Accused by Moscow of being a British master-spy, Colonel F.M. Bailey recounts the 16-month game of cat-and-mouse he played with the Bolshevik secret police. At one point, with a false identity, he joined the ranks of the latter, who unsuspectingly sent him to Bokhara to arrest himself.

Accused by Moscow of being a British master-spy, Colonel F.M. Bailey recounts the 16-month game of cat-and-mouse he played with the Bolshevik secret police. At one point, with a false identity, he joined the ranks of the latter, who unsuspectingly sent him to Bokhara to arrest himself.

This intensively researched urban study dissects Russian Imperial and early Soviet rule in Islamic Central Asia from the diverse viewpoints of tsarist functionaries, Soviet bureaucrats, Russian workers, and lower-class women as well as Muslim notables and Central Asian traders. Jeff Sahadeo's stimulating analysis reveals how political, social, cultural, and demographic shifts altered the nature of this colonial community from the tsarist conquest of 1865 to 1923, when Bolshevik authorities subjected the region to strict Soviet rule. In addition to placing the building of empire in Tashkent within a broader European context, Sahadeo's account makes an important contribution to understanding the cultural impact of empire on Russia's periphery.

Recounts the extraordinary and thrilling story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia, led by Mansfield Cumming, who would one day pioneer the field of covert action and become MI6, and their mission to foil Lenin's plot for global revolution. 40,000 first printing.