Browse Items (73 total)

Feodor: Verochka, do you remember those evenings we spent in the cornfields? British writer Romer Wilson's novels and novellas and in this case, a play, deal with the issues of art, love, and contemporary issues – contemporary with the first…

It Takes a Village... When there's talk of Russia – and especially of Petersburg – there's talk of contrasts, opposites, contradictions. This theme is a constant in Biely's novel Petersburg. Petersburg is fog, Moscow is sunshine. Moscow…

The Big Pomegranate ... We toyed with idea of calling this exhibition "St. Petersburg: The Second City," not only because of Moscow's historical firstness, but also because its architecture and art looks like nothing else, anywhere else; it embodies…

St. Petersburg High... The only image of St. P. more plentiful in western books about 19th century Russia than the bronze horseman, is the ice hill, or "flying mountain," a peculiarly Russian entertainment that may have something to do with the fact…

Shoeless Yosuf... One of this westerner's childhood memories is children's books from Europe. They were in French, German, Russian, and thus "unreadable" but beloved just the same, and linguistic barriers contributed to their mystique. This…

Positively antediluvian; or, Floods looking for a city ... Long before the founding of St. Petersburg, Europeans looked towards Russia like rabbits casing the carrot patch, especially those travelers such as Sigmund von Herberstein in the 16th and…

The Grand Inquisitor... Peter the Great had no love for Catholicism, but in the early days of his reign he showed deference to the church. Unfortunately his reforms did little to improve conditions for Catholics, and under Catherine II their…

Mad Dogs and Englishmen... During Catherine's reign, the British had established themselves as a powerful minority in "Peterborough," as it was called by some of the Brits. They ran factories and were fully involved in the intellectual and social…

From the Land of the South Slavs... Published in Vienna, this calendar of the world's happenings from its beginnings uses the Russian civil alphabet, introduced to the Russians by Peter The Great. The author, Serbian school teacher, writer,…

Kyrie Eleison...Lord Have Mercy... The following list of complaints and the engraving on the right provide the reader with the English view of Russian Orthodoxy: Of the Muscovites and the Russians The Muscovites, and Russians as they were converted…