In 1933, the Roosevelt administration, which had just formally recognized the Soviet Union, sent Nicholas Roerich and his Harvard-educated son George, who had studied Asian languages and later became a noted scholar of Tibet, on a horticultural expedition to Central Asia on behalf of Wallace's Department of Agriculture. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who was hostile to Wallace, writes that "Wallace did Roerich a number of favors, including sending him on an expedition to Central Asia presumably to collect drought-resistant grasses. In due course, H.A. [Wallace] became disillusioned with Roerich and turned almost viciously against him." Wallace biographers John C. Culver and John Hyde, however, write that it is unclear with whom the idea for the Roerich expedition originated, since in cabinet meetings Wallace had opposed Roosevelt's granting of recognition to the Soviet government because of its hostility to organized religion and his fear it would dump grain on the United States. However, once in Asia, Roerich upset the diplomatic world and the US agricultural experts who accompanied him by neglecting botany and, instead, searching for and possibly trying to bring about a revival of the legendary Shambhalla, variously located in Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, or Manchuria. These areas were partly under the jurisdiction of the British and Japanese empires, which did not look kindly on movements for national self-determination and believed Roerich to be a Russian spy and/or anti-imperialist agitator. After Wallace recalled him, the U.S. government aggressively pursued Roerich for tax evasion, and the Artist (the holder of a French passport) took up residence in India, where gurus were not considered so unusual.