A Collective Portrait of Professors of the Imperial Tomsk University in the Mirror of Their Relationships with Students (Late 19th - Early 20th Centuries)

In the research, the psychological aspects of the behavior of pre-revolutionary Russian professors that were connected with their relationships with students are examined based on archival materials, periodicals and sources of personal origin. The history of the Imperial Tomsk University, the establishment of which in 1878 marked the beginning of the first scientific and educational complex in Siberia, is studied. It is emphasized that one of the markers of the Tomsk professors' attitude to students was the honorarium system established by the General University Charter of 1884. Charity in favor of "insufficient students", whom Tomsk University had in large numbers throughout the pre-revolutionary period, became a kind of expression of the classical idea of "guilt to people" and a source of accumulation of professors' reputational capital. Conflicts within the university community, along with charity, disclose the informal ethical field, which, contrary to the official ethics, was crucial in shaping the professor's image in the eyes of students. Confrontation of professors S.I. Korzhinsky, A.S. Dogel, N.M. Maliev, A.M. Zaitsev, S.I.. Zalessky with V.M. Florinsky, the first trustee of the West Siberian educational district, as well as Professor E.V. Werner's conflict with students and the context of its development, most clearly demonstrated the priority of informal grounds in the relationships between professors and students. It is noted, mainly from the memoirs of former students of Tomsk University, that one of the manifestations of informal ethics was the critical perception of personal and professional qualities of professors by students. A symbolic expression of this ethics was organized in the Tomsk Public Meeting building almost every year on the day of the University Assembly Holiday (October 22) in the form of a "mertvetskaya" ("mortuary"): it was a room in which professors invited by students made speeches, and speeches could result in both a standing ovation and a "booing". The study shows that relationships in the academic corporation were regulated not so much by official discourse (Charter, rules, power of the trustee and the inspector) as by underground rules during the period under review. Thus, the possibility to spoil the reputation in the eyes of students determined the professors' behavior no less than the administrative subordination, and the unwritten agreement of mutual dependence of the mentor and the student in the space of the university became an important factor in the formation of the reputational and behavioral styles of the pre-revolutionary Russian professor.

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