Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan by William Dalrymple Read Free Book Online Page B

to Orenburg, promoted him to an NCO, appointed him his orderly, transferred him to the Orenburg Cossacks and later found him work at the Kirghiz Department office. 18
     
    Before long, Vitkevitch was being used as an interpreter, then later was sent out alone on missions through the Kazakh steppe. He had found his career, but only at the cost of joining the Russian imperial machine he had grown up hating, and faithfully serving the state that had destroyed his life, and about which he presumably still harboured the most bitter feelings.
    If Humboldt had begun Vitkevitch’s rise, the person who did more than anyone else to continue it was, quite unknowingly, Alexander Burnes. On his return from his expedition to Bukhara, Burnes had published his Travels into Bokhara , and found himself an overnight celebrity. He was invited to London to meet both Lord Ellenborough and the King, was lionised by society hostesses and gave standing-room-only lectures to the Royal Geographical Society, which presented him with its Gold Medal. On the publication of the French translation of his book soon afterwards, Voyages dans le Bokhara was again a bestseller and Burnes went to Paris to receive further awards and more medals.
    It was this French translation that brought Burnes’s journey to the notice of the Russian authorities. His expedition had been intended to spy out Russian activity in Afghanistan and Bukhara at a period – the early 1830s – when both areas were in reality not part of St Petersburg’s ambitions, which were closely focused on Persia and the Caucasus. Ironically, it seems to have been Burnes’s writings that first provoked Russian interest in Afghanistan and Bukhara, not least to head off British intrigues so close to the Russian frontier. As so often in international affairs, hawkish paranoia about distant threats can create the very monster that is most feared. According to General Ivanin, Chief of Staff to V. A. Perovsky, Governor of the Russian steppe frontier garrison at Orenburg, St Petersburg was becoming as frustrated as London had been with its poor intelligence from Central Asia. ‘All the information that Russia procured was meagre and obscure and was supplied by Asiatics, who either through ignorance or timidity were not able to furnish really useful accounts,’ he wrote, reflecting the same prejudices as his British rivals.
     
    We had reliable information that the agents of the East India Company were continually appearing either at Khiva or Bokhara; we were also aware that this enterprising company had enormous means at its disposal and was endeavouring not only to establish its commercial influence throughout the whole of Asia, but was also desirous of extending the limits of its Asiatic possessions . . . It was accordingly decided in 1835, in order to watch the English agents and counteract their efforts, to send Russian agents into Central Asia. In order to watch the march of events in Central Asia, sub-Lieutenant Vitkevitch was despatched thither in the capacity as an agent . . . 19
     
    Twice, Vitkevitch was sent off to Bukhara. The first time he travelled in disguise with two Kirghiz traders and made the journey in only seventeen days through deep snow and over the frozen Oxus. He stayed a month, but found it much less romantic than the Oriental Wonder House described by Burnes. ‘I must note that the tales told by Burnes, in his published account of his journey to Bukhara, presented a curious contrast to all that I chanced to see here,’ he wrote back to Orenburg. ‘He sees everything in some glamorous light, while all I saw was merely disgusting, ugly, pathetic or ridiculous. Either Mr Burnes deliberately exaggerated and embellished the attractions of Bokhara or he was strongly prejudiced in its favour.’ 20 Despite his distaste, Vitkevitch managed to make a rough set of plans of the city while maintaining his disguise. ‘No one, least of all the fanatical Bokharans, could recognize a