Alexis Aladin Papers

Date range: c.1900-1927

Medium: Archive

The life of Alexis Aladin (1873-1927) was inextricably bound up with the turbulent history of Russia in the last years of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th.

He arrived in London in 1900, having escaped Russia where he was briefly imprisoned for political agitation. He returned to his native land in 1905 under a political amnesty and rapidly rose to become leader of the Trudoviks, the revolutionary peasants’ party, in the First Russian Duma. When Tsar Nicholas dissolved the Duma in 1906, Aladin found himself exiled in England again.

He returned to Russia in 1917 under the auspices of the British Government and, having being imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, he escaped to fight with the White armies in the Civil War, before returning to London in 1920. His last years were overshadowed by poverty, illness and the bitter frustration of an exile.

The collection contains extensive papers, in both English and Russian, concerning Russian politics, the Revolution and Civil War, as well as papers relating to other activities and interests of Aladin. The material includes:

• Over 600 items of correspondence between Aladin and his close friend, the papermaker and philanthropist (Sir) David Russell (1872-1956);
• Over 700 letters exchanged with Miss E. Constance Nightingale (1892-1967), a Quaker schoolmistress whom Aladin met while travelling on the Orient Express from Constantinople to London;
• Further correspondence including family and personal letters, and letters exchanged with other émigré friends;
• Diaries, official documents such as petitions, photographs, articles and newspaper cuttings.

Further information:

• Uncatalogued.
• Reginald F. Christian, Alexis Aladin: the Tragedy of Exile (New York, 1999).
• Lorn Macinnes Macintyre, Sir David Russell: a biography (Edinburgh, 1994).

Location:

• The John Rylands Library, Deansgate  [Map]
• Find out how to use the reading rooms in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library