Bronisław Piłsudski
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Bronisław Piotr Piłsudski (November 2, 1866 – May 17, 1918), brother of Józef Piłsudski, was a Polish cultural anthropologist who conducted outstanding research on the Ainu ethnic group, which at the time inhabited Sakhalin Island, but now live mostly on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō with only a small minority left on Sakhalin.
Bronisław and Józef Piłsudski lived in Vilnius in 1874 where they continued self-education for three years. After the death of their mother in 1886, they left for Saint Petersburg. Bronislaw Pilsudski passed an examination at a local university. For his involvement with an undercover socialist in a plot to overthrow Alexander III of Russia in 1887, he was condemned by tsarist Russian authorities to heavy labor on Sakhalin island for fifteen years. He used his time on the island to conduct his research. While in Sakhalin in 1891 Bronislaw Pilsudski met ethnographer Lev Sternberg. He was then sent to the southern part of the island. The rest of his prison sentence was changed to ten years of internal exile because he had settled without the legal permission granted by the Russian authority. Three years later, he was given a grant by the Academy of Imperial Science to study the Ainu. In this year, he settled in the Ainu village and had a son with one of the Ainu women. In 1903 he recorded the language of the Ainu. From these original recordings an Ainu dictionary with over a thousand words was made which was translated into over ten languages. He also wrote down the myths, culture, music and customs of the Ainu. In 1905 he arrived in Kraków Poland after traveling from the United States and Japan. When there was upheaval preceding World War I, he escaped to Switzerland. He then left for Paris in 1917 and drowned in May 17, 1918 in the River Seine. His death was thought to be a suicide.
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