1. Florinsky, Michael T., Russia: A History and an Interpretation, 2 vols. (New York, 1960), 2: 804 Google Scholar. Florinsky's information and analysis are taken from P. Miliukov, Ocherki po istorii russkoi kul'ttiry, vol. 2. Miliukov's study went through several editions, 1896 (St. Petersburg) to 1931 (Paris), but only the pagination, not a word of the text on educational matters, was changed in the successive editions. Florinsky cites the Paris edition. Florinsky's account is typical of both Western and Russian accounts in following Miliukov and in assuming that tuition was a device Uvarov introduced to impede admission of lower class students. For examples, see Alston, P. L., Education and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford, 1969), pp. 35–36 Google Scholar; Johnson, W. H. E., Russia's Educational Heritage (Pittsburgh, 1950), p. 100 Google Scholar; Polievktov, M., Nikolai I: Biografiia i obsor tsarstvovaniia (Moscow, 1918), p. 240 Google Scholar; Mavrodin, V. V., ed., Istoriia Leningradskogo Universiteta (Leningrad, 1969), pp. 58–59 Google Scholar. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of

2. Uvarov to Nicholas, February 1847, printed in Evreinov, V. A., Grazhdanskoe chinoproizvodstvo v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1887), pp. 82–85.Google Scholar

3. For example, Torke, Hans-Joachim, “Das russische Beamtentum in der ersten Halfte des 19 Jahrhunderts,” Forschungen zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte, vol. 13 (Berlin, 1967), p. 85 Google Scholar, judges Uvarov's report, cited above, as “pathetic.”

4. A brief outline can hardly do justice to the subject of Russian classes. Useful brief treatments are the article on “classes” (sosloviia) in Entsiklopedichcskii slovar1', vol. 30 (St. Petersburg, 1900), pp. 911-13 and the article on “obligated classes” (podatnyia sostoianiia) in ibid., vol. 24 (St. Petersburg, 1898), pp. 46-47. For insightful discussions of the gentry see Jones, R. E., The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility 1762-1785 (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar, especially pp. 273-99; Terence Emmons, The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (Cambridge, 1968), especially pp. 3-29. Blackwell, W. L., in The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization 1800-1860 (Princeton, 1968), pp. 100–110 Google Scholar, provides an exceptionally lucid summary description of the urban classes, including gentry and peasants in their urban roles; While Pintner, W. M., Russian Economic Policy under Nicholas I (Ithaca, 1967), pp. 55–67 Google Scholar, presents an informative discussion of the finance ministry's hopes for developing a “middle class” out of the various urban classes. On the rural classes, see Jerome Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia (Princeton, 1964), especially pp. 475-503 dealing with the “peasant” classes other than the gentry's serfs. In this paper, the term “obligated” will refer to all groups except gentry and “officers, ” that is, those promoted to ennobling ranks in the services, since that was the usual practice of the Ministry of Education in the Uvarov years.

5. Sbornik postanovlenii po ministerstvu narodnago prosveshchcniia, 15 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1875-1902), 1: 295 (Statute of universities, November 5, 1804).

6. Ibid., p. 759 (Ukas, November 10, 1811); Sbornik rasporiazhcnii po ministerstvu narodnago prosveshchcniia, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1866-1901), 1: 223-24 (Po voprosu. … September 18, 1813).

7. In 1815 students released from the clergy were exempted from the requirements of presenting their documents to the Senate for confirmation upon completion of their course of study. Sbornik postanovlenii, 1: 855-56 (Ob opredelenii… . September 9, 1815). For the best discussions of this social aspect of Alexander's reform, see the following works of Rozhdestvenskii, S. V.: “Vopros o narodnom obrazovanii i sotsial'naia problema v epokliu Aleksandra I,” Rnsskoe proshloe, 5 (1923): 37–49Google Scholar; “Soslovnyi vopros v russkikh universitetakh v pervoi chetverti XIX veka, ” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnago Prosvcshchcniia, May 1907, pp. 83-108 (hereafter cited as ZMNP).

8. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Leningrad), fond 733, opis’ 40, delo 121, listy 1-12 (hereafter cited as TsGIAL, f., op., d., list). This delo includes a spravka (listy 8-9), a document prepared by the staff for the guidance of the official responsible for a decision in any particular case, usually citing the legislation which seemed to apply and any precedents. Here, the spravka cited Alexander's ukas of 1811 and a previous case, in which the army had issued a receipt against the military draft to a private landlord, persuading him to liberate a serf. The spravka drawn up in June 1826 on the case of a private serf, named Chekaevskii, cites the ukas of 1811 and the cases of state peasants admitted to Kharkov University. Ibid., d. 226, listy 4-6. Serfs and state peasants, then, were considered equally eligible for “scholarly service.”

9. Shishkov's speech is printed in Sbornik rasporiashenii, 1: 529. S. V. Rozhdestvenskii, in his Istorichcskii obzor deiatel'nosti Mimsterstva narodnago prosvcshcheniia 1802- 1902 (St. Petersburg, 1902), pp. 168-203, provides a detailed discussion of the work of the Committee on the organization of academic institutions, which hereafter, for brevity, will be called the “committee on schools.” For well-focused discussions of the “December 6 Committee, ” see Torke, “Das russische Beamtentum, ” pp. 70-84; N. G. Sladkevich, “O soslovnykh proektakh komiteta 6 dekabria 1826 g., ” Isslcdovaniia po otechcstvcnnomu istochmkovedeniiu (Moscow, 1964), pp. 274-83.

10. Rozhdestvenskii, Obzor, pp. 197-98. “In states, ” said Lieven, “where the division between classes is sharp and passing from one class to another, especially from middle to nobility, is very difficult and it is rare to reward long and distinguished service with a grant of nobility—in such states, I say, it is easy to organize education in that way [that is, on the basis of hereditary class]. But in Russia, where no middle or citizen class exists, where only the merchant class (kupccheskoe soslovie) in some way resembles one, where the artisan is in all respects the equal of the farmer … and where a well-off peasant may at any time become a merchant, and often is both at the same time, where the nobility extends from the foot of the throne at one end and nearly merges into the peasantry at the other, where every year many from the citizen and from the peasant class enter the ranks of the nobility by achieving the necessary rank in the military or civil service—in Russia it is very difficult to organize the schools in that way [that is, on the basis of hereditary class]. “ It may be useful to note that Lieven used the terms soslovie and sostoianie as interchangeable synonyms, while the ministry often used the term proiskhozhdenic as a synonym for either or both. See, for example, ZMNP, November 1836, p. 330. This apparent confusion helps to make clear that neither in law nor in practice did the Russian class system make the sort of clear distinctions between legal “estates, ” occupations, or even wealth, which were normal in the West. In regard to clergy, for example, “the term ‘soslovie’ was not used in the sense of corporate estate in the eighteenth century, but gained currency only in the mid-nineteenth century… . Both state and church documents …” instead often used the terms “dukhovenstvo or sviashchennyi chin.” Freeze, G. L., “Social Mobility and the Russian Parish Clergy in the Eighteenth Century,” Slavic Rcviczv, 33, no. 4 (December 1974): 642, n. 3.Google Scholar

11. Ibid., p. 182.

12. Sbomik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 1, pp. 71-73 (Reskript… . August 19, 1827).

13. For examples, TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 49, d. 43, list 4 (Kharkov University report for 1826-27); ibid., op. 29, d. 163, list S (Moscow University report for 1829-30). For typical cases, see the reports for St. Petersburg University 1827-28 and 1830-31, printed in S. V. Rozhdestvenskii, ed., 5”. Peterburgskii Univcrsitct v pcrvoe stolctie ego dciatel'- nosti: Matcrialy po istorii S. Peterburgskogo Universiteta: 1819-1835 (Petrograd, 1919), pp. 636-40, 706-9. The most successful effort to draw up a complete picture of the class composition of the student bodies is lu. N. Egorov, “Reaktsionnaia politika tsarizma v voprosakh universitetskogo obrazovaniia v 30-50kh gg. XIX v., ” Nauchnye doklady vysshei shkoly: Istoricheskie nauki, 1960, no. 3, pp. 60-75.

14. TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 29, d. 169, listy 1-2 (May 7, 1829); list 4 (May 16, 1829).

15. Ibid., op. 41, d. 58, listy 1-2, 5-6. Since neither teaching nor medicine was likely to lead to promotion to the higher echelons of the bureaucracy, they remained low prestige occupations in a society dominated by the concepts of the Table of Ranks. The law faculty, which prepared students for careers more likely to result in promotion to the upper reaches of the state administration, remained the most popular faculty, particularly for students from noble families. However, it was not unusual to find sons of those emancipated from “obligated classes, ” who had earned low or middle rank in service as teachers or doctors, enrolled in law faculties. Although delayed a generation, this was also social mobility through education.

16. Sbornik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 1, pp. 1258-60 (Reskript … . May 9, 1837). Uvarov, quoting this reskript, reminded the curators that “universities may not admit people from obligated classes before presentation of notice of their liberation from [their] obshchestvo.” ZMNP, April 1838, pp. ix-xii. It is worth noting that these “well-known “ regulations did not find their way into the statutes for gymnasia and lower schools, Sbornik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 1, pp. 200-257 (December 8, 1828), and the statute for universities, ibid., pp. 969-95 (July 26, 1835).

17. Sbornik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 1, pp. 1480-85 (March 21, 1839).

18. ZMNP, October-December 1839, sec. 1, pp. 22-28, reprinted in Sbornik rasporiazhenii, 2: 426-31 (Pravila sbora deneg … . October 10, 1839). The exemption granted faculty children seems an unnecessary gesture. Faculty salaries ranged from 5, 000 rubles a year for full professors at Moscow and St. Petersburg, with a housing allowance of 500 rubles, down to 2, 000 rubles (with a housing allowance of 300 rubles) for adjuncts—that is, instructors—at the “provincial” universities. At the same time, junior clerks received 250 rubles a year, senior clerks 600 rubles. State students had stipends of 500 rubles a year, which was probably more than the cash income of at least half, possibly three-quarters, of the serf-owning gentry. In any event, tuition of 100 rubles would have been a severe financial strain for most gentry and officer families, but not for university professors. Blum, Lord and Peasant, pp. 451-70; Emmons, Landed Gentry, pp. 3-4, 24-29. For the university salary scales, see “Shtaty i Prilozheniia,” Sbornik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 1, pp. 34-36. Comparing incomes in Nicholas's time is difficult, however, not only because of the importance of nonmonetary forms of income in a serf-agricultural economy but also, because several different ways, and exchange rates, were used to calculate the relationship between silver and assignat rubles. On this problem see Pintner, Economic Policy, pp. 256-63. Nonetheless, it is quite clear that the salaries of middle rank, let alone junior, officials in both military and civil service were strikingly low. See Starr, S. F., Decentralisation and Sclf-Govcrnmcnt in Russia 1830-70 (Princeton, 1972), pp. 21–22 Google Scholar; Curtiss, J. S., The Russian Army under Nicholas I, 1825-1855 (Durham, N.C., 1965), p. 254.Google Scholar

19. Sbornik rasporiazhcnii, 2: 485-87 (Predlozhenie Popechiteliu Kievskogo… . October 22, 1840); ibid., pp. 494-96 (Tsirkuliarnoe predlozhenie… . December 31, 1840) Uvarov wanted the curators to think up “plausible excuses” because he ordered that only the curator and rector of the university—not the faculty, and certainly not the students or the general public—should know of this directive.

20. The responses of the curators are summarized and quoted in Rozhdestvenskii, Obzor, pp. 254-55.

21. Uvarov-Stroganov correspondence April 24, 1841-November 19, 1842 in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 30, d. 185, listy 277-93, 310-11; Sbornik rasporiashenii, 2: 535-36 (Dopolnitel1- nyia pravila … . December 19, 1841).

22. In 1841 Uvarov published a set of “statistical tables” on the universities which included a breakdown of students by class origins. ZMNP, October 1841, sec. 3, pp. 32-35.The tables show little effort at precision, for each university used different terms. Moscow, for example, reported merchants, townsmen, orphans, and “liberated.” Kazan used none of these terms but instead listed students from “obligated classes” and “of unknown origins.” Uvarov made no apparent effort to encourage more precise reporting, even by demanding clarification of the terms to be used. Given the somewhat muddled character of the class system, as well as the inconsistency in the universities’ reporting, it is not possible to draw up a completely clear picture of the class origins of students. Nonetheless, studies which place clergy under “raznochintsy” (as does Egorov in “Reaktsionnaia politika, ” Nauchnye doklady) or with “officers” (as does T. B. Riabikova in “Chislennyi i soslovnyi sostav studentov Moskovskogo universiteta, ” Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, 1974, no. 5, pp. 57-67) are less precise than necessary, for university reports which listed students’ origins never failed to list clergy as a separate class.

23. Uvarov, S. S., Desiatiletie Ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniia 1833-1843 (St. Petersburg, 1864), p. 11.Google Scholar

24. Rozhdestvenskii (Obsor, p. 255) provides a summary of, and quotations from, Uvarov's report to the tsar, December 1, 1844. The growth in total university enrollment, from approximately 1, 500 in 1836 to 2, 500 in 1844 to 3, 400 in 1848, troubled Nicholas. Rising total numbers obviously meant a larger number of students from “low classes” each year, yet the social composition of the student bodies changed hardly at all—the “free” classes provided the clear majority of students. For example, Egorov ( “Reaktsionnaia politika, ” Nauchnye doklady, tables 1 and 3) reports that gentry and officers made up 66.9 percent of the students in 1836 and 67 percent in 1848. There were wide differences between universities, but these also were constant over time. For example, after 1835 at Moscow University, gentry were never less than 45 percent of the students but never as much as 50 percent, while at Kiev the gentry were never less than 75 percent. At the other extreme, at Kazan gentry were never less than 25 percent of the students but never as much as 30 percent.

25. Sbornik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 2, pp. 629-32 (O vozvyshenii platy … . June 11, 1849).

26. By omitting the words “partly of those” from Uvarov's text, Miliukov (Ochcrki, 4th ed., vol. 2 [St. Petersburg, 1905], p. 353) changes his meaning. Florinsky (Russia, 2: 802) reproduces Miliukov's error.

27. See Nicholas's notations on Uvarov's request in Sbornik postanovlcnii, vol. 2, sec. 2, pp. 629 and 631. Nicholas apparently used the term rasnochintsy to mean “low born” in general. Though often used in official records, the term had no precise legal meaning. In 1831 the curator of Kazan University requested a ruling from the Ministry of Education on just who should be considered “rasnochintsy.” The ministry had to admit that, since the only law which used the term was an unhelpful regulation on bankruptcies issued in 1800, the term had no clear meaning. Yet the ministry gave a long list of those who might be considered rasnochintsy, including retired military personnel and various government functionaries serving in posts below those listed in the Table of Ranks. Unfortunately, to this list the ministry added “and others.” Sbornik rasporiashenii, 1: 801-2 (Po voprosu… . July 22, 1831). The best discussion of the term remains Becker, Christopher, “Rasnochintsy: The Development of the Word and of the Concept,” American Slavic and East European Reviezv, 18, no. 1 (1959): 63–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. Sboniik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 2, pp. 632-34 (O merakh k zatrudneniiu… . June 14, 184S).

29. ZMNP, May-June 1845, sec. 1, pp. 31-39, reprinted in Sbomik rasporiashenii, 2: 818-24 (Polozhenie o vzumanii… . June IS, 1845).

30. Stroganov to Uvarov, October 8, 1847, in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 33, d. 172, listy 1-3. Stroganov (list 2) said that the tuition income amounted to less than 2, 500 rubles. This would indicate that only about 85 students paid the full tuition, that is, that tuitionpaying students were probably fewer than 10 percent of the student body, which was over 1, 300 in 1848. At least 30 percent of Moscow University students received some sort of aid. Approximately half the aid recipients were gentry. Most aid at Moscow was restricted. “State” stipends were available only to students in medicine or teacher train ing, while other aid funds were restricted to graduates of certain gymnasia, natives of certain cities or provinces, and so on. One fund was limited to students whose parents had perished in the 1831 cholera epidemic. Stroganov would break new ground, then, in restricting aid on the basis of academic achievement. See Riabikova, “Sostav studentov,” Vcstnik M.U., p. 66; Nasonkina, L. I., Moskovskii univcrsitet posle vosstaniia dekabristov (Moscow, 1972), p. 32–38.Google Scholar

31. Uvarov to Stroganov, November 8, 1847, in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 33, d. 172, list S.

32. Uvarov's report to Nicholas, February 1847, is printed in Evreinov, Grashdanskoe chinoproizvodstvo, pp. 82-85. Uvarov, of course, was neither the first nor the last to believe the promise of Russian institutions superior to the alternative presented by the West's “bourgeois” value system. Herzen, for example, sought his “home” not in the “West, ” but “among the alienated radical intellectuals of the West.” This point is particularly well made in Treadgold, D. W., The West in Russia and China, vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1973), p. 178.Google Scholar

33. TsGIAL, f. 735, op. 10, d. 293b, list 646 (October 24, 1848); and Nicholas's response to Uvarov's report in ibid., listy 647-61 (October 22, 1848). For an example of Uvarov's reporting, see “Obshchii otchet … za 1846 god, ” ZMNP, April 1847, p. 12— “it may be seen that the time is not far off when the brilliant harvest will be completed finally “

34. Shirinskii-Shikhmatov's report is printed in Sbomik postanovlenii, vol. 2, sec. 2, pp. 1137-38 (O priniatii v universitety … . January 26, 1850). For enrollment figures in the post-Uvarov years, see Egorov, “Reaktsionnaia politika, ” Nauchnye doklady, pp. 66-67, tables 4 and 5. The figures show a slight decrease in the percentage of noble and “officer” sons at St. Petersburg and Kazan, a slight increase at the others. Since very few students paid the tuition (see note 30), it is not surprising, of course, that the impact of the tuition charges was slight.

35. The point is not that we now know large scale modernization invariably has destroyed traditional class structures (for an excellent discussion of this experience, see Apter, D. E., The Politics of Modernisation [Chicago, 1967], pp. 43–141Google Scholar), but that contemporary Russians so perceived the choices. For a detailed description and analysis of Russia's needs, as well as the contemporary views, see Starr, Decentralisation and Selj- Government in Russia 1830-1870, pp. 3-109.

36. For statements of Uvarov's belief in Russia's promise and the need for time to allow beneficial progress, see his Rech’ presidenta impcratorskoi Akademii Nauk, popechitcliia SPB uchebnogo okruga … 22 marta 1818 goda (St. Petersburg, 1818) and his article “Podvigaetsia li vpered istoricheskaia dostovernost'?, ” Sovrcmcnnik, 1851, no. 1, pp. 121-28. While less sanguine in 1851, it does not appear that Uvarov changed his mind on fundamentals. For excellent analyses of the 1818 speech, see C. H. Whittaker, “Count S. S. Uvarov: Conservatism and National Enlightenment in PreReform Russia” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1971), pp. 93-103; V. V. Pugachev, “K voprosu o politicheskikh vzgliadakh S. S. Uvarova v 1810-e gody, ” Uchenye sapiski Gor1- kovskogo wriversiteta, no. 72 (1964), pp. 127-31.