Ilya Alexandrovich Dunbinskiy,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russian Federation, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Development of the Charter of the Imperial Tomsk University: The Genesis of the Features of the First Higher Educational Institution in the Asian Part of Russia
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2025-1-1
The purpose of this work is to reconstruct the process of creating the university charter of the Imperial Tomsk University on the basis of unique, previously unpublished sources of personal origin, as well as to investigate the reasons for its originality, due to which the Imperial Tomsk University initially had a special status in the higher education system of the Russian Empire. A number of special historical methods were used as the methodological basis of the research, such as comparative historical, historical-systemic, problem-chronological and ideographic methods of cognition. The unique personal archive of V.M. Florinsky, which is currently located in the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, was used as a source base for the study. At the moment, this archive contains, firstly, the annual reports of V.M. Florinsky, I.D. Delyanov on the progress of the construction of the Imperial Tomsk University, in which he not only reported on the construction process of buildings for the future university, but also expressed his proposals on its formation as a full-fledged educational institution. Secondly, these are diary entries, as well as personal correspondence between V.M. Florinsky and high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Public Education, which allow us to reconstruct a personal attitude to ideas about the future originality of the Siberian University. In the course of the research, the author of the article came to the conclusion that, V.M. Florinsky, throughout almost the entire period of construction of the university, was engaged not only in organizing construction works and forming educational and support institutions, but also in developing the Charter of the Siberian University, which was supposed to lay the foundations for future scientific and educational activities of the university. Most of the proposals put forward by V.M. Florinsky were due to the circumstances in which the young Siberian University was built and subsequently had to exist. In this regard, it can be argued that the hypothesis put forward by a number of V.M. Florinsky’s researchers that the fundamental task for the Charter of the Siberian University was the search for some kind of spiritual principle is incorrect. The charter of the Siberian University was created in extremely difficult conditions, when even the very opening of the university was in doubt, and its organizer was ready to sacrifice one or more faculties in order to achieve the opening of an already built educational complex. Florinsky drafted the Charter of the Siberian University based on the existing conditions and taking into account possible difficulties caused by the geographical location of the university and the low level of development of the region.
Publishing: 24/02/2025
The article has been received by the editor on 15/08/2024
How to cite: Dunbinskiy I.A. Development of the Charter of the Imperial Tomsk University: The Genesis of the Features of the First Higher Educational Institution in the Asian Part of Russia // Historical Courier, 2025, No. 1 (39), pp. 11–24. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2025/ISTKURIER-2025-1-01.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2025
Keywords: university charter; university construction; V.M. Florinsky; Siberian University; Imperial Tomsk University