General Judenits [Nikolai Yudenich], a leader of the anti-communist White movement in Northwestern Russia during the Russian Civil War. The image source is noted in the text on the left. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Nikolai Yudenich (1862-1933) was a leader of the anti-communist White movement in Northwestern Russia during the Russian Civil War

The drawing on the right is a portrait of General Judenits of the The Russian Army of the Northwest. Judenits is the Estonian version of his name.  In English he’s known as Nikolai Yudenich (1862-1933).

Nikolai Yudenich was a leader of the anti-communist White movement in Northwestern Russia during the Russian Civil War, which took place after the Russian Revolution.

Click here for an Alpha History overview related to Nikolai Yudenich >

The style of artwork, in the portrait of Nikolai Yudenich, featuring parallel lines depicting halftones, brings to mind the history of the graphic novel.

When I came across this pen-and-ink portrait, the image stopped me in my tracks. What a great way to work out halftones in a drawing!

The image is from a book, Eesti Iseseisvuse Sünd [The Birth of Estonian Independence] by Eduard Laaman (1888-1941).

Eduard Laaman was an Estonian journalist and historian who was executed at a Russian prison by the Soviet NKVD (secret police organization) in 1941.

Laaman’s wife and two daughters fled to Sweden in 1944, at the onset of the second Soviet occupation of Estonia (which was preceded by the German occupation of this Baltic country) during the Second World War.

The book, that I refer to, was published in 1964 but the original text was written earlier. The book is in Estonian.