Chapter 2
Students in Search of Identity

Sometime in February 1901 a student at Saint Petersburg University, E. K. Proskuriatov, wrote a poem protesting his classmates' passivity before the government's decision to draft 183 Kiev University students into the army. He had expected Russia's studenchestvo to react with demonstrations and strikes. Instead the students milled around indecisively, torn between the instinct for solidarity and the obvious fear that they too would be drafted.

Ia pomniu dni: sem'ëiu druzhnoi
My smelo vyshli na bor'bu.
Togda nikto nemalodushno
Ne triassia za svoiu sud'bu.
Nikto iz nas pokoi svoi sytyi
V tsel' zhizni vsei ne vozvodil
I molcha, kak teper', obidy
I oskorbleniia ne snosil.^[1]

I remember the days when as one close-knit family we entered the fray, when no one cowered for his own skin, when no one made his own personal interests the highest purpose of his life, when no one, unlike now, passively accepted insults and outrage.

Proskuriatov assumed that he and his colleagues spoke a common language and understood one another. The themes were clear: the sense of

[1] Handwritten copy in Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Oktiabrskoi Revoliutsii (hereafter referred to as TsGAOR), f. DO, 3ch. 125t. 1/1898, l. 93a.

a student family; the dichotomy between self-interest and the self-sacrificing ideals of the collective; students' obligation to uphold a common code of behavior, especially when their "family," the studenchestvo, was insulted and oppressed; finally, the implication that they were somehow inferior to previous student generations, who would have acted more courageously.

Tovarishchi! Muzhaites' dukhom!
Pust' tuchi chërnye krugom,
My smelo, brat'ia, drug za drugom
V bor'bu neravnuiu poidem.

No pozabyv, chto my studenty,
Ne stanem my v sem'e svoei
V nadezhde poluchit' protsenty
Chitat' Suvorinskikh rechei.

Ne stanem—net—my slishkom chestny
I gordy
I eti tseli neizvestny
Sredi studencheskoi sredy!

Comrades! Heads up! The black clouds may gather around, but together we will still enter the unequal struggle. We will not forget that we are students, we will not start reading conservative trash and dream of living off comfortable savings. No, we won't do that, we're too proud and too honorable, and such things are unknown to the student world.

Even if the forces were unequal and defeat was all but certain, the students still had to uphold their honor by fighting. Above all, they had to resist the temptation of looking ahead to the possibility of a secure life and comfortable job. As a 1903 Riga student proclamation put it, "The studenchestvo is the social group that is most able to forget its own egotistical interests and continue the struggle."^[2]

Some years later, in 1910, one student newspaper told its readers that despite the great changes the universities were undergoing, what held the students together was more significant than the forces driving them apart:

The studenchestvo is a separate corner of Russian life. It lives in its own separate world, shaped by special chacteristics formed out of a long history of suffering. The studenchestvo is not a random, mechanically assembled mass of separate individuals. No, it is like a miniature people [narodets ], its firm

[2] "Brozhenie v vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniiakh," Osvobozhdenie, no. 15–16 (1904).

sense of solidarity coming from the basic aspects of its collective existence. Notwithstanding the heterogeneity of its class structure . . . the Russian studenchestvo has many vital unifying elements, which bring together its different groups and blur party and social differences.^[3]

But many students began—in growing numbers after 1905, but some even earlier—to deny the very existence of a studenchestvo, arguing that Russia's students were indeed little more than a random mass of individuals from different backgrounds and fated to go their separate ways, which mostly led upward. Still other articles conceded that a sense of corporate solidarity and identity may once have existed, but claimed that the vast increases in higher-education enrollments, as well as the political and social changes that were transforming Russia, were eroding the sense of community that was at the core of the notion of studenchestvo .

Thus studenchestvo had acquired a normative as well as a descriptive significance. It implied standards of ethics, solidarity, and idealism that were hard to meet and that led many students to assume that their predecessors were somehow better than they. The 1901 student-poet who compared the cowardice of his comrades with the heroism of previous student generations might have been surprised to learn that in the 1870s a writer in the revolutionary journal Vperëd had made the same invidious comparisons between his comrades and the students of the 1860s.^[4] And in 1896, the United Council of Moscow University lamented the wide gulf in moral standards between the students of the 1890s and those of the 1860s and 1870s: "Then the description of the [studenchestvo ] as the 'hope of Russian society' or the 'flower of the nation' . . . was richly deserved. . . . But how ironic that sounds when it is applied to us!"^[5] Two points, however, remain clear: the sense of a student past, and the need of successive generations of Russian students to define their identity and their place in Russian society.

All along, of course, there had been other voices, some quite cynical, that dismissed the notion of studenchestvo as an exercise in self-delusion, a last chance to play with idealism and courage before the students became judges, civil servants, and comfortable lawyers. In February 1899, when the attention of educated Russia was focused on an unprecedented nationwide student strike, Anton Chekhov wrote to a friend:

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

[4] R. V., "Studenchestvo i Obshchestvo," in S. G. Svatikov, ed., Put' studenchestva (Petrograd, 1916), p. 34.

[5] S. P. Mel'gunov, "Studencheskie organizatsii 80–90kh godov v Moskovskom Universitete," Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 4 (1907): 172.

As long as they are still students and kursistki [women students], then they are an upright, good community; indeed, they are the future of Russia. But as soon as these students and kursistki take their own road in life and become adults, then the hope and the future of Russia go up in smoke . . . and we see rentier-doctors, voracious civil servants, dishonest engineers.^[6]

Clearly Chekhov, in referring to the students as the "future of Russia," was parodying what not only the students but also educated Russians tended to think of the studenchestvo (and of the intelligentsia). If the concept of studenchestvo gave a moral purpose to Russian student life, it also enabled university graduates to enjoy a vicarious identification with its ideals, to the point of using the memory of student experience as a convenient surrogate for political involvement and professional success. As P. Ivanov described them:

The average Russian intelligent puts too heavy a burden on the studenchestvo . . . . He hides behind the student whenever he has to confront the issue of idealism. . . . He hopes that the studenchestvo will stand up for itself—and for him—whenever it is necessary to fight.

"When I was a student . . ." is the slogan of most average Russian intelligenty . . . .

"Why are you so inert? . . . Why do you so easily swim with the tide? Why do you not fight against social evil?"

"When I was a student, . . ." the weak, whining voice replies. . . .

"We know, we know! But what about now?"

"Now?" A heavy sigh. "Now there is family, children, work, the dreariness of provincial life [provintsial'naia tina ]. I am surrounded everywhere by boring people. . . ."

"But remember, you used to go to student skhodki . . . ."

"Shh! . . . The director is coming!"^[7]

Russia needed hard-working doctors, efficient civil servants, productive landowners, diligent engineers, enterprising merchants, and imaginative industrialists. But for writers like Chekhov, as such scholars as Edith Clowes have perceptively observed, this in itself was not enough. These groups had to form alliances, develop cultural, social, and political ties. They had to overcome the mutual estrangement so brilliantly portrayed in The Cherry Orchard and begin working together.^[8] In short,

[6] A. N. Dubovnikova, "Pis'ma k Chekhovu o studencheskom dvizhenii 1899–1902," Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Moscow, 1960), vol. 68, pp. 449–476.

[7] P. Ivanov, Studenty v Moskve: Byt, nravy, typy (Moscow, 1918), p. 283. This is a reprint of a 1903 edition.

[8] Edith W. Clowes, "The Moscow Art Theater, 1898–1905: The Commercial-Industrial Sector and the Rise of New Literary Institutions," paper presented at the National Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, New York, November 1984.

they had to become a "middle class." In order to do this, they had to go beyond traditional categories of self-definition—intelligent, kupets, dvorianin —and find new symbols that could mobilize hitherto isolated groups into effective common action. The traditional labels dated from a time when the state formed society and defined social groups. To transcend these traditional categories demanded the mobilization of new forces—the theater, the universities, professional associations—that could provide a basis for "middle-class" identity.

Studenchestvo can be seen as one such traditional label. It implied negation of a hypothetical opposite: meshchanstvo, self-satisfied philistinism, and, by implication, bourgeoisie . One of the most common themes of Russian student pamphlets and articles in the Russian student press was rejection of the alleged path taken by German students after 1848: the path from studenchestvo to bourgeoisie . In a basic sense, the Russian student movement derived much of its actuality from a deep collective ambivalence about the nature of the "middle-class" identity that the universities gave their graduates a chance to achieve. And much of this ambivalence derived from the very real political and social obstacles facing those who wished to forge coalitions among commercial, professional, and landowning groups and to endow them with a sense of collective possibility and identity.

The Russian student experience was, for many, a complex combination of privilege and deprivation; of exalted status and humiliating treatment; of high intellectual expectations and disappointment in the actual educational experience; of intense commitment and self-sacrifice and equally intense frivolity and dissipation.

The notion of a studenchestvo, a student estate with its own code of behavior, organizations, traditions, and sense of mutual obligation, dates from the sudden changes that transformed the Russian universities, as well as the rest of Russian society, following the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855. Before then the students were on the whole prepared to follow the advice proffered by one curator in 1847: play cards, get drunk, chase women, but stay away from politics.^[9]

Determined to ensure the reliability of the universities, Nicholas I had enforced a strict code of military discipline. Inspectors posted to watch the students meted out harsh punishments for improperly worn

[9] S. Ashevskii, "Russkoe studenchestvo v epokhu 60-kh godov," Sovremennyi Mir, no. 6 (1907): 14.

uniforms or long hair. One student in Kiev University who appeared at a compulsory religious service in an incomplete uniform found himself shoved out of the church by an inspector and expelled from the university the next day.^[10] The writer P. A. Boborykin, recalling his freshman year in Kazan University in the early 1850s, emphasized the students' political apathy. Not only did they show little inclination to start their own organizations, but they took hardly any interest in the outbreak of the Crimean War.^[11] The only groups of students distinguished by their network of organizations and corporate feeling were the Germans of Dorpat University and the Poles. But neither Germans nor Poles showed much interest in fraternizing with their Russian classmates.^[12]

Soon after Nicholas I died, the government began to undo the harsh regime he had imposed in the universities. The abolition of the 1850 rules limiting the size of the student body led to a dramatic rise in enrollment. In 1855 there were 476 students in Saint Petersburg University; three years later the number had more than doubled, to 1,026.^[13] The government reinstituted the practice of sending young men abroad to prepare for university professorships and restored the teaching of philosophy and constitutional law. In 1859 the Ministry of Education relaxed the strict censorship rules governing the acquisition of foreign books by university libraries.

At the same time, the ministry abolished the requirements that students wear uniforms and engage in drill. In Kiev, Polish students began to march the streets in Polish national dress, while in Moscow and Saint Petersburg some students took to wearing peasant costumes. In Kazan students celebrated the new era by marching through the streets in animal skins. The new students coming into the universities were clearly different from their predecessors.^[14] As Dmitry Pisarev recalled, they did not have the same reverential attitude toward authority and quickly "became masters of the university."^[15]

[10] 1. Solov'ëv, Russkie universitety v ikh ustavakh i vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Saint Petersburg, 1914), p. 19.

[11] P. A. Boborykin, Za polveka: Moi vospominaniia (Moscow, 1929), p. 69.

[12] An interesting discussion of the relations between Russian and Polish students in Saint Petersburg University around 1860 can be found in L. F. Panteleev, Vospominaniia (Moscow, 1958), pp. 168–184; see also the Kiev University memoirs of A. V. Romanovich-Slavatinskii in Solov'ëv, Russkie universitety, p. 190.

[13] Daniel Brower, Training the Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, 1975), p. 121.

[14] Ashevskii, "Russkoe studenchestvo v epokhu 60-kh godov," Sovremennyi Mir, no. 7–8 (1907): 2.

[15] In Brower, Training the Nihilists, p. 121.

This new era in the universities coincided with the intense public discussion of the impending abolition of serfdom. Frequent appearances of well-known writers and public figures at university gatherings gave the students a growing sense of their own importance. To paraphrase Franco Venturi, the universities became one of the "battlegrounds" where liberalism and populism fought for influence.^[16] And if populism did not score an outright victory, it at least succeeded in setting the stage for what was to become one of the persistent themes of the student movement: the tension between the student corporation and the liberal to moderate elements of the professoriate. In the student movement that would soon erupt, the students would for the first time openly confront not only the government but also their liberal teachers, who would argue that despite periodic provocations, the university as such should not become involved in confrontational politics.

At the same time the students began to develop a clear sense of corporate identity. By 1861 the students, who only a short time before had been known mainly for their rowdiness and political passivity, engaged in nationwide demonstrations in defense of their rights. Over time, a wide network of institutions and organizations—zemliachestva, the skhodka (student meeting), discussion groups, newspapers, representative organs—would nurture this emerging sense of corporate identity.

Within a few years after the accession of Tsar Alexander II, students began showing a new determination to defend their rights. In Kazan University, the student body demanded that incompetent professors be dismissed. Students also defended popular professors (e.g., N. I. Kostomarov) against official harassment. In September 1857, a policeman broke into an apartment where a group of Moscow University students (mostly Poles) were drinking and demanded the surrender of a thief the students were allegedly hiding. When those inside asked him to leave, he returned with a group of police and firemen, who beat the students. The student body of Moscow University reacted with rowdy meetings demanding an official investigation and punishment of the police officers, not only on behalf of their injured comrades but also to satisfy their offended sense of corporate honor.^[17] A report of the university faculty council observed that the incident "caused the students to think of their unity. Until then there had been no common goals, and therefore no skhodki . . . . The students had not thought of themselves as a corpora-

[16] Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution (New York, 1966), p. 223.

[17] Svatikov, Put'studenchestva, p. 10.

tion. . . . The violence against some of their comrades was seen as an attack against all."^[18] The students elected course representatives to push their demand for an investigation. The young tsar shared the students' outrage, but his sympathy would soon give way to anger and frustration as the studenchestvo began to show a new aggressiveness.

Another sign of a new era in the universities was the emergence of new student organizations. Under the benevolent curatorship of N. I. Pirogov in Kiev, students at Kiev University established a court of honor, a library, and a credit society—institutions which they themselves ran.^[19] In Saint Petersburg University, students began publication of a literary journal in 1856. Its editorial board soon started a self-help society (kassa ) to help the large numbers of needy students who entered the university after 1855. To raise money, the editorial board began organizing concerts. By 1859 the kassa had actually disbursed more money (9,000 rubles) than did the administration of the university.^[20] When the students suspected the treasurer of the kassa, Butchik, of embezzlement, they turned to their law professors for help in organizing a court of honor.^[21] Such courts were to become a student tradition.

Episodes such as the Butchik affair raised the question of how students would meet to discuss their needs and reach joint decisions. Thus arose the tradition of the skhodka, an assembly of the student body to discuss issues of common concern. An individual or a group would call for a skhodka to assemble, usually in the university courtyard or in a large auditorium. At first, students had little experience in running such meetings: there was neither a clear agenda nor a presiding officer. Soon the practice of the skhodka became more refined. Students met and elected a president of the skhodka . The latter then recognized speakers and called for a vote on a given issue.

As Daniel Brower has noted, the forming Russian student community was

completely unlike the German model of student organization. The Russian manner of organization, especially in the assemblies, resembled the egalitarianism of the peasant communes, whose meetings also had the name of

[18] V. I. Orlov, Studencheskoe dvizhenie Moskovskovo Universiteta v 19om stoletii (Moscow, 1934), p. 159.

[19] Ashevskii, "Russkoe studenchestvo," no. 7–8 (1907): 34. A good overall source on the development of student corporate identity at this time is Brower, Training the Nihilists, pp. 116–134.

[20] Ashevskii, "Russkoe studenchestvo," no. 7–8 (1907): 32.

[21] S. Ashevskii, "Russkoe studenchestvo v epokhu 60-kh godov," Sovremennyi Mir, no. 10 (1907): 36.

skhodka . This fact led Dimitry Kavelin, the Saint Petersburg University his-tory professor, to conclude that the student community forming around him had somehow found inspiration in Russian cultural traditions. He argued that "educational institutions, especially universities, assume a form like their contemporary social institutions." Western medieval universities developed as guild-like corporations, resembling urban society of the time. The German student fraternities preserved some of these traditions, but Russia had not followed this social path, and its universities could not reproduce the same social patterns. Its students, whose concern for social prestige faded as their interest in learning increased, expressed egalitarian sentiments as did the peasantry. The two communities had nothing in common except a disdain for any authority but that emanating from the group. The students, privileged by official educational policy, denied any privilege among themselves. In an authoritarian society their style of life was anarchistic.^[22]

The appearance of the skhodka really marked the advent of a student corporate identity. The skhodka was eventually to become the source of legitimacy for all collective student action, the basis of an unwritten student constitution. It implied the supremacy of direct democracy, the notion that the studenchestvo possessed a general will capable of instant response when the need arose.

Alarmed by the growing independence of the studenchestvo, in 1861 the government tried to tighten its control of the universities. It raised tuition fees, banned skhodki, and tried to force all students to sign a handbook, the matrikul, spelling out the new regulations.

The students reacted with defiance. Skhodki resolved not to sign the matrikuly and voted to ostracize any student who did so.^[23] In Saint Petersburg a crowd of students marched down the Nevskii Prospekt:

A sight like it had never been seen. It was a wonderful September day. . . . In the streets the girls who were just beginning to go to university joined in together with a number of young men of differing origins and professions who knew us or merely agreed with us. . . . When we appeared on the Nevsky Prospekt, the French barbers came out of their shops and their faces lit up and they waved their arms cheerfully, shouting "Revolution! Revolution!"^[24]

A strike at Saint Petersburg University forced the government to keep that institution closed for the greater part of the next two years. The disturbances spread to the provinces. In Moscow and the provincial

[22] Brower, Training the Nihilists, p. 124.

[23] One student song of the time praised the defiance of the studenchestvo: "Honor and glory to those students who did not sign the matrikul, who did not fear the casemates, and who did not lose heart."

[24] Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. 227.

universities, the police urged shopkeepers and butchers from the nearby Okhotnyi Riad (Hunters' Row) to attack students marching toward the house of the local governor.^[25]

By 1863 relative calm had returned to the universities, and the government approved a university statute that gave the professors a good deal of power in the universities while allowing the studenchestvo far fewer rights than the students would have liked. Routine disciplinary authority was now vested in a faculty court, which was much more lenient than the old inspectorate, but students were still forbidden to hold skhodki or maintain organizations. After the abortive attempt on the tsar's life in 1866, government surveillance of the students grew more stringent, but this did not quell student disorders, which broke out in 1869, 1874, 1878–1879, 1880–1881, and 1882, over such diverse issues as the right to maintain student organizations, conflicts with professors, and demands that the universities become more accessible.^[26]

This last complaint reflected growing anger with the government's policy of limiting eligibility for university admission to male graduates of classical gymnasia. In addition to barring graduates of seminaries, realuchilishcha, and women, in 1887 the government imposed limits on the enrollment of Jewish students in the universities. Furthermore, the 1884 Statute imposed higher tuition fees (raised to 100 rubles in 1887) and limited the number of students receiving tuition waivers to 15 percent of the class.

On the whole the Ministry of Education had only mixed success in regulating the social composition of the student body, notwithstanding the higher fees imposed in 1887, the celebrated "Cook's Circular" of that same year calling for limitations on the admission of children from the "lower orders" into the classical gymnasia, and the numerus clausus restricting the entry of Jewish students.^[27] The ministry was most successful in limiting the admission of Jews.^[28] However, the policy of restricting

[25] Ibid., p. 230. A number of sources provide information on the student disorders of the early 1860s. See Brower, Training the Nihilists, pp. 127–130; Alain Besançon, Education et société en Russie dans le second tiers du 19siècle (Paris, 1974), pp. 135–164: William Mathes, "The Origins of Confrontation Politics in Russian Universities," Canadian Slavic Studies, no. 2 (1968).

[26] S. G. Svatikov, "Russkoe studenchestvo prezhde i teper,'" in his Put' studenchestva, p. 13.

[27] For a well-reasoned interpretation of the "Cook's Circular," see Patrick Alston, Education and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford, 1969), pp. 107–139.

[28] For a detailed discussion of the deliberations leading to the numerus clausus, see TsGIA, f. 733, op. 153, d. 175, l. 55. As A. N. Schwartz argued in a lengthy 1908 memorandum surveying the history of the numerus clausus, numerous exceptions and exemptions had led to significant discrepancies between the number of Jewish students actually in the universities and the stipulated legal limit (Schwartz, "O priëme evreev v vysshie i srednie uchebnye zavedeniia Ministerstva Narodnovo Prosveshcheniia," unpublished memorandum of 15 May 1908, located in the library of the Harvard University Law School).

seminary students' access to universities conflicted with the ministry's desire to direct more Russian students to lur'ev and Warsaw universities as well as the need to lure students to the newly opened (1888) and uninviting university of Tomsk. All three universities dropped restrictions on the enrollment of seminary graduates. Restrictions on graduates of realuchilishcha also came under increasing scrutiny, in part because of the government's own admission that it had to reform the secondary school system as well as because of the growing conviction, reflected in the deliberations of the 1902 commission on higher-education reform, that graduates of schools other than classical gymnasia should have a chance to enter a university if they chose, albeit with the proviso that they take additional examinations mandated by the faculty councils.^[29] Male graduates of classical gymnasia faced restrictions in gaining admission to a university only if they wished to enter some medical faculties (which required competitive examinations because of shortages in classroom space) or, between 1899 and 1906, if they wished to go to a university not designated to admit graduates from their particular educational district.

Total enrollment in the universities increased from 8,120 in 1880 to 13,548 in 1900. On the eve of the Revolution of 1905 it stood at 21,506. The impact of the revolution—almost two years of interrupted classes as well as a temporary but drastic liberalization of admissions restrictions in 1906—led to a sharp increase in enrollment, to 31,433 in 1906 and 38,440 in 1909. After that year, restrictions newly imposed by the Ministry of Education resulted in a gradual decline of enrollment, to 34,110 in 1912. The share of the two central universities in total university enrollment increased from 43 percent in 1880 to 56 percent in 1900. After that year, various residence rules, especially with regard to medical admissions, led to a moderate decline in their share, to 48 percent of total enrollment in 1912 (see Appendix Tables A-3 and A-4). The most significant change in enrollment patterns between 1880 and 1912 was the displacement of the medical faculty by the juridical faculty as the department with the most students. Enrollment in the natural sciences and mathematics faculty gradually increased, and the history

[29] Komissiia po preobrazovaniiu vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii, Trudy (Saint Petersburg, 1903), vol. 2, p. 173.

and philology faculty, too, which had suffered a sharp decline in popularity as a result of the 1884 Statute, began attracting a higher proportion of students after 1900 (see Table 3 in Chapter 1).

The popularity of the juridical faculty was in part a result of the fact that it answered the needs of students who wanted to earn a university degree but were unsure about their future choice of career.^[30] It also attracted students who started studies in the natural sciences and found themselves unable or unwilling to keep up with the work.^[31] One alumnus of Moscow University, N. I. Astrov, recalled that

young people who received their leaving certificate from the gymnasium flocked to the juridical faculty. It should be stressed that few did so because they were devoted to the prospect of a legal career or because they were enthralled . . . by the law. Many chose this faculty because it was the easiest, it did not commit one to strict specialization, and it seemed to give a general education.^[32]

To be sure, Astrov added, some students had specific reasons for wanting to study law: the hope of making a great deal of money, for example, or the dream of becoming a "defender of the oppressed." Some radical students liked this faculty because it afforded the only opportunity in the university to study political economy.

But for the majority the question of whether or not to enter the juridical faculty was solved by a process of elimination. They became sick of philology in the gymnasium, did not like mathematics, had practically no preparation in the gymnasium for the natural sciences. So the juridical faculty was the only choice left. "I'll enter it," they said, "and then I'll see what happens."^[33]

A major choice facing a graduating student in the Juridical faculty,"33 was whether to enter state service or to pursue a career at the bar, in the zemstvos, or in some type of private employment. By 1913, over ten thousand civil servants, judges, prosecutors, and other experts with legal training staffed the Ministry of Justice and the court system.^[34] A

[30] The juridical faculties, at least in Moscow University, tended to attract more sons of nobles and civil servants than did other departments, while enrolling fewer students from the peasantry and the meshchanstvo . See Appendix Tables A–5 and A–6.

[31] A survey of 1,900 male gymnasium graduates showed that more of those who wanted to enter universities intended to study natural sciences (32.4 percent) than any other subject. Law was a close second (31.6 percent). Yet enrollments on the juridical faculty stayed at the 40 percent mark, while natural science enrollments remained in the 22–24 percent range. See Ministerstvo Narodnovo Prosveshcheniia, Otchët za 1900 god .

[32] N. I. Astrov, Vospominaniia (Paris, 1941), p. 191.

[33] ibid.

[34] V. R. Leikina-Svirskaia, Russkaia intelligentsiia v 1900–1917 godakh (Moscow, 1981), p. 36.

like number were practicing attorneys.^[35] The Ministries of Finance and the Interior also demanded legally trained personnel and put pressure on the universities to provide a more rigorous legal education.^[36] State service was secure and well paid. But to a much greater extent than was the case for technically or medically educated students, state service for graduates of the legal faculties implied acceptance of the existing system and readiness to defend its policies. It also carried the stigma of "careerism."^[37] Although private legal practice proved financially rewarding for many lawyers, various government restrictions led to a growing polarization between the legal profession and the state.^[38]

The medical faculties of the universities trained a substantial number of the 20,659 physicians practicing medicine in Russia in 1903. Of these, 33 percent were in private practice, 13 percent worked for the zemstvos, 16.3 percent worked in hospitals and clinics, while another 34.4 percent were in government employment. (The remaining 3.3 percent either were employed elsewhere or did not indicate where they worked.)^[39] Although Russia desperately needed trained physicians, graduates of the medical faculties did not have an easy time finding a job. The very class that most required medical care, the peasantry, lacked the means to pay for it. As Nancy Frieden points out, "a bitter irony of medical work in Tsarist Russia was that underemployment and even un-employment coexisted with a desperate need for medical services."^[40]

[35] Leikina-Svirskaia cites a figure of 11,800 attorneys (prisiazihnye poverennye ) and assistant attorneys (pomoshchniki prisiazhnye poverennye ) in 1916; ibid., p. 78.

[36] In a case cited by Roberta Manning, a recent graduate of the Moscow University juridical faculty, Vladimir Maibordov, started his service with the Bessarabia Provincial Board of Peasant Affairs in 1904 but discovered that he was expected to "know the law very well" and quickly resigned; see The Crisis of the Old Order in Russia (Princeton, 1982), p. 410. On Interior Minister Plehve's concern for the educational training of officials entering the Ministry of the Interior, see 1. 1. Ianzhul, Vospominaniia (Saint Petersburg, 1910), p. 55.

[37] Brian Levin-Stankevitch, "Toward a Study of Professionalization in the Russian Legal Occupations, 1864–1917," unpublished paper; cf. Iu. Martov, Zapiski sotsialdemokrata (Berlin, 1922), p. 61. Martov complained that "all the future careerists and civil servants" headed for the juridical faculty. He chose the natural sciences faculty, in part because it had the reputation of being the "most democratic."

[38] See Levin-Stankevich, "Toward a Study of Professionalization"; Leikina-Svirskaia, Russkaia intelligentsiia, pp. 82–84. Stankevich concludes that "the more highly developed the legal professional's dedication to his profession and to the goal of service to society, the more alienated he became from that society. The government's policies tended over time to polarize what had begun as a united profession. The state legal professions were increasingly dominated by careerists, with the exception of the 'old guard' which had entered service shortly after the court reform. The bar became increasingly 'missionary' as the government prosecuted its members for performing their lawful functions."

[39] Nancy Mandelker Frieden, Russian Physicians in an Era of Reform and Revolution, 1856–1905 (Princeton, 1981), p. 210.

[40] Ibid.

Competition for state posts, which offered more security, became more intense after 1890. Only a few prospered in private practice, while zemstvo physicians often endured an uneasy relationship with their superiors. Physicians not only suffered from unemployment and under-employment but also had to battle for social prestige and government recognition of professional rights. Compared to other occupations requiring the same degree of education but much less exertion, physicians' salaries were low.^[41]

Study in the history and philology or the natural sciences and mathematics faculty most often led to a career in high school teaching or, for some science and mathematics students, further study in a technical institute. High school teaching certainly offered a modicum of financial security: beginning teachers in the gymnasia of the Ministry of Education earned 900 rubles a year, a salary which could rise to 2,500 rubles after twenty years of service. Pensions paid 1,800 rubles a year.^[42] Since there was a growing shortage of high school teachers, the only serious obstacle—but it was a real one—to receiving a post was securing the approval of the curator of the educational district.^[43] But there were drawbacks to this profession as well. Not all students had fond memories of their own experience in the gymnasium where, to judge from memoirs, many of their teachers resembled the Mr. Belikov in Chekhov's "Man in a Case."^[44] And while there were always jobs available, most entailed living in some small provincial town.

Thus a common feature of the professions that university-trained graduates (and technical graduates as well) would enter was their ambivalent relationship to the state. High school teachers, physicians, lawyers, and even civil servants both needed the state and resented in varying degrees its tutelage and interference. Only a certain number of students would be able to find posts in the capitals; most would go to the provinces, where they would be exposed to the vagaries of local authorities enjoying wide powers under the 1881 Emergency Decrees, unpredictable zemstvo boards, or educational curators who could sum-

[41] Ibid., p. 213. The average physician's earnings were about 1,200 rubles.

[42] Leikina-Svirskaia, Russkaia intelligentsiia, p. 62.

[43] In 1912 there were about 1,900 "vacant" teaching positions in male gymnasia and progymnasia of the Ministry of Education. See Ministerstvo Narodnovo Prosveshcheniia, Otchët za 1912 god .

[44] "The real world irritated and frightened him and kept him in a constant state of nerves. Perhaps by forever praising the past and what never really happened, he was trying to justify this timidity and horror of reality. The ancient languages he taught were essentially those galoshes and umbrella in another guise, a refuge from everyday existence." (Translation by Ronald Kiss.)

marily dismiss a high school teacher for political unreliability. Some level of financial security was indeed guaranteed to most university graduates; even the most poorly paid university graduate would earn much more than a factory worker. But in return the graduate was usually expected to grant obedience. Professional status, autonomy, and independence were much harder to achieve. In 1905 a student wrote to Russkie Vedomosti that the reasons for student unrest were not hard to find: he and his comrades could only look forward to a future lived as "Chekhovian heroes." Strikes and demonstrations were his only way of fighting back.^[45] This was to be a frequent theme, as will be seen, in student protest literature.

Available data make it difficult to ascertain with any precision the social origins of the studenchestvo . Estate categories, the most readily available statistic, provide little insight into relative wealth or into the occupational backgrounds of the students' families. Nonetheless, if used with caution, they furnish some useful information, especially when supplemented by student censuses and enrollment lists that specify such points as the civil service rank of the student's father.^[46] Available information from estate categories shows that the trend between 1880 and 1914 was for a sharp increase in enrollment of students from the meshchanstvo and the krestianstvo and a moderate decline in students from civil service and noble families.^[47]

Some generalizations, however, can be made. Most university students came from the middle ranks of Russian society—mid-level civil servants, minor landowners, merchants, priests, and relatively well-off artisans. Very few came from the working class or the peasantry. Most students, as of 1905, represented the first generation of their family receiving a higher education. On the whole, technical institutes tended to recruit a smaller proportion of their students from noble or civil service families than did the universities, and fragmentary evidence seems to suggest that students in the specialized institutes came from families with slightly higher incomes. Most students came from small provincial towns and thus had to leave home to study at the university.^[48] For many,

[45] Russkie Vedomosti, 24 February 1905.

[46] It is possible to assume, for example, that a "peasant" listing, though not necessarily signifying that the father actually tilled land, would preclude his inclusion in the higher ranks of the civil service. A Jew would not be a hereditary noble, while an "honorary citizen" would be more likely to have received a higher education than would a member of other categories.

[47] See Appendix A.

[48] In Kharkov University, for example, 90 percent of the students came from out of town. In Moscow this figure was about 75 percent.

Therefore, it was their first experience of independence. Russian students tended to be somewhat older than their counterparts in some other countries.^[49] Nor were the very wealthy a significant percentage of the student body.

In 1900 an article in Sankt Peterburgskie Vedomosti stated that

educating a son or daughter in a gymnasium or university, if you include an apartment, costs at least 300 rubles a year. Clearly, then, teachers, feldshers, and other such poor people cannot send their children [to the university] . . . even if they have only one son or daughter. All other inhabitants of the countryside—zemstvo employees, doctors, middle landowners—cannot educate more than one or two children.^[50]

The following year, the Kharkov University Faculty Council, responding to a Ministry of Education questionnaire, stated that

the very rich have no trouble [financing their university educations] while the very poor can [at least] get certificates which free them from having to pay fees. . . . But those in the middle have a hard time. The civil servant or the landowner receiving 2,000 rubles a year income from a salary or an estate, the artisan or meshchanin owning a home in a provincial backwater and earning several hundred rubles a year in income, . . . these have a hard time sending their children to the university. And most students at the university come from these kinds of families . It is hard for them to give their children enough money for expenses.^[51]

To a certain extent, various student censuses supplement available statistics on the social backgrounds of the student body. For example, at the beginning of 1905, Doctor M. A. Chlenov conducted a census of the sexual habits of Moscow University students. About half the student body (2,150 students) responded to Chlenov's questionnaire, which included questions about their social background. Twenty-six percent of the fathers had a higher education, 32.3 percent had a secondary education, 22 percent a primary education, 15.2 percent were educated at home, and 4.5 percent had no formal education. Of the students' mothers, 5.6 percent had a higher education and 37.3 percent had finished secondary school. The families of 56.5 percent of the students came from central Russia, 7.2 percent from northern Russia, 11.1 percent from the

[49] An age chart of Moscow University students in 1902 shows that 5 percent were more than 28 years old; 21 percent were between 25 and 27; 30 percent were 23 or 24; 34 percent were 21 or 22, and only 10 percent were under 21.

[50] Quoted in A. E. Ivanov, "Universitetskaia politika samoderzhaviia nakanune pervoi russkoi revoliutsii," Kandidat dissertation, Moscow State University, 1975, p. 38.

[51] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 226, ed. kh. 96 (emphasis added).

south, 5.6 percent from the Urals and Siberia, 12.2 percent from the western provinces, 5.8 percent from the Caucasus, 0.5 percent from central Asia, and 0. 9 percent from Europe. Most students' families lived in cities: 80.7 percent, according to the census; only 19.3 percent defined their place of residence as being in a village. Of the 1,698 students who said they came from cities, only 38.4 percent said they lived in large cities.^[52] These figures are congruent with detailed information about geographical background available from student lists.

Chlenov's census indicated that 9.2 percent of the fathers were landowners, 3.1 percent were factory owners, and 12.1 percent were merchants. One in four (24.8 percent) was a member of the civil service or the military, while 11 percent were salaried employees or officials in zemstvos or municipal government. Physicians, lawyers, and high school teachers made up 15.5 percent; priests, 5.8 percent; petty traders and clerks, 6 percent; and college professors, 0.3 percent. Only 3.4 percent of the respondents said that their fathers were agricultural cultivators (khlebopashets ), workers, or artisans; and only 1.2 percent said that their fathers worked as primary school teachers. The fathers of the remaining students represented a wide scattering of occupations or there was no indication of what they did (see Table 4).

The same sample, broken down by estate (soslovie ), showed that 42.3 percent of the students' fathers were nobility or civil servants, 11.2 percent merchants, 9.3 percent honorary citizens, 16.8 percent meshchanstvo, 5.9 percent peasants and Cossacks, and 11.2 percent priests; 3.3 percent were unclassified. Of the students' mothers, 79 percent did not work, 6.3 percent were teachers, 2.4 percent were in medicine, 0.7 percent were writers, 0.4 percent were artists, 6.6 percent were landowners (pomeshchitsa ), and 3.9 percent were in trade.

This survey, with all its shortcomings, tends to confirm the impressionistic evidence of student social origin gleaned from other sources: the studenchestvo came from the middle ranks of the civil service and the urban strata of Russian society, with a large proportion coming from the smaller provincial cities. Sons of peasants and workers made up only a minuscule percentage of the student body.

When asked to define the economic status of their families, 66 percent of the students answered that they fell into the "intermediate" cate-

[52] M. A. Chlenov, Polovaia perepis' Moskovskovo studenchestva i eë obshchestvennoe znachenie (Moscow, 1909), pp. 24–29. Chlenov did not specify these geographical areas further.

gory, 13.5 percent saw themselves as being "higher than average," and about 20 percent regarded themselves as coming from "lower than average" families.^[53]

A computer analysis of the 1902 Moscow University student body reveals some important additional details about those students whose fathers were civil servants. Less than one percent of the student body came from the top three ranks of the Table of Ranks (kantsler, deistvitel'nyi tainyi sovetnik, tainyi sovetnik ). The next five ranks (deistvitel'nyi statskii sovetnik, statskii sovetnik, kollezhskii sovetnik, nadvornyi sovetnik, and kollezhskii assessor ) provided 24.5 percent, and 8 percent came from the lowest ranks.^[54] By 1913 the percentage of students with fathers in the civil service category had dropped to 19 percent, of whom 14 percent were in the middle five ranks and 5 percent in the lowest ranks.

The student censuses conducted in various universities and technical institutes between 1872 and 1914, though methodologically far from perfect, provide valuable information about the economic status of the studenchestvo . Response rates were often low, as those responsible readily admitted, and only a few of these censuses elicited information about the occupational, as opposed to the estate, background of the students' families. Yet if read carefully, the censuses yield some interesting insights.^[55]

Professor N. Bunge conducted the first such census, at Kiev University in 1872.^[56] Approximately half the student body (355) returned the census forms. Bunge calculated that a normal student budget should have been 375 rubles a year, computed as follows: 80 rubles for a room, 120 rubles for food, tuition and fees of 40 rubles, 66 rubles for clothes, 24 rubles for lighting and laundry, and 45 rubles for books and incidentals. One observer, dozent V. V. Sviatlovskii of Saint Petersburg University, considered Bunge's budget to be too low. Out of 328 students living on their own, however, only 36 spent more than 300 rubles a year. Sixty-five spent less than 150 rubles a year, 104 spent between 151 and 200 rubles, and 123 spent between 200 and 300 rubles. (Twenty-seven students lived with relatives or parents.) A major source of student income was derived from tutoring high school students, but the average

[53] Ibid., p. 29.

[54] These figures are based on an analysis of Imperatorskii Moskovskii Universitet, Alfavitnyi spisok studentov . I used every fifth name.

[55] For an important general discussion of these censuses, see V. V. Sviatlovskii, "Studencheskie perepisi v Rossii," in his Studenchestvo v tsifrakh (Saint Petersburg, 1909).

[56] In ibid., pp. 13–15.

pay was only about 25 kopecks an hour, and 121 out of the 171 students reporting tutoring jobs made less than 15 rubles a month. Of the students responding to the questionnaire, little more than a third got some form of scholarship aid.

After allowing for a generous margin of error, Bunge figured the total amount of student need at approximately 170,000 rubles. Of this amount, 14,000 rubles were covered by tuition waivers, 25,000 rubles by scholarships, and 30,000 to 40,000 rubles by income derived from tutoring. This left 90,000 to 100,000 rubles not covered. Bunge asks, "How can students exist in the face of such deprivation? Some are students in name only but really cannot study, because they spend so much time tutoring. Others leave the university, sometimes for a year at a time, to earn money to enable them to finish."^[57]

The census conducted in Tomsk University and the Tomsk Technological Institute in 1901 was distinguished by its extremely high response rate: 73.2 percent for the university students and 74.4 percent for the students of the Technological Institute. The census provided some statistical backing for what many observers had been saying: that the most financially secure students tended to come from the kupechestvo and the meshchanstvo rather than from the nobility, and that students receiving a higher technical education were somewhat better-off than those going to the universities.^[58] The budgets of 79.2 percent of the university students and 59.5 percent of the students at the Technological Institute were below 25 rubles a month. Only 19.5 percent of the former but 37.1 percent of the latter lived on 25 to 50 rubles monthly. Of course, Tomsk University did contain an exceptionally high percentage of impecunious seminarists, but a 1914 article in Vestnik Vospitaniia argued that the census reflected a situation characteristic of Russian higher education as a whole.^[59]

By 1914, inflation had pushed the level of an "adequate" student

[57] Ibid., p. 12.

[58] The census also provides another example of all-too-rare statistics on the actual occupations of students' fathers. Of the fathers of students at Tomsk University, 60.4 percent were priests; 15 percent were members of the civil service and free professions; 8.1 percent worked in trade and industry; 7.3 percent were in private or railroad employment; 4.2 percent were in agriculture; 4.2 percent were rentiers; and 0.8 percent worked as artisans. Figures for the adjoining Tomsk Technological Institute show a strikingly different profile. Only 5.9 percent of the fathers of students were priests; 38.8 percent were members of the civil service and free professions; 20.4 percent were in trade and industry; 20.4 worked in private or railroad employment; 5.9 percent were in agriculture; 5.9 percent were rentiers; and 2.7 percent were artisans (including one worker).

[59] G. Gordon, "K voprosu o material'nom polozhenii nashevo studenchestva," Vestnik Vospitaniia, no. 7 (1914).

budget to 450 rubles yearly in Saint Petersburg and 400 rubles in the provinces. These figures included tuition fees of 100 rubles. At this time unskilled laborers earned 200 rubles a year, office workers about 500 rubles a year, and minor clerks 700 rubles a year.^[60]

An important source of information on the economic situation of Russian students is the February 1901 report of the commission elected by the Moscow University Faculty Council to examine the causes of recent student disorders. In identifying "needy" students, the commission used data provided by the university inspectorate, which tended to understate the degree of need. Table 5 presents a breakdown of needy and aided students by faculty. Of the 1,957 students receiving some form of financial aid, 1,499 were awarded full tuition waivers. Of these, 74 received some form of scholarship aid in addition to the full waiver. The rest received either partial waivers or grants.

Obviously Russian students depended very heavily on financial aid—and, compared to those of other countries, the universities in Russia tried hard to oblige. The four basic sources of aid were university scholarships, discretionary grants, tuition waivers, and grants from chari-

[60] Ibid., p. 178. D. Margolin, however, in his Spravochnik po vysshemu obrazovaniiu (Petrograd, 1915), maintained that a student in Saint Petersburg could live adequately on 350 to 400 rubles a year (including tuition).

table organizations, especially from the Society for the Aid of Needy Students in Moscow and similar organizations in other cities.^[61]

Despite the constant efforts of the Ministry of Education to force students to go to the university designated for their high school district, large numbers of students from all corners of the country flocked to the two central universities. Some, like A. A. Kizevetter, dreamed of coming to Moscow University to study with the great man V. O. Kliuchevskii. Others, like the young V. B. El'iashevich in far-off Irkutsk, decided that going anywhere but Moscow University was out of the question. In any case, Tat'iana was a celebration shared by all university graduates in Irkutsk, whether or not they had graduated from Moscow University.^[62] A major reason for the preference for the central universities was the hope that Moscow and Saint Petersburg might offer more part-time work and scholarship money.^[63] As a result, both Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities enjoyed strong growth in student enrollment, which in turn increased pressure on available financial resources.^[64]

If not three-quarters, then at least three-fifths of our students rely on outside earnings for their existence, and here we find ourselves in a sort of vicious circle: the cost of living in Saint Petersburg and Moscow is incredibly high and it would seem to be easier to stay in the provinces, but on the other hand there are no positions [for student jobs in the provinces].^[65]

[61] During the 1899–1900 academic year at Moscow University, students received a total of 150,000 rubles in scholarships, 125,000 rubles in tuition waivers, 41,695 rubles in discretionary grants from the university, and 36,300 rubles from the Society for the Aid of Needy Students. The society also disbursed free meals, valued at 58,879 rubles. A valuable description of the work of the society is contained in A. A. Kizevetter, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Prague, 1929), pp. 309–315.

[62] V. B. El'iashevitch, "Iz vospominanii starovo Moskovskovo studenta," in G. B. Sliozberg, ed., Pamiati russkovo studenchestva (Paris, 1934), p. 106.

[63] Rafael Vydrin, Osnovnye momenty studencheskovo dvizbeniia v Rossii (Moscow, 1908), p. 67. See also A. L., "Naselenie universitetov," Vestnik Evropy, no. 9 (1896). The Otchët of the Ministry of Education for 1902 shows that Moscow University awarded 195,124 rubles in discretionary aid and scholarships and Saint Petersburg awarded 113,085 rubles, whereas Kazan University awarded only 69,000 rubles and Kiev University awarded 42,445 rubles.

[64] Because so many students went to the two central universities (about half of the total), their scholarship funds did not translate into a significantly larger amount of aid per capita. According to the 1909 Otchët of the Ministry of Education, of 35,329 students in the nine Russian universities on 1 January 1909, 4,784 received tuition waivers, 942 received both tuition waivers and scholarships, and 752 received scholarships alone, for a total of 18.3 percent of the student body receiving some form of financial aid. A total of 693,744 rubles was available for scholarship aid, in addition to tuition waivers, which were worth 100 rubles a year apiece. Resources per capita varied wildly: 11.5 rubles yearly at Saint Petersburg University; 25.17 at Moscow; 18.82 at Kharkov; 25.67 at Kazan; 14.37 at Kiev; 17.37 in Odessa; 10.98 in lur'ev; 57.80 at Tomsk; and 36.10 in Warsaw.

[65] Vydrin, Osnovnye momenty, p. 67.

Financial aid did not keep pace with the growing student population. In 1880 an average of 62 rubles in scholarship aid per student was available. This figure declined to 23 rubles in 1891, and to just under 16 rubles by 1912.^[66] In 1880 19.6 percent of all university students received tuition waivers. This number fell to 16.5 percent in 1891 and to just over 12 percent by 1912. The government made little effort to match the rise in student enrollment with a corresponding expansion of its financial aid budget. This increased the importance of tuition waivers, the efforts of private aid societies, the cheap student dining halls, and the activities of the zemliachestva as time went on. Another result of the effective decrease in student aid was that large numbers of students were forced to leave the university because they could not pay fees. In the first semester of the 1899–1900 academic year, for example, 480 students, or 12 percent of the student body, were suspended by Moscow University for nonpayment of fees.^[67] During the 1901–1902 academic year, 3,793 out of 17,453 university students dropped out, at least temporarily, because of economic reasons.

Even those awarded aid had worries. Few scholarships paid more than 25 rubles a month, a sum that assured only bare subsistence. Most financial aid came in the form of tuition waivers, leaving students with the problems of finding accommodations and feeding themselves during the academic year. Few students could count on their parents to finance their university educations completely. A survey of Moscow University students conducted in 1893 showed that only 20 percent of the respondents received more than 35 rubles a month from their parents; 25.4 percent received less than 25 rubles a month; and 25 percent received nothing from home.^[68]

For many students, then, staying in the university depended on their finding work. As the student population steadily rose, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, competition for jobs grew more intense and hourly earnings fell. Meanwhile, prices steadily inflated, especially in rents. Tutoring remained the major source of student employment: unlike their American counterparts, Russian students shunned "putting themselves through college" by engaging in common physical labor.^[69] To

[66] Paul Miliukov, "Universitety v Rossii," in E. A. Brokhaus and I. A. Efron, eds., Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' (Saint Petersburg, 1897–1903), vol. 58, p. 799. These figures, however, do not include tuition waivers, or scholarships from private sources.

[67] P. Ivanov, Studenty v Moskve, p. 59. This book is an invaluable source of information about student life in Moscow at the turn of the century.

[68] Sviatlovskii, "Studencheskie perepisi v Rossii," p. 20.

[69] P. Ivanov, Studenty v Moskve, pp. 72–87; for comments on Russian students' aversion to taking manual jobs, see Studencheskoe Delo, no. 7 (1912).

earn 30 rubles a month, however, a student would have to tutor twenty-five hours a week. In 1900, average monthly tutoring earnings for Moscow University students were 18 rubles a month. But tutoring jobs were not easy to obtain, especially after 1902 when the government began to de-emphasize classical languages in the high schools. Once again, it was the first-year student who had the hardest time obtaining work.

Finding a place to live was also a major problem. Many landlords refused to rent to students at all, on the grounds that they always left during vacations. Students everywhere tried to live near the university and, over time, well-defined student neighborhoods took shape: Vasilevskii Island in Saint Petersburg; the Nikitskii-Tver Boulevard area of Moscow—70 percent of Moscow University students lived here or in the Presnia-Iamskaia section of the city. Since a decent room in a good location was hard to obtain for under 25 rubles a month, many students had to share a room or live in substandard accommodations.^[70] About one-fourth of Moscow University students lived in buildings without indoor plumbing. A 1907 housing census conducted by N. A. Kablukov concluded that more than half the students of Moscow University and two-thirds of the students at the nearby commercial institute lived in quarters that gave them less space per person than the hygienic minimum calculated by Professor F. F. Erisman.^[71]

After the 1899 student disorders, the government began building some dormitories, but they could accommodate only a small fraction of the student population. Moscow's Nicholas II dormitory offered library and medical facilities, cheap meals, and well-lighted and spacious rooms. Room and board for a single room cost only 260 rubles for an academic year—but the dormitory had room for only 150 students.

Cheap dining halls played an important role in student life, providing not only food but also a meeting place where students could trade news and make new contacts. The Saint Petersburg University dining hall, financed by a local philanthropic organization but run by students, had four large rooms with electric lighting and a choice of more than thirty newspapers and magazines to read. The executive board included two student representatives. Students could buy cutlets for 6 kopecks apiece, a plate of borscht for 3 kopecks, and a potato for 1.5 kopecks. In Moscow the Society for the Aid of Needy Students ran dining halls

[70] A particularly notorious example of substandard student housing was the Hirsh apartment block near Moscow University, where an enterprising landlord jammed 360 students into 123 rooms.

[71] N. A. Kablukov, Studencheskii kvartirnyi vopros v Moskve (Moscow, 1908). Kablukov cites Erisman on p. 44.

which served an average of 100,000 free meals a year between 1892 and 1902 to students able to show proof of financial need.

The government was not entirely happy with these dining halls. After the February 1899 clash between students and police in Saint Petersburg's Rumiantsev Square (discussed below), excited students assembled in the dining hall to discuss possible responses. During student disorders and strikes, the dining halls became vital centers of protest activity. On 6 April 1899, Minister of the Interior Goremykin wrote to Minister of Education Bogolepov that "the state of affairs in the Saint Petersburg University dining hall cannot be allowed to continue."^[72] After the student disorders of 1902, the government closed the dining hall, allowing it to reopen only after all students had been removed from the governing board.

How did a student qualify for financial aid? What criteria were used? From the students' point of view, perhaps the most objectionable feature of the financial aid system was the role played by the hated inspectorate, which was responsible for drawing up lists of needy students. Students who found themselves in any sort of trouble with the inspectorate had difficulty qualifying for aid. Most scholarships were reserved for upperclassmen and were awarded on the basis of not only financial need but also a student's academic performance. First-year students had particular difficulty getting aid, and this began a vicious circle. A poor freshman, in order to survive his first year in university, had to live in substandard accommodations and spend many hours looking for work. This often affected his performance on the yearly exams and thus diminished his chances of qualifying for financial aid the next year.

The inspectors, who were all expected to possess university degrees, cooperated with the police in keeping track of students outside the universities and drew up lists of those eligible for financial aid. They also had to enforce the official rules on student behavior. For example, students were required always to appear in uniform, even outside the university. They could not marry, or even go to lectures in other departments, without permission. If they came from "subject estates"—the peasantry or the meshchanstvo —they had to present a certificate freeing them from tax obligations. In order to secure admission to the university, they had to present a certificate from the local police attesting to their good behavior (svidetel'stvo o blagonadezhnosti ). The rules for-

[72] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 151, d. 49.

bade all student-run organizations: "reading rooms, dining halls, snack bars, theaters, concerts, balls, any meetings not having an academic character." In the same vein, students could not form zemliachestva (clubs uniting students from the same region) even if the latter "pursued no harmful goals." If students wanted to join organizations off the university premises, they were subject to the general laws governing associations or organizations, and even here, they needed to secure the approval of the inspectorate. Since students were regarded as "individual visitors" in the university, they had no corporate rights, not even the right to submit collective petitions or to meet to discuss grievances. Nor were they allowed to show any "signs of approval or disapproval at lectures."^[73]

Punishments could be levied by the inspectors, the rector, or the university administration. These included admonitions, confinement in the kartser (the university jail) for terms ranging up to four weeks, suspension, and expulsion. Suspended students could, under certain circumstances, enter other universities. If sentenced to the kartser, a student could leave to attend classes.

In its February 1901 report on the reasons for student unrest, the Moscow University Faculty Council laid much of the blame on the inspectorate:

The students are unanimous in their [negative attitude] toward this institution. . . . If a student, imbued with the old but dying tradition, enters the university with a feeling of reverence . . . then he quickly becomes disillusioned. . . . There are the subinspectors, who stand at the entrance of the lecture hall in order to check, and who patrol the corridors between classes, marking down those students whose uniforms are not in order. At every step the beginning student hears their remarks, comments, and warnings. . . . At first all this surprises the beginning student; later this lack of trust . . . turns into a fiery anger when the student sees that he is always being followed, that the [inspectors] . . . are always trying to see whether or not he is "reliable." When the student is in the university he feels he must always be careful.^[74]

In time, the report continued, most students adjusted to this regime, but turned sullen and came to despise not only the inspectorate but also the entire university administration and even the faculty. The latter, stripped

[73] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 151, d. 629.

[74] Imperatorskii Moskovskii Universitet, Doklad komissii, izbrannoi sovetom Imperatorskovo Moskovskovo Universiteta 28ovo fevralia, 1901ovo goda dlia vyiasneniia prichin studencheskikh volnenii i mer k uporiadocheniiu universitetskoi zhizni (Moscow, n.d.), p. 11.

by the government of all power in the university, became an object of contempt. The faculty council complained that the students saw their teachers not as "friends and senior guides in the pursuit of knowledge but, rather, as employees of the administration."

In his memoirs of student days at Moscow University in the late 1880s, A. N. Naumov—hardly a revolutionary—recalled that inspector Bryzgalov barged into his room at 10:30 one night and asked him to name those of his friends who belonged to the Simbirsk zemliachestvo . When he refused, Bryzgalov threatened him with immediate expulsion from the university.^[75] Professor E. V. Anichkov recalled that the members of the inspectorate would spend hours in the university buffet trying to eavesdrop on conversations. When they tired of this, they would pass the time studying photographs of individual students.^[76]

Right after the big 1899 student strike, the Ministry of Education reminded the inspectors that in addition to maintaining order in the universities, they had to show "genuine and positive concern" (blagozhelatel'noe popechenie ) about their charges. They were told to help them with their lessons and to assist them in finding work and suitable living quarters. At the same time the ministry ordered a large increase in the staff of the inspectorate. These measures, however, did little to improve relations between the inspectorate and the students.

Outside the university, the students suffered from the attentions of the police, who had no trouble following the uniformed students, and of the house janitors, who reported on their conduct, especially when any suspicion of illegal student meetings was involved. Of course students who lived with their parents had fewer problems with the inspectorate, but they were a distinct minority everywhere. A student had to register with the police as soon as he arrived back at school, and if he had to leave the university for any reason, such as academic failure or inability to pay, he had to endure good-natured but humiliating taunts at the police station when he came to pick up his passport for the trip home.^[77]

Since most students could afford only the cheapest accommodations, they lived in close quarters with certain urban elements who resented

[75] A. N. Naumov, Iz utselevshikh vospominanii, 1868–1917 (New York, 1954), vol. 1, p. 75.

[76] E. V. Anichkov, "Ustav 1884 goda i studenchestvo na pereput'e: Iz utselevshkih vospominanii," in Sliozberg, ed., Pamiati russkovo studenchestva, p. 42. The inspectors, it should be noted, complained that the steady increase in the student population made their job—which required that they know students by name—more and more difficult. Hence the time spent studying student photographs.

[77] P. Ivanov, Studenty v. Moskve, p. 156.

their privileged status. In Moscow, for example, brawls between students and the butchers and delivery boys of the Okhotnyi Riad were common occurrences. When such fights erupted, students suspected police complicity. Relations between students and police also suffered from the 8 February 1895 incident in which a group of police and janitors beat up some drunken students leaving Saint Petersburg's Palkin restaurant. It had long been a custom for students to celebrate the university holidays—such as 12 January in Moscow University and 8 February in Saint Petersburg—with a variety of activities ranging from lectures and banquets to alcoholic binges. Students expected the police to look the other way, and they usually did, especially in Moscow. But because students expected privileged treatment, they were all the more likely to be shocked and surprised when on occasion they were treated like anyone else. This was to be a major cause of the unexpected 1899 nationwide student strike, which erupted from just such a holiday confrontation between police and students in Saint Petersburg.

Yet, for all these difficulties, few entering students would forget their first days in the university, their first lecture, when professors called them "gentlemen" (milostivye gosudari ) and often dropped broad hints about the better days that science and knowledge would bring to Russia.^[78]

Studenchestvo! This meant that the chains were gone as well as all the tortures we had had to go through before we got our certificates from the gymnasium. The very word opened many doors and promised much in the way of new knowledge and interests. Now I felt that my ego would be liberated.^[79]

For many it was the first time in a large city. Theaters and museums gave students cut-rate tickets.^[80] And although the uniform made them more conspicuous, the distinctive visored cap, blue tunic, and green trousers also marked them, for all to see, as members of a special group.^[81]

[78] See, for example, Victor M. Chernov's description of his first lecture, in Zapiski sotsialista-revoliutsionera (Berlin, 1922), p. 108; also Astrov, Vospominaniia, p. 192; Martov, Zapiski sotsial-demokrata, p. 61.

[79] Anichkov, "Ustav 1884 goda," p. 36.

[80] On the importance of the theater to students, see Kizevetter, Na rubezbe dvukh stoletii, pp. 175–180; S. I. Mitskevich, Revoliutsionnaia Moskva, 1888–1905 (Moscow, 1940), pp. 57–58. In Moscow the students' favorite theater was the Malyi. They would "fill the upper galleries and their reaction would determine the success or failure of a play."

[81] One former student activist, V. I. Orlov, even developed his own "theory of the green trousers." Putting them on, he said, gave an intelligent a revolutionary orientation. But once he took them off, he became a "Chekhovian hero or a stupid civil servant." See Arkhiv Instituta Istorii Akademii Nauk (henceforth referred to as AIISSSR), f. 5 (M. N. Pokrovskii), op. 5, ed. kh. 58, 1. 35. These are Orlov's unpublished memoirs of the 1901–1902 student movement.

For many, the high hopes of the first days came true. They certainly did for the young A. A. Kizevetter, who came to the university knowing that he wanted to be a historian and study under the superb guidance of P. G. Vinogradov and V. O. Kliuchevskii; and for Genrikh Sliozberg, a Jewish youth from the Pale of Settlement who came to Saint Petersburg University to study law with N. S. Tagantsev.^[82] Praise was almost unanimous for such professors as K. A. Timiriazev, M. A. Menzbir, and A. I. Chuprov. A lecture by Maxim Kovalevskii or V. O. Kliuchevskii would fill even the largest hall.^[83] This is how one former student recalled a typical Kliuchevskii lecture:

All eyes turned to the sound of tumultuous applause coming from the direction of the doors. In walked a stooped figure, looking like a scribe, wearing a black coat and glasses. . . . Raising himself slowly on the lectern and brushing back his unruly hair, Kliuchevskii cast a glance at the auditorium, turned sideways, and then began. It was really not a lecture, not an analysis of what happened in the past, but an actual reproduction of the past, in an artfully woven verbal texture, in the deliberate intonation of actual historical figures. Of course one lecture could not give knowledge. But it called forth no less significant aesthetic emotions. And just as the lecture hall met Kliuchevskii with applause, so too did wild applause usher him out.^[84]

But not all professors had Kliuchevskii's skills; as is the case in universities everywhere, the general teaching level was quite uneven.^[85] Many professors read the same lectures year after year, and students quickly learned that they could easily pass the end-of-the-year exams (especially on the juridical faculty) without attending lectures. Exams were not overly difficult provided that students crammed at the last minute. Professors admitted that there were too many students and too much material to be covered for them to conduct examinations in a proper manner.^[86] (Of course, because of the nature of the subjects, study

[82] G. B. Sliozberg, Dela minuvshikh dnei (Paris, 1934), vol. 1.

[83] The rule that students could not attend lectures in other departments was not always strictly enforced; see Mark Vishniak, Dan' proshlomu (New York, 1954), p. 52.

[84] Ibid., p. 52.

[85] According to G. B. Sliozberg, only a tiny minority of Russian professors knew how to teach; see "Dorevoliutsionnoe russkoe studenchestvo," in his Pamiati russkovo studenchestva, p. 89.

[86] On the professoriate's unhappiness with the examination system, see the replies of the various faculty councils to the 1901 Ministry of Education questionnaire in TsGIA, f. 733, op. 226, d. 95. A good description of the examination system from the students' point of view can be found in Alexander Saltykov, "Moskovskii Universitet v 1890–95 godakh," in Sliozberg, ed., Pamiati russkovo studenchestva, pp. 100–101. Professors on the examination boards often did not know their students by name, and this led to frequent cheating. Some students would find substitutes to take their exams. Mark Vishniak recalled that "only an idiot" would fail the final exams on the Moscow University juridical faculty. P. Ivanov, in Studenty v Moskve, p. 236, emphasized that although the exams did not require much original thought, they did force students to do a good deal of cramming.

on the medical or natural sciences faculty demanded more dedication and certainly afforded more supervision.)^[87]

For many students, therefore, the initial enthusiasm quickly wore off; comradeship took the place of academic dedication. This was hardly surprising, since most students were far from home and lonely. Faculty-student contact was in any case quite limited. Describing his first weeks at Kiev University, Vladimir Medem, the future leader of the Jewish Labor Bund, wrote that "everything was strange and different . . . even the air smelled different than it did at home . . . all of a sudden I really felt it: I was away from home."^[88] Like so many others, the young Medem joined a zemliachestvo composed of fellow students from his home district.

There were zemliachestva at virtually all Russian institutions of higher education, and students joined them despite their being formally banned. Some were limited to a particular VUZ, others were citywide, uniting all students who came from a specific area. Non-Russian students, such as Poles, Armenians, and Georgians, had their own national zemliachestva, and these were on a much more secure financial footing than their Russian counterparts.^[89]

The zemliachestva, which dated from the late 1850s, were highly diverse. Most of them pursued the goals of mutual economic aid and

[87] Some valuable memoirs of students in these fields include Andrei Belyi, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii (Letchworth, 1966), pp. 397–464; S. Abramov, "Meditsinskii fakul'tet Moskovskovo Universiteta 90-kh godov," in V. B. El'iashevich, A. A. Kizevetter, and M.M. Novikov, eds., Moskovskii Universitet 1755–1930: iubileinyi sbornik (Paris, 1930), pp. 365–04; A. Krapavin, "Teni proshlovo," in Sliozberg, ed., Pamiati russkovo studenchestva, pp. 115–123.

[88] Vladimir Medem, Fun mayn lebn (New York, 1923), vol. 1, p. 142.

[89] A. Filippov, "Moskovskoe studenchestvo," Russkoe Obozrenie, no. 3 (1897): 382. It is not within the scope of this work to discuss extensively the non-Russian students. It should be mentioned, however, that although students from the Caucasus identified with the Russian student movement, the Polish students were divided, with the National Democratic party counseling Polish students at Russian universities to stand aside from Russian student disputes. Sometimes, as during the 1899 strike, Polish students would demand from their Russian comrades, as a price for their joining the strike, support of Polish national demands. As will be seen in Chapter 6, Jewish student groups were disenchanted with the failure of the studenchestvo to protest the Kishinev pogrom as well as by the students' refusal to treat the issue of Jewish rights as a separate and specific problem. At Iur'ev (Dorpat) University, the German element totally ignored the Russian students and their demonstrations.

"moral education." Funds came from membership dues, alumni contributions, and the proceeds of parties and concerts given in the members' home towns. According to Nikolai Iordanskii, a future editor of Sovremennyi Mir, there were about fifty zemliachestva in Saint Petersburg University when he was a student there in the late 1890s. While some counted more than a hundred members, the average was thirty.^[90] In 1894 in Moscow University, seventeen hundred students were organized in forty-three zemliachestva . Although some commentators speak of their having suffered a decline in popularity in the decade before the Revolution of 1905, there is general agreement that they enjoyed a strong revival between 1906 and 1914.^[91]

While some zemliachestva were well organized and were able to raise enough funds to help their poorer members, many barely scraped by. Since most students had little money to spare for membership dues, the major purpose of the zemliachestva turned out to be companionship rather than material help. By joining a zemliachestvo, an organization forbidden by statute, the student was committing an illegal act. Nevertheless, most zemliachestva vigorously avoided any hint of political involvement.

In a proclamation issued on 14 December 1896, the United Council of zemliachestva of Moscow University explained to the public why university students joined these organizations and why they should be made legal:

We have constant troubles with the police and can't even leave Moscow without their permission. Instead of being regarded as the intellectual cadres of the future, the government insists on regarding us as "separate visitors" in the university [with no right to any corporate life]. Spies follow our every step. Instead of comradely ties with our professors, we have an official relationship of client and civil servant. Instead of a university administration interested in helping us meet our material and spiritual needs, we have a group of police agents whose aim is to keep order. We have no right to express our collective opinions. Most of us have no families in Moscow, and we spend most of our time just trying to exist.^[92]

[90] Nikolai Iordanskii, "Missiia P. S. Vannovskovo," Byloe, no. 9 (1907): 86.

[91] Trudy soveshchaniia predstavitelei studencheskikh ekonomicheskikh organizatsii o nuzhdakh studenchestva (Saint Petersburg, 1908), pp. 3–8. An enlightening article on the strength of the zemliachestva on the eve of World War I can be found in Russkie Vedomosti, 5 January 1914.

[92] Hoover Institution, Boris Nikolaevskii Collection, file 109, box 6, packet 60, no. 140.

In an earlier proclamation the United Council explained the crucial role played by zemliachestva in helping younger students adjust to the university:

The membership of a zemliachestvo consists of students of varying degrees of knowledge and experience, students of differing ages and levels of intellectual development. . . . This helps the younger members develop that sense of inquisitiveness and curiosity which the gymnasium tried to stifle. It also fosters an ability to work independently . . . The libraries of the zemliachestva play a very important role in this regard.^[93]

Of course, not all the zemliachestva conformed to these lofty descriptions. Not infrequently, zemliachvestva disbanded because of bickering among the members. A. Filippov recalled how at the founding meeting of his zemliachestvo, the students were full of high hopes for an organization which was to supply their native province with idealistic doctors, lawyers, and zemstvo workers. By the third meeting, arguments about dues and organizational differences threatened to split the organization.^[94] Nikolai Iordanskii asserted that the zemliachestva reminded him of the Zaparozhe "Sech'," an old Cossack band that "anyone who believed in God and drank vodka could join."^[95] V. A. Posse, however, who joined the Nizhegorod zemliachestvo in Saint Petersburg University in the 1880s, recalled the great mutual respect and tolerance that characterized the relations between the "tiny layer" of students who were sympathetic to the ideals of the revolutionary movement and those students who believed in the philosophy of "small deeds." In his zemliachestvo, according to Posse's perhaps idealized account, students spent most of their time studying and discussing various books and articles.^[96]

One of the more important functions of the zemliachestva was indeed, as Posse indicated, to provide a way students of differing political and social views could meet and learn from each other. In the 1880s the philosophy of "small deeds," that is, liberal reformism, was especially strong in the universities, as the memoirs of Kizevetter and V. A. Maklakov and the example of Saint Petersburg University's Priutino brotherhood attest.^[97] Respect for the reforms of the 1860s and the achieve-

[93] Hoover Institution, Paris Okhrana Archive (hereafter referred to as POA), XVIb(7), 14C.

[94] Filippov, "Moskovskoe studenchestvo," p. 372.

[95] Iordanskii, "Missiia P. S. Vannovskovo," p. 87.

[96] V. A. Posse, Moi zhiznennyi put' (Moscow, 1929), p. 35.

[97] Kizevetter, Na rubezhe dvukh stoletii, pp. 38, 168–169; V. A. Maklakov, Vlast' i obshchestvennost' na zakate staroi Rossii (Paris, 1936), pp. 79–81; "Vospominaniia peterburzhtsa o vtoroi polovine 80-kh godov," Golos Minuvshevo, nos. 10, 11 (1908); Terence Emmons, The Formation of Political Parties and the First National Elections in Russia (London, 1983), pp. 65–67.

ments of the zemstvos, as well as a genuine aversion to the terrorism of the Narodnaia Volia (People's Will, the organization that assassinated Alexander II in 1881), led many students to believe that diligent and competent work in one's chosen profession, not revolutionary violence, was the best way to serve the nation. This hostility to direct action was reflected in the zemliachestva, which for the most part rejected overt political commitment.

The disparities between the various zemliachestva, as well as some of their common problems and characteristics, can be gauged by comparing some of their annual reports.^[98] In its report for 1891, the Siberian zemliachestvo of Moscow University complained that the alumni were indifferent and the library was in terrible condition. In order to inject some life into the organization, the students founded four different discussion groups and began expelling comrades who showed little interest or whose behavior reflected badly on the good name of the zemliachestvo .^[99] Another zemliachestvo, with fifty members, raised 600 rubles a year in annual income, which enabled it to maintain a library of 184 books and give some financial help to twenty-two students. To facilitate intellectual interchange, the zemliachestvo followed common practice by dividing into five discussion groups, which would come together during the organization's general meeting. Yet many felt that the zemliachestva should be doing more. One student, who was to be arrested for going to an illegal All-Russian student congress in 1901, disgustedly wrote:

[The zemliachestva ] unite the students mainly on the basis of financial aid and protest against the university structure. . . . In our zemliachestvo there is a group studying political economy, a group that worries about student affairs, a group that is thinking about doing propaganda, a group that is organizing a statistical survey of the studenchestvo . There's a group that bothers everybody else and, finally, there's a group that does absolutely nothing.^[100]

The Caucasus zemliachestvo in Moscow seemed much better placed. After its founding in 1884, it grew slowly, for students were afraid of

[98] Fragmentary copies of Moscow University zemliachestva reports are on file in the Arkhiv Biblioteki Moskovskovo Gosudarstvennovo Universiteta imeni M. V. Lomonosova (hereafter referred to as BMGU), f. V. I. Orlova.

[99] BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova, 5dt., no. 309.

[100] TsGAOR, f. DO/1898 3ch. 1L, B—1, l. 44 (purloined letter of Alexander Tarasov, 22 March 1900).

seeming to be members of a revolutionary-political organization. But after 1890 an influx of more energetic students brought the zemliachestvo to active life. Successful lotteries brought in money for scholarships, but the students agreed that the main purpose of the organization was "spiritual" rather than "utilitarian" union. Unlike other zemliachestva, the Caucasus students forbade subgroups, since they "defeated the main purpose" of the organization. Instead, all students participated in a "self-development circle." Unlike other groups, a report proudly noted, this group banned discussion based on reading of outside texts. Each student instead had to prepare an original report on a topic of common interest; often the zemliachestvo appointed an "official opponent" to keep the debate going.^[101]

During the 1880s and 1890s, most zemliachestva in various university towns tended to form coordinating councils, partly in response to the nationwide outbreaks of student unrest in 1887 and 1890 to protest the 1884 Statute, the inspectorate, and other aspects of the university system. Many zemliachestvo members wanted to prevent such sporadic outbreaks on the grounds that they were counterproductive. In the early 1890s several Moscow University zemliachestva revived a United Council. By 1894 the council included forty-three zemliachestva representing seventeen hundred members.^[102] The council declared that its main goals were "to raise the intellectual and moral level of the studenchestvo, " "to prepare its members for public activity," and to improve the material conditions of student life. The United Council was composed of one delegate from each participating zemliachestvo .

The council administered a number of commissions as well as a student court. The commissions undertook such functions as monitoring the financial claims of students asking for aid, gathering statistical data on the studenchestvo, and overseeing relations between zemliachestva .^[103] The student court handled appeals from the individual zemliachestvo courts, as well as any disputes between the latter and the United Council. During the 1893–1894 academic year the court heard forty-three cases. Five involved student complaints against professors (who, not surprisingly, ignored the court and did not appear), and the remaining thirty-eight cases involved students. Of the latter, five cases dealt with students accused of spying for the police or the university adminis-

[101] BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova, 5dt., no. 266.

[102] Hoover Institution, POA, XVIb(7), 14C (Proclamation of the United Council, 28 December 1894); also Mel'gunov, "Studencheskie organizatsii," p. 150.

[103] Mel'gunov, "Studencheskie organizatsii," p. 147.

tration, four cases involved students who were accused of compromising the honor of the studenchestvo by their public behavior, six involved accusations of receiving financial aid under false pretenses, another six concerned accusations of unruly behavior (buistvo ), and two dealt with students accused of "crimes against the honor of women." The court also tried students for such offenses as using counterfeit coins or cutting articles out of publications at the university library. Students found guilty were either fined, ordered to perform certain chores, or sentenced to ostracism from the student community.^[104] In its report for the 1894–1895 academic year, the court declared that its chief obligation was to ensure that the studenchestvo protected its honor.^[105] Similar courts existed in other universities. Vladimir Medem recalls attending a trial, at Kiev University, of a student accused of making an anti-Semitic remark and thus "violating the traditions of the studenchestvo ."^[106]

The United Council made other attempts to raise the tone of student behavior. It campaigned against the customary alcoholic binges associated with Tat'ianin Den'. It also encouraged such initiatives as that of the Viatka zemliachestvo, which suggested that students act as museum guides for peasants and workers.

During the 1890s the tone of student life underwent a subtle change. The famine of 1891, the accession of Tsar Nicholas II, and the growing ideological battle between populism and Marxism led to new attempts to define the place of the studenchestvo in Russian life. In the mid-1890s major student demonstrations broke out, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg universities.^[107] Many members of the Moscow University United Council began a process of intellectual self-definition that tended to isolate them from the politically inchoate zemliachestva they represented.^[108] Ironically, it was the very absence of political self-

[104] Ibid., p. 156.

[105] BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova, 5dt., no. 285 ("Otchët sudebnoi komissii za 1893–94 god"). The court complained that too much work remained to be done in making the students take pride in their corporate honor. Public drunkenness, petty theft, dishonesty among scholarship claimants, and pilfering of coats and boots from university cloakrooms were common. Furthermore, many students disputed the authority of the student court over public behavior outside the university. The students who entered the university after 1990, however, had a much better attitude, according to the court.

[106] Medem, Fun mayn lebn, vol. 1, p. 145.

[107] In Moscow, student protest was directed against various professors: Ianzhul for refusing a United Council request not to lecture on the anniversary of the emancipation of the serfs, Kliuchevskii for eulogizing the deceased Alexander III, and Zakharin for allegedly unethical behavior in his private medical practice. These demonstrations were not sanctioned by the United Council, which tried to act as a moderating influence.

[108] Future Marxists on the United Council included N. A. Semashko and V. G. Groman. At the same time the United Council included Victor Chernov, a future leader of the Social Revolutionary party.

definition by most zemliachestva members that made them more, rather than less, likely to participate in student disorders at this time and led to tensions between the United Council and its constituent organizations. For those students leaning toward Marxism, the arguments against student unrest were convincing. Victor Chernov recalled that Marxist sympathizers on the United Council were willing to concede that in the 1860s and 1870s, the studenchestvo was a clearly defined group capable of independent action, but that was before the rise of the proletariat and the social and economic shifts that were destroying the cohesion of the studenchestvo . The studenchestvo was increasingly being replaced with a heterogeneous student body that merely reflected the interests of the various groups who sent their sons to the universities. Student disorders were now futile and only resulted in needless expulsion from the universities. Moreover, after the rise of the proletariat the students could no longer flatter themselves with the romantic illusion that they were the nation's political barometer. If students wanted to protest, they should seek general political change rather than pursue narrow corporate goals. Better yet, they should become Marxists and try to establish contact with the workers.^[109]

Like the Marxists, the populist students on the United Council in the mid-1890s opposed spontaneous outbreaks of student unrest over local, corporate issues. But unlike the Marxists, they did not believe that the political role of the intelligentsia in general, and that of the students in particular, was finished. Chernov recalled that some of the students on the United Council organized an inter-zemliachestvo committee to consider the role of students in history, the part played by European students in 1848, and the future place of the Russian studenchestvo .^[110] One of the papers presented to the committee argued that the political role of students and student movements varied from country to country. In Russia, because of the peculiarities of its economic and social development, the students were still an important force:

The development of capitalism in different countries is . . . uneven. . . . The cultural achievements of the bourgeoisie vary widely. . . . In some countries they are high. Such countries see the flowering of bourgeois progressivism

[109] Chernov, Zapiski sotsialista-revoliutsionera, p. 118.

[110] Ibid. A copy of the agenda of this committee can be found in the BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova, 5dt., no. 270. Some specific questions on the agenda were: "(1) Is the studenchestvo . . . a progressive social group with an active relationship to surrounding events, or are the students an inert group, occupied only with their own specific interests? and (2) Shouldn't the aim of student groups be to establish a network of student organizations that could influence the surrounding society?" If uneducated German workers could do it, a preconference memorandum asked, then why not the educated Russian studenchestvo?

and bourgeois liberalism; there the intelligentsia subordinates itself to the bourgeoisie and its spirit more easily. In other countries, the bourgeoisie is weaker and crawls at the feet of the older and more privileged classes. . . . In such countries . . . [the intelligentsia is more independent] and becomes the political and moral vanguard of the nation. . . . But the intelligentsia has nowhere to turn except to the people. . . . Thus, the student movement and student organizations are a significant political factor and have a real role to play in Russia.^[111]

This populist view of the student movement was reflected in the proceedings of a national student congress that the Moscow University United Council organized in 1894. P. S. Shirskii, a future Denikin adjutant in the Civil War, was sent out to establish contact with various universities, and delegates came to the congress from Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Odessa, Kiev, and Kharkov. Victor Chernov represented the United Council. The conference resolved that the studenchestvo "was an integral part of the revolutionary intelligentsia and a natural vanguard of the popular movement. . . . It should not confine itself to narrow academic interests. . . . The academic structure was just a part of the general system."^[112] But the conference also resolved that "the studenchestvo should not lose its own organizational unity. The studenchestvo as such should stand ready for united action in a spirit of harmonious solidarity; it should be prepared to struggle against the academic regime which is itself but a part of the general regime."^[113] The conference warned, however, against spontaneous student disorders over concerns that would not engage the sympathies of the wider public. Aware of the traditional hostility that such urban groups as the butchers and the porters felt toward the students, the conference wanted to ensure that in the future, student unrest would not be viewed as the "carousing of well-fed rich brats." To that end, it recommended that henceforth students mark such anniversaries as the emancipation of the serfs.

The conference clearly demonstrated a strong consciousness of studenchestvo, which differed markedly from the Marxist line. In its final protocol the conference called on the present student generation to emulate the example of its predecessors in the 1860s and 1870s. Chernov, who drafted the protocol, ended the document with stanzas from Minskii's "Pesni o rodine," a poem that glorified the political role of youth.^[114]

[111] Chernov, Zapiski sotsialista-revoliutsionera, pp. 118–119.

[112] Ibid., p. 121.

[113] Ibid., p. 122.

[114] Ibid. "In the whole world there is nowhere where youth, spurning all the good things of life, so honestly and purely dedicates itself to the service of strict justice as here [in Russia]."

In 1895 and 1896, the United Council tried to focus student protest and to give it a more general appeal. A call for major student demonstrations at the Vagan'kov cemetery to mark the second anniversary of the Khodynka catastrophe led the Okhrana, in November 1896, to arrest the entire council membership. Relations between the latter and the zemliachestva had already become strained, under accusations that the United Council was acting too independently.^[115] A second United Council replaced the first but had a hard time establishing its authority. Thus, on the eve of the 1899 strike, the student movement in Moscow struck some observers as lacking leadership and organization.^[116] At the same time, however, most zemliachestva members were unhappy with the conditions of university life and supported the concept of student protest as a means of fighting for such goals as the repeal of the 1884 Statute. In December 1896, the second United Council took a poll of zemliachestva members: 51 percent favored "well-organized student protest," 34 percent were opposed, and the rest abstained.^[117]

In Saint Petersburg University, in addition to the zemliachestva, there was another important student organization, the Kassa Vzaimopomoshchi Studentov Sankt Peterburgskovo Universiteta (Saint Petersburg University Mutual Aid Society). The kassa was composed of delegates elected by student kruzhki (circles), which had been formed on an ad-hoc basis by students who knew each other and had interests in common. These circles typically encompassed between five and twenty students each. According to M. N. Mogilianskii, about one-quarter of the student body belonged to circles represented in the kassa .^[118] Each circle sent one representative to the assembly (predstavitel'noe sobranie ), the legislative organ of the kassa . The executive body was composed of the president, the treasurer, and, after 1898, a board consisting of five students. The kassa never had enough money to become a real credit union, but in time, it assumed de facto control of the university dining hall, thus acquiring a steady source of funds.

Mogilianskii, who became a president of the kassa at the end of the 1890s, recalled that when he entered the university in 1893, he shared with most of his fellow members of the kassa an exalted view of the studenchestvo, its traditions, and the political importance of student

[115] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 151, d. 72, l. 116.

[116] Ibid. These are the notes of Nikolai Rudnev, a member of the United Council, on the Moscow student movement in the late 1890s. They were confiscated when Rudnev was arrested at an abortive national student conference in Odessa in 1900.

[117] Hoover Institution, Boris Nikolaevskii Collection, file 109, box 6, packet 60, no. 140.

[118] M. N. Mogilianskii, "V devianostye gody," Byloe, no. 23 (1924): 141.

disorders. But his disillusionment with his zemliachestvo (composed of Ukrainian students) quickly led him to reconsider his earlier views. In the kassa Mogilianskii discovered that many students shared his impatience with skhodki, zemliachestva, and student protest. The basic demand was always the same—abrogation of the 1884 University Statute. The outcome, too, seemed always to be the same. The university administration would patiently explain that students had no right to make collective petitions, nor could they, of course, tell the government what to do. The students would mill around, complain, and then disperse.

By the middle of the 1890s the kassa began waging a propaganda campaign in the university against student disorders and skhodki . To a certain extent this reflected the growing influence of Marxism on the kassa leadership. The workers' strikes of 1895 and 1896, as well as the scientific rigor of Marxist analysis, made a deep impression.^[119] At any rate, the kassa began using the same arguments against the student movement that Victor Chernov had heard on the Moscow University United Council.

But many zemliachestvo members resented the kassa 's claim that the studenchestvo was disappearing and that student unrest was pointless. The zemliachestva maintained that the students remained a distinct group and had to defend their rights and dignity against the policies of the government. Through the student movement, many students would come to develop a sense of personal dignity and political responsibility.^[120]

Meanwhile, the 1890s saw a number of student protests. Unrest broke out in 1894 after the student body petitioned the new tsar to repeal the 1884 Statute. The beating of students by police and janitors outside the Palkin restaurant in February 1895 caused deep resentment and protest skhodki . In November 1896 the Moscow University United Council sent a delegate to Saint Petersburg to ask kassa support of the demonstration the Muscovites were planning to commemorate the victims of the Khodynka catastrophe. The kassa refused, advancing the familiar Marxist arguments against student demonstrations. But when news reached Saint Petersburg of the arrests following the Moscow demonstration, students ignored the kassa and held a number of stormy skhodki, thus underscoring the strong feelings of comradeship and mutual responsibility which linked students and which still outweighed arguments that studenchestvo solidarity was an anachronism.

[119] Ibid.

[120] Iordanskii, "Missiia P. S. Vannovskovo," p. 90.

The strong hold of studenchestvo solidarity became dramatically apparent in March 1897, after the self-immolation of M. F. Vetrova, a student at the Bestuzhev women's courses who had been arrested at the end of 1896 and sent to the Peter-Paul fortress. Rumors quickly spread through the Saint Petersburg student population that Vetrova had killed herself after having been attacked by Kichin, an assistant prosecutor. Vetrova's fellow students in the Bestuzhev courses then called the studenchestvo of the capital to come to a large memorial demonstration in front of Kazan Cathedral on 4 March 1897. Between two thousand and four thousand students milled about on the Nevskii Prospekt in front of the Cathedral and began singing, "Vy zhertvoiu pali v bor'be rokovoi" ("You fell, a victim in the fateful struggle"). Police quickly broke up the demonstration, but it showed once again how sensitive Russian students were to police mistreatment of fellow students. By contrast, when, just a few weeks later, a nonstudent committed suicide in prison, attempts to rally students for a demonstration proved unsuccessful.^[121] The Vetrova demonstration also highlighted many of the unresolved tensions affecting the student movement. The kassa wanted to turn it into an overt political protest, whereas the zemliachestva preferred to emphasize that the Kazan Square episode was a "non-political" memorial to a dead comrade.

Thus, by the end of the 1890s the student movement was beginning to reflect the interaction of traditional attitudes and emerging ideologies. A tension was developing between the notion of student solidarity, reflected in the concept of studenchestvo, and changes in the nation at large that were fostering alternative ways of defining the place of students in Russian society. Meanwhile, each year a few thousand young students, fresh from the provinces and untouched by these emerging ideological debates, entered the universities and replenished the ranks of the studenchestvo . The constant influx of new students kept alive the idea of student solidarity. In 1899 the students were to surprise everyone, including themselves, by organizing an All-Russia strike and undercutting the skeptics who had declared that student protest and student solidarity were obsolete holdovers from a long-gone era.

[121] V. Levitskii, Za chetvert' veka (Moscow, 1926), pp. 68–69.