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Old Russian lengths, from the vershok to the versta. Part of the Ancient Measures collection.
Every unit converts through meters. The values are the 19th-century standardized ones: arshin = 0.7112 m (28 English inches by Peter the Great’s decree), with vershok = arshin/16, pyad = arshin/4, sazhen = 3 arshins, versta = 500 sazhens. Worked example: 10 versts = 10 × 1066.8 = 10,668 m ≈ 10.67 km (about 6.6 miles). Before Peter’s standardization these units varied by region and trade — the converter uses the official imperial values.
71.12 cm — exactly 28 English inches, fixed by Peter the Great in the early 1700s. Before that it varied; the word comes from the Persian for ‘elbow.’
500 sazhens, about 1.067 km (0.66 miles). Russia’s road mile — milestones were called verst posts, and the striped ones gave Russian its word for a striped pole.
About 9 cm — the idiom described a very small child (‘from the pot, two vershoks tall’).
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