by Vladislav VOLKOV, Dr. Sc. (Geol. & Mineral.), Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, RAS (Moscow) The diaries of great natural scientist Vladimir Vernadsky (1863-1945), kept in the Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences, represent a unique written monument of national culture. The future famous scientist started making notes of his life events at the age of 14 and kept them till his last day. The notes comprised 3 revolutions, the Civil and two world wars. DIARIES: STYLE AND STRUCTURE The diaries of the 1920s-1930s, which he kept at the peak of his scientific career, have no analogs in epistolary heritage of scientists perhaps excepting diaries of Sergei Vavilov (1891-1951), physicist and President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (from 1945), which were published first in 2004. On the initiative of Alexander Yanshin (1911-1999), Vice-President of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1982-1988), publication of Vernadsky's diaries, covering a period from 1921 till his death, started in 1998 in the series The Library of Academician Vernadsky's Works (Nauka Publishers). The diaries of 1917-1921, whose considerable part is kept now in the archives of Ukraine, were published earlier, in 1994 and 1997. Nowadays preparation of the last volume of diaries (1943-1944) is almost completed, materials of which provided a basis for this publication. The volume has natural chronological limits, from his arrival in Moscow from evacuation (early September of 1943) to the last note dictated to a typist on December 24, 1944, a day before a stroke. The style and structure of the diaries are mainly similar. On the one side, he wrote notes for himself, and, on the other side, they served as a preparatory material for a book of memoirs, which remained unrealized. The notes are absolutely frank and sometimes contain very negative appraisals of scientists, some personal characteristics and behavior of his friends and relatives, ... Читать далее