Igor Fedyukin, Director of the Centre for Source Studies, Spoke at Conferences in Florence and Lyon

Igor Fedyukin spoke about the role of ‘idealists’ in educational innovations during the time of Peter the Great in a speech at the European University Institute (Florence, November 3, 2014), and at an international colloquium ‘European Innovations, Norms and Models in the Russian Empire: 18th – early 20th centuries’ (Lyon, November 7, 2014), organized by the University of Paris I Pantheon-Sorbonne and Urals Federal University with the participation of École normale supérieure de Lyon.

The study looks at the role of administrative entrepreneurs – ‘idealists’ in borrowing, adjusting, and assimilating new organizational forms and practices in education in 1700s – 1730s. It also suggests a typology of administrative entrepreneurship. Through the example of Baron de Saint-Hilaire and the Naval Academy, which was founded in 1715 in St. Petersburg, the author demonstrates the interweaving and collision between the interests of the monarch, the ‘idealist’ and his competitors, as well as the influence of ‘idealist’ strategies on the final appearance of the new school.