Mapping the Sublime: Travel Writing and the Geopolitics of the Soviet Pamirs

Introduction

The topic of this paper is the Soviet-German Alay-Pamir expedition which took place in 1928. The Pamir Mountains are situated between Central Asia and South Asia. They are connected to other notable mountain ranges, namely the Tian Shan and the Himalayas. Much of the range lies in the Gorno-Badakhshan region of Tajikistan, but it also extends into bordering countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China. The Alay Valley partially lies in Kyrgyzstan. 

The focus lies here on one of the expedition participants—Nikolaj Krylenko. He was a leading figure in the proletarian alpinism movement from the end of the 1920s to his death during Stalinist purges. The Bolshevik prosecutor Nikolaj Krylenko authored several books describ

ing his participation in the Pamir expeditions from the point of view of an alpinist. Mountaineering enjoyed a special status among the proletarian touristic activities as the “most sublime form” (Koenker 2013, 72). Given Krylenko’s unique status inside of the Soviet political and justice system, the paper explores how the geopolitical view of the region converges with the early Soviet notion of tourism. I argue that, in Krylenko’s treatment of the sublime, he substitutes aesthetic perception with a Soviet touristic ethos. Tourism in the early Soviet Union was conceived as a form of physical and ideological education rather than private leisure and was integrated in various state structures (Maurer 2010, 19; Koenker 2013, 8; Popov 2021).  

My argumentation starts with the notion of geopolitics. This concept was first introduced by Friedrich Ratzel and Rudolf Kjellén at the turn of the twentieth century; it emerged from attempts to conceptualize the relationship between geographical space, people and political organization. While the term geopolitics is often associated with Western, and especially German, strategic thought, it is more difficult to trace Soviet engagement with the concept. (Hauner 1992, 202–4). Recent scholarship has shown that geopolitics was also relevant for the early Soviet intellectual elite. As Masha Kirasirova demonstrates, geopolitical reasoning of Kjellén played an important role in the writing of Konstantin Trojanovskij on the East and anti-colonial revolution (Trojanovksij 1918, 11–17; Kirasirova 2024, 31–32). 

For literary analysis, geopolitics becomes particularly productive when approached through the lens of geopoetics. This term was proposed by Kenneth White in the 1980s: in his poetic and slightly esoteric approach he tried to figure out how literature and arts mediate relationships between physical territory and cultural meaning (Marszałek and Sasse 2010, 7–8). Though geopoetics attempts to poeticize the space, however, it cannot be considered separately from the Said’s notion of “imaginary geography” (Said [1978] 2004), especially in the Soviet case. In his thinking, Said foregrounds the fact that space is never merely described but actively produced through the narrative. Travel writing plays a crucial role in this process, as it translates exploration into textual forms that render territory intelligible. There lies the geopolitical potential of travel writing. In this sense, literature does not simply reflect geopolitical realities but participates in their construction by linking landscape to knowledge production and power structures (Laskin 2021, 6). 

In the early Soviet project, nature was seen as an asset. As Sylvia Sasse has shown, in the interwar period landscape was shaped into a distinctly Soviet space through human industrial intervention, which was intended to bring to light its inner forces and natural resources. In turn, the newly formed Soviet space was meant to help shape the new Soviet man. However, the idea that the adjustment of the natural landscape could reshape people’s character was not new and reminded of the colonization practices of the first Gouverneur of Turkestan, Konstantin von Kaufmann. The notion that environmental transformation could produce social change carries imperial continuities. This aspect is particularly relevant to the exploration of the Pamirs, as the German–Soviet expedition of 1928 took place in the midst of delimitation of the Central Asian republics. The highlands of the Soviet Union including the Pamirs were not only peripheral but also ethnically and religiously diverse, and the explorers played the pivotal role in the shaping of the new Soviet map (Maurer 2010, 21–22).

The German-Soviet Expedition

This international research expedition constituted a unique undertaking for the Weimar Republic: it was the result of a research policy that reorganized science as a component of international cultural diplomacy (Torma 2011, 181). The expedition attracted considerable media attention on both sides and was expected to help Germany overcome, at least symbolically, its international isolation following the defeat in the First World War (Torma 2011, 182). For the Soviet side as well, the expedition fulfilled an important representational function. International scientific cooperation was meant to contribute to a more favorable image of the Soviet Union after the Revolution (Krylenko 1929, 36). The German-Soviet expedition in the Pamirs was the first and last scientific cooperation of this kind. The Soviet Academy of Sciences, however, continued the exploration of the region in the subsequent expeditions (Maurer 2010, 124)

In many respects the German–Soviet Alay-Pamir Expedition of 1928 still built upon pre-revolutionary scientific networks (Krylenko 1929, 19; Gorbunov 1987, 19–20; Torma 2011, 182). The nineteenth century has often been described as the “century of discoveries” (Happel, Hussinger, and Raupach 2024, 7). The German section was headed by Willi Rickmer Rickmers – he visited the Pamirs in 1913 with the German-Austrian expedition. In his expedition diary, he notices the similarities between pre-revolutionary Russia and the newly established Soviet state:  

Anyone who believed they would encounter a completely transformed cityscape was mistaken. A political and economic upheaval is not an earthquake. One must look more closely and assemble the new picture from details that reveal themselves only gradually, step by step.

The October revolution did not sweep away the scientific life in Russia. Rickmers even managed to meet again his friend, the famous orientalist Sergej Oldenburg (Rickmers 1930, 17–18).

The expedition encompassed a wide range of scientific disciplines, including cartography, geology, meteorology, botany, zoology, ethnology, and linguistics. It also included a mountaineering group from the Alpine Club as well as a film crew from the Soviet production company Mežrabpom, led by director Vladimir Šnajderov. In total, around forty German, Austrian, and Soviet participants were organized into ten scientific divisions. Overall coordination was entrusted to Nikolai P. Gorbunov. One of the results of the expedition was the ascent of Lenin Peak, reputedly the highest summit in the Soviet Union, which was achieved only by the German members of the expedition, as the Soviet participant had already departed. The German success was later ignored in the Soviet sources (Maurer 2010, 122). 

Despite the central role played by Rickmers and the scientific leadership of Gorbunov, this paper focuses on Nikolaj Krylenko. The reason lies less in his institutional position within the expedition than in the specific perspective offered by his travelogue. As a leading Bolshevik prosecutor, Krylenko brings a distinctly normative understanding of space of the Pamirs. His text shifts the emphasis from scientific exploration to a narrative codification of territory in which geopolitical categories intersect with the aspects of sports and leisure activities. It is precisely this constellation that makes Through the Unexplored Pamirs interesting.

Nikolaj Krylenko’s engagement with the Pamirs cannot be separated from his biography. Krylenko was a committed Bolshevik revolutionary before October 1917, later serving as Supreme Commander of the Red Army and subsequently as People’s Commissar for Justice. Alongside his political responsibilities, he cultivated a range of leisure activities, including chess, hunting, and mountaineering. These practices contributed to a self-image of physical and intellectual self-discipline, raising the question of whether leisure in the case of Soviet officials could itself become a state-relevant practice (Simonjan 1985).

Krylenko began mountaineering during his political exile in Switzerland (1914–1915) and climbed Mount Elbrus in 1927 (Krylenko 1960, 5). Comparisons with the Caucasus and the Alps recur in his Pamir writings, reflecting a long-standing fascination with mountainous landscapes. Due to his alpinist experience and public outreach, he was invited to take part in the German-Soviet Pamir Expedition of 1928 to promote mountaineering (Krylenko 1960, 100). The fascination with the Pamirs shaped a series of later expeditions and publications. Nevertheless, this paper focuses exclusively on Through the Unexplored Pamirs (1929), which emerged directly from the first Pamir expedition. 

In the book’s brief preface, Krylenko emphasizes that the text is based on expeditionary notes compiled according to official guidelines and largely published earlier in the major Soviet newspaper Izvestiia. Krylenko explicitly downplays claims to scientific completeness, presenting the text instead as a collection of lived impressions, with alpinist and touristic experiences foregrounded (Krylenko 1929, 5–6). Yet despite this modest framing, the narrative exhibits a clear literary ambition. Prior to the Through the Unexplored Pamirs, Krylenko published his lectures on the topic of the law and governance  (Krylenko 1924). In such a way, creative writing can be seen as an additional hobby of the Soviet functionary that showcases the discipline of mind and body.

The Pamirs disenchanted

In Through the Unexplored Pamirs (1929), Nikolaj Krylenko represents the Pamirs not merely as a geographical region but as a strategic node within Soviet geopolitical and epistemic expansion:

And yet, by virtue of its geographical position, the Alay Valley is destined to play a major role for us in our relations with the East. In addition to the main Pamir route, which passes through the valley and connects us with Afghanistan and India, a major caravan route to China, to Kashgaria, also runs through it. 

Referring to the Alay Valley, he explicitly frames the region as a corridor linking the Soviet Union to Afghanistan, India, and China, emphasizing caravan routes, mountain roads, and overall transregional connectivity with the East. Space is thus articulated through its infrastructural and strategic potential. Unlike travel writing centered on subjective experience, expeditionary texts are oriented toward knowledge production and institutional authority. The traveler appears not as single observer but as a representative of the state and its epistemic apparatus. The Pamirs in Through the Unexplored Pamirs are primarily represented as a space for scientific and touristic exploration.  

However, it is important to stress that the perception of the Pamirs not always was limited to the rationalistic way of thinking. In his prerevolutionary visionary works, Nikolaj Fёdorov (1828–1903) ascribes to the Pamirs a unique spiritual status both as the land of the dead (Fёdorov 1982, 250) and threshold to India (Fёdorov 1982, 339). Fedorov perceived the Pamirs as the sacred graveyard where the Aryan ancestors are buried. This notion does correspond with the nineteenth-century perception of the Pamiri population who often have been associated with Tajiks as “the stubborn remnant of the ancient Aryan tribe”. (Snesarev 2014, 94). In the same fashion, Rickmers does not see difference between the Pamiris and Tajiks.

In Fёdorov’s writings, two distinct narratives about the Pamirs as the cradle of civilization on the one hand and the Pamirs as a site of Great Game between Russia and Britain on the other converge. Thus, it should be the mission of Russia and England to send an expedition to excavate the remains and to showcase them to the world in a fashion of anthropological exhibition:

With Russia and England lies the duty to equip an expedition to the heights of the Pamir with the aim of searching for the remains of our ancestors; and if only this expedition proves successful, then the riches extracted by it from the graves [...] will be a more than sufficient reward for this arduous pilgrimage feat [...].

This passage describes two ways of engagement with space—the scientific expedition and religious pilgrimage. Thus, it symbolises the unity of these two methods of producing knowledge. Through the engagement with the spatial and temporal order, there should be a possibility of pacification and unification between Russia and Britain (Fёdorov 1982, 339–41). 

The “riches” that the Soviet expeditions were after were much more down to earth: the exploration of the natural resources (Maurer 2010, 124). Even though Krylenko mentions the “unexplored tribe of people” (Krylenko 1929, 22), he is apparently not interested in anything that lies beyond his research objectives. His narrative foregrounds maps, routes, “white spots,” and personal hardship. Eva Maurer describes this modus of space representation as disenchantment (Entzauberung) (Maurer 2010, 133,142). Maps function here not merely as illustrations but as blueprints for a structured narration itself (Thacker 2002, 11; Maurer 2010, 134). Unlike other participants, such as Rossel’s ([1930] 2013), Krylenko even largely omits anecdotal episodes and adopts a markedly official tone.

Geopolitical reasoning operates on multiple levels in Krylenko’s text. First, it structures communication within the international expedition itself, particularly in relation to the German participants. Even though the relationship in the international group appears as professional and friendly competition at first, there is also some room for trust issues and for the feeling of the inferiority on the pages of Krylenko’s travelogue (Krylenko 1929, 114, 136, 208, 212). Second, it shapes the representation of local populations in the recently delimitated Soviet republics. Red Army escorts are mentioned by name, even though they appear not as expedition members. Tajik participants and porters, by contrast, remain unnamed, reinforcing an order embedded in the expeditionary hierarchy. Against the backdrop of the recent All-Union census of 1926, which sought to link the territories of the newly delimited Soviet republics with their populations, this instrumental perception of local populations might seem anachronistic.

The Sublime and Alpinist Experience

At first sight, the aesthetic category of the sublime carries a subjective, emotional charge that is not necessarily transferable into scientific discourse. However, Alexander von Humboldt in the nineteenth century does refer to the experience of the sublime, suggesting that scientific inquiry does not exclude an appreciation of natural phenomena (Bunkśe 1981, 138). Thus, he contributed to establishing a tradition of the sublime in scientific discourse in the nineteenth century, which can also be traced in the writings of the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin (Bergwik 2020, 667). 

Given the connection between the categories of the natural and the sublime in Western scientific prose, it is important to emphasize the ideological undertones of the sublime in Stalinist culture. As Katerina Clark (2011, 276–306) had noticed, the aesthetic category of the sublime dominates the narratives of space in the late 1930s. Heights were in general associated with vertical hierarchy of power; the highest point of view from a plane suited better to perceive the vastness of the Soviet territory. In many aspects the Alay-Pamir expedition anticipated many later developments of Stalinist culture. The participants of the expedition did engage in the Stalinist conquering of the space. Not only the protagonist of this paper, Nikolaj Krylenko, became a regular in the Pamirs, but also another participant of the expedition, Otto Schmidt, contributed to the exploration of Arctic in the 1930s. 

The awestriking alpine landscapes and the arduous ascent to mountains suited perfectly to the duality innate to the sublime: “[I]ts simultaneity of two extreme reactions in the beholder—joy/terror—is paralleled by the absolute contrast of the two key poles of the narrative; the extra-ordinary extension of sublime phenomena in the physical world and its locus in the inner, ‘intimate’ sphere.” (Clark 2011, 282). This notion of space can be traced in Through the Unexplored Pamirs. The experience of the sublime is closely bound to Krylenko’s position as an alpinist and note-taker in extreme landscapes. Krylenko repeatedly stages himself as writing within this environment – sitting on a rock, taking notes amid glaciers and silence: 

Climbing onto a high rock, at the foot of which our tent is pitched, with pencil and notebook in hand, I write these lines while gazing into the endless icy expanse stretching beneath my feet—at its ice mountains and snowy clearings that merge into the glacier down below, far off at the site of our previous night’s camp, in the dirty-grey moraine.

In this passage, both perspectives converge: the inward-orientated reflection and outward bird’s view on the vast icy landscapes. The sublime, thus, becomes an experience that must be stabilized through writing. This attitude reminds of Kant’s notion of the sublime as mode of thinking rather than quality of the landscape itself: „Denkungsart“ (Kant 2001, 108). Krylenko’s self-fashioning as a writing subject recalls the popularity of the genre of autobiography among Bolsheviks and their pursuit of forging a new Soviet subjectivity (Halfin 2023, 19).

However, Krylenko often downplays the uniqueness of the Pamir landscape. He repeatedly notes that, from a touristic perspective, the scenery resembles familiar Caucasian landscapes and offers “nothing fundamentally new” (Krylenko 1929, 54–55). This phrasing might render the landscapes anti-sublime und mundane. What matters for Krylenko, then, is not the singularity of the landscape, but the conditions under which it is encountered: altitude, exhaustion, and the persistence in extreme conditions. The Pamirs are repeatedly described as hostile, inhospitable, and largely unknown, yet this hostility does not produce terror or existential dread. Instead, it invites conquest, measurement, and transformation into a space of disciplined tourism. The sublime in Krylenko’s text becomes practical in merging sportive ethos and didactic notions. The account of Krylenko can be read as a story of self-improvement.

The rhetoric of the unknown heightens the pathos of discovery, while simultaneously framing it as an achievable, even necessary, mission. This notion of space echoes the imperial sublime, as elaborated by Clark. This logic is already evident in his description of the expedition’s specific tasks: the search for unnamed passes and the ascent of peaks exceeding 6,000 meters, located in areas that “on the maps of the Pamirs usually gape as empty white spots” (Krylenko 1929, 39). As the research has shown, the peripheries were crucial for the formation of the Soviet empere self. In the 1930s the frozen vast land became a paradigmatic for Stalinist culture. The emptiness of these spaces provided a potential. (Clark 2011, 291). Exploration here is inseparable from cartography: the expedition’s success is confirmed when the previously blank space is transformed into a mapped route, visually documented and narratively secured. This obsession with mapping can be read as a precursor to the later sacralization of the maps under Stalin (Dobrenko 2003, 190).

Concluding remarks: From Discovery to Sport

Taken together, Krylenko’s Pamir narrative is structured by a persistent duality: The region is repeatedly described as “unknown,” yet this unknown is always relative—unknown primarily to the European observer. What appears uninhabited or unexplored often proves to be so only on the map. These inaccuracies are gradually corrected in the course of the expedition. The Pamirs thus emerge as a space that is requiring constant epistemic adjustment.

A similar tension shapes Krylenko’s treatment of the sublime. While the mountains are initially framed as overwhelming and hostile, they soon lose their exceptional status. The Pamirs resemble other mountain landscapes; icy terrain becomes habitual; peaks are increasingly perceived not as awe-inspiring natural phenomena but as athletic objectives. The pathos of discovery is gradually transformed into a sporting ethos.

This shift becomes especially clear in Krylenko’s gesture toward future tourists. When the expedition team leaves the campsite, they build a three-metre-high stone pyramid and deposit a note in a glass jar with details of routes and directions – explicitly addressing to “future tourists.” Although this act offers no guarantee of communication, it reveals an impulse to stabilize space for subsequent use. Tourism here is not conceived as leisure but a “school of courage” in which endurance and navigation are cultivated under extreme conditions (Popov 2021).

In this way, Krylenko’s text converts the sublime from an aesthetic encounter into a practical, ideological, and sportive experience. The poetic discovery of the Pamirs turns out to be an ideological issue. The writing by Krylenko maps out the potentially dangerous landscape of the Pamirs, preparing the routs for future visitors.

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