Grigory Potanin

Grigory Nikolayevich Potanin (alt. Grigorij Potanin) (Russian: Григорий Николаевич Потанин; 4 October 1835 – 6 June 1920) was a Russian ethnographer and natural historian. He was a Victorian-era explorer of Inner Asia, and was the first to catalogue many of the area's native plants. On home soil, Potanin was an author and a political activist who aligned himself with the Siberian separatist movement.

Potanin attended a Page Corps in Omsk, a military school for children from wealthy families.

Potanin initially travelled to Siberia while serving with a Cossack division in Altaj in the 1850s. He returned to Saint Petersburg in 1858 to study Mathematical Physics. He was arrested for his participation in student demonstrations in 1861, and expelled from Saint Petersburg University. After spending three months in Petropavlovskaya fortress, he returned to Siberia.

After leaving prison, he travelled to Siberia with Nikolai M. Yadrintsev, where he began to work as a publisher. Due to his support for regionality and rights for Siberian peoples, he was arrested on charges of supporting separatism for Siberia in 1867. Convicted, he was sentenced to three years in prison and fifteen of hard labour. His hard labour was reduced to five years, and during those five years he wrote a book on the history of Siberia.

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