Archive · Heritage · Society

Insurgents destroy the eight-metre statue of Stalin during the 1956 Hungarian Uprising

The shattered figure of Stalin during the Hungarian Uprising, 23 October - 10 November 1956. The insurgent crowd brought down the eight-metre statue of Stalin erected for his seventieth birthday, leaving only the boots, into which a Hungarian flag was planted. The disfigured head lay for a long time in

Archive · Faith · Art

An illustration from a South German codex of 1417 shows the family tree of the descendants of Saint Anne

According to medieval tradition, Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, was married three times: to Joachim, Cleopas and Salomas (Salomé). From each marriage Anne had a daughter named Mary. The seven grandchildren of Saint Anne depicted in medieval art are these: Jesus Christ, son of the Virgin Mary; James

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Borges at the Sorbonne in 1978

NB! · Archive · Art · Pop Culture

Elizabeth Taylor through the Lens of Helmut Newton, 1985

NB! · Archive · Cinema

On the set of Sergei Eisenstein's film "Alexander Nevsky", 1938

Archive · Books · Observations

Dmitri Shostakovich in a 1955 letter to Isaak Glikman on the performance of Bach's music

Fine music will sound well however it is played. Any Bach prelude and fugue can be played at any tempo, with any dynamic shading or none at all, and it will still be beautiful. That is how music ought to be written, so that not a single scoundrel can spoil

NB! · Archive · Geography · Maps · London

National Flags of the Warships of Various Countries, Published in London in 1894

NB! · Archive · Monarchies · People

Nicholas II after the Coronation

Archive · Cinema · Observations · Nature

Saw this tree and remembered Sofia Coppola's 1999 film "The Virgin Suicides", which we had on cassette, and which, frankly, never gathered dust

Saw this tree and remembered Sofia Coppola's 1999 film "The Virgin Suicides", which we had on cassette, and which, frankly, never gathered dust. One of those films that leaves an impression for life. If you have not seen it, consider this a recommendation from the fireproof

Coming Up · Archive · Cinema · Humour

Sokurov's five-hour film to be shown at the Venice Festival

Sokurov's five-hour film is to be shown at the Venice Festival. The chief question is whether anyone apart from Alexander Nikolayevich himself will manage to sit through the picture to the end. The documentary work by the director Alexander Sokurov, entitled “The Director's Diary”, will

Archive · Moscow · Observations

Timofey Melnik and a panoramic photograph of pilots, Heroes of the Soviet Union, at the 1945 Victory Parade

A most interesting photograph from the 1945 Victory Parade. Heroes of the Soviet Union, airmen who took part in the parade. Timofey Melnik took this picture by chance. He simply saw a group of airmen and asked them to stop, but the large group of pilots would not fit into

Archive · Architecture · Moscow · Museums · People

Notice to Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky, architect of the Hotel Ukraina, that his case has been closed for lack of any corpus delicti: in this same case he had been sentenced to 15 years in the camps

A document from the new exhibition at the Museum of Architecture