Junior faculty, national education and the (re)making of the academic community in the Russian empire during and after the great war

Abstract

This chapter examines the nature and consequences of the mobilization of Russian universities in wartime. In Russia, which went to war in 1914, the engagement of universities in the war effort and its consequences transformed higher education, meaning that reform became one of the dominant themes of the Russian war experience for scholars. However, reform had antecedents that pre-dated the war and the ensuing revolution. Dmitriev focuses on the experience of junior faculty, a segment of the academic community that became especially vocal in demanding reform of national education in this period. Allied to the Revolution of 1917, the First World War contributed to the end of the old “imperial” university system. This chapter demonstrates the tensions between national, imperial and international understandings of higher education.