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Description
The Institute for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies received a gift of these photographs from Vera and Robert Eby. The photos were donated to the Institute in the name of their son, James Peter Eby, who at the time of the donation was an undergraduate majoring in Russian History at Berkeley. James Peter Eby is a descendent of the Kropotkin family whose other descendents in the United States include Elizabeth Sidorov (nee Princess Elizabeth Kropotkin), Alex Alden, Vera Sidorov Eby, and Christopher Eby. This collection of photographs has been in the possession of the Eby family for some time. They are housed in the offices of the Institute for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies and in the History Department of UC Berkeley. Little is known about the circumstances under which these photographs were taken, however the Eby family has verified that the photographs date from the late nineteenth century. A horizontal sepia-toned photograph from the late nineteenth century depicts a group of approximately fifteen people gathered in an open, snowy field. One man stands prominently in the left foreground, turned slightly away from the camera, wearing a long, light-colored winter coat and a dark cap. Behind him and to the right, the rest of the group is arranged in two loose rows; several individuals are seated on the ground while others stand. They are dressed in heavy, dark winter garments including coats, hats, and boots. Some members of the group hold long, thin wooden poles or rifles held vertically. The ground is a flat, expansive surface of white snow that meets a distant, hazy tree line under a pale, overcast sky. Below the photograph, a horizontal color calibration target with colored squares and a grayscale step wedge is visible, included for archival digitization. Image description generated by AI (Gemini 3.0 Fast) and reviewed, January 2026 .
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