Archive · Mores · People · Saint Petersburg
At the centre of the photograph, in Russian costume, sits the 82-year-old Vladimir Stasov, host of the evening. Behind him, to his right, is Fyodor Chaliapin; at the piano, Felix Blumenfeld; on other evenings, Cesar Cui and Rachmaninoff would occupy that place. The eye is caught by Stasov&
NB! · Observations · Mores · Humour
The Mysterious Russian Soul: Twenty-First-Century Edition
Aristocracy · The East · Monarchies · Mores · People
Who Was Olga, Queen of the Hellenes? The title "Queen of the Hellenes", rather than "Queen of Greece", is not diplomatic courtesy but a political declaration. Olga Konstantinovna Romanova was a granddaughter of Nicholas I and a daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. In 1867, at
NB! · Archive · Mores
Archaeology · The East · Books · Mores · Education
The first documented case of sucking up to a teacher was preserved for us by Sumerian literature. It is probably one of the most popular texts in Sumerian: a poem about a negligent pupil, written around 2000 BC by an unknown teacher. The poem was called "Schooldays". The
NB! · Mores · Pop Culture · Rome · Humour
Syncretism imperceptibly shades into idiocy: Katy Perry tossed a credit card into the Trevi Fountain because she couldn't find any small change. She might as well have gone for bitcoin
Archive · Books · Mores · Society
People stand outside banks with faces that bear the stamp of dull despair. This is not the fury of 1991; it is the weariness of people who have been cheated once again. A question hangs in the air: can it really be starting all over again? Marietta Chudakova on the
Observations · Heritage · Mores · Paris
Léonard Lipp opened it after the Franco-Prussian War, when he left occupied Alsace and came to Paris. He brought his recipes with him: sauerkraut, sausages, cold beer. This was Alsatian cooking in its most direct form, hearty, unpretentious and at a reasonable price. The Saint-Germain quarter of that
Archive · Mores · People · Pop Culture
The sisters Lilya Brik and Elsa Triolet show off dresses by Nadezhda Lamanova before the lens of the photographer Germaine Krull during a shoot in Berlin in 1925 for the newspaper Excelsior-Dimanche. Lilya Brik and Elsa Triolet were not mannequins. One was Mayakovsky's beloved and the chief
Faith · Books · Mores · People
On 3 June 1929 the philosopher Alexei Losev and his wife Valentina were secretly tonsured as monastics by the Athonite elder Archimandrite David, taking the names Andronik and Athanasia. It was a monastic tonsure "in the world", that is, without withdrawal to a monastery. The person goes on
Archive · Museums · Mores · People
It was taken by Pyotr Ivanovich Vedenisov in Yalta in the 1910s, using the technology of the Lumière brothers. Pyotr Vedenisov graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire in 1888, moved to Yalta and spent the rest of his life there as a pianist, local historian, meteorologist and amateur photographer with a
Cinema · Books · Observations · Mores
Has anyone seen this book in their library? It was written by Arkady Vasilyev. A comedy film was made from the story, too. You know the plot: swindlers of every stripe, traders, restaurateurs, butchers, railway station employees and various other rogues found a joint-stock partnership, a sort of secret