Faith · Books · Ethnography
Maslenitsa is bound up with the cult of the dead and the cult of ancestors, as, indeed, are almost all East Slavic festivals. One can observe this, for instance, in the symbolism of the blin, the lunar disc, or in the custom of the first blin, which was left on
NB! · Archive · Books · Observations · Humour
I have seen a thing or two, of course. But a sudoku made of the initials from Gerald of Wales's Topography of Ireland of 1188, his Conquest of Ireland and his Journey Through Wales of 1191 is a first for me. Are you getting off at the next
Books · Museums · Observations · Humour
If you cannot think how to spend 5 million roubles, then far from all Parnassuses and sundry vanities, in the illustrious city of Oryol an entire museum of Sergei Yesenin has been put up for sale. The lifelong labour of the man who assembled this priceless collection is being sold
NB! · Books · Society · Society Pages
Architecture · Books · Observations
How about a gondola full of books? Just such a gondola may be seen in one of the most unusual bookshops in the world, Libreria Acqua Alta in Venice. Here the books await their buyers not only inside gondolas but in other kinds of boats too, even canoes. The shop
Books · Observations · Society
Reading journalism on Pushkin's death, I am even frightened by what Benckendorff regards as a real threat, and by how he keeps reaching for liberals as the final accusation. That is to say, Russia really has been stuck in this paradigm of fear of liberalism for centuries 🤦🏽♂️
Aristocracy · Cinema · Books · Observations · Mores
I owe my first impression of consanguineous marriage among aristocrats to the tale of Babar the elephant, which I read in early childhood. If you remember the opening of the plot, once he has become a famous elephant, Babar goes off into the forest with his cousins Arthur and Celeste,
Archive · Books · Society
“All the way there I was tormented by one and the same thought: why was I being taken to the NKVD of Georgia, what had I done, why did they need me? I was not yet nineteen, I held no post, and I had never held any dangerous conversations. I
Archive · The East · Books · Society · People
A few days ago, in her hundredth year, Adile Abbas-ogly, a victim of Stalin's repressions, historian and memoirist, passed away. In 1938 Adile Shahbasovna was declared an "enemy of the people" on account of her family ties to Nestor Lakoba, Chairman of the Central Executive
NB! · Art · Books · People
Archive · Books · Mores · People
It is amusing that as early as the 1860s Chernyshevsky was in the thrall of a tale told about Herzen. Herzen married for great love and on the whole lived a happy family life. But the first years of his marriage to the girl he had loved since childhood, and
Books · Society · Paris · People
Théroigne de Méricourt opened schools for women, so that our silly girls might graduate from them as nihilists... There was in the nineteenth century a satirist by the name of Nikolay Shcherbina, by and large an interesting poet and, it seems, a decent man, though not without his rough edges