Russian Geographical Society

The Russian Geographical Society (RGO) is a learned society, founded on 6 August, 1845 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. __NOTOC__

History

Imperial Geographical Society

Prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, it was known as the Imperial Russian Geographical Society.

Founding members of the Society

these included:
*Fyodor Litke
*Fyodor Wrangel
*Vladimir Dahl
*Vladimir Odoyevsky
*Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve
*Karl Ernst von Baer
*Nikolai Nadezhdin

The Society's official presidents were Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia in 1845-92 and

The filial societies were established at the Caucasus (1850), Irkutsk (1851), Vilnius (1867), Orenburg (1868), Kiev (1873), Omsk (1877), and other cities.

The Society organized and funded the expeditions of Pyotr Kropotkin, Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky, Nikolai Przhevalsky, Nikolai Miklukho-Maklai, Pyotr Kozlov, Vladimir Obruchev, and Lev Berg. It helped set up the first polar stations in Russia and was one of the first to publish detailed studies of the Russian folklore and Ukrainian fairs.

The Society pioneered the systematic exploration of the Northern Urals in 1847-50, of the farthest reaches of the Amur River in 1854-63, of the vast areas of Kashgaria, Dzungaria, and Mongolia from the 1870s onward.

By 1917 the RGO was composed of eleven subdivisions and 1,000 members.

All-Union Geographical Society

The Society changed its name to the State Geographical Society in 1926 and to the Geographical Society of the USSR in 1938. After Shokalsky its presidents were geneticist Nikolai Vavilov (1931-40), zoologist Lev Berg (1940-1950), parasitologist Evgeny Pavlovsky (1952-64), glaciologist Stanislav Kalesnik (1964-77), polar explorer Aleksei Treshnikov (1977-91). The Society has convened numerous congresses and has awarded four types of medals, named after Litke, Semyonov, Przhevalsky, and Semen Dezhnev. By 1970, it had published more than 2,000 volumes of geographical literature, including the annual "Zapiski" (since 1846) and "Izvestiya" (since 1865). It reverted to its original name upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The main offices of the Society are in St. Petersburg.

Divisions

The Imperial Society comprised four departments:

Department of Physical Geography

Department of Mathematical Geography

Department of Ethnography

Nikolai Nadezhdin was involved in the foundation of this department, when the RGO was originally set up. During the 1850s and 1860s the ethnographic division gathered and published material such as works of folklore and the "byt" or "way of life" which they regarded as reflecting the "essence" of the indigenous people of the Russian Empire.In 1909 Dmitry Nikolayevich Anuchin, Vladimir Bogdanov and Vsevelod Miller convened the ethnographic sub-section of the Twelfth Congress of Russian Natural Scientists and Physicians held in Moscow. Here they pushed for more professionalism to distinguish ethnographers from missionaries and amateurs.

In 1917 David Zolotarev and Nikolai Mogiliansky of the RGO participated in the Commission for the Study of the Tribal Composition of the Population of the Borderlands of Russia.

Department of Statistic

Further reading

*Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky. "История полувековой деятельности Императорского Русского географического общества". Volumes 1-3. SPb, 1896.
*Lev Berg. "Всесоюзное Географическое общество за 100 лет. 1845-1945". Moscow-Leningrad, 1946.
*"Географическое общество за 125 лет". Leningrad, 1970.
*Hirsch, Francine. 2005. "Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union". Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-4273-7

External links

* [http://www.rgo.org.ru Official website]
* [http://www.vitiaz.ru/congress/en/thesis/70.html The contribution of the Russian Geographical Society into the history of the ocean studies]