Fedor Alexis Postnikov

Born on February 29, 1872, Fedor Alexis Postnikov was a Russian officer, engineer, and author who later lived in the United States. Sources connect him with service in the Russian military and with technical work in aeronautics and engineering, and a 1907 University of California, Berkeley publication shows him working in civil engineering as well.

Postnikov is best known in literature for Our Little Cossack Cousin in Siberia, published in 1916. In the book’s preface, the publisher notes that he had lived for years among the Ussuri Cossacks as both an officer and a civil engineer, giving the story a sense of lived experience even though it is not presented as autobiography.

His career seems to have ranged widely across military, technical, and literary worlds, which helps explain the unusual texture of his writing. Even with limited surviving biographical detail, his work stands out for opening a window onto Siberian life for English-speaking young readers of the early twentieth century.