Petrograd University Research Articles

Дискуссия А.З. Валидова и В.В. Бартольда об академическом востоковедении и империи

Abstract This article analyses the correspondence between Ahmed Z. Validov (Validi), a historian and school tutor from the Volga region, and Vasiliy V. Barthold, a Russian historian and orientalist, a professor at the Petrograd University. The modern-day scholars primarily concentrate on Validov and Barthold’s academic legacy, their writings on manuscripts, archeology and ethnography. Apparently, the historians describe them as associates by using «mentor and student» metaphor. However, this position is far from revealing the true nature of this complicated relationship. What was the reason behind the communication between these two individuals? What did they discuss? Apart from the listing of manuscripts and archeological sites, both scholars were involved in the conversation about ethics and methods of Asian studies. They discussed the connections between the orientalists and local communities. To be specific, Barthold’s position was a widespread liberal positioning of a multinational and rightful empire as an ultimate good. Despite his indicative claim to support this position, Validov found multiple ruptures in Barthold’s thought. Validov criticised the Russian orientalists in anxiety and unreasonable hate towards the Muslim polymaths. He emphasised the insoluble contradictions in the Orientalists’ behaviour that hindered them from realising their ethical claims. This critical attitude is decisive in revealing the rationale behind the hostility between the knowledge-makers in the late Russian empire.

От научных сотрудников II разряда к аспирантам: подготовка кадров высшей квалификации по медиевистике в Ленинграде (1920-1930-е гг.)

This article is based on unpublished materials from the collections of A.E. Presnyakov (St. Petersburg History Institute RAS Archive), I.M. Grevs (St. Petersburg Branch of RAS Archive), and O.A. Dobiash-Rozhdestvenskaya (Manuscripts Department of the Russian National Library). Despite the revolutionary events of 1917 and the abolition of academic degrees and ranks in 1918, the Medievalist training system established at the I.M. Grevs School worked and yielded results throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Medievalists were first concentrated in the Historical Institute at Petrograd University, then in the Leningrad branch of the RANION Institute of History, and finally, from 1934, in the Department of Medieval History at Leningrad University. The new institutions were adapting previous procedures for the education of scholars to the changed conditions, while the content of the training remained unchanged and focused on mastering the methods and techniques of historical research, the study of sources and the range of auxiliary historical disciplines. This was achieved through participation in seminars on reading and commenting on medieval sources (usually on the history of Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries), and by making reports on highly specialist subjects. Young researchers continued to see the debate (necessary to obtain the right to teach on universities) as a means of self-realisation and self-presentation, a way of entering science, especially in a situation where there was virtually no possibility of publication.

On the revision of historical collections of three-dimensional models of foraminifers from the Paleontological Museum of St Petersburg State University

Two collections of plaster models of foraminifera from the Paleontological Museum of St. Petersburg State University were studied. The first one (No. ПЛ ОФ 721) is represented by 95 objects. The time of its acquisition and authorship were unknown, some of the models were kept without labels, there was no catalog and records of its receipt. The collection has not been used for teaching or exposure in the museum. As it turned out the creator of the original collection was Academician Alcide d'Orbigny, who first described foraminifers as a separate group of animals in 1826 in the monograph “Tableau méthodique de la classe des Céphalopodes”. The 100 plaster foraminiferal models were made by him to illustrate the classification the new group. The original d'Orbigny’s collection is kept in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, and its copies were acquired by museums and universities in different countries. The copy of the d'Orbigny collection of the Paleontological Museum of St. Petersburg State University was probably made by the German trading company “Dr. F. Krantz, Rheinisches Mineralien-Kontor”. It was acquired by the St. Petersburg Imperial University for the Geological Cabinet (museum), which were created since 1870 by Professor A.A. Inostrantsev. Based on literary sources, the history of revisions of the d'Orbigny collection has been restored. That made it possible to correct errors in the museum labels, as well as to establish the original names of species depicted as models and bring them into line with the now accepted foraminiferal taxonomy. The second collection (No. ПЛ ОФ 75) is only a part (15 objects) of the collection of 100 models made by Václav Frič to illustrate foraminiferal classification scheme by the Austrian paleontologist August von Reuss. It was purchased for the Geological Cabinet of the Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) Courses and subsequently entered the Department of Paleontology, established at Petrograd University in 1919. As a result of the revision, the species affiliation of the species depicted as the models was established in accordance with the modern system of foraminifera.

Fedir Vovk as Founder of Ukrainian-Romanian Scientific Relations

Fedir Vovk (1847–1918), a native of Poltava region and a professor at the Sorbonne University and the University of Petrograd, an illustrious Ukrainian anthropologist and archaeologist, made a significant contribution to the development of national and world scientific thinking. In particular, he is known as the discoverer of Mizin culture, editor of the works of Taras Shevchenko, an active promoter of Ukrainian culture in Europe. Based on the study of a significant ethnographic material collected from different countries, including Romania, Hungary, Russia, F. Vovk published in 1892 a unique work, “The Ritual and Traditions of Marriage in Ukraine”, and in 1916 – two works: “Anthropological Features of the Ukrainian People” and “Ethnographic Features of the Ukrainian People”. Through his works, he rejected the theories of several Russian imperial historians about the fact that Ukraine is only “a south of Russia”. Of particular importance for the scientific activity of F. Vovk was his stay in Romania during 1878–1882. The scientist studied, in particular, the Ukrainian settlements in Northern Dobrogea. As the eloquent scientific results of these studies were, for example, the works “The Trans-Danubian «Sicea» in local memories and stories” (1883) and “Ukrainian Fishing in Dobrogea” (1899). F. Vovk also collaborated with the well-known writer, translator, publicist and public activist Zamfir Arbore-Rally (1848–1933) and rightly entered the scientific annals as one of the founders of the Ukrainian-Romanian scientific and cultural relations of the late (political) stage of the national-cultural renaissance and development of state-building processes in Central and Eastern Europe.

Игорь Петрович Еремин в письмах В. П. Адриановой-Перетц к Н. К. Гудзию

The school of academician Vladimir Peretz became the basis of modern historical and philological studies of the Russian Middle Ages. Varvara Adrianova-Peretz and Nikolai Gudziy were his students in Kiev and Igor Eremin at Petrograd University. The paper considers the attitude of the older generation of V. N. Peretz’s students to the younger ones by considering the example of I. P. Eremin. The research material is the long-term correspondence of Adrianova-Peretz and Gudziy stored at the Institute of Russian Literature. The letters mainly concern scholarly issues, situation in the Pushkin House, and staff of the Department of Old Russian Literature. Eremin worked in the Department since 1934. In her letters written in the 1930s, Varvara Pavlovna talks about Eremin’s participation in collective works, expresses concern about his personal life and writes about his connections with the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Since 1947, when Adrianova-Peretz took over the management of the Department, her relationship with Eremin became quite complicated. While recognizing Eremin’s talent and efficiency, Varvara Pavlovna expressed her preference in organizing the work in the Department not to V. N. Peretz’s pupils (I. P. Eremin and M. O. Skripil) but to her own, D. S. Likhachev, who became the head of the Department in 1954 to work with his own students. Eremin’s activities limited to the Pushkin House were fully concentrated on Leningrad University where he established his own school in the tradition of V. N. Peretz, with L. Dmitriev, N. Demkova, and E. Romodanovskaya being its members.

The Rand Transcript Revealed

AbstractIn this essay, the authors analyze and interpret facsimiles of important original documents—published here for the first time—that are deeply relevant to the education of the young Ayn Rand at the University of Petrograd. This definitive reading of source material provides significant documentation of Rand’s courses, teachers, and textbooks—and what she might have learned from them. Other original source materials are revealed to advance further investigations of this key period in Rand’s life. Recent commentary on Rand’s education in Gary H. Merrill’s book, False Wisdom, is also considered.

Библиография литературной критики и эссеистики А.С. Долинина, 1906–1920 гг.

The bibliography of literary criticism and essays (articles, reviews, literary portraits and parallels, critical and biographical essays, etc.) by Arkady Semyonovich Dolinin (1880–1968), first published here, gives an idea of the field of interest of a great Soviet literary critics before the beginning of his scholarly activity, in the first decades of the XX century. The paper traces the path of Dolinin - literary critic, his appeal to the classical (F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, A.I. Herzen, etc.) and modern (A.P. Chekhov, B.K. Zaitsev, F. Sologub, D.S. Merezhkovsky, etc.) literature, his artistic and aesthetic preferences (from realism to modernism), and his religious and philosophical quest against the background of social and political struggle during the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War. The paper gives an analysis of Dolinin's method: biographical and psychological approach, Critical attitude to the sociological (“pypinism”) and formal- aesthetic (“shklovskism”) methods, comments on the ideological and creative relations with S.A. Vengerov, his teacher at Petrograd University. Special attention is paid to Dolinin's intensive critical work in 1918 –1920 in the Arkhangelsk newspaper Renaissance of the North, where he chronicled Russian literary life at a historical turning point, reflecting on the works of V.V. Rozanov, L.N. Andreev, A.M. Gorky, A.M. Remizov, A.A. Blok, etc. An important achievement of Dolinin was the discovery of young, still unknown talents: L.M. Leonov, B.V. Shergin, A.V. Tufanov.

Sociology as a Theoretical Science (Based on Nikolay Kareyev’s Manuscript “General Methodology of the Humanities”)

This article sets the task of actualizing a fragment of the unpublished work “General methodology of the Humanities” by Nikolay Kareyev (1850–1931). Kareyev’s role in the history of Russian sociology is unique in that he was not only working to popularize the new science of society, but he was also its first historian. The history of Russian sociology for Kareyev, in fact, coincided with some facts from his own biography: Kareyev knew the first Russian sociologists and was one of the founders of a new scientific discipline. In the work “General methodology of the Humanities”, written at the time of reading his educational course at Petrograd University, Nikolay Kareyev summed up his methodological thoughts, paying particular attention to sociology. He considered it a discipline that synthesizes the achievements of the social sciences. By his reasoning, these social sciences were political economics, law and politics (state studies). The view of sociology as an integrating or synthesizing discipline granted it a methodological function. According to Kareyev, the sociological method is in fact a “higher synthesis” or eclectic method. Due to censorship restrictions, the manuscript of the “General methodology of the Humanities” was not published in the 1920’s. Its typescript is stored in the manuscript research department of the Russian state library. As of today the text of the manuscript has only partially been published. The research article is accompanied by the publication of an excerpt from the chapter six “Theoretical Humanities”, dedicated to the synthesizing methodology of sociology.

Methodology of Text Research in Kiev Edition of ‘The Tale of Igor’s Campaign’ by V.N. Peretz, 1926

Linguistic and literary analysis of Old Russian literature’s texts implies that a special methodology of studying should be employed. Such a methodology was developed by V. N. Peretz at his Seminary, while he was teaching at St. Vladimir's University in Kiev and at Petrograd University. In the article the principles of reading the text proposed by the scholar are reviewed basing on The Tale of Igor's Campaign, published by V.N. Peretz in Ukrainian in Kiev in 1926.

Comparative Religion and Anti-Religious Museums of Soviet Russia in the 1920s

By the end of the 1920s, more than 100 anti-religious museums had been opened in the Soviet Union. In addition, anti-religious departments appeared in the exhibitions of many local historical museums. In Moscow, the Central Anti-Religious Museum was opened in the Cathedral of the Strastnoi Monastery. At that time, the first museum promoting a comparative and historical approach to the study and presentation of religious artifacts was opened in Petrograd in 1922. The formation of Museum of Comparative Religion was based on the conjunction of the activities of the Petrograd Excursion Institute, the Academy of Sciences, and the Ethnographic department of Petrograd University. In this paper, based on archival materials, we analyze the methodological principles of the formation of the exhibitions at the newly founded museum, along with its themes, structure, and selection of exhibits. The Museum of Comparative Religion had a very short life before it was transformed into the Leningrad anti-religious museum, but its principles were inherited by the Museum of the History of Religion, which was opened in 1932.

An Alternative on the Ideological Front: Petrograd University and Power in the Context of the Civil War

The article deals with the situation in Petrograd University (St. Petersburg State University) which developed during the Russian Civil War. The University was one of the biggest centers of science and education at the beginning of the First World War. The Bolsheviks’ coming to power was not accepted by professors and students, and during 1917–1919 they awaited the fall of the Bolsheviks in Petrograd. Thus, the University corporation was an ideological enemy of the Bolsheviks. This antagonism further intensified during the realization of high school reform by Narkompros. The University did not want to lose its autonomy; however, the Bolsheviks perceived it as a source of counterrevolutionary activity. This led to repression of University professors in 1919 during the offensives of General Yudenich against Petrograd. Further, attention is paid to how the University community perceived the Civil War. The infamous “philosophical steamboat” was the last act of state terror against the Petrograd University during the Civil War. The University became a symbol of an alternative to the reform of higher education, based on autonomy and opposed to the position of the Bolshevik authorities, that remained unrealized.

"We must remember that before the appearance of Peter Kapitsa, we were the first and only laboratory in the USSR ..."

Lev Vasilievich Shubnikov was born in 1901 in St. Petersburg. His father, Vasily Vasilievich, worked as an accountant, and his mother, Lyubov Sergeyevna, ran a household. In 1911, Lev Shubnikov was enrolled in one of the best St. Petersburg secondary schools - the Maria Andreevna Lentovskaya gymnasium. He studied diligently, as evidenced by the archival documents of the gymnasium. In the report card for graduation, grade 8, in the column “physics” it says “there is a great interest in the subject”. In 1918, Shubnikov entered the Petrograd University at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics (specialty “Physics”). But he was the only recruiting physics student of this year, and he had to listen to lectures first with those who were a year older, then - a younger course. An illustration of the student life of those years is the memoirs of his classmate Olga Nikolaevna Trapeznikova, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences: “In 1919 I entered the physical department of Petrograd University. I met Lev Vasilievich at the university ... Life was difficult. After the lectures, Lev Vasilievich compiled a list of those present, the lecturer signed, and we all were given a thin piece of bread with jam - we called it tea allowance ... In 1919, the Optical Institute already existed, and D.S. Rozhdestvensky arranged for all senior students ... laboratory assistants. Separate building GOI [State Optical Institute. - Note A.T.] then did not yet have and was housed at the University's Physics Institute. All laboratory assistants received the so-called rations, and this supported them very much. Teachers received the same ration. ” The following historical facts deserve mention: the First World War, revolution, civil war and intervention gave rise to devastation, famine, cold in the country. The following extracts from government documents of that time allow you to clearly describe the then realities.

N.I. Kareev’s participation in the Processes of Institutionalizing Sociology in Russia

The article provides a brief overview of the scientific, organizational and pedagogical activities of the outstanding Russian historian and sociologist N.I. Kareev (1850–1931). The main focus is his participation in the processes of the initial period of institutionalizing sociology in Russia: the publication of scientific papers and textbooks on sociology. He was the first person in Russia to give a systematic course in sociology to university students, was co-opted to the Council of the Psychoneurological Institute, in which the first department of sociology was established in Russia. During Soviet times N.I. Kareev taught sociology in Petrograd at Women’s Courses. In 1918, by decision of the People’s Commissariat of Education, he was included in the list of 30 Russian professors who taught sociology at universities of Petrograd and sociological courses for sociology teachers working at secondary schools. N.I. Kareev took an active part in the formation and functioning of the sociological section at the Historical Society of St. Petersburg University and the М.М. Kovalevsky Sociological Society. In 1919, N.I. Kareev actively participated in the formation of the departments of sociology, sociological and social studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Petrograd University. But later, his activity began to receive less and less approval from the new organizers of science and education in Russia.

P.A. Sorokin’s Participation in the Process of Institutionalizing Sociology in Russia

This article is an overview of P.A. Sorokin’s participation in the processes of developing sociology as a science in Russia during his studies at the Department of Sociology at the Psychoneurological Institute, at the Faculty of Law at the St. Petersburg University, in preparation for thesis presentation during the First World War and in the early years of the Soviet regime. Particular attention is paid to his publications, participation in organizing the functioning of the first Russian sociological society named after M.M. Kovalevsky, Department of Sociology at the Petrograd University and in the empirical research conducted by the Sociological Institute.

“One Professorship in Sociology”: All-Russian Competition and Institutionalization of a New Department at the First Petrograd University in 1919

“One Professorship in Sociology”: All-Russian Competition and Institutionalization of a New Department at the First Petrograd University in 1919

Sociology and sociologists at the faculty of social sciences of the Petrograd university

Sociology and sociologists at the faculty of social sciences of the Petrograd university

Georges Guerwich is the forerunner of the foundation of a sociological school at the Dnipro University

The role and place of Georges Guerwich in the foundation of a sociological school at the University of Dnipro. It was found out that at the beginning of his academic career, Georges Guerwich, a coryphae of the Paris School of Sociology, worked for some time at the University of Katerynoslav, thus having laid, at least implicitly, the seeds of sociological education in the Pridneprovsky region. The course of events preceding the opening of the classical university in Katerynoslav is described. It is also noted that when opening the Faculty of Law of the named above, special attention was paid to ensuring the sociological component of the training of future lawyers. Relying on the experience of Western European and especially American universities, it was proposed at the opening of the Faculty of Law in Katerynoslav to establish a department of sociology. For this mission to the University of Katerynoslav, a talented graduate of the Petrograd University George George Gurvich was invited, who is a pupil of intellectual leaders of the Russian law school L. Petrazhitsky, P. Novgorodtsev, F. Taranovsky. While working at the Department of Encyclopedia, History of Philosophy of Law, he laid the foundations of sociological culture at this institution of higher education. It is proved that his general sociological views have a phenomenological basis. G. Gurvich determined that the object of sociology is sui generis phenomena, which are neither reduced to physical nor chemical, biological or psychological phenomena, and the explanation of their main attributes is the main task of sociology. In this case, the main attributes of social phenomena may be in agreement or in conflict. Characterized by the sociological views of Georges Gurvich, it was noted that his sociology is distinguished by the principal attention to theoretical and methodological issues, the phenomenological angle of considering social problems, the elucidation of the historical and genetic foundations of social processes. It was emphasized that it is precisely this focus of the problem’s consideration that is inherent in a sociological school formed at the Dnipro University. Georges Guerwich’s intellectual heritage, academic and scientific-organizational activities are of great importance for the development of world sociology. He co-operated with P. Sorokin, N. Timashev, F. Stepun, P. Struve, and maintained friendly relations with L. Brunswick, L. Lévy-Bruhl, M. Mouss, M. Halbwachs, T. Parsons, R. Merton and others luminaries of modern sociological science. His lectures were attended by J.-P. Sartre and J. Lacan.

Art History and Archeology in the Educational Space of Revolutionary Russia: Two Unknown Projects of 1917

A discussion on the reform of higher education in humanities in Russia in the spring of 1917 is analyzed. At the center of this discussion, questions regarding the organization of the teaching of general history of arts and archeology at Petrograd University and in technical colleges are considered. This discussion reflected the long process of delimitation of a number of disciplines (classical philology, history of art, archeology) and the formation of their own research and teaching field. Two earlier unknown documents are published: a letter from S. A. Zhebelev to V. N. Rakint, the Scientific Secretary of the Institute of History of Arts, and a note by V. Ya. Kurbatov “About teaching of the history of art in the higher technical educational institutions” from the funds of the Central State Archive of Literature and Arts. These documents expand our ideas of the history of the reforming of the higher school in 1917–1922, and the final delimitation of history of arts and archeology not only as academic disciplines, but also as educational directions. Zhebelev’s letter and Kurbatov’s note characterize the atmosphere in the Russian pedagogical environment of 1917–1922, when large-scale and effective reforms of the higher school were possible. It is obvious that some of the ideas stated during the given discussion and realized during the formation of the faculty of social sciences of Petrograd University are relevant today as well: curricula, training of teaching staff, emphasis on practical use of theoretical knowledge, and a polydisciplinary approach in the educational process.

The Logic of Methodology (On the Publication of “The Logical Prerequisites of the Methodology” by Nikolay Kareev)

The purpose of the article is the research of the unpublished methodological scientific work of the Russian historian Nikolay Kareev, called the The General Methodology of the Humanities. This book was written in 1922, but was not published due to censorial restrictions. The text solved different problems of the humanities from the point of view of positivism. In an historiographical aspect, it has some continuity with the course “The Methodology of the History” by Alexander Lappo-Danilevsky, who taught it at the University of Petrograd (after the death of Lappo-Danilevsky in 1919, it was planned to pass this course to Kareev). However, the General Methodology is an original course, written from the different standpoints of Lappo-Danilevsky. This article consists of the introduction and a published fragment from the General Methodology. This fragment includes the second chapter, which is called “The Logical Prerequisites of the Methodology”. Here, Kareev characterized logic as a condition of any methodology, and considered existing methods of cognition, such as inductive, deductive, comparative, and historical; he talked about scientific laws and their classification; he dwelled on the types of inferences and syllogisms in detail, as well as on common mistakes. In this chapter, Kareev not only dealt with the foundations of logic, but also with the theory of argumentation and the theory of proofs. He formulated the signs of scientific knowledge, those of verifiability, systematic, and completeness (integrity). We reconstructed the text of these paragraphs according to a monograph by Kareev, which is held in the Research Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library.

George Gamow`s period of life lived in Leningrag as a formation of scientific outlook

The article is dedicated to George Gamow`s period of life lived in Leningrad, it includes some information about his study in Petrograd (Leningrad) university. There is considered the influence of famous scientists in sphere of theoretical physics on the formation of Gamow`s scientific outlook as well.