
Rhyanon Demery
Head of Sale
£3,000 - £5,000
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Keeping up appearances, in the aftermath of Lena goldfields massacre: two albums giving a positive impression of the activities of the Lena Gold-Mining Company, where only a year before the Russian army had stepped in to quell a miners' rebellion, killing 270 people in the process. The massacre drew attention to poor labour conditions in Siberia and beyond, dramatically damaged state-society relations, and ultimately proved a stepping stone in the path towards the Bolshevik revolution.
Images include: prospectors and children panning, embossing serial numbers on gold bars, workers' meeting, the River Lena, laboratory, smithy, school, hospital, workers' tearoom and dining room, other workshops and buildings (mostly of log-cabin type construction), lumberjacks' houses, Yakut people with their reindeer, various stations on the train line, Bodaybo (with photographer's shadow). With their inscription on the cover, two "amateur photographers" - one identifiable as A. Vlasov of the Nadezhdensky Mines, the other with unclear signature - present the album to Elena Andreevna Perre in commemoration of work in the Lena goldfields, on 6 December 1913.