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Lambs to the Slaughter; or, I Love Your Hat... Both the French and the Germans were intrigued with Russian military uniforms and with good reason. But one would think the tassels and plumes and chinstraps would have slowed a guy down and made him…

A Gentle Soul... Before the Industrial Revolution St. Petersburg's visibly wealthy lived side by side with her hidden impoverished, often in the front and the back of the same building! This "illusion" of what the city represented, the pretense that…

The News From Lake Ladoga... Arthur Sketchley is the pseudonym of English dramatist, novelist, and entertainer George Rose. His "Mrs. Brown" novels – 32 volumes in all – purport to be the slightly dotty ravings and rantings of an…

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,…

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…

Crime and Punishment ... Austria's attitude towards pre-Peterburgian but nevertheless Petrine Russia can be seen in this diary of the journey to Moscow of the Count of Guarient and his secretary to the mission, Johann Georg Korb. While Peter was on a…

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 Emperor's Wearing Clothes! An Internet search under August Racinet will bring up beautiful reprints of Le costume historique, a prime resource for theatrical designers. This set is of the "Grand édition," published in 1888, the plates in…

Put Her in a Pumpkin Shell... The palatial Peterhof or Petrodvorets, Peter's favorite home, was 30 versts or about 20 miles from the old St. Petersburg. Was it indeed still part of larger Petersburg today? We discovered that although it's still…

Coming in 1703 to a Swamp Near You... In the 10th century the marshes where Sankt Pieter Burkh would begin to be built almost 800 years later were a part of Novgorod land, originally the area around Lake Il'men, home to the Il'men Slavs. The town of…