World history and culture: Unique photo exhibition in Moscow to tell about culture of Russian Old Believers of Manchuria

Exhibition “Faith. Hope. Manchuria. Russian Old Believers in the photographs of the Japanese scientist Yamadzoe Saburo. 1938-1941” opened in the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum.

The exhibition presents a unique collection of photographs from the V. K. Arsenyev Primorsky State Museum and it is timed to coincide with the book "Days in Romanovka. Japanese photographs of Russian Old Believer village in Manchuria in the late 1930s - 1940s". The publication is prepared within the framework of "First publication" of Vladimir Potanin Foundation in 2012.

The pictures reflect the Russian Old Believer village Romanovka that emerged in the middle of Manchuria, near the line of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) between the cities of Harbin and Mudandzyan. Farmers-conservatives, who run in the early 1930s from the Soviet collectivization of Primorye and repression, gave him the name in memory of the Russian imperial family.

These shots are made by Japanese scientist biochemist Yamadzoe Saburo (1908-2007), who in the 1930s - early 1940s studied the experience of the successful Russian survive in their new environment Manchu. In addition to photos Yamadzoe Saburo, the publication includes the work of professional Japanese photographers attending Romanovka and publishes pictures in photo albums of 1940 - the mid-1970s (more than 230 photos, accompanied by extensive commentary, memories). The book also includes materials on the history of the Old Believers, by leading experts in the field to better represent and evaluate the Romanovka place in the global historical and cultural context.