An Earthly Genius

The universe is so organized that only at the price of suffering and persecution can the world be given anything. The more selfless the gift, the harsher the persecution and the more severe the suffering. That is the law of life, its fundamental axiom...  Greatness must pay for its gift in blood....

– Father Pavel Florensky

Alexander Chizhevsky would have recognized the wisdom of these words, written by his Soviet contemporary in science and suffering, Pavel Florensky. As scientist, historian, archaeologist, intellectual pioneer and convict, Chizhevsky experienced all the aspects of Stalin’s paranoid empire: from the heights of scientific scholarship to the depths of the Gulag.

Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1963), whose centennial will be celebrated February 7th, was a man of boundless genius. In the last edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, Chizhevsky is described as “a bio-physicist, who was also the founder of the Russian sciences of helio-biology and aero-physics.” But such scientific titles are too small to contain the whole man, his tragedies and triumphs.

Chizhevsky was born in Tsekhanovyets (currently located in Poland) of Russian parents. His father, Leonid, besides being the town’s mayor, also harbored a burgeoning intellectual curiosity which he passed onto his son. In 1915, Chizhevsky entered the department of mathematical physics at the State University. He graduated in 1919 but quickly re-enrolled as a student  in the medical department, graduating in 1922. Able to balance many challenging duties at one time, Chizhevsky eventually received degrees from three different institutes (including the Moscow Archaeological Institute and the Moscow Commercial Institute), taught simultaneously at the Moscow State University and the Moscow Archaeological Institute and served as a consultant to the Biophysical Institute. In 1918, he finished his dissertation on the periodical nature of world history and was awarded a Ph.D. in world history.

Chizhevsky’s work mainly dealt with our biosphere’s vital relation to its Sun. Discovering the significance of the Sun’s cycles on numerous phenomenon in our biosphere, Chizhevsky, in countless books and articles, proved scientifically that all organic life on Earth is the result of cosmic forces.

Chizhevsky declared that the causes and effects of the earthly historical process imitate the rhythms of solar activity. “Just like the chisel of a sculptor,” he wrote,” the energy of a solar beam creates the face and the image of all organic life on Earth. The Sun not only creates the texture of the Earth, but also forms socio-political ‘expressions’ on its face, along with mass epidemics, ecological disasters etc.” By 1939, Chizhevsky’s name was spoken with reverence in scientific circles from Moscow to New York.

In his internationally influential book The Earth in the Embrace of the Sun, Chizhevsky mused,” we have gotten used to a rough and narrow anti-philosophical... life, which we have regarded....as the result of...solely earthly forces.” Though Chizhevsky made this point in order to deny its integrity in favor of his theory of “Space’s creative impact on the Earth’s raw matter,” he had unwittingly, but nonetheless accurately, described the intelligentsia’s precarious existence in the Soviet Union. What hope could there be for a free and easy exchange of ideas when even the slightest deviation from the rigid Party line meant certain death?

In 1942, Chizhevsky was arrested for his "crimes" against the Soviet people. In fear of his family's destruction [the connection between fear for his family's destruction and his fate is not made clear here], Chizhevsky, like all too many men and women of his time, was forcibly enslaved to the carnivorous Party machine. His ten years in the camps were spent combating mass epidemics and engaging in the sort of active scientific research that was barred to him in the outside world. Eventually, Chizhevsky worked off his "guilt" before the Russian people and was allowed to go home and die in his own bed. A great privilege. He had paid for his "crimes": he was forgiven his genius.

Brief Items

For the Romans, February, named after the god February, was the last month of the year. February was the god of the underworld. Therefore, Romans spent the month trying to expiate their many sins and contact their deceased loved ones. Russians adopted the word February from the Byzantine Empire, in the process replacing the older Russian names sechen (from the word sekuschy,  or whipping, as in “a whipping snowstorm”) or snezhen (from sneg, “snow”). Photos from Great Encyclopedia of Russia.

On February 15, Orthodox believers will celebrate Sreteniye Gospodnye (Candelmas or Feast of Purification) and begin preparing for Great Lent, which begins March 10 and ends on April 27th, Easter Eve.

February 1997 will also be rich in secular anniversaries, as Russia honors the memory of some of her most talented musicians, scientists and doctors.

Thus, February 1 marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of V.M. Bekhterev (1857-1927), the famous but ill-fated Soviet neurologist, psychologist, physiologist and morphologist. Summoned to treat Stalin for his chronic insomnia and withered left arm, Bekhterev met with the dictator alone. What the two men discussed is unknown, but afterwards Bekhterev had the bad luck to tell one of his colleagues his own personal opinion of Stalin’s problems: paranoia. Dangerous news traveled fast in the Soviet Union and by the next evening, after a benefit dinner held in Bekhterev’s honor at Moscow’s illustrious Maly Theater, the great scientist and doctor was dead. Food poisoning? A nasty coincidence? Or perhaps the landlord of the Kremlin was displeased by Bekhterev’s acute prognosis? The truth has yet to come out.

On a less ominous note, ninety-five years ago, on February 8, 1902, the founder of Russian pediatrics, Nikolai Filatov, died. Filatov (1847-1902), who was the first to implement vaccination of children in Russia, has been immortalized by the children’s hospital in Moscow which bears his name. The hospital is still referred to by Muscovites as simply Filatovskaya bolnitsa-Filatov’s hospital.

O ne hundred ninety-five years ago, on February 24, 1802, Russia witnessed the birth of a man destined to become a pioneer in the field of medicine. On February 7, 1847, Fyodor Inozemtsev (1802-1869) became the first doctor in the world to use ether as anaesthesia during a surgery. Inozemtsev is also known as the founder of the Moscow Society of Russian doctors.

On February 15, all lovers of classical music will observe a moment of silence, marking 140 years since the death of the great Russian composer, Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857). Justly considered to be the father of Russian classical music, Glinka is the author of such patriotic works as Ivan Susanin (1836), which recounts the story of the folk hero of the same name. Ivan Susanin sacrificed his life to stop Polish invaders who were collaborating with the tsar-impostor -- the False Dmitry -- in his quest to retain the throne. Susanin was determined to bring to power the true Tsar, Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov (Hence, the opera’s alternative name, Life for the Tsar.). Therefore, in the winter of 1613, Susanin knowingly misled a unit of Polish interventionists deep into the marshy wilderness, in order to stop the Poles from meeting up with and giving crucial military support to the False Dmitry. Needless to say, Susanin was tortured to death by the Poles.  Glinka’s musical ode to the glories of service for the Motherland was played at the 1945 Victory parade on Red Square in memory of the Soviet men and women who, just like Ivan Susanin, had fought and bled for their country.

Aficionados of Glinka’s music will no doubt remember the mesmerizing overture to his opera Ruslan I Lyudmila (1842), based upon Alexander Pushkin’s fable of the same name. Glinka and Pushkin were known to admire each other’s work, and no doubt Glinka, along with the rest of his countrymen, mourned Pushkin’s untimely death on February 10, 1837.

Pushkin (1799-1837), “the Sun of Russian poetry,” was killed by the French bon-vivant Dantes, in a duel over the honor of Pushkin’s wife, Natalya Goncharova. February 1997 will mark the 160th anniversary of this tragic event.

Speaking of talented artists, on February 27, 1887, 110 years ago, a multi-talented author of both musical compositions and scientific papers died. His one and only opera, Prince Igor, has been performed around the world to international acclaim, and he also has to his credit more than 40 papers about chemistry. His name? Alexander Borodin (1833-1887).

Dmitry Mendeleyev, on the other hand, didn’t have any special fondness for musical composition, but his gifts for chemistry were sufficient to ensure his own worldwide fame. Mendeleyev, who died 90 years ago this February 2nd, discovered the periodic law of chemical elements, codifying them in Mendeleyev’s Table of Elements.

A prolific scientist, Mendeleyev (1834-1907) wrote more than 500 scientific works, receiving upwards of 130 diplomas and honorary titles from Russian and foreign academies, institutions and colleges. Mendele