The Yekaterininskaya Women's Gymnasium was an educational institution Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, which grew out of a women's school opened in 1862 and remained in operation until 1918, when Russian gymnasiums were abolished in the course of Soviet educational reforms. After its closure, its records were in all likelihood continued by its successor institution — the Arzamas Soviet Second-Level School named after Bukharin.[1]

History and activities

The women's school in Arzamas opened on March 25, 1862: the opening had been announced in advance at the cathedral and the parish churches of the city, and 44 girls attended on the first day of classes. On September 8, 1864, the institution was reorganized as a second-grade school and named the Yekaterininskaya — in honor of Princess Yekaterina Petrovna, daughter of Prince of Oldenburg. By early 1869 it had approximately one hundred pupils, more than the Arzamas district school, and its tuition fees were twice as high.[2] The earliest surviving records from the gymnasium's archival fond date to 1868. During the Great Patriotic War, the building housed an evacuation hospital and pupils were transferred to a small house on Stupin Street; from 1943 the school returned to its own building; in 1959 the institution became a school with instruction in several subjects in English, and on May 7, 1964, by a decision of the Arzamas City Executive Committee, it was renamed the Gorky School.[3] On July 31, 1918, the Committee for Public Education resolved to rename the gymnasium the Arzamas Gymnasium, and on November 15, 1918, the Arzamas Department of Public Education gave it the name Soviet School of the Second Level, which accepted children who had completed a first-level school, from Arzamas and the surrounding volosts and districts.[3] In 1901, the progymnasium was elevated to the status of a full gymnasium with a seven-year curriculum; the program was expanded to include literature, Church Slavonic, mathematics, world history, physics, mathematical geography, and pedagogy; that same year a stone building was laid next to the wooden one and consecrated on September 23, 1902, and by the early twentieth century the number of female pupils exceeded 500.[3] In 1872, the school was reorganized into a progymnasium with a curriculum comprising the Law of God, calligraphy, Russian, arithmetic and geometry, geography, history, natural history, French, needlework, singing, and drawing.[3] The gymnasium traces its history to a women's school taken under the patronage of Prince Pyotr Georgiyevich Oldenburgsky through the intercession of Aleksandr Nikolayevich Karamzin — son of the historian — and his wife Natalya Vasilyevna Obolenskaya; the name "Yekaterininskaya" was given in honor of the prince's daughter.[3] The gymnasium building is located at Karl Marx Street, 16: until 1887 the house belonged to the landowner Poluektova, who in that year transferred it to the expanding gymnasium, which had previously occupied the Khanykov house at Progonnaya Street, 11.[3] The gymnasium operated within the framework of the classical women's education system introduced in Russia by the Charter of 1864 and consolidated by the charter of July 30, 1871.

Under this system, classical gymnasiums granted graduates the right to enter university, whereas modern-track schools did not.[1] The documents accumulated in the archival fond cover the period from 1868 to 1932: registers of outgoing and incoming documents for 1916–1925 and 1916–1932 contain information both on the gymnasium itself and on the Bukharin School, which was apparently its successor institution.[1]

Archival Fond

The gymnasium's documents were transferred for storage to the Arzamas State Archive on October 2, 1933; the source of the transfer is not indicated in the archive's registration records. The fond was assigned the number 118 and is held at the State Казённое Institution "State Archive of Nizhny Novgorod Region" (Arzamas). Its total volume comprises 1,852 storage units: inventory no. 1 contains 1,816 files, inventory no. 2 contains 36 files. The chronological scope of the materials is 1868–1932; additionally, inventory no. 1 includes files from 1936 containing copies of certificates issued to replace lost originals.[1]

Some of the documents — 15 storage units covering the years 1886–1914 — are held at the Central Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod Region in Nizhny Novgorod. During the improvement of the inventories, a scientific reference apparatus was compiled: title pages, a preface, a list of abbreviations, and chronological indexes, since the original file headings did not fully reflect the composition of the documents.[1]

Sources

  1. opentextnn.ru — Fund No. 118. Yekaterininsky Women's Gymnasium, Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate. Inventory No. 1 for 1872–1932, 1936. — OPEN TEXT (archive)
  2. arzhistory.cerkov.ru — The Development of Education in Arzamas in the 19th Century — Orthodox Local History Conference "Shchegolkov Readings"
  3. titra.ru — Yekaterininsky Women's Gymnasium, K. Marx Street, 16 — TRAFARET Printing House — The gymnasium building is located at 16 Karl Marx Street. Before 1887, the house belonged to a noblewoman…