George Vernadsky Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

: Гео́ргий Влади́мирович Верна́дский) was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n-American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 and an author of numerous books on Russian history.

European years

Born in Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 on August 20, 1887, Vernadsky stemmed from a respectable family of the Ukrainian intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

. His father was Vladimir Vernadsky

Vladimir Vernadsky

Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a Russian/Ukrainian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also worked in Ukraine where he...

, the first President of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He entered the Moscow University (where his father was professor) in 1905 but, due to the disturbances of the First Russian Revolution, had to spend the next two years in Germany, at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and the University of Berlin, where he imbibed the doctrines of Heinrich Rickert

Heinrich Rickert

Heinrich John Rickert was a German philosopher, one of the leading Neo-Kantians.-Life:He was born in Danzig, Prussia and died in Heidelberg, Germany.-Thought:...

.

Back in Russia, Vernadsky resumed his course at the Moscow University, graduating with honors in 1910. His instructors included the historians Vasily Klyuchevsky

Vasily Klyuchevsky

Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky dominated Russian historiography at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is still regarded as one of three most reputable Russian historians, alongside Nikolay Karamzin and Sergey Solovyov.-Early life:...

 and Robert Vipper. The young scholar declined to continue his career in the university after the 1910 Kasso affair and moved to Saint Petersburg University where he taught for the next seven years, during which he was awarded the Master's degree

Master's degree

A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...

 for his dissertation on the effects of Freemasonry

Freemasonry

Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...

 on the Russian Enlightenment

Russian Enlightenment

The Russian Age of Enlightenment was a period in the eighteenth century in which the government began to actively encourage the proliferation of arts and sciences. This time gave birth to the first Russian university, library, theatre, public museum, and relatively independent press...

.
Politically close to the kadet party (of which his father was one of the leaders), Vernadsky began his career as a supporter of liberal ideas, authoring the biographies of Nikolai Novikov and Pavel Milyukov

Pavel Milyukov

Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov , a Russian politician, was the founder, leader, and the most prominent member of the Constitutional Democratic party...

. During the years of the Russian Civil War

Russian Civil War

The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

 (1917–1920), he lectured for a year in Perm

Perm

Perm is a city and the administrative center of Perm Krai, Russia, located on the banks of the Kama River, in the European part of Russia near the Ural Mountains. From 1940 to 1957 it was named Molotov ....

. He then taught in Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

 and then followed the White Army to Simferopol

Simferopol

-Russian Empire and Civil War:The city was renamed Simferopol in 1784 after the annexation of the Crimean Khanate to the Russian Empire by Catherine II of Russia. The name Simferopol is derived from the Greek, Συμφερόπολις , translated as "the city of usefulness." In 1802, Simferopol became the...

, where he taught at the local university for two years.

After the fall of Crimea

Crimea

Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...

 to the Bolshevik

Bolshevik

The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....

s in 1920, Vernadsky left his native country for Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

, moving to Athens

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 later that year. At the suggestion of Nikodim Kondakov

Nikodim Kondakov

Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov , 1844, village of Khalan, Kursk Governorate, Russian Empire–February 17, 1925, Prague, Czechoslovakia), was a Russian historian, specialist in history of Byzantine art. Attended Moscow University under Fedor Buslaev in 1861–1865. Taught in the Moscow Art School...

, he settled in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, teaching there from 1921 until 1925 at the Russian School of Law. There, in association with Nikolai Trubetzkoy

Nikolai Trubetzkoy

Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Trubetzkoy was a Russian linguist and historian whose teachings formed a nucleus of the Prague School of structural linguistics. He is widely considered to be the founder of morphophonology...

 and P.N. Savitsky, he participated in formulating the Eurasian Theory

Eurasianists

Eurasianism is a political movement within the primarily Russian emigre community.-Early 20th century:Eurasianists was a political movement in the Russian emigre community in the 1920s...

 of Russian history. After Kondakov's death, Vernadsky was in charge of the Seminarium Kondakovianum, which dessiminated his view of Russian culture as the synthesis of Slavonic, Byzantine, and nomadic influences.

American years

In 1927, Michael Rostovtzeff

Michael Rostovtzeff

Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtzeff, or Rostovtsev was one of the 20th century's foremost authorities on ancient Greek, Iranian, and Roman history....

 and Frank Golder offered Vernadsky a position at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. At Yale, he first served as a research associate

Research associate

The title of research associate is used to denote an academic research position at a university or similar institution. A research associate usually conducts research under the supervision of a principal investigator. In contrast to a research assistant or research officer, a research associate...

 in history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 (1927–1946), and then became a full professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 of Russian history in 1946. He served in that position until his retirement in 1956. He died in New Haven on June 20, 1973.

Vernadsky's first book in English was a widely read textbook on Russian history, first published in 1929 and republished six times during his lifetime. It was translated to numerous languages, including Hebrew and Japanese. In 1943, he embarked on his magnum opus, A History of Russia, of which six volumes were eventually published, despite the death of his co-author, Professor Karpovich, in 1959.

The book demonstrated Vernadsky's novel approach to Russian history which is conceived by him as a continuous succession of empires, starting from the Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnic, and Gothic; Vernadsky attempted to determine the laws of their expansion and collapse. His views emphasised the importance of Eurasian nomadic cultures for the cultural and economic progress of Russia, thus anticipating some of the tenets advanced by Lev Gumilev

Lev Gumilev

Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev , was a Soviet historian, ethnologist and anthropologist. His unorthodox ideas on the birth and death of ethnic groups have given rise to the political and cultural movement known as "Neo-Eurasianism".-Life:His parents were two prominent poets Nikolay Gumilev and Anna...

.

Critics

While the G. Vernadsky’s writings about the historical past were based upon solid archive sources, his flight from Russia separated him from original materials of the latest periods. Thus, some critics are doubtful about certain figures and estimates he made for contemporaneousness, pointing out that some of them were rather a guess than. After a new, corrected edition of ”A History of Russia” (1930) was published, S.B.Clough from Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 wrote in ”Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science” next year:

”Most serious criticism of the book seems justified by the discussion of the Soviet period. Professor Vernadsky is a Russian refugee and has not been able to throw off an anti-Bolshevik bias. For example, in discussing the Five Year Plan he says, ”In some branches the quality of manufactured products fell below that of output before the war by 30, 40 or even 50 per cent”. This is obviously a guess: quality of such various goods as are produced in Russia cannot be reduced to a percentage. In his whole discussion of the Five Year Plan he does not take sufficient account of the labor and capital invested for future production, and in citing Five Year Plan statistics he does not state which Five Year Plan he refers to. Moreover, he compares the figures issued at the end of the first year fifth those of the preceding year when a better picture would have been given if he had compared them with an index number. The last paragraph of the book seems questionable to the reviewer: ”At the outset of the year 1930, the New Economic Policy could be considered completely abrogated. There had begun a new experiment in militant communism.”

Reviews

• [Clough S.B., Columbia University Vernadsky, George. A History of Russia. Pp. xix, 413. New Haven: Yale University…]