For several decades, Pytor Struve (1870-1944) stood at the very center of Russian political and cultural life. In a sense, the biography of Struve is the history of the Russian intelligentsia and of Russia since the late nineteenth century. The philosopher Semen Frank, Struve's one-time close associate and lifelong friend, was justified in writing that Struve was "the most remarkable man of our generation, the most outstanding personality of Russian social and scholarly though of the years of the nineteenth and first decades of twentieth century." Because of this multitude of academic interests and public activities, he left few major finished works commensurate with their initial conception. In spite of this, his printed legacy is impressive. His collected works, edited by Richard Pipes, consist of fifteen volumes that are far from complete: They represent only a few major works and journal articles and omit hundreds of newspaper articles. The bibliography of Struve's works prepared by Pipes consists of nearly seven hundred items in the category of books and journal articles and hundreds of newspaper articles (listed on eighty-six pages). A large number of the newspaper articles are important contributions to scholarship and to publicism. As the historian of Russian literature and society, Prince Mirsky wrote:
Saturated with a deep feeling and profound understanding of Russian history; he is certainly one of the most brilliant political writers of our times, and his short articles are sometimes masterpieces of concentrated thought and direct expression… when party felling grows less acute he will be recognized as one the classics of Russian political thought and political literature.
Essential to understanding Struve is his spiritual and political evolution, the main stages of which are noted below.
THE PERIOD OF RADICALISM
Pytor Berngardovich Struve was born on January 26, 1870, in the city of Perm, into a family with a solid academic and political tradition. His grandfather was a learned astronomer, the creator of the Pulkovo observatory near St. Petersburg and of the Russian school of astronomers. His father was a close associate of N.N. Murav'ev-Amursky in the development of eastern Siberia and, at the early age of thirty, became its governor. Struve's ancestors on his father's side were of German origin, and during his childhood he spent Stuttgart, Germany. Later he lived in other cities in Germany and in neighboring countries.
In 1889 Struve graduated from secondary school and began to study natural sciences at St. Petersburg University, where he later transferred to the faculty of law. He received his diploma in
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