Migrants and language learning in Russia (late seventeenth–first part of eighteenth century)

ABSTRACT

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Russia experienced a considerable lack of teachers. In this situation, foreign migrants became Russia’s preferred teachers for more than a century. Foreigners were particularly welcome to teach languages and a whole range of other subjects such as history, geography, and mathematics. All teaching was done in a foreign language. Foreigners became important actors in cultural transfers from Western Europe to Russia. Social elites (the nobility, particularly its upper strata) became the main clients of these foreign teachers. This process ended up producing several generations of aristocracy possessing a sort of hybrid culture, both Russian and Western-European with a particular predominance of French culture starting from the generation of the middle of the eighteenth century. In my paper I will first analyse the national composition of the teaching staff in some major Russian educational institutions, first and foremost the institutions for the nobility or in which noble students were present, and in private education; then I will give a brief overview of the geographical origin of the students in these institutions. I will finally analyse the positive aspects as well as the problems caused by this situation and will show what reactions the predominance of foreign teaching staff in Russia provoked in Russian society.

KEYWORDS:

• Migrants
• education
• language learning
• Russian Empire
• St Petersburg Academy of Sciences
• Noble Cadet Corps

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Erik Amburger, Die Anwerbung ausländischer Fachkräfte für die Wirtschaft Russlands vom 15. bis ins 19. Jahrhundert (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1968); Tatiana V. Chernikova, “Protses evropeizatsii v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XV-XVII vv[Process of Modernization in Russia in the Second Half of the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century].” (PhD diss., MGIMO, Moscow, 2014), vol. 1.

² Boris A. Kunenkov, “Perevodchiki i tolmachi Posol’skogo prikaza vo vtoroi chetverti XVII v.: funktsii, chislennost, poriadok priema [Translators and Interpreters of the Posol'skii Prikaz in the Second Quarter of the Seventeenth Century: Functions, Number, Recruitment Process],” http://www.mkonf.iriran.ru/archive.php?id=50 (accessed March 1, 2018).

³ On the “Great Embassy” and the recruitment of foreign specialists during this embassy, see Dmitrii Guzevich and Irina Guzevich, Velikoe posol’stvo: Rubezh epokh, ili nachalo puti: 1697–1698 [The Great Embassy: Turn of the Era, or Beginning of a New Way, 1697-1698] (St Petersburg: D. Bulanin, 2008).

⁴ See Ia. Zutis, Ostzeiskii vopros v vosemnadtsatom veke [The Ostsee Question in the Eighteenth Century] (Riga: Knigoizd. i tip. n°2 VAPP, 1946); Roger Bartlett, “The Russian Nobility and the Baltic German Nobility in the Eighteenth Century,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 34, no. 1/2 (1993): 233–43. On the role of Baltic nobility in the Russian army and the civilian administration, see in particular p. 238.

⁵ On the case of the Cadet Corps, see Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Native Tongues and Foreign Languages in the Education of the Russian Nobility: The Case of the Noble Cadet Corps (the 1730s-1760s),” in The History of Language Learning and Teaching I. 16th-18th Century Europe, ed. Nicola McLelland and Richard Smith (Oxford: Legenda Books, 2018) 129-144.

⁶ See for example Manifesto of 31 December 1736, Polnoe sobranie zakonov (PSZ) IX, no. 7142 (St Petersburg, 1830): 1022; Ukaz from 9 February 1737, PSZ X, no. 7171(1830): 43–5.

⁷ See an overview of Protestant schools in Vera Kovrigina, “Inovercheskie shkoly Moskvy XVII – pervoi chetverti XVIII veka [Non-orthodox Schools in Moscow, Seventeenth–First Quarter of the Eighteenth Century],” Pedagogika 2 (2001): 74–9; On Latin schools, see Antonii Florovskii, “Latinskie shkoly v Rossii v epokhu Petra I,” XVIII vek, vol. 5 (Moscow-Leningrad: Izd. AN SSSR, 1962): 316–35.

⁸ Elena V. Voevoda, “Iazykovaia podgotovka diplomatov i perevodchikov dlia Posol’skogo prikaza v XVII veke [Language Training of Diplomats and Translators for the Posol'skii Prikaz in the Seventeenth Century],” Vestnik MGOU 3 (2009): 20–1.

⁹ These dates are approximate because we do not have exact information about this school. This institution was studied by Dzhamilia Ramazanova, “Istochniki dlia izucheniia Italianskoi shkoly Ioannikiia i Sofroniia Likhudov (chelobitnye uchenikov i uchitelei), [Sources for the Study of the Italian School Run by Loannikii and Sofronii Likhuds (Demands and Complaints of the Pupils and Teachers)],” Ocherki feodal’noi Rossii 13 (Moscow-St Petersburg, 2009): 293–313; “Pervaia italianskaia shkola v Rossii (1697–1700) po dokumentam Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo arkhiva drevnikh aktov, [The first Italian School in Russia (1697-1700) in the Documents of the Russian State Archives of Ancients Acts],” Problemy italianistiki, 5: Italianskie arkhivy v Rossii – Rossiiskie arkhivy v Italii (Мoscow, 2013): 196–212.

¹⁰ Sergey A. Belokurov and Alexandr N. Zertsalov, “O nemetskikh shkolakh v Moskve v pervoi chetverti XVIII veka. Dokumenty Moskovskikh arkhivov. 1701–1715,” in Chteniia v Imperatorskomv obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh, pri Moskovskom universitete [Lectures in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University], book 1, part 1, vol. 220 (Moscow, 1907): 53.

¹¹ Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1 [Documents for the History of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, vol. 1] (St Petersburg: pri Imp. Akademii nauk, 1885): 75–6.

¹² See Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Native Tongues and Foreign Languages”.

¹³ Florovskii, “Latinskie shkoly v Rossii,” 318, 320. Jesuits contested the presence of Russian orthodox children in their school; however, their attitude is understandable because they were regularly blamed for trying to attract them to Catholicism. We have several pieces of proof that Russian children from high-ranking families were among the pupils of the Latin school at the very beginning of the eighteenth century. For example, in 1704 the Prussian resident in Russia Keyserling wrote that the Jesuits “der grossen Herren Kinder durch fleissige Information ziemlich an sich gezogen hatten.” Fr. Dukmeyer, Korbs Diarium in Moscoviam und Quellen, B. I (Berlin, 1909): 208, quoted from Florovskii, “Latinskie shkoly v Rossii,” 321.

¹⁴ Some of these pupils would become diplomats, e.g. Ivan Gavrilovivh Golovkin, Russian minister in Holland (1725–8), Aleksandr Gavrilovich Golovkin, Russian ambassador to Berlin (1711–22, 1723–7), Paris (1729–31), and Holland (1731–59). Both were sons of the Russian chancellor (i.e. minister of foreign affairs) Gavriil Ivanovich Golovkin.

¹⁵ Russian State Archives of Ancient Acts (RGADA), f. 150, op. 1703, d. 1, fol. 54 r-v; Helmut Glück and Ineta Polanska, Johann Ernst Glück. (1654–1705): Pastor, Philologe, Volksaufklärer im Baltikum und in Russland (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 2005), 130.

¹⁶ Alexandr I. Rogov, “Novye dannye o sostave uchenikov Slaviano-greko-latinskoi akademii [New Documents on the Composition of Pupils of the Slave-Greek-Latin Academy],” Istoriia SSSR, no. 3 (1959): 141–4.

¹⁷ Data obtained based on the analysis of the list published in Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1, 217–26. Erik Amburger provided slightly different numbers: 35 foreigners out of 112, so 77 Russian pupils. See Erik Amburger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutsch-Russischen kulturellen Beziehungen (Giessen: Im Komissionsverlag Wilhelm Schmitz, 1961), 184.

¹⁸ Amburger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutsch-russischen kulturellen Beziehungen, 184–6. These data include however the numbers for 1726 which do not seem correct to me.

¹⁹ RGADA, f. 248, op. 1, d. 396, fol. 2; K.V. Tatarnikov, E.I. Yurkevich, Sukhoputnyi shliahetnyi kadetskii korpus. 1732–1762. Obmundirovanie i snariazhenie [Land Noble Cadet Corps, 1732-1762: Uniform and Equipment] (Мoscow, 2009), 57.

²⁰ On this question, the reader can consult: Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Les écoles étrangères dans la société russe au siècle des Lumières,” Cahiers du monde russe 46/3 (2005): 473-528.

²¹ Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Le français et d'autres langues dans l’éducation en Russie au XVIIIe siècle”, Vivliofika 1 (2013), pp. 20-47, here 34-5.

²² The information in the memoirs by La Neuville concerning 20 Greek teachers finds no proof in any known sources to date. Rogov, “Novye dannye o sostave uchenikov,” 140–7, here 141; Nikolaos A. Chrissidis, An Academy at the Court of the Tsars: Greek Scholars and Jesuit Education in Early Modern Russia (Illinois: De Kalb, 2016), 215.

²³ Rogov, “Novye dannye o sostave uchenikov,” 141.

²⁴ Belokurov and Zertsalov, O nemetskikh shkolakh v Moskve, 53.

²⁵ Ustavy Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk. 1724–2009 [The Statutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences: 1724-2009] (Moscow: Nauka, 2009), 55. I am indebted to Tatiana Kostina for this point.

²⁶ Martin Schwanwitz was naturalised in Thorn (Poland) in 1687 but was probably not of Polish but German origin; Adolf Bernhard Cramer originated from Herford in Westphalia; Wilhelm Bernhard Störmer (or Stürmer) was from Friedland in Prussia; Johann Georg Oestermann was from Ingria, which was conquered by Russian troops during the Great Northern War and where St Petersburg was eventually founded in 1703. For some other teachers, their exact origin is unknown, but there is good reason to think that nearly all of them were of German origin if we judge by their names, e.g. Karl Friedrich Schössler, Schmitt, Esterman: see Archives of the Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg branch (SPbF ARAN), f. 3, op. 1, d. 791, fol. 24 r-24 v. I am grateful to Tatiana Kostina for this information. For more information on this school see Tatiana V. Kostina, “Podgotovka elit Rossiiskoi Imperii v uchebnykh zavedeniiakh Akademii nauk (1726–1805),” in Aktual’noe proshloe: vzaimodeistvie i balans Akademii nauk i rossiiskogo gosudarstva v XVIII –nachale XIX v. Ocherki istorii [Actual Past: Interaction and Balance Between the Academy of Sciences and the Russian State in the Eighteenth–Early Nineteenth Century: Historical Essays], ed. Irina V. Tunkina (St Petersburg: Renome, 2016), vol. 1, 207–302.

²⁷ Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1, 172.

²⁸ Inspectors Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, Georg Wolfgang Krafft, and Pierre-Louis Le Roy, who was of French origin, probably from a Huguenot family, but was raised and studied in Germany; rectors Johann Eberhard Fischer, Martin Schwanwitz, and Georg Mörling.

²⁹ See Amburger, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutsch-russischen kulturellen Beziehungen, 183–212, especially p. 183.

³⁰ Information provided by Tatiana Kostina.

³¹ Report of Count Burkhard Christoph von Münnich, General Director of the Corps, to the empress, 2 April 1734, RGADA, f. 248, op. 1, d. 396, fol. 29.

³² Materialy dlia istorii Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk, vol. 1, 464–5.

³³ RGADA, f. 248, op. 1, d. 348, fol. 65 r-7 r.

³⁴ Kristine Koch [now Dahmen], Deutsch als Fremdsprache im Rußland des 18. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Fremdsprachenlernens in Europa und zu den deutsch-russischen Beziehungen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 158.

³⁵ Russian State Archives of the History of Military Forces (RGVIA), f. 314, op. 1(1), d. 2321, fol. 45 r-46 v.

³⁶ SPbF ARAN, f. 3, op. 9, d. 78, 80 (1757–58).

³⁷ All of them have names that “sound” like the names of French-speaking Swiss families.

³⁸ SPbF ARAN, f. 3, op. 9, d. 78, 80 (1757–58).

³⁹ On this question, see details in Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Le français et d'autres langues dans l’éducation en Russie au XVIIIe siècle,” 33.

⁴⁰ Eduard Winter, Halle als Ausgangspunkt der deutschen Russlandkunde im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin: DAW, 1953).

⁴¹ Petr Pekarski, Istoriia Imperatorskoi Akademii nauk v Peterburge [History of the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg] (St Petersburg: Imp. Akademiia nauk, 1870), vol. 1.

⁴² My translation from Russian, RGADA, f. 177 (1739), d. 70, fol. 5 v. I am grateful to Igor Fedyukin for drawing my attention to this document.

⁴³ On this question, see Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski, Gesine Argent, The French Language in Russia: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018), Ch. 1 and 2.

⁴⁴ Ivan Betskoy, Ustav imperatorskogo shliahetnogo sukhoputnogo kadetskogo korpusa uchrezhdennago v Sankt-Peterburge dlia vospitaniia i obucheniia blagorodnogo rossiiskogo iunoshestva [The Statutes of the Imperial Land Cadet Corps Founded in St Petersburg for the Education of Noble Russian Youth] (St Petersburg: Tip. Suhoputnogo shliahetnogo kadetskogo korpusa, 1766), 50 (2nd pagination).

⁴⁵ On the influence of the concept of “fartherland” in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century, see for example Ingrid Schierle, “‘For the Benefit and Glory of the Fatherland’: The Concept of Otechestvo,” in Eighteenth-Century Russia: Society, Culture and Economy, ed. Roger Bartlett and Gabriela Lehmann-Carli (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007), 283–95.

⁴⁶ See Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Un journaliste français héraut de l’;éducation publique en Russie,” in Quand le français gouvernait la Russie. L’éducation de la noblesse russe, 1750-1880, ed. Vladislav Rjéoutski (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016), 233-46.

⁴⁷ Vladislav Rjéoutski, “Le Précepteur français comme ennemi: la construction de son image en Russie (deuxième moitié du XVIIIe – première moitié du XIXe siècle),” in L’ennemi en regard(s): Images, usages et interprétations dans l’histoire et la littérature, ed. Brigitte Krulic (Paris: Peter Lang, 2012), 31-45.

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Vladislav Rjeoutski

Vladislav Rjeoutski taught Russian history and translation in France and in the UK. In 2011 to 2013 he was involved in a scientific project on the social history of the French language in Russia at Bristol University. Since 2013 he has been a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Moscow. He managed several international research projects, including recently “The Ideal of education among the European nobilities” and “Translation of political texts and the origin of the Russian political language”, both hosted and financed by the German Historical Institute in Moscou (DHI Moskau). He has recently published Vladislav Rjéoutski, ed., Quand le français gouvernait la Russie. L’éducation de la noblesse russe, 1750–1870 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016); Vladislav Rjéoutski and Willem Frijhoff, eds., Language Choice in Enlightenment Europe: Education, Sociability, and Governance (Amsterdam: AUP, 2018); Derek Offord, Vladislav Rjéoutski, and Gesine Argent, The French Language in Russia: A Social, Political, Cultural, and Literary History (Amsterdam: AUP, 2018).