Welcome to a slap shot edition of the Russian rulers podcast. Today's episode is Muscovite Russia, education.

Again this is from the book History of Russia and it's 8th edition. I want to thank again Professor Steinberg for allowing me to read from it, which the book he co-authored with Nicholas Riazanovsky.

Education in pre-Patrine Russia remains a controversial subject.

Estimates of Moscovite Enlightenment have ranged from an emphasis on the well-nigh total illiteracy and ignorance to assertions

that there existed in the realm of the Tsar's a widespread ability to read, write, and

understand church teachings and practices.

The highly skeptical views of Milleakov and other critics appear on the whole rather

convincing.

Still, in this case, as in many others, one has to strive for a balanced judgment.

The Muscovide culture that we have discussed in this chapter could not have existed without some Enlightenment, the enormous Muscovite state,

and in particular its numerous bureaucracies required, as a minimum, some education of officials.

More speculative, although not necessarily fantastic,

is Vladimirsky Bhutinov's suggestion that Muscovites, like later old believers, generally could read and

have thorough knowledge of their religious books. Finally, we do possess considerable direct evidence

of education in Muscovite Russia.

Some education remained and developed in towns in the many monasteries and among the clergy

generally.

While much of it must have been an extremely elementary character,

more advanced schools appeared in the 17th century,

especially after the acquisition of Ukraine by Muscovey.

In Kyiv in Ukraine, which was more open to the West and where orthodoxy had to defend itself against Catholicism,

Metropolitan Peter Moglia or Mohela founded an academy modeled

...