Observations · Mores · Society
8 March is not a day of flowers, spring and tenderness, nor a holiday born of a cloud of face powder and marketing ploys. Behind it stand decades of struggle for what today seems self-evident: the right of women to study, to work, to vote, to dispose of themselves.
Archive · Observations · Society · Saint Petersburg
Dear girls, women, mothers! Happy the holiday of not keeping silent about your rights! Which one may wish for everyone, on any day of the year
Mores · Society · Humour
Matthiae-Mahl. The oldest dinner in the world, which nobody has dared to cancel The tradition dates from 1356: every year at the end of February the Hamburg city senate invites guests to a meal. 3,425 glasses, 3,400 pieces of silver cutlery that have been polished for several
In the Press · Books · Society
Every time I write a new page or a new chapter, I think: "Is this going to come back at me?" And just imagine how it is for ordinary people.
Moscow · Observations · Society · Humour
Now the directresses of museums, now the directors of theatres. This is not culture but a fairy tale about misplaced personnel. One has the feeling that someone has spread a Monopoly board on the table and, chuckling, is shuffling the character cards from square to square. *with minor amendments The
NB! · London · Monarchies · Society · Humour
The Soviet AToS-1 special communications set, otherwise known as the "vertushka", in the private apartments of Elizabeth II. The cryptographic information-protection equipment is, in all likelihood, built into the walnut secretaire
In the Press · Museums · Observations · Society · Paris
It is hard to single out any aspect of this Louvre director's tenure that has not come in for devastating criticism. Her departure can therefore rightly be called an act of responsibility, whoever may have initiated it Farewell, de Carmont - read my text on the crisis at the
In the Press · Museums · Heritage · Society · Paris
What should have happened four months ago, after the robbery of the Louvre, has now come to pass: its director Laurence des Cars has resigned, and the President of France has accepted her resignation. And he promptly sent her off to work on cooperation between major museums as part of
NB! · Science · Education · Society · Humour
NB! · Observations · Society
Observations · Science · Education · Society
The first precedents date from the end of 2025, when a member of staff at Yaroslavl Pedagogical University was fined 20,000 roubles for references to such educational organisations in a scholarly publication. At the beginning of 2026 a female employee of the Yaroslavl State Theatre Institute received a similar
The East · Society · People · Humour
American General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition forces during the Gulf War in 1991