Early years
Mikhail Mikhailovich Karpovich was born August 3, 1888 in Tiflis, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire. He was a child of a mixed ethnic heritage, including Russian, Polish, and Georgian ancestry.
Karpovich was active in the Russian revolutionary movement as a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (PSR) from 1904 to 1907. He was arrested and held briefly in December 1905, then arrested again and held for a month in the castle jail before being released without having been brought to trial. Karpovich was forbidden from living further in Georgia as one of the conditions of his release. In later years, Karpovich's politics moved to the center, approximating those of the Constitutional Democratic Party ("Cadets").
Throughout his life, Karpovich remained a religious man and a practicing member of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Following the failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution, Karpovich emigrated to France, enrolling at the Sorbonne where he studied the history of medieval Europe and the history and culture of Byzantium.
In 1908 Karpovich returned to Russia, enrolling at Moscow University for a second time. There he attended lectures delivered by the legendary historian Vasilii Kliuchevsky and took courses in medieval and Russian history.
Karpovich presented an essay on "Alexander I and the Holy Alliance" in 1914, for which he received a diploma as a Candidate of History with first class honors.
During the first two years of World War I, Karpovich worked as an assistant at the Historical Museum of Moscow, but he was drawn into the war effort in 1916. Karpovich was assigned to the office of the Ministry of War and assigned to the task of helping to coordinate industrial production for the needs of the front.
Following the February Revolution of 1917 Karpovich went to work for the new Provisional Government. He met Boris A. Bakhmetev, future American Ambassador of Alexander Kerensky's government by chance on the Nevsky Prospect of Petrograd. Bakhmetev persuaded Karpovich to join him on a "special mission" to America as his personal secretary. In May 1917 the pair left Russia for Washington, DC, where they established the Provisional Government's Embassy to the United States. Karpovich joined Bakhmetev with the understanding that his stay in the United States would be temporary and that he would be able to return home in time for Christmas of 1917. Historical events intervened.
Career in America
Karpovich remained in this position of trust at the Russian embassy until the middle of 1922, at which time Karpovich moved to New York City to assist Bakhmetev with his activities there. Karpovich also gave lectures on Russian history at a number of universities and made translations during this interval.
In 1927, Karpovich began his long career in the history department of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
From 1946 until his death, Karpovich served as editor of the quarterly
Novyi Zhurnal (New Magazine), an old school thick journal of serious Russian journalism and fiction. Karpovich was also an active contributor to
The Russian Review from its establishment in 1941, working closely via three-cornered correspondence with his co-editors, William Henry Chamberlin and Dimitri von Mohrenschildt.
Karpovich planned to join historian George Vernadsky in the writing of a 10 volume history of Russia, with Vernadsky handling the initial six volumes and Karpovich the final 4. The project was begun in 1943, but only Vernadsky's work was completed.
In 1949, Karpovich was named the Chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard. He remained in this position until 1954, at which time he was named the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, retaining this title along that of Professor of History until his retirement in 1957.
Death and legacy
Michael Karpovich died on November 7, 1959 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Karpovich was honored with a
Festschrift prepared by his former students and published in 1957, entitled
Russian Thought and Politics.Karpovich was remembered by pioneer historian of Russia William Henry Chamberlin as "a great Russian scholar, equally at home in history and literature" who was "a vital influence on the development of Russian studies in the United States." Chamberlin continued:
"Karpovich embodied in his own personality the finest traits of the pre-war Russian intelligentsia; he was a liberal in the truest and broades sense of that much abused word. His own ancestry reflected Russian political vicissitudes and the multinational character of the old Russian Empire. One of his forefathers was a banished Polish revolutionary; his birthplace was Tiflis, the picturesque historic capital of Georgia. So he was predisposed both against Russian chauvinism and against the anti-Russianism of some embittered members of the non-Russian nationalities."
