Zemsky Educational Establishments:  Development of the Database

1. Abstract

The process of transformation, which began in the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX century, as one of the important social problems put forward the question of literacy. The problem of literacy in Russia intensified and became more prominent after the abolition of serfdom in 1861 when peasants were granted personal freedom and some civil rights. The elimination of illiteracy was one of the most important conditions for the further development of the country. The spread of literacy in the Russian Empire in the late XIX-early XX centuries was largely associated with the activities of local self-government bodies. For them one of the most important areas of work was public education. The well-known fact is that the local self-government reform was carried in 1864. In Russian, these local self-government bodies were called Zemstvo.

These local self-government bodies did not have political functions, they dealt with building roads, improving streets, opening and maintaining schools and churches.

My field of research concerns the problems of the local self-government bodies activity in the Perm province (Russian Empire). Perm Zemstvo was established in 1870. At that time, Perm Zemstvo founded more than 2000 educational establishments which contributed to the development of literacy.

The Perm local self-government separately considered the issues of the creation and development of the indigenous non-Russian schools. The largest non-Russian population in the Perm province was Permian, Tatar and Bashkir (according to the population census of 1897 the Permian population was 92642, Tatar-46711, Bashkir-85395). The Perm local self-government founded specific non-Russian schools for these peoples.

I am collecting information about each of the educational establishments of Zemstvo in Perm. Currently I am working on database creation. This database allows keeping and processing information about the educational establishments such as names of these educational establishments, location, the time of their work, the number and name of teachers, subjects and textbooks.

This database will be posted publicly on the Internet. Teachers can use this database in the educational process for schoolchildren and students, as well as organize educational projects together with museums, archives, libraries and educational institutions. Researchers will be able to use the database to conduct a local history research and research in the field of public history. Students, schoolchildren and researchers are likely find in this database information about their schools which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries functioned as schools of Zemstvo.