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Alexander Blok and Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva
Archive · Architecture · Faith · Books · Heritage · Mores
The 1903 wedding of Alexander Blok and Lyubov Mendeleeva in the church at Tarakanovo
Do you remember the lines "A girl was singing in a church choir of all the weary in a foreign land"? In them Blok immortalised the Church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Tarakanovo. In his memoirs he writes of it as follows: Mendeleev and my
Archive · Observations · Mores · Education · Ethnography
Shrovetide celebrations at a kindergarten in Malakhovka
Children with plastic bags on their heads play at being snowballs. This put me in mind of Shrovetide at my own kindergarten, and the chief impression it left: a strange bewilderment that nobody could properly explain what sort of holiday it was, or why someone had to be burned. I
NB! · Art · Observations · Mores · Ethnography
I have collected and illustrated Russian proverbs about love for you
Archive · Observations · Science · Mores · Humour
Darwin listed the pros and cons of marriage and wed his cousin Emma
A reminder that Darwin was not merely drawing up a list of the advantages and drawbacks of marriage before deciding to wed, but following the ideas of Benthamism then in vogue, and specifically Jeremy Bentham's schemes of "moral arithmetic" The Darwin archive holds an amusing sheet
Archive · Cinema · Mores · Saint Petersburg
It's a Proper Circus!
Such was the look of the wooden structure that housed theatrical and circus performances at public festivities: the booth, or balagan. This one is the celebrated balagan of the merchant Nikolaev, set up in the Admiralty District of Saint Petersburg. It was called the "Great Roller Coaster" (Bolshoy
Observations · Mores · Society
The most popular children's names of 2025 and the absence of Arabic names from the list
Sofia and Mikhail were the most popular names for newborns in Russia last year. In 2025 the names most often given to girls were Sofia, Eva, Anna, Maria and Varvara. For boys: Mikhail, Alexander, Artyom, Matvey and Timofey. One would like to believe this bright tale, but the statistics are
Almaty · Archive · Books · Observations · Mores
I happened to read a fragment of the memoirs of Lyubov and Boris Fedotov, animal trainers quite well known in the USSR
I happened to read a fragment of the memoirs of Lyubov and Boris Fedotov, animal trainers quite well known in the USSR. It is a very sad story, I say at once. So if you fear pain, do not read the text that follows. The Fedotovs write of the hardships
Books · Mores · People · Humour
"Mummy, mummy, they said at the museum that Mayakovsky killed himself because of Lilya Brik." "No, he killed himself because of me."
Veronika Vitoldovna Polonskaya, the last love of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Art · Books · Observations · Mores
When I first saw this painting by Makovsky, in which a desperate wife tries to stop her husband from stumbling into a tavern, I pictured a scene from the life of the Marmeladov family
Perhaps the figures in Vladimir Makovsky's painting “I Won't Let You!” of 1892 do not quite match the portrait details of Dostoevsky's characters, but perhaps, had Katerina Ivanovna succeeded in restraining Semyon Zakharovich from his ruinous passion, there would be a few more happy
Archive · Observations · Mores · Ethnography
A herdsman with a barabanka and mallets calls the cattle in a photograph by Zakhar Vinogradov
A drummer-shepherd calls the herd at dawn in a photograph of 1910-11 by Zakhar Vinogradov, from the series “In the Lands Beyond the Volga and Along the Vetluga”. The historic photograph captures a shepherd summoning the herd at dawn with the help of traditional Russian wooden instruments, the