Although prepared by his parents for military career, Kozlov chose to join Przhevalsky's expedition. In him, Przhevalsky found "the young man who had been eluding him all his life: alert, submissive, loyal, and handsome".^[1] After his mentor's death, Kozlov 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 first decade of the 20th century, when the Great Game reached its peak, Kozlov rivalled Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein as the foremost researcher of Xinjiang. Although he was on good terms with Hedin and other foreign explorers, the British government, as represented by George Macartney, monitored his movements across Central Asia closely. Kozlov's 1907 visit to the Dalai Lama in Lhasa gave "the British War Office a fright",^[2] especially after the Lama declared his intention to "settle within the confines of Russia".^[3]

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

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