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V.O. Kliuchevskii on Childhood and Education in Early Modern Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Max J. Okenfuss
Max J. Okenfuss*
Affiliation:
Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
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Extract

Kliuchevskii's essay, “Dva vospitaniia” is the pioneering work in the history of childhood and of the family in Russia, and it has been sorely neglected. V.O. Kliuchevskii wrote this piece as a public lecture which was given on February 1, 1893, for the Moscow Committee on Literacy. In it he contrasts the educational values of traditional Muscovite society of the sixteenth century with those of Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi, Catherine the Great's principal educational advisor during the first years of her reign. More precisely, he compares two documents. The first was the Domostroi, the “House-orderer,” of the priest Sil'vestr. He, Metropolitan Makarii, and Aleksei Adashev were the principal advisors of Tsar Ivan IV in the early years of his active reign after 1547. They were the creators of the new ideology of the Muscovite state based on the dream of unified Orthodox Tsardom. They compiled a single all-Russian paterikon, a new unified law code, a unified ecclesiastical rule, and an official geneological history of Russia's rulers. The regimentation of personal behavior represented by the Domostroi was an essential part of the campaign for standardization and codification, which saw the origins of printing in Russia as well. In the sixteenth century these precepts had the same official sanction and status as did Catherine's legislation two hundred years later, especially the Statute of her boarding schools.

Type
Translation
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , Winter 1977 , pp. 417 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes (Introduction)

1. First published in Russkaia Mysl', 1893, III. Reprinted in V. Kliuchevskii, Ocherki i rechi. Vtoroi sbornik statei (Moscow, n.d.), pp. 216–247.Google Scholar

2. The best introduction to Betskoi is M. I. Demkov, Istoriia russkoi pedagogil Chast' II. Novaia russkaia pedagogiia (XVIII-i vek.) (Moscow, 1910), Chapters 20 and 21. In English see Pavel N. Miliukov, “Educational Reforms”, Catherine the Great: A Profile, ed. Marc Raeff (New York, 1972), pp. 93–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. In English see George Vernadsky, The Tsardom of Muscovy, (New Haven, 1969); see also N. K. Gudzy, History of Early Russian Literature (New York, 1970), pp. 341–348. The standard study of the Domostroi is A. Orlov, Domostroi po konshinskomu spisku ipodobnym (Moscow, 1908; reprint, The Hague, 1967).Google Scholar

4. Sochineniia, 8 vols (Moscow, 1956–50). Recent Soviet studies ignore the speech; M. V. Nechkina, Vasilii Osipovich Kliuchevskii. Istoriia zhizni i tvorchestva (Moscow, 1974); P. A. Kireeva, V. O. Kliuchevskii kak istorik russkoi istoricheskoi nauki (Moscow, 1966), and E. G. Chumachenko, V. O. Kliuchevskii–istochnikoved (Moscow, 1970). In private Kliuchevskii was even more critical of Betskoi than in the speech: “At a first-aid station, victims are more visible than in a military formation; compassion is more needed in the former than in the latter. In a formation one needs more will than heart. Betskoi made a first-aid station of Russian educated society, and created a society with a heart, but without a will”; V. O. Kliuchevskii, Pis'ma, dnevniki, aforizmy i mysli ob istorii (Moscow, 1968), p. 354.Google Scholar

5. [Ivan Invanovich] Betzky, Les Plans et les statuts, des différents établissements Ordonnés par sa majésté impériale Catherine II. Pour l'éducation de la jeunesse et l'utilité générale de son empire (Amsterdam, 1775), 2 vols. The key document, the statute of the Cadet Corps, is in the Polnoe sobraniezakonov Rossiiskoi imperii s 1649 goda, Vol. XVII, pp. 959–992.Google Scholar