1903 PHOTOS RUSSIAN LABOR CAMP POLISH PRISONERS KATORGA

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1903 PHOTOS RUSSIAN LABOR CAMP POLISH PRISONERS KATORGA Russian Book on the SAKHALIN ISLAND KARTOGA - LABOR CAMP. VERY RARE ORIGINAL EDITION PUBLISHED IN MOSCOW, RUSSIA, 1903. Text in Russian. A Russian friend of mine translated a bit of the book for me, and I hope the translation is close: RUSSIAN LABOR CAMPS IN 1903 - PHOTOGRAPHED. By V. M. Doroshevich. Sakhalin: Hard Labor Camp: With many Illustrations approved by the Censor. Moscow, 1903. Hardcover Book, leather spine and corners (leather on corners now missing), 7" x 10". The book Contains 2 Sections: Part I with 438 pages and Part II with 199 pages. There is a table-of-contents for both Part I and Part II at the end of the book. Illustrated with approximately 200 b&w photographs, in-text and on their own page. Many of the photographs are of POLISH - RUSSIANS who were exiled to the labor camps. An Important and Substantial Documentary History of Kartogas / Gulags, with many photographs. CONDITION: The covers are worn, rubbed, scraped, spotted and soiled; the leather spine is fraying at both ends; the leather cover corners are missing and the corners are worn through; the cloth is peeling on the rear cover; nonetheless these original covers are present and continue to do their job. Internally, there is waviness and some water-staining to the bottom margin of all the pages; there is toning to the margins as is normal; the endpapers and the first and last few pages, and some pages here and there, have soiling; there is a previous owner's name stamp to the front pastedown (something something Smiarowskiego), there is a blacked-out previous owner's name on the title-page of Part I, and there is a different previous owner's name at the top of the first page of text; the inner signatures are cracked/split at a number of places but always holding well. Overall a well-worn but COMPLETE copy with all the photographs remaining bright and clear. VERY SCARCE - No Copies (of the Russian 1903 Original) Online - Appears Very Infrequently at Rare Book Auctions - OCLC lists 28 locations; Amherst's Copy is dated 1905. About Sakhalin Island (from Wikipedia): ******Sakhalin (also Saghalien) is a large elongated island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N. It is part of Russia and is its largest island, administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast. The indigenous peoples of the island are the Sakhalin Ainu, Oroks and Nivkhs. Most Ainu relocated to Hokkaido when Japanese were expelled from the island in 1949. Sakhalin was claimed by both Russia and Japan in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, which led to bitter disputes between the two countries over the control of the island. At the beginning of the 20th century, some 32,000 Russians (of whom over 22,000 were convicts) inhabited Sakhalin along with several thousand native inhabitants.****** About KATORGA Russian Labor Camps (from Wikipedia): ******Katorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Imperial Russia. Prisoners were sent to remote camps in vast uninhabited areas of Siberia, places like Sakhalin Island, where voluntary laborers were never available in satisfactory numbers, and forced to perform hard labour. Unlike concentration camps, "katorga" was within the normal judicial system of (Imperial) Russia, but both share the same main features: confinement, simplified facilities, and forced labor. Katorgas were established in the 17th century in underpopulated areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East that had few towns or food sources. Nonetheless, a few prisoners successfully escaped back to populated areas. Since these times, Siberia gained its fearful connotation of punishment, which was further enhanced by the Soviet Gulag system that developed from the Katorga camps. After the change in Russian penal law in 1847, exile and katorga became common penalties to the parti... read more

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