Did you ever wonder how the Russian Empire looked like at the dawn of the last century? This sequence of pictures will astonish you. 

Between 1909 and 1912, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.

Watch more photos here

Here is what you can read on today’s Around the Bloc, TOL’s daily aggregation of the five most important news items related to Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union.

• In London, Putin lauds Russian judo team’s Olympic gold trifecta

• Uzbek bill to ban foreign military bases to affect U.S.
• Serbia seeks new IMF loan agreement for ailing economy
• Bosnia mulling ‘name and shame’ for tax evaders
• Azerbaijan reduces journalist’s prison sentence

Here is what you can read on today’s Around the Bloc, TOL’s aggregation of the five most important news items related to Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union.

• Travelers stranded as Polish budget carrier goes bust
• Bomb threat interrupts Pussy Riot trial
• EULEX to leave Kosovo by 2014
• Czech anti-corruption campaigners cheer tough prosecutor’s promotion
• Red-flagged Porsche stopped at Lithuanian border

Here is what you can read on today’s Around the Bloc, TOL’s aggregation of the five most important news items related to Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the former Soviet Union.

• Jailed politicians, sports stars head Ukrainian electoral lists
• Police kill six suspected extremists in Almaty raid
• Slovakia seeks extradition of Hungarian Holocaust suspect
• Russian Jehovah’s Witnesses charged with spreading extremism
• Romney courts Walesa’s solidarity

Even when larded with traditional humor and Dan Brown-like historical fantasies, political satire can be a chancy game in the land of Strategy 2030.

…Nazarbaev’s notorious remark surely sparked a keen sense of déjà vu for the many Kazakh readers who made the country’s first novel of political satire, Legenda о Nomenclatura(Legend of The Nomenclatura), a best seller in 2009…

…The authors say the book’s success took them by surprise. The country’s largest bookstore chain, Meloman, where the book topped the best-seller list three years ago, still asks for additional copies from time to time. But there will be no more, Satpaev said, unless it’s a brand-new account of Baskaida Sumelekov’s adventures…

Read the full story on TOL’s website

here is what you can read on today’s Around the Bloc:

• Documents put top Russian investigator in awkward spot
• Nikolic won’t rule out partition of Kosovo
• Romanian president lands on his feet
• Tajikistan blocks access to foreign news sites, YouTube
• Human rights activist murdered in Uzbekistan