Maksim Kovalevsky

Maksim Maksimovich Kovalevsky (8 September 1851 – 5 April 1916) was the main authority on sociology in the Russian Empire. He was vice-president (1895) and president (1905) of the International Institute of Sociology. He also held a chair in sociology at the Psycho-Neurological Institute. Kovalevsky was elected into the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1914. The Russian Sociological Society adopted his name in 1916.

Maksim Kovalevsky was born into a Ukrainian noble family and spent his childhood in a manor near Kharkov. He studied at the University of Kharkov under Dmitri Kachenovsky. He furthered his education in Berlin, Paris, and London, where he made the acquaintance of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Herbert Spencer, and Vladimir Solovyov. He also became involved in the Masonic movement, contributing to its revival in Russia.

After 1878, he read lectures in law at the University of Moscow, where he studied the Russian peasant commune and legal institutions of Caucasian highlanders. Some of his materials were later used by Frederick Engels. Minister Ivan Delyanov did not approve of Kovalevsky's liberal views. In 1886, Kovalevsky was kicked out of the university and then settled in Western Europe, where he came to know all major sociologists and anthropologists of his day.

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