The Korsh case, or Should an academician live in the capital?

Abstract

According to the tradition, which had been maintained since the 18th century, the members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences had to live in the capital and actively take part in the Academy’s routine. Yet, by the turn of the 20th century the development of Russian science and society had reached a level at which a scientist’s need and desire to live and work where he can bring maximum practical benefit began to conflict with the Academy’s rules. The article describes the situation of the early 20th century when Fyodor E. Korsh, a prominent Moscow philologist and orientalist, was elected to the Department of the Russian Language and Literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. Contrary to the Academy’s tradition, F. E. Korsh did not move to St. Petersburg, when he was elected. The archival materials reveal what his colleagues at the Department and other academicians thought about the requirement to live in the capital and about the breach of the rule as well. Since the early 20th century such «extraordinary cases» continued to happen further and further, the authorities in 1912 had to approve of the academicians’ right to live not only in Petersburg but also in other cities and had to introduce an appropriate amendment to the new staff of the Academy of Sciences. The article is supplemented with the previously unknown note which was specially written by F. E. Korsh in 1904 in reply to the reproach for breaking the Academy’s Charter. He explained there his own attitude to the wording of that point in the Charter of the Academy and that of the Department and also wrote about his scientific work in the Academy of Sciences.