Setting the East Ablaze: On Secret Service in Bolshevik AsiaPeter Hopkirk's book tells for the first time the story of the Bolshevik attempt between the wars to set the East ablaze with the new gospel of Marxism. Lenin's dream was to liberate the whole of Asia, but his starting point was British India. A shadowy, undeclared war followed.Among the players in this new Great Game were British Indian intelligence officers and the professional revolutionaries of the Communist International. There were also Muslim visionaries and Chinese warlords - as well as a White Russian baron who roasted his Bolshevik captives alive.Here is an extraordinary tale of intrigue and treachery, barbarism and civil war, whose echoes continue to be heard in Central Asia today. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - MiaCulpa - LibraryThingThis is the book that introduced me to Peter Hopkirk. "Setting the East ablaze", like other Hopkirk books I have since read, read like an adventure story rather than a dry history. Following the ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - theonearmedcrab - LibraryThing“Setting the East Ablaze” (1984) is another book by Peter Hopkirk, and could well have been called The Great Game, part 2 (even though it was written before his book, The Great Game). It deals with ... Read full review
Contents
Prologue | 8 |
An Absolutely FirstClass Man | 8 |
The Strange Adventures of a Butterfly Collector | 17 |
Bailey Vanishes | 30 |
The Executioner | 46 |
Hunted | 58 |
Bailey Joins the Soviet Secret Service | 76 |
To Set the East Ablaze | 95 |
The Last Stand of Enver Pasha | 152 |
Curzons Ultimatum | 167 |
Squeezed Out Like a Lemon | 176 |
Skulduggery on the Silk Road | 185 |
A Lady Vanishes | 194 |
The Last of the Central Asian Dreamers | 209 |
The New BogyMen of the East | 226 |
The East Fails to Ignite | 238 |
The Army of God | 108 |
The Bloody Baron | 123 |
An Avenue of Gallows | 137 |
Common terms and phrases
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References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | Setting the East Ablaze: On Secret Service in Bolshevik Asia |
| Author | Peter Hopkirk |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint, reissue |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press, 2001 |
| ISBN | 0192802127, 9780192802125 |
| Length | 252 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |