In 1889, a small band of unlikely Russian colonists seized the abandoned fortress of Sagallo in today's Djibouti. Led by the would-be Cossack Nikolai Ashinov, they triggered an international incident. But how did all this come to pass? The answer lies in Ashinov's career of skullduggery, deceipt, and falsehood.
Sources: A. V. Lunochkin, “Ataman vol’nykh kazakov” Nikolai Ashinov i ego deiatel’nost’ (Volgograd: Izdatel’stvo Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1999)
C. Jesman, The Russians in Ethiopia: An Essay in Futility (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958)
P. J. Rollins, "Imperial Russia's African Colony", The Russian Review, vol. 27, no. 4 (1968): 432-451
R. F. Byrnes, Pobedonostsev: His Life and Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968)
Andrei and Natalia Chikhachev, middling nobles, spent their lives running their small estate of Dorozhaevo in Vladimir province and raising their family. In this...
In this episode, we examine the history of lèse-majesté (insulting the honour of the tsar, his family, and his image) in imperial Russia through...
As is well known, Grigorii Rasputin wielded a considerable and scandalous level of influence over Tsar Nicholas II. What is less well known is...
