Student Festivities at Imperial Moscow University from an Administrative Dimension (Second Third of the 19th Century)

This study is devoted to the regulation of student festivities at the Imperial Moscow University. A focus on the administrative component will allow us to trace not only the control and struggle of actors, but also their cooperation in this area. Separately, it is worth noting that most students’ researchers are interested in the period of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, which was more saturated with revolutionary events, which sets the framework for research on students and educational policies aimed at them. Consideration of an earlier period and combining in one study the study of administrative practices from the 1830s to the 1860s will allow us to overcome the gap constructed in historiography between pre- and post-reform universities and combine traditionally separately studied subjects in order to see the phenomenon as a whole. The purpose of the work is to determine scenarios for the administrative regulation of student festivities in the second third of the 19th century. For the research tasks set, a historical corpus of three blocks was formed. Legislative sources that contain norms regulating student festivities. Office work, in which three main groups are distinguished: the educational department to which the students were subordinate; authorities supervising compliance with the law, that is, ensuring law and order and supervising crimes and offenses; theater department, which monitored the observance of order at the events of the imperial theaters and had the right to prohibit some festivities at its discretion. Various types of materials reflecting the consequences of regulating festivities: periodical, journalistic, statistical and sources of personal origin. All this made it possible to trace the main scenarios for regulating festivities, where students were mainly a passive mass, whose interests were sometimes supported by the university. The police and theater management defended the law and their commercial interests, respectively.