LENIN PEAK

formerly Mount Kaufman, highest summit (23,406 feet ) of the Trans-Alay Range on the frontier of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Once thought to be the highest mountain in what was then the Soviet Union, Lenin Peak was relegated to third place by the discovery in 193233 that Stalin Peak (called Communism Peak after 1962) was higher and by the finding in 1943 that Victory Peak was also higher. The peak is named after the Soviet leader Vladimir I. Lenin. Lenin Peak was discovered by the Russian explorer A.P. Fedchenko in 1871. Its steep flanks are covered with glaciers. The first ascent was made in 1928 from the south by German alpinists included in the First Pamirs Expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. The first ascent by Soviet climbers, from the north, followed in 1934.