The Laboratory Staff Took Part in the International Scientific Conference 'N. G. Chernyshevsky and His Epoch'

The head of the Laboratory, Vladimir K. Kantor, made a presentation at the plenary session on 'Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Chernyshevsky'.
Anastasia V. Grigorovskaya, a research fellow of the Laboratory, made a presentation on "The Dialectic of 'Energetic-anthropological' in N. G. Chernyshevsky's Utopian Concept". She analyzed Chernyshevsky's main utopia "What Is to Be Done?" and two of his little-known texts, 'The Helm to the Helmsman' ('Kormilo kormchemu') and 'The Sign on the Roof (According to an Eyewitness)' ('Znamenie na krovle (po rasskazu ochevidtsa)'). At the exhibition 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', held in the autumn of 2022 at the museum-estate of N. G. Chernyshevsky (Saratov), the writer's diary notes were presented, indicating that he had not only reflected on the creation of perpetuum mobile, but made calculations and even created a mockup of a new type of engine. The Russian thinker emphasized the direct connection between two evolutions — energetic and anthropological, — considering the former an obligatory source of the latter, and also postulated the mutual influence of the form of energy and the structure of society. This idea was embodied in Chernyshevsky's utopian concept, which had much common with the European utopian model (first of all, with F. Bacon's utopia, where modernization was the engine of social progress).