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Primary sourceDocument5 August 1786

Statute for the People's Schools of the Russian Empire

Catherine II of Russia · 5 August 1786

The full text of Catherine the Great's 1786 education law, establishing public schools across the Russian Empire.

This is the law Catherine herself issued, showing her direct role as a reformer shaping Russian education policy.

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Front cover of an old book bound in brown mottled leather with a worn spine on the left. A paper label at top left reads 37, Y-79, 62939 in handwriting, and a blank paper label sits at the lower left.
Statute for the People's Schools of the Russian Empire, issued by Catherine II, 1786.

About this source

What it is

This is a printed book containing the complete text of the Statute for the People's Schools, a law issued during the reign of Empress Catherine II in 1786.

Why it matters

This statute was a major Enlightenment-inspired reform, setting out how public schooling would be organized across the Russian Empire. It reveals Catherine's interest in education as a tool of modernization and reflects the broader Enlightenment ideas that shaped her reign.

Look closer

  • What does the choice to create a formal statute, rather than just an order, tell you about how laws worked in this period?
  • Who would have had access to these new schools, and who might have been left out?
  • Why might an empress want to be remembered as a reformer of education?

This document is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Catherine the Great on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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