George Vernadsky | |
|---|---|
| Георгий Вернадский | |
 Vernadsky in 1912 | |
| Born | (1887-08-20)August 20, 1887[1][2] |
| Died | June 12, 1973(1973-06-12) (aged 85)[1][2] |
| Alma mater | Imperial Moscow University University of Freiburg University of Berlin |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Russian history |
| Institutions | Saint Petersburg University Russian School of Law Yale University |
| Academic advisors | Heinrich Rickert,Vasily Klyuchevsky,Robert Vipper |
| Notable students | John Curtis Perry |
| Signature | |
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George Vernadsky (Russian:Гео́ргий Влади́мирович Верна́дский; August 20, 1887 – June 12, 1973) was a Russian-born Americanhistorian and an author of numerous books onRussian history.
Born inSaint Petersburg on August 20, 1887, Vernadsky stemmed from a respectable family of the Russianintelligentsia. His father wasVladimir Vernadsky, a famous Russian/Ukrainian geologist.[1][2]
He entered theMoscow University (where his father was professor) in 1905 but, due to the disturbances of theFirst Russian Revolution, had to spend the next two years in Germany, at theAlbert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and theUniversity of Berlin, where he imbibed the doctrines ofHeinrich Rickert.[1][2]
Back in Russia, Vernadsky resumed his course at the Moscow University, graduating with honors in 1910. His instructors included the historiansVasily Klyuchevsky andRobert Vipper. The young scholar declined to continue his career in the university after the 1910Kasso affair and moved toSaint Petersburg University, where he taught for the next seven years, during which he was awarded theMaster's degree for his dissertation on the effects ofFreemasonry on theRussian Enlightenment.
Politically close to thekadet party (of which his father was one of the leaders), Vernadsky began his career as a supporter of liberal ideas, authoring the biographies ofNikolai Novikov andPavel Milyukov. During the years of theRussian Civil War (1917–1920), he lectured for a year inPerm. He then taught inKiev and then followed theWhite Army toSimferopol, where he taught at the local university for two years.
After the fall ofCrimea to theBolsheviks in 1920, Vernadsky left his native country forIstanbul, moving to Athens later that year. At the suggestion ofNikodim Kondakov, he settled inPrague, teaching there from 1921 until 1925 at theRussian School of Law. There, in association withNikolai Trubetzkoy and P.N. Savitsky, he participated in formulating theEurasian Theory of Russian history. After Kondakov's death, Vernadsky was in charge of theKondakov Seminar, which disseminated his view of Russian culture as the synthesis of Slavonic, Byzantine, and nomadic influences.
In 1927,Michael Rostovtzeff andFrank A. Golder offered Vernadsky a position atYale University in theUnited States. At Yale, he first served as aresearch associate inhistory (1927–1946), and then became a fullprofessor of Russian history in 1946. He served in that position until his retirement in 1956. He died inNew Haven on June 12, 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, ProfessorMichael Karpovich, in 1959.
Vernadsky took a novel approach to Russian history, presenting it as a continuous succession of empires, starting from the Scythian, Sarmatian, Gothic, and Hunnic; Vernadsky attempted to determine the laws of their expansion and collapse. His views emphasized the importance of Eurasian nomadic cultures for Russia's cultural and economic progress, thus anticipating some of the ideas advanced byLev Gumilev.
Vernadsky became the leading American exponent of depicting Russia as much Asian as European, if not more so. He pointed out many substantial cultural differences between Russia and Europe and praised the success of Russian development along an independent path that revealed its unique character. Vernadsky was a geographical determinist like his Yale colleagueEllsworth Huntington. They assumed that the characteristics of a land defined the character of the people and, indeed, of their government. For that reason, Vernadsky could identify the roots of Russian culture in an ancient period long before the Slavic groups arrived. He thereby undercut the standard claim that modern Russia emerged from Kyivan Rus. He emphasized the importance of the Mongol period (1238–1471), as the horde united the vast Eurasian plain under a single ruler. This gave tsarist Russia a strong centralized government and a deep distrust of Europe. Vernadsky was annoyed that Peter the Great tried to Westernize Russia, distorting its natural character. He said Peter only succeeded in polarizing Russia into a Western-oriented elite that conflicted profoundly with the Eurasian peasants. Indeed, Vernadsky argued that this polarization was one of the main weaknesses of the tsarist regime, making it incapable of dealing with the revolutionary movements of the early twentieth century. He celebrated the collapse of the European-style parliamentary government in the October Revolution of 1917 that brought the Bolsheviks to power. Vernadsky was not a liberal, nor was he a Communist sympathizer, but he did admire the Bolsheviks for rebuilding an assertive Russia on non-European lines.[3]
While 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 of early editions were doubtful about certain figures and estimates he made for contemporaneousness, pointing out that some of them were rather a guess than hard evidence. After a new, edition ofA History of Russia appeared in 1930, S.B. Clough fromColumbia University reviewed it inAnnals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science:
Iakov Lur'e (1968) accused Vernadsky'sKievan Russia (1948) of uncritically recyclingTatishchev information about an alleged commercial treaty thatVladimir the Great supposedly concluded with theVolga Bulgars in 1006, which is only found in Tatishchev's second (printed) redaction of theIstoriya Rossiyskaya, not in his first redaction, and is not known from any other source, but fits neatly with Tatishchev's ownmercantilist theories.[5] Vernadsky knew that S. L. Peshtich had written an article in 1946 arguing that there is no evidence of such a treaty, 'but [Vernadsky] neither accepted its conclusions nor refuted them in any way.'[5] Similarly, Vernadsky wrote that 'Tatishchev's data fit well into the general historical picture' aboutRoman of Smolensk andKonstantin of Suzdal founding schools in the 12th and 13th centuries, even though this is only recorded in Tatishchev's second redaction, nowhere else, and seems to conveniently echo Tatishchev's Enlightenment ideas about the importance of education, rather than reflecting historical sources.[6]
