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Historical Photos

Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman

(1818-1882) Governor General of
Turkestan 1867-1881

Dmitrii L'vovich Ivanov

(1846-1924) - reached Sarez in 1883,
published first study of the Shughni language

Ivan Vasilievich Mushketov

(1850-1902) - a geologist, one of
the first military explorers of the Pamirs 1874-80

Mikhail Grigorievich Chernyayev

Governor General of Turkestan 1882-1884 (together with Konstantin Kaufman and Mikhail Skobelev, led the Russian conquest of Central Asia under Alexander II)

Mikhail Dmitrievich Skobelev

General M. D. Skobelev (1843-1882)

Nikolai Grigorievich Stoletov

Major-General N.G. Stoletov (1834-1912) - the British took his mission to Kabul in 1878 as the pretext for the Second Afghan War

Grigorii Efimovich Grumm-Grshimailo

(1860-1936) - eminent lepidopterist, a glacier in the Pamirs is named after him

Mikhail Efremovich Ionov

Captain M. E. Ionov (1846-1923) - commander of the famous Pamirs flying detachment, met Francis Younghusband in the Wakhan in 1891

Bronislav Ludwigovich Grombchevsky

(1855-1926) - raised British suspicions by visiting the Mir of Hunza in 1888, met Francis Younghusband near Yarkand

Adrian Georgievich Serebrennikov

(1863-1918) - military orientologist and engineer, built Russian bases at Pamirskiy Post and Khorog

Alexander Genrikhovich Skersky

Captain A. G Skersky - first commander of Pamirskiy Post and subesquently of Khorog military base

Sergei Petrovich Vannovsky

Captain S. P Vannovsky - surveyed the Bartang valley in 1893

Nikolai Fedorovich Petrovsky

(1837-1908) - Russian Consul in Kashgar

Edward Karlovich Kivekes

Captain E. K. Kivekes 1866-1940 - Commander of the Khorog garrison 1897-1902

Andrei Yevgenevich Snessarev

1865-1937 - Commander of the Khorog garrison from 1902 to 1908 and author of several works on the people of the Pamirs

Kivekes and his wife

Kivekes and his wife adopted a Pamiri girl, Gulbegim, and took her back with them to his native Finland (photo from 1914)

Pamirs flying detachment

at their base in New Marghilan

Khorog military

Khorog military base in 1911 (Photo by Dr. Arved von Schultz)

Khorog garrison

Khorog garrison 1897 (Photo by Ralph Cobbold)

Khorog officers' mess

Khorog officers' mess - with the ``Becker`` piano brought by cart and on foot from Osh in 1914

Pamirskiy Post

built at the junction of the Akbaital and Murghab rivers in 1893

Drawings by Alexander Andreevich Chikin

Chikin was a professional illustrator - he probably did not actually accompany the Russian troops in the Pamirs and based his drawings on photographs. They appeared in various editions of ``Vsemirnoi Illustratsii`` (Illustrations from around the world) in 1895, accompanying articles by Boris Leonidovich Tageev, an officer in the Pamirs detachment

Vladimir Ippolitovich Lipskiy

At the end of the 19th century, the Russian botanist Vladimir Ippolitovich Lipskiy (1863-1937) travelled extensively in the Pamirs and published the results of his work there in Mountain Bukhara - results of journeys over three years in Central Asia in 1896, 1897 and 1899), St. Petersburg, 1902. He was an avid photographer and left one of the earliest photographic records of the Pamirs. A selection of his photos follows

Inhabitants of Inskan village in the the Yaghnob valley

Inhabitants of Novabad village in the Yaghnob valley

Mushketov glacier (Hissar range)

Mushketov glacier

Shikai fortress on the Panj river in Afghan Darwaz

Fortress in Kala-i-Khumb

Bukhkaran troops in Kala-i-Khumb

End of the Sugran glacier (below Moscow Peak)

Grotto in the Sugran glacier

Willi Rickmer Rickmers

The Austro-German Pamirs Expedition 1913 and the Soviet-German Alai-Pamir Expedition 1928

Willi Rickmer Rickmers, born in Bremerhaven in 1873 into a German family of ship-owners and ship-builders, was the last great non-Russian explorer of the Pamirs. The expedition of the Austrian and German Alpine associations that he led in 1913, and the Soviet-German expedition in 1928, of which he was joint leader, uncovered some of the last remaining secrets of the remotest corners of the Pamirs.

He made his first acquaintance with Turkestan on his travels to Samarkand and Bukhara in 1894 and 1895. On his 3rd and 4th journeys in 1896 and 1898 he went deeper into the mountains of Eastern Bukhara and, travelling through Dushanbe, Baljuan and Khovaling, he reached the upper Yakhsu valley, where he started commercial gold mining until he was stopped by an edict of the Tsar forbidding foreigners to dig for gold.

His journey of 1906, together with his intrepid British wife Mabel, nee Duff (his marriage to her was the “most brilliant idea of my life”), brought him deep into the Fan mountains and on to the Zerafshan glacier, where he made important contributions to glacier research. The journey also brought him to Kala-i Khumb – the closest he had yet been to his long-standing objective: the Pamirs.

Finally, in 1913, he travelled to the Pamirs as leader of an expedition organised by the German and Austrian Alpine associations to explore the mountains and passes on the southern slopes of the Garm valley, the upper Khingob valley, the Garmo glacier and the mountain passes leading to Vanch and the Muksu. On this expedition he took the first photograph of what is now known as Ismoil Somoni Peak.

Rickmers' photo of Ismoil Somoni Peak

At this time, Lenin Peak was still considered to be the highest mountain in the Pamirs. The peak photographed by Rickmer-Rickmers was identified by him as Garmo Peak but was shown on the map produced in 1914 by Raimund von Klebelsberg (another member of the expedition) as Sandal Peak. Sandal is actually the highest peak seen from Ters-Agar and the two were thought to be identical. When the error was discovered by the 1932 Soviet expedition and the true positions and heights were determined, the higher of the two was renamed Stalin Peak. In 1962 Stalin Peak became Communism Peak and in 1998 Ismoil Somoni Peak. It was climbed for the first time in 1933 by Yevgeny Abalakov.

In 1928 Rickmers was nominated as joint leader – with Nikolai Petrovich Gorbunov, Chief of the Executive of the Soviet of People’s Commissars – of a much larger Soviet-German expedition – an unusual example of international collaboration by the Soviet regime at a time of incipient paranoia under Stalin – sponsored by the ‘Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft’ (‘German Society in Aid of Science’) in Berlin and the U.S.S.R.

Academy of Sciences in Leningrad, with support from the German and Austrian Alpine Associations.

The expedition’s main task was to explore and map as large an area of the unexplored heart of the Pamirs (then known as the Sel Tau) as possible. In doing so, they were able to determine for the first time the exact length of the Fedchenko Glacier and confirm that it was the longest mountain glacier in the world.

The photos below are from the report of the 1928 expedition by Gorbunov and Professor D.I. Scherbakov, one of the geologists on the expedition.

Crossing the Kashal-Ayak pass into the Vanch valley

Kumoch-dara pass between the Bartang and Vanch valleys

Chairwoman of the rural Soviet in Vomar (1928)

Young woman from Barzud, Rushan (1928)

Young woman from Barzud, Rushan (1928)

Young woman in Yazgulam (1928)

USSR in Construction

USSR in Construction was a propaganda journal published in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1941 in Russian, French, English, German and Spanish portraying the emergence of the Soviet Union as a major industrial power. It featured the work of some of the leading Soviet writers, photographers and graphic designers of the period. The photos below are typical of the idealisation of peasant life in the Pamirs and the glories of socialism under the Soviet Union.