page 1 CHAPTER 2 CATHERINE THE GREAT AND MOSCOW UNIVERSITY During the reign of Catherine the Great, Moscow University played a great cultural role stimulating the Russian Enlightenment. She ascended the throne in 1762 and, by virtue of her contacts with the philosophes, personally helped to usher in the Russian Enlightenment. She, like Peter the Great, brought "a new atmosphere" to Russia.1Catherine the GreatCatherine's championing of Enlightenment values was crucial for Russian culture. Under her tutelage, Western philosophical ideas poured into the country, and a thoughtful obshchestvo (educated society) arose. For the first time society began to organize and debate the transformation of the country. The Vol'noe ekonomicheskoe obshchestvo (Free Economic Society), established in 1765 under Catherine's patronage, was the initial step in this direction. Freemasonry also became popular, and the most important branch of Masonry in Russia featured philanthropic activity. Members tried to improve themselves morally by living a good life while at the same time striving to 1Simkhovitch, "History of the School," 501.page 2eliminate social ills.2In this enlightened atmosphere, Catherine attempted to found an educational system but achieved only mixed results. In 1764 she and her advisor, Ivan Betskoi, issued a General Establishment of Education for the Youth of Both Sexes, but the statute contained only "suggestions" and went unenforced. When Catherine reorganized the Russian Empire into gubernii (provinces) in 1775, she ordered the formation of Boards of Public Assistance to set up and supervise local schools, but this also went unfulfilled due to a lack of money.3 Catherine asked Joseph II, the Habsburg Emperor, for advice on educational reform in 1780, and with his approval, she invited Fedor Jankovich de Mirievo, a Serbian who had set up schools in the Eastern Habsburg Empire, to help. In 1782 she formed the Commission for the Establishment of Public Schools under the chairmanship of Petr Zavadovskii, one of her favorites, and four years later, the Commission produced a statute providing for a two-year school in each district town and a four-year main school in every guberniia city.4 2Alston, Education and the State, 12-13; Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia, 154-55, 159-64. 3Hans, History of Russian Educational Policy, 17-32; Johnson, Russia's Educational Heritage, 43-62; and Alston, Education and the State, 12-19. 4Max Okenfuss, "Education and Empire: School Reform in Enlightened Russia," Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 27page 3 With regard to higher education, Catherine took few decisive steps. Efforts by both Denis Diderot, the French philosopher, and Osip Kozodavlev, a Russian statesman, to draw up a university statute failed. Kozodavlev had proposed that four universities (Moscow, Pskov, Chernigov, and Penza) serve as links in the educational system between the Commission and lower schools. He also felt that the number of chairs in each university should be expanded from ten to twenty-two. He further envisioned more university autonomy with professors electing the deans and a rector, and he also suggested the required use of the Russian language.5Catherine continued the example set by Peter the Great of opening Russian culture up to the West and improving the educational system, but also like Peter, she achieved only limited success. In quantitative terms, the number of schools initially rose rapidly but then levelled off due to a lack of money, students, and teachers.6 Again, it was the (1979): 44-45, 62. 5Denis Diderot, "Plan d'une université," in Oeuvres complètes, 20 vols. (Paris, 1875-77), 3: 429-52; V. Vorob'ev, "K istorii nashikh universitetskikh ustavov," Russkaia mysl', no. 12 (December 1905): 3; Pavel Miliukov, "Universitety v Rossii," in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', 1890 ed.; Hans, History of Russian Educational Policy, 30-31; Steinger, "Government Policy," 11; and Ferliuden, Istoricheskii ocherk, 50-52. 6Johnson, Russia's Educational Heritage, 56-57; Darlington, Education in Russia, 27-29; and Mikhail Beliavskii, "Shkola i sistema obrazovaniia v Rossii v kontse XVIII v.," Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta: istoriko-filologicheskaia seriia, no. 2 (1959): 119.page 4state that took the initiative and the state that retained control, and like Peter, Catherine looked to Central and Western Europe for models. One difference between Catherine and Peter was in their emphasis. Whereas Peter desired the practical, Catherine, as part of the Enlightenment, stressed the intellectual.7 Moscow University during the reign of Catherine the Great 7Rozhdestvenskii, Istoricheskii obzor, 19; Johnson, Russia's Educational Heritage, 52; and Okenfuss, "Education and Empire," 48-50, 58-59, 67.page 5 Occasionally, Catherine did turn to the University for advice on educational reform. In a November 1765 decree, she gave the professors three weeks to suggest improvements, and they responded with a number of recommendations, including more autonomy and the replacement of the state-appointed director with an elected rector. For financial security they requested that Catherine grant the school some serf villages which would provide a steady income, firewood, and maintenance for the school. The conference asked for higher salaries, better retirement pensions, more student stipends, and improved physical facilities. In stressing the need to follow Western practice, the professors also wanted to add a theological department, expand the Philosophical Department from four to seven chairs, and add assistant professors and language instructors, but Catherine considered the professors "petty" for not addressing the problem of teaching quality and did not implement their suggestions.8Catherine also slowly increased state funding of the University. By 1775 the school budget reached an annual sum of thirty-five thousand rubles, but the school always experienced difficulties in actually getting the money from the government, which was one of the reasons why the 8"Mnenie ob uchrezhdenii i soderzhanii Imperatorskago universiteta i gimnazii v Moskve," Chteniia, no. 2 (1875): 190-212; Ferliuden, Istoricheskii ocherk, 47.page 6 professors had asked for serf villages.9 Catherine eventually added six thousand rubles to the budget in 1782 and another nine thousand in 1787. By the end of her reign, the budget for the University had