Hunted through Central Asia On the Run from Lenin's Secret Police

by Nazaroff, Paul; Hopkirk, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780192803689
• ISBN10: 0192803689
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-11-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Paul Nazaroff was the ringleader of a desperate plot to overthrow the Bolsheviks in Central Asia in 1918. He was betrayed to the Secret Police, who declared him "the most dangerous counter-revolutionary at large in the Tashkent region." Thus began his extraordinary catalogue of adventures, "a long and distant odyssey which would take me right across Central Asia . . . over the Himalayas to the plains of Hindustan." As he fled from Lenin's men, he was aided by the indigenous peoples of the region, the Kirghiz and the Sarts, and for months he was forced to live the life of a hunted animal. Peter Hopkirk has contributed a fascinating introduction to this thrilling tale of espionage and survival against all odds, as well as an epilogue which reveals Nazaroff's later fortunes.

Author Biography

Paul Nazaroff was educated in Moscow and St Petersburg. His career as a geoloist, minerologist, and mining engineer was interrupted by the Bolshevick Revolution, which prompted him to become a counter-revolutionary agent. A man of wide sympathies and encyclopaedic knowledge, he was also highly skilled in the fields of ornithology, archaeology, ballistics, and botany, and was an accomplished linguist, huntsman, and taxidermist.

Table of Contents

Introduction	vii
Peter Hopkirk
Map	x
Preface	xi
Malcolm Burr
Awaiting Execution	1	(18)
Release	19	(15)
Days of Wrath	34	(14)
Hiding Among the Sarts	48	(15)
Persecution and Alarms	63	(16)
Home Life Among the Sarts and Kirghiz	79	(10)
Hiding Among the Kirghiz	89	(14)
Alone with Nature	103	(13)
The White Lady	116	(12)
The Road to Semirechie	128	(18)
Pishpek	146	(12)
In Semirechie	158	(22)
Hiding in the Hills	180	(16)
Danger Again	196	(16)
Back on the Trail	212	(16)
Safety in Sight	228	(18)
Desolation	246	(17)
Despair	263	(17)
One Last Effort	280	(19)
At Last!	299	(18)
Epilogue	317	(4)
Peter Hopkirk
Index	321