Stoics as mentors and educators of youth in the Russian Empire (based on materials of the Russian periodicals of the late 18th – 19th centuries)

The article examines examples of the use (or consideration of the possibility of such using) of the Stoic legacy in upbringing and education of children, drawing on materials of Russian periodicals of the late 18th – 19th centuries. Although children’s journals Detskoe chtenie dlja serdca i razuma (the end of the 18th century) and Semejnye vechera (the middle of the 19th century) paid attention to the Stoics, they received a systematic representation on the pages of the periodicals of the Noble Boarding School at the Moscow University such as Poleznoe uprazhnenie junoshestva (1789), Utrennjaja zarja (1800–1808), I otdyh v pol'zu (1804), Kalliopa (1815–1820), where translations of various Stoic and stoicizing texts were published. One can suppose that this fact may have influenced the formation of certain behavioral ideals of pupils. The surge of interest of the Russian public in the Stoics in the last quarter of the 19th century led to consideration of the possibility of including literature about the Stoics in the educational process, as well as rose questions about Stoic philosophy as an alternative to Christian pedagogical ideals and original system of self-education. Reflections on justification of such steps are presented in Narodnaja i detskaja biblioteka and Obrazovanie. It is possible that an analysis of this phenomenon of the demand for Stoic philosophical strategies in the Russian Empire could contribute to solving the problem of contemporary Russian society’s search for value basis for education and upbringing.