"Unknown" Article about Russian Chronology by A.I. Herzen

Abstract

The article attempts to establish the authorship of the note “The seven-hundredth anniversary of Moscow”, published in the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper in April 1846. At that time, newspapers and journals in Moscow and St. Petersburg published materials related to the scholarly and chronological discussion about the date of the foundation of Moscow. The article, published in 1846, was signed under the pseudonym "A.", and its authorship was still considered unknown. Famous Soviet bibliographer I.F. Masanov managed to rival the meaning of encrypted author’s signature. Under the same name, in the 40-s of the 19^th century, a well-known public figure of the revolutionary course A.I. Herzen published his works in that newspaper upon his return from exile to Moscow, but still being under police surveillance. His authorship is confirmed by the long acquaintance of A. I. Herzen with the Professor of Moscow University astronomer D. M. Perevoshchikov, who was fond of studying the problems of historical chronology. Noting the low scientific level of the article from the Moskovskie Vedomosti, we can also indicate the cases of A.I. Herzen’s erroneous recalculation of date of the Julian calendar into the Gregorian, which becomes an additional argument for the author’s identification of the note dated 1846.