The Russian-Turkeyish [sic] War "Pllwna".

(AMERICANA)

New York, J. Richman, 1877

Colored Lithograph. Text in Yiddish and English. “Copyrigth [sic!] by Prof. J.S. Kolbe, NY.”

The Russians suffered their first serious reverse at Plevna (Northern Bulgaria) in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78. The purpose of this image was likely Russian propaganda, an attempt to gain the sympathy of American Jewry, as the Turks were said to be recruiting for their army in New York. Furthermore, the pro-Turkish press had publicized atrocities committed by the Russian army against the Jewish civilian population. See The Jewish Heritage in American Folk Art (1984) p.61; and A. Rubens, A Jewish Iconography, Supplementary Volume (1982) Addendum 7-8, no. 2194a color plates 72-73.