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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
Timothy Granovskij's opinions of and attitudes towards the United States have never been investigated in any adequate way. The fact is that, in company with many outstanding figures of the Russian intelligentsia of those times, the distinguished professor at Moscow University did display a marked interest in American affairs. He never presented such full and well-rounded views as did Herzen or Ĉernysevŝkij a little later, but sparse as were Granovskij's comments upon American life and institutions, they are of significance to us today. From the eyes of this enlightened Russian, we may derive fruitful perspectives upon certain aspects of the American past.
1 For the views of Herzen, Černyševskij and other mid-nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals, see the author's Russian Radicals Look to America: 1825–1894 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1947).
2 Granovskij, T. N., “O fiziologičeskikh priznakakh čelovečeskikh porod i ikh otnošenii k istorii,” Sočinenija T. N. Granovskago, ed. Soldatenkova, K. (2d ed.; Moscow, 1866)Google Scholar, Part I, Section I, p. 57 (hereinafter referred to as Soč.). The article was written at about 1850. Dr. Rulin had talked about the changes which occurred to domestic animals after they had been transported from Europe and had lived in America for a time.
3 Stankevič, A., ed.(?); T. N. Granovskij i ego perepiska (2nd ed.; Moscow, 1897), II, 302 Google Scholar, (hereinafter referred to as Perepiska). See also I, 264, note.
4 Soč., Part I, Section II, p. 378–79.
5 Ibid., Part II, Supplement, p. 383.
6 Ibid., Part II, Section III, pp. 200–216.
7 The figure for the size of the acreage of the public lands is roughly accurate. Under the Land Act of 1832, the lowest auction price per acre was $1.25 cash for a minimum purchase of forty acres, an arrangement still quite unsatisfactory to the pioneer farmer who demanded free homesteads. See Kirkland, E. C., A History of American Economic Life (New York, 1934), pp. 139, 144.Google Scholar
8 Soč., Part II, Section III, pp. 215–16.
9 Kirkland, op. cit., p. 147.
10 On the National Reform Association, see Dorfman, J., The Economic Mind in American Civilization 1606–1865 (New York, 1946), II, 684–86.Google Scholar
11 See Channing, E., A History of the United States (New York, 1930), V, 545–46Google Scholar and Fish, C. R., “The Rise of the Common Man: 1830–1850,” A History of American Life, ed. Schlesinger, A. M. and Fox, D. R. (New York, 1929), VI, 301–2.Google Scholar
12 Vidal's article runs to over thirty pages. Granovskij summarizes it in less than two.
13 F. Vidal, “L'Agrariarisme aux Etats-Unis,” La Revue indepéndante, April, 1846, p. 423.
14 Soč., Part I, Section I, p. 51 (written about 1850).
15 Long before that time, however, Peter the Great had attended a Quaker meeting in England. He is reputed to have said: “How happy must be a community instituted on their principles.” Quoted from Bancroft, G., History of the United States (New York, 1888), I, 568 Google Scholar. And at the end of the nineteenth century, Tolstoy was to express great sympathy with Quaker teachings.
16 Soč., Part II, Supplement, pp. 353–59. The article was printed in 1847. See ibid., p. 341.
17 Ibid., p. 355.
18 Ibid., p. 357. “Maflin” is a misreading by Granovskij of the name of General Thomas Mifflin. See Greene, E. B., “The Revolutionary Generation: 1763–1790,” A History of American Life, ed. Schlesinger, A. M. and Fox, D. R. (New York, 1943), IV, 218 Google Scholar. On Timothy Matlack (who was a colonel at least, if not a general), see Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Johnson, A. and Malone, D. (New York, 1933), XII, 409–10Google Scholar. For Nathanael Greene, see ibid. (New York, 1931), VII, 569–73.
19 Soč., Part II, Supplement, p. 357.
20 Ibid., p. 358.
21 Ibid., p. 359.
22 From internal evidence, there is no doubt but that Granovskij was familiar with the contents of the first three volumes of Bancroft's History of the United States. These had appeared between 1834 and 1840 and were concerned with the “History of the Colonization of the United States.” Within these pages, a rather full and highly sympathetic account of the Quakers was to be found, written from Bancroft's usual democratic point of view. T h e American, we may recall, had studied at Berlin University in 1820 and 182 1. H e had attended lectures by Hegel and Schleiermacher, among others. It is possible that Bancroft's reputation had lasted until the time when Granovskij was enrolled at Berlin University some fifteen years later.
The gravitation of these two historians towards the German universities is illustrative of a certain parallelism in American and Russian intellectual developments. Both were representatives of “young” countries attempting in some important ways to sip the honey of the culture of “old Europe.” For material on Bancroft's life, see DeWolfe Howe, M. A., The Life and Letters of George Bancroft (New York, 1908), 2 VolsGoogle Scholar, and Nye, R. B., George Bancroft, Brahmin Rebel (New York, 1944).Google Scholar
23 See Selsam, J. P., The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 (Philadelphia, 1936), pp. 39–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nevins, A., The American States during and after the Revolution (New York, 1924), pp. 11–12 Google Scholar; Lincoln, C. H., The Revolutionary Movement in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1901)Google Scholar, passim.
24 We have already made some reference to this article: “O fiziologičeskikh priznakakh. …” (Letter of V. F. Edwards to Amédée Thierry, author of Histoire des Gaulois), translated and supplemented by Granovskij. What follows in the text are Granovskij's additions to the foregoing, Soč., Part I, Section I, pp. 118–23.
25 Granovskij is undoubtedly referring to George Catlin's Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians, published in England in 1841. Over a quarter of this work is devoted to the Mandans. See Haberly's, L. Pursuit of the Horizon (New York, 1949)Google Scholar, a valuable new biography of Catlin.
28 Soč., Part I, Section I, pp. 118–19.
27 Ibid., p. 119.
28 In this connection, the Russian relied heavily upon such sources as the German naturalists, Karl Friedrich Phillip von Martius (1794–1868) and Eduard Friedrich Pöppig (1798–1868). Martius had travelled extensively in North and South America. Poppig was also well informed about ethnography in the New World.
29 Soč., Part I, Section I, pp. 122–23.
30 Miliukov, P. N., Le Mouvement Intellectuel Russe, tr. J. Bienstock, W. (Paris, 1918), p. 373.Google Scholar
31 Soč., Part II, Supplement, pp. 360–71. This article was published posthumously in 1856 in Russkij Vestnik. It appears to have had its origin in a talk by Granovskij given four years previously.
32 Ibid., pp. 361–62.
33 Ibid., pp. 366, 368.
34 According to the 1943 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, XIII, 298, “ t wo mouthfuls” of the beverage (also known as cava or kava) will produce intoxication within twenty minutes for those not used to it. Norman Taylor, an expert in these matters, judges kava to be not much stronger than tea, and actually “harmless.” See his Flight from Reality (New York, 1949), pp. 177–82.
35 Perepiska, p. 192. The novel in question wherein the treacherous Magua appears is, of course, The Last of the Mohicans.
36 Perepiska, pp. 193–94.
37 Ibid., p. 195. Le Lac Ontario was the title of The Pathfinder in French translation. It had appeared in 1840 and had found its way to Russia, it seems, shortly after publication in Paris. See Spiller, R. E. and Blackburn, P. C., A Descriptive Bibliography of the Writings of James Fenimore Cooper (New York, 1934), p. 107.Google Scholar