Scenes in Russia describing the manners, customs, diversions, modes of traveling, &c. Of the inhabitants of that country. London: printed for J. And E. Wallis, 1814. Children A933
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 that Petersburgers are flatlanders. Paris, Rome, Athens, and Lawrence have their high points, hogbacks, and hills, but at no point on the delta on which Peter built his city is there a spot over thirty feet above sea- level. Of all the ailments that have plagued that city – typhoid fever, typhus, cholera, giardia, influenza, malaria, diphtheria, syphilis, smallpox, and the common cold – altitude sickness has not been one of them, and actually the hill provides some relief from high barometric pressure if not from a queasy stomach. This contraption seems to be a combination of ski-jump and roller coaster: each person climbs into a small 4-wheeled shallow sided box at the top of a platform and careens downhill on a track. Sometimes ridges (moguls?) are added to increase velocity coming down enough to send them up the other side. When the River Neva is frozen the flying mountains are erected on the ice.
http://spencer.lib.ku.edu/using-the-library/library-use-and-policies
Alʹmanakh gastronomov : sostav bli︠u︡d devi︠a︡nosta polnykh obi︠e︡dov : oznachennykh zapiskami (menu) russkimi i frant︠s︡uzskimi ... a ravno zagotovlenii︠a︡ vprok na zimu produktov po frant︠s︡uzskomu sposovu / sostavleno I.M. Radet︠s︡kim ...D790
As good as the real thing... When it comes to western eyes looking through frosty Russian dining-room windows like the little match girl, the eyes are never too big for stomachs wanting dishes we can find nowhere else. Even a potato tastes Russian in the form of vodka, the Russian national drink (except that it's no longer made with spuds). Caviar, however, is more difficult to come by. Over-harvesting has almost wiped out the sturgeon and other Russian species that provide us with the delicacy. But we're happy to say that all is not lost, because those enterprising cooks in Leningrad a decade ago came up with a synthetic substitute for caviar and fish roe that they say, "is every bit as good as the real thing, except for the taste." A hungry student (and aren't they all hungry?) could translate some of these recipes, modifying the list of ingredients for what's available in western groceries (the calf's head looks a little daunting, but in the Mid-West they ought to be plentiful), try them out in KU's Russia House (if it still existed) and make them available to local chefs. Students, don't perish, publish! The world needs another Russian cookbook. Although we could find out nothing about Radetski himself, the British Museum Catalog lists an 1852 edition of this mouth-watering cookbook.
Kuznet︠s︡kii Most. I︠u︡moristicheskii illiustrirovanny al’bom. D2143
How many Russians does it take to change a northern light? Whatever country we hail from, we all know from trying to fathom "foreign" movies that humor is often difficult to translate across cultural boundaries. Russian humor often fares better with Americans than most, however. Maybe it has something to do with our both being Great Imperialist Powers. Kuznetskii Most (The Kuznetsky Bridge), this copy from the library of Alexander Benois, was a small satirical magazine produced during a short un-frosted window of time when satire was relatively safe from censorship and restriction.
An English Lady: An anonymous manuscript travel-diary, a detailed account of the sights, costumes, social services, village and town life, war aftermath, travel mishaps in Russia and Poland. MS B144
Notes From Underground... If you're interested in matters Polish and Russian or in travels in Slavic lands and in sights seen through western eyes AND if you can read this page from the manuscript diary of an Englishwoman traveling in the summer of 1828 (175 years ago!) then YOU may be the person to transcribe the contents of this little volume. You will get to know "Roberta" and "Mr. Sayer" (their real names), who were her companions on the trip. We can picture Ms. English Lady settling into the pension at night to write ... Inside the front cover she begins, "The weight of the statue of Peter The Great ..." You've seen the blurb; now read the book!
Robert Ker Porter (1777-1842). Travelling sketches in Russia and Sweden, during the years 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808. London: printed for R. Phillips, 1809. 2 vols. D1213, v.1
Postal in Petersburg; or, Hail-Mail. There's enough sleet, snow, and dark-of-night in St. P. in the winter to earn any postal worker an honest wage. Add to that a trek of eleven time zones. Trans-Siberian rail-mail speeds things up considerably. The difficulties of distribution of anything in as large an area as Russia in the 18th and 19th (and even the 20th and 21st) centuries has to have been overwhelming, even on a sunny day. It is said that in the old days a one-hour delay could be punishable by death, especially if military communication depended on it, and there was a need to keep those nosy western foreign dignitaries traveling in mail-coaches from having the chance to see more than they ought to, frosted windows or not. The postal system or iam, did become very speedy, but at a cost. The St. P. to Moscow route employed 13,000 iamshchiki in the 1760s. By 1843 there were 7,700 miles of gravel road, 1/3rd of those of Britain and 1/20th of what France had. Russian Butch Cassidys waylaid coaches, killed horses and pillaged goods so that thousands of horses were required yearly to keep any route going. But the route from Moscow to St. Petersburg was shortened from five weeks to one over the course of the 18th century. Robert Ker Porter was one of the brothers of English novelist Jane Porter. Invited by the Tsar to Russia in 1804, he married a Russian princess and after a stint in Venezuela as British consul returned to Russia where he died in St. Petersburg. The Department of Special Collections has a large collection of the Porter family papers.
Les plans et les statuts, des différents établissements ordonées par Sa Majesté impériale Catherine II. pour l’éducation de la jeunesse, et l’utilité générale de son empire / ecrits en langue russe par Mr. Betzky & tr. en langue françoise par Mr. Clerc. D1467, vol. 1.
Peter Principle, Catherine Principle... Education in Russia, woefully inadequate until Peter's reforms, had theretofore been under the authority of the church. The secularization of thought that came to Russia from the West with the Enlightenment was nowhere more evident throughout the 18th century than in the Russian educational system. The Empress Catherine II (1762-1796) continued educational reforms, embraced the pedagogical views of such men as Rousseau and Diderot in France and others in Germany. When she appointed Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi to be Director of the Academy of Arts he drafted a general plan for the education of all young Russians, regardless of sex or social standing (he was himself a foundling). After Diderot's visit to Russia in 1773 Betskoi honed this idea further, making a distinction between the basics that no one can do without (the 3 Rs) and the skills that are based on one's station in life: an individual does need specialized training (shop), but should also have a sampling from all fields of knowledge (liberal arts). At the behest of Diderot this French edition of Betskoi's plan was published one year after the Russian original. French sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet, whom Catherine commissioned to create the statue of Peter the Great that came to be known as The Bronze Horseman, found himself at odds with Betskoi on the form the statue should take. In spite of Betskoi's impressive contributions to Russian culture over his thirty-year presidency of the Academy of Arts, Falconet considered him a very conservative man of no imagination or artistic vision whatsoever.
Mémoire sur la cour de Russie et l’Etat russe. Moscow? ca. 1746. Manuscript report by an unidentified French diplomat on the persons at the Russian court and on conditions in Russia. MS C9
Diary of a Diplomat... This manuscript is a report by a high ranking but unidentified French diplomat of the men and women peopling the Russian court, and on military, economic, religious, political, and social conditions in Russia, 1745-1746. For one who would see the mid-18th century Russian court at Petersburg through French eyes, this is a grand opportunity for a research project. The first 22 chapters (of 30) form a remarkable portrait of the Empress Elizabeth (1741-1762), second daughter of Peter I and of those who played important roles in her surroundings: Russian and French counts, the ambassadors from Denmark, Hungary, England, and France. Intrigues abound.
Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes, or, On the plurality of worlds. Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle, 1853.
The Midnight Sun revolves around St. Petersburg... Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, or, On the plurality of worlds, is not a seething exposé of 18th century mystical Blakeian religious fervor as we thought it must be from the frontispiece, but an elucidation of the Copernican system. Although Fontenelle wrote poems, operas and plays, his real talent was in the sciences. He was one of the auslanders who paved the way for the scientific and philosophical ideas of the Enlightenment to gain foothold in Russia. His Russian poet counterpart, Prince Antiokh Dmitrievich Kantemir, spent time in both England and France as an envoy and translated Fontenelle's works, including this one, into Russian.
Istoria usovershenstvovanii︠a︡ ul’i︠a︡. / Sostavlena chlenom Imperatorskago Volʹnago Ėkonomicheskago Obshchestva A. Pokorskim-Zhoravko. Историа усовершенствования ул’я. / Составлена членом Императорскаго Вольнаго Экономическаго Общества А. Покорским-Жоравко.
Dr. Atkins' Nemesis... Forget the killer bees; what about killer honey and beebread? Diabetics both western and eastern have A.I. Prokopovich to blame for making honey more harvestable by his invention in 1814 of beehives with removable frames. In earlier times artificial hives imitating the real thing were hollow logs, or imitation hollow logs, straw hives of all shapes covered in clay, and the classic box-with-a hole, all placed strategically to get the attention of bees harvesting pollen from nearby bee-plants. This Petersburg imprint is apparently a very rare little pamphlet. In addition to this illustration of different kinds of hives, there's a plate with enlarged images of Prokopovich boxes, with cross-sections, and a lovely chromolithograph of Echium vulgare (viper's bugloss), a valuable source of beebread. There are five species of the genus Echium in the Russian Republic and beebread comes from the pollen that bees gather from it, pack into honeycomb cells and cover with honey. In these aerobic conditions is formed the absolutely necessary protein-carbohydrate food for bees, without which the development of bee colonies is retarded and honey yield greatly decreased.
Arifmetika; siriech nauka chislitelnaia. S raznykj dialektov na slavenskii iazyk prevedenaia, i voedino sobrana, i na dvie knigi razdielena. E502
Not Just Another Pretty Math Book... Peter I had a strong interest in developing a school of military engineering and in 1723 merged Moscow's school with the one founded in St. Petersburg in 1719. Equally important to the tsar was a school of mathematics and navigation. With Scottish mathematician and astronomer Henry Farquharson in charge, a syllabus was devised for the school that included arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, astronomy, navigation, geodesy, and related subjects. L.F. Magnitskii manned a staff in the school that included many western scholars, Farquharson among them. Magnitskii himself had already gained fame with publication in 1703 (ours is a later edition) of his Arithmetic, written in Church Slavonic. In spite of the title and its use as a textbook of arithmetic, it was an encyclopedia of mathematics, geodesy, astronomy, and navigation; it was a literary masterpiece that was still being widely read until mid-18th century. Lomonosov called it "the fates of knowledge," and it is considered the most important Russian schoolbook of the early 18th century.