Vladimir Klawdijewitsch Arsenjew

Vladimir Klawdijewitsch Arsenyev ( Russian Владимир Клавдиевич Арсеньев , born August 29, ^jul. / 10. September 1872 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † 4. September 1930 in Vladivostok ) was a Russian explorer and writer.

Life

Arsenyev, who came from the far west of Russia , was enthusiastic about the far east of the country from an early age . He attended the infantry cadet school in St. Petersburg , which he graduated in 1896, and initially had to be content with beginning his first scientific studies in western Russia and Poland . Under the influence of the Central Asian researcher ME Grum-Grzimajlo, his special interest in the geography of Asia developed . Finally he managed to be transferred to Vladivostok from 1899 .

From left: Arsenjew, Uzala and other participants in the 1907 expedition

Arsenyev, who lives in Khabarovsk , undertook twelve large expeditions over the next 30 years from 1902 to the then largely unexplored area between the coast of the Pacific Ocean and the Ussuri River . There he carried out scientific studies and described the flora and fauna as well as the geology and topography of the largely unknown country at the time, but he was particularly interested in the local tribes of the Golden (Nanaier), Udehe and Orotschen , whose customs and languages he researched. The gold Dersu Usala led and accompanied two large expeditions by Arseniev in 1906 and 1908, before he was tragically killed.

Arsenyev lived his research, without prejudice to the changing political regime in the course of the Russo-Japanese war , as a tsarist officer in old Russia and later in the Soviet Union . From 1917 to 1927 he was director of the natural history museums of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. He worked in various organizations such as the Commission for the Issues of the Small Peoples of the Far East, the Far Eastern Relocation Administration and the like. a. He gave lectures at the Pedagogical Institute and the State University of the Far East. Arsenyev also traveled to other areas such as the coastal areas of the Sea of Okhotsk , the Kamchatka Peninsula and the Commander Islands . In 1930 Arsenyev fell ill with severe pneumonia in the taiga and died on September 4th. At that time, an arrest warrant had already been issued against him. His wife was in 1938 during the Great Terror under Stalin shot as alleged Japanese spy.

plant

Arseniev's handwritten diary notes from August 1906

Arsenjew wrote over 60 works, which contained the diverse results of his research. Without actually being a specialist in any of the sciences he pursues, the facts he tirelessly amassed are of great value. The world that Arsenyev described was soon doomed and no longer exists today. His most famous book was the travelogue Dersu Usala, the Taiga hunter , published in Vladivostok in the early 1920s . Due to the excellent descriptions of nature on the one hand and the excellent characterization of the local hunter Dersu Usala on the other hand, he succeeded in one of the great works of travel literature . The authors Mikhail Prischwin and Maxim Gorky praised the book back in the twenties. After Arsenyev was politically unwelcome in the thirties and then his archives were looted, took place after the Second World War his rehabilitation . In 1949 Dersu Usala appeared again in Russia and has since enjoyed great popularity at home and abroad.

In the Ussuri area (Russian Po Ussurijskomu kraju ), 1921 (German. Through the primeval forests of the Far East , GDR 1951), travel report

Dersu Usala (Russian Дерсу Узала / Dersu Uzala ), 1923 (German Dersu Usala, der Taiga hunter , GDR 1967; German der Taiga hunter Dersu Usala , translated by Gisela Churs, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-293-20457-7 ), Travel report
- Filmed in 1975 in the USSR by Akira Kurosawa as Dersu Uzala (FRG: Uzala, the Kyrgyz )
In the mountains of the Sichote Alin (Russian V gorach Sichote-Alinja ), 1937 (German GDR 1952), travel report
Vstreci v tajge , 1956, short stories (Russian)

Collected works , 6 volumes, 1947–49 (Russian)

rating

Arsenyev is, like almost all explorers in earlier times, an ambivalent figure. On the one hand, he perceived the beauty and value of the untouched areas and expanded his knowledge about them, on the other hand, he had to be clear that he had not been sent to the Far East for the sake of nature, but that his research had very tangible military and economic purposes should serve, with which the destruction or at least change of the local nature and the way of life of the indigenous peoples had to be accepted. It was apparently useful to both the Tsar and the Soviets. On the other hand, you shouldn't look at your person too critically without taking into account the time and the zeitgeist, from which Arsenyev cannot seriously assess himself.

Afterlife

40 kopecks commemorative stamp from 1956

Several geographical names are reminiscent of Arsenyev. The city of Arsenyev is where the researcher first met Dersu Usala; the place was originally called Semjonowka. On the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the northern slope of the Avachinskaya Sopka volcano, the Arsenyev Glacier is located, and on the Kuril Islands is the Arsenyev Volcano. The Arsenyev Line is the imaginary borderline between southern Manchurian flora and northern Okhotsk flora in the Sichote-Alin , the area that Arsenyev described most thoroughly and most beautifully.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Arsenyev, Vladimir Klawdijewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Арсеньев, Владимир Клавдиевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Russian explorer and writer
DATE OF BIRTH	September 10, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH	St. Petersburg
DATE OF DEATH	4th September 1930
Place of death	Vladivostok