Yu. Ya. Soloviev

Dedicated to an out standing Russian geologist, Dmitrii Mushketov, the article discusses his contribution to the various branches of the discipline. His vast expertise in regional geology, tectonics and seismology, widely acknowledged by his colleagues in Russia and elsewhere, was not unnoticed by the leaders of the Soviet state. Beginning with 1918, Mushketov was assigned the director ship of a prestigious Mining Institute (which he headed until 1927); from 1926 through 1929, he also served as the head of the Soviet Geological Service. The huge administrative burden did not prevent him from working the classical textbook, “Physical Geology,” first published by his father, Ivan Mushketov, in 1888—1891. Its fourth edition, substantially revised and enlarged, was published in 1935, carrying the names of both the father and son. From that time on, the volume has remained an indispensable source on general geology. Neither his administrative skills nor his scientific talents, however, were to make Dmitrii Mushketov immune to the “purges” that swept over the Soviet Union in the 1930s. On 18 February 1938 he was sentenced to death as “an enemy of the people” and immediately executed. Even despite the fact of his official rehabilitation in 1956, the circumstances of his death had been kept in secrecy until 1962.