Leszek Zasztowt is a historian, ordinary professor and a former director of the Ludwik & Aleksander Birkenmajer Institute for the History of Science (2007-2015), Polish Academy of Sciences, and professor of the University of Warsaw at the Center for East European Studies.

What was life like in the territories annexed by Russia in the 19th century? What were the views and attitudes of the Poles living in lands
belonging to the Russian Empire? How did people arrange their lives when they did not take up revolutionary action and foreswore an open
struggle with the Tsarist regime? Could one be a Polish patriot without fighting gun in hand for independence? The Russians believed that Poles
were genetically preordained to be anti-Russian. Even in the west of Europe this charge of morbid Russophobia was taken to be the rule. It
seems that this was one of the greatest falsehoods that Russian imperial propaganda managed to implement in the West. Leszek Zasztowt
unfolds in this fascinating biography a much more complex reality through the life story of the medical scientist, academic and political
activist Józef Mianowski (1804-1879), a man who served Russia and loved Poland.