Research of plant resources of the European North of the USSR in the first half of the twentieth century.

Abstract

The problem of providing the European north of Russia with food and fodder worsened after the civil War in the process of a significant increase in the population when solving national economic tasks for the development of the territory. The article aims to show the main directions of research and pedagogical activity of corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR geobotanist Alexander Petrovich Shennikov on the study of plant resources of the modern Komi Republic, the creation of the herbarium of the Institute of Biology of the Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the education of highly qualified specialists. The object of the study is the personality of the scientist, the subject is the representation of personality through the analysis of the content of the documents of the Scientific Archive of the Federal Research Center "Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences" introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.   The appearance in Syktyvkar of the reporting documents of Shennikov and his young colleagues on geobotanical expeditions of the 1920s-1930s was explained by the evacuation of the Northern Base of the USSR Academy of Sciences from Arkhangelsk to Syktyvkar at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. The documents testify to the established scientific and organizational authority of Shennikov by the time of participation in the Pechora Brigade of the Polar Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1933) and the formation of the scientific community of geobotanists under his leadership. The post-war letters of the scientific consultant of the Komi branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences A.P. Shennikov and his wife Maria Mikhailovna reflect the pedagogical and scientific principles of the professor as an educator of researchers; show how the herbarium of the modern Institute of Biology of the Komi Scientific Center of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences was formed; prove the long-term creative cooperation with the botanists of Syktyvkar.