Architecture · Moscow · Museums · Mores

Lenin's Apartment in the Kremlin's Senate Palace, Its Residents and the Fate of Its Contents

In 1918 the Council of People's Commissars allotted Lenin and his family a flat and a study in the Senate Palace within the Kremlin. More precisely, the layout of the third floor in the south-western part of the palace, on the side facing Senate Square, where the

Black-and-white photo: men in caps lean over a table of newspapers beneath a sign reading “Reading Room”.

Archive · Books · Mores · Society

Peasants reading newspapers in the open air in a Russian village, 1932

An Open-Air Reading Room in the Village of Sovetskoye, Nizhny Novgorod Region. The appetite for reading in an ordinary Russian village in 1932

Black-and-white photograph of a girl in a headscarf and coat walking across a stairwell landing beside a large window and a banister.

NB! · Archive · Mores

Girls playing hopscotch in a stairwell in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1960s

Girls playing hopscotch in the stairwell of a block of flats in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk in the 1960s. Photo by Yury Sadovnikov, MDF archive

Black-and-white photo of shirtless boys in light caps lying on a sheet by a lake, with a woman in a white coat standing behind them.

NB! · Archive · Observations · Mores · Society

Miners' children resting on the lakeshore in Chebarkul District in 1953

Miners' children at a rest home of the coal industry trade union in the Chebarkul district of the Chelyabinsk region, on the shore of the three lakes, in 1953. Do you think such bliss will ever be seen in Russia again?

NB! · Archive · Mores · Humour

Spouses Boris Dmitrievich and Maria Vasilyevna Vostryakov flagrantly flout Venice's 2008 ban on feeding pigeons, punishable by a fine of up to 500 euros, on their honeymoon in 1898

Archive · Monarchies · Mores

Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna on holiday in Darmstadt with family and retinue, 1899

In the front row, left to right: Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna (Victoria Melita of Great Britain), Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. In the second row: first on the right, our handsome, dearly beloved Emperor Nicholas II; second on the left, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich; on the

Aristocracy · London · Observations · Mores

The 8th Marquess of Ailesbury's fall from a window and his mother's death at the Savoy

I have been reading about the strange death of the 8th Marquess of Ailesbury. Two years ago, Michael Brudenell-Bruce, aged 98, died after falling from a window of his London home in Shepherd's Bush. The marquess's body was found by his partner; he lay in

Aristocracy · Art · Observations · Mores · Paris · Pop Culture

The Rothschilds’ ball at Château de Ferrières with a dress code of surrealist heads

The Surrealist Ball. Hosted by Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild and her husband Baron Guy de Rothschild at their family estate, the Château de Ferrières in Seine-et-Marne, France. The dress code, written in mirror script, read: "Black tie, long dresses and surrealist heads". As the guests

Art · Mores · Paris

A servant reads aloud to his mistress, Madame Geoffrin, while she dines

A painting by Hubert Robert, Christie's Paris. Incidentally, on Madame Geoffrin's wall hangs yet another painting by Hubert Robert.

Archive · Books · Moscow · Mores · People

Leo Tolstoy's romance with Ekaterina Tyutcheva in 1857 and 1858 and the prototype of Kitty

Tyutcheva is beginning to please me quietly... Little by little, but she has taken hold of me seriously and wholly So Leo Tolstoy recalls Ekaterina Tyutcheva in his diary. In my alternative historical imagination I sometimes wonder what would have happened had Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy in fact married Ekaterina Tyutcheva,

Monarchies · Science · Mores · Humour

In 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers launched the first hot-air balloon, France succumbed to collective madness

In 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers launched the first hot-air balloon, France succumbed to collective madness. The question arose at once: might one put people in it? People were, at first, thought too great a risk, and a duck, a cockerel and a sheep were placed in the basket

Engraving of the Earl of Strafford's bedroom, with a bed between two columns, a fireplace, an armchair and a man reading at a candlelit table.

NB! · Aristocracy · Architecture · Observations · Mores

The Earl of Strafford's bedroom at Wentworth Woodhouse, with a bed set between two marble columns

In my opinion, it is a very strange architectural decision to place two marble columns at the foot of a bed. Or, more precisely, to set the bed between marble columns. But that is how the Earl of Strafford's bedchamber at Wentworth Woodhouse was arranged.