In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia

1. Education in an Era of Change

1 Education in an Era of Change 13 In 1804, shortly after large numbers of Jews first became subjects of the Russian empire, an ambitious statute granted Jews access to all Russian educational institutions. It also offered a vague threat that Jews’ refusal to reform themselves educationally could lead to government intervention.1 Given that the highly traditional Jewish community had no interest in secular Russian education and that Russia had little to offer in the way of primary and secondary schools, the statute remained largely theoretical. However, over time the situation would change. This chapter examines the developments that led to the creation of modern Jewish schools for and by Jews. In order to understand these developments, it is important to focus on the dynamics of the relationship between the Russian state and the Jews, educational trends in Russia as a whole, and educational changes within the Jewish community. Education Policy and Practice in Tsarist Russia Along with the rest of Europe, Russia experienced major advances in education during the nineteenth century. However, certain factors made the Russian situation unique. Historian James Mcclelland has memorably termed the expansion “erratic dynamism.”2 As we will see, while not governed by a rational and orderly approach, the advances were significant and ultimately opened up new opportunities for many sectors of the populace. When Peter the Great (1682–1725) embarked on his grand plan to westernize and modernize Russia in the eighteenth century, he did so from 14 c H A P T E R 1 the top down. In the field of education this meant that Russia was the only European state to establish its academy of sciences in conjunction with its first university and academic secondary school.3 Even with the steady increase in secondary schools for the wealthy elite over the years, the educational system remained markedly top-heavy. For the gentry class, whose custom had long been to bring tutors into their homes to teach their children, this was not necessarily a problem. However, the lack of lower-level educational institutions made it difficult for other classes to enter the educational system. This problem was further compounded by the development of education taking place under a variety of governmental bodies, often without the possibility of complementarity. Thus, for example, the parish schools run by the Holy Synod offered only a basic education, not covering the subjects required for entry into the prestigious academies run by the various branches of the military. Even the municipal schools under the Ministry of Education did not offer the Latin required for entry into the private gymnasia overseen by the Ministry of Finance. Nevertheless, despite a system designed to serve the wealthiest sectors of the population and to maintain a divided social order, and the vagaries of educational institutions under the auspices of four separate government departments, educational opportunities for all sectors of the Russian population increased throughout the nineteenth century. To a degree, the trends in educational reform followed the general tenor of the reigns of the various nineteenth-century tsars, but even this organizing principle did not always hold true. The Ministry of Education (Ministerstvo Narodnago Prosveshcheniia [MNP], literally the Ministry of National Enlightenment) was indeed established during the relatively liberal early years of the reign of Tsar Alexander I. However, education only really began to advance under the far more cautious reign of his brother, Tsar Nicholas I. Tsar Nicholas and his able and long-serving minister of education, count S. S. Uvarov oversaw both a consolidation of control over all levels of educational institutions and a broad expansion of the number of such institutions. Thus, whereas the student body in gymnasia grew from 5,569 in 1809 to 7,682 in 1825, within the first decade of Nicholas’s reign enrollment had reached 15,476.4 Tsar Alexander II (1855–81) ushered in the era of Great Reforms in the first decade of his reign. Liberalization in a number of key areas, including a relaxation of censorship, led to societal expectations of more reforms to come. The introduction of limited local governance through the zemstvo institutions, as well as the 1864 Education Statute, would make elementary education far more accessible, for example.5 Ultimately, however, Alexander retreated from making other, similarly bold decisions, and after his assassina- 15 Education in an Era of Change tion in 1881 the government cracked down in a number of areas, particularly...