Lyubeznikov, O. A. ARCHITECT N. P. NIKITIN AND HIS BOOK “AUGUSTE MONTFERRAND”: PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY OF ISAAC’S CATHEDRAL IN STALIN AGE // Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2019. No 4 (181). P. 41–47. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2019.329


Historiography, source studies, methods of historical research

ARCHITECT N. P. NIKITIN AND HIS BOOK “AUGUSTE MONTFERRAND”: PROBLEM OF SCIENTIFIC REPRESENTATION OF HISTORY OF ISAAC’S CATHEDRAL IN STALIN AGE

Lyubeznikov
O. A. 		St. Petersburg University
Keywords:
N. P. Nikitin
St. Isaac’s сathedral
M. T. Preobrazhensky
A. L. Rotach
Auguste Montferrand
Academy of Arts
russocentrism
architect		 Summary: The article is concerned with the history of the publication of the book about the construction of St. Isaac’s cathedral by the Leningrad architect N.P. Nikitin. The author used numerous unpublished documents of the five archives of St. Petersburg and reconstructed the long process the architect’s work on the manuscript. In the modern historiography of the history of St. Isaac’s cathedral, Nikitin’s book is criticized as tendentious, N.P. Nikitin is accused of reflecting the ideological attitudes of the Stalin era. The author set his goal to find out the causes and circumstances of the creation of the book. The book was published in Leningrad in 1939 under the title “Auguste Montferrand”. The author found the manuscript of the first version of the book under the title “St. Isaac’s cathedral. (History of the construction)” in the personal archive of N.P. Nikitin. In 1938 N.P. Nikitin received a refusal to publish the manuscript in its original form and was forced to rework the book into the biography of A. Montferrand. N.P. Nikitin wrote about the decisive role of Russian academic architects in the designing of the cathedral. This thesis was consonant with the political Russian-centrist line of policy of the 1930s, but later became perceived as conjuncture, the architect wanted to correct his book, but could not republish it. The article is relevant to the modern context of studying the history of historical science in the Soviet Union.



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