A Russian Aristocratic Childhood set out in Three Columns

“[...] I owe much, if not everything, to my upbringing [...]” wrote Iurii Samarin (1819-1876), historian, publicist and  Slavophile

Slavophiles

The Slavophiles were representatives of a school of thought that felt programmatically connected to the cultural, religious and social traditions of old Russia. Their opponents in the debate about “Russia and Europe”, which had been raging in the Russian Empire since the 1830s, were the so-called Westerners, who advocated the radical Europeanization that Peter I (1672-1725) had begun. , in a letter to the writer Nikolai Gogol Nikolai Gogol The Ukrainian/Russian writer, historian and publicist was born in Veliki Sorochincy/Poltava (Ukraine) in 1809 and died in Moscow (Russia) in 1852. He is considered one of the most important authors of the Russian Empire. His works include short stories (“Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka”, “Nevsky Prospekt”, “The Nose”, “The Overcoat”), the comedy “The Government Inspector” and the novel “Dead Souls”. in 1846.1 It is not unusual to find references like this in autobiographical texts to the importance of the writer’s own upbringing and education. What is remarkable, however, is that, in the case of Iurii Samarin, we have access to a source that meticulously traces the process of his educational journey.

The Samarins were a noble family who owned large estates in central Russia with several thousand serf peasants. The wealth this brought enabled the family to lead a lifestyle befitting their status. In addition to tastefully furnished residences in the city and countryside, a lively social calendar and trips to other European countries, this also included an appropriate education and upbringing for the children. As was customary among the Russian aristocracy at the time, the Samarin family hired a French tutor who was to be responsible for the home-schooling and long-term education of their children, especially the first-born Iurii. Adolphe Pascault, who came from Brittany and changed his name to Stepan Pako in , took up his post at the beginning of 1824.

In the numerous family archives in Russia, many of which have not yet been processed, we often find documents that demonstrate the high value placed on the upbringing and education of children. These range from correspondence between parents and tutors or governesses, lesson plans and timetables, to children's essays, writing exercises, certificates and parenting or educational instructions. Many of these sources are only useful to a degree. Although they include information about the subject matter of lessons and the children's achievements, they convey little about the importance attached to the content or the intentions behind the various educational endeavors.

The educational diary that contains records of Iurii Samarin’s education, however, provides a rare and detailed account of a Russian aristocratic childhood, one that reflects educational practices and ideas of the time.

The French tutor kept a diary from March 13, 1824 to July 24, 1831 on the instructions of Iurii's father Fedor.2 On over 580 pages, he meticulously documented his teaching and educational goals, his everyday observations on the development and behavior of his pupil, described his communication within the family and his exchanges with Fedor Samarin, and reflected on his own actions. The diary also shows that Iurii was under constant observation, had little freedom, and that his development had to follow the clear guidelines and values of his parents – today they would probably be described as helicopter parents.

A few highlights below show examples of what we learn from the diary and the extent to which the entries aid in expanding our knowledge of the Russian aristocratic childhood.

Pako divided the diary into three columns based on John Locke’s John Locke’s John Locke (1632–1704) was an English philosopher. After studying (philosophy, natural sciences and medicine) and teaching at Oxford, he developed a great interest in political issues. He held various offices of state, but also worked as a doctor and educator. His works include “Two Treatises of Government”, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” and the pedagogical work “Some Thoughts Concerning Education”. triad: Physique, Morale, Intellectuel/Instruction. The entries are not always evenly distributed across the three sections, and the focus tends to vary according to the child's age, the time of year, family activities, and external events. The child's development and learning successes were assessed at longer intervals.

In the first column, Physique, the tutor recorded the whereabouts of the family and the movements of the individual family members, made reference to special family events (such as births or holiday celebrations), the cultivation of social contacts or key political events such as the death of Tsar Alexander I in 1825. Further space was devoted to everything strictly physical: personal hygiene, sleep, dreams and fears, sporting activities and games, everyday transportation such as walks and carriage rides, illnesses and conditions. This meticulous interest in and record of Iurii's physical condition and state of health corresponds to common pedagogical ideas of the time and can also be seen to reflect the growing efforts of the Russian state to improve the health of its subjects from the 18th century onwards.

Many of the notes reflect the tutor's intensive examination of his pupil's social behavior. He observed Iurii's interaction with individual family members, servants and guests very closely. The diary reveals that Iurii's behavior was sometimes a burden for the whole family. Tantrums, quarrelsomeness, disruptions and foul-mouthed behavior at the table, physical assaults, abusive language, impertinence, inattentiveness in class and verbal attacks on those around him were the order of the day. The words désobéissant, disobedient, reproche (admonishment) or reprocher (to reproach or scold) as well as caprices (caprices, stubbornness) dominate in many entries not only in the Physique section, but also in the Morale column. The tutor did not administer punishments alone, but in close consultation with Iurii's parents. The diary allows us to trace the facets of a permanent disciplinary process. Punishments ranged from confinement in a room and withdrawal of affection to regular corporal punishment:

Pako’s meticulous records form an important historical source as they throw light on the punishment practices of noble families in pre-revolutionary Russia. However, their value goes beyond this, as ideas around discipline and punishment practices in such families were closely linked to broader societal views of order and the prevailing image of humanity.

The entries in the Instruction section often include keywords and record Iurii's “day-to-day learning” in a schematic form. In many places, the abbreviation id. (idem) stands for repetitive content and practices.6 Individual subjects, learning objectives and the assessment or examinations of the respective achievements are listed here. The older Iurii became, the more time was devoted to the imparting of knowledge. Plans show that the child's daily routine was a strictly regulated and tightly timed sequence of lessons, meals, breaks and walks between 10 a.m. and 8.30 in the evening.

The subject matter of Iurii’s lessons corresponded to the standard educational canon. The diary's discussion of French and Russian is interesting. As in many aristocratic families, the Samarins predominantly spoke French, although Russian was also spoken and used in correspondence.

Iurii’s education was based on a foreign – French – model, and he began to read and write French and Russian in 1824. With regard to language learning, there was a clear division of responsibilities between the tutor and the parents. Pako was responsible for teaching French, while Iurii's mother and, less frequently, his father regularly read Russian with their son. This approach was clearly only modestly successful, as the tutor noted on December 29, 1825: “Though he lives in Russia, he hardly learns the language at all.”7 

It would have been clear at a first glance that the Samarins belonged to the Russian nobility, who were sometimes referred to as “outsiders in their own country” due to their foreign-influenced lifestyle. The question of the Russia’s location in the context of the Europeanization of the upper classes became increasingly important from the end of the 18th century.

To improve their son's knowledge of Russian, the Samarin family also hired a Russian tutor, Nikolaj Nadezhdin Nikolaj Nadezhdin Nikolaj Nadezhdin (1804–1856) was the son of a village priest who taught literature and German at the seminary in Ryazan. He lived in Moscow from 1826 and founded the magazine “Teleskop” in 1831. There, in 1836, he published Petr Chaadaev's momentous “First Philosophical Letter”, which denounced Russia's intellectual backwardness in comparison to Western Europe. Tsar Nicholas I later had Chaadaev declared insane, the “Teleskop” shut down and Nadezhdin sent into exile to northwest Russia. , in October 1826. From then on, the child's lessons were divided between the two teachers on a daily basis. Pako also made a note about this in his diary:

However, despite these efforts, it appears that French remained Iurii Samarin’s dominant language: many years later, he recalled that in the entrance examination for Moscow University he, like many of his fellow aristocratic students, made serious orthographic mistakes in Russian.9

The diary documents the family's constant efforts to familiarize their children with the Russian language and culture – though they spoke French on a daily basis. In this way, like many Russian aristocratic families, they were characterized by an uncomplicated “cultural bilingualism”. This term was coined by the American historian Michelle Marrese, who noted that the “familiarity with Russian and Western lifestyles enabled the nobles to participate in European culture to varying degrees without withdrawing from the feeling of belonging to Russia [...].”10 Understanding this can help us to better locate Iurii's childhood and that of others of his class. It did not consist of two worlds, as one might initially think – one Russian and one “foreign” – but was a space in which different cultural parameters merged to form what constituted an aristocratic Russian childhood. For Iurii, it was commonplace to switch linguistic and cultural contexts – to engage with lessons in French and Latin translations in the mornings and to read Russian texts with his mother in the afternoons, enjoying the freedoms of rural life in the Russian province. His childhood can be categorized as both transnational and intertwined and shows that supposed opposites can dissolve into a synthesis on closer inspection.

English translation: William Connor