The new book by Julia Borissova is a journey through the streets of Kronstadt, a fortress-city and port on the island of Kotlin in the Gulf of Finland. Established in the eighteenth century the city has historically operated as the naval base of St. Petersburg. The town is also known for the revolt of 1921 led by the same sailors and Russian soldiers who had contributed to the success of the October Revolution. The sailors had joined the citizens of Kronstadt against the central Bolshevik power of Lenin, and in favor of federal and libertarian self-government, participation-oriented towards more human and less authoritarian socialism, defined as anarcho-communism, or libertarian communism. The revolt was coordinated mainly by the anarcho-syndicalist Stepan Maksimovič Petričenko, a former engineer belonging to the crew of the warship Petropavlovsk. But the Bolshevik forces did not accept this form of insurrectionism and the revolt was sedated in blood by military action from the Red Army. Petričenko took refuge in Finland until 1940, when he was deported to a prison camp where he died in 1947.

Between the lines of this story, Julia Borrisova presents a personal tribute to the mutiny of the marines of Kronstadt. She chooses to do so by creating her own imaginary museum in which marine collages, made with the official photos of the sailors, populate the streets of the city. Kronstadt looks like a submerged city, a sort of Soviet Atlantis in which the ideal slogan "Soviet without consumerism" has sunk. The cracks and stains on the walls look like morphological traces of a seabed.

Browsing the book is like moving in the Nautilus of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: A Tour of the Underwater World; through the rounded windows, we can see underwater landscapes and memories of previous lives. The book is not bound and this leaves more freedom to the reader to get lost among the loose pages, among the wrinkles of the city. There is a certain poetic skepticism, that is, "there is no certainty", as we read in the quote of the poet Arkadii Dragomoshchenko at the beginning of the journey. Again the choice of the Russian poet makes us think, as he was born in 1946 in Postdam (in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany) and his ashes were scattered in the Kronstadt lighthouse.

The choice to refer, as well in the title, to the science fiction novel by the French writer Jules Verne, does not seem random. The character of Captain Nemo was originally intended by Verne as a Polish noble yearning to take revenge on the murder of his family during the Russian repression of the January Uprising (the Polish uprising, 1863-1864). The publisher of Verne, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, feared the censorship of the book on the Russian market and offended a powerful French ally, the Russian Empire, and obscured Nemo's past and motivations. Captain Nemo has chosen to renounce the society of men and to have cut off any link with the mainland. The story brings us back to the old days of Kronstadt when sailors decided to rebel against the system.

Julia Borissova once again confirms her passion for books as art objects and not just "containers". Nautilus is the invitation to a journey that will reveal surprises to those who can search.

© All images taken from the book 'Nautilus' by Julia Borrisova, 2018

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Julia Borissova 
Urbanautica Russia