Faith · Moscow · Heritage · Society
Hard to imagine, but concentration camps were scattered all over Moscow. The young Soviet state needed as many prisons as it could get, so concentration camps took over the buildings of former monasteries and churches, from the Novospassky to the Ivanovsky in the very centre of the capital, where barbed
Archive · Moscow · Society · People
In 1920 Alexandra Tolstaya, daughter of Leo Tolstoy, was arrested on a charge of involvement in a counter-revolutionary organisation and sentenced to three years' confinement in a concentration camp at the Novospassky Monastery in Moscow. She wrote: “My father, whose views I share, openly denounced the Tsarist government
Archive · Monarchies · Society · People
The admirers of Ferdinand VII could, of course, have known that while they fought for his freedom under the slogans «God. Fatherland. King», their dearly beloved ruler was heartily congratulating Napoleon on his victories on the Spanish front. The Otechestvennye zapiski of 1868 offered a rather pithy characterisation of Ferdinand:
Books · Society · People
In his day the American writer Charles Chesnutt was called an octoroon, a designation resting on the notorious "one-drop rule". "Octoroon" or "octaroon" is a racial term adopted in the United States for people with one eighth of African blood, that is, 12%
Faith · Society · People · Saint Petersburg
The widow intended to have the funeral service for Alexander Sergeyevich held in Saint Isaac's Cathedral, but was refused: the priest regarded the duel as a suicide and declined to bury the poet. Other churches refused too. Far too many believed that Pushkin had in effect quit this
Books · Moscow · Museums · Heritage · Society
In this modest house in Peredelkino, at 3 Serafimovich Street, Chukovsky lived from 1938 to 1969. A few years after Chukovsky's death, in 1974, Lydia Korneyevna was expelled from the Writers' Union, and the Litfond decided to evict the family from the dacha. Legal wrangling dragged on
Observations · Mores · Society · Humour
In 301, Emperor Diocletian attempted to fix uniform prices for basic goods and issued the Edict on Maximum Prices. Footwear, for instance, could cost anywhere from 50 to 150 denarii. On average, that is the equivalent of 50 bricks, three weeks of a soldier's pay and two months
Architecture · Books · Society · People
On 2 December 1851, after the coup d'état, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte banished Victor Hugo from France. The writer fled to Belgium, passing himself off as a printing-house worker, Jacques Firmin Lanvin, and from there he was expelled in 1852. In 1854 he finally settled on Guernsey, an
Observations · Society · Paris · Humour
Aaaaaaaaaa!!! I have found a YouTube channel whose author explains that the French judicial system is enmeshed in the cobwebs of Freemasonry, and that judges belonging to one lodge or another decide cases according to Masonic interests rather than the letter of the law. What is more, unlike in Great
The East · Monarchies · Observations · Society
Today Akihito, the 125th Emperor of Japan, formally abdicated the Chrysanthemum Throne; tomorrow his eldest son, 59-year-old Naruhito, will be enthroned. By way of comparison, Akihito's father, Emperor Showa, lived to almost 88 and reigned for 62 years. Since abdication was not provided for by the
NB! · Architecture · Faith · Heritage · Society · Paris
Yesterday afternoon the French Minister of Culture tweeted photographs of some of the valuable objects kept in the Cathedral being removed for the duration of the repairs. The tweet was posted at 14:41, five hours before the fire
Archive · Books · Observations · Society
"A small room, plain, petty-bourgeois. Stalin is drunk, 'blind drunk', as they say. There are only men in the room; of the peasants, myself and one other, black-bearded. Without a word, Vissarionovich threw the black-bearded peasant down, covered him with a sheet and raped