Six boxes at the end of the collection were closed for 15-25 years after death of George Vernadsky (12 June 1973).
This collection is located on-site.
Correspondence, manuscripts, documents, photographs, subject files, printed materials, and memorabilia of historian George Vernadsky (Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadskii; 1887-1973). Most of the collection consists of his personal and professional papers, circa 1918-1973. Sizable groups of materials also concern members of his family, especially his wife Nina (1884-1971); his father, scientist Vladimir I. Vernadskii (1863-1945); his mother Nataliia E. Vernadskaia (1860-1943); and his sister Nina V. Toll' (1898-circa 1976).
Cataloged correspondents include: (to George and Nina Vernadsky) Boris Bakhmeteff, Roman Jakobson, Mikhail Karpovich, Nikolai Losskii, Vladimir Nabokov, Sergei Rakhmaninov, Geroid T. Robinson, Mikhail Rostovtsev, Petr Savitskii, and Aleksandr Vasil'ev; (to Vladimir Vernadskii) Henri Bergson and Petr Struve; and Ivan Turgenev. There are a great many letters by George and Nina Vernadsky's colleagues, friends, and relatives, including many historians, and members of the Bromberg, Il'inskii, Rodichev, Romberg, and Staritskii families. There are also many letters from Vladimir and Nataliia Vernadskii to their children. Other sizable groups of letters by various persons were written to Vladimir Vernadskii and Nataliia Vernadskaia in 1888-1896 and in the 1920s and 1930s, when they were staying intermittently in Western Europe; and to members of the Staritskii family, cousins of George Vernadsky. A number of files concern George Vernadsky's professional contacts with journals, conferences, organizations, and publishers, in the fields of Russian, Byzantine, and Asian history.
Series II: Manuscripts and documents
Manuscripts consist chiefly of George Vernadsky's articles, lectures, essays, books, and notes. There are also items by others, such as Iurii Arbatskii, Iakov Bromberg, Loren Graham, Petr Savitskii, and Vladimir Vernadskii. Photographs are chiefly of George and Nina Vernadsky and their friends and relations.
This collection is arranged in five series. Selected material cataloged; remainder arranged.
You will need to make an appointment in advance to use this collection material in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library reading room. You can schedule an appointment once you've submitted your request through your Special Collections Research Account.
Six boxes at the end of the collection were closed for 15-25 years after death of George Vernadsky (12 June 1973).
This collection is located on-site.
Identification of specific item; Date (if known); George Vernadsky Papers; Box and Folder (if known); Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries.
Rodichev Family Papers: contains correspondence between Nina Vernadsky, niece of Fedor Izmaĭlovich Rodichev and Ekaterina Aleksandrovna Rodicheva.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Karpovich Papers: Karpovich was Vernadsky's counterpart at Harvard University. Vernadsky's five volume History of Russia was intended to be a ten-volume collaboration with Karpovich, but Karpovich died before the project could be completed.
Gift of George and Nina Vernadsky, in seven groups donated between 1953 and 1973, and Nina V. Toll, in two groups donated in 1975 and 1976.
Materials may have been added to the collection since this finding aid was prepared. Contact rbml@columbia.edu for more information.
Selected correspondence and manuscripts on microfilm. See container list for information about specific materials' availability on microfilm. Reels containing materials from this collection include 89-2002-4, 94-2050, 94-2051, 94-2052, 95-2010, and 97-2022-3.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George and Nina Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1953.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George and Nina Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1957.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George and Nina Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1959.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George and Nina Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1962.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George and Nina Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1965.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George and Nina Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1968.
Papers: Source of acquisition--George Vernadsky. Method of acquisition--Bequest; Date of acquisition--1973.
Papers: Source of acquisition--Nina V. Toll. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1975.
Papers: Source of acquisition--Nina V. Toll. Method of acquisition--Gift; Date of acquisition--1976.
Columbia University Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Papers Accessioned 1953.
Papers Accessioned 1957.
Papers Accessioned 1959.
Papers Accessioned 1962.
Papers Accessioned 1965.
Papers Accessioned 1968.
Papers Accessioned 1973.
Papers Accessioned 1975.
Papers Accessioned 1976.
Papers Processed 10/--/82.
Materials were intellectually arranged into the current series structure at the same time the finding aid was converted to EAD. None of the materials were physically rearranged.
2020-04-13 PDF finding aid converted to EAD by CLB and KSD.
Georgii Vladimirovich Vernadskii was born on August 20, 1887 in St. Petersburg. His parents were Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadskii and Nataliia E. Vernadskaia, née Staritskaia. He had one sister, Nina, who was born in 1898.
George Vernadsky married his second cousin, Nina Vladimirovna Ilfinskaia (1884-1971), in 1908. They were to have no children. He graduated in history from Moscow University in 1910. He received a master's degree in history (equivalent to the American Ph.D.) from Petrograd University in 1917; his dissertation was, "Russkoe masonstvo v tsarstvovanii Ekateriny II." He was a private-docent at Petrograd University in 1913-17, a professor at Perm' University in 1917-18, and then at Tauride University in Simferopol' in 1918-1920. He took little part in politics as a young man, but was a member of the liberal Kadet Party in 1906-1908 and 1917. In 1920 he was briefly head of the Press Department (Otdel Pechati) in General Wrangel's Crimean government. Through most of his life, however, he seems to have been a relentlessly non-political man.
George and Nina Vernadsky left the Crimea at the time of the evacuation of Wrangel's army in November 1920. They spent several months in Istanbul, and 1921-1922 in Athens. In 1922 they went to Prague, where he was a member of the Russkaia Uchebnaia Kollegiia and a professor at the Russkii Iuridicheskii Fakul'tet. He stayed there until 1927. While in Prague, he was a founding member of the Kondakov Institute. He also became intellectually and personally close with members of the Eurasianist movement, especially Petr Savitskii.
The Vernadskys came to the United States in 1927, on the invitation of Yale University. George remained at Yale for the rest of his career, as a research associate until 1946 and then as a professor until 1956, when he retired. In this period he was also at times a guest lecturer and professor at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and Western Reserve.
George Vernadsky's major field of research and teaching was medieval and early modern Russian history, but he also made significant contributions in the Asian and Byzantine areas. His best known works were his one-volume A History of Russia, which went through 5 editions, and five volumes of a projected 10-volume history of Russia. Among his long-term professional associations were the Kondakov Institute, the Medieval Academy of America, the American Historical Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies.
Nina Vernadsky died on October 18, 1971. George died two years later, on June 12, 1973.
In order to distinguish between George Vernadsky's sister, Nina Vladimirovna Vernadskaia Toll', and his wife, Nina Vladimirovna Ilfinskaia Vernadskaia, this finding aid refers to George Vernadsky's wife by her Anglicized name, Nina Vernadsky.
Vladimir I. Vernadskii was born on 28 February 1863 in St. Petersburg; his father, Ivan V. Vernadskii (1821-1884), was a professor of economics. Vladimir Vernadskii graduated from St. Petersburg University in 1885. He defended his master's dissertation in l891 and his doctorate (the European habilitation) 6 years later. In 1890 he became a private-docent at Moscow University, and in 1898 a professor; he remained in that position until 1911, when he and many other professors lost their posts for political reasons. He was a member of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg from 1906, a founder of the liberal Kadet Party, and also served on the State Council (Gosudarstvennyi Sovet).
Vernadskii's main fields were mineralogy and crystallography, but his particular specialization has been described as biogeochemistry. His was a remarkable career, in that he was a distinguished scholar in both Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, and well thought of also in the West. Vernadskii became the first head of the Soviet Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He stayed in Western Europe through the mid-1920s, but then elected to return to the Soviet Union, where he and his wife, Nataliia, remained except for several trips to the West. He kept up regular contact with his children, George Vernadsky and Nina Toll', both of whom emigrated to Europe and, eventually, to the United States. He received the Stalin Prize in 1943.
Vernadskii died on 6 January 1945, two years after his wife. Some of his works have appeared in English and French as well as in Russian, and selections of his writings were published posthumously in the USSR.
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