Gustav Krist
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Gustav Krist (29 July 1894-1937)
Austrian adventurer, prisoner-of-war, carpet-dealer and author. The accounts of his unmonitored journeys, off the main routeways, in a politically closed and controlled Russian, and then Soviet Central Asia, offer a unique glimpse into the essentially unchanged Muslim Central Asia before Sovietization.
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[edit] Background
The Viennese Krist worked as a technician in Germany before being mobilised as a private in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the outbreak of war. In November 1914 he was severely wounded and captured by the Russians on the Eastern front. This led to internment in Russian Turkistan with other German and Austrian prisoners-of-war.
[edit] Internment
His camp was sited in Samarkand. With a natural gift for languages, before the war he had acquired some Russian and a smattering of some oriental languages. Building on this allowed him to become familiar with the peoples and places of the region over the eight years he remained there. Conditions of the camps were harsh however. Many of his fellow prisoners died of typhus and starvation, or in fighting following the collapse of the Central Government. Krist kept a diary of his experiences during the whole period written on cigarette papers and secreted in a Bukharan hubble-bubble pipe to avoid it being confiscated. After the Bolshevik revolution the region was both politically confused and dangerous, as Soviets, White Army, Basmachi insurgents and foreign powers struggled for power.
This region of ancient Silk Route cities had been closed to foreigners on political grounds during the war. Living with the native peoples and being able to talk with them directly his writings therefore offer a valuable insight to the life and customs of the various peoples and cultures of this area of Central Asia. For seventy years after him the area was seldom visited by foreign visitors unencumbered by official controls and his accounts show life before the Sovietization of the region. Krist came to love the Islamic architecture of Samarkand especially the Shah-i-Zinda complex and the nomadic peoples of the region.
[edit] Various Escapes
In 1916 Krist escaped Samarkand to Meshed, in Persia via Merv but was unable to return to Austria due the the continuing war and British control of south Persia. The Bolsheviks established a local soviet in 1920. With the promise of a train to take them home, NCO Krist led a force of Austrian POWs in suppressing mutinous Bolshevik soldiers in Samarkand. After the mutineers and the Austrians had been disarmed this was reneged on. Krist was amongst those who were condemned to death for counter-revolutionary activity, but this was commuted to three-months imprisonment at the last minute. Escaping he now entered the service of the Emir of Bukhara who was striving to re-establish his full independence in the collapse of the Russian Empire. However Bukhara fell to the soviets under Frunze and Krist eventually escaped through Northern Afghanistan to Persia.
[edit] Adventurous return
Returning briefly to Vienna, in 1922 he moved to Tabriz in Persia to work as a carpet dealer for a native Iranian. He transversed Persia for the next two years, but even this work became routine for him and a chance meeting with some Turkmen tribesmen in 1924, led him to slip across into Soviet territory, which was even then strengthening its controls along the frontier in that area.
Travelling without papers in Soviet territory was impossible. Krist said he'd "would sooner pay a call on the Devil and his mother-in-law in Hell" than attempt to travel without them. However using the I.D. card of a naturalised fellow ex-prisoner he knew in Turkmenistan he came up with a scheme to get recognition as a State Geologist of the Uzbeg Soviet in Samarkand. This enabled him to explore the mountainous region to the east without hindrance.
He crossed the the “black, or terrible, one”, the Kara-Kum desert to the Amu Darya. Always a keen observer and with his gift for striking up conversations in Deh i Nau he fell in with a GPU officer who had witnessed the death of Enver Pasha. After revisiting Bukhara and Samarkand he moved up the Ferghana Valley. There he encountered the Kara Kirghiz (Black Kirghiz) with whom he wintered during their last annual migration into the Pamirs, before the Soviet forces conquered them and they were collectivized. After working his way through modern-day Tajikistan he made his way to the Persian frontier and recrossed with some difficulty.
[edit] Final years
In 1926 he returned permanently to Vienna where he became editor of “Die Teppichborse” a monthly carpet industry trade-magazine. Here with some leisure time and stimulated by occasional visits of former comrades he pieced together his war-diary as “Pascholl plenny!” In 1936 he had his manuscript accepted by a publisher, and this led onto the writing of his account of his 1924-1925 adventure as “Alone through the forbidden Land”. His life was cut short by the serious injuries he received during the war and he died, aged 43, as it came off the presses.
[edit] Bibliography
- Pascholl plenny! (Wien: L. W. Seidel & sohn, 1936) (translated by E. O. Lorimer as “Prisoner in the Forbidden Land”)
- Allein durchs verbotene Land: Fahrtenin Zentralasien (Wien: Schroll, 1937) (Translated by E.O. Lorimer as "Alone through the Forbidden Land, journeys in disguise through Soviet Central Asia": 1939)
[edit] Sources
- Reader’s Union magazine. “Readers’ News” No. 20 (April 1939): Travel special.
- Hopkirk, Peter. Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia. (London: Kodansha International, 1984).
