Petrograd’s Scientific Societies and the Revolution of 1917

Abstract

The article explores activities of Petrograd’s scientific societies and their relations with changing state power in 1917, especially legal and financial aspects of their functioning and everyday life in the context of an acute socio-political and economic crisis. The study uses different sources, in particular legislative and regulatory acts adopted by the Provisional Government to define procedures for the creation and functioning of such societies in 1917, ficing their rights and obligations and regulating their relations with the authorities. (These materials are housed in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Historical Archive, the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg, the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg, and the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and its St. Petersburg Branch.) The author also used materials from periodicals of scientific societies from 1917–1918. In 1917, scientific societies actively cooperated with the authorities, and the authorities in turn found it expedient to support their activities, assigning subsidies assisting in solving economic issues. Despite difficulties, scholars in that crucial period of history managed to preserve these societies as important organizational forms for pursuing scholarship. This study was funded by RFBR according to the research project № 18-011-00730 (Self-Organization of the Russian Science in the years of crisis: 1917–1922).