Ivan Betskoy
Encyclopedia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n school reformer who served as Catherine II
Catherine II of Russia
Catherine II, also known as Catherine the Great , Empress of Russia, was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia on as Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst-Dornburg...
's advisor on education and President of the Imperial Academy of Arts
Imperial Academy of Arts
The Russian Academy of Arts, informally known as the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, completed 25 years later in 1789...
for thirty years (1764–94). Perhaps the crowning achievement of his long career was the establishment of Russia's first unified system of public education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
.
Life
Betskoy's parents were Prince Ivan TrubetskoyIvan Trubetskoy
Ivan Yurievich Trubetskoy was a Russian Field Marshal, promoted in 1728. He was a member of the inner circle of Tsar Peter I of Russia and husband to a daughter of Fyodor Golovin. Made a boyar in 1692, Trubetskoy commanded part of the Russian fleet during the Azov campaigns in 1696. In 1699, he...
, a Russian Field Marshal, and his Swedish mistress, Baroness Wrede. His surname is the abbreviated form of his father's.
He was born in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, where Trubetskoy was held captive throughout the Great Northern War
Great Northern War
The Great Northern War was a conflict in which a coalition led by the Tsardom of Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The initial leaders of the anti-Swedish alliance were Peter I the Great of Russia, Frederick IV of...
, and went to Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
to get a military education before joining a Danish cavalry regiment. It was in the Danish service that he sustained a fall from a horse which forced him to retire from the service. Field Marshal Trubetskoy, having no other sons but Betskoy, recalled him to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in 1729. At first he served as his father's aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
but later would be sent on diplomatic missions to various capitals of Europe.
Betskoy was actively involved in a coup d'etat
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
that brought Elizaveta Petrovna to the Russian throne. The grateful empress promoted him to General Major and asked him to attend Johanna Elisabeth of Holstein, whose daughter Catherine was selected as a bride for the Empress' nephew and heir, Grand Duke Peter. In truth, Betskoy had been on friendly terms with Johanna Elisabeth for two decades previous, their intimacy giving rise to rumours that Catherine was his biological daughter.
After Johanna Elisabeth was expelled from Russia in 1747, Betskoy found it necessary to lay down his offices and settle in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, where he spent the following 15 years in commerce with the French Encyclopédistes
French Encyclopédistes
The encyclopédistes were a group of 18th-century writers in France who compiled and wrote the Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. More than a hundred encyclopédistes have been identified. Many were part of the intellectual group known as the philosophes...
and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...
. He was introduced to the highest echelons of the French aristocracy by his only sister Anastasia Ivanovna, Landgravine von Hesse-Homburg
Hesse-Homburg
Hesse-Homburg was formed into a separate landgraviate in 1622 by the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt to be ruled by his son, although it did not become independent of Hesse-Darmstadt until 1668....
(her first husband was Prince Demetre Cantemir, ruler of Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
).
Peter III of Russia
Peter III of Russia
Peter III was Emperor of Russia for six months in 1762. He was very pro-Prussian, which made him an unpopular leader. He was supposedly assassinated as a result of a conspiracy led by his wife, who succeeded him to the throne as Catherine II.-Early life and character:Peter was born in Kiel, in...
recalled Betskoy to Russia and put him in charge of imperial palaces and gardens. Upon arriving to Saint Petersburg, Betskoy renewed his acquaintance with the sovereign's wife (and his own purported daughter), helping her depose Peter in 1762. His hopes to profit from his prominent share in the conspiracy were high. In her memoirs, Ekaterina Dashkova recalls an episode when Betskoy importuned the Empress with questions like "Was I not the one who incited the Guards? Was I not the one who threw money to the people?"
Although Betskoy held no post of any consequence until 1764, when Catherine made him President of the Imperial Academy of Arts, he went on to become a pillar of the Russian establishment. His position at Catherine's court is not easy to classify. Some historians define his post as a "personal secretary"; others regard Betskoy as an "unofficial education minister" to the Empress. He was one of the few people who enjoyed unlimited access to the Tsarina on daily basis for most of her reign. It was at his suggestion that Étienne Maurice Falconet
Étienne Maurice Falconet
Étienne Maurice Falconet is counted among the first rank of French Rococo sculptors, whose patron was Mme de Pompadour.-Life:Falconet was born to a poor family in Paris...
was commissioned to sculpt the Bronze Horseman; and it was he who engaged Georg von Veldten to design a magnificent iron fence for the Summer Garden
Summer Garden
The Summer Garden occupies an island between the Fontanka, Moika, and the Swan Canal in Saint Petersburg and shares its name with the adjacent Summer Palace of Peter the Great.-Original:...
.
Betskoy's influence continued unabated until the late 1780s when Catherine's tolerance towards the ideas of the Enlightenment began to be eroded and Betskoy was declared "reverting to childhood" on account of his advanced age. Death overtook him in his ninety-second year, when he had long been incapacitated by blindness. Betskoy never married and left his estates to a natural daughter who enjoyed Catherine's particular favour; she married Jose de Ribas
José de Ribas
José Pascual Domingo de Ribas y Boyons known in Russia as Osip Mikhailovich Deribas was a Russian admiral of Spanish-Irish origin who founded the city of Odessa...
, a Spanish adventurer who founded the city of Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
.
Educational reform
Comenius
John Amos Comenius ; ; Latinized: Iohannes Amos Comenius) was a Czech teacher, educator, and writer. He served as the last bishop of Unity of the Brethren, and became a religious refugee and one of the earliest champions of universal education, a concept eventually set forth in his book Didactica...
, John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, and Rousseau. The treatise contained a proposal to educate young Russians of both sexes in state boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
s, aimed at creating "a new race of men". Betskoy set forth a number of arguments for general education of children rather than specialized one: "in regenerating our subjects by an education founded on these principles, we will create... new citizens." Boarding schools were to be preferred to other institutions of education in accordance with Rousseau's notion that "isolating the pupils enabled their tutors to protect them from the vices of society."
The Empress endorsed his proposal and established the Society for the Training of Well-Born Girls, with Betskoy as a trustee. This so-called Smolny Institute was the first female educational institution in Russia and one of the first in Europe. The Smolny was to become a training ground for Rousseau's ideas on education: the girls viewed as the future centers of their families were protected from every pernicious influence and their moral education was given more prominence than intellectual one. The Empress personally maintained a correspondence with some of the pupils, perhaps viewing the school for women as a vindication of her own place at the pinnacle of Russian society.
For the students of this institution Betskoy and Catherine brought out an instruction entitled On the Duties of Man and Citizen. This essay not only discussed the pupil's duties in regard to God and to society but also contained practical advices on health, hygiene, and other everyday matters. An extensive collection of Betskoy's aids and manuals was published in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...
in 1775. This edition was revised and expanded to two volumes printed in 1789–1791.
Born out of wedlock himself and anxious to reduce the frequency of infanticide
Infanticide
Infanticide or infant homicide is the killing of a human infant. Neonaticide, a killing within 24 hours of a baby's birth, is most commonly done by the mother.In many past societies, certain forms of infanticide were considered permissible...
, Betskoy found in illegitimate children and orphans an ideal material for implementing his educational theories. It was by his advice that two large foundling
Child abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting them. Causes include many social and cultural factors as well as mental illness. An abandoned child is called a foundling .-Causes:Poverty is often a...
homes were established, first in Moscow
Moscow Orphanage
The Moscow Orphanage or Foundling Home Vospitatel′nyj dom v Moskve was an ambitious project conceived by Catherine the Great and Ivan Betskoy, in the early 1760s...
(1764) and then in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
(1770). The Saint Petersburg Foundling House was a precursor of the modern Herzen University
Herzen University
The State Russian Herzen Pedagogical University is one of the largest universities in Russia. Located in Saint Petersburg, it operates 20 faculties and more than 100 departments. Embroidered in its structure are the Institute of Pre-University Courses, the Institute of Continuous Professional...
. Not less potent was his encouragement of education for merchant's sons. Betskoy deplored the fact that "we have only two classes of society, either peasants or noblemen" and sought to spur the development of middle-class consciousness by establishing a commercial school in Moscow.
Further reading
- A.S. Lappo-Danilevsky. I.I. Betskoy and His System of Education. SPb, 1904.
- P.M. Maykov. Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy: A Biography. SPb, 1904.