Bashmakov, A.A.: Letters from Africa

Title

Pis’ma iz Afriki, “Rossiia: gazeta politicheskaia i literaturnaia”, 1910, N° 1329, 1335, 1341, 1347, 1364, 1367, 1375, 1380, 1381, 1390, 1403, 1408, 1415, 1427, 1432, 1449, 1498, 1501

[Published under the pseudonym “Veshchii Oleg”]

Letters from Africa

Keywords

Summary

Through these “letters”, Bashmakov recounts his journey to Egypt and Sudan in 1910. He recalls leaving in late February from Greece; passing by Crete and reading The East, Russia, and Slavdom by Konstantin Leont’ev, he gets lost in thoughts about Russia, the Orient and what may await him in Africa. The author then shares his impressions of Alexandria, Cairo, the Red Sea, Port Sudan, Khartoum, Sennar. Bashmakov combines his own travel impressions with historical information and current news, highlighting the geography of the places he visited and the customs of the population. He also reports on his casual meeting with two Russian engineers, V. Nekrasov and R. Mikhailov.

Bio

Aleksandr Bashmakov was a writer, ethnographer and jurist, a member of the Pan-Slavist movement. Born in Odessa into a Swiss family, he obtained Russian citizenship only in 1877 following a petition of the governor of Kherson, A.D. Bashmakov, who had adopted Aleksandr and his siblings after the death of their parents. He studied in Geneva and Odessa, graduating from the faculty of Law. He served in Bulgaria for a few years, prior to moving back to Odessa where he continued to pursue a legal career, becoming the legal advisor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1898). He travelled quite extensively through Europe, the Balkans, Altai, writing essays with an ethnographic orientation. He recorded a trip he made to Egypt and Sudan in the periodicals “Rossiia” and “Pravitel’stvennyi vestnik” (1910). He published many of his works, especially those in journals and newspapers, under the pseudonym “Veshchii Oleg” (Oleg the Wise). After the 1917 Revolution he left Russia for Turkey, Serbia and finally France, where he worked as a lecturer at the Higher School of Anthropology in Paris. During the emigration years he published books and articles in French.

Sources

“Bashmakov Aleksandr Aleksandrovich”, in Rossiiskoe zarubezh’e vo Frantsii (1919-2000). Biograficheskii slovar’, t. 1, ed. by L. Mnukhina, M. Avril’, Moskva 2008, p. 127;

M. Beklemisheva, A.A. Bashmakov (1858-1943): obshchestvenno-politicheskie vzgliady i deiatel’nost’ v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii, PhD dissertation, Moskva 2021.

A.F.