The Presidential Library’s webinar spotlighted teaching and education in Imperial Russia

On November 29, 2023 the online webinar ““The Light of Learning for Public Education”: the collections of the Department of Public Education” was broadcast on the Presidential Library’s portal. The event was dedicated to the Year of Teachers and Mentors, which takes place in our country. 

The webinar focused on the state’s attitude towards the personality of the teacher, about the opening of public and private educational institutions in Imperial Russia. Numerous teaching aids compiled by outstanding scientists and teachers, and other archival documents from the collection 733 of the Russian State Archives were presented, which were digitized and included in the collections of the Presidential Library.

Documents of the Department of Public Education - and this is more than one hundred thousand archival files - reflect state policy in the field of education in the 19th - early 20th centuries: reports on the Ministry of Public Education, general affairs about scientific institutions, educational institutions; about inventions; on the procedure for awarding academic degrees; materials of the I, II and III departments (cases on special government events in connection with the revolution of 1848 in Europe; on donations to educational institutions; on the activities of scientific educational societies, including the Society for the Establishment of Mutual Education Schools with the participation of the Decembrists); about inventors - for example, about I. P. Kulibin, about participants in trips around the world and other materials.

All archives of the collections of the Department of Public Education are presented in more than 1,500 remote access centers of the Presidential Library, opened in the Russian Federation and in 34 abroad. In such centers, the electronic collections of the Presidential Library are fully available. 

Webinars on various topics are regularly held at the Presidential Library. They allow discovering unique collections of the national electronic repository, learn about rare historical documents, publications and other materials that are little known to a wide audience.

The Presidential Library’s portal provides all the information about past and upcoming webinars in Webinars section, and information about remote access centers in Remote Access Centers section.