Figure 1.--This cabinet card shows unidentified children we think anout 1900. The studio was Khripkov in Nizhny Novgorod. This city is an important economic, transportation, scientific, educational and cultural center in cebtral Russia, meaning the area east of the Urals. It is located on the Volga. The children have a doll, spade, and flowers, all presunably studio props. The spade presumably was what chikdren used to play at the beach. Nizhny Novgorod is, however, abiyt as far away from the seaside as anywhere in Russiaa. Perhaos there was a beach aeea on the Volga.

Russia is a large country in both area and population. Generally speaking the larger the population, the larger the photographic record. But the mumber of people is only one part of the equation. Economics is another part of the equation, meaning how much of the population could aford to have a studio portrait made or purchase a camera for famiky snapshots. And here Russia falls behind most of Europe, especially Western Europe which was strongly benefitted by capitalist economics. Much of the Russian population was poor. Thus the photographic record is much more limited from whay one might expect from such a large country. We have found quite a few studio portraots of well to do people during the Tsarist era unto the 1910s. This did not change with the Revolution (1917). Russia continued to be very poor. Far fewer Russians had cameras than in most other countries. We see some studio pprtraits, but realtively few family snap shots. Thus we have less information about toys than might be expected for a coyntry with such a large population. Ot is the family snapshot that is a trasute trove of information about toys. We see some images of toys in the Tsarist era, mostly from studio portarits. Children were sometimes pictured with toys in studio photography. This convention seems less commom than in the West. And of course it was almost all the prosperous upper and middle class in the cities. Russia even in the early- and mid-20th century was still a largely poor society with a large, rather poor rural population. But even in the cities, industrial workers were paid a fraction of wages of Western workers. We see some images like the boys here with theirvstiffed animals (1938). This has all affected our ability to acquire information on Russian toys. We see toys similar to western toys, esoecially the inexpensive toys which viurtually anyone could afford. This was a change from the 19th century where a large portion of the Russian population could not affird any store bought-toys for their children.

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Created: 1:09 AM 5/31/20200
Last updated: 1:09 AM 5/31/2020