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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In May-June 1905 a special conference on education for non-Russians (inorodtsy) of the eastern Empire met in St Petersburg. The conference was organized by the Ministry of National Enlightenment (i.e. Education) with the concurrence of the Holy Synod. It was chaired by A. S. Budilovich, a member of the Council of Ministers. The conference had been preceded by an investigatory commission, also headed by Budilovich, which visited non-Russian elementary schools in the eastern regions of Russia and interviewed education officials, teachers, and parents involved in the education of non-Russians in the area. The purpose of the commission and the subsequent conference was the “examination of the presently existing legislation concerning the non-Russian schools of eastern Russia and in particular that system among them which is linked to the name of N.I. Il'minskii, compared with the schools of the general type that exist in those regions, on the one hand, and with the confessional schools (especially Moslem and Buddhist), on the other.”
1. Budilovich, A. S., ed., Trudy osobago soveshchaniia po voprosam obrazovaniia vostochnykh inorodtsev (St Petersburg, 1905), p. iii.Google Scholar
2. Smirnov, V. Z, Reforma nachal'noi i srednei shkoly v 60-kh godakh XIX veka (Moscow, 1954), p. 159.Google Scholar
3. Pobedonostsev, K. P., “Iz chernovykh bumag K.P. Pobedonostseva,” Krasnyi arkhiv, Vol. 3, No. 18, pp. 205–207.Google Scholar
4. The best study in English of the Il'minskii method and its history in Russian education is Kreindler, Isabelle, “Educational Policies Toward the Eastern Nationalities in Tsarist Russia: A Study of Il'minskii's System,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1969. Il'minskii explained his method in a number of publications: Il'minskii, N. I., Kazanskaia tsentral'naia kreshcheno-tatarskaia shkola. Materialy dlia istorii khristianskago prosveshcheniia kreshchenykh tatar (Kazan', 1887); ibid., Sistema narodnago i v chastnosti inorodcheskago obrazovaniia v Kazanskom krae (St Petersburg, 1886). A useful early work in Russian is Rozhdestvin, A., Nikolai Il'minskii i ego sistema inorodcheskago obrazovaniia v Kazanskom krae (Kazan', 1900).Google Scholar
5. “Postanovleniia soveta Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniia. Zasedanie 2-go fevralia 1870 goda. Zhurnal no. 42,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniia, Vol. 148, No. 1, 1870, pp. 55–58.Google Scholar
6. Il'minskii, N. I., Programma shkoly dlia kreshchennykh inorodtsev vostochnoi Rossii (Kazan', 1893).Google Scholar
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8. Ibid., ll. 44–45.Google Scholar
9. In Kazan’ province in 1898 apart from Brotherhood Schools and Church parish schools, there were 18 schools that reported directly to the Ministry of National Enlightenment and 178 schools under the local School Councils for Christian non-Russians. The inspector reported that in all of them the Il'minskii system as stipulated in the 1870 Regulation was being used. Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstana (TsGART), fond 92 (Kazan’ School District), opis’ 1, delo 24874, ll. 15–16.Google Scholar
10. See, for example, his admiring comments about Il'minskii and his work in his letters to Aleksandr III. Pobedonostsev, K. P., Pis'ma K.P. Pobedonostsev k Aleksandru III , Vol. III (St Petersburg, undated), pp. 79–81, 259–260. For Il'minskii's extensive correspondence with Pobedonostsev see N. I. Il'minskii, Pis'ma N.I. Il'minskago k ober-prokuratoru sviateishago sinoda Konstantinu Petrovichu Pobedonostsevu (Kazan', 1895).Google Scholar
11. TsGART, f. 92, op. 2, d. 3798, l. 5.Google Scholar
12. Ibid., ll. 1–11.Google Scholar
13. Ibid., l. 6.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., l. 5.Google Scholar
15. Idem.Google Scholar
16. Idem.Google Scholar
17. Ibid., ll. 14–26.Google Scholar
18. Ibid., l. 25.Google Scholar
19. Ibid., l. 18.Google Scholar
20. Ibid., l. 22.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., ll. 27–40.Google Scholar
22. Ibid., l. 37.Google Scholar
23. Ibid., l. 39.Google Scholar
24. RGIA, f. 733, op. 173, d. 101, ll. 45–46.Google Scholar
25. Ibid., ll. 90–91.Google Scholar
26. Ibid., l. 69.Google Scholar
27. Ibid., l. 49. Emphasis in original.Google Scholar
28. Ibid., ll. 110–112.Google Scholar
29. Budilovich, A. S., ed., Trudy osobago soveshcheniia po voprosam obrazovaniia vostochnykh inorodtsev (St Petersburg, 1905).Google Scholar
30. Ibid., p. ix.Google Scholar
31. Ibid., p. xi.Google Scholar
32. Ibid., p. vii.Google Scholar
33. Ibid., pp. xli, xviii.Google Scholar
34. Ibid., pp. viii-ix.Google Scholar
35. Ibid., pp. xxxvi-xxxviii.Google Scholar
36. Ibid., pp. vii, lii-liii.Google Scholar
37. RGIA St Petersburg, f. 733, op. 170, d. 263, ll. 666–670.Google Scholar
38. For a discussion of the fate of the Il'minskii system after 1906 see Gorokhov, B. M., Reaktsionnaia shkol'naia politika tsarizma v otnoshenii tatar povolzh'e (Kazan', 1941), pp. 85–100.Google Scholar
39. Budilovich, , Trudy, p. liii.Google Scholar
