Opened in 1895, with Fedor Uspenskii, a specialist in Byzantium, as the first director. The outbreak of the Great War forced its closure.
Institution Type: Institute
From the 1870s the Russian government experimented with ways to offer women an advanced education without allowing them to matriculate in the universities. Historian and archeologist K. N. Bestuzhev-Riumin organized and directed the first successful one in 1878, and therefore it bore his name, though not formally. Initially, applicants had to be 21 and have a secondary education and an attestation of political reliability. Both courses and requirements fluctuated over the years, in response to social and political changes, but these classes offered Russian women the best opportunities for advanced education until 1918. Most professors lectured gratis, and there was a special fund to support the students financially. Included here are those who taught at the Women’s Pedagogical Institute, established in St. Petersburg in 1903.
When Dmitrii Miliutin began reforming military schools in the 1860s, the Pages Corps was transformed into a two-part Institute, the first five grades a gymnasium and the next two, a college. Reformed again in 1885, the Page Corps compared to a cadet school, but with added classes in military science and jurisprudence. It was the only military academy that prepared future officers for all arms; the others offered specialized training. Most graduates joined the military as officers, but students enjoyed the option of taking a civilian career, such as diplomacy.
One of the oldest technical colleges in Russia, founded by Catherine the Great. Students came from around the empire.
Wealthy Armenian merchant I. L. Lazarev funded a school for the children of impoverished Armenians, opened in 1814. In 1827, however, the school was assumed by the Ministry of Education and became the Lazarev Institute of Eastern Languages, a major center of linguistics. The Institute also had a gymnasium attached to it, and a seminary for training in Armenian Orthodoxy.
Named for Nicholas II, with Fedor Uspenskii’s brother Alexander as its first director. It opened branches in Vitebsk, Iaroslavl, Kaluga, Smolenski, and Nizhnii Novgorod. Maria Tenisheva finished in 1916 with the title Scientific Archeologist.
In 1835, retired colonel Mikhail Petrovich Bakhtin, petitioned to donate his private fortune of a million and a half rubles, and his estate of 2,700 serfs, to establish a cadet corps in Orel. Tsar Nicholas I promoted him to Major-General, and the corps was officially opened in 1853. Numerous important officers graduated from here over the years.
N. V. Kalachov served as the institute’s first director from its opening in 1877 until his death in 1885. From the beginning it was mired in conflict about its mission: was it to train primarily archivists or archeologists? It edcuated both, especially because archeology was not taught in universities until A. A. Spitsyn began his lectures in St. Petersburg in 1909.