I am a distant relative of Jan Witkiewicz, one of the subjects of “The Great Game” by Christopher Grabowski and Stephen Osborne (Geist 64), about the modern history of Afghanistan. I have some information on Jan, and I would like to find more as I continue genealogical research on my family. I would appreciate knowing what sources you used.
—John Witkiewicz, Somers CT
We took most of the information about Jan Witkiewicz from the book Batyr by Wladyslaw Jewsiewicki (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1983). As far as I know it hasn’t been translated into English or any other language. Batyr contains an excellent bibliography, though most of the sources are held in Russian archives. You can also find quite a lot of information on Jan on the Internet, most of it in relation to the British agent Alexander Burnes. When you try the strangest possible spellings—Vitkevitz, Vitckiewich, Witzkiewitsh and so on—in conjunction with “Afghanistan,” even more pops up. Two other books on Jan are Diplomaticzeskij Agient (in Russian), by J. Siemionow, published in Moscow in 1959, and Duel w Kabule, by M. Gus, published in Tashkent in 1964. The only English text I know about is Ivan Viktorovich Vitkevich, 1806—39: A Tsarist agent in Central Asia, by Melvin M. Kessler (Central Asian collectanea). I hope this helps.
