Archive · Faith · Moscow · Mores · Society

The Council Code of 1649 forbade Russians to serve unbaptised foreigners

The Arrival of Foreigners in Moscow in the Seventeenth Century, Sergei Vasilyevich Ivanov, 1901. Until the reign of Peter, all Europeans in Russia were called, and written down as, unbaptised. And the Council Code of 1649 laid down outright a prohibition on Russians serving, or being in bondage, to unbaptised

Nicholas II on horseback holds an icon before ranks of soldiers, with an officer in a green uniform mounted nearby.

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Nicholas II blesses soldiers of the 37th Division with an icon before their departure for the Russo-Japanese War front

Nicholas II blesses soldiers departing for the front of the Russo-Japanese War with the icon of the Saviour Not Made by Hands. Farewell to the 37th Division

Old engraving of festivities, booths and carriages on the ice of the Thames, with a title cartouche about the frost of 1683 and a lettered key below.

NB! · Archive · London · Mores · Nature

Frost fair on the frozen River Thames in London during the severe frost of 1683

Public festivities on the ice of the River Thames in London in 1683, with entertainments, refreshments and booths. Evidently the townsfolk understood that such a fair comes only once, and everyone who could attended the spectacle

Archive · Art · Moscow · Society

Second Moscow Conference of October 1944 on the War with Japan, the Balkans and Poland

Stalin and Churchill at the Second Moscow Conference in October 1944. Drawing by the Swiss artist Lindi. The matters at issue were the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan and the postwar fate of the Balkans and Poland. Besides Stalin, Molotov and Churchill, the conference was

NB! · Archive · Architecture · Heritage · Rome

The Arch of Constantine in Rome beside the Colosseum, shielded from bombing during the Second World War

NB! · Archive · Faith · Moscow

Invitation to a thanksgiving service on the occasion of a company feast day, Moscow, 1913

Invitation to a thanksgiving service on the occasion of a company feast day, Moscow, 1913. The Russia we have lost

NB! · Archive · Monarchies

King Frederik X of Denmark with His Grandfather, King Frederik IX of Denmark

Archive · Science · People

Nikolay Timofeyev-Resovsky in Germany, the death of his son and his sentence after the war

When in the 1940s the world-renowned scientist, an outstanding researcher of the problems of evolution and population genetics, Nikolay Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovsky, head of the department of genetics and biophysics at the Brain Institute in Berlin-Buc. In fact, the scientist, who had been invited to Germany as early

Archive · Monarchies · Mores · People

Catherine's letter to Poniatowski on the request of captive Peter a week before his killing

The arrested Peter III asked Catherine for the Negro who used to amuse him, his favourite dog, a violin, a Bible and a few novels. True, Catherine herself tells Poniatowski in a letter that Peter also asked for his mistress, Elizaveta Vorontsova, but she refused to send her, though she

NB! · Archive · The East

Membership card of the Union for Mutual Aid of Jews from Russia in Constantinople, 1923

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A vegetable garden in the moat of the Tower of London during the Second World War

A vegetable garden in the moat of the Tower of London during the Second World War. The moat was drained on the orders of the Duke of Wellington in the 1840s, to rid the city of the miasma of stagnant water; since then it had simply grown grass, on which

NB! · Archive · People · Nature