The Russian people now living in Chicago and in neighboring towns belong to the most recent national groups of immigrants in this country. First to come over were the people from the British Isles; the Germans, and then the Swedes, followed; and later came the Poles, the Italians, the Czechs, and others. The last immigration wave brought the Russians here.

There were, however, individual cases of early immigration to the United States from Russia. The most outstanding of the early Russian immigrants to the United States, and especially to Chicago, undoubtedly was Ivan V. Turtchaninov. He was a colonel, and later a general, in Lincoln's army during the Civil War.

Turtchaninov, who was born in 1822, was a Don Cossack. He graduated from the St. Petersburg Military Academy at the age of nineteen, and entered the czar's army as an officer in the artillery. In the years 1848-49, he participated in the Hungarian campaign. In 1851, he graduated with honors from the general 2staff academy, and his prospects for a distinguished military career were exceedingly promising. In the Crimean War, Turchaninov, then only thirty-four, was already a colonel. In recognition of his military achievements and of his military genius, he was assigned the task of preparing the plan of defense for St. Petersburg, in the event of war with Germany. Later, he became a member of the general staff in Russian-occupied Poland.

Turchaninov was not only a good military leader; he was also a talented writer and something of a poet. But because of their contents, his writings, and especially his poems, found no favor in government circles; they were proscribed, and for this reason have never been published in book form. Turchaninov's writings not only cost him his military career; they also forced him to leave Russia, out of fear that he would be regarded a disloyal subject of the czar.

In the year 1858, Turchaninov lived in London. Shortly afterward, he came to the United States and settled in Chicago, which was then a small town with bright prospects for rapid development. During his first months in Chicago, 3Turchaninov was employed as a railroad engineer. Once while on the road, he had occasion to meet Abraham Lincoln in person.

In 1861, when the Civil War broke out, he accepted the offer to take command of the Nineteenth Regiment of the Illinois Infantry with the rank of colonel. Turchaninov achieved many military successes during the Civil War. His was the glory of a victory at the Battle of Chickamauga. Later on in the war, Turchaninov was deprived of the command of his regiment as a result of a misunderstanding. When the accusations against him had been thoroughly investigated, he was found innocent of the charges and was reinstated in his command. The charges against him arose out of the fact that many of his soldiers had become marauders and had pillaged the entire countryside somewhere in Alabama. It was later proved that Turchaninov's army was insufficiently supplied with food and had to resort to pillage and confiscation to keep alive. The authorities finally found that the responsibility for this condition lay not with the commander but with the agents and purveyors whose duty it was to keep the regiment well supplied with food. The soldiers and officers of the regiment presented Turchaninov with a saber as 4a token of the high esteem in which they held their commander. The Chicago Tribune placed this saber on display in its windows, and published stories and articles defending the splendid record of Turchaninov during the first months of the Civil War.

The city of Chicago held a special triumphal celebration in honor of Turtchaninov. The celebration was held in the Opera House, July 7, 1862. When the ceremony was at its height and Turtchaninov was about to address the public, a messenger brought a telegram from President Lincoln, in which Lincoln informed Turtchaninov that all charges against him had been dropped, that he had been raised to the rank of general and had been given the command of a brigade.

Soon afterward, Turtchaninov commanded a cavalry division and won new victories in the long war with the South.

At the end of the Civil War, Turchaninov retired from the army and rejoined the railroad company. He was entrusted with the task of hiring new immigrants from 5Europe as workers for the railroad. Turtchaninov received from the Illinois Central Railroad Company a tract of land two hundred and seventy miles south of Chicago. He brought in Polish settlers (there were no Russians in America at that time) and established a town called Radom (after Radom, a city in Poland). In 1873, twenty more Polish settlers bought land at Radom, each settler paying fifty dollars for a tract. This area, however, was covered with forest and had to be cleared for farming and habitation. The life of the first settlers at Radom was extremely difficult and full of hardships. Radom is located in the southern part of Illinois, and its present population, according to the 1920 census, is three hundred and ten.

Turtchaninov left the employ of the railroad in 1879. He retired to his farm and devoted his time to farming and to writing articles on military questions. He died June 18, 1901 at the age of seventy-nine.

Sources of material pertaining to the life and work of Ivan V. Turtchaninov: Dziennik Zjednoczenia (Polish Roman Catholic Union Daily), Chicago, 6November 10, 1934;

Volnoye Kazatchestoo (The Free Cossacks), Number 154, in the historical archives in San Francisco, California, or in Prague, Czechoslovakia.