Born on May 22 (June 3 according to the old calendar) 1843 in St. Petersburg in the family of the head of the customs district of St. Petersburg.
Like many children from noble families of that time, Clement received varied home education from an early age. Under the influence of his progressive-minded father, the boy absorbed liberal republican views from childhood.
Since 1860, Timiryazev K.A. went to study at St. Petersburg University at the cameral (law) faculty, but then moved to another faculty - physics and mathematics in the natural sciences department. In 1861, for participating in student unrest and refusing to cooperate with authorities, he was expelled from the university. He was allowed to continue his studies at the university as a volunteer only after a year. As a student, he had already published a number of articles on Darwinism, as well as on socio-political topics. In 1866, Timiryazev successfully completed his studies with a candidate's degree and a gold medal for his work “On Liver Mosses,” which was never published.
Timiryazev began his scientific activity under the guidance of the well-known Russian botanist A. N. Beketov. The first real scientific work of K. A. Timiryazev, “A device for studying the decomposition of carbon dioxide,” was published in 1868. In the same year, the young scientist went abroad to expand his knowledge and experience, as well as to prepare for a professorship. His teachers and mentors included: Chamberlain, Bunsen, Kirchhoff, Berthelot, Helmholtz and Claude Bernard. The formation of K. A. Timiryazev’s worldview was influenced by the revolutionary democratic upsurge in Russia, and the development of his scientific thinking was influenced by a whole galaxy of naturalists, among whom were D. I. Mendeleev, I. M. Sechenov, I. I. Mechnikov, A. M. Butlerov, L. S. Tsenkovsky, A. G. Stoletov, brothers Kovalevsky and Beketov. K. A. Timiryazev was strongly influenced by the works of such great Russian revolutionary democrats as V. G. Belinsky, A. I. Herzen, N. G. Chernyshevsky, D. I. Pisarev and N. A. Dobrolyubov, who were interested in natural science and used scientific advances to justify materialistic views of nature. The evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin had a huge influence on the talented scientist. Timiryazev was one of the first among Russian scientists to become acquainted with Karl Marx’s “Capital” and imbued with new ideas.
Upon returning home in 1871, Timiryazev K. A. successfully defended his thesis “Spectral analysis of chlorophyll” for a master’s degree and became a professor at the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy in Moscow (currently it is called the Moscow Agricultural Academy named after K. A. Timiryazev) . Until 1892, Timiryazev gave full lectures on botany there. At the same time, the scientist led an active and eventful activity. In 1875, Timiryazev became a doctor of botany for his work “On the absorption of light by plants.” In 1877 he began working at the Department of Anatomy and Physiology of Plants at Moscow University. In addition, he regularly lectured at Moscow women's collective courses. He was the chairman of the botanical department of the Society of Natural History Lovers, which at that time worked at Moscow University.
It is worth noting that from the very beginning of his writing activity, Timiryazev’s scientific work was distinguished by strict consistency and unity of plan, elegance of experimental technology and accuracy of methods. Many issues outlined in Timiryazev’s first scientific works were expanded and supplemented in later works. For example, on the decomposition of carbon dioxide by green plants using solar energy, the study of chlorophyll and its genesis. For the first time in Russia, Timiryazev introduced experiments with plants on artificial soils, for which in 1872 at the Petrovsky Academy he built a growing house for growing plants in vessels (the first scientifically equipped greenhouse), literally immediately after the appearance of similar structures in Germany. A little later, Timiryazev installed a similar greenhouse in Nizhny Novgorod at the All-Russian Exhibition.
Thanks to his outstanding scientific achievements in the field of botany, Timiryazev was awarded a number of resonant titles: corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences since 1890, honorary member of Kharkov University, honorary member of St. Petersburg University, honorary member of the Free Economic Society, as well as many other scientific communities and organizations.
In the scientific community, Timiryazev was known as a popularizer of natural science and Darwinism. He devoted his whole life to the struggle for freedom of science and sharply opposed attempts to turn science into a support for autocracy and religion. For this I was constantly under suspicion from the police and felt a certain pressure. In 1892, the Petrovsk Agricultural Academy was closed due to the unreliability of its teaching staff and students, and Timiryazev was expelled from the staff. In 1898, due to his length of service (30 years of teaching experience), he was dismissed from the staff of Moscow University; in 1902, Timiryazev finished lecturing and remained the head of the botanical cabinet. In 1911, he, as part of a group of other teachers, left the university as a sign of disagreement with the violation of the university's autonomy. Only in 1917 was he reinstated as a professor at Moscow University, but he was no longer able to continue his work due to illness.
Timiryazev's popular science lectures and articles were distinguished by their strict scientific character, clarity of presentation and polished style. The collections “Public Lectures and Speeches” (1888), “Some Basic Problems of Modern Natural Science” (1895), “Agriculture and Plant Physiology” (1893) and “Charles Darwin and His Teachings” (1898) were popular not only in the scientific community, but went far beyond it. “The Life of Plants” (1898) became a model of a course on plant physiology accessible to anyone and was translated into foreign languages.
Timiryazev K. A. is known all over the world. For his services in the field of science, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of London, the Edinburgh and Manchester Botanical Societies, as well as an honorary doctor of a number of European universities - in Cambridge, Glasgow, Geneva.
Timiryazev K.A. was always a patriot of his homeland and was happy about the accomplishment of the Great Socialist Revolution. Until his last days, the scientist took part in the work of the state academic council of the People's Commissariat of Education of the RSFSR. He actively continued his scientific and literary work. In 1920, on the night of April 27-28, the world-famous scientist died and was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery. In Moscow, a memorial museum-apartment for Timiryazev was created and a monument was erected. The name of Timiryazev was given to the Moscow Agricultural Academy and the Institute of Plant Physiology of the USSR Academy of Sciences. A district of Moscow and streets in different cities of Russia are named after the scientist.
The following are named in honor of the scientist: a village in the Lipetsk and Ulyanovsk regions; Lunar crater; motor ship "Akademik Timiryazev"; Moscow Agricultural Academy, Institute of Plant Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, State Biological Museum, library in St. Petersburg, Vinnitsa Regional Universal Scientific Library in Ukraine, Central Station of Young Naturalists and Moscow Metro station.
The film “Baltic Deputy” is dedicated to Timiryazev. The RAS Prize named after the scientist is awarded for the best work on plant physiology. There is a bust of him in the Museum of Geography of Moscow State University.
28.04.1920
Timiryazev Kliment Arkadevich
Russian Naturalist
Scientist Biologist
Kliment Timiryazev was born on June 3, 1843 in the city of St. Petersburg. He received his primary education at home. In 1866 he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Science of St. Petersburg State University. In the formation of Timiryazev’s worldview, the philosophical views of A. Herzen, N. Chernyshevsky, the works of D. Mendeleev, I. Sechenov and especially Charles Darwin played a large role.
During his student years, Timiryazev published a number of articles on socio-political topics and on Darwinism, including: “Garibaldi on Caprera”, “Famine in Lancashire”, “The Book of Darwin, its critics and commentators”. At the same time he wrote the first popular book outlining Darwin’s teachings, “Charles Darwin and His Teachings”; his book “The Life of Plants” was reprinted more than 20 times and aroused great interest both in Russia and abroad.
In 1868, to prepare for the professorship, he was sent abroad, where he worked in the laboratories of leading physicists, chemists, physiologists, and botanists. Returning to Russia, Timiryazev defended his master's thesis and took the position of professor at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy in Moscow, where he lectured in all departments of botany. At the same time, he taught at Moscow State University at the Department of Anatomy and Physiology of Plants, at women’s “collective courses”. He headed the botanical department of the Society of Natural History Lovers at the university.
Kliment Arkadyevich became one of the founders of the Russian school of plant physiology, having studied the process of photosynthesis, for which he developed special techniques and equipment. In plant physiology, along with agrochemistry, the scientist saw the basis of rational agriculture. The professor was the first to introduce experiments with plant culture in artificial soils in Russia; set up the first greenhouse for this purpose at the Petrovsky Academy in the early 1870s.
In 1920, a collection of his articles “Science and Democracy” was published. For the last 10 years of his life, due to illness, he could no longer teach, but continued to engage in literary and journalistic activities, participated in the work of the People's Commissariat of Education of Russia and the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences. He was elected as a Deputy of the Moscow City Council.
Timiryazev was a member of the Royal Society of London. He was an Honorary Doctor of the Universities of Glasgow, Cambridge and Geneva; Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Edinburgh Botanical Society, also an Honorary Member of many foreign and domestic universities and scientific societies. Author of numerous articles, books, biographical sketches.
Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev died on April 28, 1920 in Moscow. He was buried at the Vagankovskoye cemetery.
Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev was born on May 25 (June 3), 1843 in St. Petersburg. The father was a hereditary nobleman, served as the head of the St. Petersburg customs district. Timiryazev received an excellent education at home and in 1860 became a law student at St. Petersburg University. Almost immediately he transferred to the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics. In 1861 he was expelled due to participation in the student movement. A year later he was admitted to training as a volunteer. In 1866 he graduated from the university and received a candidate's degree. In 1868, Timiryazev’s scientific career began: he published his first work on the study of photosynthesis and went abroad, where he worked in the laboratories of leading physicists, chemists, and botanists. In 1871, he defended his master's thesis and got a job at the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy near Moscow. In 1875 he became a doctor of botany, and from 1877 he lectured at the Imperial Moscow University. He worked on the problems of photosynthesis and actively applied scientific achievements in practice. He became a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences and was a member of many foreign scientific societies and educational institutions. In 1911, for political reasons, he left the university. Timiryazev welcomed the October Revolution, as he was a staunch republican. Kliment Timiryazev died on April 28, 1920 in Moscow.
At the beginning of the 19th century, scientists had a somewhat vague idea of what processes occur in plants. First it became known that plants release oxygen, then it turned out that oxygen is released only if they are in the light. A little later it was found that organic substances are formed in plants, and a special pigment contained in green leaves, chlorophyll, is responsible for this process.
And what role did the Russian scientist Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev play in the study of photosynthesis? One of the most important - he established that it is the green pigment chlorophyll that is the main link in the process of photosynthesis. He also proved that the speed and efficiency of the photosynthesis process are different when plants are illuminated with light of different spectral compositions (in red and blue rays all reactions proceed most quickly and efficiently, but in yellow rays photosynthesis proceeds much worse) and that in plants the reaction of decomposition of carbon dioxide occurs precisely under the influence of light.
Timiryazev was the first to study the most important properties of chlorophyll, its composition and interaction with light rays, and established how the reactions of dividing carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen occur with the help of chlorophyll. How does the photosynthesis reaction generally proceed? From the name it is clear (“photo” from the Greek “light”, and “synthesis” - “combination”), which is only under the influence of light. If we talk about the localization of photosynthesis processes, they occur in special organelles of the plant cell - chloroplasts, where all the chlorophyll is concentrated. Chloroplasts receive carbon dioxide and water, which break down into their component parts (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen), from which organic substances are synthesized. All of them are of great importance for all life on our planet, as they are primary in all food chains. Timiryazev pointed out this most important role of photosynthesis and, accordingly, plants.
Kliment Timiryazev was not only a theoretical scientist, but also an excellent practitioner, and a very versatile one. The scientist, who worked in many areas of botany, tried to apply the results of his work in practice, creating installations and instruments that were unique at that time, with high sensitivity and accuracy. With their help, Timiryazev established many facts about photosynthesis.
All his life, Kliment Arkadyevich dealt with the problem of photosynthesis, proposed new hypotheses, and experimentally confirmed theories. His achievements in this area were actively used by researchers who worked much later. World fame came to the scientist during his lifetime, and the results of his works form the basis of modern knowledge about the amazing process of photosynthesis.
Timiryazev's work served as a basis for further discoveries in the field of photosynthesis. Thus, with the help of carbon dioxide with labeled carbon atoms, the American biochemist Melvin Calvin managed to figure out the chemistry of carbon dioxide assimilation, the so-called Calvin cycle. This, in turn, served as an impetus for the further development of agriculture: changing environmental conditions makes it possible to regulate the ratio of photosynthesis products and create conditions for optimal plant development.
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He was born in St. Petersburg in the family of a customs official Arkady Semenovich Timiryazev, who came from an ancient noble family. Arkady Semenovich was a man of republican views, for which he aroused the personal dislike of Tsar Nicholas I as “unreliable.” In his youth, the father of the future scientist spoke enthusiastically about the Great French Revolution and, as a participant in the military campaign of 1813-1814, dreamed of getting to Paris, which was dear to him. However, having reached Montmartre (a suburb of Paris), Arkady Semenovich received the strictest order to return home. Even there, the “freethinker” and hater of autocracy was closely monitored by the tsar’s servants. Later, when the latter was already serving as director of customs, they tried to fabricate various charges against him through intrigue; only Arkady Semenovich’s impeccable honesty prevented the implementation of insidious plans. In the end, they got rid of him by abolishing his position, sending him on a very small pension. And then the question of supporting his huge family arose. Arkady Semenovich already had a daughter Maria and two sons from his first marriage - Alexander and Ivan, and also had four sons from his second marriage: Nikolai, Dmitry, Vasily and the youngest - Clement.
At that time, Clement was only 15 years old, and he, like his brothers, had to start working early to help his family. His first profession was working as a research assistant and newspaper translator. Two years later, he and his brother Vasily entered St. Petersburg University at the cameral faculty, and then, having found their bearings, Kliment chose the natural sciences department of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics, and Vasily chose the Faculty of Law. In 1861, Kliment Timiryazev enthusiastically plunged into public life, participating in the student movement. He was expelled from the university for refusing to accept the new disciplinary rules - the “matricules” of Minister Putyatin. What the young man was thinking then is best expressed by the words he published in 1905 in the article “On the threshold of a renewed university”:
“In our time we loved the university, as now, perhaps, they don’t, and not without reason. For me personally, science was everything. This feeling was not mixed with any considerations about a career, not because I was in special favorable circumstances - no, I earned my own living, but simply thoughts about a career, about the future, there was no place in my head: it was too full of the present. But then a storm came in the form, not of good memory, of Minister Putyatin with his notorious matriculi. We had to either submit to the new police system, or abandon the university, abandon, perhaps forever, science - and thousands of us did not hesitate in our choice. It was, of course, not about some matriculations, but about the conviction that in our modest share we are doing a common cause, we are fighting back the first breath of reaction, in the conviction that giving in to this reaction is shameful.” Two years later, Timiryazev was reinstated at the university, but as a volunteer student.
Immediately after graduating from the university in 1866, K.A. Timiryazev goes to work at the Simbirsk experimental field, where, under the leadership of D.I. Mendeleev conducts experiments with fertilizers and other agricultural issues. Here he established the beneficial effect of superphosphate on grain yields even in dry summer conditions and for the first time showed the importance of deep plowing for combating drought. Later, throughout his life, he was actively involved in many important problems of agriculture: plant nutrition, the use of fertilizers, combating drought, selection, seed production, etc. Some of these works were reflected in his book “Agriculture and Plant Physiology” (1906). The main thing in Kliment Arkadyevich’s scientific work was the study of photosynthesis in plants. He enriched this section of plant physiology with classical research, unsurpassed in depth and originality. Works on photosynthesis by K.A. Timiryazev began publishing in 1867. The most important of them are collected in his book “The Sun, Life and Chlorophyll” (1923). He often and with great success gave public lectures on various issues of natural science and agronomy. The series of these lectures made up his famous book “The Life of a Plant” (1878).
As biologist K.A. Timiryazev developed Darwinism, fought against Darwin’s idealistic mistakes, and defended his teaching from attacks by reactionaries and obscurantists. He first read “The Origin of Species” less than two years after its publication - as a first-year student. Four years later, on the pages of Otechestvennye Zapiski, he published his first articles about him, which the following year were included in a book that later became known as “Charles Darwin and His Teaching.” In 1877, visiting Darwin at his Downe estate, Timiryazev presented him with his work about him. A year before his death, the great Russian scientist completed his characterization of his teaching with the articles “Ch. Darwin and K. Marx" and "Historical method in biology". In the latter, Timiryazev says that Darwin’s main merit lies in the fact that he, having managed to combine “biology with history” and explain “the harmony of the organic world as a result of the elimination of everything inharmonious by natural selection,” answered the question “how the evolutionary process is carried out.”
Kliment Arkadyevich considered it necessary to study the history of science in close connection with practice, with production, in which he saw the most important source of the development of science. “The demands of life have always been the first incentives to seek knowledge, and in turn, the degree of their satisfaction served as the most accessible, most visible sign of his success.” Timiryazev noted, in defiance of the idealistic perversions of the Machists, that the main driving forces of science, which originated from people’s desire for knowledge, action and aesthetic pleasure, initially served as a means to achieve practical goals and only later, due to exercise, turned into an independent need, an attraction of a higher order. He saw the sources of the origin of science not in the ideological motives of the individual, as with the Machian Petzold, but in his material needs and production activities. “Almost every science owes its origin to some art, just as every art in turn arises from some human need.” Timiryazev never tires of repeating that the scientists who really moved science forward never ignored the centuries-old experience of ordinary people, workers. As an example of such a close unity of science and practice, Timiryazev cites the work of Darwin: “...Darwin’s teaching is indebted to the facts acquired by practitioners in the field of gardening and cattle breeding; everyone knows that one of the main merits of this scientist lies precisely in the fact that he took advantage of this enormous stock of factual knowledge to build his theory, that he owes the most basic idea of his teaching to practitioners.”
Timiryazev associated the rapid development of Russian science in the middle of the 19th century both with the successes of natural science abroad and with the general rise of the revolutionary democratic movement in Russia: “... if our society had not awakened in general to new vigorous activity, perhaps Mendeleev and Tsenkovsky would have whiled away their century as teachers in Simferopol and Yaroslavl, the lawyer Kovalevsky would be a prosecutor, the cadet Beketov would be a squadron commander, and the sapper Sechenov would dig trenches according to all the rules of his art. Speaking about the awakening of natural science, we, of course, must here bear in mind not only its development in a close circle of specialists who studied and advanced science, but also the general movement that covered wide circles of society, left its mark on schools (higher and secondary) , on literature, influenced more or less deeply the general way of thinking.”
One of the conditions favorable to the development of natural science in Russia, according to Kliment Arkadyevich, was the fact that “natural sciences, as the most distant from politics, were considered the most harmless... only by this relative tolerance towards natural science... we can probably explain that the fact is that this desire for the study of natural science, clearly expressed in the second five-year period of the fifties, was caused by a whole galaxy of talented figures, the initial development of which should be dated back to the end of the forties and the first half of the fifties.”
For 22 years (1870-1892) K.A. Timiryazev was a professor at the Petrovsky Agricultural and Forestry Academy. In it he built the first growing house in Russia for experiments with plants. At the All-Russian exhibition in 1896 in Nizhny Novgorod
where he achieved the construction of an even better growing house, in which he personally demonstrated the nutrition of plants.
Back in 1867, while passing from Simbirsk, he stopped by the recently opened Petrovka to see the professor of chemistry P.A. Ilyenkov, where he finds him in the library office at his desk; in front of him lay a thick, fresh German volume of “Capital” by K. Marx. Pavel Antonovich immediately shared his expressive lecture about what he had read. The chemistry professor was already familiar with Marx's activities, because during the first commune of 1848 he was in Paris: he was one of the first disseminators of Marx’s ideas in Russia. As another professor of Petrovka, Fortunatov, suggested, Ilyenkov took the initiative to attract Timiryazev to the new university. A. Fortunatov, who knew the scientific and social views of Kliment Arkadyevich very well, and sat next to him shoulder to shoulder for more than five years, noted that Timiryazev, while maintaining the dignity of a scientist, more than once shuddered his colleagues, members of the council of the Petrine Academy, with his “seditious spirit." The young teacher of botany was already closely connected with the leading part of the freedom-loving professorship. During his work in Petrovka, Timiryazev more than once defended revolutionary-minded students from repression by academic authorities, and in the early 90s. XIX century receives the first reprimand in a “strange form” for defending students who participated in a demonstration on the occasion of the death of Chernyshevsky.
Professors of the Imperial Moscow University who resigned in protest against the resignation of the rector and vice-rectors of the university. Sitting: V.P. Serbsky, K.A. Timiryazev, N.A. Umov, P.A. Minakov, A.A. Manuilov, M.A. Menzbier, V.A. Focht, V.D. Shervinsky, V.K. Tserasky, book. E.N. Trubetskoy. Standing: I.P. Aleksinsky, V.K. Roth, N.D. Zelinsky, P.N. Lebedev, A.A. Eichenwald, G.F. Shershenevich, V.M. Khvostov, A.S. Alekseev, F.A. Raine, D.M. Petrushevsky, B.K. Mlodzievsky, V.I. Vernadsky, S.A. Chaplygin, N.V. Davydov. 1911. Photo A. Staker
Timiryazev’s “seditiousness” haunted the conservative-minded part of the nobility and professors: the literary critic Strakhov and academician Famintsyn scribbled numerous libels against the leader of the Petrovsky opposition, Timiryazev. Black Hundred publicist Prince V.P. Meshchersky in his newspaper “Citizen” attacks K.A. Timiryazev for “expelling God from nature.” Professor Tikhomirov, having spoken out against the Darwinists with a lecture “Two Liars - Darwin and Tolstoy,” received a promotion in rank - he became a trustee of the Moscow educational district. Outstanding ones, V.O. Kovalevsky and I.I. Mechnikov, are forced to go to work abroad.
As Timiryazev later noted: “The present century, like its predecessor, is leaning toward decline with undoubted signs of a general reaction. Reaction in the field of science is only one of its particular manifestations. Just as any reaction does not come forward with an open visor, but likes to hide under a guise that does not rightfully belong to it, so the modern campaign against science, proclaiming its imaginary bankruptcy, likes to call itself a “revival of idealism.”
K.A. Timiryazev does not limit himself to pointing out the connection between the reaction in science and the general political reaction; he shows the social roots of this reaction and its social carriers - the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, which in the new conditions aligns itself with the nobility and is based on clericalism and idealistic philosophy. “The decaying bourgeoisie,” Timiryazev writes, “is getting closer and closer to moribund metaphysics, and does not hesitate to enter into an alliance with both mysticism and the militant church...” In contrast to the prediction of the obscurantist Bergson that “the past will gnaw at the future and therefore grow fat,” Timiryazev writes that “science, reality, history teach the opposite: the gleams of the present, dispelling the darkness of the past, prepare for a brighter future.”
He, along with other “unreliable” professors and students, was fired from the academy by the Minister of Education Ostrovsky in connection with its closure for the speeches of revolutionary-minded students, whom the great scientist always supported. In 1892, the academy was disbanded and turned into the Moscow Agricultural Institute.
From 1877 to 1911 K.A. Timiryazev was a professor at Moscow University, where he continued to defend everything progressive in science and public life. However, after his dismissal from Petrovka, he was not given any rest at the university: for work, he was provided with unequipped, cramped, stuffy rooms that did not satisfy not only pedagogical, but even hygienic requirements. After a cerebral hemorrhage in 1909, Timiryazev’s left arm and leg were left paralyzed. Although the seriously ill scientist had no other sources of income, in 1911 he left the university along with 124 teachers, protesting against the oppression of students and the reactionary policies of the Minister of Education Casso.
On the occasion of Timiryazev’s 70th anniversary, the great physiologist I.P. Pavlov described his colleague as follows: “Kliment Arkadyevich himself, like the plants he dearly loved, strived for light all his life, storing in himself the treasures of the mind and the highest truth, and he himself was a source of light for many generations who strived for light and knowledge and sought warmth and truth in harsh living conditions."
Kliment Arkadyevich from the very beginning condemned the war unleashed by the imperialists in 1914, and a year later accepted Gorky’s invitation to head the science department in the anti-war magazine “Chronicle”. Largely thanks to Timiryazev, it was possible to attract his fellow physiologists - Nobel laureates Ilya Mechnikov, Ivan Pavlov and many cultural figures, socialists of different parties and trends - to work in the journal for direct or indirect participation. During the same period, V.I. Lenin began to strive to publish in this magazine and even dreamed of uniting with Kliment Arkadyevich against the August Bloc of 1912, which was then part of the organizing committee of the Chronicle.
In public statements that were bold for their time, K.A. Timiryazev denounced arbitrariness and oppression in the countryside and came to the correct conclusion that getting two ears of corn where previously there was one is a political issue. This issue was resolved by the Great October Socialist Revolution, which, thanks to the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, carried out collectivization - the revolutionary restructuring of small peasant farming into a large, mechanized and socialist one.
In 1917, Timiryazev supported Lenin’s famous “April Theses”. Despite the fact that the Central Committee of the Socialist Revolutionary Party since September of that revolutionary year nominated K.A. Timiryazev to the post of Minister of Education of the Homogeneous Socialist Government, after the victory of the Great October Revolution, the great scientist from the very beginning supported the policies of the Bolshevik Party and took an active part in building a new life; he was elected a member of the Moscow Council and a full member of the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences.
In educating young people, Timiryazev attached great importance to familiarizing them with the life and work of the great luminaries of science, with their courageous struggle to implement their brilliant ideas. He spoke with special love about those of them who managed to combine their activities with the struggle for the liberation of their people. For more than half a century, Kliment Arkadyevich created a whole gallery of biographies of fighters for the people's cause - from the biography of the socialist Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1862 to an essay about the Friend of the People Marat in 1919. At the same time, Timiryazev was able to notice the weaknesses of this or that scientist. He also rebelled against the immoderate praise and sweeping condemnation of historical figures, demanding an objective approach to their assessment: “Our duty towards the dead is the same as towards the living - it’s true.”
The most important articles on socio-political issues, published by him over the years, are collected in his book “Science and Democracy” (1920). The author sent the first copy of this work, published a month before his death, to his friend V.I. Lenin, signing: “To the deeply respected Vladimir Ilyich Lenin from K. Timiryazev, who considers it a blessing to be his contemporary and a witness to his glorious activity.”
On April 21, Timiryazev fell ill with pneumonia. On April 27 he receives from V.I. Lenin’s letter in which Ilyich admires Kliment Arkadyevich’s book “Science and Democracy”, reading Timiryazev’s remarks “against the bourgeoisie and for Soviet power”, and wishes the author “with all my heart... health, health and health!”, conveyed through the new attending physician B .WITH. Weisbrod invitation to an evening dedicated to his 50th anniversary. On the same day, Timiryazev wrote his last letter, transmitted with this communist doctor:
“I have always tried to serve humanity and I am glad that in these serious moments for me I see you, a representative of the party that truly serves humanity. The Bolsheviks who are pursuing Leninism, I believe and am convinced, are working for the happiness of the people and will lead them to happiness. I have always been yours and with you. Convey Vladimir Ilyich my admiration for his brilliant solution to world issues in theory and in practice. I consider it a blessing to be his contemporary and witness to his glorious work. I bow to him and want everyone to know about it. Please convey to all my comrades my sincere greetings and wishes for further successful work for the happiness of mankind.”
On the night of April 28, 1920, Kliment Arkadyevich Timiryazev died. In Moscow K.A. Two monuments were erected to Timiryazev, his name was given to the Institute of Plant Physiology of the Academy of Sciences, the Biological Museum and Petrovka, which became the Moscow Agricultural Academy, which is now called the Russian State Agrarian University.
V.A. RODIONOV
Candidate of Agricultural Sciences
