Our Notes & References

Attractive émigré album published in Japan in the wake of the 1905 Revolution, here still with the striking publisher’s wrappers showing the breaking of prison chains and the personification of “Lady Liberty”.

Richly illustrated with more than 150 photographic reproductions, the work serves as a history of Russian revolutionaries of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a commemoration of their struggles. It contains biographies of numerous revolutionary figures, together with photographs of their circles and sometimes conditions of detention – such as in the “Kharbinskaia tiurma” in 1906. Topics and historical figures covered include: figures of the Decembrist uprising, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, Akatui Katorga prison for political prisoners, the Narodnaia Volia organization (and most prominently those members associated with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, in 1881) etc.

Boris Dmitrievich Orzhikh (1864-1947) was a Russian revolutionary, member of Narodnaia Volia and one of its leaders in South Russia. He created an underground printing house in Taganrog in 1885, before being arrested and put on trial in 1887-88. Sentenced to death for his political activities and agitation; but his sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia. After a petition for clemency, he was exiled to Sakhalin, eventually settling in Vladivostok. During the 1905 Russian Revolution he resumed political agitation and subsequently fled to Japan. He continued his political activities and published the newspaper “Volia”. He lived in Nagasaki, where he published this album and created an organization to help Russian political emigrants. He eventually left Japan for Chile, with his family, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Provenance

“Surplus Library of Congress, Duplicate” (ink stamp to front endpapers).