A history of Russia

mentioned earlier, plans were drawn to institute schooling for all Russian children by 1922, or, according to a revised estimate fol-

lowing the outbreak of the First World War, by 1925. Educational prospects had never looked brighter in Russia than on the eve of the revolutions of 1917.

The problem, however, remained immense. Russians needed all kinds of training but above all the acquisition of simple literacy. Although by the end of the nineteenth century Russia had 76,914 elementary schools for children and 1,785 for adults with a total of 4.1 million students, and by 1915 the number of students had grown to over 8 million, on the eve of the October Revolution somewhat more than half of the population of the country was illiterate. To be more precise, in 1917 literacy extended in all probability to only about 45 per cent of the people.

At the other end of the educational ladder, universities increased in number, although slowly. The so-called Novorossiiskii University - referring to the name of the area, Novorossiia, or New Russia - was founded in Odessa in 1864, the University of Tomsk in Siberia in 1888, the University of Saratov in 1910, of Perm in 1915, and of Rostov-on-Don in 1917. That gave Russia a total of twelve universities, all of them belonging to the state. However, in 1917 the empire also possessed more than a hundred specialized institutions of higher learning: pedagogical, technological, agricultural, and other. Gradually it became possible for women to obtain higher education by attending special 'courses' set up in university centers, such as the 'Guerrier courses,' named after a professor of history, Vladimir Guerrier, which began to function in 1872 in Moscow, and the 'Bestuzhev courses,' founded in 1878 in St. Petersburg and named after another historian, Constantine Bestuzhev-Riumin. The total number of students in Russian institutions of higher learning in 1917 has been variously estimated between 100,000 and 180,000. It should be noted that while the university statute of 1884 proved to be more restrictive than that of 1863 and over a period of time led to the resignation of a number of noted professors, most of the restrictions disappeared in 1905. In general, and especially after 1905, the freedom and variety of intellectual life in imperial Russian universities invite comparison with the Western universities, certainly not with the Soviet system.

Science and Scholarship

The Academy of Sciences, the universities, and other institutions of higher learning developed, or rather continued to develop, science and scholarship in Russia. In fact, in the period from the emancipation of the serfs until the revolutions of 1917, Russians made significant contributions in almost every area of knowledge. In mathematics, while no one quite rivaled Lobachevsky, a considerable number of outstanding Russian mathematicians made their appearance, including Pafnutii Chebyshev in St.

Petersburg and a remarkable woman, Sophia Kovalevskaia, who taught at the University of Stockholm. Chemistry in Russia achieved new heights in the works of many talented scholars, the most celebrated of them being the great Dmitrii Mendeleev, who lived from 1834 to 1907 and whose periodic table of elements, formulated in 1869, both organized the known elements into a system and made an accurate forecast of later discoveries. Leading Russian physicists included the specialist in magnetism and electricity, Alexander Stoletov, and the brilliant student of the properties of light, Peter Lebedev, as well as such notable pioneer inventors as Paul Iablochkov, who worked before Edison in developing electric light, and Alexander Popov, who invented the radio around 1895, shortly before Marconi. Russian inventors, even more than Russian scholars in general, frequently received less than their due recognition in the world both because of the prevalent ignorance abroad of the Russian language and Russia and because of the backwardness of Russian technology, which usually failed to utilize their inventions.

Advances in the biological sciences rivaled those in the physical. Alexander Kovalevsky produced classic works in zoology and embryology, while his younger brother, Vladimir, the husband of the mathematician, made important contributions to paleontology - and, incidentally, was much appreciated by Darwin. The famous embryologist and bacteriologist Elijah Mechnikov, who did most of his work in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, concentrated on such problems as the function of the white corpuscles, immunity, and the process of aging. Medicine developed well in Russia during the last decades of the empire, both in terms of quality and, after the zemstvo reform, in terms of accessibility to the masses. Following the lead of an outstanding anatomist, surgeon, teacher, and public figure, Nicholas Pirogov, who died in 1881, and others, Russian doctors exhibited a remarkable civic spirit and devotion to their work and their patients.

Russian contributions to physiology were especially striking and important, and they overlapped into psychology. Ivan Sechenov, who taught in several universities for about half a century and died in 1905, did remarkable research on gases in blood, nerve centers, and reflexes and on other related matters. Ivan Pavlov, who lived from 1849 to 1936 and whose epoch-making experiments began in the 1880's, established through his studies of dogs' reactions to food the existence and nature of conditioned reflexes, and, further developing his approach, contributed enormously to both theory and experimental work in physiology and to behavioral psychology.

The social sciences and the humanities also prospered. Russian scholars engaged fruitfully in everything from law to oriental studies and from economics to folklore. In particular, Russian historiography flourished in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century.

Building on the work of Serge Soloviev and other pioneers, Basil Kliuchevsky, Serge Platonov, Matthew Liubavsky, Paul Miliukov, and their colleagues in effect established Russian history as a rich and many-sided field of learning. Their works have not been surpassed. Other Russians made notable contributions to the histories of other countries and ages, as did the medievalist Paul Vinogradov and the specialist in classical antiquity Michael Rostovtzeff. While Russian historiography profited greatly from the sociological emphasis characteristic of the second half of the nineteenth century, the 'silver age' stimulated the history of art, which could claim in Russia such magnificent specialists as Nikodim Kondakov, Alexander Benois, and Igor Grabar, and it led to a revival of philosophy, esthetics, and literary criticism.

Literature

After the 'great reforms' as before them, literature continued to be the chief glory of Russian culture, and it also became a major source of Russian influence on the West, and indeed on the world. That happened in spite of the fact that the intellectual climate in Russia changed and became unpropitious for creative expression. Instead of admiring art, poetry, and genius, as had been common in the first half of the nineteenth century, the influential critics of the generation of the sixties and of the following decades emphasized utility and demanded from the authors a clear and simple social message. Logically developed, civic literature led to Chemyshevsky's novel, What Is To Be Done?, a worthless literary effort, whatever its intellectual and social significance. With better luck, it produced Nicholas Ne-krasov's civic poetry, which showed inspiration and an effective use of language, for Nekrasov was a real poet, although he wrote unevenly and too much. Fortunately for Russian literature, the greatest writers rejected critical advice and proceeded to write in their own manner. That was especially true of the three giants of the age, Ivan Turgenev, Fedor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy.

Ivan Turgenev lived from 1818 to 1883 and became famous around 1850 with the gradual appearance of his Sportsman's Sketches. He responded to the trends of the time and depicted with remarkable sensitivity the intellectual life of Russia, but he failed eventually to satisfy the Left. Six novels, the first of which appeared in 1855 and the last in 1877, described the evolution of Russian educated society and Russia itself as Turgenev, a gentleman of culture, had witnessed it. These novels are, in order of publication, Rudin, A Gentry Nest, On the Eve, the celebrated Fathers and Sons, Smoke, and Virgin Soil. Turgenev depicted Russia from the time of the iron regime of Nicholas I, through the 'great reforms,' to the return of reaction in the late '60's and the '70's. He concerned himself especially with

the idealists of the '40's and the later liberals, nihilists, and populists. Indeed, it was Turgenev's hero, Bazarov, who gave currency to the concept nihilist and to the term itself. Although he was a consistent Westernizer and liberal, who was appreciative of the efforts of young radicals to change Russia, Turgenev advocated gradualism, not revolution; in particular he recommended patient work to develop the Russian economy and education. And he refused to be one-sided or dogmatic. In fact, critics debate to this day whether Rudin and Bazarov are essentially sympathetic or unsympathetic characters. Besides, Turgenev's novels were by no