the circumstances of his birth, upbringing, education, and started his scientific and pedagogical work is very characteristic of Russia in the XIX century, when the clergy as a social caste had advanced from their midst many outstanding people in the fields of secular culture. But in order that these people could be realized in these areas, they needed at a certain stage of its development to leave their caste. However, the clergy thus spoke a kind of “base” for the development including secular culture. And personality, Sergei Solovyov – a vivid example.
He was born in the family of Archpriest, and at the same time the scribes of the Moscow commercial College, M. V. Solovyov. The mother of the historian was descended from the family of a petty official, to curry favor with the nobility, but also coming from the clergy. She was a niece of the Archbishop of Yaroslavl and Rostov Abraham (Shumilina).
In childhood, the father taught his son not only the Law of God, but ancient languages. According to the custom of the clergy, first found his son in a religious school, but with the condition that the secular subjects, he will be held in the commercial College, and exams to pass in the spiritual. In the end, he still took the son in the third class of the Moscow gymnasium, which he graduated with silver medal and entered the Moscow University’s historical-philological faculty. This is also a very important point: while history and literature were perceived as very similar discipline.
the Main instructor in the University student of Sergei Solovyov was Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin, who read the course of Russian history. First student, the faculty, the nightingales were allowed to disassemble a rich archive Pogodin, where he made his first discovery: found a fifth of “Russian History” Tatishcheva. But it is believed that with great enthusiasm, he attended the lectures do not “Slavophile” Pogodin and “the Westerner” Granovsky. Probably this determined his future Outlook: “the Westerner” by conviction, he was both a “statesman,” seeing Russian history as a movement from a fragmented tribal system to public administration. At the same time, his priestly origins explains the special interest of the historian to the religious life of the peoples.
To S. M. Soloviev, Russian historical science cannot be overemphasized. We can say that it was he who laid the foundations of this science, if not created it. His adolescent love for N. M. Karamzin (teenager several times he re-read his “History of the Russian state”) was replaced by a rather critical attitude to the principle of the description of the Russian history as the great change of rulers. At the same time S. M. Soloviev was not satisfied with the “picturesque” principle Karamzin, when the story is described as an artistic canvas without trying e�� scientific explanation.
Among the conditions of Russia development in the first place Solovyov put “nature”, the second – “life of the tribes included in a new society”, the third – “the state of the neighboring peoples and States.” With the geography of the country Solovyov tied and particularly the birth of Russian statehood: struggle “forest and steppe”, the course of Russian colonization of the Eastern lands, the relations of Russia with neighbouring peoples. The first in Russian historiography Solovyov substantiate the thesis about the historical conditionality of reforms of Peter I, the gradual rapprochement of Russia with Western Europe. However, he was not a “apologist” of Peter the great, who, from his point of view, was historically determined “leader” of the people, having moved Russia towards the West after the decision of the country of the Eastern question. But the “business” Peter did not he, and the people.
the General attitude of Solovyov to the notorious role of personality in history was calm and certain and, incidentally, very relevant to current “excited” debate on this topic. Thus, Solovyov believed to be inappropriate, the depiction of historical persons, “as excessive praise and excessive blame”. He considered the unhistorical approach when “the activity of one historical person broke away from the historical activities of the whole people; in the life of the people was introduced to the supernatural power, acting according to his will”. Listen to these words in the days of our battles around the figures of Ivan the terrible and Joseph Stalin.
But Soloviev was not as “armchair” historian who really don’t care about social events. In 1877, when an open letter 35 scientists against the planned reforms, Solovyov decided to declare his resignation from the post of rector of Moscow state University and left the faculty and was listed in the University’s “third teacher”.
Affects the scale of his works. He lived only 59 years, while writing about 300 scientific works and the 29-volume “History of Russia from ancient times”, which began publishing in 1851, and since then, every year, been strictly one volume (was subsequently consolidated into six volumes with commentary), was a teacher and rector of the University, academician of St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Department of Russian language and literature, a privy Counsellor and a teacher of the future Emperor Alexander III.
it Remains to add that his wife, Polyxena Vladimirovna Solov’eva (nee Romanov), bore him 12 children. Four of them died in childhood. Of the remaining three were prominent people with strong literary talents. Vsevolod – known and very popular historical novelist, Maria – children’s writer and memoirist, The poet and artist. Finally, his son Vladimir became the great Russian philosopher – Snoopolejnika that’s called “Russian religious philosophy” (Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florensky, etc.) in addition, the poet Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov is considered the forerunner and a “father of Russian symbolism”.
But if he is “the father of symbolism”, Sergei Mikhailovich can be considered its “grandfather.”
the Joke, of course.
