Catherine’s Education Policy sounds like Reed’s “Life of the Mind”

It is said that education of the masses is the best way to prove society and that is kind of commons sense. Educated people are able to make better decisions in their country, such as being an educated voter in America today and knowing your rights. I agree with that. An educated society is one of the “central tenets of the enlightenment.” (page 104 in Catherine the Great, ASH)

 

I was intrigued to see that Catherine believed this and wanted education for both sexes as the work of Betskoy was called, General Plan for the Education of Young People of Both Sexes. I was even surprised to see that girls were included in this, albeit that their numbers were low. The quote that made me think of Reed’s life of the mind is on page 105 that goes like this, “vocational education and favoured a general curriculum, taught by arousing the child’s interest rather than by forcing him to learn by heart.” The part of arousing, genuinely getting the child excited about learning rather than just for the grade is something that Reed follows- learning for the sake of learning.

 

Together Betskoy and Catherine set up a school called the Foundling Homes, in which they took in illegitimate children and babies to teach them from scratch. The way I see it, is that Catherine was building up an army of loyal subjects and these schools did make these children successful. There was so much emphasis that these schools did not use any corporal punishments it almost makes me think that they did, in fact use it. These schools were a huge success, but why did Catherine start so small? Do you think that Catherine’s failure to introduce compulsory education to the villages and serfs was because she wanted to build a loyal subject community?

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Catherine The Great and Censorship

For me, the main question that came to mind from today’s reading was how to wrap my mind around how Catherine II sent Radischev to Siberia in 1791, thus setting a harsh precedent for the legalities of and consequences meted by governmental censorship. Perhaps it is a personal bad habit of mine to read Madriaga with partiality to Catherine, despite her not necessarily being the most effectual monarch on the syllabus. Still, after cheering on her efforts to establish Russia’s first national school system it is difficult to reconcile the reality of her censorship program.
I think Catherine fancied herself a pretty liberal monarch, but here and other places too she seemed to fall short of that goal. Some of her literature, especially her stance on serfdom, seems half baked by today’s standards.
The serfdom example leads directly back to Radischev: Maybe she was irritated at him for making an abolitionist tract because her consciousness and her official moral party line were abolitionist but she knew she wouldn’t or couldn’t stick her neck out as far as Radischev implored.
Maybe she fell into the role of the hardass censor accidentally. For the longest time nobody had the resources or motivation to set up presses outside religious, governmental, or quasi-governmental institutions, which were motivated to self-censor. Consequently, in the advent of a private press, Catherine had to design her own censorship strategy. And maybe with a new and unpracticed censorship body it was easy to pass judgement on Radischev under the influence of personal offence as much as moral code.
Besides, it’s important to remember that Russia was an absolute monarchy and even in times of liberal reform. What do you guys think? Might A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow have been allowed to remain in circulation under a different monarch, or a more lenient censorship strategy from Catherine? (Paul I did exonerate Radischev after Catherine’s death.) Is this sort of speculation even productive?
How did the treatment of A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow impact subsequent instances of state censorship?
Leah has noted that every society requires some degree of censorship. How would we respond if we were asked to oversee a new and unsupervised arm of publishing, congruous to the public sector presses in Catherine’s day?
And, of course, I’m eager to also discuss educational reforms in class!

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Peter the Great Music Video!

Special thanks to Dasha for finding this hilarious (and fairly accurate) music video starring Peter the Great. Please note that he has no beard and is dressed in Western European attire:

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Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who’s the Swearer of Them All?

The Honorable Mirror for Youth is the ultimate guide of behavior for children during Peter’s time. It comes an abundance of actions for possibly all encounters a young man should have. It’s like that awkward puberty book that my mom gives to my brothers as they start to age. It’s there, it’s true, and most be read in order to understand.

 

Some of the rules that are present in the book are common sense , absolutely no brainers and mostly common sense, and even ones that we see in our society today. I will admit that this document cracked me up and there were sometimes that I was like “wtf?” However, over all I was entertained with this reading. One thing that I noticed was that there was not much to be said about young women. The boys and young men has about sixty numbered rules and the part about the girls and young women did not. Further, most of the rules set out for women were orientated by Bible verses, but not much was said as how they should eat, sleep, walk, and talk just like their opposite sex was told. I wonder why ( and I have a suspicion) the women did not have as many rules as their counter part?

I would also like to point out that this document gives permission to children to only “reproach someone and use slanderous words only if necessary and if they do it politely.” That part cracked me up. Some of the dinner rules that were placed for children are some that we see now or at least, that I have been accustomed too. Dinner rules- “Don’t cross legs and arms, don’t stretch your plate with your fork, don’t chew with your mouth open, etc.” The one thing I found odd was that one of the rules was that children were not “allowed to cut their food.” There were some parts too that I found contradicted what rule was said in a previous section.

Then we get to the young men section and here is where it gets interesting.

Rule #29, “Young men should not pick their nose.” As if that was not enough, we get a description at rule #56 saying that it is okay to pick ones nose as long they don’t “pick their nose as if you were winding a clock.” And of course, when you do take that bugger out, “don’t eat it!” The fact that they had to say that, well…you know?

 

Lol, talk about imagery. Following along with imagery, we get a description on how young men should eat so not to look like a peasant….

 

“Don’t gobble food down like a pig.”

 

“Don’t blow onto fish soup so that it splatters everywhere.”

 

 

 

 

 

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The Emperor’s New Suit

Among Peter’s social reforms, he introduced the mixing of genders, new holidays/ways of celebrating, and new rules on personal appearance and clothing. As we know that his goal was to pull Russia onto the European stage, these reforms make sense. But did he need to go as far as he did, specifically with his reforms on clothing, personal grooming, and manners?

Hughes writes that beliefs at the time dictated that beards delineated men from women, affirming their superiority over women, and that to shave made a man effeminate and dumb, like a beast, not allowing him to express his piety. Outside of the capital, Russians resisted Peter’s rules and continued to go about in traditional dress, continuing into Catherine’s era, when she had to issue more decrees on the subject.

Seeing as Peter enacted reforms on the military, ranks of nobles, education, etc. to modernize Russia, why did he then move into the realm of fashion? It’s conceivable that Russian citizens could perform their duties perfectly well in traditional dress — why did Peter feel to move in the direction of niceties and dress was necessary?

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Discussion question: Was the intitial muddled era of “De-Stalinization” post-“Secret Speech” purposeful? What effect could changes regarding party policy have had in this regard?

When Joseph Stalin died on March 3, 1953, the collective response was swift and dramatic as the loss of the leader of the Soviet Union seemed an unfathomably devastating occurrence. The chaos and uncertainty that occurred at his funeral, in which many were crushed to death by the “whirlpool of the crowd” (Evtushenko), was symbolic of the turmoil and uncertainty that would follow in coming years. As Nikita Khrushchev took control of the Soviet Union, there began a period of “De-Stalinization”, in which he attempted to distance himself and the country from the legacy of Stalin’s reign.

With his “Secret Speech” at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party in 1956, Khrushchev made explicitly clear the he held disdain for Stalin and indicated that a return to Leninism was necessary to unify and further the Soviet Union. Heavily critical of what he viewed as perversions of party politics, he railed against Stalin’s political purges, which led to many of his political enemies being put in labor camps or killed. In particular, Khrushchev in particular cited the “cult of personality” which led him to be perceived as a “superman possessing supernatural characteristics, akin to those of a god” (The Cult of the Individual, Khruschev) by the masses and those around him, which allowed Stalin’s notorious actions to go unquestioned.

However, the speech elicited very mixed reactions from party members, initially “distress, outrage and confusion” (Jones 42). Not only was there open internal dissent and criticism of the party’s past being explicated, but it was coming from the top and being directed at a leader who had been worshipped for many years. As the speech began to disseminate, its presentation began to vary wildly (sometimes omitting critiques of Stalin, other times exaggerating them). These loose interpretations were floating about signaled a stark change in party policy. Not only would the immediate reaction be that of iconoclastic destruction of Stalin imagery around the country, but even expression open anti-Soviet sentiment going unrepudiated.

With the above in mind, my questions are: What was the significance of immediate “de-Stalinization” in terms of the current (circa mid-1950s) state of of the Soviet Union and how would it evolve and influence the Soviet Union in years to come? Most importantly, Was the allowance of lack of unity regarding party line on Stalin and allowance of dissent and iconoclasm a calculated move by Khrushchev and company? And was it the proper/most effective way to progress forward (and if not, how could/should it have been handled differently?

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A Trio of Discussion Questions about the Russian Revolution

Per Clausewitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means. In the summer of 1917 during the height of political turmoil, Alexander Kerensky launched a new major offensive in Galicia (now a part of Poland and Ukraine) to build support for the provisional government through a military victory. The previous summer, the Russian Imperial Army had launched the Brusilov offensive (named after its commander General Alexei Brusilov), which, for a time, was a major success, nearly breaking the Austro-Hungarian army, until delays in support from neighboring Russian units allowed the Central Powers to regroup and counterattack. The overall failure of the Brusilov offensive, in turn, led to decreasing morale in the Russian Imperial Army. This in turn led to the primary weakness of the Kerensky offensive: desertions and mutiny. However, would the success of either of these offensives prevented the Revolution of 1917, or were the gears already in motion regardless of military success in the Great War?

The Kornilov affair occurred 100 years ago last week. It was centered around General Lavr Kornilov, who was given command of the forces of the Petrograd Military District (originally the Petersburg Military District created by Dmitriy Milyutin) following the February Revolution, and eventually appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army by Alexander Kerensky. The affair began with a radio address by Kerensky stating that Kornilov had demanded that Kerensky cede control of the government to him. Kornilov fired back, stating Kerensky was lying and was now controlled by Bolshevik elements working in lockstep with the German government (Germany had also recently captured Riga following the collapse of the Russian Army following the Kerensky offensive). Three cavalry divisions under Kornilov’s command were sent to capture Petrograd, and Kerensky appealed to the Petrograd Soviet for assistance. The Soviet began arming its members, allegedly for self-defense. Kornilov’s coup failed, with his soldiers, delayed and confused by members of the proletariat, eventually breaking cohesion outside Petrograd with no major engagement. Kornilov’s failure was almost immediately followed up by the October Revolution’s success. Would the successful establishment of a military dictatorship (as Kornilov desired) have led to stability in Russia? How did the Bolsheviks learn and benefit from the Kornilov affair?

The Bolshevik faction was becoming increasingly a military as well as political organization following the arming of the Red Guard. Fitzpatrick writes that, “The Communists who had served in the Red Army brought military jargon into the language of party politics, and made the army tunic and boots-worn even by those who had stayed in civilian posts or been too young to fight-almost a uniform for party members in the 1920s and early 1930s,” and “the Bolsheviks had associated themselves with armed confrontation and violence in the months between February and October 1917” (pp. 71-72). How did the Bolshevik’s militarism lead to their success?

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Discussion Question: To what extent was the Decembrist movement based upon ideas of Russian nationalism and a belief in the uniqueness of the Russian/Slavic people?

An interesting facet of the Decembrist movement is the fact that, despite the fact that it was inspired by the French Revolution and the overall liberalization of Europe, it was very much based within ideas of Russian nationalism. On the one hand, David Saunders presents many of the patriotic and “Volkish” artistic movements that took place after the Napoleonic wars as inherently conservative. Specifically, Saunders mentions Nikolai Karamzin, who as Foreign Minister under Alexander I championed working with France under the Tilsit Alliance, but who took a sharp turn to the right after Napoleon’s invasion. Karamzin in his later years spent money and time working on the culture and the history of the Slavs, his work later going on to inspire the philosophy of Slavophilism, which, according to Saunders was, “A doctrine which asserted Slavonic uniqueness and emphasized the danger of mingling the doctrines of east and west.” (Saunders, Pg. 95) Other slavophiles mentioned include the playwrights Ozerov and Shakhovskoi, Admiral Shishkov who advocated against the coining of new words in the Russian language, the poet Nikolai Gnedich, and the Polish ethnographer Adam Czarnocki.

On the other hand, Saunders exclaims that the idea of Russian “peopleness” was also a liberal concept, taken from the French idea of “peopleness. Furthermore, the term created to describe Russian “peopleness”, naradost, was originally created by Viazemskii in order to distance the idea of  the Russian people away from the institutional strength of the Church and the autocratic state, even though later the term became muddied as conservatives tried to support the claim that the Russian people depended upon these two institutions.

One can say that the idea of the “Russian people” evolved as the Decembrist movement progressed, and accordingly became more linked to the idea of citizenship, but still there is a hint of volkish and slavophile attitudes. For instance, in Project for a Constitution by Nikita M. Muraviev, the power of the government is vested within the Russian people. This is in contrast with other forms of liberal government (such as our own), that derive their power only abstractly from the people, and concretely from the system itself, and the constitution that lays down the rules of said system. Additionally, it is important to note that in Project for a Constitution, only Russian citizens are have the right to participate in the political system, and that even more importantly, to be considered a Russian citizen, one must be literate in the Russian language. This is important due to the fact that it privileges Russian over the languages of other peoples, even other Slavs in a multi-ethnic empire. Additionally, in the Statue of the Union of Welfare, only Russian citizens are described as being allowed in the Union, a Russian citizen being further defined as someone who was both born in Russia and who speaks the Russian language. Even those foreigners who left their country to serve Russia are considered Russian citizens if they have contributed a tremendous amount to the nation. This contrasts with Project for a Constitution by the fact that in that document, there is at least a method by which foreigners could obtain Russian citizenship (that being Russian residence for 7 years or more and the consent of a court).

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Was secrecy necessary for the Decembrists?

As Saunders writes, the Decembrists were primarily an organization of military intelligentsia – 253/289 men sentenced were officers at one point or another (pp. 97). In popular culture, they are often remembered as bureaucrats, writers, academics, and Freemasons, but what they had in common most of all were military backgrounds, and their visions for what Russia could be, brought home after their tours were over.

It’s notable here that (according to Saunders) the political question of the time was whether or not Orthodoxy and the state had “made” Russia and its people into what they were. The Decembrists fell on the left side of the debate – Russia had succeeded in driving off Napoleon “in spite of the system rather than because of it, and the community as a whole deserved a larger say in its fate,” (96).

Perhaps in part because Russia has the tradition of soldiers making and unmaking czars, these men began to organize together in secrecy. It’s written in the Statute of the Union of Welfare that “… the Union does not conceal it [its aim] from well-meaning citizens, but in order to avoid the censure of malice and jealously its activity must be conducted in secrecy,” (Dmytryshyn, 208). At the time that the Decembrists attempted their coup, Saunders writes that Russian society “turned away from them and manifested its legitimate stand and loyal attachments to the throne,” (112). Likewise, the serfs did not know of the Decembrists’ goals of emancipation, and looked on the czar as their only protector.

With all this in mind, was the Decembrists’ insistence on secrecy possibly part of their downfall? If Saunders is correct when he writes that intellectual currents were both conservative and progressive, and that the regime could handle almost any amount of free-thinking on the part of poets/journalists/professors/retired gov’t ministers/middle-grade civil servants. Could it perhaps have handled free-thinking on the part of the Decembrists? If the Decembrists had abandoned secrecy at a sooner point, could things have gone differently for them in the end, and to what extent?

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Welcome, Revolutionaries!

Welcome to History 316: Russian Revolution(s) from Peter to Putin! Start the semester off right by assessing your revolutionary bona fides. What party would you have joined in 1917? Take the quiz!

http://arzamas.academy/materials/1269

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