Archive · Moscow · Society
A rally on Skobelev Square in Moscow, April 1917. Today the square can be recognised by the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian peeping out from behind the building. Yes, yes, this is how Tverskaya Square looked a hundred years ago. On the very spot where the monument to the
Observations · Society
You see, a man is caught in flagrant plagiarism, yet he contrives to turn the situation so that he himself becomes the victim. In my view, that in itself is a most powerful statement about modern society
Art · Observations · Society
It turns out that the Kazakhstani officials may not have been censoring a statement about repressions at all, but trying to avoid the charge of exhibiting plagiarism. Which, in fact, is just what the official side says: the artist, so we are told, was pointed to an improper borrowing and
Art · Museums · Observations · Society
"The Machine", an installation by the artist Assel Kadyrkhanova devoted to Stalinist repression and the Red Terror, was secretly dismantled by the administration of the pavilion itself before the opening, and the spot where it had been displayed was hung with a black curtain. Officials are reported to
Society · People · Saint Petersburg
Galina Starovoitova would have turned 80 today, but she was murdered in 1998
In the Press · Books · Society
The list includes 75 books originally written in English and 25 in translation. There are 5 Russian authors on the list: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Bulgakov, Grossman and Nabokov, with 8 books between them: 6. "Anna Karenina" 7. "War and Peace" 25. "Lolita" 28. "The
NB! · Observations · Society
Archive · Moscow · Society
In view of the fact that "Zoyka's Apartment" is the principal source of livelihood for the Vakhtangov Theatre, to permit the temporary lifting of the ban on its production At the beginning of 1928 the new head of the Main Repertory Committee (Glavrepertkom), Fyodor Raskolnikov, struck
NB! · Archive · Moscow · Society · People
In the Press · Interviews · Cinema · Books · Society
Prohibitions alone will not do. The best defence is attack. A humanitarian intervention must be followed by a clever humanitarian response. The series «GDR» and «Dear Willy» have already appeared, but that is clearly not enough. Nor do these series touch on our own times. That is why I am
Observations · Society · Humour
Friends, painting even the largest swimming pool in the world cannot possibly cost 13 million dollars. Unless it is the pool of some middling river with its tributaries. Officials, for all that, are the same the world over. And the most dreadful thing is that the social order which allows
Museums · Heritage · Society · Paris
The French National Assembly has unanimously passed a law on the restitution of cultural artefacts removed from former colonies between 1815 and 1972. The year 1815 is that of the Congress of Vienna, after which France returned what Napoleon had plundered across Europe. The year 1972 is the date of