§2
After the year 1812, Moscow University and Moscow itself rose in importance. Degraded from her position as an imperial capital by Peter the Great, the city was promoted by Napoleon, partly by his wish but mainly against it, to be the capital of the Russian nation. The people discovered the ties of blood that bound them to Moscow by the pain they felt on hearing of her capture by the enemy. For her it was the beginning of a new epoch; and her University became more and more the centre of Russian education, uniting as it did everything to favour its development—historical importance and geographical position.
There was a vigorous outburst of intellectual activity in Petersburg after the death of the Emperor Paul; but this died away in the darkness that followed the fourteenth of December, 1825.
All was reversed, the blood flowed back to the heart, and all activity was forced to ferment and burrow underground. But Moscow University stood firm and was the first visible object to emerge from the universal fog.
The University soon grew in influence. All the youth and strength of Russia came together there in one common meeting-place, from all parts of the country and all sections of society; there they cast off the prejudices they had acquired at home, reached a common level, formed ties of brotherhood with one another, and then went back to every part of Russia and penetrated every class.
Down to 1848 the constitution of our universities was purely democratic. Their doors were open to everyone who could pass the examination, provided he was not a serf, or a peasant detained by the village community. The Emperor Nicholas limited the number of freshmen and increased the charges to pensioners, permitting poor nobles only to escape from this burden. But all this belongs to the class of measures that will disappear together with the passport system, religious intolerance, and so on.
A motley assemblage of young men, from high to low, from North and South, soon blended into a compact body united by ties of friendship. Among us social distinctions had none of that offensive influence which one sees in English schools and regiments—to say nothing of English universities which exist solely for the rich and well-born. If any student among us had begun to boast of his family or his money, he would have been tormented and sent to Coventry by the rest.
The external distinctions among us were not deep and proceeded from other sources. For instance, the Medical School was across the park and somewhat removed from the other faculties; besides, most of the medical students were Germans or came from theological seminaries. The Germans kept somewhat apart, and the bourgeois spirit of Western Europe was strong in them. The whole education of the divinity students and all their ideas were different from ours; we spoke different languages; they had grown up under the yoke of monastic control and been crammed with rhetoric and theology; they envied our freedom, and we resented their Christian humility.
Though I joined the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, I never had any great turn or much liking for mathematics. Niko and I were taught the subject by the same teacher, whom we liked because he told us stories; he was very entertaining, but I doubt if he could have developed a special passion in any pupil for his branch of science. He knew as far as Conic Sections, i.e., just what was required from schoolboys entering the University; a true philosopher, he had never had the curiosity to glance at the “University branches” of mathematics. It was specially remarkable that he taught for ten years continuously out of a single book—Francœur’s treatise—and always stopped at the same page, having no ambition to go beyond the required minimum.
I chose that Faculty, because it included the subject of natural science, in which I then took a specially strong interest; and this interest was due to a rather odd meeting.