A Tour of Russia, Siberia, and the Crimea, 1792-1794: The Diary of His Travels (Russian Through European Eyes Series No. 11)

xix, [1], 280 pp. 8vo. Includes a map of the journey and reproductions of prints brought back by Parkinson from his tour. The first publication of the diary of John Parkinson, an Oxford don accompanying Edward Wilbraham-Bootle to Russia. Written in the late 18th century, it was discovered in a Lincolnshire country house over 150 years later. "From St. Petersburg and Moscow they went to western Siberia, Astrakhan, the northern Caucasus, the Crimea and Ukraine. They experienced living conditions among the peasantry, and also met most of the prominent Russians of the time, including Catherine's ministers, her Italian architect Quarenghi, Counts Stroganov and Razumovsky, Archbishop Platon and the celebrated blue-stocking Princess Dashkova. They saw the foreign trading communities, a mining town in the Urals, Moravian settlers on the Volga, nomadic Buddhist Kalmyks, Circassian tribes, the palace of Bakchiserai and the great Troitskaya monastery. The tour took place against a background of major political events. In Stockholm they heard details of the recent assassination of Gustavus III; in St. Petersburg they saw Russian reaction to the French Revolution and learnt of the schemes afoot to dismember Poland. The great massacre of the Russian garrison by the people of Warsaw was described to Parkinson by an eyewitness."