4 THE BEGINNINGS
In the second half of the 18th century the Russian clergy andnobility had not yet learned to like education for its own sake. In part,
this was the result o~ the imposition of school attendance from above,
as Peter the Great had made schooling obligatory for a reluctant
nobility. Numerous contemporary reports describe the opposition and
hatred this new form. of service provoked. The ridiculous and comical
incidents which often accompanied the implementation of Peter's
rules cannot hide the personal tragedies that lay behind them. The
young nobleman left for the "cypher schools" accompanied by the
wail and tears of his parents and domestics. No wonder that the
students hated and feared the school even before coming to it, and
attempts at escape were numerous. The prospective student would
take flight on the way to school, hide from the police with the
connivance and help of his relatives. Peter the Great and -his successors
issued decree after decree ordering the "truants" back to school, and
even used regular troops to go after the unwilling pupils in their
own homes or bring back to school those that had taken flight. Not
until the second half of the 18th century - and mollified by a
relaxation of this school "service" - did the average nobleman realize
the usefulness and pleasure of study and acquire a genuine thirst for
knowledge.
Peter the Great's heavy hand had bent the clergy under a similar
yoke. The clergy became a hereditary corporation, with the sons
compelled to follow in the footsteps of their fathers - or else become
ordinary peasants, a glum prospect indeed in those times. Like the
nobleman's son, the prospective young clergyman, whether he felt
the "call" or not, had to leave his home and go to the provincial
seminary for training in the rudiments of his future profession. Little
wonder that the priest's education was debased and made difficult and
unpleasant from the very start. In addition, the system took no account
of the individual capacities and interests of the students. The prescribedcourse had to be completed by the students, regardless of the time it
might take them to do so. The less gifted and the lazy were left to
repeat the -forms year after year; in the same class were to be found
ages ranging from 12 to about 20 years. Naturally, under these
circumstances, the young and the weak were tyrannized, demoralized
and corrupted by the older and more pernicious students in the school.
Most important of all, perhaps, the school system of the Russian
clergy suffered from poverty. This poverty was twofold: the schools
had a miserable budget, and the pupils themselves had no resources
either. This was the result of the inferior status of the clergy in 18th