Vasily Seseman

A close associate of Viktor Zhirmunsky and Lev Karsavin, as a prisoner of Gulag he was also an informal philosophy tutor and supporter of Buddhist writer Bidia Dandaron.

Born to the family of a medical doctor of Finnish Swedish descent and a Baltic German mother, he was initially named Wilhelm Sesemann and attended the Lutheran school (Katharinenschule) in St Petersburg.

In Germany he also met José Ortega y Gasset who made a great impression on him, and re-established a lifelong friendship with Nicolai Hartmann who in St Petersburg had influenced Vasily's decision to switch from medicine to philosophy.

According to his stepdaughter's interview, while living in poverty, at his place in central Vilnius he also hid from the Nazis a Jewish girl (who later disappeared), and supplied ghetto Jews with false documents allowing emigration.

He spent 1945-1950 teaching at the University of Vilnius again, but then was arrested by the Soviet authorities, accused of “anti-Soviet activities” and “relations with Zionist organizations” and sentenced to 15 years of labor camps.