The Participation of N.I. Ilminskii in the Matter of Non-Russian Schooling in the Turkestan Region

In the summer of 1899 a book was published in Tashkent dedicated to the memory of K.P. Kaufman, the first Governor-General, organizer and educator of the Turkestan region, entitled “The History of Public Education in the Turkestan Region: K.P. von Kaufman – Personal Recollections of N. Ostroumov (1877-1881)”
Its author N.P. Ostroumov is an alumnus of the Kazan Theological Academy, the best of the students of the departed N.I. Ilminskii, orientalist and expert on the Turkestan region. From 1877-1881 he was a constant and most trustworthy colleague of K.P. Kaufman, in connection with the local public education and knew all the details of his educational activity and his program of public education. The entire book is comprised of notes, which the author took at the time. It includes all that which seemed to him noteworthy in his intercourses and conversations with the Governor-General, and the overarching state of education in the region. The memories of Mr. Ostroumov arouse a vivid and lively image of the well-known General. They also arouse a vivid and lively picture not only of the exterior, but interior development of local public education.
The late general was a person universally educated, with expansive political views, embracing not only a single military aspect of administration, but other aspects of state and social life of the newly conquered territory entrusted to him. He paid special attention to the matter of public education throughout the entire course of his governor-generalship. “Only public education,” he said, “is capable of conquering the territory in spirit: neither arms nor the rule of law can accomplish this, but the school, and only the school, can” (in the book of the author pgs. 54-55). He also held such a conviction earlier, during his general-governorship in Vilnus after M.N. Murav’ev, where he struggled against the influence of Polish language, culture (polonizatsiya), and the Catholic church (okatolichenie) on the Russian and Lithuanian population by educational means; he placed education at the core of his activity in Turkestan territory as well, where he had to retain Russian dominion among eastern tribes as it struggled with the no less strong and dangerous influence of Tatar culture (tatarstvo) and Islam. It is understood that on the education of non-Russians he had to turn a larger share of his educational concerns. On the successful organization of the education depended, as says Mr. Ostroumov, the future of public education in the territory, in which the main and continuous element of the population were precisely non-Russian (pg. 113).
The activity of the Governor General on this matter during this time exactly coincided with our working out of the general question of non-Russian education, posed in the second half of the 1860s in the eastern governorships of European Russia and in the south in Crimea. The main point of discussion was the new system of non-Russian education in Russian spirit, the creator of which was N.I. Il’minskii. It was implemented in non-Russian schools in Kazan and the Kazan gubernia, at first in the villages of baptized Tatars, then in the villages of other baptized non-Russians, not only in the Kazan gubernia, but also in other neighboring gubernias.
From the very beginning, these schools were considered to be a bulwark against the strong pressure on our eastern non-Russians from Muslim-Tatar propaganda, which produced among them dangerous mass apostasies to Islam and, moreover, threatened to erase their tribal characteristics and turn them into Tatars in a short amount of time. The previous Russian school, in which non-Russians studied, was not able to act as such a bulwark; it was more foreign to them than the Tatar schools with their mullahs in respect to both language, which they studied with great difficulty to the detriment of other subjects in the school curriculum, and in its entire organization. Only a very few of the non-Russian students whom the school system managed to teach something and Russify were fruitlessly ripped them from their tribes, working in village clerkships etc, not rendering on their fellow countrymen any kind of cultural influence, appearing foreign and sometimes even highly unpleasant to them.
For the successful implementation of its mission, the new non-Russian school adopted for itself a purely public (for each tribe) form of study and existence, immediately giving it in the eyes of the non-Russians immense advantage over the old Russian and Tatar Muslim schools. Russian education, which it started to convey to its pupils, took a local nationalistic form in order to communicate to the heart and mind in a more direct, immediate, and lively manner, to make the education their own, and to bring them close to the Russian fatherland, which they share with us. Its external way of life was organized in the most simple and modest forms, as close as possible to the external way of life the non-Russians themselves. When it came to choosing teachers, preference was shown to teachers from the tribesmen. Using language as an educational tool, instruction was conducted in the native colloquial language of each tribe, and Russian became only a scholarly language, which students had to study on par with other subjects of the curriculum with the help of their native language, only becoming a language of instruction in so far as was adopted by the students. For the easement of the beginning of its study and transference to the reading of Russian books, in school textbooks and other books in non-Russian languages Russian transcription was used; besides this, the Russian alphabet of these books should have sharply delineated for the pupils the “new” school from Tatar-Muslim literacy and culture, which uses the holy and Arabic alphabet shared by all Muslims.
In particular the outward nationalistic form of this new system of non-Russian education was a source of perplexity, grabbing the attention of the supporters of the state language. Due to it, they did not pay attention to the essence of the matter and the practical importance of the new methods of education, the former being in essence purely Russian and deeply religious. It is curious, that a number of these supporters included ecclesiastical figures, whom one would have thought would be more interested in supporting the best and easiest means of study of God’s law in the native tongue of non-Russians and their more sincere upbringing in the faith than the interests of the state language. In a letter of N.I. Ilminskii to K.P. Pobedonostsev ( 27 June 1891), we find an expressive reply on his part against the danger, expressed in the Educational Council of the Holy Synod by one of the bishops, that permitting of non-Russian languages in the school and church would create new nationalities harmful to the Russian state and people. “Against this danger one needs to keep in mind the following fact. A long time ago was begun and up to now irrepressibly continues the gradual absorption of all Volga non-Russians, not only pagans, but also kryashens, by Muslims and Tatars… In front of our eyes whole villages of Chermisi, Votyaki, and Chuvashi are apostatizing to Muhammedism at the hands of Tatars, who have been gradually preparing for this for a long time. It is an irresistible process, like gangrene, which if one does not place obstacles in its path, could in 50-100 years end in the final conversion of all our non-Russian tribes (Chuvash, Cheremis, Votyak) to Islam. And Muhammad will be all, in all. The only means against such an inevitable calamity is the interior, sincere, and convicted assimilation of the Christian teaching by non-Russians, enlivened by Orthodox theology and prayer. And for such a lively and sincere assimilation by non-Russians of Christian teaching, the native language serves as the most faithful and effective means [to this end]. In such a manner, a dilemma arises: if out of danger of separate nationalities we do not sufficiently allow the non-Russian language into non-Russian schools and churches for the solid and complete, convicted assimilation of the Christian faith, then in such a situation all the non-Russians will merge into one tribe in language and faith, becoming Tatars and Muslims. If we allow non-Russian languages, even if nationalities were supported…they would be unified with the Russian people by faith. Choose as you will, but I suggest, that such small, scattered nationalities cannot exist for long and in the end they will merge with the Russian people over the passage of time.”
The first application of this new system of non-Russian education touched only kryashen non-Russians, but soon its influence spread to non-Christian tribes, foremost among them the nomads of the eastern steppe. From 1858-1861 N.I. Il’minskii served on the Orenburg border commission, whose chairman then was the famous orientalist V.V. Grigor’ev. They both were very much interested in the situation of the steppe Kirgiz ethnic groups, constricted as in the case of the Volga tribes, by the irrepressible pressure of Tatar-Muslim culture. The clear predominance of Tatars over the Kirgiz with regards to administrative relations, created during the reign of Catherine II, and the fanatical propaganda of Tatar mullahs, who held more and more sway over the spiritual life of the territory, bent on the complete “Tatarization” of the good-natured, Shamanistic and illiterate Kirgiz peoples and weakening of Russian influence on the steppes. In the Russian-Kirgiz administration Tatars, in the offices of interpreters, scribes etc. became continuous intermediaries between the Russian administration and the Kirgiz people; Tatar became the official language of the steppe. In 1850 in Orenburg, a school was opened for Kirgiz children. It immediately obtained a Tatar character with most of the instruction in Tatar rather than in Russian. Rich and influential Kirgiz were all “Tatarized”. Tatarization also penetrated the masses, penetrating the steppe from two sides, from the Russian and Central Asian borders. The strengthening of Russian influence and the weakening of Tatar influence was the most urgent need for the Kirgiz steppes.
V.V. Grigor’ev attempted to weaken this dangerous influence of Tatarism by strengthening national elements of steppe life. First of all, he attempted to increase the significance of the national language of the Kirgiz, forcing interpreters to write in it in official correspondence, and to strengthen Russian influence [direction] in the Orenburg school. On his initiative, four schools were opened in the main fortifications of the Ural oblast with this same Russian influence with instruction in Russian and Kirgiz, not Tatar. Instruction of Muslim dogma was allowed only in private, outside the state. He was the first to put forward the idea of adapting the previously unwritten Kirgiz language to the Russian, and not Arab-Tatar, alphabet. His colleague Il’minskii from the bottom of his heart loved the talented Kirgiz people and its expressive language. He studied the latter and in the Academic Notes of Kazan University (1860-1861) published “Material for its study [Kirgiz language?]” and a Kirgiz story “Ir-Targyn”. In Kirgiz schools, his “Manual for Self-instruction of Russian Grammar for Kirgiz (Kazan, 1861) was significant. He managed to establish contact with Kirgiz teachers in the steppe, one of whom he was especially endeared to named Altynsarin, who later became a lead actor in the field of Kirgiz education.