Mission To Tashkent

F. M. Bailey

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9798907971103
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies

''Mission to Tashkent'' is the classic 1946 espionage memoir written by the British spy, explorer, and botanist Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick Marshman Bailey. The book chronicles his harrowing covert operations in Russian Turkestan between 1918 and 1920 during the chaotic aftermath of the Russian Revolution and the final stages of the Great Game. Sent by the British government as an official representative to Tashkent, Bailey's initial objective was to gauge Bolshevik intentions. Specifically, he needed to monitor anti-British resistance movements bleeding into Afghanistan and India, and to assess whether the Bolsheviks would aid the Central Powers in World War I. When his official status collapsed, Bailey went entirely underground to evade the Cheka (the notorious Bolshevik secret police). In a legendary twist of real-world espionage, Bailey adopted a false identity and successfully joined the ranks of the Cheka itself. The Bolsheviks, entirely unaware of his true identity, actually dispatched him to Bokhara with orders to arrest himself...! Writing the book was a feat of survival in its own right. While evading Bolshevik capture in the 1920s, Bailey lost his manuscript four separate times, rewriting it entirely from memory each time. Once finalized, British government restrictions further delayed its publication for decades until it was finally released by Jonathan Cape in 1946.

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER I
• CHAPTER II
• CHAPTER III
• CHAPTER IV
• CHAPTER V
• CHAPTER VI
• CHAPTER VII
• CHAPTER VIII
• CHAPTER IX
• CHAPTER X
• CHAPTER XI
• CHAPTER XII
• CHAPTER XIII
• CHAPTER XIV
• CHAPTER XV
• CHAPTER XVI
• CHAPTER XVII
• CHAPTER XVIII
• CHAPTER XIX
• CHAPTER XX
• CHAPTER XXI
• CHAPTER XXII
• CHAPTER XXIII
• CHAPTER XXIV
• CHAPTER XXV
• APPENDIX I
• APPENDIX II
• INDEX