Gustave Theodor Pauly (1817 – 1867), a Russian ethnographer of the 19th century, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, although a German by birth, was known as Fyodor Khristianovich. His work Les peuples de la Russie is a series of ethnographic essays. They describe different aspects of life of various social classes. The people described in the book are representatives of the Indo-European, Caucasian, Ural-Altai peoples, inhabitants of Siberia and Russian America. In cooperation with Pauly, famous scientists and artists worked on the book to furnish it with chromolithographs, many of them being colourful everyday scenes drawn from life.

One of the best editions on the history of the construction of St. Petersburg that contains a story about how Peter the Great built the city. How he dreamed of living in a city surrounded by water, how, during the preparation for the Northern War, he found in old Swedish maps a winding Neva delta, as he was looking for the best architects. The book by Felix Lurie contains reproductions of works by Russian and Western masters of the 18th and 19th centuries, depicting the new capital. The illustrations are given according to the topographical principle and are accompanied by information about the buildings that stood earlier and were planned to be buit in future.