Leonid Artamonov

Leonid Konstantinovich Artamonov (Russian: Леони́д Константи́нович Артамо́нов; 25 February 1859 – 1 January 1932) was a Russian military engineer, adviser and general, geographer and traveler, explorer of Africa, writer, veteran of the First World War and the Russo-Japanese War.

Leonid Artamonov, was born in Kherson Governorate on February 25, 1859. He studied in the Michailovsky Cadet School, then Artamonov after his graduation from the Military Engineering-Technical University in 1883, he also graduated from the General Staff Academy.

In 1897, he was a member of the Russian diplomatic mission to Ethiopia, where he became a military adviser of Menelek II of Ethiopia. During 1897–1898, he became a military aide of Menelek II in his boundary confrontation against the British colonialists. Artamonov was one of a contingent of Russian officer volunteers attached to the forces of Tessema. He joined the expedition of the Ethiopian army to the White Nile and provided help to overcome serious difficulties. The British, after colonizing the Sudan, Kenya and Uganda, exerted new pressure on Ethiopia, which lessened only after the beginning of the 1899–1902 Second Boer War.

He was viewed as one of the best Russian military experts of Russia, a competent analyst with combat experience and a strong military and engineering education. But his performance at Tannenberg did not live up to this reputation.

After Artamonov returned to Russia, he became a member of the Russian Geographical Society. He wrote a book Through Ethiopia to the White Nile about his experiences in Ethiopia. He described in detail the democratic experiments of Menilik II in the traditional patriarchal public dialog of the Ethiopian monarchy with its own people, similar to the later speeches of U. S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

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