21 Facts About George Vernadsky

George Vernadsky was a Russian-born American historian and an author of numerous books on Russian history.

George Vernadsky entered the Moscow University in 1905 but, due to the disturbances of the First Russian Revolution, had to spend the next two years in Germany, at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg and the University of Berlin, where he imbibed the doctrines of Heinrich Rickert.

Back in Russia, George Vernadsky resumed his course at the Moscow University, graduating with honors in 1910.

George Vernadsky's instructors included the historians Vasily Klyuchevsky and Robert Vipper.

Politically close to the kadet party, George Vernadsky began his career as a supporter of liberal ideas, authoring the biographies of Nikolai Novikov and Pavel Milyukov.

George Vernadsky then taught in Kiev and then followed the White Army to Simferopol, where he taught at the local university for two years.

George Vernadsky served in that position until his retirement in 1956.

George Vernadsky died in New Haven on June 12,1973.

George Vernadsky's first book in English was a widely read textbook on Russian history, first published in 1929 and republished six times during his lifetime.

George Vernadsky took a novel approach to Russian history, presenting it as a continuous succession of empires, starting from the Scythian, Sarmatian, Gothic, and Hunnic; George Vernadsky attempted to determine the laws of their expansion and collapse.

George Vernadsky's views emphasized the importance of Eurasian nomadic cultures for Russia's cultural and economic progress, thus anticipating some of the ideas advanced by Lev Gumilev.

George Vernadsky became the leading American exponent of depicting Russia as much Asian as European, if not more so.

George Vernadsky pointed out many substantial cultural differences between Russia and Europe and praised the success of Russian development along an independent path that revealed its unique character.

George Vernadsky was a geographical determinist like his Yale colleague Ellsworth Huntington.

George Vernadsky thereby undercut the standard claim that modern Russia emerged from Kyivan Rus.

George Vernadsky emphasized the importance of the Mongol period, as the horde united the vast Eurasian plain under a single ruler.

George Vernadsky was annoyed that Peter the Great tried to Westernize Russia, distorting its natural character.

George Vernadsky said Peter only succeeded in polarizing Russia into a Western-oriented elite that conflicted profoundly with the Eurasian peasants.

Indeed, George Vernadsky argued that this polarization was one of the main weaknesses of the tsarist regime, making it incapable of dealing with the revolutionary movements of the early twentieth century.

George Vernadsky celebrated the collapse of the European-style parliamentary government in the October Revolution of 1917 that brought the Bolsheviks to power.

George Vernadsky was not a liberal, nor was he a Communist sympathizer, but he did admire the Bolsheviks for rebuilding an assertive Russia on non-European lines.