utilized the standards to make education more exclusive at all levels of schooling. Following the Polish rebellion, the Polish University of Vilna was closed; in 1833 a Russian university was opened in Kiev instead. The government of Nicholas I created no other new universities, but it did establish a number of technical and 'practical' institutions of higher learning, such as a technological institute, a school of jurisprudence, and a school of architecture, as well as schools of arts and crafts, agriculture, and veterinary medicine.
With the expansion of higher education, science and scholarship grew in Russia. Mathematics led the way. Nicholas Lobachevsky, who lived from 1793 to 1856 and taught at the University of Kazan, was the greatest Russian mathematician of that, or indeed any, period. The 'Copernicus of geometry' left his mark in the history of thought by formulating a non-Euclidian geometry. Starting from an attempt to prove the old Euclidian axiom that on a given plane it is possible to draw through a point not on a given line one and only one line parallel to the given line, and proceeding by trying to refute other alternatives, Lobachevsky found his task impossible. He then faced the consequences of his discovery and went on to postulate and develop a non-Euclidian geometry, within which the Euclidian scheme represented but a single instance. While Lobachevsky's revolutionary views received scant recognition from his contemporaries either in Russia or in other countries - although, to be exact, he was not quite alone, for a few Western scholars were approaching similar conclusions at about the same time - they nevertheless represented a major breakthrough in the direction of the modern development of mathematics and the physical sciences. Several other gifted Russian mathematicians of the first half of the nineteenth century also contributed to the growth of their subject.
Astronomy too fared exceptionally well in Russia in the first half of the nineteenth century. In 1839 the celebrated Pulkovo observatory was constructed near St. Petersburg. Directed by one of the leading astronomers of the age who was formerly professor at the University of Dorpat, Frederick William Jacob Struve, and possessing the largest telescope in the world at that time and in general the most up-to-date equipment, Pulkovo quickly became not only a great center of astronomy in Russia,
but also a valuable training ground for astronomers from other European countries and the United States. Struve investigated over three thousand double stars, developed methods to calculate the weight of stars and to apply statistics to a study of them, and dealt with such problems as the distribution of stars, the shape of our galaxy, and the absorption of light in interstellar space, a phenomenon which he was the first to establish. Struve's associates and students - in fact, several other members of the Struve family - further expanded the study of astronomy in Russia.
Physics and chemistry also developed in the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I. Russian contributors to these branches of knowledge included an early experimental physicist in electricity and other fields, Professor Basil Petrov, who was on the staff of the Medical-Surgical Academy and taught himself physics, and a distinguished chemist, Professor Nicholas Zinin. Zinin worked and taught in Kazan and St. Petersburg and established the first prominent school of Russian chemists. He is perhaps best remembered as a pioneer in the production of aniline dyes.
The natural sciences in Russia grew with the physical, their practitioners including such luminaries as the great Baltic German embryologist Academician Charles Ernest Baer. As in the eighteenth century, the natural sciences were enriched by some remarkable expeditions and discoveries. Russians continued to explore Siberia and traveled repeatedly from the Baltic 'around the world' to Alaska. They discovered numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean, which, however, the Russian government did not choose to claim. And in 1821 an expedition led by Thaddeus Belingshausen discovered the antarctic continent.
The humanities and the social sciences progressed similarly in Russia in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Oriental studies, for example, profited both from Russia's proximity to much of Asia and from Uvarov's special patronage. They became established in several universities and made important contributions to knowledge, ranging from pioneer descriptions of some Central Asiatic peoples to Father Iakinf Bichurin's fundamental work on China. Indeed the Russian Orthodox mission in Peking served from the time of Peter the Great to the revolutions of 1917 as an institute of sinology.
The writing of history was developed and gained a new public. Nicholas Karamzin, who must be mentioned more than once in connection with the evolution of the Russian language and literature, also became the first widely popular historian. His richly documented twelve-volume
throughout his work that autocracy and a strong state made Russia great and must remain inviolable. In 1811 Karamzin had expressed similar views more succinctly in his secret
The Russian language evolved further, and so did linguistic and literary studies. If the writings of Karamzin marked the victory of the new style over the old, those of Pushkin already represented the apogee of modern Russian language and literature and became their classic model. The simplicity, precision, grace, and flow of Pushkin's language testify to the enormous development of the Russian literary language since the time of Peter the Great. Such opponents of this process as the reactionary Admiral Alexander Shishkov, who served from 1824 to 1828 as minister of education, fought a losing battle. While writers developed the Russian language, scholars studied it. The first decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the work of the remarkable philologist Alexander Vostokov and the early studies of several other outstanding linguistic scholars. Literary criticism rose to a new prominence. The critics ranged from conservative university professors, typified by Stephen Shevyrev of the University of Moscow, who adhered to the doctrine of Official Nationality, to the radical firebrand Vissarion Belinsky. Indeed, we shall see that with Belinsky literary criticism in Russia acquired sweeping social, political, and generally ideological significance.
Literature constituted the chief glory of Russian culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, owing to the genius of several writers. It remains the most highly prized legacy from the time of Alexander I and Nicholas I, whether in Russia, with a virtual cult of Pushkin, or in other countries where such works as
Karamzin's sentimentalism, mentioned in an earlier chapter, which was popular at the end of the eighteenth and in the first years of the nineteenth century, gradually lost its appeal, while Karamzin himself turned, as we know, to history. New literary trends included what both pre-revolution-ary and Soviet scholars described as romanticism and realism in their various aspects. Romanticism produced no supreme literary figure in Russia except the poet Theodore Tiutchev, 1803-73, who spent much of
his life in Germany and had little influence in his native land. It did, however, attract a number of gifted poets and writers and also contributed to the artistic growth of such giants as Lermontov, Pushkin, and Gogol. Of the Russian romanticists proper, Basil Zhukovsky deserves mention. Zhukovsky, who lived from 1783 to 1852, faithfully reflected in his poetry certain widespread romantic moods and traits: sensitivity and concern with subjective feelings, an interest in and idealization of the past, a penchant for the mysterious and the weird. On the whole the poet represented the humane, elegiac, and contemplative, rather than the 'demonic' and active, aspects of romanticism. Zhukovsky's value for Russian literature lies in the novel lightness and music of his verse, in the variety of literary forms that he utilized successfully for his poetry, and in his numerous and generally splendid translations. In addition to translating superbly into Russian some works of such contemporary or near- contemporary Western writers as Schiller, Zhukovsky gave his readers an enduring Russian text of Homer's
