The Development of Literacy in Russia and the USSR from the Tenth to the Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

The history of literacy in Russia may be divided into four periods: 1) the Kievan, from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries (before the Mongol invasion); 2) the medieval (Muscovite), from the middle of the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries; 3) the imperial, from the eight eenth century to 1917; and 4) the Soviet, after 1917. For each of these periods distinctive sources have been preserved that call for special han dling and methodologies. Before the 1950s historians of literacy in Kievan Rus had recourse primarily to archaeological material, especially writing paraphernalia, as well as to signatures on handicrafts, shoe lasts, and church walls. The earliest archaeological findings and graffiti of this sort derive from the tenth and eleventh centuries. 1 In 1951, during archaeological excavations at Novgorod, the first birch-bark charters were unearthed. These were notations of a mundane character-household lists, records, letters, requests, school exercises, and so forth-on beresta, the outer layer of the bark of the birch tree. Some seven hundred birch-bark charters, dating from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, have been discovered in nine ancient Russian towns. Excavations at virtually every other site have uncovered instruments for writing on birch bark. The discoveries indicate that literacy was not a monopoly of the clergy, feudal lords, and clerks, as was earlier thought, but extended as well to the urban population engaged in handicrafts and trade. The findings provide evidence of the spread of literacy and show Boris N. Mironov is a senior research associate at the Leningrad branch of the Institute of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The editors of the HEQ are extremely grateful to Professor Ben Eklof of Indiana University for his careful translation and editing of this article.

A golden age before serfdom? The human capital of Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe in the 17th-19th centuries

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Regional inequality in human capital formation in Europe, 1790–1880

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Technology and the Era of the Mass Army

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