A Ukrainian serviceman takes a rest near the town of Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region on April 28, 2023, amid the Russian invasion on Ukraine. (Photo by Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP Photo)

A Ukrainian serviceman smiles on May 21, 2024 during a moment of calm in the southeastern town of Orikhiv, Zaporizhzhia, which has been heavily damaged by Russian military strikes. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A girl dismantles a Kalashnikov rifle during a training lesson focused on the “Defence of Ukraine” at the military-patriotic center for schoolchildren in Lviv on May 17, 2023, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP Photo)

A pro-democracy demonstrator fights with a Soviet soldier on top of a tank parked in front of the Russian Federation building on August 19, 1991, after a coup toppled Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The same day, thousands in Moscow, Leningrad, and other cities answered Russian Republic President Boris Yeltsin's call to raise barricades against tanks and troops. (Dima Tanin/AFP/Getty Images)

“Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (August 30 1863 Russian Empire – September 27, 1944 Paris, France) was a Russian chemist and photographer. He is best known for his pioneering work in color photography of early 20th-century Russia”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Dinner during haying. Russian Empire, Novgorod province, county Cherepovets, 1909. (Photos by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky via US Library of Congress and Prokudin-Gorsky.org)

P.S. All pictures are presented in high resolution. To see Hi-Res images – just TWICE click on any picture. In other words, click small picture – opens the BIG picture. Click BIG picture – opens VERY BIG picture (if available; this principle works anywhere on the site AvaxNews). Enjoy.

Nothing special – just Russians celebrate the New Year. Yep, not everything in Russia is Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky.

Employees prepare spacesuits at the Russian-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on August 19, 2015. Members of the main crew of the 45/46 expedition to the International Space Station ISS, Kazakhstan's cosmonaut Aydyn Aimbetov, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov and Denmark's astronaut Andreas Mogensen from the European Space Agency, are scheduled to blast off to the International Space Station (ISS) on September 2, 2015. (Photo by AFP Photo)