Name: Poblamiento del Continente Americano
ISBN: 978-9929-687-90-5

The East · Books · Society

Chinese vessels are badly built, and although the Chinese cannot conceal their astonishment at the ships in which we come to them, their shipwrights are nonetheless amazed when invited to take our ships as a pattern

Chinese vessels are badly built, and although the Chinese cannot conceal their astonishment at the ships in which we come to them, their shipwrights are nonetheless amazed when invited to take our ships as a pattern. They say that in China it has been the custom from time immemorial to

Archive · Books · Mores · Society

Germain de Lagny on the Condition of Russian Serfs and the Knout in His 1853 Book

The law protects only the life and property of the boyars. The serf, regarded as a ploughing machine, has no need of laws; a plough may spend the night in the street, in the snow, in the rain. What else is a serf in Russia but a wandering plough? For

A page of an old printed book with verses, two lines about the western lands and war highlighted in yellow.

Books · Monarchies · Observations

Old verses in which Europe looks east in amazement and awaits its fate

I liked this politically topical line in Lomonosov's ode on the accession of Peter II to the throne:. Ликуют западны пределы, Предвидя щастие войны. Literal translation The western borders rejoice, Foreseeing the happiness of war. And what follows is good too: Европа ныне восхищенна Внимая смотрит на восток,

Books · Humour

Voltaire on the play “Hamlet”, which he sees as the work of a drunken savage

"Hamlet" is a coarse and barbarous play which even the common people of France or Italy would not deign to read. Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his beloved in the third. The prince kills his beloved's father, pretending to kill a rat, and

Art · Books · Humour

Thereupon the Town Governor took off his own head and handed it to me

Thereupon the Town Governor took off his own head and handed it to me. Examining the box lying before me more closely, I found that it contained, in one corner, a small barrel organ, capable of playing certain simple pieces of music. There were two such pieces: “I'll

Interviews · Cinema · Books · Observations · People

С выхода фильма «Высоцкий

Almost 15 years have passed since the release of the film «Vysotsky. Thank God I'm Alive», and since then, it seems, the media have rarely recalled the Soviet Union's foremost bard. And now CHTIVO is bringing out an issue devoted entirely to Vladimir Vysotsky. I am

Archive · Books · People

Leo Tolstoy on the death of Fyodor Dostoevsky, whom he never saw

How I wish I could say all that I feel about Dostoevsky. I never saw the man and never had any direct dealings with him; and suddenly, when he died, I understood that he was the closest, dearest, most necessary person to me. And it never once entered my head

Faith · Art · Books · Moscow · Museums · Heritage

The Khludov Psalter, a ninth-century Byzantine manuscript in the State Historical Museum

The Khludov Psalter, created in the mid-ninth century, has been recognised as a UNESCO monument and inscribed in the Memory of the World International Register. The Khludov Psalter is an outstanding work, and one of only three early monuments of Byzantine art to have survived to our day. It

NB! · Books · People

George Gordon Byron, “Don Juan”

Books · Humour

Skotinin: However much my neighbours have wronged me, whatever losses they have caused me, I have never petitioned against anyone; I make good any loss, rather than go chasing after it, by flaying my own peasants, and so the matter is buried and forgotten

Prostakov: Quite true, brother: the whole neighbourhood says that you collect your quitrent like a master. Mrs Prostakova: If only you would give us some lessons, dear brother; for we simply do not know how. Ever since we took away everything the peasants had, we cannot fleece anything out of

Books · London · Mores · Ethnography

"In Britain many men sleep with one wife, and many wives lust after one husband," reports a Russian chronicler

This is not the only mention of polygyny and polyandry in the British Isles. Already in Julius Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War there is an account containing the detail that "[in Britain] ten or twelve men have wives in common, and particularly brothers with brothers, and

Books · Observations · Society

Workers switched off a loader robot, as Levin's peasants spoiled machinery in Tolstoy

Sergey Kazakov, Director of the Industrial Development Fund of the Chelyabinsk Region, declares that the robotisation of industry is being held back by business itself:. "We had a case where a loader robot was installed at one of the enterprises. On the second day it broke down. They began