The first women's gymnasium
At the beginning of December 1917, my father transferred me from the First Male Gymnasium to the Seventh, on Strastnaya Square. My stay in it was very short-lived. Classes did not improve in any way, it was very cold in the classrooms, they did not heat at all, and we sat at our desks in gymnasium overcoats. This gymnasium was privileged, and many children of old Russian surnames studied there. I remember Olsufiev and Bestuzhev.
A decree was issued on joint education with girls, and in the winter of the eighteenth year, the Seventh Gymnasium was connected with the First Women's Gymnasium. Classes will be held in the premises of the girls' gymnasium.
After the seventh man's palace, this room seemed to me somehow official and uncomfortable. On four floors, large, spacious classrooms with very high ceilings, relentless light in huge windows, very wide corridors, and a large recreational hall.
On the first day, very few boys came. This innovation seemed so strange and dangerous that many parents did not let their sons in, considering all this a temporary and empty Bolshevik undertaking - you just need to wait a little, and everything will return to "normal".
It was very cold, and my mother sewed a skunk neckpiece to the collar of my overcoat: a whole narrow animal with paws and black claws, a small sharp muzzle, red lips and small white teeth - and also small orange shiny eyes with black pupils. I didn't let the skunk's face be cut off and hid it behind the collar.
The school was not heated, the hanger was closed, and the frozen doorman said that there was no need to undress.
In the class I was surrounded by many girls, all in uniform. White lace collars and cuffs, white aprons, braided ribbons. They surrounded me in a tight ring, looking at me and my skunk, laughing uncontrollably. I was probably a comic sight. One girl, Volkova, as I remember now, said: "Why are you laughing at him, he is obviously one of the poor." All this I could not stand and, hiding the skunk in my pocket, I ran home.
Life in the girls' gymnasium is gradually returning to its own rut. More and more boys appear every day.
We started publishing a literary magazine. The editor was a boy a little older than us, the son of Bunak from Smena. The magazine was named "Aurora". Aurora is the goddess of the morning dawn. I was asked to paint the cover.
The turquoise sea, the fiery red ball of the rising sun that just touches the horizon. On a rock in a white chiton, a goddess in a pensive pose. At this, the publication of the magazine ended, no one else did anything. Glory came to me with the cover. The girls vying with each other slip me their albums, in which I endlessly multiply Aurora.
The program includes lessons in plastic arts and handicrafts. Plastics is taught by the artist of the Bolshoi Theater Chudinov: a long, sweet old man, Don Quixote danced in the theater. The plastic should inform us of a graceful silhouette, elegance of manners. Girls teach us ballroom dancing.
Exercises with the ball at the end of the lesson, we play football in the hall, we are hardly forced into classes.
At needlework, we learn to sew on buttons, pricked all our fingers.
French lesson. A young French woman enters the class. She does not speak a word in Russian, we do not speak a word in French. - "Bonjour, monsieur and mademoiselle, cal er e til a prezan?" And then everything like that.
Soon a dead silence ensues in the classroom accompanied by a beautiful French woman reading: "En marchand revene de la foir ..." I paint in albums Aurora, the goddess of the morning dawn.
The American food aid ARA begins to enter the school. A buffet has been organized, in which we, the students, are on duty in turn. We cut the bread and butter. During the hours of duty, you can eat plenty. On duty, I was so full of American oil for the future that for a long time I felt sick at the mere mention of it. It was no longer possible to assign me to duty by any means.
It was very cold, the school was not heated at all, and we more and more often missed lessons.
With the revolution long-awaited freedom came to me, no one accompanied me to school and no one met me. Every day I had more and more free time, I walked a lot in snow-covered Moscow, read indiscriminately, drew. At home they continued to teach us music with desperate stubbornness.
There were rumors that some of the classes would be transferred to the former Raevskaya gymnasium, in Karetny Ryad, and there would be a hospital in the premises of our gymnasium.
There was a civil war.
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On April 19, 1858, the first women's gymnasium was opened in a house on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Troitskaya Street (modern Rubinstein Street).
Franz Xaver Winterhalter. Empress Maria Alexandrovna. 1857 g.
Until that time, girls from families that did not belong to the upper strata of society had practically no opportunity to get a good education. There were closed educational institutions, like the Smolny Institute, where only noblewomen were admitted and where the emphasis in teaching was on French, the rules of secular behavior, music, dancing, girls in such educational institutions were isolated from the family and the outside world. There were also private women's boarding schools, which provided a more serious education, but education in them was very expensive. Therefore, by the middle of the 19th century, there was a need for such an educational institution where girls of all classes could study, while having the opportunity to live in a family. A talented teacher, professor Nikolai Alekseevich Vyshnegradsky worked on the implementation of the project to create a female gymnasium. In 1857 Vyshnegradskiy drew up a project of an educational institution "for visiting girls" and turned with it to Prince Peter of Oldenburg. The well-known philanthropist liked the idea of an affordable education for women, and a few months later, with his assistance, Vyshnegradskiy, appointed head of the new gymnasium, began to prepare it for the opening - he bought furniture, teaching aids, and selected teachers. At the end of March 1858, the "highest" decree was signed on the opening of the educational institution, and a month later the gymnasium solemnly opened its doors. The new educational institution was named "Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium" in honor of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the patroness of women's education in Russia.
The educational institution was supported by a small fee, which was paid by the parents of the girls, and funds from the Department of Institutions of the Empress Maria. The curriculum at the gymnasium was quite serious. All subjects were divided into compulsory and optional, compulsory included the law of God, Russian language, literature, history, geography, natural sciences, foundations of mathematics, drawing, handicrafts. Those wishing to study additional subjects had to pay extra five rubles a year for a foreign language and for dances, and one ruble for music lessons. In the first year of the existence of the gymnasium, 162 girls aged from 9 to 13 years old studied in it - the daughters of officials, townspeople, clergymen, officers. Vyshnegradsky invited the best teachers of St. Petersburg to work in the gymnasium, and thanks to their efforts a simple and free atmosphere was formed here. The students did not have a special uniform, they were only asked to dress neatly and without luxury. There were no punishments in the gymnasium, and at the same time everyone admired the high academic performance of the girls. The high school students later recalled that the soul of the school was, of course, Nikolai Vyshnegradsky himself, who really knew how to love and understand children.
House on the corner of Nevsky Prospect and Troitskaya Street (modern Rubinstein Street),
which housed the Mariinsky women's gymnasium
Many noted that high school girls, in comparison with girls from closed institutions, study more conscientiously, "with the conviction of the visible benefits of education." However, there were those who did not like the innovation, because the daughters of a general and a tailor, a senator and a merchant could study in the same class, there was also talk that low tuition fees "give rise to educated women proletarians."
In 1864, two-year pedagogical courses for women were opened at the Mariinsky Gymnasium. For the first time, anatomy and physiology were included in their program - subjects that had never been studied in women's educational institutions before. Girls who graduated from the courses received the title of "home tutor" and could work as teachers. On the basis of the courses, the Women's Pedagogical Institute was later created.
Following the Mariinsky Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, and then in other cities, several more similar women's educational institutions were opened, thus giving rise to the spread of women's education in the country.
On April 19, 1858, the first women's gymnasium was opened in a house on the corner of Nevsky Prospekt and Troitskaya Street (modern Rubinstein Street).
Until that time, girls from families that did not belong to the upper strata of society had practically no opportunity to get a good education. There were closed educational institutions, like the Smolny Institute, where only noblewomen were admitted and where the emphasis in teaching was on French, the rules of secular behavior, music, dancing, girls in such educational institutions were isolated from the family and the outside world. There were also private women's boarding schools, which provided a more serious education, but education in them was very expensive. Therefore, by the middle of the 19th century, there was a need for such an educational institution where girls of all classes could study, while having the opportunity to live in a family. A talented teacher, professor Nikolai Alekseevich Vyshnegradsky worked on the implementation of the project to create a female gymnasium. In 1857 Vyshnegradskiy drew up a project of an educational institution "for visiting girls" and turned with it to Prince Peter of Oldenburg. The well-known philanthropist liked the idea of an affordable education for women, and a few months later, with his assistance, Vyshnegradskiy, appointed head of the new gymnasium, began to prepare it for the opening - he bought furniture, teaching aids, and selected teachers. At the end of March 1858, the "highest" decree was signed on the opening of the educational institution, and a month later the gymnasium solemnly opened its doors. The new educational institution was named "Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium" in honor of Empress Maria Alexandrovna, the patroness of women's education.
Empress Maria Alexandrovna,
wife of Emperor Alexander II
The educational institution was supported by a small fee, which was paid by the parents of the girls, and funds from the Department of Institutions of the Empress Maria. The curriculum at the gymnasium was quite serious. All subjects were divided into compulsory and optional, compulsory included the law of God, Russian language, literature, history, geography, natural sciences, foundations of mathematics, drawing, handicrafts. Those wishing to study additional subjects had to pay extra five rubles a year for a foreign language and for dances, and one ruble for music lessons. In the first year of the existence of the gymnasium, 162 girls aged from 9 to 13 years old studied in it - the daughters of officials, townspeople, clergymen, officers. Vyshnegradsky invited the best teachers of St. Petersburg to work in the gymnasium, and thanks to their efforts a simple and free atmosphere was formed here. The students did not have a special uniform, they were only asked to dress neatly and without luxury. There were no punishments in the gymnasium, and at the same time everyone admired the high academic performance of the girls. The high school students later recalled that the soul of the school was, of course, Nikolai Vyshnegradsky himself, who really knew how to love and understand children.
Many noted that high school girls, in comparison with girls from closed institutions, study more conscientiously, "with the conviction of the visible benefits of education." However, there were those who did not like the innovation, because the daughters of a general and a tailor, a senator and a merchant could study in the same class, there was also talk that low tuition fees "give rise to educated women proletarians."
In 1864, two-year pedagogical courses for women were opened at the Mariinsky Gymnasium. For the first time, anatomy and physiology were included in their program - subjects that had never been studied in women's educational institutions before. Girls who graduated from the courses received the title of "home tutor" and could work as teachers. On the basis of the courses, the Women's Pedagogical Institute was later created.
Following the Mariinsky Gymnasium in St. Petersburg, and then in other cities, several more similar women's educational institutions were opened, thus giving rise to the spread of women's education in the country.
Text prepared by Galina Dregulas