Bibliodyssey is hands-down my favorite blog ever (maybe one hand down... the other hand goes to WFMU). I can't spend 2 minutes on this amazing cornucopia without wishing I read more, and knew more, and had better aesthetic chops.
I used to have dreams, as a kid, of a tiny gateway from my basement into a parallel universe, with all kinds of tiny unforeseen wonders. Bibliodyssey keeps the dream alive, and makes it look easy.
Afanasy Nikitin was the first Russian to explore India, which he wound up doing in about 1466.
In history books you will find very little about his dealings with the Shuisky sisters, or Alnus Rugosa, or Das Brick, because I made them up.
Ali Qushji and Perkin Warbeck and Jami the Persian Poet were real people, who sadly never really had anything to do with Russia or Afanasy Nikitin. The Kreml, while a real place, was probably not as fun as it appears herein.
So abandon all pretence of learning about historical Russia, ye who enter here.
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