Abstract
The present research is dedicated to the initial period of the academic career of Grigory I. Spassky (the editor of the first magazine about Siberia in Russia). The main issue studied in the present article is Grigory I. Spassky’s participation in the activity of the Free Society of Lovers of Literature, Science and the Arts (VOLSNKh) in 1803-1823. This particular issue has never been studied; in the Russian historiography there are a few works where this fact was only mentioned. The author has been considered and analyzed the correspondence of Grigory I. Spassky with the members of VOLSNKh, as well as the contents of periodicals of the time, which were connected with VOLSNKh, such as “Severny Vestnik” [Northern Bulletin], “Tsvetnik” [Flower Garden], “Vestnik Evropy” [European Bulletin]. The research has revealed the facts of Grigory I. Spassky’s close collaboration with the Free Society; and in the beginning the Society played a leading role in the choice of the young scientist’s research areas. Through the VOLSNKh, on the pages of the Society’s periodicals there were published Spassky’s first articles, which brought him fame in the literary and research circles. Under the infl uence of the VOLSNKh banders’ recommendations, Grigory I. Spassky got the idea to publish his Siberian Sketchbook. This idea transformed into the plan of a periodical about Siberia and “some countries adjacent to it”. The publication made by Grigory I. Spassky on his return from Siberia in 1817 was called “Sibirsky Vestnik [Siberian Bulletin]”, and Spassky’s co-editor was one of the VOLSNKh members, Vasily V. Dmitriev. Thus, the analysis of the correspondence and the articles of some periodicals, connected with the VOLSNKh undoubtedly convinces that the members of the VOLSNKh made a great influence on the formation of the scientific worldview of the explorer of Siberia, Grigory I. Spassky.
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