Here I am in utter distress, for I am surrounded by illiterate and senseless people and must work alone for all of them and set right what a century of chicanery has fouled…

Here I am in utter distress, for I am surrounded by illiterate and senseless people and must work alone for all of them and set right what a century of chicanery has fouled… With each passing day I grow more and more convinced that bureaucracy is impotent…

Saltykov-Shchedrin in a letter of 1 October 1858

Report a translation error

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Here I am in utter distress, for I am surrounded by illiterate and senseless people and must work alone for all of them and set right what a century of chicanery has fouled…

Read more

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s