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A silver casket with a scroll is kept in the Archive of Ancient Acts

A silver casket with a scroll is kept in the Archive of Ancient Acts. The casket was made in 1767, and a scroll 309 metres long, with 959 glued joins, was placed in it. The scroll contains the Law Code (Sobornoye Ulozheniye) of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich of 1649, bearing the

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Abdication of Nicholas II in favour of Mikhail, signed in pencil and backdated

Speaking of disputed abdications in history, one of the most famous is surely that of Nicholas II, signed in plain pencil. As you can see, the document bears in its lower right corner the autograph signature of Emperor Nicholas II in plain pencil: “Nikolai”; in the lower left corner, a

Archive · Books · Monarchies · Society

It is very difficult to write about Russia, because at a certain time individual recollections were concealed; through a whimsical policy, the old rulers of that country forbade their subjects to write so much as the slightest word about their native land

In 1689 a Russian nobleman printed the journal of Golitsyn's Crimean campaign: the publication was burned in public, although it contained nothing against the government or the Grand Duke. This custom still held in the time of Peter the Great, and it is hardly surprising that he himself

NB! · Faith · Society · Paris

Sixteen French Carmelite nuns who resisted revolutionary state control over the Catholic Church were executed on 17 July 1794 and became the Martyrs of Compiègne

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Bill Clinton Shakes John F. Kennedy's Hand in 1963

Still from a TV quiz show: a woman and a man in glasses, with a question about the Holy Synod's ban in 1916 and four answer options below.

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The Holy Synod banned the New Year tree in 1916 amid anti-German feeling in the First World War

In 1916 the Holy Synod banned the New Year tree. A tradition that had come from Germany was swept up in the general anti-German hysteria of the First World War

Archive · Faith · Society

Church penance as punishment in the 18th century in law and in practice

In the eighteenth century a number of crimes carried ecclesiastical penalties alongside civil sanctions. One such measure was penance, imposed by a church court. In 1716, for instance, the Military Statute obliged offenders to repent of idolatry, sorcery, the charming of firearms, fornication, perjury and manslaughter. Practice, however, could differ

Archive · Faith · Society

Vatican excommunication for communist teaching and party membership remains in force

On 1 July 1949 Pope Pius XII excommunicated all Communists from the Catholic Church, calling Marxism an "implacable enemy" of Christianity. Excommunication was imposed for embracing the Communist doctrine and propagating it, for membership of the Communist Party and collaboration with it, and for reading and distributing its

Observations · Science · Society

Question about a single national list of scientific periodicals given RINTs, the VAK list and RSCI

Vladislav Panchenko, Vice-President of the Academy of Sciences, proposes the creation of a national list of scientific periodicals. He explains that “without a single national list of scientific periodicals we shall not be able to go on developing, or to defend our positions in the international scientific community, including

Geography · Observations · Mores · Society · Nature

Lobster in America went from food of the poor to a popular product thanks to the railways

Originally, lobsters in America were a very cheap and plentiful food, so much so that they were associated with poverty. They were used as animal feed, and workers campaigned for a limit on the amount of lobster in their weekly rations. The product owed its popularity to the arrival of

Colour cartoon: at the top, a group of dark-skinned people with French flags looks down at two light-skinned people with a mirror and cosmetics.

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Kladderadatsch cartoon of 1932 depicting what France would look like in 100 years

An illustration from the German satirical magazine Kladderadatsch, 1932, foreseeing the image of France a hundred years on: "The last white Frenchmen, the chief attraction of the Paris Zoo". Eight years remain until 2032

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