From Prague to New Haven

Abstract

The article explores one of the turning points in the biography of the historian Georgy Vladimirovich Vernadsky (1887–1973) — his appointment at Yale University. After fleeing Russia, G. V. Vernadsky and his wife settled in Czechoslovakia. From time to time Vernadsky received offers to move from Europe to the United States, but they did not lead to any results. His change of educational institution, country, and continent in 1927 is a vivid example of the academic mobility of a Russian scholar abroad. In the scholarship, the reasons and circumstances of his moving to the USA are, as a rule, examined on the basis of subjective and not always reliable sources — on memoirs and letters. This article for the first time refers to university records to reconstruct the facts of the appointment. Vernadsky’s case is considered within the corporate history of Yale University and within the context of the development of Russian studies. Yale was among the few American Universities where “Russian” subjects were introduced in the late 1890s. The combination of a number of factors — an increasing interest in the Russian studies in the West in the 1920s, financial resources and ambitions of officials at Yale University and the influence of the member of the department of History M. I. Rostovtzef, whose protégé G. V. Vernadsky was, made his appointment feasible. University officials assumed that Vernadsky, in addition to teaching, would compile a systematic list of Russian books for acquisition by the library, and prepare a textbook on Russian history. However, an interest in Russia at Yale in the 1920s turned out to be short-lived. Vernadsky had held the same temporary position, which he was offered when he came to Yale in 1927, for almost 19 years. He remained the only lecturer of “Russian” courses until the 1940s.