“...On a distant outskirts, in the province of Penza (God, what a wilderness it was!), there lived a landowner Semyon Smagin, the owner of six hundred souls....

“...Let us not naively think that only deeply religious people became monks. On the contrary, behind the walls of Russian monasteries, freethinkers looking f...

“...There was a Triple Alliance dangerous for France, and Paris wanted to reshape the Prussian-Russian alliance into a Franco-Russian one. So Gatchina, with ...

“...Behind the lieutenant’s back, lace suddenly rustled harshly: “What does Mr. Lieutenant want?” Kempke turned around: standing in front of him was a beauti...

“...If an engraver makes a portrait of someone, placing extraneous images on the blank margins of the engraving, such laconic inserts are called “notes.” In ...

“...For the first time in a Russian courtroom they heard the hoarse, slightly whispering voice of Plevako, pronouncing the words of the oath: “To conduct cou...

“...Fedya Plyushkin went far, even to the Porkhov district, and one day he returned with such a profit that he couldn’t believe it. Already in old age, famou...

“...the old sailor continued: “Do you really think that the Russian fleet, always famous for its traditions of humanism, could shoot a flotilla of unarmed fi...

“... From a young age I had respect for academician Yakov Karlovich Grot, about whom today I want to talk... Sometimes I think: how did one person, not pushe...

“...Recently I came across materials for the biography of Karl Bryullov, again - for the umpteenth time! - I overlooked the petite notes that explained the m...

“...Neither the doctors then nor the historians later figured out the routes along which the plague invaded the blessed Astrakhan province. More recently, th...