Moscow, 1937

by Karl Schlogel

  Sergei Aleksandrevich Dobrov (1884–1959), a geologist: one of the closest colleagues of Aleksei P. Pavlov and a member of the Academy of Sciences, he was arrested in June 1933 and worked as a cartographer and geologist in the camp on the Moscow–Volga Canal.

  Georgii Aleksandrovich Dutkevich (1907–1937), a geologist and stratigrapher: awarded his higher doctorate in 1937, he was one of the founders of the Soviet micropalaeontology school and an explorer of the geology of the Pamir and Ural Mountains. He worked for the Vostokneft Trust, researched the oil resources of the Urals and took part in the Tajikistan– Pamir expedition of the Academy of Sciences. He was arrested on 5 August 1937, immediately after his return from the Seventeenth Congress in Moscow, where he had delivered a paper; he was accused of belonging to a ‘counter-revolutionary fascist organization of terrorists and wreckers’ that was said to have been active since 1930. On 30 November 1937 he was sentenced to death under paragraphs 7 and 8 of Article 58. He was then shot. His father, Aleksandr M. Dutkevich, a mining engineer and metallurgist, was also arrested, as was the latter’s wife, Maria A. Kalmikova. During her interrogation she was told that her husband had been sentenced to ‘ten years without the right to write letters’ – the euphemistic official jargon for the death sentence. Even later on she was not told what had happened to her husband. Dutkevich was rehabilitated in 1956.

  Dmitrii Ivanovich Mushketov (1882–1938), a geologist – an expert on the geology of Central Asia and one of the pioneers of the systematic cartography of the region, as well as a specialist in tectonics: he was a member of the Imperial Academy of Scientists in Halle, the ‘Leopoldina’, after 1918 professor of general geology, and director of the Geological Committee and the Institute for Applied Geophysics, which had been established on his initiative. He worked in gold-bearing regions of Siberia, in the Donbass, the Caucasus and the Caspian, took part in the Fifteenth International Congress of Geology in Pretoria, and helped to organize the Seventeenth International Congress. However, on 29 June 1937, one month before the opening of the congress, he was arrested. The congress files contain no mention of his ideas or his paper on tectonics. His name vanished from the programme and the lists of participants. He was accused of having founded a counter-revolutionary terrorist group in 1930 and of having taken part in wrecking activities. Sentenced to death on 18 February 1938, he was shot the same day. His wife was also arrested and sent to a camp.16

  Mikhail Alekseevich Pavlov (1884–1938), a geologist and petrographer, from a family of mining engineers: he attended the gymnasium of Tsarskoye Selo and then Petersburg University. While still quite young, he took part in expeditions to explore mineral resources in the Northern Urals, in the Olonetsky Region, in the Tundra and on the shores of the White Sea, as well as to Novaia Zemlia and Franz Josef Land. He taught at Perm University. Further expeditions were made, to the Far East and Chukotka. Having undergone forced labour on the construction of a section of the railway to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, in 1938 he was sentenced to death by shooting for sabotage.

  Petr Ioakimovich Pal'chinskii (1987–1929), a mining engineer, was one of the organizers and pioneers of the exploration of the mineral wealth of Russia. He attended secondary school in Kazan, was condemned to forced labour in 1905, and fled to Europe, but returned following an amnesty in 1913. He founded a private geological institute and was the publisher of a specialist journal. A professor in Petrograd, for many years he was the chairman of the Russian Technical Association, which was re-founded in 1921 and was close to employers’ circles. He was organizer of the coal syndicate Produgol'. A member of the Provisional Government, he was arrested several times after 1917 and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. In the period of the New Economic Policy, he was a regular consultant to Gosplan and received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour. Finally, he was arrested in the run-up to the trial against the so-called Industrial Party and shot before the trial itself, on 29 May 1929. He was later accused of having initiated a conspiracy of engineers.

  Dmitrii Yefimovich Perkin (1899–1938), an organizer working in geological sciences: a Bolshevik since March 1917, he was the initiator of numerous expeditions. He was arrested in June 1937 and shot on 8 January 1938.

  Evgenievich Popov (1890–1938), a stratigrapher and palaeontologist, from a doctor’s family in Kansk on the Yenisei: he studied at Kazan University and Tomsk University and made expeditions to the Volga and Ural regions. At university he was condemned for alleged membership of the Trotskyite–Zinovievite counter-revolutionary organization, and a search of his house uncovered books with a religious content. He was banished to the Kolyma region and Magadan, and froze to death en route from Kolyma to Indigarka.

  Ivan Ivanovich Radchenko (1874–1942), an active member of the Party since 1898, he was a member of the Supreme Council of the National Economy, leader of the Peat Syndicate, and a director of the Geological Committee. Arrested on August 1937, he was accused of involvement in the ‘anti-Soviet organization of the Right’. He died in prison in 1942.

  Boris Nikolaevich Rozhkov (1901–1938), a geologist, the son of an engineer and freeman of the city of Moscow: he worked in institutions within the Supreme Council of the National Economy and was head of exploration in Norilsk. He was arrested in Dagestan in 1937 and shot in 1938.

  Rudol'f (Ruvim) Lazarevich Samoilovich (1881–1939), geologist, geographer and polar explorer: an honorary member of the Geographical Societies of the United States, Sweden and Austria, he came from Azov and graduated from the Freiberg School of Mines. Before the Revolution he was an active member of Russian Social Democracy and was arrested a number of times. He became acquainted with the north through exile there. He made expeditions to Spitzbergen (supplying Arctic coal to St Petersburg) and five journeys to Novaia Zemlia, and was head of various institutes. In 1928 he was leader of the rescue expedition on the icebreaker Krasin, in 1931 he was chief scientific officer on Hugo Eckener’s international airship expedition on the Graf Zeppelin, and he took part in a number of sea voyages. Arrested in Kislovodsk in 1938, he had previously acted as leader in a wintering expedition on ships in the Arctic. He was condemned in Moscow and shot on 4 March 1939.

  Georgii Leont'evich Stadnikov (1801–1974), an organic chemist, coal chemist and geologist, graduated from Moscow University in 1904: he was arrested by the Cheka, but after that was active in various state institutes for coal, fuel and asphalt. A third edition of his fundamental monograph on the origins of such substances appeared before his arrest, on 9 August 1938 for ‘involvement in a nationalist-fascist organization in the Academy of Sciences’. Imprisoned in Butyrka, he was not released until 1955; in 1957 he published his monograph Musical Keys, an account of other geologists to have been arrested.

  Mikhail Stepanovich Stroilov (1899–1941), a director of mines: from 1935 he had been chief engineer in the Kuzbass coal region. Arrested in 1936 in connection with the ‘parallel anti-Soviet Trotskyite centre’, he was condemned in the second Moscow show trial, and was shot before the German invasion of Orel.

  Ivan Konstantinovich Traubenberg (1882–1952), a chemist: the founder of the Coal Chemistry Service and head of the first chemical laboratory in Vorkuta, his reputation spread as far as Germany. He carried his instruments and laboratory equipment from the Ukhta-Pechora camp to Vorkuta on his back.

  Nikolai Mikhailovich Fedorovskii (1886–1956), a mineralogist: a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, a Bolshevik since1904, a graduate of Moscow University and a member of the Supreme Council of National Economy after 1917, he was chair of mineralogy and the head of numerous institutes. Arrested in 1937 for involvement ‘in an anti-Soviet organization’ in the Lubianka, in 1939 he was sent to a camp, at first in Vorkuta, then to a special prison in Moscow and in Noril'sk.

  Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Florenskii (1889–1937), a geologist, brother of the philosopher Pavel A. Florenskii: he made expeditions to Nakhichevan and Siberia and was a member of the Academy of Sciences Petrography Institute. He was arrested
in February 1937 for ‘membership of a counterrevolutionary group’.

  Vsevolod Konstantinovich Frederiks (1885–1944), a physicist and theoretician of electromagnetic exploration methods of noble birth, he was the son of the deputy governor of Nizhnii Novgorod. He graduated from the University of Geneva and worked at the University of Göttingen. After returning to Russia in 1918, he worked in the State Optical Institute and the Physical-Technical Institute and was consultant to the Geology Committee. Arrested on 21 October 1936 for membership of ‘a counterrevolutionary fascist organization’ – the ‘Pulkovo’ case – in 1937 he was condemned to ten years’ imprisonment under paragraphs 10 and 121 of Article 58. He was first a woodcutter in Tayshet, then transferred to Orel, according to the testimony of Sergei Vavilov, Aleksei Krylov and Dmitri Shostakovich (he was married to the composer’s sister). He died in transit between camps.

  Viktor Gavrilovich Khimenkov (1881–1949), a geologist and hydro-geologist: a graduate of Moscow University, while in custody he became a specialist in engineering geology. As a hydrogeologist he analysed the route of the Moscow Metro. He was arrested in 1933 and sent to work in Dmitlag, then later in Volgolag. He took part in the Seventeenth International Geologists’ Congress.

  Viktor Vasilevich Chernykh (1899–1941), a mineralogist, of peasant origin, he became a professor and made expeditions in the Urals, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Arrested on 25 October 1937 for ‘terrorism’ – a ‘stash of weapons’ (ancient halberds and pikes, etc.) had been discovered in a museum – he was shot in the gaol in Orel as the Germans approached.

  Anna Dmitrievna Shakhovskaia (1889–1959), a research fellow in the biochemical laboratory of the Academy of Sciences since 1938, she was secretary and assistant to Vladimir Vernadskii. Graduate of the courses given by V. Gere, she came from an aristocratic family. From 1918 to 1922 she worked in the museum in Dmitrov, to the north of Moscow. She was arrested several times, in 1933 together with a group of Moscow geologists. After Vernadskii’s death, she took over responsibility for his archives.

  Iurii Mikhailovich Sheinman (1901–1974), a geologist and specialist in tectonics and magmatism: a member of the Geological Committee, he made expeditions to China and was academic secretary of the Organization Committee of the Seventeenth International Geology Congress. Arrested on 29 September 1938 for his alleged ‘involvement in a spy and sabotage organization’, he served his sentence in Noril'sk, Krasnoiarsk, Moscow and Magadan.

  Sergei Sergeevich Shults (1898–1981), a geologist and geomorphologist, inventor of new scientific methods and initiator of various theories: a professor, of aristocratic family originally from Germany, who was anticommunist in attitude, he was arrested in 1920, a hostage in the Kronstadt uprising. He worked on the Geological Committee under Mushketov. Before his own arrest in 1937, Mushketov had advised him to go on a fieldwork project lasting several months immediately after the congress, in which he had taken part. Thanks to this, he survived and remained head of the chair of geomorphology in the geography faculty of Leningrad University until his death.

  Further dismal fates might be added to this list. Tatiana Martinovna Jerve, who had worked with Andrei Tupolev on the construction of the ANT-20 (Maxim Gorky), disappeared into the Vorkuta camp in January 1938.17 Berta Dubrova (1899–1965) lost her hearing during interrogation. Olga Lazareva, the wife of the physicist Petr Lazarev (1878–1942), the founder of numerous scientific institutes, hanged herself.18 Yevgraf Moldavantsev (1885–1941) threw himself out of a window in order to avoid arrest.19 Nikolai Prokhorov, an earth scientist and pioneer in the field of permafrost research, was shot for having lost a topographical map in Leningrad.20 Aleksandr Yevseev is said to have been subjected to serious torture.21

  All these people were representatives of the classical Russian intelligentsia, with a disproportionate share of aristocrats, ennobled members of the middle class, members of the ‘third element’ – people of foreign origin, especially Poles and Germans. Many of those persecuted belonged to dynasties of scientists that were not untypical of Russia. They were people who took foreign travel for granted and had a definite preference for liberal or even left-wing politics.

  Vladimir Vernadskii: a patriot without fear

  Vernadskii was a typical representative of this generation, which loomed large in the new, post-revolutionary Soviet Union. Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadskii was born in St Petersburg on 28 February (12 March new style) 1863 into a family belonging to the intelligentsia. His father was a well-known economist, denounced in the Soviet Encyclopaedia as a ‘vulgar economist’. Vernadskii studied science at the University of St Petersburg, where he specialized in geology and mineralogy under the soil scientist Vasilii Dokuchaev. In 1888 he studied with Paul Groth in Munich, and in 1889 in Paris with André Fouqué. After a lengthy stay in Italy, he worked as an unpaid lecturer (Privatdozent) and subsequently as a professor in mineralogy at Moscow University. From 1906 he was a member of the Academy of Sciences and director of the Museum of Geology and Mineralogy attached to the academy. In 1919 he became the first president of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. By the mid-1920s he had gained a worldwide reputation as a crystallographer, mineralogist and geochemist, and this brought him invitations to the Sorbonne – from 1922 to 1926 – as well as translations of his principal works into several European languages – La Géochimie was published in 1924. In 1926 he returned to the USSR, where from 1929 until his death he directed the biochemical laboratory of the Academy of Sciences.

  His later fame was based on his ability to transcend the boundaries of the pure natural sciences as well as his utter integrity in difficult times. He introduced the concept of the noosphere – that is to say, the sphere in which nature, the biosphere, is transformed by the impact of human cognition. This made him one of the precursors of modern ecological thinking.22 An aspect of his membership of the intelligentsia was his active social and political involvement. As a prominent member of the liberal party of Constitutional Democrats (the so-called Cadets), he did important war work in the Commission for the Development of Natural Resources (KEPS) and, following the February Revolution, was active for a time in the Ministry of Education of the Provisional Government.23 His son Georgii (1887–1973) went after 1920 via Istanbul and Prague to America, where he became one of the founders of Russian studies at Yale University. One of his daughters also settled in the USA. Father and son remained in contact and often met in Western Europe. Vernadskii undoubtedly enjoyed privileged status. Even in the 1930s he was able to travel abroad every year – to Münster, Göttingen, Berlin, Prague and Paris in 1932, to Czechoslovakia, England, Poland and France in 1933. He was involved in the discussions about splitting the atom, and was acquainted with Otto Hahn and other scientists from the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft in Berlin. But he always returned from his trips abroad and was deeply committed to securing the transfer of the Academy of Sciences from Leningrad to Moscow in 1934 – the idea of a science city in Neskuchnyi Sad comes from him. He himself moved to Moscow, where he took a house in Durnovskii Lane, between Smolenskaia Square and Sobacha Square – in other words, in the middle of the intellectuals’ quarter of the Arbat. In the summer he lived on an estate in Uzkoe outside Moscow. He subscribed to foreign newspapers.24 And he maintained his connections with the society of older scholars, artists and writers still surviving in Moscow. Thus he was on friendly terms with the Kremlin doctor Pletnev, who stood accused as a ‘murderer’ in the third Moscow show trial and was sentenced to death.

  In 1937 Vernadskii was seventy-four; he was just beginning his Book of Life and the Philosophical Thoughts of a Natural Scientist, written as a preface to an edition of Alexander von Humboldt’s Cosmos. He was, insofar as this can be said under the circumstances, a man of utterly independent ideas, a man who would not let the wool be pulled over his eyes. On the occasion of the census he had responded to the question of his religion by saying: ‘a believer, but not in the framework of the Christian church’.25

  As his diaries s
how, he received visitors from all over the country almost daily and knew exactly what was going on around him:

  Moscow, 26 November 1937. Terror all around and its consequences to be seen everywhere. 5 January 1938, a.m. Millions of arrests. Millions of people in prison. They work for nothing, something that plays a major role and is of great importance in the national economy.26

  His earlier diary entries likewise make clear that he was fully aware of events in the villages during the collectivization. Here are some of them:

  12 February 1932: K. A. Nenadkevich came here. Discussed work with him. He is leaving the Radium Institute. Has to finish the atoms. About isotopes and lead. About aluminium silicate. Told me about Nizhnii Tagil, where his brother lives. Oppressive monotony. Life there is very hard culturally. A vast building site. The work is done by ‘de-kulakized’ peasants; they are brought in from all over. They live in horrifying everyday conditions. Slavery is complete – worse than the eighteenth- century settlements. Serfdom – is that how they will be freed from slavery? Will events take this turn? This is a conclusion that others will no doubt arrive at too. A vast building site is developing in Khibiny. Its basis is forced labour, serfdom and a mountain of violence and suffering on the part of innocent human beings. The horror of the life of Russian peasants is never-ending. Suffering. But the spirit is strong, since people understand and pass their understanding down the generations.

  On 13 February 1932, Vernadskii wrote:

  Krachkovskii sketched a picture of the effective destruction of oriental studies. Oriental studies in Russia – provincial enough as it is. They have lost their previous importance. Entirely unimportant people have replaced them, people who haven’t got a clue, chatterers and boasters who understand nothing. They can criticize – i.e. act as informers – but they can achieve nothing of scholarly value.