The fourteenth essay in the “Creators” series is dedicated to Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev, an outstanding archaeologist and historian of Antiquity, professor at St. Petersburg University and professor at Yale University, who made a huge contribution to historical science. Together with RASA (Russian-American Science Association), T-invariant continues publishing the “Creators” series of biographical essays.
“The professor says that the Roman civilization was destroyed by goats,” – the whisper rustled through the audience. The Wisconsin students looked at the professor of classical history in bewilderment. All they knew about him was that he was a Russian who had recently left his homeland engulfed in the flames of revolution, that he was (as they were told) a great authority on classical studies, and that his impeccable four-piece suit with his invariable tie contrasted with the democratic style of the Wisconsin professors. It took the students a long time to realize that he was not talking about goats, but about Goths, the Germanic tribes who fought the Roman Empire. The students did not yet know that their professor with such bad English would soon become the pride of American scholarship and that his books would be used to teach ancient history in most universities.
This biographical essay is dedicated to Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev, an archaeologist and classical scholar, a master of untangling the complex tangles of the historical and cultural interweaving of civilizations, and a true Russian intellectual, for whom forced emigration and the loss of the “cultural layer” of pre-revolutionary Petersburg became a personal tragedy.
Mikhail Rostovtsev
Guest Tuesdays
In November 1911, the Mariinsky Theatre hosted the premiere of Mussorgsky’s famous opera Khovanshchina, a dramatic story about the Streltsy revolt. Mikhail Rostovtsev, in a traditional tailcoat and white gloves, handed the opera glasses to his wife Sofia Mikhailovna:
– Chaliapin himself sings the elder Dosifey. This production will certainly be applauded in Paris, – he commented. – By the way, we are expecting Feodor Ivanovich on Tuesday, aren’t we?
– Yes, he promised to be there, – Sofia answered.
The couple had a box at the Mariinsky, and the theatre regulars knew them well. However, the Rostovtsevs’ St. Petersburg apartment itself was a cultural space. Tickets could be sold for the social events that were held there every week on Tuesdays. The entire creative and scientific intelligentsia of pre-revolutionary Petersburg passed through Rostovtsev’s salon. In addition to Chaliapin, Rachmaninoff, Bunin, Kuprin, Blok, Mandelstam, Bely, Balmont, Gippius, Sologub, Merezhkovsky, Glazunov, Benois, Roerich, Grabar, Dobuzhinsky, Berdyaev, Struve, Guchkov, literary scholar Kotlyarevsky, historians Zhebelev, Kareev, Oldenburg, conductor Koussevitzky and many others visited there. This was precisely the breeding ground for which its participants subsequently yearned so much. Alexander Blok, who often came to the Rostovtsevs’ evenings, listened to the host’s stories about the ancient nomads of the Black Sea region and wrote his programmatic poem:
Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians,
With slanted and greedy eyes!.. (literal translation from russian)
But the guests influenced the host to no lesser extent. For example, close acquaintance with Pavel Milyukov and Pyotr Struve led Mikhail Rostovtsev to the Cadet Party in 1905, the political core of which were liberal intellectuals. From that time on, not only historical but also socio-political works by Rostovtsev appeared in print. He actively collaborated as a publicist with the magazines Vestnik Evropy (Europe’s Bulletin), Mir Bozhiy (God’s World), Russkaya Mysl (Russian Thought), and wrote for the Cadet newspaper Svobodny Narod (Free People).
Portrait of the young scientist Mikhail Rostovtsev from the archives of St. Petersburg University.
In August 1917, shortly before the October Revolution that dramatically changed his life, Rostovtsev published an article entitled “The New System and Science”, the main idea of which is as follows: the preservation and development of culture and science in Russia depend on the firmness and stability of state power. The weakening of the state as a result of powerful revolutionary upheavals is the main danger to scientific and cultural life.
It is difficult for a professional historian to avoid parallels between the events of the past known to him and the observed realities. During 1917, Mikhail Rostovtsev worked on the book “The Birth of the Roman Empire” (published in 1918). This work is dedicated to the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, marked by civil wars, a bloody struggle for power with a large number of victims.
“In the dilemma of “king” or “freedom”, huge masses of Roman citizens, without hesitation, answered “freedom” and were ready to enter into a new battle for it,” writes Rostovtsev. – “For no one was the civil war a blessing, for everyone – the greatest disaster.” Rostovtsev notes that deaths, impoverishment of the population, hunger and general economic devastation led to other negative consequences: the erasure of regional cultural characteristics, the extinction of literature, philosophy, science and even “plastic arts” such as ceramics. This was the price to pay for the subsequent transformation of the city-state of Rome into an empire.
In the preface to the book, Mikhail Rostovtsev says with regret: “I don’t think that the history of the civil wars in Rome can bring anyone to their senses.” He was right: the Bolshevik leaders in Russia read completely different books.
Challenges of the Era
Even before the first Russian revolution of 1905, Rostovtsev began to engage in social activities. From the first days of the First World War until the autumn of 1917, he organized fundraising for the wounded and refugees. The French government, highly appreciating these merits of the scientist, awarded him the Legion of Honor (it is rarely awarded to foreigners). While the Provisional Government was in effect in Russia, Rostovtsev had the opportunity to join it. Pavel Milyukov, also a historian, unofficially invited his colleague to take the post of Minister of Public Education. Rostovtsev declined, not without regret: he needed a lot of free time to do science, and for a historian this meant numerous trips and months-long archaeological expeditions.
It is interesting that even after the victory of the Bolsheviks, Mikhail Ivanovich could become a prominent functionary in Russian science. Rostovtsev’s cousin was none other than Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, the first People’s Commissar of Education of the RSFSR (from October 1917 to September 1929). Lunacharsky’s mother, Alexandra Yakovlevna Rostovtseva, was the aunt of the hero of this essay. However, her son was not born in a legal marriage, and he got the surname Lunacharsky from his stepfather who adopted him. Mikhail Rostovtsev did not accept the revolution under any circumstances and hid the fact of his relationship with Lunacharsky until the end of his life.
In November 1917, Vladimir Lenin and the People’s Commissars signed a decree “On the arrest of the leaders of the civil war against the revolution.” According to this document, the Cadet Party was recognized as a party of enemies of the people, its leaders were subject to arrest and trial, and ordinary members were to be under close surveillance due to their connections with the anti-Bolshevik White movement.
This was already an obvious threat to Rostovtsev. He was a class enemy, like the literary professor Preobrazhensky, who lived alone in seven rooms. It should be noted that our hero, who rented an apartment on Bolshaya Morskaya Street, 34, lived alone with his wife, but his occupation, noble origins and personal acquaintance with the imperial family left him no chance. Moreover, Rostovtsev, as stated above, did not accept the October Revolution, foreseeing the possibility of the complete destruction of the cultural layer in Russia.
An analysis of the historical situation told Rostovtsev that things would only get worse. He had already spent the night with a revolver, suffered from insomnia, and was painfully searching for food in Petrograd, because there had been food shortages. The landline in their apartment received several strange calls with threats to “raise the inhabitants of the house with bayonets.” By June 1918, the scientist and his wife had decided to leave the country, hoping that this was just a long business trip, that in a few months or years the passions would subside, and all the “relocants” (neologism popular among recent russian emigrants to name themselves) would be able to return. It was like a spell for self-soothing. Deep down, Rostovtsev understood: this was exile, and probably forever. By the time of his departure, he was already an academician of the Berlin (since 1914) and Russian (since 1917) Academies of Sciences, a recognized scholar of classical studies, and a professor at St. Petersburg University (since 1901). He was 48 years old.
Historian’s Story
While the emigrant steamship carries Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev and his wife Sophia to Sweden, it is necessary to tell about the long journey that led our hero to his solid position as a leading figure in Russian science.
Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev was born in Zhitomir on October 29 (November 10), 1870, into a large family, where he was the sixth child (out of eight). His great-grandfather Pavel Rostovtsev was a merchant, a native of Rostov the Great, and his grandfather Yakov rose to the position of director of the gymnasium and the rank of state councilor, receiving hereditary nobility for his services in the field of education. His father, Ivan Yakovlevich, was a classical philologist and an active state councillor (rus: действительный статский советник). He ended up in Zhitomir for a reason: he was in charge of the education system there. Therefore, Mikhail’s education began in the provinces, at the Zhitomir classical gymnasium.
Then his father was promoted, entrusted with the management of the entire educational system of today’s Ukraine, and the family moved to Kyiv. Our hero’s father and grandfather were in many ways progressive people of their time. In particular, they did a lot to promote female education in Russia. Ivan Yakovlevich also served as the director of the Kyiv First Gymnasium, where Mikhail Rostovtsev continued his education and graduated with a medal in 1888. For his essay “On the Management of the Roman Provinces in the Last Period of the Republic”, presented to the Kiev branch of the Society of Classical Philology and Pedagogy, the gymnasium student received the Pirogov Prize. His first prize from a number of laurels and regalia that marked his path in science.
Rostovtsev’s first alma mater was Kyiv University (Historical and Philological Faculty). But after two years, the brilliant student transferred to the capital’s Imperial St. Petersburg University. The choice of specialty – Classical Studies – was influenced by both his father, who taught classical languages, and the Kyiv Byzantinist Yulian Kulakovsky, who himself inherited an interest in the Ancient World from the Nobel laureate and great historian Theodor Mommsen, as well as St. Petersburg professors, who are worth telling about in more detail.
Rostovtsev was greatly influenced by Thaddeus Zelinsky, a philologist and classical scholar, translator of Ovid and Sophocles, who taught him to compare many sources, work with ancient literature and documents, considering history and literature, culture and mythology as a single whole. Also in those years, the outstanding historian of Byzantine and Old Russian art, archaeologist Nikodim Kondakov, who was fascinated by the idea of the interpenetration and cross-influence of cultures, actively worked with the students. This “cross-pollination” and enrichment would later become the leitmotif of many of Rostovtsev’s works. Kondakov admitted that he did not really like teaching, that he preferred to sit in his office with books, but it was during Rostovtsev’s student years that he worked most actively with young specialists, even creating a “circle of fact-worshipers-antique scholars” at the Museum of Antiquities of St. Petersburg University. Its enthusiastic participants analyzed and compared not only written sources, but also archaeological artifacts, brands, inscriptions, frescoes. Rostovtsev not only mastered this fruitful scientific method, but also significantly improved it. He really was Kondakov’s best student, and the professor spoke of him, according to V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina, “with particular tenderness.”
Italian Eldorado
After graduating from the university in 1892, Mikhail was left at the department to prepare for a professorship. At that time, the best graduate students were given the opportunity to intern abroad to collect material for their dissertations. Having earned some money by teaching Greek and Latin at the Tsarskoye Selo Nikolaevskaya Gymnasium and literally obsessed with the history of the Roman Empire, Rostovtsev chose Pompeii as the main goal of his trip.
Excavations of this huge city began in the middle of the 18th century, but only by the end of the 19th century had acquired a systematic character. Luxurious houses with frescoes, painted ceilings, patterned mosaic floors, temples and brothels, an amphitheater and a forum, columns and bas-reliefs, streets and alleys, countless historical artifacts, from mattresses in the slave room to a golden lamp weighing almost 900 grams – all this wealth was dug up block after block literally before the eyes of the young graduate student. Here, during the excavations, another fateful acquaintance takes place – with the German archaeologist August Mau, who immediately attracted the young man to field work and became another great teacher for him. In particular, Mau identified 4 styles of Pompeian frescoes, according to which it was possible to confidently date the wall paintings. Mikhail was so carried away that he even arrived late to the gymnasium for the beginning of the school year.
But instead his first serious article appeared: “On the latest excavations in Pompeii.” This is an archaeological report of a descriptive nature – about all the excavated residential buildings and tombs, their decoration, etc. It is interesting that Rostovtsev questions the dating of the eruption of Vesuvius, which, according to the letters of Pliny the Younger, occurred in August 79 AD. The young historian points to a fresh find by archaeologists – ripe laurel fruits that ripen no earlier than October and “move” the death of Pompeii to late autumn. Rostovtsev’s scientific talent is already evident in these early works – the ability to select significant details, compare them with an array of previously known information, draw historical parallels, argue and build a convincing conception.
At the excavations in Pompeii. In the center in a white jacket is A. Mau. On the far left in the middle row is Mikhail Rostovtsev.
European Voyage
Having once breathed in the alluring air of European antiquities, Rostovtsev strove to see with his own eyes other places where the earth revealed layer after layer of the chronicle of ancient civilizations. In March 1895, he went on a second internship to Europe with the goal of writing a master’s thesis (today, such work corresponds to a candidate’s thesis). Instead of one year, his trip lasted three and required considerable financial investment from his family and the university. Mikhail Ivanovich first arrived in Constantinople and worked at the Russian Archaeological Institute. Then he went to Greece, where in Athens he met Boris Farmakovsky (who would soon become famous for his excavations of Olbia, a Greek colony on the Black Sea).
Then there were the islands of the Aegean Sea, the coast of Asia Minor, Italy, Austria-Hungary, France, England, the French colonies of Algeria and Tunisia with their ancient cities. During the trip, Rostovtsev fruitfully communicated with European historians, worked in archives and libraries. These connections would later come in handy many times. During the trip, he wrote and sent to Russia another article about Pompeii, or more precisely about one of the famous finds – the so-called “House of the Vettii” (Casa dei Vettii), which is often called the “Pompeii’s Sistine Chapel” because of its beautiful frescoes. He analyzed the subjects and style of the images in detail, finding points of intersection of Roman art with Greek and Eastern art.
In the summer of 1898, Mikhail returned to St. Petersburg with the finished text of his dissertation on the topic “History of State Taxation in the Roman Empire (from Augustus to Diocletian)”. Part of this11 work had already been published in Germany in German. Rostovtsev received the title of privat-docent at the Higher Women’s (Bestuzhev) Courses, and after defending his dissertation, the title of Master of Roman Literature. Mikhail Ivanovich was accepted to the staff of St. Petersburg University. Now he constantly gives lectures (Latin and Roman history), writes articles and prepares material for his next dissertation – a doctoral dissertation. The scientist had an extremely short break between dissertations – only 4 years. A few years later, he would become a corresponding member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences.
Rostovtsev on the roof of a building on the Capitoline Hill in Rome.
In 1901, an important event occurred in Rostovtsev’s personal life: he married twenty-three-year-old Sofia Mikhailovna Kulchitskaya, from a family of famous Polish aristocrats. She was his student at the Bestuzhev Courses, and her higher education distinguished her from the girls who were only interested in balls and dresses. She was interested in academic science, she even wrote articles for the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.
Thus, Rostovtsev found not only a life partner, but also a reliable assistant and secretary-organizer. Sophia took on a huge amount of technical work. For example, she compiled indexes for his books: footnotes, index of names and titles, list of illustrations. Today, this work has been simplified thanks to the computer, but in the 20th century, it was a large and painstaking work that had to be started over again if changes were made to the book and the page numbers “shifted”. Thanks to her excellent English, Sophia was able to edit her husband’s early English-language works. Subsequently, Sophia Mikhailovna completely organized Rostovtsev’s foreign business trips: she booked tickets, hotels, contacted archives, scientific institutes, and guides in advance. When Mikhail Ivanovich arrived at the place, his head was free to comprehend the large-scale historical processes of antiquity. And, of course, Sophia ordered the cab.
In the Steppes of Circum-Pontic Area
“Only in Russia do we have rich material illustrating the mixture of Greek and Iranian civilizations,” writes Rostovtsev in his book “Hellenism and Iranism in the South of Russia” (published in 1918, but based on an earlier essay from 1913). The northern Circum-Pontic area, especially ancient Panticapaeum, was an accessible environment for a Russian archaeologist, and Rostovtsev temporarily transferred his scientific interest to this area. In the summer, he always went with his wife to a dacha in the Crimea, where he studied archaeology, studied the Kerch tombs, and periodically went to Olbia to help his friend and colleague Boris Farmakovsky.
Rostovtsev was well aware that from about the 6th century BC to the 1st-2nd centuries AD, many large and small states and societies arose in the territory from the Danube to the foothills of the Urals. It was important for Rostovtsev to show that the Cimmerians, Sarmatians, Scythians, and the Bosporan Kingdom actively exchanged cultural products, even borrowing gods from their neighbors. There was a crossroads of civilizations here: on the one hand, the Greek colonies of the northern coast of the Black Sea, and on the other, powerful Persia, which also claimed control over these vast territories.
Cover of one of Mikhail Rostovtsev’s Russian publications.
Rostovtsev draws his material primarily from archaeological excavations of burial mounds. If in the past they were of interest only to robbers and gold hunters, now scientists have taken up the tombs. They have found in them a huge number of expensive iron and bronze weapons, rich horse harnesses, jewelry, wine horns, mirrors, and excellent pottery from Greece and Asia Minor. Rostovtsev gives an inspired description of the burial rites of the Scythian kings, which included the sacrifice of horses (sometimes up to several hundred), servants and the deceased’s wife, as well as ceremonial attire, weapons, jewelry, wine and meat.
Working later in all the large Greek colonies, such as Olbia, Panticapaeum, Nymphaeum, Chersonesus (Khersonesos), Rostovtsev sees not the barbarian-steppe, but the imperial luxury of burials: “In Taman, some crypts are plastered inside and painted in the same manner in which the walls of temples and public buildings were painted. In Panticapaeum, the painting was replaced by … canopies and carpets.” For him, the analysis of artistic styles, which he learned from August Mau, remains important. Rostovtsev is delighted to discover that the Sarmatians brought a new style of art to the Black Sea colonies – Romanesque. He notes that the Slavic tribes also learned a lot from the Sarmatians, Scythians and Greeks.
In 1901, Mikhail Ivanovich joined an archaeological expedition studying the ruins at Cape Ai-Todor. It was he who associated the discovered settlement with the Roman military camp of Charax. The word “Charax” itself can be translated from Greek as “fortified place”. Rostovtsev meticulously searches for information about it in ancient written sources. And he finds it! True, this name is mentioned only once. But in the fundamental work of the Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy (2nd century), who gives the coordinates of Charax. Rostovtsev concludes that this is the place they are digging in Crimea. He says that the Romans gradually increased the power of this garrison, since the entire southern coast of Crimea can be controlled from Cape Ai-Todor. The next ten years, during which archaeologists discovered fortress walls, towers, gates, barracks, baths, a lighthouse, a sanctuary and a water reservoir, confirmed the scientist’s hypothesis. For example, the construction of the giant stone wall of Charax was attributed to the Taurians, who lived here before the Romans arrived. But lime mortar was found in the masonry of the wall, the recipe for which was known to the Roman builders, but not the barbarians. Therefore, the wall was built by the Romans. And the entire structure of the citadel is in the classic Roman style. Already in 1907, a museum of archaeological finds was opened in Charax.
Ruins of the Roman fortress of Charax in Crimea.
In addition to working on excavations, Rostovtsev had the opportunity to work as a guide in Crimea. Of course, he would not have interrupted his scientific work for the sake of tourists, if the family of Emperor Nicholas II had not expressed a desire to see the antiquities of Chersonesus. Just six months before this visit, in January 1914, the Hermitage Theater premiered the biblical drama “Tsar of Judea” in the presence of a select audience. It was written by Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Romanov, a man of literary talent. The author invited Mikhail Rostovtsev, who by that time had a solid reputation as the leading expert on antiquities, including Jewish ones, to be a scientific consultant for the production. The Rostovtsevs were introduced to Nicholas II at the theater. And so Rostovtsev also conducts a tour of the ancient ruins in Crimea for the tsar. The Tsar was pleased and thanked the historian in his own way: he allocated money for a luxurious album, “Antique decorative painting in the south of Russia” Rostovtsev was accepted into the Berlin Academy of Sciences for this work. It was planned to publish the second and third volumes later, but the publication was prevented by the First World War.
To Look and to See
In his early books, Rostovtsev makes many references to ancient written sources, such as Herodotus. But the more he writes, the more richly his books are illustrated. The scientist begins to work more and more with visual sources: with household items found in burials and ancient settlements, frescoes and inscriptions, figurines and coins. Rostovtsev was the first among archaeologists to begin using the most important source of information about the Ancient World – tesserae. A tesserae is a token made of ivory, bronze, glass, lead or clay, which was not a monetary unit, but served to exchange for some goods or services (usually for bread and circuses – theatrical performances, funeral meals, etc.). Such tokens were perfectly preserved, and the meticulous Rostovtsev not only extracted a lot of useful information from the inscriptions and drawings on the tesserae, but also defended his doctoral dissertation on this material in 1903.
As Pavel Alipov, associate professor of the Department of History and Theory of Historical Science at the Russian State Humanitarian University, says, Rostovtsev was able to literally see and touch the past, which is separated from us by two thousand years. He was one of the first specialists who attached such importance to working with visual information. If Karamzin, Solovyov, Klyuchevsky and other masters used mainly written sources, such as chronicles, then Rostovtsev examines everything: what kind of thing it is, what is drawn on it and how it is drawn, where and when the same style was used. The figure of Perseus differs from the figure of Hercules, the attributes of Athena are not similar to the attributes of Hera, and so on. There was a tradition, and it also changed. This makes it possible to date artifacts and trace the cultural and trade interactions of ancient peoples.
It is no coincidence that Rostovtsev’s doctoral dissertation contains an astonishing (for the beginning of the 20th century) number of photographs. Having realized the importance of analyzing visual information, Rostovtsev demands that every layer of the excavation be photographed during his expeditions, and that any find be captured from different angles. The purpose of these actions is to preserve the image of the object for subsequent interpretations taking into account new data. He devoted his entire life to “writing history with the help of archeology.” Rostovtsev’s methods were adopted by his students, among whom there were many scientists: Count I. I. Tolstoy, S. I. Protasov, M. I. Maksimova, Elizaveta (Elsa) Mahler and others. N. Antsiferov, who graduated from Petrograd University in 1915, recalled Rostovtsev as a passionate lecturer who “gave a brilliantly expressive and profoundly meaningful analysis of the historical forces that were fighting.”
Roman tessera “Musicians” 1st century AD.
Permanent assignment
So, in the summer of 1918, Rostovtsev was 48 years old, a luminary of Russian historical science, and known abroad: since the end of the 19th century, his articles and travel notes often appeared in Western European publications. Some of them were originally written in European languages and have not been translated into Russian to this day. For example, a monograph on the Roman colonate (a special form of land serfdom) that was important to Rostovtsev was written in German, the main language of science in pre-war Europe. Unfortunately, World War I severed all scientific ties with the Germans.
The revolutionary upheavals and the Civil War in Russia in its acute phase forced the Rostovtsevs to look for ways to leave the country while it was still possible. In 1918, the Swedish archaeologist and cultural historian, Academician Oscar Montelius, sent Mikhail Ivanovich an invitation to work in Sweden. The Academy of Sciences officially issues the scientist a business trip to Europe for scientific research in libraries and museums. All colleagues understand that in the event of a victory for the Reds, this business trip is indefinite.
On June 30, 1918, the Rostovtsevs boarded a steamship. Like many emigrants of that time, they take a minimum of luggage. An extensive library of hundreds of volumes on classical antiquity was abandoned in Petrograd, in a beautiful apartment on Morskaya Street. A significant part of his papers also remained there – notebooks, letters, manuscripts of lectures, scientific and journalistic works. Fortunately, friends of the family managed to save it all. Today, Rostovtsev’s papers are stored in the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg and in the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Mikhail Rostovtsev with his wife Sophia.
In Search of a Chair
The couple spent two years in Europe. From Stockholm they quickly moved to Oxford in England. From there Rostovtsev wrote to his teacher N. Kondakov: “There was absolutely nothing to do in Russia, nothing to fight for, and I considered and consider it unnecessary to die needlessly and usefully to the delight of the Bolsheviks.”
Rostovtsev’s situation is better than that of most émigrés: he is known in scientific circles, he is awarded the title of honorary doctor and is given the opportunity to give a course of lectures. Mikhail Ivanovich closely follows the events in Russia, writes many articles and brochures against the usurpation of power by the Bolsheviks: “I do what I can, I write, I speak, sometimes I shout, but this terrible machine of the masses and states crawls along its way… straight into the abyss.” Milyukov arrives in London, and here the well-known suffragette, “the only man in the Cadet Party” Ariadna Tyrkova and her second husband, journalist Harold Williams, an authoritative expert in “Russian affairs”, help the White émigrés. Together they create the Russian Liberation Committee, hold lectures and talks, publish brochures and even a weekly, “New Russia”. In 2002, Rostovtsev’s political articles were published in Russia as a separate collection, revealing to the reader the author’s social and journalistic talent. In addition to political work, Rostovtsev tries to help his colleagues who fled Soviet Russia in finding employment (in particular, the Byzantinist A. A. Vasiliev).
Cover of the German edition of Rostovtsev’s book on the Roman Empire.
Rostovtsev’s English is not very good: he only began studying the language in 1912. His classical education focused on German, French, Italian, as well as Greek and Latin. Britain, exhausted by the war, does not give the Russian professor a chair at the university due to huge competition. He could probably work in Germany, but his German colleagues were on the other side of the front. Rostovtsev took a radical anti-German position from the very beginning of the war, which harmed him. Eduard Meyer, a renowned expert in ancient history, Egyptologist and orientalist, is rumored to have bequeathed his chair to Rostovtsev, but German scholars refused to appoint an opponent of Pan-Germanism to it.
Rostovtsev’s future fate, as often happens, was determined by a short chain of events: 1) The College de France offers the Russian historian to teach a separate course for its students, promising to pay 5,000 francs, and our hero arrives in Paris. 2) The Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920 brings together leading experts from the Allied powers, and Rostovtsev is invited as an expert in historical science. 3) He accidentally ends up at the same table with the American historian and classical scholar William Westerman, who by that time had already been working at the University of Wisconsin for twelve years, and is now up for promotion and looking for a worthy candidate to replace him.
“So, the New World it is!” Rostovtsev responded to Westerman’s written invitation, and in 1920 he moved with his wife to the United States, to the town of Madison, located near Chicago. “I consider America to be the least threatened by Bolshevism,” he noted in a letter to Kondakov.
From Campus to Campus
Rostovtsev works in Wisconsin for five years: he lectures, writes, publishes books, and during vacations receives paid leave from the university to travel to Europe to find new material for research. The quiet, measured life on campus, the stability that has finally been found, would have pleased another immigrant, but Mikhail Ivanovich complains of boredom in his letters and diaries. Theater, opera, ballet, social evenings in the circle of refined public – the Rostovtsevs do not find any of this in Wisconsin. The level of historical knowledge of students also does not please the scientist; it is as if he has returned to the level of a high school teacher. “Yes, we have been scattered. Sometimes I wake up and do not know whether I am in a dream or in reality. But I have to get up and go give lectures to American schoolchildren,” Mikhail Ivanovich writes in a private letter in 1920. It was then, in isolation from the familiar cultural layer, that Rostovtsev’s chronic depression began to manifest itself, which he has so far managed to control thanks to his incredible capacity for work and new historical research.
Rostovtsev is a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Emigration to Europe, and then to the United States, forced the professor to look for a new department.
Rostovtsev’s career in the world of science does not stand still. In 1925, he transferred to work at the prestigious (“Ivy League”) Yale University and moved to the east coast of America – to the state of Connecticut, the city of New Haven, where he worked until the end of his life. Here, despite the global economic crisis, the scientist had excellent conditions: a large personal office, where his new library was located, a decent salary, every three years of teaching a special bonus – a free year for travel and archaeological excavations, which was paid for by university funds. The president of Yale wrote in a report that an outstanding scientist had come to work for them, and he could not be lost under any circumstances.
It is interesting that in 1940, when the historian was already 70 years old, he was supposed to retire. At that moment, Harvard invited him to work. Then Yale University, not wanting to let go of their star professor, made an exception: they created a lifetime post of director of archaeological research especially for him and introduced a special position with a solid salary and a whole staff of employees. Of course, Rostovtsev did not remain in debt: his new research strengthened the glory of the already legendary history department of Yale.
Magic East
In the 1920s, Mikhail Rostovtsev published several fundamental works on his favorite research topics: “Iranians & Greeks in Southern Russia”, “Scythia and Bosporus”, “ The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire” (two volumes), he also wrote a short history of the ancient world (two volumes: “The Orient and Greece”, “Rome”). These popular books were originally written in English and translated into many languages, and they replenished university libraries around the world.
Having finally received American citizenship and, not without regret, parting with his long-defunct Russian Empire passport, Rostovtsev undertook a long journey to the Middle East and North Africa (he had previously been to Algeria and Tunisia, this time he visited Egypt). He negotiated with the European émigré newspapers “Rul” (The steering wheel) (Berlin) and “Vozrojdenie” (Renaissance) (Paris) to publish his travel notes, and later, having supplemented them with new essays, he published the book “On the Middle East” (the Russian reader knows it as “Caravan Cities”, the book was translated into Russian in 2010).
For Rostovtsev, caravan trade is not just the movement of goods and their exchange, it is a situation when one civilization goes to visit another. Evidence of these visits, of the interrelations of peoples and cultures, has come down to our days in the form of frescoes and wall inscriptions, funerary steles, statues, bas-reliefs, decorative figurines, trade signs, coins, tesserae, various household utensils, weapons and fragments of textiles. Often, archaeological finds in Petra, Jerash, Palmyra and Dura-Europos bear images of a camel — the ship of the desert and the main source of wealth for these cities. Rostovtsev even describes the cult of Arsu — a new, highly specialized caravan god of Palmyra. Rostovtsev notes that land roads in ancient times were more reliable than sea roads, since people did not immediately learn to trust the sea. And caravan trade was developed and profitable. Key points flourished: magnificent paved streets, temples, theaters, hippodromes and palaces were built there.
Mikhail Rostovtsev understands at first glance that there is still much to dig and dig in the Middle East, and the study of trade through archeology will provide a wealth of information about economic ties at the crossroads of civilizations, the origin of laws, taxes, local production, the spread of news, road infrastructure, cultures and languages. He enthusiastically describes some interesting finds. For example, an inscription in Greek letters in Latin, in which a cook immortalized the number of hams served during a meal to a Roman inhabitant of the palace. Or a leather shield on which a mercenary soldier painted in color the route of his movement from the Balkan Peninsula to Dura (present-day Syria) – this is one of the oldest maps known to science!
“Every day brings us something new… And this new requires long and detailed work… work not only from books and publications, but to an even greater extent work on the spot,” Mikhail Ivanovich informs his reader.
Every summer, Mikhail Rostovtsev goes on a long trip to Europe or the Middle East.
However, Rostovtsev’s essays guarantee rich impressions not only for professional historians, but also for ordinary tourists, to whom he warmly recommends a trip to Palestine, Petra, Amman and Jerash. If at the beginning of the 20th century such a trip seemed extremely difficult (it was necessary to equip a caravan, find guards, obtain permission from the Turkish authorities), then during the years of the British Mandate everything became much easier: cars, hotels, roads, guides appeared. Rostovtsev describes, for example, his first impression of Petra: “Elegant columns, bizarre arches connecting columns and covering niches, statues in niches… As if a grandiose decoration of a Hellenistic theater stood before us.” The historian advises spending in Petra, “the most magnificent of all caravan cities,” not an hour or two, but several nights: listen to the howling of jackals, make a pilgrimage to the mountain sanctuaries.
Treasures of Dura-Europos
Tourism is tourism, but a classical scholar needs new material, which means excavations. And in a place where little had been excavated before. In this sense, Dura-Europos, a caravan city on the Euphrates that existed from about 300 BC to 256 AD, became a real treasure for Rostovtsev. If you search the Internet for images today using the query “Dura Europos”, you will be amazed by the volume of archaeological finds and the richness of colors that were buried for centuries in the Syrian sands.
“The desert sand has preserved in Dura not only what the earth preserves in other areas of the Ancient World: stone, ceramics and metal – but also wood, fabrics, leather and paper… texts on parchment and papyrus. We know from Egypt how valuable such finds are,” Rostovtsev states. He knew very well that European scientists had failed to find funds for large-scale excavations in Dura, and he made a great effort to obtain them in America. With the support of James Angell, president of Yale, and the Rockefeller Foundation, he began excavations in Dura, which lasted from 1928 to 1939. In addition to him, archaeologists from Europe participated in the work, since Rostovtsev himself could not be present at the site all the time. Despite his enthusiasm, he was no longer young and unwell, and his students were doing the excavation. He himself wrote about the archaeologists’ way of life: “the work is dirty and dusty; very hot or very cold, depending on the time of year, and almost always exhausting and hungry… The Arabs have sheep and goats, and their meat can be bought, but it is practically inedible; we didn’t find any milk, and the bread tasted like chewing gum… So we ate canned food.” His notes also contain complaints about the Syrian workers hired on site: they need to be watched all the time because they tend to spoil the finds, steal them for resale, and also prefer to disappear from the excavations, having earned some minimum they need. Rostovtsev spends most of the time leading the expedition in absentia, studying the reports, and here the rule of meticulously photographing the objects found has served him well. “I like to see the things I study,” Rostovtsev writes to his Belgian colleague Franz Cumont, who was also among the expedition leaders.
In terms of the number of finds, Dura became a sensation in historical science. It was the outskirts of the Roman Empire, but that was what made it interesting: pagan temples of Baal, Adonis and Zeus, a synagogue, the oldest Christian church, a market, baths, a Roman garrison peacefully coexisted next to each other, and the population was mixed (Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, Jews, Persians). Rostovtsev even gave a report to the Vatican, during which he said that he had discovered the earliest center of Christian art. The wall paintings from the house church in Dura-Europos date back to the first half of the third century, that is, they are older than the paintings of the ancient Christian catacombs of Rome and Naples! They depict Adam and Eve in paradise, Jesus walking on water and other subjects that formed the basis of Christian art. In 1932, a parchment fragment of the Gospel text was found – another sensational find. Many newspapers reprinted someone’s apt expression “Dura is the Pompeii of the East.”
The caravan city of Dura in Syria was called the “Pompeii of the East.”
At Rostovtsev’s insistence, many artifacts, including frescoes from the church, were taken from Syria to Europe and the United States, which saved them from subsequent destruction by ISIS militants. The Yale Art Gallery received about 10,000 archaeological items. Not every museum can boast such a collection.
Ancient Proletariat
Let us recall that even at the dawn of his career as an ancient scholar, Mikhail Rostovtsev was interested in the economic life of Ancient Rome. He devoted both his master’s and doctoral dissertations to this. In 1941, the classic three-volume work “The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World” was published, in which the scholar explains the functioning and decline of the Roman Empire through terms understandable to the reader of the twentieth century: “bourgeoisie”, “proletariat”, “ancient capitalism”. He writes about how the state of farmers under the rule of feudal lords gradually became capitalist. The stratum of the urban bourgeoisie grew and was a reliable support for the central government. The book notes that personal qualities and intelligence could provide high positions even to a person who did not have the privileges of birthright. Reading this, it is impossible not to recall the history of Rostovtsev’s own family, because his great-grandfather was a merchant, and his grandfather had already risen to the rank of state councilor, providing his descendants with a noble title.
Rostovtsev’s elegant style of dress distinguished him not only on the American campus, but even at excavations.
Rostovtsev formulated his concept of the reasons for the decline of the empire back in 1911, when he lectured at St. Petersburg University. Subsequently, his vision of the historical process was supported by many years of work with archaeological sites and documents. Gibbon wrote that Rome was destroyed by Christianity, barbarian invasion and economic crisis. Rostovtsev points to the confrontation between the city and the village, which intensified during the era of civil wars in the 3rd century AD.
The Roman army was based on uneducated and uncultured peasants, for whom military service was the only available career. They entered the struggle against the cities, the urban bourgeoisie and the cultural heritage associated with them. Winning this class struggle, they destroyed the economic and social power of the empire, and the external enemy only completed this process. “The proletarian army… most likely seeks land for itself; those thrown out of their familiar places seek, first of all, to return to them or to replace them with new ones. Therefore, every large army… demands, first of all, from its victorious leader land, and land in Italy,” Rostovtsev formulates (it is very important to note that in ancient Rome the word “proletarian” was used to refer to all representatives of the lower class of citizens, the landless and the propertyless, including peasants). Rostovtsev’s ideas about the collapse of the Roman Empire were partly inspired by experiences about the collapse of the Russian Empire.
Phantom Pains
So, Mikhail Rostovtsev is in demand and favored by the scientific community. One publication after another follows (according to the Russian historian of science Sergei Krikh, “no historian of antiquity was translated or published in European languages in the 1920s-1930s so abundantly”), round tables are held, titles are awarded. Being a professor at Yale University, he is also a doctor honoris causa of Oxford, Harvard, Cambridge, an academician of the British, Swedish, Berlin, New York Academies of Sciences. In 1935, he became the president of the American Historical Association – the first time this position was occupied by an immigrant. He was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), the American Archaeological Institute, the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences and a number of European academies. Rostovtsev lectures in 6 languages, works in leading archives, libraries and museums.
It would seem that an émigré scientist can only dream of such a fate. Even despite the fact that in his native country it is not customary to talk about him, a White émigré, except in a critical manner, and in the USSR in 1928 he was expelled from the Academy of Sciences. What oppresses and torments the outstanding historian, known to the whole world? What is the reason for his long-term depression, from which he tries to escape into the cozy environment of books and archaeological artifacts? Today, when numerous works about Rostovtsev himself have appeared, we can see that after fleeing St. Petersburg he seemed to have frozen in his “imperialism”. Until the end of his life he wrote in Russian in the old spelling, with “yats”, not recognizing the Bolshevik reform. He used all calendar dates according to the “old style”, and celebrated his birthday only according to the Julian calendar! Once his wife, together with his university colleagues, organized a surprise for him for his birthday according to the new style. Rostovtsev was very angry and demonstratively refused to participate in the celebration. He was irritated even by the mention of the “red dominance” in his homeland. Once in Wisconsin he was given a bouquet of red roses for Christmas, and Rostovtsev noted with displeasure that he no longer liked anything red.
Today we know that it was precisely because of Rostovtsev’s contempt for proletarian culture that Maxim Gorky did not receive the Nobel Prize in 1933. They had known each other since before the revolution. According to Maria Kuprina, the wife of the famous writer, Gorky approached the historian with a statement that he would like to study numismatics and asked him to recommend literature. To this, Mikhail Ivanovich replied with some arrogance: “Why do you need it? After all, no matter how many books you read on oriental studies, Egyptology, archeology and numismatics, which you just mentioned, you will still not bring any benefit to science and will remain a layman in it. It is better to leave us, scientists, to the work to which we have dedicated ourselves and where we are useful.” Gorky, according to the same diary entries, was offended and did not try to start a conversation anymore. And in 1933, the Swedish Academy of Sciences consulted the Nobel Committee on Literature. The question was being decided which of the Russians should receive the prize – Maxim Gorky or Ivan Bunin. Rostovtsev, as the only Russian in the Swedish Academy, sharply opposed Gorky. And that was how the question was decided.
Mikhail Rostovtsev was very upset by the loss of that cultural layer, an artifact and rarity of which he himself was. He clearly began to suffer in Madison, Wisconsin, because the town reminded him of either Voronezh or Peterhof, but devoid of palaces and imperial splendor. They loved cinema and baseball here, but there was no opera or literary readings. “The democracy here belittles culture, dilutes it,” the historian complained in a private letter. At first, he also had a strong aversion to English speech: “barbaric language,” “dog language.”
The democratic foundations of American society did not fit with the aristocratic style of the Rostovtsevs, accustomed to respectful servants and white gloves. “You can see the honorary dean … with a broom or a shovel in the garden … and his wife in an apron preparing food,” writes Rostovtsev, as anthropologists write about the shocking customs of savages from lost islands. He plunges into work again and again, trying to escape from reality, not to think about the fact that everything is destroyed in his native country.
Already since the late 40s, the scientist constantly admitted that he had been losing the will to live. He no longer wants to publish new books, he is ashamed of what he has written. Rostovtsev died in New Haven on October 20, 1952. In the last years of his life, he spent a lot of time in hospitals, underwent electroshock treatment, which was fashionable at that time. He even had a craniotomy. But these measures did not help where even inspiring ancient antiquities were powerless. The historical era changed, the brilliant aristocracy of the 19th century disappeared, Western science firmly took the new democratic rails. It would be a stretch to compare this process with the decline of the Roman Empire, but the feelings of an individual are not fundamental scientific research, they do not need justification. For 34 years in a row, Rostovtsev suffered from phantom pains after the forced amputation of Russian culture, which formed him as a person.
Cultural Heritage
When analyzing Mikhail Rostovtsev’s contribution to science, it should be noted that even the “smallest forms” of his intellectual work, such as articles and reviews, became an event and acquired independent value. Here is a typical example: when his fellow historian Boris Farmakovsky finished a monograph on Olbia, a Greek colony not far from modern Nikolaev, Rostovtsev wrote such an impressive review in terms of volume and significance that the Academy of Sciences decided to award two medals at once: the Large Gold Medal to Farmakovsky, and the Small Medal to Rostovtsev, who created an independent work, and not a routine retelling on two pages.
Portrait of Mikhail Rostovtsev by K. A. Somov.
The list of Mikhail Ivanovich’s own scientific works contains 680 items. He has no equal in the number of titles in historical science. However, after his death, the policy of McCarthyism against communists is in full swing in the United States. In connection with this, persecution of all prominent Russians begins. The scientific world in America is trying to forget or downplay the significance of Rostovtsev’s works. Only in the 1980s, closer to the end of the Cold War, did this name begin to return both in Russia and in America, where annual Rostovtsev lectures are now held. They gather scholars from all over the world and are devoted to the topics that fell within the field of scientific interest of Mikhail Ivanovich, as well as works that “go beyond disciplinary, geographical and chronological boundaries,” as stated on the website of ISAW – the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. The name of the researcher entered history and archeology textbooks all over the world. The multi-volume “Cambridge History of the Ancient World,” written with his active participation, is still (!) the most authoritative reference publication on ancient history. The leading modern historiographer H. White calls Rostovtsev “one of the most influential historians of antiquity in the 20th century.” The colossal work that made the German antiquarian Theodor Mommsen famous in the 19th century was continued by Rostovtsev – the Mommsen of the 20th century.
It is undeniable that Rostovtsev is the leader in creating monumental works on the socio-economic history of ancient Rome and the Hellenistic world. But his contribution to the history of the ancient south of Russia, including the history of fine arts and architecture, is no less important. Rostovtsev is also a world-class master in comparing and interpreting written sources and archaeological sites. He became one of the pioneers of analyzing and popularizing visual information. Without him, the Syrian fortress of Dura-Europos with its rich and diverse archaeological sites would not have thundered throughout the world.
The fate of the scientist and his path in science began to be actively discussed in Russia since the early 90s, when interest in the Russian Diaspora arose. Rostovtsev’s 150th anniversary was widely celebrated by the scientific community in 2020. Two collections of documents and articles were published based on his biography (“Scythian Novel” and “Parthian Shot”). A number of Mikhail Rostovtsev’s books, which were published only in foreign languages, have now been translated and published in Russian.
Vadim Zuev, a Russian scientist and archaeologist, quotes one of the master’s students: “Whoever knew M. I. Rostovtsev knew greatness!” This greatness comes not only from the research scale of the figure, not only from the number of titles, ranks, publications, but also from the special spirit of this man, who became the embodiment of the image of a Russian scientist – a refined intellectual. He excavated and exposed one after another the cultural layers of vanished civilizations, and the culture to which he himself belonged was ostracized and almost completely destroyed in his homeland. Interest in Rostovtsev’s personality has not waned even today, when a new Diaspora has emerged, uniting Russian figures of science and culture who emigrated. I would like to believe that their professional destiny will be as successful as that of Mikhail Ivanovich Rostovtsev.
Text: ANNA KUTUZOVA
Sources
P.A. Alipov. Historian M.I. Rostovtsev. Scientific success of an emigrant.
150 years since the birth of M.I. Rostovtsev
Rostovtsev Mikhail Ivanovich (Wikipedia)
E.D. Frolov. Russian Science of Antiquity
M.I. Rostovtsev (1870-1952). Brief biography.
On the path to freedom: how Ariadna Tyrkova was involved in politics in pre-revolutionary Russia
Анна Кутузова 30.10.2024