☦️ Church of the Nativity of Christ in Krokhino

In 1961, when the Sheksna Reservoir was filled, Krokhino found itself in the flood zone, and its residents were resettled. The church was preserved as a navigational landmark: a lantern was installed above the dome to warn vessels of shallow water. Thus a village church became a lighthouse church.

Decades in the water led to serious destruction. Now the team of the «Krokhino» foundation and volunteers are working to preserve the building and are collecting the history of the vanished village — archival documents, memories of the resettled residents and household items.

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❤️From Russia with love

Orenburg down shawl — finer than silk, lighter than a feather

❤ Orenburg down shawls are known for their fineness and softness. They are knitted from the down of Orenburg goats, which is distinguished by its particular delicacy and fine fibres. The shawl comes out so light that it can be threaded through a wedding ring. At the same time, since the garment was created for the harsh winters of the Southern Urals, it retains heat well.

✨ The down-knitting craft in the Orenburg region took shape from the 18th century. Local craftswomen passed on the knitting techniques from generation to generation, creating shawls with mesh patterns, braids and complex openwork borders. Over time, the items became known far beyond the borders of Russia and turned into one of the most recognisable Russian folk crafts.

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❤️From Russia with love

The Imperial Building of Kazan University

❤️ The Imperial Building is one of the most recognisable buildings of Kazan Federal University. It was built at the beginning of the 19th century, when Kazan University was only developing as one of the main scientific centres of the Russian Empire. The building became part of the university complex founded in 1804 by decree of Emperor Alexander I.

📎 The main building is especially interesting for its history as well: Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Lenin studied here, and in the 19th century the rector was the mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky, who created non-Euclidean geometry. Today the building remains the central part of the university complex and a monument of classicist architecture.

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Ivan Kramskoi — a painter for the people

🙏 Ivan Kramskoi was a 19th-century Russian painter, one of the founders of the Association of Travelling Art Exhibitions. In 1870, together with other artists, he opposed the rules of the Imperial Academy of Arts and helped create an association that allowed paintings to be exhibited in various cities of Russia, not only in the capital. Thus, works could be seen by people who rarely visited major art galleries.

🌸 Kramskoi painted portraits of Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Nekrasov and Ivan Shishkin. He also created "The Unknown Woman" and the painting "Christ in the Wilderness" (1872), in which he depicted Christ before a difficult choice. For the Peredvizhniki, it was important to address life and the human being, rather than limit themselves to mythological and historical subjects, which were traditionally valued in academic painting.

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☦️ Church of the Resurrection of Lazarus on Kizhi Island in Karelia

This is one of the oldest surviving wooden churches in Russia. It is not the famous multi-domed Transfiguration Cathedral, but a small, almost «domestic» structure from the 14th–16th centuries.

The church was brought to Kizhi from the Murom Monastery on the south-eastern shore of Lake Onega. It belongs to the simple cage type: a log frame, an altar and a porch, without complex multiple domes or decorative embellishment.

🥼 Its dimensions are modest: about 9 m long and 5.5 m high. At the same time, inside there is a preserved two-tier iconostasis of 17 icons from the 16th–18th centuries.

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❤️From Russia with love