“...It is impossible not to come to... the conclusion that Opacki’s further stay at the university is completely useless...”: Episodes of the biography of the latinist S. Opacki

Abstract

The study is an attempt to reconstruct the Kazan stage of the scientific and pedagogical activity of the latinist Stanislaw Opacki (1847–?) in the context of studying the institutional history of pre-revolutionary antiquity in Kazan. In the process of working on the reconstruction of professor Opacki’s “lifestyle”, a corpus of unpublished archival documents was studied, currently stored in the fund of the Imperial Kazan University (Fund 977) of the State Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan. In order to comprehend the scientific biography of the scientist, a problem-chronological method was applied, which ensured the formation of an accurate picture of S. Opacki’s life in Kazan in 1885–1900. The analysis of the selected archival files made it possible to learn about such little-known aspects of the scientist’s life as relationships with colleagues at the faculty, students and university employees, their nature and influence on the life of a Latin scholar and a professorial corporation. Special attention is paid to the communication of Opacki with Dean Dmitry Belyaev and Dariusz Nagujewski, his colleague at the department. The sources shed light on the assessment of the scientist’s scientific and pedagogical competencies by contemporaries, the circumstances of the appointment of the researcher to the post of extraordinary professor in 1890. In the course of the work, the history of the scientist’s resignation from the university in 1889 and 1900 was established. As a result, it was possible to find an explanation of the difficult relationship between Opacki and his Kazan colleagues, to identify the causes of conflicts and classify them, to determine the significance of Opacki’s stay at the faculty for the development of ancient philology in Kazan in 1890–1900.