Socrates in Baku: Prolegomena to the Pedagogic of Vyacheslav Ivanov

The essay opens with the first publication of Vyacheslav Ivanov's letter of 1925, written in ancient Greek at Rome, and addressed to his former student in Baku, Nina Aleksandrovna Guliaeva. In order to identify the addressee and comment on the letter's contents, it was imperative to inquire into extensive, and largely unpublished, correspondence with him on the part of his former students left in Baku, primarily, V.A. Manuilov, E.A. Millior, K.M. Kolobova and M.S. Altman. This material allows for a deeper exposition of the important role the Baku period (1920–1924) played in his creative and spiritual biography, and likewise — regarding the specifics of his academic activities as Professor of Classical Philology at Baku State University. It becomes clear that his pedagogical practice had not been limited to his lectures, and seminars, but it comprised an intense communication, outside the classroom, with individual students, variously reflecting the so-called paideia (παιδεία), the Hellenic concept of edification, which implied the wholesome and personal involvement on both sides in educational action. The available documentation (letters, diaries, recollections) permits a reconstruction of the relationship between the Professor and his students as well as juxtaposition of similarities and differences, explicit in the Socratic-Platonic didacticism and/or in Vyacheslav Ivanov's teaching methods (as well as his personal style of conduct) — especially, the translation of abstract philosophical ideas (among them, “the philosophy of eros”) into practical precepts in the realm of ethics. In both cases it aimed at the formation of a sovereign personality: endowed with capacity for authentic love, with the recognition of the human destination in transcending the empirical, and socially constructive — an ancient or the latest version of “kalokagathia”.