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)
The 1804/1818 song collection of Kirsha Danilov introduced the Russian reading public, in many ways for the first time, to the people's immensely rich...
As is well known, Grigorii Rasputin wielded a considerable and scandalous level of influence over Tsar Nicholas II. What is less well known is...
On 1 December 1911, the priest's wife Zinaida Troitskaia was found murdered in the backwoods village of Alajõe in eastern Estland province. This episode...
