Filling professorial positions in the Russian pre-revolutionary university: appointment vs elections

This research was conducted on the basis of documents extracted mainly from the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the State Archive of the Capital City of Warsaw, the Central State Historical Archives of Ukraine, the Russian State Historical Archive, the National Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan, the State Archives of Odesa Oblast, the State Archive of Saratov Oblast. Particular attention is paid to the social aspects of changing the procedures for filling vacancies, searching for optimal requirements for candidates for professorships and the phenomenon of "acting professor" ("ispravlyayushchiy dolzhnost'"). The author touches upon the subject of the degree of competition for full-time teaching positions in Russian universities. The item of the principle of the filling of teaching posts has always remained one of the central aspects of university life. Throughout the 19th century this issue was solved in different ways and this reflected the different periods of university history. Wave-like change of university statutes in 1804, 1835, 1863, 1884 were sometimes accompanied by an intensification of the elective principle, sometimes by the affirmation of the principle of centralized appointment of professors to their posts. At the turn of the 20th century there were three ways of filling vacant chairs: an open competition, a competition for recommendations, the appointment of the Ministry of Education. The requirements for candidates for teaching positions in different universities could be slightly different. The main formal requirement -the presence of a doctoral degree - was fairly easily turned aside through the introduction of the notion "ispravlyayushchiy dolzhnost'" of a professor. However, the election of a candidate to hold a vacant post was, as a rule, very competitive (there were at least 2-3 applicants and quite often 4-6). Knowledge of numerous biographies of university professors allows to come to a conclusion that during the period of validity of the last university statute (1884-1917) which allowed direct assignment of teachers to vacant posts, the Ministry of Education did not often enjoy this right. Rare cases of ignoring the opinion of the University Council in the appointment of a new member of the faculty were often perceived by the university community as extraordinary actions of the Ministry and as an attempt on their rights. The professor's attentive attitude to "staffing matters" is quite understandable. The procedure for filling vacancies played a role of admission to a university teaching corporation and its members wanted to keep control over the "front doors" to the academic world. And it was mostly possible for them.

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