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Peter Hopkirk

Setting the East Ablaze Paperback – March 27, 2006

by Peter Hopkirk (Author)

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'Let us turn our faces towards Asia', exhorted Lenin when the long-awaited revolution in Europe failed to materialize. 'The East will help us conquer the West.'

Peter Hopkirk's book tells for the first time the story of the Bolshevik attempt to set the East ablaze with the heady 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 spies, Communist revolutionaries, 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 violent repercussions continue to be felt in Central Asia today.

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Review

'A classic example of truth outpacing fiction'―Times Literary Supplement

'The stuff of a dozen adventure movies . . . everything a ripping good yarn should be'―New York Times

About the Author

Peter Hopkirk travelled widely in the regions where his six books are set - Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India and Pakistan, Iran, and Eastern Turkey. He worked as an ITN reporter, the New York correspondent of the old Daily Express, and - for twenty years - on The Times. No stranger to misadventure, he was twice held in secret police cells and was also hijacked by Arab terrorists. His works have been translated into fourteen languages.

Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: John Murray; Reprint edition (March 27, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780719564505
ISBN-13: 978-0719564505
ASIN: 0719564506
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.8 inches
Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 39 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #443,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1204 in Russian History (Books)
- #3062 in Great Britain History (Books)
- #12501 in Military History (Books)

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Borrowed Blue

Central Asia saturation, with a Balkan detour

April 20, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Peter Hopkirk's books on Central Asia are very good. Begin with The Great Game, go on to On Secret Service East of Constantinople, and follow with Setting the East Ablaze. Hopkirk was apparently inspired by Fitzroy MacLean's Eastern Approaches, to do much research and write his own books set in Central Asia. MacLean, after his diplomatic service in Moscow, with accompanying forays into 'Central Asia,' went to join The Phantom Major (David Stirling) in North Africa, before being sent by Churchill to 'Yugoslavia' to discover which resistance group was the strongest, and the one most likely to help drive the Germans and Italians out of the Balkans -- this group, then, Britain would send supplies to. MacLean and Churchill recognized that they would be choosing to help a Communist resistance group (The Partisans), and that there would be 'problems' related to the choice at the end of the war. [Read Nikolai Tolstoy's books The Minister and the Massacres and The Secret Betrayal: 1944-1947. Also, Nicholas Bethell's The Last Secret.] For fans of John Buchan's novels, Hopkirk says that On Secret Service East of Constantinople is the "true story" which lies behind Buchan's novel Greenmantle. Readers of On Secret Service East of Constantinople may want to read next, The Spy Who Disappeared, by Reginald Teague-Jones...along with Hopkirk's Setting the East Ablaze. These writers give a reader so many "ends of golden strings," that to follow them all, would take many months, and the reading of a good many books! Hopkirk is a good writer, whatever he is writing about.

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E. A. Kinzel

The Great Game between the World Wars

September 5, 2009

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is another of Peter Hopkirk's wonderful books about Central Asia, mostly dealing with players in the Great Game. This volume takes up the story after World War One, when the Bolsheviks decided they would attempt to the keep the provinces of Tsarist Russia intact and part of the Soviet Union, all in the name of anti-imperialism. There were also various Chinese, Turkic, and British forces at work in the power void which resulted in Central Asia after the collapse of the Russian Empire.

Like other Hopkirk books, this is not dry history, but a series of compelling portraits of individual players in the intrigues of the time. These include the "Mad Baron", von Ungern-Sternberg, a White Russian who thought he was the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, and attempted to recreate the latter's Empire in an orgy of murder and destruction. There is also the British super-spy Bailey, who survived for months behind Bolshevik lines as they actively pursued him. At one point he assumed the disguise of an Albanian (correctly assuming that there would likely be no one in Central Asia to check his linguistic bona fides), became a Soviet agent, and was given as one of his tasks gathering information about the British spy Bailey. Another character was Enver Pasha, the cosmopolitan former Ottoman leader, who tried to create a pan-Turkic state in central Asia, to stretch from Anatolia to Chinese Turkestan.

An excellent book.

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R. Moore

Did the Great Game ever end? Not in terms of its consequences for the modern Near East and Central Asia.

July 24, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

With the East truly ablaze these days I am grateful to British historical fiction author Antoine Vanner ("Britannia's Reach," "Britannia's Wolf") for introducing me to the works of Peter Hopkirk. While not written in chronological order, this book could be considered the third of a trilogy of works by Hopkirk that provide a very thorough, historically sound, yet highly readable introduction to the "Great Game" of territorial rivalry between Britain (ever concerned for the future of India, the jewel in the crown of the British empire) and Imperial and later Soviet Russia over influence in central Asia. One cannot hope to understand current events and passions in this region without at least an introduction to this history of Western intervention in the region.

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Daniel

Epic Sequel to The Great Game

February 6, 2020

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

In this follow up to The Great Game we again find Russia, Britain, and others struggling for mastery of Central Asia. I loved every moment of this book. It is a gem. A history of things hidden from most people in the West but which have had a profound influence on current events. Fact is truly more incredible than fiction, especially the adventures of Col. Bailey.

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James D. Crabtree

Communism on the march in Asia

July 4, 2011

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Mr. Hopkirk does it again in this great book about Asia in the wake of the Russian Revolution. Well-written, Setting the East Ablaze reads like an adventure novel, discussing the initial efforts of the Bolsheviks to secure the Muslim territories of the Tsar for themselves and then attempting to spread their communist creed to India, Mongolia, Sinkiang and China itself. The story is a fantastic one of secret agents, revolutionaries, gentlemen-explorers, warlords, madmen and opportunities lost and found. Lenin wanted to use Asia to trigger a communist revolution in Europe but in the end the most significant accomplishment the Reds had to show for their efforts was to turn the central Asian territories of the Russian Empire into Soviet Republics of the USSR. Illustrated with maps and photographs.

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Another great installment

December 14, 2006

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Peter Hopkirk's third installment of the Great game is as masterful as the first two. Lenin's drive to take over the central Asian territories and hold the oil there inspires a true terror of what the great game had evolved into. From continuing intrigued in Afghanistan to the development of Iran as a major actor in the region come directly from this time period. The great game is one of the most interesting events in history and no one tells it better than Hopkirk. You will not believe that this book is true by the time you are done. It is utterly amazing what people will do for their countries when they are called upon to serve. The adventures of the great game should be read by everyone.

3 people found this helpful

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Sir M of K

Lenin's Agenda...

March 12, 2015

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Perfect combination of history but written as adventure. I can't recommend Peter Hopkirk enough for both the casual reader and historian. His Great Game is the finest example written about that particular time. Setting the East ablaze fills in the story just after the Russian revolution. Well worth the time and money.

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