The Mind in the Machine 203Paul I made provision for 8,000 pupils in 63 schools and centralized their
administration. They were all considered subordinate agencies of the new
Imperial Military Orphanage, an institution which grew out of a school
established at Gatchina.^6 Official policy was again dictated by utilitarian
r?tther than charitable a:ms: not the v~·clfarc of tln: (.;hii<lren concerned, as
under Catherine, but the interests of the state. The authorities sought to bring
all soldiers' children within the official net, and altered the curriculum so that
greater emphasis was laid on drill and craft subjects. Each Sunday, so the
emperor ruled, pupils were to have the military regulations read out to them,
'especially those articles which deal with obedience to orders and the
punishments for lack of vigilance on guard duty, cowardice before the enemy,
insubordination, theft etc'.^7 One can hardly conceive of a less promising
pedagogical approach. These were 'stick academies', as the phrase went, in
which pupils were thrashed for the least indiscipline. They also had to perform
various services for their superiors, although this practice was prohibited by an
Imperial ukaz in 1804.^8 The more promising school-leavers now went to serve
in military hospitals, and only the less capable ended up in field regiments as
NCOs or 'junior staff'.
In 1805 the Senate discovered that over 11,000 soldiers' children (the real
number was much higher) had escaped the control system,^9 and once
Napoleon had been finally defeated a campaign was launched to round them
up. In various parts of the country zealous officials seized boys whose fathers
happened to be soldiers or ex-soldiers and without further ado placed them in
the schools, or if they were over 15 sent them to the army. In the process they
ignored the legal provisions which exempted sons of odnodvortsy or boys born
when the father was not in service. New rules were drawn up which extended
the service liability to, for example, children of landless veterans who
'wandered about idly', or to the illegitimate sons of soldiers' wives.^10
This toughening of policy was connected with the introduction of the military
colonies (see ch. 12), in which all boys, whether born to soldiers or to peasants,
became liable to the draft. The term 'military cantonists' (voyennye kantonisty)
was applied indiscriminately to children in both categories. Pupils in the
former garrison schools now came within the purview of Arakcheyev's vast
administrative empire.11 By 1822 the number of pupils in them had risen to
over 65,000-a far cry from the modest figure set a century earlier; and there
were another 22,000 military cantonists. Some 5,000 lads 'graduated' each
year, but half as many (2,446) left their school in a coffin.^12 'The extreme
6 Shchepetil' nikov (S VM iv) p. 186 n. The orphanage had I wo separate sections for the privileged
and non-privileged, but some tuilion was gi\'en in common. Ibid., p. 188.
(^7) Ibid., p. 190; PSZ xxv. 18793 (23 Dec. 1798), § S (p. 495).
8 PSZ xxviii. 21125 (14 Jan. 1804), § 8; Shchepetil'nikov (SVM iv) p. 191 and app. 16.
9 PSZ xxviii. 21820 (June 1805); Shchepetil'nikov (SVM iv) p. 193.
10 PSZ xxxiii. 26376 (28 July 1816); Shchepetilnikov (SVM iv) p. 196.
11 PSZ xxxix. 29849 ( 11 Jan. 1824).
12 Shchepetil'nikov (SVM iv) p. 205.