Unique portraits of the inhabitants of the Russian Empire, made by an American journalist in 1870-1886

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 1864, a young American from Ohio, George Kennan, joined a research team that wanted to scout a possible route for telegraph routes through the Bering Strait, Siberia, and all the way to Europe. Later, Kennan would return to this country twice more, each time capturing magnificent portraits of local people - from street musicians to police chiefs, from brides at a wedding to the Emperor of the Russian Empire himself.

The task of the research team was to find an alternative route for the telegraph routes to the route across the Atlantic. Two years George Kennan (George Kennan) explored territories unfamiliar to him (and to most of his fellow citizens), meeting both completely exotic peoples and highly educated people dressing in a Western manner.

When Kennan returned home to the United States (the idea of telegraph via Siberia was left aside), he brought with him a huge amount of travel notes, from which he created the book "Tent Life in Siberia," which can be translated as "Nomadic life in Siberia."

Six years after his first visit to Russia, Kennan again departs for its territory, this time he begins his journey from St. Petersburg and follows down the Volga to the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus mountains, where he meets Georgians, Armenians and numerous ethnic groups living in this area.

Kennan crossed the Atlantic for the third time - this time 15 years after the second visit. During this time, he became a well-known journalist in his homeland, he regularly lectured on Russia. This time Kennan set off from St. Petersburg towards the Altai Mountains to the border of Kazakhstan, towards Mongolia and China, having also visited Siberia at the gold-mining mines on the Kara River. The collection of portraits of the local population, which Kennan created during his travels, is truly impressive: in it you can see both the poor and the wealthy, both doctors and representatives of local religions, both soldiers and women who stay at home with children. …

In addition to a completely peaceful exploration mission, Kennan also delved into the country's political problems. In Siberia, the journalist investigated the system of penal servitude and exile, met some political prisoners, with whom he kept in correspondence for a long time, even being already at home in his native America. The journalist sharply criticized the tsarist government and glorified the revolutionaries, but when the October Revolution took place, he also criticized it for the revolutionaries' lack of "knowledge, experience and education in order to successfully deal with the enormous problems that were imminent since the overthrow of the tsar."

Thanks to Kennan's influence, in the early 1890s, a movement for a "free Russia" arose in America and England and the formation of numerous societies of "friends of Russian freedom". Thus, George Kennan occupies a significant place in the study of the history of cultural ties between Russia and the United States.

You can see other photos from George Kennan's trips in our review " Photos taken during George Kennan's trip to Siberia in 1885-1886."