The Development of the Regulatory Framework of the Caucasus Educational District in the Second Half of the 19th century

This paper explores the development of the regulatory framework of the Caucasus Educational District in the second half of the 19th century. Consideration is given to instruments on both general issues and specific issues dealing with secondary, lower, primary, and private education. The study’s source base relies on a whole raft of legislative materials, including regulations, instructions, statutes, circular proposals, and rules. These documents were published both as part of collections of documents on issues related to the system of public education in the Caucasus Educational District and separately. The study’s methodology is grounded in the principle of systematicity and the chronological principle. The use of the former helped to systematize legislative and regulatory instruments into two major groups – those on general issues and those dealing with secondary, lower, primary, and private education specifically. The use of the latter helped to examine the development of the District’s regulatory framework in its chronological sequence. The author’s conclusion is that in the second half of the 19th century the Caucasus Educational District witnessed the process of unification of the regulatory framework regulating the educational process in the region. In the period from the late 1860s to the early 1870s, the government implemented in the Caucasus a set of educational standards used in the European part of the Russian Empire. These standards, which covered secondary, lower, primary, and private education, played an overall large role in enhancing the quality of education offered by educational institutions in the region.