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)
As is well known, Grigorii Rasputin wielded a considerable and scandalous level of influence over Tsar Nicholas II. What is less well known is...
In 1852, the novelist and government bureaucrat Ivan Goncharov set sail on the frigate Pallada for a mission to closed-off Japan. This episode follows...
Abandoned in 1852 when scarcely two weeks old, Vasilii Gerasimov ultimately became a child worker at the Kreenholm cotton factory, where he worked for...