State charity under Catherine 2. Social reforms of Catherine II. See the issue on the same topic

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Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Volgograd State University

Department of Social Work and Pedagogy

on the topic: "Charity under Catherine II"

Group: SRZ-141

Completed by: Chikhireva E.S.

Checked by: Litvinova I. N.

Volgograd

Introduction

After the death of Peter I, there was some lull in the field of charity. It was still unclear how far the reforms of the first Russian emperor would take root and where his descendants would lead the country. The reign of Peter II, Anna Ioannovna, Elizabeth and Peter III was remembered only for the fact that the penalties for professional begging became even more severe. Moreover, some of the shelters for newborns were closed because the money previously spent on these purposes went into the pockets of alternating favorites.

Until the accession of Empress Catherine II to the throne in 1762, we see stagnation in matters of charity. Born princesses of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future empress had nothing to do with Russia except that she was the wife of the Russian Emperor Peter III, who hated everything Russian. At the same time, among the representatives of the Romanov dynasty it is difficult to find someone who could do more for Russia than Catherine II.

After the death of Emperor Peter I, very little attention was paid to charity issues. Of course, representatives of the ruling dynasty tried to follow the precepts of their great ancestor, but this was not enough. There was a lack of government will. Catherine II tried to change the current state of affairs.

With the accession of Catherine II to the throne, a second attempt began during the 18th century to change the socio-economic structure of the country. Under the successors of Peter the Great and before the publication of the institution on the provinces, the management of charity lay with the Governing Senate, without whose determination no one could be placed in an almshouse. Until this time, in the field of charity, the government adhered to the plans of Peter I.

Catherine II also followed them in the first years of her reign, significantly softening, however, her punitive system towards the poor.

Ekaterina 2

During the first period of her reign, Catherine II did not pay much attention to issues of charity, since she first needed to gain a foothold on the throne and there were other matters of primary importance. At this time, decrees were issued on liability for begging, but the form of punishment was somewhat softened. According to a decree of February 1764, police could detain beggars. At the same time, until their case was considered in court, the detainees were entitled to a small monetary subsidy.

During the reign of Catherine II, new bodies governing public charity were created, a two-level system of social assistance to those in need - orders of public charity and local guardianship bodies of an estate nature (noble guardianship, orphan's court).

The biggest undertaking of the reign of Catherine II was the establishment of two large institutions for the care of illegitimate children. The question of them was seriously developed under the leadership of the famous philanthropist I.I. Betsky and received practical implementation with the founding of the Orphanage in Moscow in 1763, and in 1770 in St. Petersburg. The establishment of these two houses laid a solid foundation for the care of illegitimate children, if not throughout the Empire, then in the provinces closest to the capitals.

force the inhabitants to repair streets and bridges instead of hired workers, for which the inhabitants will give them the daily food they need." Finally, workhouses were established. In Moscow, "the former quarantine house located behind the Sukhorev Tower" was designated as a workhouse for men, where "the awaited sloths could would be used for work "on sawing wild stone for government and private buildings", and as a workhouse for women - St. Andrew's Monastery, where women were supposed to be involved in "spinning work; the daily wages of those in need were determined at 3 kopecks." A workers' house in St. Petersburg was ordered to be established without fail by May 1, 1781; it was ordered to send to this house those wandering around in St. Petersburg begging for alms and able to feed themselves by work"; beggars in district towns were to be sent "to the Yamburg cloth factory, or to other work"; premises for a workers' house in St. Petersburg were allocated on Vasilyevsky Island, in the former buildings of almshouses. Similar workers' houses were to be built in other provinces.

In 1763, they again remembered the shelters for abandoned babies, which were first founded under Peter I, but in recent years had fallen into oblivion. Catherine II was so fired up by this idea that she allocated 100,000 rubles from her own funds, thereby setting an example for other well-wishers and, above all, for her favorites. The operation of the shelter was very successful. Those who brought children were asked to give only the name of the baby and tell him whether he was baptized or not. That is why in just 1765 almost 800 children were brought to the Orphanage, which meant 800 lives saved! At that time, it was not customary to give up children; childbearing and fertility were perceived as a gift from God. Such cases, at first glance, could only have occurred among noble city women who needed to hide their affair on the side. And yet there was another reason to give the baby to the Orphanage. The fact is that the children of serfs after birth were also considered serfs, and according to the Charter of this institution, every baby was considered free from birth. That is why for many peasants, handing over a child to the Orphanage was the only chance to give him freedom.

On September 1, 1763, by decree of Catherine II, a Manifesto was published on the “Establishment of the Moscow Orphanage.”

“We declare to everyone. Charity for the poor and care for the increase of useful society inhabitants are the two supreme positions and virtues of every God-loving ruler. We, always nourishing them in our hearts, wanted to confirm the project now presented to us by Lieutenant General Betsky with a plan for the construction and the establishment of a general alms in Moscow, as the ancient capital of Our Empire, an educational home for newborn children with a special hospital for orphaned and poor mothers in labor" - this Manifesto began.

This event marked a new stage in the development of charity in Russia, which since ancient times was famous for Christian charity, special attitude towards orphans, the poor and the wretched. It is not for nothing that the Russian people have a proverb: “One enters heaven through holy alms. A beggar feeds on the rich, and a rich man is saved by the prayer of the beggar.”

The ceremonial laying of the building took place on October 7, 1764 in the presence of the Empress. In 1764, 523 children were admitted to the Moscow educational home (children under 2.5 years old were admitted to educational homes). Soon, with frequent donations, educational homes were also opened in large provincial cities - Arkhangelsk, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Kyiv, Nizhny Novgorod, Tobolsk and others, following the example of Moscow. In them, “brought babies” were raised only until they were three years old, and then they were transferred for education to the Moscow orphanage. In 1771, the St. Petersburg branch of the Moscow educational home was transformed into an independent institution.

In addition to Moscow and St. Petersburg, educational homes appeared in Novgorod, Yeniseisk, Olonets, Kyiv, Kazan, Vologda, Penza and other Russian cities.

Orphanages had a number of privileges to increase funds. They had the right to hold a charity lottery; a quarter of the collection from all public city entertainments was spent on their needs; they had income from the production and sale of playing cards, etc.

Orphanage in Moscow

Who were the pupils of the House? According to the highest approved rules, babies were required to be accepted: “without asking the person bringing who he is or whose baby he brought, but only ask if he knows whether the baby is baptized and what his name is.” In 1764, 523 infants of both sexes were admitted, in 1765 - 793, in 1766 - 742, in 1767 - 1089... Since the late 1760s, children, in order to protect them from emerging epidemics, began to be temporarily distributed to wet nurses in villages near Moscow. , for which they paid nursing mothers up to two rubles a month. Even taking into account the very high mortality rate of children at that time, the Orphanage saved the lives of many illegitimate and foundlings born of the hard, unclean life of the city, as well as orphans from poor families. A significant number of foundling children came from serfdom, because the parents knew that the child would become a free person upon leaving the Orphanage. Therefore, before the creation of the Orders of Public Charity in 1775, the Moscow Orphanage received foundlings and orphans from Arkhangelsk, Penza, Nizhny Novgorod, Smolensk, Ostashkov, Chernigov and other cities of the country. In 1770, a similar Orphanage, as a branch of the Moscow one, was opened in the northern capital of Russia - St. Petersburg. From the age of five, the “pets” and “descendants” of these Orphanages began to be accustomed to some kind of light work, physical training of the body. Betsky developed and implemented a detailed educational program with a high level of requirements and a time-advanced humane understanding of the goals of education. Upon release, the pets of the House were given “a new cloth dress, several shirts, ties and dresses, a cap, a hat, stockings, shoes and boots... and in addition, a ruble of money and a passport with which he can live wherever he wants throughout the State... as a free person ". The creation of a special department at the House for poor women in labor, where help, care, and maintenance were provided free of charge, also played a huge and beneficial role in the life of Moscow.

The orphanage conducted extensive activities in Moscow. In 1772, Catherine II allowed him to form the Widow's, Loan and Saving Banks in order to “save the poor from the networks of moneylenders, come to the aid of random losers of “every rank” and with the indicated institutions help preserve each such poor person’s property for the benefit.”

In 1764, the “Imperial Educational Society for Noble Maidens” was founded, which later turned into the well-known Smolny Institute. It was created with the aim of forming an educated society and spreading education. According to the plan of the Empress, who until the Great French Revolution was influenced by the progressive ideas of Locke and Montaigne, graduates of the society who returned to their ancestral nests would try to give the education they received to their children. If initially future pupils were selected from the nobility, then a year after the founding of the Society a branch was opened for other classes (only children of serfs were not accepted).

In 1775, according to the provincial reform of Catherine II, orders for public charity were created in the province under the leadership of the governor with the participation of wealthy townspeople from different classes in their leadership. The orders were to monitor the functioning of public schools, hospitals, almshouses, orphanages, as well as institutions for the mentally ill, restraint houses and workhouses. For the maintenance of all these institutions, the Empress allocated 15 thousand rubles to the orders of public charity at a time. Further, the income was supposed to consist of interest on this capital, as well as private donations, fines and penalties levied during legal proceedings, etc. It is noteworthy that orders of public charity, being public authorities, had the right to attract charitable donations. Charitable funds also came to the Smolny Institute.

Thus, in Catherine’s time, a systematic approach to charity began to take shape. It was under Catherine II that the Principles were laid down on which charitable institutions were subsequently developed under the auspices of the House of Romanov: the manifestation of the royal authorities’ concern for their subjects through the patronage of charity and personal participation in it; giving the above-mentioned institutions a state character, but excluding them from the general system of government bodies of the Empire, and financing, both on the basis of charity and using public funds.

It should be noted that some of the ideas contained in the decree were clearly ahead of their time. In particular, there were no shelters for the terminally ill during Soviet times. These were simply discharged from the hospital, and they faded away at home. The idea of hospices was returned to in our country only in 1990. Currently, there are 8 of them in Moscow alone, which is quite enough to accommodate terminally ill patients. The idea of hospices is actively developing and at the beginning of 2012 their number in Russia exceeded 70. One can only be amazed at the breadth of the empress’s state mind, whose decisions in matters of charity have not lost their relevance to this day. Along with the creation of a new state charitable system, all forms of private charity were encouraged in every possible way, but donations were prescribed in favor of existing charitable institutions in order to avoid donations falling into the hands of professional beggars. Public care orders represented the "upper echelon" of public charity. In the localities, local care bodies, for example, the court for orphans, noble guardianship and others, dealt with the affairs of mercy.

In 1785, through the creation of local trustees, Thus, wide sections of the population are involved in solving social problems, who gain access to both the decision-making process and the process of implementing charitable functions. Russia has matured to the advent of philanthropy. Catherine II managed to make it fashionable to donate to charity. Patronage is becoming increasingly common. Among their many names, we cannot remain silent about the Orlov brothers, Prince Grigory Potemkin, and the merchant-philanthropists from the Stroganov family. Thus, Alexander Sergeevich Stroganov became famous as the first Russian nobleman to start collecting art. He left behind one of the largest private collections of paintings in Europe and a huge library. His contribution to the maintenance and development of Russian art and librarianship was so great that he became the chief director of the imperial library and president of the Academy of Arts.

Finishing the story about the state of charity in Catherine's era, we can only be amazed at the scale of the reforms carried out. Moreover, under what conditions! By the time Catherine II ascended the throne, Russia was still fighting the Seven Years' War. Soon after its end, many years of hostilities began with the Ottoman Empire and Sweden, thirsty for revenge. Huge amounts of money were spent on favorites, and then there were reforms aimed at reorganizing the charity system. Naturally, we are faced with a legitimate question: “Where is the money, Zin?!” Where do funds for charity come from in a country that is in a constant state of war with its neighbors, when the level of corruption and favoritism has broken all records?

The Orthodox Church becomes such an almost inexhaustible source of money for Catherine II. In 1764, a manifesto was issued, according to which the previous system of church land ownership was abolished. From now on, all land plots that the Church had accumulated over several hundred years were subject to transfer to the College of Economy, and the peasants who inhabited them henceforth began to be called “economic”. As a result, about 1,000,000 peasants passed into the hands of the state. 1.366 million rubles in taxes were collected from economic peasants per year. Of this amount, approximately 30% went to the benefit of the Church at first, but later, with an increase in the amount of tax collected, it was reduced to 13%. In fact, this was a legalized form of robbery, but in the absence of the institution of patriarchy, scattered protests of the clergy were easily suppressed. Those who disagreed with the reform were exiled to distant monasteries.

Following the example of Moscow, in 1786 a House of Charity for Neighbors was created in Yaroslavl, which later received the name Ekaterininsky. The Novgorod governor Ya.E. Sivers, the Nizhny Novgorod prosecutor Bakhmetyev, the merchant Makaryev in Belozersk and a number of other persons in different cities and places of the empire take it upon their own account to raise orphans and illegitimate babies.

The selflessness and dedication of Ivan Ivanovich Betsky were noted in 1768 by awarding him the highest Russian Order of St. Andrew the First-Called and by presenting him in 1773 on behalf of the Senate with a gold medal specially made in his honor.

social labor poverty

I.I. Betskoy

Summing up the reforms in the field of charity during the reign of Catherine II, we can say the following. Being German by origin, she tried in every possible way to make the life of her new subjects easier, whose well-being was paramount to her. How unhypocritical her love for the Russian people was is best evidenced by the fact that when in 1775 they wanted to erect a monument to her, for which over 50,000 rubles were collected, Catherine II replied: “For me, it is more important to erect a monument in the hearts of my subjects.” than in marble." With these words, she ordered that the collected money be sent to organize orphanages.

During the reign of Catherine II, radical changes were carried out in the issue of mercy. In the form of Orders of Public Charity, a “Ministry of Charity” was actually created, within which all its types were united: the organization of almshouses, the establishment of shelters, hospitals, schools and colleges. Moreover, the ideas of creating foundling homes and hospitals for the terminally ill (hospices) were clearly ahead of their time. And now, 250 years later, they are being implemented again in the Russian Federation.

At the same time, the Orthodox Church under Catherine II suffered a severe blow, from which it was never able to recover. The economic independence of the Church was put an end to, but the funds received during the secularization of church lands made it possible to carry out a reform of the entire system of charity, which subsequently proved the viability of many of its ideas.

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From the day of the death of Peter 1 until the accession of Catherine II, six sovereigns and empresses replaced the throne. These were people of different ages, dissimilar characters and tastes, but, nevertheless, they had a lot in common. First of all, none of them were distinguished by high intelligence; most ended up on the throne by chance. And one more thing - during the years of their reign, power was used not for the benefit of the state, but to satisfy personal whims. The successors of Peter the Great, although they occasionally spoke about the common good, did so out of inertia or due to external imitation. None of them conducted diplomatic negotiations, led troops on the battlefield, drew up regulations, or inspired their subjects to heroic deeds by personal example.

Heirs of Peter 1 Catherine 1st Alekseevna, the wife of Peter the Great, was proclaimed Empress after the death of Peter, mainly thanks to the announcement made by Metropolitan Feofan Prokopyevich about the verbal will of Peter the Great, who appointed her as his heir. This also corresponded to the wishes of Prince Alexander Danilovich Menshchikov, in whose hands the government of the state was concentrated. A “Supreme Privy Council” of six boyars was also created in an attempt to limit autocratic rule. But Empress Catherine 1st died already in 1727, leaving a will in favor of the son of Tsarevich Alexei Peter 2nd and then the daughters of Peter the Great - Anna and Elizabeth.

Heirs of Peter 1 Emperor Peter 2 Alekseevich, grandson of Peter the Great, ascended the throne as a 12-year-old boy. Menshikov tried to strengthen his power by declaring his daughter the Emperor’s bride, but despite this he was soon exiled, and power passed to the prince. Dolgoruky. Emperor Peter 2 died unexpectedly in January 1730 after contracting “black” smallpox.

Heirs of Peter 1 Empress Anna Ioannovna, the eldest daughter of Tsar John 5, was proclaimed Empress by the “Supreme Privy Council”. Contrary to the will of Empress Catherine 1st. Transferring the throne to Anna Ioannovna, the “Supreme Privy Council” forced her to sign “conditions”, according to which military and civil power was concentrated in the hands of this council, which replenished itself and even appointed heirs to the Throne. But on the 10th day after her accession to the Throne, Anna broke the “conditions” and dissolved the “Council”. Power actually passed to the Courland German Johann Biron, who for a whole decade persecuted everything Russian and everything Orthodox. Anna Ioannovna died in 1740, bequeathing the Throne to the grandson of her sister Catherine, the newborn John 6 Antonovich, and the same Biron was appointed regent.

Heirs of Peter 1 John 6 Antonovich came to Russia with his parents. Immediately after their arrival, the general of Peter's time, Minikh, arrested Biron and transferred the regency to the Emperor's mother Anna Leopoldovna of Brunswick, but in this way power still remained in the hands of the German party, which became unbearable for the entire population. Less than a year later, the daughter of Peter the Great, Elizabeth, with the support of the guard, arrested the “Brunswick family” and announced her accession to the kingdom.

The heirs of Peter 1, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, ascended the Throne in 1741 and ruled for 20 years. Her reign was a complete turn towards purely Russian rule, but the difficult legacy of the just past period was not easily overcome. One of the most important issues was the question of succession to the Throne. Elizabeth chose the closest descendant of Peter the Great, the son of her sister Anna, Peter Feodorovich. In 1745, Pyotr Feodorovich married Princess Angal. Tserbstskaya Ekatira Alekseevna and they soon had a son, Pavel Petrovich. Due to Peter Feodorovich’s poor ability to rule, Elizabeth intended to appoint his son Pavel Petrovich directly as heir to the Throne, but she died without carrying out this project in 1761.

Heirs of Peter 1 Peter 3rd Feodorovich, immediately after ascending the Throne, again wanted to turn the rule of all Russian domestic and foreign policy in the German way, feeling much more like the Duke of Godstein than the All-Russian Emperor. His wife Ekaterina Alekseevna, although she was a born German princess, on the contrary, completely became Russian at heart and could not come to terms with the desires of her husband. With the help of guard officers, on the night of June 28, 1762, she announced her accession to the Throne and soon arrested Peter the 3rd, who offered no resistance. A few days after this, he was killed in a drunken quarrel.

Largely unfinished and, most importantly, forced by military action, Peter's reforms remained virtually unchanged during this period. The entire upper class, obliged by law to wear foreign dress and have a foreign appearance, while at the same time foreigners were in power, could not help but undergo significant ideological shifts and separation from the masses. At the same time, the entire clergy and church hierarchy were deprived of the opportunity to continue their teaching activities; a large number of monasteries, which had previously been centers of enlightenment, were abolished and monastic tonsure itself was greatly difficult and limited; the annexation of Little Russia and the southern Russian clergy, different in many ways from the native Muscovite, led to great friction among the hierarchy itself, while simultaneously spreading the schism that we have already discussed. Thus, the entire mass of the people found themselves virtually deprived of that spiritual influence, which constituted the main strength of Moscow. But to this we should also add the annexation to Russia of significant territories with a generally pagan (east), Mohammedan (south) or Catholic (west) population.

Immediately after the death of Peter 1, a period of legislative calm began. His closest successors cared little about the full implementation of charity measures in their entirety and only repeated and strengthened the decrees on cruel punishments of mendicants. In some areas of charity there has even been a noticeable deterioration in the situation. A real blow to the charitable institutions of the Church was the secularization of church lands carried out under the Empresses Anna, Elizabeth and Catherine 1. As is known, the lands were largely transferred to the “new” nobility, which gained enormous influence as a result of palace coups.

Although Empress Catherine I, and then Elizabeth, issued decrees on the care of illegitimate children, these decrees had no force, as a result of which even those shelters that were opened under Peter I gradually closed. During this period, the overall “number of beggars increased, and even more so in churches and in the ranks.” This is how things continued until Catherine II.

Catherine 2nd (Alekseevna) Catherine II during the first years of her reign followed the traditions introduced by Peter 1, however, significantly softening his punitive system towards the poor. The first decade of the reign of Catherine 2 is characterized by the concept of social thought. During these years, her initiatives in the field of charity were limited to issues of education. Fascinated by the ideas of Western humanist philosophers, Catherine tried to introduce into life a new humane form of raising children, to create a unified type of citizen that would meet the urgent tasks of a rapidly developing state.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) At this time, she took measures to establish one almshouse in each of the 26 dioceses, drew up rules for the care of the insane, prescribed: beggars should not be allowed through the gates, beggars from the merchant class should be given away if they are healthy, to manufactories and factories, to give the poor from the landowner peasants as soldiers; confirmed the prohibition of street begging, orders on charity for those in need in those villages in which they are paid a capitation salary, and on the obligations of landowners and palace administrations to feed their poor and not allow them to wander, on the expulsion of loiterers from Moscow and on the non-issuance of passports to beggars, and, finally, it was decided to establish the Widow's Loan and Saving Treasury.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) Under Catherine II, the Church lost its former influence in the field of public and private care. However, since 1764, new monasteries have been opened, with almshouses, shelters, hospice houses, schools with dormitories for students.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) The largest undertaking of this period of the reign of Catherine the Great was the establishment of two large institutions for the care of illegitimate children. The issue of them was seriously developed under the leadership of the famous philanthropist I. I. Betsky and received practical implementation with the founding of the Orphanage in Moscow in 1763.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) A branch of this house was first opened in St. Petersburg (in 1770), transformed in 1780 into an independent institution. The establishment of these two houses laid a solid foundation for the care of illegitimate children, if not throughout the Empire, then in the provinces closest to the capitals. The creation of these houses, as well as the adoption of other measures indicated above, served to develop and strengthen the system of charity outlined by Peter the Great.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) After the opening of the Moscow and St. Petersburg educational homes, similar institutions began to open in provincial provincial cities - Kazan, Cheboksary. Here children were kept until the age of 3, and then transferred to the capital's educational homes. In 1852, in the provinces there were already 9 educational homes with 17 departments, in which 3,145 pupils were brought up.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) In order to expand the activities of educational homes, “village expeditions” were established in 1768 - physically strong children were sent to be raised in villages. For example, 2,000 villages of the St. Petersburg, Pskov, and Novgorod provinces were assigned to the St. Petersburg educational home, where 18 thousand nurses raised more than 25 thousand pets. The pay for nurses and teachers was about 15-16 thousand rubles. in year. The nurse's allowance was paid until the pets were 15 years old, after which the latter remained in foster care until the age of 21.

Catherine the 2nd (Alekseevna) The largest organizational measure taken by Catherine II in the field of streamlining social charity was the creation by her of a whole network of special institutions called “Orders of Public Charity”, opened in forty provinces on the basis of the “Institution on Governorates” of 1775.

“Institutions for the administration of the provinces of the All-Russian Empire” According to this law, “the order of public charity is entrusted with the care and supervision of the establishment and solid foundation of: 1) public schools; 2) the establishment and supervision of orphanages for the care and education of male and female orphans left behind by their parents without food; 3) establishment and supervision of hospitals, or hospitals for the treatment of the sick; 4) establishment and supervision of almshouses for men and women, the poor, crippled and elderly, who do not have food; 5) establishment of supervision of a special home for the terminally ill, who do not have food; 6) establishment and supervision of a home for the insane; 7) establishment and supervision of workhouses for both sexes; 8) establishment and supervision of restraining houses for people of both sexes.

Orders of public charity covered that part of the population that needed help and support. From the income of the province it was allowed to provide 15 thousand rubles “once” for the maintenance of orders. Moreover, this money was allowed to be put into circulation, that is, given at interest, thereby increasing capital. But this money was not enough, so there is a constant search for ways of additional financing. The activities of public charity orders did not unfold immediately and not in all provinces at the same time. From 1776 to 1787, orders of public charity existed only in 22 out of 51 provinces.

The order of public charity was an administrative body, the chairman of which was the governor-general. The orders were first subordinated to the College of Economics, and with the establishment of the Ministries in 1802 they came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; from 1810 to 1819 they were subordinate to the Ministry of Police, and with the liquidation of the latter they again became subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Governing Senate.

Since 1763, the Medical College has become the central body of medical affairs. In 1803, in connection with the formation of the Ministry, the Medical College became part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as the Medical State Board. The order system existed for over 80 years and was eliminated during the bourgeois reforms of the 60s and 70s. XIX century.

The transfer of public charity under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs translates the search for its funding into organizational forms. These include permission to conduct business and property operations (renting shops, houses, forges, gardens, mills, vegetable gardens, etc.; encouraging peat extraction, sawing logs, allowing the sale of playing cards; opening cloth factories) .

Thus, public charity orders increased their capital not only through provincial income, but also through banking transactions, private donations, and as a result of conducting independent economic activities.

During this same period, the organizational structure of public charity began to take shape. Orders of public charity were administered collectively, but were presided over directly by the governor. The board consisted of assessors of the Joint Court, one from each class: nobility, merchants, villagers, while the management of affairs was entrusted to one of the board members.

The system of daily meetings, drawing up incentives and permits, and coordinating them with the Ministry of Internal Affairs created a rather cumbersome and slow-moving system of assistance and support, which was noted by contemporaries. Since 1818, the orders have included officials and, on the part of the government, inspectors of medical boards. But each province had its own peculiarities in the administration of orders.

“Institutions for the management of the provinces of the All-Russian Empire” Thus, by the legislative act of November 7, 1775, called “Institutions for the management of the provinces of the All-Russian Empire,” a state system of public charity was established. The legislation of Catherine II decisively turned the matter of charity from the zemstvo social principle, where assistance to the poor was provided by zemstvo people using public funds, towards centralization on a state bureaucratic basis, where the charity of the orphaned and poor was handled by police and department officials.

However, begging and vagrancy do not seem to stop; new measures are required: “loitering” people, in addition to residents of Moscow itself and the Moscow district, are designated as “lower servants of the Moscow police”; on elected elders and councilors guilty of allowing economic peasants to beg for alms, a two-ruble fine is imposed on each beggar caught, which goes towards the maintenance of the workhouse; Among the responsibilities of the mayor, by the way, is the duty to ensure that the beggars, “if they work, can be forced to repair streets and bridges instead of those hired by ordinary people, for which the ordinary people will give them the daily food they need.”

Catherine 2 decided to create a universal system of charity, and using the example of Moscow, an indicative model of a universal system of public charity for all provinces of Russia. In this regard, on August 12, 1775, the Highest Decree was issued, which ordered the Moscow Chief of Police to establish a hospital, an almshouse and workhouses in the city - for the care of “those wandering around the world and begging, the elderly, the crippled and the sick, who feed on their labors.” unable, as well as people who do not belong to anyone, about whom no one has care.”

The first institution in the charity system conceived by Catherine 2 was a hospital with 150 beds, called Catherine’s. On June 19, 1776, its grand opening took place. From the very beginning, the hospital was “all-class”, common for all types of diseases. In the same year, an almshouse for 100 people was opened at the hospital. A workhouse for male “sloths” was also established here, and a women’s almshouse and a workhouse for women were located in the buildings of the former St. Andrew’s Monastery.

At the next stage, an orphanage, a home for the insane, a home for the terminally ill, a restraining house with a factory, and city and district schools were created. The management of the entire complex of charitable institutions in Moscow was entrusted to the chief overseer, whose functions were performed by the chief police officers of the city. An assistant warden was appointed to manage each institution.

That. The system of public charity created by Catherine II also provided for the establishment of special institutions for the employment of the unemployed, beggars, and vagabonds - workhouses. In 1785, a strait house was created in Moscow. Unlike workhouses, it was a forced labor colony where individuals were interned for antisocial behavior.

By 1762, a certain system of institutions of state and public social assistance was taking shape: - medical institutions (hospitals, homes for the insane); - institutions of charity (almshouses, nursing homes, homes for incurable patients); - educational institutions (orphanages, orphanages, schools for children of clerical workers); - boarding institutions, local charitable societies.

Thus, with the reform of 1775, Catherine II created a universal system of charity. It should be emphasized that the institutions of social assistance to the population in the provinces did not have a clear structure and principles of organization. Their activities were not constant and they could not meet the needs of the population. And yet, the system of charity created during this period of time flourished for a long time and has survived in general terms to this day.

In the Bessarbian region around the same time there also existed “grave-digging workshops”; these workshops, established from time immemorial, consisted of people called “chokla” and dedicated themselves to the goal of “picking up sick wanderers from the haystacks and crossroads and taking them to the hospital, burying the dead of people of different ranks and conditions without pay and looking after the sick during dangerous illnesses”; such workshops were the remnants of Byzantine burials or gravediggers (fossarii copitae), which appeared under Constantine the Great or his son Constantius; At first, members of the guilds buried only martyrs and formed a genus of church ministers, and then they extended their help to everyone who needed it; the number of members under Constantine the Great and his first successors reached 1,100 people, Honorius and Theodosius reduced them to 950, and Anastasius brought them to 1,100 people. In 1747, an order was issued in Russia to remove squalid houses from cities. And in 1771, the poor houses were completely closed. With the closure of the wretched houses, the almsgiving that Snegirev wrote about ceased: the poor were taken to wretched houses, where every year on Thursday on Trinity Sunday people gathered with coffins, clothes and shrouds for the dead, buried the dead and distributed alms to the living beggars.

Ivanovich Betskoy (1704–1795), the illegitimate son of Prince I. Yu. Trubetskoy, received a good European education. As president, he headed the Academy of Arts for thirty years. In 1763, he presented Catherine 2 with a plan for school reform - “General Institution for the Education of Both Sexes of Youth,” in which he used the ideas of the encyclopedists J. Locke and Y. A. Kamensky.

Betsky owns a number of projects for the creation and reorganization of educational institutions of various kinds (such as the Educational Society of Noble Maidens - Smolny Institute - in St. Petersburg and the Catherine School in Moscow, the Land Noble Cadet Corps and the Academy of Arts), but the project for creating an Educational Home, perhaps can be considered the most ambitious and ambitious. Firstly, it was not intended to reform an existing institution (as was, for example, the case with the Academy of Arts), but to create a fundamentally new type of institution for Russia.

Secondly, the system of orphanages in Russia was supposed, according to its creator, to include not only the shelters themselves, but also a whole network of related institutions, from maternity hospitals and hospitals to craft workshops and loan offices. And finally, thirdly, the Orphanage was to become a place for the formation of a new type of people, the so-called third estate, and the specifics of this estate were to be determined not only on the basis of their professional affiliation with the category of “merchants, artists, traders and manufacturers”, but also by ideology itself.

According to his project, in the Russian Empire a system of closed educational institutions was created for the education and professional training of children and adolescents, educational homes for foundlings in Moscow (1764) and St. Petersburg (1770), schools for boys from different classes (except for serfs) at the Academy of Arts, a commercial school in Moscow, as well as an institute for noble maidens at the Resurrection (Smolny) Monastery with a department for girls from the bourgeoisie, the gentry cadet corps was transformed

On September 1, 1763, the project presented by I. I. Betsky was highly approved by Catherine 2, but the role of the government in such an important state matter was reduced to sanctioning the enterprise, since there was no money in the treasury for the establishment of educational institutions.

Immediately after the publication of the Tsar’s manifesto, the Synod, by a special decree, announced a subscription to the collection of funds, which clearly defined the source of existence of the designed institutions - “So that it will be supported by the single generous donation of those who love God and their neighbor, according to the Gospel commandment, and are diligently concerned about the welfare of the Fatherland »

To set an example, Catherine 2 personally contributed 100 thousand rubles. The largest contributor to the construction and maintenance of the Orphanage was Prokofy Akinfievich Demidov, a famous mining owner, famous for his hospitality, his whims and large donations to the benefit of Moscow University and educational social institutions in Moscow.

Prokofiy Akinfievich Demidov - At his own expense, a Commercial School was founded at the Moscow Orphanage. He also established a boarding school at Moscow University. For his generous charity he was worthy of the rank of full state councilor.

The Demidovs did a lot for the development of the domestic metallurgy; they were smart, prudent and tough entrepreneurs. But the Demidovs also made a great contribution to the development of public charity and education in Russia. Here are some more examples of active philanthropists from this family.

Pavel Grigorievich Demidov - (1738 -1821) Corresponded with many prominent European scientists. He supported students of Moscow University who achieved success in the field of natural history and mineralogy. He donated a collection of artistic rarities with a total value of more than 200 thousand rubles to the university library.

Nikolai Nikitich Demidov - (1773 -1828) Donated to the Gatchina Orphan Institute. He donated to Moscow University a rich collection of natural scientific rarities (minerals, shells, stuffed animals, etc.). Using his own funds, he built 4 cast iron bridges in St. Petersburg. He donated his Moscow estate for the construction of the House of Diligence (today it is the building of the Moscow Pedagogical University).

This fact should be focused on, since according to the established tradition, offenders and suspects are placed in pre-trial detention cells (PPC), the conditions in which not only leave much to be desired, but are more reminiscent of a prison where criminals already convicted by a court sentence are kept. The problem of conditions of detention in the correctional facility and especially the cases of death of detainees that were sensational in the press (especially the case of Sergei Magnitsky) have acquired extraordinary severity and debate in society in our country. It is clear that it will not be possible to quickly change the conditions of detention of those suspected of committing crimes in the direction of mitigation, because This requires large funds. But at least it is possible to limit the detention of persons not suspected of committing serious crimes in the penitentiary. Apparently, therefore, the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, in one of his Messages to the Federal Assembly, spoke about pursuing a “reasonable criminal policy” aimed at decriminalizing society. As a result, laws were passed several years ago that allow for non-custodial penalties. Thus, the state “kills” two birds with one stone: it limits the communication of citizens who accidentally end up in the penitentiary with real criminals, and also does not place suspects (many of whom, as practice shows, will later be acquitted by a court decision) in prison conditions. It is gratifying to see that the experience of humane treatment of detainees, which was first applied under Catherine II and was clearly forgotten during the years of Soviet power, is becoming in demand in our time.

After several years, when potential rivals were eliminated from the political horizon, Empress Catherine II was able to more actively engage in state affairs. The issue of charity did not go unnoticed. In 1764, the “Imperial Educational Society for Noble Maidens” was founded, which later turned into the well-known Smolny Institute. It was created with the aim of forming an educated society and spreading education. According to the plan of the Empress, who until the Great French Revolution was influenced by the progressive ideas of Locke and Montaigne, graduates of the society who returned to their ancestral nests would try to give the education they received to their children. If initially future pupils were selected from the nobility, then a year after the founding of the Society a branch was opened for other classes (only children of serfs were not accepted).

Gradually, more and more educational institutions began to open throughout the country. Responsibilities for their arrangement fell on the Orders of Public Charity, which will be discussed below. Existing educational institutions were reformed in order to improve the quality of education received. These were the first timid steps towards introducing literacy among the common population. And, although the system was still very far from being introduced nationwide, the beginning of public education, according to many historians, was laid precisely under Catherine II, who did everything for its development.

The year 1775 was marked by the creation of the Orders of Public Charity. In their functions they resembled modern social welfare authorities, but in their scale they represented the “Ministry of Charity”. Their tasks included organizing schools, orphanages, almshouses, workhouses, homes for the terminally ill (the prototype of modern hospices) and for the insane (straithouses). In essence, a state system was created in which Catherine II managed to unite all types of charitable activities.

Along with the creation of a new state charitable system, all forms of private charity were encouraged in every possible way, but donations were prescribed in favor of existing charitable institutions in order to avoid donations falling into the hands of professional beggars. Public care orders represented the "upper echelon" of public charity. In the localities, local care bodies, for example, the court for orphans, noble guardianship and others, dealt with the affairs of mercy. In 1785, through the creation of local trustees, other segments of the population were also involved in charity. Russia has matured to the advent of philanthropy.

Prince Grigory Potemkin was an outstanding statesman of the times of Catherine II. His whole life and works became a blessing for Russia. It was through the efforts of the prince that the constant threat on the southern borders of Russia, which was annually plundered by the predatory hordes of Crimean Tatars, was eliminated. He removed the Crimean Khanate from the political map of the world, making the steppes of ancient Taurida safe for a simple Russian farmer, after which his surname sounded different - Potemkin-Tauride. At the same time, the prince was considered an outstanding connoisseur of art. Like many of his contemporaries, he actively collected paintings by famous world artists, leaving behind a rich collection. But most of all he is remembered for his urban planning activities. Under him, many cities were founded in the south of Russia, and several churches were erected with his personal funds. Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky was one of those people, thanks to whom the reign of the Empress is referred to as “the golden age of Catherine.”

The eighteenth century could be called happy for Russia: both at the beginning and at the end, the throne was occupied by persons undoubtedly marked with the stamp of state genius and equally entitled to the titles of “great” assigned to them. In the spirit of her activity, in her desire, which did not remain an empty phrase, to exalt Russia not only with the brilliance of external victories, but also with the breadth of economic transformations, and, in the language of modern diplomats, to introduce her into the concert of European powers, Catherine II was the true successor of Peter I.

The great significance of the legislative and charitable activities of Peter the Great, in general, has been sufficiently clarified. Let me now sketch a picture of the activities of Catherine the Great in this regard, and in view of the presence of two components in the issue of charity - the fight against professional and feigned poverty and helping real need, I will consider each of these components separately, turning first to the first.

In the “addition to the Great Order”, in Art. 560, an idea is expressed, which is only beginning to enter the consciousness of society in our time, about the dual task of charity and those elements whose resultant is true charity. The said article states that the beggars “attract care to themselves... firstly, to force those begging for alms, who control their hands and feet, to work, and, moreover, to provide reliable food and treatment for the infirm beggars.” Consequently, the sign of dividing the poor is their ability to work: for the able-bodied poor, help is needed with labor, work, labor assistance, and for the poor who have lost the ability to work, “food and treatment”, i.e., what I call “pure charity” ". However, it should be noted that the text of the article introducing a completely correct classification is somewhat incomplete: only those who own hands and feet are recognized as capable of work; but mastery of the limbs does not yet serve as an indispensable sign of working capacity, and therefore the terminology of the article under discussion should be viewed as approximate, approximate, and not exhaustive; In addition, the article overlooks measures of preventive charity, the significant development of which, of course, will reduce the need for both labor assistance and pure charity; Moreover, it seems that the greater importance of the fight against poverty is emphasized in comparison with helping it, and both resultants are recognized as unequally significant: help is, as it were, an appendage, an addition to the struggle.

Begging in the form of begging for alms is considered as a phenomenon prohibited by law. The decree of October 8, 1762 “firmly confirmed” that “beggars in Moscow should not go around the world to beg for alms, and should not sit on the streets and crossroads” 1 . The decree of February 26, 1764 reaffirmed that “no one should wander the streets under any circumstances, and should not dare to ask for alms,” for which “all police teams, by virtue of the decrees, must have the most diligent inspection.” Those who were taken away, or, as the decree put it, “taken” by the main police in begging for alms, “people of different ranks, before their proper consideration” of the case, received “fodder money, 2 kopecks each,” from the funds of the savings board. The decree of February 27, 1772 again ordered the Moscow police chief’s office to “catch those collecting alms and loitering through private officers.” However, begging and vagrancy do not seem to stop; new measures are required: “loitering” people, in addition to residents of Moscow itself and the Moscow district, are designated as “lower servants of the Moscow police”; on elected elders and councilors guilty of allowing economic peasants to beg for alms, a two-ruble fine is imposed on each beggar caught, which goes towards the maintenance of the workhouse; Among the responsibilities of the mayor, by the way, is the duty to ensure that the beggars, “if they work, can be forced to repair streets and bridges instead of those hired by ordinary people, for which the ordinary people will give them the daily food they need.” Finally, workhouses are established. In Moscow, “the former quarantine house located behind the Sukhorev Tower” was designated as a workhouse for men, where “suspected sloths could be used for work” sawing wild stone into official and private buildings,” and St. Andrew’s Monastery was designated as a workhouse for women. , where women were supposed to be involved in “spinning work; the daily wages of those in need were set at 3 kopecks." those who were beggars in district towns were to be sent “to the Yamburg cloth factory, or to other work”; premises for a workers' house in St. Petersburg were allocated on Vasilievsky Island, in the former buildings of almshouses. Similar workers' houses were to be established in other provinces.

As can be seen, among legislative and charitable activities, labor assistance, as one of the means of combating poverty, is gaining more and more significant place. With complete certainty, in her discussion of manufactories, Catherine II writes that “it is especially necessary to engage the work of those loitering in big cities.” And even in the 17th century, indiscriminate giving of alms to every beggar was a common occurrence: the impartial language of scribal books naively conveys that, for example, in the city of Murom in 1637, “poor people walking around are fed by their work, and others feed by the name of Christ,” on the assumption that that both types of earning a living are equally legitimate; in the scribe book of the city of Uglich 2, along with the entry: “yes, near the Filip'evsky Bridge there is an almshouse on the town's land... and beggars live in it, feeding on large amounts of alms,” there are entries of a completely different meaning: “opposite the Nikolsky Gate is the Church of St. Nicholas... and the church... land... thirty fathoms... and beggars live on it and pay rent to the Rostov Metropolitan, clerk Alexei Ustinov," or "the Church of the Nativity of Christ... and on that church land live poor almshouses from quitrent." In a word, ancient Rus' did not distinguish between forms of charity.

A completely different thing can be seen in the nature of Russian charity in the 18th century. First, the persecution of vagrancy and beggary in Moscow begins; under Catherine II, this prohibition extended to all provincial towns, “for those who wander for alms are not found in just the local province, but there are such, as everyone knows, everywhere enough........

However, several clarifications should be made regarding Catherine II’s use of labor assistance. Firstly, workers’ houses were established only in provincial towns, and those “staggering” in district towns had to be sent “to a factory or similar place,” where the poor, although they could get a job and, consequently, get rid of poverty, but they ended up, however, in a commercial-industrial institution, and not in a charitable-educational institution; secondly, workers' houses and manufactories offered their workers only factory or handicraft labor, and, consequently, charitable agricultural colonies, as labor assistance institutions, were apparently overlooked; thirdly, the workers' houses of that time did not have an essential feature of modern houses of industriousness - they lacked the condition of temporary charity, its limitation to certain periods, and therefore the government, even taking into account the embryonic state of the manufacturing industry of that time in Russia and the lack of workers, took on It’s hardly a feasible task to find a job for everyone who doesn’t have one; fourthly, workers' houses, established one for each province and subordinate to the local provincial body - the order of public charity, did not have a unifying central administration, the absence of which, perhaps desirable in the matter of private charity with a certain amount of localism and pride in private societies, was, Meanwhile, it is necessary here both because of the complexity of labor assistance and the novelty of its application in Russia; finally, the workers' houses founded "to punish the guilty", completely different in their goals from the workers' houses as charitable institutions, seem to be completely unnecessarily placed under the jurisdiction of the same order, on the one hand diverting it from direct charitable tasks, and on the other, inevitably introducing some confusion into the purpose of these various institutions.

Being thus a convinced supporter of labor assistance, Catherine II sought to use, among other things, one of the types of this type of assistance - public and charitable work. It should, however, be noted that Catherine II apparently allowed monetary assistance to persons who were truly in need, as can be concluded from this that the city broker was obliged, among other things, to distribute the circle collection at certain times to those who “cannot to earn one's living by work."

“Although the human heart can do a lot,” says Professor Isaev, “pauperism is too important a phenomenon, too closely connected with the structure of economic life, for society to leave it under the jurisdiction of only the heart and refuse to influence it with the norms of the law.” If, therefore, organization is needed in general in charitable work, then it is needed, it is absolutely necessary in the event of public disasters, which, by the way, are one of the causes of poverty, and not just individual poverty, but mass poverty, poverty of an entire locality. And here, in order to save the population, there must appear not only pure charity in the form, for example, of the ordinary distribution of money or materials, as a non-repayable allowance or loan, but also labor assistance, in the form of public works - and, moreover, in incomparably more volume than the above cash assistance.

As if realizing the truth of the biblical saying - “timely mercy in times of sorrow, like raindrops in times of heat,” Catherine II used both of these types of charitable assistance during those frequent public disasters that befell Russia under her.

In 1768, after a fire in Astrakhan, it was ordered that building materials be loaned to fire victims for ten years without interest. The decree of June 6, 1763 ordered, as a result of the Moscow fire, during which “in addition to the government buildings, 852 common houses alone were burned, and 33 people,” to give to the fire victims a loan of one hundred thousand rubles without interest for 10 years, and in addition Moreover, for one hundred thousand rubles “to prepare the necessary materials for the stone building” and, “buying bread for a year on passing barges, give it out without money to those who are not able to work, because others who are still able can feed themselves with their labors, especially with the future building now there is no small building." In this decree, attention is drawn to the recognition that it is necessary to use stone instead of wood for fire-fighting purposes; from a charitable point of view, it deserves comment on the emphasized distinction it makes between helping those unable to work and those able to work. The next decree, dated October 26, 1771, ordered, in order to “deliver well-deserved food and destroy idleness, the culprit of all evils,” to identify those in need “to work on increasing the college ditch”; daily remuneration for work was determined for men at 15 kopecks, and for women - at 10 kopecks, but for those who went to work with their own tools, the specified wage increased by 3 kopecks; The main leader of the work was Lieutenant General, Senator and Cavalier Melgunov. The decree under discussion clearly expresses a view of laziness as “the culprit of all evils,” and of labor assistance as assistance that provided not shameful or unworthy, but “well-deserved food.” By decree of December 2, 1774, given to the Voronezh governor Shetnev, it was ordered, in order to deliver labor aid to the population affected by crop failure, “to begin making ditches near ... cities, for a moderate cash or grain payment from the treasury, for every gender and age of people , for whoever cannot dig the earth will carry it"; In order not to shake the economic balance of the rest of the population not affected by the disaster by the organized labor assistance, it was recognized as necessary to clarify that “such work should be voluntary, not at all in order and not with such publicity that workers would flock from places of abundance.” In the above decree, the chosen type of work seems to be justified by the general availability of the work. The pestilence of 1771, which brought great devastation to the Moscow population and, naturally, greatly undermined the structure of public life, did not go unnoticed, quite understandably, by the legislative authorities: by decree of November 15, 1771 “simple people who have no handicrafts” are involved in public works to increase “with a fair fee” the collegiate chambers around Moscow.

These examples speak quite clearly in favor of the conclusion that public works are beginning to be more and more used as charitable labor assistance. The legislative orders of Catherine II clearly show a desire to introduce into the consciousness of the population a view of the need to provide assistance through labor. Far from the laws of Caius Gracchus, who established, as we know, the sale of wheat to citizens below its value, or Clodius, who went even further and allowed the free distribution of grain, Catherine the Great was much closer, in the spirit of her state view, to the genius of labor, Peter the Great, with his saying - taken, by the way, from the Holy Scriptures: “Let an idle man not eat” - with a saying that could be the best epigraph to the biography of this wonderful worker-tsar. Russia had to fight beggary; even in the event of public disasters, it was necessary to use charitable assistance conditionally, through labor. Otherwise, Russia also faced the fate of Rome, where, as is known, the free distribution of grain in 73 BC cost 10 million sesterces (700,000 rubles), and in 460 AD - 77 million sesterces (5,300,000 rubles), and each beggar, the number of which under Caesar reached a huge figure of 320,000 people, having obtained, subject to inclusion in the list of the poor, tessera (in other words, a legal patent for poverty), received 5 measures of wheat monthly from stores , and subsequently - from the time of Septimius Severus, also butter, and from the time of Aurelian, in addition, pork.

And Catherine II used, among other charitable measures, public works. A trace of this remained in the above decrees, most of which were included in the Complete Collection of Laws. But, strictly speaking, it would be very wrong to build your conclusions only on the basis of this monument, which undoubtedly preserved - I hasten to make a reservation - the most precious features of the history of the legal and economic life of former Russia. Not to mention the fact that the complete collection of laws is not complete, it, taken separately, can, in most cases, show only the desire of the government to achieve a particular goal and the instructions it gives for this purpose. When placed in connection with other documentary news, the impartial language of which, like the language of an eyewitness, conveys to what extent and under what circumstances this or that government action was actually implemented, the Complete Collection of Laws is the primary source. A comparison of the two historical and legal sources indicated makes it possible to clarify, for example, interesting questions about how far on a well-known subject public opinion was ahead of legislative activity or, conversely, lagged behind it, how feasible the plans of the government were or, conversely, theoretical, how, finally, , they were the topic of the day and sanctioned what was already being applied in reality and became, so to speak, part of the common law of the population.

Turning to the few data I have on hand about how the order on charitable and public works was carried out, I can still provide some information that is not devoid of interest.

In 1774, crop failure befell the Shatsk province; an order followed to immediately begin earthworks around the cities, allowing only those who were truly in need and, moreover, residents of only their own district, to work, “to provide those in need with a means of subsistence and so that they would not disperse to other districts”; the work consisted of constructing a ditch and embankment; in Temnikov, the work was headed by the soldier authorized by the voivodeship office, Grigory Bukhanov; payment was made weekly, with bread in kind, and for shoes and salt in money; 3,120 adults and 1,861 minors were employed; Due to the limited funds allocated for the work, they provided, in general, weak assistance: 712 quarters were spent on the entire district. bread and about 300 rubles in money. Of course, this was only the first test, the first experience and, as such, it can be considered satisfactory; therefore, it is not surprising that from the height of the throne this attempt was approved and the decree of January 14, 1776 ordered, in the event of crop failures, to adopt “the method that, according to Her Imperial Majesty’s Most High invention, was approved by actual experience in the Voronezh province in the cities of Troitsky, Temnikov, Upper and Lower Lomov and Narovchat and in the foreign colonies populated near Saratov, consisting of an establishment to work in the nearest district towns by making ditches and earthworks... for a moderate payment in money or grain from the treasury." This grain aid, which was still used weakly and to a limited extent, was, however, a step forward in the cause of charity. Involuntarily, on this occasion, I recall the words of Monnier: “science, legislation, art, writing - everything is being improved and developed in the world; God allows the art of charity to improve in the same way, so that charity, like trade, opens up thousands of ways for its distribution and so that a person multiplies his spiritual virtues, just as he multiplies his knowledge."

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Recalling the love of homosexuality 3 of ancient Russian society, which reached the point that even on icons, for example, of St. Sergius, the saint was depicted with a charter in his right hand, on which it was written - “have love that is not hypocritical and love of strangeness,” it will become clear, on the one hand, the prevalence of vagrancy in ancient Rus', and on the other hand, the need for that fight against beggary as a latrine trade, which volens-nolens legislation had to begin with the ever-increasing vagabond beggary. Let me here, by the way, note that vagrancy could develop not only from the love of strangeness of primitive societies, 4 but also due to the fact, according to Mordovtsev’s witty explanation, the circumstance that “in a primitive human society, all its members should be both trappers and shepherds , and farmers... in the same way, they all had to be warriors... of course, for those incapable of physical labor, only mental labor remained"; hence the wandering Russian cripples, singing tales of antiquity, or the ancient Greek blind men, like Homer, composing rhapsodies.

Be that as it may, the government should have taken prohibitive measures against vagrancy. And, indeed, little by little, a rather strict passport system is being established: in order to live freely in the capital, the presentation of a “letter of support” is required. From documentary data dating back to 1728, one can form some idea about this. Thus, the peasant of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery Semyon Mukin, his former feeding letter, was burned during a fire in the hemp barns where he worked, and no one accepted him without a passport “neither for work nor for living”: Metropolitan Pitirim quite often issued it to persons those who have lost their support letters and temporary residence permits; The loss of letters was not uncommon: at the Suzdal nunnery in the village of Novoselka, peasant Artemyev, who was working with children on a barge with slab stone, lost a letter “during a storm.” There were also forged letters of feeding, issued, for example, with the illegal signature of the former clerk of the Vologda Bishop Feodor Tikhomirov. One episode with a feeding letter is curious: Yakov Vasilievich lived on Okhta for eight years; Brother Gabriel, a peasant from the Resurrection Monastery, came to him from the provinces; to present their passports at the Synodal Chancellery (i.e., in modern terms, registration), the brothers left the house and headed to the Neva, but, due to lack of money to pay for transportation, Gabriel remained on the right bank of the Neva, and only Yakov crossed the river , who, having appeared with Gabriel’s passport at the Synodal Office, presented it there, calling himself Gabriel; the passport was found to be false, an investigation into the case began and both brothers were punished, they were beaten with cats, and Gabriel, in addition, was expelled from St. Petersburg, and they were accused of: Yakov - that he was not called by his own name, and Gabriel - that that he, knowing his “vice,” did not appear at the office in person...

Catherine II, as it were, attached poverty to a place and, by decree of December 19, 1774, made it an obligation that “everyone who has to go further than 30 miles from his residence must have a printed poster passport, and even then, if it is not for asking for alms, but for some work."

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In a reasonable understanding of the benefits of labor assistance, Catherine II was at the same time aware of the need to organize public charity. A brilliant monument to its legislative activity in this regard are the “orders of public charity.”

The establishment of these administrative bodies of charity dates back to November 7, 1755, when the decree “Institutions for the administration of the province of the All-Russian Empire” was published; The twenty-fifth chapter of this remarkable decree is entirely devoted to the provision “on the order of public charity and its position.”

The order of public charity was established, one for each province, consisting of a chairman - the local governor and members - two assessors of the upper court, two assessors of the provincial magistrate and two assessors of the upper justice, where the latter existed; In addition, if necessary, the district noble leader and the mayor could be invited to the meeting of the orders, as advisory members. The administration of the order included: schools, institutions for orphans and the sick, almshouses, homes for the terminally ill and for the insane, as well as workhouses and straithouses. Orders were reported directly to the Empress. In the form of initial monetary funds, 5,000 rubles were allocated to each order from the provincial sums, and these amounts, in order to increase funds, were allowed to be loaned out on the security of real estate, provided that it was located in the same province, for a period of no more than a year and in the amount from 500 to 1,000 rubles “in one hand”. The management of schools is obliged to abolish corporal punishment for children; hospitals were to be built “outside the city, but near Onago, down the river, and by no means above the city, but close”; almshouses were ordered to be built separately for men and separately for women; the establishment, in addition to hospitals, of an independent home for the terminally ill was recognized as necessary for the quite fair consideration that “there are diseases that are essentially incurable and in hospitals or hospitals a number of incurable indigents will take up places without the benefit of those who, being possessed by temporary diseases, could be cured in hospitals or clinics"; in the form of exemplary work that could be introduced into workhouses, it was indicated for Moscow - “stone slabs”, and for other places - “preparing flax or spinning”; finally, regarding the restraining houses, it was stated that, among other things, disobedient children, vicious people, “wasters” (in modern terminology, wasteful people) could be placed there, by order of the governor, or by statements of landowners, owners, parents or three relatives obliged accurately indicate the circumstances that prompted them to resort to the help of strait houses; the comparatively strict regime of the straithouses is evident from the permission to impose corporal punishment on the “murmurous and disobedient”, which consisted of lashing, but not more than three for one offense, or imprisonment in a “dark prison” for one week, or, finally , planted “on bread and water” for three days. In addition to these charitable institutions, it was not forbidden to introduce others of any other type. Meetings of the orders were limited to the time from January 8 until Holy Week.

To clarify the significance of public charity institutions and the role they played in the development of Russian charity, we should first of all recall the authoritative words of Professor Isaev. Being an unshakable defender of compulsory public charity, Isaev comes to this conclusion from several considerations; according to his witty remark, a person, firstly, very often falls into need, thanks to those conditions of social life that were not created by him and which he is not able to change; secondly, public charity does not take the form of the fruits of an unprotected tree, from which every passerby could snatch them without restriction, and therefore, given the presence of restrictive measures, public charity cannot encourage idleness. At the same time - I hasten to make a reservation - Professor Isaev does not belittle the importance of private charity: in his own words, the latter, “driven out of love for the cause, is capable of much more subtle healing of all types of need.”

Therefore, the very attempt to organize public charity deserves full attention and approval. In addition, the legislative measure of Catherine II under consideration is distinguished by many advantages: the entire planned system of public charity was imbued with the principle of humanity - corporal punishment was allowed only in strait houses, and the insane were recognized as subject to charity in institutions specially built for this purpose; further, the system was harmonious and provided for a whole network of charitable institutions; there was no beginning of centralization, and this could, in turn, contribute to the emergence of competition between some provincial authorities and others and thus contribute to the establishment of charity; persons who were quite financially secure were attracted to participate in charity, which tended to reduce the cost of maintaining personnel and served as a guarantee of more secure spending and storage of charitable sums of money; finally, allowing the orders to engage, in addition to charitable tasks, also with financial transactions on land loans made it possible to carry out public charity, which generally requires particularly significant funds, without special material sacrifices on the part of the government.

But with an impartial analysis of the institution of public charity orders, one cannot help but admit that the circumstances that contributed to the improvement of the organization of charitable work, at the same time, also entailed unfavorable consequences for this. In the absence of a central authority, orders could go into disarray and completely involuntarily waste their energy on resolving such issues, a satisfactory answer to which had already been found by someone else; the absence of at least some kind of controlling or inspecting body should also have had an impact not in terms of the benefits of the introduced system; the persons who were part of the orders unwittingly introduced into the living work of charity an element of bureaucracy, always somewhat dead and prone to clerical formalism; clergy were not involved in these orders, which were strictly secular in nature, and their presence could have united church charity with secular charity and, in any case, had an impact on eliminating the discord between these two types of charity; The non-service element of experienced local figures in the field of charity was not attracted to the activities of the charity, and yet, taking into account the territorial nature of the system of orders, this particular element was incomparably more local than the changing, “nomadic” composition of officials; limiting the time for meetings of orders to approximately three months a year naturally slowed down the matter; finally, one should imagine the whole complexity of the task assigned to the orders, aggravated by the acceptance of land property as security, in order to express surprise at how the orders, which had as officials people who devoted only their official leisure time to the cause of charity and were involuntarily doomed to turn the cause of charity, did not fall under the burden of this task not professional, but amateur.

All of the above, of course, explains the existence of two opposing opinions about orders of public charity. Both opinions are equally fair and unfair. Some researchers argue that “the orders did not live up to the hopes placed on them, due to the complexity of the work” 5, that “the orders did a lot in terms of hospitals, but little in terms of fighting poverty” 6. Others drew the exact opposite conclusion; His Eminence Anthony, a contemporary of the introduction of orders, in a speech he delivered on December 15, 1779 at the opening of the Nizhny Novgorod governorship, said: “From now on, we will not hear the flow of the sick, defeated at the crossroads, for life-giving clinics have been opened for them; what will we see and hear? We will see poverty in pleasure; orphans are honest citizens; the sick are cheerful, jumping with their feet and praising God"; There is also such a pathetic exclamation: “Catherine did not burden the people with new taxes 7 ... invented a completely new means ... income from the circulation of money in a banking position” 8 ; Defenders of this opinion cite in support of their conclusions the consideration that already in 1803 the capital and contributions of public charity orders amounted to about 9 million rubles, in 1810 - about 18 million. rubles, in 1820 - about 36 million. rubles, in 1830 - 82 mil. rubles, and in 1839, when 123,000 people used the help of public charity, the orders’ own funds exceeded 51 million. rubles, and the amount of deposits is 98 million. rub.

Of course, Catherine II herself did not look at the establishment of orders for public charity as the last word on the charitable issue, understanding, as she wrote on another occasion, that it was impossible to “divide... equally wealth, as a monk divides bread at a meal,” the legal provision needed to be supplemented...

The orders were put into effect gradually. The first order was to open Novgorod - in 1776, and two years later in 1778 the second - Tverskaya - was opened; for the triennium 1779 - 1781. The opening of most of the orders falls in the last year of Catherine's reign - Volyn, Minsk and Podolsk. Thus, orders were established during the reign of Catherine in forty out of fifty provinces.

Taking into account all of the above, apparently, one should be inclined to recognize the establishment of orders as bodies of public charity as an act of great national importance. If public charity did not blossom into that magnificent flower for which its first shoots and first buds gave hope and did not turn Russia, like England, into a country primarily of public charity, then perhaps the post-Catherine activity is to blame for this, which did not contribute to an initial sketch of the necessary amendments and additions. It is possible, perhaps, to reconcile the two hostile camps - adherents of orders and their opponents, with the witty remark of Professor Brickner: “not only the ready and complete results of the legislative and administrative activities of governments should become the subject of historical presentation, but the spirit expressed during such work is also worthy of attention, the direction in which reforms are carried out, the good intentions that guide the leaders."

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In conclusion of the analysis of the issue of Catherine II’s measures to combat beggary, it should be mentioned, at least in a nutshell, about the almost complete closure of “poor houses” and the cessation of “God’s house” charity that took place under her. Representing cemeteries for the poor, poor houses with “God’s” charity played their own unique role in the history of Russian life and survived until the 18th century. Even in this time, so close to us, the “bozhevik” was an official appointed by the magistrate for the burial in a wretched house of those who died a violent death, or in the so-called overnight, as well as those after whose death their children refused, for poverty, from their burial. In the Bessarbian region around the same time there also existed “grave-digging workshops”; these workshops, established from time immemorial, consisted of people called “chokla” and dedicated themselves to the goal of “picking up sick wanderers from the haystacks and crossroads and taking them to the hospital, burying the dead of people of different ranks and conditions without pay and looking after the sick during dangerous illnesses”; such workshops were the remnants of Byzantine burials or gravediggers (fossarii copitae), which appeared under Constantine the Great or his son Constantius; At first, members of the guilds buried only martyrs and formed a genus of church ministers, and then they extended their help to everyone who needed it; the number of members under Constantine the Great and his first successors reached 1,100 people, Honorius and Theodosius reduced them to 950, and Anastasius brought them to 1,100 people. In 1747, an order was issued in Russia to remove squalid houses from cities. And in 1771, the poor houses were completely closed. With the closure of the wretched houses, the almsgiving that Snegirev wrote about ceased: the poor were taken to wretched houses, where every year on Thursday on Trinity Sunday people gathered with coffins, clothes and shrouds for the dead, buried the dead and distributed alms to the living beggars.

Strictly speaking, God's charity had a dual character. On the one hand, in an earlier time, given the narrow religious significance of charity in general, it was of great national importance, since, without its help, in large cities the corpses of the poor and people who died from some epidemic disease would remain unburied for a long time . On the other hand, with charity interpreted in the sense of a political-economic task, it, acting from religious motives, belonged, in its origin, to church charity. Therefore, if in ancient Rus', Bozhedomsky charity was partly mixed with a political-economic shade and it stood above the average level of the state of the then charity, then in the 18th century, with the predominance of the economic significance of charity, it, mixing a religious character with charity, turned into something archaic, into a relic of former times. And it is not surprising that with the new direction of charity, this indiscriminate distribution of alms at funerals was itself condemned to degeneration, and in any case its destruction should be noted as a sign of the ever-increasing importance of economic charity.

Turning to the analysis of the second component of charitable activity, the question of charitable assistance, we should first of all dwell on the establishment of educational homes.

Referring to the example of Western European countries - Holland, France and Italy, Lieutenant General Betsky presented to the Empress in 1763 a “master plan” for the establishment of an orphanage in Moscow for the care of illegitimate children. Transferred for conclusion to three senators and actual secret advisers to Prince Yakov Shakhovsky, Nikita Panin and gr. To Minich, Betsky's report and the opinions of these senators received full Highest approval, and on September 1, the Highest manifesto on the establishment of an educational home in Moscow followed. The humane event met with sympathy from leading people; Lomonosov wrote about this: “the bliss of society increases every day”; Derzhavin, turning to Betsky, exclaimed: “you are full of mercy, love, saved, preserved, taught, nourished,” and Prince Potemkin responded that “philanthropy leads the pen of I.I. Betsky.” Among the masses of the common people, the establishment of educational homes did not meet with much sympathy, which, of course, is explained by the prejudice of the people against illegitimate children; so the Synod was forced to send out a manifesto to the churches, in twenty thousand copies, with the goal of “promoting the good undertaking of the empress.” The foundation stone for the building of the house took place on April 21, 1764, the empress’s birthday; on the opening day nineteen babies were delivered; about the first of them it was written: “No. 1, Catherine, after Alekseev’s godfather, was found in the parish of the Epiphany; No. 2, Pavel, after Petrov’s godfather, was found in the German settlement”; The names of these babies, who by the way died soon after, were given in honor of the empress and the heir herself.

The establishment of an educational home in Moscow was imitated in the construction of similar houses in other cities. By decree of the Collegium of Economy, it was commanded that “those who are members of the departments of the Collegium of Economy in Nizhny Novgorod, in the lower bazaar, formerly the bishop’s house with the church and the chambers under it, and with the entire yard... should be given to the Moscow educational home for the reception and education of children brought in in Nizhny Novgorod.” Soon Betsky, appointed chief trustee of the Moscow Orphanage, submitted a new report on “the desirability of establishing an orphanage here in St. Petersburg,” for which he found “a suitable location along the banks of the Neva River, which was formerly called the Smolny Reserve Yard”; Catherine II put a resolution on this report: “So be it, but for a good undertaking, take 5,000 rubles from the Cabinet.” From the decree of September 6, 1772, it is clear that the opening of the St. Petersburg branch of the Imperial Orphanage took place and its council included: director Colonel Ivan Moller, confessor of Her Imperial Majesty Protopresbyter Ivan Panfilov, retired Life Guards captain-lieutenant Ivan Levashov . About the reception of the first child it was recorded: “at midnight at 10 o’clock the baby was received; the woman bringing the child announced: baptized, given the name Avdotya, after Mikhailov’s godfather, daughter Yuditskaya, born in 1770 in the month of July, wearing a tin cross , on a scarlet ribbon... linen shirt, blue cap, lined with blond; no natural stains or marks." The next two children were also female, and only the fourth child brought was a boy. By decree of November 27, 1773, it was allowed in the city of Ostashkov, under the supervision of the local magistrate, “to open a house for raising infants of both sexes found and abandoned by their parents.”

The government's concern, however, was not limited to the care of the illegitimate; his goals were incomparably broader: as follows from parts 2 and 3 of I.I. Betsky’s “General Plan of the Moscow Orphanage for Infants at Home,” additionally presented in the form of his report to the members of the guardianship council (which in 1767 were N. Panin, Count Erich Minich, Prince Alexander Golitsyn, Count I. Chernyshev) and included in the decree of August 11, 1767, it was planned to “establish in the places belonging to this house manufactories, factories related to art and craft, using skilled artisans and manufacturers... from whom their pupils would learn thorough skills.” Such a measure, in addition to the direct goal - the craft education of those in need, also proves the desire to spread factory production in Russia; By the way, it should be noted here that only at the beginning the appointment of foreigners to the position of master teachers was allowed, and subsequently they had to be replaced by the most talented former students.

Undoubtedly, educational homes were expensive institutions that required large amounts of money for their establishment and ongoing maintenance. These funds were made up of voluntary donations. A special circle fee was established; An eloquent inscription was made on the circles displayed in churches: “Our pious and humane-loving monarch, Her Majesty, keep the commandment of God, build a house for raising babies, with Christ speak to them the word of the Gospel: and you will live.” The Empress herself donated 100,000 rubles for the construction of the house. lump sum and paid 50,000 rubles annually for his maintenance. Private individuals also contributed money for this item; for an orphanage in Moscow, in the first 5 years of its existence, donations were received from gr. Bestuzhev-Ryumina - 7,421 rubles, Glebova - 2,326 rubles, gr. Sivers - 1,000 rubles, Panin - 1,466 rubles, Naryshkin - 1,307 rubles, Skabronsky - 1,300 rubles, Stroganov - 2,300 rubles, book. Golitsyn - 2,300 rubles, book. Dolgoruky-Krymsky - 1,800 rubles, total 20,220 rubles; Demidov ordered to collect 20,000 rubles. from Prince Obolensky, having conceded, to collect 3% from the entire amount in favor of the orphanage; Betsky himself bequeathed 163 thousand rubles from the 400 thousand capital remaining after his death to the orphanage. In order to encourage donors, it was established that they would be given medals and, in addition, the ranks of the chamberlain from the collegium complained to persons who contributed 600 rubles annually, and the collegiate commissar - to those who contributed at least 100 rubles at a time; however, the influx of such private donations was very limited: as follows from the surviving data, no one received the rank of chamberlain from the college for donations, and no more than 48 people received the rank of collegiate commissar: in 1765 - one person, in 1766 - nine, in 1769 - three, in 1770 - three, in 1771 - six, in 1773 - one, in 1776 - one, in 1777 - two, in 1778 - one, in 1779 - two, in 1781 - one, in 1782 - one, in 1783 - one, in 1785 - two, in 1787 - one, in 1788 - three, in 1791 . - four, in 1794 - four and in 1795 - two; as you can see, whole years passed without ranks receiving awards for contributions of money and, in any case, at first such awards were more frequent; the purchase of such ranks was completely abolished in 1797. Confiscated estates were used to support and develop houses and a levy on “public disgraces” 9 was introduced, amounting to a fourth of it; 200 rubles were collected from twenty of these “disgraces.” By decree of March 31, 1774 It was ordered that “money stored in customs, proceeds from goods sold to unknown people” be turned off to the orphanage. The government resorted to such palliative measures as exemption from collecting duties on “pharmaceutical materials” “exported for the orphanage.” It is interesting to note another curious circumstance: the publishers of the magazine “Purse” (1771) decided to impose a fine of 5 kopecks for each foreign word they used. in favor of an orphanage; 10 .

Was Catherine II's event about charity for abandoned children anything new? Far from it: examples of this kind of charity are found in the history of charity, both general and Russian. Back in 315, Constantine the Great sent the following instructions to the city magistrates in Italy: “if a father or mother brings you a child, which they themselves are prevented from raising by lack of funds for it, then the duties of your position force you, without any delay, to provide food for the child and clothes, because meeting the needs of a newly born child is urgent; the funds of the empire and mine will, without a doubt, compensate for your expenses." Concerning educational houses and capitularies of Charlemagne, about most of which, indeed, it can be said that they “appear to be the work of a bishop rather than a king.” Pope Innocent III, having learned that fishermen were catching many corpses of babies in nets, set up a department in the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in 1198 to receive six hundred foundlings. Peter the Great, perhaps using the ready-made example of the Novgorod Metropolitan Job, who set up a home for foundlings in Novgorod, laid the foundation, as is known, for educational homes in Russia. But the cause of this kind of charity did not go quite successfully, and only Catherine II laid a more or less solid foundation for it. In all fairness, Betsky should be recognized as her associate in this regard, as can easily be seen from the previous cursory sketch. One can rightfully say about him in the words of a biographer, who classified him among the “memorable Russian people” that “having elevated feelings and an educated mind, he especially tried to benefit from alleviating the misfortunes of illegitimate children, who, without cover and name, often lose their lives, seeing only the light, or drag out a sad life, devoid of education, ways to feed themselves, cursing the culprits of their existence."

A completely different question is the question of to what extent the idea of establishing educational homes was implemented and whether they brought all the benefits expected from them. And here there are two contradictory opinions. Prince Shcherbatov, in his well-known, but distinguished by biased views, essay “On the Damage to the Morals of Russia” speaks very unflatteringly about educational homes; according to him, “many young people died in them, and even now, twenty years later, there are too few, or almost no artisans.” Others, like Bantysh-Kamensky, respond too enthusiastically. Of course, extreme opinions are not entirely fair; they breathe that straightforwardness of views that cannot be applied to public issues, and that lack of necessary restraint that does not allow them to be recognized as the force of completely balanced conclusions. There were both dark sides in the activities of educational homes, which were certainly justified by the complexity of the matter itself, and light sides, which more than compensated for the shortcomings of these homes.

In order to accustom children to crafts, the educational home consisted of four manufactories: a silk stocking factory, founded in 1769 under a contract concluded with Ge, a card factory, founded in 1774 under a contract with Motier, a manufactory of paper materials and a manufactory of woolen stockings; the last two manufactories were founded in 1778.

In order to give vitality to educational homes, persons who were not distinguished only by aristocratic origin or financial wealth, but who were energetic and devoted to this matter, were appointed to the board of guardians. The first guardian, from September 19, 1763, was captain of the Izmailovsky regiment Mikhail Semenovich Pokhvisnev, and soon the following were appointed members of the council: Colonel Tyutchev, collegiate adviser Frenev, Life Guards Second Major Boltin and court adviser Umsky, and already on October 14 The first meeting of the council took place.

In order to arouse public sympathy for the activities of educational homes, the absence of which mainly affected the small number of children brought in in the first years, and in view of the desire to develop these institutions in general, it was considered necessary for the priests to excite the people to the initial care of infants and then deliver them to educational home, St. Petersburg or Moscow, where the teachers were paid 10 rubles for each child brought. - for a two-year-old child, 18 rubles. - for a three-year-old, 24 rubles. for a four-year-old and 30 rubles. - for a five year old.

In order to increase funds, the Preservation Treasury was established, which issued loans secured first by movable and then by immovable property. The first mortgage of movable property was made on August 27, 1772 by the widow of Major General Sofia Stepanovna Chartoryzhskaya, who mortgaged a silver service for 1,000 rubles, and of real estate in November 1773 by the court café Pyotr Myshlyakovsky, who mortgaged a house for 6,000 rubles. In 1791, pledges were issued for 650,845 rubles, 23 kopecks, and in 1795 - for 808,060 rubles, 59 kopecks; The minimum security deposit for movable property was set at 10 rubles, and the maximum at 1000 rubles. As can be seen, the operation of issuing loans, which was once, when it first appeared in Italy, a charitable institution, turned into a purely commercial enterprise, moreover, completely depriving less wealthy people of the opportunity to turn to its help due to the limited loan of such a relatively large sum as ten rubles. Of course, the establishment of such a minimum "at the same time aroused objections from contemporaries who proposed taking out at least double loans, but the board of trustees did not recognize the possibility of lowering the minimum, firstly, because in this case poor people would resort to loans, who, in its opinion, could to use the amounts received as a loan for drunkenness, and secondly, charging double interest for small loans would be burdensome for the poor and “the house could be criticized for greed.”

Finally, I will turn to the question of the mortality rate of children cared for in an orphanage, and for my conclusions I will use the statistical statement attached to the article: “St. Petersburg orphanage under the management of Betsky.” Of course, the data presented in this article regarding the educational home in St. Petersburg for the first 27 years of its existence represent only raw material, but their combinations can lead to very interesting conclusions. First of all, by the way, I note that the number of babies brought in is gradually increasing from year to year: from 1771 to 1787, the number of children admitted ranged from 457 to 976, and from 1788 it exceeded 1052 people. The relationship between the number of babies born in a given year and the number of deaths in the same year was always the same: in 1770, 181 children were brought, of which 90 died, i.e. 50%, in 1771 about 80% died, and then the mortality rate fluctuates very little, being approximately 100%; Of course, some years were exceptions; Particularly unlucky years were: 1776 (580 born, 605 died), 1778 (609 born, 649 died), 1781 (666 born, 709 died), 1783 (748 born, 793 died), 1785 (849 born, 901 died) and 1789 (1052 born, 1207 died); but there were happy years: in 1773, 582 children were born, 404 died, in 1779, 596 were born, 503 died, in 1787, 976 were born, 787 died, in 1792, 1,134 were born, 977 died. The number of those on charity is gradually increasing; in 1771 this number was 604 people, in 1776 it doubled, in 1786 it quadrupled, and in 1795 it eightfold, reaching 5225 people in 1796. In total, from 1770 to 1796, 22,439 children were admitted, and 2,719 were born in the home; 20,878 of them died.

Thus, the mortality rate of children should be recognized as very significant, but in France, 75, 80 and even 100 percent of the babies brought to the orphanage died. The high mortality rate led to the order to provide care for children under five years of age by private individuals (as already described above) and to send children to the villages to be fed; the last measure was taken after the Moscow orphanage in 1767 lost 1,073 of 1,089 children.

Be that as it may, the establishment of orphanages should be placed at the core of the list of Catherine’s legislative and charitable activities. True, they not only did not reach a flourishing state, but even hardly fulfilled their functions quite satisfactorily. But they had the data to be able to improve later; they almost destroyed that shameful name of “illegitimate”, a false prejudice against which has survived to this day; they brought more or less organized assistance to public charity into an environment that had previously been almost completely devoid of assistance even from private charity. Orphanages were proof of the humanity and statesmanship of Catherine II...

Catherine II's concern for the care of the mentally ill is noteworthy.

True, the beginnings of this kind of charity can be found even under Peter the Great and his first successors. Some documentary news on this subject is interesting. In 1728, “a foreigner was taken without a passport, who, through translators and the Catholic priest Dedozh, was witnessed and a madman appeared,” he was sent for charity to the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in the hope that, having learned about his situation, someone would want to take him home any of the foreigners arriving in St. Petersburg on ships. Colonel Lev Selivanov, who had lost his mind, was sent to the St. Nicholas Radovitsky Monastery, and soldiers were sent along with Selivanov to monitor him. The copyist of the Synodal Chancellery Vasily Zelenin lost his mind; Zelenin’s superiors said of him that he was generally a heavy drinker and for this he was often “in charge.” Zelenin was placed in 1728 in the Trinity-Sergiv Monastery, from where, after some time, after recovery, he was again returned to serve in the College of Economy. Sometimes the “mad” were kept together with convicts. It is worth mentioning the view of Yaroslavl justice on “madmen” as criminals; in the report of the “orderly” Feodor Nekrasov; 11, by the way, it was stated that on January 5, 1756, when convicts were released, “to beg for alms, it turned out that the Yaroslavl resident Fyodor Deulin, who was kept in a booth, jokingly threw his hat at the convict, who is often in madness, Ivan Krylatsky, and he took it and split it into two parts."

Thus, there was charity for the insane before Catherine II, if sometimes, as can be seen from the example of the copyist Zelenin, the “mad” even received complete healing and returned to their usual activities, however, it was delivered very unsatisfactorily and not systematically. Therefore, it is not surprising that Catherine II was concerned about the fate of madmen.

In the Empress’s own handwritten note dated 1769, by the way, it is written: “there should be a number of monasteries, and some should be left for handicraft and wounded officers; others for the same soldiers and non-commissioned officers, also for dolgauz” (i.e. houses for crazy people).

From the very first year of Catherine II’s accession to the throne, there was a decree dated August 20 concerning charity for the mentally ill; This decree refers to an earlier one, dated April 23, in which it was prescribed: “if their relatives do not want to have them at home, they should not send them to monasteries, but build a special house for that purpose, as is usually the case in foreign countries. “, and confirms this decree, “this decree should be in full force,” however, “until the mentioned dolgauz is built, for such insane people” it was ordered “to appoint a monastery capable of this.” As you know, the insane were placed in chambers at the monasteries: Novgorod, Zelenetsky and Andreevsky-Moskovsky. The decree of July 1, 1768 seems to hint that no special houses for the insane were built; The decree recognizes the need to accept “crazy people who do not have their own food into those monasteries where the number of monastics is incomplete ... for the Senate does not see any closer method to teaching such unfortunate suffering people.” The extension of the obligation to provide care for the mentally ill to all monasteries that have an incomplete staff of monastics is again, as it were, canceled by the following decree - dated November 6, 1773, which, among other things, states that “for the care of the insane, the governing Senate now appoints three places, that is St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan." The decree of November 17, 1776, regarding the murder of his wife by retired captain Efimov, again speaks of charity in monasteries as a temporary measure until the construction of special houses, and confirms the decree of 1762. Only in the law “On the order of public charity” , in Art. 389, there is a definite indication of the need to establish special institutions for the mentally ill, among other public and charitable institutions; The same article also speaks of the possibility of appointing “retired soldiers, good and serviceable” as ministers in asylums for the insane. Apparently, special houses for “those who fell into madness” were indeed established; there is, for example, an indication that with the establishment of the Simbirsk province in 1782, a home for the poor, a home for the insane and an educational home were established.

Let me turn to the issue of charity for military ranks.

Already from the end of the 17th century, monasteries began to be involved in the charity of military officials. In a petition dated June 7, 1685, retired Pskov archers, some of whom served for more than fifty years, write that they “in many battles and attacks and forays ... fought against ... state enemies,” and are currently “dragging” in This is the fourth week in Moscow, “wandering” between the courtyards,” and feeding on “the name of Christ,” which is why these archers ask: “order, sirs, in the Pskov monasteries, where it is more convenient, to tonsure us, your servants, without contribution”; the petition was followed by a resolution: "to tonsure without contribution Ilyushka to the Savior on Mirozha, Maksimka to Gremyachaya Mountain, Alyoshka to Polonishche." Petition "of the Simonov Monastery of Archbishop Gabriel and the brethren" dated August 31, 1682, requested permission to stop accepting into the monastery "retired court infantry" over forty-seven people already at that time on charity in the monastery. According to the royal charter given on November 17, 1686 to the Novgorod Metropolitan Korniliy, “non-household assigned” monasteries were released from the habitation of retired archers, “so that you,” as the decree says to the metropolitan, “before Do not be an insult to your brothers." Peter the Great especially insisted on charity for soldiers in monasteries, and Elizaveta Petrovna laid the foundation for special military almshouses - homes for the disabled.

Catherine II, at the beginning of her reign, left the monastic charity of military ranks. According to the decree of August 24, 1762, persons “who do not have their own food, but were abandoned from military and civilian service due to illness” were to be “sent to monasteries for food.” But already this year, “disabled-settled” charity was allowed, according to which non-commissioned officers and privates, “who were capable of reporting for military service, were assigned to garrisons or other services, and others who could not perform any service, but in those who are not yet old enough that they can usefully increase the general rural economy in a settlement, then send them to settle in the Kazan province, and leave at monasteries and almshouses only those who, due to their old age or injury, are capable of neither one nor the other won't turn out to be."

For some time, monastic and settlement charity for military ranks existed together. But, finally, charity in monasteries developed by Peter I is completely abolished. The considerations that led to such a cancellation are mainly that “it is very unlike for the spiritual authorities ... to be retired, like military people, in the proper order, and for those military people to be at peace under the control and supervision of the spiritual”; therefore it is commanded; 12: “from now on, do not send retired military personnel to monasteries for food, but instead send them directly from the military college to ... advantageous places, namely: guard regiments - in Murom, and others to the following: to the Vyatka province in the cities of Khlynov, Kasimov, Arzamas, Shatsk, Tambov, Penza, Lebedyan, Kozmodemyansk, Cheboksary, Kadom, Alatyr, Temnikov, Perensk, Saransk, Nizhny Lomov, Inzaru, Putivl, Pronsk, Kozelsk, Ryask, Bezhetsk, Zaraysk, Syzran, Urzhum, Yardin, Kurmysh , Slobodsk, Kozlov, Sviyazhsk and Verkhniy Lomov, and that’s 31 cities.” In disabled settlements, it was ordered to allocate apartments in kind from the inhabitants, and in addition to this, “to make cash salaries” in the following amount per year: 3 guards for chief officers 100 rubles each, 10 guards for officers 20 rubles each, 200 guards for corporals and privates for 15 rubles, and for ranks of non-guards units: 15 lieutenant colonels for 120 rubles, 75 majors for 100 rubles, 150 captains for 65 rubles, 150 lieutenants for 40 rubles, 300 second lieutenants and 300 warrant officers for 33 rubles, 150 non-commissioned officers -officers 15 rubles. and 3,000 privates for 10 rubles; in total, as you can see, 80,600 rubles were required annually. The disabled people sent to the southeastern cities, as documented, were almost exclusively people who had lost any ability for productive work. In the “inspection list” of 1778, the lower ranks of the Shatsk invalid team say that out of 87 people, 17 were still more or less fit to fight Pugachev, and the rest were marked decrepit, with cramped arms and legs, very elderly; one disabled person was ninety-nine years old. The weak performance of disabled people and their decrepitude found an echo in the legislative act: the decree of April 24, 1765 prescribes not to employ “disabled people on heavy guard duty.”

Finally, the third type of military charity was their placement in invalid homes. By 1765 there were three nursing homes: in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kazan; in the first there were 1972 persons in care, in Moscow - 2462 and in Kazan - 332. From the decree of February 24, 1765, it is clear that due to the significant number of persons in care in nursing homes, a special Spiritual Commission was appointed to investigate the issue of the situation and degree of working capacity of disabled people; The commission found 930 people in nursing homes - in St. Petersburg, and 1,175 people in Moscow - “healthy, strong, able to feed themselves.” Therefore, the staffing number of vacancies was reduced for the St. Petersburg Invalid Home to 500, and in the Moscow Invalid Home to 1000; the house in Kazan was destroyed in 1780, when there was a ban on the further admission of retired ranks to charity; this year, 390 rubles were given to those in need, which corresponds, assuming 5 rubles. per person, seventy-eight intended. The established staff for nursing homes of 1,500 people (500 in St. Petersburg and 1,000 in Moscow), with a 240,000-strong army and continuous wars waged by Russia, could be considered insufficient if military ranks did not continue to be accepted into general almshouses, and partly were not sent to settle in disabled cities. The presence of all this forces us to recognize the soldiers during the reign of Catherine II, as one researcher of this type of charity puts it, as “complete.”

It is also worth noting that the nursing home in Moscow was founded in pursuance of the decree of July 13, 1777; For this purpose, a house was bought from the chamber cadet Saltykov; two thousand rubles were allocated to repair the building; for the current maintenance of the house, the savings board allocated 24,000 rubles for six years; the general management of the house was entrusted to the Moscow Chief of Police Arkharov. The opening of the house took place in 1779; a hospital was also attached to the same house, founded in 1775 for retired soldiers for 100 people; for its construction, it was ordered “to use former bread stores belonging to the police department, and in addition 500 rubles collected at the Varvarsky Gate, and 14,000 rubles from the provision amount, subject to flour from the police for the price sold.”

Let me give you some more statistical data on the size of the monastic charity for soldiers concerning the Uglich diocese. From the statements of 1739 - 1741. it is clear that they were supported on food: in the Resurrection Monastery in Uglich “1 lieutenant”, who received a salary of 26 rubles. 66 1/3 k. and 1 warrant officer who received 5 rubles. 49 k. salary in money and 6 quadruples of bread in kind; in the Alekseevsky Monastery in Uglich there was 1 captain, “2 lieutenants”, who received 26 rubles each. 66 k. salary each and 3 soldiers who received 3 rubles. 66 k. in money and 6 quarters of bread in kind; in the Nikolaevsky Monastery, on the river. Uleyme - 1 captain, who received 33 rubles. 33 k., 2 corporals, 5 soldiers and 1 dragoon, each receiving 3 rubles. 66 k. and 6 quarters. 3 quarters of bread...

Finally, we should also mention a personal decree to the President of the Military Collegium, Prince Potemkin, dated February 26, 1784, which ordered that 5,000 rubles be allocated annually by the Cavalry Duma for the Order of St. George. to use military ranks for charity, assigning “for their stay a place in Chesma at the Church of St. John the Baptist.”

Along with the military ranks themselves, the wives of military personnel also enjoyed charity; Thus, the decree of March 14, 1763 ordered that “soldiers’, dragoon sailors’ and recruits’ wives, who were sent and will continue to be sent from the Moscow police, received by the office of the Synodal Economic Board, should be assigned to almshouses.” As can be concluded from the text of the decree, the wives of military personnel enjoyed charitable assistance even while their husbands were on active service. When establishing a disabled settlement charity, 1,500 rubles were allocated for the widows of guards ranks, and 32,900 rubles for army ranks, which, compared with 80,600 rubles allocated for the ranks themselves, will amount to more than 42%. From the statements cited above, 1739 - 1741. city of Uglich, it is clear that there were 4 soldiers’ wives in Alekseevsky monasteries, who received 4 quarters of bread, and in Nikolaevsky - two, of which each received 3 quarters of bread in kind.

Back in 1839, one researcher of the activities of public charity orders; 13 very correctly saw that the charitable institutions subordinate to this order can be grouped into three departments: educational and educational institutions, medical and charitable institutions, and correctional institutions, classifying the latter as “workhouses and straithouses.” The activities of Catherine II left a very large mark on each group of establishments. From the previous presentation, the general nature of the activities of this great monarch in setting up educational homes, providing care for the mentally ill and caring for soldiers becomes clear. It remains to make a general outline of its activities for other types of charity.

I'll start with hospitals.

Professor Leshkov; 14, analyzing what was considered a classic, but then, of course, outdated work by Richter, dedicated to the history of Russian medicine, and an article on the same subject by the famous researcher on the history of charity Khanykov, says that no charitable medical events were accepted in Russia, according to Richter until the XVI century, and according to Khanykov - until the half of the 15th century, and that Khanykov explains this circumstance by “the simplicity of life of the people of that time.” Of course, such an explanation is too broad and not accurate. If one cannot consider the medical care provided by the ancient monasteries, then, in any case, the lack of proper medical charity can most likely be explained by the low culture of the Russian people and the rudimentary state of science in general and medicine in particular. In a more cultured country - Poland - the first hospitals are mentioned in privileges and documents dating back to the 11th century; the monastery of the Order of Canons Regular, Hospital of the Holy Spirit, transferred in 1244 to Krakow, had a “hospital”; The “hospital” also had a monastery, founded in 1222 in Sandomierz, and the local city magistrate had general supervision over these monastic hospitals; in 1775, even a central body for the management of hospitals was established - a commission for hospital hospitals, and in 1778, on April 8, a lottery was authorized in favor of the hospital of the baby Jesus and the Piar school. In Riga, a hospital for lepers was established in 1225.

From the 17th century and even the end of the 16th century, there is also undoubted evidence for Russia about the existence of hospitals at that time. At the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Cathedral in the 17th century. stood the Alekseevskaya stone church, “between two stone hospitals; its length with hospital cells extended 24 fathoms, and its width 11 fathoms.” During the landslide of the mountain from under the Pechora Monastery on June 18, 1597 to the Volga, the monks and ministers in the hospital remained unharmed. And since there were hospital ministers, there were hospitals. Patriarch Joachim, in a letter dated April 9, 1685, to Metropolitan Korniliy of Novgorod, ordered: “The St. Nicholas White Monastery, with its estates and all its lands... be assigned to the Sophia House and... in that monastery, build a hospital for the feeding and rest of the sick, and feed them from the estate of that Nikolaev Belago Monastery." Tokmakov, in the brochure “Catalogue of Cases and Manuscripts of the Pharmacy Order”, reports data from which one can, among other things, see that in 1600 Roman Bockman was sent from Moscow to Lubeck to find a doctor; in the same year, the doctor Kasper Fiedler submitted a petition to be accepted into Russian service; There is a petition about the same from the doctor Quirim Bremborch dated 1628. The information provided by Ogloblin is also interesting (consumable book of the Kiev clerk's hut, 1675 - 76 history in the historical society Nest. Chronicle, XI) and from which it is clear , that the troops of the Kiev garrison included doctors, for example, Alexey Bedinsky, who was given half of the annual salary in March - 14 rubles. 6 al. 49. “For his work healing the wounded and sick people,” there were also Kyiv residents who were engaged in “medicine” - Maxim Mikhailov and Klim Prokofiev.

Catherine II established a number of charitable and medical institutions. On October 10, 1772, the parental home was opened; in 1770, a decree was passed on the establishment of a hospital in Orenburg; in 1781, a decree of February 16 ordered “to buy houses for a hospital in parts of the city located on the left bank of the Neva”; in 1783, by decree of the Novgorod Tver Governor-General dated February 23, it was ordered to open a hospital, and 3,000 rubles were allocated from the office for its establishment; by decree of July 13, 1786, an order was made that “a hospital should be established in the former Mezhigorsky” monastery; from the "list of government expenditures for 1793" it can be seen that the following was spent on “orphanages and hospitals”: “in the provinces... St. Petersburg - 15,417 rubles 60 k. and Ufa - 300 rubles.” and “according to the accounting treasuries” of St. Petersburg - 4,480 rubles. and Moscow - 32,593 rubles. 32 k., and only 52,790 rub. 92 k.

And the past examples given, which, of course, are far from exhausting the subject, are enough to recognize that the charitable and medical activities of Catherine II were very large in scale.

Charity in almshouses has long been a common type of charitable assistance in Rus'. In the 17th and 18th centuries, almshouses were not a rare occurrence.

In 1684, beggars from the Yaroslavl Ignatievskaya Stone Almshouse, numbering 170 people, asked the great sovereigns to give them kvass free of charge; three years later, “80 people who were poor at the zemstvo courtyard” asked for kvass to be given to them against the first ones “in half.” This means that there were almshouses in Yaroslavl back in the 17th century. At the Pechersky Monastery, in the 17th century, many elderly, decrepit and crippled people, who bore the characteristic name “grain eaters,” were fed. In 1684, a patriarchal almshouse was established in Vladimir for 18 people; 38 rubles were spent on its construction. 27 al. 2 d. from forty rubles taken from the Vladimir priestly elders of the Borisoglebsky priest Trifon and the Frolovsky priest Vasily. From the expenditure records of the patriarchal government order it is clear what was spent: on “salaries and almshouses”, in 1678 - 1,161 rubles. 93 k., in 1679 - 2,947 rubles. 16 k., in 1680 - 2,906 rubles. 52 k., in 1695 - 2,939 rubles. 34 rubles, for “beggars, memorial services and prayer services” - in 1678 - 331 rubles. 59 k., in 1679 - 196 r. 65 k., in 1680 - 71 r. 22 k. and in 1695 - 85 r. 79 Kn. Interesting petition, filed on the change of the rich priest, Archbishop of the Great Ustyuzhsky and Totem "by his pilgrims of the Ustyug the Great, Voznesen Church by the priest Afonasy Larionov and the old -haired men's hut by the old -hundred, old -time Kirilli Vasiliev, ordinary Vaska Clementyev ... only 13 ordinary, and female hut out of Iriyskoye. Venediktova and privates Paraskovitsa Kharitonova..., a total of 9 privates." This document dates back to 1704, i.e. by the very end of the 17th century, in addition to proving the existence of almshouses in Ustyug at that time, it undoubtedly confirms the remark I made earlier that the almshouse beggars had something of a kind of self-government and chose an elder from among themselves. In the 18th century almshouses were also not rare: in Kazan, for example, in 1745 there were 6 men’s and 4 women’s almshouses, according to the inventory of warrant officer Ivan Gublitsky. Almshouses that had fallen into disrepair were replaced by new ones: for example, according to the 1702 report, it is clear that Peter I, during his stay in Vologda, ordered the demolition of the old building of the local almshouse, which housed eleven almshouse beggars, headed by headman Simeon Dementiev, and to build new; funds for this were ordered to be taken in the amount of 30 rubles. "from the Sofa treasury in Vologda", and 11 rubles, for the reconstruction of the entrance hall, from the Prilutsky Monastery. Monasteries, as before, continue to look after the poor in their almshouses; Thus, at the Spasopreobrazhensky or Four Saints Monastery of the Saratov diocese, they were kept in 1742. twenty-one widows, “due to their wretchedness,” ranging in age from 52 to 90 years.

Therefore, it is not surprising that even during the reign of Catherine II, the almshouse business continued to gradually develop.

A decree of 1764 prescribed “for all commoners who are most crippled” and have no relatives “who could feed them”, to establish “special almshouses, of which there will be the Moscow Archbishop’s house in Zvenigorod, St. Petersburg - in Ladoga, for this purpose , that in the residences of these state almshouses it is not supposed to have." As can be seen from paragraph 6 of the decree of November 15, 1771, after the pestilence, beggars, or as the decree puts it, “bigots and vagabonds, for there are no direct beggars,” were placed in Moscow in the Ugreshny Monastery and “fed there and rested under the supervision of Lieutenant Colonel Prince Makusova". In Saratov, in 1782, at the Vozdvizhensky Monastery there were two almshouses - for men and for women. Interesting is the agreement of the Nizhny Novgorod merchant Stepan Mikhailov Popov, which he concluded in 1774 with the priest, headman and parish of the Nizhny Novgorod Annunciation Cathedral, and according to which the merchant Popov agreed, instead of the almshouse built at that cathedral by the former Nizhny Novgorod merchant Ivan Sirotin, to “contribute to that cathedral an almshouse” for the dilapidation her, put another one in a new place, according to the instructions of the local police chief’s office; in the old place, Popov, according to the agreed upon condition, could set up his shops; In addition, Popov undertook to annually supply the cathedral with “a bucket of red wine and the best incense, six pounds each.” Sometimes almshouses were built with voluntary donations, sometimes with funds from the order of public charity, replenished both by the generosity of the Empress and by private donations. Thus, about Trubchevsk in 1779 there is a record: “by order of public charity there are no schools established, but there are two almshouses for the poor, which were built by donors”; in 1780, Nizhny Novgorod merchants, in a public meeting, made a decision to collect three hundred rubles for public charity, “out of love for humanity, for charitable items,” dividing the collection into 20 k. from each ruble paid by them into a one-percent collection from their capital into treasury, and from those newly assigned to the merchant class from the peasants of the Blagoveshchenskaya Sloboda, 10 k. per ruble; the peasants of this settlement collected 200 rubles for this purpose, Catherine II herself often donated money to charities and public charity orders; in 1767, the nobility and merchants collected 52,000 rubles to erect a monument to her, but she responded to this: “I would rather erect a monument in the hearts of my subjects than on marble,” and the entire amount, with the addition of another 150,000 rubles . from her own funds, she ordered it to be donated to charitable institutions, she did the same when she inquired about the intention to arrange a triumphal meeting for her, she wrote from Smolensk to Prince Golitsyn: “Prince Alexander Mikhailovich! I don't need a meeting. For this reason, I wish that the collected money be donated to public charity, for useful causes."

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I will appeal to the children's charity.

Of course, ancient Rus' knew this kind of charity. Under the year 6582, the chronicle records: “if someone brings a child to the monastery, if he brings a child, he is overcome by any illness”... and, therefore, there was some kind of medical institution for children at the monastery. Professor Goncharov speaks of the school founded by Anna Vsevolodnaya as “the first school in Russia for the education of girls.” Konstantin Vsevolodovich, while his father was still alive, in 1209 built a church in his yard in the name of the Archangel Michael and a school attached to it, where “Greek and Russian monks worked, especially infants.” Finally, there are also notes in the donation books of the Solotchinsky Monastery, from the 15th century, such as, for example, the following: “on the Grigorievsky field, 25 crops were plowed for the monastery’s use,” or “from the stable yard to rootless orphans 4 people, who are sent in all sorts of parcels and to estates and for horses, a ruble was given for dresses"; According to the author of the above notes, cubs were probably adopted children and, in general, rootless orphans raised by the monastery. In a word, the charity of children was used in ancient Rus', although it was not of such a widespread and ordinary nature as some researchers suggest. In addition, the name “orphans” in ancient Rus' did not yet have the restrictive meaning that this word later acquired, and quite often it extended to adult peasants, who were named as such, for example, in the letters of the Tver princes to the Otroch Monastery, dated 1361 -1365, and Metropolitan Cyprian to the Constantine Monastery.

Catherine II, as if in justification of the biblical saying “a beggar is left for you to eat, you will be a helper” and the aphorism: “childhood is a savings bank in which we put treasures for the future,” realized that assistance from schools is the best thing for children. Traces of this view are also found in the “Inscription on the completion of the draft of a new code”, where, among other things, the establishment of a commission “on schools and charity” was recognized as necessary; such a combination of schools with charity measures proves that schools were considered as a preventive measure against poverty; 15 . In connection with this, there is another legislative order - in paragraph 6 of the “Instructions of the Slobodskaya Governorate to the Governor”, which ordered orphans “going around the world to be given to local teachers to anyone who wants to take them.” Schools, however, were few; so, along with the news that the order of public charity, opened on June 2, 1779 in Vladimir, chaired by the governor of the viceroy, actual state councilor Samoilov, opened on April 22, 1783, in the houses built by the order, near the so-called Potanin, places, in addition to hospitals for 24 a person, even for the insane and a restraint house, also a school - there is, however, news of a completely different nature; from the decree of January 17, 1774, by the way, it is clear that “the noblewoman Anton Akhmatov’s wife, Anna Stepanova, the daughter of the Berezins,” petitioned for the admission, after her husband died, of her three children to the Novgorod garrison school; the then Novgorod governor Yakov Sivers, taking into account that garrison schools were intended only for soldiers' children, doubted the possibility of placing noble children in these schools; the matter reached the Senate, which decided in favor of Akhmatova. Larin’s project on the founding of a “charity school” is worth attention; as follows from the draft teaching program at this school, children were supposed to study “arithmetic, and some parts of the higher geometric sciences, for a better knowledge of this necessary science for the trades”, serving to “calculate and verify their affairs and property, knowledge of Russian trade of various industries, and from where, where and how it is more convenient to produce it, knowledge of how to keep merchant books and accounts"; being the prototype of commercial schools, Larin's charity school quite definitely established a program for educating children that had a strictly practical, utilitarian goal; Larin’s project, apparently, supplemented the article in the legislation on orders for public charity that related to orphanages, where the program was outlined only in general and vague terms. By decree of March 12, 1778, the merchant Larin was allowed to set up a “charity school.” Finally, it is necessary to mention public schools, which, while not being charitable institutions in the strict sense of the word, contributed to the improvement of public education and, at the same time, to the prevention of poverty; the development of public schools was relatively successful: in 1787 there were 165 public schools with 11,157 students, in 1796 - 316 schools with 17,341 students, and the number of children educated in public schools reached from 1781 to 1795. figures of 164,135 for boys and 12,595 for girls; 16 .

The importance of preventive charity measures in preventing poverty is quite clear: they are in the charitable issue what hygiene is in relation to the issue of maintaining health; In French literature there are entire studies with a name of this very nature. These measures did not go unnoticed by Catherine the Great.

In order to provide every person with the right to freely choose productive labor, the decree of the manufacturing board of April 17, 1767 ordered: “not to prohibit any handicrafts or handicrafts by which city dwellers can earn their own sinless livelihood.” "Concerns are being made to reduce the high cost, which is the first and most dangerous enemy of the well-being of societies." The decree of September 3, 1762 determined “to have strong watch and observation” and “not to raise Moscow’s prices for goods, and especially for hay and oats and for all provisions.” Of course, the above decree was not news even for Russia: even Joseph, in a message to Prince Yuri Ivanovich of Dmitrov, during the famine of 1812 and the rise in price of bread, advised that the sovereign “set the price (for bread) by his sovereign command in his patronymic and revived the poor people." But under Catherine, the need to reduce the purchase price of essential items was already fully recognized by the legislator himself, while the cited document from the early 16th century only shows that a representative of the clergy showed the secular authorities a new path of charitable activity. In order to avoid harmful, in the sense of increasing prices for goods, repurchases, a decree of June 23, 1784 prohibited the wholesale purchase of rural products brought to the city, “from dawn until the first hour of noon.” The letter of Catherine II, regarding the rise in price of bread, to Count Bruss, the former commander-in-chief in St. Petersburg, dated June 13, 1787, is worthy of attention; among other things, she wrote: “and in St. Petersburg only five or six merchants trade in bread, who are They are not the last of the swindlers; but we should try to introduce more merchants into the grain trade in order to take this trade out of the hands of the resellers.” In case of crop failure, it was prescribed to have spare stores. The eighteenth point of the instructions of the Sloboda province to the governor recognized the need “to build nationwide strong barns in each military settlement, where to collect from each lot one quadrangle of rye and one quadrangle of oats or barley”; so that “through long-term storage the old bread would not rot,” it was allowed “to those in need to lend it,” and the interest for the loan was set at the rate of one garnz for each quadruple given on loan. The above order can be connected with some others: in the “Instruction for Economic Boards”, dated April 4, 1771, in article 5 of the instruction “On protecting peasants in the event of their impoverishment from sudden unfortunate adventures”, by the way, supervision is required so that peasants “at least they were not left without the necessary food” and “at least they were supplied with grain for sowing”; in the "warrant to the zemstvo captains and police officers" of the Oryol governor S. A. Neplyuev, on the occasion of a bad harvest in 1787, says: “the peasants, being the owners, do not receive help from their landowners for food, while they have bread both in the granaries and in the stacks, unthreshed... declare to the landowner so that he immediately gives the required amount of bread for the peasants for food, ... and when he persists against this, then in front of strangers and witnesses, take the appropriate amount of bread and give it to those in need for food and at the same time report to me.” However, a measure that was so obviously useful as the establishment of spare stores did not meet with widespread sympathy from the population. Thus, the Voronezh governor Potapov sent out a proposal to open shops throughout the Shatsk province in 1776; but “first-class and wealthy” people, observing only their private profit, “renounced such a useful institution”; however, spare magazines gradually began to be introduced, and the first example in this regard was set by Belarus, which experienced their benefits in 1772, and then this was followed by the Pskov province, under Governor Krechetnikov. The legislator's attentiveness extended to the point that in 1771 the need was recognized to ensure that “after recovery and release” from hospitals “people receive new clothes and sufficient food for the first time”; Currently, these functions are performed, as is known, by private charitable institutions - charitable institutions at hospitals and, partly, houses of industry; The decree of May 11, 1788 established the submission of information on the state of the harvest no later than November 1, “so that funds could be provided in time to avert the poverty of the people’s food.” The so-called leges sumptuariae, prohibitive laws on luxury, also did not go unnoticed: by decree of May 6, 1784, Catherine II made an order to “assign to employees special colors for each governorship for dresses to reduce luxury”; 17. But the most remarkable order aimed at preventing poverty is undoubtedly the charter of the deanery or police officers, dated April 8, 1782; Article 119 of the charter, listing the duties of a private bailiff, says that he “provides private food to the poor, tries to arrange them for a place, or food, or support through work, fishing, handicrafts or crafts,” and Article 181 provides for the need, given the abundance of those seeking labor, establishing the position of “broker of servants and working people,” to whom both those who have labor and those who provide it could turn; from Article 189 it is clear that, when concluding a lease through this broker, the latter took part in resolving misunderstandings between both parties entering into the contract; Another interesting article is Article 184, by virtue of which the broker was obliged to “have the doors of his house open, and a sign above the doors, so that those who have services or work can come to him to write down the required information.” It is impossible not to recognize the brokerage institute, which unfortunately does not seem to have received wide distribution, as a very reasonable institution; they were the prototype of those intermediary offices, about which the question was raised only very recently, but, apparently, the law on brokers was too theoretical and therefore difficult to implement.

Thus, the charitable legislative activities of Catherine the Great can, in all fairness, be called very remarkable. Let there be personalities during her reign like the Kharkov Governor-General Chertkov, who, during the empress’s trip to the Crimea, issued an order that there should be no one “in depraved and torn clothes, and especially drunken and beggars, which should be observed at the porch, that in front of the palace, and in all places where there will be a public meeting"; let there be landowners who hid the squalor of peasant dwellings with painted decorations; all this is true, all these are negative examples of the activities of private individuals, but it is indisputable that Catherine II knew poverty, cared about its healing, and saw this as one of her monarchical duties. It will be said, perhaps, that many of its measures did not have the major consequences that could have been counted on; Yes, it is true; but on the other hand, it is also true that the initiative for almost all legislative and charitable events of Catherine II came from herself, and in this regard, the Duke de Ligne is right when he said: “they talk a lot about the St. Petersburg cabinet; I don’t know a single one that would smaller in size - it extends from one temple to the other and from the top of the nose to the hair, in a word, it is all in Catherine’s head.”

“Man,” as Chamborand puts it, “has always and everywhere been exploited by man, but it must be said that the masses of the people have never had less reason to complain about their social lot than in our time”; This saying, quite true for the present moment, is applicable to some extent in relation to the century of Catherine II

NOTES

In neighboring Poland there was also a struggle against beggary. According to the law of Sigismund I, dated 1219, peasants who arrived in the city had to enter the city for service, or for any work, no later than within three days; according to John Albert's law, it was necessary to determine the number of poor people in each village and city; such poor people, being unable to work, could beg for alms; a special stamp was applied to their clothes; in the case of begging of “unbranded” beggars, they should have been involved in the work of building fortifications against the Turks and digging ditches. (Okolsky. Historical sketch of charity for the poor in Poland. Warsaw. Univ. Izvest.; 1878, IV).

Extract from the scribal books of letters and measures of the steward Mikhail Feodorovich Samarin and Podyachev Michal Rusinov (1674 - 1676); Work. Yaroslav. scientist archive. com., in 2, 1892. However, even the patriarchs sometimes refused alms: sometimes “the petition of the old woman Maryitsa to Patriarch Nikon for alms,” where this “old woman of the city of Voronezh” asks to give her, “the wretched one, for alms”; on the reverse side of the petition it is marked: “refusal” (Tr. Ryaz. scientific. architectural committee. 1890, in IV); but this, of course, was an exception for the 17th century.

Although one should treat evidence of homosexuality, even documentary ones, with great caution; according to M. R., the author of the article “From the life of the clergy in the 18th and early 19th centuries” (Russian Star., 1900, No. 11), on annual holidays all kinds of offerings to the authorities were necessary; in books, this expense was usually displayed as follows: “sent to such and such 6 bags of wheat flour for receiving strange people.”

As is known, homosexuality was also widespread in Ancient Greece.

Charity for the poor in Russia. Nikitin (Det. Room 1894, 6)

Historical perspective on charity. Guerrier. (Ib., 1890, 19)

Catherine II's view on taxes is interesting; according to her expression (Spirit of the Journals) 1816 No. 3: “taxes are for the state what sails are for a ship; they serve to bring it into the harbor more quickly and reliably, and not to overwhelm it with their burden, or keep it always on the open sea, and finally sink it."

Orders of public charity in Russia. Safronov (Son of the Fatherland 1839, XII).

It is impossible not to remember in this regard that in Rome not only were they not taking any money from those attending theatrical performances, not to mention the absence of a tax on these performances, but, on the contrary, the spectators were given two obols for each visit (these are the so-called theorists ).

Rus. West. Modern years. 1863, No. 28. In general, Catherine II, without introducing direct taxes in favor of the poor, established a complex system of indirect taxes: for example, fine money from merchants and townspeople, and duties from fortresses on ships and vessels were used in favor of orders of public charity (P.S.Z., No. 16188; review of the beneficial action. prize. Journal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 1854, part 9).
Yaroslavl under Elizaveta Petrovna, Trefoleva (Other and New Russia, 1877, 4). In general, the “well workers” of ancient Rus' were supported by voluntary donations. In one of the folk pictures (Rovinsky, St. Stat., Read in the II Department. Imp. Ak. Nauk, vol. 27, No. 768) a log hut is shown, and two convicts are sitting in it: one of them has his hands in the convicts, the legs are chained to a chair, and the other has handcuffs on his hands and his legs in jails; there is a third prisoner in the prison yard; two "benefactors" give alms. When the collection of alms by convicts is prohibited, they submit petitions for permission to do so: so on May 2, 1704, prison inmates “on business” ask “to let their convicts into the world against them, so that they, the poor, sitting in the prison yard, will not die of starvation (" Karnovich, historical note on beggars and Voronezh acts, vol. I, p. 320). The difficult situation, in general, of convicts is eloquently evident from their petition to the Right Reverend Mitrofan (Voron. Acts, No. 165), where they write: “we are sitting in a prison in Voronezh and the brethren rule against us and the brothers beat us for the right without ceasing, but we have nothing to pay Vlaznov with and are dying of hunger and cold.”

M. N. Sokolovsky

(printed from: the magazine "Bulletin of Charity" (No. 1) for 1901; published by the Institute of Civil Society Problems in the form of a brochure in 2000)

Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution

higher professional education

"Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University

named after I.N. Ulyanov"

(Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education "UlSPU named after I.N. Ulyanov")

History department

Department of History

Course work

Charity in Russia in the era of Catherine II

Completed:

3rd year student

Tyugaev Pavel

Vyacheslavovich

Checked by: Ph.D.,

Senior Lecturer

Department of History

Solovyova Ekaterina Alexandrovna

Ulyanovsk - 2015

Introduction

Chapter 1. Formation and development of Russian charity in the era of Catherine II

1 Charity: analysis of the conceptual apparatus

2 Social policy of the state under Catherine II

3 The scale and significance of Catherine II’s reforms in the field of charity

Chapter 2. Main sources of charitable activity in Russia in the second half of the 18th century

1 The role of the church in charity

2 Contribution to charity of Russian philanthropists and patrons of the arts during the period of absolutism

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

Of all the women who reigned in Russia in the 18th century, only Catherine II ruled independently, delving into all matters of domestic and foreign policy. She saw her main tasks in strengthening the autocracy, reorganizing the state apparatus in order to strengthen it, and strengthening Russia’s international position. To a large extent, she succeeded, and her reign is one of the brilliant pages of Russian history.

The reign of Catherine II lasted more than three and a half decades (1762-1796). It is filled with many events in internal and external affairs, the implementation of plans that continued what was done under Peter the Great. “To Peter the Great - Catherine the Second” - these are the words engraved on the pedestal of the famous monument to the first emperor of Russia by E. Falcone. Catherine II, an active and extraordinary ruler, had the right to such a comparison. The achievements and victories of her reign bear in many ways the imprint of her personal participation and directing attention. A talented, educated, literary gifted nature, she knew how to do a lot - manage a huge empire, which she passionately strived for since her arrival in Russia, and get along with people, and, what is very important, bring talented, gifted people closer to her, entrust them with important matters according to their abilities.

During her reign, Catherine II paid special attention to the development of the charity system in Russia.

It was during this period in the history of Russia that completely new approaches to public charity appeared, governing bodies for this area of social policy were created, attention was focused primarily on closed-type charitable institutions, paths were opened to the birth of public organizations, and the network of institutions and categories of charity was significantly expanded. Let's take a closer look at this period of our history.

The relevance of the study lies in the fact that currently our society faces particularly acute problems of social assistance. As a result of the ongoing socio-economic and political changes, phenomena such as unemployment, professional and life instability for many segments of the population have appeared in our lives. The country is now in complete confusion, indecision, and sometimes inaction.

Purpose of the study: to consider the theoretical foundations of charitable activities in Russia in the 18th century.

The object of the study is the state's social policy in the field of charity in the 18th century.

The subject of the study is charitable activities in Russia in the 18th century.

Research objectives:

Consider the formation and development of Russian state charity in the era of Catherine II

Consider the main sources of charitable activity in Russia in the second half of the 18th century

Research methods: analysis of scientific literature; comparative analysis.

The structure of the course work: the work consists of an introduction, two paragraphs, a conclusion, and a bibliography.

Chapter 1. Formation and development of Russian charity in the era of Catherine II

1.1 Charity: analysis of the conceptual apparatus

Over the past decade, many new and old concepts related to charity have begun to enter our lives. We often hear about sponsors and funds, technical assistance, grants and donations. They write about donors, philanthropists and patrons of the arts. So, when starting to consider charity at the present stage, we first need to define a number of basic concepts.

Firsov M.V. gives a different interpretation of the concept of charity depending on the historical era before the twentieth century “charity was understood as a manifestation of compassion for one’s neighbor, a non-state form of helping those in need; in the twentieth century until the 90s, this concept was interpreted as a form of class manipulation of public consciousness in a capitalist society; Today, charity refers to non-profit activities aimed at helping those in need.”

On the one hand, charity is helping those in need, showing compassion for one's neighbor. In this sense, charity is closely related to mercy, which is “compassionate love, heartfelt participation in the lives of the weak and needy (sick, wounded, elderly).” Such charity is most often carried out through donations or alms, and the recipients of help are suffering people, we can say that this is pure charity or charity in the narrow sense of the word. From mercy came a number of concepts such as alms (giving, payment), mercy (favor), mercy (compassion).

The concept of philanthropy is closely related to charity. Although it is broader, for example V.I. Dahl interprets philanthropy as “philanthropy, concern for improving the lot of humanity”; very often one can find the definition of philanthropy as a synonym for charity.

Charitable funds can be used to improve the well-being of an individual or organization, which helps to enhance its activities. You can give money or equipment to a hospital or school, theater or museum without asking for anything in return, not even gratitude. If a philanthropist has revealed his passions, and he liked to regularly support something socially useful, and especially culture, he can be called a philanthropist.

In the explanatory dictionary of the Russian language, “a philanthropist is a rich patron of the sciences and arts; in general, one who patronizes any business or undertaking.” This concept originated from the ancient Roman nobleman Maecenas (1st century BC), who once patronized poets and artists.

There is also a sponsor and we hear about them most often. Sponsors usually support some important event, construction or creation of something, or help an organization that, in their opinion, is useful. Support is provided both in money and in the form of services or products from the sponsor. There is also the concept of an information sponsor of an action or event.

The main forms of charitable support include donations, grants, and technical assistance.

“Technical assistance is a type of gratuitous assistance (assistance) provided in order to provide support in the implementation of economic and social reforms.” Technical assistance is provided to foreign organizations and governments, often through intergovernmental agreements, and is aimed at promoting reforms in the country.

A donation can be defined as a contribution or gift to another person. Donations can be made to civil, medical, educational institutions, social protection institutions, charitable, scientific and educational institutions, museums, foundations, etc.

The most complex and at the same time quite new for Russia is the concept of a grant. The translation of this English word into Russian has many meanings, including: “a) gift, gift; b) subsidy, subsidy; c) benefit is a one-time cash payment; d) scholarship." Thus, we can conclude that a grand is a one-time subsidy awarded to a scientific institution, creative team or individual performer. From everything that is known about grandees in Russian and international practice, we can focus on the following most important characteristics: a) gratuitousness; b) target nature; c) public utility.

Another concept that has gained considerable currency recently is the fund. “There are two types of funds: one type is established to provide material assistance to any social strata or groups of the population; the other type is a public organization in charge of collecting and distributing funds for certain public needs.” Among the funds there are those that were created for the purpose of financing various charitable programs at the expense of companies, banks, organizations and individual citizens.

These funds are called charitable, their task is to effectively distribute funds.

Also of interest is another new concept - donor, more often this word always means a person who gives his blood, but this is a very narrow interpretation of the concept, a donor is also a kind of philanthropist. Rich regions that give part of their income and budget to more backward entities are also called donors; foreign states or their international institutions are also called donors. We can say that a donor is someone who gives something for free.

As a result, it should be said that the most used concepts are charity, mercy, donation. There are also a number of concepts that are new to Russia, such as donor, sponsor, grandee, which, despite their novelty, are still included in the conceptual apparatus of charity as a theory. The emergence of new concepts can be explained by the development of society and the state, as well as an increase in the volume of assistance from foreign countries, and as a consequence the introduction of foreign concepts.

2 Social policy of the state under Catherine II

With the accession of Catherine II to the throne, a second attempt began during the 18th century to change the socio-economic structure of the country. Driven by the ideas of the French enlighteners, the “crowned philosopher” in the first years of her reign took a number of specific measures to organize a new type of charitable institutions. On her instructions, one of the most educated people in Russia at that time, Ivan Ivanovich Betskoy (1704-1795), worked on this. The bastard son of Field Marshal I. Yu. Trubetskoy, he received “excellent teaching” in Copenhagen and Paris, visited “secular salons, made acquaintance with encyclopedists, and through conversations and readings acquired fashionable ideas.” In Russia, Betskoy seriously took up the problem of education. By decree of March 3, 1763, he was appointed director of the Academy of Arts, at which he established an educational school, and in September, at his proposal and plan, it was decided to open an orphanage in Moscow “for infants deprived of parental affection,” foundlings. In 1770, the same house was opened in St. Petersburg. The main ideas of I. I. Betsky were reflected in his report “The General Institution on the Education of Youth of Both Sexes” (1764), the charters of educational houses and the gentry corps. His pedagogical system was based on the views of Locke, Rousseau, Helvetius, and was quite eclectic and utopian. Together with Empress Betskaya, he planned to “create a new breed of people.”

First, according to his plan, it is necessary to form the first generation of “new fathers and mothers”, capable of raising their own kind, “following from generation to generation, into future centuries.” “But education cannot achieve its goal if the first generations being educated are not completely isolated from the elders adjacent to them, mired in ignorance, routine and vices,” argued I.I., supported by Catherine II. Betskoy. He spoke of the need to create an artificial barrier between the old and new generations so that the first, “animal-like and violent in words and deeds,” could not influence the second. He saw such a “barrier” in closed educational institutions (boarding schools), where, under the guidance of Russian (and not foreign) mentors, “children and youth would be kept until their hearts became stronger and their minds matured, i.e. until they were 18 -20 years".

It was one of these closed institutions that was to become the Orphanage, which accepted foundlings, children born out of wedlock, “legitimate children abandoned by their parents due to poverty.” The feeding and upbringing of infants was to be carried out within the walls of the Orphanage, “in order, through proper influence, to form the “third rank” and a new kind of people useful to the state from parentless and homeless children. The pupils of the house received significant privileges: they and their children and grandchildren remained free and not were subject to enslavement; had the right to buy houses, shops, set up factories and factories, join the merchant class, engage in trades and dispose of their property.

The issue of financing orphanages was interestingly addressed. The state did not provide funds; the houses had to exist on the “willing donations” of benefactors, who received various privileges for this. In their favor were taxes on imported playing cards, 25% of income from theaters, public balls and all kinds of gambling for money. Later, loan and savings treasuries were opened at the Orphanages, which brought in significant income. The houses were autonomous institutions, had their own jurisdiction, were exempt from duties, could buy and sell land, houses, villages, “set up” plants, factories, workshops, and organize lotteries without bureaucratic red tape.

At orphanages there were hospitals for poor mothers in labor with an anonymous department, where women were not required to have documents and were even allowed to give birth wearing masks. To work with them, the positions of midwives were established, and later a school for training midwives was opened at the St. Petersburg Maternity Hospital.

According to the idea of I.I. Betsky, the Educational Society for Noble Maidens was founded in St. Petersburg (1764), and a year later, within the walls of the Novodevichy Convent in the capital, the first school in Russia was opened for girls of noble origin and bourgeois rank, who studied in various departments. This closed institution also prepared a “new breed of people”: noble girls studied a wide range of general educational subjects at that time - archeology and heraldry, etiquette and drawing, music and dancing, sewing, knitting and home economics; bourgeois women had a less intellectual program, the main attention was paid to needlework, cooking, and cleaning (they were destined to become mothers, housewives, and housekeepers in the future). With the opening of the Smolny Institute, Catherine laid the foundation for women's education in the country. Girls from poor families and orphans who passed the local ballot (selection) were educated at the institute using government money. I. I. Betskoy was the main trustee and head of the school.

In 1765, Betskoy became the chief of the gentry cadet corps, for which he drew up a charter in accordance with his pedagogical program. And in 1773, according to his plan, with funds from Prokopiy Demidov, an educational Commercial School for merchant children was established in Moscow. In the end, Catherine II gave Betsky the leadership of all educational and educational institutions, richly endowing him. He donated most of his fortune to the needs of his brainchild - closed educational institutions. In 1778, the Senate awarded I.I. Betsky a large gold medal embossed in his honor with the inscription “For love of the Fatherland.” Towards the end of her life, Catherine began to be jealous of the popularity of her loyal subject (Betskoy appropriates it to the glory of the state), alienating him from herself. But his ideas troubled the minds of his compatriots for a long time.

At the end of the 18th century, the state continued to take care of the “provision of care for the insane” and the opening of new almshouses. Catherine also drew attention to such a serious social phenomenon as prostitution. Continuing the persecution of “obscenity” that began back in the 17th century and punishing “the maintenance of houses of debauchery,” she at the same time tried to place prostitution under police supervision: in St. Petersburg, special areas were allocated “for free (brothel) houses.”

All of the listed events of Catherine’s era were, as it were, preparation for the creation of a state charity system with its own administrative apparatus, finances, forms and methods of work. The administrative reform carried out in 1775 directly affected the social sphere, as did the urban reform that followed it in 1782. In 1785, “letters of grant” to the nobility and cities, which consolidated and completed the class division of the population of Russia, significantly expanded the administrative and executive functions of local nobility and city self-government. The “Institution on Provinces” created, among others, administrative and police bodies: provincial government with a governor at its head and an institution completely new to Russia both in name and purpose - an order of public charity.

The regulation approved by the Committee of Ministers in 1828 reads: “Finding<...>The [Committee] decided that the existence of educational homes in the provinces was useless and extremely inconvenient: the establishment of these under the authority of the Orders of public charity would not be allowed again.<...>Since 1812, noticing the poor state of these institutions in the provinces, the Ministry issued instructions to take measures to prevent the high mortality rate of children in them and to bring the institutions themselves into improvement; but due to the lack of methods of Orders and various inconveniences in the maintenance of these institutions, insistence on this could not be successful. Meanwhile, the supply of children increases from time to time to the point that in some places almost the same amount was spent on the maintenance of these institutions alone as in general on all other institutions, and expenses in other Orders exceeded income.”

According to the reformers, the orders created in each province were headed by the governor, and included assessors from the provincial class courts. They managed local schools, medical and charitable institutions (almshouses, orphanages and educational homes, hospitals, hospitals). Their care included “abandoned babies,” “persons incapable of continuing military service,” their families and the families of military personnel, orphans, the wounded, the decrepit and crippled, honored civil officials and others. Orders of public charity were also in charge of prison-type institutions - “workhouses” and “restraint houses.” Workhouses were intended for those who were idle or engaged in mendicant work. Serfs who had offended their master were sent to restraining houses; children were allowed to be admitted there for “disobedience” to their parents. In these institutions, a harsh semi-prison regime reigned with cruel corporal punishment for “lazy people of both sexes.”

New for that time were the principles on which the work of the orders was based: the relative independence of local charitable institutions, the involvement of the local population in their management, financing from public funds and from local sources. The income of the orders was based on an emergency fund (it was started by the amount of 15 thousand rubles received by each order from the government upon opening) from interest on real estate, benefits from the city and treasury, penalty and fine money, economic expenses (from workhouses, factories, etc. .) and random receipts (private donations, etc.). Over the 50 years of existence, orders of public charity, participating in credit and other financial transactions, turned into rich original banks - their capital grew to 25 million rubles.

Simultaneously with the orders, in 1775, orphans' courts were created under each city magistrate, which survived until 1917 - class bodies in charge of guardianship affairs of "merchant and bourgeois widows and young orphans" (since 1818 - personal nobles, if they did not have land property) . The courts monitored the state of guardianship and examined complaints against guardians. There was also noble guardianship.

In addition to orders of public charity, police authorities and officials took care of those in need. They sent “loitering people” to workhouses and restraint houses; together with other departments they opened Tollhaus (insane asylums) - in 1779 in St. Petersburg “due to the accumulation of mentally ill people in the capital”, in 1785 - in Moscow, in 1786 - in Novgorod. In 1852, public charity orders maintained 50 homes and hospitals for the insane with 2,554 beds. .

1.3 The scale and significance of Catherine II’s reforms in the field of charity

The Catherine period in the history of Russia enriched the country with new approaches to public charity, brought to life governing bodies in this area of social policy, focused attention primarily on closed charitable institutions, opened the way to the birth of public organizations, and significantly expanded the network of institutions and categories of charity. But, unfortunately, the fruits of these innovations turned out to be bitter. Orders of public charity, which existed until the zemstvo reform of 1864 (in non-zemst provinces - until 1917), were constantly criticized by the public for bureaucracy, extortion, formalism, for the fact that they did not satisfy even a small proportion of those in need, that "government funds for charity it turned out to be not enough." The entire system of public charity suffered from a lack of employees, especially practical workers, whom no one had trained professionally.

The utopian nature of Betsky’s plan was evident already in the first years of the existence of the educational institutions he created. Designed to prepare “a new breed of people of the third rank,” orphanages became popular from the moment of their opening; they received babies in numbers that exceeded the capabilities of the available premises. Experts noted: “The accumulation of a large number of children in the wards, the lack of a sufficient number of nurses, the inexperience of doctors and educators, the admission of children who were often sick and even dying - all this resulted in a terrifying mortality rate for pets.” In the Moscow House, out of 523 children taken into care in 1764, 424 (81.1%) died, in 1765 out of 793 - 597 (75.3%), in 1766 out of 742 - 494 (66.6%) , in 1767 out of 1,089 - 1073 (98.5%).

This picture could not but cause alarm and corresponding government action. The best solution was considered to be the transfer of children to be fed and raised by peasant families, who were paid for this. The mortality rate in the Moscow educational home immediately decreased by 2-3 times and never reached the level of the first years of its existence (in 1768 - 61.7%, in 1769 - 39.1%, in 1770 - 24.6%), on the other hand, the mortality rate of children in the village increased: both children from orphanages and infants of wet nurses died (from introduced diseases and decreased nutrition). The problem of saving newborn foundlings remained relevant until the end of the 19th century, when the mortality rate among them reached 50%.

Educational institutions for girls of noble and bourgeois rank did not live up to the hopes of the organizers. Children from the age of five were torn away from their families for 15 years of education, having taken a subscription from their parents or relatives that they would not take the children away until they graduated from college. In the school, which was closed to visitors, paramilitary barracks discipline and corporal punishment reigned, the food was not very filling, it was cold in the classrooms and bedrooms, the boarders often caught colds and often suffered from nervous diseases. Cool ladies and teachers did not always live up to their purpose and remained in the memories of former Smolensk students as the embodiment of evil and hatred of children. Life was no better for the boys at the Commercial School - the same conditions of admission, the same drill and overcrowding in classrooms and dormitories, the same lack of childhood and its inherent joys.

Under Catherine II, the beginning of an organization of “open public charity” was laid, i.e. "outside closed charitable institutions." A decree of 1781 obliged the capital's city magistrate to appoint a "city broker" who was supposed to open public charity circles with voluntary alms once a week and distribute money "to the poor who cannot earn their food by working." Like Peter I, in the legislative acts of 1797 on appanages, the Empress charged rural and urban communities and parishes with the obligation to “feed their poor, preventing them from falling into poverty.” Monitoring the implementation of the law and charity “outside institutions” was carried out by police officials: zemstvo captains (1775), mayors (1781), private bailiffs (1782). The responsibility of communities for caring for the poor was confirmed by the laws of 1801 and 1809. The latter provided for the maintenance of those repeatedly detained for begging at the expense of public charity orders, and attributed the costs to those guilty of “negligence and neglect.” In 1838, under Nicholas I, the St. Petersburg and Moscow committees “for the analysis and charity of those asking for alms” were organized. In development of previous measures and methods of combating the beggar industry, the “Regulations” on the committees provided for the placement of malicious beggars in workhouses, and for “those in need who voluntarily came for help”, assistance in their needs. To achieve this, the committees, consisting of 10 members, staff and agents, were required to "engage in careful consideration of cases of necessary relief and prevention of destitution." But at that time, as contemporaries and practical workers in the social sphere of the late 19th century noted, the system of open charity and closed charity “gave very insignificant results.” However, the ideas born in Catherine’s era, supported in the first quarter by Alexander I, which survived the dark period of Nicholas’s reaction, laid a serious foundation for the development of the state and public system of Russian charity, the way for which was opened by the reforms of the 60-70s of the last century.

The largest organizational measure of Catherine II was distinguished by a more independent character, which consisted in her creation of a whole network of special institutions called “Orders of Public Charity”, opened in forty provinces on the basis of the “institution on provinces” of 1775. According to this law, “the order of public charity is entrusted with the care and supervision of the establishment and solid foundation of: 1) public schools; 2) establishment and supervision of orphanages for the care and education of male and female orphans left without food after the death of their parents; 3) establishment and supervision of hospitals, or hospitals for the treatment of the sick; 4) establishment and supervision of almshouses for men and women, the poor, the crippled and the elderly; 5) establishment and supervision of a special home for terminally ill patients; 6) establishment and supervision of a home for the insane; 7) establishment and supervision of workhouses for both sexes; 8) establishment and supervision of restraining houses for people of both sexes.

Thus, by the legislative act of November 7, 1775, called “Institutions for the management of the provinces of the All-Russian Empire,” a state system of public charity was established, which flourished for a long time and has survived in general terms to this day. The legislation of Catherine II decisively turned the matter of charity from the zemstvo social principle, where assistance to the poor was provided by zemstvo people using public funds, towards centralization on a state bureaucratic basis, where the charity of the orphaned and wretched was handled by police and order officials.

Catherine II laid the foundation for the creation of charitable societies in Russia, which later became the institutional basis of the modern non-profit sector. Philanthropic and educational activities developed by Catherine II continued after her death.

In Catherine's era, orders of public charity - bodies independent of provincial authorities and subordinate directly to the supreme authority and the Senate - were created in 40 out of 55 provinces. For institutions controlled by orders, their own system of funding sources was developed: they received both government funds and money from philanthropists.

Continuing the fight against professional beggary and vagrancy, Catherine II, through legislative acts, somewhat reduced the severity of the repressive measures used in Peter's time. The poor began to be treated more humanely and differentiated; they began to be looked at not only as malicious sloths, but also as unfortunate victims of unfavorable living conditions. Therefore, Catherine II, instead of the corporal punishment practiced under Peter I, introduced a system of forced labor and labor charity for the poor. In 1775, the first workhouses, run by the police, appeared for those loitering or engaged in mendicant work.

To heal vicious people, Catherine commands the opening of restraining houses with a difficult semi-prison regime. The “violent sloths” and persons of “indecent and intemperate living” placed in them were constantly busy with work, except for time for sleep and food. The lazy were ordered to be forced, and the disobedient were to be punished with rods (no more than three blows for one offense) or put on bread and water for three days or in prison for a week.

Under Catherine II, a network of educational homes for orphans and illegitimate (“disgraceful”) babies appeared. In Russia this has become a charitable innovation. The first such educational home with a hospital for poor mothers in labor was opened in 1764 in Moscow as a state institution. This house was built with private donations (Catherine II herself allocated 100 thousand rubles from her own funds and pledged to donate another 50 thousand each year, and Tsarevich Pavel - 20 thousand each). Six years later, the same house was opened in St. Petersburg.

Foundlings, children born out of wedlock, as well as “legitimate children abandoned by their parents due to poverty” were accepted into educational homes. Here children grew up and received a basic general education, and from the age of 14-15, pupils were sent to study crafts in workshops organized at the house itself, or to city artisans. Millions of sums were spent on the maintenance of orphanages.

In Catherine's era, so-called orphanages also appeared, that is, educational institutions for children of poor parents - merchants, officials, office workers, townspeople and guild workers - who "due to their poverty did not have the means to place their children in any schools." Boys and girls aged 7 to 11 were accepted into orphanages. After graduating from school, children were assigned to serve in government agencies, factories, factories, or various types of entrepreneurs to learn crafts, trade, and other useful activities.

Under Catherine II, the first all-class hospitals for the poor appeared in Moscow: Pavlovskaya (1764) and Catherine’s with an almshouse attached to it (1776). In institutions subordinated to the orders of public charity, those in need were treated, as a rule, free of charge. In 1779 in St. Petersburg, in 1785 in Moscow, and in 1786 in Novgorod, homes for the mentally ill were opened. In an effort to prevent the emergence of new beggars among the poor population, Catherine ordered the opening of loans and loan offices for those in need, as well as craft and other schools, where people from ruined families could obtain a decent profession in order to then earn their own living.

Under Catherine II, the beginning of the organization of “open public charity” was laid, dealing with pensions, benefits, food money, providing a profession, etc. It operated “outside closed charitable institutions,” that is, hospitals, almshouses, nursing homes, etc. For example, a decree of 1781 obligated the capital city magistrate to appoint a “city broker” who was supposed to open public charity circles with free-will alms once a week and distribute money “to the poor who cannot earn their living by work.” The Empress also charged rural and urban communities and parishes with the responsibility of “feeding their poor, preventing them from falling into poverty.”

Only during the reign of Catherine II did regular contributions from donors actually begin for the construction of charitable institutions, for the organization of public and private places to help those in need.

From “love of poverty,” the country gradually moved to relatively effective forms and methods of the state policy of social assistance that was already emerging at that time for orphans, illegitimates, the elderly, the disabled, the disabled and the sick.

Chapter 2. Main sources of charitable activity in Russia in the second half of the 18th century

1 The role of the church in charity

Christianity in Rus' played a positive role in the development of charity. The historian V.O. spoke better than others about the essence of ancient Russian charity. Klyuchevsky: “Love of humanity among our ancestors was the same as love of poverty, and loving one’s neighbor meant, first of all, feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the prisoner in prison. Charity was considered necessary not so much for the benefactors, but for the benefactors - for their moral health , to raise the level of their moral improvement and as a means to ensure a good future in the afterlife."

Introducing Orthodox Christianity in Rus', Prince Vladimir deeply perceived its provisions addressed to the human soul, calling on people to take care of their neighbors and be merciful, such as: “Blessed are those who give alms, and they will have mercy,” “Give to those who ask you, and therefore, whoever wants to borrow from you, do not turn away,” “Sell your estates and give alms,” “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep,” etc.

In an effort to consolidate and develop charitable activities, to give them a more or less organized character, Prince Vladimir issues a Charter, in which public assistance to those in need was entrusted to the clergy in the person of the patriarch and church structures subordinate to him.

In addition, Prince Vladimir carried out a number of very progressive measures for his time to introduce Russians to education and culture. Establishes public festivals, primarily taking care of the “feeding” of the poor, wanderers, orphans and widows, distributing great alms to them.

People's rumors widely praised the charitable deeds of Prince Vladimir throughout Rus'. Legends were made about him, his kindness and selflessness were sung in epics for many years, testifying to the responsiveness of Russians to care and attention. Prince Vladimir, for his mercy and love of poverty, among other services to the Church, was one of the first Russians to be canonized.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which finally took shape under Yaroslav the Wise, also created its own charity center in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery. This monastery was known for its mercy towards the needy - it had a free hotel for pilgrims, a hospital, and a free refectory for poor wanderers. At first, the church was the main subject of charitable activities. Church property was declared the property of the poor, and the clergy were only stewards of this property in the interests of the disadvantaged. Donations to the church also flowed under the influence

view of charity as “protection from sins.” This ensured the church for a long time a leading role in charitable activities.

The great-grandson of Prince Vladimir, Vladimir Monomakh, distinguished himself with special care for the poor and wretched: “Feed and water the wandering and beggars like a mother’s child.” The “Spiritual” he compiled for his children had great educational significance for many generations in Rus', in which his concerns about their moral state and the need to be attentive to the needs of the people were expressed.

Princes and other wealthy people stipulated, as a rule, in their wills, deeds of gift and other documents that part of their funds should be used to support “the widow, the lame and the blind.” In the famous “Teaching of Vladimir Monomakh” to his sons, among the three good deeds by which the devil is defeated, alms were mentioned (along with repentance and tears).

However, the customs of those times contributed to the development of beggarly trade, vagrancy and parasitism. “Church and almshouse people” were, in essence, professional beggars who formed entire settlements around churches and monasteries. Cathedrals and churches had their own “regular” beggars - 10-12 people each, who received alms in money.

During the invasion of the Tatar-Mongols, in the conditions of the collapse of the unified state system and foreign domination, the Russian Orthodox Church objectively came to the fore, from the point of view of preserving and uniting the spiritual forces of the people, which at the same time became the only refuge for the poor, elderly and people in need of help. beggars.

During the period of the Tatar-Mongol invasion, the Russian Orthodox Church, which had 100 monasteries by the end of the 13th century, simultaneously became a single refuge for people in need of help - the poor, elderly and beggars, and actually completely took on charitable functions. This was facilitated by the fact that the Tatar khans, especially in the first period of their rule over Russia, respected the clergy, gave letters to metropolitans, exempted churches and monasteries from taxes, thereby giving the church a greater opportunity to engage in acts of mercy and charity, and help those in need.

The Church, with its fairly widespread network of monasteries by that time, actually completely took on charitable functions, taking advantage of the fact that the Tatar khans, especially in the first period of domination over Russia, respected the clergy, repeatedly gave Russian metropolitans letters (labels), and liberated churches and monasteries, from tributes and extortions, left the clergy to take care of the charity of those in need.

In addition to the “regular” beggars, monasteries and churches fed wanderers, pilgrims, and everyone who flocked to them during natural disasters, wars, and famine. The Miracle Monastery in the Kremlin in the 14th century "opened a hospitable shelter for foreign Orthodox saints and elders who came to Moscow, especially for the southern Slavs and Greeks, who found shelter in it, lived in it for a long time and, when dying, were buried in its own cemetery" .

During the difficult period of civil strife and national oppression, the activity of the Russian Orthodox Church was of exceptional importance for preserving among the people their inherent spirituality, faith in goodness and justice, and did not allow their hearts to harden and become indifferent to people’s grief, their suffering and deprivation. She inspired the people to fight for national revival.

The restoration of centralized Russian statehood and the final deliverance from the Tatar-Mongol yoke in the second half of the 15th century opened up wide scope for the development of the national economy and culture, the growth of public consciousness, the level of which largely determines the ability of society and the state to solve existing social problems.

The revived Russia slowly gained strength. However, even in these conditions, the traditions of charitable activities laid down since the times of Kievan Rus were not forgotten. Gradually, as the state strengthened, two mutually complementary directions began to be more clearly defined in the development of public charity. The first is the continuation of the traditions of Vladimir and other princes of Kievan Rus, setting an example of personal benefit and patronage to the poor, elderly, orphans and other suffering people. The second is strengthening the organizing principle, improving the forms and scale of state public charity while maintaining and encouraging the charitable activities of the Church.

For example, the Grand Duke of Moscow and “All Rus'” Ivan Danilovich (1328-1341) forever entered the history of Russia under the nickname Kalita (bag of money), who, being very pious and merciful, used to constantly carry a wallet with him and give alms from it to the poor and needy. One cannot help but recall Boris Godunov, who, when crowned king (1598), promised that no one in the state would tolerate need and poverty, declaring at the same time that “he will give away his last shirt if there is a need for the people.”

This tradition, fully supported by both the Church and public opinion, strengthened and developed in Russia, gradually acquiring a wider scope and numerous adherents among people of different classes, whose material well-being allowed them to use their personal means to help alleviate the lot of the poor, especially the poor, sick and orphans, as well as those without shelter and the ability to provide food for themselves. However, as social problems become more complex, the public consciousness feels the need to search for new approaches to the problems of combating beggary and other ailments affecting society; it seems more sufficient to limit ourselves to private charity and already established forms of church and monastic charity.

Researchers note that the scribal books mention the existence of almshouses, “poor houses”, “God’s houses”, etc. in all parish churches. Social support of parishes was expressed in a wide variety of forms. Residents of the parish were aware of the material needs of each family, so parish charity corresponded much better to the actual needs of the poor than alms. It could be assumed that zemstvo-parish activities would receive further development. In reality this did not happen. The paradigm of help and support already in the 16th - first half of the 11th centuries. changes a lot. The government is gaining organizational and legislative strength, limiting the role of the Church in charity, and taking those in need under its legislative control. In the 17th century The system of serfdom finally emerged. There was practically no free population left on the territory of the parishes, and therefore their significance as zemstvo self-governing units weakened significantly. In addition, from the time of Ivan the Terrible, the highest clergy began to lay claim to the church treasury of the parishes and gradually achieved this. By the end of the 18th century. the parish's right to elect a priest is replaced by divine appointment. The interest of the population in the parish is gradually decreasing and its activities are increasingly beginning to be limited by the framework of the church structure. Along with the decline in the importance of the parish, parish charity also declines.

The role and importance of the church in social and charitable activities increased after the Council of the Hundred Heads in 1551, when the state began to seek to regulate the charity of churches and monasteries. They were instructed to separate the really needy, lepers and old people, enumerate them in all cities and set up for them men's and women's almshouses under the direction of priests and priests, and also maintain these institutions through donations. The complete subordination of the Orthodox Church to the autocracy occurred under Peter I. The church reform of Peter 1 essentially put the church at the service of the state, which

was also reflected in the nature of the social and charitable activities of the Russian Church, subordinate to government collegiums - financial and judicial. However, the plan to transform the merciful and charitable institution of the Orthodox Church, conceived by Peter I, was implemented only during the reign of Catherine II.

During the reign of Catherine II, the Orthodox Church became an almost inexhaustible source of money for reforms aimed at reorganizing the system of charity.

In 1764, a manifesto was issued, according to which the previous system of church land ownership was abolished. From now on, all land plots that the Church had accumulated over several hundred years were subject to transfer to the College of Economy, and the peasants who inhabited them henceforth began to be called “economic”. As a result, about 1,000,000 peasants passed into the hands of the state. 1.366 million rubles in taxes were collected from economic peasants per year. Of this amount, approximately 30% went to the benefit of the Church at first, but later, with an increase in the amount of tax collected, it was reduced to 13%. In fact, this was a legalized form of robbery, but in the absence of the institution of patriarchy, scattered protests of the clergy were easily suppressed. Those who disagreed with the reform were exiled to distant monasteries.

The Orthodox Church was dealt a severe blow from which it was never able to recover. The economic independence of the Church was put an end to, but the funds received during the secularization of church lands made it possible to carry out a reform of the entire system of charity, which subsequently proved the viability of many of its ideas.

2 Contribution to charity of Russian philanthropists and patrons of the arts during the period of absolutism

The eighteenth - early nineteenth centuries were marked by charitable deeds of major representatives of enlightened noble philanthropy. Vivid examples of charitable institutions of this time are the Golitsyn hospital, the first city hospital, the Sheremetevsky house, the Mariinsky hospital and others. Catherine and her successors did not interfere, but for the most part encouraged the development of charity and patronage of the arts. Donating large sums to charity, opening charitable institutions, donating libraries and collections to museums, the Academy of Sciences, universities, schools, etc. began to be considered “good form.” Thus, the first president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Countess Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova donated to Moscow University “a rich cabinet of natural history that she had collected over 30 years... valued at 50 thousand rubles”

The Russian rich man Dmitry Mikhailovich Golitsyn at the end of the 18th century “established in Moscow and provided at his own expense an extensive hospital, known as Golitsyn’s.” The Oryol landowner Lutovikov founded a hospital, pharmacy and laboratory in Mtsensk and the district in 1806. The collegiate adviser Zlobin contributed 40 thousand rubles in 1808 to establish hospitals for barge haulers in different places. The merchant Sintsov opened an almshouse for 50 people in Orlov. The wealthy peasant Sampov in the Yenisei province and the merchant Popov in Arzamas founded almshouses for soldiers in 1812. But among the numerous private benefactors and patrons of the arts in the 18th and early 19th centuries, there were their own “stars of the first magnitude.” Chancellor Nikolai Petrovich Rumyantsev left most of his considerable wealth for “good enlightenment.” During his lifetime, he spent huge sums on publishing historical monuments, collecting and studying chronicles, and equipped scientific expeditions and ships for trips around the world at his own expense. The count immortalized his name by establishing a library accessible to everyone, and “bequeathed many collections and various rarities for the establishment of a museum, which, valued with the building at 2 million rubles, bears his name” (now the Russian State Public Library, formerly named after V. I. Lenin).

Count Alexander Sergeevich, one of the first representatives of the famous Stroganov dynasty, was considered a “brilliant type of Russian nobleman of Catherine’s age,” who on special days organized open dinners for everyone and did not allow his serfs to be oppressed. The Count founded a garden in St. Petersburg, open to the public, a favorite place for country festivities among the then residents of the capital. Musical concerts, song evenings, illuminations and fireworks were organized there with Stroganov’s money. There was a public library in the garden, which was available to anyone who wanted to read in it. His own library was considered one of the first in Europe with a huge number of rare publications. He was known as the patron of sciences, literature and the arts, and collected the richest collections of valuable paintings, prints, medals and stones. With his generous help, the Iliad was translated and published for the first time in Russia.

The world-famous Sheremetevs did a lot for Russian charity. In particular, according to the will of Nikolai Petrovich’s wife Praskovya Ivanovna Zhemchugova (died in 1803), they annually gave out large sums to “helpless poor orphans - girls”, poor families, “poor artisans”, part of the funds was used to buy out debts. N.P. Sheremetev founded the Hospice House in Moscow on Sukharevskaya Square (now the Sklifosovsky Hospital). The house cared for 100 people, and the hospital attached to it - 50. The count invested 2.5 million rubles in the construction of these institutions, and “for eternal maintenance” he assigned “significant estates” to them.

A special page in the history of the Fatherland was written by the Decembrists, who were able not only to survive in Siberian penal servitude and exile, but also to skillfully adapt to new conditions, combine physical labor with spiritual life, and leave a deep mark in the grateful memory of their descendants. It is known how much they did for the economic and especially cultural development of Siberia: even in the convict prisons, I. I. Pushchin organized an artel that distributed monetary and other assistance among needy prisoners; vegetables from the Decembrist public garden ended up on the table of the settlers surrounding the casemate; under the guise of teaching 30 peasant boys church singing, a school for their primary education was opened right in the prison. In the settlement of Pushchin, Yakushkin, Trubetskoy, Volkonsky, Lunin, Bestuzhev and others, they gave a lot of money and time to the schools they opened, music and art schools, museums, libraries, hospitals and medical reception centers, taught peasants agronomy, literacy, and provided material assistance to the local population .

Many modest Russian citizens - teachers and merchants, artisans and doctors - were also involved in charitable activities. One of them is Fyodor Petrovich Haaz (1780-1853), “holy doctor”, Albert Schweitzer of the 19th century. Having received a diploma from the University of Vienna, the German Haas came to Moscow in 1802 and remained here for the rest of his life. A merciful and compassionate soul called him to almshouses, hospitals for the poor, and shelters. He spent all his funds (considerable at first) on helping the poor and prisoners; in 1819 he began working in prisons, the terrible conditions of which horrified him. He joined the Society for the Care of Prisons, and at the age of 47 became a member and secretary of the Moscow Committee of the Society. Refusing rich clients, spending all his funds on the poor, Dr. Haaz enjoyed the reputation in the city of an eccentric, an “exaggerated philanthropist” who had lost his mind. And he was one of those people who, according to A.F. Koni, walk silently along the thorny road of their lives, sowing goodness right and left and not expecting, amid general indifference and all kinds of obstacles, not only sympathy for their work, but even fair relationship".

Dr. Haas's goal since the 30s of the last century was to improve conditions of detention and correct prisoners. The Doctor's merit is the reconstruction of the Moscow prison, which from a hotbed of infection, venereal diseases, a hungry and cold barracks turned into a normal institution for prisoners with a workshop where prisoners were engaged in bookbinding, carpentry, tailoring and weaving bast shoes. A school for the children of prisoners, built with funds raised by the committee, also appeared there.

“Friend of humanity” Fyodor Petrovich Haaz helped the inhabitants of prison castles with food, clothing and shoes purchased with his own money and money collected from the population, wrote for them “The ABC of Christian Good Behavior”, visited the criminals in their cells who were waiting for him like a god.”

One of the doctor’s philanthropic deeds was the invention and introduction of lightweight, leather-lined hand and leg shackles to replace the heavy and uncomfortable devices in which the unfortunate convicts were shackled during the transition to Siberia. The ascetic, whose name medical students during his lifetime demanded to be included in the list of saints, died in poverty and was buried at the expense of the police. The name of the “prison doctor” Fyodor Gaaz is synonymous with love for people, mercy and self-sacrifice in the name of man, and his life is a model for Professional social workers.

Under Catherine II, charitable and other public organizations, also involved in philanthropy, arose and developed relatively successfully; Mutual aid funds and private charitable institutions arose. At the time of the Nikolaev reaction, the government was very wary of the charitable social movement, created bureaucratic slingshots when establishing societies and institutions, and demanded a certificate of the moral qualities of donors. This slowed down the development of public and private charity. Despite the great efforts of the founders and employees, many charitable institutions were in dire straits and could not accommodate all those in need of charity. At the time of the rapid advance of the capitalist Moloch, other, new forms and methods of social policy and practice were needed; society was not satisfied with the strict bureaucratic restrictions on initiative and innovation in the social sphere, as in other areas of Russian life.

Conclusion

Summing up the activities in the field of charity during the reign of Catherine II, we can say the following. Being German by origin, she tried in every possible way to make the life of her new subjects easier, whose well-being was paramount to her. How unhypocritical her love for the Russian people was is best evidenced by the fact that when in 1775 they wanted to erect a monument to her, for which over 50,000 rubles were collected, Catherine II replied: “For me, it is more important to erect a monument in the hearts of my subjects.” than in marble." With these words, she ordered that the collected money be sent to organize orphanages.

It is well known that Catherine II herself, to a large extent, set an example for her subjects. Thus, in 1767, the Russian nobility and merchants collected more than 52 thousand rubles for the construction of a monument to the empress, but Catherine II, adding another 150 thousand rubles from herself, allocated this money for the construction of schools, orphanages, hospitals and almshouses.

Many nobles followed her example, so that the total amount of donations amounted to about half a million rubles.

Catherine II sought to interest the entire population of the country in this activity, since the treasury could not cope with all the problems on its own. The increase in public activity of citizens towards the poor was facilitated by the “City Regulations” adopted in 1785. In accordance with this legislative act, classes such as the clergy, merchants, philistines and peasants were established, which must take care of their disabled representatives. Thus, the merchants, having large financial resources, oversaw the activities of a number of homes for the mentally ill, almshouses, orphanages, and schools, which provided assistance to all sufferers, regardless of social status.

However, quite soon it became obvious that there were a number of negative factors preventing the successful implementation of all this. The most acute problem was the financial support of charitable institutions. Funds allocated by the Order of Public Charity from the state budget for the implementation of assistance programs

By the middle of the 19th century, Russian state, public and private charity had reached a state that barely met the requirements of the time. Orders of public charity, due to the too large and motley range of charitable institutions that they were supposed to manage, the mixing of disparate tasks - school education, medical care, raising children, labor assistance, open charity - could not cope equally well with everything. Lack of funding had an impact, and the lack of qualified personnel sometimes negated the enormous efforts of charity enthusiasts. However, the almost century-long experience of these unique local governments cannot be underestimated, since self-government of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was born from it.”

But nevertheless, despite the numerous problems, the system of public charity by the end of the reign of Catherine II in Russia already existed and was distinguished by a variety of forms and governments. Under Catherine II, the assistance system was reorganized and adapted to living conditions. Rich, noble, educated people considered it an honor

invest your funds in charitable institutions, almshouses, shelters, orphanages.

Patronage was encouraged in every possible way by various insignia and medals, and the philanthropists themselves enjoyed great prestige in society.

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