Kevin Windle

Elena Govor

Artyom Vesyoly

A Novel in Fragments

Russia Washed in Blood

In August 1803 two Russian ships, the Nadezhda and the Neva, set off on a round-the-world voyage to carry out scientific exploration and collect artifacts for Alexander I’s ethnographic museum in St. Petersburg. Russia’s strategic concerns in the north Pacific, however, led the Russian government to include as part of the expedition an embassy to Japan, headed by statesman Nikolai Rezanov, who was given authority over the ships’ commanders without their knowledge. Between them the ships carried an ethnically and socially disparate group of men: Russian educated elite, German naturalists, Siberian merchants, Baltic naval officers, even Japanese passengers. Upon reaching Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas archipelago on May 7, 1804, and for the next twelve days, the naval officers revolted against Rezanov’s command while complex crosscultural encounters between Russians and islanders occurred. Elena Govor recounts the voyage, reconstructing and exploring in depth the tumultuous events of the Russians’ stay in Nuku Hiva; the course of the mutiny, its resolution and aftermath; and the extent and nature of the contact between Nuku Hivans and Russians. Govor draws directly on the writings of the participants themselves, many of whom left accounts of the voyage. Those by the ships’ captains, Krusenstern and Lisiansky, and the naturalist George Langsdorff are well known, but here for the first time, their writings are juxtaposed with recently discovered textual and visual evidence by various members of the expedition in Russian, German, Japanese—and by the Nuku Hivans themselves. Two sailor-beachcombers, a Frenchman and an Englishman who acted as guides and interpreters, later contributed their own accounts, which feature the words and opinions of islanders. Govor also relies on a myth about the Russian visit recounted by Nuku Hivans to this day. With its unique polyphonic historical approach, Twelve Days at Nuku Hiva presents an innovative crosscultural ethnohistory that uncovers new approaches to—and understandings of—what took place on Nuku Hiva more than two hundred years ago.

Russian Encounters and Mutiny in the South Pacific

Twelve Days at Nuku Hiva

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Australia in the Russian Mirror is a study of Russian images of Australia from 1770 to 1919. Elena Govor, a recent emigrant from the former Soviet Union and leading authority on Russian writings on Australia, has drawn on over 1700 sources to present a revealing study of Russians' perceptions of Australia from its earliest settlement to its development and emergence as a nation. Voices of Russian visitors, armchair writers and emigres weave together both to create and to refute 'the Australian legend'. The naval officers who visited Port Jackson in the early 1800s came from the well-educated Russian nobility. They praised the transportation of convicts to Australia and the efforts of the authorities to reform them. But Russian emigrant labourers arrested and deported for participating in the Red Flag Riots in Brisbane in 1919 painted a very different picture of Australia's hostile judicial system. How and why such diversity of perceptions has evolved makes Australia in the Russian Mirror compelling reading.

Changing Perceptions, 1770-1919

Australia in the Russian Mirror

This is the story of Leandro Illin and his family who settled in Australia in 1910 after roaming the world seeking a new home. Five years later, in the face of official opposition, Leandro married a Ngadjon Aboriginal woman, Kitty Clarke. Following her death in 1925 he raised their six children by himself in outback Queensland, struggling to eke out a living in the bush. Part biography, part history and part detective story, My Dark Brother is a fascinating book about an extraordinary family.

Elena Govor

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