Along the Route of Samuil Dudin’s Expedition

The author would like to thank the Kunstkamera Museum for permission to use the photos of Samuil Dudin in this article. All images are
reproduced here with the written permission of the Peter the Great
Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera). No further
reproduction by third parties is possible without proper authorization
from the museum.

A talented ethnographer, photographer, traveler, collector, artist, and
researcher of the history and culture of Central Asia, Samuil Dudin
(1863-1929) made his first expedition in 1891. Dudin was a
participant in the Orkhon expedition and was involved in a study of
Mongolian antiquities led by the scholar Vasily Radlov, who played a
huge role in the young ethnographer’s fate. Radlov contributed not only
to Dudin’s expeditionary work, but also to his studies in Ilya Repin’s
class at the Academy of Arts in 1892-1898. The first expedition was
followed by a second: in 1893-1894 Dudin, together with Vasily Barthold,
visited the Semirechenskaya region, Tarbagatai, and Eastern Turkestan.
On this expedition, Dudin was entrusted with pictorial and photographic
representation.1 A few years later, Dudin, together with Sergei
Oldenburg, went on two consecutive expeditions to Chinese Turkestan
(1909-1910 and 1914-1915).2

In 1899, Dudin visited the Kazakhs of the Akmola, Semipalatinsk, and
Semirechye regions.3 Kunstkamera researchers Valeriia Prishchepova
and Inga Stasevich have reconstructed the route he took: from Jamantuz
(40 3⁄4 versts) to the picket Kaidaul (30 1⁄4 versts) to the picket
Chakchansky (Shakshak, 33 1⁄4 versts) to the Cossack village of Bayanaul
(24 versts).4

The researcher captured his trip to the Kazakh steppes in immortal
photos. Moreover, based on photographs, as well as on his drawings, drawings on paper, and “information from the Kazakhs,”5 Dudin prepared several publications devoted to the decorative and applied arts
of Central Asia: “Kyrgyz ornament” (Kirgizskiī ornament), “Carpets of
Central Asia” (Kovrovye izdeliia Sredneī Azii), “Woodcarving by
Kyrgyz” (Rez’ba po derevu u Kirgiz), and “Central Asian Carpets”
(Sredneaziatskie kovry).6

There are numerous parallels between Dudin’s photographs and the
photographic collection of the earlier and very famous “Turkestan
Album,” created on the order of the Governor-General of Turkestan, Peter
Mikhailovich von Kaufman, but there are also differences between the
two. The expedition to the Kazakh steppes was organized by the Peter the
Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, giving Dudin’s
photos—unlike the politicized ones in the “Turkestan
Album”7—genuine ethnographic value. Indeed, this photo collection
should be designated as an ethnographic companion to the life of
Kazakhs, primarily those who lived in the Semipalatinsk region. This
photographic companion depicts the clothing, daily occupations, and
decorative-applied arts of the Kazakhs of the late 19th century.

Traditional Clothing

In the photographs of Samuil Dudin, we see a lot of everyday clothes for
men, women, and children. Men’s attire included unique elements: a
winter hat known as tymak (Russian: malakhai)8 and a leather
belt called kise (see Photo 1). The tymak was made from felt, fox
fur, or astrakhan. This headdress was worn in the 20th century,
especially by shepherds in winter pastures. Other necessary items of
clothing for winter are a covered coat (ishik) and a sheepskin coat
(ton); the latter was worn over a coat (shekpen) made of homespun
cloth (see Photo 2).

Traditional Clothing

The leather kise with which the upper gown (shapan) was belted (see Photo 1) acquired an exclusively decorative character by the end of the
19th century, as Chokan Valikhanov has noted.9Kise was replaced by
the cotton belt belbeu10 (see Photo 1). The leather kise, a
distinctive element of Kazakh dress, was decorated with embossing and
figured overlays encrusted with silver and semi-precious stones. The
kise was not merely decorative; a semi-circular bag with a flap
(kalta or kise) was attached to the belt using special pendants and
housed a fire-starter, flint, and other tools needed by a nomad (see
Photo 3). On the other side of the belt hung a pouch with a knife and a
pouch with bullets and gunpowder.

Dudin also depicted the kalpak, a man’s headdress popular among the Kazakhs and the Kyrgyz11. The kalpak was made of thin felt and its color helped to identify its owner: the rich chose
snow-white kalpaks, while the poor wore black, gray, and brown ones.
The kalpak was decorated with embroidery and patches of colored cloth.
The Kazakh nobility wore kalpaks of velvet richly decorated with silk
and gold thread embroidery.

The upper coat (shapan) was also worn by women, together with a long
dress (koilek). Ruffles, which were very fashionable in the 19^th^
century, were used to decorate the dresses of girls and young women.
Girls’ headwear (borik) was trimmed with fur (see Photo 4). Unlike
similar men’s headdresses, fur was sewn to young women’s borik only on
the outside.

The following photograph Photo 5 shows the girls in tunic-like
koilek dresses made of printed chintz of Russian manufacture. The
oldest woman wears a camisole and a headdress kimeshek of white
calico. Similar kimeshek with modest embroidery were worn by women
over the age of 40. One of the girls put on her head a shapan trimmed
with colorful adras fabric (see Photo 5).

During this period, Russian cotton fabrics, which at first were more
expensive than local ones, began to penetrate the region. As a result,
clothing from that era was made from a wide variety of local Central
Asian and Russian fabrics, as well as British, Indian, and Iranian
textiles that were imported into the region. Photo 6 shows a Kazakh family in their yurt. Numerous felt trunk covers (karshyn) serve as a picturesque background.

In and Beyond the Yurt

The mobility of the Kazakhs influenced their culture and crafts. A whole
series of photographs by Dudin, including “A group of girls during the
aul movement” (Photo 7), clearly demonstrate the mobility of
19th-century Kazakh nomads, offering us insight not only into their
daily lives, but also into the surrounding landscape.

Moving freely across the steppe, the nomads carried with them their
mobile houses—yurts.

The preferred house of a nomad, the yurt is a tent 4 meters in diameter
and 3-4 meters high with a conical roof. The yurt is covered with white
felt that is 2 cm thick; a piece of felt is attached at the entrance and
serves as a door.12

Dudin paid much attention to the yurts: their “movable
architecture,”13 assembly, felt coverings, and interior decorations.
He also photographed certain elements of the mobile dwelling—namely
changarak, kerege, and tunduk14—and explored how these yurt
parts were purchased. Photo 8 shows the purchase of a tunduk at the
famous Kuyanda-Botov Fair. The fair took place for a month each year,
from May 25 to June 25, between 1848 and 1930 in the valley of the river
Taldy. The annual fair can be described as international: many traders
and buyers from Kazakhstan, Siberia, the Urals, Central Asia, and China
came to participate.15

Photo 9 shows how the women assembled the yurt and covered the wooden
frame with felt. In winter, the yurt was wrapped with double felt, earth
or snow was put on the bottom, and kerege (lattice walls) were put on
the outside. Felt also reigned supreme in the interior decoration of the yurt, serving as the base for numerous carpets, storage bags, and chest covers (see Photo 10).

Felt Art and Embroidery

Dudin was not only a photographer; he also collected and studied objects
featuring the decorative and applied arts of the Kazakhs. He was one of
the first to talk about the need to preserve the decorative art of the
steppe nomads, which had been gradually declining under the influence of
“common European culture.”16 He described the craftsmanship of the
peoples of Central Asia in vivid detail:

The love for colors and flair for them, the love for ornamental
decoration of household items and the richness of this decoration are
peculiar to the peoples of Central Asia. In the past, this tendency
was undoubtedly revealed with greater force and on a larger scale than
now […] It is extremely important to collect samples of everything
that has been and is still being done in the region in terms of this
art, as the materials collected so far are still insufficiently
complete and systematic. Especially important in this sense are
objects of those ethnic groups that have so far retained the urge to
decorate domestic objects and do it on their own, without resorting to
the help of artisans from other ethnic groups. If I am not deceived by
my observations, I had the opportunity to meet such people during my
travels in Central Asia in the time period from 1893 to 1914. They
were Kyrgyz-Cossacks and Kara-Kyrgyz who lived in the Kyrgyz Republic
(formerly the Governorate-General of the Steppe) and in the regions of
Jetysu (Semirechenskaya), Syrdarya, Samarkand, and Fergana. What the
reasons were that created this phenomenon, I am not certain, but one
of them is clear to me: it is the fact that the Kyrgyz more fully
preserved the nomadic way of life; almost nothing has changed in their
way of life, despite all the impacts of cultures of neighboring
nationalities.17

To support his conclusions, Dudin referred to photographs of the felt
carpets syrmak (see Photo 11) and tekemet, the storage bags ayak
kap, and other felt and leather items. These artisanal pieces served as
the interior and exterior decoration for a yurt, like a felt door
curtain (Photo 12).

It is interesting to note the similarity of the ornament on the
different felt works, which is reminiscent of the tree of life. This
highly stylized tree made of animal horns, where the lower part is like
the roots of ancestors and the upper part the future generations of a
large Kazakh family. The ornament on the felt rug syrmak and felt door
(see Photos 11 and 12) is inlaid; the pattern was superimposed on the
main background and then quilted and stitched along the contour of the
pattern. Photo 13 depicts a felt storage bag ayak kap that is
decorated with embroidery and felt appliqué.

In the paper on Kazakh ornamentation,18 Dudin shared his thoughts
about embroidery, which, in his opinion, appeared later than the art of
felting. However, this does not detract from its originality. He singled
out three main embroidery stitches that are central to Kazakh
needlework: tambour, plain, and cross stitch.

As the researcher noted, stylized plant ornamentation prevails in the
embroidery. We can see it on the black velvet of elegant pants known as
kesteli jalbar (see Photo 14). Only wealthy Kazakhs could afford such
pants. Another type of men’s pants, zhargak shalbar, were made of
finely wrought yellow or red suede, embroidered with silk thread and
patterned braid, and decorated with fur. The pants were similar in their
cut, but differed in their material of manufacture. For example, winter
jalbars were lined with wool or sheepskin.

The full extent of the huge cultural heritage of the Kazakh people that
is reflected in the photographs of Samuil Dudin is outside the scope of
this article. However, anyone interested in the history of the Kazakhs
at the end of the 19th century can explore Samuil Dudin’s photographic
collection on the Kunstkamera website.