Archive · Society · Saint Petersburg
Yegor Larichkin, accused in the case of the murder of Mikhail Gertsenshtein, together with his guards at a window of the building where the court sessions were held. Terijoki, Grand Duchy of Finland, 1909. Now Zelenogorsk, a district of Saint Petersburg. The Russian Empire we have lost
Archive · Cinema · Books · Monarchies · Society
📌 For the youngest alchemists of the channel: three magical alphabets 📌 In the Parnassian Mockingbird rubric: a review of Guillermo del Toro's new “Frankenstein” 📌 I tell the story of the recovered jewels of the Habsburg dynasty 📌 In half a century California has built 22 prisons and 1 university; we
Observations · Society · Paris
Leave us in peace! Stop pestering us! There are too many laws in this country, too many regulations, too many rules! It is killing us! Let us live a little, and you will see, everything will sort itself out! Georges Pompidou in the 1970s [about FRANCE, naturally]. But a little
NB! · Archive · Monarchies · Society
A pelican feeding its young with its own blood: the emblem of the Department of the Institutions of Empress Maria. That is, Maria Feodorovna, consort of Emperor Paul I. This was the name of the principal department administering charity in the Russian Empire
Museums · Society · People
Philadelphia Museum of Art has filed a lawsuit against its former director and CEO Sasha Suda, reports Artguide. The suit states that she “misappropriated the museum's funds and lied to conceal the theft”. Suda was recently dismissed from the museum after three years in the post, despite the
The East · Monarchies · Observations · Society
Among other things, the British envoy was to persuade China to buy British goods. The Emperor Qianlong's reply was original: “We possess all things. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious, and have no use for your country's manufactures.” On the remaining points, too,
Architecture · Moscow · Observations · Heritage · Society
Most of the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve now looks like this. A continuous fence with pinpoint access to the architectural ensemble, while the protected park itself has been effectively sealed off and dug up. I did not go to the trouble of finding out why the work is being done, or
Architecture · Faith · Observations · Heritage · Society
The Destruction of Churches in France: A Standard Procedure in the Package of Measures for Changing a Civilisational Substrate. Several churches a year in every département. The reasons may be purely formal, in this case administrative reforms that turn Christian places of worship into an expensive burden on the books
Monarchies · Museums · Society
On 24 November 1813 Russian Cossacks liberated Amsterdam from the French invaders. Russian and Prussian troops helped the Dutch to free their country from the French, and soon after the events in Amsterdam the Netherlands proclaimed its independence. But the Dutch now react very painfully to statements along the lines
Archive · Moscow · Science · Society
Muscovites observe the Great Solar Eclipse of 19 June 1936: a solar eclipse on the eve of the repressions. Photographs by Yefrem Yefremov. Against the purplish-grey sky there flared a silken, silvery corona, of the form typical of the epoch of solar maximum. The absolutely black disc of the
Observations · Society · Humour
And why, pray, forty-eight hours? It might at least have been two years, with twelve strokes of a willow switch on the *forbidden word thrown in. And make her scrub the canals for a couple of weeks besides
Archive · Books · Mores · Society · People
By nationality I am Russian, by origin a native proletarian, a hereditary metalworker. That is all that is known of my ancestry In the memoirs of Leonid Brezhnev, which are believed to have been written from his words by several prominent journalists and editors of the day and merely edited