The Struggle to Create a Regional Public in the Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Empire: The Case of Kazanskie izvestiia
p. 347-375
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1In the early part of the reign of Alexander I (1801-1825), the emperor sought to reform Russia through the creation of new European-style institutions. The aim was to ensure that Russia’s great-power status would be retained through updating its institutions, in line with a reform impulse dating back to Peter the Great and before. Among the new institutions formed in the first few years of the nineteenth century were ministries, such as of education, based on the centralized French system, as well as new universities based on the German model of the research university. German universities, such as Göttingen, were marked by university autonomy and the creation of a public, although one that might be limited to professors and teachers, capable of judging the merits of its own research in an open way. Both the ministries and the universities sought to shape a public that could respond to their needs.
2This chapter argues that these new institutions led to a conflict between an idea of the public as consumers of knowledge provided by the ministries and an idea of the regional public as producers of knowledge, fostered by the new research universities. This conflict can best be seen through Kazanskie izvestiia (Kazan’ News, 1811-1821), the first long-lasting provincial periodical.1 After a review of the historiography and sources, the chapter turns to an outline of the interlocking structures of primary, secondary and higher education in order to understand why the university was so engaged with defining the region. It then outlines earlier attempts to study the region, which were confined to faculty and university students and had limited to no success. The bulk of the chapter is taken up with an analysis of the development of Kazanskie izvestiia and to show through it the conflict between the idea of a public as consumers of knowledge from above and a regional public that would study its own region and thus produce its own knowledge. This might lead that public to a critique of the ministries, however, which the latter were determined to avoid.
3The ministries had established claims to national and international knowledge, such as of foreign affairs.2 And yet, greater understanding of the region did not always threaten the ministries’ position and provided a sphere within which an educated and regional public could share its findings and attain self-awareness. Although the ministries may have wanted a public that listened rather than spoke, a public that was capable of receiving knowledge could also produce it. The conflicts between these two visions of the public are early examples of a dynamic that would only intensify over the next century.
4Kazan’ was chosen as the site of the new university in the eastern part of Russia due to its position as the largest city in the region, along with its preexisting classical high school, known as the Kazan’ gymnasium. Kazan’, located 447 miles south and east of Moscow, has long been a major cultural center and point of contact between Russians and Tatars, a Turkic Muslim people with a long history of literacy, as well as other ethnic groups. Ivan the Terrible’s conquest of the Khanate of Kazan’ in 1552 is generally seen as the moment when a multi-ethnic empire began to take shape in Russia. In terms of population, Kazan’ was the unquestioned capital of the eastern part of Russia, with a population in the city itself of 40,000 by the late eighteenth century, of whom 2,800 were Tatars.3 In 1811, Kazan’ had a population of 53,900 and was the fourth largest town in the Russian Empire, after St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Vilnius. It dwarfed the population of the towns of the Urals, such as Orenburg (5,400) and Perm (3,100).4
5Using the rich published and archival sources found in Kazan’, including the periodicals themselves and the published and unpublished plans for the newspapers and the archives on the debates in Kazan’ University’s censorship committee helps us to understand the conflict over whether the emerging public should consume or produce knowledge. Periodicals were the main way to reach a larger audience during this time. The archive of Kazan’ University is extensive and is located both at the university itself and the National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan, allowing the research to provide a detailed understanding of the debates, both published and unpublished, that shaped the newspaper and the idea of the public.
6This chapter builds upon the sociological approach to the history of reading and publishing, or what Gary Marker has called “the social history of ideas.”5 It also draws upon a growing interest in spatial and regional history that has already begun to influence the history of reading and the book.6 Greater attention to ideas of space broadens the sources considered worthy of attention and allows us to look at regional reading publics as well as imperial or national ones. Intellectuals spent as much time writing and reading about regional spaces as they did imperial or, later, national ones, but their efforts have not been as well studied. Because the state was so large geographically, it was more willing to accept participation from non-state actors when it came to the region, such as writing topographical descriptions and other forms of regional commentary. A focus solely at the imperial level elides this activity.
7The idea of the public was in the process of transformation in the early nineteenth century. ‘Public’ as a term had been in use in Russia since the early eighteenth century, at which time it was most likely introduced directly from the Latin publicum. Reflecting an Aristotelian definition, the term referred to the government and society in contradistinction to the private or family sphere.7 In Peter the Great’s General Regulation of 1720, there was a distinction made between “public State affairs” and “private affairs.” These words were new enough to require definition in a glossary at the back of the work, where public (publichnyi) was defined as national (vsenarodnyi).8 The public, as in classical Greece, dealt with all aspects of life beyond the private or family sphere. Under Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796), it also came to mean those people outside the state, whom the state sought to shape. The public often referred to a group of people gathered at a particular place, such as the theater.9 At times, these were conjoined, as with Catheirne the Great’s plays, which sought to edify and polish the public attending the theater.10 In such a situation, the public was there to watch and learn.
8One Russian scholar notes that the idea of a cultured public, such as one would find in a theater, was quicker to develop in Russia than the idea of the public as a judge of events and a place of discussion, perhaps even of political topics. The eighteenth-century classical playwright A. P. Sumarokov wrote in 1781 that “the word public (publika), as Voltaire explains somewhere, does not mean the whole society, but a small part of it; that is, knowledgeable people who have taste.”11 Somewhat more broadly, by the mid-nineteenth century, V. I. Dal’ stated that publika meant “society, aside from the common people, the simple folk.”12 A more active and evaluative role of the public is evident in Russian statesman M. M. Speranskii’s statement from 1802 that, “Abuses, which avoid the judgment of the law, appear before the judgment of the public (sud publiki), which is far more terrible.”13
9This chapter seeks to tease out how the idea of the public developed at Kazan’ University and so avoids normative definitions such as that by Jurgen Habermas in his work on the public sphere, which has been very influential in many fields, including history. Harold Mah, however, has pointed out the schematic nature of Habermas’ work, noting that “not only has there never been a public sphere that has been genuinely universal, there also has never been the kind of individualism that it presupposes. People have always belonged to groups.”14
10Indeed, the definition of the public itself was what was under debate in Kazan’ at this time. Kazan’ was an early site for this debate in the Russian Empire, along with Kharkiv (Khar’kov), where the state founded another university in 1804. The universities developed the idea of the public far more than was found in other provincial towns, such as Vladimir, where the idea of the public was limited to idea of a physical audience, especially one composed of the nobility, as late as the 1850s.15
1. The Kazan’ Educational District as the Framework for a Regional Reading Public
11The creation of the linked institutions of Kazan’ University and the Kazan’ Educational District, composed of elementary through secondary schools from the Volga to Siberia, led to a new regional reading public that was contiguous with the district. The vision of the new reading public was influenced by the requirement that Kazan’ University professors provide oversight of the lower educational institutions, including taking long inspection tours. Because the government asked that education fit the needs of the region, professors and teachers in the district envisioned the newly-invented Kazan’ Educational District as a region and sought to encourage a reading public that would describe itself and its new region into being. Institutions such as the university and newspapers helped to provide the structure within which these intellectuals could create a new regional identity.16
12The legal documents establishing the district encouraged provincial intellectuals to imagine it as a region with its own needs; in 1803, rules for district (uezd) schools noted that classes should include “practical knowledge, useful for the needs of the region (poleznye dlia potrebnostei kraia).” In 1828, the statute for gymnasia and district schools noted that classes could be established “according to local needs.”17 In order to determine what the region’s needs were, the educational district first had to be imagined as a region. Left unstated was whether these needs could be filled through one-way top-down edification through the knowledge deemed appropriate by the Ministry of Education and other ministries, or whether the region ought to come to awareness through a process of self-study of all its facets. This would lead to a continuing struggle.
13In order to understand how this institutional framework encouraged the birth of a regional reading public, this section will first look at the reasons for the creation of the Kazan’ Educational District with its particular geographical boundaries, then survey the larger decision-making process for the creation of several new universities in 1804, including in Kazan’, and finally discuss how the universities in both Kazan’ and Kharkiv contributed to the growth of new forms of identity later in the nineteenth century.
14Founded on January 24, 1803, the Kazan’ Educational District encompassed most of the eastern part of the Russian Empire. It included the provinces of Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, the Volga region, the Urals, and part of central Russia.18 In the early nineteenth century, the district was by far the largest in Russia and, indeed, the world. The founding of the district was part of a larger plan to increase state oversight of Tatar merchants and the trade with the East, including China and India, more broadly.19 With the founding of the Kazan’ Educational District, the state sought to broaden its intermediaries beyond just the Tatar people, who the state feared might become too powerful in the region.
15The Tatar people had been the main intermediary for the Russian state in this region. Catherine the Great had noted that Russian, German and Tatar languages should be taught in schools, as the Russian Empire had three provinces where the German language was the language of administration and “there are three kingdoms of the Russian Empire inhabited by Tatar people and their boundaries stretch from Kiev to China.”20 These kingdoms were the former khanates of Kazan’, Astrakhan’ and Sibir’, which had been conquered during the reign of Ivan the Terrible (r. 1533-1584). The Kazan’ Educational District provided a new way to imagine this territory, not mainly as Tatar, but rather as an Eastern part of a Russia in which many other peoples awaited education in Russian as well as in their own languages.
16The district educated a new generation of non-Russians and non-Tatars who could become administrators in their own regions. The schools in the district were not just Russian-language schools, but included schools for and using the language of Iakuts (Sakha), Armenians, Georgians, Tungus and Buriats in addition to Russian.21 The authorities discouraged the creation of Tatar schools, despite much demand from the Tatars. However, individual Kazan’ University professors worked on teaching Tatar and proposed the founding of Tatar schools.22 Russians also studied these languages at the lower level and German, Russian and Tatar professors at Kazan’ University provided advanced study of Eastern languages.23
17The Russian state did not generally encourage the rise of a Tatar-language reading public. Many Tatars were literate in their own language, as we can see from the fact that 930 works in the Tatar language were published in Kazan’ between 1801 and 1855. In comparison, 1,463 books were published in all the other provincial presses (those outside Moscow and St. Petersburg) during that time.24 Despite more than two dozen requests for a Tatar-language newspaper in the nineteenth century, such a newspaper was published only in 1905. Several newspapers in other Eastern languages were published during the nineteenth century.25 In general, the new universities did stimulate publishing in their districts, though.
18The creation of new universities was part of Alexander I’s interest in reform early on in his reign. Alexander was particularly interested in providing future state employees with an education that was equal to the best in Europe, both as a matter of prestige and to ensure that Russia did not fall behind Europe. Having come to power after the assassination of his erratic and generally disliked father, Paul, the new emperor raised high hopes among the public for a fresh start. In 1801, Alexander called together a group of his friends and created the Secret Committee, which discussed plans for reform, including of the university system, which at the time consisted of universities in Moscow, Vilnius and Tartu (Dorpat). Within the Secret Committee there was a debate over the sort of education needed.
19By 1802, the committee had generally settled on Göttingen as the model for Russian universities.26 Founded in 1734, Göttingen was one of the first modern universities, with an emphasis on politics, history, mathematics and the sciences, which were useful for future civil servants, rather than the traditional subjects of theology and philosophy.27 In addition, by the late eighteenth century, Göttingen professors articulated the idea of the research university, in which scholarship was linked to teaching, within a context of academic freedom and faculty autonomy that would prove influential up to the present.28
20Alexander’s Secret Committee discussed where to establish new universities, and committee member Christopher Meiners, a historian of higher education, argued that they should be founded away from the capital in order to decrease state influence.29 Thus, instead of a group of universities clustered around the center, universities were established in Kharkiv and Kazan’, as well as in the capital, St. Petersburg. Kharkiv and Kazan’ were major administrative centers with pre-existing secondary schools that could be reshaped to provide higher education for the many civil servants needed in the western and eastern regions of the Russian Empire.30
21In the 1750s, Kazan’ had already become the center of learning for the Urals and Siberia. The founding of Moscow University in 1755 was directly linked to the establishment of the first provincial gymnasium, or classical high school, in Kazan’, three years later. The curator of Moscow University, I. I. Shuvalov, wished to spread education to Siberia and asked academician and explorer of Siberia Johann Eberhard Fischer for advice on where to establish a gymnasium. Due to the sparse population of Siberia, Fischer suggested that it be founded in Kazan’, which served as the gateway to Siberia.31 Empress Elizabeth Petrovna ordered the founding of two Kazan’ gymnasia on July 21, 1758: one for nobles and one for people of various ranks (raznochintsy), as was the case with the gymnasia in Moscow. The teachers in Kazan’ were drawn from those at Moscow University and the gymnasia were funded from Moscow University’s budget.32 Important figures, including the poet Gavrila Derzhavin, studied at the Kazan’ gymnasium. The gymnasium was turned into a university by government order. On November 5, 1804, the government proclaimed the founding of Kazan’ University, but this was a formal matter only, as the Kazan’ gymnasium was renamed Kazan’ University and its teachers became professors there.33
22The educational districts gave universities a built-in audience and a great deal of influence over the education of the regions’ students. The universities had to deal with hiring and firing teachers, establishing schools, and overseeing curricula. In each university, a School Committee (uchilishchnyi komitet), composed of professors, dealt with a constant stream of correspondence about the lower-level schools. While this was a heavy burden on professors’ time, it also meant they influenced what students were taught at the lower level. When regional identity developed within the university, it could also reach a large audience through the educational district.
23One of the more onerous duties committee members had to face was the inspection trips around the district, which were extremely long, due to the vast distances involved. Making the situation worse was the very small number of professors at Kazan’. While Kharkiv University had nine professors and 11 assistant professors to begin with, at Kazan’ there were only two professors and four assistant professors when the university opened.34 Such trips exposed the faculty members to the great diversity within the region, and provided them with a direct means to collect information on the geographical, ethnographic and economic aspects of the district.35 Inspection trips could be exhausting and dangerous. In 1809, Petr Sergeevich Kondyrev, assistant professor of political science, geography and history, and Ivan Ipatovich Zapol’skii, assistant professor of mathematics and physics, set off on such a trip to Orenburg province. Zapol’skii, who proposed the creation of the first newspaper in Kazan’, Kazanskie izvestiia, fell ill in Ufa and died in 1810.36 Kondyrev would be the main force shaping the second version of the newspaper.
24The new Kazan’ Educational District did lead to the spread of schools at the elementary and secondary levels. In 1804, there were 45 popular schools (narodnoe uchilishche) with 2304 students and 95 teachers that had once been under the control of the Provincial Welfare Boards (Prikaz obshchestvennogo prizreniia) and were funded by voluntary donations.37 By 1811, the number of schools had risen to 61 and by 1825, there were 92 schools, with 441 teachers for 6621 students.38 This was part of Alexander I’s larger vision for universities that would administer their own district and oversee their development.
25The creation of universities with the responsibility to identify regional needs and to oversee education throughout their districts led to the articulation of regional identities within the new universities and districts. This chapter will trace this in Kazan’ in the 1810s, but it is useful to note that a parallel process occurred in Kharkiv. Alexander I chose Kharkiv over Kiev partly as a result of the lobbying of Vasilii Karazin, a Kharkiv nobleman. Karazin’s vision—of a university in which most of the subjects could only be studied by nobles—lost out to Alexander’s need for educated civil servants from a range of estates.39 I. E. Sreznevskii, a professor of literature at Kharkiv University and a member of Karazin’s circle, established a journal titled Ukrainskii Vestnik (The Ukrainian Herald), whose goal was to “discover all the information dealing with this region (zdeshnego kraia).”40 Working within an Enlightenment framework, Ukrainskii Vestnik praised Ukrainian nobles and peasants for being model members of the Russian Empire but did not argue that the Ukrainian language was a language of culture.41 In contrast, Ukrainskii zhurnal (The Ukrainian Journal), founded in 1823 by A. V. Sklabovskii, adjunct professor of literature at Kharkiv University, drew upon Romanticism to celebrate Ukrainian specificity in language, history and culture as worthy of European-wide attention and praise. Ukrainskii zhurnal drew upon the teachers and administrators of the Kharkiv educational district as its audience.42 This Romantic regionalism was not yet a political movement, but it did provide the raw materials for a later political nationalism.
26Later, in the 1850s and 1860s, Kazan’ University became the center of a new vision of regionalism, as developed by Kazan’ professor of Russian history A. P. Shchapov, who envisioned a federalist state composed of regions and who was himself half Buriat.43 His views would inspire Siberian regionalists, who wrote about the need for a United States of Siberia, possibly to be federated with the United States of America; they were arrested after their proclamation to that effect was found in 1865, and were exiled away from Siberia. One of the regionalists lived long enough to take part in the attempt to create an independent Siberia during the Russian Civil War.44
27The creation of new universities in Kharkiv and Kazan’ with responsibilities for overseeing educational districts in their region would lead to the creation of regional identities in Ukraine and Siberia. In Ukraine, this would be transformed into national identity over time, while in Siberia it remained as a regional identity. A knowledge of the structure of the district and university is thus crucial to understanding the nature of the regional reading public, which emerged out of these regional educational institutions. The rest of the chapter explores the conflicts over the role of this public in the 1810s.
2. Early Attempts to Study the Region
28Before the creation of Kazanskie izvestiia, there were attempts to study the region without reaching out to a larger public. Two voluntary associations founded in 1806, each in their own way, were interested in the region around Kazan’. Disputes among faculty members ended the first, while the second was closed due to the fears of a retrograde curator. Failing to engage a larger public limited their impact. The lesson was not lost on those who followed.
29Although the state had proclaimed the existence of Kazan’ University in 1804, the actual social context of the university remained the traditional and patriarchal world of the Kazan’ gymnasium, which was ruled by its director, I. F. Iakovkin, with an iron hand. The curator (popechitel’) of the Kazan’ Educational District, Stepan Iakovich Rumovskii, an important St. Petersburg scientist with authoritarian tendencies, personally chose Iakovkin, who was well trained in German and French, had co-authored one of the first textbooks in Russian history, and was likely connected to Masonic circles, as was Rumovskii.45 Iakovkin became director of the university and gymnasium and inspector of students. For these posts, he received 4900 rubles a year and regularly used state funds for his own purposes.46 Iakovkin ignored the existence of university autonomy.47
30Interest in the region was fostered by voluntary associations and by the ideas of Adam Smith. As Joseph Bradley has noted, the Russian government engaged society to stimulate the economic development of the country and thus sponsored such voluntary associations as the Free Economic Society (Vol’noe ekonomicheskoe obshchestvo), founded in 1765 with Catherine the Great’s assistance.48 The Society was interested in gathering information on economic aspects of Russian regions. In early 1801, Free Economic Society member Weidemeier wrote to Alexander I to ask for permission to disseminate a questionnaire so that the society would be able “to see if there are shortcomings in existing institutions (zavedeniiiakh) and industries and occupy itself with means to remove [the shortcomings] and in this, of course, devote ourselves to the necessary spread, both inside and perhaps outside of Russia, of the best and most foundational understanding of wealth and its power.”49 This was a rather audacious suggestion, given that it was asking subjects to critique the institutions of power and suggest improvements. This questionnaire was nevertheless disseminated to provincial institutions and individuals and served as the basis of several descriptions of particular provinces.
31As with many other Russian institutions in the early nineteenth century, the Free Economic Society was influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith.50 In line with Smith’s ideas, the questionnaire sought to discover the foundations of Russia’s wealth by looking at her industry and institutions, the latter of which was not further defined, but which seemed to include the bureaucracy and perhaps larger social structures such as serfdom. In addition, since a questionnaire was sent out in 1790 to governors and had only brought about one reply, Weidermeier asked that the governors be asked to inform “not only their subordinate bureaucrats, but private persons” of the questionnaire and ask them to take part.51 Thus, the questionnaire went beyond the government to invite a public to take part that was still in the process of being conceptualized.
32On March 10, 1806, the council of the Kazan’ gymnasium petitioned curator Rumovskii for permission to “establish a society (obshchestvo) in order to write a description of Kazan’ province in conformity with that [program] announced, with the emperor’s approval, by the St. Petersburg Free Economic Society.”52 In order to distinguish this organization from others, I will refer to it as the Society to Study the Province, although it was not given a proper name in the document. The Society to Study the Province was an early example of learning about a region by dividing up the work between several people. The first version of Kazanskie izvestiia would take it even further by inviting the public to take part.
33The document proposed that the unnamed society would divide up the work between its members: Iakovkin, the patriarchal director of the gymnasium/ university, would write the parts on geography and topography, Karl Fuchs, later a noted geographer and naturalist of the Kazan’ region, would cover zoology, biology and economy, while the medical professor I. P. Kamenskii would deal with everything related to medicine.53 Zapol’skii would provide work on physics as needed, as would Friedrich Evest, an adjunct in medical sciences, on chemistry.54
34Another society, the Kazan’ Society of Lovers of the Russian Language (Kazanskoe obshchestvo liubitelei otechestvennoi slovesnosti), was also founded in 1806 and created two manuscript journals, Arkadskie pastushki (The Arcadian Shepherds) and Zhurnal nashikh zaniatii (The Journal of our Exercises), mainly of literary works, including the student writings of the future Slavophile patriarch Sergei Aksakov. The Kazan’ Society, in its works, presented Asia as both familiar and strange, both next to home and alien. The Society also published a book, The Celebration of the Society on December 12, 1814 (Torzhestvo obshchestva Dekabria 12 dnia 1814 goda) and had plans for a larger second volume, but the arrival of the retrograde inspector, and later curator, M. L. Magnitskii resulted in the closure of the Society.55 Although its aim was to combat literary traditionalists rather than to study the region, the location of the Society on what it saw as the borders of Asia influenced the content of their poems, speeches, and stories.
35The Society to Study the Province was unable to complete its work due to a serious conflict over faculty autonomy in 1805-6. The leader of the opposition was Peter Daniel Friedrich Tseplin, professor of history and economy. Others involved were German and Russian colleagues, including Grigorii Ivanovich Kartashevskii, adjunct professor of mathematics and Zapol’skii. Tseplin and Kartashevskii wrote to Rumovskii explaining their protest as a defense of university autonomy, but Rumovskii allowed Iakovkin to fire them, as well as Zapol’skii, for disobedience to superiors, which would have made getting jobs elsewhere quite difficult.56 Of the members of the Society to Study the Province, Kamenskii and Zapol’skii sided with those who argued for the promise of faculty autonomy, while Fuchs refused to be drawn in to the debate.
36Governor Mansurov, who later supported Zapol’skii’s proposal for the first version of Kazanskie izvestiia, protested the firings to Minister of Internal Affairs Viktor Pavlovich Kochubei, saying that the public supported the professors and that parents were dissatisfied and some had withdrawn their sons from the university.57 Because high-level officials in the Ministry of Education distrusted the German Protestant roots of university autonomy, they allowed Iakovkin to crush it in Kazan’.58 However, Zapol’skii was later rehired.
37Supported by Rumovskii, Iakovkin felt he could then do as he pleased and misappropriated funds from the gymnasium, allowing him to build a house and buy ten serfs, failed to teach his classes, drank excessively, and was capricious toward the requests of his faculty.59 Even his former student, Kondyrev, who owed his job to Iakovkin, was dismayed, writing in his diary in 1810 that Iakovkin “is lazy and decadent; my sincere desire is to tell him this due to my feelings of gratitude toward him, but fear and his conceit do not allow it.” Even so, Kondyrev wrote at another time that “there is some coldness from I. F. [Iakovkin] toward me for telling the truth.”60
38Unsurprisingly, the Society for the Study of the Province did not fulfill its promise of jointly writing an economic description. By 1813, the Free Economic Society had received 12 responses, including from Astrakhan’ and Iaroslavl, but not from Kazan’.61 Despite this, it seems likely that Zapol’skii’s experience in this proposed society influenced his later proposal for Kazanskie izvestiia, which, like the Free Economic Society’s questionnaire, had a strongly economic focus.
3. The Start of Kazanskie Izvestiia: a Public of Producers
39The first version of Kazanskie izvestiia sought to reach a reading public of merchants and others engaged in the market who would create, it was hoped, a collective economic chronicle of the town of Kazan’ and its region. The ideas of Adam Smith shaped the newspaper, which sought to discover the wealth of regions through sharing the work of its description among those who had property. The Free Economic Society and its many attempts to engage provincial institutions and then individuals in creating descriptions of provinces was a key influence. Although the paper was too short-lived to meet its goals, it inspired later provincial newspapers. The first version of the newspaper sought to create a market public to produce knowledge of itself and its city in the same way that this public produced the wide range of goods that supplied Kazan’.
40Kazan’ University professor Zapol’skii, who would later die in Ufa on an inspection trip, proposed the newspaper. His patron, the Kazan’ civil governor Boris Aleksandrovich Mansurov, brought the project to the attention of the Ministry of Police, later the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which sponsored the paper. Regardless, the Ministry of Education took over control of the paper later on in 1811 due to struggles over university autonomy in Kazan’ and to the desire of the Ministry of Education to control the flow of information rather than allow an emerging public to produce that information itself.
41A year after the failed attempt to create the Society for the Study of the Province, Zapol’skii proposed a newspaper in 1807 that would instead create a sort of economic chronicle written by the participants in the market themselves. After his death, it would begin publication as Kazanskie izvestiia in 1811. The newspaper would also stimulate competition and the economy more broadly, rather than simply describing it, he argued. This would be a productive public in every sense of the word.
42A sense of municipal pride in Kazan’ as one of Russia’s capitals was evident in Zapol’skii’s proposal:
It is known to all in the enlightened Russian public (rossiiskaia publika), that the provincial capital Kazan’, among capitals, occupies first place in the list of best towns. Being the center of Siberian trade, it possesses an advantage over others in that it has very important government institutions… and is densely populated, being settled by a great many merchants, nobles and other classes of residents, which inevitably creates an attitude among the residents of Kazan’ exactly like that found in the capitals.62
43Zapol’skii argued that just as in the capitals, Kazan’ needed a newspaper to serve “the mutual needs of the residents.”63 He emphasized that the audience would include the bureaucracy and the nobility, and also especially the merchantry, both Russian and non-Russian, traders, factory owners and so on, who were invited to advertise in the paper. The argument that Kazan’ was a city equal to that of the capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg was one that had implications beyond the economic sphere. Moscow, the ancient capital, and St. Petersburg, Peter the Great’s window on the west, were associated with the center and the north, while Kazan’ was presented as the capital of the east through its trade with Siberia.
44The market was the focal point of the proposal. After the description of Kazan’ claiming its status as another capital, the rest of the proposal dealt with economics. The reading public was primarily presented as those who “provide themselves with property” by serving “as mediators between buyers and sellers.”64 This definition emphasized property as the key idea of the paper, and trade as the means of creating property. This echoed a Smithian idea of economics rather than the needs of the state. The proposal turned to the needs of the market first, arguing that those who wanted to take part in it were hindered by a lack of information about prices and the people who had goods to sell or the need to buy.65
45According to this proposal, Kazanskie izvestiia would inform the public (publika) about public trades, the repayment of obrok, or quitrent, by serfs, supplies and contracts, and job announcements.66 All these events were connected through the market and might involve people of various estates. Only after the discussion of the public more broadly did Zapol’skii begin to list the ways in which members of individual estates—nobles, merchants, artisans, and various types of people—might interact with the market, but these were simply modifications of what the broader public would need to know.67
46The reading public of the newspaper was to be market oriented. This is also visible in Zapol’skii’s plan to gather 500 subscribers before asking the university to set in motion the petitions necessary to start the newspaper. In the proposal, he describes how the university could announce to the public, most likely in a physical marketplace, the number of subscribers that had come forward and the number still needed.68 This recalls the definition of a public in Russian as a group of people gathered together in a particular place, like the audience in a theater. According to Zapol’skii, 500 subscribers would provide 2040 rubles to the university treasury, 1000 of which would be pure profit.69 Each subscription would thus be around 5 rubles a year.
47Zapol’skii focused on the needs of Kazan’ as a town. While he did mention that “not only neighboring but also faraway provinces will find it useful to present various information for publication in Kazanskie izvestiia,” this comes as almost an afterthought as well as an assurance that income for the publication of announcements would be substantial.70 The reading public for the first version of Kazanskie izvestiia was primarily to reside in Kazan’ and to be motivated by competition, not just in their business dealings, but in ensuring that the number of subscribers was met. The public announcements stating how many subscribers were still needed were likely in the hope that those who had already subscribed would prevail on those in the crowd who had not yet done so. Similarly, the clerk for the newspaper, the proposal suggested, should be paid a percentage of the money raised for the paper, rather than a salary, which would insure that he was “motivated to increase the income for the university.”71
48While Russia was an autocracy, the government was not monolithic, and a canny petitioner could appeal to different parts of it to reach his goals, especially if those included the encouragement of economic life in the provinces. This allowed Zapol’skii to negotiate between ministries. Although Zapol’skii had originally petitioned the Ministry of Education, his superiors, for permission, they were reluctant to act on the proposal. As a result, Zapol’skii petitioned Governor Mansurov, who had earlier interceded for Zapol’skii in his conflict with Iakovkin, restating the basic plan and adding that the newspaper should be printed both in Russian and in Tatar. On December 22, 1808, Mansurov petitioned the Minister of Police Prince A. B. Kurakin for permission to establish the newspaper which “would be useful not only for this town and its districts, but even for other neighboring provinces, especially Siberian ones, and, along with that, not only for Russian subjects, but also for peoples of Asiatic origin, as the news would also be printed in Tatar,” which would be profitable for the press.72 When Kurakin asked Minister of Education Count A. K. Razumovskii for his opinion, the latter objected to Zapol’skii’s work as both a university professor and as an editor, and also refused to allow publication in Tatar because the Asiatic Press at the university had a shortage of Tatar type and the font was also old.73 Although the governor was willing to absorb the cost of a new Tatar font, and the Committee of Ministers and Alexander I approved the Kazanskie izvestiia as a bi-lingual newspaper, after the death of Zapol’skii in 1810, no more was said about printing in Tatar.
49When the Kazanskie izvestiia began publication on April 19, 1811, it did indeed focus on economics, as Zapol’skii had proposed before his death. It consisted mainly of government announcements, economic news, advertisements, and classifieds, all in Russian.74 Local author and landlord D. N. Zinov’ev was the editor; he and Zapol’skii had already rented a press in the governor’s office for the paper before the latter died.75 The focus was on the town of Kazan’ and Kazan’ province rather than the larger area of the Kazan’ Educational District. It was a business-oriented newspaper, reporting on the exchange rate, the tariffs on food, ships docking in Kazan’, and various other information of interest mainly to merchants and traders.76 For example, in the fourth issue, it reported that Kazan’ merchant Abdreshit Mustafin had discovered a way to create sal ammoniac from Russian materials.77 Surprisingly, it reported on local bureaucrats fired for engaging in illegal activity.78 This suggests either that the idea of the public as a judge of the activities of the state was not absent from this version of the paper or that punishment was seen as edifying for a receptive public.
50The third issue of the newspaper listed the rules for publication of announcements in the following rubrics: “the Kazan’ theater,” “buying and selling,” “from the merchantry and townspeople,” “from artists and artisans,” and “from the public (publika) in general.”79 Many advertisements listed serfs for sale and offered rewards for runaway serfs.80 While advertisements included listings of the courses that would be taught by Kazan’ University’s professors, most of the other announcements were of an economic nature. For example, the first issue included an announcement from the Kazan’ committee for the sale of state property with long lists of properties for sale in various parts of the province. It specifically noted that “not only nobles and bureaucrats have the right to buy these properties, but also merchants, townspeople and state peasants.”81 This underlines the broad audience for the paper and its interest in property as a means of bringing together those people engaged with it. Underlining the strong print culture in Kazan’, there were advertisements from bookstores and individuals selling books, along with announcements for new periodicals and books recently published.82 Readers who submitted classified advertisements were contributing to a tabulation of economic needs and the means for their supply.
51There were also glimpses of the description of the province that had been one of the original ideas of the abortive Society for the Study of the Province. An article on the town of Sviiazhsk provided an intriguing mixture of Catherinian-era topographical description, focusing on history and demography, with a lyrical appreciation of nature more in line with sentimentalism. A sketch of ruined mosques combined with an appreciation of a distant monastery, where elders were “living for God alone” showed that landscape description could also take part in the displacement of the Tatars mentioned earlier as one of the reasons for the founding of the educational district.83
52Kazanskie izvestiia was itself an independent economic entity and partly for this reason, Minister of Education Razumovskii had been hostile to the publication since its founding. The Ministry of Education was uncomfortable with a public that could produce its own knowledge outside the control of the ministry and so stopped the experiment. By July 22, 1811, Razumovskii had received Alexander I’s permission to order the transfer of the newspaper to the university. However, the experience of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with Kazanskie izvestiia was very important in creating a precedent for, among other things, the creation of provincial newspapers in forty-two provinces in 1837.84 In fact, Zapol’skii’s proposal was strikingly similar to the original program for these newspapers, which also focused on economic news and sought to stimulate the Russian economy through greater knowledge and competition in the market. In the original 1828 proposal for the provincial newspapers, Minister of Finance E. F. Kankrin stated that they should “be like Kazanskie izvestiia” in focusing on local economic material and selling classified advertisements.85
53The attempt to create a market-based public that would produce knowledge of itself as well as the goods needed for the city ran into resistance from the Ministry of Education, which preferred a top-down approach. The Ministry was not against all newspapers, but an independent one was a threat. Even under its own control, however, there was a conflict over whether a regional public should merely consume knowledge or should also produce it.
4. Kazanskie Izvestiia Under Kazan’ University: Conflicts Over a Regional Public
54When the university took over the publication of the paper, a conflict over the definition and function of its reading public emerged. On the one side were the conservatives, including the representatives of the ministries, mainly concerned that ministerial precedence and control was not challenged. They were supported by conservative faculty like Kazan’ University professor of Russian literature, Grigorii Nikolaevich Gorodchaninov, who was chosen by the curator to be the editor of the newspaper. From their point of view, the content of the paper would most likely be reprints from the central paper or translations from foreign works, rather than generated from readers. For them, the public was there to consume, not to produce, knowledge.86
55On the other side was professor of history and political economy Kondyrev, whom we met earlier as Iakovkin’s former student. He was also a liberal and a follower of Adam Smith and envisioned the paper as serving the needs of the region. The regional content of the paper also served to justify the participation of an educated public—in practice, mainly university professors and directors of schools throughout the Kazan’ Educational District—in its composition. The ministries were ambivalent about such a public. Although gaining information about the region was useful to the state, the process of engaging individuals might lead such people to believe that they could critique the ministries. This section argues that the conflict between these sides shaped the early years of the paper and gives us a greater understanding of the tension between the visions of a receptive but mute public the ministries wanted and that of a regional public that could describe features of interest to the state but might also become critical of it.
56Kondyrev’s vision of a productive and critical public became more prominent over time. In the first issue of 1812, a Kazanskie izvestiia editorial noted that since it was published “for the use of our co-citizens (sograzhdan), thus letters from any office, society, and person, along with the discussion of what specifically is needed for them to know, do, and so on, as well as what contributes to the well-being of others has been and will be received by the university with satisfaction.”87 Officials, societies, and private individuals were all able to discuss what was needed, according to this statement, on the pages of the newspaper. This was not the vision of the vertical control of ministries endorsed by the curator and Gorodchaninov, but rather of a public capable of judging a wide range of subjects.
57The paper was part of a larger conflict over the study of the state and society, particularly in the field of statistics. Statistics in the eighteenth century had been focused on the needs of the state and especially on cataloguing its resources. It did not clearly delineate the state from non-state areas such as the market, but rather saw resources as part of the state, whether in the market or elsewhere. This type of statistics had its origin in the Germanies and was called cameralism. By the early nineteenth century, a new kind of statistics, influenced by the work of Adam Smith, had emerged in Russia and elsewhere. Instead of describing the state, Smithian statistics focused on the well-being of the people and its productive capacities, which they saw as only partly under the state’s control.
58Leading Smithian statisticians were critical of serfdom, which depressed the economic activities of the majority of the population by depriving them of freedom and choice within the market. One of the most important Smithian statisticians, K. I. Arsen’ev, ran afoul of his more traditional cameralist colleagues at St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute (later University) and lost his professorship. His anti-serfdom views were well known, but the future Nicholas I nevertheless chose him to tutor his son, the future Alexander II, who would abolish serfdom in 1861.88
59Statistics at this time was more descriptive than mathematical and involved the exposition and sometimes the critique of state and societal institutions. Smith’s focus on the market as an arena of where individual choice could be exercised helped statisticians to begin to conceive of it as separate from the state, in contrast to the earlier views of cameralists. The conflict between cameralists and Smithian statisticians was also present in Kazan’.
60Although Kondyrev argued for a new vision of the public, the newspaper itself was established in a very bureaucratic, rather than market-driven, way. The curator of the Kazan’ Educational District and the Minister of Education were both highly motivated to take control over the press itself, with the latter prevailing upon the Minister of Police to withdraw his protection of the newspaper by pointing out the high number of typographical mistakes—a problem that would continue after its transfer.89 Governor Mansurov, after receiving an order from the Minister of Police that the press was to be transferred to the university, was not in a position to protect it any longer. Then the process of taking the press from its editor, Zinov’ev, began.
61The gymnasium council had originally proposed that they continue to work with Zinov’ev as the publisher of the paper, but the curator wanted the university to have complete control over the press, and thus said that Alexander I’s will was for it to be under the control of local authorities so that other government offices and employees would send in information.90 We can see the conflict between the ministry’s vision of vertical power and the earlier idea of a public motivated by interest in the market.
62The curator also ordered that the university increase the income from the paper and create a publishing plan for it. Iakovkin responded by saying that the costs for each sheet of paper printed were five kopecks for a raw sheet of paper, and seven for a white one. He stated that there were only 120 subscribers and that the annual subscription fee was only five rubles. There were not enough printers, and often the newspaper was delivered to the censor late, which made it late to the subscribers. This, plus the high number of typographical errors, had frustrated the subscribers.91 Although the costs of printing each page were only in kopecks, the gymnasium council decided to set the new price at 5 rubles 50 kopecks an issue for delivery within Kazan’ and seven rubles for mail delivery. The gymnasium council agreed on November 29, 1811, that all gymnasia and district schools would be required to pay seven rubles per issue out of the money set aside for the upkeep of the school buildings.92 Given that the paper was published weekly, this would bring in an extortionate 364 rubles for a year’s subscription from each such institution located outside Kazan’ city limits. The curator later confirmed these prices for 1812.93
63And yet an interest in the market was not lacking in the newspaper. In particular, Kondyrev was part of the new Smithian statistics that was beginning to emerge at the St. Petersburg Pedagogical Institute. One leading statistician was Mikhail Balug’ianskii, who was part of a larger shift in Russian statistics from the cameralist listing of the possessions of the state to a Smithian analysis of the well-being of the people as the origin of national wealth.94 Kondyrev characterized Mikhail Balug’ianskii as “one of the most outstanding and most scholarly of our statisticians today” and praised a journal article in which Balugian’skii defended Smith’s views on how wealth was created and circulated.95
64In 1812, Kondyrev published his translation of Georg Sartorius’ Foundations of National Wealth, which included a long introduction by Kondyrev that was the first Russian history of economics written by a Russian in that language.96 This work by Sartorius was a summary of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which Kondyrev considered too long to use as a textbook. In the introduction, Kondyrev paid special attention to Smith’s works, providing a synopsis of the Russian translation of The Wealth of Nations, along with a bibliography of other foreign-language translations of that work.
65This remarkably candid historical survey of Russian statistics and political economy was allowed to be published, but Kondyrev had to pay the university press for printing it. While the original agreement was that it would be taken out of his salary over six months, the costs were higher than expected.97 Kondyrev raised part of the money by creating a list of subscribers, who included institutions such as Kazan’ University, which bought 50 copies and the Astrakhan’ gymnasium (25 copies). Individuals included university professors, university and gymnasium students, priests and higher clergy, and merchants. Subscribers came from provinces such as Kazan’, Penza, Tambov and Orenburg.98 The subscriptions only covered part of the full cost of 471 rubles, 46 3/4 kopecks for printing.99 Kondyrev paid off the costs over the course of 1812, with the last payment received by the press on December 4, 1812.100
66Kondyrev’s Smithian interests are also visible in an article he wrote in 1811 and which provoked a sharp debate with Gorodchaninov. The article, “On the Makar’ev Fair, Nizhnii Novgorod (Statistical News),” provided a Smithian analysis of the goods bought and sold at this fair, which, while it was open, was the center of Russian economic life. He noted that there was greater supply than demand for many goods, which forced down prices, leading to more sales; this was particularly the case with Asian goods.101 Kondyrev stated that most of the people there were “Russian subjects, as well as those from Asian lands (Rossiiskikh poddannykh, tak i iz Aziiskikh zemel’), while there were very few Europeans. Persians traded their silks and cottons, Bukharans and Khivans the latter in great quantity; there were also Indians, Georgians and others.”102 The Russian economy was thus presented as closely tied to the East, perhaps even more so than to the West. He also showed in detail why the total value of goods brought to the fair was around 131,800,000 rubles and not the 58,155,000 rubles given in Severnaia Pochta (Northern Post), a St. Petersburg newspaper focusing on economic and foreign news that was published by the Post Office under the Ministry of Internal Affairs.103
67Here, Kondyrev focused on trade and the well-being of the population, along the lines of other Smithian statisticians. The merchants who were Russian subjects and those from Asian lands played a key role in tying Russian trade together and in making Russia an international trading partner. At the same time, the new statistics provided a scientific basis from which to critique official statistics, as Kondyrev provided an extended discussion of the total value of goods at the fair in order to show that the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ estimate was far too low. Kondyrev was speaking back to the ministries by taking on a role of someone who understood the region better than central bureaucrats did. On the one hand, the ministries needed information from the regions. On the other, they disliked any criticism.
68This article caused conflict among members of the censorship committee, composed of other professors and given the task of censoring the newspaper and all other publications in the district. While Kondyrev’s presentation assumed that economic information should be made widely available to the public, the more conservative Gorodchaninov saw it as belonging to the state and possibly as state secrets. Gorodchaninov did not agree with the rest of the censorship committee’s approval of the article, stating that “it was not attested to by the chairman of the municipal duma (gradskii golova) of the merchant estate or by the police.”104 Gorodchaninov saw statistics in the older, cameralist spirit as a listing of the possessions of the state rather than an outline of the productivity of the people.
69As a result of Gorodchaninov’s opposition to the article, Kazanskie izvestiia shifted from a post-publication to a pre-publication censorship regime.105 Kondyrev was not given a reprimand, however, and in this he was more fortunate than the Smithian statisticians in St. Petersburg. In 1821, cameralist statistician E. Ziablovskii assisted the reactionary curator of St. Petersburg University in putting Smithian statisticians there on trial, which resulted in their expulsion from the university, adversely affecting the teaching of statistics in St. Petersburg for several decades.106
70Kondyrev and Gorodchaninov also fought over the scope of the new Kazanskie izvestiia. Because the university had taken control of Kazanskie izvestiia, the professors needed to create a new plan that would determine what could and could not be published. This would be used by the Ministry of Education to determine if any article had deviated from the plan.
71At first Gorodchaninov and the conservatives seemed to have gained the upper hand. Kondyrev argued for wide-ranging regional coverage, even including political news, rather than simply copying the plan for Moskovskie vedomosti (Moscow News) and filling it with reprints and translations, as Gorodchaninov and other more conservative professors had wanted. On July 19, 1811, the gymnasium council met, forming a six-man committee that included both Gorodchaninov and Kondyrev and which, after a lengthy meeting, agreed to a plan that would be divided into three parts like Moskovskie vedomosti: a scholarly part, with news on literature, natural history, weather, technology, statistics, agriculture, and chemistry. The stated audience were the directors of schools throughout the educational district. The civil part incorporated some of the earlier paper’s interest in the market, with news of sales, and arriving and departing ships and caravans, with lists of goods and their owners. In addition, it would print various legal papers, such as deeds of sale and on the mortgaging of serfs, which had been approved at local governmental offices. Finally, a meteorological part would chronicle the weather.107 Broad as this seemed, it was not focused on the needs of the region.
72The next stage of the battle for the plan led to the victory of Kondyrev and a more regionally based plan that would have encouraged its readers to also become writers. At the August 17, 1811 meeting of the council, where Gorodchaninov stated that he needed subscriptions to foreign journals and research assistants to help him translate them for the paper, while Kondyrev presented a three-page plan for the publication of the newspaper that focused on regional news, including a rubric for “political news” (politicheskie izvestiia). Its inclusion of political news, a monopoly of central official Russian papers since Peter the Great, was especially striking. Including political news in the program was another aspect of according Kazan’ equal status with the other capitals. Despite Iakovkin’s criticism of the plan, supported by Gorodchaninov and the assistant editor, adjunct professor of Russian literature, V. M. Perevoshchikov, the council approved Kondyrev’s plan by a majority, if not unanimous, vote.108 This suggests that Kondyrev had a considerable amount of support for his more regionally-based vision among the council.
73On August 28, 1811, the curator approved Kondyrev’s plan, aside from the section on political news, which he said was not the business of any administration in Kazan’, particularly not regarding news of European governments, which was chosen specifically by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in St. Petersburg for publication there.109 In addition to political news, Kondyrev’s plan called for articles on literature, articles on jurisprudence, history, medicine, geography, philosophy and the arts and sciences.110 At first, the Ministry of Education would not allow any political news; however, in spring 1812, the newspaper was allowed to republish political news from Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti (St. Petersburg News), as well as news from the foreign press as long as it had no connection with Russia.111 Although the ministries asserted their rights to their own territory, they were willing to cede considerable leeway to study of the region.
74Kazan’ University also had the ability to censor the paper through its own censorship committee. As part of a liberal censorship law promulgated in 1804, the universities had control over what they and others published in their educational districts. A faculty committee was to oversee all publications in what scholars have argued was the most liberal treatment of the press during the Imperial period. The tone of the censorship law, shaped by reformers, was clear in article 22:
A careful and reasonable investigation of any truth which relates to the faith, humanity, civil order, legislation, administration or any other area of government not only is not to be subjected to modest censorship strictures but also to be permitted complete press freedom, which advances the cause of education.112
75The law drew upon Emmanuel Kant’s idea of the difference between public and private reason, which allowed for public figures to question the state in their capacity as private individuals, even as they were bound to obey in their public roles.113 Only works that were against “religion, the government, morality, or the personal honor of a citizen” were to be banned, and the ban was to be confirmed by a committee vote. The committees were instructed to interpret works in the way most advantageous to the author.114
76The curator’s rejection of political news within the plan required the censorship committee to produce a new one, which they did after a considerable amount of debate. Although the revised plan excluded political news, the new rubrics were so broad that nearly anything could be published. At the committee meeting of October 4, 1811, they approved Kondyrev’s new plan, which had three parts: first, announcements from the government; second, interesting news in the following rubrics: trading news, agriculture and industry, technology, statistics, a chronicle of military affairs and military news, jurisprudence, history, geography, philosophy, art, exact sciences, physics and chemistry, medicine, literature, and scholarly affairs; third, governmental, social (obshchestvennaia) and private announcements.115 Military news might also provide a pretext to include foreign news.
77The once-again revised plan also ran into problems with ministries that wanted to assert control over their intellectual territory. On November 29, 1811, the curator informed the censorship committee that the sections of the plan dealing with jurisprudence, philosophy and medical news had not been approved. Other ministries dealt with jurisprudence, philosophy might lead to scholarly debate, and the medical-surgical academy already published its own journal, the curator stated.116 Again, we see that the ministries did not want to involve the public in producing knowledge that they felt should be under their own control.
78In response, the committee argued for a broader understanding of the role of the paper in communicating information to a larger public for the general good, rather than being a government mouthpiece. The committee’s response, presumably written by Kondyrev, asked the curator if the ban on jurisprudence extended to decrees from the government and if the ban on medical news dealt only with “profound medical investigations or with everything that might be related to the general good (obshchaia pol’za) and should be given as information to everyone, such as, for instance, on livestock epidemics and on measures to prevent them.”117
79In January 1812, the censorship committee met to discuss the news that the curator had restricted the newspaper’s program in ways that challenged the idea of a public that produced knowledge and, possibly, the critique of ministries. The curator forbade the publication of material in the government announcements section, or, as Kondyrev’s plan put it: “new laws, new institutions, new creation of courts, appointment of bureaucrats, etc.” Similarly, articles dealing with jurisprudence and “the decisions of provincial and district courts, interesting to many” were forbidden. Military news (“information on new foreign fortresses; military cunning, old and new; impressive affairs of domestic warriors; victories of Russian troops, taken from Russian newspapers; land and sea”) could only be presented as long as it did not put Russian troops in a bad light.118 The ministries did not want to have the public, however defined, discuss their activities. Similarly, medical news was forbidden for a second time. And yet the paper continued to publish articles on livestock epidemics and means to combat them, as well as Fuch’s articles on the health of Kazan’ residents.119
80Another statement on the aim of the newspaper came on April 6, 1812, and focused more on the local needs of the residents and did not mention the government. “The goal of the publication of Kazanskie izvestiia is for the local benefit (mestnaia pol’za) of residents of Kazan’, other provinces bordering it and the provinces and countries that have many connections with it.”120 The local nature of the paper meant that reprints alone were not enough and that Kazan’ was connected to a wide range of places, which could all be of use to each other. This was a more circumspect statement of hopes than the one from January, however, as it did not mention discussion of government actions.
81Kondyrev and others may have attempted to expand the plan beyond its original bounds. On March 15, 1812, the censorship committee informed the curator that a section dealing with the arts—painting, drawing, architecture, dance, music, poetry and rhetoric—had been left out of the original plan due to a printing error. They knew that the curator had previously forbidden jokes, charades and other literary genres, but they hoped he understood it was a printing error that had banished the arts from the pages of the paper.121 Unfortunately, he failed to understand, probably assuming that they were trying to add to a program that had already been published, and refused to allow articles dealing with the arts.
82Despite the curator’s ruling, discussed at the October 26, 1811 censorship committee meeting, that novels, tales, epigrams, charades (and sermons) were not to be included, some literary works were published.122 On November 29, 1811, the co-editor V.M. Perevoshchikov, wrote a feuilleton titled “Conversation at a Ball,” which, he stated, aimed to “present the soul of the Kazan’ public.”123
83A new curator was even less comfortable with engaging the public. After the death of Rumovskii on September 16, 1812, M. A. Saltykov, a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was appointed the new curator of the Kazan’ Educational District.124 Saltykov was helpful for the university in that he realized that Iakovkin was stealing from it on a grand scale and sought to have him removed as director and took measures to strengthen the institution.125 But, toward the end of 1812, he saw no need to publish the Kondyrev plan in Kazanskie izvestiia, calling it “useless” to do so “as [the plan] does not concern the public, and is rather a set of rules for the editors of the newspaper to help them decide which articles should be published and which should not.”126 Again, we see a ministerial view of the public as simply a consumer of knowledge, rather than a producer.
84The idea of the public as producer of knowledge would soon be replaced with an even more intense focus on top-down edification of a passive public. In 1819, Prussian university students took part in terrorist acts against bureaucrats, which influenced a conservative turn in Alexander I’s educational policies. These acts deeply shook the emperor, as the Prussian university system had been one of the models for the Russian universities in 1804.127 Concerned also about the very low number of students (over the fourteen years of Kazan’ University’s existence, there had been 43 graduates, each of whom had cost the state around 40,000 rubles) and accounts of misappropriation of government funds, Alexander I named M. L. Magnitskii inspector of the university in 1819. While Magnitskii’s report, running over 5000 pages, detailed the serious administrative and financial misdeeds of Iakovkin and the resulting disorder within the university, it did not stop there. Instead, it noted that universities in Europe were like a raised dagger to the state and recommended that Kazan’ University be closed. Alexander I disagreed, and the university remained open, but with Magnitskii as the new curator. Magnitskii did carry out some positive changes, such as removing Iakovkin from his position due to his misappropriation of funds, and several other professors for ill health, lack of qualifications, or for alcoholism, and oversaw construction of the main building of Kazan’ University now seen as a symbol of the university.
85In 1820, Magnitskii replaced Kazanskie izvestiia with a monthly journal entitled Kazanskii vestnik (The Kazan’ Herald), which was designated as a means to the “edification of youth in Christian piety and good morals.”128 It lost much of its scholarly tone due to the demands of Magnitskii. Filled with popularizing theological pieces, the journal also continued to publish works describing the lands of the Kazan’ Educational District, along with foreign news, such as on the treatment of Christians under the Ottoman Empire.129 A supplement to Kazanskii vestnik entitled Pribavlenie k Kazanskomu Vestniku was also published weekly from 1821 to 1824, consisting of official notices, listings of persons arriving and leaving Kazan’, private announcements, along with observations of the weather.130
86Over time, Magnitskii’s policies became increasingly retrograde and obscurantist. Finally, he himself was deposed and arrested on December 1, 1825, for spending the money given to him for an annual inspection trip from St. Petersburg to Kazan’ for other purposes.131 Although the reign of Iakovkin was over, the tradition of misappropriation of funds and of ignoring university autonomy remained. For a time, the idea of a passive public receiving information prevailed over an active public creating knowledge of its own region, but the conflict would continue throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
87In conclusion, creating a regional press led to conflicts over what the nature of the regional public was and should be. Conservatives sought to continue the tradition of a public as at a theater, who would absorb the information provided by the state without talking back. For this, not much was needed besides reprints from the ministries’ own central publications and translations from appropriate Western periodicals. Liberals, following the ideas of Adam Smith, sought to foster a regional reading public, who would write as well as read about their region. The first version of Kazanskie izvestiia focused on a productive reading public, whose announcements would create local knowledge in the same way they produced goods for the market of the town of Kazan’. The second version was more focused on educators spread throughout the Kazan’ Educational District and had a broader view of their ability to critically engage with the needs of the region and the state. This might lead to criticism of the ministries, as well as greater knowledge for the center, though. The central state had to balance their need for information with their dislike of criticism and as a result, they did not immediately reject the idea of an active and critically minded regional reading public. Although the experiment would be suspended in the last, conservative, part of Alexander I’s reign, the regional public would later reemerge in Ukrainian and Siberian national and regional identities.
Notes de bas de page
1 The first was the short-lived Tambov News, established under Tambov governor and poet Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin.
2 A. K. Smith, “Information and Efficiency: Russian Newspapers, ca. 1700-1850,” in S. Franklin, K. Bowers (eds.), Information and Empire: Mechanisms of Communication in Russia (Cambridge, 2017), 185-211.
3 I. P. Ermolaev, Iu. I. Smykov, “Kazan’,” in A. M. Prokhorov et al. (eds.), Otechestvennaia istoriia: Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen do 1917 goda: Entsiklopediia (Moscow, 1996) vol. 2, 448; A. N. Biktasheva, Kazanskie gubernatory v dialogakh vlastei (pervaia polovina XIX veka) (Kazan’, 2008), 94. Statistics from the early nineteenth century vary considerably. Another source suggests that Kazan’ had a population of 30,000 by 1804, while a contemporary source suggests that there were more than 17,000 residents of Kazan’, of them 5,000 Tatars. E. A. Vishlenkova, “Pervye gody Kazanskogo Imperatorskogo Universiteta: 1804-1827 gg.,” in I. P. Ermolaev et al. (eds.), Ocherki istorii Kazanskogo Universiteta (Kazan’, 2002), 8; M. Pinegin, Kazan’ v ee proshlom i nastoiashchem: Ocherki po istorii, dostoprimechatel’nostiam i sovremennomu polozheniiu goroda (St. Petersburg, 1890), 242. Regardless, this was a large town for the region.
4 A. G. Rashin, Naselenie Rossii za 100 let (1811-1913 gg.): Statisticheskie ocherki (Moscow, 1956), 90-91.
5 G. Marker, Publishing, Printing, and the Origins of Intellectual Life in Russia, 1700-1800 (Princeton, 1985), xi. J. Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917 (Princeton, 1985); L. McReynolds, The News Under Russia’s Old Regime: The Development of a Mass-Circulation Press (Princeton, 1991); M. Beaven Remnek, “Russia, 1790-1830,” in H. Barker, S. Burrows (eds.), Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America, 1760-1820 (Cambridge, 2002), 224-247.
6 M. Remnek (ed.), The Space of the Book: Print Culture in the Russian Social Imagination (Toronto, 2011); M. Bassin, C. Ely, M. Stockdale (eds.), Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia: Essays in the New Spatial History (DeKalb, IL, 2010); S. Smith-Peter, “Bringing the Provinces into Focus: Subnational Spaces in the Recent Historiography of Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, 12, 4 (Fall 2011), 835-848.
7 P. Ia. Chernykh, Istoriko-etimologicheskii slovar’ sovremennogo russkogo iazyka, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1993), 80.
8 D. Smith, Working the Rough Stone: Freemasonry and Society in Eighteenth-Century Russia History (DeKalb, IL, 1999), 55.
9 Smith, Working, 56-57.
10 L. Donnels O’Malley, The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great: Theatre and Politics in Eighteenth Century Russia (London, 2017).
11 D. A. Sdvizhkov, “Ot obshchestva k intelligentsii: istoriia poniatii kak istoriia samosoznaniia,” in “Poniatiia o Rossii”: K istoricheskoi semantike imperskogo perioda (Moscow, 2012), vol. 1, 388.
12 Chernykh, Istoriko-etimologicheskii, 80. See also E. Pravilova, A Public Empire: Property and the Quest for the Common Good in Russia (Princeton, 2014), 229.
13 Sdvizhkov, “Ot obshchestva,” 388.
14 H. Mah, “Phantasies of the Public Sphere: Rethinking the Habermas of Historians,” Journal of Modern History, 72, 1 (March 2000), 168. On the problems of using Habermas in Russia, see also A. Schonle, “The Scare of the Self: Sentimentalism, Privacy, and Private Life in Russian Culture, 1780-1820,” Slavic Review, 57, 4 (Winter 1998), 727.
15 S. Smith-Peter, V. Shevtsov, “Russian Society at a Provincial Scale: Ideas of Society in Provincial Newspapers,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 50 (2016), 439-464.
16 On the importance of institutions to the creation of modern regional identity, see A. Paasi, “The Institutionalization of Regions: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Emergence of Regions and the Constitution of Regional Identity,” Fennia, 164 (1986), 105-146.
17 Quoted in L.V. Koshman, Gorod i gorodskaia zhizn’ v Rossii XIX stoletiia: Sotsial’nye i kul’turnye aspekty (Moscow, 2008), 291.
18 The district consisted of the following provinces: Kazan’, Viatka, Perm, Nizhnyi Novgorod, Tambov, Saratov, Penza, Astrakhan’, the Caucasus, Orenburg, Simbirsk, Tobol’sk, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Enisei (from 1823) and Georgia. E. A. Vishlenkova, Kazanskii universitet Aleksandrovskoi epokhi (Kazan’, 2003), 9-10.
19 F. A. Petrov, Rossiiskie universitety v pervoi poloviny XIX veka. Formirovanie sistemy universitetskogo obrazovaniia. Tom 2: Stanolvlenie sistemy universitetskogo obrazovaniia v pervye desiatiletiia XIX veka (Moscow, 2002), 378.
20 S. M. Mikhailova, Kazanskii universitet v dukhovnoi kul’ture narodov vostoka Rossii (XIX v.) (Kazan’, 1991), 142.
21 S. M. Mikhailova, O. N. Korshunova, Kazanskii universitet: mezhdu Vostokom i Zapadom (Kazan’, 2006), 45.
22 Ibid., 46-47.
23 Petrov, Rossiiskie, 388-390, 409.
24 Mikhailova, Kazanskii universitet v dukhovnoi, 161.
25 Ibid., 168.
26 J. T. Flynn, The University Reform of Tsar Alexander I, 1802-1835 (Washington, DC, 1988), 18.
27 R. Steven Turner, “University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany, 1760-1806,” in Lawrence Stone (ed.), The University in Society (Princeton, 1974), vol. 2, 504.
28 Ibid., 495-531.
29 Flynn, The University Reform, 18.
30 J. T. Flynn, “V.N. Karazin, the Gentry, and Kharkov University,” Slavic Review, 28, 2 (1969), 209-220.
31 I. P. Ermolaev, A. I. Ermolaev, Predshestvennitsa Kazanskogo universiteta (k 250-letiiu Pervoi kazanskoi gimnazii) (Kazan’, 2008), 31-32.
32 Ibid., 32.
33 Vishlenkova, “Pervye gody,” 10.
34 Petrov, Rossiiskie, 382.
35 Mikhailova, Korshunova, Kazanskii universitet, 50-51.
36 Ibid., 50.
37 Mikhailova, Kazanskii universitet v dukhovnoi kul’ture, 142.
38 Mikhailova, Korshunova, Kazanskii universitet, 44.
39 S. Smith-Peter, “Ukrainskie zhurnaly nachala XIX veka: ot universalizma Prosveshcheniia do romanticheskogo regionalizma,” in I. G. Zhiriakov, A. A. Orlov (eds.), Istoriia i politika v sovremennom mire (Moscow, 2010), 447-461; Flynn, “V.N. Karazin.”
40 Smith-Peter, “Ukrainskie zhurnaly,” 453.
41 Ibid., 451-456.
42 Ibid., 456-461.
43 M. von Hagen, “Federalism and Pan-Movements: Re-imagining Empire,” in J. Burbank, M. von Hagen and A. Remnev (eds.), Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700-1930 (Bloomington, IN, 2007), 502.
44 D. von Mohrenschildt, Toward a United States of Russia: Plans and Projects of Federal Reconstruction of Russia in the Nineteenth Century (Rutherford, NJ, 1981); D. Rainbow, “Siberian Patriots: Participatory Autocracy and the Cohesion of the Russian Imperial State, 1858-1920” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2013).
45 Vishlenkova, “Pervye gody,” 13, 17-18.
46 Ibid., 17.
47 Ibid., 13.
48 J. Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 38-85.
49 Quoted in A. I. Khodnev, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Vol’nogo ekonomicheskogo obshchestva s 1765 do 1865 goda (St. Petersburg, 1865), 72.
50 C. Leckey, Patrons of Enlightenment: The Free Economic Society in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Newark, DE, 2011).
51 Khodnev, Istoriia, 72.
52 Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan (NA RT), f. 92, op. 1, d. 180, l. 3.
53 K. Fuks, Karl Fuks o Kazani, Kazanskom krae, ed. M. A. Usmanov et al. (Kazan’, 2005).
54 NA RT, f. 92, op. 1, d. 180, l. 2.
55 V. V. Aristov, Pervoe literaturnoe obshchestvo povolzh’ia (k istorii Kazanskogo obshchestva liubitelei otechestvennoi slovesnosti v 1806-1818 gg.) (Kazan’, 1992); S. Smith-Peter, “Enlightenment from the East: Early Nineteenth Century Russian Views of the East from Kazan University,” Znanie. Ponimanie. Umenie. 2016, vol. 1, 318-338.
56 Vishlenkova, “Pervye gody,” 14.
57 Ibid., 14-15.
58 Ibid., 15.
59 Vishlenkova, Kazanskii universitet, 85.
60 Ibid., 157.
61 V. V. Oreshkin, Vol’noe ekonomicheskoe obshchestvo v Rossii, 1765-1917 (Moscow, 1963), 35; Khodnev, Istoriia Imperatorskogo, 74-76.
62 N. P. Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, vol. 2, pt. 2 (1814-1819) (Kazan’, 1902), 284.
63 Ibid.
64 NA RT, f. 92, op. 1, d. 229, l. 1.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., l. 1 ob.
67 Ibid., l. 1 ob- 2.
68 Ibid., 3 ob.
69 Ibid., 3.
70 Ibid., 2 ob.
71 Ibid., 3 ob.
72 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 288.
73 Ibid., 289.
74 P. Ponomarev, comp., Polnyi sistematicheskii ukazatel’ mestno-oblastnago soderzhaniia napechatannykh v “Kazanskikh izvestiiakh”, izdavavshikhsia pri Im. Kazanskom universitete s 1811 po 1821 g. (Kazan’, 1880), 4.
75 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 287.
76 Ibid., 292.
77 Ponomarev, Polnyi sistematicheskii ukazatel’, 26.
78 Ibid., 38.
79 Kazanskie Izvestiia, 3 (May 3, 1811), 4-7.
80 Ponomarev, Polnyi sistematicheskii ukazatel’, 45.
81 Kazanskie Izvestiia, 1 (April 19, 1811), 3.
82 Ponomarev, Polnyi sistematicheskii ukazatel’, 44.
83 “Nechto o gorode Sviiazhske,” Kazanskie Izvestiia, 12 (July 5, 1811), 3.
84 See S. Smith-Peter, The Russian Provincial Newspaper and its Public, 1788-1864, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 1908 (Pittsburgh, 2008), 7-8.
85 S. Smith-Peter, Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden, 2018), 98-99.
86 For the origins of this view, see Smith, “Information and Efficiency.” E. A. Vishlenkova, “Pamiat’ o konfliktakh: Osobennosti arkhiva Kazanskogo imperatorskogo universiteta,” Ekho vekov, 2 (2008) argues against using the terms “conservative” and “liberal” for discussing conflicts, but due to Kondyrev’s Smithianism, I argue that it is appropriate here.
87 Kazanskie Izvestiia, 1812, 1 (January 6, 1812), 6.
88 S. Smith-Peter, “Defining the Russian People: Konstantin Arsen’ev and Russian Statistics before 1861,” History of Science, 45, 1 (March 2007), 51; L. D. Shirokorad, “Prepodavanie politicheskoi ekonomii: nachal’nyi etap,” Vestnik Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta Seriia 5, 3, 21 (2004), 3-14.
89 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 295.
90 Ibid., 296.
91 Ibid., 297.
92 NA RT, f. 977, op. “Uchilishchnyi Komitet,” d. 21, l. 1.
93 Kazanskii universitet, Nauchnaia biblioteka imeni N. I. Lobachevskogo, Otdel rukopisei i redkikh knig, N. 4245, l. 6 ob.
94 Smith-Peter, “Defining the Russian People,” 47-64.
95 G. Sartorius, Ob istochnikhakh, otkuda mogut byt’ udovletvoreny potrebnosti naroda ili ob osnovaniiakh narodnogo bogatstva, trans. P. S. Kondyrev (Kazan’, 1812). 247-248; Smith-Peter, “Defining the Russian People,” 49.
96 Sartorius, Ob istochnikhakh. M.N. Bespalov, “K voprosu o vozniknovenii bibliografii politicheskoi ekonomii i statistiki v Rossii,” Sovetskaia bibliografiia 6, 154 (1975), 37-45; Cf. J. Zweynert, “The Theory of Internal Goods in Nineteenth-Century Russian Classical Economic Thought,” European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 11, 4 (Winter 2004), 541.
97 NA RT, f. 977, opis “Uchilishchnyi komitet,” d. 13, l. 1-11.
98 Sartorius, Ob istochnikhakh, 279-291.
99 NA RT, f. 977, op. “Uchilishchnyi komitet,” d. 13, l. 9-9ob.
100 NA RT, f. 977, op. “Uchilishchnyi komitet,” d. 13, l. 13ob.
101 [P. S. Kondyrev],”O Makar’evskoi Iarmonke Nizhegorodskoi gubernii (Statisticheskoe izvestiia),” Kazanskiia izvestiia, 25 (October 4, 1811), 1.
102 ”O Makar’evskoi Iarmonke,” 3.
103 Ibid, 3-4; A. G. Dement’eva et al. (eds.), Russkaia periodicheskaia pechat’ (1702-1894): Spravochnik (Moscow, 1959), 131.
104 Kazanskii universitet, Nauchnaia biblioteka imeni N. I. Lobachevskogo, Otdel rukopisei i redkikh knig, N. 4245, l. 2.
105 Ibid.
106 Smith-Peter, “Defining the Russian People,” 51; Shirokorad, “Prepodavanie politicheskoi ekonomii: nachal’nyi etap”, 3-14.
107 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 298.
108 Ibid., 299.
109 Ibid., 302.
110 Ibid., 302.
111 Ibid., 316.
112 Quoted in C. Ruud, Fighting Words: Imperial Censorship and the Russian Press, 1804-1906 (Toronto, 1982), 27.
113 Ibid., 28.
114 M. Tax Choldin, A Fence Around the Empire: Western Censorship of Western Ideas under the Tsars (Durham, NC, 1985), 24.
115 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 302-303.
116 Ibid., 312-313.
117 Kazanskii universitet, Nauchnaia biblioteka imeni N. I. Lobachevskogo, Otdel rukopisei i redkikh knig, N. 4245, l. 3 ob.
118 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 314.
119 Kazanskie Izvestiia, January 27, 1812 and February 23, 1812.
120 Kazanskie Izvestiia, April 6, 1812.
121 Kazanskii universitet, Nauchnaia biblioteka imeni N. I. Lobachevskogo, Rukopisnoe otdelenie, N. 4245, l. 9.
122 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 313.
123 Ibid., 316.
124 Vishlenkova, Kazanskii universitet, 23.
125 Ibid., 24.
126 Zagoskin, Istoriia Imperatorskogo Kazanskogo Universiteta, 315.
127 Vishlenkova, “Pervye gody,” 28.
128 Kazanskii vestnik 1824 (October), 142. The full program of Kazanskii vestnik can be found in N. P. Zagoskin, Istoriia imperatorskago Kazanskago universiteta za pervyia sto let ego sushchestvovaniia 1804-1904 (Kazan’, 1904), vol. 4, 33-34.
129 See, for example, Kazanskii vestnik 1824 (October), 95-116.
130 V. Aristov, N. Ermolaeva, Vse nachalos’ s putevoditelia: poiski lieraturnye i istoricheskii (Kazan’, 1975), 31.
131 Ibid., 35-41.
Auteur
Susan Smith-Peter is Professor of History at the College of Staten Island/City University of New York. She has published widely on issues related to Russian regions and regionalism, including Imagining Russian Regions: Subnational Identity and Civil Society in Nineteenth-Century Russia (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

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