Trip from Naryn to Lake Kel-Suu.

"The city of Naryn before the war and revolution was famous for its trade in wild animals, which was started here by a man named Nezhivov, known as the Russian Hagenbeck. He exported whole caravans of animals from here to Germany every year. His business became big, and he was a rich man. He built himself a beautiful house, surrounded by all sorts of cages for animals."

P.S. Nazarova, an emigrant.

Animal world in mountains of Naryn region.

The name of the writer-naturalist and wild animal trapper Gerald Durrell is widely known today; a hundred years ago, the name of the trapper and trader in exotic animals Karl Hagenbeck was popular. But few people now know that Kyrgyzstan had its own "Hagenbeck", "Siberian Tiger", nicknamed so by journalists from almost the entire world, a simple Russian man by the last name of Nezhivov.
This extraordinary man is worth remembering, especially since he is ours - from Semirechensk. In the very heart of the Tien-Shan Mountains there is a small cozy town called Naryn. Even by the standards of Kyrgyzstan, this is a remote backwater.
The Kyrgyz, wanting to make fun of a provincial man, say:
- "You are probably from Naryn"?
All the same, as in Russia, laughing, they mention some Uryupinsk or Vasyuki. This is in our time, but what was it like 100 years ago! Then it was a small village that arose next to the Russian fortress, erected to guard the borders from Kashgar, who had his eye on Kyrgyzstan.
There was a Russian garrison of soldiers brought from distant Russia. It was unusual, and sometimes even scary for the Russian people, accustomed to the plains, among the wild and menacing stone mountains. But among them there was a peasant from near Perm, a certain Osip (Joseph?) Nezhivov, who was simply struck by the Kyrgyz mountains.
He was fond of nature even at home, he loved to wander with a gun, and most of all he was attached to animals, birds and other living creatures, right down to bugs. And here in terms of this it was simply paradise on earth: exotic animals and birds were swarming, bright butterflies fluttered among the lush grass.
When his term of service ended, the Perm man did not think twice and stayed there. He built himself a hut from adobe, like all the locals, and began to think about how to survive. At first, he earned his living by hunting. A hunter has a field day, but our nature lover, although he was no slouch in this regard, soon wanted not only to kill, but also to keep animals alive at home, so that all sorts of goats and leopards would live nearby, where they could always be observed and enjoyed.
In short, he began to create a home menagerie, first from the simplest and most accessible animals: partridges, lizards, turtles. But first he started with insects, and here we must reveal a secret. Once, in his childhood, an important and learned Count S.A. Stroganov, who was collecting insects, passed through Osip's village.
He noticed a nimble boy who literally followed him around, asked his father for permission and took him with him for a whole month. It was there that 15-year-old Osip learned the art of dissection, stuffing and collecting beetles, butterflies and other bugs, as they used to say then, works of nature.
It was fashionable then to collect fauna and flora. Scientists were conducting a census of the animal world (it continues to this day). They were helped by officials and officers, who in their spare time strolled around the outskirts of their garrisons.
There were also those who earned extra money by doing this. This is exactly what Nezhivov did now, supplying scientific institutions, for example, the zoological museum of the Academy of Sciences, with exotic butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers. At night, he sat by the fire or with a lantern, passionately chasing moths that flocked to the light.
Among the insects, there were completely unknown, outlandish, unknown to science, and therefore willingly bought by scientists. Traveling for months through the mountains and valleys, Nezhivov soon became an expert on the region. He learned the customs of the locals, knew their language, how to cross raging mountain rivers, how and where to take shelter from bad weather, learned the habits of animals.
More than once, Osip got caught in avalanches, hid in caves during snowstorms, escaped from rockfalls, suffered from heat and cold. He had plenty of character, life taught him to fight and not give up, no matter how hard it was. In addition, our hero had a business acumen, the streak of a real entrepreneur, forcing him to think about how to expand his business, which was becoming more and more exciting and, as he would like to think, promising.
Naturalists and natural scientists visited Naryn from time to time, and Nezhivov sold the material he had collected to them. This brought in a few kopecks. He soon realized that museums were interested in both skeletons and skins of animals and birds. Horns and skulls came into play.
The next stage in the life and work of the Naryn trapper was connected with the arrival of the keeper of the zoological museum in St. Petersburg, entomologist A.I. Gerts. He advised Nezhivov to take zoological material to the center, and not only in the form of dried collections, skins and bones, but also live birds and animals.
And the trapper had accumulated quite a few of them. In the yard there were cages not only with foxes and common wolves, but also with the rarest red wolf, porcupine and Siberian ibex. Little by little, Nezhivov accumulated a small capital, but the trapper was not very happy with it, since there was nowhere else to trade in Russia.
Another would have been despondent, but not Osip Yemelyanovich Nezhivov - a man from the common people accustomed to all sorts of adversity! Again, knowledgeable people came to the rescue. The director of the St. Petersburg zoo advised taking the animals abroad.
People there are more lively, they are much more interested in everything than Russians, and Asian curiosities will be in great demand. And indeed, that is how it all turned out: in Berlin, the director of the zoo greeted Nezhivov with joy, buying all the animals and birds he brought and paying a good price.
From that time on, the business of the businessman (as they would call him today) inspired by success was put on stream. Every year, 1 - 2 caravans with 100 - 200 animals were equipped. The cages were placed on specially built huge carts, tied tightly, and off they went!
Almost a thousand miles along a terrible, bumpy road, more like a pack trail. At the railway station, Nezhivov released the caravan drivers and with 1 - 3 assistants traveled by freight train across all of Russia (two continents - Asia and Europe!) most often to Germany.
There they were waiting for him. Each arrival of a Russian trapper (trampador, hunter) was an event and aroused great interest among zoologists and zookeepers in Europe. They came here in the hope of getting their hands on another curiosity.
Each caravan brought 15 - 20 thousand rubles, which Nezhivov spent on wages for workers and expanding the farm. The prices were as follows: Turanian tiger (now extinct) from 1,500 to 2,500 rubles, snow leopard 300-500 rubles,
Tien-Shan bears, wild horses, lynxes, kulans, red wolves - 200 rubles, goitered gazelles, otters, ibex - 100 rubles, vultures, bearded vultures - 50 rubles. Butterflies, beetles (dried) from 1 kopeck to 3 rubles.
For comparison, let's say that a cow cost an average of 10 rubles, and a horse 20. Nezhivov never lost anything and everything was put to use: bones, skins, bird eggs. Gradually, the Naryn trapper (now he could be called a fur farmer) became rich and expanded his business to an entire fur farm.
Nezhivov became a prominent figure in the region. The scale of this man outgrew the boundaries of Semirechye, he became a landmark of the whole of Turkestan (Central Asia). In 1912, for the 25th anniversary of his activity, Nezhivov formed a whole colony in Naryn.
There were 12 household members - relatives and family, several houses and a whole village with a staff of employees and workers (mostly hunters) of up to 40 people. In the yard and garden there were enclosures and cages with predatory animals, herbivores roamed in the pens: argali, teki (mountain goats), Siberian roe deer, yaks, deer.
The owner was especially proud and loved predators; he had a full set of them: from ermines, martens and lynxes to bears, snow leopards and tigers. Osip Yemelyanovich had long since found Semirechye too small, although at that time it covered the entire southeast of Kazakhstan and half of Kyrgyzstan.
Przhevalsky's horse, a wild camel? The traveler N.M. Przhevalsky described these animals, previously unseen by any Europeans, from the mysterious and inaccessible Mongolia. The Grum-Grzhimailo brothers managed to get these animals in 1889 and brought their skins from the mysterious Lake Lobnor to Europe.
Nezhivov's scope and scale are no less! He sends expeditions abroad, to Eastern Turkestan, to the game-rich mountains of the Eastern Tien-Shan in Western China, to Tibet. They bring him unusually light, yellowish-furred Tien Shan bears with white claws, semi-mythical red wolves, similar to either foxes or jackals, about which it was said that rarely did any of the people caught in the mountains by a pack of these predators manage to escape, lynxes - forest predators, contrary to the assertions of zoologists and common logic, caught in the treeless (even without bushes!) Eastern Pamir. In the enclosures and pens, the inhabitants of the sky-high peaks, snow leopards, yaks with fur down to the ground and horse tails, sat in cages, eagle owls and golden eagles. Their owner could not spend a day without his animal company. Every day, walking around his farm, he stopped at the cages and "talked" for a long time with his favorites.
Having gained experience, Nezhivov hired hunters and servants only from local Kirghiz, explaining this by the fact that they knew the area and the habits of the animals better, were unpretentious and undemanding. Another important circumstance for hunting was that they did not smoke or drink wine, which meant they could not scare away animals that could not stand any smells.
Divided into teams, the hunters specialized in certain animals: some caught small game, others organized drives for herbivores, and others hunted predators. The king of all hunts was considered to be tiger hunts, in which the owner himself was an indispensable participant. They prepared for them very carefully, because the animal was rare and expensive, and hunting it was associated with a risk to life.
Having discovered a predator, they would let Nezhivov know, he would drop everything he was doing, organize an expedition, develop a hunting plan down to the last detail and return only after completing the task. The powerful and dangerous beast was hunted in two ways: by driving the hunters or by ambush from a yurt or a specially built blind.
The latter method was born in Central Asia and is even described in hunting textbooks. Its peculiarity was the construction of a strong frame inside the yurt or cage, covered with felt or skins. Hunters climbed inside, whose role was to serve as bait or a kind of irritant.
The ambush was set up on the tiger's path, waiting for the beast, and if it left, then it was moved, pursuing the predator. Thus, the tiger was irritated until, enraged, it rushed at the hunters, who finished it off right there. Such a hunt was effective only if the tiger was a female with cubs.
Then the cubs were taken and raised to a semi-adult state for sale. Snow leopards (irbis) were caught alive in pit traps. A leather bag with bait, usually a killed wild goat, was hung in a pit camouflaged with brushwood. The animal, attracted by the smell of meat, fell into the bag.
The bag tightened from the weight and all that was left was to load it and transport it to the destination. Wolves, lynxes and some other predators were also caught. Herbivores were caught in droves, with the main reliance being on the cubs. They were better tamed and survived in captivity.
Large birds of prey - vultures, griffons, eagles - were caught near the bait with nets. Nezhivov's special merit and achievement was that almost all wild animals and birds, even such rare ones as the snow leopard, reproduced in his captivity. Of course, there was harm, because the activities of the tireless trapper extended to collecting bird eggs and catching such rarities as the snow leopard and tigers.
But at that time no one was talking about the need to preserve the animal world, everyone thought that their resources were inexhaustible, and as for predators, be it beast or bird, it was considered a blessing to completely destroy them. It was also bad that most of Nezhivov's material went abroad (some remained and has been preserved to this day, for example, butterflies at Tomsk University).
The reader has already understood that in all this troublesome and difficult work, Nezhivov was not only driven by self-interest. His indifference to animals is also evidenced by the fact that he organized his own zoo and nature museum, where stuffed animals, skeletons, collections of insects, bird eggs and various curiosities collected over the years of wandering in the mountains were exhibited.
Access to all these riches was always open to anyone who wanted to, and the owner himself completely selflessly led excursions, trying to convey to visitors his love for animals. He had feelings for his pets similar to those of a father. Now that he had secured a comfortable life for himself, he could afford to give museums some of his exhibits for free, free of charge, and only one thing tormented him: his lack of education.
More than once Nezhivov regretted that he did not understand the intricacies of zoology, that he could not share what he knew, what he had seen and experienced in his life, rich in encounters with wild animals. Scientists more than once shamelessly took advantage of this, often appropriating the priority of Nezhivov's discoveries.
Foreign entomologists were especially successful in this. Looking down on the uneducated Russian peasant, they gave names to new species, forgetting about the man who discovered them. Unfortunately, very little information about this interesting man has survived.
He himself did not keep any records or diaries, at least the author of this essay is not aware of them. Perhaps there are publications abroad that could shed additional light on his activities. Surely somewhere in the archives there are documents about Nezhivov’s fur farm.
So this topic is far from exhausted and awaits its researchers. The author of this essay was tormented for a long time by the question: what happened to Nezhivov and his farm after the revolution. Finally, I came across material on the Internet that literally shocked me.
Here are excerpts from the memoirs of a certain P.S. Nazarov, an emigrant who fled from Turkestan to China after the Civil War, and then to Europe.
“Before the war and the revolution, town of Naryn was famous for its trade in wild animals, which was started here by a man named Nezhivov, known as the Russian Hagenbeck. He exported from here to Germany whole caravans of animals every year.
His business became big, and he was a rich man. He built himself a beautiful house, surrounded by all sorts of cages for animals. When I saw this place for the last time, all the cages were empty except for one, in which sat a beautiful snow leopard.
Nezhivov thought about trying to renew his business in defiance of the Bolsheviks, but this was not destined to come true. Before the end of the same year, five months later, his entire family, including the 12-year-old boy who showed me the leopard, and even the animal itself, were shot by the Bolsheviks, who sent a punitive expedition to wipe out this nest of "bourgeois".
Of the entire European population of Naryn, only two escaped this fate - very old people."
It is difficult to doubt the story of an eyewitness, and yet one would like to hope that, blinded by resentment and hatred, he exaggerated the horrors of the post-revolutionary era. But the fact remains: Nezhivov's farm ceased to exist, and it is only possible that the zoological base in Frunze, organized in Soviet times, became an echo of the business that was led by an inquisitive naturalist and talented entrepreneur.

Authority:
"Essays on the history of Semirechye.
Alexander Lukhtanov.

Photos by:
Alexander Petrov.