Photo by Gilbert H. Grosve:;or 



inside; TH:e hoIvY gate: Moscow 



The Avomen are bringing their babies to be blessed in the cathedrals and to obtain merit by 



kissing the relics, bones, etc. 



the printing press and welcomed English 

 sailors to his court. His ambassador, 

 Nepeia, in London, at the festival of the 

 Garter, sat beside the Queen. "Never," 

 the Russian historian Karamzin naively 

 says, "had the Russian name been hon- 

 ored to such a degree." 



But after him came the whirlwind — • 

 years of greater misery and shame to the 

 Russians than any they had yet experi- 

 enced : a weak-minded ruler, interminable 

 civil wars, a royal decree forbidding the 

 peasants to leave the lands, thus reduc- 



ing them to serfs or slaves ; an impostor 

 who actually seized and held the throne 

 for one year, and the most appalling 

 famine that ever devastated the capital 

 of a nation. "Men were entrapped into 

 dwellings, and killed and eaten. Pies 

 made of human flesh were openly sold 

 in the market. One hundred and twenty- 

 seven thousand corpses remained for 

 days unburied in the streets, and an eye- 

 witness relates that 500,000 persons were 

 carried off by the awful visitation." 

 Anarchy continued. No one could 



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