Shmit at Leningrad University at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s

V.G. Ananiev

St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, 199034 Russia

E-mail: v.ananev@spbu.ru

Received April 24, 2021

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

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DOI: 10.26907/2541-7738.2021.3.67-74

For citation: Ananiev V.G. F.I. Shmit at Leningrad University at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s. Uchenye Zapiski Kazanskogo Universiteta. Seriya Gumanitarnye Nauki, 2021, vol. 163, no. 3, pp. 67–74. doi: 10.26907/2541-7738.2021.3.67-74. (In Russian)

Abstract

This paper discusses an episode from the academic biography of Fyodor Ivanovich Shmit (1877–1937), a prominent Russian art historian and art theorist, museologist. The history of F.I. Shmit’s teaching at Leningrad State University during the 1920s and 1930s was covered. The scholar was an alumnus of the university and renewed the relationship with the alma mater following his return from Ukraine to Leningrad in the mid-1920s. Until 1932, F.I. Shmit taught here various disciplines of art history and theory. Since 1930, he had worked as the head of the Department of General History of Art and taught here such courses as History of Byzantine Art, History of Art in Feudal Europe, History of Ancient Art, History of Western European Art of the Age of Primitive Accumulation of Capital. He actively presented the results of his research in the form of academic reports. The analysis of F.I. Shmit’s curricula shows that, on the one hand, he tried to adapt them to the needs of the changing time, but, on the other one, he tried to preserve the traditional academic content. In many ways, his activities during this period helped to uphold the traditions of the St. Petersburg-Petrograd School of Art History. However, F.I. Shmit was deprived of the opportunity to continue his teaching due to the changes in the structure of higher education, which were typical for that period, as well as because of the growing pressure of the totalitarian state. In 1933, he was arrested, expelled from Leningrad, and murdered.

Keywords: F.I. Shmit, art history, Leningrad University, formalism, Byzantium

References

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