Museums · Observations · Society · Society Pages

The May Decrees of 2012 excluded copy exhibitions from museums' state assignments

At a museum dinner marking Leo Tolstoy's 190th anniversary, I learned that among other things the May Decrees of 2012 included a provision that exhibitions of copies do not count towards the state assignment, so a museum cannot report them as fulfilment of its plan. The innovation was

Monarchies · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg

The cholera riots in Saint Petersburg in June 1831 and Nicholas I's address to the crowd

In June 1831, popular riots broke out in Saint Petersburg. Terrified by the cholera epidemic, people supposed that the physicians were sprinkling some poison into the water and the wells, and that this was what made the disease spread. Nicholas I himself undertook to quell the riot, addressing the crowd

Old bond of 1822 with Russian text, a double-headed eagle at the top, two orange stamps and the inscriptions “Roubles 960” and “£148 Sterling”.

NB! · Archive · Society

Five per cent bond for 960 roubles of 1822 issued to Nathan Rothschild

A 5% bond for 960 roubles dated 1 March 1822, issued to Nathan Rothschild, whose signature appears in the upper right corner of the document. In all, bonds of this kind were issued to the Rothschilds to the value of £3.5 million sterling

NB! · Art · Society

The State Porcelain Factory Named After the Newspaper Pravda! 1937, the "Constitution" Vase

The State Porcelain Factory Named After the Newspaper Pravda! 1937, the "Constitution" vase. Peasant women with loaves and peasant men with pipes beneath golden sheaves of wheat. So this is what you look like, Stalin's constitution.

In a museum display case stand porcelain chess figures and painted propaganda plates with a red star and a Red Army soldier.

NB! · Art · Museums · Society · Humour

Porcelain revolutionary chess set of 1933 with red and white pieces

Porcelain revolutionary chess set, 1933. Reds against Whites. The Red pawns are peasants; the White pawns are shackled by the bourgeoisie. As for the Red king and queen, they are, of course, the worker and the collective-farm woman

NB! · Faith · Observations · Society · People

The Head of Oliver Plunkett, the Catholic Bishop Hanged, Drawn and Quartered on a Charge of High Treason

The head of the Catholic bishop Oliver Plunkett, quartered on a charge of high treason. He is regarded as the last Irish martyr, while I would remind you of the growing number of treason cases in Russia today

NB! · Society · Humour

The Portrait Gazes Upon ITS FORMIDABLE PROGENITRIX

The Portrait Gazes Upon ITS FORMIDABLE PROGENITRIX. If you still harboured any hopes for the future of Russian journalism

Archive · Education · Society

Abolition of the word “class” in secondary schools in the 1920s and its replacement with “groups”

In the 1920s, among other things, the word "class" was abolished in secondary schools as a bourgeois survival. Classes came to be called groups

NB! · Art · Society · People · Humour

Sir William Young owned West Indian estates and 1,300 slaves, was an outspoken opponent of Wilberforce's 1789 campaign for abolition, and in the end richly deserved his drubbing

Glass display cases with rows of stamps and seals against a wall bearing the Russian inscriptions “Special control”, “Permanent” and “To be returned”.

NB! · Archive · Museums · Society

Collection of KGB officers' stamps at the KGB Museum in Vilnius

Stamps for every occasion in a chekist's life: prohibit, special control, secret. The KGB Museum, Vilnius

Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · Mores · Society · Humour

Princess Olga Paley, the morganatic wife of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, sixth son of Alexander II, has an interesting recollection of how, at the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks came to requisition her palace at Tsarskoye Selo

Princess Olga Paley, the morganatic wife of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich, sixth son of Alexander II, has an interesting recollection of how, at the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks came to requisition her palace at Tsarskoye Selo. The Soviet had resolved to occupy the palace for want of premises. Paley

NB! · Observations · Society · People

Thomas, father of Alexandre Dumas, was the son of a slave; in 1793 he was appointed a brigadier general of the revolutionary armies

Thomas, father of Alexandre Dumas, was the son of a slave; in 1793 he was appointed a brigadier general of the revolutionary armies. In that same year the US Senate passed the Fugitive Slave Act. Europe and the States are, after all, very different