Engineer of Revolutionary Russia

Iurii V. Lomonosov (1876–1952) and the Railways

Anthony Heywood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317143314
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Technology & Engineering Research & Skills
• Index: Technology & Engineering

This book is the first substantial study in any language of one of revolutionary Russia's most distinguished and controversial engineers - Iurii Vladimirovich Lomonosov (1876-1952). Not only does it provide an outline of his remarkable life and career, it also explores the relationship between science, technology and transport that developed in late tsarist and early Soviet Russia. Lomonosov's importance extends well beyond his scientific and engineering achievements thanks to the rich variety and public prominence of his professional and political activities. His generation - Lenin's generation - was inevitably at the forefront of Russian life from the 1910s to the 1930s, and Lomonosov took his place there as one of the country's best known and ultimately notorious engineers. As well as an innovative engineer who campaigned to enhance the role of science, he played a major role in shaping and administering the Russian railways, and undertook several diplomatic and scientific missions to the West during the early years of the Revolution. Falling from political favour during an assignment in Germany (1923-1927), he achieved notoriety in Russia as a 'non-returner' by apparently declining to return home. Thereby escaping probable arrest and execution, he began a new life abroad (1927-1952) which included a research post at the California Institute of Technology in 1929-1930, collaborative projects with the famous physicist P.L. Kapitsa in Cambridge, a long-time association with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in London, and work for the British War Office during the Second World War. From Marxist revolutionary to American academic, this study reveals Lomonosov's extraordinary life. Drawing on a wide variety of official Russian sources, as well as Lomonosov's own diaries and memoirs, a vivid portrait of his life is presented, offering a better understanding of how science, technology and politics interacted in early-twentieth-century Russia.

Chapter 1
The Making of a Russian Engineer

Iurii Vladimirovich Lomonosov was born on 24 April 1876 in a country where the rapid expansion of the engineering profession was soon to become a national priority.1 Imperial Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War of 1853–1856 had reinforced suspicions that the empire was economically and technologically backward relative to the other major European powers. This apparent weakness confronted Tsar Alexander II with a political dilemma. The well-being of his empire and dynasty seemed to require a process of socio-economic and technological modernization, yet that process might bring irresistible revolutionary pressure against the autocratic polity. The Tsar accepted this risk, authorizing important initiatives that included the abolition of serfdom, military, legal, financial, local-government and educational reforms, and measures to promote a ‘boom’ of railway construction. This process stuttered in the 1870s and 1880s under the pressures of recession, war and terrorism, including the murder of the Tsar by revolutionaries in 1881. However, the 1890s brought a state-led drive for rapid industrialization. In this campaign, which coincided with Lomonosov’s transition to adulthood and was overseen by Count S.Iu. Vitte, Minister of Finances during 1892–1903, railway-building again served as a principal means to spur and support economic growth.2 But success required, among other things, the availability of enough competent engineers to design and operate the industrial economy; and because the regime resolved to rely on home-produced talent, the need became urgent to recruit many more of the empire’s young men (but not women, as yet) for the engineering profession.

In this context the intensely personal questions of why this youth chose to become an engineer, how he pursued his studies, why he specialized in railway engineering and how he sought to launch his career were at the same time broad matters of pivotal concern for the tsarist regime. Three of these broader themes are highlighted in this chapter. His choice of career pertains to the state’s ability to define and achieve national economic priorities: was his decision primarily a response to state policy? Similarly, his experiences as a student illuminate the state’s attempt to develop higher technical education instead of employing foreign experts. Not least, his decisions can inform the debate among historians about whether his social class – the minor rural hereditary nobility – lost their traditional position of influence in the society in the late nineteenth century or maintained it by adapting to the key social, economic and other changes.3

Childhood

The young Lomonosov’s decision to study transport engineering broke a family tradition. Like so many of their ilk in pre-industrial Russia, the men of this ‘ancient noble family’ had normally served the state as army officers and then in some civilian capacity in their home area, in this case the north-east corner of the rural Smolensk province in western Russia.4 This path was followed by the boy’s father, Vladimir Grigor’evich Lomonosov (1841–1905): after schooling at the army’s elite First Moscow Cadet Corps, he joined the Guards, retired in 1870 as a Major and made a career in law enforcement in and around the small district town of Sychevka, mainly as a Justice of the Peace.5 In time Vladimir Grigor’evich steered his only son towards a similar life, sending him to the First Moscow Cadet Corps in 1887. But the youngster was desperate to avoid an army career by the time of his graduation in 1893 and entered the Institute of Ways of Communication in St Petersburg to study transport engineering.

This rebellion arose in part from a profound change in family circumstances that reflects to a degree the argument that the late nineteenth-century Russian nobility fell into decline. Lomonosov’s childhood echoed that of his forefathers in most respects, not just in the prospect of an army life. Born in the town of Gzhatsk (now Gagarin), he spent his first decade in quiet environments in his family’s heartland: he lived initially on isolated estates in the Sychevka district, before moving in 1883 to Sychevka itself with his parents and younger sister Ol’ga.6 These surroundings, moreover, had barely changed in decades, as was typical for the Smolensk province. Most roads remained unpaved and the few factories were primarily small creameries and brickworks; not until the construction of the Rzhev–Sychevka–Viaz’ma railway began in the mid-1880s did the industrial world make any significant incursion in the Sychevka district.7 However, this atmosphere of continuity and stability was contradicted for his family by a financial crisis that unfolded over just two generations. At least in terms of vanished wealth, decline was no myth here by the 1870s. Hence, unlike even his father, the young Lomonosov always faced the prospect of having to earn his living.

Prodigality – often assumed to cause such problems – did play a part, but so too did entailments and the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Lomonosov’s paternal great-grandfather, General G.G. Lomonosov, enjoyed substantial wealth, including many settlements with serfs in the Sychevka district and an estate in the Moscow province. At his death, probably in the 1810s or 1820s, his property passed to his five sons.8 These inheritances may well have been debt-free, given that the two youngest beneficiaries built themselves estate houses at the settlements of Tatarka and Ekaterinovka.9 But one brother, Mikhail, was often sued for non-payment of debts from 1832, if not earlier. Moreover, for unknown reasons two of his siblings needed mortgages by 1849, including the future engineer’s grandfather Grigorii.10 More financial trouble followed. Wealth dispersal threatened because at least 15 children were born to the five brothers, including three boys and four girls to Grigorii. Unhappily for the family, this storm broke soon with Grigorii’s early death in 1851. Not all his seven children could inherit land: the future engineer’s father Vladimir was one of two sons who received cash alone. The problem was eased by the generous inclusion of Grigorii’s children in the wills of two uncles, which eventually made them part-owners of the Tatarka estate and other property.11 However, when the Emancipation Act of 1861 forced the nobility to sell land to former serfs, the Lomonosovs were hit by the requirement to use the proceeds to repay any land-backed debts, which left the family with small or non-existent cash receipts.12 Having moved into debt and an entailment crisis, they suddenly lost most of their regular income sources and potential collateral for loans, and had little capacity to invest in new income-generating ventures.

Could the Lomonosovs rebuild their fortunes? This question was now common for Russia’s landed gentry, not least in the Smolensk province, where over half had large debts in 1865. The government hoped that credits and railway construction would revive this province.13 But this hope proved illusory, certainly for Grigorii’s children. Marriage into wealthy families produced better circumstances for three of the girls; the other lived modestly as a teacher and married a Justice of the Peace.14 Meanwhile all three sons floundered. The eldest, Grigorii, apparently led a spendthrift, scandalous existence and was arrested for embezzlement in the 1890s.15 Ivan netted a 300,000-ruble dowry in 1881, bought out his co-owners of Tatarka and a ‘profitable’ family estate at Nikolo-niz, and opened brick- and cheese-making businesses. But ‘debauchery’ consumed his fortune within six years; by 1903 Tatarka and Nikolo-niz were double-mortgaged, after which much of the land was sold.16 As for the future engineer’s father, Vladimir, he reportedly squandered his money while an officer, together with the dowry from his marriage in 1875 to Mariia Fedorovna Pegelau (1856–1921), a local noblewoman. Indeed, his decision to mortgage his two small estates at Borova and Podseevka in 1876 suggests that his marriage did not restore his finances. By the mid-1880s, moreover, he had no serious prospect of repaying his debts. His monthly salary was just 165 rubles, augmented only by his army pension and perhaps some rent from his two estates; significant aid from relatives was unlikely; modest household economies could not yield much money; and his wife planned to pass her own expected small inheritance to their daughter, trusting that their son could fend for himself. Vladimir Grigor’evich rejected corruption, the bureaucracy’s notorious remedy for such personal difficulties, to judge by an obituary that praised him as ‘a moral social force’ and stated: ‘in the modest environment where he worked an atmosphere of consciousness of duty and searching for the truth was created around him … he earned himself a deserved reputation as not just a guardian of the law but also, more importantly, a searcher for truth in justice’.17 By 1890, therefore, his estates were double-mortgaged, and his son needed a career.18

The related family debate in 1886 about whether to give the boy a civilian or a military education is striking for the enduring influence of old social sentiments. As yet the Lomonosovs’ financial woes had scarcely affected their public standing and social attitudes. For instance, Lomonosov claims in his memoirs that his mother was regarded as Sychevka’s de facto first lady.19 Equally, many Lomonosovs scorned her humbler roots. Her father, Fedor Aleksandrovich Pegelau (1814–1892), was born a serf and sent to the army, where he earned ennoblement through promotion to the rank of Major. Her mother’s family, the Loveikos, were nobles, but owned just two small estates; and their military tradition was tainted, for some Lomonosovs, by the friendship of Mariia Fedorovna’s grandfather Loveiko with officer-participants in the failed Decembrist revolt against Tsar Nicholas I in December 1825.20 These deep-rooted attitudes help to explain the prevailing assumption among Lomonosovs that the boy would enter state service, preferably 1902: d. 1834, l. 1. Sales information is in the latter file, such as: I.G. Lomonosov–Smolensk division, State Noble Land Bank, 30 September 1911: d. 1834, l. 48. in the army. Interestingly, Mariia Fedorovna and some of her relatives wanted him to attend a local civilian school – a sign, presumably, that they hoped for a civilian career. But Vladimir Grigor’evich successfully advocated his military Alma Mater in Moscow with the backing of most Lomonosovs and at least one Pegelau. He highlighted the financial advantage that the state would fund a cadet education because his army commission had lasted longer than ten years. Meanwhile his supporters stressed tradition and values: the Lomonosovs had always served in the military, civilian service was inappropriate, and a cadet corps would instil good discipline and self-discipline. A family friend, the district police officer, added some solidly traditional reasoning: a military appearance was imposing, it showed a well-born servant of the tsar, and the government disliked university students.21

The decision for a cadet education represented an emotive reassertion of army service as a sacred duty. It did not prioritize salary – officers were poorly paid – but the patriotic passion with which Vladimir Grigor’evich endorsed the army life. His attitude can also be sensed from his pride in his uniform, his habit of wearing his military coat for making legal judgements, and especially from this posthumous tribute:

[Vladimir Grigor’evich was] a modest peace-loving person who was first and foremost a soldier to the root of his bones, in the best sense of the phrase … Military traditions, and a sense of honour, duty and discipline were inherent in him right up to the last days of his life. Only those close to him knew how he suffered as a powerless witness of the terrible indications of the decline of those principles on which he was brought up and which he professed … His feeling of love for his country and consciousness of a national duty of service to it were the guiding feeling of his whole life.22

Indeed, he was dissatisfied for his son to be offered merely a place at the nearby Polotsk Cadet Corps, where the boy’s maternal uncles had studied. He secured permission for his boy to take the entry exams for the First Moscow Cadet Corps a year later than usual, and arranged coaching. Aged 11, Iurii Vladimirovich passed these tests in August 1887 and entered the school’s second year.23

Founded in the eighteenth century with the military-political mission of preparing sons o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Note on Renderings
• Glossary of Technical Terms
• Principal railways of European Russia and Western Siberia, circa 1914
• Principal railways of Siberia and Russian Central Asia, circa 1914
• Introduction
• 1 The Making of a Russian Engineer
• 2 First Steps in Railway Engineering
• 3 Engineering Professor
• 4 The Russian Revolution of 1905
• 5 Applications of Science on the Russian Railways, 1908–1914
• 6 War and Revolution, 1914–1917
• 7 America and the Bolshevik Revolution
• 8 Building the New Russia
• 9 The Diesel Revolution
• 10 ‘A Free Soviet Citizen Abroad’
• 11 Retirement and Remembrance
• Select Bibliography
• Index