Pedagogy and Politics: Origins of the Special Conference of 1905 on Primary Education for Non-Russians in the East

Abstract

In May-June 1905 a special conference on education for non-Russians (inorodtsy) of the eastern Empire met in St Petersburg. The conference was organized by the Ministry of National Enlightenment (i.e. Education) with the concurrence of the Holy Synod. It was chaired by A. S. Budilovich, a member of the Council of Ministers. The conference had been preceded by an investigatory commission, also headed by Budilovich, which visited non-Russian elementary schools in the eastern regions of Russia and interviewed education officials, teachers, and parents involved in the education of non-Russians in the area. The purpose of the commission and the subsequent conference was the “examination of the presently existing legislation concerning the non-Russian schools of eastern Russia and in particular that system among them which is linked to the name of N.I. Il'minskii, compared with the schools of the general type that exist in those regions, on the one hand, and with the confessional schools (especially Moslem and Buddhist), on the other.”