# RUKAVISHNIKOV MUNICIPAL REFORMATORY-MOSCOW. Asile urbain Roukavichnikoff à Moscou. 17/29 juin 1890.



**Dati editoriali:** [Moscow, Photographie Française, 1890]

**Codice archivio:** 178

**Prezzo:** 2000.00 USD

**Stato commerciale:** Disponibile

**Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/rukavishnikov-reformatory-album-1890

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## Descrizione accademica e analisi

Small oblong photographic album, approximately 133×165 mm, constructed as a concertina or leporello, with 15 original mounted albumen photographs, approximately 100×140 mm each, in warm brown tones. Each photograph mounted on cream card with a printed French caption beneath; mounts joined by red cloth hinges. Original red cloth boards, upper and lower cover lettered and dated in gilt. Violet-blue cursive stamp (“Photographie Française Moscou”) at the lower right of the mount captioned Infirmerie. Some foxing to the mounts, occasionally extending into the photographs, and minor wear at the extremities. All in all very well preserved. All fifteen photographs of the recorded series are present. A commemorative photographic album prepared for the visit to Moscow of members of the Fourth International Penitentiary Congress, presenting the Rukavishnikov reformatory through its buildings, workshops, pupils, and musical ensemble. The date on the upper cover, 17/29 June 1890, represents a single day expressed in the two calendars: 17 June according to the Julian calendar then used in Russia, corresponding to 29 June in the Gregorian calendar. It should not be interpreted as a period extending from 17 to 29 June. The occasion belonged to the Moscow excursion following the congress’s regular proceedings in St Petersburg. In his contemporary diplomatic report of 3 July 1890, the American minister, Charles Emory Smith, recorded that the congress had concluded its regular work on 24 June and that delegates subsequently participated in official excursions, including a four-day visit to Moscow. The commemorative date therefore concerns the visit and celebrations; it does not establish that every photograph was taken on that day. The institution’s twenty-fifth-anniversary celebrations were held on 17 June 1890, Old Style. Liubov’ Gorodnova’s historical account records that guests at the concluding banquet in Moscow’s Ermitage restaurant received photographic albums showing the institution and its pupils, together with commemorative silver-and-enamel tokens. Established in 1864, the reformatory acquired its enduring identity under Nikolai Vasil’evich Rukavishnikov (1845-1875), who became its director in 1869 and developed its vocational programme. After his death, his brothers Konstantin and Ivan supported its transfer to municipal administration in 1878 and the acquisition of premises on Smolenskaya Square. The French designation asile thus refers here to a juvenile reformatory, not a psychiatric asylum: an institution combining custody with education and training for employment. The album belongs to a setting in which photographs and material displays could carry an argument about penal reform beyond the conference hall. In his contemporary account of the St Petersburg congress, the comte Lecourbe described the exhibitions accompanying such meetings as a means of supplementing written and spoken discussion with an “enseignement par l’aspect” - instruction through visual presentation. His observation provides a particularly apt context for this album, without constituting a specific reference to its publication. The fifteen photographs form a carefully ordered account of the institution. Six views of buildings and interiors show the principal façade; the shop selling articles manufactured in the workshops; the infirmary; the church interior; accommodation occupied by a section of the inmates; and the interior of the carpentry workshop. These are followed by eight occupational group portraits, representing pupils engaged in carpentry, turning, locksmithing, blacksmithing, shoemaking, bookbinding, tailoring, and painting or whitewashing. The sequence concludes with the institutional band, captioned Orchestre des détenus. The contrast between the occupied carpentry workshop and the more formally arranged occupational groups is particularly revealing. In the former, the camera records an interior organized for collective work. In the latter, pupils and adult instructors are posed beside carefully displayed benches, tools, machinery, and finished products. These images function as demonstrations of trades: their subject is not merely the appearance of the boys, but the skills they are being taught and the work they are expected to perform. The captions themselves preserve the institution’s dual identity. The occupational portraits repeatedly describe their subjects as “élèves”, or pupils, whereas the accommodation and band captions use “détenus”, or inmates. Education and detention coexist within the same photographic sequence. The term types in the workshop captions consequently belongs to an occupational presentation of representative groups; nothing in the album’s arrangement warrants treating these pictures as criminal-identification portraits or a physiognomic classification. The opening image of the sales shop is equally purposeful. Placed immediately after the principal façade, it introduces the products of institutional labour before the workshops and their occupants are shown. Read as a sequence, the photographs suggest a movement from confinement towards useful employment: the boys appear successively as inhabitants of an ordered establishment, apprentices, producers, and members of a coordinated musical ensemble. This is an interpretation of the album’s visual rhetoric, not independent evidence of the reformatory’s success. The photographs show how the institution wished to be understood by its visitors, rather than offering an unmediated record of the inmates’ experience. Of particular interest for the history of the book is the photograph captioned Types d’élèves de l’atelier de reliure. An adult instructor and five younger pupils are arranged around binding equipment, with a sewing frame, presses, books, and other workshop implements prominently displayed. The composition brings the workers, their tools, and the products of their labour into a single occupational portrait.

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## Bibliografia di riferimento

Lecourbe, comte. “Le Congrès pénitentiaire international de Saint-Pétersbourg. Compte rendu général extrait du Bulletin officiel du Congrès et du rapport de M. L. Herbette.” Bulletin de la Société générale des prisons, 1890, no. 8, pp. 858–884, especially pp. 858-859; Smith, Charles Emory. “Mr. Smith to Mr. Blaine.” St Petersburg, 3 July 1890, dispatch no. 17. In Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Transmitted to Congress, With the Annual Message of the President, December 1, 1890. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1891, pp. 698-700; Gorodnova, Liubov’ Evgen’evna. “Sem’ia vysokoi dobroty” [Семья высокой доброты]. Moskovskii zhurnal. Istoriia gosudarstva Rossiiskogo, no. 5 (401), May 2024. PhotoLit, Asile Urbain Roukavichnikoff à Moscou. 17/29 Juin 1890, Book no. 4016; National Institute of Informatics, CiNii Books. Asile urbain Roukavichnikoff: à Moscou 17/29 juin 1890. NCID BB07013023. Copy recorded at the University of Tokyo, Faculty of Law, KH:885, accession 4112209665.

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