Panorama Photo

'Portrait of a mountain' could be a title of your panorama, inspired by Henry James' famous novel. To me it's a pity that the highest summit of the northern Pamir mountains hasn't got a decent name. Do you know what it was called before the Soviets gave it the name of Pik Stalin? KR Wilfried

It seems that until 1933 the name of the mountain was Pik Garmo.
In 1933 there was the first climb of the mountain by Gorbunov and Evgenij Abalakov, junior brother of the more famous Vitalij, after whom the Abalakov belay is named.
After that climb, the mountain took the name Pik Stalin, which it held until 1962, when it was renamed Pik Kommunizma. Only in 1998 it was named after Ismail Somoni, founder of the original Tajik state. The Somoni monument (picasaweb.google.com/albertopedrotti/Pamir7495#5511861977786087714) marks the centre of Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, whose name means "Monday" since in old times, when it was still a little village, it hosted a Monday souk. And the name Dushanbe has been taken on also by the W shoulder of Pik Somoni.
Incidentally, the original name Garmo migrated to a 6595 m peak little south, also known for being the place where the great British Wilfrid Noyce died by slipping down by 1200 vertical metres. Noyce had been the first man to reach the South Col in the 1953 Everest expedition, and in 1962 he was in the Pamir region with the same expedition leader, John Hunt: their ultimate aim was an ascent to Pik Kommunizma from the Fedcenko side.
An interesting naming intricacy is also the one concerning Pik Lenin, the most known mountain of the region, being perhaps the easiest 7000 worldwide. Its initial name was Pik Kaufmann, changed on favour of Lenin in 1928. It was only in 2006 that president Imomali Rakhmonov issued a decree by which the mountain was to be named after Abu Ali ibn Sina, that is Avicenna, the famous commenter of Aristotle, who was born in these regions. Curiously enough, in some sources I find it named Kon-Ton Peak, and in Google Earth I find it as Qullai Istiqlal (meaning "independence" in Arabic), whereas for anyone else in the world Istiqlal is the renaming of the former Pik Revolucij, the big mountain (6940) from which the Fedcenko glacier originates south. The Fedcenko, flowing few kms E of the Somoni peak, is the biggest glacier outside the Polar regions, even longer than any glacier in Karakorum.
Incidentally, in the Fedcenko region there is a little Pik Gorbunova (6023 m) named after the climber mentioned above.
As you see, the naming saga in these regions is truly a topic on this own, and there are very interesting Soviet relics. Perhaps the first prize goes to the Peak of the 26 Commissars of Baku, somewhere behind the Leningrad and Abalakov peaks, see N.6004.
A last information: I heard rumours that for a long time there has been a statue of Stalin on the top of the mountain. In its place, here is what I found: www.panoramio.com/photo/69892158
If you are interested in the region, you should look for the book "Forbidden mountains" by Vladimir Kopylov, alas now impossible to find outside libraries. Also interesting is the site www.pamirs.org
For somewhat more home-made, but highly appreciated by me (be aware that I am far more interested in subjects, than in straight horizons and/or white balances): www.panoramio.com/user/265631/tags/Pamir

Sehr aufschlußreich, was Du über die wechselvollen Namensgebungen berichtest. Das muß ich mir kopieren und zu meinen DDR-Büchern über Pamir-Expeditionen hinzufügen. Außerdem werde ich auch mal wieder in Jg. 1929 der Zeitschrift des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins blättern. Dort gibt zwei Beiträge über deutsche Pamir-Expeditionen in den 20er Jahren.

I think that in this type of research you are very likely to meet the name of Willi Rickmer Rickmers, who was one of the leaders of the 1928 German-Soviet expedition to the Pamir. The leader of the Russian party was the Gorbunov that I mentioned above. Among other undertakings, they measured the length of the Fedcenko glacier, and they succeeded in the first ascent of Pik Lenin. They had strong climbers indeed - for example, Eugen Allwein, who had been with Willo Welzenbach at the Dent d'Hérens (!!). At the same time, another German party led by Paul Bauer was in the Caucasus, in a (failed) attempt to climb the Dykh-Tau, in the wake of the unique Frederick Mummery.
And always in the wake of Mummery - but this time on the Nanga Parbat (after some scramble on Kanchenjunga) the two parties were going to join later, giving rise to the sequence of adventures that you surely know... In 1929 it was precisely Rickmer Rickmers who wrote a letter to Major Kenneth Mason of the Indian Survey, President of the Himalayan Club and Director of the Himalayan Journal, asking him to grant some «playground» for German climbers in the Himalaya.
If you are interested in such stories, I strongly recommend the book «Fallen Giants» by M. Isserman and S. Weaver, a wonderful history of Himalayan climbing - written by two history professors and hobby Himalayan trekkers. It features 450 pages (and large ones indeed), with more than 100 (!!!) pages of notes and references. Not only an invaluable source on information, but also a masterwork from the narrative point of view.