Picturesque Russia. Travel through time and space with Presidential Library

Visit different cities and villages, see the palaces of the capital and the huts of forgotten villages. Look into the resinous log cabin of a Russian hut or into a nomad's caravan. Travel to remote forests and mountain ranges, breathe in the fresh air of wide steppes and the moist mist of rivers and lakes. Worship temples and monasteries, and stop in front of monuments of ancient times, recalling events from bygone years. This all is available with the unique 12 Volume Picturesque Russia collection.

Although much of the information presented in this scientific and artistic work, published at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, is outdated, it still contains many relevant and interesting facts about Russian culture and history.

Recently, the second part of the 12th and final volume of the collection Picturesque Russia, dedicated to the "Eastern outskirts of Russia", has been published on the portal of the Presidential Library. This makes the complete collection of this publication, which is perhaps the most significant milestone in the history of Russian publishing, available to readers in electronic format.

In the mid-1870s, Maurice Wolf, one of Russia's largest book publishers, conceived of a multi-volume work that was unprecedented in the history of Russian publishing. The full title of the work is Picturesque Russia: Our Fatherland in Its Land, Historical, Tribal, Economic and Everyday Significance. It took six years to complete the preparation of this work. From 1881 to 1901, the publication of the series of books took another twenty years, consisting of 12 beautifully illustrated volumes in 19 books. In total, the publication, which covered various regions of the Russian Empire, included 6,984 pages with 220 essays written by 93 authors, as well as 38,153 illustrations, including 400 full-page paintings, woodcuts, and photographs taken from nature.

Famous representatives of literature, science, and art worked on the project Picturesque Russia. Among them were writers Nikolai Leskov, Yakov Polonsky, Ivan Goncharov, and Dmitry Grigorovich; historians and publicists Nikolai Kostomarov and Dmitry Ilovaisky; ethnographers Vasily Radlov and Vladimir Maynov; archaeologist Ivan Zabelin; traveler and journalist Vasily Nemirovich-Danchenko; botanist and zoologist Konstantin Merezhkovsky; mathematician and popularizer of astronomy Alexander Kropotkin; and the best artists and engravers of the country.

Many of these authors went on trips to explore the areas that would be featured in the narrative, adding their own unique perspectives and insights to the project.

The publication of the multi-volume work began with a preface by Maurice Wolf. In it, he wrote: "We put aside all other projects and rejected very profitable offers in order to exclusively dedicate ourselves to Picturesque Russia. We decided to do everything possible to realize this project based on a well-conceived, but carefully crafted program. Needless to say, we spared no effort or material resources for this task. For Picturesque Russia, we established and maintained relations with many literary and scientific figures over several years, and we amassed a wealth of information and material.

For Picturesque Russia, we had to dig through a vast amount of literary, scientific, and artistic material to create a comprehensive bibliographic list of the subject. We sent talented and experienced researchers to libraries, archives, and museums, where they searched through everything written about Russia and everything ever recorded by a Russian or foreign artist.

To publish Picturesque Russia, we needed special equipment at our printing house. We ordered it and installed it.

However, all the challenges we faced paled in comparison to the moments that will never be forgotten. It is difficult to describe what we felt when we received new contributions to the treasury of "Picturesque Russia" from distant places like the Yenisei and Baikal regions, the sandy steppes of Turkestan, and the dense forests of Pechora region.

The first volume of Picturesque Russia began with a historical essay by Dmitry Ilovaisky, titled "Where did Russian land come from?". Two books in this volume were dedicated to the description of northern Russia. After that, the books Northwestern Outskirts of Russia, dedicated to the Grand Duchy of Finland and the Baltic region; Lithuanian Polesie; Belarusian Polesie; Kingdom of Poland: Warsaw, Kalisz, Kieleck, Łomża, Lublin, Piotrków, Błoc, Radom, Suwałki and Siedlce Governorates; Malorossiya, Podolia, and Volhyn: Poltava, Chernigov, Volhyn, Podil, Kharkiv, and Kyiv Governorates; Malorossiya and Novorossiya: Bessarabia, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Tauride Governorates; Moscow and Moscow Industrial Region; Central Chernozem and the Don-Caspian Regions; Middle Volga and Urals Regions; Caucasus; Russian Central Asia; Western Siberia; and Eastern Outskirts of Russia.

They compiled a fundamental work, the most comprehensive encyclopedia dedicated to the Russian Empire. The main goal of Picturesque Russia was to "create a vivid image of the diverse natural landscapes of our vast country in a living word and drawing, in a harmonious whole," as Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, the editor-in-chief and a great traveler, wrote about the idea. A collection dedicated to this scientist is now available on the Presidential Library portal. All 12 volumes of the Picturesque Russia edition are published in a separate section of this collection.