Murav'ev and Radiščev: Forging and Encountering the Myth of Lomonosov

The most thoughtful early studies of Mikhail Lomonosov that assess his natural philosophic or scientific legacy are Mikhail Murav'ev's ‘Zaslugi Lomonosova v uchenosti’ and Aleksandr Radishchev's ‘Slovo o Lomonosove’. Radishchev's and Murav'ev's works, both fascinating attempts to assess Lomonosov's overall stature as a natural philosopher, are not only singular contributions to the genre of scientific memoir in their own right, but sharply divergent responses to images of Lomonosov as the pioneer Russian scientist that were firmly situated in eighteenth-century Russian cultural discourse. It was Murav'ev's insistence throughout his account on the pioneering character of Lomonosov's scientific efforts, which fit firmly within and greatly added to the growing myth (or “cult”) of Lomonosov as the father of Russian science, rather than Radishchev's more judicious verdict, which proved decisive in the historiography.