Academician V.I. Vernadsky: “Our Common Enemy Will Be Defeated”

Academician V.I. Vernadsky spent most of the war in the deep rear, evacuated to the Kazakh resort Borovoe. He continued, however, to closely cooperate with the Academy of Sciences’ organizations. The biogeochemical laboratory he headed focused on chemical analytical work for defense purposes. It was also involved in producing energy from uranium, including for nuclear weapons. Vernadsky never doubted the victory of the USSR and its allies over Nazism. 25 months at Borovoe were extremely fruitful for all of Vernadsky’s works. The world war, unprecedented in scale, prompted him to comprehend the patterns of civilization development and to understand the role of humanity as a geological force. In Borovoe, he developed the principles of a new natural science based on the concept of the cosmic meaning of life and the biosphere.