Books · Monarchies · Museums · Mores · Society
In the Historical Museum of The Hague, it is impossible to walk past two child mannequins in eighteenth-century royal livery. These exhibits are a modern reconstruction of the costumes of two court Moors, as Black people were then commonly called at court: Cupido and Sideron. The first came from
Heritage · Mores · Society · Rome
In the last two years alone, 40 cases of vandalism at the Colosseum have been recorded in Rome. And now, at last, the city authorities have updated the legislation governing public order in the capital, which has stood since 1946. The new rules cover both the assistance rendered by police
Books · London · Heritage · Education · Society
Not long ago a plaque was put up in Oxford to commemorate those who worked in slave conditions on the Codrington plantations in the West Indies. It is the work of a group that seeks to publicise Oxford's colonial past. In 2017 its activists demanded that the statues
Heritage · Society
This curious object at the centre of the table was to be found in every government office of the Russian Empire. It is the zertsalo ("mirror"), a special prism of wood or metal, surmounted by the double-headed imperial eagle, on which were displayed the decrees of Peter
Observations · Mores · Society
Switzerland, prostitutes punished by being harnessed to a night-soil collector's cart, 1790. That is to say, this was not simply a dustman's wagon but rather an emptier of cesspits. The contents of privies and cesspools were tipped out onto the streets, and the offending women
Books · London · Mores · Society
British historian Hallie Rubenhold has published a book on the anatomy of Jack the Ripper's crimes, 'The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper'. The work is of interest not only from the standpoint of criminology, but also as an anthropological
Books · Observations · Society
A question to Putin about the return of serfdom reminded me of my beloved Konstantin Levin, who discovered that the feeding racks were broken and had not been mended since winter. And the threshing machine was broken too, for the muzhiks simply did not like the contraption. And the carpenter
NB! · Society · Humour
NB! · Society · Humour
Books · Observations · Society
"The traditions of all the dead generations weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits
Moscow · Museums · Observations · Society
The GULAG Museum has a model of the structures of the White Sea Canal. Besides the questions "what for?" and "at what price?", one finds oneself wondering HOW. How could so colossal a construction be built in such conditions, and at the cost of what sacrifices?
Moscow · Museums · Observations · Society
The exhibition of the Museum of the History of the Gulag makes a very powerful impression. It really is, perhaps, one of the best museums, in Moscow at least. Take, for example, the stand with pronouncements by the leaders of the Soviet state on repression and on the people. Kirov,