Nikolay Muravyov Amursky

Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky was born in 1809 in St. Petersburg, in an upper-class family of a professor of architecture. He graduated from the Page Corps in 1827 and participated in the Siege of Varna in the Russo-Turkish War in 1828–1829, and later in suppression of the November Uprising in Poland in 1831. Due to health reasons, he retired from the military in 1833 and returned home to manage his father's estate. However, he returned to active duty in 1838, as General Golovin's aide-de-camp, to serve in the Caucasus region. During one of the campaigns against the mountain people Muravyov was wounded. He was promoted in rank to major-general in 1841, but had to permanently retire from the military due to illness. He transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and was appointed as an acting military and civil governor of Tula province in 1846. Eager in his willingness to improve the province's state of affairs, he proposed to establish the governorate agricultural society. Muravyov was the first governor to propose Tsar Nicholas I to abolish serfdom; a motion signed by nine local land-owners. While the tsar did nothing about the petition, from then on he always referred to Muravyov as a "liberal" and a "democrat". In 1847, he was appointed as the governor-general of Eastern Siberia, where he pursued the exploration and settlement of the region north of the Amur River. He led a number of expeditions down the Amur, during the last of which, having obtained plenipotentiary powers from the tsar, he concluded the Treaty of Aigun with China (1858). This pact recognized the Amur as the boundary between Russia and China and greatly expanded Russian territory in Siberia. For his role Muravyov was granted the title of Count Amursky. The peninsula on which Vladivostok lies still bears his name. He also proposed the construction of a trans-Siberian railway several decades before its accomplishment. He also suggested that Alaska be ceded to the United States. He retired from public service in 1861 and moved to Paris, where he died in 1881. He is remembered as one of the most prominent and influential figures of the Russian Far East.