Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon (Russian: Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon) (Kishinev, July 13 [O.S. July 1] 1869 — Moscow, February 19, 1925) Russian literary critic, philosopher, publicist and translator.

Biography

Meilikh Gershenzon was born in the provincial city of Chisinau in the family of Pinhus-Yosef Leibovich (Joseph Lvovich) Gershenzon, a small businessman and private attorney from the city of Litina, and Gitli Yankelevna (Golda Yakovlevna) Tsysina. From 1875 he studied at the cheder, then at the private Chisinau Jewish public school of Blumenfeld, and in 1887 he graduated from the 1st Chisinau state gymnasium.

The father wanted to give his two sons an education that would provide them with financial independence. He sent his eldest son Abram to Kyiv to study as a doctor, and his younger son to the Berlin Technical University to study as an engineer. For two years (1887-1889) M. O. Gershenzon studied honestly, but as a result he only came to the conclusion that this career was not for him. He began to listen to lectures by the historian G. von Treitschke and the philosopher E. Zeller at the University of Berlin.

Finally, in the summer of 1889, Gershenzon returned to Chisinau and announced his determination to receive a humanities education. My father was categorically against it, since such an education opened up only two possibilities for a future career: teaching at a university or teaching at a gymnasium, and both were then prohibited to Jews. In addition, the admission itself was problematic due to the strict percentage norm for the admission of Jews, and Gershenzon did not even receive a gold medal upon graduating from the gymnasium. Nevertheless, he sent a petition to St. Petersburg, to the Ministry of Public Education. This attempt was not obviously hopeless, since the then minister, Count Delyanov, conscientiously implementing the “protective” measures initiated by K. P. Pobedonostsev and D. A. Tolstoy, often helped individual people who suffered from these very measures. And indeed, the ministry ordered the enrollment of Mikhail Gershenzon in the first year of the history department of the historical and philological faculty of Moscow University.

Thus, M. Gershenzon’s student life in Moscow began in extreme poverty, with constant learning of lessons. At the university, he listened to lectures by V. I. Guerrier on modern history, P. G. Vinogradov on the history of Greece, F. E. Korsh on classical philology, N. Ya. Grot and M. M. Troitsky on psychology, V. O. Klyuchevsky on Russian history, M. S. Korelin on the ancient history of the Semitic East. S.I. Sobolevsky taught practical classes in the ancient Greek language. Gershenzon also attended several lectures by I.M. Sechenov on physiology and S.S. Korsakov on psychiatry.

Gershenzon’s classmate turned out to be another native of Chisinau, Nikolai Borisovich Goldenweiser (1871-1924), who remained his closest friend until the end of his life. By that time, the entire Goldenweiser family had moved to Moscow: father, Boris Solomonovich Goldenweiser (1838-1916), a famous lawyer, mother, Varvara Petrovna, younger brother Alexander and two sisters, Tatyana and Maria. M. Gershenzon quickly became the Goldenweisers’ man.

In December 1893, Gershenzon was awarded a gold medal for the essay “The Athenian Polity of Aristotle and the Lives of Plutarch,” written on the initiative and under the direction of P. G. Vinogradov. He hoped, on the basis of this medal, to achieve for Gershenzon, if not staying at the university, then at least a business trip abroad to continue his education, but none of this succeeded. In a letter to his relatives, Gershenzon conveyed Vinogradov’s words as follows:

“If there had not been an order not to leave non-Christians at the university, and it was only a matter of resistance from the faculty council, then I would not have stopped even before a demonstration and would have achieved my goal.”
Until the end of his life, Gershenzon earned his living through literary work. His first published text was an entry on the Chinese Ming dynasty in Garnet’s Desk Encyclopedic Dictionary (1893); it was followed by other minor entries in this dictionary. In 1894, his review of N. I. Kareev’s books was published (without a signature) in the magazine “Russian Thought”. In 1896, the newspaper Russkie Vedomosti published 30 of his notes on various topics, mainly book reviews. This activity continued in subsequent years, although with less intensity. The main source of income for Gershenzon during this period was translations, including the books “Stories about Greek Heroes, compiled by B. G. Niebuhr for his son”, “History of Greece” by Yu. Beloch, three volumes from the multi-volume “General History” Lavissa and Rambo. He also acted as editor of translations, in particular, the monograph by E. Meyer “Economic Development of the Ancient World”; The publication of this book was hindered by censorship and was delayed for years.

Since his student years, Gershenzon was friends with V. A. Maklakov and S. P. Moravsky, also students of Vinogradov. During the period of work on Aristotle’s Athenian Polity, he communicated a lot with M. M. Pokrovsky, of whom he had an extremely high opinion: “One evening spent with him enriches me more than a year of university lectures.” From the mid-1890s, Gershenzon was friends with S. N. Bulgakov, a graduate of the Faculty of Law of Moscow University.

In 1893, philanthropist Elizaveta Nikolaevna Orlova (1861-1940, granddaughter of M. F. Orlov, great-niece of N. I. and S. I. Krivtsov, great-granddaughter of N. N. Raevsky) initiated the creation of the Home Reading Commission, the purpose of which was to promote self-education the poor. The commission published reading programs, sent books and supervised reading. P. G. Vinogradov became a member (and later chairman) of the commission. He attracted Gershenzon to its activities, who as a result published a number of translations and his own texts on problems of education and upbringing. The writing of a popular essay on Petrarch (1899), later revised into an introductory article to a collection of translations (1915), was associated with this same work. Acquaintance with Orlova grew into a long-term friendship and played a huge role in Gershenzon’s life.

Friendly relations with Nikolai Goldenweiser’s sister Maria turned romantic, but the marriage between the Orthodox Maria Goldenweiser and the Jew Meilich Gershenzon was impossible under the laws of the Russian Empire. Since 1904, they began to simply live together as a family. B. S. Goldenweiser did not approve of this decision, believing that Gershenzon could have been baptized, since this happened. The Gershenzon children — sons Alexander (who died in infancy), Sergei and daughter Natalia — were listed as “illegitimate children entered in the passport of the girl Goldenweiser .» By 1914, Russian legislation had become more tolerant: Orthodox Christians could convert to other Christian denominations, and non-Orthodox Christians could marry Jews. Maria Borisovna became a Lutheran, and they got married according to the Lutheran rite.

In 1908 or 1909, Orlova settled the Gershenzonovs in her household on Nikolsky Lane near Arbat, first in a wooden outbuilding, and then in a new house (No. 13), built in 1912 by the architect Ivanov-Shitz. She and her mother, and later her sister, who was married to S.A. Kotlyarevsky, settled in the same house. Having lost her entire fortune as a result of the October Revolution (although happily escaping any repression), Orlova continued to live with the Gershenzons as a family member until her death, earning money by teaching drawing and languages, and later by selling her own paintings. In 1959, the family (already the Chegodaevs) moved to Cheryomushki, and in 1983, house No. 13 was demolished, and in its place a new modern one was built for the “servants of the people.”

Having become a famous writer and scientist, Gershenzon did not break with everyday journalism until the Bolsheviks closed all independent newspapers and magazines. He was editor of the literary department of the magazines “Scientific Word”, “Critical Review” (since 1904), “Bulletin of Europe” (1907-08). In 1913, he published 18 notes on various topics in the newspaper “Russian Rumor” under the pseudonym “Junior”. In 1914-1916, he actively published on general and literary topics in the newspaper Birzhevye Vedomosti.

After the February Revolution — Chairman of the All-Russian Writers’ Union. In 1920-21, a member of the bureau of the Literary Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education, a member of the board of the 4th section of the Main Archive, and since 1921, the head of the literary section of the State Academy of Artistic Sciences.

Creation
According to M. A. Tsyavlovsky, Gershenzon’s grandfather, Yakov Tsysin, as a teenager saw Pushkin walking in the city garden of Chisinau, which he later told his little grandson about. Throughout his life, Gershenzon composed poetry; several poems were published in the magazines “New Word” (1897) and “Russian Thought” (1913, 1915).

Gershenzon’s first actual scientific publication was the student work “Aristotle and Ephorus,” awarded the Isakov Prize in 1893 and published at the expense of the university in 1894 under the same cover as the (also student) work of V. A. Maklakov, “Election by lot in the Athenian state.” In particular, V.P. Buzeskul responded to this work with a review. In 1895, Moscow University, again at its own expense, published Gershenzon’s second student work, “The Athenian Polity of Aristotle and the Lives of Plutarch.” He did no more research work either in Greek history or in classical philology.

From the late 1890s, he began researching the family archives of prominent noble families of Moscow, studying the Decembrist movement and the legacy of A. I. Herzen, N. P. Ogarev, Westerners and Slavophiles of the 1830-1840s.

In 1909, he initiated the publication (and also as the author of the introductory word) of the collection “Vekhi”, which united significant representatives of Russian philosophical thought: N. A. Berdyaev, S. N. Bulgakov, S. L. Frank and others (see article Vekhi ).

From the beginning of the 1910s, he concentrated on publishing literary and historical materials, especially for which he published the collections “Russian Propylaea” (1915–1919, 6 volumes) and “New Propylaea” (1923). In collaboration with the Moscow Religious and Philosophical Society, he published the collected works of I. V. Kireevsky (1911, 2 volumes) and P. Ya. Chaadaev (1913-1914, 2 volumes), participated in the development of the series “Monuments of World Literature” (since 1911) .

Author of works about Pushkin (“The Wisdom of Pushkin”, 1919), Turgenev (“The Dream and Thought of I. S. Turgenev”, 1919), Chaadaev, the era of Nicholas I, co-author (with Vyach. Ivanov) of the philosophical and journalistic “Correspondence from Two Corners” «(1921) and other works.

After the Beilis case, he began collaborating with the magazine “Jewish World”, published a work about the Jewish poet H. H. Bialik (1914), a preface to a collection of Russian translations from new poetry in Hebrew “Jewish Anthology” (publishing house “Safrut”, Moscow, 1918), in 1922 — philosophical essays “The Key of Faith” and “The Fate of the Jewish People”, in which he contrasted Zionism with the idea of ​​the universalism of the Jewish spirit.

Family
Brother — Abram (Buma) Osipovich Gershenzon (1868-1933), pediatrician and health care organizer, one of the founders of the Odessa Society of Children’s Doctors; his son is the writer and literary critic Mikhail Abramovich Gershenzon (1900-1942).
Wife — Maria Borisovna Gershenzon (née Goldenweiser; 1873, Chisinau — 1940, Moscow), sister of pianist A. B. Goldenweiser.
Son — Sergei Mikhailovich Gershenzon (1906-1998), geneticist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.
Daughter — Natalia Mikhailovna Gershenzon-Chegodaeva (1907, Moscow — 1977, Moscow), Soviet art critic, wife of art critic, professor Andrei Dmitrievich Chegodaev (1905-1994).
Granddaughter — Maria Andreevna Chegodaeva (born 1931), art critic, full member of the Russian Academy of Arts.