[Education for women] Kratkaya istoricheskaya zapiska o Vysshikh Zhenskikh Kursakh v S.-Peterburge [A brief historical note about the Higher Women's Courses in St. Petersburg.] - 1896

Two photos: The House of Higher women's courses. Dormitory of Higher women's courses. On the cover there is a donation inscription dated 06/20/1896. A special commission formed in 1873 under the chairmanship of State Secretary I. D. Delyanov developed a project of a government higher education institution for women, and in 1875 a government message followed with a promise to provide women in Russia with the same opportunity for higher education for which they rushed abroad. This mood was taken advantage of by the founders of the Vladimir courses, with A.N. Beketov at the head, and achieved permission to open in 1878 higher women's courses with a systematic, university-like nature of teaching, and the opening of the courses was recognized by the Minister of Public Education, Count D.A. Tolstoy, as a useful and even necessary task in the types of distraction of Russian women from studying at foreign universities (this goal was achieved). At the head of the pedagogical council, Professor K.N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin became the head of the courses, according to the desire of the Minister (hence the name of the courses "bestuzhevskie", and the students - "bestuzhevki"). The course of teaching, originally designed for 3 years, was already made a four-year course in 1881. The courses had three departments: verbal-historical, physical-mathematical and special-mathematical; the last two differed only from the second year. Practical classes took place in almost all subjects and in all departments, especially in natural sciences, for which the courses had richly furnished classrooms, a laboratory, a library, and subsequently classrooms specially adapted for reading experimental lectures. Attracting the best professors of the university and other higher educational institutions of St. Petersburg as teachers, the courses began to prepare independent teaching staff from among former students. At the opening of the courses, 814 students were enrolled. 1/3 of all students enrolled in the verbal-historical department, the rest mainly enrolled in the physics and mathematics department. A rare publication related to the topic of women's education in Russia, the history of the women's movement, women's emancipation, feminism in Russia.