Larger than life. Way larger than life. In Russia, it can be said there is no middle ground, only extremes. There is a “scarlet thread” of extravagance runnig through the Czarist past, the collectivized period and back to the present. Excess, and its offshoot, eccentricity, how it covers the somber Russian landscape…
---Some of his former subjects enjoyed repeating the caption of a famous cartoon that came out after the tzar’s death: “The Mice Bury the Cat.”... in a metaphor of Peter I and his life and ambition. There is still discussion between historians about the elements of his reign and what positive and negative aspects his decisions left behind. If nothing else, Peter the great has cemented himself in our memories as a ruler that was almost 'larger than life' with an ambition and energy to match it. --- Read More:http://badgerdown.blogspot.com/2011/04/peter-great-modernizer-of-modern-russia.html
Countess Saltikov’s favorite hairdresser was kept in a cage, lest he should be tempted to work for anyone else; Ivan The Terrible’s architect, according to legend, blinded after he had completed the Church of Vasili Blazhenni: it was to be unique. Wicked landowners were known to have forced serf mothers to abandon their babies, the better to nourish litters of purebread greyhound puppies at the breast.
---Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin poses with teenage ice hockey players after taking part in a hockey training session at the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow, Russia, Friday, April 15, 2011. --- Read More:http://projects.ajc.com/gallery/view/sports/putin-041511/
Fabulously wealthy nobles sent their bailiffs as far afield as Dresden or Sevres to purchase five-hundred piece dinner services., which were then laboriously transferred by wagon to Moscow or Ryazan or any other province, where, in one splendidly extravagant debauch, after being loaded with a Garagantuan feast of suckling pig, stuffed carp, and sturgeon, they were used as targets for a shooting contest.
---Equestrian Portrait of Empress Elisabeth of Russia with a Black Servant by Georg Christoph Grooth, 1743--- Read More:http://18thcenturylove.tumblr.com/post/4092242813/equestrian-portrait-of-empress-elisabeth-of-russia
Count Skavonsky, an enthusiastic musician, compelled his entire household to address him, and each other, in recitative. Another nobleman never risked the ennuis of travel without being accompanied by a cow to provide fresh milk, and twenty carriages, lined with sable, loaded with actors and musicians busy rehearsing their lines and tuning their fiddles, ready for the next halt.
COMMENTS
