Siberian ethnographer Grigorii Potanin made a name for himself as an explorer of Mongolia and northern China. Often at odds with the Russian authorities for his political views, Grigorii (or Grigory) Potanin is remembered as a leading light in science and public affairs in Siberia and founded the first Siberian university, at Tomsk.
After his schooling in Omsk, Potanin travelled with a Cossack division in Siberia and Mongolia, serving in Altai in the 1850s. It was during this time that he developed a passionate sense of Siberian patriotism. He studied physics in St. Petersburg from 1858-1861, but did not graduate due to being excluded following his participation in student demonstrations. Indeed his political activism landed him in prison for three months at the Peter and Paul Fortress. Once freed, Potanin went back to Siberia, where he worked in publishing and again became politically active, supporting the regional Siberian movement. This once more led to his arrest in 1867 on charges of separatism and Potanin spent the next eight years serving his sentence, five years of which was hard labour. During his imprisonment he produced a book on the history of Siberia.
Potanin's adventures in Asia commenced in 1876 when he led an expedition into Mongolia. His party collected plant and other biological specimens as well as making ethnological observations of the Mongolian people. The second year of the expedition, 1877, took Potanin to Hami (Kumul, Xinjiang) and Uliastai.
Potanin mounted a new expedition in 1884, setting off once more for northern China, this time with Augustus Ivonovitch Skassi. Starting in Peking (Beijing) in May, the party traversed the Wutai Shan mountains and from Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, crossed the Yellow River into the Ordos Desert. Visiting the Borobalgassun ruins and Lanzhou (Gansu Province), Potanin recorded observations on the Salar people and the Amdos Mongols before organising onward travel into Tibet. The next part of the journey went via Xining on to the Tibetan Plateau, while the winter of 1885 was spent in the Kumbum Monastery, Qinghai, before Potanin and his fellow travellers returned to Russia. Potanin went on to publish The Tangut-Tibetan Borderlands of China and Central Mongolia (1893), including lexicons for the Salar and Yugur languages.
Potanin was instrumental in the establishment of Tomsk State University in 1889. Six years later he was in trouble again, this time for supporting the revolution of 1905. He organised an assembly of Siberian separatists in 1917 and was briefly chair of the Provisional Siberian Council in 1918. He subsequently abandoned his support of Siberian autonomy, however, in favour of a central authority that could defeat the Bolsheviks. He died in 1920 at Tomsk. The 9915 Potanin asteroid bears his name.
Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 3: 102
F. von Herder, 1888, Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie, 9: 445
N. Veninkoff, 1887, "Potanin's Journey in North-Western China and Eastern Tibet", Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, 9(4): 233-235.
