Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
burg) besieged, it served together with Mur-
mansk as a staging point for Allied convoys. Dur-
ing the Soviet period, the city of Archangel was
the seat of Archangel Oblast, an area of lowland
coniferous forests that covers approximately
228,600 square miles. The famous
SOLOVETSKII
MONASTERY
is situated on islands in the White
Sea. Beginning in the 17th century and more
recently from the 1920s to the 1950s, the area
and the monastery itself was used for banish-
ment of political or religious offenders. In the
mid-1990s the city's population was 443,571,
and it remains the center of an important timber-
producing region.
other Bolsheviks on the “sealed train” that
arrived in Petrograd's Finland Station in April
1917. Loyal to Lenin, she did not always agree
with him, as in the vote on the
BREST
-
LITOVSK
treaty with Germany, which she, along with the
Left Communists, opposed. In the first years of
the revolution, she occupied a number of posts,
most importantly as director of
ZHENOTDEL
(the
women's section of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party). She organized the first con-
ference of International Women Communists in
Moscow in 1920. It met at the same time as the
Second Congress of the Comintern. She died
from cholera contracted while on holiday in the
Caucasus, and is buried outside the Kremlin wall.
Armand, Inessa Teodorovna
(1874-1920)
(born Steffen)
Bolshevik revolutionary
Long-rumored to have been
LENIN
's lover,
Armand played an important role in advancing
women's issues in the first years of the Russian
Revolution. Left orphaned in Paris at an early
age, Armand was sent to live with her aunt, a
governess with the wealthy Armand family, liv-
ing in the town of Pushkino. She married one of
the family's sons, and after his death one of her
husband's brothers. A mother of five, she started
developing an interest in social and feminist
issues after working with a school for peasant
children and the Moscow Society for the
Improvement of Women. She wanted to run
Sunday schools for poor women and publish a
newspaper, but the authorities were opposed. In
1903 she joined the Social Democratic Party, par-
ticipated in the 1905 Revolution, and after sev-
eral arrests was exiled to the
ARCHANGEL
region
in the north, near the White Sea. She escaped
and eventually reached Paris, where she first met
Lenin. Armand translated Lenin's writings into
French, served as a contact with the French
Socialist Party, and became a devoted
BOLSHEVIK
.
After a brief return to Russia that ended in
another arrest, she left Russia in 1913 and spent
World War I in Switzerland. After the
FEBRUARY
REVOLUTION
, Armand returned with Lenin and
Ashinov, Nikolai Ivanovich
(1856-unknown)
adventurer
Ashinov was a semiliterate Terek
COSSACK
who
convinced Russian nationalist and religious cir-
cles to support his plans to create a Russian
colony in Ethiopia. After an early youth work-
ing the caravan trade in Persia and Turkey,
Ashinov joined a group called the Brotherhood
of Free Cossacks and fought as a volunteer in the
RUSSO
-
TURKISH WAR OF
1877-78
. An early attempt
to obtain land for colonization for his Cossacks
proved unsuccessful, but Ashinov made impor-
tant contacts in
ST
.
PETERSBURG
. Ashinov then
hatched a scheme to travel to Ethiopia to find
land for his Free Cossacks with funds allegedly
obtained by swindling the British embassy in
Constantinople. He reached Ethiopia in 1886
and was received by Emperor Johannes, who
promised land to the Cossacks and sent gifts to
the czar. In 1887, Ashinov traveled to Paris,
gained access to Russophile French nationalist
circles, and bought 20,000 rifles, which he
transported to Africa and stored near the French
colony of Obok. On Emperor Johannes's insis-
tence Ashinov returned to Russia with two
Ethiopian monks in time for the celebrations
for the 900th anniversary of Russia's conver-
sion to Christianity. Although Foreign Minister
N. K.
GIERS
objected to the whole enterprise,
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