History of the cadet corps in the arena
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Cadet corps is one of the most significant events in the history of military educational institutions in Russia, and in the history of Russian education in general. They were the initial stage in the training of officers and civil servants. The value of the pedagogical experience accumulated in cadet corps goes far beyond the purely military sphere, since these educational institutions provided their pupils not only with a special military, but also with a broad civil education. Cadets (French - junior, minor) in pre-revolutionary France were young nobles who were assigned to military service, young children of noble families before they were promoted to the 1st officer rank. The word "cadet" comes from the diminutive "capdet" in Gascon, derived from the Latin "capitelleum", which literally means "little captain" or "little head". In Russia, since the establishment of the School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences by Peter I and until the closure of the last cadet corps in autumn 1920, in different years, there were in total about fifty cadet corps or military educational institutions, similar in essence to cadet corps. Outside of Russia, after the 1917 revolution, up to six Russian cadet corps functioned at different times. When Peter I was proclaimed Emperor in 1689, one of his priority tasks was to create a permanent army in Russia with a competent command staff. Peter realized that by recruiting foreigners to serve in the Russian army and sending young Russian nobles to study military affairs abroad, he would not completely solve the problem of training military personnel for the Russian army. The creation of a regular army, armed with modern weapons, made it necessary to train command personnel in Russia itself to lead military units and units. Peter undertook a long journey through Europe and on June 3, 1698 he visited the cadet corps in the city of Dresden. The first cadet corps appeared in Prussia in 1653, when the great elector established the first cadet school for noble children to carry out military service. Traveling abroad, Emperor Peter I understood more and more clearly that in his plans to build the Russian fleet he could not do without the help of foreign specialists. Equally, the same thoughts came to him when he thought that it was impossible to build a fleet and an army only using the services of foreign specialists. We need to create our own Russian school. The cadet corps seen in Dresden was land-based, but for Russia the priority was to create its own fleet, and therefore the first educational institution was not yet called the cadet corps. On January 14, 1701, a decree was issued "The Great Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Duke Peter Alekseevich indicated with His personal command to be Mathematical and Navigational, that is, cunningly nautical sciences to teaching." |
In 1715, the Naval Academy or the Academy of the Marine Guard was established in St. Petersburg. In the Project of the Naval Academy, which was presented to Peter by its author, Baron Saint-Hilaire, the word cadet was first used, but due to the naval specifics and French authorship, the title of cadet has not yet been officially introduced into circulation.
On January 16, 1712, Peter I founded the first Russian Military Engineering School. On January 31, 1910, Emperor Nicholas II ordered: “Due to the established by historical data the continuity of the 2nd cadet corps from the Engineering School established by Emperor Peter I on January 16, 1712 in Moscow, to give the Second Cadet Corps seniority from the date of the establishment of the named school, that is from January 16, 1712 ". This meant that the Second Cadet Corps officially became the successor to the School of Engineering.
And already on June 29, 1731, the Decree of Empress Anna Ioannovna was adopted on the creation of the Land Gentry Cadet Corps, after which the word cadet and cadet corps appeared in all official documents.
Thus, we can say with full historical certainty that the cadet corps in Russia date back to 1701.
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Sretenka. View of the Sukharev Tower, late 19th century. |
The empress Anna Ioannovna (1730-1740), responded to the proposal of the President of the Military Collegium, Count B.K. Minich and Russian Ambassador to Berlin Count P.I. Yaguzhinsky to establish a cadet corps in Russia. The development of the draft regulations on the corps was entrusted to Count Munnich. The first charter of the corps was based on the regulations of the Prussian and Danish cadet corps.
Based on the experience of Denmark and Prussia, in the training program of the cadet corps, along with special military subjects, the foundations of the exact, natural and humanitarian sciences were included. Since the time of the Peter's Table of Ranks in tsarist Russia there was no rigid border between military and civil service. The transition from military service to civilian service while maintaining or even increasing rank was not something special. Accordingly, the system of training and education in the cadet corps was created taking into account these features, and the range of subjects taught there was quite wide. The corpus studied "Russian literature" (language and literature), history (including the history of Ancient Greece and Rome - a course that involved acquainting pupils with the works of ancient authors not only in modern, French and German translations, but also in Latin) , heraldry and genealogy. Cadets were trained in horse riding, fencing, dancing, jurisprudence, new and ancient languages. Throughout the entire existence of the cadet corps, the course of study and programs changed periodically.
By the time the cadet corps was established in Russia, there was no pedagogical science as such, theoretical and practical developments for teaching most of the subjects determined for study in the cadet corps. Cadet training programs also did not exist, there were no textbooks. In St. Petersburg, it was impossible to get most of the books and instruments necessary for cadets for training. I had to ask military engineers in Narva, Revel, Riga to send books, training equipment, rulers, compasses, various ammunition and other items necessary for cadets to the cadet corps. The experience of teaching both civil and military disciplines did not exist. Everything had to be done for the first time. That is why the system of training for cadets, suffered through the first years of the existence of the cadet corps, later went far beyond the scope of this educational institution in importance and began to serve as a certain standard for the programs of the newly created cadet corps and other educational institutions.
The positions of Chief Director and Director of the Cadet Corps were established to lead the Gentry Corps of the Cadets. The chief director was supposed to carry out the general management of the cadet corps and the educational process and ensure communication of the corps with the empress, who showed great interest in the corps, and the Governing Senate, who was directly related to the recruitment of cadets to the corps. The first Chief Directors of the corps were Count B.K. Minich (1731), princes Anton-Ulrich of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel and Ludwig of Hesse-Homburg (1741), princes V.A. Repnin (1745), B.G. Yusupov (1750), Grand Duke Peter Fedorovich (1759), Count I.I. Shuvalov (1762). Major General Lyuberas (1731-1734) was appointed the first director of the corps.
Researchers and historians who analyzed the activities of the cadet corps in the first years of its existence came to the conclusion that, in the presence of some shortcomings in the organization of the educational process, the atmosphere of camaraderie, cohesion, simplicity of the environment and the often harsh regime of cadet life developed integral and persistent characters, rooted in most pupils with a sense of honor and duty, firmly bound them with the spirit of friendship and mutual assistance, which remained between the comrades after graduation from the corps. Each of them remembered the cadet brotherhood with sincere gratitude and love.
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Gradually, through the efforts of the Chief Directors of the corps, the quality of education and upbringing was brought into line with the high requirements that were laid down during its creation. Professors of the Academy of Sciences and teachers with a university education began to be widely involved in teaching in the building. The selection of teachers and corps officers became more thorough.
From the first days of its existence, the corps was under the close attention and tutelage of the reigning persons of Russia. None of the cadet corps was subjected to the introduction of such a number of innovations and such frequent adjustments of the curriculum as the 1st Cadet Corps. Each of the rulers of Russia strove to make his own contribution to the education of the cadets, considering this as the highest good for them. The reigning persons regularly visited the corps, presented them with their portraits, ceremonial uniforms, and showed other signs of royal favor. Corps directors were appointed only with the consent of the empress or emperor.
In January 1798, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich was appointed Chief Director of the 1st Cadet Corps. During the first 70 years of the existence of the 1st cadet corps, 3,300 students graduated from its walls, many of whom have achieved outstanding achievements in the field of public service, science and art.
By the beginning of the reign of the emperor Alexander I (1801-1825) in Russia there were four military educational institutions for the training of officers. Alexander I invited the nobility to think about creating provincial military schools at the expense of the nobles. On March 21, 1805, the "Plan of military education" developed with the direct participation of the emperor appears. In 1802, the Corps of Pages was established in St. Petersburg, which became the successor of the Court boarding house, created by Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. By decree of October 10, 1802, the Page Corps becomes a closed military educational institution. The charter noted that “this corps is such a military establishment, where noble youth, through education, are prepared for military service by strict obedience, complete subordination and strict coercion, but voluntary fulfillment of their posts. The Corps of Pages is a privileged educational institution, the purpose of which is to provide the sons of well-deserved parents intended for officer service, mainly in the guard troops, both general military education and upbringing corresponding to their purpose. "
In 1810 the Corps of Pages was transferred to the building of the former Vorontsov Palace, where until 1801 the Chapter of the Order of Malta was located, which was patronized by Paul I. This fact of purely external continuity was unexpectedly developed in the system of education of pages. The white Maltese cross became its official sign: Maltese crosses were depicted on the corpus banner, they have been preserved in the interior decoration of the premises. The sign of the Corps of Pages was also executed in the form of the Maltese Cross. It was received by graduates of the corps. In addition to the Orthodox Church in the building, the Catholic (Maltese) Chapel remained in memory of the previous owners of the building - an unprecedented case in the history of military educational institutions in Russia. The behests of the Knights of Malta, embossed on the walls of the chapel, were taken by the students of the Corps of Pages as moral and ethical standards. They read: “You will believe everything that the church teaches”, “You will respect the weak and become his defender”, “You will love the country in which you were born”, “You will not give up before the enemy”, “You you will wage a constant and merciless war with the infidels "," You will not lie and you will remain true to your given word "," You will be generous and will do good to everyone "," You will be a champion of justice and good against injustice and evil everywhere and everywhere. "
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In 1804, the Mining School, formed in October 1773 to train mining engineers, was transformed into the Mining Cadet Corps. There were preparatory and 8 classes in the building: four lower, two middle and two upper. The pupils of the four lower classes were called cadets, the next two were called conductors, and officers were trained in the senior classes. From the moment of its foundation, the Mining Cadet Corps was under the jurisdiction of the Mining Department, although the general rules of conduct, training and education were borrowed from the documents developed for the cadet corps. In 1833, the Mining Cadet Corps was renamed the Mining Institute, and the corps ceased to exist. It should be noted that not all Russian researchers classify the Mining Cadet Corps as a system of cadet corps, perhaps, first of all, this was caused by the subordination of the corps to the Mining Department, and not to Tsarevich Konstantin Pavlovich, who at that time took over the command of the cadet corps. At the same time, this institution, which has trained hundreds of experienced mining engineers, deserves to be put on a par with those military educational institutions that were established under Alexander I.
In 1812 in Finland, in the Gaapanemi town of the Kuopio province, the Gaapanemi Topographic Corps was created, which played an important role in the preparation of military topographers for the Russian army, necessary for drawing up geographical maps, conducting reconnaissance of the area, studying navigable rivers, etc. Initially, there were 6 cadets and 10 officers in the corps. Four years later, the special character of this institution has changed, and with the increase in funds for its development, it begins to prepare young people, natives of Finland, for all branches of the Russian army. In May 1819, the topographic corps was transferred to Friedrichshamn and began to be called the Finnish Cadet Corps. According to the state, it was supposed to have 30 state and 30 self-employed pupils. The corps was disbanded in 1903.
Under Alexander I, the military principle laid down by Paul I continued to strengthen in the cadet corps. By this time, as noted by the author of one of the most complete studies of the history of cadet corps, M.S. Lalaev, collectives of educated officers were formed in the cadet corps, recruited mainly from among the graduates of the same corps. Although most of them were more combat officers than educators. They rarely saw officers, the cadets say. The company commander appeared only on duty, company training or during executions. Strict discipline was maintained in the buildings. Corporal punishment was widely used. Company commanders and other officers had the right to punish cadets with rods. As one of the commanders of the cadet battalion remarked, “it was a shame to give the grenadier less than a hundred rods”. In the absence of the kind and constant influence of the officers-educators on their pupils, the inner life of the cadets gradually began to be determined by the cadets themselves. In the cadet environment, their own notions of a sense of honor and duty are taking root, which firmly bound their classmates with the spirit of disinterested friendship not only within the walls of the corps, but also outside of it for many years of life. Upon arrival in St. Petersburg and Moscow, each of them considered it his first duty to visit his corps. Pupils of different issues met each other like siblings.
Under Alexander I, the foundation was laid for the management of Russian military educational institutions from a single center. By the decree of March 29, 1805, a special "Council on Military Educational Institutions" was established, whose primary task was to unify the entire system of upbringing and education in cadet corps. The first chairman of the Council was the brother of the emperor, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. The creation of the Council marked the beginning of the activities of a state body, which was obliged to coordinate the preparation of curricula for military educational institutions, the release of teaching aids and textbooks and monitor the quality of teaching and education in cadet corps.
The greatest contribution to the creation and development of Russian cadet corps was made by the Emperor Nicholas I (1825-1855). Existing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. military educational institutions far from satisfying the needs of the army in recruiting officers. Military educational institutions, which developed separately from one another, did not have a reliable uniform organization; each institution was managed at the discretion of its immediate superior. Admission to cadet corps was often carried out without clearly defined rules and in many cases depended directly on the corps director. There were no uniform programs, guidelines and instructions for teaching and educational work. The experience of one educational institution served as an example for a newly created institution. For the period from 1800 to 1825. 4845 officers were released from the Pages, 1st and 2nd Cadet Corps, i.e. the average number of officers graduated annually was 200. According to Lalaev, the above educational institutions provided replacement in the army of no more than one sixth of all officer vacancies that were opened annually. Junker schools first appeared in Russia only in the last year of the reign of Alexander I.
Under Nicholas I, the most rational system of cadet corps began to take shape. Nicholas I decided "to give military educational institutions a new structure, to link them together into one common branch of government, in order to direct one and the same thought towards the same goal." According to Nicholas I, by the time of his accession to the throne, the cadet corps had fulfilled their educational function, which was originally assigned to them when they were created, and now had to focus their attention on training exclusively officers.
On May 11, 1826, a committee was formed under the chairmanship of engineer-general Opperman to develop a new regulation on military educational institutions. The committee was entrusted with the task of examining in detail the organization of the educational process and educational work in Russian military educational institutions and submitting its proposals for the further development of military education in Russia. The result of four years of work was the draft "General Regulations and Charter for military educational institutions." The goal of all educational institutions was to prepare the sons of the nobility for military service.
Nicholas I decided to return to the project presented by Platon Zubov to Alexander I in 1801. However, the practical implementation of P. Zubov's proposals took a slightly different direction. Zubov proposed the creation of 17 "military schools" - preparatory educational institutions, whose graduates, according to the established quotas, would be sent after graduation either to the cadet corps or to the university. Eight large schools were supposed to be created in Dorpat, Grodno, Volyn, Kiev, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Vologda and Smolensk. Nine more were to appear in Tver, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Orel, Kharkov, Saratov, Orenburg and Tobolsk.
Nicholas I took the path of creating new cadet corps. On February 1, 1830, the emperor approved the "Regulations on provincial cadet corps", on the basis of which cadet corps began to open both at the expense of the treasury and the local nobility. Initially, it was decided to establish corps in Novgorod, Tula, Tambov, Polotsk, Poltava and Elizavetgrad, each for 400 pupils. Children from the nearby provinces could enter the cadet corps in these cities. At the same time, it was specially determined which province was assigned to one or another corps.
By 1855, 17 cadet corps were opened, ten of which existed until 1918-1919.
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| Nizhny Novgorod Count Arakcheev Cadet Corps |
Cadet corps subordinate to the Chief Chief of military educational institutions were distributed among three military educational districts. TO Petersburg district were ranked: Corps of Pages, School of Guards Ensigns and Cavalry Junkers, Noble Regiment, 1st, 2nd, Pavlovsky, Novgorod Count Arakcheev, Finland, Aleksandrovsky Minor Cadet Corps. TO Moscow: 1st and 2nd Moscow, Alexandrinsky-Sirotsky, Orlovsky Bakhtina, Tula Alexandrovsky, Mikhailovsky Voronezh, Tambov, Orenburg Neplyuevsky and Siberian cadet corps. TO Western: Polotsk, Petrovsky-Poltava, Aleksandrovskiy Brestskiy, Non-ranked Vladimirskiy Kiev cadet corps.
In the era of Nicholas I, up to 6,700 students were brought up in cadet corps, 520 people graduated annually. In the years 1825-1856. 17653 officers were released from the cadet corps.
All cadet corps of that time were boarding schools with a staffing of 100 to 1000 pupils, divided into companies (grenadier, musketeer, non-ranked). Each company consisted of 100-120 cadets of approximately the same age and was directly subordinate to the company commander.
In the summer, the cadets were taken to the camp and lived in large tents, 50 people in each. For the St. Petersburg cadet corps, the camp was located until 1829 in Krasnoe Selo, and then near Peterhof. Since 1832, Moscow buildings were camped near the village of Kolomenskoye. The main camp activities were drill exercises (company, battalion). During the camp, much attention was paid to excursions, both near and distant, various sports activities, the purpose of which was to improve the health of the cadets.
In the cadet corps, the teaching of mathematics was expanded so that those graduated into the artillery and engineer troops had sufficient general training. In 1834, the teaching of gymnastics was included in the program for the first time. In the premises of the company, it was necessary to have red boards to show on them the names of the excellently trained cadets and black ones for the negligent or, as they liked to say at that time, "bad cadets." For each cadet, a certification notebook was kept, where the good and bad deeds of the cadets, their characteristics and measures for correcting bad inclinations were entered.
The primary place in the process of educating the cadets belonged to the church, and even the entire way of life of the corps rested on the Orthodox calendar. Religious education, which was the basis of moral education, reaching the depths of cadet hearts, instilled in them not only love for God, but also a sense of duty, love for the great Motherland, respect for parents, devotion to the Emperor, respect for elders.
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| Home church in the Cadet Corps. 1890s |
Immediately after laying the first stone in the foundation of the building for the newly established building, the construction of the corps Temple began. The date of the completion of the construction of the Temple became one of the most revered holidays by the cadets.
The temples were rich in decoration and had rare icons donated by members of the imperial family or local patrons of the arts.
For example, for a church Suvorov Cadet Corps, the iconostasis, which was in the army of A.V. Suvorov during her entry into Warsaw in 1794, and then at the main headquarters of Emperor Alexander I during his campaigns abroad in 1813-1814.
Corps church 1st Moscow Catherine II Cadet Corps, located in the Catherine Palace in Lefortovo, was famous for the fact that the princess of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Empress Catherine II, adopted Orthodoxy in this church.
Almost all cadets had a blessing icon from their home at the head of the bed, in front of which they prayed every morning and when they went to bed.
In 1831, in connection with the death of Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich, Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich was appointed Chief Head of military educational institutions, with the Council on military educational institutions subordinate to him. In 1832, in order to further strengthen the control of the military department over the corps, the Directorate of Military Educational Institutions and the Headquarters for the Administration of Military Educational Institutions were created, later transformed into the General Staff. The powers of his boss were equated to those of a minister. In the context of these transformations, the consistent tightening of disciplinary measures should also be considered: the pupils were under the vigilant control of educators. Their orders were not negotiable. The exit from the gate of the corps for the cadet was possible only accompanied by a minister or relatives.
In 1836, the Chief Head of the military educational institutions, the Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, introduced a new Charter for military educational institutions. In accordance with it, cadet corps were divided into 2 classes. By 1862-1863, there were 12 1st class cadet corps and 5 2nd class cadet corps. The 1st class included: Corps of Pages, School of Guards Ensigns and Cavalry Junkers, Noble Regiment, 1st and 2nd Cadet Corps, 1st and 2nd Moscow Cadet Corps, Finlyandsky, Pavlovsky, Novgorodsky, Orlovsky, Voronezhsky , Polotsk, Brest, Petrovsky Poltava, Orenburg and Siberian cadet corps. As the cadet corps became part of the first class, special classes were established in it, after which cadets were promoted to officers. The first special classes were created in the capital's cadet corps - in St. Petersburg: in the Pages, 1st and 2nd cadet corps, Pavlovsky, in Moscow: in the 1st Moscow, as well as Finland. In the late 40s of the XIX century, it was decided to establish special classes in the Orenburg Neplyuevsky, Siberian, Aleksandrovsky Orphan, Konstantinovsky, Vladimirsky Kiev cadet corps. The directors of the cadet corps were considered an honor to have special classes in the corps, and after the corps gained strength and acquired a certain authority, they began to make petitions for the introduction of special classes in the corps.
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In the second grade there were Aleksandrovsky Maloletny, Alexandrinsky Orphans, Tula, Tambov, Vladimir Kiev cadet corps. After 5 years of study, the cadets of these corps entered the corps of the 1st class. The cadets of the provincial corps, which initially did not have special classes, at the end of the general classes were transferred to the Noble Regiment, where, after graduating from the special classes, they were promoted to officers.
According to the unified curriculum introduced in 1836 for the 1st grade cadet corps, all subjects were divided into three courses: preparatory (1 year), general (5 years), special (3 years). The preparatory classes taught the basics of the Law of God, reading and writing in Russian, French and German, an initial course in arithmetic, calligraphy and drawing; in general and special classes - the Law of God, Russian language and literature, French and German, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, analytical geometry, mechanics, natural history, physics, chemistry, Russian and general history, geography, jurisprudence, statistics, artillery, tactics, military topography, descriptive arts, gymnastics, fencing and dancing. Differential and integral equations for those preparing to enter the artillery and engineering schools were held in special classes. During summer camps and vacations, the senior cadets who remained in the corps were engaged in topographic work. For reading, a special literary magazine was published, presenting a collection of the best works of that time. No children's books were published at that time.
Each academic subject was determined such a volume that all subjects, in accordance with their importance, made up an integral course program. The program was designed for the average cadet and was subject to compulsory learning. In addition to detailed programs, notes were drawn up; textbooks for these programs were commissioned by professors and eminent teachers. More than 50 textbooks were compiled by the most famous teachers of that time. A graduate of the 2nd cadet corps, General M.I. Lelyukhin, recalling the way of life and customs in the corps in 1837-1845, wrote: “The mental development of the cadets was very limited, they learned a lot, but they learned little for themselves, mainly due to the shortcomings of mentors who could help the cadets in preparing lessons. The cadets did not have a shortage of things that made up clothes, the linen was good and in sufficient quantity, finally, they were fed quite well in the corps. I don’t remember that any of the former cadets had a hostile feeling towards the corps, on the contrary, in the memoirs of the officers love for the corps, some kind of related feeling prevails. "
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Token of the 1st Cadet Corps in St. Petersburg |
The creation of numerous cadet corps, according to Nicholas I, was explained not only by the need to provide military training to future officers, but also by the desire to instill an appropriate morale in the future servants of the fatherland. For this purpose, in 1848, the Main Directorate of Military Educational Institutions, with the direct participation of Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, compiled a "Instruction for the Education of Pupils of Military Educational Institutions," explaining the purpose of creating cadet corps. It read: “To provide the young military nobility with an upbringing decent to this rank, in order to strengthen the rules of piety and pure morality in these pupils, and by teaching them everything that it is necessary to know in the military rank predetermined for them, to make them able to serve the Emperor with benefit and honor,” and the well-being of their entire life to be based on an unshakable commitment to the throne. Christian, Loyal, Russian kind Son, reliable comrade, modest educated young man, executive, patient and efficient officer - these are the qualities with which the pupils of the Military Educational Institutions must move from school to the ranks of the Imperial Army with a pure desire to repay the Emperor for his honest good deeds service, an honest life and an honest death. "
Emperor Alexander II (1855-1881), upon accession to the throne, assumed the title of Chief of the 1st Cadet Corps and ordered to name the Headquarters of the Chief of Military Educational Institutions - the General Staff of His Imperial Majesty for military educational institutions. In 1863, at the suggestion of the Minister of War Milyutin, the reform of military educational institutions began in Russia. The cadet corps, already well-established by the graduation of a large number of worthy officers into the army, were abolished on the initiative of the Minister of War and turned into paramilitary gymnasiums, which, according to the internal regulations and curriculum, were much closer to civilian secondary educational institutions. Special classes in the corps were also abolished, and the cadets of these classes were transferred to the newly established military schools: Pavlovskoye, Konstantinovskoye, Aleksandrovskoye, Orenburgskoye. This reform was perceived differently in public circles. Someone enthusiastically greeted her, while others sharply criticized her. General V.G. von Bool, in his memoirs "Memories of a Teacher", repeatedly emphasized that during the reform many of the good qualities of the old cadet corps were unfairly abandoned, that the reorganization was carried out too hastily. According to Milyutin's critics, he, transforming the cadet corps into military gymnasiums, saw only one general educational side, forgetting that the cadet corps prepared young people for service in the officer rank in the Russian army, and believed that civilian educators could replace officers, and the education of cadets in military schools this will not suffer.
All cadet corps that existed by that time were renamed into military gymnasiums or disbanded. Military attributes were eliminated. The shoulder straps were removed from the cadets - their pride. The drill abolished, the salutation abolished. In the newly created general military educational institutions, instead of military discipline, the correct, according to the then requirements of pedagogy, education under the guidance of educators, without the participation of non-commissioned officers from senior cadets, was introduced.
Emperor Alexander III (1881-1894), to a certain extent, had to eliminate those blunders that were made by his predecessor in the field of military education, in the training of officers. On July 22, 1882, it was announced in the military department that, taking into account the merits of the former imperial cadet corps, whose pupils, "having glorified Russian weapons in the memorable wars of the past and present centuries, have valiantly asceticised in various fields of useful service to the Throne and the Fatherland," the emperor ordered to call all military gymnasiums henceforth cadet corps.
They had the right to enter the cadet corps (to the state account):
1. Sons of officers who have spent ten years in active military service or naval military service or who have received the Order of Military Merit. Sons of retired officers, military or naval doctors, military priests and persons who were or are in active teaching and educational service at the Military Education Department, including assistants at departments and clinics, hospitals and academies, doctors of clinics of nervous and mental diseases and Imperial Military Medical Academy. Without fail: a) full orphans of the same persons who died in the service; b) the sons of the same persons and, in addition, class officials of all departments, if these persons and officials were killed in the war, died from wounds and concussions received in the war, are or were under the auspices of the Alexander Committee on the wounded, on the first and on second class.
2. Sons of those persons (other than civil servants) who are suddenly killed or have lost their mind or sight in the service.
3. Sons of holders of the Order of St. George of all degrees.
4. Sons of persons who participated in battles and were awarded the Badge of Distinction of the Military Order or who are under the auspices of the Alexander Committee for the wounded, in the first or second class.
5. Sons of warrant officers, ordinary warrant officers and non-commissioned officers in the company of the Palace Grenadiers.
6. Minors listed as pages of the Highest Court.
The sons and grandchildren of persons (male and female) who were born in the Jewish faith did not have the right to enter the cadet corps.
The cadet corps, restored in 1882 and subsequently founded, were secondary military educational institutions; in them there were only general education classes and preliminary preparation for military service was conducted. The corps had a military organization and were subdivided into companies. The entire administration consisted of the military. At the head of the corps was its director with the rank of major general or lieutenant general. Company commanders were colonels, and lieutenant colonels were appointed as training officers in class divisions.
The buildings taught: the Law of God, Russian, German and French, Russian and general history, geography, mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, geometry, analytical geometry, trigonometry, the application of algebra to geometry), cosmography, physics, chemistry, mechanics, zoology, botany, mineralogy, physiology, jurisprudence, drawing, projection drawing, sketching and calligraphy.
The system of extracurricular activities was constantly expanding. The developers of the new programs tried to ensure the harmonious development of the personality in the cadet corps. Since 1905, military training provided for the full course of single and platoon training. Extracurricular reading in French and German and a rhetoric course were introduced. Famous artists and directors were invited to teach the rhetoric course. A section on various moral and philosophical systems is introduced into the course of jurisprudence in high school, and the program of the foundations of scientific ethics is expanded. The physical development program included mandatory excursions and military campaigns lasting up to 5-7 days. During the campaigns the cadets received dry rations, a bowler hat, and hiking boots. The outfit was completed by an overcoat rolled into a roll, a rifle, a pouch, a duffel bag. During the campaigns, the cadets spent the night in tents in the field, each of the cadets performed some duties: who made a fire, who cooked food, who went to the field guard.
In 1890, compulsory dance instruction was introduced in the cadet corps. It should be noted that in the late XVIII - early XIX centuries. dances were already taught in cadet corps, and at that time they replaced gymnastics classes to a certain extent. The system of teaching dance at that time was carefully developed by "the French dance school based on the principles of beauty, grace and expressiveness of the human figure in rest and movement." In dance lessons, graceful manners, beauty and decency of gestures, gait, posture were studied.
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The educational unit of the cadet corps was run by a class inspector and his assistant, both with higher education. Persons with higher education, both military and civilian, were invited as teachers. Extracurricular activities were also held in the buildings, of which were obligatory - drill, shooting, gymnastics, fencing, swimming and dancing, and not obligatory - singing, music, manual labor in various forms. After completing their studies in the corps, the overwhelming majority of cadets were transferred to military schools - infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineering, and only a few entered universities and higher technical civil educational institutions. Upon entering the civil service, cadets who completed a full course in the corps received the rank of the 14th grade - a collegiate registrar.
In March 1900, after taking office as Chief of the military educational institutions, Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich issued orders aimed at:
Abolition of corporal punishment;
Abolition of correctional military educational institutions with their transformation into normal military educational institutions;
Prohibition to expel cadets from the corps for accidental "youthful" illnesses;
Freedom of smoking in the senior company, with the device of "smokers".
Introduction to the maintenance staff of special dental offices. It was envisaged to improve nutrition, with the appointment of special food for weak cadets, medical examinations were more frequent, a shower and foot baths were introduced in washstands. Company libraries have been increased. Drawing and modeling courses were added to manual labor.
One of the first directors of the cadet corps who had a significant impact on the formation of the educational process in the cadet corps was Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy, director of the Land Cadet Corps under Catherine II. The great influence of the director of the cadet corps is evidenced by the fact that almost all of his proposals were unconditionally accepted by the empress and recommended for introduction into the practical life of the cadet corps.
Another director who had a significant influence on the education of the cadets of the 1st cadet corps was Count F.E. Anhalt (1786-1794). Adjutant General F.E. Anhalt established himself as a brave and courageous officer, but at the same time he was an ardent supporter of the pedagogy of the Enlightenment and sought to bring the beginning of camaraderie into the relationship between teachers and students. European and Russian periodicals were openly circulating in the building, books of outstanding French thinkers were laid out on tables in the cadet lounge. On boards set up in the same hall, the cadets could write their thoughts about the books and articles they had read throughout the week. These notes often became the subject of discussion. The corps theater flourished. However, the Anhalt system of "greenhouse education", according to the graduate of the cadet corps, writer and historian F.I. Glinka, caused psychological difficulties among the graduates of the corps in the process of adapting to the realities of harsh reality.
Replacing F.E. Anhalt as director of the corps, the future field marshal M.I. Kutuzov began to revise the entire system of education of cadets in order to adapt it to the real needs of military service. And the most interesting thing is that he received the go-ahead to carry out transformations in the corps from Catherine II. The discipline was tightened, those who did not agree with the views of the new director of the corps were asked to leave. For the senior pupils, for the first time in the history of Russian military educational institutions, summer field camps were introduced. In the curriculum, tactics and military history, taught by M.I. Kutuzov. Tactics classes were required to attend not only cadets, but also officers.
One of the most respected directors of the Nizhny Novgorod count Arakcheev of the cadet corps was Major General Pavel Petrovich Nosovich, who was responsible for the transfer of the corps from Novgorod to Nizhny Novgorod. Nosovich graduated from the Novgorod Cadet Corps in 1846 (8th grade). Twenty years later, in 1866, he became the director of the corps and led it for eleven years until 1877. The leadership of Nosovich, according to the author of the essay on the corps KS Zvyagin, “was distinguished by an enlightened but firm character, deeply moral influence on all sides of the life of cadets, with strict military discipline. " The building museum kept the notebook of P.P. Nosovich, in which he made detailed notes on the successes and behavior of all, without exception, his pupils from 1866 to 1877. He ran a gymnasium, "giving full opportunity to develop those who wish, encouraged the hunt for knowledge, filling the leisure of pupils with useful and healthy entertainment." Nosovich's reputation was so high that he was transferred from the Nizhny Novgorod cadet corps to the position of director of the capital's 1st St. Petersburg cadet corps.
The director of the Naval Gentry Cadet Corps during the reign of Catherine II was Captain 2nd Rank I.L. Golenishchev-Kutuzov, released from the Land Gentry Corps in 1743 as a midshipman. General Krotkov, who wrote the history of the Naval Cadet Corps in 1901, described I.L. Kutuzov: “Smart, energetic Kutuzov did a lot of good for the education and training of sailors. Knowing French and German, knowing Russian and foreign literature, while sailing on ships in his youth, Kutuzov got acquainted with the difficulties of the sea service, and with those shortcomings of the maritime theoretical and practical education that sailors received at the Maritime Academy. Kutuzov cared about the benefits of the fleet even more than the direct duty of the director of the Marine Corps required. He is busy with the training of naval ship craftsmen who know the theory of shipbuilding, and the opening of special mathematical classes for future naval officers. "
The director of the 2nd Emperor Peter the Great Cadet Corps, Major General Mellisino (1782-1797), based on the pedagogical principles of I.I. Betskoy, drew up a project for transforming the corps, according to which the general educational element was strengthened, the number of hours for learning foreign languages \u200b\u200bwas increased.
Personal training of the director played an important role in shaping the good feelings of the pupils. Director of the Khabarovsk corps, Major General K.N. Grishkov had a great musical culture, a beautiful bass, he sang on the choir of the corps church. He directed two choirs - church and secular. Brilliant combatant B.V. Adamovich, the director of the First Russian Corps, aroused in the cadets a passionate desire to imitate him.
The above examples of the influence of directors of cadet corps on the educational process and the life of cadets only to a small extent reflect the real picture of what actually could have happened in cadet corps under one or another director. During the existence of the cadet corps, dozens of generals and colonels of the Russian army, who had different military and general training, upbringing and character, were in this position. The further from the capital, the more independent the directors of the corps were in their decisions. The General Directorate of Military Educational Institutions in a special note "On the Director of the Corps" noted: "In the provincial corps, the Director of the Corps is a representative of educational institutions that are highly regarded in public opinion and occupies a prominent position among the provincial administrative personnel.
Before the revolution of 1917, cadet corps, as noted by the writer S. Dvigubsky, a graduate of the cadet corps, “differing from each other in the color of shoulder straps, had exactly the same curriculum, upbringing, lifestyle and drill. Of all the educational institutions in Russia, they, without any doubt, were the most characteristic both in their exceptional character and in the strong love that the cadets had for their native corps. It is almost impossible to meet in the life of a former cadet who does not remember his corps well ”. In this regard, an example should be cited, mentioned by the authors of the study on cadet corps A. Popov and A.M. Plekhanov. A former graduate of the Corps of Pages in 1904, and in 1920 - the King of Yugoslavia, Alexander I Karageorgievich, out of a sense of solidarity and mutual assistance, sheltered several cadet corps from Russia on the territory of Yugoslavia.
Cadet corps with their commanding, teaching, educational and service personnel of high qualification, with excellent classrooms, laboratories, hospitals, comfortable bedrooms, gymnasiums and beautiful uniforms cost Russia very dearly. With 30 corps, their annual release was no more than 1600 new cadets, which could not fully satisfy the army's needs for officers. However, as S. Dvigubsky notes, “this number was absolutely enough to give leaven to the entire cadet mass and to saturate it with the spirit that each cadet carried with him from the corps walls and which, imperceptibly for themselves, penetrated through and through those who were in the military schools came from civilian educational institutions. It was on this cadet yeast that the lush dough of the officer corps of the Russian imperial army rose. "
By 1917, there were 31 cadet corps in Russia, including the Marine and Pages. The total number of cadets by 1917 exceeded 10 thousand people. By February 1917, the following cadet corps existed in Russia:
Founded by Anna Ioannovna:
First Cadet Corps - 1732 Chief - His Majesty, director - Major General Fedor Alekseevich Grigoriev.
Founded by Elizaveta Petrovna:
Naval Cadet Corps - 1752
Founded by Catherine II:
2nd Cadet Emperor Peter the Great Corps - 1762, seniority since 1712, director - Major General Alexander Karlovich Lindeberger;
Shklov noble school, later - 1st Moscow Empress Catherine II cadet corps - 1778, director - Lieutenant General Vladimir Valerianovich Rimsky-Korsakov.
Founded by Alexander I:
Pages of His Imperial Majesty's Corps - 1802, director - Major General Vladimir Alexandrovich Schilder, seniority since 1742
Founded by Nicholas I:
Count Arakcheev's Nizhny Novgorod Cadet Corps - 1834, director - Lieutenant General Leonid Pavlovich Voishin-Murdas-Zhilinsky;
Polotsk Cadet Corps - 1835, director - Major General Modest Grigorievich Chigir;
Petrovsky-Poltava Cadet Corps - 1840, director - Colonel Nikolai Petrovich Popov;
Voronezh Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich Cadet Corps - 1845, director - Major General Mikhail Pavlovich Borodin;
Oryol Bakhtin Cadet Corps - 1843, director - Major General Robert Karlovich Luther;
Orenburg Neplyuevsky Cadet Corps - 1844, director - Major General Nikolai Alexandrovich Puzanov;
1st Siberian Emperor Alexander I Cadet Corps - 1845, director - Major General Alexander Ardalienovich Medvedev;
2nd Moscow Emperor Nicholas I Cadet Corps - 1849, director - Colonel Vladimir Eduardovich Dankvart.
Founded by Emperor Alexander II:
Vladimirsky Kiev Cadet Corps - 1857, director - Major General Evgeny Evstafievich Semagikevich.
Founded by Emperor Alexander III:
Emperor Alexander II Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Lieutenant General Alexander Tosifovich Malinovsky;
Simbirsk Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Major General Karl Velyaminovich Spiegel;
Tiflis Grand Duke Mikhail Nikolaevich Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Major General Ivan Petrovich Tomkeev;
Pskov Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Major General Vladimir Pavlovich Rodionov;
3rd Moscow Emperor Alexander II Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Major General Valerian Lukich Lobachevsky;
Nikolaev Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Major General Vladimir Viktorovich Kvadri;
Donskoy Emperor Alexander II Cadet Corps - 1882, director - Major General Pavel Nikolaevich Lazarev-Stanischev;
2nd Orenburg Cadet Corps - 1887, director - Major General Vasily Vasilyevich Grigorov.
Founded by Emperor Nicholas II:
Yaroslavl Cadet Corps - 1896, director - Major General Iosif Anufrievich Latour;
Suvorov Cadet Corps - 1899, director - Major General Alexander Nikolaevich Vaulin;
Odessa Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich Cadet Corps - 1899, director - Major General Nikolai Alexandrovich Rodkevich;
Sumy Cadet Corps - 1900, director - Major General Andrey Mikhailovich Saranchov;
Khabarovsk Count Muravyov-Amursky Cadet Corps - 1900, director - Major General Konstantin Nikolaevich Grishkov;
Vladikavkaz Cadet Corps - 1900, Director Major General Ivan Gavrilovich Soimonov;
Tashkent Heir to the Tsarevich Cadet Corps - 1901, director - Colonel Vladimir Matveyevich Kokh;
Volsk cadet corps - 1908, director - Major General Petr Viktorovich Moralevsky;
Irkutsk Cadet Corps - 1913
After the February Revolution of 1917, the cadet corps were renamed the military gymnasium without changing the training programs. In 1918, most of the cadet corps were closed. Some cadet corps existed in Russia until 1920.
Medals of the cadet corps. 1764 g.
Back in 1731, at the suggestion of the Prosecutor General of the Senate Pavel Yaguzhinsky, a former associate of Peter I, Anna Ioannovna's personal decree of July 29 was followed to establish the first cadet corps in Russia. In it, the Empress gave instructions to the Senate on its organization and that “... our uncle Peter the Great ... by his vigilant labors brought the military work to ... a perfect state ... (it is) still in real good order, however, so that such a glorious and the state was extremely demanding in art, it was very necessary, so that the gentry from an early age to that was taught in theory, and then fit into practice; For this sake, we indicated: to establish a corps of Cadets, consisting of 200 people ... children, from thirteen to seventeen years old ... and for the maintenance of that corps ... we determine the amount of 30,000 rubles, and we command our Senate to establish an institution, how to maintain and teach, and state ... and to that able to look for a house, and to us about all that immediately inform ”.
This privileged, closed educational institution was founded a year after the decree was issued. It prepared exclusively noble children for military and civil service and had the official name "Cadet Corps". It was located in the building of the former Menshikov Palace with the adjacent territory "... in a circle of more than two and a half miles", with several stone wings, wooden buildings and an evangelical church located at that time. General-Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph Minich was appointed its chief director "... as a sign of the special favor of Empress Anna Ioannovna." Being at the same time the president of the State Military Collegium, he showed great concern for the cadet corps, delved into all educational and economic matters, knew all his pupils beforehand and was the true owner of the educational institution entrusted to him.
In accordance with the established rules, the pupils were given state uniforms: a dark green cloth caftan with a red turn-down collar and the same cuffs, cream-colored (elk) trousers and blunt-nosed shoes; light summer uniform and camisole made of thick canvas; ceremonial uniform, decorated with gold embroidery, and everyday clothes: frock coat, camisole and trousers. All this was also accompanied by a triangular hat with a narrow gold braid, an epancha (cloak), five white linen shirts, two ties, three pairs of white canvas boots, two pairs of stockings, three ribbons for tying hair into a braid and other trifles.
According to the charter, a strict daily routine was established in the Corps. The ascent (a quarter to five) was accompanied by drum rolls. After completing the morning toilet, the cadets went to prayer and by 5.30 had to be ready for breakfast. Classes began at 6.00, after four lessons - at 10.00, military exercises were performed on the parade ground or in the arena. Lunch began at noon sharp, then two hours were devoted to classroom studies, and the next two hours again to exercise. Dinner was at 7.30, at 9.00 the drums beat the lights, after which all walking was prohibited.
This regime was strictly observed. For the slightest violations, a penalty followed: the guilty were forced to stand motionless for one or two hours with a heavy fusée on their shoulders. For more serious offenses, the cadets were put on guard, but for short periods and without exemption from classes in classes and on the parade ground. In addition, there were several black caftans in the Corps, which were worn by those "... who are often in fines."
On Sundays and holidays, the most worthy pupils were released on leave, receiving the strictest instructions on how to behave in the city. Particularly disciplined (one from each company) were honored (on Sundays) to fulfill the duties of orderly at Minich himself.
The training program in the Cadet Corps was quite extensive. Subjects for study were determined by the further service of the pupils, which could be not only military, but also civilian, including in the diplomatic part. In addition to studying the general sciences - history, geography, mathematics, physics, as well as the military - artillery, fortification, topography, drill training and shooting, cadets were taught foreign languages, drawing, music, dancing.
In addition, each student had to learn horse riding and fencing. All cadets regularly carried out guard duty, shortened dragoon fusées with steel bayonets served as weapons for this.
During the festive formations, the horse cadets, who had a peculiar dress uniform with the emblem of the cadet corps made of black cloth sewn onto a short caftan, were noticeably distinguished by their ammunition. They wore high bell-bottomed boots with polished spurs on their feet.
For solemn marches, each company had its own multicolored satin banner with the golden monogram of the empress.
Since 1737, spring and autumn exams were introduced to test the knowledge of the pupils - "... not only all cadets in general, but everyone separately, in all parts of these sciences, which they study, to testify."
February 23, 1750 "... Prince Boris Grigorievich Yusupov, appointed as a senator and director of the Cadet Gentry Corps", and two and a half years later - October 15, 1752 - "... in St. Petersburg, a decree of the Life Guards was received from the Senate office Izmailovsky regiment in the regimental office ... about the establishment of the Naval Cadet Corps, which will be in St. Petersburg ... and in Moscow that there was a school on the Sukharev Tower, which was established in 1701, it will not be. "
So the Naval Cadet Corps was founded, and, in contrast to it, the first Corps was renamed the "Land Gentry Cadet Corps".
In 1763, the president of the Academy of Arts Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy, a talented public figure of that time, was appointed director of this Corps. He proposed to Empress Catherine II to carry out a new educational reform, which later turned the Cadet Corps "into a general educational educational institution with a wide encyclopedic program", a new methodology - "... teach without coercion, taking into account the child's tendency, not to use corporal punishment", etc. Children were now admitted to the Corps between the ages of 6 and 11.5, which was more in line with their title of "cadet" (junior).
On the initiative of Betsky, by 1766 the building was reconstructed and expanded. 800 pupils were already engaged in it, and its name became even more impressive - "Imperial Land Gentry Cadet Corps". The previously existing Artillery and Engineering schools were reorganized in 1762 under Catherine II into the corresponding cadet corps - Artillery and Engineering, which in 1800 were renamed into the 2nd cadet corps. And "Imperial" became the 1st cadet corps.
Thus, gradually the specialized schools founded by Peter I and designed to educate children of all classes turned into privileged educational institutions for children of the upper class.
The cadet corps were under the special care of the government. They provided, first of all, general education and upbringing, and then only specialization. The cadet corps trained not only officers for the army, but also civilian officials - judges, diplomats, etc.
Catherine II paid serious attention to the development of cadet corps, introduced a lot of new things into the education of the noble youth. During her reign, along with various incentives for academic excellence, a special award medal with a corresponding inscription was introduced for pupils of the cadet corps (at the initiative of Betsky).
The medal is silver, gilded, oval in shape; the monogram of Catherine II is depicted on the obverse in a stylized laurel half-wreath. Along the rim, the medal is framed with a beautiful rim of small silver beads. The eyelet of the medal is transverse with a ring inserted into it for suspension to a chain.
On the reverse - in the entire plane of the medal - there is a five-line embossed inscription: "FOR - APPLICABILITY - AND - GOOD - BEHAVIOR".
This medal existed only during the reign of Catherine II and was intended to award the best cadets in academic performance and discipline. Pupils were obliged to wear it only in the buttonhole of a cadet uniform. The mark about the awarding of the medal was included in the “formal officer list”.
In addition to the award medal for wearing in cadet corps, award commemorative medals were also introduced for storage. They were classified into three grades:
"Successful" (in science and behavior).
"Reaching" (required level).
“Reached” (the required level in sciences and behavior).
The stamps for these medals were cut by the French master L. Fernier, who was working at the St. Petersburg Mint at that time.
The further fate of the cadet corps is as follows: in 1794, MI Kutuzov was appointed director of the 1st cadet corps. He revised the training program and introduced new purely military disciplines into it, one of which serves as the basis for the foundations of military affairs - this is tactics. He forced to comprehend it not only pupils, but also their teachers - officers. So gradually, by the beginning of the 19th century, cadet corps began to turn into military educational institutions that graduate only officers for the army. True, they also gave a good general education.
Since the 30s of the last century, the cadet corps have been structured as purely military units - battalions, which were divided into companies and squads.
As a result of the reform carried out in 1863, six cadet corps were liquidated, others were reorganized into gymnasiums and military schools, which provided only military knowledge. Only four cadet corps survived: Pages, Finland, Siberian and Orenburg.
With the coming to power of Alexander III (in 1881), the cadet corps were again restored on the basis of the same gymnasiums with the preservation of general education programs in them, but with an intensification of the military orientation. In addition, civilian educators were replaced by officers, and the training period was increased to 7–8 years.
In recent years, the autocracy of cadet corps has become so numerous that they already existed in almost every provincial town.
The land nobility cadet corps in St. Petersburg. 1731-1918
1731 year. On August 9 (July 29, Old Style), by order of Empress Anna Ioannovna, the Land Cadet Corps was founded - an educational institution for children of nobles, preparing them for further military service.
The decree on the creation of the Land Gentry Cadet Corps was adopted on July 29, 1731. The imperial decree, signed by Empress Anna Ioannovna, said: “Although our sovereign Peter the Great, the Emperor, has brought military affairs to such a perfect state with his vigilant memory that Russian weapons have shown their bravery and art to the whole world ... and military affairs are still in real good order, however, for such a glorious and extremely necessary work to be carried out naively in art in art, it is very necessary that the gentry from an early age be trained in theory, and then fit into practice; For this we have indicated: to establish a corps of cadets, consisting of 200 people of gentry children from 13 to 18 years old. "“In the corps, it was supposed to teach not only military, but also general education subjects,“ before every person, nature is inclined to one military one ”. Thus, the foundations were laid not only for a general educational direction in training to replace the previously existing professional, but also a dual-purpose corps: to train both military personnel and civilian officials. This was the essential difference between the Russian cadet corps and the European ones.
It was decided to open the building in the capital - in St. Petersburg - as the center of the cultural and scientific potential of the state. He was given a house on Vasilyevsky Island, which previously belonged to the favorite of Peter I, Prince Menshikov, where all the cadets “for learning and living with considerable peace of mind should be placed following the example of the Prussian, Danish and other royal cadet houses, so that they are so less of a promenade and obscene manners and amusements. they did not waste time in vain, but in everything, both in teaching and in their other state and behavior, there was constant supervision over them. " The priest, some of the officers, teachers and warders were obliged to live in the same house.
Only noble children who had already learned to read and write were admitted to the corps. Here they studied mathematics, history and geography, artillery, fortification, fencing, horseback riding and "other necessary sciences for the martial art", as well as German, French and Latin (for those who want to study the sciences after learning) languages, calligraphy, grammar, rhetoric, drawing, dancing, morality and heraldry, and it was also ordered to teach cadets "soldier's exercise". These last classes were prescribed to be carried out daily, but then it was determined: "Henceforth, the military cadet should teach one day every week, so that there would be no obstacles in the teaching of other sciences."
The corps was organized according to the military type and was divided into two companies of 100 people each. The cadets lived in rooms for 6-7 people, and one of them was appointed as a senior, "a commander in comradeship." Officers on duty (captain and lieutenant) were appointed for the corps, who did not have the right to leave the building of the corps.
The organization of the educational process was associated with certain difficulties, a lot had to be done, as they say, "by touch", so mistakes were inevitable. The training system adopted in the corps under the command of General Director Minich was far from perfect. The teachers rarely explained the material, but demanded that the students memorize sections, the independent work of the cadets was also limited to memorizing. The learning process was monotonous, boring and did not arouse student interest. Although even then there were attempts to somehow diversify the occupations by introducing certain elements of clarity. In order to accustom cadets to foreign languages, students for whom, for example, their native language was German, were placed in dormitories next to the "Russian" ones, and in the classroom it was absurd for the cadets "in their certain classes to always speak the language that is taught in that class. ... ".
It must be borne in mind that the pupils were divided into groups of studied disciplines, which were called classes. The curriculum was divided into four grades, with the 4th grade being the youngest and the 1st grade being the oldest. Education in grades 3, 2 and 1 was given for 5-6 years. In accordance with the class in which the cadet was trained, upon graduation he was awarded either the corresponding military rank or civilian class rank. Let us also note that the general orientation of the cadet corps towards training not only officers, but also civilian officials inevitably entailed the emergence of a multidisciplinary subject, which the military educational institutions could not get rid of. The fact is that in those days the bureaucratic apparatus was largely formed from the number of retired officers, so they had to be well-versed in matters of jurisprudence; military engineers were entrusted with the construction of ports, roads, bridges, which required knowledge of civil architecture, etc. That is why the question of multidisciplinary subjects in military educational institutions of that time could not be solved by mechanical reduction of the disciplines studied, although attempts were made to cut some training courses or combine them among themselves.
As for the moral education in the Land Cadet Corps, there are different opinions on this subject, but there is no doubt that in the first years of the corps existence, old mistakes were repeated, since the memories of Peter's military educational institutions and the order that reigned in them were alive. The cadets were viewed as "lower ranks" and, accordingly, the requirements for them did not differ in any way from the requirements of the company commander for his soldiers. They, just like soldiers, were punished for violating established rules and regulations. And so it went on until the corps was headed by Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy ...
In 1766 I.I. Betskoy drew up the "Charter of the gentry land cadet corps for the education and training of the noble Russian youth." First of all, the division of pupils into companies was eliminated; the charter introduced five ages, each consisting of five departments, where both noble children and high school students, that is, children of commoners, studied. It was conceived from the gymnasiums to prepare teachers for the corps, and they were to be educated and trained with cadets on equal terms. By this, Betskoy intended to bring the younger generation of different classes closer together and avoid disagreements between them in the future.
At the first age, they began to recruit 5-6-year-old boys, at each age they had to study for 3 years and graduated from the corps at 20, and during all 15 years of study, parents could not demand their return home. Nevertheless, there were a lot of people who wanted to send their children to the corps, and this is not surprising, since the nobles at that time did not recognize either the Greek-Latin Academy, or the Academy of Sciences, or other civil educational institutions, considering them unworthy for their offspring. and the only way that promised great prospects for the future was the cadet corps. I.I. Betskoy, however, began to give preference when entering the corps to children whose parents were killed or wounded in the war, or to impoverished nobles who, at their own expense, could not give a decent education to children (this principle of admission to the Russian cadet corps remained in the future).
At the time of Betsky, the first age was under the supervision of ladies, or wardens. They took care of the health of the pupils, walked with them, instilled good manners, taught them foreign languages. In the juvenile department there was also a priest with a deacon, who, in addition to the church service, taught classes on the Law of God, a teacher of the Russian language, and several teachers of drawing and dancing. The juvenile department was located in a separate building.
The second age united children of 9-12 years old and was under the supervision of male tutors, who should not "treat children harshly, observe that they themselves set an example of meekness and moderation and that the time of education and study would not pass without benefit." Together with the teachers, they had to teach the pupils to serve themselves, so that they could do without servants, instill in them “a love of virtue and good manners, notice in everyone the natural inclination and the quality of reason, so that those who are clearer than others can advance in others. sciences ". Teachers and tutors were required to note what everyone is capable of, what inclinations and inclinations he has, observing the pupils during lessons, games and on walks. This made it possible to determine where the young man could be more usefully used - in the military or civilian. At the second age, in addition to the subjects started in the first, they studied geography, chronology, history, mythology, arithmetic, geometry and the Old Church Slavonic language.
The third age - 12-15 years old - practically did not differ from the second in its organization. According to Betsky's plan, pupils of this age had to take care of "bringing to perfection the sciences begun in previous ages" and, in addition, study Latin, the basics of military and civil architecture, as well as accounting. In the third age, the general education of cadets ended.
In the fourth and fifth ages, the life and study of the cadets changed: they fell under the command of officers, who had to "especially watch that the cadets were never idle, to persuade them with affection and love, so that they could find useful exercises for themselves." The training officers and commanders were required to treat the cadets firmly, but at the same time not instilling in them fear, which would be difficult to get rid of later.
These ages were commanded by a lieutenant colonel. His assistants in the rank of captains trained cadets in military sciences. Studied fortifications, siege and defense of fortresses, artillery, regulations; non-commissioned officers supervised the drill. Since 1775, physics and chemistry have become compulsory subjects. Physics and chemistry rooms with an "optical chamber", a telescope, compasses, a collection of Siberian minerals (nuggets of gold and silver, various ores, lead, vitriol, etc.) appeared. Attention was paid to courses in civil architecture and jurisprudence, knowledge of French, German, Latin (or Italian) was deepened. They practiced fencing and horse riding. Even special teachers of recitation were invited: they were either Russian artists, such as Melavilshchikov, or foreigners, for example, the French artist Orpheus, who at one time played in Voltaire's home theater.
In general, it must be said that theatrical art was very popular in the Land Gentry Cadet Corps. The Society of Lovers of Russian Literature was even formed there, the soul of which was the cadet Alexander Sumarokov, who graduated from the corps in 1740. Subsequently, he became the most famous writer of his time. Fyodor Volkov, one of the founders of the first Russian professional theater, who made him famous for his acting, also studied at the Land Cadet Corps and was a member of Sumarokov's group.
According to Betsky and his successor, Count Fyodor Evstafievich Anhalt, the cadets had to learn easily, without the coercion of teachers. As noted in his "Notes" the former pupil of the Land gentry cadet corps S.N. Glinka, “Asiatic despotism is harmful both in human affairs and in the field of learning” (Russian memoirs. - M., 1988. S. 369.). This idea was shared by the educators and teachers of the corps, trying to replace forcing the cadets to study with the excitement of interest in the subjects studied, the conviction in favor of knowledge, in their need for a young man who decided to devote himself to serving the Fatherland.
The building contained a rich library of domestic and foreign literature, a botanical garden was laid out, representing the flora of not only Russia, but also some other countries, there was also a training arsenal, mechanical and architectural "chambers" "and even a small picture gallery.
Cadets of the fifth age - from 18 to 21 years old - completed the training courses begun at the fourth age, and, having chosen civil or military service, could no longer change their specialization. At the time of his command of the corps, Betskoy considered it very important to repeat all the courses he had completed. “This age should be the harvest of what was sown in the previous four,” he thought. "Here it is necessary for an enlightened cadet to maturely argue about what state to choose for himself in society at the great theater of light".
Teachers and educators were charged with the duty of the cadets “to deal with all quietness and courtesy, which must be inseparable from the educated, to which they are not called otherwise; if it happens that some pupil commits any important mistake, whom it is dangerous to leave without punishment, then he must inform the supreme leader of this society about this in order to solve it. " This eliminated the practice of a sole decision on punishment. In general, it should be noted that Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy was an ardent opponent of corporal punishment, considering them a vile means. On this occasion, he wrote: “It would be desirable that not only corporal, but also all kinds of punishment be eliminated altogether, but how, perhaps, there are those who have neglected such invaluable mercy and, having forgotten their position, will fall into crimes, vicious the nobility, that they are punishable by reprimands at the meeting of their comrades, a penalty table (that is, food separately from comrades), imprisonment and on a donkey (a nobleman could only ride a horse, putting him on a donkey was a dishonor), deprivation of bed and pillows , dressing in a tunic (a special penal black tunic), keeping other cadets during meals (serving cadets during lunch), imprisoning them on bread and water, depriving them of their uniforms for a while, imprisoning them in iron (being arrested in shackles). "
The attitude even towards such a grave offense as escape from a military educational institution has changed. If earlier he was subjected to the most severe corporal punishment, and at the Naval Academy this threatened with the death penalty, then in the cadet corps for the first escape they were sent to study at the garrison school for soldiers' children for a period of six months, and for the second - for three years. As you can see, the punishments were more of a moral nature. At each age there was a special so-called penalty journal, where all the cadets' misconduct was recorded and records were made about the measures used to correct them, and the effectiveness of these measures for each student. Twice a month, reports were submitted to the corps office about the punished cadets.
The charter of the cadet corps established the foundations of moral education. Thus, the overseers were instructed to "have a watchful eye over the cadets entrusted to them, so that in all their behavior, virtue, courtesy ... always repaired, and the lies and infidelity and other obscene vices to the gentry were very eradicated from them." Moral education was also facilitated by musical studies, dances, without which the education of a secular person was simply unthinkable. By the time they graduated from the corps, the cadets had to learn to play tolerably one of the musical instruments. Personal communication with the head of the corps was of great importance in the education of young men. Betskoy practiced inviting well-performing cadets to his home for tea, and this was seen as a reward. Empress Catherine II also invited young cadets to play with her grandchildren. Count Anhalt, who replaced Betsky as director of the Land Cadet Corps, also invited students who had distinguished themselves in their studies and discipline. Former cadet S.N. Glinka noted in his Notes: “Not long before his death, Count Anhalt presented me with a complete edition of Plutarch. I will note here that everything that the count gave us, and everything that was in our entertainment hall, he bought at his own expense and, moreover, provided all kinds of benefits to the corps teachers. Count Anhalt was a bum and waster on good deeds ... ”(Russian memoirs, p. 376). An interesting innovation was introduced in the corpus - the so-called "talking wall", on which various aphorisms and sayings of ancient thinkers were written. After classes, Count Anhalt walked through the park with the cadets along this wall and explained the meaning of what was written on it, discussed with them, wishing that the cadets would not just memorize them, but understand the depth of their philosophical meaning. Examinations at that time were held every four months, and at the end of the year there was a public examination in the presence of the empress or "under the ministers, generals and other spiritual and civil noble persons." Later, this procedure was somewhat changed: only two public exams were held annually - on March 15 and September 15 in the presence of one of the senators, some professors and teachers of the Academy of Sciences, and the Corps of Engineers.
For each subject submitted for exams, the minimum and maximum number of points (from 1/8 to 128) that a cadet could receive was established. For example, for the subject "Russian writing" points were set from 1/8 to 2, for knowledge of Russian grammar - from 1 to 96, arithmetic - from 1 to 32, etc. After the exams, all the points were summed up and the best students were determined, who were awarded medals, various drawing tools, books. All awards were entered on the student form, and this mattered in post-graduation distribution. The already known S.N. Glinka recalled that after one of the exams he was awarded the book "The Life of Cleveland, Cromwell's Bastard Son" in Kharlamov's translation. The reaction of the young Glinka to this book was interesting. “A dreamy imagination took possession of me so much,” he recalled, “that I burst into tears at the fairy tale about Bove the King's son, reading how the little girl saved the young prince from the intrigues and malice of his persecutors.”
I must say that, being 15 years practically in the greenhouse conditions of the building, where Count Anhalt called upbringing "a gentle mother who, moving away thorns, leads her pet in colors", young people essentially found themselves cut off from real life. Having received an excellent education and upbringing, but faced with the harsh conditions of feudal Russia, graduates of the cadet corps were sometimes lost, unable to find a worthy application for what they had been taught for many years. Therefore, although there were many officers, generals and statesmen who graduated from the cadet corps in their time, a significant part of its former pupils left the service and returned to their family estates. True, S.N. Glinka believed that the one who was brought up with love and attention, whose heart was not petrified with luxury and vanity, would be useful everywhere.
It must be borne in mind that the events outside Russia at the end of the 18th century were very dramatic. This was the heyday of the military glory of Napoleon Bonaparte, who led brilliant campaigns in the fields of Europe, reshaping its political map in his own way. It was absolutely clear that sooner or later Russia would also have to defend its borders. On the eve of the hard times of war, the Russian army needed well-trained officers capable of leading soldiers into battle against a well-armed, trained and battle-hardened enemy. Meanwhile, the Land Gentry Cadet Corps did not fully solve this problem. This is primarily understood by Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, who took command of the corps in 1794, after the death of Count Anhalt. By this time, Kutuzov already had a teaching job at the Artillery and Engineering School, combat service and, most importantly, participation in hostilities against the Ottoman Port; he was well aware of the army's needs for trained officers.
The new director reorganized the corps. Instead of five ages, four musketeer companies and one grenadier company were introduced, with 96 cadets in each. Instead of the first age, there was the so-called juvenile department, which enrolled noble children aged 4-7 years, or those who did not have parents, or the children of those officers who were forced to constantly move from place to place, often change garrisons. It was kind kindergarten, in which the educators cared mainly about the health of their pupils. In the new juvenile department, unlike the former first age, there were no training sessions: the head of the corps believed that only physically healthy, strong, hardened cadets could serve in the army, therefore, in the juvenile department, they tried to temper the boys during active games and walks in the fresh air every day, in any weather.
Of the best cadets of the grenadier and musketeer companies, non-commissioned officers were appointed who had certain insignia, advantages in service and increased salaries. Moreover, the cadets who were the most trained in combat were selected to the grenadier company: serving in a grenadier company was considered more honorable than in a musketeer. The introduction of companies in the corps put the cadets in completely different relations with the commanders, educators and teachers; this influenced the improvement of discipline, brought closer to the army reality. In an effort to improve military education, Kutuzov introduced classes in tactics and military history in the corps. He conducted these classes not only with cadets, but also with corps officers (since that time, tactics and military history have become compulsory subjects in all military educational institutions).
During this period, the teaching of military disciplines acquired a pronounced practical orientation. Classes for senior pupils from classrooms were postponed for two months to summer camps, which later became traditional in all military educational institutions. In the camp, the cadets got up at 6 o'clock in the morning at the signal of the drum. The beginning of classes, breakfast, lunch, dinner and the end of classes were also announced with drum signals. In the camp, the cadets practiced various tactics, fired rifles and artillery pieces, received certain commanding skills, learned to work with a map, make topographic surveys, recognize signals, rebuild on command, and "behave like a soldier in everything." In order to accustom the cadets to service, they were assigned to watch "some of the most honest posts." During lunch, one of them read aloud to everyone "a few of the articles, regulations and decrees, as well as stories or newspapers." In their free time, the cadets swam, sunbathed, did physical exercises, which promoted health improvement and which the corps director paid special attention to.
Kutuzov set as an example those who studied well. In one of his orders, he expressed gratitude to the personnel of the corps for the excellent classes in the camp. “The goodwill and successes of gentlemen non-commissioned officers, corporals and gentlemen of the cadets justify a good opinion of them from the very beginning, may God bless their progress in this noble field. I hope that they will not ruin the precious time in the classroom in idleness, but ... they will acquire the knowledge necessary for a noble person in every condition ... "(Kutuzov MI Documents. - M., 1950. T. 1. S. 358).
The poorly performing cadets in the camp were required to study their school subjects during the allotted time for rest. Unlike Betsky and Anhalt, Kutuzov in relation to the cadets acted not only by persuasion, but also by coercion, as evidenced by his orders on the corps: “... Of the gentlemen of the cadets and gymnasium students, a great number were lazy, whom I give a month to recover deadline; if even then there will be such, the non-commissioned officers will be demoted, and the cadets will be punished ”; poorly performing cadets "for negligence on any occasion, until they reform themselves, they should not be fired from the yard, in their free hours they should be ordered to study in chambers, and on holidays they should not even be released into the interior of the corps" (Kutuzov MI Documents. T . 1.P. 361, 370).
During this period, the class-lesson system of teaching was firmly established in the building, according to which pupils of the same age and approximately the same level of knowledge began to unite in the class. The transfer of cadets to the next class was now carried out after successfully passing exams in certain disciplines. In addition, winter and summer vacations were introduced. Throughout the years of joint study, the class became a close-knit family, and this sense of camaraderie continued in further service. Here is how a graduate of the Land Cadet Corps, a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, F.N. Glinka: “I had the pleasure of hugging my brother Gregory, who is serving in the Libau infantry regiment. The company of officers in this regiment is excellent, the soldiers are excellent. Having traveled around several regiments, I everywhere found officers who accepted me as true friends, as closest relatives. Who are these wonderful people? - you ask. - Our common comrades: the cadets! ABOUT! How useful social education is! No statutes, no conditions of society can produce such strong bonds between people, as the conjugal of early years. Co-fosterlings in heart and soul meet everywhere with unfeigned, heartfelt pleasure ... "(Glinka FN Letters of a Russian officer. - M., 1987, p. 7).
It should be noted that in accordance with the charter, when appointing cadets after graduation, it was ordered to be guided by the strictest impartiality, "regardless of seniority or service, no other circumstances, but only one essence of all dignity and concept." At the very beginning, getting to know the cadets, M.I. Kutuzov threw them into confusion when he said that, unlike Count Anhalt, he would not treat his pupils as children, but as soldiers. And this is what he said, saying goodbye to them after graduation from the corps: “Gentlemen, you did not love me because I told you that I would treat you like soldiers. But do you know what a soldier is? I received ranks, ribbons, and wounds; but the best reward I think is when they say about me - he is a real Russian soldier. Gentlemen! Wherever you are, you will always find in me a person who sincerely wishes you happiness, and who is absolutely rewarded for love for you with your glory, your honor, your love for the Fatherland ”(Russian memoirs, p. 376).
Mikhail Illarionovich managed to solve many issues of training and educating future officers, achieving the main task - to prepare professional and competent commanders of infantry and cavalry units capable of withstanding the strong, accumulated combat experience of the French army. His pupils subsequently proved to be excellent on the battlefields of the Patriotic War of 1812 "(Yu. Galushko, A. Kolesnikov. Historical reference book. School of Russian officers. - M., 1993).
The land gentry cadet corps at different times bore different names: from 1766 - the Imperial land gentry cadet corps; from 1800 and from 1882 - The First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps; in 1864-1882 - The first St. Petersburg military gymnasium.
In the First St. Petersburg Cadet Corps, there was the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature and one of the first Russian amateur theaters in the 1740s and 1750s.
Writers A.P. Sumarokov, M.M. Kheraskov, V.A. Ozerov. Among the graduates of the corps were the Decembrists F.N. Glinka, A.E. Rosen, K.F. Ryleev, V.K. Tiesenhausen. With the establishment of Soviet power, the first Russian cadet corps in 1918 was abolished.
Quoted from: Y. Galushko, A. Kolesnikov. Historical reference book. School of Russian officers., 1993
History in faces
Burkhard Christopher Munnich, from "An Outline Giving an Idea of \u200b\u200bthe Way of Government of the Russian Empire":Since the empress soon appointed me as Field-General and President of the Military Collegium, which position I had been holding for several years, she gave me an important assignment to draw up new military staffs for both the Guard and field regiments, garrisons and the Ukrainian militia, and to encourage me, this great empress granted me after that Field Marshal of her troops and entrusted me with the main command in St. Petersburg and Ingria.
At the same time, on her orders, I founded the Cadet Corps and formed the first cuirassier regiment, as well as engineering troops.
I was so busy with all these assignments that, in order not to miss anything, I went to Petersburg, where the Military Collegium, the Office of Artillery and Fortifications were located, and where my seat as a commander was supposed to be, so that only Osterman and Cherkassky remained in the Cabinet, on that I agreed, the more willingly because I was not well versed in foreign affairs and matters concerning the internal administration of the empire.
Quoted from: Timelessness and temporary workers. Memories of the "Epoch of Palace Revolutions" (1720s - 1760s). L .: Fiction, 1991
Cadets, special school students, Suvorovites, Nakhimovites, we are all pupils of the same School, all are a product of the Russian system of upbringing and teaching children in special closed educational institutions with the aim of preparing them from an early age to serve the state in the military or civilian field. This system is the property and pride of Russia. There is no other country in the world with such an experience of almost 300 years.
The revolutionary events of 1917 interrupted the practice of training in cadet schools. But already in the 30s, special military schools were created, and thus there was a tendency for its revival, and in 1943 it was not only completely restored, but also developed further. This happened thanks to the initiative of an outstanding statesman, patriot of Russia Alexei Alekseevich Ignatiev.
On April 17, 1943, Major General A.A. Ignatiev addressed a personal letter to the People's Commissar of Defense, Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin. The letter, in particular, said:
“… The international political situation forces us to foresee for our country not only to preserve a standing army after the war, but also to outline in advance a number of measures to strengthen and improve the qualifications of its command personnel.
The measures taken before the war to train officers in the form of special schools were the first attempt to give the education of school-age youth a military character. Although the short life of these schools does not make it possible to pass a final verdict on them, however, in the opinion of the majority of senior and senior command personnel, this measure is a half-measure and cannot eliminate the fundamental shortcoming of the middle command personnel: the lack of internal military discipline - military ethics and related this authority in the eyes of junior command and rank personnel.
The specificity of the military craft requires instilling a taste for it from childhood, and the lack of discipline of children in the home school environment makes it necessary to create special military secondary schools for the preparation of morally educated and physically developed future commanders of the Red Army.
The cadet corps that existed in Russia, despite all the shortcomings, were nevertheless the main breeding grounds for the officer education of our truly military Soviet people.
The creation of such a Military High School is motivated at the moment by the desire to provide direct and effective assistance to the families of commanders who fell in battle, whose sons should be the majority of these schools. The example of a father who gave his life for the Motherland is in itself a sufficient incentive for raising a child and a young man in the spirit of a high consciousness of military duty.
The term of study is eight years for a ten-year high school course, supplemented by a program in mathematics, foreign languages, political and drill training.
Size - 500-600 pupils, divided into 4 companies, two classes each.
Educational staff - specially selected mainly from the wounded commanders not lower than the rank of captain, if possible with higher education.
The teaching staff is selected only from persons with higher education.
To begin with, in the form of experience, it is proposed to create, as a model, only one cadet corps in Moscow, which should enter into the system of the UVUZ and the People's Commissariat of Defense.
The opening of the building - September 1, 1943, by what date the first 6 grades should be completed from the students of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades of secondary school.
Education is free with the obligation upon graduation from the corps to enter military schools and serve in the Army for at least 5 years.
Major General A.A. Ignatiev
Moscow, Serov's passage, house 17, apt. 15. Tel: К-0-81-55
(State Archives of the Russian Federation. F.3. Op.50. Case 224. Sheets 14-15.)
Stalin appreciated the historical significance of the initiative of the experienced and sagacious general and ordered that measures be taken to implement his proposal. Moreover, in the course of a more detailed reflection on this initiative, it was decided to create not one military educational institution, as the author of the letter suggested, but nine at once. Only four months later - on August 21, 1943 - the Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars and the Central Committee of the RCP (b) No. 901 was issued, which contained the following points:
1. For the device, education and training of children of soldiers of the Red Army, partisans of the Patriotic War, as well as children of Soviet and party workers, workers and collective farmers who died at the hands of the German occupiers, to organize in Krasnodar, Stavropol Territories, Voronezh, Kharkov, Kursk, Orel, Smolensk and Kalinin regions, nine Suvorov military schools of the type of old cadet corps, 500 people each, 4500 people in total, with a seven-year training period with a closed boarding house for pupils ...
Krasnodar Suvorov Military School in Maikop,
Novocherkassk Suvorov Military School in Novocherkassk,
Stalingrad Suvorov Military School in Astrakhan,
Voronezh Suvorov Military School in Voronezh,
Kharkiv Suvorov Military School in Chuguev,
Kursk Suvorov Military School in Kursk,
Oryol Suvorov Military School in Yelets,
Kalinin Suvorov Military School in Kalinin,
Stavropol Suvorov Military School in Stavropol ...
In order to fully staff all the Suvorov military schools at the same time in 1943, as an exception, to admit four ages - from 10 to 13 years inclusive ....
Suvorov and Nakhimov military schools
The first nine Suvorov military schools began to operate exactly on the date specified in the Resolution. In addition to it, and with the approval of the country's top leadership, the People's Commissar of the Navy, Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, by his order of October 16, 1943, formed the Nakhimov Naval School in Tbilisi, an analogue of the pre-revolutionary naval cadet corps.
In June of the following 1944, the State Defense Committee formed six more Suvorov schools - in the cities of Gorky, Kazan, Tula, Tambov, Kuibyshev and Saratov, and two Nakhimov schools - in Leningrad and Riga.
We should especially note that such a large-scale project was carried out in a country torn apart by a war against the fascist hordes, in a country in extreme military tension. Years will pass, and a graduate of the Tambov SVU poet Boris Gaikovich will write:
Memory of duty.
Another war is a cool bonfire,
And the tanks of Goth are devouring diesel fuel,
Krom also has a question squarely
And the howitzer thunder will cease
Only after two huge years ...
What was the country thinking about
According to heart and order
When there was a country - a string
Stretched to failure?
About the assembly of Silt, about the armor,
About a hasty new formation?
And at the same time about the guys,
About utter fatherlessness.
She took them under her wing -
Maltsov of lead bad weather.
We, frankly, were lucky:
They lay down like her hands warm
On the shoulders are scarlet shoulder straps.
…
Ascended to the clouds
Until the end of days, before their sunset,
We only pay our debts
The hopes that were once laid.
"It is a glorious deed and the state needs it very much"
The practice of preparing defenders of the state from an early age existed in ancient Greece. Children were accustomed to military affairs and comprehensively developed in special schools called "palestras". Such schools were, in particular, in Sparta and Athens. In the 17th century, Europe will remember the ancient experience. The first cadet school will be opened in 1653 by the great Elector of Prussia. Then similar schools will appear in France, Holland, Austria.
Tsar Peter the Great, by decree of January 14, 1701, will create in Moscow the School of Mathematical and Navigational Sciences, which will become the first attempt in Russian history to introduce the European experience of training military professionals from a young age. But at that time in Russia there were neither suitable conditions nor teachers capable of coping with such a task. In 1716, the German king Frederick I will form a company of cadets in Berlin, appointing it commander of his 4-year-old son, the future commander Frederick the Great. The tsar was undoubtedly aware of the affairs of the German monarch, and therefore, in 1721, perhaps it was not by chance that he attracted the German general Burkhard Minich to the Russian service, who ten years later, after the death of the great reformer of Russia, would carry out Peter's plan.
On July 29, 1731, Empress Anna Ioannovna will issue a decree establishing the first cadet corps in Russia in St. Petersburg. All preparatory work will be performed by the President of the Military Collegium Field Marshal Count Minich. In the imperial decree we read: “So that the military deed is glorious and the state is extremely necessary, naive in art, it is very necessary that the gentry from an early age are trained in theory, and then fit into practice. For this sake, We have indicated to establish a corps of cadets, consisting of two hundred gentry children from thirteen to eighteen years old, both Russian and Livonian and Estonian provinces, who are taught arithmetic, geometry, drawing, fortification, artillery, swordplay, ride horses and others. martial art necessary sciences. And even before every person, nature is inclined to one military, so also in the state political and civic training is no less necessary, in order to have teachers of foreign languages, history, geography, jurisprudence, dancing, music and other useful sciences, in order to see a natural inclination, according to that and to the teaching to determine. "
In 1732, the first Russian cadet corps will begin to operate, and from that time on, cadet education in our country will receive the widest development.
In the Russian cadet corps, young people were not only given special knowledge and instilled a love of military affairs, but, as the highest valor, brought up in them the desire to serve the cause of strengthening the security and power of the state with the full dedication of spiritual and physical strength. The cadets emerged from their "alma mater" as people who were comprehensively developed, aimed at a creative search, at the constant expansion of their knowledge. Hundreds of famous names, including the generals Pyotr Rumyantsev, Mikhail Kutuzov, Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, naval commanders Fedor Ushakov, Dmitry Senyavin, Mikhail Lazarev, Pavel Nakhimov, navigators Ivan Kruzenshtern, Faddey Bellingshausen, as well as outstanding statesmen, diplomats, writers ... Unmercenaries and brave men, like Yakov Kulnev, the people's hero of the war against the hordes of Napoleon, they saw the meaning of their life in selfless and zealous service to the Fatherland.
The ancient family of the Ignatievs
So who is the legendary Russian and Soviet General A.A. Ignatiev? Who were his ancestors, what are they glorious in the history of the Russian state?
In the two-volume History of the Clans of the Russian Nobility (1886, St. Petersburg, Publishing House of Herman Goppe), in the section Counts and Nobles of the Ignatievs (volume II, p. 98) we read: a native of Chernigov, Fyodor Akinfievich Byakont - grandfather of the Metropolitan of Moscow St. Alexia (1293-1378) ". Along the way, let us note the outstanding role in the history of Russia of Metropolitan Alexy. In fact, he was the ruler of the Moscow principality under three great dukes. This skillful diplomat largely contributed to the fact that the great reign was finally consolidated behind the Moscow princes. It was he who prepared the victory of Dmitry Donskoy in the Battle of Kulikovo. His services were so great that after his death in 1378, he was canonized. From the text of the book it follows that the brother of St. Alexis by the name of Theophanes had the nickname of the Pisces. Therefore, his son Fyodor began to be called Pleshcheev. Fedor had two sons - Stepan and Daniil Pleshcheevs. Daniel also had two sons - Constantine and Ivan. Konstantin had six sons. Of these, the youngest is Ignatius and gave rise to the Ignatiev surname. We read further: "The ancestor of the Ignatievs and his six sons were still called Pleshcheevs and only their children (two sons of the first, three sons of the second, two sons of the fourth and five sons of the fifth brother) began to be written by the Ignatievs at the beginning of the 16th century."
The Ignatievs, who were voivods in Roslavl, Borovsk, Mozhaisk, Rzhev, Zubtsov, are known from the genealogies of noble books ... At the court of the Romanov dynasty, the Ignatievs are mentioned among solicitors, stolniks, bed-workers. From the lands given to them by the Russian tsars, Ignatiev's ancestral branches were formed - Tver, Tula, Oryol, Smolensk, Pskov, Moscow. It is known, for example, that Latynya Ignatiev was a clerk in Kolomna, and Rusin Ignatiev was a sovereign military man. In 1558, with only ninety archers under his command, he bravely defended the Ringen castle near Kaunas from the army of the Courland governor Kettler, who was able to seize the castle only after the defenders ran out of gunpowder. Among the numerous descendants of the family we find the Duma clerk Vlas Ignatiev, who at the beginning of the 16th century was the closest assistant of Dmitry Gerasimov and Maxim the Greek and repeatedly carried out royal diplomatic assignments in relations between Russia and the Holy Roman Empire. Another clerk, Andrei Ignatiev, enjoyed the special favor and confidence of Ivan IV and in 1562 was appointed tsar in the Ambassadorial Prikaz. Under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, the Ignatiev family was entered into the Velvet Book of the Russian nobility. In the era of Peter and in the following decades, the Ignatievs were constant participants in all major battles, executors of responsible state orders. So Stepan Lukich Ignatiev was the commandant of the Peter and Paul Fortress from 1727 to 1747. In the rank of lieutenant general, he then became the St. Petersburg chief commandant and vice-president of the Military Collegium. Major General Dmitry Lvovich Ignatiev is a hero of the Patriotic War against Napoleon's invaders. His portrait can still be seen in the Hermitage in the Gallery of Heroes of 1812.
But we are only interested in the Tver branch. Among its representatives we find the royal steward of the 17th century, Philon Afanasevich Ignatiev. His son Ivan Filonovich was in the sovereign's military service, and his grandson Nikolai Ivanovich, Major Seconds, landowner of the Ostashkovsky district, became a court counselor. It was he who petitioned the tsar for the approval of the noble coat of arms of his surname. He was married to Nadezhda Yegorovna Izvekova. This couple had their only son Pavel in 1797 ...
"The most important person in the family," says Pavel Nikolaevich Ignatiev in the above-mentioned "History of the Clans of the Russian Nobility". As a young warrant officer of the Preobrazhensky regiment, he joined the Russian troops in Paris in 1814. Having become a captain and company commander, on the day of the mutiny on December 14, 1825, the first of the guards commanders came to the aid of Emperor Nicholas I. The Tsar promoted him to the post of adjutant wing. His further career developed rapidly and extremely successfully. He, in particular, was the director of the Corps of Pages in St. Petersburg, where in subsequent years a personal scholarship was even established in his name. The next Russian emperor Alexander II granted him the title of count. On July 19, 1878, in the tsar's rescript to the ruling senate, it was said that Pavel Nikolayevich Ignatiev with all his offspring was being raised "to the dignity of the counts of the Russian Empire." The Ignatiev family was included in the genealogical books of the Novgorod, Smolensk, Tver, Tula, Moscow and Pskov provinces.
Count Pavel Nikolaevich had sons Nikolai, Alexei and a daughter Olga. The eldest son Nikolai Pavlovich graduated from the Corps of Pages and served as a military attaché in London, where he directed the activities of Russian military intelligence. After the failure of one of the operations, he was expelled from London and was appointed ambassador to the Emir of Bukhara. In 1860, at the age of 28, on behalf of Russia, he led the military-diplomatic mission in China and managed to prevent a war between the Chinese and the Anglo-French coalition, for which he was granted adjutant general and became director of the Asian department of the Foreign Ministry under Prince Gorchakov. In the 1870s, as ambassador to Turkey, he drew up the famous Peace Treaty of San Stefano. Nikolai Pavlovich was very popular in Bulgaria. One of the central streets in Sofia was named after him, and until his death certain circles in Bulgaria did not lose hope of electing him as the Bulgarian king. Nikolai Pavlovich became the governor of Nizhny Novgorod and became famous for the reconstruction of the famous Makaryevskaya fair.
The second son of Pavel Nikolaevich - Alexey Pavlovich was born in 1842. He graduated from the Corps of Pages, served in the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, and graduated from the General Staff Academy. Alexei Pavlovich and his wife Sofia Sergeevna nee Meshcherskaya had three sons. Among them, the first two, Alexei and Pavel, were cadets of the Corps of Pages and, according to the established family tradition, served with the royal persons - in the Cavalier Guards and Life Hussars.
The father of our hero, Alexei Pavlovich, in 1881 received the post of chief of staff of the guards corps. Tsar Alexander III in 1885 appoints him governor-general of Eastern Siberia, and three years later the governor-general of Kiev, Podolsk and Volyn. After accession to the throne, Nicholas II appointed him in 1896 as a member of the State Council. In 1905, the tsar instructed him to be the chairman of the "Special meeting for the revision of the exclusive legal provisions established for the protection of state order", as well as the chairman of the "Special meeting for religious tolerance." Both state bodies were created by decree of Nicholas II of December 12, 1904.
In the State Council and in "special meetings", Count Alexei Ignatiev strongly opposed the convocation State Duma, he was opposed to any privileges for the press, believed that the time had come for the most stringent measures to consolidate state power, that police and military repression should be used against the champions of liberal tendencies who seek to undermine the foundations of the empire and its centralized government. He made many enemies for himself among the so-called democrats. In 1905 and 1906, the count was constantly in opposition to S.Yu. Witte, who was pursuing a policy of liberal reforms in the country. Ignatiev's views were shared by a very small circle of tsarist dignitaries, whom the Russian liberals dubbed the "Star Chamber". The members of the “chamber” tried with all their might to persuade the tsar to take decisive actions to establish firm order in the country. Alas, Nicholas II did not heed their advice.
The family estate and estate of Alexei Pavlovich were located in the Tver province near Rzhev, and therefore, whenever an opportunity presented itself, he participated in meetings of the Tver province assembly. On December 9 (December 22, new style), 1906, during the break of such a meeting, the Socialist-Revolutionary Ilyinsky approached him and fired five shots from his revolver at close range. The results of the investigation into the circumstances of the villainous crime inevitably led the family and friends of the count to the idea that the murder had been prepared by agents of the tsarist secret police, acting on direct orders from St. Petersburg. The ill-wishers allegedly whispered to Nicholas II that the count was preparing a military coup, after which the security department eliminated the obstinate subject, disguising the murder as a terrorist act of the combat organization of the Social Revolutionaries, which was led in those years by the provocateur Azev. This fact could not but influence the subsequent life decisions of Alexei Alekseevich Ignatiev.
Alexey Alekseevich Ignatiev
Alexey Alekseevich was born on March 13, 1877. In 1894, he graduated from the Grand Duke Vladimir Cadet Corps in Kiev and continued his studies in St. Petersburg in the Page Corps, where his grandfather and father studied at one time. In 1896, after graduating from the corps, he served in one of the cavalry units. In 1900 he entered the Academy of the General Staff. In 1903 and 1904 A.A. Ignatiev is the squadron commander of the Horse Guards of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
With the beginning of the Russian-Japanese war, Captain Ignatiev on the Far Eastern front. He is the commander's adjutant, then a senior officer of the Manchurian Army Headquarters. After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, in 1908, he was sent as a military attaché to Denmark, Sweden and Norway. From 1912 to 1917 he was a military agent (attaché) at the Russian Embassy in France and at the same time the Representative of the Russian Army at the General Staff of the French Army. A.A. Ignatiev single-handedly disposed of all funds received into his accounts from the Russian treasury. These funds were intended for the purchase of weapons, ammunition and military equipment in France for the Russian army. He excellently solved the issues of military supplies to Russia, although the tasks that he had to solve were not easy. Here's one example.
At the end of 1914, an order was received from St. Petersburg to urgently organize the purchase of shells for 75-mm field guns. These French cannons of the 1897 model were considered the most modern, and for the first time a hydropneumatic recoil brake was used in their design. They were in service with the Russian field artillery, but shells for them were produced only in France. With the outbreak of hostilities, the Russian artillery quickly used up almost all the ammunition available in the depots.
According to information from French sources, A.A. Ignatiev faced terrible red tape and confusion in the French military industry. Bribery and corruption reigned in the republican military and civilian bureaucracy. The case with the shells did not advance, and then at the beginning of 1915 he turned for help to General Louis Bacquet, who knew him well, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Artillery and Ammunition. The French general advised Ignatiev to contact the industrialist Andre Citroen directly. According to Ignatiev himself, the meeting took place in early 1915. Citroen proposed to build a special plant for the production of shells. “Today is March 10,” he said, “on August 1, the plant will be built and by August 1, 1916, all orders will be completed. But payment must be made in advance. The cost of one shell is 60 francs. " There was no other way out. But by the indicated date, the problem with the supply of shells was resolved.
The year 1917 has come. The February revolution broke out in Russia. By order from Petrograd, Ignatiev was removed from his post as a military agent. However, Kerensky, who came to power, soon reinstated him in office and even conferred on him another military rank of Major General.
French sources describe A.A. Ignatiev's further stay in France in this way. “After the October Revolution of 1917, the count did not provide any support to the Soviet government. At the same time, the allies of imperial Russia persistently tried to get him to transfer funds to them, which remained in many bank accounts controlled by the general. Then he tried to transfer all the money he had to his personal account. According to some sources, he had at that time more than 225 million French francs, which at the current exchange rate is about $ 2 billion.
He used part of the money to help Russian emigrants in poverty in exile, while he did not take a dime for his needs. The Ignatievs lived very modestly. Numerous White Guard organizations that insistently demanded that the tsar's money be transferred to them, the count responded with a categorical refusal. But when in 1924, the People's Commissar of the RSFSR for Foreign Trade Leonid Krasin arrived in Paris on a visit, A.A. Ignatiev, to the great surprise of the People's Commissar, offered to transfer to the Soviet government all the money in his personal account. At that time, two billion dollars helped to a large extent to restore the destroyed Soviet economy. They purchased equipment for power plants, machine tools for factories, thousands of tractors for agriculture.
Count Ignatiev's act drew fierce criticism from Russian émigré circles. He was called a traitor, his best friends turned away from him, he was struck off the lists of officers - graduates of the Corps of Pages, officers of the Life Guards ... His own mother announced that she did not want to see her son and even after her death he should not be at her funeral. True, she later changed her mind.
In the Soviet trade mission, after receiving tsarist money from Ignatiev, it was as if they forgot about the existence of the general. He lived in poverty and, together with his wife, the famous ballerina Natalya Trukhanova, was forced from an apartment in the center of Paris to move into a squalid dwelling on the outskirts of the city. In the end, he was given the position of a consultant at the Trade Representation of the RSFSR, which somewhat supported the spouses. In this position, he worked until 1937, when, finally, Natalya Vladimirovna got the Soviet ambassador to receive Soviet passports, threatening that she would turn with her request directly to Stalin. In Moscow, Ignatiev was provided with a wonderful apartment at 17 on Serov Passage (now Lubyansky Passage). The windows overlooked the Ilyinsky square, at the beginning of which there is a monument to the heroes of Plevna. Ignatiev was offered to head the department of foreign languages \u200b\u200bin one of the military universities, but, in the end, he began to work in the publishing house of the People's Commissariat of Defense (Voenizdat). According to some reports, work in the Military Publishing House was only a cover, but in reality, Aleksei Alekseevich was busy training Soviet foreign intelligence personnel. However, I was unable to find any documents confirming these facts.
On August 29, 1943, he was awarded the next military rank of Lieutenant General. Note that this happened only a week after the decree on the creation of the Suvorov military schools was published. Was not the conferment of another title in reality a reward for the idea of \u200b\u200breviving cadet education, which was brought to life? But this is only a guess, while Ignatiev's letter to Stalin is a document.
Thus, the real initiator of the creation of the Suvorov and Nakhimov schools in the USSR is Alexei Alekseevich Ignatiev. With this initiative alone, not even mentioning his previous services to the Fatherland, the great patriot of Russia immortalized his name.
It was mentioned above that Aleksey Alekseevich returned to Russia with his wife, the famous ballerina Natalya Vladimirovna Trukhanova. She was born in Kiev in 1885 in the family of actor Vladimir Bostunov and a Frenchwoman from Alsace, Marie Brown. But the father left the family, and the mother and daughter moved to Moscow. Mother gave French lessons, which did not give a stable income. It happened that they were in poverty, but Natalya stubbornly studied acting courses with Nemirovich-Danchenko and additionally took paid lessons from the choreographer of the Bolshoi Theater Khlyustin. In 1900, at the age of 15, she married Lieutenant B.F. Trukhanov, but soon divorced him. In 1904, she persuaded her mother to leave Russia for France. In Paris in a short time, she, as a ballerina, achieved great fame. Natalya Trukhanova was familiar with Diaghilev, Chaliapin. Her friends were the famous composers Ravel, Reinhardt, Massenet, Saint-Saens. As a ballerina, she made her original contributions to Diaghilev's famous theatrical seasons.
Her acquaintance with A.A. Ignatiev took place in February 1914. Since then, they have always remained faithful to each other, and in 1918 they became husband and wife. The last performance of the brilliant ballerina on the Parisian stage of the "Grand Opera" was in 1926. The theater director announced to her that she was dismissed as the wife of a general sympathizing with the Soviet regime. “We don't need red spies in the theater,” he said.
After almost all of his friends, both Russians and foreigners, turned away from Ignatiev, they lived for several years in poverty on the outskirts of Paris, where they cultivated their own vegetable garden, which made it possible to feed themselves. Life more or less got better when A.A. Ignatiev and his wife were accepted into the staff of the Soviet trade mission. While working, she began translating the works of Soviet writers into French. Two collections "Notebooks of a new Russia" were published in France, which included the works of B. Lavrenev, A. Novikov-Priboy, L. Nikulin, Vs. Ivanov in the translations of N. Ignatieva-Trukhanova. With the support of the French Communists, she created her own small theater, Art and Labor. The troupe performed on the workers' suburbs of Paris, showing plays by Soviet playwrights. Natalya Vladimirovna was both a translator and a director and a performer.
While living in Moscow, Natalya Ignatieva-Trukhanova wrote a book of memoirs On Stage and Behind the Scenes. A friend of the Ignatiev family, the famous Soviet historian Academician E.V. Tarle, after reading the manuscript, said about it: "Lovely memoirs, full of masculine intelligence and charming femininity."
It was only in the 21st century that this book first saw the light. It was published ... in the USA, by the University of Michigan. The second manuscript, which she called "The Book of Love", is dedicated to her life with Aleksei Alekseevich and was never published. According to some information, the manuscript is kept in the Central State Archives of Literature and Art.
The contemporary Russian writer Lyudmila Tretyakova, known for her novels about the fate of famous Russian women, published an article in 2001 in the magazine Vokrug Sveta, from which it follows that, while living in Moscow, the Ignatievs were far from satisfied with their fate. The active Natalya Trukhanova could not find a job, and Alexei Alekseevich was also not satisfied with his modest position. We read: “How much the Ignatievs needed, can be judged by the fact that, in the end, she sold their wedding rings. Moral and material support for Ignatiev was the publication of his famous book "Fifty Years in the ranks". The name of the "red earl" gained immense popularity. But there was also something else. In 1947, overnight, Ignatiev was fired from the army. They called the personnel department of the Red Army and asked:
- What do you think, Comrade General, about the resignation?
- I think that if the conversation is about resignation, then I am superfluous. And you don't need to be superfluous either in the service or with women. The will of the superiors requires submission. And I am a soldier, and I do not have to object ... "
And one more excerpt from L. Tretyakova's article:
“He died in the hospital on November 20, 1954. Natalya Vladimirovna found out about this, going, as usual, to his room. She was told that everything happened without suffering, in half-oblivion, and the last words of the general were the command: "Third squadron, come to me!" With visions of youth, the gray-haired cavalry guard went into eternity ... After the death of her husband, Natalya Vladimirovna lived for less than two years. All this time she divided between the Novodevichy cemetery, where Alexei lay, and the manuscript, which she called "The Book of Love." Ignatieva ended her memories, which remained in the manuscript, with the words: "Goodbye, my dear ... See you soon ..." In August 1956, she felt ill. An ambulance was called, but the patient did not agree to lie on a stretcher. Powdered, painted on her lips, put on a hat and, clattering her heels, hurriedly began to go down the stairs, as if somewhere out there, besides her, invisible to anyone, was waiting for the cavalry guard with those words of love that are remembered all my life ... "
Is this how it really happened, or are we only dealing with the literary invention of the writer Tretyakova?
On the Internet, you can find other sources claiming that the Ignatievs' spouses led an interesting life in Moscow, full of events and meetings ... They attended all theatrical premieres, concerts, and opening days. They had many friends. The 70th anniversary of A.A. Ignatiev was celebrated in the Central House of Writers. The hall was overcrowded. Many famous personalities - friends of the hero of the day - performed. N. Obukhova and I. Kozlovsky sang. The ballerina O. Lepeshinskaya read poems dedicated to the hero of the day. A greeting letter from Maurice Thorez was read out. Among those with whom they constantly corresponded and communicated were writers Lavrenev, Ehrenburg, A. Tolstoy, historian E. Tarle, actress A. Yablochkina.
Oleg Rudensky writes on the Celebrity website that “In the circle of the highest Soviet officers, Alexei Alekseevich felt very uncomfortable. I did not understand how the Bolshevik generals could drive soldiers to build their private dachas. He believed that the state salary should be enough for his own arrangement. When Soviet colleagues tried to praise Aleksei Alekseevich for his disinterestedness, he was simply angry:
Allow me! But it's even offensive. Can a person be praised for not being a scoundrel? "
Many of the facts presented here undoubtedly require documentary confirmation, and the very life of General Ignatiev is our deepest study.
Not far from Rzhev.
The family estate of the Tver branch of the Counts Ignatievs was located in former times in a quiet corner of the Tver province, away from the column road leading from Rzhev to the city of Toropets (Toropetsky tract). Nowadays, it is cut in two by the M9 Moscow-Riga motorway. Thoroughly broken by heavy trucks, especially in the 90s of the last century and at the beginning of this one, this highway has been rebuilt all the way through the Tver region in recent years. It is noteworthy that the reconstruction of the highway was carried out in the years when a cadet, formerly a Tver Suvorovite Hero of Russia, Andrey Shevelev, became the governor of Tver.
Driving along an impeccable asphalt belt, we pass the city of Zubtsov and after three dozen kilometers we leave at an intersection with a traffic light. A branch from the highway to the right leads to the regional center, the city of Rzhev, and we continue to the west and after 25 kilometers the village of Zvyagino will appear on the left. Here we are already within the bounds of the Ignatievs' estate. The highway runs over a new bridge, under which the Moscow-Riga railway passes. Trains rush along it without stopping past the Chertolino station, located south of the motorway. The station was once built by Count A.P. Ignatiev. Three kilometers south of the Chertolinsky railway station lies the village of Bakharevo, which was also part of the estate.
Having passed the bridge over the railway, we will see on the right two or three houses - all that remains of the once large village of Svistuny. A little further to the right, a narrow road leaves the highway. If you follow it, then after 800 meters we will find ourselves in front of a low ancient building, which to this day is called the "Svistunovskaya Hospital". It is a hospital, and it was built at the expense of Count Alexei Pavlovich for the peasants of the surrounding villages. Behind the Svistunovskaya hospital, one and a half kilometers away, are the villages of Svetloye and Sednevo, which also belonged to the Ignatievs.
Continuing along the M9 highway, after five and a half kilometers, if we count from the bridge over the railway, we will see the village of Barygino on the left, Starye Kuznetsy on the right. We turn off the highway to the right onto a narrow road and, having driven one kilometer seven hundred meters, we turn left onto a slightly noticeable path. Certolino will be about a kilometer away. It was here that the count's estate was located, now a forgotten, abandoned place ...
In the prospectus for tourists visiting the Rzhevsky region today, it is written: “A few kilometers from the Chertolino station there is a small village of Chertolino. Once it was one of the richest estates in the district, owned by the famous tsarist dignitary, Count Ignatiev. Now only the entrance alley and the dilapidated stable are left of the estate. "
Our filial duty
The patriotic feat of General Ignatiev, who preserved and transferred to the Soviet state in difficult times huge funds of the tsarist treasury, oddly enough, was not noted by the Soviet government. In pre-revolutionary times, A.A. Ignatiev received almost two dozen awards, including two Orders of St. Stanislav, two Orders of St. Anne, the Order of St. Vladimir with swords and a bow, the French Order of the Legion of Honor ... There is not a single order. Only in 1945 he received the Medal "For Victory over Germany".
Decades passed, the Motherland still did not appreciate, did not recognize the feat of her outstanding son. The merit of A.A. Ignatiev to the Fatherland in the restoration of cadet education should also be duly noted. Was it, starting from 1943, not within the walls of Suvorov, Nakhimov schools, and later in cadet corps tens of thousands of officers strong in spirit and body — the glory and pride of our Armed Forces? Hundreds of our outstanding statesmen, scientists, diplomats, writers, athletes, conquerors of the Cosmos, and cultural figures have not come from them?
The filial duty of the Cadets requires the elimination of historical injustice. The monument to General A.A. Ignatiev in Moscow on Suvorovskaya Square, where thousands of graduates of the Suvorov and Nakhimov military schools invariably meet, would at least become an expression of popular gratitude to a person who, with his whole life, devotion to Russia, has earned eternal memory and respect for descendants.
And the house number 17 in Moscow in Lubyansky passage? On its wall you can see memorial plaques that remind of the military leaders who once lived in it. But there is no Ignatiev board on it.
The question arises about the graves of A.A. Ignatiev and his wife at the Novodevichy cemetery. Where are they, in what condition are they? In the list of names of people buried in this national necropolis published on the Internet, there are no names of either A.A. Ignatiev or N.V. Ignatieva-Trukhanova.
An equally important matter would be the publication of the manuscripts of Aleksey Alekseevich's wife Natalia Ignatieva-Trukhanova. After all, we are talking about the most valuable memoirs, which reflect the events not only in the life of this married couple, in them the very breath of the era, our history.
Finally, the question of the Ignatiev family estate near Rzhev. I think that the entire cadet world should turn to our comrade, the current governor of the Tver region, Andrey Shevelev, with a request to take care of the Ignatiev family nest in the Rzhevsky region. What needs to be done there, how to ennoble Chertolino, what commemorative sign to put at the turn from the M9 motorway to the Ignatiev estate, what means to equip all this - this is the subject of our discussion, the subject of concern not only by the governor, but, first of all, by the general cadet concern.
I think the Tver SVU will not stand aside either. Research work dedicated to Aleksey Alekseevich, his father Aleksey Pavlovich, a collective study of the role of the glorious Ignatiev family in the history of Tver land, in the centuries-old history of our state, can become fascinating and extremely useful for the current and future generations of Suvorovites. Isn't that how the sacred sparks of patriotism are kindled in young hearts?
