Gustav Krist

Gustav Krist (29 July 1894 – 1937) was an Austrian adventurer, prisoner-of-war, carpet-dealer and author. His accounts of unmonitored journeys, in a politically closed and tightly-controlled Russian, and then Soviet Central Asia, offer valuable historical testimonies of the still essentially Muslim region before Sovietization, and the conditions there of the Central Powers prisoners-of-war during and after the First World War.

Background

The Viennese-born and educated Krist worked as a technician in Germany before being mobilised as a twenty-year-old private in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the outbreak of World War I. Early in the war (November 1914) he was severely wounded and captured by the Russians at the San river defensive line on the Eastern front. This led to nearly five years' internment in Russian Turkistan with other German and Austrian prisoners-of-war.

Internment

After a period of hospitalisation in Russia proper he had a sharp taste of the misery and hardship to come. He describes how he was one of only four survivors of a trainload of some three hundred prisoners-of-war who were sent from Koslov to Saratov in December, 1915, after the train-load was singled out for barbaric punishment. He was only saved at this time by the intervention of Elsa Brändström of the Swedish Red Cross.