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39THE RESULTS OF AN INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH PROJECT "UBI UNIVERSITAS, IBI EUROPA"
A. Iu. Andreev, S. I. Posokhov
Moscow State University V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University
А. Ю. Андреев, С.И. Посохов
Московский государственный университет Харьковский национальный университет им. В.Н. Каразина
Abstract. The article details the results of an international research project on the establishment of universities in the Russian Empire. A team of historians from Moscow, Kazan" and Kharkov Universities oversaw the project. The results make possible a greater understanding of how university ideas were adapted by and transferred into and within the Russian Empire in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The resultant research also offers a needed comparison of the development of universities in the Russian Empire with broader European trends, and a better estimation of inherited universities' traditions.
Keywords: history of universities, universities in the Russian Empire, university traditions.
Corresponding author: sposokhov[at]mail.ru
Copyright: © 2014 Andreev and Posokhov. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
УДК 94(4/5)|18/19|
РЕЗУЛЬТАТЫ РЕАЛИЗАЦИИ МЕЖДУНАРОДНОГО ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКОГО ПРОЕКТА "UBI UNIVERSITAS, IBI EUROPA"
Аннотация.. В статье идет речь об итогах реализации международного научного проекта, посвященного анализу процесса становления университетов в Российской империи. Проект осуществлен коллективом историков из Московского, Казанского и Харьковского университетов. Результаты исследований позволяют осмыслить специфику трансфера и адаптации университетской идеи в XVIII -первой половине XIX в., сравнить развитие университетов в Российской империи с общеевропейскими тенденциями, лучше понять доставшиеся нам в наследство университетские традиции.
Ключевые слова: история университетов, университеты в Российской империи, университетские традиции.
The international research project, entitled "Ubi universitas - Ibi Europa: The Transfer and Adaptation of University Ideas in the Late
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-century Russian Empire," was officially implemented in 2008-10, although project participants initiated discussion of some ideas earlier. The completion of all scheduled tasks took place in 2012 with the publication of a final monograph. The project was based out of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, with Dr. A. V. Doronin as the Instute's curator of the project. Gerda Henkel Stiftung provided core funding (AZ 02/SR/08).
Participants in the project included historians from Moscow, Kharkov and Kazan" universities. Already in the project's early stage, the participants were clustered into three study groups. The Moscow group (its head, A. Iu. Andreev, also supervised the implementation of the project) studied various types of relationships within corporations at Russian universities in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, disclosed largely through university conflicts that demonstrated a different understanding of the ideological foundations of a university and, therefore, the characteristics of the transfer and adaptation of ideas in the Russian context. These included issues of formalization of corporations by obtaining privileges, adaptation of the system of academic titles and degrees in Russia, hierarchical division within corporations, relations between professors and students, and change over time due to the assimilation of "classical university" ideas.
Project participants from Kazan" (headed by E. A. Vishlenkova) focused on the study of governance arrangements, the practice of formal and informal power relations between the university and the state, the role of trustees, administrative problems, the role and functions of rectors, inspectors and other positions in the corporate culture, and the formation of norms and deviations in an academic environment. The special task of this group, and specifically of Kazan" University, was to study the "educational colonization" of the region through the university, i.e. its contribution to the development of infrastructure and to the improvement of local living conditions.
The Khar"kov group (headed by S. I. Posokhov) primarily examined the problem of the "university and the city" in its various aspects, including the socialization of scientists in an urban environment, spatial and temporal organization of life, material and financial conditions of work, relationships between city authorities and the local community, and forms of representation in public life.
The International Scientific Conference "University Concept in Europe and Russia in the Eighteenth - Early Twentieth Centuries" (St. Petersburg, June 22-24, 2007),1 held by the German Historical
1 Conference papers were published in the book: Andreev, A. Iu, comp. 2009. "Byt russkim po dukhu i evropeitsem po obrazovaniiu:" Universitety Rossiiskoi imperii v obrazovatel'nom prostranstve Tsentral'noi i Vostochnoi Evropy XVIII - nachala XX v. ["To Be a Russian at Heart and a European by Education:" Universities of the Russian Empire in the Educational Space of Central and Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries]. Moscow: ROSSPEN publ.
Institute in Moscow at the Russian State Historical Archive in St. Petersburg, played a critical role at the preparatory stage in forming the team members and delineating the main issues of the project.
Subsequently, the project participants organized five more workshops:
1) "Academic Conflictology: the Nature of University Conflict in the Russian Empire" (Moscow, November 5-6, 2007), which addressed the main types of conflicts and the resulting clashes between different hierarchies at the university, the mechanisms of adaptation of "university autonomy," including academic positions and degrees, and other issues.
2) "The University and the City in the Russian Empire in the Eighteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries" (Kharkov, May 15-18, 2008), employed a comparative framework to explore the interaction of three Russian universities (Moscow, Kharkov and Kazan") with the social space of the cities in which they were located, the impact of the university on the city, and the impact of the city on the university.
3) "University Practices of Ruling: Kazan", Moscow, Khar"kov (the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century)" (Kazan", April 27-29, 2009), focused on the problem of formal management practices (the institution of curators and trustees in this time period under Russian legislation and the European tradition); the presence of informal practices carried out through letters, language, and symbols between professors and authorities; and a gradual formation of "power of intelligence" through the creation of a new elite by Russian universities, who become carriers of the European ideas.
4) "Russian-German University Connections in the Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries: Partnership, Mutual Influence, and Intellectual Space" (Mainz, June 17-19, 2010). In addition to the project participants, German scholars involved in similar studies took part, making it an international conference. The Russian Humanitarian Scientific Foundation and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) provided support. Featured topics included a comparison of university space in the Russian Empire and Central Europe (i.e. the Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation, and the German Empire) in this time period, a comparative analysis of Russian corporations and German universities within the main parameters stated in the project objectives, and mechanisms for the transfer of university ideas from Europe to Russia.
5) The final project meeting was held at the German Historical Institute in Moscow (November 19, 2010). Each group presented summary reports on the results of their work, in accordance with parts of the subsequent monograph. The scientific publications prepared in the course of the project were also presented.
Altogether, the project resulted in three collective publications, as well as monographs by individual participants. The German Historical Institute in Moscow, in collaboration with the publisher ROSSPEN, will offer a series of edited volumes from the project "Ubi universitas, ibi Europa." The anthology "The Idea of the University in the Late Eighteenth
to Early Twentieth Century Russian Empire," contains texts in which academics, statesmen, and public figures express their understanding of the processes of distribution, establishment, and development of university ideas in the Russian Empire (Andreev and Posokhov 2011). These texts show the reflection of different views in Russia, which had emerged in Europe during the ideological foundation of the universities' utilitarian, enlightenment, and classical activities. These texts likewise demonstrate that Eastern Europe also contributed to the design of university ideas. The collection includes more than forty texts arranged in four sections in chronological order. Each section is prefaced, and the texts themselves contain detailed commentary and biographical information about the author and history of the text. In addition, the appendix includes translations from German of papers by European university education theorists Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schleiermacher, whose writings are perhaps the most important for understanding the meaning of university ideas. Most of the members from Moscow and Khar"kov project teams took part in the preparation of this anthology. Overall, this volume makes clear that modern conceptions of the university represent the intertwining of variegated approaches, interpretations, and hypotheses from earlier time periods that still have not lost their relevance today.
The biographical dictionary, Foreign Professors of Russian Universities from 1750 to the 1830s, provides the first ever publication of one hundred biographies of foreign (mostly German) professors who taught at Moscow, Khar"kov, Kazan" and St. Petersburg universities (Feofanov 2011). The biographies draw from archival sources (service records, personal files), and include lists of works, teaching programs, formal attributes of a career in Russia (grades and awards), and, when possible, the mens' subsequent careers after returning home from Russia. The resultant material allows not only for individual biographies of academic scholars (many of whom lacked such records until now), but also makes possible a prosopography of those who acted as intermediaries in the transfer of university practices from Europe to Russia. All of the project teams attended to the work on the dictionary.
Individual monographs illuminating scholarly findings on specific aspects of the project in accordance with its goals include works by A. Iu. Andreev (Andreev 2009b), A. M. Feofanov (Feofanov 2010), and L. Iu. Posokhova (Posokhova 2011).
This creative activity fulfilled the main objective of the project, culminating with the publication of a final monograph in late 2012.2 The authors of this article prepared this book for publication, but it has, in fact, become a collective monograph, since it included the results of every participant. In particular, the book would have been impossible without the great research assistance (including archival work) carried out by project
2 Andreev, A. Iu, and S. I. Posokhov, eds. 2012. Universitet v Rossiiskoi imperii XVIII - pervoi poloviny XIX veka [University in the Russian Empire from 1700 through 1850]. Moscow: ROSSPEN publ. 671 pages.
participants A. M. Feofanov, D. A. Tsygankov (Moscow), L. Iu. Posokhova, V. Iu. Ivashchenko (Kharkov), K. A. Ilina, and T. V. Kostia (Kazan"). Of course, the collaborative efforts involved a certain amount of disagreement and debate among participants over key issues, but the result is a text that can be called "final," and for which we, its authors and editors, assume full responsibility.
While we will avoid offering a personal assessment of the results of our work, press reviews of the book appeared shortly after its publication and deserve a brief assessment. In particular, V. S. Bakirov considers the value of the monograph as follows: "First of all, in this case, the history of Russian universities is inscribed into the European context. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that this is not a simple copy/move, but an adaptation of university ideas in a different socio-cultural space. The authors explore the complex processes of perception of new cultural forms, the approval of the university as 'theirs,' and the adoption of local university traditions. Secondly, the study is based on a broad source base, including recent works, foreign scholarship, and contemporary methodological methods. Regarding the latter, we note the use of comparative and cultural history. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the monograph contains a number of fundamentally new opinions, estimations, and characteristics. For example, we note the concept of 'Northwestern' and 'Southwestern' shuttle vectors, interpretation of such concepts as 'university corporation,' „university autonomy,' 'university lifestyle,' 'university space,' and so on, which do not act as empty abstractions, but rather as concrete historical concepts inscribed in their temporal contexts. We draw attention to the authors' description of the mechanisms of the university as a social institution and its interaction with the non-university environment."3 We are pleased by such an assessment. After completing a difficult and ambitious task people always want to hear praise, but in this case we note that the highlighted themes accord well with our own understanding of our intended objectives. That said, we also know that the study of the history of Russian universities, including in the modern period, is far from complete. Many complex and controversial issues remain unexplored and the required research cannot be completed in a single project. The university is not only the most important social institution, but it also reflects the state of the society in which it operates and is connected by thousands of threads to this broader context.
In conclusion, we wish to express our deep gratitude to the staff of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, and especially its founding director Professor Bernd Bonwetsch and director from 2010 Professor
3 "Kruglyi stol, posviashchennyi vykhodu v svet knigi «Universitet v Rossiiskoi imperii XVIII -pervoi poloviny XIX veka» Pod obshch. red. A.Iu. Andreeva i S.I. Posokhova. - M.: ROSSPEN, 2012 [A roundtable devoted to the book launch of Andreev, A. Iu., and S. I. Posokhov, eds. 2012. The University in the Russian Empire from 1700 through 1850. Moscow: ROSSPEN publ."]." 2013. Vestnik Pravoslavnogo Sviato-Tikhonovskogo gumanitarnogo universiteta [The Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University Herald]. No. 4 (53): 144.
Nikolaus Katzer, as well as researchers Andrei Doronin and Brigitta Ziehl. With sincere appreciation, we acknowledge the German scholars who, through their academic and organizational assistance, helped with the project: Trude Maurer (Goettingen), Hartmut Rüdiger Peter (Halle), and Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz) professors Jan Kusber and Alexander Kaplunovsky.
We are convinced that the university is a good basis for cooperation not only for researchers, but for all who seek mutual understanding, appreciate the important role of dialogue among cultures, and want to make life better. In this regard, we hope that the German Historical Institute in Moscow publication series about universities enjoys a long and fruitful existence.
REFERENCES
1. Andreev, A. Iu, and S. I. Posokhov, eds. 2012. Universitet v Rossiiskoi imperii XVIII - pervoi poloviny XIX veka [The University in the Russian Empire from 1700 to 1850]. Moscow: ROSSPEN publ.
2. Andreev, A. Iu, and S. I. Posokhov, comp. 2011. Universitetskaia ideia v Rossiiskoi imperii XVIII - nachala XX vekov: antologiia [The University Idea in the Russian Empire in the Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries: An Anthology], Moscow: ROSSPEN publ.
3. Andreev, A. Iu, comp. 2009a. "Byt' russkim po dukhu i evropeitsem po obrazovaniiu:" Universitety Rossiiskoi imperii v obrazovatel'nom prostranstve Tsentral'noi i Vostochnoi Evropy XVIII - nachala XX v. ["To Be a Russian at Heart and a European by Education:" Universities of the Russian Empire in the Educational Space of Central and Eastern Europe in the Eighteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries]. The series is edited by A. V. Doronin. Moscow: ROSSPEN publ.
4. Andreev, A. Iu. 2009b. Rossiiskie universitety XVIII - pervoi poloviny XIX veka v kontekste universitetskoi istorii Evropy [Russian Universities from 1 700 to 1850 in the Context of University History in Europe]. Moscow: Znak publ.
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