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PHJ №1 (45) 2025 — D. A. Barinov, E. A. Rostovtsev. GRADUATES OF THE FACULTY OF HISTORY AND PHILOLOGY OF ST. PETERSBURG UNIVERSITY AT THE TURN OF THE 19TH–20TH CENTURIES: COLLECTIVE PORTRAIT AND CAREER PROSPECTS

Throughout the imperial period, St. Petersburg University functioned not only as the largest scientific and educational center in the country, but also as a training ground for the political and cultural elite, thus serving as the most significant source for the formation of the domestic intelligentsia. This study examines the role of the historical and philological faculty of the capital’s university in the formation of the national elite. The primary research method employed by the authors involved the compilation of a collective biography of бfaculty graduates, encompassing an analysis of their career trajectories, social compositions, and other relevant factors. A sample of issues from the turn of the 19th–20th centuries (1895–1904) was taken for analysis. The analysis revealed that the further professional paths of graduates developed in three main ways: a bureaucratic career, a career as a teacher in gymnasiums and colleges, and a scientific career, usually associated with work in higher education or the Academy of Sciences. Concurrently, the proportion of teachers and scientists among the graduate population increased, while the proportion of bureaucrats decreased. However, many individuals who opted for careers in the government apparatus did not forsake scientific studies, continuing to publish works, compilations, or organise expeditions. The article also provides comparisons with analogous indicators for other faculties, including law, physics, mathematics, and oriental languages. One of the objectives assigned to the article was to identify the connections that students established during their studies and that influenced the trajectory of their future careers. A thorough analysis of biographies revealed that these connections played a pivotal role in the development of academic and political careers, where the ties of student friendship could prove to be a significant asset.

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PHJ № 2 (34) 2022 — D. A. Barinov. STUDENT FRATERNITIES OF THE IMPERIAL AND SOVIET UNIVERSITY

The historiography of higher education is often characterized by a watershed presented by the events of 1917. The change in social and political structures opened a new era in the history of Russian higher education. However, with such an approach, it is often forgotten that the changes of the first decades of Soviet power were experienced by people formed in the old, pre-revolutionary tradition. This situation is typical as well for higher education, where the inertia of its existence under the old regime was preserved throughout the 1920s. First of all, this inertia can be traced in the forms of organization of student self-government. The main and senior body of mutual economic assistance among the students was the fraternities. Initially, from the first half of the 19th century, they provided active material support to the out-of-town students. In this article, using the example of St. Petersburg / Petrograd / Leningrad University we will trace the history of fraternities, define the features of their legislative status, connections with political movements. The analysis allowed the author to come to the conclusion that both in the Tsarist and in the Soviet period, the fraternities in many aspects faced similar problems. Being organs of grassroots initiative, they were weakly amenable to control, bureaucratization, their activities did not coincide much with the existing legislative provisions. And most importantly, they were considered to be bodies of possible protest. Therefore, in the Soviet period, during the tightening of political control, such organizations were doomed to be closed, as they seemed to be a place of concentration of non-party people, i. e. a potentially hostile studentship.