Eastward to Tartary by Robert D. Kaplan: book review

Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus (2000) is a documentary-style travelogue in three parts. The first section is The Balkans, Part II is Turkey and Greater Syria, and Part III is The Caucasus and Tartary.

Kaplan commences his travels in 1998 from Budapest, Hungary, with his first stop in Debrecen, until he reaches his most eastern destination, Merv, in Turkmenistan in 1999. In between, he visits Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After his last stop, Kaplan returns to America and ‘shortly thereafter’ in October 1999 he flies to Armenia (which he covers in the Epilogue).

He writes of each countries’ history from ancient feuds to contemporary politics, their wealth and poverty, their religion, their lifestyle from food to alchohol, and their ideologies. He writes of ‘old-new’ nations and of irredentism – the political movement to reclaim and reoccupy a lost homeland – and of blood loyalties. He focuses on everything from the military, economy, culture, agriculture, architecture, geography (from flatlands to mountains), lifestyle, and politics, to passions.

I was mostly interested in the chapters on Ajara and Georgia, and also of neighboring Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan – the Caucasus Region. Of Georgia, Kaplan writes, ‘Few places, with the possible exception of Romania, were to move me as deeply as Georgia. But like Romania, Georgia was an acquired taste.’

The Epilogue on Armenia is also interesting: from the capital Yerevan – also mentioning Ararat (in Turkey) – to Stepanakert in the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The name of the book is not quite accurate. First, Kaplan travels west, and only eastward when he is in the Caucasus. Second, Tartary incorporates the areas of the Volga-Urals, Caucasus, Siberia, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, and Manchuria – but in this book’s context it is only Turkmenistan.

On a personal level, Kaplan concludes that everywhere ‘the human spirit seemed to me indomitable.’ While he comments on people he meets, it is less about the citizens and more about the history and politics. He answers questions, but also poses his own questions – usually global political questions about the regions.

Kaplan travelled with his notebook and sought out high-level government officials to interview, as well as a few general citizens. Hence instead of an informal travelogue, the documentary-style writing is dense, political, and speculative (about what might happen in these regions in the future). However, considering he travelled in 1998-1999, it is interesting to read his ‘journalistic’ view.