Tales from Imperial Russia

In the early nineteenth century, Raffaele Scassi, Genoese gambler and ne'er-do-well, found himself in the newly founded Black Sea port of Odessa. This was the beginning of a remarkable career in Russian service that led to adventures in the Caucasian mountains, the rebuilding of a ruined Crimean town, and the preservation of ancient Greek relics. This episode explores his life and Russia's expansion to the south. Sources: Heloisa Rojas Gomez, The Crimean Italians: A History of Mobility and

In 1889, a small band of unlikely Russian colonists seized the abandoned fortress of Sagallo in today's Djibouti. Led by the would-be Cossack Nikolai Ashinov, they triggered an international incident. But how did all this come to pass? The answer lies in Ashinov's career of skullduggery, deceipt, and falsehood. Sources: A. V. Lunochkin, “Ataman vol’nykh kazakov” Nikolai Ashinov i ego deiatel’nost’ (Volgograd: Izdatel’stvo Volgogradskogo gosudarstvennogo

In 1852, the novelist and government bureaucrat Ivan Goncharov set sail on the frigate Pallada for a mission to closed-off Japan. This episode follows Goncharov as he encountered Africans and Asians across an imperial world dominated by the British, Dutch, and Spanish. This episode is based on translations and information provided by Edyta M. Bojanowska, A World of Empires: The Russian Voyage of the Frigate Pallada (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018)

From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the First World War's eastern front massacred men by the thousand. Father Dimitrii Smirnov, along with hundreds of other religious officials, tried to offer spiritual solace to the fighting and the dying, all while suffering hardships himself and witnessing the horrors of modern warfare. Father Dimitrii's experiences were made all the more arduous by the fact that he was an Old Believer, a religious group that had only recently been granted full legal

In 1910, Europe and Russia were rocked by a sensational murder trial: three Russians stood accused of conspiring to murder one of their compatriots in Venice. Filmed and photographed, the lurid details of affairs and petty violence shocked the world. But what brought these Russians to such dire straits? And what did the trial reveal about how Europeans and Russians thought of one another? This tale is heavily dependent on the interpretation and reconstruction of events in Louise McReynolds, Murder

In 1904, a shepherd and his daughter created a new religion in the Altai mountain ranges, leading to a violent confrontation with Russian settlers and a dramatic trial. But what was the cause of this outburst and what was the ultimate fate of the new faith? [Originally released on 22 January 2021, this episode was re-recorded on 9 February 2021]. References: Danilin A.G.: Burkhanizm. Izistorii natsional’no-osvoboditel’nogo dvizheniia v gornom Altae. Gorno-Altaisk: Ak-Chechek,

Tales from Imperial Russia is a fortnightly podcast narrating ordinary and extraordinary lives from the Russian Empire. In short episodes, we will avoid the oft-retold stories of emperors and battles to focus on the mostly forgotten lives of individuals from an amazing array of locales, peoples, and circumstances. This podcast is written and performed by Dr James White. For my academic articles, please see: https://urfu.academia.edu/JamesWhite. To purchase my recent book, please see: