegram-channel analytics of 1872. They keep mulling over the future after the death of Alexander II, although he has another nine years allotted to him, and, as usual, they threaten to cut our dear little Russia

Black-and-white photograph of well-dressed visitors with umbrellas walking at the foot of the Eiffel Tower among exhibition pavilions.

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Observations · Paris

The grounds around the Eiffel Tower at the 1889 World's Fair and the pavilions demolished afterwards

The grounds around the Eiffel Tower during the 1889 Exposition Universelle. It is strange to reflect that all these buildings were temporary pavilions, and were simply pulled down once the exhibition was over

Black-and-white photograph of two large stone warrior figures on a grassy plain, two men standing between them, more statues and hills in the distance.

NB! · Archive · The East · Heritage

Stone statues at Ming-era tombs in China in a photograph of 1869

Tombs of the Ming era in China, that is, of the 14th to 17th centuries. Photograph of 1869

NB! · Archive

Newborn, photograph by Yury Abramochkin

NB! · Archive · Art · Books · People

Tolkien's own illustrations for "Letters from Father Christmas", the series of letters he wrote to his children every year

Archive · Books · Moscow · Observations · Education

Does the Young Maiden Tremble, or the Young Wench Shake?

Mikhail Alexandrovich Dmitriev, an old Russian writer of the Slavophile circle, now almost forgotten, recalls the Church Slavonic classes of his university years in this way. Professor of Slavonic philology Matvey Gavrilov proposed that, wherever possible, Russian words in speech be exchanged for Slavonic ones, and the result was handsome:

Sepia photograph of a young man in boots seated on wooden porch steps, four women above him, two dogs lying on the steps and the ground, and a bicycle at right.

NB! · Archive · Mores · People

Sergei Rachmaninoff with four women on the steps of the Krasnenkoye estate in 1899

Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff with ladies on the steps of the manor house at the Krasnenkoye estate, Voronezh Governorate, in 1899. Posing with Rachmaninoff are two charming dogs, together with Natalya Alexandrovna Satina, Yelena Yulyevna Kreutzer, Natalia Nikolayevna Lanting and Madame Mayevskaya.