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A researcher's journey to Siberia

Category: Orthodox Church

More on Ignatii

31 October 2019 / / 0 Comments

My current research assistant found a blog post from 2012 that is, essentially, a scan of a pre-revolutionary publication about the murder of Ignatii Dvernitskii. Unfortunately, the blogger (a priest named Andrei Spiridonov) did not post the publication information for the book, and I’ve asked my research assistant to look into this.

In any case, the publication includes several photographs, including one from Ignatii’s funeral procession (below). It is also a defence of Ignatii, and includes a lot more information about the murder than did the newspaper reporting at the time.

Funeral Procession of Ignatii Dvernitskii. Original source unknown.

For instance, this publication states that yes, Ignatii was found strangled, but also that his neck was broken, and that his hand was clutched around his cross. The publication also defends his role at the school: admitting that Ignatii was very strict, the (still unknown) author states that Ignatii improved the food at the school and was generally a positive influence in what had been a hotbed of revolutionary activity.

If we can believe the basic details in this publication (and yes, I need to find out more about it), the author provides a description of how the Kuimov and Iurinov were caught. The author writes (forgive the rough translation),

The police chief found a fragment of a mother-of-pearl button from a shirt on the floor. Since all the buttons on the shirt of the deceased were intact, the police gathered all of the pupils and examined them. Gerasim Iurinov’s shirt had a broken button. When placed with the broken button found in the monk Ignatii’s room, it turned out that they fit together. […] The criminal first obfuscated, but then in prison not only confessed, but named his accomplice, Grigorii Kuinov [sic.]

Anyway, there is a lot more information to unpack in this piece, that I won’t bore you with, now. I’m skeptical, considering that the church went to great lengths to depict Ignatii as a martyr, that everything in this piece is true. Still, so far, it is the most detailed available account of the murder and the arrest itself.

The Church-Teachers’ School

6 July 2017 / / 0 Comments

While at the CAS conference at the end of May, Heather Coleman, expert on the late-Imperial Orthodox Church, pushed me to look more carefully at the role of the Orthodox Church in education in Siberia specifically, since the zemstva (elected local governments that had been established during the Great Reforms), in charge of much of the schooling in European Russia, did not exist in Siberia. Thus, education in Siberia was the responsibility of the church, and those who went to parish schools or who attended the church-teachers’ schools, may not themselves have been religious at all. This lack of religiosity, of course, would have made Ignatii Dvernitskii’s extreme reforms at the school in 1908-09 even more likely to be rejected by many of the pupils, as they may not have been strong believers.

Coleman in passing, however, also stated that she was unfamiliar with the church-teachers’ schools. Indeed, preliminary digging around has given me little background information. A Google search for “церковно учительская школа” is not particularly helpful, as many of the results deal with the church parish schools or the seminaries. The few direct hits, however, show that these schools were not confined only to Siberia. For examples, here’s a link to a brief discussion of one that was founded in Kazan in 1904, and another to a series of photographs from 1909 of a large church-teachers’ school for young women in the heart of the empire, St. Petersburg. The second link, in particular, reveals my ignorance of the subject, as I did not realize that some church parish schools employed women as teachers. JSTOR is unfortunately unhelpful, at least with the search terms I’ve used, as is Project Muse,

Facade of the Women’s Church-Teachers’ School in St. Petersburg, 1909. From: http://humus.livejournal.com/4369090.html

suggesting that English-language scholarship on these types of schools is quite rare. In any case, time to investigate, and if anyone reading this had helpful suggestions, please comment or get in touch!

I’ve included one photograph of the St. Petersburg school (Свято-Владимирская женская церковно-учительская школа (Забалканский пр., 96)), as they do not appear to be copy-protected. Quite impressive!

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