The System of Public Education in Volyn Governorate in the Period 1796-1917. Part 1

This work explores the system of public education in Volyn Governorate in the period 1796-1917. This part of the work examines the timeframe 1796-1885. The key sources used in putting this work together are the Extracts from the Report of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod for the Department of the Orthodox Faith (1836-1885), the Military-Statistical Survey of the Russian Empire, and the 1887 Memorandum Book for Volyn Governorate. The authors' conclusion is that in the period 1796-1885 the system of public education in Volyn Governorate had been developing in the light of the incorporation of this region into the Russian Empire. Attempts to keep in place the Polish education system led to a polarization of the local population and to student involvement in nationalist riots between 1830 and 1831. Only subsequent to this did the Russian government begin to take measures to unify the public education system based on the Russian Empire's standards. By 1885, the network of the region's educational institutions numbered eight secondary schools, 28 lower schools, and 1,515 primary schools. Overall, Volyn Governorate had in operation 1,551 educational institutions, with a combined enrollment of 47,253 students. The region's education sector included secular, ecclesiastical, private, and national educational institutions. The process of the making of the region's public education system was pretty much over by 1885.