Behind the Facade of Uvarov’s Classicism: Career Strategies of Classical Philologists at Russian Universities

Abstract

Introduction. The article is focused on reconstruction of the practices of forming a disciplinary group of classical philologists in the Russian Empire universities in the 1830s – 1850s. Methods. For this purpose, the archival materials of the Ministry of Education, as well as Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan and Kiev Universities are considered. The research methodology is based on a combination of both traditional general historical methods and methods of classical source studies, and approaches developed in the framework of the history of science, the sociology of knowledge and the history of disciplines. Analysis and results. It is important to analyze three points: the political context, practices in building career trajectories and academic networks of professors of Greek and Roman literature and antiquities at Russian universities. The transformation of the existing network of universities into the system of public education was carried out by the Minister of Public Education Sergey Uvarov in the 1830s. Transferring to Russia the European model of secondary education based on the study of classical languages, Uvarov created a system of general education and relentlessly promoted antiquity studies in the Russian Empire. Teaching classical disciplines was expanded at gymnasiums and universities. Following the academic personnel reform of the late 1830s, a number of “antiquity chairs” at universities was headed by young philologists and historians who had spent two or three years of training at universities in Germany, mainly in Berlin, attending lectures and seminars of leading German classical philologists. In the 1840s – 1850s, an artificially constructed group of classical philologists gradually transformed into a disciplinary community.