It is none of students' business to appoint teachers themselves": conflicts between professors and students of Russian universities at the turn of the 20th century

The article aims to reconstruct the problem areas that reflect the crisis of the Russian university at the turn of the 20th century through the description of conflict situations between professors and students that took place in this period. This research was conducted on the basis of published memoirs, as well as documents extracted 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 Central State Archive of Moscow, the National Archives of the Republic of Tatarstan, the State Archives of Odesa Oblast, the State Archives of Kharkiv Oblast, the State Archive of Saratov Oblast. The author gives a classification of conflicts, their division into two large groups: 1) conflicts associated with the educational process and 2) conflicts that were part of the student protest movement. During the educational process, sometimes there were conflicts caused by a sense of injustice, a students' resentment of their professors. There were speeches against teachers who did not satisfy students' demands. The procedure for passing tests and exams was always potentially "conflict-intensive". However, conflicts between students and teachers that accompanied the student protest movement were much more widespread in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There were student strikes, boycotts of certain teachers and even "trials of professors". The main part of political student speeches were against the "right-wing" professors who adhered to monarchical views. The author comes to a conclusion that the key problems of the university, determined by student-professor conflicts, were the following: gap between the views of students and professors about the rights and opportunities of students at the university; de facto restrictions on the legal manifestation of student self-organization; politicization of both students and professors which caused acute ideological tensions. It is important to note that during the period under review relations between professors and students became more complicated. During student riots, a number of professors strengthened their understanding of the need to change attitudes towards students as unreasonable young men who needed permanent guardianship. The paternalistic model of relations between teachers and students established in the 18th - first half of the 19th century was a thing of the past.

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