Professional and Political Activism: the Russian Teachers' Movement, 1864-1908. (Volumes I, II and Iii).

This is a study of the growth, professionalization, and , particularly, the political activation of primary schoolteachers in pre-revolutionary Russia. Concentrating on the rural zemstvo school, it is argued that opposition to the existing regime among teachers was a natural result of their search for professional self-definition within the context of government policies: both the state's ambivalent attitude toward enlightenment for the rural masses and specific measures designed to maintain the teacher in a state of isolation and cultural deprivation. The intersection of political activism and professional needs is examined during the period before the Revolution of 1905-1907 through a close inspection of teachers' access to cultural commodities (e.g. reading materials) and teacher association: summer refresher courses, mutual-aid societies, as well as illegal organizations. In each instance the relationship of teachers to the administration, non-official institutions and groups (zemstvos, liberal and revolutionary political organizations) is examined. By 1905 the above professional factors impelling teachers to political opposition were reinforced by pressures from other sectors of Russian society: (1) from radical and liberal elements of educated society seeking to influence the political stance of the rural masses through the medium of the teacher, and (2) from the peasantry itself, seeking interpretation of national events and articulation of its needs during a period of revolutionary change. Both exerted powerful influence upon the teachers' movement in 1905, resulting in the formation of a national organization with a radical political and social program (the All-Russian Union of Teachers) and unprecedented political activity by teachers in the countryside. The thesis is based on extensive research in Soviet archives (including police records, official reports and the records of teachers' associations and unpublished memoirs), as well as upon the published records of teachers' organizations, the press (including provincial newspapers), and statistical data collected by the zemstvos.Ph.D.European historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159083/1/8225044.pd