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Autocratic Politics, Public Opinion, and Women's Medical Education During the Reign of Alexander II, 1855-1881

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Christine Johanson
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Extract

The reign of Alexander II witnessed an extraordinary expansion of women's medical education. The post-Crimean War regime saw the establishment of the first Russian medical courses which trained female physicians and the creation of a contingent of women doctors far outnumbering that of any contemporary European state. This remarkable advance of Russian women in the medical profession grew out of the experimental policies and the somewhat erratic nature of Alexander II's rule, which introduced sweeping, but often uncoordinated, domestic reforms and allowed favored statesmen to develop competing policies in their respective ministries. During the period 1855—81, the popular press, reveling in its recent release from Nicholas I's censorship, transformed the question of women's medical education into a major issue of public controversy.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 426 - 443
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1979

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References

1. An indispensable study of women's education during this period is Likhacheva, E., Materialy dlia istorii zhenskago obrasovaniia v Rossii, 1856-1880 (St. Petersburg, 1901).Google Scholar Recent studies which have influenced my interpretation of educational reform under Alexander II are Alston, Patrick L., Education and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford, 1969)Google Scholar; Sinel, Allen, The Classroom and the Chancellery: State Educational Reform in Russia under Count Dmitry Tolstoi (Cambridge, Mass., 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Vucinich, Alexander, Science in Russian Culture, 1861-1917 (Stanford, 1970).Google Scholar Useful studies on the nature of autocratic politics include Raeff, Marc, Plans for Political Reform in Imperial Russia, 1730-1905 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966)Google Scholar; Rieber, Alfred J., ed., The Politics of Autocracy: Letters of Alexander II to Prince A. I. Bariatinskii, 1857-1864 (Paris and The Hague, 1966)Google Scholar; Rieber, Alfred J., “Alexander II: A Revisionist View,” Journal of Modern History, 43, no. 2 (March 1971): 42–58 Google Scholar; and Yaney, George L., The Systematisation of Russian Government: Social Evolution in the Domestic Administration of Imperial Russia, 1711-1905 (Urbana, III., 1973).Google Scholar

2. “O zhenskom meditsinskom obrazovanii, 1871-1886 gg.,” in Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Leningrada (TsGIAL), fond 846 (Georgievskii), opis’ 1, delo 119, list 89.

3. . Alston, Edtication and the State, pp. 43-44; Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery, p. 24; and Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, pp. 35-37.

4. Although educational reform is not discussed by Emmons, Terence (The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 [Cambridge, 1968])Google Scholar, or by Ruud, Charles A. ( “Censorship and the Peasant Question: The Contingencies of Reform Under Alexander II [1855-1859],” California Slavic Studies, vol. 5 [Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1970], pp. 137–67)Google Scholar, both historians agree that the exigencies of peasant reform prompted Alexander II to make conciliatory gestures to various interest groups outside the government and to invite their participation, however temporary, in the reform effort.

5. For the humanistic views of two leading educational theorists who advocated the reform of women's education, see “Voprosy zhizni,” in Pirogov, N. I., Isbrannye pedagogicheskie sochineniia, ed. Smirnov, V. Z. (Moscow, 1952), pp. 55–84 Google Scholar; and “Odna iz temnykh storon germanskogo vospitaniia” and “Otchet komandirovannogo dlia osmotra zagranichnykh zhenskikh uchebnykh zavedenii kollezhskogo sovetnika K. Ushinskogo,” in Ushinskii, K. D., Izbrannye proisvedeniia: Prilozhenie k shurnalu “Sovetskaia pedagogika,” ed. Struminskii, V. la. (Moscow-Leningrad, 1946), pp. 249–60, 157-91.Google Scholar

6. In response to a ministerial poll of 1861, all Russian University Councils, with the exception of Moscow and Dorpat, agreed to admission of women to university study. See Ministerstvo narodnago prosveshcheniia (abbreviated MNP), Zamechaniia na proekt obshchago ustava Imperatorskikh Rossiiskikh universitetov (St. Petersburg, 1862), part 2, pp. 520-27.

7. “Ukazatel’ literatury zhenskago voprosa na russkom iazyke,” Severnyi vestnik, 1887, no. 7, pp. 1-32 [separate pagination], and ibid., 1887, no. 8, pp. 33-55, lists a total of 1, 785 articles and books on the woman question. For further discussion of the woman question, see Stites, Richard, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (Princeton, N.J., 1978), pp. 29–154 Google Scholar passim. Other relevant studies by Stites, include “M. L. Mikhailov and the Emergence of the Woman Question in Russia,” Canadian Slavic Studies, 3, no. 2 (Summer 1969): 178–99;Google Scholar and “Women and the Russian Intelligentsia: Three Perspectives,” in Atkinson, Dorothy, Dallin, Alexander, and Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky, eds., Women in Russia (Stanford, 1977), p. 39–62.Google Scholar For a discussion of women's higher education as a dominant aspect of the Russian women's movement, see Ruth A. F. Dudgeon, “Women and Higher Education in Russia, 1855-1905” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1975); and Whittaker, Cynthia H., “The Women's Movement during the Reign of Alexander II: A Case Study in Russian Liberalism,” Journal of Modern History, 48, no. 2 (June 1976): 35–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Widely publicized liberated women of the period were the literary heroines refashioned by Dobroliubov in “Chto takoe oblomovshchina ?,” in Dobroliubov, N. A., Sobranie sochinenii, ed. Bursov, B. I. et al., vol. 4 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1962), pp. 307–43 Google Scholar; and by Pisarev, in “Zhenskie tipy v romanakh i povestiakh Pisemskago, Turgeneva i Goncharova,” in Sochineniia D. I. Pisareva: Polnoe sobranie v shesti tomakh, ed. Pavlenkov, F. (St. Petersburg, 1894), 1: 481–528.Google Scholar Chernyshevskii, N. G., Chto delat'f? (Moscow, 1963 [St. Petersburg, 1863])Google Scholar, created the archetype of the emancipated woman pursuing medical studies in the literary heroine, Vera Pavlovna.

9. For a succinct description of the nigilistka in the conservative press, see an excerpt from Vest', no. 46 (1864), as cited in Moser, Charles A., Antinihilism in the Russian Novel of the 1860's (The Hague, 1964), p. 44.Google Scholar

10. Likhacheva, Materialy, pp. 468-69. For the welcome extended by St. Petersburg professors, see the reminiscences of one of the first female auditors, lunge, E, “Iz moikh vospominanii, 1843-1860 gg.,” Vestnik Evropy, 40 (May 1905): 258 Google Scholar; and the memoirs of a contemporary student, Panteleev, L. F., Is vospominanii proshlago (St. Petersburg, 1905), pp. 133–37 Google Scholar. Shchepkina, E. N. (Is istorii shenskoi lichnosti v Rossii: Lcktsii i stat'i [St. Petersburg, 1914], p. 288)Google Scholar reports that no women entered Kazan’ University, although the district curator reportedly sympathized with women seeking higher education. Korbut, M. K. (Kasanskii gosudarstvennyi univcrsitet intent V. I. Ul'ianova-Lenina sa 125 let [1804/5-1929/30], 2 vols. [Kazan, 1930])Google Scholar makes no reference to women in Kazan’ University during this period.

11. Sechenov, I. M. (Autobiographical Notes, ed. Lindsley, Donald B., trans. Hanes, Kristan [Washington, D.C., 1965], pp. 103–4)Google Scholar records the famed physiologist's warm reception of women into the Medical-Surgical Academy.

12. Mikhailov, M. L., “Zhenshchiny v universitete,” Sovremennik, no. 86 (1861), p. 506.Google Scholar

13. Mikhail, Lemke, “Molodosf Ottsa Mitrofana,” Byloe, 1/13 (January 1907): 202 Google Scholar.

14. Shchepkina, Is istorii shenskoi lichnosti, p. 288.

15. Dionesov, S. M., “Russkie tsiurikhskie studentki (Iz istorii vrachebnogo obrazovaniia russkikh zhenshchin),” Sovetskoe sdravookhrancnie, 30, no. 6 (May 1971): 68 Google Scholar; and Istoricheskii obsor pravitel'stvennykh rasporiashenii po voprosu o vysshem vrachebnom obrasovanii shenshchin (St. Petersburg, 1883), pp. 8-9 (hereafter cited as Istoricheskii obsor VVOZh).

16. Mathes, William L., “The Origins of Confrontation Politics in Russian Universities: Student Activism, 1855-1861,” Canadian Slavic Studies, 2, no. 1 (Spring 1968): 34–37.Google Scholar

17. Eimontova, R. G., “Universitetskaia reforma 1863 g.,” Istoricheskie zapiski, no. 70 (1961), p. 166.Google Scholar

18. Alston, Education and the State, p. 48; and Mathes, , “The Origins of Confrontation Politics,” pp. 38-39. Tikhomirov, M. N. et al., eds., Istoriia Moskovskogo universiteta v dvukh tomakh, 1755-1955 (Moscow, 1955), 1: 243, n. 2Google Scholar, reports that two-thirds of Moscow University students were exempt from fee payments in 1859. Eimontova ( “Universitetskaia reforma,” p. 167, n. 11) reports that over one-third of the St. Petersburg students and almost one-half of the students at St. Vladimir University paid no fees during the period 1859-61.

19. Mathes, “The Origins of Confrontation Politics,” pp. 39-42.

20. Nikitenko, A. V., Dnevnik v trekh tomakh, ed. Brodskii, N. L. et al. (Moscow, 1955), 2: 213 Google Scholar. Skabichevskii, A. M. (Literatumyc vospominaniia, ed. Koz'min, B. [Moscow, 1928], p. 338, n. 38)Google Scholar reports that this woman, Maria Bogdanova, persuaded the students to refrain from violence and to disperse.

21. Mathes, “The Origins of Confrontation Politics,” p. 41.

22. Eimontova, “Universitetskaia reforma,” pp. 167-68.

23. MNP, Zamechaniia, part 2, pp. 520-27.

24. Universitetskii ustav 1863 goda (St. Petersburg, 1863), pp. 16-17, 28.

25. 'Sbornik rasporiashenii po Ministerstvu narodnago prosveshcheniia, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1866-1901), vol. 3, cols. 560-566 (no. 577, July 20, 1863). According to the report of the State Council, the prohibition of women did not demand special mention in the statute, but appertained to the administrative regulations to be issued by the Ministry of Education (see “Mnenie gosudarstvennago soveta,” in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 147, d. 95, listy 28-29). Eimontova ( “Universitetskaia reforma,” pp. 175-79) convincingly argues that the implementation of these restrictions through a ministerial circular was a tactical maneuver designed to create the impression that these restrictions emanated not from the central authorities but from the University Councils.

26. “Pravila i instruktsii, sostavleniia sovetami universitetov: S-Peterburgskago, Kazanskago, Kharkovskago i sv. Vladimira i utverzhdeniia popechiteliami, na osnovanii universitetskago ustava 1863 goda,” Zhurnal Ministerstva narodnago prosveshcheniia, October- December 1863, pp. 3, 14, 36, 59 (hereafter cited as ZhMNP).

27. Likhacheva, Materialy, p. 479.

28. In 1868, Kashevarova received the diploma of lekar’ (physician) and the right to practice medicine. Eight years later, on the completion of her dissertation, Kashevarova was awarded the degree of Doctor of Medicine (see Belkin, M. S., “Russkie zhenshchiny-vrachi —Pionery vysshego zhenskogo meditsinskogo obrazovaniia,” Sovetskii vrachebnyi sbornik, no. 14 [1949], pp. 34–35).Google Scholar

29. For issues other than women's medical education which divided Miliutin and Tolstoi, see Alston, Education and the State, pp. 92-95; Miliutin, D. A., Dnevnik D. A. Miliutina, 4 vols., ed. Zaionchkovskii, P. A. (Moscow, 1947-50), 1: 55, 98, 107-9, 144-45, 171, 197-203Google Scholar; James Cobb Mills, Jr., “Dmitrii Tolstoi as Minister of Education in Russia, 1866-1880” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1967), pp. 64 and 176; and Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery, pp. 79-84, 147-49.

30. For further discussion of scientism and social consciousness during the 1860s, see Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture, pp. 3-34 passim.

31. Likhacheva, Materialy, pp. 490-92.

32. Ariian, P. N., Pervyi zhenskii kalendar1 na 1899 god (St. Petersburg, 1899), p. 139.Google Scholar Detailed statistical information concerning the period of enrollment, faculty, and geographical origins of Russian men and women studying in Zurich can be found in Meijer, J. M., Knowledge and Revolution: The Russian Colony at Zurich ﹛1870-1873). A Contribution to the Study of Russian Populism (Assen, The Netherlands, 1955), pp. 208–17.Google Scholar

33. Meijer's Knowledge and Revolution provides the most comprehensive study of Russian revolutionary organizations in Zurich during the early 1870s.

34. For the report of the special commission, see “O merakh k prekrashcheniiu priliva russkikh zhenshchin v Tsiurikhskii universitet i politekhnikum,” in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 191, d. 268, listy 25-26.

35. Ibid., list 25.

36. Valuable insight into the activities of Russian women in Zurich, particularly those who became involved in the revolutionary movement, is found in Figner, Vera, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v shesti tomakh (Moscow, 1929), vol. 5Google Scholar, and Figner, , “Studencheskie gody,” Golos minnvshego, 10, no. 2 (1922): 165–81, and ibid., 11, no. 1 (1923): 27–45Google Scholar. Another useful study is Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, pp. 131-38.

37. Figner, , “Studencheskie gody,” Golos minnvshego, 10, no. 2, p. 181.Google Scholar

38. This was recommended by the special commission (see “O merakh k prekrashcheniiu priliva russkikh zhenshchin,” list 26).

39. Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, May 21, 1873, p. 1.

40. The number of Russian women enrolled in Zurich University dropped from one hundred and two in the summer of 1873 to twelve in the summer of 1874 (see Ariian, Pervyi zhenskii kalcndar', p. 139).

41. Dionesov, “Russkie tsiurikhskie studentki,” p. 69.

42. Essential to the discussion of the advanced midwifery courses is the collection of official documents and ministerial correspondence found in Trudy Vysochaishe uchrezhdennoi komissii po voprosu o zhcnskom obrasovanii, parts 1 and 2 (St. Petersburg, 1879) (hereafter cited as Trudy ZhO). Other useful sources include Istorichcskii obsor VVOZh; Isakov Commission, Istoricheskaia zapiska k dokladu Vysochaishe uchreshdennoi komissii po voprosu o zhenskikh vrachebnykh kursakh, meditsinskom obrasovanii i pravakh meditsinskoi praktiki zhenshchin (n.p., n.d.) (hereafter this collection of materials of the Isakov Commission of 1878-79 will be cited as Istoricheskaia zapiska Isakova); Kozlov, N. I., Zapiska po voprosu o vysshem, v osobennosti meditsinskom, obrazovanii zhenshchin (St. Petersburg, 1879)Google Scholar; and Sushchinskii, P. P., Zhenshchina-vrach v Rossii: Ocherk desiatiletiia zhenskikh vrachebnykh kursov, 1872-1882 gg. (St. Petersburg, 1883).Google Scholar

43. For further information on the employment of the graduates of the courses, see Sushchinskii, Zhenshchina-vrach v Rossii, p. 17.

44. Raeff, Plans for Political Reform, pp. 15-16; Rieber, The Politics of Autocracy, pp. 39-40, 55, 65, 94-96. George Yaney ﹛The Systematication of Russian Government, p. 299) suggests that Alexander II deliberately appointed ministers of opposing views to constrain one another.

45. Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery, pp. 148-50.

46. For further details of Kozlov's proposal, see Istoricheskii obsor VVOZh, pp. 5-17.

47. Istoricheskaia zapiska Isakova, pp. 7-8.

48. Stasov, Vladimir V., Nadeshda Vasil'evna Stasova: Vospominaniia i ocherki (St. Petersburg, 1899), p. 175 Google Scholar; and Tyrkova, A., Sbomik pamiati Anny Pavlovny Filosofovoi, vol. 1 (Petrograd, 1915), pp. 222–23, n. 1.Google Scholar

49. As quoted in Mills, “Dmitrii Tolstoi,” p. 64.

50. As quoted in Istoricheskaia sapiska Isakova, p. 8.

51. Approved by the minister of internal affairs on April 23, 1870 (see “Otnoshenie Voennago ministra k Ministru vnutrennikh del” [June 12, 1872] in Trudy ZhO, part 1, pp. 8-9).

52. “Iz otzyva Ministra narodnago prosveshcheniia” (May 11, 1872) in ibid., p. 8.

53. For the replies of the University Councils, see “Izvestiia o deiatel'nosti i sostoianii nashikh uchebnykh zavedenii,” ZhMNP, October 1871, chapter 157, part 4, pp. 164-77. The reports of the medical faculties are found in TsGIAI-, f. 846 (Georgievskii), op. 1, d. 119, listy 1-3.

54. For the response of the Ministry of Education, see Istorkheskaia sapiska Isakova, P. 8.

55. “Doklad po Glavnomu voenno-meditsinskomu upravleniiu o kapitale na uchrezhdenie kursov” (March 2, 1872) in Trudy ZhO, part 1, pp. 3-5.

56. “Otnoshenie Voennago ministra k Ministru vnutrennikh del” (June 12, 1872) in ibid., p. 10.

57. Istoricheskaia zapiska Isakova, pp. 1-2.

58. “Otnositel'no dopushcheniia zhenshchin na sluzhbu v obshchestvennyia i pravitel'- stvennyia uchrezhdeniia” in Sbornik postanovlenii po Ministerstvu narodnago prosveshcheniia, 15 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1875-1902), vol. 5, cols. 14-16 (no. 5, January 14, 1871) (published in Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, February 19, 1871, p. 1).

59. “Rezoliutsiia” (March 4, 1876) in Trudy ZhO, part 1, pp. 24-25.

60. “Glavnoupravliaiushchago IV-m otdeleniem Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva kantseliarii Gospodinu Voennomu ministru” (May 11, 1876) in ibid., p. 29.

61. “Otnoshenie Ministra vnutrennikh del k Voennomu ministru” (May 5, 1876) in ibid., pp. 30-31.

62. “Zapiska, vnesennaia v Meditsinskii sovet Ministerstva vnutrennikh del Tainym sovetnikom Kozlovym” (February 1, 1878) in ibid., pp. 54-55.

63. “Vypiska iz doklada v Meditsinskii sovet komissii po peresmotru pravil ispytaniia na meditsinskaia, farmatsevticheskaia i veterinarnyia stepeni i raz “iasneniiu prav lits zhenskago pola na vrachebnuiu praktiku” (June 24, 1878) in ibid., p. 57.

64. Minister of internal affairs to minister of education, July 15, 1878, in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 191, d. 310, list 2.

65. Sidorov, N. I., “Statisticheskie svedeniia o propagandistakh 70-kh godov v obrabotke III otdeleniia: Zapiska M. M. Merkulova o propagandistakh 70-kh godov,” Katorga i ssylka, 38 (1928): 29–56.Google Scholar For a discussion of higher educational institutions as main incubators of Russian radicalism, see Alain Besançon, Education et societe en Russia dans le second tiers du XIXe siecle (Paris and The Hague, 1974); and Brower, Daniel R., Training the Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca and London, 1975)Google Scholar.

66. Figner, PSS, 5: 184.

67. For the membership of the Isakov Commission, see Istoricheskii obzor VVOZh, p. 69.

68. Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery, pp. 253-54.

69. Istoricheskaia sapiska Isakova, p. 1.

70. Before the official expulsion date of January 1, 1874, Shuvalov provided Tolstoi with the names of forty-five women to be barred from pedagogical activities on their return from Zurich (see Third Department to Tolstoi, December 13, 1873, in TsGIAL, f. 733, op. 191, d. 268, listy 47-49).

71. “Mnenie chlena ot Ill-go otdeleniia Sobstvennoi Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva kantseliarii” in Trudy ZhO, part 2, pp. 81-86.

72. Ibid., pp. 85-86.

73. Ibid., p. 83.

74. A. I. Georgievskii, “Po povodu mneniia chlehov komissii t. s. Kozlova i d. s. s. Severtsova” in Trudy ZhO, part 2, pp. 143-46. The quotation is on page 145.

75. Istoricheskii obzor VVOZh, p. 101.

76. Ibid., p. 107.

77. Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, June 29, 1880, p. 1.

78. Istoricheskii obsor VVOZh, p. 118.

79. Ibid., pp. 122-23.

80. For further discussion of the public reaction to the cancellation of the courses, see Sushchinskii, Zhenshchina-vrach v Rossii, pp. 24-28.

81. For more detailed discussion of Alexander Ill's entourage, see Zaionchkovskii, P. A., Rossiiskoe samoderzhavie v kontse XIX stoletiia (Moscow, 1970).Google Scholar