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Literacy and Literacy Texts in Muscovy: A Reconsideration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Gary Marker
Gary Marker*
Affiliation:
Department of History, State University of New York, Stony Brook
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Extract

For well over a century scholars with a variety of concerns have inquired into the level of literacy in pre-Petrine Russia with mixed success at best. The problem is well known: The array of sources upon which historians of other cultures typically rely to estimate levels of literacy–parish records, wills, service records, and tax lists–either do not exist for pre–Petrine Russia or do not provide the volume of data necessary for computing literacy in a statistically meaningful way.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 74 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1990

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References

1. One telling indication of just how lacking Muscovy was in the appropriate records is Harvey Graff's chart of sources for literacy and the countries for which they have proven useful. Virtually none of these records is available for Muscovy except under exceptional circumstances, a fact that explains why there are no references to Russian sources in Graff's chart. See Graff, Harvey J., The Literacy Myth (New York : Academic Press, 1979, 325–327 Google Scholar. An identical list of sources can be found in two other works by Graff, : The Legacies of Literacy : Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1987, 6–7 Google Scholar; and Literacy in History : An Interdisciplinary Research Bibliography (New York : New berry Library, 1981).

2. Houston, R. A., Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity : Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England 1600-1800 (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 5, “Measures of Literacy,” 162-192.

3. Sobolevskii, A. I., Obrazovannost’ moskovskoi rusi XV-XVII vekov (Moscow : Tipografiia A. M. Vol'fa, 1892)Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., 4-12.

5. B. Stevens, Carol, “Belgorod : Notes on Literacy and Language in the Seventeenth-Century Army,” Russian History 7, pts. 1 and 2 (1980) : 115 and 122 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In regard to the reliance on Sobolevskii, see, for example, the first chapter of Luppov, S. P., Kniga v Rossii XVII veka (Moscow : Nauka, 1971, 9–11 Google Scholar. An exception to this reliance upon Sobolevskii's evidence can occasionally be found in the few regional studies of seventeenth century literate culture. See Sudakov, G. V., “Gramotnost’ i knizhnaia kul'tura vologzhan v XVII v.” in Materialy po istorii evropeiskogo severa SSSR. Severnyi arkheograficheskii sbornik, ed. Kolesnikov, P. A. et al. (Vologda : Vologodskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii institut, 1973), 3 : 215–226 Google Scholar.

6. Kukushkina, M. V., Monastyrskie biblioteki russkogo severa (Leningrad : Nauka, 1977), 167–177 and ff Google Scholar.; Rozov, N. N., Kniga v Rossii v XV veke (Leningrad : Nauka, 1981 Google Scholar, especially chaps. 1 and 3; Malyshev, V. I., Ust'-Tsilemskie rukopisnye sborniki XVI-XX vv. (Syktyvkar : Komi Knizhnoe Izdatel'stvo, 1960)Google Scholar; Pozdeeva, I. V., “Zapisi na staropechatnykh knigakh kirrilovskogo shrifta kak istoricheskii istochnik,” Fedorovskie chteniia 1976. Chitatel’ i kniga. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Moscow : Nauka, 1978, 39–54 Google Scholar; Kopanev, A. I., “Iz istorii bytovaniia knig v severnykh derevniakh (XVI v.),” Pamiatniki kul'tury. Novye otkrytki 1975 (Moscow : Nauka, 1976, 98–100 Google Scholar; idem, “Knizhnost’ severnoi volosti XVI-XVII vv.” in Kul'lurnoe nasledie drevnei Rusi. Istoki stanovlenie traditsii, ed., M. B. Khrapchenko et al. (Moscow, 1976), 394-399; and many others.

7. See, for example, Okenfuss, Max, The Discovery of Childhood in Russia : The Evidence of the Slavic Primer (Newtonville, Mass. : Oriental Research Partners, 1980), 10 Google Scholar.

8. The list of derogatory comments has been recounted in whole or in part in several places. See Jack Kollmann, “The Moscow Stoglav ('Hundred Chapters’) Church Council of 1551” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1978), 337-339; Grigorii Mirkovich, “O shkolakh i prosveshchenii v patriarshii period,” Zhurnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveshcheniia, pt. 198 (1878) : 15-16; A.I. Iatsimirskii, “Obrazovannost’ v moskovskoi Rusi,” in Russkaia istoriia v ocherkakh i stat'iakh, ed. M. V. Dovnar- Zapol'skii (Kiev, 1912)3 : 514-520.

9. Golubinskii, E., Istoriia russkoi tserkvi (Moscow : Tipografiia Moskovskii universitet, 1901) 1 : 720 Google Scholar. Ivan Zabelin made a similar point by emphasizing the narrowly mechanical nature of this type of reading. Zabelin, I., “Kharakter nachal'nogo obrazovaniia v dopetrovskoe vremia,” in Opyty izucheniia russkikh drevnostei i istorii (Moscow : Grachev, 1872) : 63–64 Google Scholar.

10. Botvinnik, Marat, Otkuda est’ poshel bukvar’ (Minsk : Vysheishaia shkola, 1983 Google Scholar; Markushevich, A. I. et al., eds., Ot azbuki Ivana Fedorova do sovremennogo bukvaria (Moscow : Prosveshchenie, 1974, 7–43 Google Scholar; DuFeu, V. M. and Simmons, J. S. G., “Early Russian Abecedaria in Oxford and London,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, no. 3 (1970) : 119–133 Google Scholar; Isaevich, la. D., “Izdatel'skaia deiatel'nost’ L'vovskogo bratstva v XVI-XVIII vekakh,” Kniga 7 (1962) : 219–220 Google Scholar; Alekseeva, M. A., “U istokov russkogo bukvaria. O bukvare Kariona Istomina 1694 goda” in Bukvar’ sostavlen Karionom Istominym (Leningrad : Kniga, 1981, 4–5 Google Scholar; Botvinnik, M. V., “Azbuki Ivana Fedorova i ee traditsii” in Ivan Fedorov i vostochno-slavianskoe knigopechatanie (Minsk : Nauka i tekhnika, 1984, 115–129 Google Scholar; Golenchenko, G. la., “Istochniki po istorii belorusskoi kul'tury (staropechatnye uchebnye knigi XVI- pervoi polovine XVII vv.)” in historii knigi v Belorussii (sbornik stalei), ed., Zbralevich, L.I. et al. (Minsk : Izdatel'stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1979), 129–152 Google Scholar. Okenfuss, , The Discovery of Childhood in Russia, 8-42; Roman Jakobson, Ivan Fedorov s Primer of1574 (Cambridge : Harvard College Library, 1955, 6–30 Google Scholar; Iagich, V., “Rassuzhdeniia iuzhnoslavianskoi i russkoi stariny o tserkovno-slavianskom iazyke,” Akademiia nauk. Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti. Issledovaniia po russkomu iazyku 1 (1885-1895) : 788 and ff.Google Scholar

11. The list of standard secondary sources on seventeenth century primary education is very extensive; there is no particular purpose served in reproducing a long list of already well-known studies. Among those that have been particularly helpful for the questions raised in this study, other than the works that have already been cited, are Izvekov, D., “Bukvarnaia sistema obucheniia v iskhode XVII i nachale XVIII st.,” Sem'i'a i shkola 4 (1872) : 723–750 Google Scholar; Mordovtsev, Daniil, “O russkikh shkol'nykh knigakh XVII veka,” Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri moskovskom universitete, bk. 4 (1861) : 1–100 Google Scholar. See also Max Joseph Okenfuss, “Education in Russia in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1970), 114-212.

12. Meletii Smotritskii's Grammatika slavenskaia of 1619 refers to this sequence of books as the method that had been used for centuries. Similar comments appear in the Domostroi and in the standard instructional pamphlet “Nakazanie ko uchitelem kako im ouchiti detei gramote i detem ouchitisia bozhestvennomy pisaniiu i razumeniiu,” which circulated both in printed and manuscript form in the seventeenth century. See Iagich, “Rassuzhdeniia iuzhnoslav ianskoi i russkoi stariny,” 500-504, for the manuscript variant and the Moscow psalter of 1645 (no. 180 in Zernova, A. S., Knigi kirillovskoi pechati izdannye v Moskve v XVI-XVII vekakh. Svodnyi katalog [Moscow : Gos. biblioteka SSSR im V.I. Lenina, 1958] and no. 586 Google Scholar in Karataev, I. P., Opisanie slaviano-russkikh knig, napechatannykh kirillovskimi bukvami [St. Petersburg : Tipografiia Imperatorskoi Akademii Nauk, 1861])Google Scholar for the printed text.

13. Over the past fifteen years the primacy of reading over writing in European education between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries has become widely accepted in scholarship on literacy. For an early statement on the subject see Havelock, Eric, Origins of Western Literacy (Toronto : Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1976), 19 Google Scholar.

14. Barnicot, J. D. A. and Simmons, J. S. G., “Some Unrecorded Early Printed Slavonic Books in English Libraries,” Oxford Slavonic Papers, no. 2 (1951) : 98–99 Google Scholar; Zernova, A. S., Nachalo knigopechataniia v Moskve i na Ukraine (Moscow : Izdatel'stvo Moskovskii universitet, 1947), 41 Google Scholar.

15. Castell, Suzanne de and Luke, Allan, “Models of Literacy in North American Schools : Social and Historical Conditions and Consequences,” in Literacy, Society and Schooling : A Reader, ed. Castell, Suzanne de, Luke, Allan, and Egan, Kiernan (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1986, 88–89 Google Scholar.

16. Paul'son, I. A., Metodika gramoty po istoricheskim i teoreticheskim dannym (St. Petersburg, 1887), 7–8 Google Scholar.

17. Exactly where writing was introduced in the pedagogical sequence remains unclear. According to a number of western specialists, the ability to sign one's name was intermediate between the ability to read and the ability to write in France and England. Were this true for Muscovy, one would place Sobolevskii's and Stevens's lists of signatories between the teaching psalter and the Acts of the Apostles. See Francois, Furet and Jacques, Ozouf, Reading and Writing. Literacy in France from Calvin to Jules Ferry (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1982), 11–16 Google Scholar; Schofield, R. S., “The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Goody, Jack (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1981, 315–324 Google Scholar.

18. Okenfuss, The Discovery of Childhood in Russia, 8.

19. Jakobson, Ivan Fedorov's Primer, 12.

20. Luppov, Kniga v Rossii, 66-67; Luppov, S. P., ed., Chitateli izdanii moskovskoi tipografii v seredine XVII veka (Leningrad : Nauka, 1983), 11 and ff Google Scholar. Fragmentary figures can also be found in Sobolevskii, Obrazovannost’ Moskovskoi Rusi, 18.

21. Preliminary results of this work have recently appeared in a rotoprint of 300 copies, Pozdeeva, I. V., ed., Novye malerialy dlia opisaniia izdanii moskovskogo pechatnogo dvora. Pervaia polovina XVII v. (Moscow : Izdatel'stvo Moskovskii universitet, 1986)Google Scholar. I have, unfortunately, been unable to see a copy of this work to date. See also Amosov, A. A., “Zametki o moskovskom staropechatanii. K voprosu o tirazhakh izdanii XVI-nachala XVII v.,” in Russkie knigi i biblioteki v XVI-pervoi polovine XIX veka, ed., Kutasova, E. I. (Leningrad : Biblioteka Akademii nauk, 1983, 5–12 Google Scholar.

22. Tsentralnyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (TsGIA) in Leningrad, fond 796, the Records of the Synod Chancellery; opis’ 58, number 43 “Vedomost’ kakogo zvaniia knigi v Moskovskoi tipografii s nachala uchrezhdeniia eia do nyne pechataemye byli i po skol'ku ekzempliarov o torn pokazano nizhe sego,” 1-14. [Hereafter standard Soviet Union notation will be used.]

23. Pokrovskii, A. A., Pechatnyi moskovskii dvor v pervoi polovine XVII veka (Moscow : Tipografiia V.I. Voronova, 1913), 12–13 Google Scholar.

24. P. P. Pekarskii, Nauka i literatura v Rossii pri Petre Velikom. Vol. 2, Opisanie slaviano-russkikh knig i tipografii 1698-1725 godov (St. Petersburg : Tovarishchestvo “Obshchestvennaia Pol'za,” 1862).

25. T. A. Afanas'eva, “Izdaniia kirillicheskoi pechati XVIII veka svetskogo soderzhaniia,” in Problemy istochnikovedcheskogo izucheniia rukopisnykh i staropechatnykh fondov. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov (Leningrad : Gosudarstvennaia publichnaia biblioteka im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, 1979), 184-187.

26. The creative activities of both Polotskii and Burtsev are very well known and fully described in the literature. They, along with Fedorov, Istomin, and Smotritskii, are universally recognized as the authors of the most important and impressive pre-Petrine primers, works that became landmarks of Russian pedagogical thought. Whether these unquestionable masterworks were widely used in practice, as is sometimes argued, and whether their sophistication was in any sense passed on to the abecedaria, which clearly were widely used, is another question altogether that will be addressed in a subsequent essay. See the discussions in Markushevich, Ot azbuku lvana Fedorova, 7-39; Botvinnik, Otkuda, 7-12 and ff.; and Okenfuss, The Discovery of Childhood, 8-35.

27. Zernova, Knigi kirillovskoi pechati, 26 and ff.

28. On the contents of seventeenth century libraries, see, inter alia, Luppov, Kniga vRossii, 153-186; Sapunov, B. V., “Izmenenie sootnoshenii rukopisnykh i pechatnykh knig v russkikh bibliotekakh XVI-XV1I vv.,” in Rukopisnaia ipechatnaia kniga (Moscow, 1975), 37–50 Google Scholar.

29. Hellie, Richard, Slavery in Russia 1450-1725 (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1982), 240 and 604 Google Scholar.

30. DuFeu and Simmons, “Early Russian Abecedaria in Oxford and London,” 125-133. For specimens and descriptions of azbuki-propisi, see Kalachov, N., “Azbuki-propisi (vypiski iz rukopisnykh azbuk i propisei kontsa XVII-go i nachala XVII veka),” Arkhiv istoriko-iuridicheskikh avedenii otnosiashchikhsia do Rossii (Moscow, 1861) 3 : 3–18 Google Scholar; N., Marks, K azbuke kontsa XV11 veka (Moscow, 1908), 1–22 Google Scholar; Marks, N., ed., Azbuka-propis’ vremen Tsaria Mikhaila Feodorovicha (Moscow, 1911), 3–5 Google Scholar; and Bush, V., “Starinnyia azbuki-propisi,” lzvestiia otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti russkoi Akademii nauk 1918g. (Petrograd, 1919) 23 (book 1) : 195–224 Google Scholar.

31. Iakim, Zapasko and Iaroslav, Isaevich, Pamiatki knizhkovogo mistetstva : Katalog starodrukiv vidanikh na ukraini, 2 vols. (L'vov, 1981, 1984) 1 : 261 Google Scholar; Botvinnik, Otkuda, 68-105; G. la. Golenchenko, “Istochniki po istorii belorusskoi kul'tury (staropechatnye uchebnye knigi XVI-pervoi polovine XVII vv.),” in Zbralevich, L. I., ed., li istorii knigi v Belorussii (sbornik statei) (Minsk, 1979), 130–146 Google Scholar.

32. Zapasko and Isaevich, Pamiatki, vols. 1 and 2; Isaevich, “Izdatel'skaia deiatel'nost',” 219; Luk'ianenko, V. I., Katalog belorusskikh izdanii kirillovskogo shrifta XVI-XVII vv., 2 vols. (Leningrad : Gos. publichnaia biblioteka im. M. E. Saltykova-Shchedrina, 1973, 1975)Google Scholar; Galenchanka, G. la. et al., eds., Kniga Belorussii 1517-1917 : Svodnyi katalog (Minsk : Izdatel'stvo “Belorusskaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia, 1986), 98–133 Google Scholar.

33. Galenchanka et al., eds., Kniga Belorussii, 120-121.

34. The substantial literature on the migration of east Slavic books across borders is still quite fragmentary. See, among other things, Jakobson, Ivan Fedorov's Primer, 38; Du Feu and Simmons, “Early Russian Abecedaria,” 129; V. Votsianovskii, “K istorii prosveshcheniia v drevnei rusi XVII v. Knigi v Ustiuge velikom,” Bibliograf, no. 2 (1892), 66-68; E. L. Nemirovskii, “Chitatel’ izdanii Ivana Fedorova. Opyt analiza vladel'cheskikh zapisei,” Fedorovskie chteniia 1976 (Moscow : Nauka, 1978), 57-64; and Isaevich, la. D., Preemniki pervopechatnika (Moscow : Kniga, 1981, 141–156 Google Scholar : “Rasprostranenie russkikh knig na Ukraine i ukrainskikh v Rossii. “

35. Vodarskii, la. E., Naselenie Rossii za 400 let (XVI-nachalo XX vvj, (Moscow : Prosveshchenie, 1973), 29 Google Scholar.

36. Using Vodarskii's figure of 10.5 million for the population of Muscovy in 1678 (excluding the Baltic and non-Russian populations of Siberia), we will assume that the press runs for L'vov were typical of all literacy texts that were printed outside of Moscow; that all of the printed texts, regardless of origin, circulated exclusively within Moscovy; and that each of the primers lasted long enough to reach ten students. According to Richard Hellie, the life expectancy of the general population of Muscovy cannot be calculated. He hypothesizes that the life expectancy for slaves, however, “probably was not much longer than the 25.5 year average life span of Roman slaves who lived outside the capital.” Hellie's narrative implies that because slaves lived harder-than-normal lives, their life expectancies were probably lower than normal. The only other figures for life expectancies in Russia come from Steven Hoch, who recently estimated an average life span of 40 years for the inhabitants of the village of Petrovskoe who had survived until their fifth birthday. Hoch's figure is based on nineteenth century records, but he believes that they may also be accurate for the eighteenth century. For our speculative purposes let us take Hoch's figure as being applicable to the late seventeenth century.

We know very little about the age distribution of the population of Muscovy. As part of this exercise, however, let us assume that it was approximately even and that the relevant population for primers was limited exclusively to children between the ages of 7 and 10, or about a million people.

By this combination of improbable circumstances and computations we would end up with about 75, 000 students using the primer out of a possible total of a million, or about 7.5 percent rudimentary literacy. All of these assumptions, of course, are biased to yield the maximum possible literacy rate. All of the calculations that are in this study are premised, in part, on two additional notably optimistic assumptions : that all of the primers actually were used in the prescribed manner, rather than being taught incompetently or lost altogether, and that students actually emerged from this pedagogy knowing how to read. The real state of affairs, in all probability, was decidedly less sanguine, and, consequently, the actual rudimentary literacy rate most certainly was considerably lower. ( Hoch, Steven J., Serfdom and Social Control in Russia : Petrovskoe, a Village in Tambov (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986), 69 Google Scholar; Hellie, Slavery in Russia, 424-426. On the difficulties of using records on schooling without having some idea of attendance, see Graff, Literacy in History, 25-27', and Furet and Ozouf, Reading and Writing, 11.)