The photographs you are about to see are the work of Sergey Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944), who was funded by Czar Nicholas II to travel the span of the empire, photographing it in full color. While some of the photographs have not been attributed a specific date, they were all captured between 1905 and 1915. We would like to invite you to scroll down this page to see just how different Russia was over a century ago:
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1. The Emir of Bukhara, Alim Khan (1911)
2. A Rabbi with some students (1911)
3. A countryside fire brigade (1909)
4. Prisoners incarcerated in a zindan
5. Women working with hay at Leushinskii Monastery (1909)
6. Evgenievsky Spring in Borzhom
7. A group of children sitting on a hill (1909)
8. A Bashkir switch operator (1910)
9. A melon vendor with his stock (1911)
10. The construction of a dam (1912)
11. A group of workers
12. A Surt woman
13. A yarn spinner from the village of Izvedovo
14. A group of settlers in Grafovka
15. The view from Belgorod bell tower (1911)
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