THE RUSSIAN STUDENT.

Mataura Ensign, Issue 1514, 18 July 1905, Page 1

THE RUSSIAN STUDENT.

The Russian student belong* to no class in particular, and can be compared to no other body of student* known to the civilised world. There are the students of aristocratic families, and tho sons of parenU of position and wealth, but these, especially the latter, are extreiaclv rare in Ruesia. They belong to their class rather than to their cloth. It is of the typical student that I wish to speak the man to whom the university re' presents everything the world has to g«ve, who, in his uniform coat, with the striking blue facings, is sonJobody ,in the world of Russia; without it is indistinguishable from the common herd around. Such student* form the overwhelming majority in Russia, Not be it noted, in the Baltic provinces where the ancient scats of learning existed long before the advent of the Russian, and owe nothing that is oood to his over-lordship. In real Russia your student may be the son of the lady who brings you the milk on her toil-warn shoulders to your back-door every morning ; the offspring of your brow-beaten lj " ,| er. whom voti treat in Russian fashion, to hard 'words and loud threats, even at the present dayhe may bo evenly closely related to the old humbug at your church door. who invokes all the saints of tie calcmlar to bless you for the careless rift of the smallest copixsr coin. The ideal of Russian education is a noble one. Indeed, Russia is the land of high and noble ideals, hut I do not know that tho practice of the country it any better than elsewhere; and the contrast between the ideal and the real is certainly more striking than in land* where more regard is had for the substantial and practical in life. The Russian ideal is that the highest education in the land must l>e open to all. That is the ideal; there are two very practical drawbacks to the realisation. Money is the first, but would not Ire a fatal obstacle if Russia honestly believed that she wanted education. Tho second obstacle is the Orthodox Church ; and as that has the conscience of all Russia, that count* in,its keeping, tho State spends very little at all in education, and allows the Church to undertake tho nominal provision of a great deal of it, the most tangible result whereof is tha wonderful church singing to be found even in out-of-way little village* throughout the Russian Empire, where the rudiments of learning, in spite of Church schools, are not to be found. The bulk of the Educational Budget of Russia is spent on universities, most of the remainder goes for the gymnasia, whose successful pupils pass out with the right of entering the university without further formality beyond compliance with certain police regulations. A mere trifle is spent on the common schools of the land. It seems a little topsy-turvy, but so many things are, to our ideas, wrong way round in Russia. The universities exist, from the point of view of the State, for the purpose of providing hrninß to carry on the process of administration, and it was for this purpose only that universities were first founded in Russia. Like the literati of China, therefore, the Russian student is on the high road to place and honor in the ranks of the governing classes of the Empire. " Factories for the production of chinovniks " is tho last new name for Russian universities. With this object in view, the State makes university education, for those who have passed through all the ordeals of the educational ud.9 and the police-spy system safely, •<> cheap that if the whole system were not so topsy-turvy Rdssia would be the best, instoud of tho worst, educated country in Europe. All the university fees demanded do not exceed five pounds sterling per annum. Yet this is an unattainable sum to the majority of the students at some of the universities. Nominations and scholarships, given not for scholarship,, but by interest, provide for a proportion of the needy. Annual charity balls and concerts, with tho occasional windfall of a bazaar, provide for a good many more. But hundreds of perhaps deserving intellects arc annually sent down from each of the Russian universities for inability to raise the princely sum of £3. Some return a year or so later, when persistent solicitation may have provided the necessary means. But there is nothing of tho honorable system in vogue in America, where the needy student turns out into the world at intervals to earn the means of continuing his studies. The Russian student belongs to tho privileged classes, and cannot work. It is true the railway, a few years back, when suffering unusually from the regular dishonesty of ticket inspectors, offered to open these posts to university students during the summer months. One is a little astonished at first to find the inspector with the ticket punch in the uniform of a university student; but uniforms have so very different a signiitanoe at home, and Russiu is a topsy-turvy land at best. Many of the unfortunates sent down never do return; and theso are not merely lost to the State, but mostly go to swell the ranks of the avowed enemies of the system of government, become foolish members of hot-headed secret societies, desperadoes; of terrorist conspiracies and the like. It is here, perhaps, more than any- , where else that Russian idealism is called upon to pay a price which increases ns the years pass and progress deepens, for disregarding the practicul limitations of weak humanity in order to produce an educated Utopia—on paper. Not half, often not more than a quarter, of the students who enter the university, ever complcto the course. Of those who take degrees, the numbers arc so few that any man who devotes himself to any special study may be practically certain of finding a chair vacant for him at one or other of the nine universities. But even the failures of a university are good enough.to fill the places of what we should call secondclass clerks in the Civil Service, and that is about all the State demands of its universities, Ijeyond the provision • of doctors of a very limited number. In short, the State wants "chinovniks," and the public want to escape the public service of the army, which, for students, is reduced to a negligible minimum, and there is little doubt that this consideration has at least equal weight with the thirst for knowledge in keeping the lecture rooms of Russian universities always abundantly filled.—Victor E. Marsden, in the ' Evening Standard.'