Shadow of the Future: Shubnikov and Fersman. Letters of 1922–1924

We present the second part of transcribed letters written in 1920–1924 from Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk) by A.V.Shubnikov and his wife O.M.Lebedeva-Shubnikova to Academician A.E.Fersman, as well as some comments on these letters. The letters discuss the life of the Department of Crystallography at the Ural State University, which included Institute of Mines, as well as crystallographic research, the organization of scientific work, and the difficult life of scientists during the reconstruction of our country after the Civil War. Unfortunately, by 1925 the situation in Sverdlovsk had changed vigorously, and the Shubnikovs were forced to leave the department they created and move to work in Leningrad, to the Mineralogical Museum of the USSR Academy of Sciences, where Alexei Shubnikov created a crystallography laboratory in which he gathered the best quartz specialists.

A.V.Shubnikov, A.E.Fersman, crystallography, Yekaterinburg, organization of science