204 The Imperial Century, 1725-1825over-crowding', ran an official report, 'not only helps disease to spread among
the pupils but causes considerable mortality.' Arakcheyev himself stated
privately that before he took over the annual death toll had been 10 per cent
and that some children had had to eat bread mixed with sand.U
ful all thi5, 50:huvliilg brnuglii itdVitf1iil8C:'> [u iliu:-,i; jJUjJib wliu ~UI vivt:u ii.
Statistics show that it helped a soldier to advance in the service. Of I 25 men in
the Yaroslavl' regiment known to have been discharged in I 792 and I 795, 17
(13.6 per cent) were described as literate (gramotu umeyet).^14 Of 57 veterans
classified as physically fit, I I were literate. Of these seven were soldiers' sons,
three sons of clergy (iz tserkovnikov), and only one was of peasant stock.
Three had risen to join the regimental staff, one had become a sub-ensign,
four were sergeants, and one a corporal. The degree of literacy increased withseniority: of private soldiers only one man in (^24) was literate, but of corporals
one in six, of sergeants four in 14, and of regimental staff three in eight. The
educational level reached may not have been high, but it did make a difference
to the fortunes of those concerned.^1 ~
In one cavalry regiment for which data are available the literacy rate was
higher: 14 out of98 veterans (16.6 per cent) who had served their 15-year term.
They included a number of Ukrainians who in civilian life were more likely
than Great Russians to have access to educational facilities. (^16) On the other
hand, the Yaroslavl' regiment soldiers who were of odnodvortsy origin had a
literacy rate of only 6.9 per cent, less than half that of their social inferiors.
This was probably because boys in this category were not admissible to gar-
rison schools, while their parents were too poor to afford a private tutor, as
the wealthier gentry could.^17 Among such men, and among common soldiers
generally, there must have been a few individuals who taught themselves to
read and write. Pamfil Nazarov, who did so in 1816, made rapid progress-
'already by Christmas I could read the psalter and write letters'-and his deter-
mination inspired some of his comrades to emulate his example. One of them
became a monk-as did Nazarov himself.^18
How important was religion generally in the Russian soldier's life and out-
look? The sources are not forthcoming about such matters, and Nazarov's
pious cast of mind cannot be taken as typical. Foreign observers, especially
IJ Mayevsky, 'Moy vek', p. 441. Lyall, Travels, i. 106, describes the institution in Kiev. The
1,800 boys 'almost all ... had a squalid, sickly appearance'; they were short of food and slept in
damp beds; one in six was ill; but the schooling, on the Lancastrian system, flourished.
14 Keep, 'Catherine's Veterans', p. 394. This excludes two men who knew German or Polish
rather than Russian.
15 Ibid., pp. 393-4.
16 TsGVIA, V-UA, ed. khr. 16449 (1790), 11. 142-63.
17 Keep, 'Catherine's Veterans', p. 395. One historian speaks scathingly of 'the old odnodvortsy
privilege of being uneducated'; six regimental schools were set up for them in 1752, bu1 they
evidently did not make much impact. Vladimirsky-Budanov, Gosudarstvo, pp. 128-9, 287-8; PSZ
xiii. 9972 (13 Apr. 1752).
11 Nazarov, 'Zapiski', p. 541.