Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Dagestani Types, ca. 1907-1915. Digital color rendering. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsc-04436 (12)

The Russia of Nicholas II on the eve of World War I was a land of striking ethnic diversity. Comprising all of the republics of what later was to become the Soviet Union, as well as present-day Finland and much of Poland, Russia was home to more than 150 million people—of which only about half were ethnic Russians. In his travels throughout the empire, Prokudin-Gorskii captured this diversity. His color photographs of peasants from rural Russia, the nomadic peoples of Central Asia, and the mountain peoples of the Caucasus predate the forced Russification and the rapid modernization of the Soviet period and document traditional costumes and ways of life.