Post-Reform Theological School of the Russian Empire: Bursak between Piety and Revolt

The history of theological education in the Russian Empire has flourished in recent decades due to both the opening of archives and the opportunity to rethink old ideological clichés. The literary allusion of the issue is “Essays on the Bursa” — a mid19th century bestseller that shocked the public with its descriptions of the mores of a clerical theological where cramming, poverty, hunger, beatings and bullying of students
by cruel teachers and older classmates reigned. This discussion posed questions that allowed participants to test this paradigmatic text, which influenced not only readers of its time, but several generations of scholars. By offering their own reading of N.G. Pomialovsky’s story, the authors formulated a vision of the post-reform theological school, focusing not on the content of the succession of educational reforms and curricula, but on its anthropological dimension: everyday life, social practices and interpersonal relationships, introducing new actors into the story — teachers, parents, authors of novels and novellas about the life of seminarians. The main character, the “rebellious seminarian”, remains unchanged, but the reasons for his participation in the protest movement have become much more complicated. They can no longer be reduced to the seminarian’s particular sensitivity to revolutionary propaganda, which replaces his former piety with a fervent belief in the social revolution.