Mikhail Petrovo-Solovovo


Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo was a Russian diplomat, psychical researcher and skeptic.

Career

Mikhail Petrovo-Solovovo, a scion of an ancient aristocratic family that owned a Neoclassical palace on Nevsky Avenue, inherited the comital title from his maternal grandfather, General Boris Perovsky, in 1907. He held the rank of chamberlain at the imperial court and, for some time, was the first secretary of the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Empire.
Solovovo joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1890. He published several controversial papers in the SPR Journal arguing that many spiritualist mediums had been caught in fraud. In 1936 he moved to London.
In 1904–1905, Solovovo translated Frank Podmore's Modern Spiritualism into Russian with a new supplement that included an exposure of the fraudulent medium Jan Guzyk. In December 1910, Solovovo attended séance sittings with Everard Feilding and the magician William Marriott to test the medium Eusapia Palladino. The results were negative and the conclusion was that the phenomena was entirely fraudulent.
In 1912, Solovovo described a letter written by Dr. Barthez, a physician in the court of Empress Eugenie, which claimed the medium Daniel Dunglas Home was caught using his foot to fake supposed spirit effects during a séance in Biarritz in 1857. The letter proved controversial within the parapsychology community and has become a source of debate between Home's defenders and skeptics.
Solovovo attended many séances with the Russian medium Stephan Fomitch Sambor. On one occasion a chair was found hanging from the mediums arm even though his hand was allegedly held by a séance sitter. Solovovo later discovered that this sitter had intentionally released Sambor's hand and was likely to have worked as an accomplice for the medium on other occasions.

Selected publications

BooksThe Scientific Investigation of Physical Phenomena with Mediums
Papers
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. On the Production of Spurious "Spirit Raps"]. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 6: 120–122.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 13: 293–295.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 21: 436–482.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 15: 274–288.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 32: 18.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 24: 368–370.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 24: 306–307.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 39: 247–265.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. . Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 30: 87–90.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. Incidents of Bygone Days. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 31: 79–81.
  • Perovsky-Petrovo-Solovovo, Count.. Nikolaeff: A Little-Known Russian Physical Medium. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 47: 261–266.