The Yekaterininsky Women's Gymnasium was an educational institution Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Province, that operated from no later than 1868 until 1918, when Russian gymnasia were abolished in the course of Soviet educational reforms. After its closure, its document flow was apparently continued by its successor institution — the Arzamas Soviet Second-Level School named after Bukharin.[1]

History and Activities

The exact date of the gymnasium's founding cannot be established from available documents: the earliest surviving files in the collection date to 1868. During the The Great Patriotic War, the building housed an evacuation hospital, and pupils were transferred to a small house on Stupin Street; from 1943 the school returned to its own building; in 1959 the institution became a school with instruction in several subjects in English, and on 7 May 1964, by decision of the Arzamas City Executive Committee, it was renamed the Gorky School.[2] On 31 July 1918, the Committee for Public Education resolved to rename the gymnasium the Arzamas Gymnasium, and on 15 November 1918 the Arzamas Department of Public Education designated it the Soviet Second-Level School, which accepted children who had completed the First-Level School from Arzamas and the surrounding volosts and uyezds.[2] In 1901, the progymnasium was elevated to the status of a full gymnasium with a seven-year course of study; the curriculum was expanded to include literature, Church Slavonic, mathematics, world history, physics, mathematical geography, and pedagogy; that same year, a stone building was laid next to the wooden one, consecrated on 23 September 1902, and by the early twentieth century the number of female pupils exceeded 500.[2] In 1872, the school was reorganized into a progymnasium with a curriculum that included the Law of God, penmanship, Russian language, arithmetic and geometry, geography, history, natural history, French, needlework, singing, and drawing.[2] The gymnasium traces its history to a women's school taken under the patronage of Prince Pyotr Georgiyevich of Oldenburg through the mediation of Aleksandr Nikolayevich Karamzin — son of the historian — and his wife Natalya Vasilyevna Obolenskaya; the name "Yekaterininsky" was given in honor of the prince's daughter.[2] The gymnasium building is located at Karl Marx Street, 16: prior to 1887 the house belonged to the landowner Poluyektova, who that same year transferred it to the expanding gymnasium, which had previously occupied the Khanykov house at Progonnaya Street, 11.[2] The gymnasium operated within the system of classical women's education introduced in Russia by the Charter of 1864 and consolidated by the charter of 30 July 1871. Under this system, classical gymnasia granted graduates the right to enter university, whereas non-classical gymnasia did not.[1] The documents preserved in the archival collection span the period from 1868 to 1932: registers of outgoing and incoming documents for 1916–1925 and 1916–1932 contain information about both the gymnasium itself and the Bukharin School, which appears to have been its successor.[1]

Archival Collection

The gymnasium's documents were transferred to the Arzamas State Archive on 2 October 1933; the source of the transfer has not been established. The collection was assigned number 118 and is held at the State Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region" (Arzamas). Its total volume amounts to 1,852 storage units: inventory no. 1 contains 1,816 files, and inventory no. 2 contains 36 files. The chronological scope of the materials is 1868–1932; additionally, inventory no. 1 includes files from 1936 containing copies of certificates issued to replace lost originals.[1]

Some documents — 15 storage units covering 1886–1914 — are held at the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region in Nizhny Novgorod. In the course of improving the inventories, a scientific reference apparatus was compiled: title pages, a preface, a list of abbreviations, and chronological indexes, since the original file headings did not fully reflect the composition of the documents.[1]

Sources

  1. opentextnn.ru — Collection no. 118. Yekaterininsky Women's Gymnasium, Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. Inventory no. 1, for 1872–1932, 1936 — OPEN TEXT
  2. titra.ru — Yekaterininsky Women's Gymnasium, K. Marx Street, 16 — TRАФАРЕТ Printing House — The gymnasium building is located at Karl Marx Street, 16. Until 1887 the house belonged to the landowner…