Transcript Pictures of Russia

The Empire that was Russia
The photography of
Prokudin Gorskii
The Russia of Nicholas II on the
eve of World War I was a land of
striking ethnic diversity.
Comprising all of the republics of
what later was to become the
Soviet Union, as well as presentday Finland and much of Poland,
Russia was home to more than
150 million people--of which only
about half were ethnic Russians. In
his travels throughout the empire,
Prokudin-Gorskii captured this
diversity. His colour photographs of
peasants from rural Russia, the
nomadic peoples of Central Asia,
and the mountain peoples of the
Caucasus predate the forced
Russification and the rapid
modernization of the Soviet period
and document traditional costumes
and ways of life.
Russian Peasant Girls
Young Russian peasant women offer berries
to visitors to their izba, a traditional
wooden house, in a rural area along the
Sheksna River near the small town of
Kirillov.
Nomadic Kazakhs on the Steppe
Many Central Asiatic peoples, for example the
Kirghiz, Kazakhs, and Uzbeks, lived nomadic
lives on the steppes, valleys, and deserts,
migrating seasonally from one place to another
as opportunities for obtaining food, water, and
shelter changed. Shown here is a young Kazakh
family in colorful traditional dress moving across
the Golodnaia (or "Hungry") steppe in presentday Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
Jewish Children with their Teacher
Samarkand, an ancient commercial, intellectual,
and spiritual center on the Silk Road from
Europe to China, developed a remarkably
diverse population, including Tajiks, Persians,
Uzbeks, Arabs, Jews, and Russians.
Samarkand, and all of West Turkestan, was
incorporated into the Russian Empire in the
middle of the nineteenth century and has
retained its ethnic diversity up to the present.
Prokudin-Gorskii captures here a group of
Jewish boys, in traditional dress, studying with
their teacher.
Children sit on the side of a hill near a church
and bell-tower in the countryside near White
Lake, in the north of European Russia.
Russian Settlers in the Borderlands
Ethnic Russian settlers to the Mugan Steppe
region, south of the Caucasus Mountains and
west of the Caspian Sea, established a small
settlement named Grafovka. The region is
immediately north of the border with Persia.
Settlement of Russians in non-European parts of
the empire, and particularly in border regions,
was encouraged by official government policy
and accounts for much of the Russian migration
to Siberia, the Far East, and the Caucasus
regions.
People at Work
By the eve of World War I, Russia had
undergone rapid industrial development,
much of it fueled by foreign investment
and the import of technology from Western
Europe. Key industries included textiles,
metal-working, and chemical and oil
production. At the same time, many people
lived in appallingly backward conditions,
especially in the countryside.
Workers pose while harvesting tea. This region of the Russian
Empire, in present day Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, had a
significant Greek minority, some families going back many centuries
to the Classical and Byzantine eras.
Wooden mills using wind-power to grind
wheat and rye are photographed in the
middle of summer on the vast Siberian
plain in rural Ialutorovsk county in Western
Siberia.
A. P. Kalganov poses
with his son and
granddaughter for a
portrait in the
industrial town of
Zlatoust in the Ural
Mountain region of
Russia. The son and
granddaughter are
employed at the
Zlatoust Arms Plant-a major supplier of
armaments to the
Russian military since
the early 1800s.
Kalganov displays
traditional Russian
dress and beard
styles, while the two
younger generations
have more
Westernized, modern
dress and hair styles.
An early autumn scene from 1909
shows farmers taking a short break
from their work to pose for their
photograph. The location, though
unidentified, is probably near the town
of Cherepovets in north central
European Russia.
The city of Samarkand was surrounded by oases and
agricultural regions that supported the urban
population. Traditional food crops grown on fields such
as these included melons, wheat, beans, rice, and
barley.
Austro-Hungarian Prisoners of War
In the early years of the First World War, ProkudinGorskii photographed a group of prisoners of war from
the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The men are probably
Poles, Ukrainians, and members of other Slavic
nationalities, imprisoned at an unidentified location in the
far north of European Russia near the White Sea. This
image escaped being confiscated by border guards--the
fate of the vast majority of politically sensitive images-when Prokudin-Gorskii left Russia for good in 1918-probably because what is being represented is not
immediately obvious.