The Desnitsky Centre is an independent and non-partisan translation company established in the UK that is inspired by Semyon Desnitsky and his works. It aims to promote the ideals of a free society in the Russian-speaking world and elsewhere. 

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The Centre takes its name from Semyon Desnitsky, a Russian legal scholar who studied under the 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith in Glasgow before introducing concepts of a free society and Scottish Enlightenment to the Russian public.   

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After his studies in Scotland, Desnitsky became a law professor at Imperial Moscow University and was one of the first academics to teach in Russian (rather than in Latin). He used the works of Smith, David Hume, and other philosophers of the Enlightenment as inspiration for his own ideas concerning property and equality.  

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Indeed, Desnitsky viewed property rights as fundamental to a free society and brought theories such as the common law to Russia through his teachings and translations. In doing so in the Russian language – innovative for the time –Desnitsky won the approval of none other than Catherine the Great and changed the approach to teaching in the Russian-speaking world forever.  

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Semyon Desnitsky was an entrepreneurial legal mind and, in translating and teaching the principles and values of a free society into Russian for the Russian people, is a fitting inspiration for the Centre.