Nicolas Ivanovitch Achinoff

Nikolay Ivanovich Ashinov (also Achinov or Atchinoff, ) (1856 -1902 ) was a Cossack, burgess of Penza and adventurer-traveler. He was of a restless disposition and his studies did not work out as expected. When his father went bankrupt, Nikolai sold the remaining property and left his hometown. He rushed to the Caucasus, driven by the project to grow tobacco. However, Ashinov did not possess the knowledge and patience of such an endeavour and abandoned the region 3 years later.

Ashinov's speech seduced several influence figures: Valerian Panaev (1824–1899), an engineer and publicist ; General Otto Karl Peter von Richter (1830–1908), commander of the Imperial Main Headquarters; Ivan Aksakov (1823–1886), an intellectual and Slavophile; Mikhail Katkov (1818–1887), an influential journalist.

In the spring of 1884, Nikolay began to collect volunteers from the Poltava Governorate to be resettled to the Sukhumi district. There, Ashinov had obtained a territory where he intended to set up the village of "Nikolaevskaya". However, more than half of the settlers immediately left the colony and returned. Once in the area, Nikolay set out a plan to promote a rapprochement of the Christian country with the Russian Empire. Part of his political engagements led him to approach the Emperor of Ethiopia Yohannes IV , posing as a representative of the Tsarist authorities.

After returning to Russia, his travel story circulated by Russian newspapers and embellished by journalists gave him an unexpected popularity. Ashinov activated his supports to get an audience with Alexander III, but it did not happen. To this purpose, he had brought gifts to the tsar, allegedly from the Abyssinian Negus, among which was a live ostrich. These presents were handed over to the commander of the Imperial Apartment, General Richter; the ostrich was placed in a poultry house in Gatchina park. Ashinov organized a shelter for the mission in the abandoned Egyptian fort of Sagallo, where they settled on 14 January. Concurrently, he announced the place Russian soil and christened it New Moscow . Additionally he proclaimed as Russian land the area "fifty miles along the coast and a hundred miles inland": on 28 January the Russian flag was raised. While several people from the expedition fled to Obock, a nearby village from the French territory nearby, French authorities became aware of the presence of the Russian colony, at odds with the initial intention to travel to Abyssinia.

On 5 February 1889, an ultimatum, supported by a French squadron consisting of a cruiser and three gunboats, was sent to Ashinov demanding his withdrawal from the French protectorate. Passing the deadline, Sagallo was shelled by artillery, killing one Cossack and five civilians. Furthermore, the attack entirely destroyed the landings. Ashinov's troops soon surrendered and were put under arrest by the French.

They were sent back to Suez on the clipper Zabiyaka and then to Odessa on the steamship Chikhachev. Archimandrite Paisius was assigned to a monastery in Georgia; Ashinov was exiled under police supervision for three years to a remote district of Saratov province.

Later years Pardoned in April 1890, Ashinov traveled to Paris and London. There, in August 1891, he sent a letter to the Tsar, offering his services for the development of a vast territory in Africa. He spent the rest of his life on his wife's estate in the Chernigov province, where he farmed and raised five children.

Nikolay's last years are shrouded with uncertainty. According to one of his peer's memoirs (1911), Ashinov ended his last days "in his homeland, in the Kamyshinsky district of the Saratov province".

Work and scientific contributions

In addition to African paraphernalia from his expeditions, Ashinov's also brought back manuscripts presented to Alexander III, which ended up in the Gatchina Palace: The Psalter followed and The Organon of Praise of the Holy Virgin . The items were moved in 1924 to the library of the Theological Academy.

In fiction Ashinov is one of the characters of Nikolai Leskov (1831–1895) essay Inspired Vagrants . Soviet novelist Valentin Pikul (1928–1990) wrote a book on the adventurer, Вольный казак Ашинов , published in 1993.