Archive · Mores · Society · Humour
On 26 January 1522 the city council of Amsterdam decreed:
"…that no one shall throw snowflakes, neither woman nor man, on pain of a fine of one pound."
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· 1862 stories
Society
Books · Society · People · Saint Petersburg
Dostoevsky and the Petrashevsky Circle, from the 1849 Sentence to the 1857 Pardon
Dostoevsky Was Sentenced to Death by Firing Squad. The sentence on Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was pronounced in November 1849. His offence was participation in the circle of Mikhail Petrashevsky. In the spring of 1849 the circle was broken up. Dostoevsky was arrested together with other participants in the gatherings. For
Books · Society · Humour
Russia is a vast, abundant and wealthy state; but the man in it is a fool, and starves to death in the midst of plenty
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Archive · Geography · Society
Long Live the Conflagration of World Revolution! An inscription on the agitprop train under the command of Mikhail Kalinin, 1919
The train was created as part of a mobile apparatus of agitation and propaganda. It carried lecturers, agitators, instructors, journalists, actors and artists, as well as a travelling printing press, a cinema projector, slide projectors, and gramophones with records. The train travelled all over the country for two years
NB! · Observations · Society · Paris
Last night in Paris, at a rally on the Place de la République condemning the seizure of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, an American flag was burned
Last night in Paris, at a rally on the Place de la République condemning the seizure of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, an American flag was burned. Were it not for the Monument to the Republic by the Morice brothers in the background, one might think the party was taking
Archive · In the Press · Geography · Society
Blockade of Venezuela in 1902, the Hague arbitration and revision of the Monroe Doctrine
During the civil wars in Venezuela in the late nineteenth century, European merchants in the country suffered heavy losses, chiefly German, French, Spanish and Belgian capital. The ambassadors of these countries demanded compensation. The dictator of the day, Cipriano Castro, refused to pay reparations or service the foreign debts. The
Archive · Observations · Society
The word azъ in official documents of Ancient Rus and in the Laurentian Chronicle
The treaties of Princes Oleg and Igor began with the formula "We of the Rus' kin", that is, on behalf of the whole Russian land and the entire population of the country. The business instruments and official documents of Ancient Rus', by contrast, opened with the
NB! · Archive · Geography · Books · Society · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography
Population of the Russian Empire in the 1897 Census in Rubakin's Book of 1912
A statistical survey of the composition of the population of the Russian Empire on the basis of the 1897 census, with a hand-drawn diagram of national composition from the book "Russia in Figures. The Country. The People. The Estates. The Classes" by Nikolai Alexandrovich Rubakin, published in
Archive · Society
HANDS UP!
A Finnish anti-Soviet propaganda postcard of 1939-1940
Archive · Science · Society · People
Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov inspects the ruins of an astronomical observatory in 1946
Sergey Ivanovich, the younger brother of the geneticist Nikolai Ivanovich, was a physicist and the founder of a school of physical optics. In 1945 he became President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and held the post until 1951. Nikolai Vavilov was arrested in 1940 on charges of
NB! · Observations · Society · Humour
I am trying to work out whether this is the same Ivan Bassov who in 1993 was battling "dogmatic teaching of Marxist-Leninist theory" at the Faculty of Radio Electronics and Informatics in Rybinsk, and who in 2025 is holding forth in Israel on why the Pale
I am trying to work out whether this is the same Ivan Bassov who in 1993 was battling "dogmatic teaching of Marxist-Leninist theory" at the Faculty of Radio Electronics and Informatics in Rybinsk, and who in 2025 is holding forth in Israel on why the Palestinians killed
Archive · Monarchies · Moscow · Society
Notice of the Moscow Military Governor-General on the Administering of the Oath of Allegiance to His Majesty the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Pavlovich, of 18 December 1825
The administering of the oath will continue from the 20th day of December, to persons of the male sex of every rank and station, other than state peasants and the serf peasants and servants of landowners, for which purpose all churches will be open after the Liturgy From the collection