Autobigraphy of Stephen

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As I RememberTHE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF STEPHW P. CIAfOSHENXO

Stephen P.Timoshenko

D. VAN flcm-MmCOMPANY,mc.Princctnn, Newkrry Tarouto Landon Melbourne


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VA N NOSITANDREGIONALF F I C ~ :ew Ymk, Chicago, Sdn FranciscoD.VA N N O ~ N DOMPWY, TD.,LondonD.VA N N O ~ N DOMPANY (Canada), LID., TorontoD.VANNISXUND A u ~., m., eibourne

Capyright @ 1968. by D.VAN NOSCRAND COMPANY. INC.Published simultaneously in Canada byD. VA N NOSTLAND OMPANYCanada), L-m.

N o ~eproduction n ally form of this book, in whole orin part (rxcept for h i e ] quotat ion in critical articles' orr e u i e w ~ ) ,may bc n l a k without wri t ten o u l h o ~ i m l i o n

, jrom I I I G publisher.

I , To The English Edi t ia .I -I *

, . Professor Stephen P. Tirnoshenko has en-. riched the lives of thousands of his studenw and colleagues

1 - during his many years of active work. He is know: to mostof us as a teacher, writer, researcher, and adviser, and if .anyone deserves to be called "the father oE engineeringmechanics" in the United States, i t surely rvauld be Professor1 . Tirnoshenb. Thin is quite remarkable when i t is observedthat only one-half of his life has been spent in the UnitedStates, and that he arrived here in 1922 (at the age of forty-our) virtually unknown. Although he had already donemuch outstanding work in R&ia &d:~;yo~e, his reputationha d not yet reached this country.His life in Russia before and during the CommunistRevolution, hi s an i v a l in this country, and his adaptation(or failure U, adaptl) to the American way of life arechronicled in this autobiography. N a one who reads this

book will doubt that his life has been a most varied andunusual one.Profesor Timoshenko rvrote this b m k in his nativeand it was published in Paris in 1963. How thee into being is told by Mr.E.A. Vetchorine, a long-

of Timoshenko, in th e foreword to the Russianedi!ion of the book, which appears a he folollo~ving ages.I t i s only natural that the School of Engineering at Stanford


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vi FOREWOW TO THE ENGLISH EDITIONUniversity, where Timoshenko taught for so many years, hasarranged for the English transIation and publication of thisbook. Special thanks are due to Dr. Joseph M.Pettit, Deanof the School of Engineering. for his interest in this project.Wc have had th e ful l support of Professor Timoshenkoduring the translation, and he has carefully checked thisedition. W e have aIso prevailed upon him to supply somenew photographs and in a fe w places some additional text

for this version, Friends of Timoshenko will be happy toknow that he is in excellent health and still enjoys walkingseveral miles each day.At the backof the book the reader wit1 find a bibliographyof Timoshenko's writings and a list of his doctola1 studentsa t th e University of Michigan and at Stanford University.We have made a careful literature search in order to veribthe bibliography and have attempted to make the list ofstudents as complete and accurate as possible. We are in-debted toDr. . L. vcrctt and Dr. M. Hetenyi for assistancein compiling th e names of former students a t the UniversityofMichigan.

The book was translaled into English by hfr. Robert Addis,wh o performed a masterly piece 01 work in maintaining the , :special Timoshenko style of writing. It was obvious to usthat the translating of this b w k by. Mr. Addis was a laborof love, as he immediatfly became fascinatedby the story ofTirnoshenko's ife, although he had never met him personally.We hope that this book will hold the same interest for allof its readers.As farmer students and, later, professorial colleagues ofTimoshenko, we have appreciated the opportunity to ar-range for the translation and publication of his life's story.

J. M. GereD. H. YoungStanford UniversityStanford, California

ForewordTo The Rwsian Edikkm

Th e idea of this book was born duringfriendly chats in Switzerland between Stepan ProkoFyevichTimoshenko, scholar and professor, an d one of his fotmerpupils. They were recalling horr much they owed to t h e 'St. Petenburg Polytecl~nic Institute, founded sixty yearsbefore on a completely new basis, with an unprecedentedsystem of teaching. As a young laboratory assistant. StepanProlioF'pvich had found thete a special atmosphere, whichshaped all hi s later scientific work and gave impeds to thefull development of hi s talents.T h e memory of the eighty-five-year-old cholar has resur-rected long-past days, events, encounters, the wanderin@ ofa long life's journey, with penetrating descriptions of inter-national cmgreses and accounts of he world-famous scien-tists whom he has met and worked with. All of mi. ricelesrmaterial had to be rccorded fo r future generations. to pre-serve pictures of the pat seen from the v i e v o i n t of ana u b t a n d i q conternporaq of the events.

After ~crsistenl . rgink;, it finally proved possible to per-suade Stepan Pmkof'yevich, who di d no t wish m be con-spicuous aQd ddra~attention to himself, to write thesememoirs- Yielding 10 our entreaties, he accomplished thegreat task during the years 196243 .From it we see how a great Russian scholar war formed,

vi i


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viii FOREWORD TO TH E RU!LSIAN EDITlON

E. A. Vctchorinc an d the author at Kundcr-skg, S w i t m l a n d , 1962.

ho w during travels abroad he enriched his knowledge andexpanded his scientific horiions. At the St . Petersburg PoIy-technic lnstitute his associationswith professors of th e call berof Viktor L'vovich Kirpichev left an indelible imprint on ,the young teacher, steering him toward new ways of bring-ing theory closer to practice. T h i s chancteristic of the authorhas been on e of he remarkable qualities of his teaching and,coupled with his exceptional talent, has filled his lecturehalls with students whereier he ha s taught: ir Russia, Pugc-slavia, an d the United States.S. P. Tirnoshenko arrived in the U.S. n 1922, in theyears. following World War I, when a need was beginningto be felt there to apply theory to practical calculation.His work as technical consultant began at the factories ofWestinghouse. It quickly expanded and was supplementedwith teaching. Every year the plant took on some threehundred young beginning engineers, an d h e had the jobof filling in their knowledge about th e strength of machine

. structures. And this was the start of hi s undeniabIe in-Ruence upon the entire system of educating Americanengineers.

H e worked at Westinghouse five years. During that period,in addition to hi s work a t the plant, he initiated organiza-

FOREWORD 'I'O THE RUSSIAN EDITION ixtion if the Applied Mechanics Division of the AmericanSociety of Mechanical Engineers, now th e Society's largestand most active section, which publisher the Journal ofAPplied Mechanics, a most important publication in thatfield. At Westinghouse he wrote two books, Applied Elus-ticiIy and Vibration Problems in Engineming.H is lectures on applied mechanics at the Univenity of .Midrigan attracted large numbers, f students ho r n otherdepartments, and also young teachers. His fame as a lecturerspread rapidly. He possessed an ability to present the mostcomplex subjects with a simplicity and clarity that delighted

' his audiences. Though his knowledge oE English at th e timewas limited, everyone understood him perfectly.. At Ann Arbor he organized a weekly seminar, attendedby persons interested in applied and theoretical mechanics.- As a fesult oE hi s evergrowing renown, summer sessions inapplied mechanics were instituted at the University ofMichigan, and reachen from other universities and higherinsritutions of technical learning came to them. Europeanluminaries in the field of mechanics, men like L. P n n d t l ,R. .Southwell, H . M . Westergaard,Theodorevon Kdrmdn,an d others were invited to participate. The courses enjoyedgreat success.During his nine years at the Univefsity of Michigan an u m k r of is basic works were published: in 1930 the two-volume Strength of Matmiah, in 1934 T h e o q of. Elarficity,and in 1936 Theory of Elmtic Stability.

In 1936 he moved to California and began teaching a t.Stanford University. There his Engineering Mechanics(1937). Theory of Plaies and Shellr (1940). Theory of Struc-Lures {1945), and Aduanced Dynamics (1948) were published.The last textbook of our world-bus cholar appeared in1953, a History of Strength of Malerialr, horn Leonardo daVinci nd Galileo to the present. Translated into Russian inMow# aod published there in 15,000 copies, the book soldO u t i threemonths.-Also n 1953 some of his American pupils pthered t+g'erher most of his articles that had come out in French.


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X FOREWORD -TO HE RUSSLAN EDITION IGerman, an d English,and published them in the form ofCollected Papers.In 1959,aEter a trip LORussia, he wrote a little book calledEngineering Edrrcalion in Russia.In 1951 Stanford University named its new Laboratory ofEngineering Mechanics after him.His many years of devoted useful service in th e reaim ofxience have not gone l~nrecognized hroughout the world.H e has been elected a member of:Ukrainian Academy of ciences, Kiev (1918);

Russian Academy of Sciences, Petersburg-Leninpd(1928);Polish Academy of Technical Sciences, W a m w (1935); 'American Philosophial Society, New York (1939) ;French Academy of Sciences, Paris (1 939);Nacional Academy of Science, Washington, D. C. (1941); IRoyal Sociery, London (1944);Italian Academy of Sciences, Rome (1948).Honorary doctoral degrees have been conferred upon him

by:Lehigh University, D. Sc., (1936);University 01 Michigan, D . Eng. (1938);

I .Zurich Technical Institute, D. Eng. (1947);Munich Technical Institute, D.Eng. ( 1 949);Glascow University, Il. h w s (195 1);University of Bologna, (1954);Zagreb Polytechnic, D. Eng. (1956);Turin Polytechnic, (1960).

H e as received many medals for his work. In Russia in1911 th e Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communicationawarded him the Jourawski Medal and Prize for his opusElmtic Slalrili~y.In 19LB he received, from the Ministry OFW a y s of Communication the Salov Prize for his Stresses inRail-tyee Tru ch . In 1935 the American Society of Me-chanical Engineers conferred upon hi m the Worcester ReedWarner Medal for achievements in the field of mechanics.In 1939 the American Society of Engineering Educationawarded hi m the Lamme Medal for his services to engineer-

FOREWORD TO THE RUSSIAN EDlTION xiing education. The Franklin Institute honored him withthe Levy Medal in 1944 for his work on suspension bridges.In 1947 the Asociation de s Ingtnieurs-Docteursde Franceconferred upon him their Grande MWaille, and Britain'sInstitution of Mechanical Engineers present4 him, for hisservice to engineering science, with their James Watt Inter-national Medal, iven every five years to the most outstand-ing engineer. In 1948, in appreciation of th e impetus im-p r t e d by him to applied mechanics an d for his services inthe realm of scientificsubstantiation of engineering PI-actice,the Association des XdgCnieurs Sortis de i'koie de LiPgeawarded him the Trasenster Medal. He was the first re-cipient (1957) of th e Timoshenko Medal (named in hishonor)' by the American Society ofmMechanicalEngineers.AIso, he received the Creson Medal of the Franklin In-stitute in 1958, and -in 1963 Britain's lnstitu tion of CivilEngineers bestorved upon him the James Ewing Medal.

At the end of the book we list his writings that have beenpblished in Russian an d other languages. That impressivebibliography is thc fesult of our or m research. 'When one speaks 01 the influence of Russian Cmigds onworld culture, in the pleiad of th e outstanding ones, wh o

have gained world renown, th e name of S. P.Timoshenko,author of these memoirs, will certainly occupy a foremostposition. His ne w theories have helped to uplift moderntechnology to the heights that i t ocrcupie in our exceptionaltime. His books have become bibles among advanced me-chanical engineers and builders throughout th e world.

Stepan ~ r o k o fevich has donated the entire proceeds fromthis Russian-language edition of his book ro the Mutual-AidFund for Graduates of St. Petmburg Polytechnic. A deepbow of gratitude is made to him for this in-he name of hi smany infirm, ailing, old co1Ieagues scattered over the earth.

Eugene A. VetchorineChairman, Association of Graduates ofSt . Petersburg Polytechnic InstituteParis, 196j


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Table o f Contents1 - . CHAPTER

1 My Parents I. . 2 Early C h i l d h o d 5

Schooling StartsThe Romny HeaLrchuleSummer VacationFinishing A t T h e RealschuleThe Competitive ExamsMy First Year A t The InstituteStudying On At The InstituteThe Student Library And CanteenStudent Practice-EngineeringStudent UnrestMy First Trip AbroadFinishing At The Institute-My Second Trip AbroadMy Military Service

6167xiii


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xiv16

TABLE OF CONTENTS ' IThe Mechanics laboratory A t The WaysOf Communication Institute 74Petersburg Polytechnic Institute 79 ITrip T o Europe In The Summer Of 1904 87 IThe School Year 1904-1905The School Year 1905-1906The Kiev PolytechnicW e Move T o Petemburg 119 1A Trip To EnglandTeaching In PetersburgWorld War One I3I IRevolution 14 2 (Events In Kiev 149 1

I 28 Kiev Under T h e BolsheviksI 29 The Volunteer Army

50 Getting To Yugoslavia31 I Bring Out My Family32 My Work In Yugoslavia33 America34 My Work At Westinghouse35 A Trip T o Europe36 Th e University Of Michigan37 Summer School Of MechanicsI 38 Still At T h e University OE Michigan39 T he Years 1934-1936

TABLE OF CONTENTS ' XV40 CaliEomia 329$ 1 World War T w o 34542 My Brother Arrives-The Postwar Years 35943 A Trip T o Russia 384

BIBLIOGRAPHY 418L I S r OF STUDENTS 43 0

List ofIllustratim.3 ,S. P. TimoshenkoE. A . Vetchorine an d the Author

IMy Eather at age 50My mother at age 40T he Institute of Ways of

Communication, St . PetersburgAuditorium of th e InstituteMy tvife and I about 1903St . Petersburg Polytechnic InstituteProfessor V. L. KirpichevThe three discharged deans, Kiev, 191P. S. EhrenEest and the author , 1912My family in Zagreb in 1920"Hiking" club, Pittsburgh (circa 1925)T he author, Zurich, 1926

Frontis.VEtt

33


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xvi' TABLE OF CONTENTSGraduate students and author

at University of Michigan in 1931 305On the balcony a t Merligen in I932 310With Caculty and students

at University of Michigan in June, 1936 328T h e Author's home in Palo Alto, 1957 330

. 'The author and Professor J. V. Uspenskyat Stanford (circa 1938) 39 8

StanEord University LaboratoryOF Engineering Mechanics (circa 1939) 339

Faculty baseball team, University of Michigan,summcr 1938 340Garden at -Palo Alto, 1940 349The author with brothersSergei and Vladimir, Palo Alto, 1947 365Lecturing a t Stanford, about 1948 366Picnic a t An n Arbor, 1949 371The author and Russian delegate,

Professor Rabotnov, Brussels Congress, I956 382The author returns to Kiev in 1958 391The author at the Materials Testing Laboratory,

Moscow University, 1958 403The author being sho~vn ew dynamics measuring

instruments 404With Vladimir in 1960 on Stanford University

campus 415In 1960 ac Stanford 416

As I Remember


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-1My ParmtsCodceming my parents, I know th e f o h yt ing. My father, Prokop ~irnoke~evich,as born July 8, 1847,

in the peasant cottage of a ser belonging to the landownerStepan Kandyba, who later married one of hi s serfs, namelymy father's older sister. My father was taken as a small childinto Kandyba's household and brought up with his children,i.e., with my father's own ncphervs an d nieces. I know littleabout his childhood. Kandyba wa s fairly'w e l l - t d o , l ivedon hi s estate in the village of Shpotavka, district of Konotop,province of Chernigov, an d had other holdings in the prov-inces.ofPoltava and Kiev. H e died early, leaving his widowwith their five small children-three sons and tw o daughters.It was a time.of transformation in Russia. Serfdom wasending an d the great reforms of Alexander 11 were begin-ning. As a result of the economic changes, many landownerswere ruined. Kandyba's affairs were not going tooweU either.

Hi s eldest son, Vladimir Stepanovich,andmy father decidedthat they could not get along on the primitive home schkI-ing that landowners' children then received but must learnsomehing that would afford them a livelihood, So o heywent to Kharkov to take the ne w course in land-surveyingbeing offered there. Successully completing i t in tw o years,they went into business as surveyors,a t around age twenty.There was much ~vork or surveyors at the time, parcelingout land to heed serfs. Fields were beingdecachedfrom estates


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2 AS I REMEMBER 1 MY PARENTS 3and divided among he peasants. This involved a number ofknotty problems, mainly economic (and sometimes politid)rather than technical. In some places the peasants ~ e f u s e doaccept the land, insisting that they should receive it as a gift *and not have to pay for it . T h e surveyorwas partly amediatorber~veenhem and the landown'ers. Oft en it wa s up to him todetach the land in such a wa y as to protect the peasants. My .Eather, in his work, defended their interests an d left behindhim in the KonotopDistrict a favorablememory. Years ater,when he had iong since given up surveying,as a bciy I woulddrive with him through villages in which, in his youth, hehad worked as a surveyor. Every peasant bowedand took offhis cap as we drove by . In those days, such respect was notshown to just an y landowner! I recall too that in disputesover boundaries, the peasants of those villages never went tocourt but came to my father, whose word decided the matter.My farher surveyed for about ten years. Thanks to hisoutstanding health and capacity for work; he accomplisheda meat deal. As a child I used to hear stories of how he rvould

I U ~athcr at age 50. My mother a l age 40 .-work straight through two shifts. Starting early in the morn-ing, he rvould wear ont one gang of workers by noon,where-upon a ne w gang would show up, with whom he would workuntil nightfall. 1 myself later witnessed his enormous energywhen he was running his own big estate. In summer heusually got up a t sunrise and personally supervised distribu-tion of the work. Around eight o'clock he would come in forbreakfast, then go back to the fields for the rest of the day.He often had his supper by candlelight, after ten or twelvehours without food. That's the way he worked until he was ,fifty.In 1876 he rna*ed. Surveying, involving constant travel,had to be given up.Leasing the Randyba estate in the villageoE Shpotovka, he began farming on his own. In 1880, whenI was two, he leased the adjoining Bazilovka estate, whichbelonged to the noblewoman V.P. Gamalyaya (nee Skoro-

' padskaya), and we went to Iive at Bazilovka, where I spentmy childhood.

My mother rvas born in 1354 into the Polish hrnily ofSarnavskaja. Her father, a retired military man, managedthe Branitskig estate near the town of Zvenigorodka, hen inKiev Province. 1 know almost nothing about her childhood,

, only that she attended th e Fundukleyev gymnarium for 9;rIs.newly opened in Kiev, and that she graduated from there,thus enjoying a complete gymnasium education.. rareachievement for a woman in those days.Looking back on my parents now, I can see that they bothenjoyed rare good health, had a huge capacity for work, andwent about their affairswith z e t . Father was totally absorbedin his business and had virtually no outside interests. Suchrustic pastimes as hunting, cards, horses, viii ting neighbors,played a minuscule roIe in his life. W e usually subscribed to a

I literary monthly, the Niva (with upplements).1believe that1w.s all my father read. Mother obviously took a much greaterinterest in reading, especially literature. While we werestudying a t the 7eolrchule and brought home library books


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on holidays, she would read them all, hungrily, not stoppinguntil she had finished. When over holidays the philologyteacher would assign us a composition, 1 sometimes tu~nedto her fo r help. She wrote well.In my early childhood, on winter evenings when Fatherhad no arm duties, Mother would read poems by Shevchenkoaloud to him. Shevchenko wrote in the Kiev Province dialect,and Father did not understand some of the words. Mother,knowing Polish, could understand.Father was a fanatic for work. Buried in his affairs, hewould forget family an d children. Mother was gentler andunders tod better that life has other dimensions. We carriedour little problems to her. She mediated between us and

' Father. I t was a friendly.&rnily,and ife was tmnquil. ~ k v e rdid'1 observe a flicker of disagreement between my PaTents.

2 Early Childhood1 1 till retain some d i ~ c ~ h n e c r e demories of

my earliest childhood, when I was probably no more thanthree. From the age of five onward I r e d 1 my life quitewell. In Bazilovka a t that time there was till an oId countryestate with a large garden. The estate had been establishedby Lhe ~ k r a i n i a nandowner Dorashenko, later r h e Ukrainianheman.* In our time th e house was already very old, datingprobably from the end of the eighteenth century. The gardenhad been neglected, Only near che house were the walks stilIswept, the figured beds of flowers kept in order-while,farther off, thick undergrowth covered the garden groundsand man-made embankments, formerIy laid out n the Frenchstyle. In my childhood this garden played an enormous role.In spring and summer I spent most of my time there, and

I now, ecalling my childhood, first and foremost I picture ourgarden. It occupied apparently about forty-nine acres, butto us at th e time it seemed infinite.In spring an d summer my mother used to help Father alot. The vegetable gardens and planted tobacco, cultivatedby the women, were f u l y under her management. There-fore, we were often left to ourselves. There was, of course,the nursemaid, but she was usually kept busy with theyounger children, the older ones soon escaping from 'her

A Cossack leader.


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6 AS L REMEMBERtutelage. We went oE to the garden, where there were sev-eral ponds, and spent thc time there. T he only thing strictlyforbidden us was bathing and boating in the absence ofadults. We adhered to this requirement until we were al-most ten, by which time we swam well. But even withoutswimming there was much of interest a t the ponds. Alongthe shallow bank one could wade in the water, pants rolledup, or gohunting in the bushes for frogs and grass snakes, ofwhich there were many.Sometimes we went ou t to the fields, to the shepherds.There too we had lots of fun. T he shephwds, village ladstwelve to fifteen years of age, knew how to make whips ou tof hemp. From straw an d stems they wove little baskets. Theymade fifes and sofiiIki.* All of these entertaining thingscould be had in exchange for old newspapers, which wereused forcigarettes.The shepherds would si t us up on hokes.We became accustomed to horses early and could ride EairIy 'well. '

There was anorher thing that I enjoyed: playing in a pikof sand Ieft in a yard from some building job. From the s a dI built fortresses, castles, and, especially, nilroads. X becameacquainted with the railroad early. In autumn, when thework in the fidds was nearly over, Father and Mother wouldusually go for a week or tw o to Kiev, about 130 d i l e s away.Those trips were a very important event in my life, and c e qtain details of them I remember to this day. I recall how,several days before our departure, the suitcases were brough:tout. After Mother had packed everything, Father himselfwould tie the sui tm a up with cord. as an added precaution!To get to the station at Konotop in time for the evenind'train to Kiev, we left extra early. T h e drive rook about thre2,hours (twenty-three miles). Even the ride to Konotop held'great inte~est. long the road we had to go through several.,villages, part landowners' estates. OE course everything in-trigued us: the buildings on the estate, their gardens, ponds,' lural of ~op i l ha , Ulminian folk wind-instrument01 the flute'VPC*

EARLY CHILDHOOD 7etc. On on e estate, right at the edge of he road, s tod adistillery with chimneys. Finally, approaching Konotop, wehad to cross the railroad tracks. For some reason this rail-road, - this crossing, produced an enormous impression onme, an d from earliest childhood I 'dreamed about railroads.I built milroads in the sand pile, and later, when I wasolder, I always dreamed of becoming an engineer. TheKonotop Stationstruck me by its size, mass of light, and giantgleaming samovar in the waiting room.W e traveIed toward Kiev al l night. By morning w e ap-proached the city. First a m e a large pine forest-biggerthan our garden1 Then the Dnieperi Crossing the bridge wasexciting. Sometimes under the bridge wooden barges wouldbe floating by. In th e distance a chain bridge could be seen.,On he hilly bank ar Kiev on e saw the great Monastery andthe other churches. This was al l ne w for me, o unlike Baz-ilovka. Then-the Kiev Station. W e took a cab to the hotel,along paved streets. We s a w houses which seemed enormousand the Bohrinrkoy monument a t the corner aStation Streetand Bibikov Boulevard. Ai l of this 1 would remember laterand teIl about when I returned home. Father and Motherknew Kiev from childhood, since they had lived there. Theyhad acquaintances there whom they liked to visit. Also, onecould go to the theater and hear music. They took me to thetheater sometimes, bu t 1 often fell asleep during the per-formance. Bu t still today I remember what an impressionwas made on me by the duel of Lenskiy and Onegin. Howglad I was, after the play was over, to see Lenskiy still alive,bowing to the public.From my early childhood Father took me with him to thefie]&. He drove around inspecting the work in a racingsulky. Everything was so interesting: the flowers in the'ravine beEore th e haying and the grave mounds on the field.(Various tales were told about them]) Of the field work I wasParticularly fond, for some reason, of hay-mowing. h e rowsofmowers, their scythes, the whetstones an d steels for sharp-ening th e scyehes-all so interesting. Later. wh en I was


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8 AS I R E M E M B E Rolder, I learned how to mow, and could do i t rather well. Bythen I was already reading Anna Karenina and knew howLevin had worked with the mowers, ut 1 did not become aTolstoyan. Levin seemed to me an unserious young gentle-man.

3 Schooling StartsW h e n I was five years old, my schooling

started. An book was purchased. Mother 'played theteacher. It was wipter; there wa s nothing to do n the fieIds.I don't remember whether reading or the first arithmeticlessons presented difficulties for me. I was resigned to study-,ing in the winter, but I always hated it in the summer- T othis, day I can still see how, on a bright summer's day, I'd be ,sitting at the table in the garden studying verses:

" ~ o d a ~oped the dungeon wideAnd loosed the captive there inside;

Back flew the songstress ro her tree,And sang her joy at being free."

1 certainly had no dea which dungeon an d what prisonerwere meant. Mother would assign the lesson and go abouther work, leaving me .to waste all that delicious time onmeaningless rhymes. I never liked memorizing poetry. T h e -lessons grew stiIl harder when two of Mother's friends ar-rived from Kiev for the summer. They were teachers at theFundukleyev Gymnasium. One of them, obviously, wasvery fond of teaching children, and she organized my lessonsa t once. And so, after breakfast, we would have to si t dorvrlwith a French grammar. We learned nothing at all; merelywasted the best hours of the summer morning. In the fa11 of1886, when I was about eight and my brother Sergei six, myparents sent to Kiev for a teacher lor us, a woman; then


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10 AS I REMEMBERregular schooling began. I think rhat she was inexperienced;the lessons bore l itde fruit. In Russian we started by mem-orizing the grammar of Kirpichnikav and Gilyarov, a booknot written Eor chiIdren, so that I understood nothing. Ina~ithmetic hings went better; I experienced no difficulty. 1liked that subject.Another year went by. In the fall of 1887 the lady teacherwas replaced by a man, a young fellow who himselE, only .tw o years before, had finished a t th e reahchute in Romny.Mikhail Mikhailovich Kovalenko was his name, nd he reallyknew how to teach. He succeeded in arousing our interest,and our studies immediately improved. It wa s decided toprepare us for admission to the Romny realschule, that beingthe middle school nearest our home. From Romny to Bazil- ,ovka was about twenty miles in al l . ~ l r e a h ~y the spring oE1888 1 was ready for the starting class at the reaLchule,, butwas still under ten, so the entrance exam had to be putmoff ,until 1889. Because of this, I 'had an opportunity to go 't h o u g h almost the ent i re first year's work in advance. Ientered the school quite well prepared. In my general knowl-edge there was one flaw, which always remained. In child-hood we spoke a kind ofmixture of Russian and Uknin ian ,and 1 grew up without knowing Russian well. This was re-flected in my l a t h Russian-language studies. T h a t was prob-ably the most troublesome subject far me in the entiresealrchule curriculum. In speaking Russian I was never able.to get rid of my Ukrainian accent. Later, when I enteredthe Institute of Ways of Communication, the other fellowsthere called me a khokhol (a derisive. nickname meaningUkrainian).

4 The Rmnny RealschuleAr the end of May 1889 we went with our

teacher' to Romny to take the entmnce.examination. Every-thing rvas new to me. The t w ~ s t o r ybuilding seemed huge.I was especially struck by the reachers in their uniform tail-coats. It rvas the Delyanov era-formalism reigned.+ TheycalIed me "step& Timoshenko," addressing me wirh theaustere formalword for "you"-which was unusual. 1 passedthe exams without difficulty, but rvas scared to death.

After the exams came our first summer vacation. We werecompletely free until August 15 [ N o essons a t all, and rveutilized the time to the full. Our teacher's younger brother,&h a Kovalenko, came to stay with us, and this broughtvariety to our Eun.We spent most of our time in the garden,on the ponds. After that Sasha came several times to spendthe summer holidays with us, and we became very goodfriends. Now, fter seventy-five years, when I recall that Iastday of exams and arriving home for vacation, I realize whata happy time this was.On August 1 5 we had to drive to Romny. Father had takenan apartment for us, and we were to live there with Grand-mother, wh o had come to stay with us. Life away from homeseemed to us very boring. We counted the days to Christmas,when we could be home again, iE only for tw o weeks. But' clyanov was Minister of public Instruction from 1882 o 1898.'A 'form liberal, he had become an int enx reactionary.I 11


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12 AS 1 REM EM BERthere were interesting things in town too: big houses,churches, shops, and- outsi de of town overlooking the littleriver Sukhoy Romen--groves along a steep bank. NOW, henI remember Romny, hose groves and the little river seemespecially remarkable. I recolIect them clearly. T h e littleriver and steep banks were new things Eor me. In Bazilovkathere were plains, nothing l ike this. I had some friends inRornny, too. As a band we would go for walks in the groves.W e wanted, of ourse, to go over to the station and watchthe trains, bu t for pupils at th e realschule this wa s expresslyforbidden. , . ,At the realschuie, also, everything was unusual. The class- ,rooms seemed large, and the huge assembly hall, where theymarshaled us in the mornings for prayer, seemed to me verysplendid.

I never l iked my classroom studies. At home I could workwith pleasure, but, in class, under observation, it was un-pleasant. There w a s the constant fear that the teacher wouldcall on me . 1 always prepared my lessons well, but t he fearof being called on remained. I soon discovered that, for me, 'sitting five llours every day was a complete waste of time.Because I was well prepared, the school lessons posed for m enot th e slightest difficulty, an d the teacher's explanationswere unnecessary. Bur Iistening as the pupils answered inclass, a n d fearing that L myself would be called on at anymoment , had a terribIe effect on my nerves. I think that thistired me out more than any work. n th e spring, before ex-aminations, I had an opportuni ty to convince myself thor-oughly of the uselessness of a t t ending classes. I got themeasles, but the illness was not serious. I lay in bed wi th 'a high temperature o r our or hv e days and soon recovered.But in order not to infect my classmates, I ha d to stay awayfrom school. I rvas informed what th e assignments were anddid them at home. T h i s required l i t t le time. Then-I kasfreel Whac a marveIous time that rvasl Ma y in Romny wasalways good: fresh leaves were on th e trees and the bushes,shrubs, in blossom. I liked th e flowering and scent of whi te

THE R O M N Y REAWCHULE 19acacia. It was warm, an d m e couId swim. h e roves at thisseason were especially attractive. And four weeks totally freeof classes1 I could spend whole days outdoors. T h a t was a

.marvelous May. 1recall it well to this very day.1 come back to my studies, an d the difficulties caused me. by the Russian language. Th e fict is that from chi ldhood Ihad nevcr heard correct Russian. At home w e spoke n a kindof mixture af Russian and Ukrainian. T h e servants andpeasants spoke Ukrainian. My pronunciation had never beenpurely Russian, and w i t h o u t knowing i t I made mistakes.k a m i n g gmmrnar and memorizing verses were nor difficultbut were uninteresting. Reading books, though, i d interestme.Usually tvith impatience I Iooked forward to Saturday,when books could be taken home from th e school libmry. Idevoured them. On Saturdays, returning from school, Iwould si t down to read, and sometimes rvould read on until1 had finished the book. 1 remember three volumes by JulesVerne, Th e Mysterioris Wa n d . I could no t tear myself away.By Monday I had stil l not finished it. I told Grandmothertha t I rvas sick. I stayed in bed an d read to the end. Andlater it was Mayne Reid and Fenirnore Cooper1 I read themall from cover to cover. At that time, of course, Americaseemed to us a land of wonder.

In the first-year class there were trvo subjects that I liked:geography an d drawing lessons. Geography was taught us byth e Supervisor, Vladimir Xvanovich Timofeyev. When 1 lookback no w upon his classes, I realize that he rvas a natural-bornteacher. As Supervisor he had to deal with us Tather strictly,observing various formalities and meting ou t punishments.Bht i n class the man changed, an d we forgot that he was

. Supelvisor. He took the trouble to explain the lesson to us,to make i t interesting. He was hot always trying, as theothers were, to catch some upil wh o did not know the lesson.He would call usually on only on e pupil, and then hardlylet him speak, doing al l th e talking and explaining himself,

, For this reason we did not do the homework that he as-sig-rlcdUS, bu t after an hour of Timoleyev's elucidations .rue


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14 AS I REMEMBERknew the lwon pedecrly. in the upper grades Timoieyevtaught nature, and we learned this subject well from him.To this day X r e d l some of his explanations.

I always liked d n w i n g , though 1 was not terribly good atit . From the second year on I was so keen on drawing that Ispent a lot of time a t home opying pictures horn illustratedmagazines. By the rime I leEt school I could draw fairly well.Generally I studied hard and usually was a t the head ofthe class. Z worked diligently, no t because I liked studyingor wanted to distinguish myself, but, as I now remll, for thefollorvjng huo reasons. From childhood I had heard that,engaging a teacher, then keeping us a t Rornny, cost a lot ofmoney, and that i t was not easy Eor Father and Mother togive us an education.So I considered it my duty to meet myschool responsibilities.Moreover, X felt terribly ashamed andawkward if I could not answer a question asked me by the.teacher. I was afraid that the teacher would think that 1was.not properly prepared and was trying to get out of the as-signment. I d o not say that I did no t like being at the headof the dass, but I made no effort to push myself fonvard orto display my knowledge to the teacher. I was never a show-.off. he fellows at school liked me .

In the upper grades my main subjects were algebm, geom-etry, and then trigonometry. A t first, fbr some reason,algebrawas hard for me . I even got a D or on e quarter, an extremelybad mark for th e top student in ,h e class. This subject svastaught us by Lev ~ ' v o v i c h zhitskiy, ,a nervous chap but anexcellent teacher. 1t seemed to me that he picked on me, ha the was trying to show that 1wasn't very good in mathematics.Maybe that was so. Anyway, it forced me to pay attention to 'mathematics an d to work at it more seriously. 1 did so, an dby the end of the term (that was in the third year) I hadgrown quite interested in algebra, especially in setting upan d solving equations. I hove to bc grateful tu Irllitskiy. B ydemanding more of me, he wound up awakening i n me aninterest in mathematics. Thencefornard I studied mathe-matics with pleasure. I got hold OF various problem books

TH E ROMNY REALGCHULE 15and solved the problems in them lor amusement, not be-cause they were assigned.In th e upper p d e s , when rve starred to think about whatrve wouId do ,upon cornplerion of the realschuie, the mathe-matics question became for me e s ~ e c i a i l y mportant. 1 no wdefinitely dreamed of becoming an engineer of ways of com-munication. But in Russia there was only on e school lor en*gineers of ways OF communication, in Petenburg. Admissionto chat school was limited. Also, in the matter of admission,preference was given to sons of engineers of ways of com-munication. Admission w as on the basis of a competitiveexam. There were many more examinees than openings at

:the school.. During the last years at Romny the question of cornpeti-rive exams preoccupied a11 those of us who hoped to enter aninstitution of higher learning. I recall that there wa s a pub-lished .collection of problems that had been given in previouscompetitive exams. Dreaming of being engineers, rve werevery interested in that book of problems. I spenc all my freetime rvorking tile problems, not resting until I ha d solvedthem all.

, .Later I: heard many times that the competitive exam wa s'a completely useless. . thing, that one might just as well draw:-lots. never a p e d withmihis. oth I and my schoolmat&were forced by the thought of a competitive exam to take ourmathematical studies more seriously, and we did learnelementary mathematics extremely well.

Mathematics was my main subject in th e upper grades ofthe realrchule, .but not everyone had h e necessary ability forit . Some needed outside help. No t only did T enjoy studyingmathematics, but I also enjoyed explaining mathematicalProofs to others. I would go to school early in order to havetime for explanations to my comrades for whom mathematial ~ a smorc dificult. For me, giving explanations, going overproofs of theorems, was pure joy. l think that i t was destinedfor me to become a teacher. If I have succeeded in doing 'this in ifc, it was because I was working a t wha t I liked.. . I

/--


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5 Summer VmatirmI have been remembering school. but whatsticks in my memory more are recollections of the times'thatI was free of school.

How we did look forward to vacations! Ho w interestingeverything was when, finally, fter the last exam, we weredriven home to Bazilovkal We would arrive home- in theevening, considering that our real vacration did not beginuntil the following morning, when we would ger up earlierthan usual, the sooner to se e what changes had occurred inour absence.T h e big thing in our summer life was our large garden.Near th e house, in the shade of maples, was a big table onwhich, in summer,w e ate breakfast and dinner. Beyond,there was a swing and trapeze. Then there was a cast-ironstove on which, in summer, jam was often cooked. Fa~theroff were lades. Th e grass had not yet been mowed. A mass .

h rf flowers a erTsZw such a mass of flowers only in Switzer- ,land, on the Alpine meadows, in June. Farther off still, wasth e pond. We spent quite a bi t of our time near th e bath-house, where there was a boat, and where, constantly soak-ing, were barrels and tubs a somehkind ,with which onecould carry out various experiments.

The garden 'was cut in two by the ponds. Beyond the ''ponds was the wilder, more neglected part of the garden.T h e r e stood the hu t of the garden watchman, always a b n - .

SUMMEK VACATION I7fire nfar it . On e could bake potatoes, apples, pears, or make&rlied fruit. On the other side, on the bank, the fishing wasbetter. It was quiet there. Here we spent most of our time.

To inspect the fields, w e had to ask Tata (Father) for theracing sulky. H e was constantly driving around the fields,&ecking the state of the crops, watching over the work. Iwas quite familiar with all the different jobs, an d I knewapproximately ho w much time each required. I particularlyemjoyed the graimharvest. 1 iked using the scythe, an d whenI grew older, I spent a lot of time scything. When I wassixteen or seventeen years old, I tried to spend whole daysin the fields. I would go out to work at sunrise. Breakfast andlunch were brought to me in the field. Of course I go t ter-;ibly tired. After Lunch, a n hour of rest. I slept'on the groundlike someone dead. In ,the evening I went straight to bed,from exhaustion. How my anns and back ached during thosefirst days1 Then I got used to it an d stopped feeling so tired.

I remember the summer that I was promoted to gradefour. Father had bought a harvesting machine; the machine'was extremely primitive. The cut grain wa s tossed downfrom the platform by th e operator. This required some kill.I learned how to do t, and the work pleased me very much.But especially interesting was the threshing. We alreadyknew in advance when th e steam thresher rvould be broughtover Erom the neighboring estate. Transporting i t was a bigevent in our lives. Because of our miserabIe dirt roads, theyhad to harness five teams of oxen,each to the thresher andlocomobile. Especially difficult was crossing th e big ravineknown as Popiv Yar, almost .a mile and a half from ourhouse. They had to c m stream at the bottom of the ravine:There che machine, locomobile) often ot stuck in the mudand would then have to be dragged up a steep hill. Then,even at great distances, one could hear the shouts of thedrivers and commands of the supervising foreman and ma-chine-operator. The machine ran a t our place for usuallythree weeks, an d I virtually never left it , so interesting was itall. Especially fascinating to m e was the ten-honeporver loco-


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I a As I REMEMBER. mobile. h e r my father bought his own thresher, a horse-

driven one. The rigging and assembly of this thresher alsomuch enthralled me, an d every summer I spent a lot of timethreshing.The simple three-field system of farming required no greatM d n a i n k ~ n , . ~ -nowledge of agriculture. Success

pan' ' .A t ou r p ace, the work was always done-There were nou ugh homer and oxen,and-rue had the necessary agricultural rnachinerj. Every year w ehired suficient laborers, an d by such means a large part ofthe land was worked. A relatively small portion was givenover to the peasants to be worked, in exchange for half theyield. This was a very widespread fanning practice. It was notvery profitable for th e landowner, but it did save him a lot oftrouble. Owing o poor equipment, the peasants' farming wasunsatisfactory, the yield from their fields being always lower .than that obtained from che lando~vnen' ields.

AS a result of his successEu1 farining. my father succeededin accumulating a certain sum amoney, and (with the helpof the bank) purchased the Shpotovka estate, formerly theKandyba estate. ,Shpotovka was about three and a half miles From Bazilovka,though the distance between the land boundaries w$ lessthan one and a hH11miles. For three years the G o estates, a tBazilovka and Shpotovka, were Farmed simultaneously. andFather spent a great deal oE time driving back and forth inhi s racing sulky from one to the other. 1 often rode alongwith him. I w a s very interested in the structures h a t had tobe built at Shpotovka to effect the change-over from thepeasants' "rn&tayerwJystem d arming to the more advan;edsystem of landowner farming. Sheds were needed for thework animals, housing for th;e ~vorkers.A manor house ex-isted bu t was old, and one had to think of building a newhouse. T h e building oE the latter interested me especially.Shpotovka was purchased in 1892. I was about fourteen. Atthe reakchuie I had already learned to sketch and draw.

S UM M ER VACATION 19Father suggested that I participate in the planning and

- building of the house. That pleased me greatly.Designing th e house was so interesting that I was ready to, give up my lifelong dream and become an architect insteadof a road engineer. In Russia at that time, building a house

out i n the country was a complicated matter. One,had toarrange everything oneself, hence for me building it rvasparticularly instructive.As early as 1892, a site had been chosen for the house.Father drew up the plan; I had to prepare sketches oE th efront. All the sketches of houses that I couId find, houses on

. - modern estates, houses in Romny-all this constituted a huge.'new interest for me. So much so that somedmes.during les-sans, when boring questions and answers were going on,spent the rvhole time drawing the future window ornaments

' for th e house,designing columns for the porch and balcony.In the end I even pasted together a cardboard model of thehouse.In I893 a brickworks rras built. Bricks had to be readied

for the foundation. The making of bricks fascinated me, andI spent a lot of time at the works. In the end I knew howto make bricks very well . In time all this was to profit me,when as an apprentice engineer 1 built inexpensive railroad

. buildin& on the Volchansk-Kupyansk railroad.I In the autumn oE 1893 the foundation for the house waslaid, and , h e ,needed wood was ordered. The house was. soundly buii t of 10-inch pine l o p sawn in half. The floorsi and ceilings consisted of 21/2 nch planks. Almost the entireSummer of 1894 was spent building the walls and roof. Mom-:: j n g I would ride out to the building site with Father andI taY there until nightfall. We did not dine until evening. 11 don't think that t h a ~ as good for my health, but I learned agreat deal and began to understand about the quality of

QVentry. How useful all this proved to be atterwardrlto this experience, when later a t the Institute w ehad to design houses, I had a big advantage over my corn-/ / , :


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FINISHING AT T HE R E A U C H U L E 23ary, an d still later became a noted Zionist, devoting his liieand energies to electrification in Palestine. I saw hi m last in .,

I Tel Aviv in th e fa l l of 1934, forty-five years after we hadstarted at the Romny realschule. W e spoke of the past, mar-veled at the unexpected k i n g s f Fate. OE th e two Romnyreahchule pupils, one had become a Zionist leader, the other-an American proEessor1

In the competitive exams, in addition to mathematics,o n e had to write an essay in Russian. I was sure that I would .pass the mathematics, but I was a little bi t a h i d of essays. Ihad never been very strong in the Russian language, andesays were always particularly difficult for me. IE th e essay , -required a knowledge of l i terature or history, then I couldtvrite it without dificulty. But i f i t required an artistic de- . . ,scription, any kind oE poetry, then I would be completely , ,Iost. In my last year I devoted a large amount of t ime to the .Russian language. We studied th e ancient Russc-Slavanic .l i terature. W e h ad a good teacher, who knew how to awaken'our interest in' subjects such as the old Russian folk epics,The La y of gofs Host, Lives of th e Sainls. H e recommended 'books outside the syllabus, qu i te a number of which 3 read, I

I read as well the new Russian literature: Gogol,Pushkin, ITurgenev, Goncharov, Tolstoy, Dostoevski. Some OF thesebooks-for initance, Turgenev's V i ~ g i n oi l , and most of -Dostoevski-were not allowed in school. Rutenberg would

Ige t me these from th e town 'library. We were especially in- 1 '

graduat ion, there did exist a revolut ionaiy m o u ~ avine

terested at the time in literary criticism. The works oE Pisa-rev had made a great impression on me . His " ~ & l i s t s " wa sread through several times. I read Belinskiy and Dobrolyu-bov, but they made no special impression. Of the l i terarymonthlies, I read Mir Bmhiy ("God's World") and Nedelya("The Week").Between OU T final exams, in mid-May, came the fest ivi~ies

, . A * - uconnections w i th t he party Narodnaya Volya ("People'sWill"). There were arrests and deportations. Durinpr the

' . .' .!

-reign of Alexander 111, al l this had disappeared. M y fatherheld liberal views. He opposed l imit ing th e powen of theZ e w u u (District Councils), especially in the mat te r of publ iceducation. He was against 'the institutions of th e District

celebrating the coronation of Czar Nicholas 11. At the ar -ranged parade we a11 carefully shouted hurrah."Politics" d id not particularIy interest anyone in our class.Bu t in Romny, om e twelve to f i f~eenyears prior to otlr

- - - - .Magistrates, then being int roduced, against the class restric-tions and artificial maintenance of land ownership by th enobiiity with the aidhof he Gentry Bank. At t ha t time hemore than once told me, as we drove in th e racing sulkythrough the fields, that a big mistake had been made by th e'revolutionaries who killed Alexander 11. It seemed to himthat cont inuing th e reforms of AIexander 11 could have ledRussia onto a happier path.' A t thg beginning of J u n e 1896 the final exams were over.We were photographed in a group with our nstructors, a n dthen left fo r-o ur respect ive homes. L have never since beenin the school building or seen most of my instructors. B uta t seventeen one does no t think oE such things. We departedfrom the school light of heart.I went to Shpotovka lor rrvo months of vacation, but thisvacation differed from the previous ones.Partly it rva5 spoiledby anticipation of the competitive exams, by th e need to .study for them a t least a l i t t le. But rhc main thing was thatI had other nterests. Sitting ou t in th;. counuy had becomeboring,


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7 The Cmpetitive ExamsTOlay it safe, 1,had applied far admission

to tw o institutions of earning: the Institute of Enginee~sfWays of Communication and the Insritute of Civil Engineers.1 was especially interested in the former bu t decided that, ifI failed the exam, I wo uld become an architect. That too-seemed interesting. The exams at th e Institute oE Civil En-gineers began August 16-at the Communications Institute,September 5. It rvas decided that my mother would ride toPetersburg with me. Mother had a sister in Petersburg, andit wa s assumed that she and her sister would help me getsettled during my first days in the big city. Things turned outcomplctely differently. On the train on the way to PetersburgI me t two of my comrades from Romny, and on arriving in ,Petersburg three more. Suddenly there we were, si x bud-dies with identical interests and plans. I took lodgings withOmdyustyy, later a Perersburg architect. A few days afterarriving ][.was with him at the Institute of Civil Engineers,taking the exam. The exams went well, and we were both onthe list of ewly accepted students.Bu t I did no t leave It at that. On September 5 I startedthe exams for admission to the Institute of Engineers ofWays oE Communiation. We had to write a "composition'!in Russian, and take written exams in arithmetic, algebra,geometry and trigonometry. Then we were examined orally

THE COMPETIT~VEEXAM S 25an the same subjects. Finally, over and above the competi-

' tion, w e had to make r drawing and display an adequateknowledgeof German. There were more than seven hundredexaminees. From these, 150 were to be selected. To achievethis, they sometimes assigned intricate problems. I remem-ber that in arithmetic they asked me to give the criterion ofdivisibility by two in the quinary system. had heard some-thing about such problems back in the reulrchule, hence hadno special trouble with them. In trigonometry my examinerwas G .V. Kolosov. As I learned later. this was a very od dman.-Justone ook at him in his long frock coat, with his -awkward manners and rather indistinct jerky way of speak-.ing, produced an ,unfavorab le impression on me. I appar- .end; answered his qu ati om comecdy, but hc knocked off apoint anyway, iving me 4% instead of 5 . 1 never could findout what had dissatisfied him. Also, I goc only 4 lor the corn-position in Russian. Even so, the total of my grades was .urishctory. an d wound up in the t o p forty ou t of theseven hundred. That wasn't bad. Natu~;lIIy was happy to beadmitted to the Institute of Engineers ofWays of Commu-nication. My dream of being an engineer and building rail-roads was beginning to come true. Here at the exams I sawclearly th e advantage enjoyed by the examinees wh o hadgone through middle school in the capital or some otherlarge city. They knew better th e examination requirements.Many ofthem had spent the summer in special preparatoryschools whose teachershew he exam requirements down tothe last detail. They knew the examiners, their peculiarities,their favorite questions. To us, coning h m he country,everything was new and unexpected. NevertheIess, I have al -ways considered that admissionon a competitive-exam basis isthe fairest way. I would never agree to replacing it with admis-sion based on certificates or any kind oE lottery system, as has,been proposed. There is no doubt that, despite its variousdefecw, the competitive-exam system generally did, withsufficientaccuracy, select from he mass of young examineesthose best grounded in mathematics. That gmunding, d


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26 ~iREMEMBER THE COMPETITIVE E X AM S 27course, would be extremely irnportan in their subsequent toon$)- inspected the big churches, the st. 1 m c k an d ~~~bstudies as future engineers. ~ t h e d r a l s . even1 times I visited the Hmi hg e , picture; ~ ~ t e rt universities in America, as ' a professor, I en. galkv t the Academy of Arts. The two ~ v e e b ere entirely: students who lacked proper mathematical train- filled with these sight-seeing r o u a ~ f l e ~i t t le R~~~ every-

ing. I saw ho w this affected the evel of eaching, which had 5 0 int-thg: And, to top it all, 1 had beento be lowered, adjusted downward to th e students' level of c e ~ t c d t [h e Institute of Enpneen of Ways of communia11 prepamtion. nsuficicnt mathemarical- mi ni ng haf undoubt lion' I wa s a student. an d would soon be attending hec edly exerted great influence on the attitude of stlldena t* lectures of amous prbfcssals.

ward the science of ngineering. The American studenc~in, m o s t cases, isnot interested in deducing any kind of formula.- .or in the basic assumptions underlying such deduction. Allhe wa n& is thc final result-a formula tvhich he can apply -i.mechanically, without thought, to solve practical p ~ ~ b l e m ~ .It is my belief that the defectiveness oE the mathematical . . .education offered n American secondary schools during the .' .early part of this century wa s one of the main reasons for -- - t h e low level of development of the engineering sciences ' ;in the United States.To return to my co~npetitive xams: from the end of theexams unti l the start of schoo1 I had tw o compIetely free ,'wceks, which I used to acquaint myself with the city. Never t

1!again wa s I to wander the streets of Petersburgas much as in i!those two weeksl Everything wa s ne w tome; the streets paved 'with wooden blocks, he large store-windows, the huge build-ings, he like ofwhich I had never seen.Bu t the main thing Iwa s th e Neva, the Fontanka, the canals. Such a wealth -ofwater I had never seen in my life. I r d e along the Fontanka ,

. in a small steamer of the Finnish Steamship Company. Icrossed the Neva on th e same boat. 1 visited the Petersburgside, where I inspected the Petropavlov f~rtress nd the littlehouse of Peter the Great. I visited Vasil'yevskiy Island. 1made my way to Galernaya Harbor, in the hope oE feastingm y e y e s o n t h e s e a. B u t t h e r e w a s n o s ea t h e r e . O n t h e N e v aI saw, for the first time, big foreign steamship. I I o oked a tthe bridges: the Nikolayevskiy arid Littynyy (enduring.strong); the ~ r o i t s k i yand Dvortsovyy (wooden, on pan-. .

1

,

6


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8 My First Year At The InstituteFina l ly around the 20th of $ept:mber, 1896.

our lectures began. Th e Ministry of Ways of ~ommunica-tion, busy building the Siberian railroad, needed engineersand had increased the number of studenw admitted. In-stead of the 150 vadncies announced for the competitiveexam, there were more than 200 in our class. There wasn'ta lecture hall in the Institute that could accommodate anaudience of that size. Therefore, lectures were given in theauditorium. In place of the benches they had pu t in chairs.It was cramped and uncomfortable; taking notes was almostimpossible. T he 'auditoriumwas beautiful, having been builtin che days of Alexander I , founder of the Institute. On hewalls hung portraits of th e Institute's Czar-founder, and oECzar Nicholas 11and the different Ministers 01 Ways oE Com-munication.

Our Institute came under the Ministry of Ways of Coh-munication, and the Institute's director wa s answerable di-rectly to the Minister. Ar &at time 1 knew nothing of thehistory of the Institute, and the pormits on the walls in-terested me little.

Before th e start oE classes the Institute's Supervisor, Alex-ander Andreyevich Brandt, assembled us in the library hallLO make sure that we al l had the uniform required by theInstitute's rules. Then the Institute's Director, Gersevanov,spoke a few unimportant words, telling us always to wear OUT

hiY FIRST YEAR AT W E N S ~ T U T E 29i uniforms, to salute c o m m u n i ~ t i o n s ngineers on the street,and nor to smoke except in special smoking moms. I recallthat neither Bmdt nor Gelsevanov impressed me especially.Only later did I learn &at both were outstanding engineers,that they loved the Institute, loved young people, and hadbeen ready on occasion to risk their careers when it cameto the interests of the Institute and students.

The I ~ t i t u l c f Engineers oJ Ways of Communicrrrion, St.Peters burg (circa I910).Th e first lectures were a big disappointment ta m e. I re-

- m e m b e r t h e f i r s t l e c t u r e o n g e o d e s y . I t w a s g i v e n b y a P r efessor Boguslavskiy, ,author of a voluminous book on th es u b j ~ t .He was a poor lecturer. A descriptive course is ill-suited to the lecture method of teaching, especially in alarge lecture hall. Th e physics lectures were even worse. TheIecturer, Professor Gezekhus, was not a bad physicist, bu t inth e first semester he was supposed to lecture to us on measur-

. ing instruments, and in the first lecture he explained what avernier is. We al l knew that from middle school. Naturally.a lecture like that could not hold the interest of young peo-


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30 AS I REMEMBERple. The vast majority (myself included) soon decided thatsuch lectures weren't worth attending.The actual introductoq lecture was given in the chemistrylecture hall. T h e lecturer, Konovalov, was a rvell-kno~vnchemist, th e pupil of Mendeleyev. He spoke to us about thescientific method in general, telling what it w a s that d ictinguished chemistry from alchemy. He said a little about thehistory of chemistry. We were all interested, felt that herewa s a real scientist, who wanted to inrrduce us to his science.Chemistry, I thought a t the rime, had Litcle bearing on myown Euture interests, and actually 1 never again did have tostudy it , b u t I sa t through Konovalov's course of lectureswith great interest.

The audilorium of th e Institute (circa 1910).

The main subject in the first year rvas mathemaucc-analy-tical geometry an d differential calculus. In these counes wehad six lectures a week. The lecturer was Professor Grave,then still a young mathematician, wh o had just received hisdoctor's degree and who always appeared for the lectureswearing hi s doctor's insignia. Later G n v e transferred to theUniversity of Kiev, acquiring a reputation as a mathema-

I /fnY FIR= YEAR AT TH E INSTITUTE 3 1tician. He was a good lecturer, bu t he made no attempt to tiethe subject to the interests of Future engineers. In his presen-ration he followed a book on analytical geometv which hehad just had published. AEter reading some of the book, Iquickly decided that I could assimilate the subject soonerand better horn th e book, without a t tending th e lectures.

! I expected much from the course in mechanics. For some! reason I had decided t h a t fo r a future engineer this coursei , was basic. It was given by Domogarov, a superb lecturer. Hehad obviously spent a great deal of time preparing the course,\1 but the material rvas poorly chosen. He should have beeni - ' introducing us to mechanics, bur he spenc th e whole time ond kinematics. He presented the subject very clearly, with many!

' geometric construc tioos, which he drew nicely on the black-board wi th chalk. We gained a good understanding of kine-matics, but statics-so important i n al l our fu tu re work-ws ignored, an d I completed my engineering educationwithout ever having had a systematic 'course in statics.

1. Our training i n such important subjects as mathematics* nd mechanics was unsatisfactory because. as I now clearly.. . . -see, these subjccrs were taught by uniGirsity teachers. Theirprincipal in teresr was in the Mathematics Department, wherea purely abstract exposition of mathematics and mechanics. war natuial. Lecturing in a school of engineering, they re-! ;

, Peated their university courses, not knowing what was spe-i cially imporcant for;future engineers. The teachers of the

, : theoretical subjects had no close connection w ith the teachersL .

, of he technical courses,and there was no mutual understand-. ing and agreement. The university teachers did no t knowwhat it was ha t future engineers needed to know, r in whatform, and the engineering teachers were usually so far fromany theory that they were unable to formulare h e require-ments that courses in theory ought to satisfy. Mechanics inarticular suffered from this. It r v a taught us for three years.Statics and introduction to mechanics in th e fiat year,

- dynamics of points and systems in the second, dynamics ofrigid bodies in th e third. I am compelled to sa y that, owing '


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52 AS x REMEMBER MY FIRST YEAR AT THE I N S T ~ T ( J ~ 33to the system of teaching, left the Institute liked to get some pmctical experience, bu t I had no con-with no understanding of the most elementary things in nectiOns, an d without a special recommendation no onemechanics. would hire a first-year student.Another reason fo r our unsatisfactory training in mathe- ' , I went home for the summer to shpotovka. Natually 1and mechanics was the absence of any ~racticalex- . . was glad be with my h i l y again.I njoyed showing myxlfercises. W e listened to lectures. Then we had tests. in which in my schwluniform. tell ing about Petersbug, bet 1soonwe had to show knowledge of what th e lecturer ,had said. ' uw ha t this vaation war not like th e past ones. M~ nterest

. .Problems were assigned too, but no one showed us how to in 'he va'-iousdetails of quiet villag& ife ha d vanished. Isolve ,these problems. Later on, when I myself was a Pro- mo'' of l ime in the garde,n, flopped down somewhere in. fesfor at the Institute, that deficiency was eliminated, and we Ihe shade?rereading Dos tdevski, Talstoy, ~ m l ~ ~ k ~nthen had well-pIanned courses in mathematics and me- - previous Yean it had been horrible to think &at my mationchanics. was ending. h a t soon one would have lo go back m R~~~~O f t h e first-yearsubjectsIshould rnent iona lsodexr i~t ive ' , an d studying. That was no longer so. AS the r u m vgeometry, taught us by Professor Kurdyumov, a great ad- d' '~ '' . l ~se .1 was impatienflyawaiting the da y when i tmire= ofGaspard Monge, creator of this'science.Kurdyumov - be time to go back to Petenburg and resume my

, studies at th e Institute.had put together a wide-ranging, excellently ~ l a n n e d ourse,introducing into i t all the requisite practical exercises. Mos tof s learned this subject wel l .So after my first few weeks at th e Institute matters stood -

4 thus: X was attending lectures in two subjecw only-mehan-I I4' ics and chemistry. In the other courses X re pared Ear testsj from books an d did not attend the lectures. As a result 01our,I 'I not attending the lectures and having no ~ractical xercises,our knorvledge wa s very flimsy.

At the end of the first school year, examinations over, we:: i had compulsory practical training in geodesy. During t he !i. school year there had been no practical exercises in gedesy.8; For the summer exercises the class was divided into p u p s1 i,(, OF six persons each. Each group was assigned to it s own area,about seven miles in circumference. W e had to make a -' \geodetic survey oE the area, map it , do the leveling, and P ~ C - I

tice plotting the location of railroad transition curves. This Iwork interested me very much, and from the very first day 1became leader of our group and was in charge of a11 thework. In three weeks the work wa s finished, and by-mid-July we were free. Comrades having acquaintances at theI I II Ministry got summer jobs on the railroad. I too would have!- ;' :. I1 I.


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9 Studying On At The'lnstituteT h e ~udiern the second year were again of

little interest. Mathematics was taught by 1.1. Ivanov. Heeficien tly explained to us integral calculus, writing ou t manyexamples on the blackboard. We learned m integnte. cal-culate areas and volumes, and solve very simple differentialequations. ~ o s t o f s were sure that so mucll mathcmadwwas not necessary for a practical engineer.

In mechanics things were much worse. Teaching it .wasD.K. Bobylev, an honored professor, author of a three-vol-ume hook in mechanics. As a lecturer he wa s completely im-possible, moreover had bad eyes and was constantly making,mistakes. To get anything out of those Lectures was diffi-cult. I soon stopped attending and prepared for the restsfrom he book. But the book too was ponderous, unclearlywritten. Most of us a t the Institute acquired no knowledgeof mechanics at all.At Erst I was interested in the course in graphic statics,taught by S.K.Kunitskiy. H e explained the subject dearlybut extremely slowly. Constructing a string polygon tookhim several lectures, and in the twehour, year-long coursehe imparted to us very little. Even so, the subject seemed toUS interesting and important. By the end of he year wewere able to construct the Maxwe\l diagram for very simpletrusses. We could .find the bearing reactions and plot thebending-momentdiagram for simple beam.3 4

STUDYING ON AT THE INSTmUTE 35We expected much From the course on strengeh oE ma-tedals. W e new chat without a knowledge of this subject we

could not design bridges. And "bridges," for some reason,were deemed the main, most important subject at the In- .#stiture. The bridge professors, N.A . Belelyubskiy and L.F.Nikolai, were highly esteemed by the students. At one timestrength of materials and the statics of suuciures were taughta t the Institute by the celebrared French engineers, Lam&and Clapeyron, who had started th e laboratory far testingthe 'strength of materials, and who had taken part in thebuilding of Petersburg'schain bridges and th e cupola of St .Isaac's Ca thedral. LaterD. . Jourawski, builder of the bridgeson the NikoIayev railroad, taught at the Institute. He hadbecome famous throughout Europe for hi s remarkable the-ory of th e shear stresses in the flexure of beams, and for amethod of calculating the farces in bridges of the Howe sys-tem. In ou r day the important.course on the strength of .materials rvar in the hands of th e completely insignificant,un-interesting Professor Lekhnitskiy. H e tried to explain to usthe basic problems 01 the subject, bu t the main points sorne-how eluded our attention. Left were only a few special casesof beam flexure. Apart from these, discussed in class, weknew nothing, c ~ u l d ot even have begun to solve any new-problem. Again the main defect was the lack of rationallyconceived practical exercises.We did practice calculating beams and riveted join& butlearned little Erom it , owing mainly to the absence of com-petent instructors. I remember that I was assigned the taskotcalcula ting an I-beam.No ne had told me of the existenceof ables that tvould have enabled me easily to compute th einertia moment of the beam's cross section. I did al l the com-putations with an arithmometer. I calculated everything witha large number ofdigia, completely wasting a great deal oftime. During our whole time a t the Institute no on e calledOu r attention to the precision with which engineering cal-culations have to be made.The most interesting subject in the second year was geol-


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36 AS I REMEMBERogy. It was taught us by th e famous Russian geologist, Mush-ketov. He was a splendid lecturer, and I did attend hislectures. I also worked in th e geology laboratory, where Istudied petrography.Starting with the third year, we were taught mainly tech-

, nical subjects: architecture, steam engines, electrical engi-neering, statics OF structures. I was so impatient to studythese (as seemed to me) real engineering sciences that I lefthome ahead of time, arriving in Petersburg in mid-August,long before the start of school. I do no t remember now whyI h a d decided


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38 AS I REMEMBERof the professors were of the same opinion. They were allbusy with their jobs at the Ministry, could not seriously con- Icem themselves with preparing lectures, and, as soon as their

!

audiences had dwindled to one or LWO students, they stoppedgiving the lectures, thus saving themselves the extra trouble.II I

10 The SCudentLibrary and CanteenI n ile days n.llen I was a srudenr very strictniles were in effectat the university and other institutions

of higher learning in Russia. N o student organizations what-ever were allowed. Student meetings (rallies) were forbidden.I t was instilled that students at tended school as individualsonly, that there could be no such thing as student affairs ingeneral. These procedures were observed with special strict.ness at the Ministry of Public Enlightenment, headed a t thattime by Delyanov. Our Institute was under the Ministry of,Waysof Communication, and, thanks to the humane attitudetoward the sjudents shown by our administration, some de-partures from the strict rules were tolerated.Several rooms on the top floor had been turned over to th estudents for use as a student library and canteen. These twoinsiitutions were entirely under student management. Forthis purpose, every year, the students elected a special l i b m ycommission. The proceeds horn the canteen provided meansfor adding books to th e libnry and subscribing to news-Papers. T he canteen had great importance for us. On themornings when lectures were scheduled, since most a s didnot attend them, we gathered in the canteen. T h e main oc-CWation here was newspaper-reading. Newspapers were then,much in demand, and of om e several copies were ordered.,Too,here in the canteen one could chat and argue with one's

Tal k was plentiful. At twelve o'clock, when th e


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AS I REMEMBER THE nUDENT LIBRARY AND CANTEEN40 41lectures were officially supposed to end, they opened thedrafting mams,where we did our drawing and designing.From that moment we had more opportunity for conversarionand gatherings. This, of course, interfered with ou r work.We spent three to four hours a day in the drafting rooms,in th e upper classes substantially more than that. Bu t duringthat time very little work got done.

The student library waswell supplied not only with fictionbut with books on history, sociology, and economics. Thiswas the time that the young cudents were beginning to takean interest in Marxism, and al l literature'on the subject,passed by the censor, was abundantly purchased by the libraryand read by many students. Ita seems that, of Marx's DaKapi ia l , more copies of the Russian tonslation circulated 'than in the languages of Western Europe. T h e library sub-scribed also to all th e literary monthlies. T l~e emand forthem wa s very great. During my time as a student, after along stagnation in the reign of Alexander 111, literature hadbegun LO show some life again. N e w writers appeared: Gorki,&dreyev, V~rlhyW, tLirikov,The interest i i Lhre a~thor'swas enormous, and the students spent a great deal of time 'reading literature.At that time in R u s i a persons with a higher educationusually had no trouble finding work. Every student knewj that, once he had finished school, he would be able to ge t ajob. Life was comparatiuely easy, and not by a long shot were

! all a student's energies devoted to working at his specialty.7 Reading, theater, and just conversation took up a p a t dealof our time.The library comm ission was elected every year. Every gradelevel had, 1believe, four representatives on it. It had quite a

:I bit todo:buying th e food andkeeping the canteen accounts;ordering books, magazines, and newspapers; doing libraryduty; and, finally, publishing the profesors' lectures in lithc-

i! graphed form. In connection with this last 1 myself waselected to the library commission, nd during the last twoyears took part in its meetings.T h e meetings were lengthy,

with endless talk about the most varied things. It was sug-gested, for example, that we order Muther's book on the his- ,tory of painting.Then thediscussion started. Di d we have th eright to spend th e students'money for useless books on pureart? Should we nor give prehrence to books on economits?when the matter of subscribing to magazines came up, andwith it the question of a magazine's political lean in^, longarguments ensued between the Marxists and People's-Will-i tes.

After the accounting of he canteen comrnission, he pointwas raised that our principaI income came from,tea and thecheapest pieces of buttered bread, consumed by the studentswith the least money. The income from the more expensiveitemswasmuch 1;s~. I r turned out that th e canteenrvss taking

-more from the poorer students than from the well-todo.Again there were endless discussions. Sometimes our meet-ings d~aggedon un t i l after midnight, and our Supervisor,Professor Brandt, thrertened to .turn off the elecrricity attwelve o'clock. We then decided to buy s t n r i n candles and .continue our meetings, if need be, without the electric light.

I remember all this now. What an inrerating timel W espent a lot of time talking, but it was good that we had ourow n ibrary, our own canteen, our own newspapen.


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11 Student Practice-EngineeringT h e summers 011899 and l CG I spenkprac-

ticing, on construction of the Volchansk-Kupyansk railroad.My immediate superior, Vasiliy Kuz'mich Remezav, was anexperienced engineer who had previously spent several y e a non conrtnlction of the Siberian railroad. I lcamed a lot fromhim. T o start with, 1 was given the job d upervising con-struction a the station building in the village of Manochi-novka. nearly ten m i l u from Kupyansk. T h e S L ~ C ~ U T C Sereerected on good ground, and there were no dificul ties ofmykind. I enjoyed th e work and everything about it . W e had tostart by marking ofF thebuilding sites and digging the founda;tion pits. In the evening I would read through the pertinentpages of a l i t t l e book on architecture. and then the nextmorning, theodolite in hand, make all the needadmesure-men&. Then th e bricklaying started. From the time of mywork a t Shpotovka 1 knew something about the quality ofbricks, hence could oversee delivery of them with some un-derstanding. The bricklaying proces I frnt learned fromthe book.1 thoroughly studied the te~hnical onditions under whichthe contract had been let. I arrived a t work early in the-- - .morning, along with the bricklaym, and kept constantwatch to see that th e job was done correctly. I probably con-siderably annoyed the contractor and workmen. Of courseth e buildings, erected on good ground, would be adequately

strong even if some of the requirements were not fully met,bu t I always insisted on exact fulfillment of he condiri~ns.In addition to erecting buildings, there were other jobstobe done at the station. I was rather concerned about arrang-ing the water supply. T o lay a water pipe horn the pond tothe .tankhouse we had to cut through a rvood. The distancewas something over half a mile. But the rvorkers had to begiven precise directions so rhat th e two swaths, being cutfrom pposite sides of the wood,would come rogether exactly.First. with all possible accuncy, I made the necessary thec-dolite survey. I rechecked it , and only then did I give thenecessary directions for cutting th e swaths.

But I was rerribly agita ted the whole time. What if h e ydidn't meet? But everything turned out beautifully. Th e tw oswaths, begun one at each end, came together with perfectprecision. T h a t was my first success in practical engineering.A small success, to be sure, but it seemed important to me.And evcn norv I rclncrmber those days of rvony. There at 'Manwhinovka, where my work as an engineer began. whereI spent two montI~ssupervising their construction, do thetankhouse and station buildi~lgs till exist?

During that time I lived in a school, unused during thesummer. The watchman'swife prepared my dinner, robbingme rnerciJessly. My rather scant dinner was SO expensive thatit swallowed up my entire student's stipend. I recall that myfather came over fm m Shpotovka to see what I war doing.I proudly showed him my station building. He found thatI looked very emaciated, advixd that I make other amnge-rnents about food.A change occurred with total unmpcctednes. A neighbor-ing landowner asked me to help his son, wh o hadjust finishedat the gymnasium, prepare- for the competitive exams inmathematics. In exchange for this I startcd having br c akfa~tand dinner a t th e landowner's. Life immediately improvd.I began to ear well, moreover could spend evenings with thelandowner's family. T h e amily was cultured and musical. Ithink that nowhere but in Russia was it possible at that time


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to observe such contrasts. In the daytime you saw the povertyof peasant life, the ignorance and primitiveness of the con- ,struction workers-while in the evening, a t the landowner'shouse, it was Chopin, Beethoven, the latest French novelsfrom Paris.AEter tw o months I was transferred to ~ ; ~ ~ a n s k .t had ,been decided to build the Kupyansk station inexpensively,an d I was given the job of making the detailed drawings an dpreparing the estimate. Again a mass of ne w interesting ques-tions. I had to find out where and a t what price we could get ,stone for th e foundation , bricks, and lumber. T h e work wa sentirely different From what we were doing a t the Institute,a n d I liked it so much that I decided I would certainly be-come a pmctical engineer an d work at buildink new railroads,where there were so many new problems. I worked verydiligently, and left for Petersburg only in the late autumn.

The Eollowing summer I no longer had to look for a prac-tice job.Engineer Remezov had suggested beforehand that Zcontinue working ivith him, and by June 1 , 1900, I wasagain in Kupyansk. My job now wa s more diversified. 1 w kto supervise construction of the abutments of th e bridge overthe Oskol river at Kupyansk, an d to work out the plan of th e 'railroad tracks at the Kupyansk-City station. In building thebridge I go t well-acquainted with piledriving and workingwith concrete. The trusses were not erected until after X hadlelt.I had some part also in building the enginehouse. Th eentire area oE the Kupyansk station rested on alluvial soil,which had to be allowed for in preparing the foundations.For the enginehouse it was suggested that piles be drivenunderneath the foundation.I proposed diggingwide troughs,filling them with packed sand, and erecting the building onthis sand, as on a foundation. X had read about constructionof this type in some book on architecture. Later I heard thatthe enginehousewas one of the fe w buildingsat the Kupyanskstation that had not developed cracks.

But nor al l of my experiments were so successful. I learned'

STUDENT PRACTICE-ENGINEERING 45afterwards that the stoves in the passenger building, on thedesigning of which I had a p l t quite a bit of effort, hadproved a Failure and had to be rebuilt.

Recalling now my experience on the railroad, see that i tlayed a large role in my engineering education. It's a pityat such opportunities for practice do no t exist in Americanthat most of the students are graduated without real

acquaintanceshipwith work in their field.With regard to opportunities for student practice, the Insti-

tute of Engineers of W a y s of Communication was in auniquely favorable position. Th e entire vast Russian railroadnetwork wa s in the hands of the Ministry of W a y s of Com-munication, which was able to distribute th e students amongthe raiIroads in such a way that they could familiarize them-! selves with all the most important types of construction.


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m E N T UNRB-I- 47; heard that under Alexander 111 th e reforms had been halted;

I that Pobedonobbev had tried to I imit th e action of theZ cmu a (District Councils) in regard to public ducation;- that fie Government was upholding th e influence of theclew* ~ selping th e parochial schools; that infiohclionof the Dismict Magistrates had resulted in res&-tion of he

- peasants' rights. All this, of course, had had it s InPetersburg I already infecred with the mood of opposi-tion.In t h e spring of 1897, \{hen I was in my finty g r , there1 ' occufled the "Vetrova affair." I t war said that a girl student,

Myludenr yean c~;ncided ith the starta in ~ ~ s s i . ,anifested primarily in st'-dent disturbanccs, \+rhjch took on a form and scope neverknown, This because the Student protests'coinciding t[lc mood 01opposition in "le cou''-rry, foundu n i v e r ~ l sympathy. The huge majority *' sm-.drllrr verc ready to supporr an y prorest a s i n s t the rulingporver, ,vhile those among the studen. ready to thatwinate? 1 recall thatpower lgere very few. HOWdid all this oriothe r c o ~ ch lL~ ce had not been inrereacd in poliric5*

, though of opposition sometimes discerniblewedid nor l ike bring compelled LO go to church OnWe like rn i l imn/ klmnastics. There was a ceroinhorfiity toward the olficm, f which in Romny were-quite a few.mililaryschwlr the reahchule went only the lazy, who had no hope of getting into an institutionIlighor learning.From my early childhood 1 had had a chance,, observe he extreme poverty of the peasanu. sawignorance an d *[ undorr& it injurticer-T h ewriting. of NekraJov, T o ~ s ~ o ~ ,hchedrin had m a d e a bigimpresrion- , that he irultion could be correctedby improving pub)ic rducarion, by out various re- 'fomr, F~~~ my ather I had heard that the re[oms .*lnunder 11 had impwed the lot the peasants. had

m e Vetrova, having been jailed, su&red an oumge at hehands of a gendarme officer.Refusing to tolerateheoumge,

, sh e doused hersellwi th kerosene and burned herself to ashesin her cell. I don't know I IO~Vrue this s t o q r v a , but it wuLou& to inflame al l 0~ Petersburg's nudens. ~t wasdecidedmarch in a b d y 10 the Kazan' Cathedral and osrenta-t i o u s l ~ old a requiem for vetrow. Large cmwdsd -gathered in front of he cathedral. I am sure that most of hestudentsfrom our Institute were there. Th e police demandedthey disperse and go home. S~ubborn roups were hauled

' 0 @ice station, had their names -ken, andwere released. T h e students no t taken tb the police stationnext day signed a statement alfirming their cdmp]ete sym-pathy with their arrested comrades. The disturbances did notlast and I don't think anyone suffered for having par-.t i c i ~ t e dn th e demonrtmtion. The washowever, a d don't recall that anyone in c u ragainst che demonstration.

T1lese lvere the first student disturbances in Ivhich I to"me extent participated. I remember r h a ~ome illegal littlejnto my hands which quoted the apctch that11 had given before the rural an d city rcpreaenta-r,iv's On the of hi s ~mna t i o n . he remark about

scnsc1cs5dreamin@" filled me with deep indignation.In my day, student 0Igdnii3tions were brbidden, But

e+isted nevertheless, mainly in the fo- of regional


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48 AS 1 REMEMBER m D E N T UNREST 49clubs. Students from the same town, the same province,would form their own ittle society. I remember that by 1898 .we ha d a good-sized group, boys and girls, who had gonethrough the Romny reaischule and girls' gymt~arium. t wassuggested that w e organize a Romny regional club. The mainpretext was mutual aid and goup eading. I attended on e of-the first meeti ng, but t didn't satisfy me. T o get together for

,

group readings seemed to me irrational. I preferred readingby myself, an d did read a few books on economicsand social-ism. sayev's an d Chuprov's courses i n economics, and TheFactory by Tugan-Baranovskiy,did not.particularly thrill me.I liked much better Zombart's book SociaLGm and th e Social~ o v e m e n f ,nd Bernstein's booklet correcting Marx's theory.I tried to ~ e a dlso ~ a i x ' s m apital, but I never had quitethe energy Qr time to conquer that voluminous work.The first student movement to spread over al l of Russia

started on February 8, 1899. On that day, th e anniversary ofPetersburg University, disorders broke out inside th e univer-s i ty . Then groups of students, marching out of th e universitysinging, were broken up by mounted police, several of thestudents being sttuck with whips. This evoked a general in- 'dignation among the students. At al l the institutions of higherlearning in Petersburg, and then in the provinces, rallieswere held. T h e s am e happened with us a t tllc Ways of Corn+-munication Institute. The speakers at the rallies took theposition that the question here was not one of politics, bu tof introducing reg

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