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Enlightenment and Religion in Russian Education in the Reign of Tsar Alexander I
Author(s): Franklin A. Walker

Source: History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992), pp. 343-360
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Enlightenment and Religion in Russian
Education in the Reign of Tsar Alexander I
Franklin A. Walker
Contemporaries saw the educational legislation of Tsar Alexander I

(1801-25) as a sign that the new emperor intended to raise the cultural
and material well-being of his countrymen. The establishment in 1802
of a ministry of public education and the division of the country into six
great educational districts to administer a network of schools-elemen-
tary, intermediate, secondary, and university-extended the initial re-
forms of Catherine II (1762-96). Her grandson Alexander employed
some of her advisers and looked to other reformers, who shared the two
monarchs' interest in the intellectual fashions of the Enlightenment. Rus-
sian educators, who reflected the ideals of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rous-
seau, and their followers, saw public education as a means whereby
advanced European thought would contribute to native virtues and lead
to national progress. If the creation of schools did not match the publicity
for public education, there was at least no doubt that the government
encouraged the formation of an educated population. However, that
mood changed after the Napoleonic wars when, in fear of revolution,
educational authorities saw the school system primarily as a means for
inculcating obedience and Christian pietism. Obscurantism decimated
the staffs of universities and darkened schools on every level.'
All historians have agreed on this general picture of Russian edu-
cation in this period, but too much reliance on the directions of central
authorities has led to a deceptively simple picture of the views of edu-
cational officials both in the earlier and the later parts of the reign. Official
statements, legislation, and contemporary literary journals with their
Franklin A. Walker is professor emeritus of history, Loyola University of Chicago.
'Patrick L. Alston, Education and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford, 1969), 20-
25; Franklin A. Walker, "Popular Response to Public Education in the Reign of Tsar
Alexander I, 1801-1825," History of Education Quarterly 24 (Winter 1984): 527-43;
James C. McClelland in Autocrats and Academics: Education, Culture, and Society in
Tsarist Russia (Chicago, 1979), 11, links the repressive policies in the latter half of Al-
exander's reign with later fears that "Western" ideas in the schools contributed to sub-
version.
History of Education Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 Fall 1992
344 History of Education Quarterly
hitherto-neglected essays and addresses of educators, offer material for

a new analysis of attitudes. While the traditional accounts properly point
to a shift in emphasis, it is crucial to recognize that Enlightened ration-
alism and Christian pietism were strong elements in Russian education
in both the pre- and post-Napoleonic periods. Journals and newspapers
reveal that educators had taught the significance of loyalty and religion
since public schools were first established, while ideals associated with
the Enlightenment endured to the end of the reign. Frequently the same
educator voiced a mixture of ideas from the Enlightenment and from the
religious reaction.2
Educated Russians had absorbed, often in a syncretic manner, a
wide variety of eighteenth-century ideas. Opinions from that century
ranged from the condemnation of Christianity to the upholding of state-
church paternalism, from materialism to religiously oriented idealism,
from rationalism to sentimentalism.3 Pietistic aims in Russia, as in West-
ern Europe, often accompanied Enlightenment concepts. Rulers saw the
church as a means of political and social control and assumed that church-
men and religious ideology would play an important role in the schools.4
2 The Enlightenment in Western Europe itself was a complex phenomenon. The En-
lightenment included the "secularization" aim, of which Collingwood spoke; the "remaking
of man," as Crocker pointed out; critical thought, the struggle for intellectual freedom,
and humanitarianism which Gay described. Yet as Cassirer showed, the Enlightenment in
its German version strove not for the dissolution of religion but for its " 'transcendental'
justification and foundation." R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York, 1956),
76; Lester G. Crocker, Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment
(Baltimore, 1963), 492; Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (New
York, 1967-69); Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz C. A.
Koelln and James P. Pettegrove (Princeton, N.J., 1951), 136. For an analysis of the com-
plexities of Enlightenment thought, see Ira 0. Wade, The Structure and Form of the French
Enlightenment, 2 vols. (Princeton, N.J., 1977).
3 For a general discussion of intellectual currents in this period, see James H. Billington,
The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretative History of Russian Culture (New York, 1968),
220-300. Also see Marc Raeff, "The Enlightenment in Russia and Russian Thought in the
Enlightenment," in The Eighteenth Century in Russia, ed. J. G. Garrard (Oxford, 1973),
25-47, and the two special issues which David M. Griffiths edited of Canadian-American
Slavic Studies 14 (Fall 1980) and 16 (Fall-Winter 1982) on "The Russian Enlightenment."
4 Too much should not be made of the supposed "rationalism" of Catherine's reign.
She confiscated church lands and corresponded with leading members of the Enlightenment,
but her educational reforms were more in the spirit of state control over the church, as in
the rule of the Emperor Joseph II of Austria (1780-90) ("Josephinism") than of atheistic
determinism. She depended in part upon ecclesiastical institutions to provide students, and
religion was an important part of the curriculum. Most teachers were former seminarians.
Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven, Conn., 1981),
488-502; Max J. Okenfuss, "Education and Empire: School Reform in Enlightened
Russia," Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas 27 (1979): 41-61; S. V. Rozhdestvenskii
preface to Opisanie del arkhiva Ministerstva Narodnago Prosveshcheniia [A Description
of the Materials in the Archives of the Ministry of Public Education], eds. S. F. Platonov
and A. S. Nikolaev, 2 vols. (Petrograd, 1917-21), 1: xlii-xliii, and documents on 157-58.
Enlightenment and Religion in Russian Education 345
Although Russian educational theorists in the early nineteenth cen-

tury seldom referred specifically to religion, most continued to assume
that schools should impart religious values as part of their mission to
produce enlightened, loyal, and useful citizens. Tsar Alexander's adviser
Frederic-Cesar de La Harpe agreed with Voltaire that virtue, not birth,
distinguished people. He frequently railed against Roman Catholic reli-
gious orders, but he assumed that at least elementary schools would teach
religion according to the beliefs of the parents.5
Russian publicists shared with their European counterparts, such as
the Prussian historian Frederic Ancillon, the view that religion "enlight-
ened the spirit" and influenced "manners." Education was to transform
the intelligence and the character of the pupils to conform to the ideals
of a service-oriented state. As the 1802 law that announced the formation
of the school commission expressed it: "to form everywhere educated
and well-mannered citizens fit for all forms of service and social obli-
gations." The educator was thought to be an "enlightener" by encour-
aging the sciences and the arts which, in the words of an anonymous
French observation which a Russian journal copied, furthered morality,
gave a nation its glory and prosperity, "softened manners," and "em-
bellished life." Popular among the educated classes in Russia, as in West-
ern Europe, were the sentimentalist views of Stephanie Genlis, who
believed that religion formed a child's conscience so that the pupil would
become virtuous, kind, honest, tolerant, generous, even prayerful, but
not "superstitious." The religious and moral overtones in the thought of
German academics who taught in Russia are evident in the writings of
the philosopher and political economist Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob, who
followed the teachings of Immanuel Kant and Adam Smith. Jakob be-
lieved that the state had the responsibility to promote "moral religion."
He objected to the "independent" seminaries and monasteries of Catholic
Europe as the promoters of "superstition" and "errors" but held that
the state must oversee religious instruction and that theologians should
be trained in the universities, as in Protestant Germany.6
5 For example, see I. M. Born in Periodicheskoe izdanie Vol'nago Obshchestva liubitelei

slovesnosti, nauk i khudozhestv [Periodical Publication of the Free Society of the Lovers
of Literature, Science and the Arts] (1804), 136-38; G. I. Terlaich, Kratkoe rukovodstvo
k sistematicheskomu poznaniiu grazhdanskago chastnago prava Rossii [A Short Guide to
a Systematic Knowledge of Russian Private Civil Law] 2 parts (St. Petersburg, 1810), 1:
11, 18; Jean Charles Biaudet and Francoise Nichol, eds., Correspondance de Frederic-Cesar
de La Harpe et Alexandre ler, 3 vols. (Neuchatel, 1978-80), 1: 72, 90, 316, 372, and
(1979), 2: 230, 235.
6 Frederic Ancillon, Tableau des revolutions du systeme politique de l'Europe depuis
la fin du quinzieme siecle, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1803-5), 1: intro., xxxix; law 20.407, 8 Sep.
1802, Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii s 1649 goda [Complete Collection of
Despite the central place of the anticlericalism of Voltaire and others

in European thought, the Enlightenment did not mean a necessary conflict
between rationalism and religion. Educators in Russia customarily had
identified religion with morality, while education removed "darkness"
and "superstition." These terms, which were so emotionally charged in
Western European Enlightenment polemics, in Russia referred usually
not to religion, but to boorishness and ignorance. Catherine's adviser, I.
I. Betskoi, in his 1764 plans for a state boarding school in Moscow, had
predicted that educational institutions would "overcome the superstition
of the ages," and at the same time he included catechism as an important
part of the curriculum. Alexander's 1804 law said that in addition to
religious instruction, elementary schools were to provide "a precise
knowledge of the phenomenon of nature and to eliminate in [the children]
superstitions and prejudices which are so harmful to their welfare, health
and condition." The regulations for the gymnasiums warned that teachers
had to guard themselves and their pupils from "all superstitions, fairy
tales and corrupt deeds and conversations."7
It was not unusual at any time in the reign of Catherine or of
Alexander to combine Enlightenment distaste for "superstition" with
support for teaching traditional religion. That the primary obligation of
schools was to teach morality and that morality was the product of
religion were truisms among educators early in the nineteenth century
who cited the Reign of Terror in France as proof of the disastrous effect
of "godlessness." Benevolent Russian rulers provided justice and pro-
moted knowledge. Very early in Alexander's reign educators who showed
the influence of German idealism rebuked the impious French. Professor
P. A. Sokhatskii, a Kantian, argued in an 1801 University of Moscow
address that "true Enlightenment" meant an awareness of God and the
soul's immortality as opposed to the revolutionary "fanaticism" of "false
philosophers." In 1805 the teacher of a district school, whose knack in
citing the psalms indicated a seminary background, pictured Peter I and
Catherine II as well as Alexander as "philosopher rulers" who opened
the doors to Enlightenment. Students were to be given a knowledge of
Laws of the Russian Empire] (hereafter cited as PSZ) (St. Petersburg, 1830), 27: 240;
Korifei [Coryphaeus] 1 (no. 2, 1802): 187; Stephanie Genlis, Comtesse de, afterwards
Marquise de Sillery (1746-1830), Adele et Theodore ou lettres sur l'education, 2d ed., 3
vols. (Paris, 1782), 1: 233-37, 2: 74-81, 3: 90-91; Ludwig Heinrich Jakob, Grundsdtze
der Policeygesetzgebung und der Policeyanstalten, 2 vols. (Kharkov, 1809), 1: 257-62.
7 G. N. Volkov, S. F. Egorov, A. N. Kopylov, eds., Antologiia pedagogicheskoi mysli
Rossii XVIII v. [An Anthology of Pedagogical Thought in Russia in the Eighteenth Century]
(Moscow, 1985), 150,153; law 21.501, 5 Nov. 1804, PSZ, 28: 640; Sbornik postanovlenii
po Ministerstvu Narodnago Prosveshcheniia [A Collection of Decrees of the Ministry of
Public Education] (St. Petersburg, 1864), 1: 313.
nature to prevent their assimilation of "crude superstitions," but the

teaching of religion also contributed to good manners and citizenship.
Such addresses were part of the commonplace propaganda about Peter
the Great whose many accomplishments included having overthrown the
"heavy chains of superstition," a theme consonant with the description
of modern Russian rulers as Enlighteners but in contradiction to the
history in the often-heard claim that medieval Russian princes in coop-
eration with the church had brought "Christian Enlightenment to Rus-
sia. "8
If there was some confusion among publicists and speakers as to
whether the medieval rulers, the church, Peter, or all three were to be
credited with bringing education to Russia, everyone agreed that Enlight-
enment had a Christian flavor. Anticlericalism appeared not in attacks
on religion nor on the Russian Orthodox church, but in denunciations
of the medieval Roman Catholic church. Many Russian educators fol-
lowed Western European thinkers in presenting the Enlightenment anti-
clerical view of historical progress. Dmitrii Mizko, director of schools at
Ekaterinoslav, at the 1805 opening of that province's gymnasium, praised
enlightened monarchs for carrying out the will of the "All Highest" in
banishing "dark ignorance," the alleged condition of man after the col-
lapse of the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages "human reason" was
"held in chains," to be broken only by "the light of knowledge." The
director of Vitebsk gymnasium in 1809 linked the Inquisition, the St.
Bartholomew's massacre, and the assassination of Henry IV with the
condemnation of Socrates, "brutal laws," and "ruinous habits" as ex-
amples of intellectual "errors." While speakers before school assemblies
frequently abused medieval Catholic churchmen for the repression of
"reason," and some may have used this device to slur all clerics, the
orators did not challenge the role of religious teaching in Russia's school
system, nor did they show contempt for Orthodoxy.9
8 Rechi, proiznesennyia v torzhestvennykh sobraniiakh Imperatorskago Moskovskago

Universiteta russkimi professorami onago . . . [Addresses, Delivered at Solemn Assemblies
of Imperial Moscow University by Its Russian Professors] (Moscow, 1821), 3: 68, 78-79
(henceforth cited as Rechi [Addresses]); Periodicheskoe sochinenie o uspekhakh narodnago
prosveshcheniia [Periodical Writings on the Successes of Public Education] 13 (1805): 202-
12 (hereafter Periodicheskoe sochinenie [Periodical Writings]; Litsei [The Lyceum] 2
(1806): 9; Ulei [The Bee-hive] 1 (Apr. 1811): 296.
9 Periodicheskoe sochinenie [Periodical Writings] 13 (1805): 107-9; Kanarovskii-Sok-
hovich (initials not given) in Ulei [The Bee-hive] 3 (Mar. 1812): 188. Since the reign of
Catherine II, speakers had identified Russian Christianity with Enlightenment concepts,
while voicing horror of the medieval Catholic church. The theologian, philosopher, and
historian Kh. A. Chebotarev in 1779 contrasted "pure and practical" Christianity with
both "godlessness" and "superstition." Rechi [Addresses] (1819), 1: 343,347. The physicist
P. I. Strakhov declared in 1788 that the kind of religious persecution associated with the
Inquisition opposed "the laws of religion and humanity" and was contrary to Russian
traditions of Enlightenment. Ibid. (1820), 2: 228-42.
All educators thought that schools must shape the morality of stu-
dents. As one student essayist wrote in 1811, youth must be on guard
against "harmful and silly superstitions," but the chief objective of ed-
ucation was "the formation of the heart." Radical French Enlighteners
had advocated education in virtue as a substitute for the hope of heavenly
bliss, but in Russia no publicist nor official implied that moral training
obviated traditional Christian hope. Educators at the beginning of the
nineteenth century said little about the Bible or Jesus Christ, but like
later reactionaries they stressed "loyalty," "service," and "faith," and
some warned of irreligious writings. Ex-seminarian, translator, teacher,
and journalist Ivan I. Martynov, a director for the ministry of education,
explained in his introduction to his 1804 journal The Northern Messenger
that the purpose of education was associated with the government's
objective of obedience, order, justice, family life, industry, "faith," and
morality. These virtues he believed to be the special qualities of Russians.
"Faith, knowledge and morality constitute the essence of enlighten-
ment."10
An anonymous article in the journal argued that "religious zeal must
utilize all its efforts to convey the loftiness of its teachings to the unde-
veloped understanding of youth." Other contributors applauded the role
of schools in promoting family life, service, utility, and bravery. The
complaints of one essayist about the danger of "useless" and "bad" books
anticipated the capricious censorship of the later period. The dual ap-
proach of many educators-the medieval West was retrograde, but the
revolutionary West was antireligious-produced arguments that con-
demned both intellectual repression and freedom of thought. An 1805
writer singled out medieval Russian churchmen for their role in bringing
enlightenment and morality to the country, but in the well-worn pattern
of Enlightenment anticlericalism accused the medieval Roman Catholic
West of "superstition" and "arbitrary power." He also warned of the
dangerous effects from irreligious authors such as Lucretius and Spinoza,
and praised the "divine" Plato, Newton, and Leibniz for their reverence
for God.11
According to Alexander's early educational legislation, parish and
district schools were to teach religion and some universities had faculties
of theology, but religion was not a part of the secondary school curric-
'? Vasilii Sokolov of the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute, Periodicheskoe sochinenie
[Periodical Writings] 29 (1811): 652-58; Jean-Gottlieb Buhle, Histoire de la philosophie
moderne, 6 vols. (Paris, 1816), 6: 61; Severnyi vestnik [The Northern Messenger] 1 (1804):
1-12, esp. 2-3, 5, 6, 8, 10.
" Severnyi vestnik [The Northern Messenger] 1 (1804): 43-44, 3: 342-50, 4: 205, 5
(1805): 42; N. Cherniavskii in ibid. 5 (1805): 35-38, 40.
ulum. This did not show governmental disregard for religious instruction,
despite the assertion of the Soviet historian E. N. Medynskii that the
1804 regulations for secondary schools were based on "philosophical,
rationalist principles, characteristic of the age of Enlightenment." The
omission of religion from the gymnasiums corresponded to a similar
neglect in Catherine's secondary schools. The educational commission
reported, 8 May 1801, that religion was taught in the first three classes
of Catherine's major public schools, but not in the fourth. It was not
assumed, however, that adolescents did not require religion. In the 1804
regulations for boarding schools, proprietors were to provide religious
instruction for children, according to their denomination. Teachers were
to accompany their pupils to church, to see that they prayed before and
after lessons and meals, when they rose in the morning, and when they
retired at night. Similar regulations applied to the nobles' boarding school
attached to the University of Moscow and to the nobles' boarding school
attached to the St. Petersburg gymnasium.'2
Publicity about religious practices in such schools was in part an
attempt to encourage noble parents to use public rather than private
schools. That both types of schools boasted of their religious atmosphere
shows that many believed long before the pietist reaction that youths
required some kind of religious influence in school. Religion was included
in 1805 in the newly reorganized military schools, in 1806 in the Tiflis
nobles' school, and in the mining schools under the finance ministry,
where special arrangements were made for Lutheran pupils. By 1807
students in the St. Petersburg commercial school studied religion, and
religion was part of the public examination at the Irkutsk gymnasium in
1810. S. S. Uvarov, as curator of the St. Petersburg educational district,
in 1811 made religion part of the curriculum in the reorganized St.
Petersburg gymnasium. 13
12 Sbornik postanovlenii [A Collection of Decrees], 1: 54, 141, 264, 268, 334-36; law
21.501,5 Nov. 1804, PSZ, 28: 628; E. N. Medynskii, Istoriia russkoi pedagogiki do velikoi
Oktiabr'skoi revoliutsii [The History of Russian Pedagogy until the Great October Rev-
olutionl, 2d ed. (Moscow, 1938), 110; Sbornik materialov dlia istorii prosveshcheniia v
Rossii [A Collection of Materials for the History of Education in Russia], ed. Ivan Kornilov
(St. Petersburg, 1893), 1: 330; Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe] 17 (Oct. 1804):
223-29; Periodicheskoe sochinenie [Periodical Writings] 21 (1808): 451-63.
13 Sanktpeterburgskaia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 36 (30 May 1804): 1112,
76 (21 Sep. 1806): 857, and 84 (17 Oct. 1807): announcement; Severnaia pochta [The
Northern Post] 89 (21 Sep. 1810), and 51 (26 June 1812); law 21.675, 21 Mar. 1805,
PSZ, 28: 906; law 22.208,13 July 1806, PSZ, 29: 462; A. Voronov, Istoriko-Statitichesksoe
obozrenie uchebnykh zavedenii St. Peterburgskago uchebnago okruga s 1715 po 1818
vkliuchitel'no [An Historical-Statistical Review of Educational Institutions of the St. Pe-
tersburg Educational District from 1715 to 1828 Inclusive] (St. Petersburg, 1849), 215.
Newspaper items which reported on school donations stressed char-

ity and the advantages of education, but in the early part of the century
they were not filled with a cloying religiosity as would be the case later.
Sometimes writers in promoting religious instruction demonstrated a
defensiveness that showed they were alive to the Enlightenment's objec-
tions to intolerance. V. V. Izmailov, 1814 editor of The Messenger of
Europe, in an essay on "Religion and Philosophy," maintained that just
as superstition, hypocrisy, and intolerance were not part of religion, nor
was irreligion a part of philosophy. Morality could not be based on reason
alone. "Faith presumes wisdom, and wisdom Faith." Never did speakers
or writers imply that religion was somehow opposed to character-build-
ing and intellectual development. Churchmen participated in public
school openings and in public examinations, religious ceremonies were
a part of school assemblies, and school prayers were common. Journal
articles on education early in the nineteenth century acknowledged the
role of the clergy in supporting schools. Not only were there religious
services, a procession, and the sprinkling of holy water when on 29 July
1806 the major public school in Astrakhan was turned into a gymnasium,
but a priest delivered an address on "the utility of education when united
with the Christian Faith."'14
The religious atmosphere in school festivities in the early period
often was accompanied by speeches from educators who voiced secular
aspects of Western European Enlightenment ideology. Professor of lit-
erature and rector, Ivan S. Rizhskii, at the opening of Kharkov University
in 1805, cited aesthetic views of Voltaire, described the role of exceptional
minds (the "thinking people") in furthering progress, and he eulogized
knowledge and reason. Like many Russian educators, this master of the
catchphrases of the Enlightenment had an ecclesiastical background.
Rizhskii was from a priestly family; he was the product of church schools
and was a former seminary teacher. He had served for a time as a secretary
to the Orthodox church's governing institution, the Holy Synod. Fedor
Kudritskii, director of the newly opened Kharkov gymnasium, in 1805
attributed divine-like characteristics to the emperor's activities as an En-
lightener. The tsar's power was based not on servility, but on love, good-
ness, and justice. Schools that combined training of the intelligence and
14 Sanktpeterburgskiia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 47 (10 June 1804): 1390-
91, 86 (27 Oct. 1805): 985, 39 (8 May 1808): 552, 95 (26 Nov. 1807): 1198, 24 (23
Mar. 1809): 293, and 38 (11 May 1809): 483; Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe]
27 (Sep. 1814): 46-57; Sbornik materialov dlia istorii prosveshcheniia v Rossii [A Collection
of Materials for the History of Education in Russia] (St. Petersburg, 1898): Litsei [The
Lyceum] 3 (no. 2, 1806): 94; Periodicheskoe sochinenie [Periodical Writings] 16 (1806):
429-30.
the heart improved manners and morals.'5 The lavish but imprecise loft-
iness here, common in the period, demonstrated an approval of the po-
litical and social order; if there was an absence of those biblical references
of the latter part of the reign, the sentiments did not question what were
then considered to be Christian principles.
The way in which scholars prior to the religious reaction sometimes
combined conventional Enlightenment language with doctrinal Christi-
anity may be seen in an 1807 address which G. N. Gorodchaninov,
professor of rhetoric and literature, gave at Kazan University. In 1804
Gorodchaninov had translated for the ministry of education Raynal's
anticlerical History of the Two Indies, but he was also a follower of the
conservative bureaucrat and writer Admiral A. S. Shishkov. Adroit ca-
reerists had little trouble in professing whatever they thought the au-
thorities favored at any given moment. Later that professor would be
associated with the purge of liberals, but in 1807 the Kazan educator
spoke of enlightenment as raising a student from the "darkness of natural
ignorance," as it freed him from "prejudice, false opinions and super-
stition." Education gave "an exact and clear understanding of things"
and "opened the mysteries of nature." Moral lessons, however, came
from religion. Examples of the "highest human virtues" were Abraham,
Isaac, Job, Joseph-"leading to the divine teachings of Christ."16
An emphasis on religious training would increase for all schools
until it culminated in the intense pietism which marked the last decade
of the reign. In that period a simplistic identification of the Enlightenment
with the French Revolution and of Restoration liberalism with subversion
had joined with Tsar Alexander's interest in "mystical" Christianity to
produce conservatism both in foreign policy and in domestic affairs.17
The appointment of the pietist Prince Alexander N. Golitsyn as minister
of education in 1816 and the combining of the administration of the
Holy Synod with education in 1817 to form a Ministry of Spiritual Affairs
and Education reinforced the position of the state as the propagator of
'5 For Rizhskii speech, Periodicheskoe sochinenie [Periodical Writings] 16 (1806): 457-
67, esp. 458, 463, 466; for biography, see Russkii biograficheskii slovar' [Russian Bio-
graphical Dictionary] (St. Petersburg, 1913), 16: 192-95; for Kudritskii, Periodicheskoe
sochinenie [Periodical Writings] (1806), 14: 178-87.
16 G. N. Gorodchaninov, Sochineniia v stikakh i proze [Writings in Verse and Prose]
(Kazan, 1816), 52, 57-58.
17 The French reactionary writer Count de Maistre tried to influence Russian educa-
tional leaders to pursue a more religiously oriented program. David W. Edwards, "Count
Joseph Marie de Maistre and Russian Educational Policy, 1803-1828," Slavic Review 36
(Mar. 1977): 54-75. For a balanced summary of Alexander's reign, see Allen McConnell,
Tsar Alexander I, Paternalistic Reformer (New York, 1970); on foreign policy, Patricia
Kennedy Grimsted, The Foreign Ministers of Alexander I: Political Attitudes and the
Conduct of Russian Diplomacy, 1801-1825 (Berkeley, Calif., 1969).
religion which had marked the activities since 1813 of the Russian Bible
Society, under Golitsyn's presidency.
The frequent employment of scriptural phraseology on the part of
educators, the tedious repetition of the advantages of religious instruc-
tion, and the persecution of gifted academics pointed to a change of
atmosphere which made ugly the image of Alexander as the "tsar en-
lightener." Alexander's "mysticism" and Golitsyn's pietism at first were
not in contradiction to early liberal goals, but gradually religiosity became
a substitute for secular reforms. Prominent educators who wished to
support the government's program of Christian instruction sought, as
had religious writers in Western Europe, to show that a diabolical, ra-
tionalist "enemy" had to be overcome. However the religiosity of the
final decade should be seen in the context of how journalists and edu-
cators throughout the reign presented the function of religion in the
school system. The chauvinism of the post-Napoleonic period had eigh-
teenth-century roots, and very early in the nineteenth century publicists
who objected to the influence in Russian education of the "frivolity" and
"godlessness" of the French had asked for a return to old-fashioned
"Russian" patriotic and religious values.18
Many of the standard expressions of the Enlightenment in school
addresses remained. Some educators after the Napoleonic wars continued
to present themselves both as defenders of religion against French rev-
olutionary ideology and defenders of Enlightenment against medieval
obscurantists. The solemn opening ceremonies at Kazan University, 5
July 1814, were accompanied with the usual religious services after which
Professor Vasilii Perevoshchikov identified knowledge with virtue, cited
Voltaire, attacked the Middle Ages as a period when "superstition tor-
tured mankind," but warned that in the present day "lack of religion
would turn people into wild beasts" and held that the greatest merit of
knowledge was its revelation of our immortality-"it raises us to the
Divinity." A speech at the 1818 public examination at Tula gymnasium
in the fashion of Enlightenment anticlericalism bewailed the "darkness"
of the medieval Catholic clergy, the "dread Vatican which manipulated
the conscience," and the lack of "justice" in the feudal period "where
IN Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge,

Mass., 1960). See "Dobryi otets," ["A Good Father"] Russkii vestnik [The Russian Mes-
senger] 7 (Sep. 1809): 297-342, for one among many examples of chauvinistic-religious
assertions. Also see Mark Al'tshuller, Predtechi slavianofil'stva v russkoi literature (Ob-
shchestvo "Beseda liubitelei russkogo slova") [The Forerunners of Slavophilism in Russian
Literature (The Society of the "Colloquy of the Lovers of Russian Speech")] (Ann Arbor,
1984); Franklin A. Walker, "Patriotic Rhetoric, Public Education, and Language Choice
in the Russia of Tsar Alexander I," Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism 12 (Autumn
1985): 261-71.
the poor man was the slave of the rich." At the same time the orator
denounced the use of "reason" and "philosophy" without the guidance
of "holy religion." Neglect of religion produced the "despotism" and
"anarchy" of Marat and Robespierre. Our "only Enlightenment," he
insisted, was "faith." Yet the speaker's main point was the necessity of
education to avoid the "ruinous effects of ignorance."'9
After the Napoleonic wars, as earlier, the efforts of the government
and of private donors to promote education were featured in newspaper
accounts, and if references to the "sacrifices" of benefactors resembled
the frequent appeals to Christian charity, patriotic poetry continued to
portray the ruler as an enlightener who swept away "darkness." An
essayist in 1821 affirmed the role of the autocrat as the founder of schools
which, in encouraging intellectual development, contributed to the ideal
of "fulfillment." The advocacy of religion did not appear in conflict with
earlier calls for learning in virtue. As late as 1824 Parofenii Engalychev's
study of educational theory expressed the usual horror of French god-
lessness, but also attacked "superstition" and "prejudice." He held up
as models those favorites of the Enlightenment-Socrates, Cato, Epic-
tetus, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius-and cited Montaigne and Locke.
The author described the utilitarian advantages of religion-it kept the
poor from robbing the rich while it gave the rich a sense of obligation
to the poor. Educators of all stripes accepted the Enlightenment's opti-
mistic view that education should result in moral progress. Many religious
speakers now identified morality with dogmatic Christianity, but they
used much of the same language as more secular moralists. Priests at
school ceremonies, in pleading the cause of religious instruction, de-
scribed religion as improving manners and strengthening virtue. They
assumed the continuation of other parts of the curriculum.20
Officials hoped that the introduction into Russia of Lancastrian
schools would spread both religion and literacy among common people-
a view that the British educational reformer Joseph Lancaster himself
ly Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe] 18 (Sep. 1814): 83-105; I. Evgenov,

"Ob istinnom prosveshchenii" ["On True Enlightenment"], ibid. 105 (May 1819): 85-
103, esp. 88-89, 101-3. Evgenov is not identified. Presumably he was a senior student
who reflected the views of a teacher.
20 Sanktpeterburgskiia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 17 (27 Feb. 1814): 167,
47 (13 June 1819): 527-28, and 48 (17 June 1819): 539-40; Stepan P. Shevyrev's poem
in Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe] 123 (Mar. 1822): 57; the journalist and
minor finance ministry bureaucrat D. M. Kniazhevich in Blagonamerennyi [The Well-
Intentioned] 13 (Jan. 1821): 49-50, 58; Parofenii Engalychev, 0 fizicheskom i nravstven-
nom vospitanii [On Physical and Moral Education] (St. Petersburg, 1824), 3-4, 39-41,
47, 206-11, 42; the priest Vivilianskii of the Imperial Orphans' Home, 10 May 1817, Syn
Otechestva [The Son of the Fatherland] 38 (no. 22, 1817): 81-88.
held. Moscow's The Messenger of Europe was rarely a vehicle for liberal
opinion, but an anonymous 1817 article held that the Lancastrian method
made possible an education for all classes. An extremely rare reservation
about education for common people appeared when The Russian Veteran
reprinted a French royalist argument on the danger of extending edu-
cation, because commoners, if educated, would feel a "repugnance" for
their position. But an article which The Son of the Fatherland copied
from a French liberal journal praised Lancastrian schools as a means of
"improving manners, furthering religion, love to neighbor and obedience
to laws." The minor bureaucrat, Joseph Gamel', an early proponent of
Lancastrian schools, wrote that the "spiritual and moral education" of
the common people was the goal of the patriot and the "true Christian."2'
The wish to inculcate Christian principles among common people
was part of the religious reaction which aimed for a "true" enlightenment.
In addition to intensive propaganda for charitable activity in the news-
papers and journals in the latter half of Alexander's reign, there was a
great deal of information about the activities of the Russian Bible Society.
Frequently now Bibles were presented to meritorious students at school
ceremonies, and there was much mention of the students' use of the
Bible.22
The Bible Society went hand-in-hand with the Lancastrian schools,
since Bible reading demanded literacy. Among bureaucrats associated
with Golitsyn as honorary members of the St. Petersburg Society for
Mutual Instruction was that symbol of reaction Count A. A. Arakcheev,
along with the Orthodox and Roman Catholic metropolitans. More lib-
eral bureaucrats such as V. P. Kochubei, Mikhail Speranskii, and Uvarov
were also involved, as well as liberal publicists, some of whom were or
would become members of the secret Union of Welfare or the later
21 Le conservateur impartial 63 (8 Aug. 1816): 333-34; Severnaia pochta [The North-

ern Post] 44 (3 June 1814), and 67 (19 Aug. 1816); Joseph Lancaster, Improvements in
Education, as it respects the industrious classes of the community . . ., 3d ed. (London,
1805), intro., viii-xi; Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe] 96 (Nov. 1817): 26-33;
Russkii invalid [The Russian Veteran] 2 (Jan. 1819): 3; Syn Otechestva [The Son of the
Fatherland] 53 (no. 13,1819): 3-16; Opisaniie sposoba vzaimnago obucheniia po sistemam
Bella, Lankastera i drugikh ... Sochinenie Nadvornago Sovetnika, Doktora Meditsiny
losifa Gamelia [Descriptions of the Methods of Mutual Instruction According to the Systems
of Bell, Lancaster and others ... The Work of Court Counsellor and Doctor of Medicine
Joseph Gamel'] (St Petersburg, 1820), intro., 1-2; Judith Cohen Zacek, "The Lancastrian
School Movement in Russia," The Slavonic and East European Review 45 (July 1967):
343-37.
22 For example, Severnaia pochta [The Northern Post] 62 (3 Aug. 1818); and Sa
peterburgskiia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 86 (25 Oct. 1818): 978. J. C. Zacek,
"The Russian Bible Society and the Russian Orthodox Church," Church History 35 (Dec.
1966): 411-37; Stuart R. Tomkins, "The Russian Bible Society-a Case of Religious
Xenophobia," The American Slavic and East European Review 7 (Oct. 1948): 251-68.
Northern Society (Decembrist) organizations. These included F. N.

Glinka, V. K. Kiukhel'beker, Prince S. P. Trubetskoi, and N. M. Mur-
av'ev. The religious aspect of the program was in consonance with the
tsar's patronage of Quaker humanitarians and with the development of
the Bible Society. While Quaker Christianity and Bible Society propa-
ganda were foreign to the traditions of Russian Orthodoxy, the Quakers
and Evangelicals who visited Russia were devout Christians who worked
in harmony with the Orthodox hierarchy. The overlooking of sectarian
distinctions implied in the pietism of Golitsyn's ministry continued that
toleration of various religions which had existed in the public school
system from the beginning, when in so far as possible accommodation
was made in the teaching of religion according to the persuasions of the
pupils.23
Tensions soon developed, however, between moral reformers, some
of whom were associated with the future Decembrists or shared similar
views, and those who argued that educational efforts required a more
literal application of "Gospel Christianity" to prevent the corruption of
Russian youth from "rationalist," "revolutionary" ideology. M. L. Mag-
nitskii, as curator at Kazan, and D. P. Runich, as curator of St. Petersburg
educational districts (and both high in the main educational administra-
tion), were responsible for the dismissal of harmless foreign and Russian
pedagogs, the advancement of whom had been an objective of Alexan-
der's educational plans. The removal of eminent, mildly liberal professors,
the driving out of the country of outstanding foreign academics, the
consequent pressure on the remaining professors to exercise caution, and
the repellent insistence on the role of religion in education explain why
historians such as Allen Sinel have argued that "the stale air of outmoded
religious study began to suffocate the free spirit of inquiry." Magnitskii
advocated the spread of public education-but as a counter to liberal
constitutionalism, which he considered "diabolical." Finally in 1824 po-
litical and clerical enemies of Golitsyn took advantage of the Protestant
aspects of that minister's pietism to accuse him of undermining Ortho-
doxy. The tsar then replaced him with the conservative Shishkov. It is
23 Russkii invalid [The Russian Veteran] 42 (19 Feb. 1819): 168-70; Syn Otechestva
[The Son of the Fatherland] 52 (no. 7, 1819): 3-9, 53 (no. 14, 1819): 89-92; Life of
William Allen: With Selections from His Correspondence, 3 vols. (London, 1846-47), 1:
439-40,447-49, and 2:12-15, 22-29; A. N. Pypin, Religioznyia dvizheniia pri Aleksandre
I [The Religious Movement under Alexander I] (Petrograd, 1916), 148; Max Geiger,
Aufklarung und Erweckung: Beitrage zur Erforschung Johann Heinrich Jung-Stillings und
der Erweckungstheologie (Zurich, 1963), 384-85; there were special sections of the Gol-
itsyn ministry to handle non-Orthodox and even non-Christian faiths, Zhurnal Departa-
menta Narodnago Prosveshcheniia [The Journal of the Department of Public Education]
(Jan. 1821), 9.
hardly a wonder that Russia did not escape what was a general European
reaction, such as was seen especially in the repressive educational meas-
ures that were a feature of Metternich's 1819 Carlsbad decrees. The fear
that "liberalism" might reintroduce the Terror led to that obscurantism
which many intellectuals found so offensive that instead of the repression
preventing radical movements, retrograde measures contributed to future
upheavals.24
Liberalism was hardly to be equated with revolution, however, es-
pecially since the Russian government had encouraged at least moderate
aspects of liberal ideology. And it was not true that all liberals in Russia
were anti-Christian or even anticlerical. Of course Magnitskii, Runich,
and other obscurantists struck at the wrong target, but their slanders
found a hearing because some educators had already identified "foreign"
rationalism with revolution, and moreover there was indeed a revolu-
tionary ferment among the Russian intelligentsia, some of whom were
important writers and others held military posts. Major General M. F.
Orlov, a Union of Welfare leader, utilized a meeting of the Kievan Bible
Society to flail Western European royalism and clericalism along with
their Russian counterparts. What began as a customary laudation of the
spread of the Bible ended as an alignment of progress versus reaction.
"In all times, in all lands," he held, there were "defenders of ignorance
and enemies of all that was lofty." These "enemies of the light" and
"defenders of darkness" in France opposed "free thought and the intro-
duction of representative institutions," while in Germany they defended
"the remnants of feudal law." Similar dark forces in Russia had opposed
the reforms of Peter the Great, the Empress Elizabeth, and Catherine the
Great and now would condemn all philosophy as "unbelief."25
24 Allen Sinel, The Classroom and the Chancellery: State Educational Reform in Russia
under Count Dmitry Tolstoi (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 10; Magnitskii letter to the tsar,
7 Nov. 1823, Sbornik istoricheskikh materialov, izvlechenykh iz arhiva pervago otdeleniia
sobstvennoi ego Imperatorskago Velichestva kantseliarii [A Collection of Historical Ma-
terials Extracted from the Archives of the First Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own
Chancellery] (St. Petersburg, 1876) 1: 367-74; Walter William Sawatsky, "Prince Alex-
ander N. Golitsyn, 1773-1844: Tsarist Minister of Piety" (Ph.D. diss., University of Min-
nesota, 1976). For an excellent study of the universities, including an objective analysis of
the repressions, see James T. Flynn, The University Reform of Tsar Alexander I, 1802-
1835 (Washington, D. C., 1988). For an example of the antipathy to the ministry's religious
program on the part of a future Decembrist, see V. I. Shteingel, Sochineniia i pis'ma
[Writings and Letters], 2 vols. (Irkutsk, 1985), "Zapiski" ["Memoirs"], 1: 166, and letter
to A. A. Pisarev, 17 Apr. 1818, 1: 189. On attitude of the educated public, see N. Eidel'man,
Pushkin i dekabristy: Iz istorii vzaimootnoshenii [Pushkin and the Decembrists: The History
of Their Mutual Relationships] (Moscow, 1979), 116-19.
25 M. F. Orlov, Kapituliatsiia Parizha: Politicheskie sochineniia: Pis'ma [The Capit-
ulation of Paris: Political Writings: Letters], ed. I. I. Borovoi and M. I. Gillel'son (Moscow,
1963), 45-52. Russkii invalid [The Russian Veteran] 178 (2 Aug. 1819): 711-13, depicted
Orlov's wide-sweeping exposure of the political and cultural reaction

extended to the Restoration period the stereotype of the medieval Cath-
olic church which educators had always voiced. But Orlov's grand his-
torical view implied a contemporary polarization in society which was
exaggerated. Despite the simplistic directives of extremists, such as Mag-
nitskii and Runich, moderate educators held that religion and Enlight-
enment reinforced one another. When still curator of the St. Petersburg
educational district, Uvarov, at the 14 February 1819 ceremony which
marked the transfer of the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute into St.
Petersburg University, had declared that the university must seek "the
spread of healthy principles of morality, based on Religion." The Free
Society of the Lovers of Russian Literature, the Sciences and the Arts
held a meeting on 26 November 1820, attended by five hundred persons,
at the hall of the Commission on Ecclesiastical Schools, to hear the
president of the Society, the well-known satirist and journalist A. E.
Izmailov, praise church schools for serving from ancient times as the
"garden of enlightenment." Similarly a survey of the history of education
in The Neva Observer remarked that the "spread of the Christian faith"
meant the extension to all classes of the principles of free education,
developed first by Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch. The author declared,
however, that the full implications of Christianity for education were
realized only by the pietists and those reformers whom Rousseau had
influenced. He showed how the schools of the German pietists, in addition
to religion, emphasized nonreligious training.26
A stress on religion in later school reports was combined with the
earlier pride in supposedly remarkable successes in secular disciplines.
And if accounts of public examinations in all schools in the final decade
of the reign now began with the subject of religion, examinations even
in ecclesiastical schools included not only questions in theology and phi-
losophy, but mathematics, history, Russian literature, and the German,
Greek, and French languages. The report of the 1816 public examination
at St. Petersburg gymnasium emphasized the religious content of the
courses. Pupils were examined in the "Orthodox teachings of the Greek
Russian church," on the "sacred scriptures," on the history of the church,
the army Lancastrian schools under Orlov's jurisdiction as carrying out an enlightenment
activity similar to that of St. Vladimir in establishing Christianity at Kiev, but some of his
schools imparted the symbolism of revolution. See V. G. Bazanov, Vladimir Fedoseevich
Raevskii: Novye materialy [Vladimir Fedoseevich Raevskii: New Materials] (Moscow-
Leningrad, 1949), 98-99.
26 Sanktpeterburgskiia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 14 (18 Feb. 1819): 141;
Blagonamerennyi [The Well-Intentioned] 12 (Nov. 1820): 259-62; N. Rashkov, Nevskii
zritel' [The Neva Observer] 1 (Jan. 1820): 170-79.
and on the liturgy. On the other hand, the account of the December 1816
examination at the Moscow nobles' boarding school told of a student
play which, in the spirit of D. I. Fonvizin's moralizing, argued that ed-
ucation was to train pupils not to shine in the world but to become true
sons of the fatherland. "Learning is light, ignorance is darkness."27 As
we have seen, this does not mean that religion did not play a part in the
boarding school, but that it accompanied service notions which went
back to the previous century.
Religiosity sometimes covered old-fashioned Enlightenment con-
cepts of educational progress. The newspaper description of the public
examination at Riazan gymnasium, 19 June 1822, reported that "espe-
cially noticeable was the spirit of reverential respect and zeal for success
in [the subject of] religion," but such publicity may have been aimed to
fit the mood that Golitsyn's ministry encouraged. The account does not
establish that scholars were really more pious than in the past. The main
address was on the utility of history, while besides religion, students were
examined in mathematics, physics, geography, statistics, logic, and in
languages. Sketches in Latin and Greek on the value of knowledge marked
the 1822 public examination for a church school in Voronezh province.
A priest praised the tsar for having planted a "vine" of enlightenment
which "will ripen for the benefit of church and society." A student poem
read at the Moscow nobles' boarding school graduation ceremony in
December 1817 included among the advantages of education a reverence
for the Creator, who for us had descended from heaven, and implanted
His laws in our hearts. "We are taught that He is our judge and that in
His eyes wealth, rank and luxury are but dust"-a turn-of-the-century
anti-aristocratic sentimentalism now put in Christian terms.28
The repressions in the universities were unjust, self-seeking, and
absurd, as Uvarov and others asserted so effectively at that time. The
setback to education was most marked at the universities in Kazan,
Kharkov, and St. Petersburg, where mediocre but pious timeservers re-
placed fine scholars. As James T. Flynn points out, the new universities
were the most vulnerable. Fortunately the old and much greater Moscow
University was virtually untouched. Apart from the universities, the num-
ber of schools continued to grow, even if at a rather disappointing rate,
while efforts were made to increase the number of teachers-the most
27 Severnaia pochta [The Northern Post] (3 July 1812), (18 Aug. 1815); Sanktpeter-
burgskiia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 5 (16 Jan. 1817): appendix; Vestnik Evropy
[The Messenger of Europe] 90 (Dec. 1816): 297, and 91 (Jan. 1817): 3-13.
2X Sanktpeterburgskiia Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 65 (15 Aug. 1822): 834-
35, and 67 (22 Aug. 1822): 862-63; Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe] 97 (Jan.
1818): 81-86.
serious gap in the educational program.29 The heavy religiosity of the

period-public celebrations of the awards of Bibles to students, address
after address by catechism professors on the "true" basis of education
and morality-did not dim the concern so often expressed for the welfare
of the poor and for the educational needs of the unfortunate.
To what extent did teachers change their ways and actually try to
strengthen religion in the curriculum? While it is difficult to learn what
took place in the schools, evidence from the journals indicates that re-
ligion did not displace secular subjects. The lyrical depiction of a public
examination at the Mining Cadet Corps, 27 May 1822, which began
with an account of the performance of the pupils in religious knowledge,
soon went on to tell how they excelled in literature, chemistry, miner-
alogy, law, and political economy. Some gave talks in Russian, French,
and German, all of which was part and parcel of customary publicity
for the enlightening effects of public education. The assertion in 1821 of
the teacher of religion at the St. Petersburg gymnasium that natural
history and physics directed minds to "the divine creative activity" was
an example of unctuous Magnitskii-Runich religiosity, but at least the
clerical orator upheld the importance of scientific studies. At the 1818
opening of the Richelieu lyceum in Odessa, Count A. Langeron, military
governor, contrasted the benefits of an education based on religion to
the horrendous fruits of irreligious philosophy, but at the same time he
opposed the "despotism" and "barbarism" of the Turks to the "enlight-
enment" and "humanitarianism" of the Russians.30
The opening in Penza gymnasium in 1821 of "Christian and Literary
Conversations" was typical of the late pietist atmosphere; yet in addition
to studying religion, the students were to examine the classics, modern
literature, and the standard Russian authors. Even Magnitskii's notorious
1820 "instructions" to Kazan University, which maintained that the pur-
pose of education was to produce "true sons of the Orthodox Church,
true subjects of the Ruler, good and useful citizens of the Fatherland,"
approved expanded efforts in the teaching of Arabic and Persian, albeit
only for utility in state service, with the restriction that students were to
learn that any "wisdom" in Arabic culture came from the Greeks. The
29 Cynthia H. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual

Biography of Count Sergei Uvarov, 1786-1855 (DeKalb, 111., 1984), 82-83; Flynn, Uni-
versity Reform, 80-157; William L. Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization,
1800-1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1968), appendix 2, pt. 5, Table A; Zhurnal Departamenta
Narodnago Prosveshcheniia] The Journal of the Department of Public Education] (Feb.
1821), 154-61.
30 Blagonamerennyi [The Well-Intentioned] 18 (no. 22, 1822): 356-61; Syn Otechestva
[The Son of the Fatherland] 68 (no. 18, 1821): 6; Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of
Europe] 97 (Feb. 1818): 161-69.
speech of a pupil at the 1822 public examination at the Moscow com-

mercial school that "enlightenment adorns a man from every class" ex-
pressed a truism propagated in the late period of the reign as it had been
in the beginning.31
That knowledge was to create citizens of good character and there-
fore moral training was essential all educators agreed. Some upholders
of the status quo saw moral instruction as directed primarily toward
obedience, while liberal reformers hoped the schools would contribute
to social and political change.32 There had always been a religious element
in Russian education. The experiences of the 1812 invasion and the
subsequent political turmoil in Europe justified in the eyes of some a
reemphasis on what were believed to be national religious values. How-
ever, the educational system had been modeled on that of the West, and
no attack on alleged "godlessness" could eliminate the broad influences
of the Enlightenment, which with its rationalist aspects contained ap-
pealing moral ideals. Historians have neglected the religious content in
education in the early part of the century, while their understandable
concentration on the nefarious treatment of liberal-minded professors
has led to an insufficient appreciation of the complexities of Alexander's
reign. During the darkest period of reaction, many theorists employed
phrases associated with the Enlightenment. Certainly a flood of religious
exhortation altered the educational atmosphere, but officials had thought
since the beginning of public education that schools should be instruments
of Christian morality and patriotism. Authorities in the late Alexandrin-
ian period attempted to stifle what they regarded as a rationalist taint in
education, but much of the moral atmosphere of the Enlightenment hap-
pily survived.
31 Zhurnal Departamenta Narodnago Prosveshcheniia [The Journal of the Department

of Public Education] (May 1821), 56-58, and (Oct. 1821), 242-43; Sanktpeterburgskiia
Vedomosti [The St. Petersburg News] 68 (25 Aug. 1822): 880.
32 See the constitution of the Union of Welfare which linked education to the virtue
which was "the support of states," Izbrannye sotsial'no-politicheskie i filosofskie proizved-
eniia dekabristov [Selected Social-Political and Philosophical Writings of the Decembrists]
ed. I. Ia. Shchipanov, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1951) 1: 240-41, 244; on Christian influences on
the Decembrists, see Franklin A. Walker, "Christianity, the Service Ethic, and Decembrist
Thought," in Church, Nation, and State in Russia and Ukraine, ed. Geoffrey A. Hosking
(Basingstoke, 1991), 79-95.

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Enlightenment and Religion in Russian Education in the Reign of Tsar Alexander I

Author(s): Franklin A. Walker

Contemporaries saw the educational legislation of Tsar Alexander I

Franklin A. Walker is professor emeritus of history, Loyola University of Chicago.

History of Education Quarterly Vol. 32 No. 3 Fall 1992

hitherto-neglected essays and addresses of educators, offer material for

Although Russian educational theorists in the early nineteenth cen-

5 For example, see I. M. Born in Periodicheskoe izdanie Vol'nago Obshchestva liubitelei

Despite the central place of the anticlericalism of Voltaire and others

nature to prevent their assimilation of "crude superstitions," but the

8 Rechi, proiznesennyia v torzhestvennykh sobraniiakh Imperatorskago Moskovskago

Newspaper items which reported on school donations stressed char-

IN Hans Rogger, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge,

ly Vestnik Evropy [The Messenger of Europe] 18 (Sep. 1814): 83-105; I. Evgenov,

21 Le conservateur impartial 63 (8 Aug. 1816): 333-34; Severnaia pochta [The North-

Northern Society (Decembrist) organizations. These included F. N.

Orlov's wide-sweeping exposure of the political and cultural reaction

serious gap in the educational program.29 The heavy religiosity of the

29 Cynthia H. Whittaker, The Origins of Modern Russian Education: An Intellectual

speech of a pupil at the 1822 public examination at the Moscow com-

31 Zhurnal Departamenta Narodnago Prosveshcheniia [The Journal of the Department

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