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I have long wanted to tell you about one project of the Museum of the History of the Gulag: colleagues, together with the Memory Foundation, have created a collection of graphic novellas based on the recollections of people who passed through the cauldron

File on Telegram I have long wanted to tell you about one project of the Museum of the History of the Gulag: colleagues, together with the Memory Foundation, have created a collection of graphic novellas based on the recollections of people who passed through the cauldron of Stalinist repression. The

The East · Art · Museums · Society

Barge haulers beyond Russia and Georges Daoud Corm’s 1935 painting “Galershchiki”

Barge Haulers on the Nile. Yes, barge haulers existed not only in Russia: the poorest men towed boats upstream, straining at the harness, in France, Belgium, Egypt and other countries, and in some places this form of employment survived until the 1930s. As proof that the destitute in different corners

In the Press · Books · Observations · Society · People

Turgenev's conflict with Katkov and the ban on a memorial meeting after the writer's death

A Few Words on Haters. Turgenev had many enemies even in his lifetime, Katkov of the Russian Messenger among them. Their quarrel began when Ivan Sergeyevich stopped publishing in his journal. The matter was this: the editor had thought it permissible to correct Fathers and Sons at his own discretion,

Art · Observations · Society

Medusa Gorgon, whom we remember as a terrifying monster with snakes for hair, a lolling tongue, scales, claws and a hideous visage, turning to stone all who meet her gaze, and asleep, beheaded by the valiant Perseus…

A sexist reception of the heritage of world culture leaves outside the brackets of memory the story of how Medusa was turned into a monster: the beauty, raped by Poseidon, found neither help nor consolation in the temple of Athena, protectress of justice, but received instead a curse from the

Faith · Museums · Society · People

Mask of preacher Alexander Peden made of hair, skin and teeth, and his opposition to Charles II

The mask of Alexander Peden, the seventeenth-century Scottish preacher, is made of human hair, animal skin and even human teeth! Today this wandering prophet would be called an oppositionist. He spoke out sharply against the Crown and every decision of Charles II, for which he was declared an outlaw

Science · Society · Nature

The 1900 bubonic plague outbreak in Glasgow and a new inquiry into the role of rats

The Plague of the Twentieth Century. The Third Pandemic flared up in Asia in 1855 and claimed millions of lives; several decades later it found an echo in Europe: in 1900, in Glasgow, 48 recorded cases of bubonic plague led to at least 16 deaths. Only a couple of years

Archive · Mores · Society

From the Report of Guard Corporal Ignaty Kolosyev, with the Hand of the Clerk Stepan Lavrentyev Affixed in His Stead

From the report of Guard Corporal Ignaty Kolosyev, with the hand of the clerk Stepan Lavrentyev affixed in his stead. To the Bryansk Chancery of the Voivodeship Administration: "On the 21st day of August of this year 1730, in Bryansk, in the square, the peasant wench Yefrosinya was buried

Stone head of Marianne with a winged dragon on its helmet and a hole in the face, in a dimly lit room of the Arc de Triomphe.

NB! · Art · Heritage · Society · Paris

Sculpture of Marianne damaged inside the Arc de Triomphe during clashes in Paris

Marianne, victim of circumstance. The sculpture, a symbol of the French Republic, in the display at the Arc de Triomphe was badly damaged during clashes between demonstrators and police in central Paris

Archive · Observations · Society · People · Humour

The first Russian theorist of economics, Ivan Tikhonovich Pososhkov, a Muscovite peasant's son who lived at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries and is known for his remarkable work "The Book of Poverty and Wealth, That Is, a Declaration of Whence…

"The post is a hole hewn by foreigners, through which they see plainly all our affairs of state and of trade." And therefore the post "must be abolished as soon as possible. The Russian people know nothing of foreign goods or of their prices, so let the

Faith · Museums · Heritage · Society

Union of Museums of Russia discusses church claims to museum property, including UNESCO sites

The General Assembly of the Union of Museums of Russia has discussed the thorny question of transferring museum property to the Church. At present, in particular, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believer Church lay claim to the Dormition and Demetrius cathedrals of the Vladimir-Suzdal Museum-Reserve and

NB! · Archive · Heritage · Society

On the night of 13 to 14 November 1961, the monument to Stalin in East Berlin was demolished as part of the Soviet-wide campaign of de-Stalinisation

Faith · Art · Heritage · Society

Corporal Guibert Alsini clings to the crucified Christ: a stained-glass window in the church of the commune of Monbert

During the First World War, the parish priest of the village of Monbert, Father Frédéric Thibault, read out the dispatches from the front every week, told of what had befallen the local lads who had been called up, and held services for the wounded and the dead. When the war