posted on: 2008-10-31 19:09:25
The Kyivan Academy and its Impact on the Establishment of Higher Education in Imperial Russia
by Ihor Cap
Learned Societies and Science Academies the world over were at the forefront of establishing and serving the higher learning needs of their citizens. Oxford founded England’s Royal Society in 1660. Six years later, Louis XIV and Colbert founded the French Academy of Sciences (Donovan, 1990, p.13). In the USA, it was the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, organized in 1812, that first gave encouragement to scientific investigation (Sylvester, 1910). The oldest Canadian society for the study and promotion of science was the Royal Society of Canada, which they established in 1881 (Macnutt, 1967). For Ukrainians, science and culture flourished under the leadership of academicians of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy, which obtained its status as an Academy in 1658 (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_Mohyla_Academy ). Its impact on the establishment of higher learning and Ukrainian consciousness is certain. Its role in the establishment of higher education in Imperial Russia is also convincing.
Brotherhoods were schools in Ukraine that well served the rearing of national consciousness. They emerged in the late 16th and beginning of the 17th century. The first Brotherhood school to appear was the Ostrozka (end of 1570s). The L’vivska (1586), Kyivan (1615), and Lutsk (1624) brotherhood schools came later (Zastavny, 1994, p.43). The Kyivan Mohyla Academy could be considered the first progressive centre of higher learning on Ukrainian lands. The Archimandrite of the Kyiv Cave Monastery and later the Metropolitan of Kyiv, Petro Mohyla, reorganized the original Academy (Collegium) in 1632, but was based on the Kyivan Brotherhood School that originated in 1615. In 1658, the Treaty of Hadiach elevates it to Academy status. A “Rewarding Decree” was conferred in support of the Kyivan Academy in 1659 by tsar Alexei Mykhailovych, and again in 1694 by tsar Peter I. In 1701, it received a “Decree of Affirmation” from Tsar Peter I recognizing it as an Academy (Kortschmaryk, 1976). The Polish Commonwealth King, Vladislav IV, issued an edict giving this institution Collegium status in 1635, which the edict of 1634 opposed earlier. Government and Jesuit circles feared losing their monopoly on higher learning (Yereniuk, 1997, p.7). For the Ukrainians, Petro Mohyla left them with an important legacy - namely, the principle foundations of the highest intellectual centre for the European East and holy Orthodox see. According to Professor Ihor Shevchenko, Mohyla also ” . . . strived for equality for his nation within the framework of the Polish Commonwealth” (in Yereniuk, 1997, p.9). Mohyla’s Academy provided a true academic alternative to the unrestrained Polonization of the Ukrainian elite and postponed its Russification for at least another 100 years (Yereniuk, 1997).
The academicians of the Kyivan Mohyla Academy played a prominent and conclusive role in the organization and development of Ukrainian science and culture. Kyivan science gradually spread to all Eastern Europe. Its leadership played an irrefutable role in the state of Muscovy-Russia for a full century especially after 1654 and reforming the Slavonic-Greco-Latin School in Moscow, i.e., an academy (hereafter the Moscow Academy) since the beginning of the 18th century. The curriculum, and pedagogical methods applied at the Moscow Academy were modelled after the pro-Latin school spirit of the Kyivan program of studies (Hrushevsky, 1991; Kortschmaryk, 1976, p.45, 53). The Russian historian Ya Grot writes of them, “In the middle of the 17th century a migration of educated clergymen began from Kiev to Moscow, and thus the gradual grafting of Western European learning concepts and words on the still tree of Great Russian life came about” (in Kortschmaryk, 1976, p.19). Since 1701, Kyivan scholars at the Moscow Academy taught in the hopes of giving newly-founded seminaries qualified native teachers. With few exceptions, K. Kharlampovich’s detailed research shows that the prefects and rectors of Kyivan science “... headed the Moscow Academy and were its directors throughout the first half of the 18th century” (in Kortschmaryk, 1976, p. 47).Moreover, only three students were Russian among the thirty-four philosophy students in the newly-reorganized Moscow Academy for the year 1704. Former students of the Kyiv Mohyla Academy dominated the classrooms. By 1708, the Muscovite tsar Peter I issued a decree compelling recalcitrant Russian youth to study or be prohibited from work in any profession except the military. In 1726, not one native student from the surrounding dioceses and seminaries was sent to the Moscow Academy. Consequently, the number of graduates in 1727 was no larger than twelve. Six of these were former Kyivan Academy students. In 1735, the Moscow Academy was unable to send the twenty students required by the Petersburg Academy of Science established just ten years before. They sent only twelve. It became the primary supplier of qualified members for the Petersburg Academy of Science because it was the only higher education institution available in the entire state of Muscovy (Russia). Nonetheless, the limited number and quality of local students compelled the Muscovite government to rely on qualified students and teachers from Kyiv. According to Professor M. I. Petrov’s calculations, between 1721 and 1750, one hundred and twenty-five Kyiv Academy students taught at various Muscovite ‘seminaries.’ They called them seminaries although only three of the twenty-five newly established and reorganized seminaries offered theological instruction during this period. The urgency of a more enlightened cadre of pupils emboldened by an ecumenical curriculum also compelled the Muscovite Church to staff most Moscow bishoprics with Kyivan representatives (Kortschmaryk, 1976). The Kyivan-Latin approach to higher learning was exported north to Muscovy, where it became the foundation to all the Russian Academies up to the times of Catherine II. Many learned Ukrainians facilitated this. They sent them north, often unwillingly, “ . . . to build the Imperial Russian state and church (e.g., Stepan Yavorsky, Teophan Prokopovych and others),” observed Dr. Yereniuk (1997, p.9).
Serhii Plokhy (2008, p.35), the Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History at Harvard University, summarized the Ukrainian contribution to the imperial polity of 18th century Russia in these words:
Throughout the eighteenth century, the alumni of the Kyivan Academy continued to transmit Western ideas and play an important part in the affairs of state and church – roles they had assumed under Peter I. Between 1754 and 1768 alone, more than three hundred students and alumni of the Kyivan Academy moved to Russia. The Latin that they learned at the academy prepared them well for classes in medicine. Thus, in the eighteenth century there were twice as many Ukrainian doctors in the empire as Russian ones. In the last two decades of the century, more than one third of the students at the St. Petersburg teachers’ college came from Ukraine.³ By some estimates, Ukrainians accounted for half the non-noble intelligentsia in the eighteenth-century Russian Empire. 4
The peak of Ukrainian influence in the empire occurred during the rule of Elizabeth, when Oleksii Rozumovsky, the son of a rank-and-file Cossack from the Hetmanate, became the empress’s husband. At that time, all Russian eparchies except one were administered by Kyivans.5
This brief, albeit concise historical survey of the Kyivan Academy alumni’s role in the formation of Russian higher education and reception of a European curriculum and political culture shows that they were an indispensable element of the imperial polity. “Ukrainians emerged as the most active builders of the imperial ideology, institutions, and state apparatus, but they were also among the principal victims of the new imperial project,” concludes the Harvard scholar (Plokhy, 2008, p.34). Retrospectively, the Russian Academies and seminaries across the Muscovite Empire owed their existence to the work of Ukrainian scientific and cultural forces assembled at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
Author: Ihor Cap, Ph.D. Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada
References
Donovan, F.J. (1990). “Scientific and Technical Education: An Historical International Perspective.” Journal of Studies in Technical Careers. Vol. 12(1) 9-16.
Hrushevsky, M. (1991).Mykhailo Hrushevsky pro ukrainsku movu I ukrainsku shkolu. (Mykhailo Hrushevsky about the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian school). First printed in 1913. (2nd printing). Kyiv.: Veselka Publishers. (pp.23-24).
Kortschmaryk, B. F. (1976). The Kievan Academy and its role in the organization of education in Russia at the turn of the seventeenth century. New York: Published by the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Inc.
Macnutt. S. W. (1967). “The 1880s” The Canadians 1867-1967. Edited by J.M.S. Careless and R.Craig Brown. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited. p.75
Plokhy, S. (2008). Ukraine and Russia: Representations of the past. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
Sylvester, H.C. (1910). (Editor in Chief). The New Practical Reference Library. William F. Rocheleau (Associate Editor), Kenneth L.M. Pray., Anna McCaleb., Helga M. Leburg., and Albertus V. Smith (Assistant Editors)., Vol. I, New York: The Dixon-Hanson Company.
Yereniuk, R. (1997). “Reformy Mytropolyta Petra Mohyly u sferi vyshchoi osvity v pershiy polovyni XVII stolittia.” (“The reforms of Metropolitan Petro Mohyla in the sphere of higher education of the first half of the XVII century.”) Ukrainian Voice, Winnipeg, Manitoba: Trident Press Ltd., Monday, January 6, 1997, Vol. LXXXVII(1):6-9.
Zastavny, F. D. (1994). Heohrafia Ukrainy: u dvokh knyhakh. (Geography of Ukraine: In two books) L’viv: Svit Publishers.
Internet Reference
National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv_Mohyla_Academy. (Regarding the 1658 Hadiach agreement)
