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Как и любой музейный проект, выставка требует от посетителя некоторой подготовки — для полноценного восприятия материалов необходимо ознакомится с каталогом выставки, документальным фильмом и другими материалами. На первый взгляд четыре «станции» кажутся просто видео-инсталляциями, но при более подробном изучении вы понимаете, что, несмотря на отсутствие слов и необычный видеомонтаж со спецэффектами, эти фильмы — скорее рассказ-отчёт о научных исследованиях, чем очередное постмодернистское творение. Их задача — привлечь внимание и вызвать у зрителя интерес к более подробному или самостоятельному изучению вопроса.
An Exhibit: «Nansen's Legacy»
Valeri D. Khasler
A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications, St. Petersburg, Russia; [email protected]
The Norwegian traveling exhibition «The Nansen Legacy» was held at the A.S. Popov Central Museum of Communications in Saint-Petersburg from April 7-26. It arrived from Bergen and will depart to visit Berlin, Oslo, Arkhangelsk and Tromse. The exhibition is dedicated to Fridtjof Nansen — explorer, scientist and social activist. The idea for the exhibition belongs to the University of Oslo, where Nansen worked. «The Nansen Legacy» was created under the direction of Doctor Olav Christensen. It represents connections between the past, present and future of science, involving original Nansen’s devices and works of modern Norway scholars about Arctic climate, biology and the ocean. The exhibit makes use of an interesting design including video installations and an atmospheric soundtrack.
The Sciences in Russia, Finland and the Baltics in the Early 20th Century:
A Seminar in Helsinki, June 27, 2011
E. Johanna Lilja
Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; E. [email protected]
The seminar Sciences in Russia, Finland and the Baltics in the Early 20h Century was a second one in a — hopefully — continuing series of meetings on the history of science and scientific networks in the Baltic Sea area. The first seminar originated from the 24th International Baltic Conference on the History of Science held in Tallinn in October 2010. Some of its participants wished to get acquainted with researchers studying the academic networks or contacts between naturalists in the Russian empire. Researcher Mait Talts from the Department of International
Professor Anto Leikola
Relations of the Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration mediated this wish to be spread in the Finnish Society for the History of Science and Learning and organised a follow-up seminar of the Baltic Conference, in December 2010 for this purpose.2 To guarantee the continuation of a promising co-operation, next meeting was to be held as soon as possible, by choice in the summer of 2011.
The theme of the second seminar was the development of sciences in the early 20th Century in north-eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on the effect of politics on science and scientific networks during World War I, the collapse of the Russian empire and the emergence of independent nation-states in the region. The WWI and its impact upon academic research and academic networks have aroused interest among many historians of science but the focus has been mostly on the Central Powers and the Western Allies. Studies of early twentieth century science in north-eastern Europe have been more structured by the concept of national history with little regard to the political rearrangement which occurred with the WWI and the collapse of the Russian empire. The organisers of the seminar Sciences in Russia, Finland and the Baltics in the Early 20th Century were the Finnish Society for the History of Science and Learning; the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Russian Academy of Sciences; the Tallinn School of Economics and Business Administration (TSEBA), and the Estonian Association for History and Philosophy of Science (EAHPS). The call for papers, directed to established scholars and doctoral students, was spread in Russia, Finland and Baltic states. Abstracts were received from all countries, but unfortunately Latvian and Lithuanian speakers had to cancel their participation.
2 Report on this seminar is published. See, Talts M. The Follow-up Seminar of the 24th International Baltic Conference on the History of Science // Baltic Journal of European Studies. 2011. №. 1(9). P. 407-412; Slepkova N. V.. Workshop on the history of science in Tallinn // Studies in the History of Biology. 2011. Vol. 3. № 2. P. 142-143.
The seminar was opened by Nadezhda Slepkova (senior researcher from the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg) with the presentation entitled Zoological Museum of the Academy of Sciences in Petrograd during the First World War and Revolution 1914-1923. She analyzed what happened to the academic institutions in Russia at that time, focusing on the Zoological Museum. In 1914, Zoological Museum was a significant center of taxonomic studies in Russia with extensive international and intra-Russian relations. Traumatic events of war and Revolution influenced it for nearly ten years. Circumstances during the war and the Revolution had scientific, social and political consequences, the worst period being after the Revolution. The scientific effects were: changes in focus of studies which was transferred in the neighbourhood of Petrograd; more applied nature of research; and general decline in funding, resulting in decline of the volume and efficiency of studies and publications and followed by the loss of the scientific relations. To the social consequences were attributed the accompanying conditions of hunger, cold, vicinity of the front, which caused preparations to evacuation, intensification of the work of each employee through the mobilization of technical staff, work for more than one employer. Political implications caused more intensive pressure on the scientific staff and changes in the administration of the museum to more democratic.
The second presentation by Mait T alts (researcher and lecturer, Department of International Relations, Tallinn University of Technology) Professor Heinrich Riikoja’s contribution to the development of natural sciences in Estonia focused on two main issues of the scientific activity of the pioneer of Estonian hydrobiology and limnology professor Heinrich Riikoja (Reichenbach) : his alleged and still disputed discovery of two new species of Rotatoria (Macrochaetus esthonicus and Lecane matsaluensis)3 analyzing the material gathered in the expedition to the Matsalu Bay (Western-Estonia) during the summer of 1920 — the first year of peace for Estonia — and his much greater contribution to the development of Estonian hydrobiology and study of lakes. He was the first one to conduct the systematic measurements of Estonian lakes and surveys on planktology. He was also one of the most significant creators of the Estonian zoological terminology and the Estonian language nomenclature of species and, last but not least, the teacher of the second generation of Estonian hydrobiologists. The presentation also shed some light on Prof Riikoja’s contacts with Scandinavian, German, French, American, English and Russian colleagues. The author of presentation displayed some books written, compiled or translated by Heinrich Riikoja.
The first session ended with a presentation examining the role of science in wartime, from the point of view of the botany. In her paper Pharmaceutical hunger and medicinal plants: Mobilization of the botanists during the second patriotic war Anastasia Fedotova (researcher in St. Petersburg branch of the Institute for the history of Science and Technology, Russian Academy of Science) discussed how the threatening lack of medicament during WWI drafted botanists and agricultural specialists into the war effort and the defense of the state. Botanical knowledge was essential to the state and economy totally transformed by war. In 19151917 with advice or/and leadership of botanists, special meetings were organized, botanical trips were made, manuals and reference books were published, experimental stations and fields were created, lectures were read and so on. As a result of all these actions taken by the governmental and public organizations high prices and steady demand were established. It made an enabling environment for the development of the cultivation and picking up of the
3 See: Talts Mait. Matsalu lahe saladus // Eesti Loodus. 2007. Vol. 58. № 1. P. 24-25.
officinal plants. The structures created during WWI not just survived in war and revolutionary years, but developed in large institutions4.
The second session offered three perspectives to scientific contacts. Marina Loskutova (researcher in the Institute for the history of Science and Technology, St. Petersburg branch) began with her paper Local studies in Russia across the Great War and Revolution: international context, national academic networks and local social basis.5 She examined the rise of local studies movement in Russia in the 1910s-1920s: the proliferation of provincial learned societies, which began to identify themselves with the ‘study of native region’ (краеведение) after 1906, as well as the attempts to institutionalize local studies as a distinctive academic discipline in the 1920s. While recent historiography tends to privilege humanities (history, archaeology, ethnography) as an alleged ‘core’ of the movement and its roots in the 19th century traditions of provincial amateur pursuits of these subjects, Marina Loskutova emphasized a much broader agenda of provincial learned societies, and the novelty of their enterprise. In order to understand the rise of the local studies movement in the early 20th century Russia, the paper explored a number of key factors: the rise of learned professions in Russia in the early decades of the 20th century and the expansion of research beyond the university environment. Particular attention was given to the impact produced by the WWI, the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War upon provincial learned societies: the paper analyzed their changing membership, sources of funding and research agenda.
The paper Academic Relief Committee of Finland: re-establishing the international scientific relationships with Russia in 1921-1923 by Jussi-Pekka Ha.kkara.inen (PhD student in the University of Turku, Department of General History) highlighted the process how the scientific relations with the Western countries were re-invigorated as a result of the relief programme for the Russian scholars organized by the Academic Relief Committee of Finland (ARCF) from spring 1921. The outcome of negotiations between the Russian scholars and ARCF was a shared agenda on the international aid for the Russian scientists and their families, who were members of the House of the Learned in Petrograd. The major aims of this agenda were twofold: 1) the arranging of the relief (food, clothes, fuel, other daily necessities etc.) for the Russian scholars in Petrograd and 2) the exchange of Russian scientific publications that could connect Russian scholars with the foreign colleagues again. From a wider perspective, Hakkarainen discussed how the ARCF was successful in creating a communication channel and route to Russia and Petrograd earlier than any other organisation or state after the Great War.
The presentation of Johanna Lilja (PhD Student in the University of Tampere, School of Information sciences) Universalism and the learned contacts in the Baltic Sea Area in 1914-1939 discussed the international exchange of publications between learned societies in light of Robert Merton’s normative structure of science. She argued that the normative structure was rooted in the old traditions and ethos of scientific community. Its first norm, Universalism, which means ignoring national, political and religious attributes when judging scientific work, was visible already in the interwar period, in the field of exchange of publications. The international contacts of four Finnish learned societies indicated that political attitudes were suppressed when
4 Fedotova Anastasia A. Russian phytogeoraphers during the “second patriotic war” // Science, Technology and Society in Russia and Germany during the WWI. Saint-Petersburg, 2007. P. 364-390. (in Russian).
5 Loskutova M. V. Distric scolars: self-organization of the academic community in provincial Russia in the second half of the nineteenth and early decades of the twentieth centuries // Ab Imperio. 2009. № 3. P. 119-169 (In Russian).
establishing exchange relations. For instance, the Soviet Union became one of the most important exchange countries, despite political suspicions among Finns and Russians. The societies emphasised that learned contacts were based only on scientific reasons. This policy was not only idealistic but also provided practical benefits by guaranteeing the availability of foreign material in the libraries of the societies.
The title of the third session Expanding boundaries began with the paper of Anto Leikola (professor emeritus, history of science, University of Helsinki) The Geo-ecological Finland - a peaceful expansion of boundaries.6 Finland, for several centuries an integral part of the Swedish Kingdom, was annexed to the Russian Empire as a Grand Duchy in 1809. Its first society for natural history, Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica, arose the question, where the natural boundaries of the Grand Duchy would actually be. The botanist J. E. A. Wirzén defined it in 1837 so that it would include the Kola Pensinsula and East Karelia or Russian Karelia east of the political boundaries of the country. This definition was accepted by most Finnish naturalists, as the vegetation in Kola was very similar to that of the Finnish Lapland, and that of East Karelia very similar to the Finnish one, compared with the vegetation of the Russia proper. Later, it was found that the same division was valid for geology. During all 19th century and beginning of the 20th century, until the Russian revolution and Finnish independence in 1917, this concept of a geo-ecological Finland appeared in the descriptions and maps of Finnish naturalists. In some definitions, it extended hundreds of kilometres east of the political border, but in the west the “natural” boundary coincided with the political boundaries towards Sweden and Norway. One reason for this was that the research of the Swedish and Norwegian naturalists covered their whole territory, whereas the Russian naturalists of St. Peterburg were not particularly interested in Karelia, and thus the Finnish researchers had, so to speak, free hands in this rather poorly studied area.
The last paper presented by Tarmo Kiik (Doctoral student, University of Tartu) and written by Tarmo Kiik and Ph. D. Erki Tammsaar (Estonian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Science Studies) Pre-story of the Russian South Pole Expedition (1819—1821), focused on the matters regarding the initiator and launch of the Russian South Pole Expedition. Various opinions about the initiators of the South Pole expedition have been expressed by both Russian and western researchers. According to a recent study of archival sources and correspondence they stated that the initiator of both the Russian South and North Pole expeditions (1819— 1821) was Russian Naval Minister Jean François Prévost de Sansac Marquis de Traversay. The first important premise of these expeditions was Otto von Kotzebue’s successful expedition (1815-1818) in the ship Rurick. The second essential premise was Krusenstern’s manuscript on the first Russian North Pole expedition (1765-1766). Both these premises helped create, develop and spread Traversay’s enthusiasm. The only naval officer that played an active part in the planning and preparation of the Russian South Pole expedition was Gavriil A. Sarychev. Nevertheless, Krusenstern’s and Kotzebue’s part is also very important in creating ideas behind Russian North and South Pole expeditions.
The seminar, which indicated the long tradition of scientific contacts in the Baltic Sea area, brought together Finnish, Estonian and Russian historians of science who all were delighted to find colleagues interested in similar themes. This informal network aims at continuing meetings and seminars, at least in the framework of International Baltic Conference on the History of Science whose next meeting will be in Vilnius in 2012. It is desirable that historians of science in Latvia and Lithuania as well as in Poland and Nordic countries would also join this network.
6Anto Leikola. The Geo-Ecological Finland: Natural History Defining the Boundaries of a Nation // Evolution of science and technology. 2009. Vol. 1. № 2. P. 146—167.
Естествознание в России, Финляндии и Прибалтике в начале XX века: Семинар в Хельсинки 27 июня 2011 г.
Э. Йоханна Лилья
Университет Тампере, Тампере, Финляндия; [email protected]
27 июня 2011 г. в Хельсинки прошёл семинар «Естествознание в России, Финляндии и Прибалтике в начале XX века» — второй в серии семинаров по истории науки и научных связей в Балтийском регионе. Организаторами семинара выступили Финское общество истории науки и учёности, СПбФ ИИЕТ РАН, Таллинская школа Экономики и управления и Эстонская ассоциация истории и философии науки. В семинаре приняли участие 15 историков и биологов из Санкт-Петербурга, Турку, Хельсинки, Таллина и Тарту.
