The famous doctor Badmaev Petr Alexandrovich was Buryat by origin (his family led a nomadic lifestyle). Since the boy was brought up in the Transbaikal wilderness, almost nothing is known about his early years. Moreover, historians still cannot determine the exact date of his birth. According to various estimates, this is either 1849 or 1851.
Education
The first documentary evidence that Peter Aleksandrovich Badmaev left behind is related to his studies at the Irkutsk gymnasium. Then a native of Siberia moved to the capital of the empire and entered Petersburg University.
It is not surprising that the young man chose the Oriental faculty. He was not just a Buryat, he studied in detail the life, culture and traditions of his native land. It was these deep knowledge that made him famous throughout the country.
Officer and Doctor
Studying at St. Petersburg University ended in 1875. After this, Petr Aleksandrovich Badmaev began working in the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But the young man was not just an official. After the older brother’s early death, he inherited a popular St. Petersburg pharmacy. It sold Tibetan medicines, which were in great demand in the capital. The secular public with trepidation belonged to all sorts of mysterious means delivered from a distant Asian land.
Becoming a pharmacist, Badmaev Petr Alexandrovich delved into the study of the culture of Tibet. Very quickly, he became a prominent specialist in the field of medicine. Moreover, the entrepreneurial Badmaev did not stop at theoretical knowledge. He began to practice medicine, which made his name famous throughout the city. As a medicine, Petr Badmaev used herbs and powders of his own production.
Grey Cardinal
As a St. Petersburg celebrity, Badmaev became close to the high society of the capital and the royal court. He became a public figure of the first magnitude in the reign of Alexander III. The autocrat was even the godfather of the Buryat, who converted to Orthodoxy in adulthood. Peter Badmaev not only became a Christian, he maintained contacts with the main persons in the Church. That is how the extensive correspondence of the doctor with the famous preacher of his time — John of Kronstadt — was preserved.
The religiosity and mysticism of Badmaev’s figure helped him become even closer to power after the accession to the throne of the deeply superstitious Nicholas II. Another person with a similar influence was the much more famous Grigory Rasputin. It was with the help of the “Tobolsk elder” Badmaev who for a long time contacted the tsar and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna. Rasputin often visited the popular healer. Meetings of the bureaucratic and bureaucratic elite were periodically organized in his apartment.
Rasputin, who had a huge influence on Nicholas II, often considered candidates for ministerial posts on their professional suitability. Important in this connection was Peter Aleksandrovich Badmaev. Jamsaran (the real name of the Buryats) brought the old man Gregory with his many clients. For example, it was he who had the idea to appoint Alexander Protopopov as Minister of the Interior. In 1915 - 1916 the official treated Badmaev with his psychotic seizures (he could suddenly lose control of himself). The former minister announced at one of the interrogations of the Cheka after the October Revolution his connections with the healer and his role in the backroom decisions of the tsarist government.
Eastern question
Expressed in modern language, Peter Badmaev was a lobbyist. But he not only helped the authorities make personnel decisions. Pyotr Aleksandrovich Badmaev, whose biography still has many white spots, tried to influence the policies of the Russian Empire in the Far East. This region attracted a doctor, because he himself was from Transbaikalia, and all his fame was built on the techniques of Tibetan medicine.
Just under Alexander III and Nicholas II, the Trans-Siberian Railway was under construction. This project was extremely important from all points of view: economic, military, colonial. Badmaev first shared with Alexander III his thoughts on the Far East in February 1893, when he sent him a thorough and detailed explanatory note with ideas about the tasks of state policy in Asia.
Notes to Alexander III
On what did Petr Aleksandrovich Badmaev base his proposals on the Far East? The books that he left behind indicate that the medicine man traveled several times in China, Mongolia and Tibet. The Manchu dynasty, which ruled then in the Middle Kingdom, experienced a long crisis. All signs indicated that power in China would soon clog in agony. This trend was caught by Badmaev Petr Alexandrovich. The medical prescriptions that he composed were far from the only topic of interest to the doctor. He acted and wrote reports to the emperor as a diplomat and politician.
In his note, Badmaev proposed that Alexander III occupy weakened China. This one thought seemed fantastic, but the healer insisted: if the Russians did not come to the Celestial Empire, this country would be in the hands of Great Britain and other colonial European powers. Alexander regarded the note of his godson as an unrealizable utopia, but for the work done he made him a real state adviser.
Expansion plan in tibet
Badmaev did not just write about the need for expansion in China. He proposed specific methods to achieve this goal. In particular, he advised Alexander III to build another railway. If the Trans-Siberian Railway was oriented to the Far East, then the new path was to open the road to Tibet. The key point on this route was the Chinese city of Lanzhou. It was there that Petr Alexandrovich Badmaev proposed to carry out the railway.
Ivan tea, which grew in Siberia, was not the only reason for the interest of the Buryat physician. Of course, speaking about state interests, he reasoned primarily as a politician, and only then thought about the herbs that made him famous. The railroad in the region, according to the state adviser, was needed in order to gain trade influence. Thanks to him, Russia would become a monopolist in almost all of Asia. And economic power, in turn, is easy to convert into political. The prospects described by Petr Badmaev attracted the close attention of Minister of Finance Sergey Witte. He strongly supported the adviser's projects.
Healer and Nicholas II
Badmaev’s lobbying on the eastern issue continued after the untimely death of Alexander III. The new autocrat Nicholas II also received notes from the famous healer. Badmaev rarely saw the king, but, despite this, had some influence on him. And there were reasons for that. Firstly, Nikolai tried to focus on people whom his own father respected. Secondly, the last Russian tsar had a sick son, Alexei. Badmaev, known for his medical talents, tried to help the heir to the throne. But on this path he was circumvented by Grigory Rasputin.
When the aggravation of relations with Japan began, the state adviser in every way convinced the monarch that he needed to focus on expansion in Tibet and forget about the annoying Japanese. Nikolai even sent a delegation to the mountains. However, in 1904, the Russo-Japanese War began, and the Tibetan project was finally closed.
The main book of the famous doctor
Peter Badmaev left a written legacy and as a doctor. In 1903, his guide to the medical science of Tibet was published, which was based on the translation of the ancient treatise "Chjud-shek." This book was very popular. In Soviet times, they forgot about it. Interest in the works of Peter Badmaev revived again in Perestroika. The manual of the Buryat healer was reprinted for the first time in many years in 1991.
The work is a collection of tips on how to maintain health and beauty. For many years these recommendations were collected and double-checked by Petr Aleksandrovich Badmaev. Ivan tea, a book including which stirred up the Petersburg reading public, attracted the attention of the researcher especially. For many years, the doctor sold powders based on this herb in his pharmacy. Many readers at the beginning of the 20th century appreciated the work published by Pyotr Aleksandrovich Badmaev. Ivan tea recipes for the preparation of welds and powders - all this extremely occupied the wealthy residents of the capital of the Russian Empire.
Imprisonment and death
In the last pre-revolutionary years, Badmaev in the eyes of public opinion has become as unpleasant and mysterious as Rasputin. When the Provisional Government came to power, it sent an old man to Helsinki. Badmaev personified the old era, he was not destined to take root under the new order.
If the Provisional Government tried to get rid of its opponents by peaceful means, then the Bolsheviks who replaced him with the "charlatans of the tsarist regime" did not stand on ceremony. In 1919, Peter Badmaev went to prison. He died in custody in July 1920 (the exact date is unknown).