WOMEN’S EDUCATION AND LAND LIBERALISM OF THE NORTHERN LEFT BANK (70–80S OF THE XIX CENTURY)

Abstract

The article examines the fruitful activity of the opposition aristocratic front of the Northern Left Bank in the field of women’s education in the 1870s and 1880s. The author comes to reasoned conclusions that zemstvo institutions, and in particular the opposition aristocratic front of northern Ukraine, played a dominant role in the processes of creating state and municipal women’s educational institutions. During the studied period, two stages in the policy of the Zemstvo Liberal Party of the region regarding women’s education can be conventionally distinguished: 70s of the 19th century and the reign of Emperor Alexander III. The undoubted achievement of the first stage was the establishment of the Borznyan Zemstvo Girls’ Gymnasium. The progressive efforts of the opposition managed to achieve stable financing of the educational institution by forming a circle of private patrons, solidarity contributions from members of the Borznyan District School Council and increasing city taxes on property and real estate assets according to the progressive principle with the simultaneous fiscalization of these resources to the budget of the Borznyan District Zemstvo for the needs of the girls’ gymnasium. Members of the opposition aristocratic front periodically initiated the provision of financial assistance from the budgets of zemstvo self-government bodies for the needs of women’s educational institutions not only in the provincial city and county centers of the Chernihiv province, but also in the capital of the Russian Empire – St. Petersburg. During the period of the Counter-Reforms, the Zemstvo liberals of the region were forced to take into account the radical changes in the internal policy of the Russian Empire and adjust their position accordingly. However, the oppositionists managed to preserve the main achievements of the era of the Great Reforms in the field of women’s education, using the imperatives of “balanced reformism”. In general, the policy of the Zemstvo liberal party of northern Ukraine in the field of female education in the 1870s and 1880s, in our opinion, should be evaluated as an undeniable act of social progress and a selfless achievement of the opposition aristocratic front of the region. The implemented democratic imperatives became an integral and organic component of the large-scale humanitarian policy of the Zemstvo liberal movement in the north of Left Bank Ukraine in the 1860s–1880s.