Famous people of the Tunkinskaya valley

The Tunkinskaya valley is connected with the names of many famous people, who were either the former natives of these places or came here and left their trace in its history.

Many politicians of Russia including about thousand political opponents of authority visited these places in different periods in exile.

• Among them were the professor A.V.Lvov becoming the first scientific researcher of mineral waters of Tunkinskaya valley;
• a decembrist - V.S.Tolstoy who having left for the Caucasian war, gave his house to the national school;
• one of organizers of the Society of the United Slavs - Yu.K.Lublinsky who had lived in Tunka for 16 years, settled down to a large family life and engaged in training of local population and medical business. 
• Here were members of a secret Society “The Earth and the Will” M.A.Kolenkina, a close friend of Vera Zasulich,
• narodovolets ( a national volunteer) and a poet V.A.Denisov who collected here a big library
• and I.V. Barinov, condemned by the loud process of the "50-s”.

Also the whole colony of the Polish revolutionaries lived here, among them were an artist S.Vronsky, who created here many art cloths and a writer - polyglot B.Shvarts.

The fate a famous revolutionary, a writer - M.Voynich, the author of a well-known novel "Bot-fly" was also connected with Tunka. He worked in Tunka as a pharmacist, then escaped and left for London.

“The Tunkinsly hunter” as a 19-teen year old Yuzef Pilsudsky was called, lived here as well, he was sent here in exile according to the case of making an attempt on the tsar Alexander III’s life, the brother of Vladimir Ulyanov, Alexander Ulyanov also was sentenced on this case. Here Yuzef Pilsudsky passed a hard school of life, the establishment of him as a human being and his views took place here. In 1892 Pilsudsky returned home where he became the founder of the independent Polish state and its hetman.

A revolutionary N.I.Kalandarashvili moving with his detachment from Kyakhta to Yakutsk was lost in Tunkinskaya valley.

An oustanding figure of Buddhism, Agvan Dorzhiv, who built the Khoymorsky Datsan, conducted the religious and educational activity here.

Such famous scientists and researchers of Siberia as G.N.Potanin, P.P.Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, V.A.Obruchev, A.P.Okladnikov, S.P.Peretolchin devoted their works to Tunka.