Steven Usitalo (PhD McGill University) is an associate professor at the Department of History, Northern State University. He is the co-editor with William Benton Whisenhunt of Russian and Soviet History: From the Time of Troubles to the Collapse of the Soviet Union (2008).
“Steven A. Usitalo’s The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov: A Russian
National Myth is a pioneering study of Mikhail Lomonosov’s
scholarly reputation in the Russian cultural imagination. As every
Russian has been learning in school beginning in the mid-nineteenth
century until the present, Lomonosov was a polymath, a genius to
whom Russian culture is indebted for the creation of not only
poetry but also of virtually every other scientific and social
discipline, including chemistry, physics, geography, history, and
linguistics. The author convincingly demonstrates the mythological
nature of this reputation and traces its emergence from the
eighteenth-century biographies of Lomonosov to the work of the most
enthusiastic twentieth-century historian of Lomonosov’s life and
work, Boris Menshutkin, whose many articles and books have
solidified and perpetuated the myth of Lomonosov as the greatest
national genius. Erudite and skillfully argued, the book is bound
to become obligatory reading for every Lomonosov scholar, science
and literary historians alike.”
*Irina Reyfman, Columbia University*
“With his book, Usitalo has proven that it is possible to write in
an original way about an old topic and make it exciting and
relevant. The author not only deconstructs and obliterates the old
myth, but retraces the true story of Lomonosov, the scientist. . .
. With this book Usitalo advances not just our understanding of
Lomonosov, but opens the window to a larger study of the role of
myth-making in the development of national consciousness.”
*Canadian Slavonic Papers, Vol. LVI, Nos. 1-2, March-June 2014*
“The Invention of Mikhail Lomonosov has potential appeal to a
number of audiences. For historians of science, this study provides
insight into the particularities of the Russian case and how it
differs from, and is similar to, the veneration and self-fashioning
of non-Russian scientists such as Galileo in early modern Europe or
Benjamin Franklin in the United States. Historians of Russia and
the Soviet Union will also profit from this book’s intriguing ideas
about the 'mythogenic' qualities of Russian culture, where cults of
personality— beginning with political figures and extending to the
pantheon of literary, engineering, and cosmonaut heroes—play such a
prominent role in politics and in the propagation of ideas about
what it means to be a Russian.”
*Isis, Vol. 105, No. 3 (September 2014)*
“The substance and merit of Usitalo’s study is his richly
documented and copiously footnoted critical reconstruction of the
myth of Lomonosov the scientist and its growth and reconfigurations
over time, set within the broader context of the pan-European
perception of scientific biography.”
*Slavic and East European Journal, 58.2 (Summer 2014)*
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