Vladimir Klavdiyevich Arsenyev, (; 10 September 1872 – 4 September 1930) was a Russian explorer of the

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

who recounted his travels in a series of books— (, "Along the Ussuri land," 1921) and (, "Dersu Uzala," 1923)—telling of his military journeys to the Ussuri basin with Dersu Uzala, a native hunter, from 1902 to 1907. He was the first to describe numerous species of

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

n flora and the lifestyles of the local ethnic groups.

Life

Vladimir Arsenyev was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

, on 10 September 1872. His father Klavdy Arsenyev was the illegitimate son of Fyodor Goppmayer, a Tver townsman, and Agrafena Filippovna, a serf woman who was later freed and married Goppmayer. Klavdy Arsenyev, who took the surname of his godfather, was raised to the status of burgher () after the death of his father. He spent most of his life as a clerk for the Nikolayevskaya (Saint Petersburg–Moscow) Railway. (Later, when Vladimir was already an adult, his father served as chief of the Moscow District Railway.) Vladimir's mother, Rufina Kashlachevaya, was the daughter of a serf from the Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. Arsenyev graduated from the Saint Petersburg Infantry Cadet School in 1896. He began his service in Vladivostok in 1900 and made his first military expedition in the Far East in 1902. His most important expeditions were to Sikhote-Alin, in 1906, 1907–08, 1908–10 and 1912–13. The main purpose of the missions was to draw up maps of the region, but Arsenyev documented a large amount of data not directly related to this task, including botanical, zoological, archaeological and ethnographic information. He studied various local peoples, especially the Udeges. Ethnographic materials collected by Arsenyev are held at the Russian Museum of Ethnography in Saint Petersburg, the Khabarovsk Regional Lore Museum, and elsewhere. He conducted an expedition to

Kamchatka The Kamchatka Peninsula (, ) is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, with an area of about . The Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Okhotsk make up the peninsula's eastern and western coastlines, respectively. Immediately offshore along the Pacific ...

in 1918 and another to the Commander Islands in 1923. In 1927 he led a large expedition along the route Sovetskaya Gavan–Khabarovsk. He served as the director of the Khabarovsk Regional Lore Museum from 1910 to 1918 and again from 1924 to 1925. Arsenyev lived in Vladivostok through the years of the Russian Civil War and was a Commissar for Ethnic Minorities () of the independent Far Eastern Republic. In 1918 his parents and two siblings were murdered in their home by burglars. He married Margarita Nikolayevna Solovyоva, the daughter of a Vladivostok official, in 1919. After the Far Eastern Republic was absorbed by Soviet Russia in 1922 Arsenyev refused to emigrate and stayed in Vladivostok. He gave lectures on ethnography, anthropology, archeology, and the history of "primitive societies" at the universities of Khabarovsk and Vladivostok. He played a major role in the preparation of the 1926 Soviet census and helped draft an ethnographic map of Siberia. In 1930, Arsenyev made his final trip, this time to the lower part of the Amur River to oversee expeditions for the identification of possible railroad routes. He caught a cold during the trip and died of a heart attack en route back to Vladivostok on 4 September 1930, at the age of fifty-seven. His widow Margarita was arrested in 1934 and again in 1937 after being accused of being a member of an underground organization of spies and saboteurs allegedly headed by her late husband. The military court hearing of the case (21 August 1938) lasted ten minutes and sentenced her to death. She was executed immediately. Arsenyev's daughter Natalya also was arrested in April 1941 and sentenced to the

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

Work

Arsenyev is most famous for authoring many books about his explorations, including some 60 works on the geography, wildlife and ethnography of the regions he traveled. Arsenyev's most famous book, ''Dersu Uzala'', is a memoir of three expeditions in the Ussurian

taiga Taiga or tayga ( ; , ), also known as boreal forest or snow forest, is a biome characterized by coniferous forests consisting mostly of pines, spruces, and larches. The taiga, or boreal forest, is the world's largest land biome. In North A ...

(forest) of Northern Asia along the

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it ...

and North to Vladivostok. The book is named after Arsenyev's guide, an Ussurian native of the Goldi tribe (referred to as the Nanai people today). Eventually the book was made into two films, one by Soviet director Agasi Babayan in 1961, the other by Japanese filmmaker

Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who List of works by Akira Kurosawa, directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the History of film, history of cinema ...

in 1975. Kurosawa's ''Dersu Uzala'' won that year's Oscar for Best Foreign-Language Film. The third book of Arsenyev's trilogy, ''In the Sikhote-Alin mountains'', was published posthumously in 1937. Arsenyev's books have been translated into multiple languages including English, German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. The "Dersu Uzala trilogy" was first translated in 1924 into German as a two-volume set (''In der Wildnis Ostsibiriens''). More recently, in 2016 an uncensored, annotated edition of 1921's ''Across the Ussuri Kray'' was translated to English.

Legacy

Arsenyev's family home in Vladivostok has been made into a

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

. A town, Arsenyev, and a river, the Arsenyevka, both located in the

Primorsky Krai Primorsky Krai, informally known as Primorye, is a federal subjects of Russia, federal subject (a krais of Russia, krai) of Russia, part of the Far Eastern Federal District in the Russian Far East. The types of inhabited localities in Russia, ...

, are named after him. In 2018 Vladivostok International Airport was renamed after him.

Selected works

*(1921) ( (Through the Ussuri land (Dersu Uzala): journey in the mountainous region of Sikhote-Alin)). Vladivostok: Tip. Ekho. The first book of Dersu Uzala trilogy. English translation: ''Across the Ussuri Kray: Travels in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains'' (Indiana University Press, 2016). *(1923) ( (Dersu Uzala: memories from journeys in the Ussuri land in 1907)). Vladivostok: Svobonaya Rossiya. The second book of the Dersu Uzala trilogy. ** The heavily redacted 1926 combination of and , titled , was translated into English by Malcolm Burr and published as ''Dersu the Trapper'' (London: Secker & Warburg, 1939).Arsenyev 2016, "Translator's Introduction." Another heavily redacted combination from 1946 was translated into English by Victor Shneerson and published as ''Dersu Uzala'' (1950). Anne Terry White's 1965 adaptation ''With Dersu the Hunter: Adventures in the Taiga'' is a shortening of Shneerson's translation. *(1930) ( (Through the taiga)). Moscow: Molodaya Gvardiya. *(1937) ( (In the Sikhote-Alin Mountains)). the third book of the Dersu Uzala trilogy, published posthumously. *(1947–49) ( (Works)). 6 vols. Vladivostok: Primizdat. (The works in this collection were subject to censorship and abridgment.) *(1995) ( (Myths, legends, traditions, and fables of the peoples of Far East)). Khabarovsk: International Institute of Ethnolinguistic and Oriental Studies (IIEOS). ; . *(2007–) ( (Collected works in 6 volumes)). Vladivostok: Rubezh.

References

External links

*
Article about Vladimir Arsenyev
{{DEFAULTSORT:Arsenyev, Vladimir 1872 births 1930 deaths Writers from Saint Petersburg People from Sankt-Peterburgsky Uyezd Imperial Russian Army officers Russian travel writers 19th-century explorers from the Russian Empire 20th-century Russian explorers Explorers of Siberia Primorsky Krai Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society Recipients of the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class Recipients of the Order of St. Anna, 3rd class Recipients of the Order of St. Anna, 4th class Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Russian), 2nd class Recipients of the Order of Saint Stanislaus (Russian), 3rd class Russian people of the Boxer Rebellion Russian people of the Russo-Japanese War