he very carefully and consistently engaged in the upbringing and education of his son. It was he who instilled in Volodymyr interest and love for the Ukrainian people, their history and culture. The future scientist recalled that before moving from Kharkiv to St. Petersburg, he and his father were abroad and in Milan, they read about a circular in Pyotr Lavrov's newspaper "Forward" that forbade printing in Ukrainian in Russia. In his memoirs, he wrote: In St. Petersburg, a 15-year-old boy noted in his diary on March 29, 1878: Political activities Vernadsky participated in the First General Congress of the zemstvos, held in Petersburg on the eve of the 1905 Russian Revolution to discuss how best to pressure the government to the needs of the Russian society; became a member of the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (KD); and served in parliament, resigning to protest the Tsar's proroguing of the Duma. He served as professor and later as vice rector of Moscow University, from which he also resigned in 1911 in protest over the government's reactionary policies. Following the advent of the First World War, his proposal for the establishment of the Commission for the Study of the Natural Productive Forces (KEPS) was adopted by the Imperial Academy of Sciences in February 1915. He published War and the Progress of Science where he stressed the importance of science as regards to its contribution to the war effort: After the war of 1914–1915 we will have to make known and accountable the natural productive forces of our country, i.e. first of all to find means for broad scientific investigations of Russia’s nature and for the establishment of a network of well equipped research laboratories, museums and institutions ... This is no less necessary than the need for an improvement in the conditions of our civil and political life, which is so acutely perceived by the entire country. After the February Revolution of 1917, he served on several commissions of agriculture and education of the provisional government, including as assistant minister of education. Vladimir Vernadsky belonged to the small group of ethnic Ukrainians who had dual "Russian – Ukrainian" identity and considered the Ukrainian culture as part of Russia imperial culture and even declined to become a Ukrainian citizen in 1918. Scientific activities Vernadsky first popularized the concept of the noosphere and deepened the idea of the biosphere to the meaning largely recognized