Romanov Riches: Russian Writers and Artists Under the Tsars

The legendary “load of frozen fish,” with which Lomonosov traveled for three weeks from Archangel Province to Moscow, is a very exotic stroke. But fishing was the main (and very profitable) business of the coastal peasants. If Lomonosov’s fellow villagers had been fur traders, the young man would have reached the capital with a “load of sable,” which is not nearly as touching.

The miraculous way Lomonosov got into the Slavic-Greco-Latin Academy (the same one attended by young Antioch Kantemir) was described in his official biography of 1784 this way: in the capital the poor youth “knew not a single person”; after spending the first night in Moscow in the fish stalls, Lomonosov “fell to his knees, raised his eyes to the nearest church and begged God to have mercy.”³

So the next morning a majordomo, come to buy fish, recognized Lomonosov as a fellow villager and took him home. Two days after that, the majordomo’s friend dropped by—a monk from the monastery where the elite academy was housed. The majordomo interceded on Mikhail’s behalf, the monk was willing, and the lad was accepted as a student at the academy with an annual stipend of 10 rubles.

In order to get in, Lomonosov had to say he was the son of nobility, since peasant children were not accepted in seminaries at the time. For some reason the abbot of the monastery believed him—had the monk put in a good word for his friend’s countryman?—and things were settled.

Today’s skeptical reader is unlikely to see “God’s providence” or even good fortune in this chain of events; it is more like the expected result of a network of useful acquaintances, which worked in Lomonosov’s day just as it does in ours.

Throughout his life, Lomonosov always found numerous patrons who got him out of situations that would have ruined anyone else’s career. Lomonosov, who was big and strong not only mentally but physically, also had a quarrelsome nature and a preference for strong drink that led to brawls, which were not suitable for the scholarly milieu in which he found himself. (Even his surname means “nosebreaker” in Russian.)

In 1736, Lomonosov was sent to Germany to study mining and chemistry at the university in Marburg (where 176 years later another great Russian poet, Boris Pasternak, was to study philosophy). Outraged reports soon flew from Marburg to Russia about his “excessively boisterous life and passion for the female sex.” Then Lomonosov got into an argument with his professor: “He made terrible noise, banging with all his might on the partitions, shouting out the window, and swearing.”⁴

This habit of blowing up over the least thing, or even without a reason, remained throughout Lomonosov’s unfairly short life (he died in 1765 at the age of fifty-three). He left Germany for St. Petersburg, where he was hired at the Academy of Sciences. Here again he behaved scandalously, bursting into a neighbor’s house in search of his sheepskin jacket. With bared saber in his hand, Lomonosov threatened the neighbor and his guests and hacked up all the furniture; the innocent neighbor’s wife, terrified, jumped out the window. The young scientist, apparently drunk, was pacified by six patrolmen, who dragged him to the police.

And once again, as had happened in Germany, the incident was covered up by someone, even though Lomonosov already had a record of “fighting and dishonorable behavior.”

This unusual leniency on the part of the authorities is not difficult to explain. From the moment of her accession to the throne, Empress Elizabeth I made it a policy to promote “national cadres” in all spheres, including science. All her advisers urged this policy; in their opinion, Peter’s promotion of foreigners, especially Germans, to positions of leadership had gotten out of control under his successors.

There was no open declaration of “Russia for Russians” under Elizabeth, but things were moving in that direction. Well-built, strong, energetic, and full of ideas, Lomonosov proclaimed that “the Russian land can give birth to her own Platos and quick-minded Newtons.” He seemed a convenient symbolic figure (despite the excesses of his character) to Elizabeth’s ministers.

The young genius quickly showed what he could do. While still studying in Germany, in 1739 he sent a “Letter on the Rules of Russian Versification” to the academy, elaborating his ideas on modernization of Russian verse. The “Letter” and other important works by Lomonosov—“Short Guide to Rhetoric,” “Russian Grammar,” and particularly “Preface on the Usefulness of Church Books in the Russian Language,” set the stylistic norms for Russian writing for at least the next hundred years. Contemporary literary Russian is in many ways the child of Lomonosov.

Pushkin summed up the achievements of this extraordinary man concisely: “Lomonosov was a great man. Between Peter I and Catherine II he appears as a unique champion of enlightenment. He created the first university. It would be better to say that he himself was our first university.”