Mendeleyev. Shostakovich. Blok
V. V. Okrepilov
The book is devoted to the three prominent people of Russia. D. I. Mendeleyev, D. D. Shostakovich and A. A. Blok are similar not only in talent, passion and love for their work. Their fortunes are connected by the variety of circumstances the authour pays his attention to.
The book is addressed to the wide range of readers, who are interested in the history of their native culture, science and technology.
The authour expresses his sincere thanks for the help in the preparation of this book to Igor Ivanovich Isaev, Arina Borisovna Bildug, Alexandra Vladimirovna Klementyeva and Nina Grigorievna Freyman.
The publishing layout has been saved in PDF A4 format.
V.В V. Okrepilov
Mendeleyev, Shostakovich, Blok
Foreword
What do we know about D. I. Mendeleyev? Most of us know him as a scientist-chemist who had discovered the periodical law. He is less known as a metrologist, though he devoted fifteen years of his life to metrology and appeared to be not only a brilliant specialist in this sphere, but also an excellent administrator. Exactly thanks to the efforts of Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev on September, 10
(23
) of 1900 was solemnly opened the first in Russia Saint-Petersburg station of sample measures and weights attached to the Imperial Russian technical society. Nowadays the Center of Testing and Licensing – Saint-Petersburg (Test – Saint-Petersburg), which got this name in 1992, is its successor.
We keep the history of our organization with solicitude; we study it and look for the new documents and materials. The interest to the past revealed to us unexpected connections between the great people: the names of Alexander Blok and Dmitry Shostakovich appeared to be next to the name of D. I. Mendeleyev.
I express my sincere thanks to all those people, who helped me in the creation of this book. Especially I want to thank the Russian National Library, the Library of the Academy of Sciences, the Russian State Historical Archive, the Central State Historical Archive of Saint-Petersburg, Saint-Petersburg State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation, the D. I. Mendeleyev Museum-Archive attached to Saint-Petersburg State University, the Metrological Museum of the State Standard of Russia attached to the D. I. Mendeleyev All-Russian Research Institute of Metrology and the D. D. Shostakovich Saint-Petersburg Academic Philharmonic Society for the given documents and materials.
During the preparation of this edition the materials and photographs, given by the “Test – Saint-Petersburg” Museum of History, which exposition tells about the history of verifying work in Russia and also about the work of the head of the first verifying marquee D. B. Shostakovich, the father of the great composer, were of great importance.
Preface
"Usually, while speaking about Mendeleyev, we make an idea of him as a great chemist. More informed people think about him also as a physicist. They also know that Dmitry Ivanovich was interested in the State matters. It is enough to mention his book “To the knowledge of Russia”. But few people know that also a great public figure lived in Mendeleyev…” – wrote one of Dmitry Ivanovich’s colleagues M. N. Mladenzev in his notes about him.
But even the spheres of interest of this scientist, listed here, don’t make the complete list. E. g. he thought about the matters of developing Arctic and Northern seaway, of aerostatics, public education and art; he invented the smokeless gunpowder.
The scientist admitted, “I’m surprised myself – what haven’t I done in my scientific life. And I think that it was done rather well.”
The interest of D. I. Mendeleyev to metrology during the last period of his life was quite natural. In his chemical and physical experiences he had constantly faced the problems of measuring and the necessity of precision. Besides, while studying the questions of economy, the scientist understood that metrology should be based on the proper organizational and legislative basis. Since the foundation of the Main House of Measures and Weights metrology becomes not just a science of measures, but it unites organizational, scientific, technical and legislative functions.
The natural interest to the activity of Mendeleyev-metrologist resulted in the fact that three great names appeared on the pages of this book instead of one. At the first approach only wonderful endowments and fame seem to be common for Mendeleyev, Shostakovich and Blok. Strong, prominent figures, though belonging to different generations, as if according to a physical law, appear to be connected with each other.
The Mendeleyevs and Beketovs (A. N. Beketov – the grandfather of Alexander Blok) were friends even before the future poet’s birth. They became especially close when Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleyeva, the daughter of the scientist, became a wife of Alexander Blok. Blok, being a poet-symbolist, saw more keenly a real genius in Mendeleyev, a person who had the superior knowledge, who “knew everything.”
More unexpected collation is Mendeleyev – Shostakovich. D. D. Shostakovich, a great pianist and composer, opened the whole era in the history of Russian music. His name is connected with Leningrad – Petersburg. His Seventh symphony, which was written and performed during the siege of Leningrad, rang out all over the world.
D. I. Mendeleyev worked shoulder to shoulder with the father of the composer D. B. Shostakovich, who had made an enormous contribution to the development of the verifying work in Russia. Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich was born in house No.2 in Podolskaya Street. Here the Principal Board of Weights and Measures was also situated.
Mendeleyev, Blok and Shostakovich are similar in talent, passion and love to their work.
Russia means a lot for each of them. D. I. Mendeleyev formulated for himself three services for his country: studies of sciences, teaching and labour for the good of Russian industry. He addressed to this subject more than once. In order to understand that these were not just words, it’s enough to recollect his work “To the knowledge of Russia”.
And Alexander Blok wrote about Russia like that, “… Subject of Russia… I devote my life to this theme meaningly and irrevocably. I understand more and more brightly that this is the first-rate matter, the most vital, and the most real. I’ve been approaching it for a long time, since the conscious life of mine…”
Music of D. D. Shostakovich rested upon the cultural heritage of Russia. For all his innovation the composer didn’t break with the past. He wrote: “… while fulfilling the search of new means of expression we should remember about the main line of the development of art, about its historical succession. While making bridges to the future, we shouldn’t burn ones, that connect contemporary culture with its undying past…” During the years of the war D. D. Shostakovich joined the ranks of the people’s volunteer corps as a volunteer. And his music supported the people, who were fighting for their Motherland.
It was written a lot about Mendeleyev, Blok and Shostakovich. But I would like to place these names next to one another, on the pages of one book, especially because the time, in which we live, is marked by the sequence of anniversaries.
In 2005 it was the 125
anniversary since Alexander Blok’s birth.
In 2006 it will be the 100
anniversary since Dmitry Shostakovich’s birth. This year is declared by UNESCO to be the year of Shostakovich.
In 2009 it will be one more important date – the 175
birthday of D. I. Mendeleyev.
The book, which I would like to offer to the reader, consists of three chapters. The first one is devoted to the life of D. I. Mendeleyev. The second one tells about the father and son Shostakoviches: about Dmitry Boleslavovich, the head of the first station of sample measures and weights, and the great composer Dmitry Dmitrievich. The third chapter of the book is about Alexander Blok and his “Belle Dame” Lyubov Mendeleyeva.
Chapter I
Dmitry Mendeleyev
Childhood and education. First scientific achievements
Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev was born in Tobolsk. He was the last, seventeenth child in the family of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleyev, the director of a gymnasia and public schools of Tobolskaya province. Dmitry Mendeleyev’s grandfather was a priest in Tverskaya province. His father had also graduated from Tverskaya theological seminary. Then, however, he entered the section of philology of the Main Pedagogical Institute in Petersburg. The post of the father at the moment of birth of the last child was one of the most honourable in the town. And the remarkable intellect, high level of education and creative approach to teaching marked Ivan Pavlovich out of the teachers’ sphere.
Mother of Dmitry Ivanovich, Maria Dmitrievna Kornilyeva, came from an eminent merchants’ family. There was a legend in the family that one of the ancestors had got married for love an Orient beauty. He loved her so much that, when she had passed away, he died of grief. The niece of D. I. Mendeleyev Nadezhda Yakovlevna Kapustina-Gubkina wrote, “… A stream of the Mongolian race’s blood got into the clear Great Russian blood of Kornilyevs, and several descendants of it even have something oriental in their type…”
The clan of Kornilyevs was proud of the fact that they were the first who started to establish factories in Siberia: papery and crystal. In 1787 they established the first typography in Tobolsk and since 1789 they started editing the first newspaper in Siberia “Irtysh”, they printed books.
The big family of Mendeleyevs started living well. The nanny from serf peasants Paraskovya Pheraphontovna, who stayed in the family of Mendeleyevs till her very death, helped to look after the elder children. The father of Maria Dmitrievna, Dmitry Vasilyevich Kornilyev, also lived with them. Already in youth he was ill with a brain fever and he couldn’t work any more. Later D. I. Mendeleyev’s sister Ekaterina Kapustina remembered about the beloved grandfather like that: he was a grey-haired, thin and short old man. He was quiet, kind, imperturbable and lead calm and idle life. Every day he went to the mass, then he used to read in his room, he wrote prose and rhymes – in general, “what he liked.” Dmitry Vasilyevich always used to pray in the evening. And after prayer before going to bed, when everything around became silent, he walked around the house with a candle: he watched whether the windows and the doors were closed. Then he went to the porch and watched whether the attic, inner porch and larders were locked.
Ekaterina Ivanovna wrote, “Remembrance about grandfather is always connected for me with a kind, comforting feeling, as we remembered him, he was never able to offend anyone and endured everything resignedly.
Next to the remembrance about the holy old man I want to tell about his grandson, i. e. about my brother Dmitry Ivanovich. This is my dear brother, the pride and comfort of our family. My heart is full of gratitude to him for his concern for me and my children at anytime…”
Mitenka, loved by everyone, was born on January, 27
(February, 8
) of 1834. This year was a hard one for the family. Ivan Pavlovich had to retire since he had become almost blind. The family had to live on his small pension. The Mendeleyevs moved from Tobolsk to the village of Aremzyanka, where the glass-work, which was inherited by the brother of Maria Dmitrievna Vasiliy Kornilyev, was situated. Maria Dmitrievna got a letter of attorney to manage it.
Dmitry spent his childhood and early youth in the village, among peasants and mill-hands. The problems of manufacturing and agriculture were constantly discussed at the Mendeleyevs. Mother, Maria Dmitrievna, worked tirelessly. She wrote, “My day starts at six o’clock in the morning with the preparation of dough and pastry for rolls and pies, then with the preparation of meal and at the same time with personal orders for the business. Moreover, I walk to the kitchen table, then to the bureau and during the days of payments – right from the cooking to the accounts.” Ivan Pavlovich worked as long as possible. In such an atmosphere Mitya got a respect to labour, interest to the industrial work and agriculture, which remained in him for the rest of his life.
Mitya learned to read, write and count very early. He grew being a bright child. His sister Ekaterina Kapustina liked to tell about the mother wit of her younger brother like that. When she was already married and lived in Omsk, mother with a 6-year-old Mitya visited them sometimes. While entertaining the child Ekaterina Ivanovna played with him a card game, which had been popular then, “tintere” and “sticks”, where the counting played the main role. Little Mitya always defeated his grown-up sister.
When he was 7 years old, he was already prepared to enter gymnasium together with his elder brother Pavel. Mitya studied at gymnasium without any especial progress, treating bona fide only those subjects, which he liked and which didn’t require intensive work. He liked mathematics, physics and history. He was absolutely indifferent towards the Russian philology and religion. He couldn’t stand foreign languages – German and Latin, and only the threat of remaining in the same form for the second year made him study.
The last years of Mitya Mendeleyev’s studies at gymnasium were saddened by misfortunes. In October of 1847 his father Ivan Pavlovich died, three months later one of his sisters Polina – died. In June of 1848 the glass-work in Aremzyanka, which had been for a while the main source of the family’s subsistence, burned down entirely. Maria Dmitrievna had no choice but to liquidate the farm and to leave the native places forever.
The Mendeleyevs passed winter of the 1849–1850’s in Moscow with the brother of Maria Dmitrievna, and in spring of 1850 they went to Petersburg cherishing hopes that Dmitry would be able to enter one of the academies of the capital. They chose the Main Pedagogical Institute (MPI), where Dmitry’s father had studied. The institute was located in the same building with the University, in the building of the Twelve Collegia. It didn’t enjoy wide popularity because of its specialization, but the education here was of the highest level: the professors of the University and academicians were teaching here.
However, the year 1850 wasn’t for entrance. Mother had to do everything in her power so that her son would have been admitted to the entrance examinations; institute friends of Ivan Pavlovich Mendeleyev, who lived in Petersburg, helped her. At the end of summer of 1850 Mitya Mendeleyev was admitted to the physico-mathematical faculty of the Main Pedagogical Institute as a student “at the state expense”. In autumn of the same year, as if having fulfilled her main mission, Maria Dmitrievna Mendeleyeva died. Before death she willed: “… to insist in labour and not in words and to look for God’s and scientific truth patiently…”
Nadezhda Yakovlevna Kapustina-Gubkina wrote in her notes about the Mendeleyevs that Maria Dmitrievna loved all her children, but most of all the youngest. Before death she blessed her son with the icon of the God-mother, where was the following inscription:
“I’m blessing you, Mitinka. All expectancies of my old age were based on you. I forgive you all your mistakes and beg you to address to God. Be kind, honour God, Tsar, Motherland and don’t forget that you should be responsible for everything at the Trial. Forgive and remember your mother, who had loved you more than anyone.”
Many years later, in 1887, being already a well-known scientist, D. I. Mendeleyev dedicated his work “Research of aqueous solutions according to the specific gravity” to his mother: “This research is dedicated to the memory of my mother by her last-born. She was able to nurture him only by her labour, managing the factorial affairs; she educated with her example, corrected with love and moved from Siberia, spending the last might and means, in order to devote to science.”
Student Mendeleyev didn’t have any unloved subjects. Most of all he was keen on abstract mathematics; he paid a great attention to chemistry and physics. But also he studied zoology, botany, he was interested in the sciences, which were studied at the historico-philosophical faculty, he studied at the laboratory of electrotype. Mendeleyev proved to be a many-sided, extraordinarily capable and originally thinking researcher. Intensive work let him enter quickly the number of the best students of institute. When he was a student in his elder year Dmitry Mendeleyev chose for himself two main directions of research: chemistry and mineralogy.
After having graduated the MPI, Mendeleyev presented his dissertation, which was named “Isomorphism in connection with other relations of crystal form to the composition.” Isomorphism is an identity of crystal form under the difference in the solution. This phenomenon is extraordinarily widespread in the minerals. The work, made under the direction of professor A. A. Voskresensky, was of great importance for the future development of scientific interests of the young scientist. At the end of his life he wrote, “In the Main Pedagogical Institute it was required to write a dissertation on one’s own subject – I have chosen isomorphism because I was interested in the things, which I had discovered by myself… and the subject seemed to me to be important in natural historical sense… The compiling of this dissertation involved me most of all to studying of chemical relations. Thus, it determined many things…”
Studying of isomorphism made Mendeleyev clarify the similarity and distinction between the chemical compounds, and 15 years later – to discovery of the periodical law of chemical elements.
In spring of 1855 D. I. Mendeleyev successfully passed the finals in all subjects. Academician U. F. Frizsche, who was present at the final in chemistry, highly appreciated the Mendeleyev’s knowledge and in his letter to the director of the MPI supported the idea of giving this graduate an opportunity to continue his research. In Frizsche’s opinion, Mendeleyev was to get a place for the future work in one of the university’s cities.
Mendeleyev, however, wasn’t able to take advantage of the opportunity to stay at the institute because of the state of health. Already in 1853, having been ill with consumption, he got to the institute sick quarters. Then the physicians didn’t hope already that he would get well again, but Dmitry Mendeleyev recovered and wrote to the doctor in charge of the case a report with a request to take the next exam.
After having finished his studies, Mendeleyev had been appointed as a teacher of gymnasium in the Crimea. Southern air was healthgiving for him. He was prescribed to go to Simferopol. But Mendeleyev couldn’t start working: there was the Crimean war of the 1853–1856’s, Simferopol was situated close to the battle-ground, and the gymnasium was closed. Dmitry Mendeleyev learned that there was a vacant post of teacher in Odessa.
During winter and spring of 1856 Mendeleyev worked as a chief teacher at the gymnasium attached to the lycee de Richelieu. His teaching was of a lively, original and creative nature. Except teaching according to the curriculum, he planned to write a guide for gymnasia, where, according to him, he planned “to describe gases, liquids, geological materials, minerals, remains of the organic creatures, plants starting with the lower ones and animals starting with the human being as a type, who forms a special class, and to finish with… geography.”
