SERGEI RACHINSKY AND HIS “SUPERNUMERARY DISCIPL” IVAN SHCHEGLOV

Abstract

A current revival of spiritual life in Russia enhanced interest in the heritage of those public figures for whom religion was the highest value above all their activities. One of such figures was the public school reformer Sergey Alexandrovich Rachinsky (1833–1902). He did not left any theoretical works, expressed his ideas rarely in articles, as well as in his letters. This manuscript treasury attracts researchers’ attention, but only two correspondences have been published (with Vasily Rozanov and Stepan Smolensky). Worthy of special note is his epistolary dialogue with a man of a different generation, education and character. Ivan Leontyevich Leontiev (1856–1911), a writer and a theoretician of people’s theatre (the pen name Ivan Shcheglov), came to adopt the Orthodox faith and regarded Rachinsky as his spiritual teacher. The correspondence took place between 1891 and 1900 and contained 123 letters. What could bring together a St. Petersburg neurasthenic, as Shcheglov admitted himself to be, and the piously calm rural hermit? The present article is supposed to answer this question.

Extended abstract:

A revival of spiritual life in Russia and related processes in science and culture naturally enhanced interest in biographies and in the creative heritage of those public figures for whom religion was the highest value above all their activities. One such figure was the public school reformer Sergey Alexandrovich Rachinsky (or Raczynski, 1833–1902). He was nicknamed a “Tatevo hermit” since he created an exemplary model of school for peasant children on his estate at Tatevo in Smolensk Province, a school functioning as both children’s home and community. Rachinsky did not leave any purely theoretical works. He expressed his pedagogical ideas and life experience in essays, notes, and rarely in articles, as well as in his letters to numerous correspondents. Rachinsky carefully amassed the received letters to form a special collection, which he jokingly named “a cart to descendants”. More than 120 voluminous books of bound letters arranged according to the dates are kept in the Russian National Library, St. Petersburg. The tutor’s letters written in reply can also be found in this and other archives, including the Pushkin House. This manuscript treasury increasingly attracts researchers’ attention, but only two correspondences from it have been published so far — those with the philosopher Vasily V. Rozanov and the composer Stepan V. Smolensky. Worthy of special note in Rachinsky’s collection is his informative epistolary dialogue with Ivan L. Leontiev, a man of a different generation, education, and character. Ivan Leontyevich Leontiev (1856–1911), a prose writer, playwright, and a theoretician of people’s theatres, who wrote under the pen name of Ivan Shcheglov, came to adopt the Orthodox faith and regarded Rachinsky as his spiritual teacher. The correspondence between them took place between 1891 and 1900 and contained 123 letters (64 letters by Shcheglov and 59 replies by Rachinsky). What could bring together a St. Petersburg neurasthenic, as Shcheglov admitted himself to be, and the piously calm rural hermit? The present article, based on unknown materials, is supposed to answer this question. The author concludes that the meeting with Rachinsky was a turning point in Shcheglov’s life. In Rachinsky he met a man whose words do not differ from deeds. After that, Shcheglov’s work developed in two directions: vaudeville and fiction for a stable income and attempts at serious creativity (for example, works about Gogol). Rachinsky took care of his younger friend for a long time, until Shcheglov’s articles about Evgeny Baratynsky (the great poet and the uncle of the Tatevo teacher) became the reason for the break in their relationship.