arlekin-nn.narod.ru is the site of the Nizhny Novgorod theater-circus "Arlekin" ("Harlequin"), a troupe that put on shows with clowning, trained animals, and costumed mascot characters, and kept plays based on children's stories in its repertoire. In the nn.ru directory the address was listed under the category "Show Business" (section "Firms (Enterprises)", subsection "Leisure and Entertainment") under the name "Nizhny Novgorod Circus \"ARLEKIN\"" with the description "History, repertoire, invitation to cooperate"[4]. It was precisely this listing that brought the address into the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. The site ran on the free hosting service narod.ru; the web archive accessed the address from March 7, 2001[1] to October 7, 2022.

What the site looked like

The surviving snapshots of the home page belong to the address's last period — 2022 — but the content is older: at the bottom of the page stood the notice "© 2009 The VITAMIN, Inc. All rights reserved. Videostudio VITAMIN"[2]. Judging by it, the page was made by a video studio, and its present appearance took shape no earlier than 2009. There are three snapshots from 2022 — March, June, and October — and the text in them matches word for word[3]: in the final year the page was no longer being touched.

The home page was built around video: almost every item carried an invitation of "Watch video," "See the video," or "See photos"[2]. The only contact on the page was the email address snov2002@mail.ru — the home page gave no phone number, no postal address, and no performers' names[2].

Besides the performances themselves, "Arlekin" offered props and costumes. The "We offer services" section listed the tailoring of transformation costumes, the tailoring of transformer costumes, the making of baskets from feathers, and the making of flowers from feathers[2]: the troupe made the props for its transformation numbers itself and also offered them to outside customers.

Repertoire and acts

The "Shows" section listed two productions. "The Magical Transformations of Domovyonok Kuzya" ran with the tags "MUSICAL!" and "PREMIERE!" and the note: "Trained animals and costumed mascot characters take part!" Second came "The Adventures of Neznaika" — "the astonishing adventures of NEZNAIKA and his friends." Both productions had a link to video and to a poster[2].

A clown duo was singled out separately, with a list of numbers marked "NEW": a soap-bubble show, a transformation act, "Transformer No. 5," the clown duo itself, and the sketch "Jugglers"[2]. The page gave a general list of what the shows included, as an enumeration: clowning, acrobatic numbers, trained animals, magic tricks, juggling, costumed mascot characters, transformer props, colorful decorations, special effects, a laser show; the spectator was promised "meetings with cheerful clowns, exciting games, prizes," and the page promised the client: "We are ready to give you a celebration!!!"[2].

The site also had a "Charity" section with video recordings from two years: 2005 — in three parts — and 2009, captioned "Charity performances in children's homes"[2]. Together with the 2009 copyright notice, this is everything the site said about its own chronology: the home page gives neither a founding year nor the troupe's history, even though the nn.ru directory promised the visitor precisely a "history"[4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was not a notable one. It did not make the Counter.nn.ru rating, it is not listed among the results of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote[6], and in the nn.ru directory itself the listing's rating column read "none"[4]. In the census of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, "Arlekin" entered only through the nn.ru category listing, where the entry held on from at least October 2002[4] to November 2003[5]. The directory listing remained the only external trace of the address that the census found.

The address's fate

The earliest snapshot, from March 7, 2001, contains a single word — "glav" — which also stands in the page's title[1]. It looks like a placeholder page, which means one cannot claim that this same theater-circus already occupied the address in 2001: the census explicitly flags the address as possibly having changed hands — the beginning and the later state are too different. The link between the empty early-2000s placeholder and the theater-circus's page remains unproven; over twenty-one years the web archive accessed the address 37 times in total.

The last saved text of the home page is dated October 5, 2022[3], and the web archive's last access to the address was October 7; there are no snapshots after that. The project never had its own domain — "Arlekin" lived on a subdomain of the free host narod.ru. When checked in August 2026, the site at this address was responding.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Earliest snapshot of the address, March 7, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, March 30, 2022 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, October 5, 2022 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — "Show Business" category of the nn.ru directory, October 19, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — The same nn.ru category, November 7, 2003 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — Results of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote, 2004 (archive)