Where can I find 19th century depictions of Russian Nihilists? (Such as paintings, illustrations, political cartoons, or modern depictions of 19th Russian nihilists)
Google Images gets 17 hits for the search: russia* nihilist*. Phrase searching, and especially truncation, is tricky. For the web search(not limited to Images) I get zero hits for: russia* nihilis* site:edu, but 79 for: "russian nihilists" site:edu. You can experiment with adding jpg or tif to the search words, to try to get images. The search: russia nihilists site:edu tif gets 26 hits; russia nihilists site:edu jpg gets 17. Possibly using other words like anarchists or radicals might get a few hidden illustrations of Nihilists.
I tried some commercial databases that would require access to an academic or large public library (at least remote password access). ArtStor had only one image from the search: nihilists. I suspect that an extensive search of the web may in fact be your best bet. Even a search of books on Russian anarchism or radicalism history, or Russian 19th century history in general, could take a very long time - since most library catalogs won't search for illustrations. Worldcat, the 60+ million record international library union catalog, only gets one hit for the keyword search: russia nihilists illus, and I feel sure there must be some more books on Russian Nihilists that have illustrations or portraits.
Also, academic library databases will not necessarily search illustrations - though I certainly wouldn't rule out journal articles as a source. I didn't get any obvious hits on
searches of New York Times and Washington Post Historical (back into the 1800s), but they DO have many articles on nihilists, and there could be pictures in a few them. JSTOR, a full-text searchable collection of many scholarly journals, some back into the early 1900's, gets 382 hits for the search: russian nihilists. But trying to limit to "Caption" in advanced search got no hits for the very broad search: nihilists, or even for nihilis*. But if you are near a big academic library, and have the names of Nihilists, it can't hurt to try them as names in a caption.
Google Books DOES get about 73 hits in "Full View" (no longer under copyright) books. It is possible some of those have cartoons or pictures of Nihilists. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog gets 1 hit for the search: nihilists. It is an 1898 cartoon labeled "Lost in Siberia. caption: A safe depository for nihilist letters"
I would recommend a thorough search of web indexes and directories. Librarian's Index to the Internet did not look too promising, unless this is WELL hidden far down in pages on general Russian history. But the Google Directory may help, possibly under Anarchism; or more likely under
Russian social history. That category gets pages like PBS, where the search: nihilists gets 8 pages.
Jim Miller
Univ of Maryland