Contrary to popular misconception, Nikolay Miklukho-Maclay did not have foreign roots. Legend of the Scottish Mercenary Michaele Macalae, which took root in Russia and became the founder of the family, was a family tradition.

In fact, the traveler came from an obscure Cossack family Mikluh. As for the second part of the surname, historians have not been able to reliably establish the reason for its appearance. It is only known that in 1868 the scientist signed his first scientific publication in German.

Repeater and troublemaker

At school future traveler studied poorly - partly because of poor health, partly simply because of the unwillingness to study. Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay twice stayed in the second year and, as a high school student, was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for participating in a student demonstration.

AT Soviet time biographers wrote that both from the gymnasium and from the university, Miklouho-Maclay was expelled for participating in political activity. In fact, this is not so - he left the gymnasium of his own free will, and he could not be expelled from the university, since he was a volunteer.

Ernst Haeckel (left) and Miklouho-Maclay in the Canary Islands. December 1866. Source: Public Domain

On the first expedition, Miklouho-Maclay studied sea sponges

Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay went on his first scientific expedition in 1866, while studying abroad. German naturalist Ernst Haeckel invited a Russian student to the Canary Islands to study the local fauna. Miklouho-Maclay studied sea sponges and as a result discovered a new type of calcareous sponge, naming it Guancha blanca in honor of the indigenous inhabitants of the islands.

It is interesting that local residents, mistaking scientists for sorcerers, turned to them with requests for healing and predicting the future.

In New Guinea, a Russian scientist landed with a Swedish sailor

In 1869, Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay introduced the Russian geographical society plan for an expedition to the islands of the Pacific Ocean, designed for several years. On September 20, 1871, the Russian ship Vityaz landed the traveler on the northeast coast of New Guinea. Subsequently, this area was named the Maclay Coast.

Contrary to the misconception, Miklouho-Maclay did not land alone, but accompanied by two servants - a Swedish sailor Olsen and young men from the island of Niue named The battle. With the help of sailors from the Vityaz, a hut was built, which became both housing and the scientific laboratory of Miklouho-Maclay.

Russian ship "Vityaz". Source: Public Domain

Salute turned Miklouho-Maclay into an evil spirit

Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay was at first considered among the Papuans not as a god, as is commonly believed, but, on the contrary, as an evil spirit. The reason for this was the incident on the first day of meeting. The islanders, seeing the white people, thought that he had returned Rotay their great ancestor. Many men went in boats to the ship to bring him gifts. On the ship they were well received and also presented with gifts. But on the way back to the shore, a cannon shot suddenly rang out - the ship's crew saluted in honor of their arrival. From fear, people jumped out of the boats, threw their gifts and swam to the shore. They told those who were waiting for their return that it was not Rotei who had arrived, but evil spirit Buka.

Papuan by name helped to change the situation Tui, who turned out to be bolder than the rest and became friends with the researcher. When Miklukho-Maclay managed to cure Tui from a serious wound, the Papuans accepted him as an equal, including him in the local society. Tui also remained an intermediary and translator in the traveler's relations with other Papuans.

Miklukho-Maclay with the Papuan Akhmat. Malacca, 1874 or 1875. Source: Public Domain

Miklukho-Maclay was preparing a Russian protectorate over the Papuans

Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay carried out expeditions to New Guinea three times and put forward a "project for the development of the Maclay Coast", which provided for the preservation of the way of life of the Papuans with the achievement of more high level self-government based on already existing local customs. At the same time, the Maclay Coast was supposed to be under the Russian protectorate and become one of the bases for the Navy. Russian Empire.

This project, however, turned out to be unrealistic - by the time of the third trip of Miklukho-Maclay, most of his friends among the Papuans, including Tui, had already died, and the villagers were mired in internecine conflicts. The officers of the Russian fleet, after studying the local conditions, came to the conclusion that they were not suitable for Russian warships.

In 1885, New Guinea was divided between Germany and Great Britain, which finally closed the question of the possibility of implementing the projects of the Russian traveler.

An 1884 map of New Guinea with annexation zones. The Maclay Coast is also marked on German territory.

The bright figure of Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay, who was born on July 17, 1846 in the village of Yazykovo, Novgorod province, seemed to be plowed up and down. The tireless traveler, very popular during his lifetime and soon forgotten after his death at the age of 42, acquired a textbook sound in the USSR, becoming a colorful character school curriculum, and a powerful forerunner of the struggle against colonialism and racism. When, after the war, in the memorable era of “small pictures”, Alexander Razumny’s feature film “Miklukho-Maclay” (1947) was released, the viewer felt the progressive nature of the scientist, including visually: the same actor Sergei Kurilov starred in the title role, which in a few years will play in the biographical picture of Grigory Kozintsev Vissarion Belinsky.

“It is often hard to believe that such a small and weak person could do such things,” Admiral Kopytov wrote about Miklukho-Maclay. Photo: RIA Novosti

Having landed as a 15-year-old schoolboy in the Peter and Paul Fortress for participating in a student demonstration, reading Chernyshevsky and seeing Prince Kropotkin, Nikolai Nikolayevich nevertheless did not become a revolutionary. A movie about him in the Stalinist era was shot very on time, and the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences was also named in his honor in the same 1947 very appropriately: by the standards of 1949, this same Miklukho-Maclay was, after all, a real cosmopolitan. In fact, he rarely visited his native lands, he had German and Polish roots on his mother’s side, he obviously would not approve of the song that “I don’t need the Turkish coast”, because he preferred to be alone in ideologically unsustainable remote corners of the world, but got married in 1884 on an Australian widow. And he also called himself Maclay at the age of 20, adding something Scottish to the Cossack surname inherited from his father.

Here, espionage is not far away, and an astute reader, suspecting the discoverer of information and intelligence activities, will be more likely right. Published quite recently, in 2014, under the editorship of intelligence historian Oleg Karimov, a weighty volume archival documents"Unknown Miklukho-Maclay" allows you to verify this on concrete facts. The traveler’s correspondence with representatives of the royal family, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Naval Ministry and the Russian Geographical Society (RGS) leaves no doubt: he not only did not forget about his homeland from his New Guinean and Australian far away, but also tried to provide the empire with all possible and truly invaluable help, because others there were no sources of information in those parts at all.

The lone traveler, whose critics, by the way, are convinced that it was the loneliness of his expeditions that “irrevocably destroyed” his already poor health, turned out to be more difficult than it seemed before. Already on his very first trip to the Papuans, considerations of the highest state order left an imprint: in that same 1870, when 24-year-old Nikolai Miklukha (that was the name he got from his father) was knocking around the St. Petersburg thresholds in search of money for the expedition, a 26-year-old officer Scout Baron Alexander Kaulbars submitted through the Russian Geographical Society a note "On the Russian colonization of New Guinea" that was tempting for the authorities. The strategic ideas of St. Petersburg and the plans of the researcher coincided, and support came personally from the autocrat: Alexander II allowed not only to include the young enthusiast as a passenger on the military corvette Vityaz, which safely delivered him to the desired Astrolabe Bay, but also allowed him to reimburse the money spent by the scientist in excess of those 1200 rubles, which he received for the trip from the Russian Geographical Society. With such benefactions, the agreement to officially call the traveler Miklouho-Maclay from now on became an inconspicuous and quite natural detail.

Thus, the trip resembled a well-thought-out and officially financed business trip, which had not only scientific goals. One of the supporters of the presence of the Russian Empire in the far corners of the Pacific Ocean in the early 1870s was the heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich. Having ascended the throne, Alexander III showed quite a practical interest in the ideas of Miklouho-Maclay about the Russian protectorate over the Papuan Union. In the autumn of 1882, the traveler met the emperor 5 times in Gatchina in a month, after which the same clipper ship, renamed from Vityaz to Skobelev, headed for the shores of New Guinea with a very specific goal. Vice-Admiral Ivan Shestakov, head of the Naval Ministry, gave quite clear instructions on "acquiring a point on which we could claim ownership and raise our flag on it."

But it never came to that. Rear Admiral Nikolai Kopytov, commander of a detachment of ships in the Pacific Ocean, was delighted with the personality of the traveler and surprised by the local nature, but he only wished the enemy to stay in these latitudes, concluding: "The local climate is distinguished by its dampness and becomes extremely harmful in hot weather." During a short (only 8 days) stay in New Guinea in March 1883, Kopytov safely buried all the cherished dreams of Miklouho-Maclay, who were passionately shared Alexander III. One of the arguments turned out to be truly lethal: the traveler proposed to arrange fleet bases in very remote from the main sea ​​routes places, but it was not possible to equip coal warehouses on such islands to replenish fuel, water and provisions for Russian ships. The admiral also noted the huge costs for the defense of the new Papuan borders of Russia, and the necessary funds would exceed the cost of the protected property. Kopytov was a supporter of offensive tactics and offered to seize the necessary coal warehouses from the British, and leave the exotic islands alone.

Miklouho-Maclay believed in his imperial dream to the last possible, he wrote personally to the emperor, but the naval elite clearly explained to the autocrat that the traveler was an ordinary "projector". In the meantime, first Great Britain, and then Germany, benefited strategically from the discoveries of Miklouho-Maclay in New Guinea and already in 1884 divided this island among themselves, and the German colonizer Otto Finsch, who was familiar with the Russian traveler, pretended to be the brother of Maclay to the Papuans.

Dreams of a Russian protectorate over the Papuan Union remained unfulfilled, and a "broad-profile naturalist" could henceforth be useful to the fatherland only with information from the Green Continent. And already in 1886, Miklouho-Maclay would return to Russia famous and terminally ill. And only in the 1960s it will become known that early death in February 1888 came from cancer, and not from tropical diseases, as contemporaries believed.

Today, when Miklouho-Maclay is often accused of the lack of monumental works and thoughtful scientific program, returning to the same admiral's opinions about the "searchlight", it is very appropriate to recall the naval commander Kopytov, who buried his cherished plans. In a letter to his wife in February 1883, he put all the accents correctly: the first time he met Miklukho-Maclay, “an extremely interesting person who did almost incredible things during his life with savages and during various trips to all corners of the Pacific Ocean. Listen to stories about his adventures gives a lot of pleasure, and it is often unbelievable that such a small and weak person could do such things. He speaks 12 languages, and the subject is not only educated, but a scientist."

He will remain a scientist in our memory.

The great Petersburg traveler knew how to charm the Papuans and Australian beauties

We remember that the natives ate Cook. But about Miklouho-Maclay, on the contrary, we know from childhood that he managed to make friends with the natives. This strange Russian traveler with an incomprehensible surname, like a tumbleweed, traveled to the distant southern islands. He was going to arrange a new free state on the Papuan territory - Chernorossia, and most importantly, he scientifically proved that people of the black and white races are exactly the same in their mental abilities.

"Change" found in St. Petersburg the descendants of the famous traveler.

family legend

The family coat of arms is kept in the apartment of Miklouho-Maclay's relatives.

According to family legend, it is believed that Catherine II granted the nobility to Miklukham. It happened at the time Russian-Turkish war, - says Dmitry Basov, a descendant of Maclay. - For six months, Russian troops could not recapture the fortress of Ochakov from the Turks. Finally decided to attack. And the first, as the legend says, the Cossack Stepan Miklukha flew up to the wall with a torch in his hand. Therefore, the Miklukho-Maklayev family coat of arms depicts a fortress and a man with a torch.

fell asleep and survived

The Papuans took Miklukho-Maclay for a superman, for a god, - says Dmitry Basov. They called him "the man from the moon." Often the natives killed the travelers arriving to them, but Maclay survived. He disarmed the savages with his extraordinary behavior. When the Vityaz corvette approached the coast of New Guinea, the captain suggested that Maclay take weapons and guards from the sailors with him. But the traveler went to the village alone and unarmed. The Papuans began to shoot him with bows and brandish spears. And he unlaced his shoes, lay down and fell asleep in the midst of armed enemies. The Papuans realized that he was not afraid of them and therefore it was useless to do something bad to him.

I have the greatest respect for Maclay. Reading his diaries, you understand how noble he was. Once he forbade war. Papuans from a neighboring village came to him and said that they were starting a war with another tribe. Miklukho-Maclay said: "If you fight, I will set fire to the sea." He gave one Papuan a bowl, at the bottom of which was kerosene, ordered to scoop up water from the sea, and then set fire to a combustible liquid. The Papuans fell to their knees: "Maclay, we will never fight again."

He was also amazingly honest and never lied, and it's very hard! One Papuan asked him: “Maclay, can you die?” If he said yes, he would lose credibility, and if he said no, he would lie. He gave the Papuan a spear in his hands: "Strike me and you will know." He shouted: “No, Maclay, you cannot die!” and did not take a spear ...

Love for the Australian Margaret

The traveler had three foreign grandchildren: Robert, Kenneth and Paul. They often came to Petersburg. They usually met on the ancestor's birthday on July 17 in his homeland in the small village of Okulovka in the Novgorod region. Robert even celebrated the golden wedding in the circle of St. Petersburg relatives. He passed away last summer in Australia.

In the year of the 150th anniversary of his birth, when Maclay was named a citizen of the world, a monument to the great Petersburger was unveiled in Sydney.

Everything in the life of Miklouho-Maclay was unusual. Even the story of his love and marriage to the Australian Margaret Robertson. She was the youngest, fifth daughter of the Prime Minister of the New South Wales Colonies. A beautiful, wealthy, childless widow. Many of the influential colonial officials asked for her hand. At first, Margaret's relatives opposed the marriage with Maclay, then several months passed in anticipation of special permission from the Russian emperor to marry according to the Protestant rite. “Let him marry at least according to the Papuan custom, if only he doesn’t loom before his eyes,” Alexander III gave such an answer in the end.

Not knowing the Russian language, with two children, Margaret went with her husband to St. Petersburg and remained by his side while he reported to the Geographical Society on the work done in New Guinea and Australia. They lived together for four years. After Maclay's death, his wife went back to Australia, and the Russian government paid her a pension until 1917.

Margaret-Emma Robertson (Miklukho-Maclay) with sons Alexander and Vladimir (sitting)

In St. Petersburg, at the Volkovo cemetery, several Latin letters were carved on the grave of Miklukho-Maclay. No one could decipher them until the wife of his Australian grandson Rob, Alice, guessed that these were the initial letters of the marriage formula in the church ritual: "Only death can separate us." With these letters they signed letters to each other.

Chernorossia - a country in the Pacific Ocean

Miklouho-Maclay wanted to create a new society on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Fell in 1871 Parisian Commune. It seemed to Maclay that the time had come for social experiment. More global and more successful. He sent out invitations to anyone who wanted to settle in New Guinea and create a new independent state.

“Why not settle here for everyone who wants to? he wrote. - We will declare our rights to the Maclay coast. We will create a hotbed of tropical agriculture here, we will lay roads.”

In May 1886, an announcement appeared in the Novosti newspaper: a famous traveler was gathering everyone who wanted to settle on the Maclay coast or on one of the Pacific islands. By June 25, 160 applicants had applied. By September there were over 2,000 of them. Prominent people interested in the project public figures, Leo Tolstoy inquired about Maclay. Someone has already come up with the name of the future colony - Chernorossia. Maclay had his own plan: the members of the commune would cultivate the land together, money would be canceled, the colony would form a community with elected governing bodies - an elder, a council and a general meeting of settlers.

But such plans frightened the Russian emperor. A verdict was passed: "Miklukho-Maclay should be denied."

The life of the Papuans was far from ideal, and Nikolai Nikolaevich knew this like no one else, - Dmitry Basov explains. - Many tribes of New Guinea had scary customs, for example. They considered it the norm to lure the enemy, attract him with a good attitude, pretend to be kind, hospitable, invite him to his house, kill, cut off his head and hang him from the ceiling as a trophy. Miklukho-Maclay hoped that the Russian people would not only save the Papuans from ruthless exploitation by Europeans, but would also be able to serve to soften their morals.

Faith in God is faith in people!

Dmitry himself has never been to Indonesia, Papua or any other exotic countries- travel places of Maclay.

When I studied at the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg University, I packed my bags several times: first to Indonesia, then to Malaysia, but all trips were disrupted. And I decided that this is no accident. Probably someday I will visit Indonesia, but for now I have to live in Russia. I traveled a lot around the country, visited many villages, hermitages, monasteries. Unlike Miklouho-Maclay, I was always more interested in religion and literature, but not in science.

Dmitry Basov became a writer. He writes under the pseudonym Dmitry Orekhov, and his books are sold not only in Russia, but also in the CIS countries and even in Australia.

For the last two years I have been writing prose, but I started with nonfiction books about Orthodox spirituality. How do they come to Orthodoxy? You see, the child believes in the rationality of the world, and the festiveness of childhood is connected with this. However, growing up, he is faced with the fact that life is unreasonable, cruel, unfair and almost meaningless, since it ends in death. He can be surrounded by people who live according to wolf laws, who do not recognize any morality. It would seem that nothing prevents him from becoming the same as others, but something says no. This “something” can be called soul, conscience, “religious gene”, “inner feeling”. It seems to me that everyone has a “religious gene”, but for someone it does not have time to open up. Miklouho-Maclay was also endowed with this gene. Yes, of course, he was a scientist and believed that humanity needed first of all scientific knowledge, but he served his idea of ​​goodness with full effort as a true believer. Interestingly, physically he was weak, thin, small in stature. Never been in good health. During his travels, he suffered severely from a fever. It was very difficult for him, but he knew how to overcome his ailments - for the sake of his loved ones, for the sake of the Papuans, for the sake of all mankind.

Olga GORSHKOVA

Many have heard about the Russian traveler Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay, who went to the other side of the Earth and lived for several years among the Papuans. He studied their culture and way of life, as well as the flora and fauna of New Guinea. But all this could not have happened, because the local savages almost ate the famous ethnographer.

At school, Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukha was not considered a gifted student, he even stayed twice in his second year of study. However, he was able to enter the prestigious Heidelberg University, then attended lectures in Leipzig and Jena. There he met the philosopher and biologist Ernst Haeckel. Haeckel invited a capable young man to take part in scientific expedition. In 1866-1867 they set off for Madeira and the Canary Islands.

An expedition of two teachers and two students studied fish and other sea creatures. Miklukha himself even discovered a new type of sponge for science. Teachers and students returned in different ways: some went through Paris, while Miklukha and his partner bought Berber costumes and went to Morocco. Probably, it was there, in the sands of the Black Continent, that the interest in anthropology woke up in a young Russian scientist.

On his return to Jena, he published his first scientific work about some features of the anatomy of sharks. It was signed with a double surname: Miklukho-Maclay. The scientist himself did not leave any explanation about this in his notes, but his heirs have several versions. According to one of them, someone in their family "crossed paths" with a Scot named Maclay. Another, more plausible, is that, having discovered a new type of sponge, Miklukha attributed to its name the abbreviation of his last name - Mcl. And so the same "Maclay" appeared.

Being a man of humble origin, Miklukha was ashamed of this. Therefore, doubling the surname in the Polish manner (and the mother of Nikolai Miklukha was Polish), he made her more “presentable”. Spreading rumors about his nobility, Miklukho-Maclay made his way to scientific world, since it was much easier for aristocrats to get funding, to get on expeditions.

Soon Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay went on a trip to Italy, and then on a wandering through the Egyptian desert to the Red Sea. Risking his life, he even tried to get into the holy Arab city of Jeddah. Then the young traveler caught malaria, and also owed his friends a large sum of money.

Returning to his homeland, Miklukho-Maclay joined the Russian Geographical Society, made useful contacts and was able to organize an expedition to Pacific Ocean. In November 1870, on board the 17-gun corvette Vityaz, the traveler set out on a long voyage. Along the way, he conducted a series of studies of flora, fauna, climate, bought gifts for the natives: knives, axes, cloth, needles, soap, beads.

On September 20, 1871, the Vityaz moored in the Astrolabe Bay off the northeast coast of New Guinea. When the ship fired an artillery salvo to greet the assembled Papuans, they got scared and fled.

The first acquaintance of Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay with the natives was already on earth in an original way. To improve relations with the locals, he went to the village of Gorendu, where savage cannibals lived. Seeing a white-skinned man, they began to threaten, throwing spears, shooting arrows right at their feet. It seemed almost impossible to survive in such a situation. What did the Russian traveler do? He spread out the mat, lay down on it and defiantly fell asleep.

When the scientist opened his eyes, he saw that the Papuans had lost all their fighting enthusiasm. The savages, seeing a man who was not at all afraid of them, decided that he was immortal. Moreover, the natives thought that this was a real god.

Naturally, no one began to dissuade them in the opposite. Nicholas Miklukho-Maclay surprised the Papuans more than once. Once he demonstrated to the natives how alcohol burns. He explained to the savages that if he wanted, he could set fire to the whole sea. After this, of course, he was feared and respected even more.

This was only the beginning of the first expedition of the Russian traveler to the lands of New Guinea, from which he brought the richest ethnographic and anthropological material, as well as collections of animals and plants of this tropical island from the other side of the Earth, which he will find something to surprise. The Papuans of New Guinea have more

Original taken from p_i_f to Miklukho-Maclay and his Papuans

display:inline">

Miklukho-Maclay lived only 41 years and from childhood he constantly won the right to life. At first, he suffered pneumonia, later there was malaria and fever, these diseases provoked constant fainting, delirium attacks. Maclay's death was generally caused by a disease that doctors were unable to diagnose: the scientist had a jaw pain, one arm did not function, and there were severe swelling of the legs and abdomen. Many years later, during the reburial of the remains of Maclay, studies were carried out, as a result of which it was found that Maclay had jaw cancer, and metastases had spread throughout his body.

Despite such a bunch of diseases, Miklouho-Maclay traveled constantly, he traveled to the most remote corners of our planet and was not afraid to go where no civilized person had gone before. The scientist became the discoverer South-East Asia, Australia and Oceania, before him no one was interested in the life of the indigenous population of these territories. In honor of the expeditions of the ethnographer, the area was named "Maclay Coast".

The first expedition of the ethnographer to New Guinea dates back to 1871. The traveler reached a distant land on the ship "Vityaz" and stayed with the natives. True, the first meeting was not without excesses: the locals met the ship friendly, agreed to board, but when they left, they heard a volley and, of course, got scared. As it turned out, the volley was given as a greeting to the new "friends", but the natives did not appreciate the captain's ideas. As a result, Maclay persuaded the only daredevil remaining on the shore to become his guide.

The guy's name was Tui, he helped Maclay get in touch with the inhabitants of the coastal villages. Those, in turn, built a hut for the explorer. Later, Tui was seriously injured - a tree fell on him, Maclay was able to cure the man, for which he received the fame of a healer who arrived ... from the moon. The Guineans seriously believed that in the guise of Maclay, the progenitor of the Rotei clan came to them.

Maclay lived with the Papuans for a year, during which time an official obituary had already been published in Russia, since no one believed that it was possible to survive in those conditions. True, the expedition on the ship "Emerald" nevertheless arrived to pick it up on time. The ethnographer sent a proposal to Russia to organize a Russian protectorate on the Maclay Coast, but the initiative was rejected. But in Germany, the idea was approved, and soon Guinea became a German colony. True, on local residents this had a negative impact: wars broke out among the tribes, many Papuans died, the villages were deserted. To organize an independent state under the leadership of Miklouho-Maclay turned out to be an unrealistic task.

The traveler's personal life was also interesting: despite constant illnesses and traveling, he managed to start relationships with girls. Perhaps the most extravagant was the story of the patient that Maclay treated when he was in medical practice. The girl died, bequeathing him a skull as a token eternal love. From it, the ethnographer made a table lamp, which he then always took with him on his travels. Information has also been preserved about Maclay's novels with girls from the Papuan tribes.

Miklukho-Maclay also had an official wife, an Australian. The couple had two sons, Maclay moved the family to St. Petersburg, where they lived for 6 years. After the death of Miklouho-Maclay, his wife and children returned to Australia.