History & Persons

Sergey Stankevich24.04.2024

The-First-Post-Communist-Mayor-of-Moscow-Gavriil-Popov-in-1991.jpg

34 years ago the democrats took power in Moscow. On April 20, 1990, Gavriil Popov was elected chairman of the Moscow City Council of People’s Deputies. For the first time in Soviet history, the capital of the USSR was headed not by a party official, but by a scientist-economist. On April 21, Sergei Stankevich became […]

Yuri Chekalin16.04.2024

The legendary comedian Charlie Chaplin was born on April 16, 1889, 135 years ago! Charlie Chaplin miraculously escaped death, because an assassination attempt was being prepared on him during his visit to Japan in 1932. Chaplin was a crowd favorite. In fact, he became the first actor to be adored by crowds and greeted with […]

Sergey Stankevich15.04.2024

The Great Flood in Moscow took place in April 1908. In the old, ancient times, floods also regularly occurred in Moscow: once every 30-40 years, the waters of the Moskva River, Yauza, Neglinka and small rivers broke out of the banks and walked through the streets of the capital. The rise in water level from […]

Tony Rocchi11.04.2024

The far-right Black Hundreds movement had its biggest mass appeal in the borderlands of the Russian Empire, rather than in the core ethnic Russian regions in the empire. Thousands of people in the nine Western Provinces, a transitional zone between the traditional Russian and Polish states, enthusiastically accepted the Black Hundreds message of <<Russia for […]

Tony Rocchi08.01.2024

One of the darkest chapters in the history of the People’s Will [Народная Воля] was how some narodovol’tsy supported a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms [погромы] in 1881-1882 in the southern and southwestern provinces, now forming part of Ukraine. A pogrom is a mob attack direct against certain categories of people, considered evil alien elements by […]

Dmitry Litvinov18.12.2023

Shah-Alam-conveying-the-grant_of-the-Diwani-to-Lord-Clive.jpg

On December 31, 1600, the Company of London Merchants Trading with the East Indies, better known as the British East India Company, was founded in London. Soon, Queen Elizabeth I granted her a monopoly on trade with eastern countries. Such actions were quite in the spirit of the time, when foreign trade was based on […]

Sergey Stankevich03.12.2023

Henry Kissinger died at the enviable age of 100 at his home in Kent, Connecticut. Until his last breath he was active, wise and significant. Back in July, Xi Jinping himself received him as a guest of honor in Beijing. He met regularly with Joe Biden, as well as with 11 previous US presidents. None […]

Tony Rocchi03.12.2023

Tsar-Nicholas-IIs-opening-speech-before-the-first-elected-State-Duma-on-27-April-1906l.jpg

Political trials in the Russian Empire turned into battlegrounds between the government and educated society as represented by the political parties and movements. Socialist defendants and their liberal defense lawyers joined combat with prosecutors determined to present the revolutionaries as monsters seeking to destroy Russia. Defendants accused the government of committing crimes against the people […]

Tony Rocchi01.12.2023

Although the Russian government had severe policies against its real and imagined political opponents, it was not a police state. The government did not have the resources or the political will to become a police state. The image of the Russian Empire as a police state was built up from the 1800s by socialists and […]

Tony Rocchi29.11.2023

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Part 5 see here. Any discussion about the Russian government’s police and repressive policies toward its real and imagined political opponents must look at these policies in a broad context. Simply describing the government structure in the Russian Empire as a police state does not give us the full picture of how the government faced […]

History & Persons

Gavriil Popov — the First Post-Communist Mayor of Moscow

135 years ago Charlie Chaplin was born!

The Great Flood in Moscow

The Stronghold of the Black Hundreds in the Russian Empire

The People’s Will and Russia’s Jews

British East India Company

Who Was After All Mr. Kissinger?

Political Crimes in the Russian Empire

The Political Police of the Russian Empire

Terrorism and Other Types of Mass Violence in the Russian Revolution of 1905-1907: Part 6

What Beliefs Does the Orthodox Church Have About Birth Control?

On the Birthday of Leonid Brezhnev

Administrative Capitalism or a Fairy Tale from the Ogonyok Magazine that Turned into a Pumpkin

Photographs for the Tsar