[3] The main purpose of the missions was to draw up maps of the region,[3] but Arsenyev documented a large amount of data not directly related to this task, including botanical, zoological, archaeological and ethnographic information.

[3] Arsenyev lived in Vladivostok through the years of the Russian Civil War and was a Commissar for Ethnic Minorities (Komissar po delam inorodcheskim) of the independent Far Eastern Republic.

[3] In 1930, Arsenyev made his final trip, this time to the lower part of the Amur River to oversee expeditions for the identification of possible railroad routes.

He caught a cold during the trip and died of a heart attack en route back to Vladivostok on 4 September 1930, at the age of fifty-seven.

[4] His widow Margarita was arrested in 1934 and again in 1937 after being accused of being a member of an underground organization of spies and saboteurs allegedly headed by her late husband.

Arsenyev's most famous book, Dersu Uzala, is a memoir of three expeditions in the Ussurian taiga (forest) of Northern Asia along the Sea of Japan and North to Vladivostok.

The book is named after Arsenyev's guide, an Ussurian native of the Goldi tribe (referred to as the Nanai people today).

Eventually the book was made into two films, one by Soviet director Agasi Babayan in 1961, the other by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in 1975.