RETURN TO NATIVE UNIVERSITY CORRESPONDENCE AND DOCUMENTS ON THE ELECTION OF P.G. VINOGRADOFF AS A SUPERNUMERARY PROFESSOR AT MOSCOW UNIVERSITY IN 1908

Archival documents are published, highlighting the main points of the election of the world-famous historian P.G. Vinogradoff as a supernumerary professor at Moscow University in 1908. The publisher describes in detail the peripeteia of the process, in which differences in the understanding of the conditions of normal educational activity by the historian living in England, and professors of Moscow University, as well as different attitudes to the situation among the latter. P.G. Vinogradoff was supported, first of all, by his colleagues in file university’s professorial council who knew and remembered him well, while young historians were wary of the return of the world-famous colleague, perceiving him as a competitor. But the opportunity to increase the number of professorships in file Department of General Elistory at the expense of supernumerary funding identified support for file initiative of the council by representatives of the Faculty of Elistory and Philology. Elowever, differences in the understanding of the principles of professional activity not within the university community, but between professors and Ministry Interior officials turned out to be the most revealing: often what the former considered as professor’s merits, the latter were attributed to Vinogradoff’s misconduct. Elowever, without official grounds in the form of penalties or punishments, the Ministry of the Interior was unable to prevent the approval of the decision of the Council of Moscow University by the Trustee of the Moscow School District and the signing by the Minister of Public Education of file relevant order. Published documents were found in the fund of the Moscow Imperial University of file Central State Archive of Moscow and in the fund of the Ministry of Education of the Russian State Elistorical Archive in St. Petersburg. Their texts are brought into line with modem standards of spelling and supplemented with the necessary detailed comments to better reveal their meaning and significance.

Paul Vinogradoff, biography, Moscow University, Faculty of Elistory and Philology, Department of General Elistory