Illustrations in Russian history school textbooks in the second half of the 19th–early 20th centuries: Structure and content

The article is the first publication to analyze the illustrative content of pre-revolutionary secondary school textbooks on Russian history — a topic that has been a subject of neither historical nor pedagogical research. The article was prepared against the background of today’s scholarly interest in the experience of the old school as well as contemporary discussions about the possibility and feasibility of using such experience in modern education. The author identifies the earliest pre-revolutionary examples of educational illustrations in school textbooks approved by the Ministry of Public Education. The article compares the structure and methods of presenting illustrative material in different types of textbooks (i. e., compulsory and additional textbooks) for junior and senior classes, and analyzes the content of images on the title pages of textbooks. The author comes to the conclusion that the practice of using illustrative material in pre-revolutionary textbooks on Russian history is clearly divided into two periods: the second half of the 19th century (the first isolated experiments) and the beginning of the 20th century (widespread use in junior classes). In compulsory textbooks, the structure of illustrative material remained virtually unchanged throughout the entire period under study. In such textbooks, illustrations were usually anonymous, but they were more varied and, theoretically, allowed teachers to organize in-class work with them in different ways. However, there was no methodological apparatus in the compulsory textbooks, and the images only illustrated the text but did not interact with it in any way. In contrast, additional textbooks were characterized by genre scenes (which were the only or the prevailing type of images), sometimes executed by famous artists.