'Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov' () (born
October 3,
1863 near
Smolensk; died
September 26,
1935 in
Peterhof) was a
Russian explorer who continued the studies of
Nikolai Przhevalsky in
Mongolia and
Tibet. His 1907 visit to the
Dalai Lama in
Lhasa gave "the
British War Office a fright",
[1] especially after the Lama declared his intention to "settle within the confines of Russia".
[2]
Although prepared by his parents for military career, Kozlov chose to join Przhevalsky's expedition and continued travelling in
Asia with his successors,
Pevtsov and
Roborovsky. In
1895, he took general command of the expedition from ailing Roborovsky. From
1899 to
1901 he explored and later described in a book the upper reaches of
Huang He,
Yangtze, and
Mekong rivers.
During the expedition of
1907–
1909, Kozlov explored the
Gobi Desert and discovered remains of
Khara-Khoto, a
Tangut city ruined by the
Ming Chinese in
1372. It took him several years to excavate the site and bring to
St. Petersburg no less than 2,000 books in
Tangut language he uncovered there. Kozlov described his findings in a bulky volume entitled ''Mongolia and Amdo and the Dead City of
Khara-Khoto'' (
1923).
His last expedition to Mongolia and Tibet (1923-1926) resulted in discovery of an unprecedented number of
Xiongnu royal burials at
Noin-Ula. After bringing to St. Petersburg some amazing samples of 2000-year-old
Bactrian textiles, Kozlov retired from scientific work and settled in a village near
Novgorod.
References
;General
★
Kozlov's biography
;Inline
1. Palace, Wendy. ''The British Empire and Tibet, 1900-1922''. Routledge, 2005. ISBN 0415346827. Page 71.
2. Andreyev, Alexandre. ''Soviet Russia and Tibet: The Debacle of Secret Diplomacy, 1918-1930s''. Brill Publishers, 2003. ISBN 9004129529. Page 29.