Our Notes & References
A panorama of Russian Turkestan during the age of colonial expansion, from the pen of a writer and artist who reveals his “captivating passion for Central Asia” via an album of travel notes complemented by “masterful and detailed artistic images” (Andreeva).
First complete edition, scarce outside Russia: apparently no copy in the UK; we could trace only four copies listed on WorldCat (all in the USA: Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, U. of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, U. of Arizona and Berkeley).
From Orenburg, a city founded in the eighteenth century on Russia’s Asian frontier, to Tashkent, today the capital of Uzbekistan and the largest city in Central Asia, it is almost two thousand kilometres. The six chapters of Karazin’s travelogue cover every stage of his journey into the territory dubbed “Turkestan.” It was Russia’s nineteenth-century expansion into this land of desert, steppe and mountain, of Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajik, that triggered the Russo-British Great Game.
The narrative – almost a travel guide, with tips on accommodation, packing, how to choose the right carriage, etc. – is accompanied by folio plates reproducing Karazin’s highly-detailed drawings, featuring exotic landscapes, caravans, nomad dwellings, and scenes from the everyday life of the Central Asian people. The author’s perspective is that of a sympathetic ethnographer and an enthusiastic imperialist, as epitomized by his concluding remarks on the “fairytale-like growth” experienced by Tashkent “by the force of Russian energy.” The text too is adorned with Karazin’s illustrations.
A “fascinating and complex character,” (Andreeva), Nikolai Karazin (1842-1908) lived for over ten years in Turkestan, and fought as a soldier in Russia’s Central Asian campaigns. He also became a popular and prolific writer, painter, and illustrator. Among his many accomplishments, he was the first illustrator of Dostoevsky and the creator of Russia’s first illustrated postcards, and also designed the original project for the Moscow metro.
From Orenburg to Tashkent includes the earliest work produced by Karazin after his retirement from the military in 1870 to become a full-time writer and artist. Fragments appeared in the journal Niva in 1871, followed by this complete album in 1886, published as a supplement to the journal Vsemirnaia illiustratsiia.
Bibliography
Andreeva, E. Russian Central Asia in the Works of Nikolai Karazin, 1842–1908: Ambivalent Triumph. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
Physical Description
Folio (43.2 x 31.5 cm). 14 pp. incl. title, [1] leaf with printer’s details, and 7 chromolithographed colour plates, with 22 illustrations in text.
Binding
Loose as issued in original publisher’s printed wrappers over contemporary boards with patterned endpapers.
Condition
Wrappers stained and rubbed, tear near centre of lower wrapper, with loss revealing underneath a repurposed upper board lettered in gilt (on the Tretyakov Gallery from 1903), boards rubbed and bumped at extremities; slight marginal staining to title, a few pages dog-eared and with small closed tears to edges.
