Dedicated to the memory of
Academician
Mikhail Antonovich
Usov

Academician M. A. Usov

THE LIFE AND WORK OF ACADEMICIAN M. A. USOV

(1883–1939)

M. K. Korovin

Mikhail Antonovich Usov was born on February 21 (8), 1883, into a poor petty-bourgeois family in the town of Kainsk, former Tomsk Governorate.

Despite the family’s material difficulties, M. A., at the insistence of his mother, Anna Grigorievna, entered the Omsk Gymnasium in 1892. He studied in Omsk under difficult conditions, supporting himself chiefly by giving lessons. In 1901, after completing the gymnasium course with distinction, he entered the mining department of the then newly opened Tomsk Technological Institute. In 1908 he graduated from the institute with distinction, receiving the title of mining engineer in the geological specialty.

That same year he was retained at the institute to prepare for a professorial title, as a postgraduate student of Academician V. A. Obruchev (then a professor of the institute) at the Department of Geology. Having successfully completed postgraduate study under the guidance of V. A. Obruchev, M. A. took the master’s examinations at Kiev University and additionally worked in Kiev under the supervision of Prof. N. I. Andrusov and in Leningrad under the supervision of Professors F. Yu. Levinson-Lessing and N. N. Kurnakov.

In 1912 M. A. worked at the Tomsk Institute as a teacher of historical geology and paleontology, and in 1913, after the successful defense at Kharkov University of his master’s dissertation and the award to him of the academic degree of Master of Mineralogy and Geognosy, he was appointed extraordinary professor in the institute’s Department of Geology and Paleontology. In 1916 M. A. was already ordinary professor of this department. At the end of 1921 he transferred the Department of Geology and Paleontology to his pupil, Prof. Korovin, and himself moved to the Department of Geology and Petrography, retaining leadership of this department until 1930. In connection with the separation from the former Tomsk Technological Institute of the branch Siberian Geological-Prospecting Institute and the formation within it of a number of new departments, in 1930 M. A. retained for himself the Department of General Geology, while the two new departments that had branched off from it he transferred to his pupils—the Department of Ore Deposits to Prof. Shakhov and the Department of Petrography first to Prof. Gornostaev and Prof. Kuzmin, and then to Prof. Kuznetsov. M. A. retained leadership of the Department of General Geology through 1938 inclusive.

Alongside his principal work at the Tomsk Technological, now Industrial, Institute, from 1912 to 1917 M. A. taught at the Siberian Higher Women’s Courses in the city of Tomsk, and from 1917 to 1928 directed the teaching of geology at Tomsk State University.

In addition to teaching, M. A. also carried on extensive educational-administrative work: in 1916 he served as secretary of the institute council; from 1917 to 1922 as dean of the mining faculty; and from 1922 to 1926 as member of the administration and vice-rector of the institute for academic affairs.

Teaching work in the city of Tomsk constitutes, in general, the most important period in the life and activity of M. A. Usov. To it he devoted, beginning from his student days, 37 years of his life, of which 30 years were devoted to pedagogical work, including 25 years in the role of professor. In this honorable and lofty post he showed himself to be a talented Soviet teacher and a remarkable methodologist. Being a brilliant lecturer, he was able to present any topic, any complex question, simply, clearly, and engagingly. At the same time, he treated his lectures, as he did every address, with extraordinary seriousness. For every lecture or report he prepared carefully, compiling detailed outlines. Many of them have been preserved in M. A.’s archive, and it may be said that in most cases these are works ready for print. All of M. A.’s lectures were ideologically consistent, saturated with the latest achievements of scientific geological thought, posed new questions, marked out new paths for further research, and were distinguished, moreover, by a high standard of presentation; they were accompanied by a large number of schematic drawings and illustrations, which he drew on the blackboard with great skill (after the obligatory careful preliminary preparation), thereby always achieving a high degree of visual clarity and lucidity in the entire exposition. At the same time, in lectures, as in every address, he was wholly alien to the bureaucratic, sometimes pompous dryness or the dull sluggishness of formal exposition that is still sometimes observed among us, characteristic of lecturer-officials who are always detached from the audience. On the contrary, the lecture captivated M. A.; it invariably proceeded with great uplift; from beginning to end he lived through it, and this was inevitably transmitted to the audience, which was always organically connected with him, forming a single whole together with him. And is it any wonder that M. A. enjoyed great popularity in Siberia as a remarkable lecturer, and that his lectures, like his reports, always attracted a broad audience of listeners not only from among the student body, but also among scientific workers and production engineers. These lectures always played a great educational role, awakening and cultivating a love for geology, kindling in the listeners the flame of inquisitive researchers, and training cadres of specialist geologists.

In his many years of pedagogical work M. A. also devoted very great attention to the development of textbooks and teaching aids. Among them, special mention should be made of: 1) The Fedorov, or Universal-Optical, Method for the Study of Rock-Forming Minerals, Especially Feldspars (1911)—a manual that enjoyed great success not only in Russia but also abroad; 2) Historical Geology (1914)—a lithographed edition of lecture notes; 3) Geology of Caustobioliths (1920), in which M. A. gave, for the first time in Russian, an extensive picture of the geology and genesis of combustible minerals, unsurpassed up to recent times; 4) Ore Deposits—a new and original textbook that became widely distributed in the USSR and went through three editions (1928, 1931, and 1933); 5) Elements of Geomorphology and the Geology of Loose Deposits (1934)—the first printed textbook on geomorphology in Russian; 6) Structural Geology—a textbook prepared for publication in 1938 and now issued by the All-Union Committee on Higher Education; 7) General Geology, part 1, almost completed for publication (1939). Over 30 years of pedagogical work M. A. produced 7 large higher-education textbooks, that is, one textbook every 4–5 years.

It must be noted, moreover, that all the teaching manuals developed by M. A., despite the conciseness of their exposition and their small size, always coordinated with the curricula of higher technical educational institutions, constitute fully original scientific works. In them not only is a synthesis of the latest achievements of geological science given, but new tasks and new paths of research are also outlined. Such are, in particular, the above-mentioned *Geology of Causto-

“biolites” and “Ore Deposits,” which were highly praised in the Soviet press. The textbooks of recent years, such as Geomorphology, Structural Geology, and General Geology, are also noteworthy because in them M. A. began the restructuring of a number of geological problems on the basis of materialist dialectics, deepening and developing this restructuring ever further.

A major role in M. A.’s instructional and methodological work was also played by the training of young cadres of scientific workers. M. A.’s enormous authority, his broad erudition, his love for youth, and his constant readiness to share with them his knowledge and his experience always attracted young forces to him. They were drawn to him; around him gathered both scientific workers of higher educational institutions and production geologists. For many Siberian geologists it was a cherished dream to join M. A. at the department, to become his assistant or postgraduate student. Because of rigid staffing conditions, only a few succeeded in realizing this dream. But all who wished could easily come to him for consultation and unfailingly received the help they needed. And nothing gave M. A. such satisfaction, such pleasure, as the hours of consultation: here he could observe the gradual growth of his pupils, the appearance of new original ideas, the birth of new methods, the formation of young, often talented scholars.

How broad and fruitful this activity was may be judged from the fact that almost the entire body of scientific workers of the Geological-Prospecting Faculty of TII at the present time consists of M. A.’s direct pupils; among them are 5 professors and 12 docents. All the professors-geologists of TII and TSU—also pupils of M. A.—make up the leading core of geologists of the West Siberian Geological Administration, as well as of the West Siberian Branch of the Rare Metals Trust. Dozens of his pupils occupy chairs and carry out leading work in higher educational institutions and scientific-research institutes of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Irkutsk Oblast, the DVK, Northern Kazakhstan, the Urals, Moscow, Leningrad, and many other centers of the USSR. And in production the number of M. A.’s pupils over his thirty-year activity grew to many hundreds.

It should be noted, moreover, that M. A.’s connection with his pupils did not cease when they left the higher educational institution. How living this connection was may be judged from the following example. In the sorrowful days of M. A.’s death, I received a letter from the Buryat A. A. Orsoev, a geologist of the East Siberian Geological Administration in the city of Irkutsk. Here are several excerpts from this letter: “...on July 27 I learned by radio of the death of Mikhail Antonovich. This news came like thunder from a clear sky. To the depths of my soul I felt that my own father and teacher had died. In those days his bright image stood before me, and I did not want to believe that Mikhail Antonovich, beloved by us all, was no more... ...All the Tomsk geologists working in all parts of the USSR, and in particular in Eastern Siberia, received the news of M. A.’s death with a feeling of deep sadness and grief. Although M. A. did not work directly in Eastern Siberia, his name always inspired us in our work.... Geology and the geologists of Siberia have suffered a heavy loss. The family of Siberian geologists has been orphaned. An outstanding investigator of the mineral resources of Siberia, a remarkable teacher of higher education, a major public figure is no more...”.

In M. A.’s activity in higher education, an important place was also occupied by instructional-methodological work. In this respect he was a true reformer, who did not stop before breaking down old, outlived methods of teaching. He began this work on the eve of the Great October Socialist Revolution. As early as 1916, in the Council of the Tomsk Technological Institute, he delivered a report—“An Attempt to Develop the Foundations for the Construction and Execution of the Curriculum of the Russian Higher Technical School, on the Example of the Tomsk Technological Institute” (Izvestia TTI, 1916).

In this report, even then M. A. sharply raised the question of the student’s time budget, of the need for strict correspondence between the curriculum and the dimensions of the students’ time. But he was able to develop methodological work in its full breadth only after the October Revolution, in the role first of dean and then of vice-rector for academic affairs of the Industrial Institute. Having joined in this work immediately after the October Revolution, he devoted a total of 10 years to it. With his characteristic enthusiasm he restructured curricula and syllabi, introduced new methods of teaching, and rebuilt anew the entire order of life of the Soviet higher educational institution. In all this work M. A. displayed remarkable flexibility: he quickly grasped all the revolutionary directives on the reform of higher education, immediately and persistently put them into practice, and resolutely fought for them. At the same time, all this great, responsible, and strenuous work, by M. A.’s own admission, gave him great moral satisfaction.

The results of the enormous work carried out by M. A. under the leadership of the VKP(b) on the reform of Soviet higher education, using the Tomsk Technological Institute as an example, were later presented by him in the form of a special report in Moscow and received high praise at a special session of the State Academic Council.

M. A. repeatedly returned to methodological questions in subsequent years as well, devoting to them special reports and articles in the local or central press. In this connection M. A. paid particular attention to the same question of the student’s time budget, which has retained its urgency to the present day. Such was M. A.’s last methodological article, “More Attention to the Student’s Time Budget,” published in Nos. 8–9 of the journal Vysshaya shkola in 1937. Despite the radical restructuring of curricula and new methods of teaching, M. A. notes the great strain on the student’s time budget even today. The reason for this lies in the still insufficient restructuring of the work of many laboratories and departments, which overload students with various kinds of extracurricular activities, such as unavoidable home calculations for course projects and other graphic work, various homework assignments for current lectures, laboratory reports, etc.

M. A.’s many years of work at the Tomsk Industrial Institute named after S. M. Kirov brought him into the front ranks of higher-education workers: in 1938 M. A. was invited to the All-Union Conference of Workers of Higher Education, and in the report of the deputy chairman of the VKVSh, Comrade Sukhanov, he was put forward as an outstanding student of the USSR; and the Department of General Geology under his direction, which for many years had held first place in TII, was characterized as an exemplary department of the Union.

M. A. devoted himself to educational-methodological work with great love, was carried away by it, and it absorbed much of his time and much of his strength. However, at the same time he found it possible systematically to carry on major scientific-research work and extensive production work.

This work of M. A.’s began while he was still a student, when he took part in two large expeditions of Academician V. A. Obruchev to the Border Dzungaria, passing under V. A.’s guidance through a school of broad field investigations and mastering the remarkable methodology of field geology developed by Academician Obruchev during his many years of travel in Central and Northern Asia.

M. A.’s scientific-research work before the October Socialist Revolution was closely connected with the Tomsk Technological Institute and was partly based on consulting and expert work at the invitation of various mining enterprises. During this time he carried out surveys: in 1912, of gold-ore deposits—

of the Aidyrlya district in the Southern Urals, the Saralin district in the Kuznetsk Alatau, and the Onon and Ili districts in Transbaikalia; in 1913—in the gold-bearing regions of Northern Mongolia, and also at the gold-ore deposits—the Ili deposit in Transbaikalia and Kolchedan near the city of Chelyabinsk; in 1914—in the Khentei Range of Northern Mongolia; in 1917—in the left-bank region of the Minusinsk Basin and at the Novosudzhensk mines of Kuzbass.

After the October Revolution, M. A.’s field research work received a more planned and systematic development, and along with it work in theoretical geology was broadly expanded, finding its base in the Siberian geological institution that he had organized.

From the very first year of the activity of the Siberian Geological Committee, M. A.’s field work acquired a definite orientation toward the study of the Kuznetsk coal basin. In 1918 he studied the Anzhero-Sudzhensk coal district; in 1919 he studied in detail the Anzherka mine and the Shcherbinovsk coal deposit. After a serious illness in 1920–1921, when M. A. underwent a course of treatment in the Kirghiz steppe and incidentally studied the Chingiz Mountains of that steppe, he returned again to Kuzbass; in 1922 he studied the deposits of the Kemerovo and Leninsk districts; in 1923 he made an excursion along the Tom River, cutting across the basin as a whole along its long axis; in 1924–1928 he completed the study of the basin by surveying the large districts of the southern group—the Kiselevsk, Prokopyevsk, and Osinovsk districts. At the same time, beginning in 1926, M. A. began studying the Telbes iron-ore district, in which he carried out direct surveys and at the same time directed the work of a number of other geologists. In subsequent years M. A. turned to the direction and consultation of the numerous geological and geological-prospecting parties of the West Siberian Geological Trust that already existed at that time, with systematic inspectional and instructional excursions to various districts of the Altai, the Salair Ridge, Gornaya Shoria and the Kuznetsk Alatau, Kuzbass, the Minusinsk Basin, and the Western Sayan. He continued this work until the very end.

Thus, M. A.’s field research work continued almost uninterruptedly for 30 years. During this time M. A. elucidated the geology of a large number of districts of Western and Eastern Siberia and, in part, the Urals, as well as adjacent regions of Northern Asia, namely: Border Dzungaria (jointly and under the direction of Academician V. A. Obruchev), Northern Mongolia with the Khentei Range, Transbaikalia, the Western Sayan, the Minusinsk Basin, the Krasnoyarsk district, the Kuznetsk Alatau with Gornaya Shoria, the Kuznetsk coal basin, the Salair Ridge, the Russian Altai, the West Siberian Lowland, Northern Kazakhstan, and the Southern Urals. Through his extensive investigations, M. A. contributed to the identification and study in the named districts of the composition and structure of deposits of gold, iron ores, coal, petroleum, manganese, polymetallic and copper ores, rare-metal ores, bauxites, and various fluxing and building materials.

M. A.’s diverse research work was closely connected with extensive organizational and production-administrative activity, and at the same time provided him with abundant material for scientific-theoretical investigations. As in his educational-methodological work, here too M. A. was a bold innovator; he followed his own revolutionary path, not hesitating to break old forms, obsolete methods, or outlived theories.

In this direction, the first and most important measure after the October Revolution was the establishment in the city of Tomsk of the Siberian Geological Committee. In 1919 M. A. took an active part in organizing this first geological institution in Siberia, despite the resolute opposition of the central geologists then in Siberia, in addition to

and even contrary to the wishes of the Geological Committee in Leningrad. From 1920 to 1930 he was director of this institution; and from 1930 through 1938, after its transformation into the West Siberian Geological Trust and later into the West Siberian Geological Administration, he worked there first as scientific director and then as senior consultant; in addition, from 1920 to 1938 M. A. was the managing editor of all publications of this institution.

The first stage of work in the Siberian Geological Committee (later the Siberian Branch of the Geological Committee), from 1920 to 1930, deserves great attention, when the young institution had to prove its right to exist and to gain final recognition not only from Siberian organizations but also from central ones. This was a very difficult task, since the first research work of the Siberian Geological Committee had to be carried out during the years of the civil war, in conditions of devastation, when some old and strong organizations were almost curtailing their activity. However, with the constant support of Siberian Party and Soviet organizations, thanks to his enormous tact, broad erudition, and great organizational abilities, M. A. successfully overcame all difficulties and brilliantly coped with the task before him. By skillfully and carefully selecting collaborators, in most cases from among his own pupils, he created a tightly knit core of Siberian geologists and, relying on it subsequently, nurtured a large collective of young geologist-enthusiasts of Siberia, who under his leadership developed in Siberia such extensive and successful research work that by the end of the first decade of its existence the Siberian Branch of the Geological Committee had become one of the powerful and authoritative geological institutions of the Union.

One of the characteristic indicators of the activity of the West Siberian Geological Administration is its large and regular literary output, in the quality and volume of which it now occupies one of the first places among the provincial geological institutions of the Union. This major achievement of the West Siberian Geological Administration is also due wholly to M. A. Usov, who, as editor-in-chief of the Administration for almost 20 years, forged from among his pupils not only field researchers but also geologist-writers. One had to see M. A. in the role of editor-in-chief, for example in the early 1930s, to appreciate all the persistence he showed in this work and all the enormous labor he put into it. On his desk lay literally dozens of production reports by geologists, which he carefully reviewed, selecting the best of them for scientific and industrial value and for literary presentation. The authors of the best works—most often very young people and very inexperienced writers—he would then summon to him and, again carefully going through the manuscript with them, bring it to complete readiness for print. Let us add to this that for many years he also combined in himself the role of technical editor and even chief proofreader.

But M. A.’s production activity was not confined solely within the framework of the West Siberian Geological Administration. His many years of work in Kuzbass, and then in Gornaya Shoriya, and his broad familiarity with the geology and mineral resources of Siberia made him the most authoritative consultant and expert on questions of industrial planning and the development of Siberia’s mineral resources. Thus, from 1919 to 1928 M. A. worked as a consulting geologist for the Kuzbass trusts; from 1929 to 1931—as consulting geologist of the Siberian Branch of Shakstroy, while continuing throughout this time to study the composition and tectonics of the most important industrial regions.

of the Kuznetsk Basin; at the same time, from 1926 to 1930, he worked as senior geologist of the Siberian Branch of the State Institute for the Design of Metallurgical Plants—Telbessburo, studying the entire mineral base for the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant named after Comrade Stalin; moreover, from 1927 to 1930 M. A. was a member of the board of the Scientific and Technical Administration of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR and a member of the Scientific and Technical Council of the coal industry, and from 1928 to 1930—a member of the Scientific and Technical Council of Gidromez.

This whole complex of production work placed in M. A.’s hands an enormous body of factual material on geology and mineral resources, especially of Western Siberia. And despite all the variety and complexity of the work and duties that M. A. had to bear, he developed extensive literary activity and produced scientific output of high quality, the concrete expression of which is the list of his scientific works, comprising 134 titles. This activity unfolded in its full breadth only after the October Socialist Revolution. Suffice it to say that before 1918, in the list of his works, we see only 14 printed works; all the remaining 120 works belong to the period after October.

In a brief sketch there is no possibility of giving anything like a complete characterization of this important aspect of M. A.’s activity. In the list of scientific works there is obviously a great diversity of questions that occupied him. They concern the regional geology of Siberia, mineralogy, petrology, general geology, the study of ore deposits, the study of caustobioliths, mine (shaft) geology, geotectonics, geomorphology, historical geology and stratigraphy, i.e., to a greater or lesser extent they touch almost all branches of geological knowledge. Alongside this, a number of M. A.’s works are devoted to organizational and methodological questions of the geological-prospecting service in Siberia, to organizational and methodological questions of higher education, to the planning of socialist industrialization and industrial construction in Siberia. It is also necessary to single out his popular-science works, both on general questions of geology and on the geology of individual regions of Siberia, for example, Kuzbass. We shall dwell only on two groups of M. A.’s works: those on Kuzbass and those on the geology of the West Siberian Territory.

Scientific works connected with the study and development of Kuzbass occupy a very important place in M. A.’s overall literary legacy: these include 30 titles of works connected with the study of the geological structure of the basin and of its individual districts, or with the resolution of various questions in the construction of a second Donbass, and, in addition, a number of works of a theoretical nature, based in part or entirely on materials from the geological study of the basin. They cover the period from 1919 up to the very latest time.

A central place among them is occupied by works on the composition and tectonics of the most important coal-bearing districts of the basin, to which M. A. devoted 10 years of almost uninterrupted research. In these works, for the first time in geological practice, he applied and developed a new methodology for studying coal deposits not only by means of a comparative-lithological analysis of coal seams and the rocks enclosing them, but also through a detailed study of underground tectonics, with a careful analysis especially of the microtectonic forms revealed by underground workings, to which geologists had previously paid almost no attention. The Kuznetsk works enabled M. A. quickly to obtain a number of major achievements. Applying the new methodology, he carried out an original analysis of dislocations and developed original schemes of the tectonic structure of all the main coal deposits opened by exploitation workings up to 1930; for the first time he brought into full clarity the previously confused ...

the composition and stratigraphic relationships of the productive strata of many deposits, greatly expanding the industrial prospects of some of them, and developed a coherent scheme of the tectonic structure of the Kuznetsk Basin as a whole.

The works also had broader theoretical and practical significance. Thus, they enabled M. A. to establish the leading role, in the tectonic history of the basin, of tangential pressures, which created a distinctive structure of complex tectonic zones along its margins, with the widespread occurrence of the forms of disjunctives newly established by M. A.—of the type of upthrusts and overthrusts, and even nappes. At present this proposition constitutes one of the theoretical foundations of geotectonics. M. A. was the first to apply it to the study of the Kuzbass and consistently pursued it in his tectonic works on the basin, beginning as early as 1919, when the theory of radial dislocations and block structures predominated in Russian literature. The Kuznetsk works further confronted M. A. with the fact of an extremely confused terminology and a poorly developed classification of disjunctive dislocations. As a result of ten years of research in the Kuzbass, M. A. established a number of new forms of disturbances and then, on the basis of the extensive materials of these studies, developed the first genetic classification of disjunctives, proposing at the same time a simple and coherent terminology for them. He set it out in a large special work (1933), in which he also gave a detailed analysis of all the forms of disjunctives he distinguished.

The great theoretical and, at the same time, practical significance of M. A.’s tectonic works in the Kuzbass also lies in the fact that they aroused great interest in mine tectonics in the Kuzbass, stimulated tectonic observations and investigations in the mines, and, by M. A.’s own admission, were the first to introduce mine geology into the practice of the Kuzbass; they led to the establishment of a special staff of mine geologists, who are now working on the exploitation and exploration of the Kuzbass with great effectiveness. All this contributed to the further development of theoretical works on tectonics as well. The great importance of M. A.’s Kuznetsk works lies also in the fact that they played a major role in the most recent recalculations of the enormous coal reserves both of individual deposits and of the Kuzbass as a whole, as well as in the formulation of their grandiose industrial prospects.

It deserves, finally, great attention that M. A.’s many years of work in the Kuznetsk Basin and the enormous factual material he accumulated in the Kuzbass largely determined the subsequent direction of his scientific-theoretical investigations connected with the problem of geotectonics. This also includes M. A.’s last posthumous work—“The Geotectonic Theory of the Self-Development of the Matter of the Earth.” It is the result of M. A.’s persistent many-year effort to radically reconstruct the fundamental problems of geology on the basis of dialectical materialism. This work, unfortunately, was not completed by him and represents only an attempt at formulating the theory of the self-development of the Earth, partly in outline form. But for us it acquires enormous significance from the standpoint of mastering Marxist-Leninist methodology in geology.

Of the numerous works on the geology of Western Siberia, we shall dwell on only one—“Phases and Cycles of Tectogenesis of the West Siberian Region” (1936), in which M. A. gave a synthesis of the vast material on the geology of Western Siberia for the preceding 20 years. Directing the work of the West Siberian Geological Administration, M. A. systematically published survey articles on the general results of the work of this institution in the form of annual reports (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1926, 1927), and also in the form of brief, sometimes expanded summaries of new data on the geology of Western Siberia.

Siberia (1928, 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937), or in the form of summaries of new data on the geology and mineral resources of individual regions, on certain groups of mineral resources, or on individual geological formations—for example, on the Telbes iron-ore district and Mountain Shoria (1927, 1929, 1930, 1933, 1934, 1937); on the Kuznetsk Basin—a large number of articles and major works mentioned above; on the Salair Ridge (two summaries, 1933, 1935; two summaries, 1936, 1937); on the Western Sayan (1935); on aluminum ores (1934); on petroleum (1936); on the Precambrian (1935); on the Lower Silurian (1936); on Quaternary geology (1937), and so forth.

All these works gradually led M. A. to a broad synthesis of the geological structure and geological history of the formation of Western Siberia and its mineral resources, which he set forth in the remarkable book mentioned above, written “for the Eighth Extraordinary Congress of Soviets, which adopted the Stalin Constitution of the USSR.” In it he developed the basic propositions of his geotectonic theory, devoting the first chapter to it; in the second chapter, for the first time in the geological literature, he gave an extended analysis of the criteria for distinguishing formations, proposing and formulating many of them for the first time; in the subsequent chapters he developed and cast into a coherent form a new conception of the geology and geological history of the Sayan-Altai region, building it on the basis of his theory of the self-development of the Earth.

In the first chapter, developed on the basis of Marxist-Leninist dialectics, M. A. showed that geotectonic cycles, as well as the principal phases of tectogenesis and volcanism that constitute them and are recorded in a given country, are “not accidental phenomena depending essentially on local conditions, but an expression of the process of self-development of terrestrial matter” (p. 202). Of great interest is also the second chapter, on the criteria for distinguishing formations. Despite the obvious importance of this question, in the specialized geological literature it may be said to have received no attention at all. Relying on many years of personal experience and also using the collective experience of Siberian geologists, M. A. showed that many geological phenomena and records well known to every geologist can serve as excellent objective criteria for distinguishing formations and can place in the hands of the geologist a new, fruitful methodology of stratigraphy. Particularly worthy of attention are the criteria: 1) of the geological map, which gives a more or less horizontal section of a region—in the analysis of the map M. A. sees the basic universal method for distinguishing formations, although it has not been used at all until now; 2) of facies and phases of magmatic rocks, which likewise until now have been completely ignored in stratigraphy; 3) of facies of sedimentary rocks, long known in geology but little developed and rarely applied in stratigraphy; 4) of relicts of the fossil land surface, which place rich material in the geologist’s hands but in practice are usually little used; 5) of relict tectono-structures, recently developed by M. A.’s pupil K. V. Radugin and very effective, and so on.

The complete neglect by geologists of the question of the criteria and methodology for distinguishing geological formations was the reason why geological history until now had been represented as very poor in revolutionary leaps and in the more or less significant interruptions in the sequential development of geological events associated with them. Applying the new criteria and methods of stratigraphy that he had developed, M. A. showed, on the example of the Sayan-Altai region, that this is not so, and that geological history is very complex, being extraordinarily saturated with revolutionary leaps and interruptions in the course of events. The history of the geological development of the Sayan-Altai region, after a detailed analysis

of her most important stages, M. A. vividly presented in a tectonic diagram and a tectonostratigraphic scheme, which profoundly diverge both from the views on West Siberia that have prevailed up to now in Soviet literature and from the stratigraphic and geotectonic scales generally accepted in world geological literature.

Overcoming the conservatism of certain learned geologists, M. A. showed, using Western Siberia as an example, that the geology of the enormous continent of Asia cannot be squeezed into the narrow framework of the old geology developed in the limited spaces of Western Europe, and that European standards and templates cannot be slavishly transferred into the geology of Siberia. Here are several concrete examples. In world geological literature the Cambrian period has long been regarded as a period of tectonic calm, as an evolutionary stage in the history of the Earth. But in the Cambrian of the Sayan-Altai region, a group of Siberian geologists under the guidance of M. A. first tentatively, and then ever more decisively, identifies—and M. A. definitively formulates—15 revolutionary phases of tectogenesis and 4 epochs of intrusive volcanism, united in the Salair geotectonic cycle, which embraces this period from the Lower through the end of the Upper epoch. Another example: in the Middle Paleozoic, in the Devonian period, world geological literature likewise customarily sees an evolutionary stage of tectonic calm, lying between two revolutions—the Caledonian and Variscan tectogeneses. Meanwhile, in the Sayan-Altai region a group of Siberian geologists reveals a different picture. As early as 1927, while studying the Telbes iron-ore district in Mountain Shoria, M. A. established in the Devonian the Telbes phase of folding and the Telbes volcanic cycle, to which the iron-ore deposits of Mountain Shoria are subordinated. The extensive factual material accumulated thereafter enabled M. A. to establish in the Devonian of the region 8 phases of tectogenesis and 2 epochs of intrusive volcanism, and to unite them into a new Telbes cycle of tectogenesis of local significance. And throughout the entire geological history of the Sayan-Altai region, from the Upper Proterozoic (Algonkian) through the Post-Pliocene inclusive, M. A. establishes 8 major geotectonic cycles instead of the 4 generally accepted ones, and within them 54 phases of tectogenesis and 36 phases of volcanism, of which 13 are phases of intrusive volcanism.

This remarkable work of M. A., radically reconstructing many old tenets of general and historical geology, as well as of the regional geology of Western Siberia, creates a new epoch in our science, poses a number of new problems in theoretical geology, and outlines new methods and new paths for the geological study of Siberia and its mineral resources. Of course, one must not forget here that some of the constructions proposed by M. A. in this work cannot be regarded as immutable laws; in many respects they are still approximate and even provisional, corresponding to the present level of our knowledge, as M. A. himself repeatedly says in the work (pp. 184, 185, 188, 189, 202, etc.). And the task of subsequent work in our region is to refine and supplement these constructions and conclusions. The enormous scientific and practical importance of M. A.’s constructions and conclusions has already been proved by the three-year experience of Siberian geologists of the Usov school, who accepted them and introduced them into the practice of field geological work, where they proved highly fruitful.

Having no opportunity to dwell on M. A.’s other scientific works, I shall merely note that all of them preserve the same basic characteristic feature of his scientific creativity: an invariably revolutionary innovation in all areas of geological knowledge with which he came into contact, and at the same time a persistent and immediate introduction into life, into geological practice, of new important theories, new ratio-

methods. Such are M. A.’s remarkable works on petrology—“Phases of Effusives” and “Facies and Phases of Intrusives,” which went through two editions (1925, 1929, and 1932). Summing up and synthesizing in them the entire past experience of the world’s petrographers, M. A. derives the basic regularities of the origin and subsequent alteration of rock-forming minerals, modifies and supplements the generally accepted genetic classification of rocks, introducing into the latter a very substantial new element in the form of facies and phases, and thereby opens up entirely new prospects for petrology, since magmatic rocks, it turns out, are good geological documents for solving a variety of stratigraphic questions. Such, further, are M. A.’s works on ore deposits—the already mentioned Textbook of Ore Deposits, as well as the synthetic work Geology of the Ore Deposits of the West Siberian Region (1935), and others, in which he develops a new classification of ore deposits based, on the one hand, on genetic features and, on the other, on the conditions of occurrence, introducing here as well a new and important element: the facial character according to the depth of occurrence of deposits. These works likewise open up new and broad prospects for geology, far outstripping world geological thought.

M. A.’s innovative tendencies found their interesting and fruitful reflection also in the practice and methodology of geological investigations in Western Siberia. Here one should note, for example, the introduction of the petrographic method as obligatory for every Siberian geologist, with its mastery both in field investigations and in special laboratory work. It is only thanks to M. A.’s persistence that Siberian geologists owe the fact that, in the microscopic processing of materials, they as a rule manage without the services of specialist petrographers. But particular mention must be made of the first introduction in the practice of the USSR of the integrated method of geological investigations, now obligatory for all geological institutions according to the latest directive instructions of the VGU. In the West Siberian Geological Administration, M. A. persistently began to propagandize and introduce this method, placing it at the forefront of geological investigation, at least as early as 1927, i.e., long before the directive orders of the VGU. And the major successes of Siberian geologists in the geological study of Western Siberia must, to a large extent, be attributed to the mastery of these methods under M. A.’s leadership.

M. A.’s multifaceted educational-methodological, scientific, and production activity was closely intertwined with and inseparable from the great public work that he carried out both at the higher educational institution and in production. It was expressed above all in broad technical propaganda—in numerous lectures and reports at mines and ore workings, in workers’ and students’ clubs, in appearances in the daily Siberian and central press, in which he provided systematic popular articles on the geology and mineral resources of Siberia and especially of Kuzbass. It was also expressed in larger, excellent popular-science essays both on general geology, for example Catastrophes in the History of the Earth (1916), and on special questions, for example, The Geological History of the Kuznetsk Coal Basin (1923). In his daily work M. A. also always displayed a high degree of civic consciousness. He, for example, was one of the first scientific workers in the city of Tomsk to join VARNITSO, organized a VARNITSO cell at the Siberian Geological Prospecting Institute. He also was among the first active members of the Marxist-Leninist circle of TTI, worked a great deal on himself, and delivered interesting reports. He always responded actively to all outstanding socio-political events. He was not afraid of self-criticism, readily acknowledged his mistakes and quickly corrected them. It is entirely understandable that the Tomsk city—

[[unclear: beginning of word]] and regional Siberian public circles advanced M. A. to leading municipal and regional work. Thus, for a number of years he worked as a member of the Tomsk City Bureau of VARNITSO, a member of the Tomsk City Soviet for several convocations, a member of the plenum of the West Siberian Regional Executive Committee, and later of the Novosibirsk Regional Executive Committee, etc.

Such was the many-sided and vigorous activity of M. A. Usov. One had to be a genuine enthusiast of the Soviet higher school and Soviet science, of the geological-prospecting service in Siberia and of socialist construction there, in order to carry out this whole complex of work with unfailing success over the course of thirty years. And the high esteem that M. A. received in the highest Soviet and public bodies of the USSR is entirely understandable: in 1932 he was elected a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; in 1934 he received the scholarly degree of Doctor of Geological-Mineralogical Sciences without defending a dissertation; in 1937 he was chairman of the methodological commission of the All-Union Committee for Higher Technical Education for the development of a unified curriculum and syllabi for geological-prospecting higher educational institutions; in April 1938 he was a participant in the All-Union conference of workers of the higher school and in the reception in the Kremlin, at which he was accorded special personal attention by Comrade Stalin, Comrade Molotov, and Comrade Kaganovich; in 1937 he was a member of the presidium and leader of the Siberian Excursion of the XVII International Geological Congress; from June 1938, at the personal invitation of Comrade Kaganovich, he was director of the All-Union Scientific-Research Geological Institute; from February 1939 he was a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Continuous, vigorous activity and unceasing labor over many years, with insufficient rest, undermined M. A.’s naturally powerful constitution, and on July 26, 1939, he was no more.

In departing from us, M. A. left behind a great and rich legacy. It consists in several generations of specialists in geological prospecting trained by him, in the Usov school of geologists—the largest in the USSR—which he created; it lies in the very skills, in Usov’s method of work, in the remarkable examples of his labor; it lies in first-class scientific works of immense value. To study and master all this, to learn to work in Usov’s manner, to absorb the remarkable qualities and working skills of M. A.—all this must be our immediate task.