THE RUSSIAN STATE DOCUMENTARY FILM & PHOTO ARCHIVE AT KRASNOGORSK (RGAKFD)

N A R R A T I V E   I N D E X

The following narrative was written by the Archive's staff in an attempt to reveal some examples of the vast range of photographs and film footage available. The text is broken down into photography and film collections. Navigation tools can be found at the bottom of each page. To search for a particular phrase, either use your browser's "Find" function (look under "Edit") and search each page or use the site search button in the menu bar at the top of the page.

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P H O T O G R A P H S

The earliest photo document is an album "Sevastopol 1885-1856" with pictures of the period of Crimea war. A little bit "younger" are the photos from the album illustrating the construction in 1863-1867 of one of the first Russian railway bridge (authors - Sherer and Nabgolts), albums of views of Tiphlis (1858), (now Tbilisi, capital of Georgia) and Moscow (1876). During Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878 several photographers (Nikitin, Fisher K.A., etc.) photograph the battles of Russian troops. There are photo portraits of the participants of this war - generals and officers and photos of the battles on the Balkans and Caucasus fronts.

Archive keeps a lot of photos of Russian-Japanese war 1904-1905 (for example made by S.M.Prokudin-Gorskiy.) The most interesting are photos made by the junior captain of artillery Korsakov during the defense of Port Arthur - showing the period of time from the construction of fortification to the day when the Japanese marched in the city.

The life of the Russian Imperial Court is very well represented in photo documents: portraits and group photos of the Russian Emperors, their families, relatives and persons in attendance (archive preserves a lot of photos of the court photographer K.E.fon Gan), portraits of statesmen and public men.

There are a lot of photos on Russian army (since 1863) and fleet (since 1888): photos of reviews, parades, drills, maneuvers, etc., (with the names of regiments), reviews of garrisons, scenes of military life, views of warships of the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Pacific fleets.

Archive photo documents show not only Russian history events. For example there is a photo album "Events in China 1900-1901", showing the suppress of the Boxer's revolt. There are photos of French colonial troops - zouaves, etc., made in 1874 in Algeria.