Chapter 8
Confrontation

Between 1910 and 1914 there was a paradoxical juxtaposition of growing government concern for education with a major crisis in state-university relations.^[1] While the government reiterated its preference for technical higher education, the professoriate pressed its claim that the universities should be the centerpiece of the nation's system of higher education. Meanwhile the government showed little regard for the professoriate's prerogatives as it initiated a ruthless campaign to suppress student unrest, which revived after Lev Tolstoi's death in November 1910. The result was a major crisis epitomized by the mass resignations of the Moscow University faculty in 1911 and mass expulsions of students.

New elements were modifying this by-now-familiar pattern of three-sided confrontation. As the state provided a steadily declining percentage of Russia's university budgets, private philanthropy became more

[1] During this period the Russian government made an unprecedented effort to increase expenditures on education. Between 1906 and 1914 the Ministry of Education's share of the state budget rose from 1.4 percent to 4.4 percent. Between 1896 and 1914 the percentage of Russia's population going to some kind of school more than doubled, from 2.3 percent to 5.5 percent. Yet state outlays on the universities remained constant. Russia was far ahead of England and Germany on the proportion of GNP spent per student (although it lagged far behind in per-capita educational expenditure in absolute terms). The government saw educational expansion as contributing to economic development, but Michael Kaser has argued that precisely the opposite was true: Russia's rapid economic development began without the basic literacy levels widely assumed to be an essential precondition of economic growth. It was the growth of national income that led to the rapid expansion, on all levels, of Russian education ("Education in Tsarist and Soviet Development," in Chimen Abramsky, ed., Essays in Honor of E. H. Carr [London, 1974]).

important. And for the first time private institutions of higher education, such as Moscow's Shaniavskii University, emerged as real alternatives to the traditional state university.

There was no crisis in Russian higher education or in Russian science on the eve of World War I. In both areas Russia had achieved unparalleled strength and diversity, largely as a result of the contributions of private individuals and the efforts of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Trade and Industry in establishing their own network of VUZy . The real problem was the crisis in relations between the universities and the state. The policies of the Ministry of Education did much to undermine the prestige of the autocracy in the eyes of the Russian professoriate and wide sections of the Russian bourgeoisie, already repelled by the anti-Semitic carnival of the Beilis trial and the growing role of Rasputin at the court. Nor did the ministry achieve its major aim, the elimination of student unrest in the country. By 1914 the crisis of the universities was seen as part of a deeper, more serious issue, that of the growing friction between the autocracy and the Russian public.

The Council of Ministers and the Draft Statute

During 1909 and 1910 the Council of Ministers met several times to discuss Schwartz's draft statute before its submission to the Duma. Public pressure and a generally hostile press reception forced some changes in the original 1908 project, but the council finally approved the entire draft on 13 January 1910. The record of these discussions illustrates significant trends in the government's higher-education policy.^[2] The Council of Ministers agreed that the 1884 Statute had outlived its usefulness, but it also lashed out at the Russian professoriate for its attempts to stretch the meaning of the 27 August Rules and turn the "universities into a state within a state." Pointing to the example of "the West," the council complained that the professors' definition of autonomy far exceeded the freedoms their counterparts enjoyed in other countries. The Russian universities were state institutions and the state had to ensure that they served its interests.

The council also stressed the need to deemphasize the central role of the universities and encourage students to seek education in other directions. In the past the Russian government had taken steps to encourage

[2] The record is found in TsGIA, f. 733, op. 154, d. 471, ll. 182–198.

students to enter the universities, but the time had now come to recognize that the national interest was no longer served by a massive influx of students prompted by considerations of social mobility rather than love of learning or dedication to a useful profession. In endorsing the provision in Schwartz's draft calling for the abolition of the privileges associated with university degrees, the council noted:

The population now recognizes the value of higher education and [no longer needs state encouragement]. . . . On the contrary, it is much more important to raise the quality of education and improve the intellectual and moral level of the student body. [The government must try to] curb the widespread and excessive striving for higher education as a means of gaining entry into the civil service and the liberal professions: this demand for higher education is very dangerous from the social point of view.^[3]

For the same reason, the council supported Schwartz's stipulation that entry into the universities be restricted to graduates of Ministry of Education gymnasia. It thus overruled the argument of the Ministry of Trade and Industry that graduates of commercial and other secondary schools should be allowed to matriculate at universities. The council noted that commercial and other specialized secondary schools were established for a reason; it would not serve the "interests of the state" if their students could easily abandon their chosen careers and enter a university.

An interesting aspect of the deliberations on the Schwartz statute was the Ministry of Finance's opposition to Schwartz's call for sharp increases in faculty salaries and in the state's contribution to the universities' operating budgets.^[4] (Poor Schwartz could not win. The rectors attacked him for destroying university autonomy, while the Ministry of Finance accused him of coddling the faculty!) State grants to the universities had lagged far behind student enrollments; between 1880 and 1912, state expenditure per student declined from 311 rubles to 166 rubles. The state share of annual university budgets had declined from 77 percent in 1894 to 60 percent in 1912. And, as was shown earlier, faculty salaries were grossly distorted by the unfair honorarium system.^[5] But the minister of finance argued that the universities spent their funds inefficiently, that professors received plenty of vacation time to

[3] Ibid.

[4] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 154, d. 471, l. 114.

[5] D. I. Bagalei, "Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie russkikh universitetov," Vestnik Evropy, no. 1 (1914): 232; "Rossiia-Prosveshchenie," in E. A. Brokhaus and I. A. Efron, eds., Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Saint Petersburg, 1913), vol. 27.

make up for their allegedly low salaries, and that rather than throw more money into the universities the state should force them to make better use of the funds they already had.^[6] Too many university students, the minister of finance complained, were rejects from the specialized technical institutes and did not really know what they wanted to do with their educations.

Clearly the Council of Ministers had no use for the vision of the universities developed at the Tolstoi Conference, nor was it willing to spend anything like the 13 million rubles a year that the 1906 conference called for. Schwartz, Stolypin, and the majority of the Council of Ministers all believed that the liberal professoriate's claims for the universities were ill-defined, unrealistic, and self-serving.^[7] Schwartz published comments by such leading German professors as Friedrich Paulsen that pointed out that the Tolstoi Conference draft would have given the Russian professors powers that far exceeded those of their colleagues at other universities. He and Stolypin were convinced that the professors' slogan of "a research university above politics" was a cover for anti-government activity by professors as well as students. The Council of Ministers did not want to spend state funds preparing students for vague and undefined roles. Instead, while recognizing the defects of the 1884 Statute, it demanded a precise, workable, and utilitarian definition of the universities' role and purpose. This was exactly what Schwartz tried to provide in his draft statute. His major theme was "quality over quantity." As far as he and Stolypin were concerned, it was the government, not the faculty councils, that wanted to raise academic standards, take the universities out of politics, and ensure that they did what they were supposed to do.^[8]

In the spring of 1910, Schwartz finally introduced the draft statute into the Duma. Not only the Kadets but also major spokesmen of the Octobrist party attacked the plan and warned that the new statute would cripple the universities.^[9] Relations between Schwartz and N. A. Khomiakov, the Octobrist president of the Duma, became severely strained. In addition, Schwartz, like his predecessor, now began to be attacked by the extreme right because of the inability of the Ministry of Education to control student unrest. V. M. Purishkevitch, the leader of the Union of the Russian People, subjected the Ministry of Education to

[6] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 154, d. 471, l. 114.

[7] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 154, d. 471, ll. 182–198.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 5 (1910).

a number of interpellations regarding alleged violations of the law by both students and professors. Nor did the Nationalist faction in the Duma, more important than ever to a politically beleaguered Stolypin, particularly like Schwartz. One of its leaders, A. A. Bobrinskii, noted in a September 1910 diary entry that Schwartz was a "fine person, a rightist of firm principles, but, like any other professor, seems unsuited to the tasks of the Ministry of Education. The [routine] of the job seems to have paralyzed him."^[10] Meanwhile, a major conservative daily, the Novoe Vremia, attacked both Schwartz's draft statute and his allegedly dangerous policy of opening up too many new high schools.^[11]

Unable to afford additional political liabilities, Stolypin decided once again to change ministers of education. The new appointee was also a professor, L. A. Kasso, who had taught on the juridical faculty of Moscow University. A member of the Bessarabian nobility, Kasso brought with him a reputation as an arch-conservative.^[12] One immediate result of Kasso's appointment was that the government withdrew Schwartz's draft statute from the Duma, despite the objections of a group of rightist professors, led by Odessa's A. P. Kazanskii, who met in January 1911 to reaffirm their support for the project.^[13]

In an interview with Novoe Vremia Kasso announced a new turn in the government's university policy. The Ministry of Education now proclaimed that it could live with the 1884 Statute. "It is abnormal," Kasso explained, "for the statute to change every twenty years. We can get along perfectly well with the present statute and the 27 August Rules."^[14]

On that note, Kasso began a four-year tenure marked by controversy and confrontation. Within a month of his taking office, the renewal of student unrest gave him and Stolypin a chance to try new policies to

[10] "Dnevnik A. A. Bobrinskovo," Krasnyi Arkhiv, no. 26 (1928).

[11] As reported in Golos Studencbestva, no. 1 (1910).

[12] Professor P. I. Novgorodtsev, a longtime colleague at Moscow University, characterized Kasso as a "man who, though himself a professor, was by his spirit and breeding absolutely alien to the spirit and traditions of the Russian universities. . . . He came from a Rumanian family in Bessarabia and was educated abroad. If his predecessors did not always look with sufficient reverence on Russian learning, then he was . . . completely indifferent to national achievements and to the peculiarities of the Russian universities. He did not hesitate to dismiss. . . . the best Russian scholars, to interfere with the work of the most eminent scientific institutions. . . . He viewed university teaching from the viewpoint of scholastic professionalism, which he wanted to implant in the Russian universities, thus killing their independence and originality" (P. N. Ignatiev, P. I. Novgorodtsev, and D. M. Odinets, Russian Schools and Universities in the World War [New Haven, 1929], p. 149).

[13] Rech', 7 January 1911.

[14] As reported in Rech', 3 February 1911.

cow the faculty councils and the students. But this time the government would find itself more isolated than at any time since 1905.

The Student Movement and the Tolstoi Demonstrations

The collapse of the nationwide student strike in the fall of 1908 did not signal the end of student unrest in the country, but only the reemergence of a series of local, uncoordinated confrontations. A number of student strikes occurred in 1909 and 1910 because of disputes with academic authorities over such matters as scholarships and examination schedules. Two of the most serious disputes erupted at the elite forestry institute and the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute. In both cases Stolypin directly intervened and reaffirmed Plehve's policy that the technical institutes would get the same treatment as the universities.^[15]

But these were isolated incidents, and in March 1910 Assistant Minister of the Interior P. G. Kurlov expressed some guarded optimism that the students were beginning to lose their taste for confrontation.^[16] He was especially encouraged by what he saw as their growing interest in sports and religion. Kurlov's assessment was echoed in the student press, which continued to decry the students' "cowardice" and embourgeoisement . A typical complaint, printed in 1910 in Golos Studenchestva, emphasized that "the problem does not lie in the so-called political differentiation of the studenchestvo . No, the real issue is that now a 'new studenchestvo ' has appeared, a new kind of 'complacent student' [studenta-obyvatelia ]. . . . For students of this kind, Sanine, Vaininger, and the libretto of the theater . . . have replaced Marx and Mikhailovskii."^[17] The trend toward student professionalism, first noted after 1906, continued, but the zemliachestva, credit societies, and other student economic organizations still had to contend with chronic lack of funds and frequent demoralization and apathy.^[18] In some cases scandals erupted over allegations of financial misdealings.

[15] Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 1 (1909): TsGIA, f. 1276, op. 20, d. 42. In the case of the forestry institute, the dispute concerned the elective curriculum; in the mining institute, the issue was the implementation by the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Stolypin's order banning student participation in the determination of financial aid. After a reduction in the financial-aid budget, the students declared a strike in January 1910 and the cuts were cancelled. As a result, Stolypin ordered that Professor E. S. Fedorov, Russia's leading crystallographer, be dismissed from the directorship of the mining institute.

[16] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 158.

[17] Golos Studencbestva, no. 7 (1910).

[18] An informative description of this problem can be found in "Vzaimopomoshch' i solidarnost' studenchestva," Studencheskii Mir, no. 1 (1910).

Despite all these hardships, however, the basic sense of a studenchestvo tradition continued. When the rightist deputy Purishkevitch attacked students' sexual mores in a Duma speech, there were protest skhodki in several VUZy; some students at Saint Petersburg University even wanted to challenge him to a duel.^[19] The threat of Schwartz's draft statute was a powerful unifying factor. It also made students pay more attention to their professors' warnings that large-scale student disorders would play into Schwartz's hands by convincing the Octobrists to support the project.

The student press, which encountered difficulties after the abortive 1908 strike, revived in 1910. The most important student newspapers to emerge during this year were Studencheskaia Zhizn', Studencheskii Mir, and Golos Studenchestva . A basic theme of the student press was the continued survival of the studenchestvo as a unique group with its own traditions and goals: "The Russian studenchestvo now constitutes an army of 100,000. . . . Though it is scattered all the way from Saint Petersburg to Tomsk, the studenchestvo remains a single entity and possesses common properties."^[20] Economic need, wider educational access, and the democratization of the country ensured that student professionalism, advocated by most of the student press, became a complement of, rather than a substitute for, political commitment. This argument was made especially strongly in Golos Studenchestva . Its editorial staff included Rafael Vydrin, V. M. Friche, and S. G. Svatikov, who had all written extensively about the history of the Russian universities and the studenchestvo .

The student press and its propagation of student professionalism met with a cool reception from the revolutionary movement. A report on the students published in Znamia Truda, the organ of the Social Revolutionary party, complained that professional interests and economic concerns had replaced politics as the students' chief preoccupations.^[21]Znamia Truda placed much of the blame on the student press. It concluded that the 1910–1911 academic year promised to be disappointingly quiet.

This prediction turned out to be totally wrong. The catalyst for the renewal of large-scale student unrest was the death of the writer Lev Tolstoi on 7 November 1910. The next day, students in VUZy all over the country spontaneously held memorial services and passed resolutions

[19] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 158.

[20] Studencheskii Mir, no. 1 (1910).

[21] Znamia Truda, no. 32 (1910).

calling on the students to honor Tolstoi's memory by leading the fight against capital punishment.^[22] During that week enthusiasm ran high, especially in Saint Petersburg, where police repeatedly dispersed thousands of students trying to demonstrate on the Nevskii Prospekt. When the prorector of Saint Petersburg University, Professor I. D. Andreev, went to the university embankment to convince the students to disperse, the crowd lifted him off his feet and continued to march and sing.

The government was worried by the demonstrations. The head of the Saint Petersburg Okhrana told Stolypin that the mood of the students reminded him of 1905.^[23] Unlike 1908, students were marching in the streets. Stolypin feared a possible fusion of the student and labor movements.^[24]

Had he known the students better he might have rested easier. The student organizations that emerged in November to direct the marches against capital punishment were ad hoc affairs, composed of self-appointed representatives of political factions and a few delegates from the zemliachestva .^[25] Students sympathetic to the revolutionary movement were skeptical of the demonstrations and stayed on the sidelines.^[26] Most of the enthusiasm for the November demonstrations came from freshmen and sophomores.^[27] The few attempts made to attract worker support for the student demonstrations ended in complete failure.^[28] Various district committees of the RSDRP advised the workers to stay away, warning them not to trust the transient enthusiasms of the students.^[29] But considering the disarray of the Social Democratic party, it is

[22] A useful collection of documents describing the students' reaction to Tolstoi's death can be found in "Politicheskaia bor'ba vokrug smerti Tolstovo," Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, no. 69 (1961): 321–402.

[23] Ibid., pp. 338–339.

[24] TsGAOR, f. 102, d. 12, ed. kh. 59 LB, l. 30.

[25] Znamia Truda, no. 33 (1911). A letter received by the Znamia Truda editorial staff from someone at Moscow University stated that "in 1905 and 1906 the student movement signaled the beginning of a broad popular political movement. But now . . . alas! The student movement has caught the revolutionaries napping. The 'factions' of the various political parties in the university did not lead the movement and in most cases could barely keep up with it. They usually wavered and in some cases even hid."

[26] Rabochaia Gazeta, 18 December 1910.

[27] Ibid. "One of the most notable features of the demonstrations was the absence of the older 'active' students. They were either completely absent or they used the skhodki to speak against the demonstrations. The weight of the demonstrations . . . was borne by . . . the younger students. . . . Now there are no leaders among the students. The factions of the Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries are weak and barely do anything. But it is enough to say that a student is speaking in the name of a revolutionary group and the other students listen to him."

[28] "Politicheskaia bor'ba vokrug smerti Tolstovo," p. 372.

[29] See, for example, an RSDRP pamphlet urging the workers to ignore the student movement ("Politicheskaia bor'ba vokrug smerti Tolstovo," pp. 332–333). The pamphlet reminded the workers that in the past the students had cared little for their fate. Even if now the students were marching to protest capital punishment, it did not mean that the workers should be deluded by the "unstable, transitory moods of the intelligentsia."

probable that worker disinterest, not party pamphlets, lay behind the complete absence of proletarian involvement. Furthermore, the demonstrations themselves assumed a mass character only in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Students in the provincial cities, all too aware of the whims of the local authorities, preferred memorial skhodki within the grounds of the VUZy .

By 15 November the Tolstoi demonstrations were over. The student organizations which arose that week in the capitals tried to maintain the momentum of the student movement by using two new issues to fan further protest: the release of students arrested during the demonstrations, and the suicide of a certain Sazonov, a political prisoner in the Novyi Zerentui prison. But calls for protest strikes in Saint Petersburg and Moscow failed.

As students dispersed for their vacations, there seemed little reason to expect an abnormal second semester. The liberal press saw the failure of the strike calls as further proof that the era of political student protest was finally over. Responsibility for this welcome development was attributed to the moral influence of the professoriate and its efforts to convince well-meaning but immature students that unrest in the universities only helped the right and jeopardized the existence of a vital national institution. Further peace in the universities depended on the government's willingness to respect the leadership of the professoriate and widen the parameters of academic autonomy.^[30]

The right, however, drew radically different conclusions from the November demonstrations. And at the end of 1910, Stolypin was in no position to alienate the Nationalist party, his firmest ally in the Duma, as was evident from his decision to dismiss Schwartz. The Nationalists were frightened that the student demonstrations presaged a repeat of 1905. Prince A. A. Bobrinskii, one of their leaders, noted in his diary entry of 10 December that the "revolution is going forward . . . and the aristocracy must again prepare to defend its property. . . . All this is going on with the negligent connivance of the government."^[31] On 11 December M. O. Men'shikov, in Novoe Vremia, urged Stolypin to crush the student movement by mass expulsions. He warned that the "second round of the revolution had already begun." The influential journalist

[30] Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 1 (1911): 97–113.

[31] Cited in A. Ia. Avrekh, Stolypin i tret'ia Duma (Moscow, 1968), p. 314.

reminded his conservative readers that the Revolution of 1905 had also begun with student demonstrations.^[32]

Stolypin's response came quickly. On 11 January the government issued a circular that banned student meetings on the premises of VUZy and directed the police not to wait for an invitation from the faculty councils before breaking up skhodki and arresting participants. The circular also ordered the professors to call in the police at the first sign of trouble.^[33] In a secret explanation of the circular, Stolypin told the governors-general and chiefs of police that the student movement was no longer corporate but political.^[34]

It is possible that the prime minister was influenced by a special Okhrana report on the student movement that glumly warned that "the center of gravity in the revolutionary movement has passed to the students." The report emphasized the crucial importance of suppressing any student demonstrations before they spread to the working class.^[35] But Stolypin clearly overreacted to the Tolstoi demonstrations and the scattered student activity at the end of November. Although masses of students had taken to the streets in Saint Petersburg, their slogans focused mainly on the issue of capital punishment and contained no revolutionary demands.

The professors, shocked at this further attenuation of their rights, protested the circular. Russkie Vedomosti, in a common reaction, complained that the circular abolished "university self-rule. There is no longer a trace of university autonomy."^[36] Under the 27 August Rules, the option of calling police into the VUZy rested with the faculty councils, who exercised it when the need arose. Now professors had no choice. But despite grave misgivings, the professors prepared to comply with Stolypin's latest orders. Although they did not like the circular, such rectors as Moscow's Manuilov ignored calls to resign in protest. Such a step, he explained, might be construed as encouraging student disorders.^[37] As in 1905, the professors wanted to avoid any hint of collaboration with the student movement.

[32] Ibid.

[33] TsGIA, f. 1276, op. 3, d. 800, l. 187.

[34] TsGAOR, f. 102, d. 12, ed. kh. 59 LB, l. 30.

[35] TsGAOR, f. DP, ed. kh. 59, 1911, l. 4.

[36] Russkie Vedomosti, 14 January 1911.

[37] Manuilov's report on these events is in GPB im. V. I. Lenina, f. 158, folder 5, ed. kh. 16. On 17 January the rectors of the Saint Petersburg VUZy met with curator Musin-Pushkin to complain about the circular. But they promised to "remain at their posts" (TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 205, l. 128).

The 1911 Strike

Meanwhile the students' corporate interests were under direct attack. The ban on meetings on the premises of VUZy threatened to destroy the zemliachestva and credit societies. Rentals of outside buildings were costly, and police interference was a constant threat. Furthermore, the government dealt very harshly with some of the students arrested in the fall demonstrations. Twenty-four Saint Petersburg university students were expelled by government order, a procedure that completely bypassed the faculty disciplinary court. Five were exiled to remote regions of the country for terms ranging from two to five years.^[38] The last time the government had treated student demonstrators so severely was in February 1902.

The Christmas vacation ended amid the general expectation of a strike for the second semester. Many students agreed with Golos Studenchestva that not only the students but also the professoriate faced a moment of truth. Self-interest alone, the newspaper editorialized, would force the professors to make common cause with the students. Just before Christmas vacation, a tense confrontation at Odessa University resulted in bloodshed when a rightist student shot a classmate. On the first day of the new semester the police arrested 373 students in Tomsk Technological Institute for attending a skhodka .^[39]

As in 1908, Saint Petersburg took the lead in organizing student action. Pamphlets posted in various VUZy asked students to await a signal from Saint Petersburg.^[40] Plans for a semester strike crystallized at a 23 January meeting of the newly organized Saint Petersburg City Coalition Council, which included representatives of the capital's VUZy as well as a Moscow delegate.^[41] Once again there was a proclamation that would serve as a model for similar appeals in other cities. The Saint

[38] Russkie Vedomosti, 1 January 1911.

[39] On the Odessa incident, see Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 1 (1911); on the Tomsk Technological Institute, see Rech', 22 January 1911. To make matters worse, the curator of the Tomsk Educational District, L. A. Lavrentiev, insulted various faculty members in front of students because the teachers were allegedly lax in trying to break up the skhodka .

[40] A report on the mood of the studenchestvo at the beginning of the semester can be found in Golos Studenchestva, no. 3 (1911).

[41] Of the thirty-one students on the City Coalition Council, eighteen considered themselves to be Social Democrats, nine were Social Revolutionaries, and four were Kadets (TsGAOR, f. DO, 1910–11, 53a, ll. 10–16). Cf. Z. S. Kruglova, "Studencheskaia zabastovka 1911ovo goda i eë politicheskoe znachenie," Uchënye Zapiski Moskovskovo Oblastnovo Pedagogicheskovo Instituta 135 (1964): 8.

Petersburg proclamation admitted that "our chances for victory in the upcoming struggle are slight." Nonetheless, the students could seriously embarrass the government by fighting for the principles of freedom of speech and of assembly, and liberty from police repression.^[42] Another proclamation, issued on 22 January by the Kharkov coalition council, admitted that the students' situation was desperate but emphasized that there was little choice but to fight:

The ban on skhodki and other meetings means the liquidation of the zemliachestva and mutual aid societies. . . . The studenchestvo, which is mostly poor, has been put into a terrible position. . . . With cold-hearted and premeditated cruelty the government is provoking the studenchestvo; it is pushing us onto the path of stubborn and difficult battle and we knowingly choose that path, because we have no choice. We have no illusions about the support we can expect from the Duma. In the defense of its rights the studenchestvo has to rely on itself alone.^[43]

But along with a feeling of resignation, many of the proclamations demonstrated an undercurrent of hope that this time the student movement might generate more support than in 1908. In 1911 there was a clearer sense of the government's growing isolation in the Duma, where even the Octobrists were taking an increasingly critical stance toward many of Stolypin's policies. The 1911 student movement was based on corporate issues: the January circular, and the police repression against other students. But unlike the 1908 strike, which erupted in protest against a crackdown on the admission of Jews and women to universities, these issues could be fairly easily related to the general liberal demand for legal order and guarantees of personal inviolability. The students' corporate demands now had a decidedly political tinge.

Furthermore, leftist students tried to instruct their comrades on the political significance of the strike. In a 26 January proclamation, the Saint Petersburg Social Revolutionary Student Committee urged the studenchestvo to go beyond corporatism. "The student movement," the committee proclaimed, "should now drop its present goal, the struggle for academic autonomy, and fight for the overthrow of the whole system."^[44] Of course, the chances for immediate success were remote. But

[42] TsGAOR, f. DO, 1910–11, 53a, ll. 10–16.

[43] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 205, l. 150. For the text of a similar proclamation by the Moscow City Coalition Council, see GPB im. V. I. Lenina, f. 158, folder 6, no. 58.

[44] TsGIA, f. 1282, op. 1, d. 731, l. 3. Student Social Revolutionary proclamations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg played heavily on the theme of the studenchestvo 's glorious tradition of protest.

by their sacrifice, the students could set an example and "reawaken Russian society." A Social Democratic group in Moscow University told the students that precisely because the peasants and the workers were so passive, the student movement was poised to play a decisive role in reawakening the masses.^[45] Besides, a semester strike would harm the "system" by depriving it of educated cadres.

By the first week of February, the strike had become nationwide, involving both universities and the specialized technical institutes. Students themselves, as their purloined letters show, were surprised by the sudden resurgence of the studenchestvo 's spirit and determination. An informal nationwide student conference, which met during the Christmas vacation, ensured a high degree of coordination at the beginning of the semester.^[46]

Once again the professoriate found itself in a quandary. Opposing both the 11 January circular and the strike, the professors continued to lecture. Students responded by obstructing classes; even popular teachers with liberal reputations (E. D. Grimm, M. Ia. Pergament, I. A. Pokrovskii) were hooted down. Bitter over the professors' opposition to the student strike, on 5 February the coalition council of Saint Petersburg University issued an "Open Letter to the Faculty" which set the tone for similar statements at other universities:

A few days ago you asked the students to resume classes peacefully but you can see that you were unsuccessful. . . . You were not with us when we marched in the streets after Tolstoi's death. You even accept [the 11 January circular]. . . . You have closed the student employment bureau and the student financial aid commission. . . . Where, then, is your defense of the interests [of the universities]? . . . In your condemnation of the strike? In your toadyism? No, kind sirs! People of true convictions do not act in such a way. You do not even take yourselves seriously. Remember your brave pronouncements during the 1908 strike that you would defend academic autonomy? . . . What right do you have after this to hinder us in our fight for the dignity of the university? What alternative do you have to offer?^[47]

As incidents multiplied, faculty councils in several major VUZy asked for temporary cessation of classes in order to prevent further violence.

[45] TsGIA, f. 1282, op. 1, d. 731, l. 2.

[46] A file of student letters purloined by the police can be found in TsGAOR, f. DP, DO 59, 46ch., LB. 1911. On the student conference, see the unsigned agent's report in TsGAOR, f. DP, ed. kh. 59, 1911, l. 66. On 28 January 1911, rector Manuilov told the Moscow University Faculty Council that on 18 January an announcement had been posted in the corridors of the university telling the students that contact had been established with the coalition councils of other VUZy throughout the country.

[47] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 168, l. 27.

The government, determined to smash the strike by mass arrests, refused, sending in police to guard the lecture halls. Many students asked their teachers whether they had already forgotten the "Declaration of the 342," in which they had proudly asserted that lecturing under such circumstances was beneath their dignity.

On 1 February Russkie Vedomosti described a typical scene at Saint Petersburg University, where, by the evening of 31 January, more than 410 students had been arrested: "There are many police with rifles and fixed bayonets ranged along the long corridors of the university; professors, along with small numbers of students, are escorted by armed police to lectures. Armed police stand in the lecture halls. Students storm in, trying to interrupt lectures with whistles, noxious gases, and the singing of revolutionary songs."^[48] One professor, accosted by a striking student, was said to have suffered a hysterical fit and had to be carried away.^[49]

In Moscow University, the situation escalated rapidly. Rector Manuilov was prepared to cooperate with the authorities. But as police stormed into the university uninvited, to apprehend students taking part in banned meetings, they arrested innocent bystanders as well as activists. These actions, as Manuilov complained to the faculty council, not only deterred moderate students from coming to classes but also had a radicalizing effect on the whole student body.^[50] When their efforts to curb police interference failed, Manuilov, assistant rector M. A. Menzbir, and protector P. A. Minakov decided to resign. On 28 January, the rector explained to the faculty council that although the police tried to behave correctly the 11 January circular had created an "intolerable state of dual power in the university."^[51] The three resigned their administrative, not their academic, posts and offered to continue serving in the former until replacements could be found.

Now came the surprise. Minister of Education Kasso, after consulting Stolypin and the tsar, dismissed the three professors from their university duties. Stolypin had the semi-official Rossiia warn that the government considered the resignations "political demonstrations," which were intolerable on the part of state employees.^[52] The Moscow University Faculty Council, in a 2 February emergency meeting, told the gov-

[48] Russkie Vedomosti, 1 February 1911.

[49] Ibid.

[50] GPB im. V. I. Lenina, f. 158, folder 5, ed. kh. 16.

[51] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 168, l. 37, contains a valuable record of the faculty council's 28 January meeting.

[52] As reported in "Krizis vysshei shkoly," Russkaia Mysl', no. 3 (1911): 134–164.

ernment that unless the three professors were reinstated, many of their colleagues would be forced to resign.^[53] But Stolypin refused to compromise, and Moscow University tottered on the brink of ruin. By 20 February twenty-five full professors and seventy-four junior faculty members had resigned from the university—more than one-third of the teaching staff. The natural sciences faculty was especially hard-hit.^[54] Most of those who resigned did not return to Moscow University or, indeed, to service in any VUZy controlled by the Ministry of Education. Many did, however, find positions in the independent Shaniavskii University, the Moscow Commercial Institute, or the VUZy not attached to the Ministry of Education. The government did not interfere with these appointments.^[55]

The year 1911 came to be known as the year of the "destruction [razgrom ] of Moscow University." Professor Evgenii Trubetskoi, in a widely quoted "plague on both your houses" article, explained that his and his colleagues' resignations in no way connoted any support for the student movement. During any period of political confrontation, "the university should enjoy the same status as a Red Cross hospital on the battlefield and should not be shot at from either side. . . . We resigned . . . because neither side respected the neutrality of the university."^[56] In another comment on the resignations, Peter Struve, writing in Russkaia Mysl', lamented that the current crisis, "the worst faced by Moscow University in its 150-year existence," had fundamental political as well as academic implications. Struve emphasized that, unlike past crises in the universities, this one seemed to offer no shreds of hope, no grounds for ultimate optimism.^[57]

Many students and large sections of the Russian public hailed the mass resignations as an act of moral courage, but the Moscow City Coalition Council, coordinating strike activities there, reminded the

[53] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 161, l. 135.

[54] The 6 February issue of Russkie Vedomosti reported that of the 21 full professors who had resigned by that date, 1 was from the history and philology faculty, 10 were from the physics and mathematics faculty, 3 were from the law faculty, and 7 were from the medical faculty. Of the 69 privat-dozenty on the natural sciences faculty, 36 resigned. Corresponding figures for the medical, juridical, and history faculties are 18 out of 124, 16 out of 38, and 9 out of 39. A full list of those resigning can be found in V. I. Vernadskii, "1911 god v istorii russkoi umstvennoi kul'tury," Ezhegodnik Gazety Rech' za 1911 god (Saint Petersburg, 1912).

[55] On alternatives available to professors in other VUZy not under the Ministry of Education's control, see M. M. Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N'iu-Iorka (New York, 1952), pp. 94–100; N. V. Speranskii, Krizis russkoi shkoly (Moscow, 1914), pp. 182–183.

[56] Rech', 23 February 1911.

[57] "Krizis vysshei shkoly," p. 163.

studenchestvo that the professors did not leave the university out of sympathy with the students. They had looked on impassively while the government moved to curtail student rights and disband their organizations. In resigning, the Moscow professors demanded the reinstatement of their three comrades but kept silent about the return of expelled students or the rights of students to organize and meet. The coalition council concluded its commentary with a warning to students that they could not count on faculty support and would have to maintain their struggle alone to the end.^[58]

Nor could students expect much help from what was left of the regular Social Democratic organizations in the capitals. At the beginning of February the Saint Petersburg City Social Democratic Committee adopted a set of "theses" on the student movement that opposed trying to involve workers in the students' struggle—although it welcomed the student movement as a sign of strained intelligentsia-government relations, which would weaken Russia's prestige in Europe. The committee also reminded student Social Democrats that their first task was to help the regular party; work on behalf of the student movement was of secondary importance.^[59] Other Social Democratic groups were no more encouraging, with the possible exception of Trotsky's Pravda . The latter admitted that the student movement historically owed little to outside influence or direction but claimed that its spontaneity and vitality were potential political assets to the Social Democratic movement if the latter could only find a way to channel the students' energies into regular party work.^[60]

A lead editorial in the Bolshevik Zvezda on 29 January was an important barometer of the relationship between the revolutionary and the student movements. Zvezda stressed the basic social differences between the student movement and the labor movement and echoed the statements made elsewhere in the left-wing press that students with clear revolutionary views or party affiliations had largely ignored the student movement.^[61]Zvezda 's analysis of the student movement stressed its unique sociological characteristics and offered some still-useful insights into the place of the universities in prerevolutionary Russian society. Most of the students involved in the strike, the editorial asserted,

[58] TsGAOR, f. 102, op. 12, ed. kh. 59, 46A/1911, l. 88.

[59] TsGAOR, f. 102, op. 12, ed. kh. 65, 3/1911.

[60] See the copy of a circular discussion letter on the student movement sent by the editorial board of Pravda, in TsGAOR, f. DP, ed. kh. 59, 1911, l. 106.

[61] Zvezda, 29 January 1911.

were young arrivals from the provinces, where there was even less political freedom than in the capitals. These students reflected the seething but impotent discontent of their fathers, the "formless mass of middling and petty citizenry." Student disorders were inchoate and undefined, but they would continue until "those classes from which the students come stop being discontented."

While the Zvezda analysis minimized some of the genuine corporate concerns of the studenchestvo, its description of the student movement as a function of the wider discontent of the middle classes underscored a crucial clue to the political significance of the 1911 strike: the relationship between the student movement and Russian liberalism in a tense period when widespread disillusionment with the political situation in the country had replaced the high hopes raised by the 17 October manifesto. And it was precisely these middle classes from which the studenchestvo came: the petty bureaucrats, clerks, schoolteachers, and merchants who also represented the chief potential social base of the Kadet party.

A major reason why the student movement was important was that in many respects it represented a spontaneous but nonetheless conspicuous attack on some of the central assumptions of Russian liberalism. This was the thrust of a provocative analysis published by Nikolai Iordanskii, a prominent journalist and moderate Social Democrat who, as we have seen, had himself been a leader of the 1899 student strike.^[62] He reminded his readers that the current student movement posed a direct challenge to the consciences and beliefs of those very groups in Russian society, including the liberal professoriate and the Kadet party, who felt that "after 17 October 1905, Russia had crossed the Rubicon and begun a course of social development on the European model." The student movement threw them into "perplexity and confusion. . . . Liberalism sympathizes with many of the demands of the student movement, such as academic freedom and autonomy for the universities. But the students' tactics of [direct confrontation] are very different from the liberal tactic of compromise, and the student movement inspires fear in the liberal camp, especially because liberalism cannot help seeing in the student movement a strong element of democratic social radicalism." The professoriate opposed the student movement, in part from the sincere conviction that student protest would jeopardize the future of Russian higher education, play into the hands of the right, and lead the govern-

[62] Nikolai Iordanskii, "Ottsy i deti," Sovremennyi Mir, no. 2 (1911).

ment to rescind some of the gains won by the professors after 1905. While the student movement defended academic autonomy by direct confrontation, the professors preferred the liberal tactic of compromise. But was this realistic in the Russia of 1911?

The liberal tragedy reaches its highest stage precisely in the area where fathers clash directly with the children: in the sphere of the professors' relations with the students. The professors cannot dodge having to give direct answers to the accursed questions raised by the students, but in a confrontation they must make a choice and at the same time be ready to take firm action. But this itself is foreign to the political character of Russian liberalism.^[63]

It was only natural, Iordanskii continued, for the professoriate to compensate for its lack of real power by striving for the removal of the university from the arena of power and politics, defending the integrity and importance of "pure science," and asking all sides to respect the "neutrality" of the university. And even after more than one-third of the faculty of Moscow University resigned, the professors were still careful to emphasize that they were protesting the violation by the students as well as the government of the idea that the university should be "above politics."

In a suggestive counterpoint to Iordanskii's article, A. S. Izgoev's analysis of the university crisis, published in Struve's Russkaia Mysl', also saw the wider stakes involved, but from a different perspective. Whereas Iordanskii clinically analyzed the implications of the university crisis for Russian liberalism, Izgoev, in a passionate defense of the professoriate, attacked not only the students and the government but also the Russian educated public. For Izgoev, the real question was whether Russia's thin reserves of culture and civic values could survive constant blows from right and left, as well as the indifference of an educated public that failed to understand the significance of the universities for the nation's future. Only the professoriate, Izgoev argued, understood what was at stake and was fighting to protect the VUZy .^[64]

The students were forcing both the professoriate and the Kadet party to face the harsh realities of the role of power in political and academic life—and to take a second look at the notion that the university could somehow lead a life uniquely above the political fray. The Kadets had to consider the issues raised by the student movement at their May 1911

[63] Ibid.

[64] A. S. Izgoev, "Nebyvalyi razgrom," Russkaia Mysl', no. 3 (1911): 146–147.

party conference. One item on the agenda was the relationship between the party and its student groups. Kadet student representatives told the conference that they were fighting the left for influence among the students and needed clear guidelines from the central party. Was the university only a cultural center, the students asked, or did it have a political role?

Many members of the party, including Paul Miliukov, himself a former academic, found themselves torn between their opposition to student strikes in principle and their awareness of the usefulness of student unrest as a convenient way of causing the government political embarrassment. The underlying issue, as Miliukov recognized, was whether Russian liberalism should respond to the government's overall policies by abandoning the polite tactics of a "loyal opposition" and returning to the direct confrontation of 1905.

It was a strained discussion. Some members, such as N. V. Nekrasov, suggested that the party follow the example set by the students: why follow constitutional tactics when the government did not even respect the promises of the 17 October manifesto? Besides, did not the Duma itself, and even the Kadet party, come out of the 1905 general strike? Yes, other delegates responded, but that was an exceptional case. Now the party had to condemn the student strike explicitly. How could they try to build respect for law, culture, and learning, and simultaneously endorse student strikes?

Professor Nikolai Gredeskul saw the student movement as forcing the Kadet party to face the vital question of the incompatibility between the liberal goal of a constitutional Russia and the use of "unconstitutional tactics."^[65] He urged the party to condemn student strikes. Until 1905 the student movement had "carried the torch" against the autocracy, but now it only undermined the effort to give culture and learning a secure place in Russian society.

In the end Miliukov advised the conference to avoid taking a stand and to refuse to issue guidelines to the Kadet students. By straddling the issue, Miliukov conceded that the party was putting itself in a two-faced situation, unwilling to support the students but loath to condemn them. Nonetheless, the party followed Miliukov's advice. In the words of Soviet historian A. Ia. Avrekh, the "Kadets, as a constitutional party op-

[65] TsGAOR, f. 523, op. 1, ed. kh. 11/1911, ll. 34–36 (minutes of 9 May 1911 meeting of Kadet Central Committee). Another important meeting of the Kadet Duma faction on the subject of the student movement took place on 16 January 1911 (TsGAOR, f. 523, op. 1, ed. kh. 3). See also Avrekh, Stolypin i tret'ia Duma, pp. 441–442.

posed in principle to revolutionary tactics, could not approve student demonstrations, but they were not averse to using them for their own purposes."^[66]

This time, the students did not lose heart after a few days and peacefully return to the classroom, as they did in the 1908 strike. To break the strike the government resorted to mass expulsions and suspensions on an unprecedented scale, expelling 1,871 students and suspending 4,406.^[67] Those students previously exiled as a result of the Tolstoi demonstrations suffered harsh treatment. Rech' reported that few of the exiles to the Arkhangel'sk region had sufficient money or warm clothing. Many students had to march twenty versts a day to their ultimate destinations.^[68] The authorities also conducted mass arrests of student coalition councils, and these arrests thwarted a planned student conference in April to discuss the overall situation of the studenchestvo .^[69] As a final blow, Kasso warned students on financial aid that if they did not start attending classes, they would lose their scholarships. Nevertheless, the strike continued to be highly effective until the beginning of April.

One way the government hoped to combat the student movement was to encourage the formation of rightist student groups. Representatives of these groups were granted private audiences with Stolypin and the tsar in February and March. There was more concrete inducement as well, such as preference in financial aid or the promise of state posts after graduation.^[70] In Odessa the prorector asked for and received a consignment of pistols to distribute to rightist students—which resulted in the shooting of a student. But in the central universities the membership of these organizations remained extremely small. It was only in Odessa and Kiev, where the rightist professors used the protection of the local authorities to gain control of the faculty councils, that the right-wing student groups were a significant factor.^[71]

Although the government, as the students themselves foresaw, suppressed the strike, that victory came at a price. The wholesale arrests and the mass resignations from Moscow University occurred at a time

[66] Avrekh, Stolypin i tret'ia Duma, p. 441.

[67] A tabulation of those expelled and suspended in the spring of 1911 can be found in TsGIA, f. 733, op. 201, d. 206, l. 167.

[68] Rech', 18 February 1911.

[69] TsGAOR, f. DP, ed. kh. 59/1911, l. 116.

[70] On 30 December 1913, Minister of the Interior Makarov sent a long report to Prime Minister Kokovtsev outlining the history of the rightist student groups in the VUZy and government attempts to help them. See TsGIA, f. 1276, op. 3, d. 800, l. 187.

[71] Ibid.

when Stolypin was already becoming more estranged from some of his former supporters, such as the industrialists and the Octobrists. Along with the nettlesome western zemstvo crisis,^[72] the university problem both underscored and increased his political isolation and demonstrated just how dependent Stolypin had become on the Council of the United Nobility, which bore him no great love, and the Nationalists.

A conspicuous sign of the political effects of the university crisis and the growing dissatisfaction with Stolypin's policies was the public protest signed by the sixty-six leading industrialists in the middle of February; they were very upset over the apparent destruction of Moscow University. The industrialists condemned some of the worst excesses of the strike but put most of the blame for the university crisis on the government:

During the past few years the revolutionary wave was ebbing [in the universities] . . . and the students became more serious about their studies; one can say with certainty that only a few months ago the overwhelming mass of Russian students were far from any idea of active protest. If, as a result of the measures of the government, this protest arose and assumed, in many cases, rude forms, does this mean that [the government] can, with a clear conscience, take revenge on the university itself? In important matters of national interest, wrath is a poor guide for policy.^[73]

Many Octobrists also attacked the government's handling of the university problem. The party met on 12 February to discuss the issue. N. P. Shubinskii read a report on the student movement covering the period from November until February; he concluded that the present strike did not have a revolutionary character and that the whole mass movement was the result of Stolypin's overreaction to the Tolstoi demonstrations. Most students, he told the meeting, wanted to defend university autonomy, not overthrow the regime. Another delegate, V. K. von Anrep, supported Shubinskii and saw the university crisis in the context of a

[72] In March 1911 an amended version of a Stolypin proposal introducing zemstvos into five western provinces was rejected by the conservative State Council. In order to increase Russian influence at the expense of the Poles in these projected zemstvos, the bill proposed a voting law that severely limited the power of the Polish nobility. The State Council, in a bitter rebuke to Stolypin, rejected the proposal because, to quote Richard Charques, "the nobility there might be entirely Polish, but nobility they remained and as such had a prescriptive right . . . to the privileges of their class." Stung by the rebuke, Stolypin forced the grudging assent of the tsar to the removal from the State Council of two of his right-wing foes and the implementation of the bill under Article 87. This highhanded action further weakened his political position. See Richard Charques, The Twilight of Imperial Russia (London, 1965), pp. 184–185.

[73] For the text of the protest, see Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 2 (1911).

growing gulf between even the loyalist elements in the country and the Stolypin regime. But the party itself, already on the verge of disintegration, was deeply split on the issue, as its votes on the Duma interpellations (discussed below) would show.^[74]

Between 22 January and 8 February the Duma discussed the university question. The Kadets were in a very delicate position, torn as they were between their opposition to the government and their scruples about a "university above politics"; at first they hoped that the matter could be kept out of the Duma altogether. But the Social Democrats and the Trudoviki pressed the issue by introducing formal interpellations of the government's policy. This forced the Kadets to take a stand.^[75] I. P. Pokrovskii, representing the Social Democrats, challenged the liberal view of the student movement by linking some of the underlying causes of student unrest to the genuine economic problems of much of the studenchestvo .^[76] He also questioned the moral integrity of a professoriate that had enforced, albeit reluctantly, government circulars abridging university autonomy.

The Kadets finally introduced an interpellation of their own, based on the alleged legal incompatibility between the 11 January circular and the 1905 Temporary Rules. V. A. Maklakov, the major Kadet speaker, emphasized that student unrest had been on the wane in Russia until the government, whose motives he questioned, needlessly provoked the students with the January circular. Until then, the students had rebuffed all pleas from "outside agitators" for revolutionary demonstrations; the students were "sick of politics"; the "professoriate, irrespective of political affiliation, stood up to the revolutionaries and despite all abuse . . . protected the university for learning." And, he continued, "just when it appeared that the agitation from the left had failed, troublemakers appeared from the right and our government stabbed . . . the professors in the back."^[77]

The Duma defeated the Kadet interpellation by a margin of 160 to 109. The vote was narrower than expected, and it foreshadowed the ministerial crisis of March 1911, the disintegration of the Octobrist party, and the growing polarization in the Duma between a center-left bloc of Kadets and Progressives and a right-wing bloc of conservative Octobrists, Nationalists, and the extreme right.

[74] Iordanskii, "Ottsy i deti."

[75] Ibid.

[76] Rech', 6 February 1911.

[77] Russkie Vedomosti, 9 February 1911.

Another result of the 1911 university crisis was a further deterioration in relations between the government and the professoriate. Many professors in other institutions agonized over whether they should join their Moscow colleagues in resigning their posts but were dissuaded from doing so after it became clear that the Ministry of Education welcomed resignations from professors with a liberal reputation.^[78] The 1911–1914 period was a low point in the relations between the Ministry of Education and the professoriate. Between 1907 and 1909 the ministry followed the recommendations of the faculty councils in appointment decisions on all but five occasions. But in 1911 the ministry made twenty-one appointments that conflicted with the wishes of the faculty councils and in 1913 it made thirteen more appointments of which the faculty councils disapproved.^[79]

Kasso dealt ruthlessly with professors who publicly questioned the policies of the Ministry of Education. A favorite tactic was to transfer professors from the central universities to schools in the provinces, where they would be at the mercy of local authorities less hesitant to employ the police powers granted them by the 1881 special decrees. Kasso disingenuously argued that his main aim was to raise the quality of the provincial universities. In this way he proceeded to break up the prestigious juridical faculty of Saint Petersburg University. In the summer of 1911 he ordered Professor M. Ia. Pergament to transfer to Iur'ev University. Pergament refused and resigned. In August 1912 he transferred I. A. Pokrovskii to Kharkov University.^[80] In 1913 D. D. Grimm resigned his professorship rather than accept a transfer to Kharkov University.^[81]

In turn conservative professors were transferred from the provinces to the central universities. A notable example was Professor P. P. Migulin, who was transferred from Kharkov to Saint Petersburg to lecture in financial law. His first lecture, which took place on 23 January 1912, set off a sizable student demonstration. Migulin was hooted down and not permitted to finish his lecture. The next month Professor V. A. Udintsov, whom Kasso took from Kiev University to fill Pergament's civil law chair at Saint Petersburg, received similar treatment and lectured under

[78] V. R. Leikina-Svirskaia, "Iz istorii bor'by Peterburgskovo Universiteta s ministerstvom Kasso," Vestnik Leningradskovo Universiteta, no. 4 (1947).

[79] V. P. lakovlev, "Politika samoderzhaviia v universitetskom voprose, 1905–11," Kandidat dissertation, Leningrad State University, 1970, p. 197.

[80] Leikina-Svirskaia, "Iz istorii bor'by."

[81] V. I. Vernadskii, "Vysshaia shkola v Rossii," Ezhegodnik Gazety Rech' za 1914 god (Petrograd, 1915), p. 312.

constant police guard.^[82] In another blow aimed at the Saint Petersburg juridical faculty, Kasso forbade privat-dozenty from giving courses already being offered by full professors. This sudden move prevented an extremely popular and able group—A. Kaufman, M. P. Chubinskii, V. A. Lazarevskii, and I. V. Gessen—from offering their courses.^[83]

On the Eve of the War

After Stolypin's assassination in September 1911, the state's university policy remained in Kasso's hands until his own death in 1914. The rift between the state and the professoriate continued to grow. In a move ostensibly made to train more professors and alleviate the serious problem of "vacant chairs," Kasso proposed, in November 1911, the opening of special seminars for selected graduate students in Berlin, Tübingen, and Parts. Modeled on a similar scheme in the 1880s, Kasso's plan undermined the right of Russian professors to train their successors. To add insult to injury, the candidates would be chosen by the Ministry of Education rather than by the professors themselves. The Academy of Sciences labeled the scheme a "needless abasement of the dignity of Russian science."^[84] But even in the face of intensely hostile public opinion, the Council of Ministers approved Kasso's scheme, albeit with a marked lack of enthusiasm.^[85]

The shortage of qualified professors was one reason the minister of education cited for opposing requests from numerous zemstvos and cities for more universities. On 20 January 1911, the Council of Ministers ordered Kasso to report on the future direction of the nation's higher-education policy. The directive recognized a special need to expand facilities in higher technical education.^[86]

On 9 February 1912, the Council of Ministers met to consider Kasso's conclusions. Kasso stated that there was a particular need for medical, veterinary, and agricultural education but argued against a general policy commitment to the expansion of higher education. The study group chaired by Kasso considered requests for new universities in Rostov and Tiflis; polytechnics in Samara, Perm, Ekaterinburg, and Nizhni Novgorod; the expansion of Tomsk University, new veterinary institutes

[82] Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 4 (1912).

[83] Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 3 (1914).

[84] Rech', 16 October 1911.

[85] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 155, d. 201, ll. 4–9.

[86] TsGIA, f. 1276, op. 20, d. 49.

in Tomsk and Omsk; and new agricultural institutes in Kursk, Novo-Nikolaevsk, and Krasnoiarsk. Kasso rejected most of these requests, recommending only an agricultural institute in Voronezh, a mining institute in Ekaterinburg, and a medical faculty in Rostov. The council rejected strong pressure for a university in Tiflis because it feared the consequences of establishing an institution of higher education in the Caucasus. At its February 1912 meeting the Council of Ministers ap-proved Kasso's recommendations.^[87]

When Nicholas II reviewed the record of the 9 February meeting of the Council of Ministers, his written comments both described the past trend of the state's policy toward higher education and strongly indicated what future policy would be. The tsar endorsed the specific recommendations of the Council of Ministers, including the proviso that henceforth the government would only pay the yearly expenses while the locality would have to pay the construction costs of any new institution of higher education. In endorsing the recommendations the tsar wrote: "I agree. I think that Russia needs higher technical institutions and even more so intermediate technical and agricultural schools, but the already existing universities are sufficient. Take this resolution to be my guiding order."^[88] In short, the tsar decreed that there would be no more universities in Russia, only additional specialized institutes.

Although the government and the Ministry of Education discouraged the establishment of new universities, it would be wrong to infer that the 1905–1914 period saw the erosion of Russia's system of higher education. On the contrary, in this period the numbers of VUZy and students reached an all-time high. A major reason for this was the growing initiative of other ministries and private individuals in starting new VUZy and supporting existing ones.

Two of the most important of these new VUZy were the Saint Petersburg Psychoneurological Institute and Moscow's Shanlavskii University. Both these institutions were started and funded by private sources, an indication that the rise of a new Russian bourgeoisie was beginning to generate enough capital to challenge the traditional hegemony of the

[87] Ibid. For a critical appraisal of the government's refusal to establish a new university in Tiflis, see Speranskii, Krizis russkoi shkoly, p. 184. Although most ministers opposed establishing a VUZ in Tiflis, Viceroy Vorontsov-Dashkov's arguments in favor of such a move received Prime Minister Kokovtsev's support. Finally, the tsar approved the establishment of a polytechnic there, but nothing was accomplished before the outbreak of World War I.

[88] Sovet Ministrov, "Ob otkrytii novykh vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii i o rasshirenii sushchestvuiushchikh," Osobyi Zhurnal, 9 February 1912.

state.^[89] Neither had an easy time gaining government approval to begin operations, and outside interference remained a constant problem.^[90] But these new VUZy indicated the beginning of significant new trends in Russian higher education.

Shaniavskii University, for example, broke new ground in university governance and curriculum.^[91] The faculty, recruited from the staffs of nearby VUZy and from those professors who had resigned from Moscow University, enjoyed excellent relations with the students. The Shaniavskii curriculum was geared to the needs of zemstvo workers, municipal employees, schoolteachers, and other groups who needed a new kind of higher education. Prospective students did not face the admissions barriers that complicated the quest of seminary graduates, Jews, and women for a university education. Courses included public administration, the cooperative movement, public health, pedagogic theory, and other areas not strongly represented in the traditional university curriculum. There was a fundamental tension within Shaniavskii University between the traditional concept of the Humboldtian elite university and the notion of practical higher education aimed at a mass constituency.^[92] But the tension was creative and hinted at a new willingness to reconsider the traditional role of university education. Although Shaniavskii's degrees did not confer the same privileges as those granted by state institutions, its graduates found that employers respected their academic credentials.^[93]

There were several other indications of the growing diversity of Russian higher education on the eve of World War I. The Ministry of Trade and Industry fostered the rapid expansion of higher commercial education: in 1913 the Moscow Commercial Institute, the biggest such school, had more than four thousand students. The network of polytechnic institutes continued to attract more students. By 1910 there were more than twenty VUZy for women, with a total enrollment of over twenty thousand. According to Ezhegodnik Rossii 74,783 students were enrolled in state VUZy in 1914. University students made up

[89] On the Psychoneurological Institute, see Alexander Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture (Stanford, 1970), vol. 2, p. 322. A useful survey of the growing role of private contributors can be found in Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 4 (1914).

[90] Speranskii, Krizis russkoi shkoly, pp. 147–184.

[91] Ibid.; A. A. Kizevetter, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Prague, 1929), pp. 470–494; Silke Spieler, Autonomie oder Reglementierung (Cologne, 1981), pp. 188–212.

[92] For example, see Professor A. I. Chuprov's comments on the relationship between the projected Shaniavskii University and the more traditional universities, quoted in Speranskii, Krizis russkoi shkoly, p. 160.

[93] Kizevetter, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, pp. 492–493.

about half this total. Adding enrollment in non-state institutions, Russia's student population in 1914 exceeded one hundred thousand.^[94] Leading universities such as Saint Petersburg and Moscow universities were among the largest in the world.

But this expansion of Russian higher education did not soothe the growing resentment of the professoriate. Leading professors pointed out that most of this expansion was a result of private initiative or the efforts of other ministries. The Ministry of Education, they complained, was doing practically nothing. Most important, the state had apparently turned its back once and for all on the professors' claim for the elite Humboldtian university as the cornerstone of Russia's system of higher education.

In 1914, Professor V. I. Vernadskii published a severe criticism of the state's higher-education policy. The concentration on specialized technical institutes, Vernadskii warned, was a mistake that would seriously affect the future of Russian higher education:

The creation in the nation of a system of higher education in which specialized institutes predominate over universities has no precedent in any country . . . and will have important and widespread consequences. One should not deny some useful benefits from the creation of multi-department higher technical schools. They introduce much that is valuable and new into Russian life. But at the same time the influence of general education, imparted by the universities, is lost. The respect of the Russian public for pure learning diminishes. I think that the structure of the [university] provides more of a basis for the proper organization of academic life than does a structure based on technical, commercial, and agricultural schools. In any case the university has stood the test of experience and represents a known quantity. It is no accident that the educational system of other countries has been based on the universities, and that includes such practically oriented peoples as the English and the Americans. But Russia is embarking on another path, is making a new experiment, but it is doing so accidentally, only because of the unfortunate character of its central ministry in charge of education.^[95]

Despite the great increase in private giving and local support of higher education, the university professoriate knew that ultimately the universities needed the financial and moral commitment of the state. On the eve of World War I, this goal seemed more elusive than at any time since 1884.

[94] In "Vysshaia shkola v Rossii," Vernadskii cited a total figure of 137,000 students in 1912. This included students in people's universities and other institutions that did not confer the state-recognized privileges associated with the degree.

[95] As cited in ibid.

The Studenchestvo, 1911–1914

Right up until the beginning of the war, the Russian government maintained its pressure on the studenchestvo, but it failed to pacify the VUZy . The studenchestvo did not forget the 1911 crackdown nor did it forgive the government for the unprecedented expulsions and suspensions. Between 1911 and 1914 several outbreaks of student unrest occurred, most confined to specific VUZy, a few escalating to nationwide protests. There were strikes and sympathy demonstrations over a mass repression of the students of the military-medical academy; skhodki to protest the Beilis trial and the Lena massacre; and, most frequent of all, constant demonstrations against unwelcome professors foisted on the universities by the Ministry of Education.

As in the past, the studenchestvo was quicker to protest attacks on comrades than to react to events outside the VUZy . For example, the reaction to the events in the military-medical academy involved many more students than did the protests against the Beilis trial and the Lena Goldfields massacre—although the latter made the Okhrana very nervous.^[96]

The assault on the military-medical academy was another example of the gratuitously repressive policies that alienated the Russian government from the educated public on the eve of World War I. The students at the academy had long been divided into two groups, those with a future military obligation and those whose status differed little from students in other VUZy . (The first group had state scholarships.) On 14 December 1912, V. A. Sukhomlinov, the minister of war, issued an order requiring all students at the academy to salute officers—even in the street. The students were outraged by the militarization of their status, and most refused to give the required salute. One officer responded by striking a student with a saber, and his victim then attempted suicide. Four hundred students promptly resigned from the academy. Unfazed, on 12 March 1913, Sukhomlinov announced a new statute that turned the school into a full-fledged military institution. In response, more than a hundred thousand students participated in short protest strikes.^[97]

But Russian student life during this period was marked by more than

[96] "Kak otozvalis' studenchestvo i obshchestvo na sobytiia v voenno-meditsinskoi akademii," Studencheskie Gody, no. 3–4 (1913); Studencheskoe Delo, no. 5–6 (1912); TsGIAM, f. 11, op. 5, ed. kh. 454, l. 112.

[97] "Kak otozvalis' studenchestvo "; A. Ia. Avrekh, Tsarizm i chetvërtaia Duma (Moscow, 1981), pp. 64–67.

just protests and demonstrations. The processes that had begun after the Revolution of 1905 continued, and so did the problems. More students than ever—more than one hundred thousand—attended VUZy in 1914, with an especially large influx from the peasant estate. The vast majority crowded into Saint Petersburg and Moscow, where they continued the fierce competition for jobs, housing, and scholarships. As we have seen (see Chapter 7), this large increase in numbers, along with new political realities, made it increasingly difficult to talk about the studenchestvo as a close-knit family held together by common moral and economic interests. Besides sheer numbers, unmistakable signs of growing intellectual heterogeneity strained old traditions and definitions. One notable example was the growth of a students' Christian Movement, with numerous chapters and international ties.^[98] This religious movement, condemned by the Synod, had nothing to do with state-sponsored rightist student organizations, but its growth, as several respected observers of university life pointed out, showed that new processes were at work within the studenchestvo .^[99]

Most discussions of "where the studenchestvo is going," however, stopped with questions, not answers. Typical was Vernadskii's cautious appraisal that the "studenchestvo stood at a crossroads."^[100] Few observers repeated the prediction, so common in 1907–1908, that the Russian students would follow the bourgeois road of their post-1848 German counterparts.

One reason for this caution was that amid the growing signs of intellectual heterogeneity, there were also clear indications of centripetal forces at work within the studenchestvo . In many important respects student organizations and traditions were showing unmistakable resilience and vitality. After all, the old problems—loneliness, economic need, intellectual confusion—remained, and the students needed their organizations more than ever. In the period just before the war, student organizations such as zemliachestva and cooperative societies enjoyed impressive growth, although their instability was a source of constant concern.^[101] The zemliachestva, for all their drawbacks, maintained their central place in student life and relied heavily on the mystique of the stu-

[98] V. I. Vernadskii, "Vysshaia shkola i nauchnye organizatsii," Ezhegodnik Gazety Rech' za 1913 god (Saint Petersburg, 1914), pp. 366–367.

[99] L. Kleinbort, "Sovremennaia molodëzh': Prezhde i teper'," Sovremennyi Mir, 10 (1914): 138.

[100] Vernadskii, "Vysshaia shkola i nauchnye organizatsii," pp. 366–367.

[101] Russkie Vedomosti, 5 January 1914; P. Trofimov, "Itogi i perspektivy studencheskovo ekonomicheskovo dvizheniia," in S. G. Svatikov, ed., Put' studenchestva (Petrograd, 1916), pp. 167–193.

dent traditions to integrate entering freshmen into the student culture.^[102]

The student organizations still faced formidable problems. The 1911 circulars banning all but student "scientific circles" from university premises forced the zemliachestva and student economic organizations off campus. They faced manifold challenges in finding suitable meeting places and obtaining legal recognition on the basis of the 4 March 1906 Rules on Voluntary Associations.^[103] All the while the old problems continued to bedevil the zemliachestva and other student economic organizations: lack of funds, over-reliance on a diligent few, and so forth.^[104]

Continuing a trend of which everyone but the government and the extreme right seemed to be aware, the center of student concerns continued to shift away from purely political organizations and toward the problems of student professionalism. (Although, as we have seen, the students' alleged obsession with politics had always been misunderstood.) The student political groups survived, but their place in student life depended, as before, on their relationship to and involvement in issues specific to the studenchestvo . And within the political groups themselves, especially the student Social Democrats, there was little patience with the doctrinal disputes dividing the adult parties.^[105] Of course, this did not mean that the studenchestvo as a whole was indifferent to politics. What the students were looking for were answers to the problems of relating larger political and moral issues to their own experiences and situation, something the revolutionary parties per se could not offer.

Perhaps the major issue of student life just before the war was the ongoing debate concerning student professionalism and moral commitment. Would the student economic organizations renounce any kind of political, moral, or educational mission and confine themselves to organizing inexpensive dining halls and discount bookstores? Or would they use the framework created by the students' economic and fraternal needs to inculcate in their members the studenchestvo 's traditional concern with justice and democracy? This question was fought out on the pages of the student press and within the zemliachestva and student cooperatives. Two new weeklies, Moscow's Studencheskie Gody (founded

[102] An example is the May 1912 appeal of the Serpukhov zemliachestvo of Moscow University to entering freshmen (TsGAOR, f. 102, op. 13, ed. kh. 59, 46ch. B/1912, l. 25).

[103] Trofimov, "Itogi 1 perspektivi"; "Neskol'ko slov k voprosu o studencheskom dome," Studencheskie Gody, no. 2 (1913).

[104] "Zemliachestva ili kooperatsiia?" Studencheskoe Delo, no. 1 (1912).

[105] For example, see the 3 April 1913 Okhrana report on the student movement in TsGIAM, f. 111, op. 5, ed. kh. 455, l. 179.

in 1912) and Saint Petersburg's Studencheskoe Delo (founded in 1913), emerged as the most energetic proponents of a morally committed student professionalism.^[106] Another student newspaper, Golos Polytekhnika, argued that students' main responsibility was to work hard, acquire useful skills, and serve the nation by doing their jobs well. Student organizations should limit themselves to immediate economic matters and leave wider questions to the discretion of their individual members. The old studenchestvo, Golos Polytekhnika asserted, was gone.^[107]

This debate coincided with a growing tendency toward larger student organizations operating on a citywide rather than an institutional basis.^[108] This trend affected both cooperative societies and zemliachestva . An important example was the campaign launched in Moscow in 1912 for a Student House. The Student House would be built with funds raised by the students themselves and would serve as a physical base for citywide student organizations and enterprises. Proponents pointed out that such an enterprise would teach the students how to manage a large-scale project themselves and wean them away from their over-reliance on handouts and charity balls.^[109] As the Student House campaign spread to Saint Petersburg, a committee emerged to define its ultimate purposes. Some members of the Student House committee saw it as a totally apolitical center open to all students, but a group centered in the staff of Moscow's Studencheskoe Delo saw the Student House as a base for the "democratic studenchestvo ." While avoiding identification with any particular party, it would nonetheless support a nonpartisan but left-wing "democratic professionalism." The paper emphasized that its aim was "that every students' organization should always regard itself as part of a general student movement, that it should teach its members to aspire to great and important ends, instead of confining itself to paltry calculations."^[110]

[106] "Ot redaktsii," Studencheskie Gody (February 1913); Studenchestvo i ekonomicheskie organizatsii," Studencheskie Gody (April 1914); "Ot redaktsii," Studencheskoe Delo (February 1912); V. Vetrov, "Moskovskii Studencheskii Dom," in Svatikov, ed., Put' studenchestva, pp. 241–243. Studencheskoe Delo, while not denying the legitimacy of student party organizations, remained—as S. G. Svatikov, one of its editors, recalled—firmly committed to the notion of nonpartisan "democratic professionalism" worked out by Golos Studenchestva in 1910–1911. Studencheskie Gody grew increasingly impatient with nonpartisan professionalism and by 1914 openly called for a more politically committed student movement.

[107] As cited in Studencheskii Gody (February 1913).

[108] Trofimov, "Itogi i perspektivi," pp. 181–182.

[109] V. Vetrov, "Moskovskii Studencheskii Dom," in Svatikov, Put' studenchestva, pp. 194–212.

[110] Quoted by Ignatiev et al., in Russian Schools and Universities, p. 139.

On the eve of the war, therefore, it was clear that the students still maintained their ongoing dialogue with themselves and the past over their identity and their place in Russian society. For many the concept of studenchestvo still served not only as a vital psychological and intellectual construct but as a sign of their heritage and their links to previous student generations.

The First Years of World War I

Shortly after the outbreak of World War I and the death of L. A. Kasso in November 1914, the direction of the government's higher education policy took yet another turn. After a short interlude, Kasso was replaced by Count Pavel Nikolaevich Ignatiev, a scion of a prominent family and a former governor of Kiev who had been serving as assistant minister of agriculture. Ignatiev, who would remain minister of education until December 1916, pursued policies that earned him the respect, if not always the agreement, of the liberal press and the majority of the professoriate. Influenced by the Slavophile tradition, Ignatiev believed in breaking down the "bureaucratic walls" that allegedly separated the tsar from the people. In a government alienated from the Duma and the educated public, the Ministry of Education became something it had rarely been before—a bastion of relative enlightenment. Though by no means a liberal, Ignatiev was still quite explicit about his determination to remove the odium from the ministry by working with the Duma and by paying closer attention to public opinion. This did little to endear him to the empress or to Rasputin. Asked later by a Provisional Government commission how he had survived so long at his post and how he managed to turn his ministry into an "oasis," Ignatiev replied that he probably owed his tenure to an old personal association with the tsar: they had served together in the Preobrazhenskii Regiment, and there had been close family ties as well. On assuming his appointment, Ignatiev recalled, he resolved to change the "terrible state of affairs where precisely that ministry which should be the beloved child of the entire nation is instead despised."^[111]

In higher-education matters Ignatiev undertook two major initiatives: a master plan for the expansion of higher education, and a new draft statute. Shortly after his appointment, Ignatiev told the budget

[111] Chrezvychainaia sledstvennaia komissiia vremennovo pravitel'stva, Padenie tsarskovo rezhima (Moscow, 1926), vol. 6, pp. 4–5; see also, Silke Spieler, Autonomie oder Reglementierung (Cologne, 1981), pp. 40–44.

committee of the Duma that, unlike Kasso, he agreed on the urgency of replacing the 1884 Statute, and he promised close collaboration with the Duma.^[112] A year later, speaking to the same committee, Ignatiev emphasized that "the ministry must meet halfway the wishes of the nation; it must draw into its work the whole community, all the living forces of the country. It must create conditions for lasting and fruitful work in this field."^[113]

Ignatiev worked quickly. A project was ready by the middle of 1915. Although many of its provisions did not satisfy the professoriate, even Ignatiev's critics appreciated his willingness to listen to and often to accept new opinions. More than any of his predecessors, Ignatiev was willing to meet a key demand of the professoriate by emphasizing the mission of the universities as research institutions and by stressing the primacy of method over content in university teaching. In his introductory remarks to the draft statute, he criticized the past tendency to stress the role of the universities as training grounds for civil servants. Only by dedicating themselves to the imperatives of research and eschewing the temptation to impart "practical" education and training could the universities prepare the kind of civil service that the state needed.^[114]

The new draft largely eliminated the powers of the curator and greatly strengthened those of the rector, who would be elected by the faculty council. The minister could appoint professors if the individual department had failed twice to elect a suitable candidate or if he twice found the department's choice unacceptable. After some indecision on the role of the faculty council in electing professors, the ministry finally favored bypassing the faculty council in favor of the individual department, a move that caused some consternation on the part of many academic critics.^[115] Students could organize academic and cultural societies within the VUZy, but all other student organizations would be subject to general statutes. The new statute would have greatly expanded the faculty,

[112] Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities, p. 195.

[113] Ibid., p. 196.

[114] TsGIA, f. 1037, op. 1, ed. kh. 6 ("Oblasnitel'naia zapiska po proektu ustava imperatorskikh rossiiskikh universitetov").

[115] See, for example, the critical article by Professor M. M. Novikov of Moscow University that appeared in Russkie Vedomosti on 12 January 1917 (after Ignatiev had already resigned). Novikov, who had worked closely with Ignatiev while serving on the Duma's Education Committee, respected the minister but believed that the draft statute constituted "a serious threat to university autonomy." Ignatiev's draft statute invested the departments with the power of electing professors, but on 3 July 1916 a decree went into effect that, besides raising academic salaries, clarified procedures for electing professors and associate professors. According to this decree, the electing body was the faculty council, not the department. The final word in the debate was to have rested with the Duma. For discussion of the 3 July decree, as well as additional arguments in favor of faculty council as opposed to department powers, see Russkie Vedomosti, 26 August 1916.

abolished the honorarium, and raised faculty salaries. The course of study on all but the medical faculty would be cut from four to three years. But students interested in pursuing teaching careers, in either secondary schools or universities, would stay a fourth year, write a specialized thesis, and receive a Kandidat degree.^[116]

Shortly after assuming his post, Ignatiev instructed N. O. Palachek, now the ministry's chief specialist in higher-education affairs, to prepare a study of the nation's future needs in this area.^[117] In his report, submitted in the spring of 1916, Palachek noted that despite decades of commissions and studies, the Ministry of Education had lacked a coherent strategy governing the development of higher education in the empire. Although spending for lower and secondary education had sharply increased, and many new specialized technical institutes had been opened, the universities were languishing. There were serious shortages of physicians and high school teachers, and too many of the existing institutions of higher education were concentrated in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, an anomaly that caused a drain of talent from the provinces to the capitals. Palachek linked the case for more universities with the imperative of regional development, as well as with the need to utilize Russian culture as a unifying force on the periphery of the empire. Building a new university at Vitebsk or Minsk, for example, would help counterbalance the cultural influence of the Polish nobility. Moscow University was overcrowded and could not meet the needs of the teeming central Russian provinces. Palachek called for at least ten new universities in cities such as Voronezh, Irkutsk, Tashkent, Rostov, Perm, and Samara. He also recommended careful consideration of a new type of university—a "mixed" institution along the lines of American state universities, which would combine "pure" subjects with de-

[116] The draft statute also abolished the two-degree requirement for university teachers (now only the doctorate was required) and substituted the dozent rank, abolished by the 1884 statute, for the category of extraordinary professor. This move would have greatly reduced the size of the faculty council, since dozenty would have voting power only in departments, not on matters affecting appointments. For a sympathetic discussion of the draft, see two articles by E. D. Grimm: "Organizatsiia universitetskovo prepodavaniia po proektu novovo ustava," Russkaia Mysl', no. 4 (1916); "Organizatsiia universitetskovo upravleniia po proektu novovo ustava," Russkaia Mysl', no. 5 (1916).

[117] Palachek's report, entitled "Blizhaishie zadachi Ministerstva Narodnovo Prosveshcheniia v oblasti vysshevo obrazovaniia," can be found in TsGIA, f. 733, op. 226, d. 206. For a positive evaluation of this official, see Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N'iu-Iorka, p. 207.

partments teaching technology and other applied skills.^[118] (This had the support of such key members of the Duma Education Committee as Professor M. M. Novikov.) In all, Palachek estimated that 40 million rubles would be needed to renovate existing universities and 160 million would be needed to implement an optimal program of building new universities and new specialized institutes.

On 16 June 1916, Ignatiev presented a memorandum to the tsar that argued for an expansion of the system of higher education. He made a careful case for favoring universities over specialized institutes as the linchpin of the nation's system of higher education. As an interim measure Ignatiev asked the tsar to approve the transformation of Tomsk and Saratov into full-fledged universities and the building of new universities in Rostov and Perm. In the latter two cities, the municipalities and the zemstvo had agreed to pay the start-up costs. On 30 June 1916, four years after he had opposed the building of new universities, Tsar Nicholas reversed his stand. Approving Ignatiev's memorandum, he wrote that it would be beneficial to found new universities and other institutions of higher education, "especially in smaller cities."^[119] This imperial decision served as another reminder that the autocracy's higher-education policy was not so much reactionary as it was inconsistent. The tsar could indeed be swayed by arguments appealing to the national interest, especially in wartime, and temporarily put aside his fear of creating new bastions of troublesome student unrest. Nevertheless, student unrest remained the major criterion for the autocracy's evaluation of higher-education policy.

In the end, however, Ignatiev was no more successful than I. I. Tolstoi had been in holding on to his post. Rasputin and the empress resented his policies and wanted to replace him with someone who would follow the policies of Kasso. In turn, Ignatiev minced no words in telling the tsar of the need for major changes in personnel and policy.^[120] For some time, Tsar Nicholas refused to fire Ignatiev. One reason, according to the testimony that Minister of the Interior A. D. Protopopov gave before the Provisional Government investigating commission, was that Ignatiev

[118] For an interesting discussion of this concept, see Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N'iu-Iorka, pp. 198–199.

[119] TsGIA, f. 1037, op. 1, ed. kh. 6 ("Vsepodaneishii doklad Ministra Narodnovo Prosveshcheniia, 30ovo lunia, 1916").

[120] P. N. Ignatiev, "Sovet Ministrov v 1915–16 godakh," Novyi Zhurnal, nos. 8, 9 (1944).

had succeeded in keeping the students quiet.^[121] But by the end of 1916 Ignatiev's time had run out and a favorite of Rasputin's, Professor N. K. Kulchitskii, became the empire's last minister of education (just when Rasputin himself met his untimely end). Kulchitskii began his short tenure by sharply criticizing Ignatiev's policies and his "failure to take heed of the law."^[122] Nevertheless, Kulchitskii promised to let the Duma consider Ignatiev's projects.

World War I also had a major impact on the student movement. From the outbreak of the war through the Revolution of 1917, one basic point united the professoriate with the vast majority of the studenchestvo: the need for national defense. The imperative of helping the war effort overshadowed most other problems, especially dissatisfaction with the government's higher-education policy. This is not to say that student demonstrations and skhodki ceased. As before the war, there were frequent incidents sparked by dissatisfaction with internal issues—unpopular professors, the scheduling of examinations, and so forth. But the context of student unrest changed as events outside the universities impinged on the students' lives more than ever before.

Russia's students returned from their 1914 summer vacation under the shadow of the crushing defeat suffered by the Russian army at Tannenberg. As a February 1915 Okhrana report noted, the general mood of the studenchestvo at the very beginning of the academic year was clearly patriotic.^[123] L. Kleinbort, who had written several articles on student affairs for the leftist journal Sovremennyi Mir, published a widely quoted article in November 1914 on the students' patriotism.^[124] This, Kleinbort emphasized, was a "different war," in part because students keenly felt the Germans' contempt for Russian culture.

To be sure, there were dissenting voices. A lead article in the 15 March 1915 issue of Studencheskie Gody complained about the Kleinbort piece as well as about excessive chauvinism in the universities. Singling out the participation of some students in anti-German street violence, Studencheskie Gody insisted that such actions were atypical of the studenchestvo as a whole. Indeed, right-wing student groups tried but failed to exploit the war in order to gain massive student support. A January 1916 Okhrana report noted that the Moscow Academic Club

[121] Chrezvychainaia sledstvennaia komissiia, Padenie tsarskovo rezhima, vol. 4, pp. 321–322.

[122] Quoted in Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities, p. 218.

[123] TsGAOR, f. DP 00, op. 1915, ed. kh. 59, 57ch.

[124] L. Kleinbort, "Molodëzh' i voina," Sovremennyi Mir, no. 11 (1914).

might have to liquidate its activities because of insufficient funds. In response the Moscow chief of police urged that the Ministry of the Interior increase its subsidy of the organization.^[125] In March of 1916, forty-eight Petrograd University zemliachestva and other student organizations signed a petition calling on students to boycott the Academists, who had just helped the police arrest five students accused of participating in a skhodka .^[126]

Outright opposition to the war was limited to a tiny minority of Bolshevik and radical Social Revolutionary supporters, but the influence of these party groups continued to decline. Bolshevik students in Saint Petersburg organized the United Committee of Social Democratic Organizations, but it wielded scant influence.^[127] According to Okhrana reports, most Bolshevik sympathizers in the VUZy abandoned their work in the universities to participate in outside political activity. Protest skhodki called to support the arrested Bolshevik Duma deputies in the fall of 1914 failed to attract much student interest.^[128] Most Menshevik and Social Revolutionary sympathizers followed their adult parties in supporting the war as a matter of national defense.^[129] They also played a leading role in the student war-relief and economic self-help organizations.

As the war dragged on, however, and the confrontation between society and the government deepened, student unrest began to reemerge. After the Progressive Bloc announced its program on 21 August 1915, the government responded by proroguing the Duma. Public outrage was quickly reflected in various resolutions emanating from such groups as the Union of Zemstvos and Towns and the war-industry committees. In September 1915 a massive one-week strike broke out in Moscow's larger institutions of higher education—the university, the commercial institute, and the technological institute—to protest the proroguing of the Duma, the anti-Semitic policies of the high command, and repression of workers' organizations. The skhodki demanded the reconvening of the Duma, the replacement of the Council of Ministers by a govern-

[125] TsGAOR, f. DP 00, op. 1915, ed. kh. 59, 46ch. l. 5.

[126] TsGAOR, f. DP 00, op. 1915, ed. kh. 59, 57ch. l. 45.

[127] For a somewhat biased but still useful account of Bolshevik activity in Petrograd VUZy during the 1914–1917 period, see l. P. Lelberov, "Revoliutsionnoe studenchestvo Petrogradskovo Universiteta nakanune i v period pervoi mirovoi voiny," in Ocherki po istorii Leningradskovo Universiteta, (Leningrad, 1968), vol. 2, pp. 3–40.

[128] TsGAOR, f. DP 00, op. 1915, ed. kh. 59, 57ch. l. 42.

[129] See, for example, the 9 November 1915 Okhrana report on the student movement, in TsGAOR, f. DP 00, ed. kh. 59, 46ch. LB, l. 88.

ment answerable to the Duma, and a general amnesty. (A major factor contributing to the strike was the shooting of a Moscow University student by the police.)^[130] But at the same time that the students voted these resolutions, they were rejecting more extreme calls for a constituent assembly and urging Moscow workers not to strike. To be sure, the student resolutions were to the left of the program announced by the Progressive Bloc. But clearly the consensus on national defense and the growing rift between the government and the public were altering the relative position of the student movement. An October 1915 Okhrana report identified a similar trend in Petrograd. The studenchestvo, the report noted, was showing greater readiness to support mainstream liberal rather than extreme revolutionary demands.^[131]

More than ever, the center of gravity of student life continued to shift to the zemliachestva and economic organizations. In large part, this reflected the staggering practical problems the students encountered as a result of the war. In addition to inflation, the students faced an unprecedented housing crisis, following an influx of refugees into Petrograd and Moscow. Spiraling inflation weakened the ability of the student self-help organizations to cope with the situation and made the role of outside philanthropy all the more important. But this development undercut one of the most important goals of student professionalism, that of developing student self-reliance and initiative. Tension developed between outside philanthropic organizations, which tried to raise money to help needy students, and student groups who insisted on the imperative of student self-reliance but lacked the means to do much about it.^[132]

By 1916, the deteriorating economic situation began to affect student enrollment. In June 1916 the Ministry of Education was forced to limit entering classes in Petrograd, Moscow, lur'ev, Kiev, and Kharkov. Meanwhile, growing numbers of students either left for the army or were forced to leave the universities because of shortages of housing and the worsening inflationary situation. For example, on I January 1916, 11,184 students were enrolled in Moscow University; on 1 January 1917, only 6,680 were enrolled.^[133]

One point of continuity with the prewar period was the persisting student problem of self-definition. An issue that had preoccupied the

[130] TsGAOR, f. DP 00, op. 1915, ed. kh. 59, 46ch. (Okhrana report of 18 September 1915).

[131] TsGAOR, f. DP 00, op. 1915, ed. kh. 59, 57ch. l. 30 (10 October 1915 report on the Petrograd student movement).

[132] See A. A. Kizevetter, "Studenchestvo i obshchestvennyi dolg," Russkie Vedomosti, 12 September 1916.

[133] Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities, p. 209.

student movement on the eve of the war—whether student cooperatives and economic organizations should limit themselves to economic tasks or see their role as providing "moral leadership" and "unity" for the studenchestvo —continued to foment controversy. For example, after some disagreement, the new Petrograd Kassa Vzaimopomoshchi, which arose at the end of 1915 to unite student self-help groups, proclaimed that a basic purpose of the organization was not only to disburse funds but also to give the studenchestvo a sense of purpose and cohesion. The students were in danger of becoming a random group of "Individual visitors" to the university, the kassa warned. It was time for a real effort to restore unity.^[134]

Those who argued for the necessity of linking student economic organizations to larger moral purposes, such as maintaining the democratic traditions of the studenchestvo, had other organizational bases. One was Studencheskie Gody, which the government finally closed down at the end of 1915. Another was the Moscow Committee for a Student House. In 1916 this group, which included such historians of the studenchestvo as S. G. Svatikov and Rafael Vydrin, issued the important collection of essays Put' Studenchestva, which discussed the history and prospects of the studenchestvo . In the introduction Svatikov admitted that the outbreak of the war had diverted the students' attention from their own concerns. But whereas in other countries the war strengthened the links between government and society, in Russia the test of war had exposed the system and brought about the demand for far-reaching political changes. The war would bring about the liberation of Russian society, and when that moment came, the studenchestvo had to be ready.^[135] The essays emphasized fundamental divergences of interest between the studenchestvo and the professoriate. History had repeatedly shown that professors were all too prone to forget about student concerns once they felt that they were about to win their own goals—faculty power and higher salaries.^[136] The student agenda—more scholarships, rights of assembly and organization, economic self-help,

[134] "Khronika," Vestnik Vospitaniia 4 (1916): 91—92. On 11 March 1916, the minister of the interior sent a letter to Ignatiev complaining about the harmful influence of the new Kassa Vzaimopomoshchi. By that time, 1,032 students had already signed up for membership. See TsGIA, f. 733, op. 155, d. 1191, l. 137.

[135] Svatikov, ed., Put' studenchestva, p. iv. Although Minister of Education Ignatiev supported the Student House idea, the Okhrana heatedly opposed legalizing the enterprise. A 15 May 1915 memorandum argued that the Student House committee dreamed of "uniting the studenchestvo of all of Russia" to fight against the government. See TsGAOR, f. DP 00, ed. kh. 59, 46ch. LB.

[136] See the essays by Rafael Vydrin, "Studenchestvo i obshchestvo," and A. Kovrin, "O reforme vysshei shkoly," in Svatikov, ed., Put' studenchestva .

liberalized admissions—demanded that the studenchestvo develop the organization and determination to fight for its interests.

Protected from conscription until they had completed their studies, many students nonetheless felt a moral obligation to aid the war effort.^[137] In 1914, Moscow students had already started the Moscow Students' Hospital Organization to help the wounded and organize their transport from trains to local hospitals. Similar efforts developed in other cities. In Petrograd the students organized the General Student Committee to Help Victims of the War, which eventually included more than one hundred different student groups, including zemliachestva and self-help organizations.^[138]

Professor Pavel Novgorodtsev estimates that by the end of 1915 about 10 percent of Russia's students had volunteered for officers' training schools.^[139] As early as September 1914, the minister of war had been empowered to draft students, but he deferred action for the first year of the war. On 15 September 1915 an interministerial conference discussed the issue of drafting the students. The minister of war favored immediate conscription, but Ignatiev submitted a memorandum urging that only in "exceptional cases" should students be drafted before they had graduated.^[140] After all, the minister of education argued, the nation would desperately need trained professionals once the war was over. But in the spring of 1916, conscription was initiated, beginning with the youngest students and exempting medical students and students in their last year at the university or last two years at technical schools. Call-ups proceeded by lots, which were drawn in the presence of all prospective conscripts. According to Professor Novgorodtsev, the initial mood of these meetings was one of "patriotic harmony." But as the war dragged on, he recalled, the mood grew more sullen, although outright opposition to conscription was still confined to a minority.^[141]

1917

The sudden fall of the Romanov dynasty met an enthusiastic response from faculty councils and students alike. Classes spontaneously

[137] For example, see a purloined letter written by a Moscow student on 27 September 1914: "All student organizations are working as before, but now all want to salve their conscience and do something for the wounded" (TsGAOR, f. DP 00, 1914, 59, 46ch. LB, 1. 148).

[138] Studencheskie Gody, 15 March 1915.

[139] Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities, p. 190.

[140] Ibid., p. 191.

[141] Ibid., p. 217.

halted as both faculty and students gave in to the prevailing excitement of the revolution. In several VUZy student skhodki passed resolutions calling for a suspension of classes so that students could engage in unspecified political or educational work. For many this political work consisted of participating in election campaigns for municipal elections, responding to zemstvo calls for lectures in the countryside, and preparing to work in the planned inventory of land holdings and food reserves.^[142] Even when classes resumed for the remainder of the semester, attendance was small.

Shortly after the fall of the dynasty, several professors called for the revival of the Academic Union. In a 12 May article published in Rech', Nikolai Kareev stressed the importance of the Academic Union in 1905–1906 and argued that it had a role to play even in a democratic republic. Governments, be they autocratic or democratic, had a tendency, Kareev warned, to take a "utilitarian" approach to higher education. Even public opinion could not be trusted to safeguard the interests of the universities. It was up to the professoriate to defend the interests of "pure science." Moreover, professors—whose profession was defined by a disinterested seeking after truth—had a responsibility to the nation to provide proper political leadership. In Kareev's words, "noblesse oblige ." No matter what political party they belonged to, they had to ensure that politics did not serve "narrow class interests."^[143]

The fourth congress of the Academic Union (so numbered to stress the basic continuity with the Academic Union of 1905 and 1906) convened in Petrograd in June 1917. The seventy delegates heard reports on faculty-student relations, the relationship between the government and the universities, and the nagging issue of junior-faculty rights. They adopted a collective statement calling on all citizens to show "discipline," support the war effort, and fight against the growing anarchy in the nation.^[144]

The revolution also saw the election of new student government organs. Although the parties of the moderate left maintained their majority, the elections showed some gain in popularity by the Kadets.^[145]

[142] See Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 4–5 (1917): 27–28.

[143] Rech', 12 May 1917.

[144] "Iz zhizni vysshei shkoly," Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 6–7 (1917): 77–82; Russkie Vedomosti, 11 June 1917.

[145] One possible explanation, noted by Professor Novgorodtsev in Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities, p. 222, was that committed leftists left the universities to engage in political work and were thus unlikely to participate in student politics. The elections to the Temporary Council of Student Elders of Petrograd University gave the Kadets six seats, the Trudoviki four, the Social Democrats (Mensheviks) four, and a "unification" group one. At the Petrograd Polytechnic the Kadets won five seats, the Social Revolutionaries four, the Trudoviki two, and the Social Democrats one (Rech', 9 May 1917). In Odessa the student governing board was composed of twenty-two "Socialists," sixteen representatives of a nationalities bloc, and twelve Kadets; (Rech', 19 May 1917).

The student resolutions supported fighting the war and preparing for a transfer of power to the constituent assembly. Pro-Bolshevik slogans made little headway.^[146]

Although the attention of students and professors alike was focused on the tumultuous events occurring outside the VUZy, in several universities conflicts did erupt between the two groups.^[147] In Kiev, the students called for a boycott of several professors accused of rightist views. The students in Odessa University called for an investigation into the 1911 shooting incident where a student lost his life, and they demanded curricular reforms and a student role in running the university. In Kharkov University as well, the students pressed their claims for a greater role in internal governance. In Kiev and Kharkov, students had active help from the newly organized junior faculty, who advanced their own claims.^[148] At Kazan University, the faculty council gave in to student demands for delegates at department meetings but turned down the call for student representation at faculty council meetings.^[149] In the central universities, relations appeared to be better, as negotiations proceeded on the principle that joint faculty-student committees would consider all matters directly affecting the studenchestvo .

The Provisional Government appointed a new minister of education, former Moscow University rector A. A. Manuilov. Manuilov (later succeeded by Sergei Oldenburg), who had been fired by Kasso and Stolypin in 1911, immediately ordered the reappointment of all those professors who had lost their jobs that year as well as the removal of all those professors who had been appointed to their posts by the Ministry of Education without the consent of the faculty councils (the latter could, if they

[146] On student hostility to anti-war propaganda, see reports in Russkie Vedomosti, 9 and 24 March 1917, and Rech', 13 April 1917. Shortly after the revolution the Student House group called for ending the war but was explicitly repudiated by the newly formed Moscow Committee of Student Deputies.

[147] Still, one cannot agree with Marc Ferro's assertion that "the professor had within a few weeks become as discredited as the priest, the bureaucrat and the judge." See Marc Ferro, The Bolshevik Revolution (London, 1980), p. 66. According to Novgorodtsev, the net effect of the revolution was to increase the authority of the professoriate over the students, especially as both groups began to perceive a common enemy—the Bolsheviks (in Ignatiev et al., Russian Schools and Universities, p. 222).

[148] "Iz zhizni vysshei shkoly," p. 77.

[149] M. K. Korbut, Kazanskii Gosudarstvennyi Universitet imeni V. I. Ul'ianovaLenina za 125 let, 1804/5–1929/30 (Kazan, 1930), vol. 2, pp. 294–295.

wished, ask these colleagues to stay). Manuilov also announced the convening of a conference on the needs of higher education that would include representatives not only from the senior faculty but from the junior faculty and the students as well. The conference convened in June 1917 and discussed several issues, including a future university statute, relations between students and faculty, and the role of younger faculty in university governance. Basic principles of agreement included joint faculty-student committees to consider matters affecting student life, abolition of the minister's ultimate veto power over faculty appointments, and somewhat increased representation of younger faculty in internal governance. Privat-dozenty and assistants could participate in department meetings and send representatives to meetings of the faculty council. Students received the right to maintain their organizations within the VUZy . Professor Novikov recalled that the student delegates had arrived in a somewhat belligerent mood, prepared to fight for student interests. But the conference proceeded smoothly, and a good working relationship developed among all the groups.^[150]

In the summer of 1917, the professoriate began to speak out more clearly on political as well as academic issues. The Moscow University Faculty Council issued a hard-hitting statement implicitly attacking the Provisional Government for not doing more to maintain order. The Kiev University Faculty Council criticized the Provisional Government's willingness to negotiate with Ukrainian separatism.

In August 1917 the universities were invited to send delegates to the State Conference called by Kerensky to shore up the tottering government. Speaking for the professoriate, Professor D. D. Grimm attacked the Provisional Government for its lack of determination to fight anarchy and safeguard the national interest. Soon, Grimm warned, Russia would turn into a "jungle society" (budet podlinno chelovek cheloveku volk ). There was too much concern with rights and freedom, not enough regard for duty, obligation, and work.^[151]

By the fall of 1917, conditions had deteriorated so much that the Provisional Government, in order to relieve the demand on the limited food supplies in Moscow and Petrograd, called for the cancellation of the academic year. Loud protests helped countermand this decision, but relatively few students returned for classes in September.

What was left of the studenchestvo joined the faculty in attacking

[150] Novikov, Ot Moskvy do N'iu-Iorka, pp. 275–276.

[151] Rech', 14 August 1917.

the Bolshevik seizure of power in November 1917. On 8 November a huge skhodka convened in Moscow which included representatives of all student political groups and all the city's VUZy . The skhodka condemned the Bolsheviks for betraying socialism and "betraying the popular masses." The skhodka proclaimed that the "studenchestvo will dedicate all its strength to defending the rights of the people and to struggling for the ideals of democracy and socialism."^[152]

The Soviet regime did not achieve immediate control of the universities; that took at least three years.^[153] The young Soviet state bitterly complained of the counter-revolutionary tendencies of the studenchestvo and set about altering the social composition of the student body. For their part, the students joined forces with the faculty to fight for academic autonomy. In an ironic turn, the professoriate actually began asking for a greater student role in university governance, and the students fought back against efforts to curb the powers of their elective bodies. Student skhodki demanded that the regime respect student rights, and the studenchestvo even organized street demonstrations, complete with the singing of traditional student songs. The Council of Elders in Petrograd University organized evenings where new students, especially working-class recruits to the new Rabfak, could become acquainted with the traditions of the studenchestvo . A new organization appeared in Petrograd University to fight the Bolsheviks: the Staroe Organizovannoe Studenchestvo (the old organized studenchestvo ). But now both students and professors were confronting a much more efficient opponent.

[152] Russkie Vedomosti, 8 November 1917.

[153] A good source on student-Bolshevik relations is Sergei Zhaba, Petrogradskoe studenchestvo v bor'be za svobodnuiu vysshuiu shkolu (Paris, 1922). Zhaba was a student leader in Petrograd University in the 1918–1922 period. Cf. V. Stratonov, "Poteria Moskovskim Universitetom svobody," and M. M. Novikov, "Moskovskii Universitet v pervyi period bol'shevitskovo rezhima," in V. B. El'iashevich, A. A. Kizevetter, and M. M. Novikov, eds., Moskovskii Universitet 1755–1930: iubileinyi sbornik (Paris, 1930), pp. 156–242. Also see J. C. McClelland, "Bolsheviks, Professors, and the Reform of Higher Education in Soviet Russia: 1917–1921," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1970.