Золотой век России (1880-1940)

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Aleksandr Shevchenko - Still Life. Fruit, 1913

Women performing gymnastics, 1936. Photo by Aleksandr Rodchenko.

The ethnic origin of the Abkhazians of African descent — and how Africans arrived in Abkhazia — is still a matter of dispute among experts. Historians agree that the settlement of Africans in a number of villages in the village of Adzyubzha in Abkhazia (then part of the Ottoman Empire) is likely to have happened in the 17th century. According to one version, a few hundred slaves were bought and brought by Shervashidze princes (Chachba) to work on the citrus plantations.This case was a unique, and apparently not entirely successful, case of mass import of Africans to the Black Sea coast.
According to another theory, Abkhazians of African descent are the descendants of the Colchians, the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Colchis in present-day western Georgia. However, the question of the likelihood of at least some continuity between the ancient Colchians and current Abkhazians of African descent is not known, because there is no available, reliable evidence of the existence of an African population in historic Kolkhi. They may also derive from the Egyptian Copts or Ethiopian Jews. Abkhazian writer Dmitry Gulia in the book “History of Abkhazia” compared the place names of Abkhazia and the corresponding names in Ethiopia and claimed that some of the geographical names are identical: Bagadi – Bagadi, Gunma – Gunma, Tabakur – Dabakur, etc.
In 1927, the Russian writer Maxim Gorky, together with the Abkhaz writer Samson Chanba visited the village of Adzyubzha and met elderly Africans there. Based on his visit and comparison of his observations with the published data, he felt that the Ethiopian version of the origin of the Abkhazians of African descent is true.
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Portrait of an Afro-Abkhazian man, c. 1870-83. Photo from the George Kennan Papers.

The 26 Baku Commissars were Bolshevik and Left Socialist Revolutionary (SR) members of the Baku Soviet Commune. The commune was established in the city of Baku (the capital of the briefly independent pre-Soviet Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, now the Republic of Azerbaijan). The commune, led by Stepan Shahumyan, existed until 26 July 1918 when the Bolsheviks were forced out of power by a coalition of Dashnaks, Right SRs, and Mensheviks. After their overthrow, the Baku commissars attempted to leave Baku but were captured by the Centrocaspian Dictatorship and imprisoned. According to the Soviet historiography, on 14 September 1918, during the fall of Baku to Ottoman forces, Red Army soldiers broke into their prison and freed the commissars; they then boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk, where they were promptly arrested by local authorities and, on the night of 20 September 1918, executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on the Transcaspian Railway. - Source

Isaak Brodsky - Execution of the Twenty Six Baku Commissars, 1925

Zeppelin pumping station at Komendantsky Airfield in Leningrad, 1931.

American military ship unloading Renault FT-7 tanks for use by the White Guard, Vladivostok, November 1919. Photo by Merrill Haskell.

Portrait of an elderly man, Vladivostok, 1919-20. Photo by Merrill Haskell.

Portrait of an elderly Ukrainian woman, 1900’s. Photo by Vladimir Kozyuk.

Employees of the Stepan Razin Brewery, Leningrad, 1924.

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Russian naval officers hunting seals on an iceberg in the Arctic, c. 1900-10’s.

Regional specialist Boris Yermakov hangs a birdhouse on a tree in the village of Gorpitomnik, Volgograd Region, 1934.

"Improvement is necessary. Any character can be changed. Patience, capacity, even physical strength - all can be developed in oneself, if it is genuinely desired, if you do not give in to indulgence."

— Mikhail Frunze (1885-1925)

Nicolai Fechin - Portrait of the Artist Konstantin Lepilov, 1909

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