Papers by Anastasia Fedotova
Forum for Anthropology and Culture, 2025
The article is devoted to the biography of Augustus Szusterus (circa 1805-not earlier than 1871),... more The article is devoted to the biography of Augustus Szusterus (circa 1805-not earlier than 1871), the keeper of the zoological cabinet at the Vilna Medical and Surgical Academy (1835-1841), and then at the University of St Vladimir, Kyiv (1842-1870). By using his life as a case-study, we analyse the career of an "invisible technician" in Russian higher education during the 19th century. Szusterus was one of the best taxidermists who worked for the academic community in the Russian Empire in the second third of the 19th century. He was a student of Ludwig Bojanus, a pre-eminent comparative anatomist, and of Felix Brunner, a skilled taxidermist. His legacy consists of museum exhibits that were made as skin-mount over sculpture, the technique that was (it is believed) developed only in the late 19th and in the early 20th century; in particular, several European bison mounted by him have been preserved till today. The professors with whom Szusterus worked in Vilna and Kyiv hardly mentioned his name in their annual reports and other documents, although it is quite obvious that without his assistance, both their educational and scientific activities would have been significantly more difficult. We collected fragments of information about Szusterus by using archival material in various cities. The most informative documents that we managed to find were about his work on mounts and skeletons of European bison that served as valuable objects of museum exchange and even diplomatic gifts in the 1830s and 1840s. Thanks to these documents on mounting bison for museums it has become possible to restore Szusterus' name to the history of zoology.
PLOS ONE
Visual media are one of the fastest and most effective tools informing the public about conservat... more Visual media are one of the fastest and most effective tools informing the public about conservation goals and convincing societies to support conservation actions. Similar mechanisms functioned in the past, only within a much longer time scale and different communication channels. We analyse the evolution of European bison’s depictions between 1500 and 1900 in the context of building public awareness of the species and its conservation needs. Experts evaluated the anatomical accuracy of thirty eight images of the species from the period analysed, and their conservation appeal was assessed by using an online survey of the general public. Existing knowledge and previous publications allowed authors to describe the development of the scientific knowledge about European bison in 1500–1900. By juxtaposing this with anatomical accuracy of depictions, a conclusion was reached that the accuracy of depictions was not directly linked to the state of knowledge about the species. In the survey...
Zagadka żubra z Warszawskiego Gabinetu Zoologicznego z I połowy XIX wieku
Parki Narodowe i Rezerwaty Przyrody, 2019
The Tsars’ Private Hunting Ground (1888–1915)
In September 1888, Bialowieza Primeval Forest (BPF) together with the adjacent Świslocz Forest wa... more In September 1888, Bialowieza Primeval Forest (BPF) together with the adjacent Świslocz Forest was transferred to the Tsar’s family private property managed by the Ministry of Imperial Court. This was in order to secure better protection for European bison and turn the Forest into the Tsar’s private hunting ground. In the years following the transfer, the imperial palace designed by Nicolas de Rochefort was erected, along with accompanying infrastructure. Game management was given priority in the overall administration of the Forest, and royal hunts were organized in 1894, 1897, 1900, 1903 and 1912. Forest inventories carried out in 1889–1890 and in 1909–1911 assigned low volumes of oler timber to be extracted. This extraction was further limited according to Tsar Nikolai II’s wish to sustain the original, primeval appearance of the Forest. In the period from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, a wave of botanists, zoologists, forestry scientists, and veterinarians, ...
Stanisław Batys Gorski’s botanical research in the Białowieża Primeval Forest during the 1820s
Archives of Natural History, 2021
The first scientific description of the flora of the Białowieża Primeval Forest (Puszcza Białowie... more The first scientific description of the flora of the Białowieża Primeval Forest (Puszcza Białowieska) was published in 1829 in Stanisław Batys Gorski’s paper “O roślinach żubrom upodobanych, jakoteż innych w puszczy Białowiezkiey [About preferred plants of the European bison and other plants from the Białowieża Primeval Forest]”. This publication comprised the first critical evaluation of the plant species present in the forest based on several field surveys during 1822, 1823 and 1826 by Gorski, and it dismissed the popular hypothesis that the European bison ( Bison bonasus) survived there because some of its preferred forage plants were exclusively found in the forest. To assess the importance of Gorski’s contribution to studies on the flora of the Białowieża Primeval Forest, we critically evaluated all his materials on the topic, including manuscripts, plant specimens collected by Gorski now preserved in Vilnius University Herbarium and his published works, and also traced all men...
Traditions of a Royal Period (Until 1795)
This chapter covers the period when Bialowieza Primeval Forest (BPF) served as a hunting reserve ... more This chapter covers the period when Bialowieza Primeval Forest (BPF) served as a hunting reserve for the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and the Polish Kings from the late fourteenth century until 1795. At the same time, along with grand hunting, a various traditional uses were allowed associated with villages, towns, and churches. The most significant of these were haymaking and forest beekeeping. The anthropogenic environmental impact of this royal period can be seen in the creation of the cultural landscape of a hunting garden, in the evolution of stands of pure pine resulting from centuries of fire use, and the establishment of the conservation and winter supplementary feeding system for European bison. The cultural heritage of the period, incorporated traditions connected with European bison, small-leaved lime, Scots pine, and the local knowledge of forest herbs and their uses. All these traditions persisted here because of the royal status of the Forest and the longevity of its custo...
Żubrze eksponaty z lat 1811−1914 w europejskich kolekcjach naukowych – mało znany aspekt XIX-wiecznej gospodarki łowieckiej w Puszczy Białowieskiej
Sylwan, Apr 15, 2017
The 19<sup>th</sup> century game management in Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), espe... more The 19<sup>th</sup> century game management in Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), especially hunts for European bison, have been a subject of several works. The aspect of hunts motivated by research and museum needs have not been described in detail yet. The paper attempts at describing the administrative process behind such hunts and collecting all records of bison hunted or captured and carcasses acquired in BPF for museums, natural collections and universities in 1811−1914 (period covered by manuscript sources and published historical works with data on bison hunts available). Based on available sources, we calculated that in the period in question a total of 153 bison were hunted during 'recreational' hunts (by tsars, their families and exalted guests with special tsars' permissions) and 56 were shot for purposes of study and research – therefore 27% out of 209 hunts had research motivations. Furthermore, 72 bison were captured alive (for zoos, cross−breeding and taming experiments) and carcasses of 89 bison (plus another 9 of unknown origin) were sent to museums and universities all around Europe. We believe that this little known aspect of the 19<sup>th</sup> century game management in BPF has had a significant impact on informing the scientific world and especially the general public about the European bison species, which in turn could have contributed to successful, international collaboration after the extinction of the species in the wild in 1919.
R. Regel. APPLIED ECOLOGY FOR IRRIGATION ENGINEERS
Vavilovskii zhurnal genetiki i selektsii, Jan 25, 2012
Черепа и розы: естественно-исторические коллекции и их значения в XVIII-XIX вв
The recent shift of attention from ideas to practices in the history of science alerted scholars ... more The recent shift of attention from ideas to practices in the history of science alerted scholars to the importance of spatial and material aspects in the production of knowledge, promoting a growing corpus of literature on natural history cabinets, museums and botanical gardens. Some scholars even went further on by examining the ‘spaces in between’ the field and the museum, botanical garden or a pharmacy – the spaces where a natural object acquires a new status of a scientific specimen, while loosing some of its previous cultural attributes. This panel seeks to develop this line of reasoning and to enhance our understanding of the ways in which natural objects were transformed into specimens, assembled as collections and used in a broad variety of cultural, political, economic and social contexts of the 18th-19th century Europe. The panelists will examine a variety of purposes for which different actors used natural history collections and specimens – the ways in which these objects acquired a new cultural and scientific significance. The contributions to this panel will examine a broad range of natural history collections – from craniological specimens amassed by naturalists in the Caucasus to rose varieties cultivated by French horticulturalists. In particular, the panel will explore the function of natural history collections and specimens as a gift exchanged between academic and non-academic partners, a gift that is deeply embedded in social relations, that defines and binds together the giver and recipient and is deliberately intended to facilitate other transactions. Another aspect that we will examine is a complex interaction between collections on display and their various groups of viewers/users. The papers on the panel will consider the ways in which competing interests of these groups affected the selection of objects and the display of exhibits. Finally, this panel seeks to explore the relation between collections and specimens, on one hand, and associated practices of viewing, testing, describing and visualizing, on the other. How did these practices become associated with and disentangled from the objects themselves? What happens to these practices when the objects are moved to a different location? Who, why and how determines legitimate practices and rules out other possible ways of treating collections and specimens? By answering these questions, we hope to improve our understanding of the relations between advancement of knowledge in natural history in the 18th – 19th centuries, on one hand, and a cultural practice of collecting.
Известия Русского географического общества, 2019
Based on published and archival sources, the paper considers the transformations in Russian legis... more Based on published and archival sources, the paper considers the transformations in Russian legislation and administrative policies on forest beekeeping (harvesting honey from owned or tended nests in forests) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It demonstrates how in the course of the eighteenth century, the ownership of bee nests started violating the concept of absolute private property over forests, which was increasingly incompatible with the rights of other individuals to exploit natural resources on the same territory. From the early decades of the 19th century, borders were gradually demarcated between forested areas belonging to the state and private owners, and between the state forests and those designated for the use of state peasants. This process made possible to exercise the concept of absolute private property over forests in practice. These changes in legislation and the forest cadastre were closely linked to the making of ‘forestry science’ that developed i...
The Beetle Question: The Growing Problem of Insect Infestations in South Russia in the Late Nineteenth Century
The Slavonic and East European Review, 2015
As is well known to historians of Russian agriculture, from the second half of the 1870s to the e... more As is well known to historians of Russian agriculture, from the second half of the 1870s to the early 1880s the provinces of the southern part of European Russia suffered from a series of crop failures. These crop failures were the result of drought as well as insect infestation, the latter attributable in large measure to the ‘grain’ or ‘kuzka’ beetle, Anisoplia austriaca. This article examines the Regional Entomological Congresses organized in Odessa and Kharkov in the 1880s as a response to these outbreaks. Agronomists of the late nineteenth century such as Aleksandr Ismailskii and Mikhail Neruchev,1 as well as current historians of Russian agronomy (Varfolomei Savchuk and Olga Elina) have highlighted these Congresses as an important episode not only for the development of applied entomology, but also for the development of agricultural experimentation in South Russia.2 At the same time, while a few scholars such as Larisa Chesnova,
“Veterinary” Study Travel of the Soil Scientist Pavel Kostychev
Encyclopedic Dictionary “Biology in St. Petersburg. 1703-2008”
The Dictionary “Russian Botanists” by Sergey Y. Lipshits: the history of an unfinished project
Энтомологическое обозрение, 2022
Институте прикладной зоологии и фитопатологии в Ленинграде (= Санкт-Петербурге) в 1925-1941 гг. Е... more Институте прикладной зоологии и фитопатологии в Ленинграде (= Санкт-Петербурге) в 1925-1941 гг. Его деятельность была связана с исследованиями по систематике и экологии прямокрылых, а также с прикладной энтомологией (биологическим контролем сельскохозяйственных вредителей) и чтением лекций для студентов. За время службы в этой организации он участвовал в экспедициях на Кавказ, опубликовал множество статей по систематике и фаунистике прямокрылых (включая описания новых видов, родов и таксонов более высоких рангов), а также монографию по фауне прямокрылых Азербайджана с таблицами для определения всех известных таксонов этого региона. С. П. Тарбинский работал также над книгой по сверчковым фауны СССР и над определителем насекомых европейской части СССР, но в 1941 г. он был призван в Советскую Армию, и в 1942 г. погиб, защищая Ленинград. Материалы к его книге по сверчковым не сохранились, но первый определитель насекомых европейской части СССР был опубликован в виде книги только в 1948 г. (с С. П. Тарбинским и Н. Н. Плавильщиковым как редакторами и секционными авторами).
История науки и техники, 2022
Беловежская пуща и беловежский зубр-объекты, часто обсуждавшиеся (и обсуждающиеся) в научной и по... more Беловежская пуща и беловежский зубр-объекты, часто обсуждавшиеся (и обсуждающиеся) в научной и популярной периодике. В 1985 г. был издан аннотированный указатель отечественной литературы о Беловежской пуще, содержащий более 1800 названий, и с тех пор это количество только увеличивается. В справочник, однако, не были включены некоторые категории периодики, в частности-охотничьи журналы эпохи Российской империи. Данная статья призвана заполнить этот пробел и проанализировать достоверность информации, приводимой в этой периодике. В статье также даются краткие сведения об охотничьих журналах, публиковавших статьи и заметки о зубрах и Пуще, и об авторах публикаций. Показано, что среди авторов были как дилетанты, более или менее случайно оказавшиеся в этой местности, так и признанные эксперты. Автор показывает, что Беловежская пуща и зубр появились на страницах русскоязычной охотничьей периодики практически с самых ранних ее шагов-с середины XIX в. Статьи о зубрах в охотничьих журналах печатались довольно часто. Если же соотносить реальные шансы читателей поучаствовать в охоте на зубра с количеством опубликованных статей о нём, то число статей о зубрах стоит оценивать как диспропорционально большое. Характеризуя формат публикаций, можно сказать, что публиковалось много перепечаток и пересказов, при этом одни источники (не обязательно самые достоверные) получали несравнимо больше внимания, чем другие. Еще в середине XIX в. русскоязычные авторы подчеркивали, что Пуща и зубр сохранилась благодаря попечению правительства; что они наша национальная гордость. В начале XX в. уже говорится, что Пуща и зубры-также общеевропейское и всемирное достояние, а на империи лежит международная ответственность за их сохранение. Нам удалось найти несколько публикаций о зубрах, переселённых из Беловежской пущи в леса Гатчинской императорской охоты и другие охотничьи парки и зоосады.
Sylwan, Nov 5, 2021
In this paper, we analyse data on the occurrence of the European mink (Mustela lutreola) in Biało... more In this paper, we analyse data on the occurrence of the European mink (Mustela lutreola) in Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF) in the 19th; century. The aim of the paper is to provide evidence of the occurrence of the European mink found in different sources, both published and archival documents. The archival sources on which this paper is based include materials obtained from the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg and the National Historical Archive of Belarus in Grodno. The importance of seeking historical evidence of the presence of the European mink is associated with the concept of animal diversity in BPF which in the past was higher than today, thus indicating the ecological processes having taken place in one of the best−preserved temperate forests in Europe. Compared to other extinct animals which were once inhabiting Białowieża Forest, the occurrence of the European mink was still not sufficiently proven. Some publis...
Żubrze eksponaty z lat 1811−1914 w europejskich kolekcjach naukowych – mało znany aspekt XIX-wiecznej gospodarki łowieckiej w Puszczy Białowieskiej
The 19<sup>th</sup> century game management in Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), espe... more The 19<sup>th</sup> century game management in Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), especially hunts for European bison, have been a subject of several works. The aspect of hunts motivated by research and museum needs have not been described in detail yet. The paper attempts at describing the administrative process behind such hunts and collecting all records of bison hunted or captured and carcasses acquired in BPF for museums, natural collections and universities in 1811−1914 (period covered by manuscript sources and published historical works with data on bison hunts available). Based on available sources, we calculated that in the period in question a total of 153 bison were hunted during 'recreational' hunts (by tsars, their families and exalted guests with special tsars' permissions) and 56 were shot for purposes of study and research – therefore 27% out of 209 hunts had research motivations. Furthermore, 72 bison were captured alive (for zoos, cross−breed...
Previously published biographical accounts of Sir Boris Uvarov, FRS (1886 [sic]–1970) were based ... more Previously published biographical accounts of Sir Boris Uvarov, FRS (1886 [sic]–1970) were based mostly on personal recollections by his friends and colleagues recorded for the first time in the 1970s or later. Archival research reveals the true date of his birth and allows some oher key facts and dates on his early biography to be corrected. Резюме. Ранее публиковавшиеся биографические очерки о создателе теории фаз саранчи сэре Борисе Уварове, рыцаре-командоре ордена св. Михаила и св. Георгия и члене Лондонского королевского общества (1886 [sic]– 1970) были основаны главным образом на личных воспоминаниях его друзей и коллег, записанных в 1970 году или позднее. Архивные исследования обнаруживают подлинную дату его рождения и позволяют уточнить некоторые другие важные факты и даты его ранней биографии. In an age of universal civil registration, it is highly unikely for a person to be uncertain about his or her date of birth. This was, however, not the case with Sir Boris Uvarov, K.C...
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Papers by Anastasia Fedotova