August and September in History

August

3 This is the 230th birthday of the Russian architect Vasily Stasov (1769-1848), who created many historical monuments in Moscow in St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg, he reconstructed the Court Stables and built the Barracks of the Pavlovsky Regiment, the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior and the Cathedral of the Trinity. He also redesigned the interior of the Winter Palace after the fire of 1837. In Moscow, Stasov is famous for the white Food Depot building on Krymskaya Ploshchad, near Park Kultury metro station, and for a number of ancient hotel buildings on the boulevard ring. By the age of 34, this son of a clerk was one of Russia’s most prominent architects. By 1816 he was one the four main architects in St. Petersburg. At the age of 70, he was overseeing construction of the New Hermitage—the building adjacent to the Winter Palace. Appropriately, his motto in life was: “A man is worth his name when he is useful both to himself and to others.”

7 Another eminent Russian architect, Fyodor Shekhtel (1859-1926), was born on this day 140 years ago. He was one of the founders of Russian style moderne. Shekhtel designed all types of buildings: private mansions, office buildings, railway stations; he also introduced the principle of free asymmetry and used colored vitrages, both on the facades and in the interiors of houses. He used glazed bricks in decorating Ryabushinsky’s house in Moscow. Many of his creations are important Moscow landmarks: the Khudozhestvenny cinema, the 1901 building for the Moscow Insurance Society, more commonly known as the “Boyar’s Court,” the Stroganov Art School, the Yaroslavl Railway Station and the famous Moscow Art Theater.

8  200 years ago architect Vasily Bazhenov (1737-1799) died. Considered to be the founder of Russian classicism, Bazhenov created such beautiful monuments of architecture as Moscow’s Pashkov House (above), Tsaritsyno Park and the famous Mikhailovsky palace in St. Petersburg. Russia recently organized a competition for a monument to Bazhenov, to be erected in front of Pashkov House.

13 Ivan Sechenov (1829-1905), the famous Russian physician, was born 170 years ago on this day. Sechenov founded the Russian study of physiology and has an institute in Moscow named after him. He earned international fame for showing that stimulation of the brain could inhibit the spinal reflexes of a frog. His fundamental work, Reflexes of the Brain, earned him international fame. In it Sechenov explained humans’ main reflex mechanisms, paving the way for Pavlov’s Nobel Prize winning work (see September).

23 On this day 60 years ago, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop surprised the world when he flew to Moscow and the USSR and Germany signed the now infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact, leading the way for Hitler to invade Poland 8 days later.

28 Russian actor Vladimir Ivashov (1939-1995) would have been 60 on this day. Ivashov became famous at the age of 19, after starring as the soldier Alyosha Skvortsov in Grigory Chukhrai’s Ballad of Soldier (see Russian Life, Feb. 1997). The film was largely successful because of Ivashov’s acting skills. He starred in 40 films over the next 30 years, but then movie directors for some reason stopped calling. As a result, at the end of his working life, he was forced to work in construction to feed his family. He died four years ago at the age of 55.

The creative destiny of another Russian actor sharing this birthday, Anatoly Solonitsyn (1934-1982), was happier. But he, too, died at an early age. Solonitsyn was director Andrei Tarkovsky’s favorite actor. Solonitsyn, then an unknown actor from Sverdlovsk, approached Tarkovsky and persuaded him that only he could play the lead in Tarkovsky’s epic film about icon painter Andrei Rublev. Solonitsyn went on to star in several of  Tarkovsky’s other Russian  films: Solaris, Mirror and Stalker. Of course, he also worked with other directors, e.g. as an aging Casanova in Nikolai Gubenko’s Of the Life of Vacationers, or as a journalist in Vadim Abdrashitov’s film A Train has Stopped—a merciless indictment of the paranoid nonchalance leading to a railway accident.

29 On this day 50 years ago, Russia became a nuclear power with the detonation of its first nuclear bomb (not announced in the press until September 25). Stalin had charged Lavrenty Beria to supervise the Soviet nuclear project, and Soviet intelligence played a crucial role in speeding up Russia’s acquisition of the bomb. Russian nuclear scientists such as Andrei Sakharov, Yuly Khariton and Yakov Zeldovich took part in the project, which was headed by Igor Kurchatov. After the successful test near Semipalatinsk, Kurchatov declared: “We should never use what we have made.” Russia has never used nuclear weapons AND for many years adhered to a No First Use policy. However, in the wake of the war in Yugoslavia and the US’ potential withdrawal from the 1972 ABM Treaty, the Russian Defense Ministry has said it is rethinking its military doctrine.

September

1 This is the 80th anniversary of VGIK, The State Institute of Cinematography. The institute educates Russian screenplay writers, directors, actors and cameramen. Hundreds of talented actors and directors have studied and later taught at VGIK, including Sergei Eisenstein, Alexander Dovzhenko, Sergei Bondarchuk and others.

This day also marks the centenary of Andrei Platonov (1899-1951, born Klimentov), Russian writer and playwright. Platonov originally suported the October  Revolution. But in the mid 1920s he began to publicly criticize revolutionary hubris and the false brotherhood of the socialist flag bearers. In 1929, Maxim Gorky criticized Platonov’s short novel Chevengur and it would not be published until 1988. In 1931, another literary kommissar, Alexander Fadeyev, criticized Platonov’s novel Vprok (“In Store”). Such criticism all but put an end to Platonov’s published writing. Except for a few stories, for the next three decades Platonov had to write “for the drawer.” Only in the late 1980s, with glasnost, were Russian readers allowed to read his novel Kotlovan (“Foundation Pit,” writtten in 1929-30, published in Russia in 1987) which criticizes the notions of social, moral and technological progress, and his most famous masterpiece, Chevengur. The latter deals with the brutal imposition of communism in Russia. Platonov is an honest and sincere author whose fiction is serious and heavy, usually appreciated only by true lovers of literature. Critics, however, consider him to be one of the most important prose writers of the interwar period. Interestingly, the plot of Andron Konchalovsky’s famous film, Maria’s Lovers was inspired by Platonov’s short story Potudan River.

12 Eminent Russian violonist and conductor Vladimir Spivakov turns 55 on this day. Until recently, Spivakov was the head of the ensemble Moscow’s Virtuosos; recently, however, he replaced Mikhail Pletnev as director and conductor of the Russian National Orchestra (RNO).

15 On this day 40 years ago, Nikita Khrushchev arrived in NY for his 12-day tour across the United States. It was the first time a Soviet head of government visited the United States.

24 300 years ago next February 2, Moscow’s Lefortovo district was founded. But the founding is being celebrated in Moscow this month to take advantage of the weather. Only recently infamous as the site of a prison for foreign spies, the district was in fact named after one of Peter the Great’s closest associates, Francis Lefort (1655-1699). This admiral of Swiss origins served Peter from 1678-99 and was a successful commander of the Russian fleet during the Russo-Turkish war of 1686-1700. A key result of these naval battles was the capture of Azov (1696).

26 150 years ago the Russian neurophysiologist Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was born. Known the world over for his work in conditioning (with the famous dog and bell experiments), Pavlov served as Professor and Head of the Department of Pharmacology (and later Physiology) at the Military-Medical Academy (from 1890 till 1924). He received the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his work dedicated to the physiology of digestion. At the 15th International Congress of Physiologists, he was awarded the honorary title of World’s Senior Physiologist. Pavlov was lukewarm towards the communist regime (becoming pro-Soviet only in the 1930s), but Lenin nevertheless signed a special decree providing for good working conditions for Pavlov. Such patronage did not keep Pavlov from saying, on the occasion of Sechenov’s (see August, above)100th anniversary in 1929: “We live in a country where the state is everything and the man is nothing.” In Russian popular literature, legend has it that Pavlov served science even in the throes of death, reputedly convening his students before dying and making them note down all his sensations as he died.

27 200 years ago Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov completed his spectacular passage through the Alps (see the Vassily Surikov painting in Russian Life, Dec/Jan 1998) to meet up with Alexander Korsakov’s forces, who were being defeated by Massena. Suvorov had just defeated the French in several key battles in Italy and Switzerland.

28 50 years ago the USSR terminated its Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Tito’s Yugoslavia. This was the formal split that began with Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the Cominform the previous year and which had its roots even before WWII, when Stalin exterminated Yugoslav communists resident in Moscow, only sparing Tito at the request of Bulgarian leader Georgi Dmitrov.