Let Them Teach Me! Or How They Used to Teach in Russia

You won’t believe it, but in education Russia not only did not lag behind Western countries—it in many ways set the tone for them! Thanks to Alexander Bushkov, we can learn from primary sources: Why was Methodius, one of the creators of the Slavic alphabet, thrown into prison and subjected to torture and all kinds of humiliations? Where did “unauthorized” books come from in the time of Ivan the Terrible, and why was the struggle against them fought to the death? For what reason was Russian first printer Ivan Fedorov persecuted and forced to flee to Lithuania? Why did the Dutchman Jan Tessing need to publish books in Russian in his homeland? What was the danger of the education system invented by Catherine II, under which children had to be isolated from their family? Why were some works of A. S. Pushkin, including the poem “Ruslan and Lyudmila,” under a categorical ban in Russian lyceums?