1. | Jun 27, 2014

Howdy! This blog post could not be written any beettr! Looking at this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He always kept preaching about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he's going to have a good read. I appreciate you for sharing!

2. | May 25, 2014

Howdy! This blog post could not be written any bteetr! Looking at this post reminds me of my previous roommate! He always kept preaching about this. I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he's going to have a good read. I appreciate you for sharing!

3. | Sep 25, 2013

I bought a bttloe of Russian vodka in St. Petersburg last month.I just received the bttloe from Stockholm security yesterday.The name looks like:BOHKA IIAPCKAR 3OVOTARThe bttloe shows window mirror looking at the back side of the bttloe.I cannot find it on Google. Can you tell me anything about the vodka?Thank you,Jack Efird

4. | Sep 8, 2013

Hi, Alison!I agree that the phrasing is sntkiirg. And I like the point you make about truth and reconciliation being a modern concept. I'd be interested to see when it first cropped up, because it's something human beings tend to shy away from, as a whole. Governments/powers/etc., certainly do, on the grounds of avoiding embarrassment.Another thing that occurred to me, too, after I replied, was the use of semantics. If I understand the climate of Catherine's time correctly, one couldn't pardon treason. It simply wasn't done. One could, however, pardon a disturbance.But you're right that it does sound an eerie note. I think because the language itself, however kindly, is only a mask for the motives. Catherine may have been looking to show mercy, but others have used similar phrases to mask some of the world's great horrors. Reading it is like looking through a smoky glass; what's hidden behind can be light or disturbingly dark.All the best,Lucy

5. | Sep 8, 2013

That was fascinating helostny, I think I could fall in love with trivia for its own sake, because it's like getting a few more pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.Talking about why these men returned . I can think of a couple of possibilities. For one, unless they settled in areas with sizeable Russian enclaves, they had probably encountered isolation and loneliness. An amnesty that meant they could not only go home but be free would settle all their problems at once supposedly. Second, they had entered on a voluntary self-exile, but there does seem to be a strong theme in Russian culture that being exiled is only about two steps better than being dead. You're cut off, you've been sent to the outside. So the pull to go back could be very strong, even if they were living in an otherwise supportive or prosperous environment. And of course, as you suggested, they may have had families back home.(I too am familiar with the wish-I'd-found-that-earlier bug, as I think most historians/historical writers are. He's an itchy little pest.)Thanks for a fun post!

6. | Aug 30, 2013

That was fascinating htsenoly, I think I could fall in love with trivia for its own sake, because it's like getting a few more pieces of a gigantic jigsaw puzzle.Talking about why these men returned . I can think of a couple of possibilities. For one, unless they settled in areas with sizeable Russian enclaves, they had probably encountered isolation and loneliness. An amnesty that meant they could not only go home but be free would settle all their problems at once supposedly. Second, they had entered on a voluntary self-exile, but there does seem to be a strong theme in Russian culture that being exiled is only about two steps better than being dead. You're cut off, you've been sent to the outside. So the pull to go back could be very strong, even if they were living in an otherwise supportive or prosperous environment. And of course, as you suggested, they may have had families back home.(I too am familiar with the wish-I'd-found-that-earlier bug, as I think most historians/historical writers are. He's an itchy little pest.)Thanks for a fun post!

7. | Aug 29, 2013

This is so interesting, John! First, I feel like I see a spike of cases of peolpe firming up their status in the early 1760s, too and my theory is that it has a lot to do with the third revision. The action of cleaning up the books certainly affected individuals and societies in terms of having them register properly, and I can also see it having the effect of making societies guard their privilege more carefully.As far as what makes it in to the PSZ, there's also the factor that apparently Nicholas didn't open all state archives and files to Speransky et al (see here: Marc Raeff, “Preface,” Catherine II’s Charters of 1785 to the Nobility and the Towns,, trans. and edited by David Griffiths and George E. Munro (Bakersfield: Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher, 1991), xii.)Then there were a number of books in the early 1800s in which individual authors tried to recover all the laws (or a lot of the laws) pertaining to various subject. I looked at one of them: P. Khavskii, Sobranie zakonov o kuptsakh, meshchanakh, posadskikh i tsekhovykh, ili Gorodovoe Polozhenie so vkliucheniem zakonov predshestvuiushchikh i posleduiushchikh s 1766 po 1823 god (SPb, 1823). I sat there in the Publichka using a usb modem to search through the PSZ online as I looked through the book, to see what wasn't in one or the other. Somewhat to my surprise, the things missing in the PSZ were mostly ukazes from Alexander's reign (and I should note that they may be there, hidden under a different date I had that problem, too, that things were reported oddly).

8. | Aug 28, 2013

etot kurginyan sdolat rothschildov! ego tozhe raskrutshiwaut w Rossii dlja psewdosozialisma po trotskomu (nowi tolpolitarism) i raswala Rossii (revoluzia kak eto uzhe bilo) Info pro kurginyana na KPE. ru !!!Dmitri Slawoljubov ..wash bibleiski projekt w rasnowidnoi forme skoro prowaliza i washa psewdowlast (kapitalism, pwsewdosozialism gde toka elita rulit a ne narod..) isbrannix balnix skoro bolshe nebudet