The Moscow gymnasium project of 1731

In January 1726, the Academic Gymnasium was established in St. Petersburg as part of Peter the Great’s broader educational reform plan, intended to prepare personnel for the university – a higher education institution represented by the Academy of Sciences at the time. The creation of this complex educational structure was a response to the absence of a network of schools at various levels in Russia. By the onset of Anna Ioannovna’s reign, however, the Academic Gymnasium was in decline; its operations were hampered by the broader administrative and financial difficulties facing the Academy of Sciences. The viability of the gymnasium was questioned almost immediately after Peter the Great’s death. Furthermore, in 1728, many students abandoned the institution, following the imperial court to Moscow together with their parents. Against this backdrop, the 1731 discussion of a new gymnasium modeled on the original academic institution signals the continued support of Anna Ioannovna’s government for the educational system initiated by Peter the Great and further developed by his daughter Elizabeth. The proposal to establish a gymnasium in Moscow in the early 1730s has previously been overlooked by scholars. Its rediscovery was made possible through correspondence between members of the Academy of Sciences and Vasily Tatishchev, the initiator of the project, preserved in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Employing the retrospective method, this study explores the motivations behind Tatishchev’s proposal, the opportunities that such a project could have offered young Muscovites, and the reasons why the project ultimately remained unrealized.