Grigory Potanin

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

They departed Si-ning and went to Ming-chau, crossing the high altitude Tibetan Plateau, where they recorded information on the native vegetation.

The expedition ran out of supplies in Sung-pang-ting, and turned back towards Lang-chau, stopping in Lung-an-fu, Ven-hsien, Tse-chau, Hung-chang-fu and Di-dao.

It was here that they organised a Regional Conference in August 1917, and a Congress in October to draft a constitution for an autonomous Siberia.

Potanin was elected chairman of the Provisional Siberian Council 8 December 1918 at Tomsk by delegates from the major centres of Siberia.

But this assembly was largely dominated by the Esery (Social Revolutionaries, SRs), and Potanin resented being used as a mere figurehead and resigned in protest 12 January 1918 as the first Siboduma convened.

Subsequently he abandoned the idea of Siberian autonomy in favour of a strong central authority able to restore order and defeat the Bolsheviks.

[16] In 1882, botanist Karl Maximovich published Potaninia, a genus of flowering plants from Mongolia, belonging to the family Rosaceae and it was named in his honour.

[17] In 1889, Maximovich also published the Chinese tree Rhus potaninii,[18] which glows like a red banner in autumn also bears his name.