The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian National Myth (Imperial Russia)
Steven A. Usitalo
Language: English
Pages: 298
ISBN: 1618111736
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This study explores the evolution of Lomonosov’s imposing stature in Russian thought from the middle of the eighteenth century to the closing years of the Soviet period. It reveals much about the intersection in Russian culture of attitudes towards the meaning and significance of science, as well as about the rise of a Russian national identity, of which Lomonosov became an outstanding symbol. Idealized depictions of Lomonosov were employed by Russian scientists, historians, and poets, among others, in efforts to affirm to their countrymen and to the state the pragmatic advantages of science to a modernizing nation. In setting forth this assumption, Usitalo notes that no sharply drawn division can be upheld between the utilization of the myth of Lomonosov during the Soviet period of Russian history and that which characterized earlier views. The main elements that formed the mythology were laid down in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Soviet scholars simply added more exaggerated layers to existing representations.
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field of literature. However, he omitted mention of Lomonosov’s work in the sciences. Le Clerc’s oration was met without enthusiasm by the Academy members,4 was not made available for distribution, and 3 There is no adequate study of the eulogies offered at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, but for limited comparative flavor, please see C. B. Paul, Science and Immortality: The Eloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1699-1791) (Berkeley, 1980), 1-27, 133-55 (which contains three examples
Shuvalov’s introduction, Lomonosov’s “energy,” “talent,” and unspecified striving for “knowledge” and “new ideas” appear in the background. Shuvalov counted Lomonosov particularly lucky to have been able to go abroad, where it was “possible to study much that was new, and also where he was fortunate enough to learn from the famous Wolff.” Eschewing any perusal of Lomonosov’s papers or activities in “science,” except for a citation from the Letter on the Usefulness of Glass, Shuvalov observed that
Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), reconstruct how natural philosophers became “men of science” (and later scientists). 14 D. S. Babkin, G. E. Pavlova, and especially Irina Reyfman have each examined these biographies. Babkin was most interested in the intricacies of their composition, while Reyfman’s work is concerned with how they created and exaggerated Lomonosov’s literary reputation. Galina Pavlova suggested their
also published a short poem, “Verses to a Cup” (“Stikhi na Tuiasok”), apparently authored by Lomonosov in 1734 (see ibid., 303; and also Lomonosov, PSS, vol. 8, 7, 864-66). If this date is accurate, it is the first known composition of Lomonosov. Ivan Lepekhin, who Ozeretskovskii honored by compiling the above volume, traveled extensively in the areas around Lomonosov’s birthplace in 1771-72 (accompanied for a time by Ozeretskovskii, who was then a student), and penned descriptions of the area.
anticipating Franklin, he did aver that “many have stood up to convey hypotheses of lighting and electricity flashes…. But Franklin was the first … to prove from the flash he extracted from the skies that [this spark] has all of the properties of the spark of electricity.”67 He gave Lomonosov credit for his own speculations, which roughly paralleled those of Franklin, and recognized that in some of his conjectures he may have even exceeded Franklin’s reach, but he was quite explicit in stating