Helena Blavatsky — writer, co-founder of the theosophical society with roots in the Russian Empire
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was born Yelena Petrovna von Hahn in Yekaterinoslav, in the Russian Empire, now Dnipro in Ukraine, on 12 August (31 July, Old Style) 1831. Her father, Colonel Peter von Hahn, an army officer, came of a noble family of Mecklenburg origin settled in Russia, and as a child she travelled widely around the Empire with her family. At seventeen she married Nikifor Blavatsky, an official much older than herself, but left him after a few months.
She then travelled for many years in Europe, the Americas and Asia. By her own account she spent long periods in Tibet studying with teachers she called the Masters; these claims were contested in her lifetime and have been disputed by later scholars, who note that she tried, with little success, to enter Tibet through Nepal and Kashmir. In 1873 she settled in New York, where she met the lawyer and journalist Henry Steel Olcott, and in 1875 she, Olcott and others founded the Theosophical Society, which sought to bring together religion, philosophy and science and promoted the study of Eastern religions in the West. On 8 July 1878 she became an American citizen, according to the Theosophical Society the first Russian woman to do so.
Her first major book, Isis Unveiled, appeared in New York in 1877 in two volumes; its first edition of a thousand copies sold out within days. In 1879 she and Olcott went to India, and in 1882 they established the society's international headquarters at Adyar, near Madras. After sharp criticism in the Indian press and failing health, she left for Europe, worked on her magnum opus at Würzburg, and settled in London, where The Secret Doctrine appeared in 1888 in two volumes; it remains the principal source book of the Theosophical movement. Among her other works was The Voice of the Silence, a book of meditative precepts.
Blavatsky died in London on 8 May 1891, aged fifty-nine. Her ashes were divided between New York, India and London. Her grandnephew Boris de Zirkoff, born in St Petersburg in 1902, spent more than half a century editing her Collected Writings.
"Left Russia as a young woman and travelled widely; settled in New York in 1873 and became an American citizen in 1878; India from 1879; London in her last years."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Yekaterinoslav, Yekaterinoslav Governorate (now Dnipro, Ukraine)
Born Yelena Petrovna von Hahn in Yekaterinoslav, in the Russian Empire, in 1831, the daughter of an army officer of a noble family of Mecklenburg origin, she travelled widely around the Empire as a child and married the official Nikifor Blavatsky at seventeen.
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Yekaterinoslav, Yekaterinoslav Governorate (now Dnipro, Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.