Rubakin, N.A.: Adventures in the Country of Slavery

Title

Prikliucheniia v strane rabstva, Sankt-Peterburg 1904²

Adventures in the Country of Slavery

Keywords

Summary

The book is an adaptation of Samuel Baker’s Ismailia (1874). It is enriched with illustrations of African landscapes, people, and animals. It is divided into three chapters, supplemented with a brief conclusion. The volume tells the story of Samuel Baker’s military expedition to the equatorial regions of the Nile, as well as Buganda and Bunyoro, with the intention of suppressing the slave-trade. The book also contains numerous descriptions of African nature, cities, and villages. The overall emphasis is laid on the fight against slave-trade, and Baker is seen as a “man who has come to protect the black people from white robbers”. However, it transpires that another goal of the military campaign against local rulers is to promote the interest of the British crown.

Bio

Nikolai Rubakin was a Russian book historian, bibliographer, writer, and theorist of education, as well as a social activist. He graduated from the Saint Petersburg University in 1887. A pioneer in the theory of self-education, he authored works such as The Practice of Self-Education (1914), engaging in correspondence with 15.000 readers and developing individual self-education plans for them. Rubakin laid the groundwork for the sociology of reading with Etudes on the Russian Reading Public (1895). Active in politics, he was a member of the Social Revolutionary Party from 1901 to 1909, collaborating with the Social Democrats. Facing multiple expulsions from Saint Petersburg, he emigrated to Switzerland in 1907. Rubakin had the largest private collection of Russian literature abroad (around 100.000 volumes). Following his will, the collection was transferred to the Lenin State Library of the USSR after his death. Rubakin contributed to the field of bibliology with the theory of bibliological psychology (bibliopsychology). In addition to his scholarly pursuits, Rubakin authored journalistic works, popular science books, historical and adventure novels, as well as science fiction stories.

Sources

N. Ianovskii-Maksimov, Nasledie N. A. Rubakina, “Voprosy literatury”, 1959, 12, p. 147-157;

L. Razgon, Pod shifrom “Rb”: kniga o N. Rubakine: (1862-1946), Moskva 1966;

A., Rubakin, Rubakin (Lotsman knizhnogo moria), Moskva 1967;

K. Mavricheva, N.A. Rubakin, Moskva 1972;

I. Khomiakova, “Rubakin, Nikolai Aleksandrovich”, in Bol’shaia rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, v. 28, Moskva 2015, p. 734;

Iu. Stoliarov, Vozvrashchennyi Rubakin, Moskva 2019.

M.E.