Michael Walsh

The Exiled Duke Romanov Who Turned Desert Into Paradise Michael Walsh

Despite his ingenuity, organising skills and industry, mankind leaves it to a deity to turn the wilderness into the Promised Land. Unwilling to wait for a promise to be fulfilled, Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich Romanov, upon his being exiled to Uzbekistan, got down to the job. The outcome was that the Romanov aristocrat, cheated of what he presumed his right to be the Tsar of Imperial Russia, created a prosperous, well-irrigated and contented nirvana from the double landlocked Asian outback. Born in 1850, the exiled aristocrat and his banished family was one of the most talented of the Romanovs. A great irrigator, using his personal allowance, created a canal system that is still in use today. Villages were founded and populated mainly by Russians, public buildings and palaces blossomed, which again are still in use. Secreted away inside the palace was a recently discovered collection of treasures and artworks the wealth of which defy valuation. The Grand Duke left his imprint on a wilderness that only a deity can remove.