Background
Ivan Vasilievich Vernadsky was born on May 24, 1821, in Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine in the family of a State Counsel Vasily Ivanovich Vernadsky, a military doctor and a member of Suvorov’s Swiss campaign.
(Russian Edition)
Russian Edition
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Ivan Vasilievich Vernadsky was born on May 24, 1821, in Kiev, Kyyivs'ka Oblast', Ukraine in the family of a State Counsel Vasily Ivanovich Vernadsky, a military doctor and a member of Suvorov’s Swiss campaign.
In 1831-1837, Ivan Vasilievich studied at the Kiev Theological College and the Noble Pension at the 1st Kiev Gymnasium.
In 1837-1841, Ivan Vasilievich studied at the 1st (philological) department of the philosophical department of Kiev University of Saint Vladimir, where he obtained his habilitation and received a gold medal for his philosophical work About the Soul. Soon after, he taught Russian literature first at the Kamianets-Podilskyi Provincial Gymnasium and subsequently, since 1842, in the 2nd Kiev Gymnasium.
In 1842, Ivan Vasilievich was admitted to the Department of Political Economy of Kiev University. In the years 1843-1846, he studied political economy in European scientific centers of Germany, France, England, Belgium, and Holland, where he attended lectures by famous scholars such as K. Rau, M. Chevalier, and J. Blanqui, and met famous Slavists (P. Shafarik, V. Gankalyu). In 1847, he defended his master's thesis On the Theory of Needs at Saint Petersburg University and began lecturing in the rank of adjunct at Kiev University.
Having defended his doctoral dissertation Historical and Critical Research on Italian Political and Economic Literature until the Beginning of the 19th Century at the Imperial Moscow University in 1849, Ivan Vasilievich became an associate professor at the University of Kiev in the Department of Political Economy and Statistics, which he was in charge of.
In 1847, Ivan Vasilievich became a member of the Russian Geographical Society. Since 1849, he was a professor at Kiev University, then since 1850, he taught at Moscow University. A year later, he started to collaborate in the Moskovskiye Vedomosti newspaper, as well as in the Russky Vestnik magazine. In one of his historical and journalistic works, Ivan Vasilievich presented the characteristic of Napoleon I and portrayed him as a prudent and unprincipled politician who betrayed revolutionary ideals for the sake of personal power. This characteristic was possibly taken into account by L.N. Tolstoy when working on War and Peace.
In 1856, Ivan Vasilievich moved to Saint Petersburg, where he served on the Central Statistical Committee of the Ministry of the Interior and, on the instructions of the committee, wrote: Studies on Hookers (Saint Petersburg, 1857). At the same time, he taught at the Main Pedagogical Institute (1857-1859), and then from 1861 to 1868 - at the Alexander Lyceum. He also actively worked in the Free Economic Society. Ivan Vasilievich published a number of scientific papers on economics.
In 1857-1861, Ivan Vasilievich and his wife, Vernadskaya Maria Nikolaevna, published and edited the Ekonomicheskiy Ukazatel magazine. In his numerous articles, he opposed the enslaving conditions for the liberation of the peasants, for freedom of economic activity, and for the development of the large-scale industry. Vernadsky's polemic with N.G. Chernyshevsky in a number of articles 1857-1858 caused a wide public outcry. That allowed Chernyshevsky to set out the agrarian program of revolutionary democracy and express the idea of the prospects of the peasant community as a form of transition to the future socialist organization of society. In a series of articles On Land Ownership, from the standpoint of bourgeois progressivism, Ivan Vasilievich pointed to the archaic, economic nonviability of such community. The heated debate, which attracted many literary magazines (Russky Vestnik, Russkaya Beseda, Ateney, Otechestvennyye Zapiski) and newspapers, did not harm the opponents' personal relations.
In January 1862, Ivan Vasilievich was one of the founders of the Chess Club, at the first meeting of which he was elected its director. He wrote a draft of the new censorship rules, signed by a large group of writers. In 1862, on behalf of P.A. Valuev, he drafted a law on income tax from nobles, which was adopted only in 1916.
In 1868-1876, Ivan Vasilievich was the managing director of the State Bank in Kharkov, deputy chairman of the provincial Statistical Committee and chairman of the Mutual Credit Society. In 1871, he became one of the five founders of the country's first joint-stock mortgage bank - the Kharkov Land Bank. In 1876, he retired with the rank of Privy Councilor.
Ivan Vasilievich returned to Saint Petersburg in 1876 and at the same time headed the Literacy Committee and the Political and Economic Society. He also opened the Knizhnik bookstore and a printing house.
(Russian Edition)
In 1847, Ivan Vasilievich became a member of the Russian Geographical Society.
Ivan Vasilievich was a prominent representative of the Russian liberal intelligentsia. He knew several European languages well, highly valued European science and culture, and considered the tsarist autocracy to be a harmful relic of the past. He was a supporter of the introduction of democratic constitutional rule in Russia.
For the first time, Ivan Vasilievich married Maria Nikolaevna Shigaeva in 1850. His first wife, ten years after the marriage, died, leaving him son Nikolai. The second time, he married in 1862. Anna Petrovna Konstantinovich, the cousin of Maria Vernadskaya, became his wife. In 1863, the couple had a son, Vladimir, an outstanding geochemist and science organizer, who in the pre-revolutionary period actively acted as a publicist and memoirist. In 1864, the twin sisters Olga and Ekaterina were born.