Russia’s nineteenth century began with a palace coup.
By Dr. Ekaterina Basargina1
Senior Researcher
St. Petersburg Branch
Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Government bureaucracies are institutional mechanisms of communication. They exist in part in order to gather, process, store and (perhaps less willingly) disseminate information. Some of the information that they gather consists of the hard administrative data required for core functions such as taxation or conscription. Some of the information that they disseminate consists of governmental pronouncements, laws, or decrees. However, some modes of communication can be less direct, more oblique. The Ministry of Public Education and its journal provide a case study in such institutional communication in the interests of the cultural policies of the state.
Russia’s nineteenth century began with a palace coup. On the night of 11 March 1801, a group of conspirators brutally murdered the “mad tsar Paul”.2 The next morning, St Petersburg was overcome with riotous exaltation: people wept and embraced one another at home and in the street. The future was unclear, but for the moment the end to the terror and stress of Paul’s reign seemed an occasion for relief and celebration as the twenty-three-year-old Alexander I ascended the throne.3 Liberally educated and an enthusiastic follower of French Enlightenment thought, Russia’s young tsar quickly announced the new era of his rule with a series of decrees and manifestos. Among his first actions was an amnesty for those who had suffered exile and imprisonment without trial under Paul. The Secret Expedition, which carried out interrogations under torture, was destroyed. Thus Alexander I aimed to prove that he would not continue the harsh and unpredictable rule of his father. The new tsar made a grandiose promise to rule his people “according to the laws and the heart” of his grandmother Catherine the Great, declaring that he would “follow her most wise intentions”.4
The new tsar’s initial moves gave Russian society hope for future change. People expected a new form of governance, one that would replace arbitrary rule and violence with the rule of law and justice. Alexander’s initial measures seemed to justify such expectations. The intense activity in the first part of his reign left a deep impression on many of his contemporaries. Aleksandr Pushkin would later call this period “the wondrous beginning of Alexander’s days” (Dnei Aleksandrovykh prekrasnoe nachalo) in his “Epistle to the Censor” (1822).
Russia’s new tsar was enthused by plans to reform the country from top to bottom and completely reorganise the state structure. He intended to put in place a series of measures that would eventually lead to the abolition of serfdom, and he dreamt of crowning his work with a new constitution modelled on the best examples of the period in Western Europe. However, before Russia could receive a constitution, Alexander had to educate and prepare the population for the coming reforms. Crucially, the tsar had to prepare those able to make his plans a reality—Russia’s public officials. Thus, education was made the highest priority in this programme of wide-ranging transformations in order to guarantee Russia’s successful Europeanisation; it was seen as the quickest means of distributing European ideals and values.
Initially, Alexander put Catherine-era officials in charge of the government. He dismissed Count Petr Pahlen, who had led the conspiracy against Paul and who now aimed to guide the young tsar. However, Alexander managed quietly but firmly to avoid being thus guided, and selected advisers who shared his own outlook. He came to rely on a small circle of personal friends, his Private Committee, which had formed while he was still a prince. This group—which included Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski and Counts Viktor Kochubei, Nikolai Novosiltsev and Pavel Stroganov—had no official powers, but made decisions on all matters of state. Liberal to a man, this group dreamt of large-scale reforms to the operations of the Russian state, and the Private Committee was behind the highly important projects carried out during the first years of Alexander’s reign. The tsar’s “young friends” gathered privately in the imperial palace, discussing state business informally in lively and friendly conversation. The group’s motto was “to stand above any personal interest and accept neither preferment, nor reward”.5 The tsar sometimes jokingly referred to this circle as the Comité du salut public (Committee of Public Health).
The Private Committee’s most important works consisted of transforming Russia’s central state institutions. The first project was to change the collegiate system of governance, which dated back to Peter I, into a ministerial one that would preside over all the state’s administrative work, an important step in centralising Russia’s governance.6 On 8 September 1802, Alexander signed a decree “On the Institution of Ministries” to form eight ministries with remit over the army, navy, foreign affairs, judiciary, internal affairs, finance, commerce and public education, respectively.7 A Committee of Ministers was also established to facilitate the joint discussion of state affairs; the tsar himself often attended this committee’s meetings.
Russia’s new system of rule placed the principle of personal authority and responsibility at its core. Each minister alone was responsible for all the actions of his ministry. Each minister had a deputy and chancery, and the ministries were subdivided into departments, which were headed by directors; departments were divided again into sections with section chiefs; and sections were divided into desks with individuals in charge of each desk. Ministers answered to the monarch and the Senate.
The establishment of a Ministry of Public Education was part of this grandiose reform of Russia’s executive.8 For the first time, the administration of Russia’s public education was concentrated in a single independent ministry, which aimed at “the education of youth and the dissemination of learning”. The new ministry was formed not only to bring order to the administrative sphere and establish a single system of education: it aimed to create an intellectual elite and a spiritual leadership within society.
In order to position this new education policy as a successor to Catherine’s reforms, Alexander made Count Petr Zavadovskii (1739–1812) his first minister of public education, who had “once been famed for both his beauty and his intellect, and Catherine appreciated him not only for the latter”.9 The tsar’s “young friends” were not particularly sympathetic to Zavadovskii, whom they regarded as intellectually crude. They derided him for what they claimed was “his inflexibility in both mind and body”.10 Nevertheless, they appreciated his kindness and his fair-mindedness. Alexander foresaw that “Catherine’s old man” would not always be open to following progressive ideas.
The Ministry of Public Education, in contrast to other ministries, kept its collegiate features due to its inclusion of the Commission on Educational Institutions (from 1803, the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions). Alexander counterbalanced the elderly Zavadovskii’s indifference with the energy of his assistants. The members of the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions were educated public officials: the trustees of Russia’s education boards, members of the Academy of Sciences, or members of the church hierarchy. The Commission on Educational Institutions took up the task of developing a model for educational reform. Its main aim was to establish new universities that would form the core of a system to administer education in Russia.
In the course of this reform, Russia was divided into six regional education boards (Moscow, St Petersburg, Kazan, Kharkov, Vilnius and Dorpat (Tartu)), each of which had directors permanently based in Petersburg. The reform introduced a single system of education that encompassed primary school through to university. Thus, all the different stages of public school fitted together in a vertical system: each course of study provided complete training to a certain level and, at the same time, served as a preparatory stage for the next, higher level. The universities comprised the final link of the chain in the whole system and, beyond their traditional teaching and research functions (“the teaching of sciences to the highest degree”11), they also served as administrative centres for the regional education boards. All the education establishments of a given region—parish, district, and province-level gymnasiums—were subordinate to a university. This period saw the establishment of universities in Kazan (1805) and Kharkov (1805), and the reform of the universities in Dorpat (1802) and Vilnius (1803). In 1804, the universities in Dorpat and Vilnius received a charter granting them broad autonomy and freedom in teaching.
The general plan for education reform and its main principles were laid out in the “Preliminary Rules of Public Education”, which became law on 24 January 1803.12 Paragraph 41 of these rules read: “Under the authority of the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions, a periodical publication will be issued so as to disseminate information about the successes of public education”.13 The Journal of the Ministry of Public Education was Russia’s earliest ministerial periodical.14 It was issued under various titles: in 1803–17 it was called simply the Periodic Publication of the Successes of Public Education. The journal’s first editor was the academician Nikolai Ozeretskovskii (1750–1827), who was a member of the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions.15
Ozeretskovskii was a prominent figure in the reform of Russia’s public education, and possessed an influential voice in the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions. He was involved in creating charters for universities, gymnasiums, district and parish schools, as well as the draft of a censorship charter. Ozeretskovskii believed in judicious freedom of the press. “Restrictions on the press”, Ozeretskovskii observed, “are hard to keep within their proper boundaries. When taken to excess they are frequently ineffectual and always harmful. It is unquestionable that excessive severity in such matters almost invariably has damaging consequences. It obliterates sincerity, weakens the intellect and, extinguishing the holy flame of love for truth, inhibits the spread of enlightenment”.16 In ambiguous cases where various interpretations might be possible, the censor should interpret the author’s ideas and intentions “in the way most favourable to the author”; the censorship committee was instructed to respect works that included “modest and well-meaning pursuit of any truth”.17 The 1804 Charter on Censorship was Russia’s most liberal such charter throughout the nineteenth century.
Ozeretskovskii carried the principles of academic freedom into the Ministry of Public Education. He edited the Periodic Publication from its inception in 1803 to its final issue in 1817. Aside from the journal’s official section, useful information and translations were also published and a section of criticism and bibliography was also included.
From the very beginning of the journal’s life as the Periodic Publication, Ivan Martynov (1771–1833), the director of the Department of Public Education and the head of the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions, as well as a botanist and translator of ancient texts, had proposed that is should be transformed into the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education.18 According to Martynov’s proposal this new incarnation was to take on the character of an official journal with an emphasis on scholarship. The journal was to include news of meetings held by the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions, the Academy of Sciences, and the Russian State Academy. It would publish scholarly articles and the reflections of members of both academies, as well as regulatory decisions and other measures relating to the six regional education boards. Concurrently, Martynov presented a new publication proposal for a separate semi-official journal, The Northern Messenger (Severnyi vestnik).19 The Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions approved the plan for The Northern Messenger, and Martynov published it during the course of 1804–05.
The Northern Messenger was closely linked to the reformist policies of Alexander I, and articles on issues of state and societal structure, on legislation and on education took a central place in the journal, alongside translations of classical and contemporary European authors. In 1806, Martynov’s journal Lyceum (Litsei), with its expanded literary section, continued the work of The Northern Messenger.
The Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions did not reject Martynov’s idea for a journal for the ministry, but also did not take any steps towards implementing it. In effect, then, the Periodic Publication remained on its former footing. The journal came out 4 times a year, and 44 issues were published from 1803 to 1817. The journal’s print run of 1200 copies was subsidised by the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions, and 605 copies were sent free of charge to universities, academies, gymnasiums and district schools.20
The production of Periodic Publication stopped in 1817. By the time the war with Napoleon had come to an end Alexander’s views and domestic policy had undergone a significant shift—one that reflected the general crisis in the political and cultural life of Europe. In Russia, disillusion with European values set in, and the liberal innovations that had marked the beginning of Alexander’s reign began to encounter intense criticism. Barely established, the universities found themselves under attack, and piety was declared the basis of true education. This new ideology was reflected in the creation of a unified Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education in 1817, which Nikolai Karamzin called the “ministry of the eclipse”.21 Ozeretskovskii and Martynov were sacked from this new ministry.
At the same time, it was decided to continue publishing the ministry’s journal under a new title, The Journal of the Department of Public Education. A plan for the new publication was drawn up in 1820, and its first issue was published in January 1821. To preserve continuity with the former publication, the first issue included all the imperial decrees issued after 1817. The new journal was published monthly, and contained ministry orders, news of research and teaching institutions, and academic, literary, and bibliographic sections. From 1820–24, the writer Nikolai Ostolopov (1783–1833) ran the journal, receiving a salary of 2500 rubles per year. Ostolopov had made a name for himself as the author of the 1821 Dictionary of Ancient and New Poetry (Slovar′ drevnei i novoi poezii). In this new journal, Ostolopov published the essay “A Key to the Works of Derzhavin with a Short Description of the Life of this Famous Poet” (1822), which is considered one of the first attempts at literary commentary in Russia.
In 1824, Admiral Aleksandr Shishkov took over the direction of the ministry. Shishkov, a writer and critic, was known for using his philological essays as instruments to serve his nationalist agenda.22 For many years, Shishkov had been president of the Russian Academy, the research institute dedicated to Russian language and culture set up by Catherine the Great in 1783, and had spared no efforts in transforming it into a centre of Russian spirituality and patriotism.
Under Shishkov, the united Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education was dissolved due to the significant replication of its functions by the Synod, and the Ministry of Public Education was restored. The ministry’s journal also changed once again. It was renamed Notes of the Department of Public Education (Zapiski Departmenta narodnogo prosveshcheniia), lost its status as a periodical and instead was published only when enough material had been gathered to merit an issue. Editorial work was assigned to Petr Sokolov (1764–1835), a member of the Chief Directorate of Educational Institutions. The author of a work on Russian grammar, Sokolov was a diligent employee of the Russian Academy, and suited Shishkov, who made him his closest aide in both the Academy and in the Ministry.23 Under Sokolov’s direction, three large editions of Notes of the Department of Public Education were issued in 1825, 1827, and 1829, respectively. After Sokolov was dismissed in 1829, publication ceased.
The Ministry’s official print organ was restored on the initiative of Minister of Public Education Count Sergei Uvarov (1786–1855).24 Uvarov held broad views on the role of education in public life and defended the concept of education as a means of progress.25 A godson of Catherine the Great, Uvarov was a favourite at aristocratic gatherings. He built his reputation as a leading autodidact of his time, and made a career even from an early age. He had been drawn to culture in his early years, and had the ability to find a common language with people of opposing views. Uvarov was acquainted with representatives of the new trends in literary taste such as the poet Vasilii Zhukovskii and the writer and historian Nikolai Karamzin, yet simultaneously maintained friendly relations with the literary traditionalists from the society that called itself the “Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word” (Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova). Uvarov was among the co-founders of the Arzamas literary society and belonged to what Aleksandr Herzen later called the “Arzamas geese”, those members who devoted themselves to state service rather than literary activity.26
Uvarov was highly articulate and wrote with ease on historical and literary topics in French, German and, eventually, in Russian. His 1810 project to create an “Asiatic Academy” in Russia stimulated serious public discussion.27 This project reflected the growing interest of the Russian state in its Eastern neighbours, as well as the need for academic study of the East. Uvarov’s proposal made an impression in academic circles, particularly abroad. J. W. Goethe, having received a copy of the proposal from Uvarov, was intrigued by the broad conception of the research and wrote to him several times about the issue.28 In 1811, Uvarov was elected an honourary member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Göttingen academic society.
Recognising the importance of the Orient in the history of civilisations, Uvarov nevertheless ascribed particular significance to Russia’s cultural connection to Western Europe. He believed that Russia and Western Europe shared a common source of education and civilisation which could be traced back to antiquity, especially to the Hellenic world, and that this was important for the study of Russian history and literature. In his early years, Uvarov embraced the principles of neohumanism, which aimed to restore the lost ideal of humanitas. He assimilated the neohumanists’ faith in the educational ideal of antiquity, and viewed classical philology as the path to a comprehensive knowledge of the ancient world. The neohumanists believed that only education in its classical form could lead to the complete and holistic realisation of man’s spiritual potential. Learning ancient languages was an individual’s best path to a rounded formation of personality, and the aim of such instruction was to encourage independent interpretation of the cultural achievements of the peoples of antiquity. The neohumanists tried to direct school education towards a creative perception of antiquity, not as a norm or as a model for blind imitation, but as the seed from which the principal cultural values of Western civilisation had emerged. Understanding ancient culture opened the way to asserting one’s own national culture.
Uvarov enthusiastically accepted the call of the neohumanists, “Educate yourself in the Greek way” (“Bilde dich griechisch”), and was ready to learn to follow the spirit of the Greeks, to feel, think and act as a Greek. He respected Goethe, the recognised leader of neohumanism and romanticisim, and admired Friedrich Wolf, the pillar of classical philology. Uvarov was inspired by the ideas of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who reformed the Prussian education system by placing ancient languages at the centre of study.29 Indeed, it was in no small part thanks to Uvarov that Nikolai Gnedich made the first attempt at a Russian translation of The Iliad into hexameter verse, as evidenced by the translator’s letter to the minister in the foreword to the 1829 translation. In 1816, Uvarov was appointed an honourary member of the Institut de France.
Borrowed from German scholars, Uvarov’s sense of Greek classicism’s fundamental importance for Russia’s cultural development formed the core of his entire educational policy. However, if in the 1810s Uvarov had slavishly followed Western models, then by the 1830s, under the influence of the revolutionary events spreading across Europe, he changed his views and began to doubt whether the Western model of societal development and education was universally applicable. On the whole, however, German philhellenism had a profound influence on Russian education, shaping the development of the humanities until 1917.
A large part of Uvarov’s life was connected to the Ministry of Public Education. A turning point in his career came in 1810 when, at the age of 24, under the protection of his father-in-law, Minister of Public Education Count Aleksei Razumkovskii, Uvarov received the post of trustee of the Petersburg Regional Board of Education (1810–22). In 1818 he became the President of the Academy of Sciences. Towards the end of Alexander I’s reign Uvarov found himself out of favour, and moved into the Ministry of Finances. However, with the accession of Nicholas I Uvarov re-entered the larger political arena.
When Nicholas I (1796–1855) came to the throne in December 1825, shooting broke out on Senate Square.30 Although the Decembrist revolt was quickly suppressed and five of its leaders were executed, the uprising left a deep impression on the new tsar, fostering distrust and fear towards any manifestation of free thinking. Throughout the rest of his life, Nicholas wasted no effort in trying to eliminate “revolutionary infection”. In the tsar’s manifesto of 13 July 1826 informing Russia of the result of the Decembrists’ trial, the spirit of rebellion was attributed “not to enlightenment, but to an idleness of mind” and “the destructive luxury of half-knowledge”.31 In this new age, Nicholas suggested, Russia needed to reform its now degraded educational system and foster an educated elite, loyal to the government. As part of this modernisation process, the government had to increase the number of educated people, and prepare a new generation of educated teachers, professors, doctors, and public officials.32
Uvarov was the kind of enlightened public servant who understood the breadth of his remit and was prepared to fulfil it. In 1832, he was appointed Deputy Minister of Public Education. In March 1833, Uvarov took on the duties of Minister of Public Education, and a year later his position was confirmed.33 Uvarov carried out state educational and academic policies in Russia until 1849. As Russia’s Third Department put it in their 1839 report: “No minister acts so autocratically as Uvarov. The name of the tsar is constantly on his lips”.34
As Minister of Public Education, Uvarov saw his role as the promoter of the historical principles of Russian culture and statehood. In the name of maintaining the health and power of Russia, Uvarov tried to unite European Enlightenment with Russian national spirit (narodnost′) and to establish this on the basis of Russia’s historic qualities of “autocracy, Orthodoxy, and narodnost′”, which formed, according to him, the “anchor of our salvation”. This triad became the core of official ideology, a “theory of official nationality”.35
Uvarov proposed this triad as a formulation for the core principles of public education for the first time in his 1832 report on the inspection of Moscow University. Here he defined two aspects of teaching in Russia’s universities: first, the scholarly and educational aspect, and second, a moral and political aspect. Uvarov intended to give higher education in Russia a national character, combining the benefits of the European Enlightenment with the advantages of narodnost′. The requirement was, as he phrased it, “to be a Russian in spirit before attempting to be a European in education”.36
Recognising the growing influence of the periodical press on society’s consciousness, Uvarov was sharply critical of the state of contemporary journalism. He argued forcibly that “the path to the corruption of morals begins with the corruption of taste” and condemned the “brazen attempts” of journalists “to go beyond the limits of decorum”, which brought serious harm to unformed minds and had a negative influence on the atmosphere of the university.37
In 1832, Uvarov took aim at Nikolai Polevoi, the publisher of the highly successful Moscow Telegraph (Moskovskii telegraf) for getting drawn into “journalistic polemics”, for daring to print satirical sketches of high society, and for opining against Karamzin, whose scholarly authority had hitherto been reckoned unimpeachable. In 1834, Uvarov managed to shut down the Moscow Telegraph, and banned Polevoi from working in journalism.
Uvarov, who was responsible for censorship as Minister of Public Education, closed two other journals in addition to Moscow Telegraph during his ministerial duties, including The Telescope (Teleskop) in 1836 for publishing Petr Chaadaev’s “First Philosophical Letter”. Uvarov was outraged by Chaadaev’s expression of bitter regret at the spiritual stagnation reigning in Russia, which was cut off from the “global education of the human race”.38 Chaadaev was accused of a lack of patriotism and officially declared insane; Nikolai Nadezhdin, the editor of The Telescope, was exiled. The severity of the punishment was explained with reference to the fact that Nadezhdin’s position as a professor at Moscow University set the Ministry of Public Education in a poor light.
Uvarov clearly understood that restricting journalists by bans alone would not work. Thus, he proposed to the “educator class” (soslovie obrazovatelei), as he referred to the professors, that they publish their own journal, which would contain only serious articles “without political news and literary squabbles” and give the reading public (and particularly young people) “pure nourishment, mature and protective”.39
When Uvarov became the Minister of Public Education in 1834, he had an ideological scheme already prepared. On the day of his appointment, Uvarov addressed his subordinates through a circular in which he repeated his tripartite formula, requesting that public education “be carried out in the united spirit of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost′”.40 Understanding the importance of state propaganda, Uvarov—without a hint of embarrassment—took on the role of ideologue of the Russian Empire. But in order to inculcate his cultural policies in society, he needed an official mouthpiece for his ministry, rather than an academic journal. With this in mind, Uvarov renewed the ministry’s defunct journal, but with a broader remit and a more ambitious programme. The publication again received a new title, Journal of the Ministry of Public Education. In it Uvarov hoped to converse directly with educated society, manage culture, direct minds and shape public opinion in a direction supportive of the government.
The journal aimed not only to serve as the ministry’s official mouthpiece—the “echo of the government”, as Uvarov’s put it—which would contain government instructions on teaching as well as reports from the ministry, but to become a kind of Russian equivalent of the French Journal des savants, allowing its readership to follow the progress of all branches of science and learning. In Uvarov’s conception the journal was intended to reflect the status of academic life in the empire and, insofar as it was possible, become a replacement for foreign scholarly journals, which were inaccessible to a majority of the public. It was also meant to report news of academic life in Russia and abroad, and to cover the history of education and enlightenment in different countries.
As Uvarov was to write in his report of ministry activities for 1833–34, the journal’s principal aim consisted of
publicising the measures undertaken by the government in relation to the successful development of the sciences and of public education, reporting new useful methods to teachers, and disseminating information about the growth of Enlightenment in Russia in comparison with its development in other lands. In the past five years, twenty issues of this journal have been published. The teachers of young people who live close to the capital, as well as those who live in the remote steppe and in distant territories of the empire, are equipped with reading material, from which they can see what the government expects of them in the great work of public education: without being in Moscow, Petersburg, or Kiev, they can, as it were, attend the lectures of the universities there, become acquainted with all the fruits of our educated classes, and the lecturers at higher education institutions can compare their own thoughts and the observations of their fellow teachers in other towns. At the same time, teachers, knowing the direct intentions of the government in full, can bring their actions into line with it, without any need for direction from outside.41
Uvarov took on the general directorship of the journal, intending to turn it into the country’s leading Russian-language academic journal. He personally developed a plan for the publication, defined its structure, and proposed rubrics that would guide the distribution of content.42 The journal was organised as follows: 1) “Acts of government”; 2) “Literature, science, and the arts”; 3) “News of scholars and educational institutions in Russia”; 4) “News of foreign scholars and educational institutions”; 5) “The history of Enlightenment and public education” in different countries, particularly in Russia; 6) “News and miscellaneous”.
The journal appeared monthly. Its publication required the joint efforts of many people, and Uvarov personally supervised the creation of an editorial board. This consisted of an editor, four staff members, and additional freelance employees. The board was located in St Petersburg, where it occupied a single, dimly lit, low-ceilinged room with a semi-circular window—more like a kennel than a ministerial office—in the building of the Ministry of Public Education by Chernyshev bridge (today, Lomonosov bridge).43
Konstantin Serbinovich (1797–1874), who had previously worked as secretary to Karamzin, was the journal’s first editor.44 For Uvarov, a devotee of Karamzin’s work, Serbinovich’s previous employer was the best recommendation possible. Serbinovich was neither a scholar nor a writer, but he was an intelligent editor, and a good administrator.45 Serbinovich diligently carried out all Uvarov’s orders, who summoned him almost daily for various explanations and instructions.46 Serbinovich read the third (i.e. the final) proofs of the journal and was supposed to make sure the dictates of the censor were followed, and that all the texts were in tune with the government’s thinking. He gave Uvarov the final proofs to check, and after receiving his approval, the journal was published. Serbinovich made no serious errors in his work, and Uvarov valued his obliging editor, demanding of him little more. Serbinovich served as the journal’s editor for twenty years, combining that position with duties as director of the Chancery of the Ober-Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, where he played a prominent role in attempts to re-unite the Uniate (Eastern-Rite Catholic) Church with the Orthodox Church.
The journal’s editorial assistant role was demanding, and for many years Ivan Galanin (1817–73) occupied this position, managing the general work, an extensive correspondence with authors, the delivery of the journal to its subscribers, and other such administrative tasks. Galanin drew up the first, official section of the journal, covering the actions of the government. A ministry department, the Chancery of the Minister, and the Chancery of the Main Censorship Administration presented the necessary information (decrees, decisions, instructions, and accounts of the ministry’s work) to the editorial board. Aside from that, Galanin read the first and second proofs of the journal.
However, Uvarov considered that his main assistants in this work were Russian scholars, his subordinates: university and lyceum lecturers employed by the Ministry of Public Education, as well as members of the Academy of Sciences (Uvarov had served as President of the Academy since 1818). He counted on their assistance and hoped to receive the majority of the scholarly material for his journal from them. To facilitate a steady flow of articles, Uvarov used the administrative levers of influence he already had. For example, in a circular to the directors of regional education boards on 9 September 1833, Uvarov simply ordered the professors of universities to deliver one article a year to the journal.47 The professors’ texts were supposed to be “evidence of their talents and knowledge, and of the level to which they had raised the subject they taught”.48
Thus, participation in the journal was seen as tantamount to a qualification required of the professors, while the journal itself became a means for control and oversight of the efficiency of academic work undertaken by employees of the Ministry of Public Education. When the council of the University of Dorpat refused to deliver articles at the minister’s behest on the grounds that they were too busy, Uvarov modified his peremptory tone. He hastened to assure the Dorpat scholars that he was inviting them to write, but was not in any way forcing them to collaborate with the ministry’s journal.49 The professors of other universities, as well as members of the Academy of Sciences, readily agreed to take part in the journal. Before long, scholars had become the mainstay of the publication. Thanks to them, two of the journal’s six sections, “Literature, science, and the arts” and “News of foreign scholars and educational institutions”, were always saturated with scholarly material.
Uvarov supported the journal with an annual subscription of 2,000 to 3,000 rubles from the ministry’s administrative funds. This went to pay the honoraria of the authors, which Uvarov set himself. The amount depended on the length of the composition, so the minister warned his authors against “superfluous productivity”, requesting extreme clarity in exposition. For a composition of less than 1 “author’s sheet” (i.e. around 40,000 characters), a contributor would receive 50 rubles; for between 1 and 2 “author’s sheets”—100 rubles; for 2 “author’s sheets”—150 rubles; for 3 or more—200 rubles.
The first issue of the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education was published in January 1834, and continued to appear once a month until 1917. In total, 434 volumes were published, each of which included several issues.50 The first issue opened with the grand declaration that the “era of unconditional imitation” had finished in Russia, and that the country “could apply the fruits of education to its own needs better than its foreign teachers and clearly distinguish good from evil in the rest of Europe; it used the former, and was not afraid of the latter”.51 Uvarov’s ideological programme was based on the bold assumption that Russia had already reached maturity, had transformed itself into a developed state and in some areas was already superseding its Western neighbours. The very concept of narodnost′, in which there was “something fresh and, so to speak, unworn out” to the contemporary ear, was meant to testify to Russia’s maturity, its ability to move forwards on a par with the nations of Europe.52
Petr Pletnev, a professor of St Petersburg University, took it upon himself to support the doctrine developed by Uvarov. He showed the importance of the national principle in literature with reference to ancient Greek literature. According to Pletnev, the fruits of Greek literary culture, in all its richness and variety, merge into a “single image reflected in several mirrors”, which is united by the common idea of civic consciousness.53 However, Pletnev decided not to apply that measure to the history of Russian literature, referring instead to its national distinctiveness.54 Uvarov’s programme, which affirmed the unity of monarchy, the Orthodox faith, and national distinctiveness, had nothing in common with the Slavophiles’ understanding of narodnost′. Although the official ideology and the Slavophiles’ views proclaimed the same principles, the spirit and meaning of the official programme and the Slavophiles’ system were opposed to one another. The theory of official narodnost′ was aimed at reinforcing state power; its main principle was autocracy, to which the principles of Orthodoxy and narodnost′ were subordinated. By contrast, for Slavophiles who were not statists, the principles of true Orthodox faith and true narodnost′ were definitive.
In a period of increased debate about what the national principle meant in Russia’s culture and history, Uvarov had no intention of turning the ministry’s official mouthpiece into a platform for discussions of society and politics.55 It is therefore unsurprising that the works of Slavophiles such as Aleksei Khomiakov, the religious philosopher Ivan Kireevskii, and the brothers Ivan and Konstantin Aksakov, as well as others, failed to appear in the journal.
According to Uvarov’s plan, the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education was to become an exemplary model of its kind for Russian journalists. It appealed to a wide audience, although it was first and foremost destined for the scholarly milieu—lecturers at institutions of higher education, teachers in gymnasiums and district schools—allowing them to follow successes in science and practical pedagogy in Russia and abroad in their own language. The print run in these years was 1,200 copies, and the number of compulsory subscribers reached 600.56 The names of the voluntary subscribers were printed in the final issue of the year. From year to year the number of voluntary subscribers increased, and this served as the best evidence that Uvarov had managed to make the journal popular.57
In the 1830s and 1840s, different spheres of knowledge were represented in the journal, although the humanities were predominant, with history, philosophy, religion, Oriental studies, philology and jurisprudence taking pride of place.58 The journal brought together works by the best lecturers of the Ministry of Public Education, who published their independent research in it: the most important lectures on their topics, works on the history of various disciplines, general reflections on the state of scholarship in Russia and Europe, accounts of research trips, reports on Russian and foreign scholarly publications, and so on.
Where possible, the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education aimed to review all scholarly books in the humanities published in Russia, as well as publishing regular thematic overviews of Russian and foreign periodicals. These periodicals came either from the publishers themselves or from the Chancery of the Main Censorship Administration, and served as a source of varied information on the state of education in Russia. These overviews were produced by the journal’s employees, who were chosen personally by Serbinovich. As a rule, the journal’s staff were capable young men who had recently completed university. People who knew several or rare languages were in particular demand. Contributors included the future editor of Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski), Andrei Kraevskii, the publicist and education organiser Ianuarii Nemerov, the historian Ivan Tarnava-Borichevskii and Albert Starchevskii, a journalist and polyglot.
The editorial office received foreign newspapers and journals from Uvarov himself. The staff used all material from these publications that they found appropriate, sending it for translation or critical review. Every three months, the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education published detailed overviews of newspapers and journals broken down by category: general and Russian history, belles lettres, criticism, theory and history of literature and art, mathematics, natural sciences and medicine, and military science. These reviews were thorough and extensive, and were examined in detail by the editor. According to one of the journal’s staff members, the reviews were written “expansively, because Serbinovich had a penchant for pruning, and would delete a lot”.59
The Journal had a particularly important role as a means for disseminating information about cultural life abroad. Although this was not stated explicitly at the time, it provided one of the few means of bypassing the normal obstacles imposed by the censors. According to the procedures laid down in the 1828 Statute on censorship, all printed materials from abroad were to be inspected by the Foreign Censorship Committee. The chairman of the Committee was the ultra-vigilant A. I. Krasovskii, who gave instructions to inspect even the printed scrap paper in which foreign books were packaged. Almost every time that one of the censors recommended approving a work for distribution in Russia, a supplementary annotation countered that “the chairman considers it more prudent to refuse”. The Committee received foreign newspapers and journals by regular subscription, but very few of them made their way into the hands of Russian readers. The Journal provided its own channel for information from abroad, which it made still more accessible through rendering it in Russian.
The section on belles lettres, which reviewed literary works published in journals, was the least successful. At the end of the 1830s, literary reviews were sent to Boris Fedorov (1794–1875) for review: Serbinovich had complete faith in Fedorov’s literary taste. A mediocre writer, and the object of mockery and epigrammes, Fedorov was a “retrograde and a true scourge of modern Russian literature, which he hated”.60 The journal’s staff knew that Fedorov would edit and rewrite their reviews from start to finish.
Beginning in 1837, the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education printed advertisements and announcements for books published at home and abroad. Gradually, the bibliographic review content grew to the point that the editors created a separate section, “Reviews of books and journals”. Reviewing all academic books in the humanities printed in Russia was painstaking work, and a thorough review could take up to six months to write. Books for review were given to specialists, but in the rare case when the author of a book under review happened to be on the journal’s staff, he would review his own work: it was often difficult to find another specialist in the same narrow field. Starchevskii, for instance, had to write a “self review” on his two-volume Historiae Ruthenicae Scriptores exteri saeculi XVI (1841–42). The article was published under the surname of an acquaintance who had not even seen Starchevskii’s work.61
The section “News and Miscellany” was notably diverse in its contents. It published bibliographic surveys, announcements of new foreign books, journalism, as well as information on new discoveries and inventions, or on travels, or on noteworthy developments in classical philology. Thanks to the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, the Russian reader could become better acquainted with, for example, aspects of British life and history across a broad spectrum ranging from Newton to railways.62
Uvarov greatly valued his journal both for itself and for the uses to which it could be put. In his capacity as “education tsar”, the Journal served as his means of promoting his education reforms. When he was appointed Minister of Public Education, a new university charter was in preparation, and Uvarov devoted considerable efforts to university reform. His “General Charter of Imperial Russian Universities”, confirmed in July 1835, was an attempt to unify research and teaching, and to raise both the level of teaching and the quality of scholarly research.63 Uvarov used the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education to show how his charter derived from the tradition of Western universities’ legislative acts. Original and translated articles regularly appeared in the “News of foreign educational institutions” section. These articles were dedicated to the history and current state of university education in European countries. Particular attention was paid to the state of public education in Prussia, the structure of Prussian universities, and new forms of teaching in France. Several articles took English universities as their subject, in particular the history of Oxford.64
In the year leading up to the publication of the new charter, and continuing after it was implemented, Uvarov waged a campaign in support of disciplines that had previously seemed “dangerous” and subversive to the state. Relying on the authority of scholars, Uvarov tried to dispel fears about philosophy as a discipline of dubious reliability, and to highlight the benefits of studying law.65 When Uvarov announced narodnost′ as a cornerstone of education for the first time in 1832, he was trying not only to create a certain didactic effect, but also to attract students to study the history of their own country. Uvarov hoped that “harmless and thorough” lessons in Russian history would furnish young people with a kind of mental buttress “against the influence of so-called European ideas, which threaten us perilously”.66 The university charter of 1835 aided the institutionalisation of these areas of study, making Russian history a separate department for the first time, and establishing a new department dedicated to the history and literature of Slavonic dialects.
The pages of the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education presented historical research not only by university professors, but also by members of the Archeographic Commission, which was created by Uvarov in 1834 to extract from the archives and publish a full corpus of documents on Russian history. Historical articles took pride of place in the journal, and patriotism was no impediment to serious scholarly work.67
Uvarov’s classicism also aimed to serve national interests. By insisting on the introduction of the Greek language into gymnasiums and universities, for instance, Uvarov aimed to highlight the Byzantine roots of Russian culture and hence to aid understanding of Russia’s particular position in relation to Western cultures. Professors of the universities of Dorpat, Kharkov, and Moscow published articles in support of classical disciplines in the journal, explaining why studying the ancient past was useful.68
The permanent secretary of the Academy of Sciences, Pavel Fus, collected news of Russia’s scholarly and educational establishments.69 The journal’s first issue included accounts of the work carried out by the Ministry of Public Education in 1833, and by two of the capital’s higher research institutes: one about the activities of St Petersburg University for 1833–34 and a “Review of works by the Imperial St Petersburg Academy of Sciences, 1827–1833”. In its second issue, the journal presented a “Review of works of the Russian Academy since its establishment up to 1833” by Fedorov. Apart from such reports, the journal also often published extracts from the minutes of meetings of the Academy of Sciences. This was a prime opportunity for President-cum-Minister Uvarov to present the Academy he had fostered in all its glory to the readers of the Journal—which meant to the whole of educated society.
In 1835 the intellectual life of Russian universities was enlivened by the return of a group of young scholars from Germany, where they had been sent to finish their education, Uvarov was personally involved in the allocation of candidates to university departments, taking advantage of his right, as Education Minister, to appoint professors. Prior to departing for their new posts, each of these young scholars gave a lecture pro venia legendi (the lecture which demonstrated their professional credentials). These lectures took place publicly in the Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of the Ministry of Public Education published a detailed account of the events as well as the text of several lectures in full.70
The new university charter facilitated the rotation of personnel, since it limited the term of service to twenty-five years, and introduced the title of “emeritus professor”, which allowed the ministry to retire older professors who had ceased to be active in scholarship, and to replace them with fresh cohorts, thus aiding the renewal and revival of Russian universities. The dismissal of nearly a quarter of the total number of professors was a painful process, and university bodies cautiously awaited the arrival of the new, younger guard. Thus Uvarov thought it wise to use the ministry journal to present this new generation to their senior colleagues. He used the Journal as an instrument with which to draw society’s attention to the outcome of his policy: an improvement in the level of learning and scholarship in Russia.
The ministry’s journal acted as a rich, living chronicle of the development of education and learning in Russia until Uvarov’s retirement, which came soon after the revolutionary upheavals in Germany and Austro-Hungary in 1848–49. These events shook the Russian government, forcing it to change its priorities in state education policy. Uvarov’s life’s work was crushed before his eyes. With every means at his disposal he tried to protect the development of Russian education and learning from the harsh demands of the time, but he lacked the resources necessary for a serious struggle. According to Uvarov, he “was in the position of a man who, fleeing from a wild beast, throws pieces of clothing, one after another, to distract it, and is glad that he remains whole”.71 With the onset of a period of political reaction in 1849, there was nothing left to throw, and Uvarov retired.
In 1850, Platon Shirinskii-Shikhmatov (1790–1853), who saw “real enlightenment [prosveshchenie]” only in the light of the icon-lamp, became Minister of Public Education.72 Under Shirinskii-Shikhmatov, the main emphasis of education policy was on religious education. The universities, so recently invigorated, were ostracised. The change of state education policy was reflected in the ministry’s journal. Its annual State subsidy of 3,000 rubles was withdrawn, and this led to a deterioration of its contents. The journal shed its best authors and gradually fell into decline. It lost the “respect and trust of the reading and thinking public” which came to see it merely as “official drivel”.73
Endnotes
- This research was conducted with the support of the Russian Science Foundation (grant no. 14–18–00010 ‘The Interaction of Science and Power: Sketches of Institutional History of the Imperial Academy of Science, from the Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries’). The chapter was translated by Thomas Rowley.
- D. Davydov, Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel′stvo khudozhestvennoi literatury, 1962), p. 471.
- See Allen McConnell, Tsar Alexander I: Paternalistic Reformer (New York: Crowell, 1970); Marie-Pierre Rey, Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012).
- Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, Series 1 (1649–1825) (hereafter PSZ 1), no. 19779.
- Adam Chartorizhskii, Memuary (Мoscow: Terra, 1998), p. 184.
- See N. P. Eroshkin, Istoriia gosudarstvennykh uchrezhdenii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow: Vysshaia shkola, 1968); Vysshie i tsentral′nye gosudarstvennye uchrezhdeniia Rossii, 1801–1917, 4 vols (St Petersburg: Nauka, 1998–2004), vol. 3; M. A. Prikhod′ko, Podgotovka i razrabotka ministerskoi reform v Rossii (Moscow: Sputnik, 2002).
- PSZ 1, no. 20406.
- S. V. Rozhdestvenskii, Istoricheskii obzor deiatel′nosti Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1802–1902 (St Petersburg: Ministerstvo narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1902).
- F. F. Vigel′, Zapiski (Moscow: Zakharov, 2000), vol. 2, p. 108.
- Chartorizhskii, Memuary, p. 230.
- ‘Ob ustroistve uchilishch’, PSZ 1, no. 20597, p. 438.
- ‘Ob ustroistve uchilishch’, PSZ 1, no. 20597.
- Ibid., p. 441.
- Other ministries also established periodicals. For instance, during the period 1804–09, the Ministry of Internal Affairs published the St Petersburg Journal (Sankt-peterburgskii zhurnal), and, from 1829, The Journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Zhurnal ministerstva vnutrennikh del). The Ministry of Transport published its own journal, initially under the title The Journal of the Ministry of Transport (Zhurnal putei soobshcheniia), which was then titled The Journal of the Central Аdministration of Transport and Public Buildings (Zhurnal glavnogo upravleniia putei soobshcheniia i publichnykh zdanii) from 1845, and later The Journal of the Ministry of Transport (Zhurnal Ministerstva putei soobshcheniia). See Russkaia periodicheskaia pechat′ (1702–1894) (Moscow: Politicheskaia literature, 1959).
- ‘Zhurnal Glavnogo uchilishch Pravleniia za mesiats aprel′ 1803 goda’, RGIA, coll. 732, descr. 1, file 1, fol. 39.
- M. I. Sukhomlinov, Istoriia Rossiiskoi akademii, 8 vols (St Petersburg: Tip. Imp. Akad. nauk, 1874–1887), vol. 2 (1875), p. 373.
- ‘Ustav o tsenzure’, PSZ 1, no. 21388.
- E. Ia. Kolbasin, Literaturnye deiateli prezhnego vremeni: Martynov, Kurganov, Voeikov (St Petersburg: Knizhnago magazina A. I. Davydova, 1859).
- ‘Zhurnal Glavnogo uchilishch Pravleniia za mesiats oktiabr′ 1803 g. Zasedanie 3 oktiabria 1803 g.’, RGIA, coll. 732, descr. 1, file 2, fol. 135–135.
- RGIA, coll. 732, descr. 1, file 1, fols. 64–65; file 2, fol. 164.
- N. M. Karamzin, Neizdannye sochineniia i perepiska (St Petersburg: Tipografiia N. Tiblena i Komp., 1862), vol. 1, pp. 11–12.
- In 1812, moved to patriotic fervour, Shishkov wrote several manifestos; the most striking of them concerned the loss of Moscow. Dmitrii Bludov, an imperial official, commented that Moscow had to burn for Shishkov to write something beautiful. See N. I. Grech, Zapiski o moei zhizni (Moscow: Kniga, 1990), p. 210.
- Sokolov had been actively incolved in the compilation of the Academy’s dictionary (Slovar′ Akademii Rossiiskoi), and was awarded a gold medal for his efforts. Sokolov’s Basics of Russian Grammar (Nachal′nye osnovaniia rossiiskoi grammatiki) of 1788, a condensed version of Lomonosov’s Rossiiskaia grammatika, was published in seven editions before 1829, with a combined print run of more than 200,000 copies. For more details, see Sukhomlinov, Istoriia Rossiiskoi Akademii, vol. 7 (1885), pp. 387–97; M. P. Lepekhin, ‘P. I. Sokolov’, Slovar′ russkikh pisatelei XVIII veka (St Petersburg: Nauka, 2010), vol. 3, pp. 147–50.
- ‘O vozobnovlenii izdaniia Zhurnala departmenta narodnogo prosveshcheniia’, Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia (hereafter ZhMNP) 1834, Ch. 1, viii–ix. For more details, see E. Basargina, ‘Aus der Geschichte der Zeitschrift des Ministeriums für Volksaufklärung (Žurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveščenija)’, Russische klassische Altertumswissenschaft in der Zeitschrift des Ministeriums für Volksaufklärung, ed. by Anatolij Ruban and Ekaterina Basargina (St Petersburg: Bibliotheca Classica Petropolitana; Nestor-Verlag, 2012); idem, ‘Iz istorii “Zhurnala Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia”’, in Klassicheskaia drevnost′ v Zhurnale Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia (ZhMNP). Annotirovannyi ukazatel′ statei 1834–1917 gg., ed. by A. Ruban (St Petersburg: Bibliotheca Classica Petropolitana, 2015), pp. 7–40.
- For more on Uvarov, see C. H. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786–1855 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1984).
- A. I. Gertsen, Byloe i dumy, in Sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols (Moscow: Izdatel′stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1956), vol. 8, p. 304.
- S. Ouvaroff, ‘Projet d’une académie asiatique’, Études de philologie et de critique (St Petersburg: L’Académie Impériale des Sciences, 1843); Sergei Semenovich Ouvaroff and Louis-Antoine Léouzon Leduc, Esquisses politiques et littéraires (Paris: Gide et Cie, 1848).
- Goethe und Uwarow, und ihr Briefwechsel, ed. by G. Schmid, special off-print of Russische Revue 28. 2 (St Petersburg : R. Hammerschmidt, 1888); S. N. Durylin, ‘Drug Gete’, Literaturnoe nasledstvo (Moscow: Zhur.-gaz. ob”edinenie, 1932), vols 4–6, pp. 186–221.
- John Edwin Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), vol. 3, pp. 47–87.
- A. E. Presniakov, Emperor Nicholas I of Russia: The Apogee of Autocracy, 1825–1855, ed. and trans. by J. C. Zacek (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1974); W. Bruce Lincoln, Nicholas I: Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1978); Richard S. Wortman, Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy from Peter the Great to the Death of Nicholas I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
- ‘O sovershenii prigovora nad gosudarstvennymi prestupnikami’, PSZ, Series 2 (1825–1881), no. 465.
- N. V. Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways: Government and the Educated Public in Russia, 1801–1855 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
- Nicholas A. Hans, History of Russian Educational Policy, 1701–1917 (London: P. S. King and Son, 1931); Patrick L. Alston, Еducation and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969).
- Rossiia pod nadzorom. Otchety III otdeleniia, 1827–1869, ed. by M. V. Sidorova and E. I. Shcherbakova (Moscow: Rossiiskii arkhiv, 2006), p. 211.
- For more on the meaning of the triad, see Uvarov’s five-year report on his work as Minister of Public Education in S. S. Uvarov, ‘Obozrenie istekshego piatiletiia’, ZhMNP, 1, 1839, Ch. 21, 7–8. See also Riasanovsky, A Parting of Ways.
- ‘4 dekabria 1832. S predstavleniem otcheta tainogo sovetnika Uvarova po obozreniiu im Moskovskogo universteta i gimnazii’, Sbornik postanovlenii po Ministerstvu narodnogo prosveshcheniia (St Petersburg: Tip. V. S. Balasheva, 1875), vol. 2, column 512.
- Ibid., column 513.
- Piotr Iakovlevitch Tchaadaiev, Lettres philosophiques, adressées à une dame, présentées par François Rouleau (Paris: Librairie des Cinq Continents, 1970).
- Sbornik postanovlenii po ministerstvu narodnogo prosveshcheniia, vol. 2, column 516.
- ‘Tsirkuliarnoe predlozhenie g. Upravliaiushchego MNP nachal′stvam uchebnym okrugov, o vstuplenii v upravlenie ministerstvom’, ZhMNP, 1, 1834, xlix-l.
- S. S. Uvarov, ‘Obozrenie istekshego piatiletiia’, ZhMNP, 1, 1839, Ch. 21, 31–32.
- RGIA, coll. 733, descr. 2, file 87, fol. 4.
- A. V. Starchevskii, ‘Vospominaniia starogo literatora’, Istoricheskii vestnik, October 1888, vol. 34, 110.
- ‘O naznachenii nadvornogo sovetnika Serbinovicha redaktorom zhurnala departmenta narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 8 aprelia 1833 g.’ RGIA, coll. 733, descr. 2, file 87, fol. 2. For Serbinovich’s views of editorial work, see ‘Ob izdanii zhurnala pri Ministerstve narodnogo prosveshcheniia’, RGIA, coll. 1661, descr. 1, file 245, fols. 16–17.
- Compare the views of Serbinovich’s background and beliefs in Starchevskii, ‘Vospominaniia’, 110 and the entry for 11 June 1843 in A. A. Nikitenko, Dnevnik, 3 vols (Moscow: Zakharov, 2005).
- Starchevskii, ‘Vospominaniia’, 110.
- RGIA, coll. 733, descr. 2, file 87, fols. 10–11.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., fols. 25–28, fol. 33.
- The journal can be accessed online at http://www.runivers.ru/lib/book7643/450649/.
- ZhMNP, 1, 1834, v–vi.
- P. A. Pletnev, ‘O narodnosti v literature. Rassuzhdenie, chitannoe v torzhestvennom sobranii Imp. SPB universiteta ord. prof. onogo Pletnevym’, ZhMNP, 1, 1834, 2.
- Ibid., 3.
- Ibid., 18, 29.
- For Uvarov’s relationship to polemics, see his letter to Mikhail Pogodin on 18 December 1840. M. Pogodin, ‘Dlia biografii grafa Sergеia Semenovicha Uvarova’, Russkii arkhiv, 12 (1871), column 2082.
- Ten exclusive copies were bound separately from the main print run and presented to the tsar, members of the imperial family, the Minister of Public Education and the head of department. See RGIA, coll. 1661, descr. 1, file 245, fol. 3. For Uvarov’s circular obliging all educational institutions to subscribe to ZhMNP, see RGIA, coll. 742, descr. 2, file 1, fol. 76. There was a variable level of compulsory subscription: gymnasia took two copies, lyceums—three, and universities—four.
- The cost of an annual subscription was 30 rubles in St Petersburg, and 35 in all other cities of the Russian Empire.
- See the thematic indexes of Ukazatel′ k povremennym izdaniiam Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia s 1803 po iiun′ 1864 goda (St Petersburg: Ministerstvo narodnogo prosveshcheniia, 1865).
- Starchevskii, ‘Vospominaniia’, 107.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., 105.
- See, for example, ‘Tsennost′ gornoi proizvoditel′nosti Anglii’, ZhMNP, 1841, 86–91; ‘Zheleznye dorogi v Anglii’, 1856, Ch. LXXXIX, otd. VII, 122–24; ‘Sravnenie anglichan s rimlianami’, ZhMNP, 1846, XLIX, otd. VI, 222–24; D. Perevoshchikov, ‘Otkrytiia N′iutona’, ZhMNP, 1841, Ch. XXXII, otd. II, 1–68. For more detail see the Ukazatel′ k povremennym izdaniiam Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, pp. 9–10.
- ‘Obshchii Ustav imperatorskikh rossiiskikh universitetov’, ZhMNP, 8, 1835, XLIX–LXXXVII; ‘Shtaty imperatorskikh rossiiskikh universitetov Sankt-Peterburgskogo, Moskovskogo, Khar′kovskogo i Kazanskogo’, ZhMNP, 8, 1835, LXXXVIII–XCVII. For a list of articles, see ‘Universitety otechestvennye’, Ukazatel′ k povremennym izdaniiam Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, pp. 236–39.
- ‘Universitety zagranichnye’, Ukazatel′ k povremennym izdaniiam Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshchenii, pp. 239–40. K. Morgenshtern, ‘Sravnenie angliiskikh universitetov s nemetskimi’, ZhMNP, 11, 1835, Ch. 8, otd. IV, 327–54; N. D. Brashman, ‘Ob angliiskikh universtitetakh’, ZhMNP, 4, 1843, Ch. XXXVIII, 1–30; ‘Kratkaia istoriia Oksfordskogo universiteta i Oksforda kak goroda’, ZhMNP, 10, 1844, Ch. XLIV, otd. IV, 1–18.
- See, for example, A. A. Kraevskii, ‘Sovremennoe sostoianie filosofii vo Frantsii i novaia sistema sei nauki, osnovyvaemaia Botenom’, ZhMNP, 3, 1834, 317–77; A. S. Fisher, ‘O khode obrazovaniia v Rossii i ob uchastii, kakoe dolzhna prinimat′ v nem filosofiia’, ZhMNP, 1, 1835, 28–68; V. Androsov, ‘O predelakh, v koikh dolzhny byt′ izuchaemy i prepodavaemy pravo politicheskoe i narodnoe’, ZhMNP, 12, 1834, 367–85; K. O. Nevolin, ‘O soedinenii teorii s praktikoiu v izuchenii zakonov i v deloproizvodstve’, ZhMNP, 12, 1835, 445–75.
- ‘S predstavleniem otcheta tainogo sovetnika Uvarova po obozreniiu im Moskovskogo universiteta i gimnazii, 4 dekabria 1832’, Sbornik postanovlenii po Ministerstvu narodnogo prosveshcheniia, vol. 2, col. 517.
- See, for example, P. M. Stroev, ‘Khronologicheskoe ukazanie materialov otechestvennoi istorii, literatury, pravovedeniia, do nachala XVIII stoletiia’, ZhMNP, 1834, Ch. 1.2, 152–88; N. G. Ustrialov, ‘Skazaniia kniazia Kurbskogo’, ZhMNP, 1834, Ch. 3, 82–85; idem, ‘Predpolozhenie ob izdanii russkikh letopisei i gosudarstvennykh aktov’, ZhMNP, 1837, Ch. XIII, otd. II, 338–52; M. P. Pogodin, ‘O vseobshchei istorii’, 1834, Ch. 1, 31–44; idem, ‘Otryvok iz rossiiskoi istorii dlia narodnykh uchilishch’, ZhMNP, 1834, Ch. IV, otd. II, 386–400; idem, ‘Povestvovanie o Moskovskikh proisshestviiakh po konchine tsaria Alekseia Mikhailovicha’, ZhMNP, 1835, Ch. V, otd. II, 69–82; N. V. Gogol′, ‘Plan prepodavaniia vseobshchei istorii’, ZhMNP, 1834, Ch. 1, 189–209. For a complete list of articles see Ukazatel′ k povremennym izdaniiam Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, pp. 90–95.
- M. Rozberg, ‘Glavnye svoistva grecheskoi i rimskoi slovesnstoi’, ZhMNP, 7, 1834, 1–26; I. Kroneberg, ‘Ob izuchenii slovesnosti’, ZhMNP, 11, 1835, 253–89; I. M. Snegirev, ‘O predmete i tseli drevnostei rimsikh i posobiiakh inostrannykh i otechestvennykh dlia izucheniia onykh’, ZhMNP, 11, 1835, 301–13.
- For a complete list of articles, see ‘Uchebnye zavedeniia’, Ukazatel′ k povremennym izdaniiam Ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, pp. 242–46.
- ‘O probnykh lektsiiakh universtitetskikh vospitannikov, nedavno vozvrativshikhsiia iz-za granitsy’, ZhMNP, 9, 1835, 507–33.
- B. N. Chicherin, Vospominaniia, 4 vols (Moscow: Izd-vo Abashnikovykh, 1929), vol.1, p. 28.
- P. M. Kovalevskii, ‘Vlasti prederzhashchie. U Chernysheva mosta’, Russkaia starina, 2 (1909), 301.
- ‘Otvet K. D. Ushinskogo na predlozhenie ministra E. V. Putiatina o vozvrashchenii k prezhnei programme zhurnala’, Arkhiv K. D. Ushinskogo, vol. 1 (Moscow: Izdatel′stvo Akad. ped. nauk. RSFSR, 1959), p. 52.
Chapter 10: Communication and Official Enlightenment: The Journal of the Ministry of Public Education, 1834–1855, from Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850 (edited by Simon Franklin and Katherine Bowers), published 11.27.2017 under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.