Kerch 1855. History in letters

The article is devoted to the events of the 1853-1856 Crimean War reflected in the letters of K. N. Leontiev to his mother and of the clergy, who wrote reports and messages to St. Innocent (Borisov), Archbishop of Kherson and Taurida, on the same days about the course of the Azov campaign. The letters of Leontiev, a participant in the Crimean War in the position of a regimental doctor in the Yenikale fortress, fully published for the first time more than a century and a half later, convey military episodes in a tonality sparing his mother’s heart. But even so, Leontiev’s Crimean letters are unique documents of the key event in the 19th century Russian and world history. Leontiev’s descriptions are significantly supplemented by the revealed and fragmentary published for the first time letters of Archpriests Arseny Lebedintsev from Sevastopol, Grigory Briukhovsky from Berdyansk, Feodot Penchul from Feodosia, and Ioann Anfinikov from Kerch to St. Archbishop Innocent. These are incriminating evidence of atrocities, robberies, and violence committed by the British, French and Turks on the land of Crimea.