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The Myth of the Zemstvo School: The Sources of the Expansion of Rural Education in Imperial Russia: 1864–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Ben Eklof
Ben Eklof*
Affiliation:
History Department of Indiana University
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Extract

… Earlier I felt, as does everyone from the city, that the popular striving for education is more or less limited to the major industrial centers, that village Russia was an expanse still largely untouched by schools … it seemed to me that it was the mission of the government and educated society to introduce to the dark masses the very idea of the need for education, and I thought that it would take several decades before the people would feel the necessity of schooling. Now, having heard these vibrant voices, not only from (European) Russia, but also from the borderlands, I see a completely different picture. Now I see clearly that the people already fully recognize the value of education, and do so with equal force throughout the country…

Comment on a survey of popular attitudes conducted by the Moscow Literacy Society, 1894

Most works on Russian educational policy contain an underlying assumption: namely, that the size and shape of educational systems are largely determined by what sociologists of education call “corporate actors” organized groups united by shared commitment to specific goals such as egalitarian reform, economic growth, national integration or social controlor by the interplay of such groups; According to this interpretation, the major impetus for educational change comes from those directly responsible for education policy-making; in Russia, this included the central government and the educated Russian elite, acting through the zernstvos, municipal dumas, and after 1906, the national Duma. Influenced by trends in social history, however, some historians are beginning to argue that “primary actors,” or the population as a whole, playa major role in determining the scale and even structure of educational systems. In other words, these historians place exphasis upon social demand, rather than supply, as the major factor in educational growth.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , Winter 1984 , pp. 561 - 584
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. On primary and corporate actors see Craig, John E., “The Expansion of Education,” typescript, University of Chicago, 1981, 1–30, to which this article is heavily indebted. See also, Alston, Patrick J., “Recent Voices and Persistent Problems in Tsarist Education,” Paedagogica Historica, 16 (1976):203–215; Sinel, Allen, “Problems in the Periodization of Russian Education: a Tenative Solution,” Slavic and European Education Review, (1977) No. 2:54–62; Mathes, William L., “The Process of Institutionalization of Education in Russia, 1800–1917,” in Rowney, K. E. and Orchard, G. E., eds. Russia and Slavic History (Cambridge, 1977).Google Scholar

2. A few historians in the West have noted this progress: see especially Ignatiev, Paul, et al, Russian Schools and Universities in the World War (New Haven, 1929). (Ignatiev was Minister of Education during World War I). Recently, too, Gail Lapidus has stressed the Tsarist foundations of the Soviet primary educational system; see her Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley, 1978), pp. 136. However, most Western and Soviet works continue to assert that before 1914 schooling had barely reached the countryside, or that when progress had been achieved, it was entirely due to the state or the local, gentry-dominated zemstvos. For an outstanding exception, see the discussion in Sinel, Allen, The Classroom and the Chancellery: State Educational Reform in Russia Under Count Dmitrii Tolstoy (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), esp. 214–252.Google Scholar

3. See Craig, , “Expansion,” pp. 11, 27–29.Google Scholar

4. Ibid. Google Scholar

5. Ibid. Google Scholar

6. Ibid., esp. pp. 53–54, for discussion and references to other literature.Google Scholar

7. For sources, argument and material, see Eklof, Ben, Russian Peasant Schools: Popular Pedagogy and Village Culture (Berkeley, 1985). The notion that in Russian peasant culture that pursuit of survival and basic welfare rather than profit maximization or risk-taking was rational, and that measures designed by outside elites to alter production cycles or radically change peasant behavior often carries extraordinary risks for the peasant has been eloquently presented by Shanin, Confino and Lewin in very different contexts.Google Scholar

8. Footman, David, Red Prelude: A Life of Zheliabov (New Haven, 1945), p. 21.Google Scholar

9. The phrasing here is from Katz, Michael B., “The Origins of Public Education: a Reassessment,” History of Education Quarterly, 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1976): 381–408 Google Scholar

10. The phrase is from Weber, Eugen, Peasants into Frenchmen (Stanford, 1976), p. 329.Google Scholar

11. Harrigan, Patrick J., Mobility, Elites and Education in French Society of the Second Empire (Waterloo, Ont. 1980) pp. 87–88; also see Graff, , Literacy Myth, 1–21, 191–225, and especially, 225–233.Google Scholar

12. See my “Peasant Sloth Reconsidered: Strategies of Education and Learning in Rural Russia before the Revolution,” Journal of Society History, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall, 1981):362–366.Google Scholar

13. Bushnell, John, “Peasants in Uniform: The Tsarist Army as a Peasant Society,” Journal of Social History, 13, No. 4 (Winter, 1980):565–566.Google Scholar

14. Darlington, Thomas, Education in Russia (London, 1909), p. 192; Bushnell, , “Peasant,” p. 573.Google Scholar

15. On volnye shkoly see especially Prugavin, A. S., Zaprosy naroda i obiazannosti intelligentsiiv v oblasti umstvennogo razvitiia i prosveshchemia (Moscow, 1890), pp. 31–52; Chekhov, N., Istoriia narodnogo obrazovaniia v Rossii (Moscow, 1912) pp. 28–34; and Bunakov, N., O domashnikh shkolakh gramotnosti v narode (St. Pet., 1885).Google Scholar

16. Charnoluskii, V., Zemstvo i narodnoe obrazovanie 2 Vols. (St. Pet., 1910) Vol. 1, p. 68; Veselovskii, B., Istoriia zemstva za sorok let, 4 Vols. Vol. 1, p. 471, 581, 472; MNP, Odnodnevnaia perepis nachal nykh shkol Rossnskoi Imperii l-ogo lanvaria 1911 16 Vols. (St. Pet. 1911–1916); Vol. 16, pp. 51, 117, 194.Google Scholar

17. Kulomzin, A.N., Dostupnost nachal noi shkoly v Rossii (St. Pet., 1904) pp. 44 Veselovskii, , Istoriia zemstva, Vol. 1, pp. 655–657; Yaney, George L., The Systematization of Russian Government (Chicago, 1973) p. 348.Google Scholar

18. Veselovskii, , Istoriia zemstva, 1, pp. 509–510.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 475.Google Scholar

20. Sbornik postanovlenii moskovskogo gubernskog o zemskogo sobraniia s 1865 po 1897. Five Volumes (Moscow 1899–1902) Volume 5, p. 18. For a lengthier discussion of the zemstvo process of organizing peasant schools, see my Russian Peasant Schools, Chapter 3.Google Scholar

21. Chekhov, N., Tipy russkoi shkoly v ikh istoricheskom razvitii (Moscow, 1923), p. 35.Google Scholar

22. Kapterev, P., Novye techeniia v russkoi pedagogicheskoi mysli (St. Pet., n.d.), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

23. Ibid. Google Scholar

24. Pervyi obshchezemskii s'ezd po narodnomu obrazovaniiu. Trudy, Vol. 6, “Raskhody” pp. 14–15.Google Scholar

25. Falbork, G., Vseobshchee obrazovanie v Rossii (Moscow, 1908) pp. 208–209 Johnson, W.E., Russia's Education Heritage (Pittsburgh, 1950) p. 292; Hans, Nicholas, History of Russia's Educational Policy (New York, 1964) pp. 229–232; Falbork, G. and Charnoluskii, V., Narodnoe obrazovanie v Rossii (St. Petersburg 1898) pp. 194–195; Veselovskii, , Istoriia zemstva, vol. 1, 568–570; “Raskhody zemstv,” in Pervyi obshchezemskii sezd po narodnomu obrazovaniiu, Trudy, 12 Vols. (Moscow, 1911–1914?) Vol. 6, Svodka svedenii p. 15.Google Scholar

26. Falbork, and Charnoluskii, , Narodnoe, pp. 92–93; also: Pogrebinskii, A. P. Gosudarstvennye finansy tsarskoi rossii v epokhu imperializima (Moscow, 1968) pp. 15–30. The figure on government allocation was reached by combining tables 1 and 2 in Hans, , History, pp. 229–230. It should be noted that Hans budget totals include extraordinary state expenditures as well as the regular state budget, but that his estimations of MNP outlays do not include money allocated to teacher training institutions, a considerable sum.Google Scholar

27. Virtually every history of Russian primary education, before and after the Emancipation, refers to the “paper schools” run by the Holy Synod. For a critical discussion of MNP reports, see Oldenburg, F., Narodnye shkoly evropeiskoi rossii v 1892–1893 (St. Pet., 1896); also Falbork, and Charnoluskii, , Narodnoe, pp. 121–136; for additional discussion, see my manuscript, esp. “Pale Immitations: The Church Schools” and “Education before 1864”.Google Scholar

28. Odnodnevnaia perepis Vol. 16, p. 65.Google Scholar

29. West, E. G., Education and the Industrial Revolution (New York, 1975) pp. 8–30.Google Scholar

30. U.S. Education Office, Annual Report of the Commissioner 1910, Vol. 2, pp. 1333–1341; Odnodnevnaia perepis', Vol. 16, pp. 68–70.Google Scholar

31. Odnodenvnaia perepis, Vol. 16, p. 60. For enrollment and school-leaving ages, see Monroe, P., A Cyclopedia of Education, 5 Vols (New York, 1911–1913), the individual entries for respective countries. For length of stay in England in 1870 see, for example, Middleton, Nigel and Weitzmann, Sophia, A Place for Everyone (London, 1976) p. 76, and West, , Education pp. 34–36.Google Scholar

32. Odnodnevnaia perepis Vol. 16, p. 110. This figure is used by Rashin in his work on literacy and education in Tsarist Russia, yet the Soviet historian does not use the 8–11 age group, nor point out the discrepancy between the school-age base and length of the school program; “Gramotnost i nachalnoe obrazovanie v Rossii v XIX i nachale XX vekhakh, Istoricheskie zapiski 37. (1951) pp. 28–80.Google Scholar

33. West, , Education, p. 19.Google Scholar

34. Bogolepov, I.P., Gramotnost sredi detei shkol'nogo vozrasta v Moskovskom i Mozhaiskom uezdakh Moskovski qubernii (Moscow, 1894), pp. 32–54.Google Scholar

35. Phillips, H.W., Basic Education—A World Challenge (London, 1975), p. 30.Google Scholar

36. Svodka svedenii, Vol. 1, pp. 65–69; Kapterev, P.F., Novye dvizheniia v oblasti narodnago obrazovaniia i srednei shkoly (Moscow, 1913) p. 90; Belokonskii, I., “Narodnoe obrazovanie v Moskovskoi gubernii,” Russkaia shkola Vol. 2, No. 2 (1891):139.Google Scholar

37. Farmakovskii, V., “K voprosu o vseobshchem obuchenii,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, Vol. 345 (Jan.-Feb. 1903): 132: Izsledovanie polozheniia narodnogo obrazovaniia v Viatskoi gubernii (Viatka, 1902) pp. 52–53; Sbornik statisticheksikh i spravochnyk h svedenii v Vladimirskoi gubernii, Vypusk III (Vladimir, 1900), p. 39; Nachal'noe obrazovanie v Iaroslavskoi gubernii po svedeniiam za 1896–1897 uchebnyi god Vypusk I (Moscow 1902), p. 6.Google Scholar

38. Odnodnevnaia perepis', Vol. 16, Table 20, p. 69.Google Scholar