Kagan, V. N. (1952). N. I. Lobachevsky and His Contributions to Science. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. Vucinich, Alexander. (1962). “Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevskii: The Man Behind the First Non- Euclidean Geometry.” ISIS 53:465-481
The history of local government in Russia and Soviet Union can be characterized as a story of grand plans and the inability to fully implement these plans. The first serious attempt to establish this branch of government in Russia came during the reign of Peter I. Between 1708 and 1719 Peter introduced provincial reforms, in which the country was divided into fifty guberniiu (provinces). Each of the provinces was then subdivided into uyezdy (districts). Appointed administrators governed the provinces, while district administrators and councils assisting provincial administrators were elected among local gentry. Provincial and district government was to be responsible for local health, education, and economic development. In 1720-1721 Peter introduced his municipal reform. This was the continuation of the earlier, 1699 effort to reorganize municipal finances. Municipal administration was to be elected from among the townspeople, and it was to be responsible for day-to-day running of a town or city.
The results of Peter’s reforms of local and municipal government were uneven. The basic subdivisions for the country (provinces and districts) survived the imperial period and were successfully adopted by Soviet authorities. The substance of the reforms-the elective principle and local responsibility-fell victim to local apathy and inability to find suitable officials.
Another attempt to reform local government in Russia took place during the reign of Catherine II. Catherine followed the policy of strengthening of gentry as a class, and under her Charter of Nobility of 1785, the gentry of each province was given a status of legal body with wide-ranging legal and property rights. The gentry, together with the centrally appointed governor, constituted local government in Russia under Catherine. In the same year, Catherine II granted a charter to towns, which provided for limited municipal government, controlled by wealthy merchants.
The truly wide-ranging local and municipal reforms were instituted during the reign of Alexander II. The 1864 local government reform established local (zemstvo) assemblies and boards on provincial and district levels. Representation in district Zemstvos was proportional to land ownership, with allowances for real estate ownership in towns. Members of district Zemstvos elected, among themselves, a provincial assembly. Assemblies met once per year to discuss basic policy and budget. They also elected Zemstvo boards, which, together with professional staff, dealt with everyday administrative matters. The Zemstvo system was authorized to deal with education, medical and veterinary services, insurance, roads, emergency food supplies, local statistics, and other matters.
Wide-ranging municipal reforms started in the early 1860s, when several cities were granted, on a trial basis, the right to draft their own municipal charter and elect a city council. The result of these experiments was the 1870 Municipal Charter. Under its provision, a town council was elected by all property owners or taxpayers. The council elected an administrative board, which ran a town between the elections.
LOMONOSOV, MIKHAIL VASILIEVICH
The local government reforms of 1860s and 1870s were wide-ranging and significant. However, they still left significant inequalities in the system. Electoral rights were based on property ownership, and largest property owners-the gentry in the rural areas and the wealthy merchants in the cities-had the greatest representation in the local government. These inequalities increased under the successors of Alexander II-Alexander III and Nicholas II- when peasants and the non-Orthodox religious minorities were denied rights to elect and be elected.
The February Revolution of 1917 brought local and municipal government reforms of 1860s and 1870s to their widest possible extent. The lifting of all class-, nationality-, and religion-based restrictions on citizens’ participation in government considerably widened local government electorate. The temporary municipal administration law of June 9 formulated accountability, conflicts of interest, and appeal mechanisms. As central government weakened between February and October Revolutions, the role of local government in providing services and basic security to the citizens increased. At the same time, the soviets, the locally based umbrella bodies of socialist organizations, came into existence. The soviets and old local administrations coexisted throughout the Russian Civil War. As Bolsheviks consolidated power, however, the old local administrations were dissolved, and local soviets assumed their responsibilities. Throughout early 1920s the local soviets were purged of non-Bolshevik representatives and, by the time of Lenin’s death, they lost their practical importance as a seat of power in the Soviet Union. The structure of local soviets was similar to that of the provincial and district Zemstvos. They consisted of standing and plenary committees, which discussed matters before them and elected presidium and the chair of the soviet. Local soviets were tightly intertwined with local Communist Party structures and representatives of central government. This, together with their inability to raise taxes and tight central control, severely curtailed their effectiveness in such areas as public housing, municipal transport, retail trade, health, and welfare. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a move away from soviets and toward Western models of local government. However, the shape of this branch of government is yet to be decided in the post-Communist Russian Federation. See also: ASSEMBLY OF THE LAND; GUBERNIYA; SOVIET; TERRITORIAL-ADMINISTRATIVE UNITS; ZEMSTVO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kenez, Peter. (1999). A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. (2000). A History of Russia. New York: Oxford University Press. Sakwa, Richard. (1998). Soviet Politics in Perspective, 2nd ed. London; New York: Routledge.
(1711-1765), chemist, physicist, poet.
Mikhail Lomonosov was born in a small coastal village near Arkhangelsk. His father was a prosperous fisherman and trader. At age nineteen Lomonosov enrolled in the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy in Moscow, a religious institution where he learned Latin and was exposed to Aristotelian philosophy and logic. In 1736 he was one of sixteen students selected to continue their studies at the newly established secular university at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Immediately the Academy sent him to Marburg University in Germany to study the physical sciences under the guidance of Christian Wolff, famous for his versatile interest in the links between physics and philosophy. He also spent some time in Freiberg, where he studied mining techniques. He sent several scientific papers to St. Petersburg. After five years in Germany, he returned to St. Petersburg and began immediately to present papers on physical and chemical themes. In 1745 he was elected full professor at the Academy.
Lomonosov drew admiring attention not only as “the father of Russian science” but also as a major modernizer of national poetry. He introduced the living word as the vehicle of poetic expression. According to Vissarion Belinsky, who wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century: “His language is pure and noble, his style is precise and powerful, and his verse is full of glitter and soaring spirit.” According to Evelyn Bristol: “Lomonosov created a body of verse whose excellence was unprecedented in his own language.”
Lomonosov’s work in science was of an encyclopedic scope; he was actively engaged in physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, meteorology, and navigation. He also contributed to population studies, political economy, Russian history, rhetoric, and
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Portrait of poet and scientist Mikhail Lomonosov from the State Hermitage Museum collection. © REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION OF THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA/CORBIS grammar. He brought the most advanced scientific theories to Russia, commented on their strengths and weaknesses, and advanced original ideas. He sided with Newton’s atomistic views on the structure of matter; questioned the existence of the heat-generating caloric, a popular crutch of eighteenth-century science; and endorsed and commented on Huygens’s clearly manifested inclination toward the wave theory of light. He raised the question of the scientific validity of the notion of instantaneous action at a distance that was built into Newton’s notion of universal gravitation, conducted experimental research in atmospheric electricity, made the first steps toward the formulation of conservation laws, suggested a historical orientation in the study of the terrestrial strata, and claimed the presence of atmosphere at the planet Venus. In the judgment of Henry M. Leicester, Lomonosov’s
