Worker of public education and spiritual enlightenment: A.P. Cheruvimov in Samara (XIX – early XX centuries)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of social and cultural factors in the development of public education, the formation of a professional group of its workers and organizers in Russia in the last quarter of the XX early XX centuries. The particular attention is paid to the relationship between school, society and church. The methodological basis of the research was the theory of modernization and the techniques of the biographical method. In the article on a large source base the administrative-pedagogical and public-educational activities of A.P. Cheruvimov in the Samara Region, aimed at developing new forms of the school organization while preserving national spiritual traditions, were investigated. As a result of his efforts the successful secondary educational institution in the form of the Samara Real School was created in the provincial city and an effective channel was created to support needy students through the Society for the Promotion of Education was created too. Cheruvimov's contribution to the works of the Aleksievsky Orthodox brotherhood, aimed at supporting parish schools and at the religious and moral education of residents, has become significant and fruitful. For two decades on a voluntary basis he served in the brotherhood in the responsible position of the Chairman of the Council with a wide range of the real responsibilities. His example shows a figure of Russian modernization, whose personal desire for his own social mobility and the promotion of the progressive cultural trends was combined with the traditional religious foundations and the conservative political views. This example demonstrates that the social movement in imperial Russia took place in more complex forms than the paradigm of opposition between the progressive and reactionary forces, which was established in historiography and often was reduced to the social origin or position of persons belonging to one political camp or another.