ABSTRACT
The rector of the higher and secondary educational establishments of the Academy of Sciences in 1750 was S. P. Krasheninnikov, who was a 'soldier's son'. The Academy of Science gymnasium in St Petersburg and the gymnasia attached to Moscow University were civilian in character. Two gymnasia were established at the same time, one for nobles, one for non-nobles, but graduates from both these establishments were taught together in the university. The non-noble gymnasium was open to pupils of all classes including children of serfs freed by their owners in order to enable them to be educated. The Foundling Hospital not only represented an opportunity for new educational theories to be tried out. It also fitted into Catherine's general concern with population policy, and in particular into the fashionable effort to create a third estate in Russia. Nineteenth-century historians have frequently expressed themselves somewhat scathingly regarding Catherine's efforts to construct an educational system.
