of carrying out this gigantic program. The condition sine qua non was that 
instruction should be given cost free and that the children of all natio- 
nalities and all religious denominations should be accepted. The minimum 
term of the school course was to be not less than four years. Doubtless, 
certain modifications were admitted, according to local peculiarities and 
requirements. 
Beginning from 19o8 the assignments for primary education went on 
increasing from year to year, till at last 10 mill. additional gold roubles 
were assigned yearly. A fund named “The Fund of Peter the Great” was 
instituted for building purposes. Each year the sums set aside for the fund 
were increasing till they reached the yearly figure of ro million. 
All local institutions were only too eager to meet the plans of the 
Government half-way. In 1910 only 15 out of the 360 district Zemstvas did 
not possess such a network of schools and financial programs for their 
further development. In rgri, g districts and 8 towns had carried out the 
complete program of universal instruction. And notwithstanding all the 
increasing difficulties of the last years (war, the ever growing cost of 
living, etc.) the whole program would have been carried out fully by 1922, 
if the revolution had not broken out. 
Besides the primary schools there existed also the so-called Double 
Class Schools in which the period of instruction lasted from 5 to 6 years, 
and also the “Superior People’s Schools” with a course of 4 years; thus 
siving together with the primary school a period of a full 8 years school- 
course in the first-grade schools. The number of Superior Primary Schools 
was over 1200. The number of Teacher's Seminaries and Teacher's Courses, 
and also of the Superior Pedagogical Teaching Institutions (Pedagogical 
[nstitutes) was ever increasing, in response to the demand for qualified 
eachers. 
It was as far back as the end of the rgth century that the Ministry 
of Education raised the question regarding first grade industrial and tech- 
nical instruction. At the moment when war was declared the Ministry of 
Trade and Industry had opened about 500 special technical and industrial 
first grade schools for 40,000 students. And the Ministry of Agriculture 
had opened 300 first grade agricultural schools. 
When the revolution broke out the total number of first-grade schools 
m- the Russian Empire was about 120,000 (of different types) and the 
attendance 8,000,000. According to the questionaire made by the Soviets 
in 1920, 86 9 (in the cities 91 %) of children aged from 12 to 16, (i. e. 
of children who had been taught in schools founded before the revolution) 
could read and write. 
In Russia (in pre-Bolshevist time) as well as in the whole of Europe 
the education received in first-grade and in second-grade schools was not 
7 
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