Eklof

Laska i Poriadok:
The Daily Life of the Rural

School in Late Imperial Russia
BEN EKLOF, WITH NADEZHDA PETERSON
Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, school inspector V. I. Raevskii, from Nizhnii
Novgorod, cited notes taken during a visit to a local school. Observing the Spartan conditions
of the building, he added:
To expect that under such conditions this teacher (who does not have a specialized
training) would have very good results is naturally unthinkable. I am surprised
that she managed to get as far as she did with her students. I visited this teachers
class. It was reading in the upper section. Russias North from Baranovs
reader. The lesson went quite well. The main virtue of her approach was in the
smooth and measured way she asked questions. ... The children summarized the
article quite well, some very well. The general mood was so cheerful that it was
hard not to smile despite the fact that everybody was cold, there was high wind
outside and twilight in the classroom at noon, the teacher had her jaw tied up with
a scarf, and I could not find a seat. I thank this teacher with all my heart, and hope
those above me will do the same. I mention one circumstance I observed which
attests to the childrens love for the teacher. A little boy walked in with his books
in hand. He was crying inconsolably, relating that he could not study any more
because his mother was sending him out to beg for food. The teacher sent for his
mother in the hope that this could be settled somehow. The mother arrived and
also started crying. Finally, the mother gave in: Its all right. Go study. Ill go
out to beg myself, she said.
1
In Russia, primary education rapidly expanded throughout the European part of the
empire in the decades before World War I. By 1914 as many as three quarters of all children
of school age were probably receiving some schooling, ordinarily lasting for two to three
years.
2
Yet historians have generally understated the spread of schooling in Russia,
The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of staff at the State Archive of Kirov Oblast (GAKO) and
the Herzen State Library for research conducted over the course of three years (20068).
1
V. Raevskii, Iz zhizni narodnykh uchilishch (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1896).
2
Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture and Popular Pedagogy (Berkeley, 1986);
idem, The Adequacy of Basic Schooling in Rural Russia: Teachers and Their Craft, 18801914, History of
Education Quarterly (Summer 1986): 199233; Jeffrey Brooks, The Zemstvo and the Education of the
People, in The Zemstvo in Russia, ed. Terence Emmons and Wayne S. Vucinich (Princeton, 1984), 24378;
B. B. Veselovskii and Z. G. Frenkel', eds., Iubileinyi zemskii sbornik 18641914 (St. Petersburg, 1914).
The Russian Review 69 (January 2010): 729
Copyright 2010 The Russian Review
8 Ben Eklof, with Nadezhda Peterson
or dismissed its results as inconsequential. Teachers, it was believed, were so ill prepared,
conditions so abysmal, and schooling so shortwinded, that schools could hardly have made
an imprint upon village life. In reality, teachers were moderately well trained, and certainly
competent to teach the rudiments to peasant children. Further, school buildings [which can
serve as a proxy for conditions as a whole], though modest, were by 1900 considerably
improved from earlier days, and were not radically different from schools elsewhere in
Europe. Extramural education and libraries, too, had made deep inroads into the
countryside.
3
But how much were children learning? Detailed retention studies carried out over
three decades by zemstvo commissions, as well as a thorough survey of teachers opinions
conducted for the 1911 Zemstvo Education Congress, showed that in fact graduates, and
even pupils who had not completed the full program, could read simple texts out loud and
restate them in their own words. Basic computation had been mastered. Everywhere the
lowest scores were given for composition; here, however, logical sequence of thought and
style were being tested, not rudimentary writing. The most commonly observed writing
problems (improper word boundaries, word distortion, and so on) suggest that pupils learned
to write phonetically, in their own dialect, but had not fully mastered formal Russian prose.
Thus, peasants were learning how to read, write, and count, albeit with deficiencies
moreover, they were retaining these skills.
4
If effective learning was taking place on a wide scale, then, how are we to explain
these results? This article seeks to recover the lived experience of schooling, not only its
prescriptive designs, in late Imperial Russia: what strategies did teachers deploy; which
subjects were actually given the most attention, and what results were achieved? What
were the interactions between pupil and student; what was the ethos of the schoolroom? I
believe the picture drawn below is representative of mainstream pedagogy as well as of the
daily life of the school.
5
By 1914, the culture and discourse of schooling I describe below
3
Eklof, Kindertempel or Shack? School Buildings in Late Imperial Russia (A Study in Backwardness),
Russian Review 47 (April 1988): 11745; idem, The Archaeology of Backwardness: Rural Libraries in Late
Imperial Russia, in The Space of the Book in Russia, ed. Miranda Remnick, forthcoming, University of
Toronto Press.
4
Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, 479, and chap. 11 (Mere Learning). Brooks, When Russian Learned to
Read (Princeton, 1985), 4751, has a number of shrewd observations on the results of schooling. As early as the
1890s, a church school inspector who visited zemstvo schools in Poltava province noted the spacious, dry,
well-lit interiors of buildings and the satisfactory level of knowledge achieved by pupils. See Rossiiskii
gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 733, op. 228, ed. kh. 41.
5
I believe mainstream pedagogy comprised a large number of educators, both officials and public figures,
scattered throughout the provinces, who wrote textbooks and handbooks, drew up curricula, ran teachers
summer courses, published articles in newspapers, and often eschewed discussion of the politics of education
which preoccupied the Duma and national press in favor of practical solutions in the classroom. A key role in
creating a mainstream tradition which reflected the practical needs of the schools was played by teachers
refresher courses, congresses, and other gatherings, which often brought prominent educators and textbook
authors face to face with local teachers and inspectors. See N. A. Potapova, Istoriia zemskoi shkoly Moskovskoi
gubernii v nachale XX-ogo veka (Cand. Diss., Moscow State University, 1945), 109, 129; and A. I. Piskunov,
ed., Ocherki istorii shkoly i pedagogicheskoi mysli narodov SSSR: Vtoraia polovina XIX veka (Moscow, 1966),
315; Many of these educators were well known at the time, but few are known today, even among Russian
educators. One recent survey of mainstream educators in the provinces is V. B. Pomelov, Prosvetiteli Viatskogo
kraia: Rossiskie deiateli kul'tury i mestnye uchenye-pedagogi (Kirov, 2007).
The Daily Life of the Rural School in Late Imperial Russia 9
prevailed at all levels, from education activists in St. Petersburg, to powerful school curators
in, say, Kazan school district, to local school inspectors, organizers of teachers summer
courses, and, finally, to teachers in the rural classroom. Remarkably, the evidence suggests
that this discursive culture also largely described practice.
6
It bears note that my focus is exclusively upon rural schools. Urban elementary schools
came under similar regulations and material constraints, but deserve their own historian.
Secondary schools were literally a world apart, and curriculum, classroom dynamics, and
discipline all differed profoundly from the portrait I draw below. Finally, while my data
largely concerns zemstvo schools, by the turn of the century teaching approaches and
classroom practices in many church schools were, by many accounts, similar.
EDUCATION LEGISLATION
Historians of education have been particularly subject to what Marx called the illusion of
politics: the notion that change comes from the pens of legislators and that a study of
schooling essentially involves law codes and statutes, bureaucratic decrees, and the theories
of prominent educators.
7
Social history has made deep inroads into this approach,
challenging the significance of all legislation to the history of education and identifying
different stakeholders in the process.
8
In Russia, too, forces other than the state helped shape schooling. In particular, a
popular pedagogy governed the actions of peasants and imposed what educators today
call a natural cycle upon the school, forcing schedule and curriculum to adjust to
community needs and wishes and limiting the freedom of initiative of teachers and other
outsiders. As Thomas Darlington noted long ago, the fact that there is nowhere in Russia
proper any legal obligation to send children to school ... [means] [n]o peasant will send his
child to any school ... if the teaching ... is not what pleases him.
9
For most peasants this
6
I have examined inspectors reports from more than a dozen provinces, and provincial directors reports to
the Ministry of Education. A particularly rich collection is in the Viatka [Kirov] archive for the period 1892
1913: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kirovskoi oblasti (GAKO), f. 205, op. 25. Others include, but are not limited
to, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Vologodskoi oblasti (GAVO), f. 438, op. 1, d. 595 (for 191415); and RGIA, f.
733, op. 171, ed. kh. 440 (a reviziia of schools in Saratov and Samara provinces on l. 112). In addition, I found
several candidate dissertations from the Soviet era, based upon extensive archival research, that were valuable
in reconstructing the daily life of the school: K. V. Verakso, Razvitie nachal'nogo obrazovaniia na Urale:
Shkoly Permskogo zemstva (Sverdlovsk State University, 1948); T. N. Vostrukhina, Istoriia nachal'nogo
obrazovaniia vo Vladimirskoi gubernii s 60-kh godov do Oktiabr'skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Moscow
State University, 1955); K. P. Tsebrovskii, Narodnoe obrazovanie v Iaroslavskoi gubernii v poreformennyi
period (Moscow State University, 1955); Potapova, Istoriia zemskoi shkoly Moskovskoi guberni; and V. A.
Petrov, Zemskaia nachal'naia shkola v Viatskoi gubernii (Moscow State University, 1955).
7
Marxs phrase is from The Holy Family. For a good, if dated, review of literature on this topic see John E.
Craig, The Expansion of Education, Research in Education 9 (1981): 151213.
8
Franois Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Three Centuries of CrossFertilization, in Literacy and Social
Development in the West: A Reader, ed. Harvey Graff (Cambridge, England, 1981), 21531; Marvin Lazerson,
Revisionism and American Educational History, History of Education Review 43:2 (1973): 277. See also
Craig, Expansion of Education, 151213.
9
Thomas Darlington, Education in Russia (London, 1909), 303. The renowned church educator Rachinskii
made a similar point, stating that peasants utilized passive resistance to exert their influence over the curriculum.
See P. I. Sokolov, Istoricheskii ocherk razvitiia tserkovnykh shkoly z istekshee dvadatsipiatiletie (18841909)
(St. Petersburg, 1909), 179.
meant gaining for their children the rudiments of reading, writing, and counting. For a
minority it meant more, learning proper Russian, receiving the grooming and the certificate
necessary for escape from the village and to advance their careers.
But to argue that peasants exerted an exit veto does not mean that they fully controlled
the curriculum. First of all, peasants saw the utility of literacy in a world increasingly
crowded with documents; they recognized the need to read, write, and count to avoid being
cheated by their peers or their social betters, and had little choice but to send their child to
the local zemstvo or church school.
10
In fact, according to the 1911 Zemstvo Survey, in the
thirty-four zemstvo provinces alone, applications for admission to elementary schools
exceeded available places by more than one million. Thus, possession of the exit veto
was balanced by the growing demand for state-provided schooling, and education is best
seen as a negotiated, or contested space, involving those who regulated, those who delivered,
and those who appropriated. We begin with the regulators.
According to the 1864 Statute (revised in 1874), the purpose of education was to
impart religious and moral notions among the population and to spread useful, basic
knowledge (Article 1). The program of the primary school was to include religion, reading
in religious and secular books, penmanship, the first four functions of arithmetic, and
(optionally) singing (Article 3). The length of the program went undefined, as did the
number of hours to be devoted to each subject. Nor was a proper school age specified.
School boards supervised the selection of textbooks and the appointment of teachers. Though
control over these school boards was nominally exerted by the Ministry of Education
(particularly after 1874) and especially by the local director, in reality the zemstvos often
exerted much influence.
11
A Church parish school program adopted in 1886 (and modified
in 1902) was used as a model for secular schools in some districts, but all sources agree that
until the turn of the century a considerable variety existed in textbooks used, schedules
followed, and even approaches adopted.
12
In 1897 the Ministry of Education adopted a Model Program for one-class (three- and
four-year) schools, but this program stipulated only the minimal amount of attention to be
10
See I. I. Ozerov, Na bor'bu s narodnoi tmoi (Berlin, n.d.), which contains a large number of proverbs
expressing the fear that illiteracy placed the individual in danger of being cheated and outwitted by outsiders
as well as fellow villagers. For a survey of peasants diverse motivations for seeking literacy see D. M. Bobylev,
Kakaia shkola nuzhna derevne (Perm, 1908), 40. For similar observations on the defensive views of peasantry
in relation to literacy see N. Bunakov, Sel'skaia shkola i narodnaia zhizn' (St. Petersburg, 1901), 12. On
vol'nye shkoly see N. Bunakov, O domashnikh shkolakh gramotnosti v narode (St. Petersburg, 1885); and V.
Devel, Krestianskie vol'nye shkoly gramotnosti v Tverskoi gubernii, Russkaia shkola , 1890, no. 4:96111.
11
For the 1864 legislation see Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia (ZhMNP) 123, Section 4
(July 1864): 3947. The 1874 Statute is in ZhMNP 174, Section 4 (August 1874): 22737. On the school
boards see my Russian Peasant Schools, 507 n.89, and the lengthy discussion in chap. 5. The inattention to
schedules is curious, given the lengthy discussion given curriculum in the various drafts to the statute. On the
goals of education in legislation over the nineteenth century see the summary in N. Chekhov, Narodnoe
obrazovanie v Rossii s 60kh godov XIX veka (Moscow, 1912), 20910. See also A. V. Ososkov, Nachal'noe
narodnoe obrazovanie v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii (Moscow, 1982), 1922.
12
On the notion of a golden age of diversity and choice preceding the 1897 statute, and especially in the
1860s, see V. V. Petrov, Voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia v Moskovskoi gubernii, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1903),
esp. 4748.
given to each topic and was not binding in detail (see Table 1).
13
A wealth of testimony
exists indicating that the program did leave considerable freedom for interpretation.
14
In
fact, many teachers complained that because the Model Program was so open-ended,
directors and examiners could be arbitrary and unpredictable when verifying progress in
the schools. They sometimes wanted more, not less direction from the center.
15
TABLE 1 1897 Model Program
Subject Hours Weekly As Percentage
Bible Study 6 25
Church Slavonic 3 12.5
Russian 8 33.4
Penmanship 2 8.3
Arithmetic 5 20.8
*The program called for a minimum of 26 weeks of school, 24 hours of instruction
weekly, in a three-year program. The school day was set at 4-1/2 to 5-1/2 hours.
Perhaps the greatest impact legislation had upon the school day was through the rules
adopted in 1875 to govern the certification of pupils who had completed the three-year
program and wished to qualify for the reduced term of service offered literates by the
Military Statute of 1874. These rules, in force until 1906 (when the corresponding benefits
were eliminated), stipulated that to be certified the graduate had to
be able to read fluently, correctly, and intelligently a narrative or descriptive
passage from an unfamiliar book in the Russian or Slavonic character, and to
reproduce the subject matter in response to questions; to write from diction
correctly and with due regard for punctuation, and be able to read cursive; to
work common problems in the four basic modes of arithmetic, and to show a
knowledge of Russian weights and measures, coinages, and time.
16
As we will see below, the certifying and (where conducted) promotion (perevodnye)
examinations undoubtedly shaped the daily schedule of the classroom and the relative
13
For the text of the Model Program see N. Verigin, V pomoshch uchashchim v nachaln'ykh narodnykh
uchilishchakh, 5th ed., (Moscow, 1915), 5073. An abridged translation, based on Darlington, is in my Russian
Peasant Schools, 48386. The extensive deliberations of the commission within the department of education
charged with drawing up the 1897 Program make rewarding reading for those interested in official views on
schooling, and can be found in RGIA, f. 733, op. 172, ed. khr. 496, ll. 36142 (18931902).
14
For a comprehensive survey of curriculum plans and legislation in nineteenth-century Russia see S. A.
Cherepanov, Uchebnye plany obshcheobrazovatel'noi shkoly v dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii, Izvestiia Ak. ped.
nauk RSFSR 33 (1951): 158209. One clause in the commentary to the Model Program, admonishing teachers
not to stray too far from mandatory course material in their discussions or to become too preoccupied with
superfluous detail, was seen by some as promoting censorship.
15
On school board members imposing their arbitrary demands at school leaving exams, there is abundant
testimony; one example is the annual report of the Bronits district, Moscow province zemstvo executive board
in 1906 (Potapova, Istoriia zemskoi shkoly Moskovskoi gubernii, 194).
16
Darlington, Education in Russia, 239. For a brief commentary, and further literature on these exams, see
my Peasant Sloth Reconsidered: Strategies of Learning and Education in Rural Russia Before the Revolution,
Journal of Social History 14 (Spring 1981): n. 30.
emphasis given to various subjects.
17
Yet inspectors and the personnel of the local school
boards changed often and were arbitrary in their demands. Because the Model Program
was so flexible, and because the background, training, and views of those supervising the
schools were unpredictable, there was no telling what might be required on the exams any
given year, or what emphasis the local inspector might place on a given subject.
18
THE KORF SCHOOL
We turn now to those who delivered education. Russian pedagogy is often conceptualized
in progressive and reactionary streams.
19
But this classification ignores the considerable
ferment existing among mainstream educators with a wide range of political orientations
who were able to publish their manuals and articles on education and pursued a common
agenda that was mildly childcentered, reformist and yet pragmatic. Among these educators
were radicals such as Nikolai Bunakov, but also many school officials who, by providing
both inspiration and practical advice to teachers, had a real impact on the daily life of the
schoolmore than Tolstoy in the seventies, perhaps more than such better-known figures
as Pobedonostsev and Dewey. It was the handbooks (spravochniki) and schedule organizers
(rukovodstva) published in many editions by innovative, but lesser-known educators such
as Baron Nikolai Korf, K. V. El'nitskii, M. I. Demkov, A. I. Anastasiev, and N. F. Bunakov
that were utilized at teachers seminaries and summer courses. Confronted with the pressing
problem of successfully organizing so many boys and girls aged eight to fourteen into three
smoothly functioning groups, and doing so with limited resources, teachers and
administrators relied heavily upon such tools to achieve their goals.
20
Space allows only a brief discussion of one Handbook which helped shaped the zemstvo
school and cast its shadow over half a century of Russian education.
21
Although Konstantin
17
Trudy pervogo s''ezda deiatelei po narodnomu obrazovaniiu v Moskovskom uezdnom zemstve (713 aprelia,
1914 goda) (Moscow, 1916), esp. 16268, 55255. See also Petrov, Zemskaia nachal'naia skhola, throughout
for comments upon the impact of the exams, and his earlier discussion in Voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia
1:3091.
18
Petrov, Voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia 4:87 and 27; Trudy pervogo s''ezda deiatelei ... v Moskovskom
uezdnom zemstve (1914), 55861.
19
For a recent, post-Soviet treatment of the two streams of pedagogy in late Imperial Russia see the preface
to B. V. Emel'ianov and V. V. Kulikov, Pedagogicheskaia mysl' Rossii vtoroi poloviny XIXnachala XX vv.:
Bibliograficheskoe posobie (Chita, 1999), 39.
20
The hagiography surrounding Lenins father, the school director of Simbirsk province, by provoking the
skepticism of many Western scholars, has obscured the fact that indeed many education officials were highly
educated and dedicated civil servants. In Viatka province two notable school directors pursued a progressive
pedagogy while simultaneously complying with demands to dismiss, arrest, and exile teachers suspected of
revolutionary activities. One, A. Krasev (trained by Ulianov in Simbirsk), made copious comments on the
margins of reports by the inspectors under his supervision; these private comments made evident his sharp eye
for school realities, and his determination to humanize the classroom environment. The second, A. I. Anastasiev,
published a handbook which was widely employed and enjoyed multiple editions. See Anastasiev, Narodnaia
shkola: Rukovdostvo dlia uchitelei i uchitelnits narodnykh shkol, 2 vols., 7th ed. (Moscow, 1910). Other
major handbooks included N. Verigin, V pomoshch' uchashchim v nachal'nykh narodnykh uchilishchakh, 5th
ed. (Moscow, 1915); A. Lebedev, Shkolnoe delo, 2 vols. (Moscow, 190911); N. V. Tulupov and P. M. Shestakov,
Prakticheskaia shkolnaia entsiklopediia (Moscow 1912); and Derkachev, Kak shkolu postroit i ustroit (Moscow,
1872).
21
M. I. Demkov, Nachal'naia narodnaia shkola, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1916), 83.
Ushinskii was perhaps the founder of Russian pedagogy, it was a follower of his, Baron
Korf, who had the greatest impact on the village school in the half-century after the
Emancipation.
22
Working with children in the (conveniently named) village of Neskuchnoe
(Ekaterinoslav), Korf devised a schedule and program for a three-year school run by one
teacher which served as the prototype of the zemstvo school. Korf also produced a reader
for the primary school, Nash drug, which sold over 250,000 copies in his lifetime alone
and was meant to replace Detskii mir, the companion volume to Ushinskiis famous Rodnoe
slovo. Its material was designed for the peasant child rather than the urban pupil, in that it
dealt with agriculture, natural history, and subjects of rural byt rather than presenting primarily
tales and fables, with secondary attention to the natural world.
23
Korfs approach to teaching peasants can perhaps be described as pragmatic idealism.
His writing is matter-of-fact, and down to earth. His Handbook directly confronts rural
poverty and ignorance as major obstacles to schooling and reveals a man aware of the need
to set limited goals.
24
For example, conceding that villagers saw no need to educate girls,
he recommended, against his own convictions, that schools be initially established mainly
for boys. Arguing that the poor results achieved by pre-Emancipation schools, in which
semiliterate sextons or retired soldiers had sometimes failed to produce even a single literate
over the course of a winter, had made the population distrustful of education (attendance
was often seen as a natura'lnaia povinnost'), he urged that educators not seek to expand
schooling too rapidly, but to concentrate instead upon achieving solid results in villages
where peasants had already demonstrated initiative by opening schools. Recognizing that
opportunity costs would not permit many parents to keep their children in school for the
full three-year course, he organized his schedule so each year would offer a complete cycle
of learning for pupils.
Korf was one of many Russian educators, including the prominent Church teacher
Rachinskii and the Viatka school director A. Krasev (see below), who spoke glowingly of
the wonder and enthusiasm manifested by small children when they first crossed the threshold
of the school. And he was determined to nurture rather than suppress this spontaneous joy.
He believed strongly in the new discipline and stated that the aim of school discipline was
not to punish but to prevent misbehavior (preduprezhdat', a ne karat'). The widely
documented harsh, even punitive practices of recent times had to go; students so liked the
combination of warmth and order (laska i poriadok) he introduced that they could scarcely
wait until the school doors opened and then stayed as late as possible. The teacher was to
reward achievement and encourage slow learners, but order also had to be maintained,
largely through a carefully arranged schedule which kept all pupils engaged at all times
(with suitable breaks) and through monitors, who could help both instruct and supervise.
22
Ososkov, Nachal'noe narodnoe obrazovanie, 6267, Piskunov, Ocherki istorii shkoly, 31319. On Korf
see Charles Timberlake, N. A. Korf, 18351883: Designer of the Russian Elementary School Classroom, in
Schooling and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia, ed. Ben Eklof (London, 1993), 1235; and L. P. Mikhailov,
Pedagogicheskaia deiatel'nost' i pedagogicheskie vzgliady N. N. Korfa (Moscow, 1955).
23
By the 1890s Nash drug had entirely fallen out of favor, as readers gave increasing space to fables, fiction,
and fancy rather than hygiene, account keeping, and legal documents (Demkov, Nachal'naia narodnaia shkola,
140).
24
See the excellent, though brief, comments by Brooks in When Russia Learned to Read, 5154.
Pupils were to rise when the teacher entered the classroom, raise their hands for permission
to speak, and file out row by row, in prearranged sequence. Quiet was the order of the day,
yet lessons were also to be fun, guaranteed by the teachers enthusiasm and the intrinsic
interest of the material presented. It would, however, take time before the elders in the
village would accept the new discipline, for they were suspicious of schools which drew
enthusiastic pupils, as well as the notion of combining work with fun.
25
Korf sought to achieve a balance in approach between cramming the schedule with
information and stimulating curiosity. He believed that the schools mission was to provide
a general education; in an oft-quoted statement he asserted that the public school is not for
preparing craftsmen or agriculturalists, but molding people, therefore it must provide not a
vocational but the general primary education which every person needs regardless of the
path fate chooses for him.
26
He felt that upon leaving school the pupil should be able to
read both expressively and with comprehension (the ability to read and summarize in ones
own words an unfamiliar text), be familiar with literary language (knizhnyi iazyk), be able
to formulate his own thoughts on paper without gross mistakes in spelling or grammar, be
able to draw up letters and documents, to solve simple problems in computation, read
maps, and know mechanical drawing.
Korf was a firm advocate of the phonics method and believed that reading and writing
should be taught simultaneously, and within three months of first enrollment.
27
He was
skeptical of the value of explanatory readings (ob''iastelnoe chtenie), which with visual
education (nagliadnost') became key elements of the curriculum in the second half of the
nineteenth century (in opposition to the alphabet method and rote instruction). Though a
firm supporter of nagliadnost', he believed that conditions were too constricting, the
curriculum too crowded, and teachers too ill-prepared to permit significant deviations from
a set schedule, or pauses for the free exchange of ideas. In the Handbook, Korf cautions
against teaching grammar in the schools, not because he was a follower of Tolstoyan free
education, but because time was so short and so few teachers had fully mastered the rules
of grammar themselves.
28
Thus Korf occupied a middle ground between Tolstoyan advocates and these
propounding more formal ways of organizing the classroom. Despite the fact that explanatory
readings and visual approaches were broadly integrated into the curriculum by his successors,
his pragmatism is what gave his Handbook such wide appeal, and the examples he provided
of a tightly organized schedule alternating supervised and unsupervised classroom exercises
for three groups provided direction for later generations.
Korf argued vociferously for the inclusion of information on agriculture, history, and
geography as well as language and literature (which N. Bunakov, in a series of famous
25
After Korf, many studies showed that peasants disliked readers which included fables and fairy tales, or
instruction structured to resemble games.
26
Baron N. Korf, Russkaia nachal'naia shkola: Rukovodstvo dlia zemskikh glasnykh i uchitelei selskoi
shkoly (St. Petersburg, 1870), 62.
27
Korf rejected, however, the method introduced by Zolotov, the analytic in favor of the synthetic: that
is, from sound (syllable) to word, and not the reverse.
28
Korf, Russkaia nachal'naia shkola, 16468. This is a cursory summary of his lengthy discussion on
methods (ibid., 61236).
lectures, argued should be the core of the program). Attacked for promoting materialism
and irreligion, he replied that to deny the use of the natural sciences to the peasantry
means that it is useful to let people believe that our planet stands on a whale, that thunder is
a noise produced by a chariot.
29
Yet Korf was not opposed to religious instruction in the classroom (an issue that sharply
divided progressive and conservative educators in the corridors of power in St. Petersburg).
On several occasions he observed that peasants preferred learning to read in Church Slavonic
to modern Russian; he and many others testified also to the wild popularity of choir among
peasant children. He argued that Bible instruction should place more attention on the New
Testament, which would help shed meaning on religious rituals unthinkingly carried out
by the peasants, and that pupils should not only learn the historical events depicted in the
Bible as well as the details of the life of Christ but also be engaged in discussion of vital
moral issues.
Korf was aware of what we today call the hidden curriculum of education: The
school, in a whole series of exercises ... helps promote will-power, respect for others, a
sense of self-worth, and regard for the law.
30
But it was also important that the school
offer important practical advantages. The ability to read the law and understand his rights
and obligations would relieve the literate peasant of the annoying expenses connected with
hiring someone else to draw up or read letters and documents. And while literacy would
allow the peasant to travel more freely and securely, Korf did not treat schooling as a way
out of the village, or a source of social mobility.
Perhaps Korfs greatest contribution was to take a hard look at village culture, set a
reasonable agenda, and provide a schedule allowing for step-by-step progress through the
school year, over the course of three winters, with demonstrable results.
31
His Russian
Primary School: A Handbook (1870) went through over two dozen editions by the turn of
the century, and selections for it were included in Demkovs authoritative textbook for
teachers seminaries in which the author comments that Korfs views still merited the utmost
attention.
32
Rare was the teacher who had not come into contact with his ideas and
program.
33
An entire cottage industry of handbooks for teachers emerged in the next
generation, along with over 150 journals devoted to pedagogy. While many of his tenets
were modified, and many rural schools expanded the program to four years, adding a second
teacher, his instrumentation of the pedagogy of simultaneous instruction of multiple groups
of pupils, relying upon both persuasion and structure, remained the core of the Russian
school program.
29
Nicholas Hans, The Russian Tradition in Education (New York, 1964), 147. For Korfs comments on
discipline see Korf, Russkaia nachal'naia shkola, 7592.
30
Korf, Russkaia nachal'naia shkola, 64.
31
For his schedule see ibid., Appendix, pp. 3173.
32
M. N. Demkov, Nachal'naia narodnaia skhola: Eia istoriia, didaktika i metodika, 2nd ed. (Moscow,
1916).
33
Ososkov, Nachal'noe narodnoe obrazovanie, 6277; Piskunov, Ocherki istorii shkoly, 1319. The church
school historian Sokolov called Korfs work the handbook of the zemstvo activist but also noted the influence
of Korf on how parish schools were run (Istoricheskii ocherk, 153).
THE SCHOOL CYCLE
According to the Model Program, the school year was to last 163 days; in reality in the
villages schools met for 150 days on average. School doors opened on September 15, but
many children remained at home to work on the farm until early or mid-October. Absenteeism
and school closings could be severely disruptive, especially when teachers were dealing
with three classes simultaneously and following tightly regimented schedules. One of the
most difficult goals to attain, in a school with one teacher and three sections, V. V. Petrov
noted in the 1890s,
is the maintenance of a uniform level of knowledge and skills among all pupils in
a grade. This ... permits the teacher, according to Ushinskys phrase to work
with his class, as one works with a responsive and well-tuned instrument. Thus,
the student who misses a few days holds back the entire class.
34
Moreover, most children failed to complete the full three grades of the primary school.
Approximately one child in three who enrolled actually completed the program and received
a certificate of graduation. Those who did complete the program generally took almost
four years to do so; the two thirds who dropped out stayed for over two years on average,
most leaving at some point in the second or third grade, many having repeated a grade
before doing so.
35
So, the length of stay in school was generally abbreviated. But during
this time, were interruptions, whether in terms of individual absenteeism or of school closures,
a major disruption of this tightly regimented regime?
In fact, despite occasional conflict, the school adjusted to the seasonality of village
life by accommodating its schedule. Because schools largely shed the urban sense of time
and dressed in village garb, they were able to become an integral part of village culture,
and to extract a remarkable high daily attendance level from those enrolled. The actual
experience of schooling for most children was surprisingly intense, sustained, and continuous;
the evidence for this is quite dramatic.
Teachers adjusted to the farm cycle by using the first month to work intensively with
the first gradechildren too young to work at home and needing help learning the rudiments.
Once schools were at full muster, they seldom closed their doors until May or June. (there
were week-long vacations for Christmas and for Easter). In every year over a four-year
period (188993) in Moscow province, only 3 percent of zemstvo schools were forced to
close for three days or more at a stretch, and more often than not it was because of epidemics
of contagious diseases, or because the teacher was ill.
36
Another study, conducted in
191314, showed that in a school year averaging 165 days (1,282 schools) only 2,737 days
were lost because of illness, repairs, or weather. Village holidays accounted for another
34
Petrov, Voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia 1:144. For other local studies see Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools,
571 n.20. This section of the article summarizes material examined at length in ibid., 31531.
35
Nachal'noe obrazovanie v Iaroslavskoi gubernii po svedeniiam za 18961897 uchebnyi god (Moscow,
1902), 3031, 9496. For similar information on students in thirty-four provinces see also Pervyi obshchezemskii
se''zd po narodnomu obrazovaniiu, vol. 6, Svodka svedenii (Moscow, 1912), Section 1A, pp. 2627.
36
Petrov, Voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia 1:141.
2,326 days. Thus, an average of 3.3 days were lost, or 2 percent of the school calendar
year. So, once the school year had begun, the continuity of lessons was seldom broken.
Moreover, daily attendance was strikingly high. The impression one gains from
memoirs and impressionistic descriptions of school life is that absenteeism was pervasive.
Yet all attempts to quantify lead to a different conclusion. A detailed study conducted in
Moscow province(189195) showed that in a school year lasting 160 days the typical boy
missed 7.4 percent of the school year, and the typical girl 6.7 percent. Information from
other, more rural districts showed that absenteeism averaged significantly less than 10 percent
of the calendar year. More than a decade later, the 1911 School Census of the entire empire
revealed that in on January 18, in the depth of winter, 6.7 percent of enrolled village children
were not in class.
37
In short, once enrolled, Russian school children came to school with
striking persistence, despite cold, snow, and the lack of warm clothing.
Russian rural schools generally met six days a week (usually meeting for a half day on
Saturday.) Throughout the country educators complained about the abnormal length of the
school day. The Model Program required at least 4 to 4.5 hours of class time each day, but
in Kursk (1905) only 27 percent of schools kept to this minimum; 49 percent met from 5 to
6 hours, and 25 percent more than 6 hours. In Pskov, the average number of weekly school
hours was 2633 for basic subjects, with 4 to 5 hours more for supplementary courses
(choir, draftsmanship, needlepoint). In addition, 33 percent of zemstvo schools held evening
classes. In Kursk, three in four schools spent between 30 and 42 hours a week on class
lessons alone, but 96 percent also gave substantial amounts of homework. N. Bratchikov,
who spent his life teaching in Viatka, wrote:
How does the length of the school day affect children? The pupils get up with the
dawn and hurry to school by seven or eight in the morning. To avoid being late
they often show up ahead of time, but in many schools the doors remained closed.
Classes begin from eight to nine and continue to three or even to four. During
this time the meal, especially for those who come from other villages, consists
exclusively of bread washed down with water. Only in the spring after Easter do
eggs and milk appear, and in the fall turnips and carrots. Returning home between
3:30 and 4:00 in the afternoon, many pupils are faced with a walk of three and a
half to four versts. When they arrive it is already dark; but then they have to
prepare their lessons. Perhaps the fact that so many children leave school before
completion can be explained by the combination of a heavy school work load and
a subsistence diet of bread and water only. After all, children arent entirely
inured to hardship.
38
In response to these difficult situations, many schools had launched modest school
breakfast programs by 1914 (before then, wealthy benefactors sometimes supplied food).
In addition, it was a widespread practice, particularly in the north, for children to remain at
the school overnight, often for the entire week (some remarkable descriptions of life in
such schools have survived). Consider the impact such schools must have had upon children,
37
Ibid. 1:14445; Odnodnevnaia perepis' 16:65.
38
For the studies cited, and for the quotation, see N. Bratchikov, Uchebno-vospitatel'naia chast' nachal'noi
shkoly, Russkaia shkola, 1909, no. 1:11015.
living away from their families and the village, in protracted contact with a teacher outsider
and with their peers of both sexes, sometimes from scattered villages.
39
TIMETABLES FOR THE SCHOOL
What could be achieved in the brief two to three years children spent in school? As some
educators lamented at the time, the teacher working in isolation with three groups could
realistically engage only one group at a time; thus pupils were actively educated not for
three but for one year (that is, one third of the time in school). Clearly Baranov and Bunakov
disagreed, believing that much could be achieved, given a properly integrated schedule.
In Russia in the 1880s, most teachers were dealing with 40 to 50 pupils in a single-
room schoolhouse. In the following decades, despite the rapid expansion of schooling, this
ratio changed little. The 1911 School Census showed that the average zemstvo school
teacher was working with 41 pupils, the church school teacher with 43. But some progress
was being made; even though the teacher-pupil ratio remained stable, many teachers were
now dealing with only two classes, and had less material to cover in those two years. Thus,
by 1911 over a fourth of all rural schools offered a four-year course, and in all but a fraction
(4 percent) of such schools there were at least two teachers. Moreover, in another third of
all three-year schools, a second teacher had been added. Besides reducing the isolation of
teachers, and providing a substitute in the event of illness, this could only have improved
the quality of instruction.
40
At the same time, a small minority of teachers continued to
work in truly desperate circumstances, responsible for up to 75 pupils in 4 grades (Moscow
district), or for 120 pupils in 3 grades (Mogilev province). What follows, then, is a
description of a schedule designed to fit the situation confronting most teachers in the
half century following the Emancipation, but applicable only to just under a half (47 percent)
in 1911.
Whether dealing with two, three, or four sections, teachers were preoccupied with the
problem of how to coordinate multiple sections, and educators kept busy with plans and
suggestions on how best to squeeze the appropriate material into the proper time slots
while retaining a modicum of sanity. In his Handbook Korf included a detailed daily plan
to help teacher with three grades make it through the week, but similar plans drawn up later
by Baranov and Bunakov undoubtably enjoyed more widespread use in village schools.
41
The options open to the teacher were limited. The two extremes, working directly with
three sections simultaneously, or working with one section alone, were employed only
occasionally. Thus, Bunakov suggested that all sections could be simultaneously engaged
39
Ibid., 115.
40
Odnodnevnaia perepis' nachal'nykh shkol Rossiiskoi Imperii, vol. 16 (St. Petersburg 1916), 60. For further
discussion, and data, see me Russian Peasant Schools, 3037.
41
A. Baranov, Podrobnyi plan zaniatii v nachal'noi narodnoi shkol (Tver', 1879); N. Bunakov, Dnevnik
nachal'noi obshcheobrazovatelnoi shkoly (St. Petersburg, 1882). See also the works of Cherepanov and Veselov
in the Soviet era. Baranov was an inspector of schools in Moscow province with close ties to high officials in
the Ministry of Education. His widely used textbook was heavily promoted by the ministry as a replacement
for Ushinskiis very popular Rodnoe slovo, which it had withdrawn from its list of approved textbooks. Bunakov
was a prominent liberal educator best known for his heated public debates in the 1870s with Lev Tolstoy about
the best way to teach literacy. In 1904, Bunakov was sent into internal exile and forbidden to teach.
in discussing a single topic at different levels of complexity. For example, the entire school
could be shown a picture, the lower section then required to name the object, the middle to
describe their reactions to it, and the upper to write a brief composition on it. Bunakov
objected to leaving a group to its own devices for an entire period, pointing out that pupils
could seldom occupy themselves productively that long. Baranov, on the other hand, argued
strenuously against Bunakovs plan to engage all three sections simultaneously with the
teacher, calling it artificial and unfeasible. Baranov argued that, given sufficient preparation
and clear instructions at the beginning of the period, pupils could keep fruitfully busy for
the entire period. Moreover, in every period of direct interaction with one group there
would be momentary pauses, when the teacher could check up on the other two grades.
Both authors found acceptable an approach according to which teachers spent some periods
working alternately with each group: in breaks with one group, during which the pupils of
that group would prepare answers to questions posed or reflect upon a topic, the teacher
could turn to other sections to activate work, deal with slower pupils, or correct ongoing
written work. Baranov noted the difficulties of this approach, including the brevity of time
allocated to each group, fragmentation, and difficulty of coordination, but felt it would
work adequately with timed writing exercises (v takt) when the entire period was too long
for such tedious tasks.
Both Baranov and Bunakov argued that the necessity of independent work was in fact
a virtue. Like homework in urban schools, it helped pupils review new material and taught
initiative. (Baranov and many other educators felt that in peasant communities homework
assignments were pointless: conditions at homesuch as crowding, noise, absence of light
by which to readmade it impossible for the pupil to concentrate.) To Bunakov, work in
silence (vtikhomolku) taught concentration and helped provide the tools for the transition
from guided instruction to self-education. This, after all, was the goal of education; given
the brevity of the school program, it was better to teach how to learn rather than to cram
facts into the school day. Such views, of course, adumbrated those of John Dewey, whose
work was first translated into Russian in 1908.
Bunakov worked out his schedule at a number of teachers seminars he led (such
seminars were an important side of the educational landscape in late Imperial Russia), and
he modified them on the basis of comments from thousands of teacher-participants who
had practical experience in the schools (Tables 2 and 3). This schedule indicates that
teachers could indeed work productively with three sections. In Bunakovs calculations,
this meant in reality that the teacher had, after 4 hours of Bible each week, 66 lessons
(72 in the second half of the year) to plan and conduct. With his schedule, 30 lessons
(36 in the second half) would be spent in independent workan average of 10 per group
the remainder face to face with the teacher. To be sure, disease, whether it struck the
teacher (who belonged to a profession with the highest mortality rate of any) or the pupils,
could wreak havoc in the classroom, as we shall see shortly. Moreover, a high degree of
coordination, not to mention sheer talent, was required to keep the classes working together,
and extremely little time could be devoted to individual pupils during scheduled classes.
In fact, the entire system left little room for individualization, the core of progressive
pedagogy. Yet it is noteworthy that educators, in some cases basing their schedules on the
direct, collective teaching experience of hundreds of fellow teachers meeting in summer
courses, felt that the situation was by no means hopeless. Moreover, few schools actually
followed a rigid segregation of grades. First, the schedule changed as the year proceeded,
with more attention to the lower section at the beginning (as the ABCs were mastered), and
a greater focus on the upper section as the spring exams approached. In some schools
younger children had a shorter school day; thus teachers were working for part of the day
with only two grades. In addition, the most popular schedules included many hours weekly
in which the teacher worked simultaneously with two sections, leaving only one on its own.
For example, in Bunakovs schedule 10 hours of the 24-hour week were allocated to work
simultaneously with the middle and upper sections. Finally, whatever the schedules, it was
a fact that Bible lessons were almost always taught simultaneously to all three classes
(reducing the time the priest had to spend in school). This, parenthetically, significantly
reduced the proportion of the school week actually devoted to religious topics (a very
contentious issue for secular educators).
TABLE 2 Weekly Schedule: Lower Section
Subject 1st half of year 2nd half of year
Visual education (nagliadnye besedy) 6 6
Timed writing with teacher (v takt) 2 2
Arithmetic with teacher 2 2
Independent work (vtikhomolku) 4 10
Total 14 20
*In Bunakovs view this did not necessarily mean pupils directly engaged with the teachers were working at the same
subject. Thus for two hours, reading in the middle section would be combined with arithmetic in the upper, for two hours
weekly the topics for these two grades would be reversed; twice a week reading and writing would be taught simultaneously,
and so on.
TABLE 3 Weekly Schedule: Middle and Upper Sections
Nagliadnye besedy, history, and geography 2 hours
Reading with teacher 4 (3 in combined class)
Writing with teacher 2 in combined class
Grammar 3
Arithmetic with teacher 3
Independent reading and work 13
Total 26
It remains now to find out what use teachers made of their time, and what textbooks
and readers made up the content of education.
HOW THEY WERE TAUGHT
How, then, did teachers actually arrange their daily schedules? Several studies, conducted
at the turn of the century and for the Zemstvo Education Congress of 1911, indicate that
most teachers set their priorities to meet the demands of the certification exams conducted
in May and June. An investigation of 482 zemstvo, 392 church, and 226 literacy schools in
Vladimir province in 1898 (one year after promulgation of the Model Program) concluded
that an inordinate amount of time, particularly in the upper division, was spent on grammar,
spelling, and dictation. The actual distribution of time in the classroom in rural schools can
be seen in Table 4.
42
TABLE 4 Vladimir Schools: Time Allocation 1898 (1100 schools) (as percentage)
Type of School Zemstvo Church
Grade First Second Third First Second Third
Bible 13.5 12 13 21.5 20 26
Church Slavonic 1 11 11.5 6.5 13 13
Reading
With teacher 19 13 12 17 14 12
Solitary 8 11 8.5 8 8 7
Grammar 9 17 23 3 10 13
Penmanship/Spelling 21 12 8 16 10 8
Arithmetic 22 19 19 19 18 18
Singing 1 1 1 9.5 9 9
Total Hours 24.5 28 28 27 30 29
The investigators complained that as the child proceeded through the school the amount
of contact time with the teachers dropped. Thus, the hours spent on explanatory reading
dropped from 4.7 in the first grade to 3.4 in the third. Moreover, as the exam date approached
more and more time was given over to grammar (from 2.2 hours to 6.5 hours in zemstvo
schools, from .8 hours to 3.8 hours in church schools). The investigators concluded that
the whole system of instruction is based upon the principle of mechanical mastery of
certain rules and skills according to the following formula: learn the rules, and apply them
in the following cases. When asked upon what subject the most attention was lavished in
the senior division, teachers typically replied, Most of all, we spend time on dictation,
grammar and arithmetic.
43
Vladimir teachers were clearly frustrated that they were spending too much time on
grammar, spelling, and mindfracturing math problems at the expense of readings,
discussions, and other activities to stimulate creative thought and curiosity. Their belief
that the schools were wasting much precious time is best expressed in Table 5.
TABLE 5 Performance of the Schools, Vladimir 1898
To what subject is the most attention given? Which is the best mastered?
Which is the first forgotten? (Total responses: Zemstvo (481/258/327); Church (469/234/242)
Most Effort Best Mastered First Forgotten
Zemstvo Church Zemstvo Church Zemstvo Church
Bible 3 20 27 46 0.5 2
Church Slavonic 1 4 10.5 14.5 2 1
Explanatory Reading 9 10 29 20.5 0.3 2
Grammar 57 45 4 3 79 71
Penmanship 1 1 1 4 0 2
Arithmetic 29 21 29 12 14 23
42
Sbornik statisticheskikh i spravochnykh svedenii po narodnomu obrazovaniiu vo Vladimirskoi gubernii,
6 vols. (Vladimir, 18991902), 1:213.
43
Ibid., 215. See also the comments in ibid., 21517. In dictation, the prevailing demand was for the pupil
to be able to write eighteen lines or so with no more than one or two mistakes.
V. V. Petrovs thorough study of Moscow province depicted similar conditions. In a
detailed examination of zemstvo reports, school board documents, and inspections, whose
conclusions he compared with similar studies from Tavrida, Orel, Kaluga, Tambov, and
other provinces, Petrov considered the time allocated, approaches used, and results achieved
in each major subject. Moreover, for Moscow province he was able to use studies conducted
in 1894 as well as 1902 (both before and after implementation of the 1897 Program) to
discover remarkable continuity in school routines. He observed that in the primary schools
of Moscow province attention and effort are focused most of all on teaching children to
write with proper grammar and how to solve math problems.
44
As for the world view of
the pupil, one teacher explained that the level of knowledge in history, geography, hygiene,
agriculture, and natural science is limited to the material in the readers available to the
school, and conveyed only during explanatory reading lessons.
45
A decade later, in 1911,
little seemed to have changed. When asked on what subjects they spent the most time,
13,784 teachers replied (in a study carried out for the zemstvo congress): grammar and
spelling 80.6 percent; explanatory reading 30.5 percent; Bible 7.9 percent; arithmetic
15.7 percent; and oral and written exposition 4.7 percent. The range of variation was low
from province to province for most subjects; the exception was explanatory reading from
53 percent in Bessarabia and 45 percent in Vologda to 18 percent in Orel.
46
Finally, a convention of teachers from Moscow district in 1914 concluded that little
had changed for the better since 1901, the date of a similar gathering.
As earlier, the mechanical assimilation of prepackaged knowledge is foremost.
This is achieved by reliance upon books, mechanical skills of writing, reading,
and computation. Over the course of 5 to 6 hours children write uniform
compositions and dictation, dolefully (zaunyvno) respond to stereotypical
questions, memorize ... sweat over grammar and over complicated, contrived
math problems, and then return to their crowded, noisy peasant huts, to continue
with the same dreary manipulations.
47
Thus, there is abundant testimony that a formal, content-oriented, and skill-mastery approach
to basic school prevailed, that exit examinations and program requirements determined
how time was allotted, and that many national educators were unhappy with this picture.
DISCIPLINE AND MOTIVATION
But was the school day such an oppressive experience for children? One might conclude
so after reading the preceding surveys. Yet Korf certainly did not think so. And the portrait
44
Petrov, Voprosy narodnogo obrazovaniia 4:31.
45
Cited in Ibid., 48. See also ibid. 1:4041, 7385. A particularly rich source on the curriculum is a
questionnaire given to over two hundred teachers who had gathering for a summer refresher course in Viatka in
1900. The questionnaire covered all aspects of the curriculum as well as teaching methods and discipline, and
contains a rich body of qualitative insights on schooling. See GAKO, f. 616, op. 5, ed. khr. 5255 (Anketa
uchashchim).
46
Pervyi obshchezemskii s''ezd po narodnomu obrazovaniiu, vol. 5, Anketa uchashchim s''ezda, 4360,
esp. 43. The figure for arithmetic is substantially understated, for the compilers of the study sheepishly admitted
they had neglected to include it in the list of subjects on the questionnaire.
47
Trudy pervogo s''ezda deiatelei ... v Moskovskom uezdnom zemstve (1914), 45.
of doleful, browbeaten children is contradicted by the abundant references in teachers
memoirs and inspectors reports to the enthusiasm with which peasant children came to
school, and the love they retained for schooling. True, inspectors would have won no
accolades for uncovering dirt, squalor, abusive relations, chaos, or failure in their own
districts. True also, teachers were sometimes unduly influenced by populist sentiments
(they often contrasted rural and urban youththe latter inevitably unruly and depraved).
Yet many teachers depictions of radiant youth were written after years, often decades, of
hard work in difficult and trying conditions in the villages.
48
It is one thing to think of urban
youth marching into the village to pay back a debt of conscience to the narod; it is quite
another to dismiss as populist naivete the nearly uniform tone of veteran teachers accounts
marveling at the pliability and curiosity of village children. As for inspectors, the very
willingness of many in their ranks to point out deficiencies in reports to their superiors,
even occasionally to depict atrocious conditions, convinced me of the authenticity and
balanced nature of their evaluations. And a survey of former school-children ten years
after leaving behind their school desks conducted in 1886 by Krasev, then school inspector
from Simbirsk, found that most former pupils remembered their school years with great
affection.
49
Later, as director of schools for Viatka province, Krasev wrote movingly of his
observations of impoverished school children arriving at school full of curiosity and eager
to explore the world. For the most part, he argued, on the basis of hundreds of visitations,
childrens love of schooling only grew as time passed.
50
My own investigation of unpublished inspectors annual reports in Vologda, Iaroslavl',
and especially Viatka, where I also looked at write-ups of individual school visits written
immediately afterwards as well as annual reports, convinced me that when visiting schools,
many inspectors were concerned far more that pupils were mastering basic skills, logical
processes, and knowledge than in producing little automatons. The words expressiveness
and comprehension, and the phrase sequence of thoughts crop up over and over in
such reports. Likewise, G. I. Chernov, a teacher from Vladimir writing in Soviet times,
recalled that in his province teachers did not follow the program faithfully, but altered and
broadened the course of instruction. Those more progressive gave children certain
information about the world (mirovedenie), some Russian history, and acquainted them
with maps as well as with natural history. Though some teachers relied upon zubre''zhka,
many others were enthusiasts who concentrated upon expressive reading, a conscious
48
Teachers memoirs are legion. For a sample, see the incomplete list in Zaionchkovskiis guide: Istoriia
dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii v dnevnikakh i vospominaniiakh (Annotirovannyi ukazatel' knig i publikatsii v
zhurnalakh), comp. G. A. Glavatskikh, 5 vols. in 13 (Moscow, 1976-89). See also Ben Eklof and Scott Seregny,
Teachers in Russia: State, Community, and Profession, in Educational Reform in Post-Soviet Russia: Legacies
and Prospects, ed. Ben Eklof et al. (London, 2005), 197220.
49
A. Krasev, Chto daet krest'ianinu nachal'naia narodnaia shkola (Simbirsk, 1887), esp. 2073. Krasev is
especially credible, because as a school director supervising eleven inspectors in Viatka province at the turn of
the century, his comments on the margins of their annual reports are unfailingly insightful, and often bitingly
caustic when he suspected inspectors were ill-informed or covering up deficiencies in the schools (GAKO, f.
205, op. 5, ed. khr. 2316).
50
A. Krasev, Nachal'nye narodnye uchilishcha v Viatskoi gubernii (17861898) (Viatka, 1900). Comments
about childrens enthusiasm also pop up frequently in dry zemstvo annual surveys. See, for example, N. V.
Iatsevich, ed., Nachal'noe narodnoe obrazovanie v Poltavskoi gubernii (Poltava, 1894), 21.
attitude to learning, a consistent summary of what children read, the use of visual aids, and
a focus on practical problems. In 1910 between 2528 percent of all schools in Vladimir
province offered regular instruction in geography and history in the first three or four grades.
51
Another glance at the 1911 Zemstvo Congress data reminds us that while much attention
was given to grammar and spelling, a significant minority of teachers allocated a good
portion of the day to explanatory readings (the time spent on explanatory readings serves
as a good proxy for the approach pursued in the classroom as a whole.)
Consider, too, the question of discipline. From the time of Korf, most educators had
been vehemently opposed to corporal punishment or humiliation of the pupil.
52
Official
inspectors reports, both church and secular, show at least a perfunctory, and often a serious
concern for the humane treatment of children. Of course, it is difficult to believe that harsh
measures had been everywhere eradicated by the turn of the century. First, given prevailing
notions among educators as well as Ministry of Education and Holy Synod injunctions to
eschew punishment, those who used the rod were likely to conceal their actions as best they
could. Also, outsiders observed high levels of interpersonal violence in the peasant family
and village, along with harsh disciplinary practices. Many parents encouraged the teacher
not to spare the rod.
53
But in a summary of an exhaustive investigation of schools in the empire conducted in
the 1890s, a prominent education official, Vl. Farmakovskii, concluded that corporal
punishment has been extirpated everywhere, with the exception of standing on ones knees
for a half hour to one hour, a practice employed widely.
54
Likewise, a detailed survey of
more than two hundred experienced teachers taking part in refresher summer courses in
Viatka in 1901 inquired of teachers responses to mischievous and miscreant pupils. Almost
without exception teachers, most of whom were women, made two points: first, corporal
punishment was entirely unacceptable; and, second, that the breakdown of classroom
discipline, whether involving individual pupils or the entire class, was the fault of the teacher,
not the pupil. Perhaps what teachers professed did not always match what they practiced,
but at the very least this survey demonstrates the pervasiveness of a pedagogy which believed
in the intrinsic good of children, and the goal of inspiring rather than punishing children.
55
51
G. I. Chernov, Stranitsy proshlogo: Iz istorii dorevoliutsionnoi shkoly Vladimirskoi gubernii (Vladimir,
1970).
52
The 1862 draft education statute (the actual Statute was promulgated in 1864) outlawed all corporal
punishment, but when circulated to British and German educators, the response was overwhelmingly negative.
53
The prominent educator N. Iordanskii published a survey revealing harsh peasant disciplinary practices
(Byt i semeinnye usloviia zhizni shkol'nikov v Nizhnom Novgorode [Nizhnii-Novgorod, 1907], 19). A Church
school historian wrote in 1909 that peasants often complained of lax discipline in the schools and urged the
schools to instill ostrasku (Istoricheskii ocherk, 225). According to Catriona Kelly, by all accounts corporal
punishment persisted among working class and peasant families well into the 1970s (Childrens World: Growing
up in Russia, 18901991 [New Haven, 2007], 391).
54
Vl. Farmakovskii, Nachal'naia shkola MNP, Russkaia shkola, 1899, no. 78:179. According to the survey,
other disciplinary measures used included warnings and reprimands (vygovory i zamechaniia), separation
(pomeshchenie za otdelnyi stul), expulsion from the classroom, and deprivation of the right to play during
recess. Everywhere, too, the old method of detention after class for thirty minutes to two hours (during which
the pupil was expected to do homework) was practiced. As a last resort, teachers sent warnings to parents,
reduced grades, and suspended students. In six locations, primarily in Siberia, some schools maintained isolation
cells (kartser) where pupils could be kept on bread and water for up to four hours.
55
GAKO, f. 616, op. 5, ed. khr. 5254 (Anketa, question 17, ll 16255).
It also suggests that Korfs goal of laska i poriadok was somehow being realized, as rigorous
schedules were being imposed, but children were being treated humanely.
56
TEXTBOOKS
For better or worse, textbooks have always been part and parcel of schooling, and the
Russian primary school was no exception. The impression we have of Russian and Soviet
education is one of centralization and uniformity, including close control over the selection
of textbooks. It comes as a surprise then, to learn that a rich variety of textbooks were in
currency. A perusal of zemstvo yearbooks, inspectors reports, and specialized surveys of
textbooks in use in this or that district shows that from roughly 1880 until 1914 no single
reader dominated the schools in any large area.
57
Selection of textbooks was guided by the
official list of approved books put out by the Textbook Committee of the Ministry of
Education and by the Holy Synod. But the lists were often so out of date that school boards
and zemstvo commissions (which often supplied the textbooks) selected instead from those
readers favorably reviewed in such influential compendia as Alchevskaias Chto chitat
narodu, or the multivolume surveys put out by the Imperial Free Economic Society.
58
Even
more often, the choice seemed to be almost random. With tight budgets, school boards and
inspectors simply used whatever was on hand, including even books which had been
proscribed by the censor (Volume 2 of Ushinskiis Rodnoe slovo, banned in the eighties but
still in wide use, is an example).
59
Two sets of readers do, however, appear regularly on most lists. Baranovs Nashe
rodnoe went through over seventy editions, and was favored by officialdom (perhaps because
56
For more on discipline, including citations and references to teachers memoirs, see Ben Eklof, Worlds in
Conflict? Patriarchal Authority, Discipline and the Russian School, 18611914, Slavic Review 50 (Winter
1991): 792806 (reprinted in Eklof, ed., School and Society in Tsarist and Soviet Russia [London, 1993],
95120). In her magisterial work, Kelly provides an alternative viewpoint; citing the memoir of two former
pupils in secular schools and one from a church school, she details physical abuse. At the same time, she
acknowledges that by the turn of the century corporal punishment had been eradicated in schools of the Ministry
of Education, as well as a zemstvo survey in Novgorod on the eve of World War I supporting that fact (Childrens
World, 52122).
57
A very detailed picture of the great variety of texts in use can be found by examining the Ezhogodniki of
various zemstvo statistical boards from the 1890s until the outbreak of World War I. The annual reports of
school inspectors also usually included, as information requested by higher authorities, at least passing mention
of textbooks in use. Sometimes the listings were quite thorough (for Viatka province see, for example, GAKO,
f. 205, op. 25, 18921903). The survey conducted in advance of the teachers summer seminar in Viatka in
1901 also queried more than two hundred teachers on which textbooks they used (GAKO, f. 616, op. 5, ed. khr.
52, ll. 5178 passim [items 1819 on the Anketa]). Soviet-era dissertations, based largely on the same types of
materials, uniformly attest to this variety, despite ideological constraints requiring them to emphasize hegemonic
control over the schools by the autocracy (Petrov, Zemskaia nachal'naia shkola, 293308; Potapova, Istoriia
zemskoi shkoly Moskovskoi gubernii, 1719). For a good example of the discourse on textbooks see the
annotated guide by A. E. Flerov, Ukazatel' literatury po vospitanii i obuchenii (Moscow, 1900).
58
Kh. D. Alchevskaia, Chto chitat narodu: Kriticheskii ukazatel' knig dlia narodnogo i detskogo chteniia, 3
vols. (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 18841906).
59
These comments are based upon perusal of dozens of zemstvo surveys of textbooks in use in the provinces
of Moscow, Viatka, Vladimir, Iaroslavl', Vologda, Tula, and Tavrida, as well as data periodically collected by
school inspectors in their annual reports. See also Ososkov, Nachalnoe narodnoe obrazovanie, 6277. In
fact, random is not a fully accurate term for the selection of textbooks. As Potapova notes, zemstvo educators
Baranov had close connections in the Ministry of Education and Holy Synod); Bunakovs
Azbuka i uroki chteniia i pis'ma appeared in over one hundred editions by 1917. Bunakov
was a reformist, Baranov a conservative educator; a brief look at their readers designed for
first and second graders will give us a good idea of the type of material in use, the approach
employed, and the level of difficulty of the content assimilated.
60
Baranovs Nashe rodnoe (1886 edition) was written to generate religious feelings in
the pupil, support moral values, and instill love for the homeland.
61
Divided into four
sections, the first-grade reader includes the ABCs with short texts, designed to take two
months to master, readings in modern Russian, followed by exercises, and finally by readings
in Church Slavonic. In the first section (azbuka and bukvar) the child learned his letters,
both print and cursive, and, using the phonics method, began to put sounds together, from
syllables to words (for example, under the letter L: Ma-ma shi-la. Ra-i-sa sha-li-la. Ma-
la-sha so-ri-la. Lu-sha ku-sha-la). The second section of the primer is the longest. Designed
for reading, retelling, and memorization, it consists of seventy short pieces on various
topics. About one third (twenty pieces) are explicitly religious (descriptions of church
holidays, lives of the saints, moral homilies). Slightly more space (twenty-seven stories) is
allotted to nature descriptions. Five stories deal with the benefits of education, and the rest
deal with moral issues. Baranovs texts are taken largely from the works of Russian classics
(Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Krylov), with a sprinkling of lesser-known religious and
nationalistic writers, and offer a wide variety of genres: fables, poems, fairy tales, and short
stories.
The Christian morals propounded in the brief stories or passages are quite conventional:
love for ones neighbor, compassion for humans and all living beings, moderation and
selfdenial, and the importance of learning. Illustrating such lessons are a story about a
chicken fed too much who stopped laying eggs, a little boy who gave money presented to
him by his grandfather to a beggar, and children who feel sorry for chicks found on the
ground and place them back in their nests.
Baranovs goals are more salient in his inclusion of Tolstoys Learned Son (Uchenyi
syn), which tells of a peasant youth who returns home after studies in the city. He pretends
to have forgotten what a rake is, and is punished for denying his roots when he steps on just
such a rake and receives a good blow to the head (immediately recognizing the object that
hit him). The notion that too much learning is dangerous, and the fear that educated peasants
were keenly aware that the selection of a textbook was far more important than the stipulations of the 1897
program in determining what happened in the classroom. While zemstvo activities in education were by law
limited to khoziastvennye dela, in fact zemstvos established textbook warehouses and spravochnye biuro,
subsidized the publication of texts, and addressed much attention to the content of various textbooks (Istoriia
zemskoi shkoly Moskovskoi gubernii).
60
A full sampling of textbooks widely used after 1900 would have to include Vakhterovs Mir v rasskazakh
dlia detei, with its militant secularism, emphasis upon social justice, and strong faith in science and progress,
as well as Tikhomirovs religiously oriented and Tolstoys famous readers, still in wide circulation.
61
According to Potapova, Moscow teachers often complained that Baranovs texts were turgid and dry.
While they could be found in half of Moscow provinces schools before 1900, by the onset of World War I, only
5657 percent of schools used his text (Istoriia zemskoi shkoly Moskovskoi gubernii, 14451). See also
Ososkov, Nachal'noe narodnoe obrazovanie, 198; and Statisticheskii ezhegodnik Moskovskoi gubernii za
1896 (Moscow, 1896), Section 5, p. 19.
would flee the countryside, was standard fare of the conservative mind in the nineteenth
century, and Baranov was no exception. Other moralistic tales in this section are elaborations
of passages (izrecheniia) from the Gospels offered in the final part of the reader, such as
The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, Do no evil, and so on. The sententious
tone of the reader should not, however, obscure the fact that the level of difficulty of these
early readers is, by our standards, very high, and is comparable to, if not more rigorous
than, contemporary Soviet primers.
The 1911 edition of the primer devotes far more space to nature and village life (now
a new section, the longest in the book, is entirely devoted to a nature and the seasons) while
religious materials is entirely separated from the other sections and given less space. There
are passages from Mamin-Sibiriak, Nekrasov, Ushinskii, Tolstoy (in great abundance),
Pleshcheev, Koltsov, Zhukovsky, Aksakov, Tiutchev, and many others. The entire reader is
some 150 pages of small print. To be sure, Baranov carefully culled the works of the great
writers to find passages encouraging children to be meek, obedient, diligent, and accepting
of their lot in life. The exercise section following the readings is largely catechistic: pupils
are encouraged to memorize passages and to be able to summarize the material rather than
to think critically. But it is also important to see that, in scope of material and nature of
subject matter covered, Baranovs later reader now strongly resembled other readings
competing for the market.
Nashe rodnoe for second grade students (1888) consists of five sections (142 pages)
The first and longest (44 pages) is devoted to selections from the Old Testament, Tikhon
Zadonskiis sermons, lives of the saints (in Church Slavonic), and other religious material
in modern Russian, all aimed at demonstrating the virtues of humility, frugality, and fortitude.
Secular texts follow the same pattern set in the first year: by judicious selection from the
classics illustrating the attitudes Baranov espoused for the peasant. For example, using
Turgenevs famous story Mumu, about a mute serf Gerasimov who rescues and befriends
a drowning puppy, Baranov leaves out the ending (Gerasimovs landlord kills the puppy) to
make Mumu a tale of mans compassion for animals. Another story, Samokrutka by
Tolstoy, tells about a peasant who was convinced he could devise a perpetual-motion machine
and wasted a lot of money in the effort. In the end, the landlord convinces him to do what
he really knows how to do: build simple windmills and watermills. Finally, Patience
(included in both first- and second-year readers) relates the story of a peasants
misadventures. The hero loses everything he has and is completely despondent, when he
sees a spider patiently rebuilding his torn web. This example from nature convinces the
peasant to begin anew (this whole section is 36 pages long).
The third section (50 pages) consists of stories about nature and village life, a fourth
is written exercises, and the fifth offers practice with blueprints and maps. In the third
section the pupil reads about various insects, fish, animals of the forest, birds, plant life, the
soil, minerals, the elements, the human bodyall in very elementary formand in
conclusion receives a few pointers about railroads, life in the city, and the origins of
governments. The 1911 version of this reader showed similar changes, with a much-enlarged
section on the natural world and a considerably reduced (15 pages) section on religion. A
separate reader, drawn up jointly for second- and third-grade readers (65th edition, 1911),
includes numerous readings of a patriotic vein, with heroic descriptions of Peter the Greats
exploits, the 1812 campaign, the Crimean War, and the Russo-Turkish wars (no mention of
the Russo-Japanese War!). In addition, a fourth section (Our Homeland) introduces the
pupil to Russian geography and the main events of Russian history, presented in a highly
schematic, patriotic, and religious manner. A brief fifth section (Mir Bozhii) provides
rudimentary information on the outside world: Is There an End to the World? What Are
the Origins of Day and Night? Continents and Oceans; What Are the Origins of the
Seasons? Animals and Plant Life of Various Countries.
Bunakovs Azbuka i uroki chteniia i pis'ma (1884) also proceeds from mastering the
alphabet to readings of progressively greater difficulty (in concentricsthe fashion of
the day), and includes grammar exercises. Like Baranov, Bunakov uses fables, tales, and
poems, but he includes more original texts and fewer selections from standard works. The
range of readings are of a comparable difficulty of mastery, but in the second and third
years Bunkaov includes a far broader and deeper discussion of the natural world, of world
geography, and of daily life. More notably, the inspiration and the approach of the two
authors differ radically. Bunakov stresses creativity, originality, spontaneous thinking, and
questioningthough, to be sure, within a patriotic framework and religious world view.
Every text, even the most simple, is provided with supplementary questions of a probing
nature. There are pages of small block pictures of household items, tools, and natural
specimens as well as larger, story pictures, which pupils are encouraged to actively assimilate
(by contrast and comparison and by relating to events in their own life). The larger number
of original stories in Azbuka i uroki allows for greater continuity in the texts. Finally, the
amount of space devoted to religious topics is small (one suspects minimal). Indeed there
is little direct moralizing; Bunakov prompts the student to think by questions and riddles.
The message he preachesthe virtues of hard work, creative thought, empathy, generosity,
harmony with natureare asserted only gently and indirectly. In fact, in comparison with
Baranov, whose book resembles nothing if not a McGuffey Reader in tone, Bunakov offers
a lively, fast-moving excursion through the world of man, nature, and literature.
Despite the marked differences in political persuasion or pedagogical belief on the
part of the authors, these readers were of a uniformly high level of complexity. At the very
least, if pupils could retell these stories and nature descriptions in their words, they had
attained a good basic command of both oral and written tools of communication. If they
had mastered the material in the more advanced readers (and particularly the more
progressive, secular readers) their understanding of the outside world, of history, and of
geography had been immeasurably expanded.
62
THE DAILY LIFE OF THE SCHOOL
What, then, was the climate of the Russian elementary school classroom? If much time was
spent instilling the rules of grammar and mechanical learning, how do we explain the
significant outcomes: literacy and numeracy retained well after school leaving, and children
preserving strongly positive memories of their school years? Undoubtedly, in many schools
much time was wasted on the cult of the jers (two vowels, jers and jat, were pronounced
62
For a somewhat different perspective on Russian textbooks see Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read.
identically but spelled differently until the orthographic reforms after the Revolution). Many
teachers, whether out of natural proclivity, force of circumstances, or dictate of the authorities,
concentrated on rote learning and memorization. As noted above, the rhythm of the three-
grade, one-teacher school often forced teachers to adopt the talk-and-chalk approach; in
comments to the 1911 Zemstvo Congress survey, teachers explicitly stated that they spent
so much time on grammar because they had to find some way to keep children occupied
when not directly engaged with the teacher. Others complained that teachers in a given
district competed with one another on the exams, resulting in pressure upon the examining
commission to test students for grammar and spellingthe most easily measurable
achievements.
But the widespread image of children being force-fed knowledge of little practical
value to them, by tightly controlled teachers in a harsh, disciplinary environment, clearly is
overdrawn. First of all, as we saw earlier, the composition of local school boards varied
enormously, the 1897 Program was flexible (one teacher in Moscow noted soon after its
introduction that it merely recapitulates existing practice in most schools), and demands
made by the authorities differed. What is more, both in Moscow and in Vladimir and
certainly elsewhere a significant proportion of teachers conducted their classes with less
concern for the fine points of grammar, or for memorization or dictation, than the examples
would suggest. Petrovs careful, unpolemical survey includes reports from different areas
indicating that some teachers paid more attention to explanatory readings and included
systematic instruction in geography, history, and natural sciences. Furthermore, they were
encouraged by the local inspectors or school boards to do so.
Finally, the testimony of those closest to the schools, both teachers and inspectors,
regarding the enthusiasm with which most pupils enrolled in school, their curiosity about
the world, and the fondness with which they remembered their school years later in life,
should give us pause. In short, the authoritarian classroom, though it prevailed in secondary
schools in Russia, and persisted elsewhere in Europe, had virtually vanished in elementary
schools in Russia. But structure and discipline had remained. This unique combination of
order, dictated by the rigors of the environment, and child-centered views, engendered a
distinct culture of schooling. Teachers, encouraged by their mentors, were looking for that
elusive goal defined by Korf: laska i poriadok. If the widespread descriptions of the
enthusiasm peasant youth brought to school are to be believed, and given the mildness of
the sanctions teachers generally employed, Russian children learned their ABCs in a
structured, disciplined, but hardly barracks-like environment. It might well be that this
pedagogy, as much as the dictates of Stalinism or industrial mobilization, shaped the Soviet
school as well.
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