Conflicts in the Community of the Imperial Tomsk University: On the Foundations of Conflicts in the Universities of the Russian Empire During the Late XIX - Early XX Centuries

The prerequisites for the formation (grounds) of conflicts in the Community of the Imperial Tomsk University are investigated. The article is based on the materials of the office documentation, periodicals and sources of personal origin. The aim of the study is to characterize the ethics of the Russian University Community during the late 19th - early 20th centuries in relation to the grounds of these conflicts. The main research methods are comparative historical and historical abstraction. To achieve the aim, the authors considered the conflicts in the Community of the Imperial Tomsk University from the point of view of a number of contradictory trends. These are the contradictions between the personal and corporate interests of the participants of conflicts, between the manifestation of conflicts and their isolation in the Community of the University, and finally, between the adherence to democratic ethics and the need to build conflict behavior depending on the conservative ethics. The main accusations of the participants of conflicts, the strategies of their conflict behavior, the function of the Rector of the Tomsk University, the Curator of the West Siberian educational district and officials of the Ministry of Public Education in conflicts reveal the coexistence of two alternative principles in university ethics. On the one hand, a controversial ethical system separated the Community of the Imperial Tomsk University into two groups. This division was partly based on the criterion of the political views. At the same time, the situation of the conflict forced their participants to choose between two largely contradicting ethical codes. The advantages were accordingly gained by those participants in the conflicts who confronted their opponents with the unrealizable choice: between self-exposure, or voluntary defeat in the conflict, as an adept of the Government (as an informer) and the escalation of the conflict as its instigator. In the first case, the participant of the conflict doomed himself to condemnation of his colleagues, and in the second - to the disfavor of his superiors. It is emphasized that the Professors who found themselves in the conditions of such a choice (S.I. Korzhinskiy, M.A. Reisner, P.M. Bogaevskiy, P.I. Lyashchenko and a number of others) voluntarily or forcibly left the Imperial Tomsk University.