The instruction of youth in late Imperial Russia: vospitanie in the cadet school and classical gymnasium, 1863-1894

This thesis uses memoir and pedagogical literature to juxtapose the experiences of students who attended two different types of secondary school - the cadet school and the classical gymnasium - in Russia during the reigns of Alexander II (1855-1881) and Alexander III (1881-1894). It examines how students and teachers evaluated educational policies by the Ministries of War and Education during a period of reform and reaction. Seeking to train an independently minded officer and ensure loyalty to the autocratic state, the Russian Ministry of War paid great attention to providing its students with an ideal school experience centered on familial relations between teachers and students, progressive pedagogical innovations, and extracurricular activities. In contrast to the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Education viewed its students' political attitudes with suspicion and attempted to limit their exposure to radical thought through the teaching of classical languages and the classroom use of rote memorization and stern disciplinary measures. As a result of these two different approaches to secondary education, former military cadets professed loyalty to their alma maters for having provided them with an ideal schoolhouse environment and youth experience, while former civilian students decried the Ministry of Education's efforts to shape them and upheld self-education as the necessary supplement for the incomplete instruction they had received in the classroom