St Petersburg: Directorate of Resettlement, Ministry of Planning and Agriculture,, 1914. One of the finest achievements of pre-Revolutionary Russian cartography First edition, first printing, of this essential historic survey of Asiatic Russia. This work is sumptuously produced and copiously illustrated, covering present-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Siberia, and Russian East Asia. Atlas' aziatskoi Rosii is scarce in commerce, especially when presenting as beautifully as here. The work reflects the colonization of Siberia, Russian Central Asia, and East Asia following the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in the 1890s and the agrarian reforms begun by Witte and advanced by Stolypin. It was a period during which Russia became one of the largest agricultural exporters in the world, a growth in economic opportunity that encouraged mass migration from European Russia to the East, controlled by the newly formed Emigration (or Resettlement) Administration. The director of the administration, Grigoriy Glinka, was the instigator and chief editor of the present work and encouraged the contributions of prominent Russian authorities such as the geographer and agro-climatologist Aleksandr Ivanovich Voeikov and the historical geographer S. M. Seredonin. The illustrations were chosen by the eminent archaeologist and art historian Adrian Prakhov, while the maps were selected by Mikhail Alekseevich Tsetkov, a cartographer and specialist in historical geography who was the chief editor of the atlas volume. The first volume ("Peoples and Institutions Beyond the Urals") contains articles on regional history, demography, and ethnography, including valuable accounts of the Kamchadals, Inuits, Finns, Tungusic peoples, Mongols, Aleuts, Bukharans. Further articles are devoted to describing the major cities and trading centres, administration, education, health infrastructure, the Kazakh and Christian populations, and the Altaians directly under the control of the emperor. The second volume ("Land and Agriculture") is dedicated to the topography, geology, natural resources, wildlife, industry, agricultural potential, and transport systems of Asiatic Russia. The third volume contains the indices. The atlas itself is prefaced by an introductory historical essay on the cartography of the region by Leo Bagrow, who founded founded Imago Mundi in 1935, and a spectacular collection of maps representing all regions and provinces of Asiatic Russia, together with plans of 14 of the major cities and diagrams schematizing statistical data about the population density, climate, soil quality, and trade of the region. The combination of wire-stitching and printing throughout on coated paper often causes the bindings of the text volumes to fail, while the overall size and the quality of the maps militates against the survival of the atlas. The present set has benefited from judicious and professional restoration and repair. 3 quarto text vols (292 x 223 mm) and one folio atlas (528 x 410 mm). Vol. I: 8 portraits with tissue guards, and 75 other plates (3 double-page), 15 colour maps and diagrams on card-stock (one double-page), and an extensive folding collotype panorama of Vladivostok, numerous illustrations in the text; vol. II: 3 portraits with tissue guards, and 62 other plates (one double-page and one colour), 15 maps and diagrams on card (2 double-page, and 2 colour), profusely illustrated from photographs in the text, some full-page; atlas: 72 maps and plates, the majority colour and double-page, one folding, includes the postal and telegraph map 58a, which is not called for in the contents, fine chromolithographic plate with gold and silver of regional coats of arms, captioned tissue-guard. Contemporary green morocco-backed green cloth, bevelled boards, spines lettered in gilt, title and embossed Imperial eagle on front covers, edges marbled, endpapers decorated with state crests and Imperial eagles. Original wrappers bound in, the front wrappers of the atlas vol. with gilt and silver decoration. Ink stamps of one D.N. Smirnova on titles and wrappers in each volume, additionally on endpapers in the atlas; contemporary bookseller's notes on rear pastedown of vol. I. Professional repairs to heads, tails, joints, corners restored, colour and gilt improved, slightly rubbed, atlas with boards bowed and minor damp stains also internally to margins, small marginal repairs to front free endpaper and title, a few maps lightly creased, occasional pencil annotations on the preliminary text leaves, text vols lightly toned with occasional soiling. A handsome set. National Library of Russia, Cartography Department, catalogue, available online.
