In August 1702, the serving girl Marta came into the possession of a Russian general following a siege. Some twenty-two years later, she was crowned Empress Catherine I of all Russia. In this episode, we follow the remarkable story of this woman and the men who fell in love with her, especially Peter the Great.
Source: I. Pavlenko, Ekaterina I (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2004)
On 1 December 1911, the priest's wife Zinaida Troitskaia was found murdered in the backwoods village of Alajõe in eastern Estland province. This episode...
Abandoned in 1852 when scarcely two weeks old, Vasilii Gerasimov ultimately became a child worker at the Kreenholm cotton factory, where he worked for...
From the 1890s, the Russian Empire saw an outburst of interest in vegetarianism, especially since it was being propounded by famous figures like the...