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13 Founders of Deaf Education in Russia Howard G. Williams Editor's Introduction Most published studies of deaf history relate to North America and Western Europe, particularly France and England. In these countries deaf people historically have had the most influence over their own lives. As well, these are relatively wealthy nations that could and did go to the expense necessary to try to educate their deaf members. Deaf history outside of North American, France, and England is therefore still in its infancy. What Gi.inther List observed about the study of deaf people's past in Germany is true of most countries of the world: at this stage it is still necessary to document basic data, such as the dates of schools' founding and the names of significant individuals . The following three essays introduce the study of deaf people, primarily deaf education, in three countries seldom studied-Russia, Italy, and Hungary. Each approaches deaf history differently, however, and asks different questions. This essay looks at the founding of schools in Russia. The author, Howard Williams, tries, first, to demonstrate that Russia, though backward in some ways, did not entirely neglect deaf education. Second , and more signficantly, he documents the role of deaf people in founding schools. He discusses briefly the examples of several deaf men and one deaf woman who took the initiative to establish educational programs for deaf children, despite formidable obstacles. Students familiar with the history of deaf education in the United States will recognize that some schools in this country also were begun by deaf people, although they were usually moved out of the school's administration when it became established and professionalized. The original version of this paper appeared in Renate Fischer and Harlan Lane, eds., Looking Back: A Reader on the History of Deaf Communities and their Sign Languages (Hamburg: Signum, 1993). 224 Founders of Deaf Education in Russia 225 Williams also provides evidence that in another respect the experience of deaf education in Russia was not that different from the United States. Most Russian schools began as private, philanthropic or tuition-supported endeavors. Later, after they were founded, the schools turned to the state for government support. The reasons for this were almost certainly financial. The implications, however, in terms of employment of deaf teachers, use of deaf administrators, and treatment of deaf students remain to be studied. THE HISTORY RELATING to deaf Russians can be traced back over many years. In the days of Kiev Rus and at the beginning of the emergence of the State of Muscovy, there were civil canon laws that, though difficult to separate, did express specific attitudes toward deaf people, or, as it was then said, "the deaf and dumb." These attitudes, like that latter phrase, might not be judged exemplary at the present day, but for their time, and possibly in comparison with what then prevailed in Western Europe, they seem quite progressive. Thus the Code of Czar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1640 decreed that "if there should remain deaf and dumb children after a death, and brothers and sisters cause them wrong and try to drive them out of their father's or mother's estates, then the estates of their father and mother are divided according to lot into equal parts for the children of the deceased, so that no-one should be seriously harmed." Again in 1733, an order issued on August 14 extended clerical protection to deaf people: "The police, who keep mute poor for maintenance and mental correction, should refer them to the Holy Synod so that it can order them to be sent to a monastery." In the code of laws issued in 1833, deaf people were protected under a legal system of wardship, which oversaw their rights of inheritance. Any criminal proceedings against a deaf person had to be overseen by an advisory court. More important, those who had gained access to education were accorded certain legal rights that recognized the value of that education, and possibly entrance to certain vocations. Admittedly there were very few deaf persons, if any, being educated at all in imperial Russia outside of the institute at St. Petersburg, but, at least by 1833, legal protection of a kind had been promulgated.l Yet even if the history of deaf Russians goes back for centuries, the West is relatively uninformed about Russian development and its achievements. Part of the West's ignorance is conditioned by the [3.129.247.196] Project MUSE (2024-04-24...
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