The first scientific meeting of the Academy of Sciences and Arts took place on November 12, 1725. Catherine I, who acceded to the throne a week later, imparted an official status to it, having promulgated a document corroborating the establishment of a Russian academy a la Parisian Academy.
Why Parisian? The empress’s late husband Peter the Great was an honored member of the Parisian Academy and highly appreciated that fact.
Soon confusion set in. The academy was originally planned as both a research and education center. The ambiguous relationship between researcher and teachers had lasted until the reign of Elizaveta, Peter the Great’s daughter. In 1747 the two departments were separated.
Empress approved of the new staff for the Academy: ten full members, ten assistant professors attached to them and ten honorary members. It’s noteworthy that according to the protocol signed by the Empress, all assistant professors were to be ethnic Russians.
Catherine the Great made her own contribution. She did not increase the number of academicians; yet the Russian Academy appeared in her reign. This one was established and supervised by princess Dashkova, who also directed the Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts.
In 1803 the “arts” dropped away and only sciences were left, which was quote sensible. In 1841 Tsar Nicholas I was predisposed towards absolute order annulled the Russian Academy in Moscow, having transformed it into the Department of Russian Language and Philology at Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Sciences.
The quantitative representation of the Academy was a matter of particular concern. While in 1818 there were 60 full-fledged members, after the merger with the Russian Academy their number increased to 76. Curiously enough, unlike university professors, academicians were not eligible for any salary and were motivated with gold medals and other valuable gifts, despite the fact that the Academy itself was very decently financed, with laboratories, libraries and museums added to it.
Members of the Academy began receiving a salary only in 1836 at the rate of professor’s compensation, i.e., up to 3,000 rubles per year, which was comparable to army general’s compensation.
Almost all eminent Russian scholars and men of letters were somehow related to the Academy – from Lomonosov and Pushkin to Tolstoy and Mendeleev. Among its directors there were also quite a few remarkable personalities, such as count Sergey Uvarov, who authored the famous “orthodoxy, autocracy, national ethos” triad, and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich well-known in the literary circles as poet K.R.
In 1917 the flagship of science was predictably renamed into the Russian Academy of Sciences and later into the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1991 they returned the old name of Russian Academy of Sciences. In the 20th century other academies of medical and applied sciences sprang into being and in the post-Soviet times the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences (RANS) was established. What a luring word it is: the Academy!
It continues to beckon many nowadays. This is why we could not help remembering that very first academic meeting in Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and Arts. In December 2011 new full and corresponding members will be elected. The last time this happened was in 2008.
We’ve been accustomed over the last two recent decades to the lament about the mass leakage of best Russian brains abroad, especially representatives of the younger generation. The paradox is, however, that there are roughly 200 people seeking the 82 chairs of full-fledged members. Competition is even higher among the prospective corresponding members: 1,000 claimants to 133 chairs. It seems that the land of Russia has not been drained of talent, or perhaps the wrong ones escaped? Or the wrong ones are applying for membership in the Academy?
If you look at the lists of scientists who are going to contend for membership, you will notice among them quite a few scholars of the younger generation who could be ranked among the junior age group of research fellows in the days of the mass exodus of Russian scientists abroad.
True, very few women are found among the candidates. Things seem to have remained unchanged since the days, when Ms. Dashkova was the only lady scholar in Russia.
There are also a number of non-scientists among the nominees, but unlike in 2008 and earlier there are no odious names among them.
Once we started with a historic reference, we can hardly dispense with modern-day statistics. Nowadays there are more than 500 full members and over 800 corresponding members in the Russian Academy of Sciences, not to mention the upcoming elections…
Perhaps it’s high time to read A Note about the Need for Reform by Mikhail V. Lomonosov.
Mikhail Bykov
