I.

Catherine II, as no other ruler of the Russian Empire, thought deeply and continuously about what constituted “good police” (gute Polizey), that is, the public order she believed was her right to enforce over the entire empire. She also considered questions of what actions should be permitted to the subjects of this order as well as what such order could offer to its subjects.^[1] Order and regularity (reguliarnost’) appeared to be the dominant guidelines of her politics. Klaus Gestwa, echoing Christopher Ely, has suggested that the configuration of imperial space as a well-ordered landscape was a guideline of absolute monarchy intended to impose a uniform shape on the empire. The idea of a well-ordered landscape was enacted not only in the gardens of the European elite but also in newly acquired territories. Just as every plant had its own place in a European-style garden, so every subject of the empire had his own place.^[2] Gestwa and Ely have also suggested the tsarist gardens as a metaphor for the empire in which changes became increasingly apparent as the eighteenth century drew to a close. The position of imperial subjects, specifically of the individual, within the political and social order of the empire can be visualized against the background of this image of the imperial garden, which shifted from a regulated baroque style to a landscape that allowed for liberal ideas and individual solutions. A similar shift occurred in ideas concerning the significance of the individual. Ways of understanding the significance of the individual in the empire were as numerous as the political and social practices that governed it. This article examines the arguments found in public debate about individual and group-oriented education at the time of Catherine II at the level of discourse and legislation.
As always, the historian must position himself with respect to the paradigm of state-initiated Europeanization: discourse and, moreover, legislation proceeded from the autocrat. Questions of education concerned Catherine II continuously throughout her thirty-four-year reign. The empress’s interest in this was initiated by what she read and thus became an element of her own educational biography – what she experienced and what her advisers brought to the table. Of course, stress was inevitable between such ideals and the resulting conceptions that were proposed or enacted as law. This has led historians to accuse the empress of manipulating educational policy, reflecting either pure vanity or shrewd propaganda.^[3]
This problem has already been discussed in terms of the analytical and typological category of enlightened absolutism, of which Catherine was long considered a typical representative. But even after the scholarly discussion on this topic had cooled down, the tension between one’s will and actively carrying out one’s will remained under scrutiny.^[4] This concerned the establishment of a state framework in which society could be organized into different institutions. It also involved the activation of public administration and the deeper penetration of the state into society simultaneously with the vast outer expansion of the tsarist state that occurred during Catherine’s era. These issues played out in various ways,^[5] and, as elsewhere in the study of early modern states, the centralizing grasp of the ruler was met with persistence and sometimes open opposition.^[6] The history of the Catherinian age can also be understood as a process of negotiation between the expansion of practices of rule and administration that were uniform throughout the empire and regional or group privileges.
New studies contribute toward efforts to interpret Russian history in light of its imperial dimension,^[7] to obtain a better understanding of how sophisticated a view the functional and power elites of the Catherinian era had of the heterogeneity of their state and how they perceived groups, subjects, and individuals.
Generally, study of imperial history of the eighteenth century and the so-called saddle-period (Sattelzeit) of Reinhardt Koselleck – that is, Russia up to the time of Nicholas – has not been the focus of research that has attempted to identify the analytical power of the category “empire.” This article will contribute to the diverse overall “imperial” picture and raise questions concerning the ways in which the individual became visible in the discourse on the obligatory education of imperial subjects, which expanded in significance in the eighteenth century.^[8] The collective element in thinking and the accompanying features of this phenomenon of collectivity remain current topics in Russian intellectual history.^[9] Here the opposition of group versus individual has been transposed to the opposition of Russia versus Europe. I argue that the analytical power of this dichotomy is limited and primarily the result of auto- and heterostereotypes, which are carried over to academic history. Of interest here is the discussion of what kind of place, if any, the individual occupied in the Russian Empire of the late eighteenth century, following as it did an era of forced and unsystematic modernization during which the individual was treated as a person only in terms of his functional use to the state.

II.

Since the days of reform under Peter I, and increasingly during the reign of Empress Elizabeth, the need for a systematic expansion of education had been under discussion. In this context, it was another problem to determine which social circles should form the basis of an educated society. It was well understood that the construction and final form of educational institutions would fundamentally influence the composition and nature of an educated society. At the beginning of the reign of Catherine II, a debate took place about the proper scale and limits of individuals’ education. Individual scholars, who were partially prepared to constitute the nucleus of a rising functionary elite, shaped this debate to a greater extent than did politicians. They acted, first and foremost, as scholars and not as educators (a split that first arose gradually during the nineteenth century),^[10] but like the philosophes in France and the philosophers of the Enlightenment in Germany they pursued a complete social mission that also considered questions of education and schooling. Texts that had proved fundamental for the establishment of pedagogical tradition were translated into Russian. Among these were: L’éducation parfaite (The Perfect Education) by Abbé Jean Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde (1648–1734),^[11] which was published in 1710 and translated into other European languages. It appeared in Russian translation in 1747 and was, above all, intended to convey a sense of loyalty and honor on the nobility within the state framework, similar to Fénelon’s Traité de l’ éducation des filles (O vospitanii devits/On the Education of Young Women) of 1678,^[12] first translated in 1763, which proposed the education of girls according to their natural talents. Here the feminization of the idea of education was suggested for the first time in a theoretical tract in the Russian language in a way that anticipated Rousseau’s ideas. Older pedagogical traditions, such as those of Comenius and Montaigne, were renewed through translation and brought into the discussion along with concepts from the age of Peter I that lived on in the published works of Feofan Prokopovich.^[13] In 1759, a translation was completed of John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education (Mysli o vospitanii) of 1693,^[14] to which the translator, Nikolai Popovskii, offered his own introduction.^[15] In the introduction, Popovskii wrote that Locke’s views on the education of all social classes and groups of people were transferable to other countries, not least because Locke’s ideas fell within the tradition of ancient authors and their notions of universal human nature. Indeed, Locke’s ideas would prove to be exceedingly influential in further eighteenth-century discussion. While still Grand Princess, Catherine II, largely as a result of reading Locke’s texts, decided to take up questions related to education and made direct reference to this work.^[16] With this literature as a foundation, professors and teachers, primarily at Moscow University, discussed the need for acquisition of useful knowledge as well as correct moral guidelines, such as respect for the foundations of Christianity, which the Orthodox Church believed was being threatened by translations and the teaching of foreign systems of thought. The topic of debate here was more the imperial subject than the individual. That learning entailed dangers for the individual was suggested by A. A. Barsov as early as 1755 when Moscow University opened. Barsov believed learning was a weapon that could be used for good or for bad. The challenge to the teacher and educator was to provide control so that the good would dominate.^[17] The formation of the individual was thus not seen as strictly positive. Consensus held sway over who possessed the right to define the concept of “good,” and the consensus opinion was that this power belonged to the state.^[18]
New forums were also created in which the discourse on education and schooling could develop, which, in fact, continues to this day. With the Monthly Essays (Ezhemesiachnie sochineniia, 1755–1764) distributed along with the Sankt Peterburgskie Vedomosti, the scholarly and cultural elite of the empire dedicated itself to the goal of popularizing the achievements of science, art, and culture. They intended a publication that, with its wide circulation, would surpass the Sankt Petersburgskie Vedomosti, and even more so, the rudimentary religious books of the time.^[19] It was intended to show the domestic and foreign scholarly elite the level at which learned discourse was being conducted within the tsarist state and how readers had become involved in these debates. General knowledge on various topics was published in the journal in anticipation that it would educate the reading public. Thus, the basic concept was a pedagogical-didactic one. The journal consisted of both original articles and translations and discussions from West European publications.^[20]
An examination of the Monthly Essays reveals that the top priority of pedagogically oriented articles was the publication of translations of ancient authors. Aristotle, Plato, and the Socratic Dialogue on duties of the citizen were published, as were articles on education in Sparta, Athens, and republican Rome.^[21] The purpose of these articles was to transfer values and a moral lifestyle while at the same time emphasizing the citizen’s duties to the body politic. This, for example, was the tenor of one of the first essays published in the journal on the education question, “Rules for the Upbringing of Children,”^[22] a translation from the German weekly the Patriot. In another essay, Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov expressed deep anthropological pessimism about the need for and advantages of civic law. In his understanding, human instincts and passions could be harnessed only through the straitjacket of laws and, above all, state-controlled upbringing.^[23] In the second stage of Catherine’s reign, Shcherbatov was a loud critic of the consequences of “Europeanization,” which he described as a corruption of morals,^[24] sounding what was to become a theme of his later work as a writer. He opposed the Rousseauian idea that children should be denied the right to live in their parents’ house in order to develop their own individuality and their own unique talents.
Presenting conflicting opinions, the Monthly Essays proved to be an enlightened forum for the discourse on upbringing, schooling, and education. Pedagogical concepts that had shaped debates in Western Europe since the seventeenth century were reworked here for a small Russian reading public and published to promote discussion. The essays offered a starting point for debate under Catherine II. From the beginning of her reign Catherine had been skeptical that nobles were ready, albeit on the basis of house tutors, to attend to the education of their offspring. As Grand Princess, she had already expressed the opinion that home education could have dire consequences for the individual as well as for the state.^[25] After Peter III’s abolition of obligatory state service, the question of how the state could meet its growing need for well-educated men in numerous and varied fields became all the more pressing. Similarly, in the discourse a dilemma became more and more clear: how could the adoption of enlightened pedagogical concepts of various origins be made to coincide with the interests of the individual, society – that is, the new functional and learned elites – and the autocracy?
All of Catherine’s biographers have emphasized her interest in questions of education, which had developed by the time she was Grand Princess.^[26] There is consensus that Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi (1704?–1795) was Catherine’s most important adviser on issues of education policy and related pedagogical concepts for the first decade and a half of her reign. However, despite all the attention, not one modern biography has been dedicated to Betskoi, in contrast to other prominent figures of late eighteenth-century Russian history.^[27]
Catherine appreciated Betskoi as the ideal representative of the French-style Enlightenment that could be enlisted to develop educational plans that would be at the forefront of contemporary developments. In addition, Catherine’s coronation occasioned many new expectations of the empress. Moscow University honored her coronation with a display of fireworks, and solemn speeches at Moscow University and the St. Petersburg Academy alluded^[28] to the fact that up to this point, rulers had encouraged education and scholarship but now the age of wisdom had definitively arrived. Behind these figures of speech, a call to the empress to enter this realm of politics for the good of the state and its subjects was evident. Betskoi quickly became president of the Academy of Arts (1763–1793), curator of the newly founded Moscow Foundling Home (Vospitatel’nii dom v Moskve) (1763–1790, 1770–1792; the latter period included service at a similar institution in St. Petersburg), curator of the Society for Well-Born Girls, which later became the Smolny Institute (1762–1794), as well as member of the Board of Trustees of the Cadet Infantry Corps (1765–1782). From these numerous positions, Betskoi was not only able to create new educational institutions based on his and Catherine’s ideas but also to reform those already in existence. However, his dominant position was not to last as long as his curatorships – Betskoi was Catherine’s “general representative” for education issues for only a few years.
After coming to power in 1762, the empress wrote that the interests of the state should be in the “fabrication de l’homme ideal et du citoyen parfait.”^[29] Her goal was thus twofold. She had no blueprint for this objective, which included both the individual and moral education as well as the creation of a subject class of educated citizens, so she began to search for promising models.
It is known that Catherine was familiar with the pedagogical ideas of Fénelon and, above all, Locke, and that her understanding of the state, to which she subordinated her ideas about education, was shaped most of all by Montesquieu’s De l’esprit des lois (The Spirit of the Laws), which she had studied while she was Grand Princess. For practical realization of her ideas she looked in different directions, initially, toward the German schools of St. Petersburg.^[30] Looking less to these practical models, Betskoi’s proposals were built on firmer theoretical foundations. He was able to implement his ideas in the statute for the foundation of an orphanage as well as in the reform of already existing secular educational institutions such as the Cadet Infantry Corps and the Academy of Arts. Catherine was mindful that through translations of her Nakaz (1767), especially through publication of her semiofficial correspondence, her ruling activities found a degree of publicity in Western Europe. She also saw to it that ideas similar to Betskoi’s were disseminated through translations and testimonials of her pedagogical interests and the enlightenment of her advisers.^[31] “The General Education Plan for Youth of Both Sexes,” approved by the empress on March 12, 1764, can be considered the document that most accurately conveys Betskoi’s theories.^[32] Like other documents formulated by Betskoi, it is not entirely clear which of the ideas incorporated into the plan were his and which originated with Catherine.^[33] They were in constant communication with each other during 1763–1764.
As Catherine sincerely believed herself to be heir to Peter I’s legacy,^[34] the devastating verdict passed by Betskoi upon reviewing previous achievements in the educational sector must have been approved by the empress. In this context, Catherine’s legislation shone like a bright light:^[35] “While for a long time, Russia has had an academy and various schools, and has incurred considerable expense to send young Russians to learn about the science and art of other countries, this has produced little or no practical value.”^[36] Peter’s measures had, at most, a short-term effect. “In this way, up to the present day, Russia has not been able to create a citizenry of the type that elsewhere would be called a middle class or third estate.”^[37] This “elsewhere” hints at Betskoi’s familiarity with West European culture, where a much larger group of citizens lived in cities and occupied the social space between the nobility and the peasantry. The reforms of Peter I were not able to create such a class of people because the necessary legal changes were lacking. For Catherine and Betskoi, was it a question of “creation of a third estate”^[38] and with it a new social body? Or was the issue simply a matter of usage of typical concepts of the time that, through constant repetition, developed a certain potency in the discourse but could not actually be adopted in Russia in the absence of concrete, substantive ideas and specific social preconditions? Was this a case of education of the individual? Betskoi’s achievements at least hint at his conception of the citizen: the citizen (grazhdanin) should be characterized by certain qualities such as honesty, fear of god, and industriousness. This was found also in the catalog of virtues already formulated by Feofan Prokopovich, with an eye toward the ideal subject. With Betskoi, these virtues were to be practiced as much in the framework of self-perfection as to safeguard the proper ordering of citizens in the social hierarchy. Also new for Russia were the manner and method in which these virtues were to be promulgated and notions of how children were to be brought up. The unique ambivalence of education, which could have equally negative and positive effects, was in evidence in the founding ukaz of Moscow University. The conclusion drawn by Betskoi was not the need for an exact definition of a canon of subjects and curriculum to be taught, but that children should be separated as early as possible from their families and familiar surroundings in order to head off harmful influences.^[39] This would succeed according to Betskoi only through “Schools of Education for Children of Both Sexes,”^[40] whereby for the first time in tsarist Russia girls too were distinctly to be included not just in separate institutions but in a unified model of coeducation.
School education was to begin at the age of five or six years at the latest, according to Betskoi’s scheme, as at this age children were receptive to schooling and reason began to awake “from its slumber.”^[41] Thereafter, teachers were to observe students so that they might advance in accordance with their natural abilities and talents. Schools would no longer be limited to science, manual skills, merchantry, and, above all, military science, as were the existing closed schools where admission to a certain school ideally determined one’s profession. Rousseau’s influence was visible here: this was the first time in Russia that the the discussion focused on the education of the individual, and not of individual subjects.^[42] Betskoi’s “General Education Plan” was initially nothing more and nothing less than a declaration of intent, as no concrete legislative steps were publicly established. In the end came simply the warning that the guidelines must be implemented in their entirety in order to avoid “pernicious half-measures.”^[43] Betskoi never precisely defined what a third estate in Russia meant for him. But his educational houses, designed against the intellectual background of his experiences as a visitor to philanthropic institutions of Western Europe^[44] and his knowledge of cosmopolitan life, proposed a limited vehicle for the desired establishment of this estate and for the education of individuals. In the long term, a new social group could emerge among these “new men.” A pan-social conception in which the “middle classes or third estate” would be integrated into a hierarchy comprising other social groups was lacking. Such a concept was more visible in projects for tax legislation of the urban population in which privilege and participation were given priority and were already being developed in other places.^[45]
For Ivan Betskoi the Moscow Orphanage that he founded must have been the ideal laboratory for experiments in testing how a new generation of people could be reared. The statute of September 1, 1763,^[46] to which the above-mentioned Muscovite professor A. A. Barsov also contributed, along with enhancements (sections 2 and 3 of the statute) of August 11, 1767,^[47] was the most detailed document providing information on Betskoi’s pedagogical philosophy. It was characterized by regulatory statutes, which, contrary to the “General Education Plan,” constantly needed to prove their relevancy to everyday life. The plans allowed expectant mothers to come freely to the hospital of the Foundling Home to give birth to their children, and then to leave their babies in the care of staff comprised of selected doctors, wet nurses, caregivers, inspectors, and, lastly, teachers and educators.^[48] The mother or the person bringing the child to the home was to be asked simply whether or not the child had already been baptized. The absence of the family provided immediate isolation from “harmful surroundings,” whereas children in other institutions were not separated from their families until the age of five or six.
Two years in the care of a wet nurse were to be followed by four years during which the children were to dedicate themselves to understanding their environment through play. At age six years education began. As the children grew older, their curriculum became more extensive. It began with reading, writing, and religious instruction, and when children reached age eleven, it included geography, arithmetic, home economy, and accounting. At age fourteen, coeducational classes ended. Girls were to learn skills related to the household while boys were to be channeled into a craft or merchantry, according to their abilities.^[49] It was also incorporated into the statute that orphans, upon leaving the institution, were to be free. Such an education was to contribute to building a “middle class,” according to the “General Education Plan.”
No models for such an orphanage were given in the statute, although such institutions did exist abroad. The Francke Foundations in Halle may have served as a possible example. These institutions operated independently and extensively as commercially run enterprises in the eighteenth century. As there had been direct contact with Francke in the time of Peter I,^[50] here too a Russian connection with the Middle German Enlightenment is not improbable. The statute also quoted pedagogical authorities typically associated with the beginning of the eighteenth century: Samuel Pufendorf and John Locke served as references for the argument that an education would lead to good citizens. In addition, ancient authors such as Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch were regularly referred to in the Monthly Essays, and were used as principal testimony for a society’s need to be organized by the state. On the other hand, no mention was made of Rousseau, although he would have been at least an inspiration for the pedagogical concept of the orphanage up to age six, as well as for the express rejection of any sort of corporal punishment.^[51]
The Moscow Orphanage opened its doors in May 1764 and soon enrollment was so great that it led to irregularities in accounting and disagreements between attendants, which Betskoi in his paternalistic manner mediated, although without being able to make any improvements in the way the work was organized.^[52] It also led to high child mortality and illness. In 1765 Betskoi succeeded in having a member of the Academy, Gerhard Friedrich Müller, assume leadership. Müller was finally able to steer the orphanage to calmer waters during his stewardship of 1765–1768,^[53] and, moreover, he obtained its social acceptance after initial opposition from the Church.^[54]
Before the October Revolution A.S. Lappo-Danilevskii spoke of a Betskoian system of education.^[55] This characterization was, however, only partially accurate. In his “Plan for Education for Youth of Both Sexes,” Betskoi developed guidelines for moral instruction, which he repeated in the statutes of various closed educational institutions. He varied these guidelines, but not in the sense that he included particular specifics of these institutions in his considerations. For him, belief in the success, even utopianism, of the French Enlightenment with which he was familiar, was as captivating as his own idealism.
Only closed facilities could be “laboratories” for the formation of new people, who, through the development of their talents and reason, were to be made into useful members of society. These central ideas, based on a synthesis of the thought of Comenius, Locke, Montaigne, Fénelon, and Rousseau were held as universally applicable – they were to apply to the Kadet Corps just as to the Smolny Institute, and to the Academy of Arts just as to the poorhouses and orphanages.
The empress undertook yet another experiment with the orphanage in Moscow and other similar establishments, as well as the Smolny Institute. No educational institutions were founded under exclusively public or private administration. Instead they were arranged through autonomous societies. These societies had financed orphanages and the Smolny Institute, whereby they were supported by significant contributions from private coffers, independent of Catherine or Betskoi. Perhaps Catherine wanted to use this form of financing to establish the extent to which it would be socially acceptable. Their expectations were not disappointed, despite some problems with the institute’s financial accounting. In the first years it was able to minimize state subsidies.^[56]
In a 1993 article, Alla N. Eroshkina concluded that Betskoi had not wanted to shake the social foundation of the tsarist state.^[57] However, Eroshkina does not judge Betskoi by criteria of his time period. In his novel Émile, Rousseau also described the environment of the main heroes as pernicious but without designing a social counter-model. Instead, the hero was supposed to withdraw from this adverse climate. These ideas are also present in Betskoi’s plans. The “new people” were to be educated in institutions that were considered alternatives to those then in existence. A new corporate and social model, for which concrete political measures such as the abrogation of servitude would have been necessary, did not emerge. Here Betskoi imitated the example of certain French philosophes, whom he greatly esteemed.^[58] One thing can, however, be established: while the “General Education Plan” and the statutes for separate closed educational institutions differed from each other and contained some internal contradictions, the target audiences had a common characteristic. Whether those involved were artisan craftsmen, orphaned children, aristocratic daughters, or meshchanskie devitsy (daughters of petty bourgeoisie) in the Smolny Institute,^[59] in these institutions people of limited means were always to be advanced and educated. Thus, a closed model was not intended. Instead, this system was to expand the groups that would, according to their functions, participate in the blessings of the prosveshchenie (enlightened).
As dominating as Betskoi was in the discourse on education policy in the first years of Catherine’s reign, he was not the only one writing on this topic. The empress soon stopped consulting only Betskoi in regard to questions of education policy because, as Catherine expressed in April 1766, he began many things but finished nothing.^[60] Such a lack of tangible results, largely the consequence of Betskoi’s personality and the fact that he preferred to deal with designs for projects rather than their realization, displeased the empress as did the inclinations of her political advisers toward the ideas of Rousseau. By 1763 Catherine had forbidden the planned translation of Émile, which, in her opinion, was a work that contravened the laws and good morals of the Russian nation.^[61] Catherine’s criticism was sparked in the first place by Rousseau’s ideas of state and society^[62] and less as the result of pedagogical problems such as children’s learning and character formation, to which Betskoi had attached particular significance in his “General Education Plan.”
Betskoi’s name is linked to the development of avant-garde projects of closed school institutions but not with the creation of a school system for the Russian Empire, for which the “General Education Plan” was to have served as a first step.^[63] Catherine sought other advisers who were to base their suggestions more on Russian realities, but above all to first acquaint themselves with conditions in the legislative commission.^[64] So it was that in the second half of her reign Catherine maintained that Betskoi’s ideas on, for example, the orphanages and Smolny Institute, which were to be implemented in educational institutions spanning the empire, were not suitable. Nevertheless, Catherine maintained her idea of giving the tsarist empire a school system in which the individual was molded and the subject educated.

III.

On another note, it is not incorrect to observe, as first argued in the 1980s, that in the Catherinian era the pace of the legislative process was in no way unusually fast. Indeed, the monarch and her circle of advisers engaged in intense thought on how realizable their goals were. Their government reform of 1775 is an example of a legislative project that had been prepared long in advance. To assure its success, the empress closely studied the legislative commission and corresponding subcommittees as well as the political literature of the time, and actively discussed these matters.^[65] These reforms restructured the administrative units of the empire in a more close-knit fashion through the reclassification of gubernii and uezdy and the simultaneous abolishment of the Petrine provincial system of administration. In addition, institutions of local governance were established in which the population, especially the nobility but also the urban merchant class, was brought together in elected office. These institutions lasted until the time of Alexander II, and partially even until 1917.^[66] A question that is still contentiously debated in the scholarly literature is whether this was an attempt to strengthen autocratic power under the cloak of ostensible decentralization as the state: arguably, the state was trying for the first time to take control of different parts of the empire at the local level and had to assure itself the cooperation of the local elites in the absence of a qualified bureaucracy.^[67]
The provincial reform was also fundamentally significant for the imperial system of education. The general framework for the founding of schools in the countryside was given in chapter 25 of the legislative act.^[68] In Catherine’s nachertaniia (outlines) as well as in drafts of the project in the subcommittee of the legislative commission, a direct connection had already been established between the question of education and concepts of public welfare.^[69] It was in keeping with this concept that both these areas were now associated with one institution, the Agency for Public Welfare (prikaz obshchestvennogo preizreniia), with the idea of “good public policy” (gute Policey) acting as a guideline for implementation of the reforms as a whole.^[70] As per the prikaz, in every guberniia, a district office was to be set up and managed by a board composed of two members from the higher regional court as representatives of the nobility, two representatives of the newly created provincial administration to embody the interests of merchants, two members of the highest peasant court as representatives of the free peasantry, and, finally, the governor as the presiding member of the council. The establishment and maintenance of peasant schools (narodnye shkoly), orphanages for children of both sexes, hospitals and infirmaries, institutions for welfare and employment as well as asylums were handed over to this council.^[71] Apparent here is the basic approach of an empire that was concerned for its well-being and coming down on the side of social self-initiative.
The target audience for these institutions were groups that were represented in their management, in other words, the Catherinian “middle class” that was to be created through educational efforts. Concern about the serfs and the possibility of their education at home, remained unchanged within the purview of the paternal structures of the aristocratic landowner. In the legislation, the peasant did not come to the fore as a possible object of individual education.^[72]
To finance such public institutions, which at the time barely existed even in the capital cities, an order was given in Article 382 for a one-time 15,000 ruble payment to come out of the provincial budget. While this money could not be spent directly, it was suggested that the sum be invested in the Bank of the Nobility^[73] in order to cover the running costs of the institutions through money earned on a high rate of interest.^[74] Therein not only was a clear, local authority in the form of a council created for the first time, but also a concrete sum of money was allocated and responsibility for investing it was given to local councils as partially elected representatives.^[75] Admittedly, however, the sums of money in proportion to overall expenditures of the state and the local administration in the provinces were meager.^[76]
Compared with articles about institutions of public welfare, which were partially the result of a particular educational impetus, Article 384 on the narodnye shkoly were restricted and narrow.^[77] Such schools were to be opened in all cities and larger villages. But attendance was not obligatory and it was particularly emphasized that it would not be required against parental will. Nonetheless, as an incentive, free instruction was to be offered to the needy. Writing, reading, arithmetic, drawing, and morals were to be learned, and the curriculum also included Orthodox subjects such as instruction in the Decalogue and Catechism.^[78] What was standard in the West European pedagogical literature and promoted by Betskoi and others in the Russian Empire as necessary components for education became law. The prikaz was responsible for conditions in the classroom in terms of cleanliness, good ventilation, and adequate lighting, and for the orderly appearance of pupils. And, as in the Bol’shoi nakaz and Betskoi’s statutes, corporal punishment by the teacher was forbidden. The school calendar was precisely determined. Oversight of teacher performance, designation of salary increases, and salary payment was assigned to the prikaz.
While it was a foundational law for the tsarist state, it was a long way from the three-level school system, consisting of elementary school, gymnasium, and university.^[79] However, with a more connected administrative network and the adoption of differently developed and structured areas of the empire, it would ideally have been possible to create a comprehensive school system. Nevertheless, for Catherine, the Act of 1775 was only an interim measure in the area of education.
In February 1775, Catherine wrote “...je suis fort en peine d’avoir une idée d’université, de sa régie de gymnases et de sa régie d’écoles et de sa régie” to an acquaintance of hers, Friedrich Melchior Grimm, in a request that he send her any materials on schools or systems of education that he could possibly get his hands on.^[80] Presumably this request was a reaction to the suggestion of the governor of Astrakhan, who had initiated the creation of schools for soldiers and for orphaned children in order to teach foreign European and oriental languages. Catherine had responded that the governor should wait for the general directive on establishment of schools in the provinces, which was forthcoming.^[81] This decision was not necessarily aimed at the provincial reform of 1775. With respect to establishing a universal school system and its implied image of humanity as well as the instructional materials and methods that would make up such a system, the empress had developed absolutely no course of action. The provisions of the provincial reform project, in which the problem was shifted from the center to the provinces, offered her the chance to catch her breath. She was able to observe how schools were developing under the supervision of the prikazy. This also furthered discussion of the form in which an empire-wide multilevel educational system could be implemented.
Thus, in the constant discourse on education, the European Enlightenment and the changing Russian society offered suggestions for reform. In addition, the empress repeatedly called for principles and concepts inspired by the Enlightenment, which she had publicly formulated to be brought to bear on imperial administration. Against this background, her own literary production is significant. Whether in theatrical productions of plays authored by her, such as the satirical premiere of O vremia, or in her journal entries, which from 1769 emerge as a significant source, at issue for her was “modernization through literature.”^[82] On the other hand, these works were also characterized by a call to pursue a discourse on the further enlightenment of the country and, in this way, also demanding acceptance and obtaining further suggestions for her activities. The empress was perhaps more successful in this than she at first intended. Around 1770 she involved herself in a discourse that, prior to her monarchical involvement through literary articles, had been limited to a small circle of elites. Nikolai Novikov is someone who stimulated and encouraged discourse, and someone with whom Catherine shared the same ideas about the characterization of people who were backward-looking and unwilling to change.^[83] But the dramatist Denis Fonvizin (1744–1792) and other authors can also be placed in this context.^[84] Literature became an increasingly strong driving force in the demand for an improvement in society’s educational level as the century drew to an end. Authors, scientists, and scholars also moved the discourse forward. Various Moscow University professors came forward with writings on pedagogical and methodological literature,^[85] and the Academy of Sciences also undertook and promoted projects.^[86] Literary production and science converged in the second half of the eighteenth century in capital city circles where one’s own language was both a research topic and a medium at the same time. The Russian language became a topic of private and public learned societies,^[87] which for their part influenced the discourse on educational policy. Other groups dedicated themselves generally to the circulation of knowledge and enlightenment whereby the traditions of “learned societies” and reading groups in Western Europe were adopted, though thoroughly modified in a prenational sense that sought to build an imperial identity.^[88]
To speak of an absolute paradigm shift within the elite in regard to the status of education would be to exaggerate the actual circumstances of the 1760s and 1770s. But the very different currents within society led to propagation and initiation of the phenomenon of founding schools through self-initiative. The above-mentioned proposal of the Astrakhan governor was declined by Catherine merely because of an administrative deficit. In Astrakhan, translators were needed to administer a multiethnic population and for international trade relations. At this juncture, the state did not want to finance the preparation of such skilled employees. However, when Prokofii A. Demidov and other noble entrepreneurs made financing available to establish an elite institution for the education of merchants,^[89] the empress willingly gave her blessing. The result was the establishment in Moscow in 1772 of a commercial gymnasium, which, despite some initial difficulties, developed in an enormously positive way through the nineteenth century. And in the legislative commission, when low-income nobility demanded that they be allowed to utilize existing educational institutions, the government was ready to expand the original target groups. Thus, in 1774 it was resolved that garrison schools, which until then had been designated exclusively for soldiers’ children, were now open to the low nobility as well. In addition, 1,000 noble children were to be accepted on a tuition-free basis as a way of honoring the performance of their fathers who had served in the Turkish war.^[90] And when, finally, economic interests could be bound up with political projects, the empress not only opened her own wallet but also provided for long-term state contributions. In November 1774, General Mordvinov informed Catherine II that Aleksei Orlov had returned to Russia, bringing with him 200 Greek youth from the Turkish war to receive their education in Russia. Catherine anticipated the establishment of a Greek school for these boys.^[91] The Greek Gymnasium that was opened in April 1775 near St. Petersburg became a building block in Catherine’s plans – driven by her interest in classicism – to expand in the Mediterranean area. A short time later, this enterprise would become known as the “Greek Project” and was to preoccupy European politics.^[92]
The lavish construction of the Greek Gymnasium^[93] showed the lengths to which Catherine was prepared to go when personal interest in education policy and political ambition coalesced. In 1783, following the annexation of the Crimea, the Gymnasium was transferred to the curatorship of Grigorii Potemkin and moved to Kherson.^[94] It was accurately assessed that the largest influx of school children would be from among the Greek population of the Crimea. Catherine was cautiously opposed^[95] to private and only sporadically occurring initiatives in which an individual not acting for any personal benefit was the driving force, unless there was an apparent benefit to the state of such projects, as in the case of commercial gymnasiums.
The provincial reform of 1775 proceeded, among other things, from the understanding that the state must have more presence in the provinces and with this presence a local elite must be developed. The planned schools were, however, only rarely established and thus the goal of establishing the grounds on which a “society as a creation of the state” (Gesellschaft als staatlicher Veranstaltung)^[96] would form was not achieved. “The apple is no good until it is ripe,” wrote Catherine II at the beginning of February 1780 to Friedrich Melchior Grimm^[97] to illustrate that the last line in educational legislation had not yet been written. The accelerated professionalization of various social levels and the allocation of subjects to a concrete place in the state hierarchy had been fundamental ideas in the school statute of 1786. To implement this school reform, Catherine II attracted the Serbocroat Theodor (Fedor) Jankovich de Mirievo, who had launched a school system on the basis of the pedagogical ideas of Johann Ignaz Felbiger in Timişoara of the Banat region (present-day Romania) and thus had experience in the (south) Slavic area.^[98] Catherine had thus definitively set aside the ideas of Ivan Betskoi and settled on older pedagogical traditions with roots in the seventeenth century. As the leading figure on the “Commission for Establishment of Schools,” organized in 1782, Jankovich wielded wide-ranging influence as the person working in closest consultation with the empress. He emphasized the importance of one standardized teacher-training process and proposed a unified system of elementary schools while stressing the significance of standardized study.
Shortly after the commission met, a road map for establishing a school system, approved by Catherine, was promulgated.^[99] This plan was to be tried out initially in existing schools and those to be founded in the province of St. Petersburg. After a successful trial period of the “Plan for Establishment of Folk Schools in the Russian Empire,”^[100] extensive adoption of the interlocking, multiphased system was planned, whereby methods were once more presented in detail through charts, repetition, learning the Catechism, and other individual subjects. For the first two grades the curriculum included the subjects of writing, reading – here still treated as separate subjects – Catechism, and arithmetic, similar to the Austrian system. In contrast, in the third and fourth grades an expanded curriculum was planned. In the third grade (grammar school) the subjects of history, geography, and church history were to be integrated; included in the two-year fourth grade (for secondary schools) were natural history, mechanics, physics, drawing, calligraphy, and German.^[101] Natural sciences were to be taught much more extensively than in Austria and education was to be tailored to preparing administrators through the teaching of German and calligraphy, which suggests that the true goal was to produce a functionary elite in the provinces. For the publication of the ukaz Catherine added an appendix that made this goal even more manifestly apparent. Contrary to a first draft worked out by the commission, the empress made critical changes with regard to the teaching of foreign languages. In the future, French was to remain reserved solely for education within the home because Catherine did not believe its use to be critically important in service to the state. If the nobleman desired his offspring to have a knowledge of French, he was to cover the cost of such education out of his own pocket. Catherine believed, however, that it was a state necessity to incorporate the ethnic particularities of her multinational empire. Thus, the Greek language was to be taught in the provinces of Kiev and Azov, and in Novorossiia, Chinese in the guberniia of Irkutsk, and Arabic and Tatar in areas inhabited by Muslim nationalities.^[102] The uniformity of the course of instruction was thus compromised in the area of foreign language teaching. But the education of translators answered the needs of linguistic communication in the multiple regions of the empire and was thus beneficial to the state.^[103]
An examination of the main textbook that was to be used in primary schools gives the clearest illustration of the spirit of school reform and the educational climate in schools. The school commission adopted a work of Johann Ignaz von Felbiger that had been translated in short order by Jankovich. Instructions of Virtuousness, published in Russia under the title On the Duties of People and Citizens, was to be used in the schools to impart a foundation for the correct life and comportment of subjects.^[104] In four chapters, the education of the soul (including a catalog of virtues), personal hygiene (passages in which the natural pedagogy of the Enlightenment were most apparent), duties toward the state and society, and management of the home and family were covered – each part, at times, specifying very detailed rules of conduct. Overriding significance was assigned to love of the Fatherland. This love manifested itself for artisans and peasants in hard work and respect for their fellow man; for members of the clergy^[105] in the Christian upbringing of people entrusted to them; for the nobility in model behavior toward the rest of the population and in service to the Fatherland. The element of discipline was thus prominent at every level of society. According to the Felbiger/Jankovich handbook, all groups were to be good subjects in their own individual positions in society. This was to be imparted to the people ideally through collective education with noble children and through the use of a mandatory textbook, which differed in intent and mode from the moral guidance given to sons of the nobility or even instructions for princely upbringing.^[106] With all of this subordination to the state, despite rigorous attention toward the child, and in view of the importance of regulation of thought, this represented an innovation in the educational landscape of the tsarist state (despite the conservative tenor, which Max Okenfuss defined as submission to the monarch based on the Orthodox religion^[107]). Nevertheless, it did not meet with unanimous acceptance. One criticism was that the forms of government of a monarchy and a republic were juxtaposed, thus leaving open the argument that the intensity of patriotism was not dependent on them. In the age of European revolutions, such thoughts appeared to be dangerous for the state. Thus, Minister of Education Golitsyn in 1816 dispensed with the document “On the Duties of People and Citizens.” However, the catalog of virtues and the commentary on character and disciplining of the human soul was so attractive to his successor, A.S. Shishkov, that the latter proposed the reintroduction of this book that could be replaced by no other.^[108]

IV.

The school system introduced in 1786 provided for the establishment of local and central provincial schools. In 1786 alone, 165 primary schools were founded, and a similar number in the following years. Catherine, a skillful self-propagandist, sought to use this success for publicity. But by the late eighteenth century not only had the wave of school openings evened out, but the overall number of schools had even begun to decline. On the occasion of Alexander’s accession to the throne in 1801, the school commission published a report stating that in its 315 schools, only 790 teachers were working and barely 20,000 pupils studying, of whom 1,780 were girls.^[109] Only some 1.4 percent of the expanding Russian national budget in 1796 was allocated for education and social welfare. Janet Hartley has shown in detail, on the regional example of St. Petersburg,^[110] how regular day-to-day schooling, despite outwardly favorable conditions, was in danger of failure. After 1786, there was only a marginal appropriation of funds above the basis set in the provincial statute. The center in St. Petersburg, on the contrary, suggested the mortgaging of capital investments in order to increase funds, or, in contemporary language, to fundraise, which at that time was possible more for prestigious educational projects than for establishment of elementary schools.^[111]
Catherine herself certainly knew that the establishment and continuation of an educational system and, with its help, the creation of social groups, would take time even in the center of the empire and more so in the periphery.^[112]
The issue here is less about the number of schools constructed or the number of students than about the image of humanity that stood behind this system. As in the book On the Duties of People and Citizens, from the state perspective, the subject was to behave in a useful manner. This system was fully based on such a world outlook. This guideline is certainly not to be confused with total regulation of the curriculum and uniform drills for students. A school system that banned corporal punishment and whose guidelines likewise disallowed “making a student stand in the corner wearing a dunce cap,” was modern for its time in that it respected the person. In still another sense this was an advancement over the era of Peter I, when the connection between education and a person’s benefit to the state was seen in much narrower terms. Thus, the school system was intended to be open to all social groups. When enserfed children of peasants and members of groups that would later be known as inorodtsy could go to school, the network at the level of the province as well as the empire as a whole became broadly interconnected. For ethnic groups, a proposal for education in foreign languages was made corresponding to the regional realities from which the state profited. Here further study is needed to enable a discussion of whether the empire required schools as a vehicle for colonization.^[113] Some factors suggest that this was not the intention of such efforts and instead point to a cultural arrogance contained within the Enlightenment ideal. And finally, as opposed to what followed with the reforms of Alexander I, the system was coeducational. According to this notion, the education of girls was to consist not only of knowledge they would need to manage a household but also of general subjects of education. As Bianka Pietrow-Ennker has suggested,^[114] these educational elements were not simply geared to the domestication of women.
These tendencies are suggestive of the modernization of the “saddle-period” in the Russian Empire, which was confronting the reguliarnost’ of the (older) absolutism. There were already elements that symbolized freedom in the regulated Baroque gardens of an empire that was ordered on the concept of “good police” (gute Polizei). Ivan Betskoi represented a solitary avant-garde figure with his deliberations, influenced by Rousseau, that went much farther than the elements of individualism. To a certain extent, Catherine attempted to combat the spirit of Betskoi’s plan, which had been taken up by Nikolai Novikov and others.^[115] But these figures were already engaged in a discourse on education, and the empress herself was ready to meet them halfway, suggesting that imperial subjects be educated not just through drills but through an individual developmental psychological education. Thus, from her perspective as well, childhood acquired an intrinsic value that was new and initially adopted only among the functionary elite. This is evidenced in the school statute, for example, on the topic of the reconciliation of uniform and region-specific ideas. Contrary to her predecessors, Catherine maintained an understanding of the diversity of the empire and her subjects.^[116] This also implied an acceptance of the individual and his education. This concerns not merely a functionalist education, but an education through the formation of the individual as a person. However, in this sense she was neither as modern nor as idealistic as her adviser Ivan Betskoi, but she was more modern than her successors in the first half of the nineteenth century.