Large Octavo (ca. 25x15,5 cm). [2 – t.p.], xvi, [1], [1 - errata], 357, 29 pp. With sixteen photogravure plates. Original publisher’s wrappers. Wrappers slightly age-toned, with a couple of minor tears on extremities, but overall a very good copy.

First and only edition.

Historically significant, original ethnographical Russian work on the people of the Yakutsk Province of the Russian Empire in the late 19th century (roughly the territory of the modern-day Republic of Sakha/Yakutia). The author was a Russian revolutionary and ethnographer, Ivan Mainov. In 1881, for anti-government propaganda, Mainov was arrested and exiled from Moscow to the Irkutsk Province and in 1887 to the Yakutsk Province. During his exile (until 1904), Mainov collaborated with the Eastern Siberia Department of the Russian Geographical Society and took part in the 1894-1896 ethnographical expedition around the Yakutsk Province, organized by the Department and sponsored by a notable Irkutsk entrepreneur Innokentiy Sibiryakov (1860-1901). At the same time, Mainov collected local statistical and demographic data on the assignment of the Governor of Yakutia, Vladimir Skripitsyn (1848-1929). Mainov and his associate G. Kondakov (a native Yakut man) “visited all settlements of the Yakutsk and Olyokminsk districts, studied local archives and carried out a census of all households” (Mainov, I. Russkiye krestyane i osyodlye inorodtsy… p. IX). The goal of the survey was “the production of a detailed report of the administrative and legal system applied to the Russian peasants and sedentary natives [of Yakutia], and on the economy of Russian households” (Idem.).

The book is based on the materials collected during Mainov’s statistical survey for the Governor of the Yakutsk Province. Fourteen chapters are dedicated to the history of Russian settlement of the province (with a list of all Russian settlements); the characteristics of the Russian peasants (number, the dynamic of population growth, age groups, number of families, &c.); local schools and literacy level; administrative system; sedentary natives (number, distribution, society structure); credit organizations and grain warehouses; main occupations and public income; taxes and duties; agricultural lands and the principles of granting them to peasants; the system of public administration of agricultural lands; cattle breeding; other occupations including fishing and hunting; settlements of Skoptsy (members of a religious sect) and exiles for criminal offences. Four appendixes include government instructions for rural settlements of the Yakutsk Province, a list of settlements of the indigenous division of the Olyokminsk district, and the results of census of the Yakutsk and Olyokminsk districts with detailed data on their Russian and indigenous inhabitants. The illustrations reproduce the original photos, taken by the Yakutsk studio of V.S. Kellerman and three of Mainov’s friends (M. Sosnovsky, V. Gorinovich, N. Vitashevsky) and include group portraits of Russian peasants and native Yakuts, a Skopets man in winter dress, views of local villages in summer and winter, native horses and cows, &c. Overall an important content-rich original source on the economy and demographics of Yakutia in the late 19th century.