Krasnov, P.N.: The Cossacks in Abyssinia

Title

Kazaki v Abissinii, Sankt-Peterburg 1900

The Cossacks in Abyssinia

Revised version (with two additional chapters, maps and photographs), of Kazaki v Afrike. Dnevnik nachal’nika konvoia Rossiiskoi Imperatorskoi missii v Abissiniiu v 1897-98 g., Sankt-Peterburg 1899

Keywords

Summary

These travel notes are a recollection of Petr Krasnov’s journey through Ethiopia in 1897-1898, as part of the Russian diplomatic mission. Krasnov and twenty other Cossacks were tasked with safeguarding the other members of the expedition. The book recollects several stops on the journey (Odessa, Constrantinople, Athens, Alexandria, Port Said) before the arrival in Djibouti and the penetration through the Somali desert, the Harari region, the Chercher mountains. The journey ended in Addis Ababa, where the hearing with Menelik II took place. In the memoirs, Krasnov describes the land and the peoples encountered, emphasizing their exoticism, as well as the backwardness of the ‘blacks’ living alongside Ethiopians. Thus, he constantly marks the distance between this far-away African country and Russia (the latter belonging to advanced Europe).

Bio

Born in Saint Petersburg in a military family, he graduated from Pavlovsk Military School in 1888. He served as lieutenant-general in the Ataman regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. Soon after the Russian Revolution he was elected Ataman of the Don Cossacks and fought in the civil war alongside the White movement. He consequently left Russia and moved firstly to Germany and then to France (1923), where he was one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Russian Truth, a counter-revolutionary organisation. In 1937 he moved again to Germany, where he became a supporter of the Nazis. During WWII he worked for the Germans, helping in the creation of the 1^st Cossack Cavalry Division and serving with a Cossack force in the Italian Alps (Friuli region). Captured by the British, they were handed over to the Soviets, who sentenced them to death. Apart from his military career, P.K. was also a prolific writer of essays, novels and short stories, often devoted to Cossack life and enterprises, or to travels in distant lands (Siberia, Japan, China, India, the Middle East, Ethiopia). As a matter of fact, he travelled to Ethiopia in 1897-1898 as the leader of the Cossack escort to the First Russian diplomatic mission (1897-1899), headed by P. Vlasov. This experience prompted him to write memoirs as well as fiction (novels and short stories) set in Ethiopia.

Sources

M. Rait, Russkie ekspeditsii v Efiopii v seredine XIX-nachale XX vv. i ikh etnograficheskie materialy, “Afrikanskii etnograficheskii sbornik”, 1956, 1, p. 220-281;

C. Darch, P.N. Krasnov’s Journey to Ethiopia: A Note, “Africa: rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente”, 1975 (30), 4, p. 600-601;

V. Korolev, K. Polivanov, “Krasnov Petr Nikolaevich”, in Russkie pisateli. 1800-1917: biograficheskii slovar’, ed. by P. Nikolaev, Moskva 1994, p. 133-135;

M. Maguire, Spectral Geographies in Russian Émigré Prose: The Cases of Petr Krasnov and Georgii Peskov, in Utopian Reality. Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond, ed. by C. Lodder, M. Kokkori, M. Mileeva, Leiden-Boston 2013, p. 99-111;

P. Deotto, Stanitsa Tèrskaja, l’illusione cosacca di una terra, Udine 2020.

A.F.