history of science, emigration of Russian scientists abroad
This essay concerns activities devoted to assisting European and Russian scientific elites (Russian emigrants of the «first» post-revolutionary wave, professors and high school teachers) who escaped from countries in Nazi-occupied Europe during the 1930s. The article uses unique and previously unknown materials from American archives, in particular the recently discovered 1939-1941 correspondence of the President of the Tolstoy Fund in New York State, Countesse A. L. Tolstoy, along with some of his friends and colleagues, with Alvin S. Johnson, the director of the «Refugee University» at the New School for Social Research. Through new materials, the author of the essay analyzes the historical problem of the «brain drain».
Scientists who immigrated to the United States after the revolution of 1917 worked in difficult economic conditions and lacked certain rights, but they maintained a cohesive and active academic community. Divided by their political opinions and beliefs, they were nevertheless united by the idea of preserving the Russian tradition of academic science and culture that in their opinion had been destroyed in the USSR. One particular feature of the Russian academic diaspora was that, despite territorial divides, it did not disintegrate into closed immigrant communities, but maintained common interests and scientific and cultural contacts. On the whole, Russian 6migre scientists in America pursued a wide spectrum of activities in locales ranging from large aviation firms to observatories, university centers, and laboratories. They contributed to and established professional, political, and youth organizations, schools and institutes, libraries and archives, theaters, and publishing houses.
This publication sheds light on the little-known late period in the life of a prominent Russian scientist Mikhail Novikov (1876-1965), famous for his work in histology, cytology, and comparative anatomy. A well-known public figure in pre-revolutionary Russia (he happened to be the last rector of Moscow University, appointed to this post as a result of democratic elections), Novikov left the country after the Bolshevik Revolution, along with many other men and women of learning. Notwithstanding their eventual dispersal across the world, some of these people maintained close relationships that were to last until the end of their lives, albeit mostly in the epistolary form. Focusing on the hitherto unknown letters written to Novikov during 1946-1961 by a number of Russian intellectuals living in exile, this publication reveals the lasting circle of his epistolary friends and their shared concerns and interests in the years after the end of World War II.
Деятельность русской эмиграции по подготовке к изданию итогового многотомного труда под названием «Золотая книга русской эмиграции» (1958–1971) можно отнести к числу крупных, но малоизученных событий в жизни русского зарубежья. Работа над «Золотой книгой» стала делом чести русских эмигрантов и своего рода ответом на события холодной войны. Сами эмигранты воспринимали «Золотую книгу» не только как свой «ответ», «отчет» или даже как оправдание перед потомками, но и как «завещание» будущим поколениям. Статья анализирует ранее не опубликованную переписку, проливающую свет на обстоятельства передачи материалов «Золотой книги», оказавшихся в распоряжении Е. А. Вечорина, а после его смерти в 1969 г. у его вдовы С. И. Вечориной, из Парижа в НьюЙорк (1969–1971). Эти документы хранятся в так называемых русских архивах США – Бахметевском архиве Колумбийского университета (Нью-Йорк), Архиве Русской академической группы в США (Киннелон, штат Нью-Джерси) и Архиве Толстовского фонда (Валлей Коттедж, штат Нью-Йорк).
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