Ferdynand Ossendowski

Ferdynand Ossendowski , born the May 27th 1876 with Vitebsk (today in Bielorussia) and died in Milanówek (Poland) the January 3rd 1945, was an academic, adventurer and writer Polish known for its accounts of voyage and its testimonys on the Russian Révolution.

The student and the teacher

Child, it settles with his father with Saint-Petersbourg where it follows his Russian schooling. He is registered at the university and starts studies of mathematics, physics and chemistry. He then starts to carry out study trips then traverses the seas of Asia embarked on a boat which ensures the sea link between Odessa and Vladivostok. He publishes his accounts devoted to the the Crimea, Constantinople and the India.

In 1899, he flees the Russia following riots coeds and goes to Paris, where he continues his studies with the Sorbonne, having in particular the chemist and academician Marcellin Berthelot as professor. He turns over to Russia in 1901, and teaches physics and chemistry at the Institute of Technology of the University of Tomsk in Western Siberia. He gives also courses to the Academy of Agriculture and publishes article devoteds to with hydrology, geology, physics and the geography.

In 1905, it is named at the research laboratory techniques of Mandchourie, is responsible for the prospection for minerals, and directs the department of the Russian Company of geography in Vladivostok. He for this reason visits the islands of the sea of Japan and the Bering Strait. He is then an influential member of the Polish community of Mandchourie and publishes its first Polish novel, the night .

Implied in the revolutionary movements, it is stopped and condemned to death. Its sorrow will be commuted to forced labors. But it is slackened in 1907 with prohibition to work and leave Russia. It is devoted then to the writing of novels, partly autobiographical, which enable him to regain the grace of the leaders. In February 1917, it is named professor at the polytechnic Institute of Omsk, in Siberia. When bursts the Révolution of October, it adopts the counter-revolutionaries groups, and achieves different mission for Alexandre Vassilievitch Koltchak, which makes its Minister for Finance of it.

The adventurer

Condemned to flee with other companions, he tells his epopee in Bêtes, Hommes and Gods , who will be published in the years 1920. The account, which arises as a book of lived adventure, starts at the time when Ossendowski has just learned that one denounced it with the Bolcheviks and that the firing squad awaits it. It carries a rifle and some cartridges and gains the forest in the freezing cold.

Thus begin a race-continuation which it will not leave alive, thinks it, that if it succeeds in gaining with foot the English India, by the master keys of Mongolia, then the desert of Gobi, then the plate Tibetan, then the the Himalayas. This almost initiatory voyage also enables him to discover the reality of the Agharta, while penetrating in the middle of the mysteries of the thousand-year-old Asia.

During its tour, Ossendowski meets the baron Von Ungern-Sternberg, called the “insane baron”, who thought of being the reincarnation of Gengis Khan, and of which he becomes the adviser. He is then sent on mission to the Japan and the the United States. It is there that it stops finally. Refusing to turn over to Asia, it decides to settle with New York. He works then for the Polish secret services and publishes his account Bêtes, Hommes and Gods in English.

Return in Poland

In 1922, it turns over to Poland and settles with Warsaw. He teaches then at the university, the University of war and the Institute of political studies of the capital. In same time, he is frequently consulted by the government on the related questions with the Soviet policy.

While continuing to travel, it publishes various works which will make it regard as one of the Polish authors most popular, including abroad. It republishes the success of its first account with a book devoted to Lénine, in which it criticizes severely the methods of the leaders Communistes in Russia.

During the Second world war, Ossendowski remains in Warsaw where it takes part clandestinely in the secret government of Poland on the questions of education. Of confession Lutheran, it converts with the Catholicisme in 1942. Patient, it settles in 1944 in the village off Żółwin, close to Milanówek, where it dies on January 3rd, 1945. The soldiers Soviet S who had succeeded in seizing the area sought it to stop it as an enemy of the people following his writings anticommunists. It was necessary to unearth its body to bring the proof of its death. Its works were prohibited thereafter by the Communist government of Poland until the fall of the mode in 1989.

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