The First World War and the mathematics in the "Russian world"
speaker: Serge Demidov (Mosca University)abstract: In the Russian history the First World War consisted marked a turning point. The country entered in the war in August 1914 as Empire, and in 1918 when it ended its name was: the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. During the war it confronted with two revolutions in 1917 – the February and the October Revolutions. As a result of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks ruled the country and began the construction of a new type of state – the Soviet republic. In 1918 a civil war broke out, which was largely completed in 1920, but in some areas continued even in 1922. In the end of 1922 was formed the USSR – the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. Geographically, the new state was less than the Russian Empire as it did not include: Finland, the lands of Baltic republics, the Kingdom of Poland and Bessarabia. From the beginning of 1917 the country attended constant political changes and social experiments which led to the total devastation of: agriculture, industry, education, science. In the second half of the 20s, and especially in the years 30s occurred the stabilization and the development of new forms of life. After the collapse of hopes for a speedy implementation of the world revolution, the Bolshevik regime was in a rather difficult situation – as it was surrounded by hostile states, to face the destruction of the industry (including the military one), the education and the science. All that was able to restore in the way of mobilization (taken sometimes quite brutal measures) in a relatively short time, which still existed before the Second World War. First of all it was necessary to restore the primary and the secondary schools which were disfigured by idiotic experiments of all kinds of reformers, as well as the rehabilitation and the construction of higher education, which would be able to provide the country with specialists (first of all by engineers). The science has proved extremely necessary, in particular, the science which could solve complex military-technical problems. For the organization of a such scientific research has been used the old Russian Academy of Sciences, which now received the name of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and was proclaimed the General Staff of the Soviet science. Of course, it was not a question of the restoration of the pre-revolutionary school, as well as of the restoration of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in their old forms, but all these institutions were adapted to the realities of the new life and reconstructed on new socialist principles. As concerns mathematics and mathematical education, in spite of the losses (and these losses were considerable), the main mathematical schools – St. Petersburg and Moscow schools – were preserved (although in damage), as well as the local mathematical centers - in Kazan, in Kharkov, in Kiev, in Odessa. The loss of Russian higher educational institutions, which were in result of the war abroad (in the Poland or in the new Baltic States), partially offset by the fact that some of them were evacuated to the interior of the country and fully (as the former Warsaw university, which moved to Rostov-on-Don) or partially (as the Riga Polytechnic Institute, which appeared in Ivanovo) stayed there. For the needs of the industry (primarily of the military one) were created new institutions of higher education. The new institutions also emerged in the national borderlands – so in 1918 was founded the University in Tbilisi, and in 1921 the Belarusian University. In all these schools mathematics were taught and the need to increase the number of persons, who can do it, led to an increasing the number of students in mathematics. Thus mathematics became a mass profession. It might be stressed that in the new state the prospects to study was opened for people who had not such possibilities in the Tsarist Russia – for people from villages or from the working environment, or for Jews. Many mathematicians, who became famous later, used such opportunities. Classic examples provide the scientific biographies of M.G. Krein (1907 – 1989) and I.M. Gelfand (1913 – 2009). The transference in 1918 of the capital from Petrograd, which after the separation of the Finland became close to the border, to the depth of the country, to Moscow was the cause of the subsequent (in 1934) transference of the Academy, as well as the V.A. Steklov Mathematical Institute. This transference put end to the traditional strong confrontation between the mathematicians of the two capitals and led to a fruitful synthesis of the ideas of the leading national schools and, finally, gave birth of the Soviet mathematical school.The First World War was for the whole of Europe and for every European country a thorough shake-up, which led to a powerful tectonic shifts of the social life of European peoples. One of the consequences of these changes was the increase in awareness of the unity of the European (and therefore the world) mathematical community. Mathematicians immigrants from Russia started to become habitual phenomenon for mathematical communities in different countries – of the Yugoslavia (N.N. Saltykov (1872 – 1961), A.D. Bilimovich (1879 – 1970)), of the Poland (A.P. Psheborsky (1871 – 1941)), of the Czechoslovakia (D.F. Selivanov (1855 – 1932), E.L. Bunitsky (1874 – 1952)), of the France (S.E. Savich (1864 – 1936)), of the Great Britain (A.S. Bezicovich (1891 - 1970)), of the USA (Ya.A. Shokhat (1866 – 1944), Ya.V. Uspensky (1883 – 1947), Ya.D. Tamarkin (1888 – 1945), Yu.Ch. (Jerzy) Neyman (1894 – 1981)). The movement for the organization of the next really international congress of mathematicians, which was intended to bring together mathematicians of all countries after the terrible events of the First World War, in which the Russian mathematicians (V.A. Steklov, A. V. Vasiliev et al.) participated also and which held in Toronto in 1924, became an important step for the consolidation of this community.
timetable:
Fri 22 May, 10:15 - 11:00, Sala Stemmi
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