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Red Hogwarts. Series 3. Major

My first hero in this series of essays was practically unknown to anyone, the second one was probably the most famous student of the Moscow State Academy of Art, the third one is in an intermediate position — the media periodically recall him, but not so persistently and with enthusiasm. And this story began with an old joke about a rich dad of a humble student. In general, let's get acquainted!



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Here he is. Agree - a handsome young man. Not even beautiful ... Well-groomed - it will be more accurate.



On the other hand, why would he not be well-groomed? Today he would have been called major, because with our money he was the son of an oligarch. The boy was named Vladimir Vasilyevich Arshinov, and he was the son of the merchant of the first guild Vasily Fedorovich Arshinov, the millionaire's cloth dealer and supplier of the court of His Imperial Majesty, who made huge money on the supply of uniforms for the Russian army.



Dad prenyatny, I must say, was a man. Born in the county town of Saransk, now the proud capital of Mordovia, in a large family of a peasant who moved to work in the city and enrolled in the philistine class. Eleven years old he was given "to the people" - "boy" to the bench in the village of Pochinki. Having received a proper amount of cuffs and cones and having grasped the world of commerce from the inside and from the bottom, the “boy” matured in 1872 by 17-year-old D'Artagnan sent to conquer the capital. True, in the absence of any horse, even an orange suit, Arshinov Sr. went to Moscow without any pathos — on foot and without shoes.



But then the interesting begins. Unlike many ambitious provincials, Vasily Arshinov did not disappear without a trace on Moscow’s crooked streets. He didn’t even turn into the then equivalent of a middle-level manager with a removable hut and credit Renault LOGAN, although everything went to that. Upon arrival in the capital, Vasya got a job at the cloth manufacturer Vasily Yefremovich Meshcherin in the tavern, sorry shop at Pyatnitskaya. There, in fact, lived. But then riddles begin - as in all stories about business success, the stage of initial accumulation of capital is covered with an impenetrable fog. All biographers of Arshinov Sr. talk about “extraordinary energy and trade ingenuity, hard work and endurance, observation and will,” that is, in fact, they do not say anything. But one way or another, nine years after the ritual crossing of the then non-existent Moscow Ring Road deserving the patronymic Vasily Fedorovich at that time opened his first own cloth factory, and a few years later he became the founding director of the trade association “V. Arshinov and Co. ”and the supplier of the imperial court.



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The version of “marriage on money”, by the way, disappears - Arshinov, Sr., married an impoverished orphan, Alexander Orphan, Zelenova. She, as in a fairy tale, bore him three sons - Vladimir (1879), Vasily (1881) and Sergey (1883).



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Things are going uphill, papa is building, as they would say today, an office building for his trading house. Yes, not anyhow what. First, five minutes walk from Red Square. Secondly, it was the first Moscow office in the “modern” style: the most prestigious Russian architect of that time, Fyodor Osipovich Shechtel, was hired to build it. The building is still preserved, becoming a monument of architecture of federal significance, you can go and see - Staropansky Lane, Building 5. The capitalist liked working with Shekhtel, and a few years later the great architect rebuilt Arshinov’s mansion on Bolshaya Ordynka, 32, and in the depths of the huge Arshinov the garden is building another small two-story building of a very unusual shape.



But this second two-storey mansion with a kind of semicircular dome over the attic was a terribly secret project - and here's why. The eldest son Vladimir, the very well-groomed young man from the photograph, unexpectedly showed up great abilities for science.



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Fizmata student of Moscow State University V.V. Arshinov.

He finished the natural sciences department of the Moscow State University in the first category and the great Vernadsky himself left him at the department "to prepare for a professorship". And at all not counting on papinos "sponsorship". The attention of the master was deserved without fools, and he earned his place in the inner circle of the most promising students of Academician Arshinov Jr. on his own. And it was a very interesting company, many of these "young and early" will soon make a brilliant scientific career.



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Here is how Vladimir Arshinov himself recalled this time: “At the Department of Mineralogy, V. I. Vernadsky organized a circle in which members of the Department and students made reports on both their works and abstracts of works published in the scientific literature on mineralogy. Sometimes the meeting of the circle took place at the apartment of Vernadsky. Interesting performances at the circle of AE Fersman's student are recalled. I also remember how I explained to the student Fersman what is pegmatite in front of a glass case in a museum ... ” .



For the ignorant of geology: the joke of humor is that a quarter of a century later, it was Fersman — the academician, the order-bearer and the scientific body of the first magnitude — who would create a detailed doctrine on pegmatites.



In general, while the son enjoyed the earnest happiness of scientific research and everyday communication with his peers, the father, who had never even studied at the gymnasium and had only primary education, was simply thrilled with pride for his son, and was ready to cheer up the first-born child on any scale. If Vernadsky only hinted that it would be nice for the younger Arshinov to complete an internship in Germany, to study, for example, the newest methods of microscopic examination of minerals and rocks ... In general, Vladimir Vasilievich soon went for two years to the University of Heidelberg, to the laboratory of the famous Professor Rosenbush - one of the world's largest authorities in descriptive microscopic petrography. And on his return, it was Arshinov who was the first in Russia who began conducting classes in crystal optics with MSU students. He taught this course for about six years, having trained almost all the older generation of Soviet mineralogists and petrographers.



But again I was distracted, and even ran ahead. Actually, I promised a joke. Well, about a modest major student who wanted to be like everyone else, ride a bus and live in a dormitory. Well, yes, the one where my dad bought a bus and was already trying to buy a hostel in the krovinochka. That's about what happened.



Upon returning from Germany, Vladimir Arshinov was in for a surprise - to mark the end of his studies, the pope presented him with the first and perhaps the only private research institute in Russian history.



It was for the personal research institute Shekhtel that he built the two-story building with a telescope on the roof. In the semicircular turret, as it turned out, one of the first astronomical observatories in Moscow was equipped, where, by the way, for the first time in Russia, Halley’s comet was observed in 1910. In general, the son could not be shy in money when buying equipment and hiring employees - the father allocated 700 thousand rubles to Literary (that is the name of the scientific research institute, that is, “Stone Earth”) - huge money at that time.



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Vladimir Arshinov served at Moscow State University until the sad memory of 1911, when Moscow University was practically crushed. Then, protesting against the actions of L. A. Kasso, Minister of Public Education, more than two dozen university professors submitted a letter of resignation. Yes, and Vernadsky too. In addition to professors, 105 privat-docents, assistants and laboratory assistants left the university. And, yes, Arshinov left after the teacher. However, he had to go where - from 1911, he was engaged only in his institute, and it was not by chance that after the 11th year of publication, the staff of Litogei went out one by one, both in Russia and abroad.



And at the institute Arshinov worked the same young, certainly brilliant and definitely immortal scientists with burning eyes, who, of course, just a few days ago will unravel all the secrets of the universe. In the list of employees, we see geologists S. V. Obrucheva, V.D. Ryazanov and V.A. Varsanofyev, petrographers A. A. Mamurovsky, E. A. Kuznetsov and B. Z. Kolenko, mineralogists A. S. Uklonsky, N. A. Smolyaninova and K. I. Viskonta, crystallographers E. E. Flint and Yu.V. Wolf



And then…



Then came 1917 and the old life ended unexpectedly. And the surprises on this did not stop. And not only at the country level, but also at the level of individual people.



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To everyone's surprise, the Arshinovs remained in Soviet Russia, although you know yourself - to whom, who they were, and where they were, and what to leave for. My dad had enough foreign partners and money invested in projects abroad. But the matter did not stop there - almost immediately after the Bolsheviks came to power, long before any red and white terror there was a real sensation: Arshinov Sr. suddenly made a sensational statement that he transferred all his movable and immovable property to the Soviet Republic. Following the father and the younger, Arshinov in 1918 appealed to the Soviet government with a proposal to transfer the institute "Litogeya" to state ownership. October 1, 1918 Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars V. I. Lenin and SNK managing directors V. D. Bonch-Bruevich sign a decree “On the nationalization of the Petrographic Institute“ Lithogaea ”, beginning with the words: “ Point one: Petrographic Institute “Lithogaea” in Moscow, having a task of scientific research of rocks and minerals, is declared a public institution, which is in charge of the Scientific and Technical Department of the Supreme Economic Council ... " . And the former owner, Vladimir Vasilyevich Arshinov, was appointed the first Soviet director of the Litogea Institute.



However, in the first years it was extremely difficult for the institute to work - there was famine, devastation and civil war in the country. And both Arshinovs suddenly show up in ... Yes, yes, in the newly formed Red Hogwarts, that is, the Moscow Mining Academy. The fact is that Vladimir Arshinov, one of the founders of MSA, Nikolai Mikhailovich Fedorovsky, was a friend of mineralogical group at Moscow State University. Fedorovsky was a Bolshevik with pre-revolutionary experience, a member of the RCP (b) since 1904, but this did not prevent him from becoming one of the favorite students of Vernadsky too. In general, Fedorovsky, who turned out to be in great ranks after the revolution (he headed the Mining Council of the Supreme Economic Council and headed the entire mining industry of the country) did not forget his old friend, and persuaded him to work in his specialty - professor and head of the department of petrography of the Moscow State University. By the way, these two institutions were generally very closely related. For example, almost all the staff of Littogie taught at the MGA, and even the academy’s dormitory (where, eating the soup of herring heads, prominent statesmen of the USSR Tevosyan, Fadeev, Yemelyanov, etc.) spent their best years — and that was located on Staromonetny, 33, really two steps from the legendary mansion with a telescope on the roof. In addition, the academy and the institute repeatedly, through joint efforts, tried to obtain at their disposal the former Arshinov's lands in Tsaritsyno - and there were not one and not ten hectares there. It did not work out, but the friendship of the two scientific institutions in battles with bureaucrats strengthened and the close cooperation of NITU "MISiS" and VIMS is still ongoing.



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A temporarily unemployed father of the professor, by the way, was at the same time offered to use his wealth of practical experience as the head of the economic part of the Moscow Mining Academy. It was Vasily Fedorovich Arshinov, a former millionaire, and now working in the RSFSR, who organized the grand opening of the Moscow Mining Academy on January 12, 1919. Perhaps the building for the Academy on Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya (now Leninsky Prospekt) was proposed by Vasily Fedorovich, who for a long time was a trustee of the Meshchansky School and poorhouse located in it.



I tell you truly, the position of the supply manager at Red Hogwarts was enchanted. What kind of “vice rectors for the AHC” was not there - we will return to this topic more than once, there such unanimous deputies are waiting for their turn to tell the story! In addition, the supervisors were constantly changing - it was about how the teacher of protection from the dark arts, just not in the book, but in fact.



The former oligarch worked as the head of the MGA for two and a half years. And then there was a story in the style of my other favorite book - not “Harry Potter”, but “Dunno on the Moon”. I always really liked the final of Scuperfield's adventures. Well, you remember, I hope:



“Poor Skuperfild, who lost all his capital before he took the factory away from him, did not know how to be now. At first, he went to dinner with his friends, but then made sure that he didn’t get much pleasure from friends, and ended up joining a former pasta factory. No one prevented him from doing so. Everyone knew that he loves pasta business, and hoped that he would work properly and in good faith. ”



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Parents. Left - newlyweds, right - after a golden wedding

That is exactly what happened with the senior Arshinov. In 1922, none other than Viktor Pavlovich Nogin, the first people's commissar for trade and industry, came to him. Yes, the same one, which is the metro station "Kitay-Gorod", the city of Bogorodsk and the brilliant poem by Edward Bagritsky "... Kuntsev's pioneers, Setun's pioneers, Nogin's pioneers," she’s also Kuntsevskaya dermatin-glue-fiber factory.



Minister by that time he had already ceased to be, but was appointed head of the All-Russian Textile Syndicate. He recalled the former "cloth king of Russia", found him, and took to work in his specialty - as a consultant to the trust. And I did not lose, you know. Vasily Fedorovich knew the textile business brilliantly, he worked in the trust without a single remark for many years, having survived more than one boss (and physically too). By his advanced years, he worked out for himself a personal pension of republican significance with all the benefits due. He died a very old man, having reached the age of 88, in his Moscow apartment - he and his son left several rooms in his former mansion on Bolshaya Ordynka.



He died in 1942, having managed to see how the Germans were rejected from his beloved Moscow. The cities to which this “fallen asleep” appeared barefoot at the age of 17, where he was once a vowel of the Moscow City Duma, and where he and Volodya broke up a unique park for the painful Seryozha in Tsaritsyno, which today bears their name. And the stone in Arshinov Park is the only monument to this man of unique fate.



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Memorial stone "From the grateful residents of Tsaritsyno", installed in Arshinov Park

As for Arshinov Jr., he had to go from beginning to end all that terrible and glorious path that Russia went through in the first half of the glorified and cursed XX century. At the Moscow Mining Academy, he taught from the very beginning to the very end, before the division of the Moscow State Academy of Education into six independent universities - and after that for a long time he lectured at the Moscow Geological Prospecting Institute. Ordzhonikidze.



In his beloved lithogee, he was directing until 1922, when the institute was reformed and integrated, renamed the Institute of Applied Mineralogy and Petrography, and appointed Nikolay Fedorovsky as director. Oddly enough, but the change in Arshinov’s status does not seem to have touched at all. Rather the opposite - getting rid of administrative functions, he happily plunged headlong into his favorite science. In less than a decade, from 1928 to 1937, more than three dozen monographs, articles and notes were published, mainly on petrography and non-metallic minerals.



In the renewed institute, Arshinov headed the petrographic laboratory, which he supervised all the way until his death.



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It was Vladimir Arshinov who laid the foundations of the industry of non-metallic minerals — asbestos, talc, etc. — in our country. He left us classical descriptions of ultrabasic rocks, as well as minerals associated with them and the processes of their metamorphism — talc and talc stone, chrysotile asbestos, amphibole asbestos, magnesite, and others. And these of his studies have lasting value. In fact, he created a scientific school, whose representatives played a significant role in the study of these minerals in our country. The first domestic works on the use of natural materials for stone casting are associated with his name, he actively participated in the selection of facing materials for Moscow embankments and the first metro stations. As a result of all - in February 1936, Arshinov Veh Ve was approved to the degree of Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences on the totality of scientific works.



But his life is not over. I think you have already paid attention to the date that concludes his “best decade”. Yes, that is exactly what happened. In 1937, when they were cleaning up the old Bolsheviks, Fedorovsky was taken, and after that, practically all the veterans of Litogei, one after another, were imprisoned under investigation. They took Arshinov - in the 39th, and he spent more than half a year alone. Vernadsky, who had been bothering about his release, recalled it in his memoirs in the following way: “... he was innocent - and had the character that enabled him to withstand the inquisitorial structure of our justice. And in confrontations, he firmly held on and maintained a heavy regime. ... There was no torture, but he lost sight in one eye, as he could not gently treat the eye, although the eye doctor was admitted to him . " And summing up: “He is among those people who are building a new system much more than the party structure taken as a whole, since this is a man of high moral strength . ”



Only one characteristic detail - Arshinov was one of the best librarians in the country; it was on his initiative that the Association of Scientific Libraries was created in the USSR. And while in prison, instead of appeals and requests, he submitted to the administration reports with specific proposals on the organization of a scientific library in the prison for investigative scientists.



On July 16, 1939, Vladimir Vasilyevich Arshinov was fully acquitted by the military tribunal of the Moscow Military District and released from prison.



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Having lost an eye, he could no longer actively engage in his favorite microscopic petrography. But Arshinov was always not only a scientist, but also an inventor, and therefore in the last two decades of his life he concentrated on design and inventive activity in the field of polarization microscopy.



And here he was again very successful: he filed more than 50 applications, 35 of which were recognized as inventions. Particularly successful was the design of a portable “road” polarizing microscope, developed for use in expeditionary conditions, developed in 1951. This microscope has become very popular in our country, has been exported abroad for many years, and at the World Exhibition in Brussels in 1958, received the “Grand Prix”.



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However, his invention was not limited to microscopes. Based on the use of color interference effects, Vladimir Vasilyevich Arshinov proposed a new direction in decorative art - “radiant mosaic”; on the basis of polaroids, he created a new model of suspended light traffic light, a signal lamp for river fleet. And during the war, the workers of his former Lithogea, which became VIMS, reported that “the institute was produced according to the method of V.V. Arshinova and sent to the front tens of thousands of points-filters ". They were referring to the special non-dazzling glasses for pilots invented by Viktor Vasilyevich.



The author of the invention in 1944 was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor. And in 1948, for merits in the study of the mineral resource base of the country - the Order of Lenin. In January 1945, Vladimir Vasilyevich Arshinov was awarded the title of professor. In 1951, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation awarded him the honorary title of Honored Scientist of the RSFSR. The mineral named “arshinovit” is named after him.



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In 1954, the scientific community of the Land of Soviets celebrated the 75th anniversary of the scientist. Here is his photo taken for the invitation card. I look at her and think - is that in this gray-haired one-eyed, bearded old man of the 1954 model left of that glossy young man who he was in 1910?



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One human life separating these two numbers. A life unfortunately ideally inscribed in the history of our country of the 20th century. Did he regret not having left then? Situationally - probably sorry, and more than once. But in general ... I look at this photo, and for some reason I understand the famous lines of Brodsky much better:



What to tell me about life? What turned out to be long.

Only with grief I feel solidarity.

But until I got my mouth full of clay,

only gratitude will be heard from it.



However, it is possible without Brodsky, with a much more famous quote.



He never had a family or children, he lived his life as an adept in science and for the sake of knowing the world. I lived it in my country, I lived it as long as I bequeathed, having gone through all the points:



In the mountain ...



... and in joy ...



In wealth ...



... and poverty ...



In the disease ...



... and in good health.



Until the death separates us.



Professor Vladimir Vasilyevich Arshinov died in August 1955 in Leningrad, where he went on a business trip about the production of new devices for the study of rocks and minerals.



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He was buried at the Danilovsky cemetery, in the same place where his father was buried during the war.



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Lytogeya is still alive, just today it is called the N. Fedorovsky All-Russian Research Institute of Mineral Raw Materials. This memorial board hangs on the wall of the institute.



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In 1957, a collection of scientific papers of VIMS employees was published dedicated to Vladimir Vasilievich. Texts for the collection were written by people who knew him all his life, who, in fact, were his family.



The opening speech there ends with the words: “ Vladimir Vasilyevich devoted his whole life to selfless service to geological science. He gave her all the abilities, all the strength and all the passion of his richly gifted nature. Love for the country where he was born, lived and worked - this is the only thing that filled the great working life of V.V. Arshinova . "



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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/374409/



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