num_pages: 272
description: Amid the sand and rock of Central Asia, Russia and England spent much of the 19th century playing what historians have come to call the Great Game: the struggle for control over transcontinental routes from Europe to the Far East. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, Lenin continued to press Russian--now Soviet--claims to faraway, fabled places such as Samarkand and Hotan. The intrigues of his agents and their British counterparts, swashbucklers all, could come from a modern spy novel, and they make for fascinating reading in Peter Hopkirk's vivid account.
language: English
title: Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia
titlecomplete: Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia (Oxford Paperbacks)
genres: 20th Century, China, History, Espionage, Historical, War, Asia, Russia, Nonfiction, Russian History
ratings_count: 890
places: India, British Empire, Soviet Union
publisher: Oxford Paperbacks