Prince E.N. Trubetskoy and the decision of the “university question”

This paper aims to analyse the role of Prince E.N. Trubetskoy [Troubetzkoy; Trubetzkoy] in the discussion of university education during the period from 1901 to 1910. The scholar’s views on the universities’ autonomy and students’ rights as well as the right- and left-wingers’ reaction to E.N. Trubetskoy’s public uttering were studied based on the materials from the periodicals of the time and on archival documents from the Russian State Library’s Department of Manuscripts. This issue was not the subject of a special study, although the presented materials show that E.N. Trubetskoy was one of the active fighters for the democratisation of higher education, but with the preservation of the inspections’ institute. He was an exponent of the views of Constitutional Democrats who believed that the government’s crisis could be overcome by raising the level of the population’s education. The article shows that the University Regulation of 1884 by the beginning of the 20th century, it was at odds with public sentiment, so the Ministry of Public Education repeatedly raised the question of the need to make changes to this document. The inevitability of updating the University system became obvious after the wave of student strikes that swept through in 1901. E.N. Trubetskoy, Professor at the Kiev University of St. Vladimir, in 1901 expressed his own opinion about the University autonomy, which, in his opinion, should not have become uncontrolled. The supersession of the Ministers of Public Education and students riots that swept the country prevented further advancement in the tackling of the long-pending university issue. In 1908, the university community once again got back to the discussion of draft Regulation proposed by the Minister of Public Education, A.N. Shvarts. Shvarts’ draft Regulation focused on suppressing the university liberties and strengthening the controlling functions of university inspectors. By this time, E.N. Trubetskoy’s views had become more liberal: he advocated expanding the powers of the university councils and the corporate rights of students. E.N. Trubetskoy’s ideas about the “University question” were not accepted by both right and left political forces, which was expressed in active criticism of his views on the pages of newspapers and even in cartoons. Perhaps the reason for the beginning of the persecution of the Prince by the students was the widespread distribution among them of representatives of the Social Democrats, who demanded that the power of the Professor’s Corporation be replaced by student self-government. The situation became so heated that the government versions of university charters never got round to be approved by the State Duma while the Imperial universities continued to operate and cope with the riots and commotions on the part of revolutionary-minded students.

Keywords

Authors

References