Personal memories of Alexei Nikolevich Kuropatkin. Autograph manuscript signed.
180 x 230 mm. 50 ff.
€ 18,500.00
50 pages written by Sven Hedin in Swedish; last sheet signed and dated.
Kuropatkin was a general of the Russian army and minister of war. During his tenure, tensions with Japan increased, leading to the Russo-Japanese War in 1904/05. Hedin first met Kuropatkin in Ashgabat in 1880, and "I met him several times later, at Samarkand, Tashkent, and St. Petersburg; and I remember his name with gratitude, for he was one of the men who made travelling easier for me" (My Life As An Explorer, trans. by Alfhild Hübsch. New Delhi and Madras, Asian Educational Services, p. 87).
Hedin's reminiscences of Kuropatkin were first published, in a very similar version, in the newspaper "Stockholms Dagblad" on 17 September 1904; a German translation appeared on the same day in the journal "Die Woche" (38, pp. 1663-1667). Abridged versions appeared in more than 100 daily papers, e.g. in "Lunds Tagblad" (20 September: "Sven Hedin om Kuropatkin och kriget"). The "Times" (1 November 1904) ran a version omitting the comparison between Lord Roberts and Kuropatkin, inserting instead a new paragraph about Lord Curzon. The present Swedish version could not be traced in print.
