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 Lunacharsky Articles and speeches on international politics

To the 200th anniversary of the All-Union Academy of Sciences

Published according to the journal "New World" 1925, No. 10.

In 1974, in the same journal, in No. 5, the article was reprinted with abbreviations, which are indicated in square brackets in the text. — Approx. site.

The foundation of the Academy of Sciences, which at the beginning bore the name of St. Petersburg, is closely connected with all the reforms of Peter the Great.

At present, the meaning of the reforms of Peter the Great is quite clear. It is sufficiently known that these reforms were prepared already in the previous reign and found their logical continuation in the further policy of the Russian autocracy, although sometimes there were interruptions and distortions.

From such interruptions and distortions, the reforms of the most swift and most straightforward of the reformers, Peter, could not be free.

The Russian autocracy was, of course, primarily the center of forces and the main form of organization of the ruling classes of the country. However, things were not very simple within the ruling classes themselves; the various sections within them waged no small struggle among themselves.

The old, mainly feudal-agricultural system, with an admixture of some forms of relatively small trading capital, more Asian than European type, faced in its interests with the tendencies of the new trading capital, which gradually grew out of petty turnovers, began to look at outlets to the seas, to use transit between Europe and Asia, and not only for a more or less extensive exchange of paternal raw materials for European products, but also for a gradual transition to independent processing of raw materials.

Politically, commercial capital did not seem to play a significant role, but economically it became an increasingly important wheel in the state. However, the influence of the upper strata of the merchants and the nobility, somehow drawn into the commercial capitalist enterprises, could not by themselves bring the state out of balance so rapidly and revolutionaryly as we see it under Peter. To understand the inner meaning of Peter's reforms, one must also take into account the interest of the autocracy as such. This does not mean at all that the person of the king, his dynasty, court, or even the bureaucracy would be singled out by us as some kind of independent class. Not at all. They are, of course, bone and bone and flesh and blood of the ruling classes in general, but they constitute the main headquarters of these classes. With the low development of society in Russia, they were, of course, people

It is not God knows how deep this awareness was and God knows how wise the political thought of this headquarters was, but nevertheless, one thing was always clear to him: the need to keep the colossal Russian patrimony in complete subordination to the ruling classes, to protect it at the same time from the predatory encroachments of the ruling classes of the neighboring powers. Military considerations, side by side with those of a police nature, were involuntarily the dominant considerations of this general headquarters. And here, with complete obviousness for all the more or less thinking people, the advantages of Western commercial and industrial culture, even in purely military terms, became clear. Peter the Great fought a lot and relatively happily, the results of his wars (far, however, not unconditionally successful) were themselves explained at the time by the reforms introduced in the country's military forces on land and at sea. There is no doubt that if these reforms had been carried out with less swiftness and pressure than Peter did, then the country would have been late and would undoubtedly have been severely mutilated by one or another of its neighbors.

But already military-political considerations led to the conclusion that the army and navy of the European order could not be supported by the rear, devoid of some, at least minimal, elements of European-built industry.

These tendencies of the autocratic headquarters coincided with the tendencies of the upper classes of the commercial bourgeoisie and greatly increased the influence of this class.

The same considerations extremely weakened the opposition of that part of the nobility and the clergy who were ready to stand for antiquity. The decisive factor in this was that the autocracy, beginning with Ivan the Terrible, if not earlier, acquired a certain new method of seeking support for itself in internal and external strife, and a certain new layer of rulers, which served as a source of strength for it. This layer was the landownership. The extraordinary strength of the Russian autocracy in the face of all elements of the population consisted precisely in the fact that in Europe, where cities developed powerfully, they had to be taken into account directly, i.e. not only patronize them, but feel the pressure of their demands. Russian cities, on the other hand, were rather weak in this regard, playing a certain economic role, pushing the country forward on the path of Europeanization.

The landlordism of an immense country, which was created in parallel with the strength of the Muscovite tsars, found precisely the main knot of its organization in the autocracy as such. It again could not find any other organizing center. Dispersed, individually weak, sustained only by the patronage of the tsar, it in its entirety constituted, nevertheless, the basis of the military force of the autocracy; It was, admittedly, a wasteful, absurd, but nonetheless a powerful enough apparatus to draw together an even more dispersed and disorganized peasant mass, from which the military and economic power of the state was finally beaten out. The autocracy, directly through the landlords, relied on disenfranchised, unarmed peasant Russia,

The landlords, of course, were primarily interested in the military-political and, to a large extent, the commercial power of the country. Because of the time it was the most state class. Individual landlords could be completely unaware of this and be real savages, but class feeling in these cases, which usually manifests itself as a certain social instinct, suggested to the landowners that their well-being is most closely connected with the growth of Russia's great power.

Being a great power was objectively possible, because historically a country with a vast territory and a sparse but numerous population has developed. The whole point was only to use this element to the greatest benefit of the ruling. Such a method was found precisely in Europeanization adapted to this purpose. She was led by Peter. In doing so, he could rely on the more or less widespread idea, which weakened some and strengthened others, that without Europeanization Russia could perish under the blows of its Western neighbors. He relied on the interests of the growing bourgeoisie, he relied on his officers of the nobility and on his drilled, well-cooked peasant soldiers in the barracks.

Peter did not need to be a particularly wise man to understand the impossibility of creating a great power without science. In the 17th century, this was already undeniable. Although religion held on more or less firmly, and not only the government, but also the bourgeoisie were convinced of the need for it, as a bond of obedience to the lower classes. Although the various philosophical systems were just more or less falsified conclusions from young science, attempts to reconcile them with religious elements, nevertheless, in fact, the thought of the bourgeoisie, already then the main active class, set sail from the religious shore. We know that after a series of wanderings on the seas, freedom of trade, freedom of speech and conscience, and finally even political freedom, the bourgeoisie will try to land again on these abandoned shores. 18th century was the spring of all these freedoms, not yet hatched from the egg of time. For the bourgeoisie, it was clear that widespread navigation, manufacture with the gradual use of more and more improved mechanical and chemical processes, are completely unthinkable without the development of mathematics, mechanical views of nature, etc. The eighteenth century was left to raise the question of scientific elucidation of social phenomena with all acuteness. The 17th century thought relatively little about this. Mechanics and mathematics were his predominant interests, and from here he made the necessary and often destructive excursions into the fields of philosophy and religion in order to create for himself a fairly solid foundation for his success.

The broadest constructions of Descartes, Malherbe, Spinoza, in their social meaning, were primarily attempts, without declaring direct war on the clergy, to create a logical and psychological atmosphere in which it would be possible to obtain accurate knowledge about nature with confidence.

Russian religious thought was terribly weak and compromised.

Sincere and holy believers could be found mainly among schismatics, absolutely obscure, savagely superstitious, completely unyielding in relation to progress. Maybe from the Old Believers there was some way out to the light, but it lay on completely different paths than the path of state enlightenment, naturally chosen by Peter. Orthodoxy, as such, was a complete rot.

Below, in the peasantry, it goes without saying, pagan half-belief, combined with superstitions and nothing more, and above, the absence of any conviction, an empty ritual, and at every step the trampling of all the principles of any kind of Christian morality. Compared with the squalor of Russian religious thought, Europe, both in Catholicism and in the purely bourgeois versions of Christianity, especially of the Calvinist persuasion, was an inaccessible stronghold of religiosity.

This circumstance most of all allowed Peter to turn the church into an auxiliary, subordinate and slightly despised screw of his state machine, and personally to rise to a strange mixture of weak remnants of religious consciousness with the most jocular mockery of religion.

Peter the Great was extremely little bound by the bonds of religiosity, and the same, of course, must be said about the entire bureaucratic general staff that surrounded him. On the other hand, the realization that accurate knowledge of nature is the basis of proper management, the correct disposal of people and things, firmly entered the head of the owners of Russia at that time. Hence the natural desire to transplant science onto Russian soil as soon as possible. While building his St. Petersburg Academy, Peter did not at all think of mechanically transplanting the learned Germans he had invited to Russia. It is said that Peter loved foreigners; of course, he found in them more understanding assistants, but he perfectly saw that the inoculation of science should at all costs be facilitated by the emergence of its own national scientific growth, which would ensure the possibility of greater independence from Europe. The lazy Russian landlord puppy was incredibly difficult to get to learn. But Peter decided not to spare sticks and to force the European science of the Russian undergrowth to hammer. The Germans were called for this, and at least some capable barchuks were sent to the Germans.

Very characteristic are those, so to speak, godfathers who stood at the font of the future Academy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Peter in many respects took his charter from the Paris Academy of Sciences. Even a tenth of the Academy of Paris did not develop the revolutionary nature of scientific thought that distinguished the French enlighteners a few decades later, but nevertheless it was a very serious bourgeois battery. Its members were very many nobles, but they were nobles of the bourgeois type.

In the Paris Academy, in the most interesting part of it for Peter, among mathematicians, mechanics, physicists, chemists and all sorts of other natural scientists, the same love for acquiring accurate knowledge of nature reigned. Later, it is on this soil that the wonderful flower of Diderot's encyclopedia will grow. Parisian science would later not only promote revolutionary rationalism, that very active force in the spontaneous upheaval of the end of the eighteenth century, but would align itself with the revolutionaries themselves, give their members to all parties down to the most extreme, offer very effective help to science in the self-defense of revolutionary France and the organization of new life. Together with the entire French bourgeoisie, the French science is experiencing a tremendous upswing, not only in terms of purely scientific achievements, but also in the sense of understanding the deepest inner connection between science and revolution, understood as a process of conscious arrangement of expedient forms of life on earth. Peter, of course, did not understand the revolutionary charge laid down in the Paris Academy. It was important for him to acquire a tool for enlightening his noble officials and a support for the development of national industry and trade, as well as, and above all, military equipment.

Having, nevertheless, the Paris Academy as a model, Peter turned to Leibniz with a request to draw up the charter of the Academy. Leibniz, for all the immensity of his universal mind, was a great Sahar Medovich. Bourgeois science did not even subjectively realize at that time the need for a break with the monarchy. The power of the young bourgeoisie still showed itself in the sense of strengthening the monarchy, although simultaneously with its degeneration into so-called enlightened absolutism. This was also consistent with the whole manner of Leibniz, who was ready to flatter quite subtly various kinds of crowned persons of both crawls and used huge and often amazing in wit tricks in order to turn the screaming contradictions of the world into harmony, in which, thanks to the wisdom of providence, complete freedom of the individual is perfectly combined. (which was part of the ideal of the then enlightened bourgeois entrepreneur and competitor) and "order".

The bourgeois individualist at that time was very thirsty for order , and he always thirsts for it, first of all because, together with Hobbes, he more or less clearly understands that without some police arbiter, bourgeois rivals can devour each other - scatter such warm associations for commercial and industrial exploitation. foreign countries and their own poor, which were the powers, especially from the 17th century.

Nevertheless, Leibniz was an enlightened man. He imagined order as something harmoniously arising from the desire of freecitizens of even the very first rank, and he included scientists as such, to maintain this dear order to everyone. He wanted to preserve the freedom of self-determination for the Academy, and in the charter he wrote that the St. Petersburg Academy should be a purely scientific unit, independent of the bureaucracy, not merging with it, and that members of the Academy should in no case receive either ranks or orders. . He wanted the Academy to elect its own president and, in general, be a kind of collective monad, whose inner will itself would direct it along lines harmoniously parallel to the goals of the Russian state. In approximately the same tones, I would be ready to see the Academy and a typical, somewhat narrow, but honest enlightened man - Wolf.

Peter wanted the names of the brilliant teachers of Europe to shine on the birth certificate of the newborn Academy, but he knew what he wanted, and in his decree on the opening of the Academy of January 28, 1724, he stated that “it is impossible to follow the accepted model here in other states, but we must look at the state of the local state.” Based on his understanding of the "state of the local state", Peter the Great bestowed, firstly, on all academicians the title of nobles and thus included them in the ruling class. Secondly, he established for them all the rules that governed the life of the bureaucracy in general, and, thirdly, he recognized it as necessary that the president be appointed by the tsar. In this form, the St. Petersburg Academy began to live.

Although it consisted of foreigners, Peter had already taken measures to call the successors of this work from his own land. In the bowels of the Academy, both a university and a gymnasium were arranged, which later separated from it. As if symbolizing the further course of the development of culture, as if in response to the request of the noble autocracy, the people from their rather deep bowels, from the stratum of the prosperous peasantry, put forward the giant Lomonosov.

Under Peter, and during the entire 18th century, very prominent representatives of science were invited to the Academy from abroad, but Lomonosov, perhaps, eclipsed them all, both by the universality of those he touched, which, however, could not particularly surprise them, and by his amazing, truly the ingenious depth of his insight into the essence of many scientific issues. Lomonosov was ahead of his time and in many ways is almost our contemporary. His influence on the Academy and on the entire young culture of the country was, of course, enormous, but it could not in any way change the fundamental features of the scientific life of Russia in the 18th century.

When the revolution was ripening in France, the electric currents of Voltaireanism and encyclopedism reached as far as Russia. They were far from being just the fashionista of individual Russian bars, these gilded Tatars, far from being just a parure of northern Semiramis, they groped among the already advanced strata of the mixed bourgeois-noble avant-garde that had already appeared, people capable of responding to them more or less entirely. Such were not only the well-known Radishchev and Novikov, but, for example, the amazing Krylov, who at the beginning of his career promised to become an absolutely exceptional brilliant satirist, and, perhaps, the most powerful conductor of freethinking on Russian soil. From the first swing of it one could think that he would leave Fon-Vizin and his ilk infinitely far behind him.

But did it somehow affect the Academy? The Academy was to such an enormous extent fettered by its dignitary bureaucracy, it was to such an extent at the hand of the autocracy, which understood it as its own apparatus, that apparently it did not stir at all. True, during the period of repressions at the end of the reign of Catherine and in the era of Paul, the activity of the Academy, even scientific, was greatly weakened; True, it seems to be straightening out with the growth of a new social opposition wave that led to December. But nevertheless, it can be said that in the history of the Russian public, as such, the Academy does not play any faces. Its political ideology before Lomonosov, with Lomonosov, and after Lomonosov, is frail and well-intentioned. And it's good if she's a coward. A cowardly academician is still a more pleasant type than an academician who has nothing to be cowardly,

And yet it was during this first period of the life of the Academy in the 18th century that it developed an unusually planned activity, and far from being only abstract scientific, not only did the names of Vernuli, Euler, Pallas and native Lomonosov sparkle in its lists, but gigantic practical work was being done . The climax of this work falls on the 60-70s of the XVIII century.

At that time, Pallas, Hildesptedt, Lepekhin, Falki, and others began to intensively explore the Eurasian country, as if rediscovering it for mankind, or, more precisely, opening it for him for the first time. A number of classically described expeditions, brilliant in their results, are sent to all directions of the immeasurable empire and, enriching science with a lot of new data, at the same time accumulate rich materials for the throne and bureaucracy, which, in order to be any zealous masters, needed to know what they actually do.

Yes, the Academy of Sciences, represented by its foreign and Russian members, is discovering Russia. Her most brilliant work is the creation of the Russian Atlas, which appeared back in 1745 and received the most brilliant reviews from the best geographers of that time.

No wonder Academician Oldenburg in his note on the history of the Academy very subtly remarks:

“If we compare the nature of the work of the Academy at its founding and in the early days of its existence, we will be struck by how great the resemblance of this work to that which the Academy is doing now, especially since the revolution. The reason for this is clear. If you pay attention to the fact that both then and now the country was going through tremendous changes: at the beginning of the 18th century, Russia began to become part of the European countries with its culture and civilization, now our Union has entered into a completely new life already on a global scale, uniting in itself West and East. In both periods, science in general and the Academy in particular were required and still require a tense unification of theory and practice. In the 18th century, an intensified study of the country was required for the knowledge of all natural resources and its needs, in the 20th century, especially after the revolution, a more in-depth study of the country's productive forces was taking place, and in this study the Academy showed special activity through the specially organized under it in 1925 year "Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces" (KEPS), which carried out a large research and accounting work and published a number of collections and monographs that were widely distributed in the Union and caused a number of similar surveys and records in different parts of the USSR.

I have neither the intention nor the opportunity here to present the history of the Academy, and it has not yet been written, although there are six volumes of apparently most interesting materials on its history. As a scientific society, the Academy in its history includes, first of all, the history of all scientific works and discoveries. It can only be carried out collectively, and one must think that this work will not be long in coming.

In subsequent eras, in the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century, the Academy grew stronger: it finally turned into the Russian Academy, ceased to be imported to some extent, but instead established strong and beneficial relations with European science. It gradually grew and extremely important institutions spun off from it, not to mention the First Russian University. For example, the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory and the Main Geophysical Observatory were born in it and are still connected with it, for example, it has numerous laboratories, of which two have turned into the most complex and richest institutes - Physicogeological and Chemical. Osh opened a number of academic museums on mineralogy, geology, botany, ethnography, etc. It published more than 15,000 volumes in 200 years, including a dictionary of the Russian language.

But it is striking that how rich her objective-scientific work is, and at the same time not only abstract, but often practical, just as pale, weak, just as absent, one might say, the social life of the Academy.

Is it true that science must live like a recluse, that it must, like a great tree, bear its fruits, not caring at all what animals will devour them at its roots? The autocracy, which at times became furious with the universities and the press and reached the point of insanity, whose representative was, for example, the round scoundrel Magnitsky, was somewhat cautious with the Academy. The Academy was also cautious. She shunned, like fire, the raising of any question that might arouse the slightest jealous feeling of autocracy. Academicians diligently sat together with the princes Dunduks, sometimes under their heavy behinds, which occupied academic chairs. They reveled in their scientific work and, as it were, turned a blind eye to their surroundings. I have no doubt that it is possible to prove what the deadening of public feelings and thoughts of the Academy of Sciences is, which lasted almost the entire time of its existence, could not but deaden to some extent its scientific thought. But, of course, I am far from the opinion that the scientific thought of the Academy is therefore deprived of value. On the contrary, beyond the reach of the police, in the field of pure science and in the field of objective, like photography, geographical and ethnographic research, the Academy did a gigantic job. Indirectly, this was also of social significance, because without a permanent center of academic thought, Russian natural science would have been deprived of its backbone. geographical and ethnographic research, the Academy did a gigantic job. Indirectly, this was also of social significance, because without a permanent center of academic thought, Russian natural science would have been deprived of its backbone. geographical and ethnographic research, the Academy did a gigantic job. Indirectly, this was also of social significance, because without a permanent center of academic thought, Russian natural science would have been deprived of its backbone.

We all know the ways of Russian thought. Without the flourishing of Russian academic science, Russian universities would be poor, whose influence on the Russian public through the professorship and especially the students, no one will dare to deny. But all this was done outside the Academy. It can be said that the Academy had a beneficial effect on the Russian revolution insofar as the sun itself had on it. She shone, she warmed, not caring about what would grow and flow out of all this, remaining forever in heaven and shunning the earthly.

[The mood that after 1825 was so tragically reflected in the greatest man of that era, Pushkin, to a large extent serves as an explanation for the internal psychological makeup of the Russian academician.

When Pushkin, shackled and mutilated by the autocracy, decided that he still had to live, he first of all tried to come to terms with the autocracy. He didn't quite succeed in this. Every attempt at a praise in his mouth was false and burned them. Even his estate landowner closeness to the autocracy helped little. But another theory was at the service, so splendidly explained in Pushkin by Plekhanov, the theory of a fruitful, magnificent and sublime flight from hard reality into the realm of pure art. And what? Didn't Pushkin create something great in this field in the 1930s? Are we not close to the idea that perhaps this was a great success for the Russian people? After all, that breadth, that thoughtful calmness, that sad love that permeates the works of a spiritually mutilated poet, who from the wound of his birth of a pearl, represent the greatest values. It is not for nothing that Marx says that the growth of society, or even of its economic foundation, does not always coincide with the highest waves of art. A turbulent life is in some ways the opposite of art. Art always includes a certain kind of dream. Whoever lives by art always takes something away from immediate reality. That is why epochs when there is no other way out than art, under other more or less favorable conditions, can create a remarkable flowering of it, then with certain reservations, passing through certain prisms that can serve as a life-giving factor in more active, but less aesthetic epochs.]

I certainly do not think that the business transition to communism that we are now experiencing has led us to underestimate the importance of so-called pure science, and not, of course, because we are inclined to believe in its self-sufficient sacred altar, but because we know , as the most distant, but logical and experimentally correct studies, unexpectedly for their creators and critics, they throw a seed on the ground and give the most beautiful fruits. But nevertheless, we notice the fears of our scientists, lest, having given a finger to the greedy practice of our time, they would not be at the mercy of it with their entire arm up to the shoulder, and perhaps with their entire body.

It is a little strange to see a man who, amid lime and brick, to the sound of axes of a building being erected, thoughtfully pursues in some corner, the course of his thoughts, completely unrelated to the moment.

The autocracy surrounded the Academy in a circle and said: don't you dare go outside this circle, the public is taboo for you. You are a priest and do not dare to take a broom in order to sweep dirty rubbish out of the hut. The autocracy had every reason to fear such a broom.

You were born for pure science. And academics deeply believed in it. If they did not believe in this, they would be the most miserable people. With all the greatness of science, they still exaggerated its importance. They made her the real goal of their whole existence. They were ready to emasculate themselves publicly in any way they liked, to put on whatever uniforms they wanted, to be silent, to pretend, to be mean, but on the other hand, entering the silence of their office, to feel the kiss of truth on their foreheads.

This consciousness undoubtedly contributed to scientific development. Science developed aristocratically, dominating itself. Nevertheless, she scattered rays of light around herself, for she cannot help shining. I repeat, the necrosis of some joints, some kind of distortion of the image of truth from this captivity of her could not have failed, but some of her organs could even flourish under these conditions especially magnificently.

It is impossible not to note here one aspect of the work of the Academy, which, as it were, involuntarily constituted an exception in the general order of its work.

The autocracy was filled with a nationalist spirit, it wanted to divide and rule. It poisoned the consciousness of the Great Russians, convincing them that they are the people - the ruler, and the rest of the peoples - the peoples of the subjects. Of course, the Academy was forced to officially accept such a purely Russian, in other words, Great Russian character. However, the autocracy had to know these subject peoples, and the Academy was allowed to study them. The Academy did this with all its characteristic scientific zeal. She studied the language, way of life, customs, thinking of the many tribes that inhabited the royal prison, and studied them so carefully that she created enormous prerequisites not only for local history in general, which has always been the strong side of the Academy, but also for correct ethnology, which should be put in basis of our new Soviet policy.

Paying tribute to each nationality that makes up our Union, we cannot, however, fail to note the special importance of the Eastern nations, for they are, in the world respect, an immeasurably important bond between the European proletariat and the non-European colonial and semi-colonial* peoples. And here the Academy has remarkable merits. Its Asiatic Museum is a natural and necessary instrument of the new state policy pursued by the worker-peasant government. Her Sanskrit vocabulary still ranks first. The same place is occupied by her dictionary of the languages of the Turkic peoples, the dictionary of Georgian-Russian-French and a number of other of her own publications, as well as an amazing library, an amazing printing house that has fonts for all languages - all this makes up real wealth, a ready and perfect apparatus for our construction of fraternal life of dozens of nationalities.

From all of the above, it is clear that although the Academy was a recluse and lived, so to speak, in the chamber of the autocratic Koshchei, it was, nevertheless, a very living force.

And then the revolution finally came. The Academy reacted amiably to the revolution of the bourgeois, February, and there is nothing surprising in this, perhaps among the academicians there were some eccentrics of Orthodox autocratic views, but the majority consisted of objective scientists who, in general, preferred Europe to Russia, rather easily put up with the autocracy, but parted with it without regret. They expected better. The left minority of the Academy consisted of genuine liberals, Cadets and Cadets. They took the February Revolution as their own.

Even in the first period of the war, the Academy created the so-called KEBS, the Committee for the Study of the Natural Wealth of Russia. She, of course, even more readily agreed to serve as a scientific assistant in the matter of continuing the war with her new Milyukov-Keren turn. But in the depths of the autocracy that had begun to flourish, not only the bourgeois revolution had matured, but also the proletarian revolution. She soon followed her feeble predecessor and devoured him.

We know that the scientific world, by and large, treated the new revolution as an unexpected and absurd occurrence. Such an unprecedented storm, which, moreover, brought down a colossal amount of inconvenience on the head of every scientist both in the field of private life and in science, caused discontent and grumbling in the widest scientific circles. Many hoped that this obsession would pass quickly. Other scholars fell prey to the political short-sightedness of the liberal parties to which they belonged and to their hopes for the Western European bourgeoisie, whom they were accustomed to respect. The deepest isolation from public life, in which the learned caste existed, made for many of them completely incomprehensible what was happening around, and painfully hit on the nerves. I am not familiar enough with the internal life of the Academy to say whose merit it was that the Academy of Sciences, by and large, as an institution, like the majority of its members, managed to position itself in a completely different way.

At the beginning of 1918, having just looked around the walls of the Ministry of Education recently occupied by us in Chernyshevsky Lane, I decided to find out the attitude of the Academy towards us in the midst of the general raging waves of vicious boycott. I asked the Academy what kind of participation it was going to take in our cultural and educational work and what it could give in connection with the mobilization of science for the needs of state building, which the new government considers necessary.

The Russian Academy of Sciences, signed by its president Karpinsky and its indispensable secretary Oldenburg, literally answered me that: “it is always ready, at the request of life and the state, for a feasible scientific theoretical development of individual tasks put forward by the needs of state building, while being organizing and attracting scientists the center of the country's forces." I know that the Academy was accused of a kind of mimicry, of a kind of self-armoring. Since the Academy had to live in the “animal kingdom”, what was left for her, smart, highly experienced, to do but immediately acquire a protective color and not declare that we, objective scientists, serve life to the best of our ability, no matter what transformations it may take? nor experienced and recognize any state. Isn’t that how the caste intelligentsia of the church once declared that “there is no power unless it comes from God”?

At the same time, say some of its opponents, the Academy booked itself behind its old charter, presented to it by tsarist times, and behind its new charter, which it began to develop, and sat out in every possible way in autonomy, which other scientists and higher educational institutions also tried to do. The People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR also received its share of reprimands. That's right - you did not allow the autonomy of higher educational institutions and did a good job, but learned societies, especially the Russian Academy, retained their autonomy. This is a state within a state.

But I ask, could the Academy and we have a more reasonable policy? What could we demand from the Academy? So that she suddenly turns into a communist conference en masse, so that she suddenly crosses herself as a Marxist and, laying her hand on Capital, swears that she is the most orthodox Bolshevik? [I think that we would hardly have survived such an event without a certain feeling of disgust.] After all, such a transformation could not be sincere. Perhaps it will come with time and through the gradual replacement of the previous generation by a new one and through the process of lively osmosis we observe, the lively penetration of the new public through the imaginary armor of the Academy of Juices. But under what conditions can this process be successfully completed?

Only under the conditions of a good neighborhood. The Academy expressed such a wish. Did the Academy sit out? Was she barren for us?

This I emphatically deny. We took a new spelling from the Academy; we used the results of the work of her commission on the reform of the calendar; we received a lot of interesting information from her KEPSA; we relied on it in negotiations with neighboring powers for peace; she created, on our order, the most accurate ethnographic maps of Belarus and Bessarabia. We will receive strong support for it by introducing literacy in the mother language for nationalities that did not have a written language, or that had a germinal script. And it would be difficult to enumerate all those minor services that the Academy provided to the People's Commissariat of Education, the Supreme Economic Council, the State Planning Commission, etc.

Of course, there is still no complete correspondence between the work of the Academy and the nature of the work of the state, but this will take time.

Or should the People's Commissariat of Education, seeing that the Academy is delaying being baptized into a new faith, baptize it, like Dobrynya, with fire and sword? [But I hope that A. I. Rykov will not consider me immodest if I repeat the words of V. I. Lenin quoted by him, to which he referred when discussing one issue related to the Academy: Academy."]

Yes, V. I. Lenin not only did not disagree with the People’s Commissariat for Education on this issue, but very often went further, and I remember very well two or three conversations in which he literally warned me not to “play naughty” around the Academy.

One very respected young communist and astronomer came up with a wonderful plan for the reorganization of the Academy. It came out very nice on paper. The prerequisite was, of course, to demolish the existing building in order to build a model academic city. V. I. Lenin was very worried, called me and asked: “Do you want to reform the Academy? Do you have any plans for this?

I answered: “The Academy must be adapted to the general state and public life, it cannot be left as some kind of state within a state. We have to pull her closer to us, know what she is doing and give her some directives. But, of course, the plans for a radical reform are untimely and we do not attach serious importance to them.

Somewhat reassured, Ilyich replied: “We now have no time to deal with the Academy, and this is an important national issue. This requires caution, tact, and great knowledge, but for now we are busy with more damned questions. There will be some daredevil with you, he will run into the Academy and kill so many dishes there that later you will have to be strictly exacted from you.

I remember this order of V. I. in both parts of it and in part of the threat to exact from those who break the academic dishes, and in the part that the time will come when this “important state issue” will be settled with all the power of thought of our great party .

I do not think that the deadlines have already come, and that in connection with the entry of the Academy into the third century, it would be possible to bluntly raise the question of some kind of radical Sovietization of it. But this question is not far off, it will, of course, be resolved amicably, taking into account all the good traditions of the Academy, preserving all the respect that we have for it not only for its brilliant scientific past, but which many of its representatives have won from us, constantly who communicate with us and become in our eyes major, respected figures in our cultural campaign.

In any case, the Academy will enter the third century as an All-Union Academy.

I must say a few words about this. The People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR has always sought this. We categorically stand on the point of view that it is impossible to put up any barriers to the all-union nature of our science. We are generally not inclined, of course, to put up any barriers to the worldwide scope of science, but we fully admit the idea that a certain difference in approach to all scientific problems will gradually become clear if the two worlds—the Socialist Union and bourgeois chaos—exist for some time side by side. But within the Union, of course, we must help to ensure that no partitions exist for science, that no customs system be built, that no particularism be manifested.

Does this mean that the People's Commissariat for Education of the RSFSR encroaches on the development of individual nationalities, even to the slightest degree, that it is even slightly antipathetic towards the desire to build this single science powerfully among any nationality and, if possible, in all languages ​​of our multilingual union?

Does this mean that Narkompros, under the guise of defending the all-Union nature of scientific thought, is striving for some kind of hegemony, for some kind of violation of the rights of other commissariats of public education?

Unfortunately, such an offensive and rude understanding of our position was expressed by some parties. We are glad that it did not interfere with the proclamation of the All-Union Academy. The government will draw the attention of the Academy to the fact that those times have passed; when there was a ruling nation in our homeland, when it was necessary to serve it first of all, when it was presented by the aristocratic-bourgeois autocracy as the creative subject of history, and other nations as the object subject to its processing and exploitation.

The Soviet government will point out that one of the most important duties of the Academy is to shed the light of knowledge and culture everywhere, and above all into the darkest corners of the country, that it must stretch out its hand first of all to the backward nations, that not only can, but must find a place for non-Great Russian scientists. in her chairs. The Russian Academy of Sciences stubbornly sought to be recognized as an All-Union Academy. She proceeded from purely scientific considerations. She knew how many tasks she had, which must be disseminated and scientifically settled from a single all-Union center. Now she has been honored with this title, it imposes new duties on her.

In one of his notes, the indispensable secretary of the Academy, S. F. Oldenburg, writes: “The Academy enters the third century of its existence with the firm conviction that it will be able to further expand and deepen its work on an all-Union and world scale.”

No one will encroach on the work of the Academy in the field of so-called pure science, but of course, the further we go, the more our construction will involve it in its powerful cycle.

Its invaluable scientific apparatus, its talented scientific personnel, will have to carry out a number of very important practical tasks on a really all-Union and even world scale.

The recluse of autocracy has been released. Perhaps many academicians think that this is not freedom at all. They lived comfortably in their gilded cage. Yes, perhaps, this is not metaphysical freedom, which, however, does not exist in general. Our freedom is liberation from religious and bourgeois prejudices, our freedom is liberation from all petty fetters of a class, estate, national character. No wonder Lassalle spoke of the natural union of the scientist and the worker. We need a powerful science that speaks the truth, and science needs a state or a society capable of fully implementing the principles dictated by true knowledge of reality. But only healthy breasts can breathe the air of this freedom. For others, this atmosphere may seem like poison.

After all, bourgeois scientists so easily managed to connect their science with religion from formal Orthodoxy to all sorts of refined essences of a religious and philosophical order, because they so easily slipped into the pink abyss of an idealistic worldview and all kinds of formalism. After all, they swayed so comfortably in the rocking chairs of all sorts of bourgeois sophisms, which, while defending the inequalities of the bourgeois system, indirectly defended their privileges!

All those who have grown close to such deviations will feel that they are smashed to pieces and that free science will devour them with the fire of its truly democratic and profoundly materialistic being. It is all-people, all-human, and therefore cannot but be friends with the proletariat leading to all-humanity.

She hates all lies, all relics of antiquity, she courageously proclaims the whole truth, as it follows from correct experiment and even thought. The Academy of Sciences was able to say to the new element from its very appearance: “I do not contradict you, I will try to live with you, I will try to be useful to you. You, for your part, spare me, treat me with tact; as soon as circumstances allow you - take care of me, save my scientific resources, multiply them as soon as you can. Then we will gradually merge, we will exchange our gifts. You will pour into me your courage, your energy, you will pour into me new forces, new Lomonosovs, which the factories and the countryside will give us. I will give you countless treasures of knowledge, I will solve many of the problems that will be before you, I will help you organize scientific forces around your struggle.

Here is what the Academy of Soviet Power said, which answered “All right! let's try." Until now, we have not repented of this trial and we think that we will not repent in the future.