Federal agency of Education

State educational institution

Higher professional education

Birsk branch of Bashkir State University

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Department of Russian History and Documentation

Final qualifying work

specialty 032600 “History”

Development of secondary and higher education in Russia at the end of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries.

Saisanova Valentina Yurievna

6th year correspondence student

Scientific supervisor: Nazmutdinova O.R.

Introduction

Chapter I. Government policy in the field of secondary and higher education in the second half of the 13th - early 19th centuries

1 Russian universities under Catherine II

2 Development of public education under Alexander I

3 Education reform under Nicholas I

Chapter II. Educational reform of 1863

1 Strengthening the scientific and educational potential of universities

2 Formation of university teaching staff

3 Student Question Charter 1863

Chapter III. Comparative analysis of the education system before and after the reform of 1863

Conclusion

List of sources and literature used

Introduction

Relevance of the research topic. The role of education in modern stage Russia's development is determined by the tasks of its development within the framework of a democratic and legal state, a market economy, and the need to overcome the danger of the country lagging behind global trends in economic and social development.

In the modern world, the importance of education as the most important factor in the formation of a new quality of economy and society increases along with the growing influence of human capital. The Russian education system is capable of competing with the education systems of advanced countries. At the same time, there is a need for broad public support for the ongoing educational policy, restoration of the responsibility and active role of the state in this area, deep and comprehensive modernization of education with the allocation of the necessary resources for this and the creation of mechanisms for their effective use.

Of particular importance is the study of the experience of transforming the system of secondary and higher education during the second half of the 19th century, when the processes of development and legislative legalization of a new educational policy, the formation and implementation of a strategy for updating secondary and higher education took place. high school. Much of that valuable theoretical and practical heritage, created including by social thought, in this area has been lost today. This circumstance causes an objective need for a new understanding of it.

During the period under review, Russian universities and gymnasiums repeatedly underwent transformations, during which their organizational and educational structure was formed. Studying the history of reform of domestic secondary schools and universities allows us to determine those essential characteristics that have traditionally been characteristic of them. The search for modern ways of harmonious development of secondary and higher education cannot take place without relying on an analysis of historical events, taking into account the mistakes and achievements of previous times. Reconstruction of the complex process of reforming universities and secondary schools with a retrospective nature historical research has a practical advantage - a known completeness of the experiment, knowledge of the results and long-term consequences of the innovations carried out.

In the second half of the 19th century. Feudal Russia transitioned to capitalist Russia on the basis of large-scale peasant reform and other transformations

An appeal to understanding the history of reforms of universities and secondary schools in Russia in the second half of the 19th century. makes it possible to better understand the essence of the changes taking place at that time, which began after the abolition of serfdom, to explain the causes of socio-political and spiritual-moral crises, to evaluate the positive results of the socio-economic and cultural development of the country, to identify the motives for the sharp turns in the political courses of the autocracy.

Studying the history of the reform of secondary schools and universities during the era of great reforms and conservative modernization of Russia in the second half of the 19th century, which opened a wide path for the capitalist development of the country, which gave it the opportunity to move to a new qualitative level commensurate with the level of advanced Western powers, is quite natural and natural interest.

The object of the study is secondary and higher schools in post-reform Russia.

The subject of the study is the historical process of reforming the Russian secondary and higher secondary schools in the period of the 60s - 70s. XIX century.

The purpose of the work is to formulate an idea of ​​the process of reforms in the field of general secondary and higher education in the second half of the 19th century, based on an analysis of the practice of transforming secondary and higher schools, various sources, and the results of theoretical developments.

Research objectives:

consider the historical background of reforms in public education in the second half of the 19th century;

determine the stages of reform and modernization of gymnasium and university education, their rationale and characteristics;

Analyze the mechanism for the preparation and implementation of government legislative decisions on reform and modernization in the field of secondary and higher education;

Review the main legislative documents in the field of secondary and higher education;

conduct a comparative analysis of higher and secondary education before the reform and after the reform of 1863.

The practical significance lies in the fact that the materials and conclusions contained in the work can be used: in a training course on the history of Russia, the history of pedagogy, for the development of special courses on the history of public education and culture of Russia.

When writing a thesis great importance for us were the generalizing works of modern authors devoted to the methodology of studying transition processes and reforming society. Among them, it is necessary to note the scientific works of A.I. Avrusa, T.B. Zemlyanoy, O.N. Pavlycheva, F.A. Petrova, V.I. Zhukova, V.V. Zhuravleva, S.A. Kuleshova, Sh.M. Munchaeva, B.N. Mironova, V.M. Ustinova and others.

To understand the essence of pedagogical problems of education and upbringing, to better understand the meaning of social and pedagogical movements and private initiatives that had big influence The works of modern historians of pedagogy (A.N. Shevelev, M.V. Mikhailova, B.K. Tebiev, T.B. Solomatina, etc.) on the history of public education helped us in the reform steps of the government in the field of secondary and higher education. pre-revolutionary Russia.

It is necessary to note the works of V.R. Leikina - Svirskaya, G.I. Shchetinina, R.G. Eymontova.

Monographic studies by R.G. are devoted to issues related to the development and implementation of the university charter of 1863. Eymontova. The works reveal the active participation of the public in the preparation of draft charters.

Within the framework of the topic under study, the monograph by V. A. Tvardovskaya “The Ideology of Post-Reform Autocracy (M. N. Katkov and his publications), as well as the chapter written by her in the collective monograph “Russian Conservatism of the 19th Century” is of significant interest.

A contribution to the development of the history of public education in Russia was the bibliographic reference book edited by E.D. Dneprov, which presents almost all journalistic and historical works of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet period.

In writing our thesis, we relied on the textbook by V.A. Tomsinov. University reform of 1863 in Russia.

The next volume in the "Great Reforms" series contains analytical articles and documents reflecting the preparation and implementation of the University Reform of 1863 in Russia. It publishes records of discussions that took place on the essence and significance of universities, the content of the new University Charter, the curriculum of the Faculty of Law; The texts of the General Charter of Imperial Russian Universities of 1863 and the accompanying Personal Decree of Alexander II, given to the Governing Senate, are given. The book also publishes legislative acts that regulated the organization and activities of the Academic University in St. Petersburg and the Imperial Moscow University in the 18th century, and the charters of the imperial Russian universities of 1804 and 1835. They allow us to more deeply understand the essence of the changes in the Russian university education system introduced by the University Reform of 1863. In the introductory articles of Professor Tomsinov V.A. an overview of the history of university education in Russia in the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries is given, the methodology for preparing the university reform of 1863 is shown, the meaning of its main measures and their significance for the further development of Russian universities is revealed.

It is necessary to pay attention to the book “Alexander II and the Abolition of Serfdom in Russia” by L.G. Zakharova.

The idea of ​​this publication is revealed in the introduction “The Path to the Topic,” which is dedicated to the history of the creation and fate of the book “Autocracy and the Abolition of Serfdom in Russia. 1856-1861" (Moscow: Moscow State University Publishing House, 1984). The monograph examines the development of the government program for the abolition of serfdom in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the Secret and Main Committees for Peasant Affairs and, especially, in the Editorial Commissions of 1859-1860, which prepared the “Regulations of February 19, 1861.” The personal role of Alexander II at all stages of the creation of this legislation is shown, as well as the activities of the people who prepared the reform: N.A. Milyutina, Ya.I. Rostovtseva, Yu.F. Samarina, P.P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, book. V.A. Cherkassky and others. The appendices complement and develop the questions posed in the monograph: the influence of the peasant reform of 1861 on all the transformations of the 1860-1870s, connected by a single ideology into a common system and constituting the era of the Great Reforms; the role of Alexander II in this process and his tragic end as a man and a king-liberator; the state of modern historiography (domestic and foreign) of the Great Reforms.

In the monograph by Tolmachev E.P. “Alexander II and His Time” examines one of the most striking periods in the history of the Russian state, associated with the life of Emperor Alexander II. One of the topics considered by the author is the Great Reforms of the second half of the 19th century.

A detailed biography of Alexander II is in the book by N.S. Hoppen “The Crowned Muscovite. Essay on the reign of Emperor Alexander II" (S.-P, 1901). The author, with details known only to a contemporary, briefly and figuratively talks about the birth of the future emperor in the Moscow Kremlin, about the program of his upbringing and education, about his accession to the throne, about the coronation, the reforms carried out and about the last year of his reign and his death on March 1, 1881.

It is necessary to note the book “Alexander II - Tsar-Liberator (1855-1881)” (compiled by M. Kolyvanova), this publication continues the series “Russia - the path through the centuries”. It tells about the events that took place in the Russian Empire during the reign of Tsar-Liberator Alexander II.

After the 1917 revolution, the history of Russian universities was not given due attention for several decades, because the very fate of universities until the early 30s. was hanging by a thread. In the 20-40s. Several books of an anniversary scientific and reference nature were published. And only in the 50s. interest in this issue revived again, which was largely due to the anniversaries of Moscow, Kazan, Kharkov, and Saratov universities celebrated in those years. One of the first to publish an article by the famous historian E. N. Gorodetsky Soviet reform of higher education in 1918 and Moscow University (Bulletin of Moscow State University, 1954, No. 1). In subsequent years, the main focus Soviet historians was turned to the study of individual periods in the history of Russian universities, mainly in the 19th century. It is necessary to note the works of A.E. Ivanova, G.I. Shchetinina, R.G. Eymontova. All of them began with the publication of articles, and completed their research with solid monographs, representing a significant contribution to the historiography of Russian universities. Their works provided the most in-depth study of the history of domestic universities during the second half of the 19th century. - beginning of the twentieth century. In 1998, the publication of a multi-volume monograph by F. V. Petrov began, dedicated to Russian universities in the first half of the 19th century.

As if summing up some results of the study of domestic higher education before 1917, a team of authors published a book in 1995 Higher education in Russia: an outline of history before 1917. The monograph contains a lot of interesting factual material; the appendices are of great value. However, only one chapter of the book is specifically devoted to universities, and therefore many aspects of university life are only indicated in the text.

Chapter 1. Government policy in the field of secondary and higher education in the second half of the 13th - early 19th centuries

1 Russian universities under Catherine II

In the history of Russian public education, the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. were marked by the separation of secular education from spiritual education. Already by the time of the reign of Catherine II, the dominance of class-vocational education introduced by Peter I had been shaken, and a new task was opening up before the government: to lay the principle of general and all-class education in the foundation of the policy of public education. The first steps in this direction were made under the predecessors of Catherine II: the Academic and Moscow universities, the academic, Moscow and Kazan gymnasiums were the first experiments in establishing comprehensive schools open to young men of different classes. But these various educational institutions suffered from one fundamental drawback: they were not subordinated to one general plan, and were not connected into a single system.

Class and professional education of the first half of the 18th century. closed into isolated cycles determined by the professional interests of each individual class. Meanwhile, general and classless education inherently requires that all types of schools (primary, secondary and higher) be combined into one system, since the appropriateness of each individual type of general education school is always determined by the position it occupies in the complete education system. In fact, the vital interests of schools at all levels have always organically united them into one system. The university, on the one hand, had to be nourished by scientific forces who had received theoretical scientific training (for this purpose the Academy of Sciences); on the other hand, he could not do without the gymnasium as a preparatory school for him. In turn, for gymnasiums the university has always been a source of teaching staff, and the content and level of the gymnasium course were consistent with the interests of university science.

Catherine's era brought new trends in the field of public education, its formation became a state task. The highest authorities are showing a desire to broadly organize public education and search for new means to resolve the central issue of the system of general and classless education. Special commissions and individuals in the 60-70s. XVIII century Various educational reform projects were created. All of them were based on the idea of ​​general education. But they were not destined to come true.

One of the important reasons for the failure that befell many educational reform projects in the 18th century was the absence of such competent authorities that would be specifically in charge of public education. All attempts to oblige general administration bodies to perform educational and administrative functions have always been unsuccessful. Realizing this, Catherine II, by decree of 1782, established a special educational and administrative body - the “commission on the establishment of public schools,” which was entrusted with the task of introducing the Austrian system of public schools in Russia. The activities of this commission, called the “main school government” in the charter of public schools (August 5, 1786), created a solid foundation for building a complete system of public education. According to the charter, main and small schools were established. Main schools were created in provincial cities and were supposed to train teachers for small schools. The plans soon yielded tangible results. So, if in 1872, when the reform began in Russia, there were only 8 main schools, where 26 teachers taught 474 boys and 44 girls, then already in 1800 there were already 315, in which 790 teachers worked, giving knowledge 18 128 boys 1787 girls.

In 1787, a commission led by P.V. Zavadovsky developed a plan for the establishment of universities in Russia, which were to crown the network of primary and secondary educational institutions in the country. They needed students who had completed secondary education. The functions of secondary educational institutions were assigned to the main public schools, which, according to the charter of 1786,

should have become a reliable basis for universities. The university specified the ideal level to which the secondary school should rise; The task of preparing students for the university clearly defined the scope of secondary education, which in turn made it possible to draw a more precise boundary between secondary and primary education. According to the project of 1787 Russian universities were to consist of three faculties: philosophy, medicine and law, and the three-year course of the philosophical faculty was intended to serve as the basis for two higher special faculties. From the point of view of the interests of organizing a system of universal education, the Faculty of Philosophy acquired particular importance, since “philosophical teaching connected the main public schools with the higher sciences.” The traditions of “state benefit” according to the project determined the purpose of universities: “The main goal of each university is to provide the state with people who can perform services, which in the sending presuppose the knowledge of some higher sciences“That’s why universities are called higher schools.”

The charter of 1786 contained the idea of ​​a classless school: public schools were open to children of all classes. In the project plan of 1787, the same idea was defended: “The student title is not a dignity or rank, but only a way to acquire them, for every student is a student, even if he was not registered as a student, therefore, this title can be accepted a person who is not free to take on himself without any prejudice to the sciences.” In the project itself of 1787, the idea was expressed that higher education could not be organized without the widespread establishment of secondary and lower schools.

However, the establishment of universities never took place. The lack of the required number of professors and lack of material resources did not allow us to complete the creation of an education “system” and the establishment of general, all-class education as a necessary basis for higher professional education.

Thus, in the history of Russian public education, the end of the 17th, beginning of the 18th centuries. were marked by the separation of secular education from spiritual. The highest authorities sought to broadly organize public education and search for new means to resolve the central issue of the system of general and classless education.

2 Development of public education under Alexander I

The creation of an integral system of public education, undertaken by Catherine II, after the failure that befell the university project, stopped halfway, and the creative activity of the commission on public schools gradually froze.

It was revived at the beginning of the next century, under new conditions of state and public life. Alexander I and his advisers on the Secret Committee had broad views on the role of education in public life, which was seen as a panacea for backwardness and a reliable basis for future development. Effective governance, economic progress, military power, social cohesion, the welfare of the country - all this required preparation and training as professional elite, and the working classes. The circumstances of the first years of the reign of Emperor Alexander I connected educational reform with administrative reform. Among the first eight ministries, the Ministry of Public Education, headed by Count P.V., was established in 1802. Zavadovsky, who held this position from September 1802 to April 1810. At the beginning of 1803, the Commission on Schools was transformed into the Main Board of Schools of the MNP. The decree of September 8, 1802 required the commission to begin implementing a new educational reform with the establishment of universities, that is, from the very point where the transformations of Catherine II stopped. On the initiative of the Minister of Education, new universities were opened: Dorpat (1802), Vilna (1803), Kazan (1804) and Kharkov (1805). M.M. participated in the development of the new system of public education as part of the commission. Speransky, academician N.I. Fus, F.I. Jankovic de Mirievo, A. Czartoryski. Based on their projects, a general reform plan was drawn up - “Preliminary Rules for Public Education” (January 24, 1803). This fundamental law formulated the purpose and content of the new educational system as follows: “for the moral education of citizens, according to the responsibilities and benefits of each state, four types of schools are determined: 1) parish schools, 2) district schools, 3) provincial or gymnasiums and 4) universities.”

The preliminary regulations outlined a program of educational reform. Its detailed development was the statutes of universities and their subordinate schools (gymnasiums, district and parish schools), approved on November 5, 1804. Both of these documents were the cornerstones on which the policy of education in Russia was built throughout the 19th century. In the six educational districts into which most of the country was divided, universities were not only an educational center, but also an administrative center. The administration of each educational district was represented by a trustee living in St. Petersburg. The provincial gymnasiums were directly under the control of the university. The directors of the gymnasiums have general control over the district and similar schools, and the superintendents of the district schools monitor order in the parish schools. These latter are entrusted to the “enlightened and well-intentioned guardianship” of landowners, parish clergy and honorable residents. The maintenance of educational institutions, except for parish ones, was provided by the treasury, orders of public charity and the income of city societies. According to university statutes, based on German models, universities received privileges in the form of autonomy and academic freedom; university councils, consisting of members of the teaching staff, had the right to elect rectors, deans and other bodies, independently administer justice, introduce their own censorship and choose textbooks. The university statutes outlined a range of subjects that were supposed to introduce students to knowledge of branches of knowledge useful to the state. They also indicated that a young person could become a student if he provided the university board with a certificate of his condition, as well as a certificate from the director of the gymnasium on behavior, diligence and success in the sciences taught. In those years, graduates of gymnasiums did not take entrance exams to universities. Admission to universities was also allowed for persons who graduated not from gymnasiums, but from other types of secondary educational institutions (theological seminaries, new cadet corps, commercial schools).

The commission preparing the reform studied the education systems of other countries and, above all, France, where the principles of constructing curricula in the spirit of rationalism were interesting. One of the authors of the French educational system was a philosopher, educator, mathematician and political figure Jean Antoine Condorcet. Like the Condorcet project, the new charter laid the principle of continuity at the basis of the Russian education system. Each level, from primary school to university, provided a complete education and at the same time served as preparation for the next level. The parish school was taught for one year; district school - two years. The charter emphasized the continuity of the program of parish and district schools. The gymnasiums had a 4-year course, and their curriculum was linked to the program of district schools. Educational districts were also in charge of private educational institutions. This system did not include only the schools of the Holy Synod, although connections between religious and secular educational institutions were not interrupted. This was a complete reform that united all categories of secondary schools, from the university to parish schools, into one system. Access to higher levels depended only on the students' abilities; schools were free, and scholarships were provided for disadvantaged students. The most prepared graduates of gymnasiums continued their education at universities and other higher educational institutions of the Russian Empire (Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Mining School, Medical-Surgical Academy, Demidov Legal Lyceum).

The reform was intended to provide the state with a qualified workforce and a literate, able-bodied population; in particular, educational institutions were supposed to train teachers, doctors, management workers and technical specialists, so necessary for the country. Therefore, the training courses emphasized practical, “modern subjects.” Primary education by new system was adapted to the spread of progressive agricultural techniques, industrial and commercial innovations among the people. In each of the 42 Russian gymnasiums, that is, secondary schools that emerged for the most part from the main public schools and those located in provincial cities, eight teachers each taught. They taught 4-year courses in a wide range of subjects, preparing merchants or government officials. The central link in the educational system was the gymnasium - the key to university education, which opens the way to secure public service. It concentrated the functions of academic and university gymnasiums of the 18th century, a significant part of the functions of male noble educational institutions, and even part of the tasks of the main public schools. Given this state of affairs, the course of gymnasium education turned out to be unusually difficult. As an institution preparing for university, the gymnasium had to maintain Latin in its curriculum. From the cadet corps the “fine sciences”, German and French languages; finally, the main public school transferred to it mechanics, hydraulics and “other parts of physics that are most needed in general,” technology and commerce, with the addition of “fashionable” to all this for the beginning of the 19th century. "political economy". The cumbersome nature of the gymnasium curriculum caused many methodological difficulties. Many nobles objected to the "excessive" or "encyclopedic" curriculum of secondary schools, seeking to avoid gymnasium education. However, the charter of 1804 established a very certain degree of dependence between education and place in the table of ranks, which would make it possible to improve the low educational level of civil servants. To strengthen this dependence, Secretary of State M.M. Speransky, by decree of August 6, 1809, linked promotion to an exam for rank. According to the new regulation, in order to enter the eighth and fifth grades of the civil service, it was necessary to present a university certificate or successfully pass tests in fifteen subjects of the university program. But the education provided by the gymnasium according to the charter of 1804 suffered from one-sided preparation for public service.

Fundamental changes to the secondary school development plan were made by the trustee of the St. Petersburg educational district S.S. Uvarov. At the beginning of November 1811, his proposed project for the reform of the St. Petersburg gymnasium was approved, and by the end of the decade the capital’s experience had already been extended to all educational districts. While “reforming” the provincial gymnasium, he reported to the Minister of Public Education A.K. Razumovsky: “Having confirmed that the course of study and the way of teaching at the St. Petersburg Provincial Gymnasium has so far not at all corresponded to the intentions of the government, I consider it necessary to draw your attention to some changes. The purpose of the gymnasium in general is to prepare students for taking academic or university science courses, which is why the gymnasium course should not include subjects that are presented only to universities.” On this basis, Uvarov excluded university courses from the gymnasium curriculum - political economy, commercial sciences, finance, aesthetics and philosophical grammar. And on the contrary, subjects that “serve as the first foundation of true enlightenment in all states and in every century” are included in the plan: the law of God, Russian and classical languages, history, geography, mathematics, grammar, logic, rhetoric, domestic and foreign literature. The period of study at the gymnasium was increased to seven years .

Thus, the plans of the gymnasium and the university were quite sharply differentiated. The gymnasium was freed from the subjects of “real education” and turned into an estate-based educational institution, preparatory to the university or directly to the bureaucratic service, with a program completely unsuitable both for the industrial strata of society and for that part of the ruling class itself, whose life was beginning to become more and more to be associated with the interests of capital. But the biggest innovation was that the gymnasium course included the teaching of classical languages, which were considered as the basis of education. The needs of the merchants and philistines were satisfied by the opening of special classes at district schools and gymnasiums, where the emphasis was on sciences that provided preparation for activities in trade and industry.

Other principles proclaimed by the reform - universality and free education - did not have any legal restrictions. However, in practice their implementation encountered great difficulties.

Thus, we can draw the following conclusion. The circumstances of the first years of the reign of Emperor Alexander I connected educational reform with administrative reform. Among the first eight ministries, the Ministry of Public Education was established.

Thus, the plans of the gymnasium and the university were quite sharply differentiated. The gymnasium was freed from the subjects of “real education” and turned into an estate-based educational institution with a program, preparatory to the university or directly to the bureaucratic service.

3 Education reform under Nicholas I

Further restructuring of the educational system was associated with the events of December 1825, the Decembrist uprising, which had a huge impact on all aspects of the social life of the Russian Empire. The new Emperor Nicholas I saw one of the reasons for the revolutionary uprisings in the imperfection of the educational system. The Minister of Public Education, Admiral A.S., has repeatedly expressed thoughts about the “depravity” of domestic education. Shishkov, who was in this position in 1824-1828. He believed that public education should be national in content and help strengthen the autocracy.

His views A.S. Shishkov also carried out this work through the Committee on the Organization of Educational Institutions, which worked from 1826 to 1835. The committee prepared: the charter of gymnasiums and district and parish schools (1828), the charter of the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev (1833), the regulations on educational districts (1835) and the General Charter of Imperial Russian Universities (1835) .

The development of the charter of gymnasiums proceeded in sharp disagreements on the issue of the nature of gymnasium education. Some of them believed that the gymnasium could fulfill its role only as an educational institution “providing the necessary preliminary knowledge to those preparing to enter universities”; others (Shishkov), on the contrary, allowed a certain independence of the gymnasium course, as “providing methods of decent noble education for those young people who do not intend or cannot continue their studies at universities.” The defenders of the first opinion reduced the task of preparing for university mainly to the study of ancient languages ​​and literature; supporters of the completeness of the gymnasium course, on the contrary, placed native language, literature, history, foreign languages ​​and law. In search of a compromise between these two opposing and one-sided solutions to the issue, the majority of committee members outlined three options for the direction of development of gymnasiums: 1) the duality of the type of secondary school in the form parallel existence classical gymnasiums that prepare for universities, and special schools that provide complete education; 2) bifurcation of the upper classes of the gymnasium, branching education along the same two lines; and 3) a single type of gymnasium with a narrow classical program (without Greek), supplemented by the teaching of native and new foreign languages ​​and some natural science disciplines. The author of the last proposal was S.S. Uvarov. Nicholas I supported his option, which was included in the approved charter. The new charter set the goal for gymnasiums, on the one hand, to prepare for listening to university lectures, and on the other, to “provide methods of decent education.” The gymnasium consisted of seven classes. The number of subjects and the scope of their teaching in the first three grades of all gymnasiums was the same, and starting from the 4th grade, the gymnasiums were divided into gymnasiums with and without the Greek language. At the head of the gymnasium there was still a director, who was assisted by an inspector, elected from among the senior teachers, to monitor order in the classrooms and manage housekeeping in the boarding houses. The title of honorary trustee was also established for joint supervision of the gymnasium and boarding school with the director. In addition, pedagogical councils were formed, whose task was to discuss educational issues in the gymnasium and take measures to improve them. The main subjects were ancient languages ​​and mathematics. Most of the teaching time - 39 hours - was devoted to the study of the Latin language and ancient literature as knowledge that accustoms the mind “to attentiveness, hard work, modesty and thoroughness.” The number of lessons on the Law of God and the native language increased. The remaining subjects remained: geography and statistics, history, physics, new languages, penmanship and drawing. Charter of gymnasiums and schools from 1828 to the 60s. has not been revised. However, amendments were made to it by separate government orders. Thus, in 1839 a special “Regulation on real classes at educational institutions of the Ministry of Public Education” was published, and in 1849-1852. significant changes have been made to educational plans gymnasiums.

Further transformations of the public education system of Nicholas's time were again associated with the name of Count S.S. Uvarov, but already as the manager of the Ministry of Public Education from March 1833 (from April 1834 - minister). From a young age, he was convinced that education is a necessary prerequisite for progress in any field, and the level of enlightenment is a criterion in assessing any country.

With the active participation of S.S. Uvarov was prepared and on June 25, 1835. the regulation on educational districts of the Ministry of Public Education was approved, which created the necessary legal basis for the effective management of education in the Russian Empire. According to the document, all educational institutions were distributed among eight districts: at the head of which were universities with a trustee.

By the mid-30s. XIX century Russia had six universities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Kharkov, Kiev (St. Vladimir) and Dorpat. The life of the first four of them was regulated by a charter prepared by the Committee for the Organization of Educational Institutions, and approved by the highest on July 26, 1835. Two other universities, Dorpat and Kiev, functioned on the basis of statutes specially prepared for them, since the first was German in composition, and the second Polish, and a different approach was needed to them.

According to the charter of 1835 (in contrast to the charter of 1804), the management of each of the universities was entrusted to the special leadership of the trustee of the educational district - a government official appointed by the emperor. The trustee became the sole head of all educational institutions included in the district, which were previously subordinate to universities. The trustee was assisted by a council that included an assistant trustee, the rector of the university, an inspector of state schools, two or three directors of gymnasiums and an honorary trustee from noble local people. It was also expected that the trustee would continue to seek assistance from the university council on purely academic matters. However, in practice this did not happen. The new centralized system of school district management led to restrictions on university autonomy and academic freedom. As a result, the role of the trustee and his office in the management of the university has significantly increased. Its legal functions in relation to universities expanded significantly, which was enshrined in a number of articles of the charter. The first duty of a trustee was to strictly ensure that the university staff strictly fulfilled their duties and to observe their ability, morality and devotion. If the teacher did not meet these requirements, the trustee could reprimand him or fire him if he considered him unreliable. At his own discretion, the trustee could head the university council, consisting of professors and an elected rector. In addition, the trustee was the head of the university board, which also included the rector, deans of faculties and an inspector. The board of the university council was entrusted with the care of finances, material, staff and office, as well as the function of maintaining order at the university. The former university judicial proceedings were abolished and transferred to local judicial authorities. And finally, now the trustee, and not the rector, appointed an inspector to supervise the students, and not from among the professors, as before, but from among the officials.

Charter 1835 retained the previous principle of forming teaching staff: filling vacancies in departments was carried out by electing councils, for which the applicant had to present his scientific works and give three trial lectures; The Minister of Education approved the selected candidates for professors and adjuncts, and at his own discretion could appoint them to vacant departments.

Professors who served for 25 years were awarded the title of emeritus and were given a pension in the amount of their full salary. If he wished to continue serving at the university, the department was declared vacant and the council carried out the procedure for re-election. If a professor again occupied the department, then in addition to his full salary for five years he also received a pension.

The professorial boards retained such academic rights as the distribution of training courses, scholarships, discussion of teaching aids and teaching methods. The university council fully retained the functions of supervision over its own academic life: professors retained the privilege of duty-free and uncensored import of materials for scientific studies, the right to independently censor dissertations and scientific works of teachers, as well as university publications printed with state funds, etc. In addition, the university the council continued to elect rectors and deans from among its professors for a four-year term, with their subsequent approval by the emperor and the minister, respectively. Rectors' powers were expanded by giving them the right to reprimand professors and university officials if they did not fulfill their duties in good faith. Professors were freed from administrative duties, which, as a rule, were a burden to them and were poorly performed by them. The new charter called for professors to focus on research and teaching students. At each university, a university-wide department of theology, church history and church jurisprudence was created for all students of the Greek-Russian faith.

Researchers recognized that the university statute of 1835 was a step back in matters of university autonomy compared to the statute of 1804, but was more liberal than the statutes of German universities, and especially France, where universities were not recognized by scientific communities at all.

Along with the charter of 1835, university staffs were also approved. Moscow, Kazan, Kharkov and Kyiv universities had three faculties: philosophy, law and medicine. Until the end of the 1840s. The Faculty of Philosophy was divided into two departments: verbal and natural. There was no medical faculty at St. Petersburg University, but in 1856 another one was introduced - oriental languages. The duration of study at the Faculty of Medicine was five years, for the rest - four years. For Moscow, Kazan and Kharkov universities, the following staff were determined: 26 ordinary and 13 extraordinary professors, one professor of theology, eight adjuncts, two dissectors with two assistants, four foreign language lecturers, a drawing teacher and arts teachers (fencing, music, dancing, horseback riding). ride). A somewhat smaller staff was allocated for St. Petersburg and Kyiv (which also initially did not have a medical faculty) universities. Ordinary and extraordinary professors were required to have a Doctor of Science degree, adjuncts - a Master of Science degree.

The legislation of Tsarist Russia included university teachers in the general system of bureaucratic hierarchy. They were endowed with appropriate class ranks and wore uniforms. The rector was entitled to the rank of V class, ordinary professor - VII class, extraordinary professor, adjunct and prosector - VIII class. Having an academic degree upon entering the civil service also gave the right to ranks: Doctor of Science received the rank of V class, master - IX, candidate - X class. By the end of their teaching career, many professors had risen to the rank of actual Privy Councilor, and some reached the rank of Privy Councilor. The acquisition of learning opened up the path to it for those who did not have the title of nobility. Legislatively, the rank of IX class gave personal, and IV class (actual state councilor) hereditary nobility.

Russian students in the second half of the 30s, as before, were divided into self-kost and state-kosht. The first group was the most financially secure. Many of them were natives of the university city and lived in their parents' houses or in rented apartments and paid their own fees for their studies, after which they were free to find a job. State-funded students lived in boarding houses at the university on full government support and were required to work for six years after completing the course for the appropriate purpose. Students were required to wear dark blue uniforms, decorated with gold buttons and gold-embroidered buttonholes, and were provided with a cocked hat and a sword. According to the statute of 1804, students were responsible for their conduct before professor-inspectors and an independent university court. For Nicholas I, this system seemed insufficient. The charter of 1835 legitimized new rules for student conduct and supervision. Now the chief inspector of each university, a high-ranking and highly paid official, was called to his post from civil or military service and had, relying on a staff of his deputies, to monitor the piety, diligence and cleanliness of the students.

Some students upon graduation from the university were awarded the title of full student and the rank of XII class. Students who successfully passed the exams and submitted a dissertation or were previously awarded a medal for an essay were awarded the academic degree of Candidate of Sciences and the right to the rank of X class. University graduates had legal grounds to enter government or military service and to ask for honorary citizenship.

In general, the charter of 1835 ensured the progressive development of Russian universities until the mid-40s; Russian universities in the second quarter of the 19th century. were very close to the best universities in Europe.

The progressive development of Russian universities was facilitated by government policy aimed at creating highly qualified teaching staff - a difficult issue for higher education. Initially, universities filled the ranks of teachers by inviting foreigners, but the language barrier made this practice difficult, and the national pride of Russians demanded its end. Under the Minister of Education A.N. Golitsyn tried to train professors abroad from among the Russian students sent there, but this did not reduce the need of Russian universities for qualified teaching staff. A breakthrough in this direction was made with the opening in 1827 of the Professorial Institute at the University of Dorpat. Only two graduations of the Professorial Institute (1828 and 1832) produced 22 professors of various disciplines, who returned to their native universities and occupied departments. In 1838, the Professorial Institute was closed, but the practice of annually sending young scientists (two interns from each university) abroad at the expense of the treasury to prepare for the professorship continued, giving birth to new talented names of domestic scientists.

On the basis of the charter of 1835, the development of higher education was carried out for the next almost twenty years, until the beginning of the 60s. XIX century, when universities rightfully began to occupy a leading place in the general education system of Russia. Universities made a significant contribution to the development of science not only at the theoretical level, but also took an active part in the development of its applied direction. Courses in various disciplines (agronomy, industrial chemistry, commodity science, mechanics, medicine, architecture, etc.) taught in them contributed to the formation of specialists in various fields of the country's national economy.

By the middle of the 19th century, domestic universities, under the influence of historically conditioned tasks of the country's socio-economic development, overcame the boundaries strictly defined by the autocratic government - the training of educated officials - and became the most important social institution that determined the direction of the forward movement of the entire educational system of the country, its cultural appearance in the sphere of material production and spiritual state.

The tsar himself was of the opinion that “not enlightenment, but idleness of mind, more harmful than idleness of bodily strength, - this willfulness of thoughts, this destructive luxury of half-knowledge, this rush into dreamy extremes, the beginning of which is the corruption of morals, should be attributed to the lack of solid knowledge, and the end is destruction." He sought to build a system of public education and upbringing that would leave no opportunity for the revolutionary aspirations of youth. The creation of a protective direction in education became the goal of his educational policy. However, the “protectiveness” of Nicholas I’s policy in the field of education was not identical to the concept of “conservatism” in the same area. Nicholas I and his ministers of public education, based on political considerations, purposefully adjusted educational policy towards the constant strengthening of protective measures, thereby deviating from the basic educational documents - the charters of gymnasiums of 1828 and universities of 1835. As a result, by the mid-50s gt. XIX century Russian education found itself in a state of crisis. The formation of negative phenomena in the functioning of the education system occurred gradually and was associated with specific names of senior government officials from the Ministry of Education, who acted in line with the general regulations of the emperor. Among them, a special role belongs to S.S. Uvarov.

Uvarov based the activities of the ministry on a broad program built on the historical principles of Russian statehood and culture. “To adapt general world education to our national life, to our national spirit,” to establish it on the historical principles of Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality, according to Uvarov, was necessary to preserve the power and well-being of Russia. The essence of this famous program, which expressed the general protective nature of the policy of Nicholas I, was revealed by the minister in his letter-report to the emperor dated November 19, 1833.

Establishing the Committee for the Organization of Educational Institutions, Nicholas I highlighted the lack of “proper and necessary uniformity” as the main problem and again repeated this criticism when Uvarov took office. Uvarov accepted the royal order for execution. Already in 1843, he reported to the emperor: “During the reign of Your Majesty, the main task of the Ministry of Public Education was to collect and unite in the hands of the government all mental forces, hitherto fragmented, all means of general and private education, left without respect and partial without supervision, all elements that have taken an unreliable or even perverse direction, to assimilate the development of minds to the needs of the state, to ensure, as much as is given to human reflection, the future in the present.” Uvarov believed that his calling as a minister was to lay a solid foundation for Russian education, while relying on the qualitative, rather than the quantitative, side of the development of all its constituent parts.

Uvarov used centralization, unification and inspection both to control the education system and to improve it. First of all, this concerned increasing the number of teaching staff, who were sorely lacking to properly expand the network of educational institutions. Uvarov also realized that existing teachers were too poorly trained to improve the quality of teaching. On his part, attempts were made aimed at improving the material well-being of teachers, steps were taken to strengthen the Main Pedagogical Institute and improve the training of teachers not only in gymnasiums, but also in primary schools. But even in this matter, protective interests overshadowed common sense. In the 40s, again, as in the 20s, hostility towards teaching institutes intensified, where young people of ignoble origin, who upon completion of the 14th grade, sought to attend. It seemed to many, including the sovereign, that this undermined the foundations of the social order. In 1844, Uvarov was forced to block access to the institute to members of the “tax-paying” class on the grounds that there were supposedly enough applicants from the “free” classes; the number of students was halved. In 1847, the second category of the Main Pedagogical Institute, where teachers were trained for primary schools, was closed again, and in 1858 the entire institute was closed. Teachers were now to be trained only at universities, which recruited students mainly from the upper classes.

Nicholas was extremely concerned about stability in the country and understood that revolutions arise for reasons both political and social, and therefore demanded that the Russian educational system in no way undermine the existing social order. The royal rescript, dedicated to the discussion in the Committee on the Organization of Educational Institutions on the issue of accessibility to educational institutions for representatives of various classes, generally recognized the need for education for all layers of society, but at the same time noted that each person should acquire only “the knowledge that is most suitable for him.” necessary, that could serve to improve his lot, and without being lower than his condition, he also did not strive to rise excessively above that in which, according to the ordinary course of affairs, he was destined to remain.”

The educational policy of the Nicholas era constantly emphasized the class character of educational institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Public Education. Even in the documents of 1803-1804, although the principle of universal accessibility of the new educational system was proclaimed, there were many restrictive formulations that reduced the real opportunities for people of a non-free status to study in secondary and higher educational institutions.

Similar restrictions were retained in the updated charter of 1828. For persons of the “unfree” class, the possibility of entering a secondary or higher educational institution was determined by the need to obtain official release from previous duties. The relative accessibility of education for all Russians has become possible since the time of Peter I, when the social structure of the country was already difficult to regulate. Subsequently, the class structure became more and more fluid, and it was no longer possible to organize a school strictly on the basis of class succession. Therefore, the school system was built in such a way that it corresponded to class needs, but also allowed a certain social mobility without making it a goal.

In 1837 they were delivered to the serfs. This year, by order of the highest order, a Committee was formed to review existing regulations on the admission to educational institutions of people of unfree conditions. It included M.M. Speransky, Count Benckendorf, the ministers of public education and internal affairs. As a result of the work of this Committee, in May 1837, a royal rescript appeared in the name of Uvarov, in which Nicholas I instructed the minister to strictly observe the rule according to which for the children of serfs who did not have a certificate of their dismissal, education was limited only to lower schools (parish or district) . “To prevent harmful consequences” - this is how the purpose of this measure was defined, indicating an understanding of the danger of allowing the natural mental development of the serf peasant, which would inevitably lead to a protest against the bonds of slavery.

Restrictive measures also applied to other classes. In 1840, Uvarov, after visiting the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev addressed the trustees of educational districts with a secret circular, in which it was stated that “when admitting students, it is necessary to pay some attention both to the origin of young people devoting themselves to higher academic pursuits, and to the future that opens up for them. With the growing desire for education everywhere, the time has come to ensure that this excessive desire for the highest objects of learning does not somehow shake the order of the civil classes, arousing in young minds an impulse to acquire luxurious knowledge and goods...”

By the 1940s, tuition fees became a serious regulatory tool for the social composition of secondary and higher educational institutions. Introduced back in 1819, it acquired extremely important political and social significance. At the initiative of the emperor, the issue of measures to limit access to gymnasiums and universities for youth from the tax-paying classes was again discussed. An increase in tuition fees in gymnasiums and universities was proposed as an effective restrictive measure.

In 1845, following an increase in tuition fees at universities and gymnasiums, on the initiative of Emperor Nicholas I, the issue of making it difficult for commoners to enter gymnasiums was considered. In June 1845, on a memorandum from the Minister of Education on tuition fees, Nicholas I wrote: “I wonder if there are ways to make it difficult for commoners to access gymnasiums?” The result of the minister's considerations was the imperially approved decree that appeared in the same year prohibiting admission to gymnasiums without dismissal certificates from societies. Thanks to this measure, Uvarov noted in his note, “gymnasiums will become primarily a place of education for the children of nobles and officials; the middle class will turn to district schools.”

In 1847, there was a ban on the right of auditors to attend lectures at the university. Young men from the tax-paying classes are instructed to “under no circumstances be exempt from tuition fees.” In 1848, the emperor promised another increase in tuition fees.

The proactive measures of Nicholas I and his government against the penetration of persons of unfree status and commoners into secondary and higher educational institutions basically achieved their goal. In 1833, approximately 78% of the total number admitted to the gymnasium were representatives of the upper classes - the nobility, officials and merchants of the first guild, 2% came from the clergy, and the rest - from the lower and middle classes 45. Similar statistics remained in the second half of the 40s. According to P.N. Milyukov, raznochintsy in gymnasiums and universities accounted for 20-30% at that time.

When building a system of secondary gymnasium education, Uvarov paid a lot of attention to training programs in them. A significant factor in increasing the level of training of future officials was the expansion of the gymnasium program from four to seven years, so graduates entered the service not from the age of fifteen, as before, but from eighteen, and with a more significant knowledge base. In addition, the seven-year program made it possible to thoroughly prepare young people for entering university.

Alarming messages in 1848 from the countries of Western Europe, where students and young people were drawn into the revolutionary movement, forced the government of Nicholas I to take a number of measures aimed at protecting “student youth” from the harmful influence of ideas destroying the foundations of autocracy. Among them was the secret circular-guidance of Minister Uvarov to the trustees of educational districts from 1848, where the political aspect was brought to the fore: “So that the harmful wisdom of criminal innovators cannot penetrate our numerous educational institutions,” he considered it his “sacred duty” to convert the attention of the trustees to “the spirit of teaching in general in schools and, in particular, at universities,” “the trustworthiness of superiors,” “private educational institutions and boarding houses, especially those maintained by foreigners.”

In the context of revolutionary events in Western Europe, the government paid close attention to self-paid (studying at their own expense) students at Russian universities, consisting of representatives of the privileged classes. They represented the bulk of university students. In order to exclude the possible penetration of “harmful” ideas into their midst, it was decided to limit the desire of noble youth for university education and direct a certain part of them to enroll in military educational institutions that were experiencing enrollment difficulties. As a result, in April 1849 S.S. Uvarov was announced Secretary of State of the Imperial Chancellery A.S. Taneyev issued the highest order to limit the number of self-employed students at each university to 300 people, “with a ban on admitting students until the available number reaches this legal size.” This decision did not apply to medical students, since Uvarov convinced the Tsar that, given the catastrophic shortage of doctors, refusing to admit students to the Faculty of Medicine would further reduce the number of doctors the military department was counting on. The minister managed to convince the tsar to abandon the reduction of government-paid students, proving to him their good intentions and desire to become teachers, so urgently needed in various parts of Russia.

After revolutions began to shake Europe in 1848, and the Petrashevites’ cause arose in the Russian capital, the position of Uvarov, who now seemed too liberal to Nicholas I, began to shake. In October 1849 S.S. Uvarov tenders his resignation, which is accepted.

Prince P.A. is appointed to the post of head of the educational department. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov, who served as a companion to the Minister of Education since 1842. His appointment to this important post was a complete surprise to him. On January 26, 1850, he presented a note to Nicholas I “on the need to transform teaching in our universities in such a way that henceforth all the provisions and conclusions of science would be based not on mental, but on religious truths, in connection with theology.” The Emperor liked this idea, and he hastened to appoint P.A. Shirinsky-Shikhmatov as minister, whose post had remained vacant for a long time. Acting in the spirit of the emperor's instructions, the MPP took a number of steps aimed at changing the curricula of educational institutions in the secondary and university education systems. The first of the disciplines studied at universities was excluded from the state law of the European powers, “shocked by internal sedition and rebellion at their very foundations, due to the instability of their beginnings and the uncertainty of their conclusions.” Since 1850, the same fate befell philosophy, which was recognized as useless: “with the modern reprehensible development of this science by German scientists,” it was necessary to “take measures to protect our youth from the seductive philosophies of the latest philosophical systems.” Philosophy departments were closed, and teachers were transferred to others or resigned. Reading logic and experimental psychology was prohibited to secular teachers and assigned to professors of theology.

The organizational structure of universities changed. Philosophical faculties, since the science of “philosophy” itself was expelled, were divided into two independent faculties: historical-philological and physical-mathematical. By a ministerial circular of November 5, 1850, pedagogical institutes at universities were abolished and departments of pedagogy were established in their place. Two reasons for this step were noted in the ministerial document: firstly, the institutes did not give future teachers knowledge of the full system of education and upbringing of youth; secondly, professors who were not familiar with the rules of pedagogy as a science could not be reliable leaders of students. The Ministry approved the proposal previously put forward by Buturlin’s committee that professors must submit lithographic copies of their lectures. In January 1851, Shirinsky-Shikhmatov sent instructions to universities, intended for rectors and deans of faculties, “On strengthening supervision over university teaching.” Each teacher had to submit to the dean a detailed course program indicating the literature used, which was approved at a faculty meeting and by the rector. In addition, the dean was obliged to monitor the exact correspondence of the professors’ lectures to the programs and report the slightest deviation, “at least harmless,” to the rector, who was exempted from teaching by instructions and focused on control functions. Professors' lectures were subject to manuscript verification. The requirements for dissertations were increased in terms of the good intentions of their content, and the publicity of scientific debates during dissertation defenses was limited. To top off all the protective and restrictive steps in higher education, in 1852 the government decided to ban the invitation of foreign scientists to vacant departments, although 32 of 137 departments at universities were vacant. Thus, the fundamental provisions of the university charter of 1835, which declared academic freedom, were completely undermined.

As a continuation of the previous policy, measures were taken to change the social composition of the student body. To achieve this, tuition fees were increased and the admission of young people of non-noble origin was limited.

In March 1850, the MNP's monopoly on censorship of educational manuals was broken. Now they found it necessary, in addition to general censorship, to subject textbooks to “special, the most careful and strict examination,” for which a special committee was created under the chairmanship of the director of the Main Pedagogical Institute I.I. Davydova. The task of the next secret committee was to monitor not only the spirit and direction of this type of writing, but also the “method of presentation of them” .

The instruction regarding the observance of class principles in gymnasiums continued to be strictly followed. This was confirmed by both the large number of noble boarding houses and the predominantly noble composition of students in the gymnasiums. According to information from a member of the Main Board of Schools A.S. Voronov, in 1853 in the St. Petersburg district, out of 2831 gymnasium students, 2263 were nobles, or 80 percent. The class principle of organizing educational institutions with appropriate teaching staff was vigilantly guarded throughout the entire reign of Nicholas I.

In addition to district schools intended for townspeople and small merchants, in addition to parish schools for peasants and theological schools, during the reign of Nicholas I, educational institutions appeared in each department. The War Ministry had cadet corps, cadet schools and other special educational institutions. The Naval Ministry also had its own cadet corps and its own cantonist schools. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Department of the Court, the Department of Mining Engineers (factory schools, etc.) had their own schools. Of course, with such a passion for class, the uniformity proclaimed at the beginning of the reign, like many other things, was not achieved.

The imposition of stagnant principles of the structure of academic life, excessive regulation of the educational process, and overorganized forms of education intensified the process of stagnation of education. Many of those who studied at universities at that time in their memoirs talk about the rather low quality of teaching of a number of subjects, about the formal approach to assessing students’ learning educational material. The exams required a literal retelling of the text, often without understanding its meaning.

The Ministry of Public Education, in the context of the tightening of the political course of the autocratic government in relation to gymnasiums and universities, lost its independence. Uvarov and Shirinsky-Shikhmatov “became victims of that storm that hit our already weak and shaky enlightenment.” But the education system turned out to be quite strong and withstood the blows of censorship.

After the death of Shirinsky-Shikhmatov in 1853, his deputy A.S. became the Minister of Education. Norov (1795-1869), son of a Saratov landowner, provincial leader of the nobility, participant in the Battle of Borodino, invalid of the Patriotic War of 1812, educated man, with a literary name, a man, according to contemporaries, “weak-willed and kind.” His arrival could not make fundamental changes in government policy in the field of education, since it was still difficult to overcome the personal interference of the reactionary emperor and the committees he created in the affairs of the educational department. The position of the Minister of Public Education was determined by strict adherence to the rules of the game proposed by the emperor, which were based on the subordination of the urgent pedagogical tasks of education to political goals.

However, it was under Norov that the creation of certain prerequisites for overcoming the crisis and subsequent reform of secondary and higher schools began. Even during the life of Emperor Nicholas I, the new minister tried to abolish some restrictive measures regarding universities. In particular, he obtained the tsar’s consent to increase student enrollment by 50 people at the capital’s universities and to celebrate the centenary of Moscow University, and presented to the tsar “a plan for reforms in the regulations and institutions of the Ministry of Public Education.”

Thus, the further restructuring of the educational system was associated with the events of December 1825, the Decembrist uprising, which had a huge impact on all aspects of the social life of the Russian Empire. The new Emperor Nicholas I saw one of the reasons for the revolutionary uprisings in the imperfection of the educational system.

Class differentiation in the organization of the education system found its practical embodiment in Uvarov’s policy in the educational department. He saw his main goal in attracting young people of the upper classes to state gymnasiums and universities, believing that “noble youth” would take their rightful place in civil spheres, having received a solid education.

The desire to protect educational institutions providing secondary and higher education from the penetration of representatives of non-noble classes into them led to the need to erect legislative barriers for these classes.

The proactive measures of Nicholas I and his government against the penetration of persons of unfree status and commoners into secondary and higher educational institutions basically achieved their goal. In 1833, approximately 78% of the total number admitted to the gymnasium were representatives of the upper classes - the nobility, officials and merchants of the first guild, 2% came from the clergy, and the rest - from the lower and middle strata. Similar statistics remained in the second half of the 40s. According to P.N. Milyukov, raznochintsy in gymnasiums and universities accounted for 20-30% at that time.

Chapter 2. Education reform of 1863

1 Strengthening the scientific and educational potential of universities

Signs of a new political course began to appear with the ascension to the throne of Alexander II. The first measures taken by Alexander II were received by society with satisfaction. In the fall of 1855, the long-awaited resignations of a number of ministers of Nicholas I followed. The ban on Russian citizens traveling abroad, the forced conscription of commoner children as soldiers, and restrictions on the civil service of natives of the western provinces (primarily Poland) were lifted. Works of previously disgraced writers were allowed to be published (among them N.V. Gogol and A.V. Koltsov). The dominant feeling in society was a feeling of liberation from the oppression of the Nicholas regime and the expectation of a more liberal policy. The first steps of the government gave the personality of the new emperor the aura of a sincere supporter of liberal reforms.

The liberal trends that swept through government spheres were not slow to spread to the department of public education. The reform of the education system was put forward as a priority task, since by the middle of the 19th century. It became obvious that government policy in the field of education was in a state of crisis. Its expression was manifested in the fact that the progressive development of the educational system has ceased, there has been a lag, delay, and inadequate response to the needs of society. One of the features of the education crisis is the stagnation of the system as a consequence of the reactionary course of the government, which is expressed in the bureaucratization of education and the artificial inhibition of the quantitative growth of its system (reduction in enrollment and graduation, freezing the opening of new higher educational institutions). In addition, the stagnation of education was accompanied by the imposition of stagnant principles of the structure of academic life, regulation of the educational process, over-organization of forms of education, strengthening of extensive tendencies in the content of education - the so-called pseudo-encyclopedicism, etc.

In 1863, by Decree of June 18, a new university charter was approved, the most liberal of all pre-revolutionary charters.

The draft university charter drawn up by the von Bradke commission was printed and sent to the trustees of educational districts, councils of universities, lyceums, prominent scientists, teachers, government and church leaders, as well as “various persons who were primarily engaged in the matter of education and from whom useful considerations can be expected.” . At the direction of Golovnin, the text of the draft university charter, translated into French, German and English languages, along with primary and secondary school projects, was sent for review to famous scientists and educators in Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland and England.

The Charter of 1863 applied to Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Kazan and Kiev universities. The main provisions of this document were also binding on the University of Warsaw. Compared to the charter of 1835 new law significantly increased the material resources of universities and expanded the independence of the professorial corporation. The Charter recognized the priority of science for universities and created great potential opportunities for the internal development of universities. At the same time, it outlined measures to prevent student unrest and maintain the bureaucracy's grip on universities.

The structure of universities according to the new charter did not undergo fundamental changes; it only expanded due to an increase in the number of departments in the faculties. Each had four faculties: physics and mathematics, history and philology, law and medicine. Only at St. Petersburg University, instead of a medical faculty, there was a faculty of oriental languages. However, the charter allowed for some differences between universities in the organization of their internal life, the organization of which was left partly at the discretion of university councils.

They began to teach highly specialized disciplines: church legislation, police law, etc. The Department of Political Economy and Statistics became part of the Faculty of Law.

For example, instead of one department of mineralogy and geognosy, two independent departments appeared - mineralogy and geognosy. The departments of physics and physical geography, botany and zoology were divided. The teaching of such disciplines as technology, Agriculture, forestry and architecture, by dividing them into two departments - technical chemistry and agronomic chemistry. Innovations strengthened the profile of faculties and made it possible to more productively conduct educational and scientific work that meets modern needs.

Deep structural changes took place at the Faculty of Medicine, where the number of departments increased from 10 to 17. Departments were introduced that developed the natural science training of future physicians: medicinal chemistry and physics, embryology, histology and comparative anatomy, and general pathology. The department of medical substance science acquired its modern sound as a result of division into three: pharmacognosy and pharmacy, general therapy and medical diagnostics, theoretical and experimental pharmacology. The creation of new departments at this faculty made it possible to differentiate teaching and further develop specialization in the educational process.

At the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​of St. Petersburg University, new departments were introduced for the first time - the history of the East and Sanskrit literature, and the history of oriental literatures began to be taught.

The basis for further specialization of education was the provisions of the charter granting university councils the right to divide faculties into departments, and the subjects taught into compulsory and optional, main and secondary. The charter, in a certain sense, upset the balance between classical and natural science education in favor of the latter, for which Golovnin soon began to be sharply attacked by security agencies, who saw natural science as a source of godlessness, materialism and nihilism.

The idea to include the theology course in the list of optional disciplines was not reflected in the charter. On the contrary, a recommendation was enshrined in law to make the reading of theological sciences more solid in terms of content, connecting them with the fundamentals of presentation of other university disciplines. For this purpose, the former department of dogmatic and moral theology was reorganized into the department of general theology, and at the historical and philological faculty, as noted above, a department of church history was created, and at the legal department - church jurisprudence.

The approved staffing assumed a significant increase in the number of university professors and teachers. If, according to the staffing table of 1835, their total number at five universities was 265, then the new law increased it to 443, i.e. by 67%.

In the new charter, much attention was paid to increasing the number of educational and support institutions that make up the educational and material base of universities: libraries, laboratories (in basic natural sciences), classrooms (physical, chemical, applied mechanics, mineralogical, zoological, etc.) clinics (therapeutic, surgery, obstetrics, women's and children's diseases), museums (physiological anatomy, antiquities and arts, collection of coins and medals), astronomical observatories, botanical gardens. This was supposed to help improve the practical side of the educational process, mainly in the faculties of physics, mathematics and medicine, deepen scientific research, improve the quality of teaching and the overall level of training of students.

Significant funds were allocated to reform universities. Before the reform, five universities were entitled to 988,357 rubles. 26 kopecks. Now for the new states this amount has increased to 1,762,383 rubles. 50 k., i.e. for 774,026 rubles. 24 kopecks. On average, the salaries of professors and other teachers have approximately doubled. Ordinary professors (who previously received from 1263 to 1572 rubles) were assigned 3000 rubles. per year, extraordinary - 2000 rubles, associate professors - 1200 rubles. The increase in salaries allowed university teachers to concentrate on scientific and educational work and not look for additional income. In addition, they were all promoted in rank. Thus, an ordinary professor was now awarded the rank of class V (the former rector's), an extraordinary professor - VI, and an associate professor - VII. Increasing the social status of university teachers was supposed to contribute to the growth of their authority, strengthen the self-esteem of scientists and attract attention to the very profession of a scientist-teacher of capable young people.

Special funds, generated mainly from the collection of fees for listening to lectures and private donations, were recognized as the inalienable property of universities (§ 109, 42, paragraph 9); their unspent balances could not be taken to the treasury at the end of the year.

The increase in the material content of universities was generally a favorable factor, but not enough to satisfy the necessary needs of these higher educational institutions. The amounts requested for the project were reduced by the Ministry of Finance by more than 100 thousand rubles. The increase in salaries for professors and associate professors still did not lead to the achievement of the amounts that were determined by objective calculations carried out by the teachers themselves and reflected in their comments on the project. Thus, when describing the average statistical level of living wage for a professor, the project indicated payment for an apartment of five rooms, maintenance of a family and servants, purchase of books, etc. It was noted that a preferable salary of 5,000 rubles. to ensure a comfortable life. The size of pensions for teachers who have completed their careers also remained unchanged.

Thus, the structure of universities according to the new charter did not undergo fundamental changes; it only expanded due to an increase in the number of departments in the faculties.

The number of departments at the Faculty of Law almost doubled - from 7 to 13. New among them were: encyclopedias of law, the history of Russian law, the history of the most important foreign legislation, ancient and new, financial law.

The number of departments at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics doubled due to the division of the previous ones, which increased the differentiation of teaching.

2.2 Formation of university teaching staff

According to the new charter, the position of associate professor was introduced at universities to replace the adjunct (assistant professor). One could become an associate professor only if one had a master's or candidate's degree (by the way, one could not become a professor without a doctorate). The charter gave associate professors the right to teach independent courses, to attend meetings of the university council and at faculty meetings (after two years of service in this rank, he received the right to vote in it).

Universities had the right (§ 118) to elevate to the rank of honorary members of their universities persons known for their patronage of the sciences or famous for their talents and merits. Honorary members of universities (after their approval in this rank by the trustees of the educational districts) were issued corresponding diplomas. Honorary members, as a rule, provided financial assistance to universities.

The formation of the teaching staff was now completely entrusted to the university council. The minister approved those elected by the council: rector, deans, vice-rector and professors. Associate professors, lecturers, honorary members, laboratory assistants, curators of classrooms and museums, assistant dissectors and vice-rector or inspector were approved by the trustee of the educational district. Many proposals from scientists to change the procedure for electing teachers were included in the charter. If, according to the statute of 1835, the nomination of candidates for vacant positions in departments was provided to the university council, which could invite any professor, regardless of his specialty, to run for available vacancies, then under the new law this right was transferred to the faculty in which there was a free place. An applicant for the position of professor, associate professor or private assistant professor had to give two trial lectures in the presence of members of the faculty. The election procedure involved voting first at a faculty meeting, and then a second time at the university council. The one who received an absolute majority of votes was considered elected. Repeat voting was allowed under the same conditions.

The requirements for re-voting were more stringent for professors who had served for 25 years. What was required here was not a simple majority of votes, as before, but two-thirds of the total number of voters. Only then was the election recognized as valid, and the professor could continue working at the department for another 5 years, after which a new re-election followed. With such a measure, they hoped to add dynamics to the process of rejuvenating scientific and pedagogical personnel and raise the level of teaching.

The charter made the path to the highest academic degree - doctor - easier: to obtain it, only a public defense of the dissertation was necessary; the examination for the doctorate was canceled as a detrimental formality. It became easier to achieve the title of private assistant professor. To do this, it was necessary for the candidate (formerly the master) to submit and publicly defend a dissertation pro venia legendi (to obtain the right to lecture). Private assistant professors, not being full-time teachers, did not have a legally established salary, and the new charter left the issues of material incentives for this category of teachers at the mercy of university councils, which introduced uncertainty into the position and prospects of private assistant professors at universities.

The administration of the universities was carried out by the Minister of Public Education and the trustee of the educational district, to whom the former was entrusted with supervision. The university council (§ 5) and faculty meetings, consisting of all university professors, were recognized as part of this management. The council elected the rector, deans, vice-rector (or inspector), professors and other teachers, university judges, and decided on the issue of admitting private assistant professors to give lectures. The charter significantly expanded the scope of powers of the university council and determined issues on which the council's decisions were final: the distribution of subjects and the order of their teaching among faculties; awarding medals, prizes for scientific achievements to students and awarding them scholarships; confirmation of academic degrees and the title of a full student; selection of scholarship holders for preparation at the university for a professorship; orders for the publication of scientific works; approval of university court decisions; reviewing the financial budget of the university and approving the annual budget of special funds, income and expenses; distribution of amounts assigned across the state for teaching aids by faculties.

With the consent of the minister, the council could carry out changes in the structure of faculties: divide them into departments, combine and separate departments, send candidates and masters abroad to prepare for the professorship, create scientific societies, determine a list compulsory subjects for students. The charter delegated to the university the drafting of rules on the procedure for testing for academic degrees, internal regulations (rules for students) and instructions for the vice-rector (or inspector).

The role of faculties in organizing the educational process increased. Faculty meetings were empowered to elect a dean (for a period of three years) and teachers, approve educational programs, programs for competitions for occupying vacant departments, approve works published by the university, and also take measures to strengthen the educational activities of students.

As can be seen from the content of the articles of the charter on the organization of university self-government, they reflected many ideas expressed by the overwhelming number of progressively minded professors. The most radical proposals (Kavelin, Stasyulevich, etc.) remained unrealized. The solution to a number of important issues, not only of an educational and scientific nature, but also of an economic and administrative nature, depended on the trustee and the minister.

An analysis of the articles of the charter that define the competence of the trustees of educational districts allows us to state that they retain significant power over universities. The terms of reference of the trustee included approval of cases regarding the appointment and dismissal of teachers (with the exception of professors), staff of educational and auxiliary institutions, and university judges. He authorized instructions intended for the vice-chancellor or inspector, “measures and means leading to the strengthening of the activities of the university,” as well as rules drawn up by the council: on the procedure for collecting, distributing and using the amount collected for listening to lectures; on admission of students to the university; on the admission of unauthorized persons to listen to lectures; about the responsibilities of students and order at the university; on penalties for violation of these duties and procedures; about proceedings in the university court. The intentions of the liberal professors to limit the power of the trustee to only control functions in relation to universities, thus, were not fully realized. Many issues raised by university councils turned out to depend on the trustee authority.

Article (26), which defines the powers of the trustee, is drafted very vaguely. According to it, the trustee is given the right to take all necessary measures to ensure that institutions, bodies and persons belonging to the university fulfill their duties; in emergency situations, he is authorized to act by any means available to him, even if they exceed his power, with the obligation in such cases to immediately report to the minister; he allows, within the limits established by the statute, representations in matters exceeding the authority of the university, or enters into such matters with considerations to the Minister of Public Education.

On issues of university management, the plans of social thought and their actual implementation in the provisions of the charter turned out to be not entirely identical. This was recognized within the MNE itself. “It goes without saying that university autonomy may subsequently develop even more; then it will probably be possible to submit some of the matters now approved by the trustee to the final approval of the councils,” noted an official article published in the ministry’s journal.

And yet, it should be clearly recognized that in matters of university management, from the point of view of the initiative granted to university collegial bodies under the new charter, significant progress has been made in comparison with the legislation of the previous era. This was an undoubted victory for progressive social thought, defending the ideas of autonomy and self-government as a reliable objective basis for the scientific and educational excellence of university education. Despite the fact that it was not possible to achieve the full implementation of plans for university independence, the degree of bureaucratic interference in the internal life of these higher educational institutions was significantly limited.

Thus, the formation of the teaching staff was now completely entrusted to the university council. The charter significantly expanded the scope of powers of the university council and determined issues on which the council's decisions were final: the distribution of subjects and the order of their teaching among faculties; awarding medals, prizes for scientific achievements to students and awarding them scholarships; confirmation of academic degrees and the title of a full student; selection of scholarship holders for preparation at the university for a professorship; orders for the publication of scientific works; approval of university court decisions; reviewing the financial budget of the university and approving the annual budget of special funds, income and expenses; distribution of amounts allocated throughout the state for teaching aids by faculties.

3 Student Question Charter 1863

An important part of the charter were articles on the status of students. It (chapter eight) established the right of young men who had reached the age of 17 and successfully graduated from high school to enter the university without entrance exams. The student signed an undertaking to comply with the rules; the form was cancelled; outside the university buildings, the student was subject to the police. The treasury annually allocated significant sums for scholarships and benefits: to St. Petersburg University - 41,500 rubles, Moscow - 42,880, Kharkov - 28,250, Kazan - 32,000, and Kyiv - 24,000 silver rubles. In addition, a scholarship fund named after St. Cyril and Methodius was funded separately. For this purpose, each university was annually allocated 960 silver rubles. Transfer tests were maintained. Those who graduated from the university with good grades and submitted dissertations received the degree of candidate (X class), and those who did not submit dissertations were awarded the title of full student (XII class). The category of state-funded students was eliminated and scholarships were introduced for those in need. A fee of 40 rubles was charged for listening to lectures. in provincial universities and 50 silver rubles per year in capital ones. Tuition fees were paid six months in advance. If a student could not pay for tuition within two months, he was expelled from the university with the right to reinstatement after paying the established amount. Some categories of students were exempted by the council from paying money in full or in part, depending on income and other circumstances. A significant portion of poor but well-performing students were exempt from tuition fees. The charter did not provide for any class restrictions for applicants. The duration of study at the medical faculty of the university was 5 years, and at the rest - 4 years. The academic year lasted from August 15 to July 1.

The new charter assigned educational functions to university boards, including in matters of student supervision. Now it was not a civil or military official appointed by a trustee who, as before, was the arbiter of the fate of students, but vice-rectors - professors or inspectors with a university education, appointed by the council and acting according to instructions drawn up by it (Chapter Six). The task of the vice-rector (inspector) was only to ensure that students complied with the rules of conduct established by the council itself. In case of their violation, the degree of responsibility was established by the newly revived (from the time of the charter of 1804) university court, whose verdicts on the most significant offenses were approved by the council, and on less significant ones by the board. The new order established strict control and responsibility of the councils and the university court in relation to students.

Formally, the charter of 1863 did not prohibit the creation of student organizations, however, in a confidential circular from Minister Golovnin, sent to the trustees of educational districts immediately after the tsar approved the university bill, the necessary requirements were expressed for the councils to draw up rules for students. Among them, mandatory ones included a ban on the creation of student organizations, holding meetings, etc.

The charter did not regulate the forms of organization of the educational process and control over students' classes (timing and frequency of examinations). All this was transferred to the jurisdiction of university boards, but was approved by the trustee of the educational district.

The charter passed over the “women’s issue” in silence. Subsequent orders of the Ministry of Public Education and the rules drawn up by universities on their basis on the admission of outsiders to listen to lectures did not provide women with such a right.

Thus, the charter of 1863 restored university autonomy, helped strengthen the position of universities as centers of science and education, and significantly raised the social status of the teaching corps. At the same time, the influence of government structures on university life remained quite strong, since the rights of trustees were extremely vaguely defined. The student corporation did not receive legal registration, which did not meet student interests and created a reason for new student protests.

It can be considered that the charter of 1863 was a temporary compromise between the liberals and the government bureaucracy, which in those days socio-economic and political conditions could not afford to sacrifice principles and retained the prospect of revenge on this most important issue.

A major drawback of the 1863 charter was the complete denial of student corporations, which was persistently emphasized in ministerial regulations and was carried out with extreme strictness in all subsequent years. Already on July 20, 1863, there was a circular proposal from the Minister of Public Instruction to the trustees of the educational districts, which strongly indicated that students should, of course, be considered individual visitors to the university. Not only gatherings and submitting addresses to the authorities were strictly prohibited, but also theatrical performances, charity concerts, student libraries, mutual aid funds, and even... smoking rooms, where students sometimes gathered and leaflets of various contents were posted. The ministerial document urgently required university councils, when drawing up university regulations, to ensure that they excluded the possibility of a recurrence of student unrest. “...It is highly desirable to take advantage of this opportunity,” the circular noted, “to remove from universities the very reasons for regrettable events, such as those that forced the cessation of lectures and the closure of entire faculties, so that in the future nothing will disturb the usual calm progress of the scientific activities of universities "

A special section of the circular ordered that when drawing up rules for the admission of students and listeners, the recommended requirements should be taken into account: that these rules should contain a ban on women attending university lectures, that the right of volunteer students to attend classes could be limited by the need to obtain the consent of the professor, that the rules for transferring from one university to another should be tightened (now such an opportunity was provided only to those who could present an approving review from their previous place of study and thus protect the educational institution from undesirable elements).

By the beginning of the new 1864/65 academic year, almost all university councils, on the basis of the ministerial circular, drew up intra-university rules, which were approved by the trustees of the educational districts. In essence, this was a direct violation of the newly adopted charter, according to which the professorial board had to independently develop documents for internal use, without pressure and instructions from the ministry. The minister's circular not only blocked the path to student autonomy, but also marked the beginning of blocking the autonomous rights of university councils.

The planned reform of universities during practical implementation encountered a number of difficulties and contradictions, caused in some cases by the absence of necessary provisions in the charter or the uncertainty of their content. This primarily concerned the preparation of a new shift of teaching staff for universities. Although paragraph 42 declared possible ways to resolve this issue (retaining graduates at universities, sending them abroad), the mechanism for implementing these plans was not spelled out. In addition, financial support for “postgraduate” education was not provided for by regular funds. Ensuring the required composition of departments according to the new charter turned out to be not an easy task. The shortage of highly qualified personnel has been acute for many years.

The lack of a consistent personnel policy had a negative impact in the late 50s. on the staff of university departments. Many of them remained unfilled. Previous possibilities have been exhausted. Under Nicholas I, the Professorial Institute in Dorpat was closed in 1838, and the Main Pedagogical Institute was closed in 1858. The institute of assistant professors was weak in solving this problem, so universities were forced to send individual candidates abroad, where they prepared for the rank of professor at the best Western European universities. But since 1848, even this possibility was banned. They tried to get out of the difficult situation by inviting teachers from other disciplines, as well as low-qualified specialists, recent students, and gymnasium teachers, which negatively affected the level of training of university graduates.

Thus, in the discussion of issues of university structure, one of the main places was occupied by the student issue, the urgency of which was given by the so-called student “unrest”. This problem forced us to look for ways to strengthen the educational and scientific activity of students in order to exclude the possibility of student participation in the socio-political life of the country. The tense situation in universities gave rise to various proposals in public thought for further improvement of the educational process aimed at its democratization. At the same time, a significant number of opinions were against the idea of ​​​​creating a student corporation with certain rights and responsibilities.

public education reform nikolai

Chapter 3. Comparative analysis of the education system before and after the reform of 1863

During the reign of Emperor Nicholas I, a Charter was introduced that destroyed university autonomy. According to the Charter of July 26 (August 7), 1835, the management of universities passed to the trustees of educational districts subordinate to the Ministry of Public Education. Candidates for rectors began to be approved by the emperor, and professors - by the trustee. The Council of Professors lost its independence in educational and scientific affairs.

Usually a new stage in the development of Russian universities is associated with the accession to the throne of Alexander II. However, facts indicate that already in the last year of the reign of Nicholas I, certain changes began in attitudes towards education in general, and universities in particular. A Committee for the Transformation of Educational Institutions was created under the leadership of D. Bludov. In 1854, a new minister of public education, S.S. Norov (brother of the Decembrist), was appointed, who, together with his unofficial adviser A.V. Nikitenko (professor of the SPU and liberal censor), presented the tsar with a report on the need to improve the situation of universities. If in 1854 Nicholas I did not allow the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Kazan University, then in 1855 the 100th anniversary of the University was celebrated solemnly, and the tsar sent a letter of gratitude to the university on this occasion. In addition, in 1854, after a long break, it was allowed to increase enrollment in some universities, but only in medical faculties.

With the beginning of the reign of Alexander II, the process of change accelerated, and the most restrictive prohibitions of previous years were gradually abolished. Already in 1855, restrictions on student admission were lifted, and from 1856 again

graduates were sent to foreign universities to prepare for professorships, the rights of universities to elect rectors and deans were restored, since 1859 it was allowed to subscribe books from abroad without censorship, since 1860 the former departments of philosophy and state law were revived and new ones were opened in accordance with the demands of the time. In a short period of time, there was a rapid increase in the number of university students, doubling on average over 8 years. There was a rapid change in the composition of teachers, the professorial staff was renewed by almost 50% in 1855-1862, especially in law faculties.

Many young professors appeared at the departments, including those who were considered politically unreliable, subjected to exile, etc. Thus, N.I. Kostomarov, who had just returned from exile and replaced the conservative Ustryalov, was elected to the department of Russian history at St. Petersburg University. The Department of History of Russian Literature was headed by 27-year-old A.N. Pypin (cousin of N.G. Chernyshevsky), K. Kavelin, V.D. Spasovich, etc. During these years, the old rivalry between Moscow and St. Petersburg universities continued, but if in previous years Moscow University held the palm, now it passed to St. Petersburg University.

In fact, for the first time in the history of Russia, the knowledge of scientists was in demand by the government when developing a new political course. Special attention called at universities peasant reform, the vast majority of teachers and students opposed serfdom.

There was a radical change in the heads of universities; military trustees were replaced by civilian officials, and an outstanding surgeon, Professor N.I., became a trustee of Kyiv University. Pirogov (the first case in the history of Russian universities). Young talented scientists appeared as rectors: Kiev University was headed by 34-year-old Professor N. Bunge (future Minister of Finance of Russia), Kazan University - 32-year-old Prof. chemistry A.M. Butlerov. Prof. enjoyed decisive influence in the SPU. Kavelin K., elected dean of the Faculty of Law. Kiev and Kharkov universities were freed from the tutelage of governors general.

A new phenomenon in the life of the university was the appearance of more volunteers and even complete strangers at the lectures; finally, in the winter semester of 1860, the first woman appeared in the lecture hall of the Faculty of Law, and by the end of the second semester women were present at lectures in all faculties, in some classrooms there were as many of them as there were students. Kavelin achieved a decision by the university council to allow women to attend lectures, then other universities followed this, except Moscow, where the majority of professors spoke out against it.

During the events held in Russia in the 60s. transformations, the problems of university development were not occupied last place. The reforms of Alexander II required a sharp increase in the number of educated people and serious changes in the sphere of public education. It is no coincidence that the question of significant changes in universities and the development of a new university charter arose. Both in official government documents and in speeches by professors in the press, the main problems that required solutions were noted. They boiled down to expanding university autonomy, freedom of teaching, increasing the rights of the professorial board, improving the material base, increasing teachers' salaries, etc. Minister of Public Education Golovnin in his Notes for a few noted the main shortcomings of Russian universities by the beginning of the 60s: 1. Lack of good professors, hence many departments are unfilled or have random people; 2. The indifference of the scientific classes to the interests of their universities and science in general is the result of the fact that professors are removed from the management of universities and are burdened with material concerns; 3. Excessive multiplicity of subjects studied by students, which affected the depth of knowledge and led to leniency in tests; 4. The paucity of university textbooks, which did not allow them to keep up with Western European ones.

The final draft of the charter was prepared by the scientific committee of the Main Board of MNP schools with the involvement of a wide range of specialists. From June 27 to October 31, 1862, 18 meetings of the committee were held, discussing all the proposals and developing a text, which was considered at the beginning of 1863 at a special meeting of dignitaries and ministers. After this, the project was examined by the Ministry of Justice and was approved by the general meeting of the State Council. On June 18, 1863, the emperor in Tsarskoe Selo approved the university charter, which marked the beginning of a new stage in the history of Russian universities.

The adopted charter of 1863 did not take into account many proposals made during the discussion; it was largely of a compromise nature, but two main ideas were carried out quite consistently: the concentration of scientific issues in universities (public opinion realized that the advantage of Western Europe, first of all , in the development of science, and the source and support of science are universities) and the elimination of regulation, especially in moral issues, which were introduced by the charter of 1835. The official note of the Ministry of Public Education, sent to universities in connection with the approval of the charter of 1863, emphasized: Science is read in universities for the sake of science, and the very property of different branches of human knowledge serves as the basis for dividing universities into faculties. University teaching can bring true benefit to those who seek only science in the temple of science, i.e. knowledge, and do not go there driven by material, speculative motives. Therefore, all artificial attractions are harmful to the university, because they fill its auditoriums with unusual listeners, and from this it follows that universities should stand outside any category of ranks .

The Charter of 1863 consisted of 12 chapters, which detailed the rights of universities as a whole, faculties, teaching and student corporations. Universities received fairly broad autonomy; the rights of trustees were curtailed; they were not supposed to interfere in the daily life of universities. But the rights of the Council, the rector, elected by the Council for 4 years from university professors and approved by the emperor, faculty meetings were expanded, the university court was restored, which was elected by the Council from 3 professors and 3 candidates, with 1 prof. and 1 candidate must have been from the Faculty of Law. Universities received the very important right to approve academic degrees. The number of departments and staff positions in 4 faculties has expanded significantly, in the historical and philological department there are 11 departments with 12 professors and 7 associate professors, in physics and mathematics - 12 departments with 16 professors and 3 associate professors, in law - 13 departments with 13 professors and 6 associate professors , in medicine - 17 departments with 16 professors and 17 associate professors, in the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​(only at St. Petersburg University, where there was no medical faculty) - 9 departments, 9 professors, 8 associate professors, 4 lecturers. In addition, the universities had a department of theology and 4 lecturers each to teach Italian, French, German and English.

To supervise the students, the Council elected a vice-rector or an inspector from among the officials, and sub-inspectors and a secretary for student affairs were appointed to help them. They were admitted to the university from the age of 17, without entrance exams for those who successfully graduated from the gymnasium. The student signed to comply with university rules, wearing a uniform was canceled, and outside the university walls the student became subject to the police. The creation of student organizations was not allowed. The transition of a student from course to course became possible only through tests; those who graduated from the university with good grades and submitted dissertations received a candidate's degree, and those who completed satisfactorily and did not submit a dissertation were awarded the title of full student. The category of state-funded students was eliminated and scholarships were introduced for those in need; fees for lectures were charged, set by universities (on average 40-50 rubles per year).

According to the new charter, the synchronization of academic degrees and positions was clearly carried out: No one can be an ordinary or extraordinary professor without having a doctorate in the category of science corresponding to his department. To obtain the title of associate professor, you must have at least a master's degree; Candidates who have submitted dissertations in the department of the faculty in which they intend to teach can also become private assistant professors. . However, this correspondence was not achieved in practice.

According to the new charter, universities received more independence in resolving personnel issues, because now the Council and faculty meetings elected professors, sent the best graduates abroad to prepare for the professorship, and for the same purpose, docents were introduced in almost all departments.

The salary of an ordinary professor was increased to 3 thousand rubles. per year, full-time associate professor - up to 1.5 thousand. All universities came under the special patronage of the emperor and were called imperial, they were exempt from many duties and taxes, had their own seal, could acquire real estate, open printing houses and bookstores.

Giving a general assessment of the statute of 1863, it should be noted that, firstly, it restored university autonomy and contributed to a certain progress of universities as centers of science and education; secondly, the rights of the professorial board were expanded, the financial situation of professors improved, which helped attract talented young people to their ranks; thirdly, a fairly coherent system of training university personnel was emerging; fourthly, universities now have the right to approve academic degrees themselves. At the same time, the supervision of government structures over universities was largely preserved, since the rights of trustees were formulated extremely vaguely. The students remained in the same situation, without receiving the desired rights. Therefore, student unrest did not stop. So we can assume that the charter of 1863 was a compromise between the liberal trends of the 60s, the previous university order and the aspirations of bureaucratic St. Petersburg circles. Hence the dissatisfaction of everyone and the desire to make changes to the charter. Liberal authors, welcoming the new charter, noted its half-heartedness, conservatives criticized it for concessions to the public, revolutionary democratic figures and their press organs perceived the new charter sharply negatively. Although the government camp welcomed the charter, attacks on university rights soon began in a disguised form: the Ministry of Public Education sent circulars to universities, proposing to develop and implement internal regulations that would further curtail the rights of students and violate the 1863 Charter.

The decade after the adoption of the charter is assessed by many researchers and contemporaries as one of the most productive in the history of Russian universities. St. Petersburg University developed especially successfully, where the largest Russian scientists concentrated: mathematicians, chemists, lawyers, and philologists. University professors became the basis of the teaching corps of the higher women's courses (Bestuzhev's) that opened in 1878 and worked according to the university program.

The increase in the scientific potential of universities was manifested in the creation of more schools that received international recognition. Thus, a brilliant mathematical school arose at St. Petersburg University (academician P. Chebyshev and his students - A. Markov, A. Lyapunov, etc.), the first school of physiologists in Russia headed by I. M. Sechenov, the Mendeleev chemical school ( A. Butlerov, N. Menshutkin), at Moscow University created the school of physics A.G. Stoletov, who headed the corresponding department for 30 years and handed it over to another major scientist P.N. Lebedev. Chemistry at MU was on hold until V.V. appeared. Markovnikov in the 70s, who founded his own school. These same years were marked by the flourishing of science at the young Odessa University, where a large group of prominent scientists simultaneously worked: I.I. Mechnikov, V.O. Kovalevsky, N.A. Umov, N.I. Andrusov, L.S. Tsenkovsky, I.V. Yaglich et al.

It was in the 60-70s. A system of historical education has emerged in Russian universities. Unlike Western Europe, where historical sciences were usually part of the philosophy faculty, we had historical and philological faculties, and historical education was received in close connection with philological education, the same subjects were studied in 1-2 courses, specialization began in 3rd year. A stable nomenclature of history departments was formed, reflected in the Charter of 1863. A tradition of Russian universities was formed - professors read author's general courses, which forced students to think and taught them to conduct independent analysis. Special courses were usually taught by private lecturers and associate professors, who thus presented the results of their future dissertations to the audience.

The University Charter of 1863 combined the German principle of a self-governing professorial corporation, the French principle of a compulsory curriculum and transitional examinations, and control over the activities of educational institutions, traditional for the Russian autocracy (Ministry of Public Education, educational districts, inspections, commissions, etc.). The adopted Charter did not take into account many proposals; it was of a compromise nature, but some fundamentally important ideas were carried out quite consistently. Firstly, universities became centers of science: the effectiveness of combining educational and scientific work was proven by Western European experience. Secondly, excessive regulation of university life was eliminated, which was a serious obstacle to the development of new directions in science and education. Universities received fairly broad autonomy; the trustees of the educational district were not supposed to interfere in the daily life of educational institutions operating on the basis of the Charter of 1863. The University Council (which included all professors) and faculty meetings were given broad powers in resolving scientific, educational and many administrative matters . They had the final say in approving academic titles and awards for scientific activity, publishing scientific works, approving educational programs, etc.

Thus, the Charter of 1863 granted universities quite broad autonomy.

Conclusion

In the history of Russian public education, the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. were marked by the separation of secular education from spiritual. The highest authorities sought to broadly organize public education and search for new means to resolve the central issue of the system of general and classless education

However, the establishment of universities never took place due to the lack of the required number of professors and lack of material resources. This did not allow us to complete the creation of an education “system” and the establishment of general, all-class education as a necessary basis for higher professional education.

The circumstances of the first years of the reign of Emperor Alexander I connected educational reform with administrative reform. Among the first eight ministries, the Ministry of Public Education was established.

The new charter, developed in 1804, laid the principle of continuity at the basis of the Russian education system. This was a complete reform that united all categories of secondary schools, from the university to parish schools, into one system. Access to higher levels depended only on the students' abilities; schools were free, and scholarships were provided for disadvantaged students. The most prepared graduates of gymnasiums continued their education at universities and other higher educational institutions of the Russian Empire.

Initially, gymnasium education was overloaded with subjects studied. On this basis, Uvarov excluded university courses from the gymnasium curriculum, and introduced subjects that “serve as the first basis of true enlightenment”; the plan included: the law of God, domestic and classical languages, history, geography, mathematics, grammar, logic, rhetoric, domestic and foreign literature.

That is, the plans of the gymnasium and the university were quite sharply differentiated. The gymnasium was freed from the subjects of “real education” and turned into an estate-based educational institution with a program, preparatory to the university or directly to the bureaucratic service.

Further restructuring of the educational system was associated with the events of December 1825, the Decembrist uprising, which had a huge impact on all aspects of the social life of the Russian Empire. The new Emperor Nicholas I saw one of the reasons for the revolutionary uprisings in the imperfection of the educational system.

The new Charter of 1835 set the goal for gymnasiums, on the one hand, to prepare for listening to university lectures, and on the other, “to provide methods of decent education.” At the head of the gymnasium there was still a director, who was assisted by an inspector, elected from among the senior teachers, to monitor order in the classrooms and manage housekeeping in the boarding houses. The title of honorary trustee was also established for joint supervision of the gymnasium and boarding school with the director.

According to the charter of 1835, the management of each of the universities was entrusted to the special leadership of the trustee of the educational district - a government official appointed by the emperor. The new centralized system of school district management led to restrictions on university autonomy and academic freedom. As a result, the role of the trustee and his office in the management of the university has significantly increased.

Class differentiation in the organization of the education system found its practical embodiment in Uvarov’s policy in the educational department. He saw his main goal in attracting young people of the upper classes to state gymnasiums and universities, believing that “noble youth” would take their rightful place in civil spheres, having received a solid education.

The desire to protect educational institutions providing secondary and higher education from the penetration of representatives of non-noble classes into them led to the need to erect legislative barriers for these classes.

The proactive measures of Nicholas I and his government against the penetration of persons of unfree status and commoners into secondary and higher educational institutions basically achieved their goal. In 1833, approximately 78% of the total number admitted to the gymnasium were representatives of the upper classes - the nobility, officials and merchants of the first guild, 2% came from the clergy, and the rest - from the lower and middle strata. Similar statistics remained in the second half of the 40s. According to P.N. Milyukov, raznochintsy in gymnasiums and universities accounted for 20-30% at that time.

With the adoption of the Charter of 1863, the structure of universities did not undergo fundamental changes; it only expanded due to an increase in the number of departments in faculties.

The number of departments at the Faculty of Law almost doubled - from 7 to 13. New among them were: encyclopedias of law, the history of Russian law, the history of the most important foreign legislation, ancient and new, financial law.

The number of departments at the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics doubled due to the division of the previous ones, which increased the differentiation of teaching.

The formation of the teaching staff was now completely entrusted to the university council. The charter significantly expanded the scope of powers of the university council and determined issues on which the council's decisions were final: the distribution of subjects and the order of their teaching among faculties; awarding medals, prizes for scientific achievements to students and awarding them scholarships; confirmation of academic degrees and the title of a full student; selection of scholarship holders for preparation at the university for a professorship; orders for the publication of scientific works; approval of university court decisions; reviewing the financial budget of the university and approving the annual budget of special funds, income and expenses; distribution of amounts allocated throughout the state for teaching aids by faculties.

The Charter of 1863 recorded a number of privileges granted to universities: they were exempt from many taxes, could purchase real estate, open printing houses, and bookstores.

The University Charter of 1863 combined the German principle of a self-governing professorial corporation, the French principle of a compulsory curriculum and transitional examinations, and control over the activities of educational institutions, traditional for the Russian autocracy (Ministry of Public Education, educational districts, inspections, commissions, etc.). The adopted Charter did not take into account many proposals; it was of a compromise nature, but some fundamentally important ideas were carried out quite consistently. Firstly, universities became centers of science: the effectiveness of combining educational and scientific work was proven by Western European experience. Secondly, excessive regulation of university life was eliminated, which was a serious obstacle to the development of new directions in science and education. Universities received fairly broad autonomy; the trustees of the educational district were not supposed to interfere in the daily life of educational institutions operating on the basis of the Charter of 1863. The University Council (which included all professors) and faculty meetings were given broad powers in resolving scientific, educational and many administrative matters . They had the final say in approving academic titles and awards for scientific activity, publishing scientific works, approving educational programs, etc.

List of used literature

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Similar works to - Development of secondary and higher education in Russia at the end of the 18th–first half of the 19th century

After the death of Alexander I and the Decembrist uprising, the reactionary rollback of the Russian education system continued. Already in May 1826, the imperial

The rescript established a special Committee for the organization of educational institutions, which was instructed to immediately introduce uniformity in educational system.

Nicholas I understood perfectly well that the fight against revolutionary and liberal ideas had to begin with schools and universities. The class character was returned to the education system.

The general structure of the education system remained the same, but all schools were removed from the subordination of universities and transferred to direct subordination to the administration of the educational district, i.e. Ministry of Public Education. Teaching in gymnasiums was greatly changed. The main subjects were Greek and Latin. “Real” subjects were allowed to be taught as additional subjects. Gymnasiums were seen only as a stepping stone to university; Thus, given the class-based nature of the gymnasiums, commoners were practically denied access to higher education.

In universities and other higher educational institutions, the election of rectors, vice-rectors and professors was abolished - they were now directly appointed by the Ministry of Public Education. Professors' trips abroad were sharply curtailed, student enrollment was limited, and tuition fees were introduced. Theology, church history and church law became mandatory for all faculties. Rectors and deans had to ensure that in the content of the programs, which are mandatory presented by professors before teaching courses, “nothing was hidden that disagrees with the teachings of the Orthodox Church or with the way of government and spirit government agencies"Philosophy was excluded from the curriculum, which was considered unnecessary - "given the modern reprehensible development of this science by German scientists." The teaching of courses in logic and psychology was entrusted to professors of theology.

Measures were taken to strengthen discipline among students, i.e. to public and secret supervision over them. The students were dressed in uniform, even their hairstyle was regulated.

In 1839, real departments were opened in some gymnasiums and district schools, where industrial and natural history, chemistry, merchandising, accounting, bookkeeping, commercial law and mechanics were taught. Commoners were accepted there; the task was to keep the lower classes of the state in proportion to their civil life and to encourage them to confine themselves to district schools, not allowing them to enter the gymnasium and universities. But objectively, this meant a departure from the dominance of classical education towards the real needs of society.

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• Appointment of heir
• Accession to the throne
• The theory of official nationality
• Third department
• Censorship and new school charters
• Laws, finance, industry and transport
• The peasant question and the position of the nobles
• Bureaucracy
• Foreign policy before the early 1850s
• Crimean War and the death of the emperor

1. Appointment of an heir

Aloysius Rokstuhl. Portrait of Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. Miniature from the original from 1806. 1869 Wikimedia Commons

In a nutshell: Nicholas was the third son of Paul I and should not have inherited the throne. But of all the sons of Paul, only he had a son, and during the reign of Alexander I, the family decided that Nicholas should be the heir.

Nikolai Pavlovich was the third son of Emperor Paul I, and, generally speaking, he should not have reigned.

He was never prepared for this. Like most grand dukes, Nicholas received primarily a military education. In addition, he was interested in natural sciences and engineering, he was a very good drawer, but he was not interested in the humanities. Philosophy and political economy passed him by altogether, and from history he knew only the biographies of great rulers and commanders, but had no idea about cause-and-effect relationships or historical processes. Therefore, from an educational point of view, he was poorly prepared for government activities.

The family did not take him too seriously from childhood: there was a huge age difference between Nikolai and his older brothers (he was 19 years older than him, Konstantin was 17 years older), and he was not involved in government affairs.

In the country, Nicholas was known practically only to the Guard (since in 1817 he became the chief inspector of the Corps of Engineers and the chief of the Life Guards Sapper Battalion, and in 1818 - the commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, which included several Guards units ), and knew from the bad side. The fact is that the guard returned from the foreign campaigns of the Russian army, in the opinion of Nicholas himself, loose, unaccustomed to drill training and having heard a lot of freedom-loving conversations, and he began to discipline them. Since he was a stern and very hot-tempered man, this resulted in two big scandals: first, Nikolai insulted one of the guard captains before the formation, and then the general, the favorite of the guard, Karl Bistrom, in front of whom he eventually had to publicly apologize.

But none of Paul's sons, except Nicholas, had sons. Alexander and Mikhail (the youngest of the brothers) only gave birth to girls, and even they died early, and Konstantin had no children at all - and even if they had, they could not inherit the throne, since in 1820 Konstantin ascended into a morganatic marriage Morganatic marriage- an unequal marriage, the children of which did not receive the right of inheritance. with the Polish Countess Grudzinskaya. And Nikolai’s son Alexander was born in 1818, and this largely predetermined the further course of events.

Portrait of Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna with her children - Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich and Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna. Painting by George Dow. 1826 State Hermitage / Wikimedia Commons

In 1819, Alexander I, in a conversation with Nicholas and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna, said that his successor would not be Constantine, but Nicholas. But since Alexander himself still hoped that he would have a son, there was no special decree on this matter, and the change of heir to the throne remained a family secret.

Even after this conversation, nothing changed in Nikolai’s life: he remained a brigadier general and chief engineer of the Russian army; Alexander did not allow him to participate in any state affairs.

2. Accession to the throne

In a nutshell: In 1825, after the unexpected death of Alexander I, an interregnum began in the country. Almost no one knew that Alexander named Nikolai Pavlovich as heir, and immediately after Alexander’s death many, including Nikolai himself, took the oath to Konstantin. Meanwhile, Constantine did not intend to rule; The guards did not want to see Nicholas on the throne. As a result, the reign of Nicholas began on December 14 with the rebellion and shedding of blood of his subjects.

In 1825, Alexander I suddenly died in Taganrog. In St. Petersburg, only members of the imperial family knew that it was not Constantine, but Nicholas, who would inherit the throne. Both the leadership of the guard and the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, Mikhail Milo-radovich, did not like Nicholas and wanted to see Constantine on the throne: he was their comrade in arms, with whom they went through the Napoleonic Wars and Foreign Campaigns, and they considered him more prone to reforms (this did not correspond to reality: Constantine, both externally and internally, was similar to his father Paul, and therefore it was not worth expecting changes from him).

As a result, Nicholas swore allegiance to Constantine. The family did not understand this at all. The Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna reproached her son: “What have you done, Nicholas? Don’t you know that there is an act that declares you the heir?” Such an act actually existed August 16, 1823 Alexander I, which stated that, since the emperor does not have a direct male heir, and Konstantin Pavlovich expressed a desire to renounce his rights to the throne (Konstantin wrote about this to Alexander I in a letter at the beginning of 1822), the heir -announced by no one Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich. This manifesto was not made public: it existed in four copies, which were kept in sealed envelopes in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin, the Holy Synod, the State Council and the Senate. On an envelope from the Assumption Cathedral, Alexander wrote that the envelope should be opened immediately after his death., but was kept secret, and Nikolai did not know its exact contents, since no one familiarized him with it in advance. In addition, this act had no legal force, because, according to the current Pauline law on succession to the throne, power could only be transferred from father to son or from brother to the brother next in seniority. In order to make Nicholas heir, Alexander had to return the law on succession to the throne adopted by Peter I (according to which the reigning monarch had the right to appoint any successor), but he did not do this.

Constantine himself was in Warsaw at that time (he was the commander-in-chief of the Polish armies and the actual governor of the emperor in the kingdom of Poland) and flatly refused to both take the throne (he was afraid that in this case he would be killed, like his father), and officially , according to the existing form, to renounce it.

Silver ruble with the image of Constantine I. 1825 State Hermitage Museum

Negotiations between St. Petersburg and Warsaw lasted about two weeks, during which Russia had two emperors - and at the same time, none. Busts of Constantine had already begun to appear in institutions, and several copies of the ruble with his image were printed.

Nicholas found himself in a very difficult situation, given how he was treated in the guard, but in the end he decided to declare himself heir to the throne. But since they had already sworn allegiance to Constantine, now a re-oath had to take place, and this had never happened in the history of Russia. From the point of view of not so much the nobles as the guards soldiers, this was completely incomprehensible: one soldier said that gentlemen officers can re-oath if they have two honors, but I, he said, have one honor, and, having sworn the oath once, I'm not going to take the oath a second time. In addition, two weeks of interregnum provided the opportunity to gather their forces.

Having learned about the impending rebellion, Nicholas decided to declare himself emperor and take the oath of office on December 14. On the same day, the Decembrists withdrew the guards units from the barracks to Senate Square - in order to supposedly protect the rights of Constantine, from whom Nicholas was taking the throne.

Through envoys, Nikolai tried to persuade the rebels to disperse to the barracks, promising to pretend that nothing had happened, but they did not disperse. It was getting towards evening, in the dark the situation could develop unpredictably, and the performance had to be stopped. This decision was very difficult for Nicholas: firstly, when giving the order to open fire, he did not know whether his artillery soldiers would listen and how other regiments would react to this; secondly, in this way he ascended the throne, shedding the blood of his subjects - among other things, it was completely unclear how they would look at this in Europe. Nevertheless, in the end he gave the order to shoot the rebels with cannons. The square was swept away by several volleys. Nikolai himself did not look at this - he galloped off to the Winter Palace, to his family.

Nicholas I in front of the formation of the Life Guards Sapper Battalion in the courtyard of the Winter Palace on December 14, 1825. Painting by Vasily Maksutov. 1861 State Hermitage Museum

For Nicholas, this was the most difficult test, which left a very strong imprint on his entire reign. He considered what happened to be God's providence - and decided that he was called by the Lord to fight the revolutionary infection not only in his country, but also in Europe in general: he considered the Decembrist conspiracy to be part of the pan-European one.

3. The theory of official nationality

In a nutshell: The basis of the Russian state ideology under Nicholas I was the theory of official nationality, formulated by the Minister of Public Education Uvarov. Uvarov believed that Russia, which only joined the family of European nations in the 18th century, is too young a country to cope with the problems and diseases that struck other European states in the 19th century century, so now it was necessary to temporarily delay her development until she matured. To educate society, he formed a triad, which, in his opinion, described the most important elements of the “national spirit” - “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” Nicholas I perceived this triad as universal, not temporary.

If in the second half of the 18th century many European monarchs, including Catherine II, were guided by the ideas of the Enlightenment (and the enlightened absolutism that grew on its basis), then by the 1820s, both in Europe and in Russia, the philosophy of the Enlightenment disappointed many. The ideas formulated by Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, Georg Hegel and other authors, later called German classical philosophy, began to come to the fore. The French Enlightenment said that there is one road to progress, paved by laws, human reason and enlightenment, and all peoples who follow it will ultimately come to prosperity. German classics came to the conclusion that there is no single road: each country has its own road, which is guided by a higher spirit, or a higher mind. The knowledge of what kind of road this is (that is, what the “spirit of the people”, its “historical beginnings” lies in), is revealed not to an individual people, but to a family of peoples connected by a single root. Since all European peoples come from the same root of Greco-Roman antiquity, these truths are revealed to them; these are “historical peoples”.

By the beginning of Nicholas's reign, Russia found itself in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, the ideas of the Enlightenment, on the basis of which government policy and reform projects were previously based, led to the failed reforms of Alexander I and the Decembrist uprising. On the other hand, within the framework of German classical philosophy, Russia turned out to be a “non-historical people”, since it did not have any Greco-Roman roots - and this meant that, despite its thousand-year history, it still destined to live on the side of the historical road.

Russian public figures managed to propose a solution, including the Minister of Public Education Sergei Uvarov, who, being a man of Alexander’s time and a Westerner, shared the main tenets of German classical philosophy. He believed that until the 18th century Russia was indeed a non-historical country, but, starting with Peter I, it joins the European family of peoples and thereby enters the general historical path. Thus, Russia turned out to be a “young” country that is rapidly catching up with the European states that have gone ahead.

Portrait of Count Sergei Uvarov. Painting by Wilhelm August Golicke. 1833 State Historical Museum / Wikimedia Commons

In the early 1830s, looking at the next Belgian revolution Belgian Revolution(1830) - an uprising of the southern (mostly Catholic) provinces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands against the dominant northern (Protestant) provinces, which led to the emergence of the Kingdom of Belgium. and, Uvarov decided that if Russia follows the European path, then it will inevitably have to face European problems. And since she is not yet ready to overcome them due to her youth, now we need to make sure that Russia does not step onto this disastrous path until it is able to resist the disease. Therefore, Uvarov considered the first task of the Ministry of Education to be “to freeze Russia”: that is, not to completely stop its development, but to delay it for a while until the Russians learn some guidelines that will allow them to avoid “bloody alarms” in the future.

To this end, in 1832-1834, Uvarov formulated the so-called theory of official nationality. The theory was based on the triad “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” (a paraphrase of the military slogan “For Faith, Tsar and Fatherland” that took shape at the beginning of the 19th century), that is, three concepts in which, as he believed, lies the basis of the “national spirit "

According to Uvarov, the illnesses of Western society occurred because European Christianity was split into Catholicism and Protestantism: in Protestantism there is too much rational, individualistic, dividing people, and Catholicism, being overly doctrinaire, cannot resist revolutionary ideas. The only tradition that has managed to remain faithful to real Christianity and ensure the unity of the people is Russian Orthodoxy.

It is clear that autocracy is the only form of government that can slowly and carefully manage the development of Russia, keeping it from fatal mistakes, especially since the Russian people did not know any other government other than monarchy in any case. Therefore, autocracy is at the center of the formula: on the one hand, it is supported by the authority of the Orthodox Church, and on the other, by the traditions of the people.

But Uvarov deliberately did not explain what nationality is. He himself believed that if this concept is left ambiguous, a variety of social forces will be able to unite on its basis - the authorities and the enlightened elite will be able to find in folk traditions the best solution to modern problems It is interesting that if for Uvarov the concept of “nationality” in no way meant the participation of the people in the very government of the state, then the Slavophiles, who generally accepted the formula he proposed, placed emphasis differently: emphasizing the word “nationality”, they began to say that if Orthodoxy and autocracy do not meet the people’s aspirations, then they must change. Therefore, it was the Slavophiles, and not the Westerners, who very soon became the main enemies of the Winter Palace: the Westerners fought on a different field - no one understood them anyway. The same forces that accepted the “theory of official nationality”, but attempted to interpret it differently, were perceived as much more dangerous..

But if Uvarov himself considered this triad to be temporary, then Nicholas I perceived it as universal, since it was capacious, understandable and fully consistent with his ideas about how the empire that was in his hands should develop.

4. Third department

In a nutshell: The main instrument with which Nicholas I had to control everything that happened in different layers of society was the Third Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery.

So, Nicholas I found himself on the throne, being absolutely convinced that autocracy is the only form of government that can lead Russia to development and avoid shocks. The last years of his elder brother's reign seemed to him too flabby and incomprehensible; the management of the state, from his point of view, had become loose, and therefore he first of all needed to take all matters into his own hands.

To do this, the emperor needed a tool that would allow him to know exactly how the country was living and to control everything that happened in it. Such an instrument, a kind of eyes and hands of the monarch, became His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery - and first of all its Third Department, which was headed by a cavalry general, a participant in the War of 1812, Alexander Benckendorff.

Portrait of Alexander Benckendorf. Painting by George Dow. 1822 State Hermitage Museum

Initially, only 16 people worked in the Third Department, and by the end of Nicholas’s reign their number did not increase much. This small number of people did many things. They controlled the work of government institutions, places of exile and imprisonment; conducted cases related to official and the most dangerous criminal offenses (which included forgery of government documents and counterfeiting); engaged in charity work (mainly among the families of killed or maimed officers); observed the mood in all levels of society; they censored literature and journalism and monitored everyone who could be suspected of unreliability, including Old Believers and foreigners. For this purpose, the Third Department was given a corps of gendarmes, who prepared reports to the emperor (and very truthful ones) about the mood of minds in different classes and about the state of affairs in the provinces. The third department was also a kind of secret police, whose main task was to combat “subversion” (which was understood quite broadly). We do not know the exact number of secret agents, since their lists never existed, but the public fear that the Third Section saw, heard and knew everything suggests that there were quite a lot of them.

5. Censorship and new school charters

In a nutshell: To instill trustworthiness and loyalty to the throne among his subjects, Nicholas I significantly strengthened censorship, made it difficult for children from unprivileged classes to enter universities and severely limited university freedoms.

Another important area of ​​​​Nicholas’ activity was the education of trustworthiness and loyalty to the throne among his subjects.

For this, the emperor immediately took up the task. In 1826, a new censorship charter was adopted, which is called “cast iron”: it had 230 prohibitive articles, and it turned out to be very difficult to follow it, because it was not clear what, in principle, could now be written about. Therefore, two years later, a new censorship charter was adopted - this time quite liberal, but it soon began to acquire explanations and additions and, as a result, from a very decent one it turned into a document that again prohibited too many things for journalists and writers.

If initially censorship was under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Education and the Supreme Censorship Committee added by Nicholas (which included the Ministers of Public Education, Internal and Foreign Affairs), then over time all ministries, the Holy Synod, and the Free Economic Society received censorship rights , as well as the Second and Third Departments of the Chancery. Each author had to take into account all the comments that censors from all these organizations wished to make. The third department, among other things, began to censor all plays intended for production on stage: a special one had been known since the 18th century.

School teacher. Painting by Andrey Popov. 1854 State Tretyakov Gallery

In order to educate a new generation of Russians, regulations for lower and secondary schools were adopted in the late 1820s and early 1830s. The system created under Alexander I was preserved: one-class parish and three-class district schools continued to exist, in which children of unprivileged classes could study, as well as gymnasiums that prepared students for entering universities. But if earlier it was possible to enroll in a gymnasium from a district school, now the connection between them was severed and it was forbidden to accept children of serfs in the gymnasium. Thus, education became even more class-based: for non-noble children, admission to universities was difficult, and for serfs it was basically closed. Children of nobles were required to study in Russia until the age of eighteen; otherwise, they were prohibited from entering the public service.

Later, Nicholas also became involved in universities: their autonomy was limited and much stricter regulations were introduced; the number of students who could study at each university at a time was limited to three hundred. True, several branch institutes were opened at the same time (Technological, Mining, Agricultural, Forestry and Technological School in Moscow), where graduates of district schools could enroll. At that time, this was quite a lot, and yet by the end of the reign of Nicholas I, 2,900 students were studying at all Russian universities - about the same number at that time were enrolled in the University of Leipzig alone.

6. Laws, finance, industry and transport

In a nutshell: Under Nicholas I, the government did a lot of useful things: legislation was systematized, the financial system was reformed, and a transport revolution was carried out. In addition, industry developed in Russia with the support of the government.

Since Nikolai Pavlovich was not allowed to govern the state until 1825, he ascended the throne without his own political team and without sufficient preparation to develop his own program of action. Paradoxical as it may seem, he borrowed a lot - at least at first - from the Decembrists. The fact is that during the investigation they spoke a lot and openly about Russia’s troubles and proposed their own solutions to pressing problems. By order of Nikolai, Alexander Borovkov, secretary of the investigative commission, compiled a set of recommendations from their testimony. It was an interesting document, in which all the problems of the state were listed point by point: “Laws”, “Trade”, “Management system” and so on. Until 1830-1831, this document was constantly used by both Nicholas I himself and the Chairman of the State Council Viktor Kochubey.

Nicholas I rewards Speransky for drawing up a code of laws. Painting by Alexey Kivshenko. 1880 DIOMEDIA

One of the tasks formulated by the Decembrists, which Nicholas I tried to solve at the very beginning of his reign, was the systematization of legislation. The fact is that by 1825 the only set of Russian laws remained the Council Code of 1649. All laws adopted later (including a huge corpus of laws from the times of Peter I and Catherine II) were published in scattered multi-volume publications of the Senate and were stored in the archives of various departments. Moreover, many laws disappeared altogether - about 70% remained, and the rest disappeared due to various circumstances, such as fires or careless storage. It was completely impossible to use all this in real legal proceedings; laws had to be collected and streamlined. This was entrusted to the Second Department of the Imperial Chancellery, which was formally headed by the jurist Mikhail Balugyansky, but in fact by Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky, assistant to Alexander I, ideologist and inspirer of his reforms. As a result, a huge amount of work was carried out in just three years, and in 1830 Speransky reported to the monarch that 45 volumes of the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire were ready. Two years later, 15 volumes of the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire were prepared: laws that were subsequently repealed were removed from the Complete Collection, and contradictions and repetitions were eliminated. This was also not enough: Speransky proposed creating new codes of laws, but the emperor said that he would leave this to his heir.

In 1839-1841, Minister of Finance Yegor Kankrin carried out a very important financial reform. The fact is that there were no firmly established relationships between the different money that circulated in Russia: silver rubles, paper banknotes, as well as gold and copper coins, plus coins minted in Europe called “efimki” were exchanged for each other... hectares at fairly arbitrary courses, the number of which reached six. In addition, by the 1830s, the value of assignats had dropped significantly. Kankrin recognized the silver ruble as the main monetary unit and strictly tied banknotes to it: now 1 silver ruble could be obtained for exactly 3 rubles 50 kopecks in banknotes. The population rushed to buy silver, and in the end, banknotes were completely replaced by new banknotes, partially backed by silver. Thus, a fairly stable monetary circulation has been established in Russia.

Under Nicholas, the number of industrial enterprises increased significantly. Of course, this was connected not so much with the actions of the government as with the beginning of the industrial revolution, but without the permission of the government in Russia, in any case, it was impossible to open a factory, plant, or workshop. Under Nicholas, 18% of enterprises were equipped with steam engines - and they produced almost half of all industrial products. In addition, during this period the first (albeit very vague) laws regulating relations between workers and entrepreneurs appeared. Russia also became the first country in the world to adopt a decree on the formation of joint stock companies.

Railway employees at Tver station. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864

Railroad bridge. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Bologoye station. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Cars on the tracks. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Khimka station. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Depot. From the album “Views of the Nikolaev Railway”. Between 1855 and 1864 DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University

Finally, Nicholas I actually brought about a transport revolution in Russia. Since he tried to control everything that was happening, he was forced to constantly travel around the country, and thanks to this, highways (which began to be laid under Alexander I) began to form a road network. In addition, it was through the efforts of Nikolai that the first railways in Russia were built. To do this, the emperor had to overcome serious resistance: Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Kankrin, and many others were against the new type of transport for Russia. They feared that all the forests would burn in the furnaces of steam locomotives, that in winter the rails would be covered with ice and the trains would not be able to take even small ascents, that the railway would lead to an increase in vagrancy - and, finally, would undermine the very social foundations of the empire, since the nobles , merchants and peasants will travel, although in different carriages, but in the same composition. And yet, in 1837, movement from St. Petersburg to Tsarskoe Selo was opened, and in 1851, Nicholas arrived by train from St. Petersburg to Moscow - for the celebrations in honor of the 25th anniversary of his coronation.

7. The peasant question and the position of the nobles

In a nutshell: The situation of the nobility and peasantry was extremely difficult: landowners went bankrupt, discontent was brewing among the peasantry, serfdom hampered the development of the economy. Nicholas I understood this and tried to take measures, but he never decided to abolish serfdom.

Like his predecessors, Nicholas I was seriously concerned about the state of the two main pillars of the throne and the main Russian social forces - the nobility and the peasantry. The situation for both was extremely difficult. The third department annually gave reports, starting with reports about landowners killed during the year, about refusals to go to corvee, about cutting down the landowners' forests, about complaints from peasants against the landowners - and, most importantly, about the spreading rumors about freedom, which made the situation explosive. Nikolai (like his predecessors) saw that the problem was becoming more and more acute, and understood that if a social explosion was possible in Russia at all, it would be a peasant one, not an urban one. At the same time, in the 1830s, two-thirds of the noble estates were mortgaged: the landowners went bankrupt, and this proved that Russian agricultural production could no longer be based on their farms. Finally, serfdom hampered the development of industry, trade and other sectors of the economy. On the other hand, Nicholas feared the discontent of the nobles, and in general was not sure that a one-time abolition of serfdom would be useful for Russia at this moment.

Peasant family before dinner. Painting by Fyodor Solntsev. 1824 State Tretyakov Gallery / DIOMEDIA

From 1826 to 1849, nine secret committees worked on peasant affairs and more than 550 different decrees were adopted concerning the relations between landowners and nobles - for example, it was forbidden to sell peasants without land, and peasants from estates put up for auction were allowed to be released before the end of the auction. Nicholas was never able to abolish serfdom, but, firstly, by making such decisions, the Winter Palace pushed society to discuss an acute problem, and secondly, secret committees collected a lot of material that was useful later, in the second half 1850s, when the Winter Palace moved on to a specific discussion of the abolition of serfdom.

In order to slow down the ruin of the nobles, in 1845 Nicholas allowed the creation of primordiates - that is, indivisible estates that were transferred only to the eldest son, and not divided between the heirs. But by 1861, only 17 of them were introduced, and this did not save the situation: in Russia, the majority of landowners remained small-scale landowners, that is, they owned 16-18 serfs.

In addition, he tried to slow down the erosion of the old noble nobility by issuing a decree according to which hereditary nobility could be obtained by reaching the fifth class of the Table of Ranks, and not the eighth, as before. Obtaining hereditary nobility has become much more difficult.

8. Bureaucracy

In a nutshell: The desire of Nicholas I to keep all government of the country in his own hands led to the fact that management was formalized, the number of officials increased and society was forbidden to evaluate the work of the bureaucracy. As a result, the entire management system stalled, and the scale of treasury theft and bribery became enormous.

Portrait of Emperor Nicholas I. Painting by Horace Vernet. 1830s Wikimedia Commons

So, Nicholas I tried to do everything necessary to gradually, without shocks, lead society to prosperity with his own hands. Since he perceived the state as a family, where the emperor is the father of the nation, senior officials and officers are senior relatives, and everyone else is foolish children who need constant supervision, he was not ready to accept any help at all from society . Management was to be exclusively under the authority of the emperor and his ministers, who acted through officials who impeccably carried out the royal will. This led to the formalization of the country's governance and a sharp increase in the number of officials; The basis for managing the empire was the movement of papers: orders went from top to bottom, reports from bottom to top. By the 1840s, the governor was signing about 270 documents a day and spending up to five hours doing so—even just skimming the papers briefly.

The most serious mistake of Nicholas I was that he forbade society to evaluate the work of officials. No one except the immediate superiors could not only criticize, but even praise the officials.

As a result, the bureaucracy itself became a powerful socio-political force, turned into a kind of third estate - and began to defend its own interests. Since the well-being of a bureaucrat depends on whether his superiors are happy with him, wonderful reports went up from the very bottom, starting from the chief executives: everything is fine, everything has been accomplished, the achievements are enormous. With each step these reports only became more radiant, and papers came to the top that had very little in common with reality. This led to the fact that the entire administration of the empire stalled: already in the early 1840s, the Minister of Justice reported to Nicholas I that 33 million cases, set out on at least 33 million sheets of paper, had not been resolved in Russia. And, of course, the situation developed this way not only in justice.

A terrible embezzlement has begun in the country. The most notorious was the case of the disabled people's fund, from which 1 million 200 thousand silver rubles were stolen over several years; they brought 150 thousand rubles to the chairman of one of the deanery boards so that he could put them in a safe, but he took the money for himself and put newspapers in the safe; one district treasurer stole 80 thousand rubles, leaving a note that in this way he decided to reward himself for twenty years of impeccable service. And such things happened on the ground all the time.

The emperor tried to personally monitor everything, adopted the strictest laws and made the most detailed orders, but officials at absolutely all levels found ways to circumvent them.

9. Foreign policy before the early 1850s

In a nutshell: Until the early 1850s, the foreign policy of Nicholas I was quite successful: the government managed to protect the borders from the Persians and Turks and prevent revolution from entering Russia.

In foreign policy, Nicholas I faced two main tasks. Firstly, he had to protect the borders of the Russian Empire in the Caucasus, Crimea and Bessarabia from the most militant neighbors, that is, the Persians and Turks. For this purpose, two wars were carried out - the Russian-Persian war of 1826-1828 In 1829, after the end of the Russian-Persian War, an attack was carried out on the Russian mission in Tehran, during which all embassy employees, except the secretary, were killed - including Russian Ambassador Plenipotentiary Alexander Griboyedov, who played a major role in peace negotiations with the Shah, which ended in an agreement beneficial for Russia. and the Russian-Turkish War of 1828-1829, and both of them led to remarkable results: Russia not only strengthened its borders, but also significantly increased its influence in the Balkans. Moreover, for some time (albeit short - from 1833 to 1841) the Unkyar-Iskelesi Treaty between Russia and Turkey was in force, according to which the latter was, if necessary, to close the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits (that is, the passage from the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea) for warships of Russia’s opponents, which made the Black Sea, in fact, an internal sea of ​​Russia and Ottoman Empire.

Battle of Boelesti September 26, 1828. German engraving. 1828 Brown University Library

The second goal that Nicholas I set for himself was not to let the revolution cross the European borders of the Russian Empire. In addition, since 1825, he considered it his sacred duty to fight revolution in Europe. In 1830, the Russian emperor was ready to send an expedition to suppress the revolution in Belgium, but neither the army nor the treasury were ready for this, and the European powers did not support the intentions of the Winter Palace. In 1831 Russian army suppressed harshly; Poland became part of the Russian Empire, the Polish constitution was destroyed, and martial law was introduced on its territory, which remained until the end of the reign of Nicholas I. When the war began again in France in 1848, which soon spread to other countries, Nicholas I was not on he was jokingly alarmed: he proposed moving the army to the French borders and was thinking about suppressing the revolution in Prussia on his own. Finally, Franz Joseph, head of the Austrian imperial house, asked him for help against the rebels. Nicholas I understood that this measure was not very beneficial for Russia, but he saw in the Hungarian revolutionaries “not just the enemies of Austria, but the enemies of world order and tranquility... who must be exterminated for our own peace,” and in 1849 the Russian the army joined the Austrian troops and saved the Austrian monarchy from collapse. One way or another, the revolution never crossed the borders of the Russian Empire.

At the same time, since the time of Alexander I, Russia has been at war with the highlanders of the North Caucasus. This war went on with varying degrees of success and lasted for many years.

In general, the foreign policy actions of the government during the reign of Nicholas I can be called rational: it made decisions based on the goals that it set for itself and the real opportunities that the country had.

10. Crimean War and the death of the emperor

In a nutshell: In the early 1850s, Nicholas I made a number of catastrophic mistakes and entered the war with the Ottoman Empire. England and France sided with Turkey, Russia began to suffer defeat. This aggravated many internal problems. In 1855, when the situation was already very difficult, Nicholas I unexpectedly died, leaving his heir Alexander the country in an extremely difficult situation.

Since the beginning of the 1850s, sobriety in assessing one’s own strengths in the Russian leadership suddenly disappeared. The emperor considered that the time had come to finally deal with the Ottoman Empire (which he called the “sick man of Europe”), dividing its “non-indigenous” possessions (the Balkans, Egypt, the islands of the Mediterranean Sea) between Russia and other great powers -by you, first of all by Great Britain. And here Nikolai made several catastrophic mistakes.

First, he offered Great Britain a deal: Russia, as a result of the division of the Ottoman Empire, would receive the Orthodox territories of the Balkans that remained under Turkish rule (that is, Moldavia, Wallachia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Macedonia), and Egypt and Crete would go to Great Britain. But for England this proposal was completely unacceptable: the strengthening of Russia, which became possible with the capture of the Bosporus and Dardanelles, would be too dangerous for it, and the British agreed with the Sultan that Egypt and Crete would receive for helping Turkey against Russia .

His second miscalculation was France. In 1851, an incident occurred there, as a result of which President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon's nephew) became Emperor Napoleon III. Nicholas I decided that Napoleon was too busy with internal problems to intervene in the war, without thinking at all that the best way to strengthen power was to take part in a small, victorious and just war (and Russia’s reputation as the “gendarme of Europe” , was extremely unsightly at that moment). Among other things, an alliance between France and England, longtime enemies, seemed completely impossible to Nicholas - and in this he again miscalculated.

Finally, the Russian emperor believed that Austria, out of gratitude for its help with Hungary, would side with Russia or at least maintain neutrality. But the Habsburgs had their own interests in the Balkans, and a weak Turkey was more profitable for them than a strong Russia.

Siege of Sevastopol. Lithograph by Thomas Sinclair. 1855 DIOMEDIA

In June 1853, Russia sent troops into the Danube principalities. In October, the Ottoman Empire officially declared war. At the beginning of 1854, France and Great Britain joined it (on the Turkish side). The allies began actions in several directions at once, but most importantly, they forced Russia to withdraw troops from the Danube principalities, after which the allied expeditionary force landed in Crimea: its goal was to take Sevastopol, the main base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. The siege of Sevastopol began in the fall of 1854 and lasted almost a year.

The Crimean War revealed all the problems associated with the control system built by Nicholas I: neither the supply of the army nor the transport routes worked; the army lacked ammunition. In Sevastopol, the Russian army responded to ten allied shots with one artillery shot - because there was no gunpowder. In Russian arsenals towards the end Crimean War There were only a few dozen guns left.

Military failures were followed by internal problems. Russia found itself in an absolute diplomatic void: all European countries broke off diplomatic relations with it, except the Vatican and the Kingdom of Naples, and this meant the end of international trade, without which the Russian Empire could not exist. Public opinion in Russia began to change dramatically: many, even conservative-minded people, believed that defeat in the war would be more useful for Russia than victory, believing that it would be not so much Russia that would be defeated as the Nicholas regime.

In July 1854, the new Russian ambassador in Vienna, Alexander Gorchakov, found out on what terms England and France were ready to conclude a truce with Russia and begin negotiations, and advised the emperor to accept them. Nikolai hesitated, but in the fall he was forced to agree. At the beginning of December, Austria also joined the alliance between England and France. And in January 1855, Nicholas I caught a cold and died unexpectedly on February 18.

Nicholas I on his deathbed. Drawing by Vladimir Gau. 1855 State Hermitage Museum

Rumors of suicide began to spread in St. Petersburg: supposedly the emperor demanded that his doctor give him poison. It is impossible to refute this version, but the evidence confirming it seems doubtful, especially since for a sincerely believing person, as Nikolai Pavlovich undoubtedly was, suicide is a terrible sin. Rather, the point was that failures - both in the war and in the state as a whole - seriously undermined his health.

According to legend, talking to his son Alexander before his death, Nicholas I said: “I am handing over my command to you, unfortunately, not in the order I wanted, leaving a lot of troubles and worries.” These troubles included not only the difficult and humiliating end of the Crimean War, but also the liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Ottoman Empire, the solution of the peasant question and many other problems that Alexander II had to deal with.

During the reign of Nicholas I, education took on a closed class character: parish schools for peasants; district schools for children of merchants, artisans and other urban inhabitants; gymnasiums for children of nobles and officials. In 1827, a decree and a special circular were issued prohibiting the admission of serfs to gymnasiums and universities, which testified to the basis of public education, which was the principle of class and bureaucratic centralization.

The new Minister of Education S. Uvarov in his reforms only strengthened the reactionary course, because his attitudes qualitatively illustrated the desires of a significant part of the nobility at this stage. These desires, of course, included the complete eradication of revolutionary ideas, the development of a religious worldview, the strengthening of class differences - all this in the field of education became the first task of the ministry. It should be noted that examples of the implementation of these tasks appeared quite quickly: Orthodox seminaries and bishops' schools were opened, which increased by 2-3 times by the middle of the century. Until 1835, there was an Education Committee, whose activities in practice during the reign of Nicholas I consisted of the following reforms: the adoption of the charter of the gymnasium and district and parish schools in 1828 and the adoption of the university charter in 1835. The Charter of 1828 retained the types of educational institutions, created in 1804, but determined their class affiliation, as we discussed above. In accordance with this, the curriculum of the institutions was determined. The change in the educational system and structure after Alexander I ended with the “Regulations on educational districts”, published in 1835, and the “General Charter of Imperial Russian Universities” 54. It is important to note that the first of these documents completely changed the usual structure of educational institutions, which had been in force since 1804. The functionality of universities was changed towards reduction: methodological, administrative and educational responsibilities were now absent in relation to the lower and secondary schools of the districts they headed. Instead, all educational institutions were controlled by a trustee, who was appointed by district by the Minister of Education himself.

Despite the strengthening of autocracy, it was under Nicholas I that a program for educating peasant children began to develop, which led to an increase in the number of schools from 60, with 1,500 students, in 1838, to 2,551 schools, with 111,000 students, in 1856 55 . At the same time, technical schools and universities began to open, i.e. a system of vocational secondary education was constructed. Thus, the new school charter significantly changed the previous system of educational institutions, creating new categories of education:

1. 
   for children of the lower classes - one-class parish schools (the four rules of arithmetic, reading, writing and the “law of God”) were studied.
2. 
   for the middle classes, that is, townspeople and merchants - three-year schools (geometry, geography, history).
3. 
   for the children of nobles and officials - seven-grade gymnasiums (where they prepared for entering the university).

Count Uvarov's reforms were further developed and acquired new content during the implementation of the educational reform of 1828-35. The process of preparing this reform was given as the main responsibility to the Committee for the Organization of Educational Institutions created in 1826 by Nicholas I, the head of which was the new Minister of Education A.S. Shishkov (since 1824). Shishkov developed his own program for the system of estate schools - as he believed, the all-estate school of the era of Alexander I should be divided into types of educational institutions. Each of them became independent to a certain extent, since it provided the opportunity to receive a complete education that was suitable for the student’s family in terms of class and financial status. It was on this basis that the new school charter was approved, and after it the fundamental documents that we have already paid attention to above. The most obvious features of the newly created school system were the following:

1. 
   there was no large-scale change in the management system: “Parochial schools are subordinate to the Authorities, i.e. To the full-time Superintendents of district schools, and these to the Provincial Directors of schools, as Heads of Gymnasiums; a certain number of Gymnasiums, with all the schools subordinate to them, constitute an Educational District. Under the direct control of one of the Universities" 56. In other words, some changes in the school system concerned such an aspect as the division of schools into state-owned and landowner villages. The management of schools in landowner villages was carried out by the nobles themselves, and in state-owned villages - by a dean priest (not a parish priest).
2. 
   District schools were also headed by a full-time superintendent, however, there was a nuance here: for detailed control over their activities, an honorary superintendent was additionally appointed, who was chosen by the university and approved by the ministry. The same changes took place in the management of gymnasiums: in addition to the director, control functions were carried out by the same honorary caretaker.

During the reign of Nicholas I, special emphasis was placed on the activities of cadet corps. Assistant to the Grand Duke (Head) Ya.I. Rostovtsev introduced noticeable changes to the educational system of these institutions. Now much in the education system was aimed at the ideological education of cadets, which entailed the introduction of subjects such as literature and history into the educational process - they were supposed to increase the level of patriotism and morality of the cadets. In addition, a special magazine was published for students in military institutions, which also contributed in its articles to the formation and development of the monarchical worldview. In fact, the entire life of the Corps of Pages (which we mentioned in the previous section) was militarized in nature: the entire time students were in the corps was structured in such a way that the students mastered military discipline in full and understood the specifics of strict subordination. Good grades were the basis for leave, which was sent on with a special ticket indicating the date of dismissal. Bad behavior of a vacationer on the street or in a public place threatened to have his ticket confiscated by any officer and serve a strict punishment within the walls of the school (punishment cell, canings, deprivation of vacation, even expulsion).

Let's look at how it was modified education system after the introduction of the new charter.

Parochial (folk) schools suffered a serious blow as a result of the adopted new Charter: the school was separated from secondary and higher educational institutions and accepted only representatives of the lower classes, and their social status initially influenced the limitations of the educational program. The parish schools of the Volyn, Kyiv and Podolsk provinces, which were in the hands of the Catholic clergy, were decided to be closed completely in 1832 due to their low attendance and, as the minister believed, unnecessary for peasant children. After 7 years, all educational institutions of the Kingdom of Poland were subordinated to the Ministry of Education, and at the same time a large number of private primary schools and schools at churches were closed. Here, in our opinion, the reason was religion - the autocrat did not recognize other religions except Orthodoxy. Meanwhile, new parish schools in the early to mid-19th century. continued to open, although the classes were very mixed by age, and the premises were overloaded (up to 70 students in one class), which, of course, greatly reduced the quality of the educational process. Also, the teachers themselves were almost illiterate, rude and cruel, which created an extremely negative atmosphere.

The charter of 1828 changed the status of district schools, defining them as institutions for children of the third estate - merchants and townspeople. Education within the walls of these institutions was already better than in schools, although even here the students were instilled with a sense of submission to the autocracy and the emperor. But high-quality and valuable preparation for practical activities was carried out: the law of God, history, Russian language, mathematics, geography, calligraphy and drawing were taught. The training was carried out for 3 years, and the district school did not prepare for entry into the gymnasium, which proved the elimination of the principle of continuity in the education system.

Decrees of 1818 and 1824 excluded a number of disciplines from the disciplinary course of gymnasiums: philosophy, law, political economy, but introduced the same law of God and the Russian language, at the same time increasing the number of hours of attendance in Latin and Greek 57 . The new Charter significantly changed the essence of the curriculum and the general organization of education in the gymnasium. First of all, she was average secondary school only for nobles, and the training process was significantly reduced. At the same time, foreign languages ​​and mathematics became the main subjects in the gymnasium, which contributed to the creation of its new type - classical. Simultaneously with the changes in the teaching system at the gymnasium, other disciplinary measures were introduced. Control over students was given to the newly established position of class monitors - the behavior of gymnasium students was under supervision not only during school hours, but also during free time. However, the teaching methodology itself was practically unregulated.

As we can see, the imperial government introduced significant restrictions in the structure of secondary education, which led to a decrease in the growth rate of the number of gymnasiums. For example, by the end of the first half of the 19th century. There were only 5 gymnasiums in St. Petersburg. The first gymnasium was recreated in the 20s. from the Noble boarding house, the second arose earlier than the First (I think the First was more status) from founded in the 18th centuries. another gymnasium, then belonging to the Academy of Sciences. The third gymnasium was similar to it in curriculum and organization. The fourth (Larinskaya - named after the merchant who gave money for its foundation) differed from the previous ones in appearance and a slightly different curriculum. The fifth gymnasium was opened almost in the middle of the 19th century. The total number of high school students in St. Petersburg at that time was 1,425 people, which was explained by the small number of the privileged class.

It can be said that the new Charter did not bring large-scale and in-depth reforms in the management system of educational institutions, but it influenced the expansion of the control (supervision) function for educational sphere in general from the nobility and clergy, additionally introducing a new official in the school itself, also acting in the status of an inspector. The responsibilities of the superintendent of district schools to supervise their activities were also increased, which confirms the fact that the main task of the reforms in the reign of Nicholas I was solved: the isolation of classes at each educational level. The same situation was achieved in relation to gymnasiums, where the functions of the director were clearly defined: “The main responsibility of the Director is vigilant, unremitting supervision of the Gymnasium and all the schools entrusted to him; he must try to ensure that the decrees of the Charter of educational institutions and the instructions of the Authorities are carried out everywhere” 58 .

The adoption of the new Charter was the expected result of the general internal political transformation of the Russian Empire, aimed at preserving the existing social system and maintaining a part of society free from state tutelage. School education in this direction was a consequence of the evolution that took place. The administrative system in question existed until 1835, i.e. before the adoption of the “Regulations on Educational Districts of the Ministry of Public Education” 59. The main idea of ​​the educational policy of Nicholas I was, nevertheless, precisely in distinguishing the types of educational institutions according to the class principle: they became independent from each other according to the social status of the students, the possibility of moving up the educational levels, according to gender and age restrictions. This reflected the backwardness of the school system and education in general: the Russian state retreated back in this area, rather than developing further. This is also proven by the reluctance of the majority of the population to study - many noble children were only happy to reduce the curriculum and workload in individual subjects compared to the beginning of the century. The number of classes also decreased - mainly to 40 people, and the quality of education still remained low. Thus, the defining features of the Nikolaev comprehensive school system were:

1. 
   administrative and bureaucratic organization of management, strengthening the class principle, introducing religious education, increasing the importance of control and supervision, simplifying the content of training and formalizing its methodology, increasing study load;
2. 
   granting special rights and privileges to graduates of gymnasiums, as well as to teaching and management personnel of schools, increasing wages, introducing pensions, and generally improving the legal status and financial situation of employees of state primary and secondary schools.

In 1835, a new University Charter was issued, limiting university autonomy and prohibiting the activities of the university court. What is important, the Charter actually led to the establishment of police supervision over students: universities were now fully subordinate to the trustee of the educational district, and their reform was to some extent similar to the reform of gymnasiums: the scale of scientific activity was reduced and the status of scientific institutions was modified into educational institutions. In other words, the research process at the university was now called into question, which was further proven by the elimination of its autonomy and the reduction of the functionality of academic councils, also controlled by the trustee. The election of professors and deans was abolished - they were now also appointed by the trustee of the educational district. Changes were made to the structure and curricula of universities. Out of coordination with faculties at universities, general departments theology, church history and church jurisprudence, and these subjects became compulsory for all students. This was followed by an expansion of these courses, which entailed a reduction in the hourly load for philosophy, and logic and psychology were transferred to theology teachers, which significantly disrupted the process of understanding the specifics of these disciplines - education became pro-religious, losing its scientific objectivity.

The modification of higher educational institutions also affected class orientation: persons of non-noble origin could not study at the university. The police nature of control over student activities was implemented in the inspection of lectures given (introduced after 1825) - university “freethinking” was thus suppressed. In addition, the very life of a higher educational institution was “militarized”: the trustees were mainly military men, who were required to establish strict order and establish discipline. To supervise students according to the staffing schedule, the positions of inspector and sub-inspector were introduced, and wearing a special uniform became mandatory for teachers and students. Compliance with these innovations was very carefully monitored by inspectors and the trustee - even the appearance of any person affiliated with the university should reflect high degree disciplines.

The difficulty of university life for students was their financial security: sometimes commoners, small estates, and children of officials, whose financial level practically did not allow for education, managed to get there. The situation for such students was very difficult, since even a government scholarship provided food for several days, and then they had to look for part-time work. However, despite the ambiguously interpreted transformations, in Russian universities of the first half of the 19th century. There were already many professors and private assistant professors, excellent teachers and great scientists who contributed to the further development of domestic science and raised a new generation of Russian scholars and intellectuals. Thus, in 1832 the Imperial military Academy, which trained officers of the General Staff, and in 1855 the Artillery and Engineering Academies were separated from it. The network of industrial and technical educational institutions expanded: in 1828 the Institute of Technology was established, in 1830 - the School of Architecture, and in 1832 - the School of Civil Engineers (in 1842 both of these schools were merged into the Construction School), in 1842 The Gorygoretsk Agricultural School was opened in Belarus, transformed in 1848 into the Agricultural Institute, and in 1835 the Land Survey Institute was founded in Moscow 60. In addition, the Institute of Railway Engineers, the Forestry Institute, the Practical Polytechnic Institute, the Mining Institute, the Practical Commercial Academy, the Agricultural School, the private Mining School, and the Technical School appeared. The provinces are concerned about the creation of veterinary schools.

Thus, by the middle of the 19th century. The government's educational policy changed decisively compared to the previous period: if in the first quarter of the 19th century. the state enforced the principle of classlessness of education, now, on the contrary, the class principle was affirmed. Starting from the era of Peter the Great's reforms, the state on the path of progressive development walked ahead of society, striving for social development and not paying attention to costs, as evidenced by the same reform of 1804, associated with pedagogical and educational principles that were truly innovative for that time. At the same time, society did not strive for learning - it was characterized by immaturity and reluctance to acquire knowledge and improve its cultural level, although the beginning of the 19th century. created almost all the conditions for this. Therefore, the paradox that arose by the middle of the century was at least strange: society was relatively ready to receive an education, but the state stepped back in its reformist policies, thereby restraining civil initiative: as a result, society outgrew the narrow boundaries of the class system, and the government tried to close channels of ever-increasing social mobility, one of which was school and university education.

The reform of educational institutions in 1804, carried out under Alexander I, was certainly distinguished by a number of progressive features and reflected the influence of the ideas of Russian enlighteners of the 18th century. and the progressive public of the early 19th century. A significant step forward in the field of education was the establishment of continuity at the various levels of lower, middle and higher schools, the expansion of educational programs, the approval of more humane and progressive teaching methods and, most importantly, free education. Although the degree of formality was quite high: free education was of lower quality, and the transfer of public education into the hands of landowners essentially nullified the organization of schools for serfs. At the same time, the system of educational institutions at the beginning of the 19th century. expanded by the creation of privileged closed institutions (Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, Smolny Institute) and boarding houses. Alongside this was home schooling, which was quite common among poor nobles.

Under Nicholas I, education took on a closed class character: parish schools for peasants; district schools for children of merchants, artisans and other urban inhabitants; gymnasiums for children of nobles and officials. The basis of public education was the principle of class and bureaucratic centralization. Meanwhile, under Nicholas, a program of mass peasant education was launched for the first time, and close attention was paid to cadet corps and the activities of universities. The new University Charter limited the autonomy of universities, prohibited university courts and effectively led to the establishment of police surveillance of students. And the introduction of the new school Charter of 1828 was a logical consequence of the general change in the government’s internal policy towards the conservation of the existing socio-political system.

LECTURE XVIII

(Start)

The system of public education under Nicholas I. – Views of Emperor Nicholas. - Ministry of Uvarov. - His principles. – Charters December 28, 1828 – University Charter 1835 – Moscow University under Stroganov

Ministry of Uvarov

Sergei Semenovich Uvarov. Portrait by V. Golike, 1833

Now we have to dwell on the course of education in Russia and on the development of the intellectual and political movement among the intelligentsia in the 30s and 40s.

Admiral Shishkov, inherited by Emperor Nicholas from the previous era, remained at the head of the Ministry of Public Education, as I have already said, until 1828; then from 1828 to 1833 the ministry was ruled by the pietist Lieven. Since 1833, one of the most famous ministers of public education, S.S. Uvarov, became the minister, who ruled this department until the beginning of the third period of Nicholas’s reign - until 1849. Uvarov mainly put his stamp on the activities of the Ministry of Public Education in the Nicholas era , although in essence he was mainly only a talented executor of the orders of Nicholas himself. The role of Uvarov in the matter of public education, in terms of the significance of the transformations carried out under him, is almost as important as the role of Kankrin in the history of Russian finance and the role of Kiselev in the history of peasant legislation. We saw that Nikolai Pavlovich paid attention to issues of public education immediately after ascending the throne; he connected the question of the direction of public education, or rather, upbringing, with the direction of political thought and set himself the goal of establishing a system of public education in such a way that it would be a system that prevents the possibility of developing any revolutionary aspirations. In view of this, Emperor Nicholas, from the very beginning of his reign, took a number of unique measures in the field of public education, which I already mentioned in one of the previous lectures. The protective direction, adopted from the very beginning of the reign in the matter of public education, received particular consistency and strength after 1831. The faithful and decisive executor of this course was the prince who replaced the weaker in 1833. Livena recommended by Karamzin Sergei Semenovich Uvarov. I already spoke at one time about what Uvarov was like before the 20s, about his rather bold opposition to the reactionary aspirations of Golitsyn’s ministry at the very beginning of his activity, but it must be said that the Uvarov of that era and the Uvarov of Nikolaev’s times are, as it were, two different personalities. By the 1930s, all that remained of the Uvarov of earlier times was his solid scientific education, and his political views changed radically, apparently in accordance with the career aspirations that prevailed in him at that time. You remember that in 1818, in his speech at the act at the main pedagogical institute, he said that freedom is the best gift of God and that for its sake one should not fear the confusion sometimes associated with the constitutional structure. In a letter to Stein, he made fun of people who desire enlightenment and at the same time are afraid of its results; he said that they seemed to desire a fire that would not burn. Now he left his previous ideas aside and was mainly the executor of those views that guided Emperor Nicholas himself. First of all, Uvarov acquired the idea that it is necessary to arm the nation with the necessary knowledge only to the extent that it is necessary for the technical needs of the state, moreover, strictly protecting the public from the penetration of harmful political ideas into the minds.

Even in the Committee of 1826, from this very point of view, the charters of secondary and lower schools were revised, and in accordance with the views of Emperor Nicholas on the tasks of public education, the network of educational institutions, once built according to the plan of Yankovic de Mirievo, was broken, and new charters and new programs for gymnasiums and district schools, approved on December 28, 1828. This reactionary measure took place during that period of Nicholas’s reign; which I characterized as a period generally opposed to progress.

Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality

Uvarov, while still a comrade minister under Lieven, received a business trip in 1832, the purpose of which was to review Moscow University and other provincial educational institutions, organize teaching in them and find out how the charter of 1828 was enforced, and finally , what changes are required in the organization of universities. Returning from this trip, Uvarov presented a characteristic written report, which was compiled with such a subtle understanding of the views of Emperor Nicholas that it certainly should have promoted its author to a ministerial post. In the report, Uvarov outlined his impressions of the audit of Moscow University as follows:

“In asserting that, in a general sense, the spirit and disposition of the minds of young people await only deliberate direction in order to form in a greater number of these useful and zealous instruments of government, that this spirit is ready to accept the impression of loyal love for the existing order, I do not want to absolutely assert that it is easy it was to keep them in this desired balance between concepts that are tempting for the immature minds and, unfortunately, for Europe, that have taken possession of it, and those solid principles on which not only the present, but also the future well-being of the fatherland is based; I don’t even think that the government has every right to judge too harshly the mistakes that may have been made on the part of those who were once entrusted with the supervision of this institution; but I firmly hope that we have the means of not repeating these mistakes and gradually, having captured the minds of youth, bring them, almost insensitively, to the point where they should merge, to the solution of one of the most difficult problems of the time - a correct, thorough education, necessary in our century, with deep conviction and warm faith in truly Russian protective principles Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality, constituting the last anchor of our salvation and the surest guarantee of the strength and greatness of our fatherland."

Emperor Nicholas saw in the author of this report a reliable support for introducing into the minds of the younger generation those ideas that he himself recognized as salutary and necessary. Having already become a minister, Uvarov definitely said that he sets the main task of his management of the Ministry of Public Education: to restrain the influx of new ideas into Russia, wants to prolong its youth, and that if he manages to delay its development by 50 years, then he will die peacefully.

“In the current state of things and minds,” he wrote in his report just quoted, “it is impossible not to multiply, wherever possible, the number of “mental dams.” “Not all of them, perhaps, will turn out to be equally firm, equally capable of fighting destructive concepts; but each of them can have its own relative merit, its own immediate success.”

This report formed the basis for all subsequent policies of the Ministry of Public Education. Thus, one of the most educated Russian people of that time, which was, undoubtedly, Uvarov, was placed at the head of the ministry; and this man set himself the difficult task of strengthening and introducing “true enlightenment” into the minds of the younger generation and at the same time protecting them from the influx of revolutionary ideas and sentiments. One might think that he himself now believed in the existence of a fire that would not burn! The secondary school was also conducted in this direction, but one cannot help but say that the further it went, the more its program was freed from unnecessary science and knowledge.

Russian educational institutions under Nicholas I

Even in Shishkov’s committee there were great debates about how to structure teaching in gymnasiums, and it was decided that the most desirable program was the classical one. At the same time, disagreements arose over the question of whether to introduce one Latin language or both Greek. Many members of the committee stood for the introduction of Greek along with Latin and attached great importance to this introduction of both languages. But Emperor Nicholas admitted that the Greek language was superfluous and would only burden students. In accordance with this, the Greek language was eliminated from ordinary gymnasiums, since it was considered necessary either to introduce the Greek language in full, or not to introduce it at all. They decided to introduce it only in a few metropolitan gymnasiums.

At the same time, despite the fact that the classical system was adopted, neither natural science, nor logic, nor even familiarization with the current situation of the country, which was supposed to be given by statistics, were initially excluded from the gymnasium course. But the longer this system was tested, the longer Uvarov remained minister, the more they became convinced of the uselessness of such a broad program, and the items originally included in it were little by little thrown out of it one by one; Thus, in 1844 statistics was eliminated, in 1847 logic was eliminated, and before that, in 1846, the mathematics course was shortened, so that in the end the curriculum in high school By the end of the 40s and towards the end of Uvarov's management, her position was increasingly declining.

At this time, the nobility became more willing to send their children to gymnasiums. This was due, on the one hand, to the need to have a diploma for service, and on the other hand, to the fact that by this time the contingent of free teachers who had previously been at the service of landowners in the form of various foreign emigrants had largely dried up. Thus, the types of government were implemented and the need for gymnasiums in noble circles increased. Accordingly, the number of gymnasiums grew: in 1826 there were 48, and in the 30s - 64; the number of students at the beginning of the reign was 7 thousand, and by the end - 18 thousand people. The number of district schools also increased, but the quality of teaching there also decreased, rather than improved. This was also facilitated by the restructuring of the management of the educational department itself. According to the previous charter of 1804, which marked the most brilliant period in the history of Russian education, universities were at the head of government in the provinces. Now, firstly, the organization of the universities themselves according to the charter of 1835 was changed, and then they were completely removed from the management of educational affairs in secondary and lower schools, which was now entirely concentrated in the hands of trustees of educational districts, and such trustees in many places were made there were local governors-general, and in Siberia - governors. Most of these trustees under Nicholas were appointed from military generals, who, as the mood of the government became more conservative, were increasingly chosen from such persons who were mainly capable of curbing and pulling.

The universities were also rebuilt according to the charter of 1835. This charter completely changed the position of the universities, significantly limiting their autonomy. True, outwardly some traces of it remained: the right to choose a rector was retained, and professors themselves were left to fill vacant departments; but at the same time, the Minister of Public Education was also given the right not to approve the council’s elected representatives and to appoint his own candidates, and since the Minister of Public Education widely used his right, the right to choose gradually came to naught.

It should, however, be noted that universities still cared about the best possible preparation of professors, so that in the 30s even business trips of young candidates abroad were widely practiced. These business trips yielded brilliant results in the 1940s. Thanks to them, a whole galaxy of young Russian scientists appeared, who gave a lot for the next generation of Russian intelligentsia: just remember the names of Granovsky, Redkin, Kryukov, Buslaev (in Moscow), Meer (in Kazan), Nevolin, Kutorga (in St. Petersburg). At Moscow University, this was especially facilitated by the trustee Count S. G. Stroganov, who, himself a very educated person, actively cared about improving the teaching staff, which did not prevent him from interfering in the teaching system and even in the programs of individual professors, suggesting the desired direction and generally manage them at the university, like a real owner. Thus, here too the desire was combined, on the one hand, to improve the teaching system, and on the other, to determine its tone and direction. In any case, the university lost its independent autonomous structure, which it enjoyed according to the charter of 1804. to the reactionary ministry of Prince. Golitsyn, under whom university autonomy was actually violated in many places.

As for the number of universities, during this period the Kiev University of St. Vladimir was opened (in 1834), but it was not a completely new university, since it replaced the Vilna University, which was closed shortly after the uprising of 1831.

This is the general picture of public education in the second period of Nicholas’s reign.