Immediately after the church wedding ceremony in the summer of 1775, Empress Catherine II and Grigory Potemkin arrived in Moscow on the eve of celebrations in honor of the conqueror of Turks, Count and Field Marshal P ё tr Rumiantsev. But the latter refused to make a triumphal entry into the city and came in a carriage escorted by an officer to see the empress. The handsome and tall colonel caught Catherine’s eye. Noticing her interested glance, P. A. Rumiantsev praised his subordinate, pointing out his erudition, honesty, and gallantry.
Catherine II at once presented her new choice with a diamond ring with her name inscribed in gold. The valuable gift was followed by appointment as private secretary. Thus Petro Zavadovsky, born in Ukraine, became a long-time favorite of the empress.
The Zavadovsky family dates back to an old noble clan. His great grandfather Yakiv Ravich-Zavadovsky joined the Russian military service in the second half of the seventeenth century and achieved the rank of colonel. Grandfather Vasyl was bunchukovy tovarysh (a minor Cossack rank – Ed.). P. V. Zavadovsky’s father, also Vasyl, served as bunchukovy tovarysh first at the General Military Chancery and then at the General Little Russian Auditing Commission and, finally, at the regimental Starodub Audit Commission. He made friends with Ukraine’s last Hetman Kyrylo Razumovsky. The future education minister’s mother was a daughter of Mykhailo Shyrai, the pidkomorny of Starodub district and a prominent collector of Ukrainian folklore.
The Zavadovskys owned small estates in the Starodub and Mhlynsky districts of Chernihiv province with about 800 serfs. Petro Zavadovsky was the second child in the family. He was raised together with elder brother Ivan, younger brothers Yakiv, Illia, and Danylo, as well as sisters Maryna and Mariya. This is why maternal grandfather M. S. Shyrai took the two older grandsons to his house for upbringing. Then he sent Ivan and Petro to a Jesuit school in Orsha which was then part of the Polish Kingdom. Petro Zavadovsky completed his education at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy which trained young people for both religious and secular careers.
In 1760 P. V. Zavadovsky joined the administration of Ukraine’s last hetman, Count K. H. Razumovsky, and then began to serve in the Little Russian Collegium after the latter was established in 1764. The empress appointed Count P. A. Rumiantsev President of the Collegium and Governor General of Little Russia. The chancery was at that time administered by the future State Chancellor of the Russian Empire, Aleksandr Bezborodko. Young Petro Zavadovsky was appointed to head a department. After that, Bezborodko and he were not only colleagues but also good friends.
When P. A. Rumiantsev was appointed commander of the Russian army in the war against the Turkish Empire (1768-1774), he took all his staff to the battle area. In July 1770 Zavadovsky, head of the privy council, distinguished himself in the battles of Larga and Cagul, was promoted to colonel, and effectively commanded the Starooskolsky Regiment to the end of the war.
When Turkey asked for peace in 1774, Petro Zavadovsky was entrusted with drafting a peace treaty with the Porte. He did this together with Army Chief of Staff Count S. P. Vorontsov. By joint effort they drew up the text of the document to be signed at the village of Kuchuk- Kainarji in July 1774.
Under this treaty, Russia obtained access to the Black Sea and the right for Russian merchant vessels to pass through the Mediterranean straits. Of great importance were the treaty clauses whereby the Ottoman Empire ceded the Crimean Khanate to Russia and the principalities of Moldova and Wallachia were granted autonomy and placed under a Russian protectorate. The Kuchuk-Kainarji Peace Treaty, one of the eighteenth century’s most important political events, setting out the Romanov empire’s foreign political priorities for a century to come.
On July 10, 1775, the day of celebrations over the peace treaty with Turkey, P. V. Zavadovsky was rewarded with the estate of Liachichi near Briansk and then, on November 26, 1775, was awarded Order of Saint George, fourth degree. It is at that time that he became, unexpectedly for many, the private secretary of Catherine the Great.
The ever-increasing closeness between Catherine the Great and Petro Zavadovsky was so obvious that everybody considered the new favorite a rival to Potemkin. But Zavadovsky felt ill at ease in the atmosphere of intrigues. “I have come to know the court and the people from the bad side,” he wrote to S. R. Vorontsov , “but I will in no way change my moral principles, for I covet nothing.” When Potemkin returned to the capital, P. V. Zavadovsky was removed from the court, receiving a lump sum of 80,000 rubles, 5,000 rubles in pension, and 3,800 peasant serfs. He left for his estate at Lialichi with a heavy heart. But as soon as June 1777 the empress asked him to return. A month later P. V. Zavadovsky arrived in the capital but, finding nothing to do there, he went back to his estate.
Then again a “vagary of fate:” P. V. Zavadovsky received a series of invitations from Catherine II to arrive in Petersburg. However, this time he does not hasten to do so, setting out for Northern Palmyra only in 1780. Catherine vested him with various duties that imply attending Senate and Sublime Court Council sessions. She ordered Zavadovsky to supervise the construction of a palace in Tsaritsyn led by V. I. Bazhenov and decided to test him in the field of public education, placing him on the board of the Society of Noble Maidens (Smolny Convent, later the institute for noble ladies in Saint Petersburg). Soon after, the empress bestowed on him the title of privy counselor, and her favorite became a senator.
The empress took a genuine interest in pedagogy as an instrument of raising “a new breed of people.” Moreover, the economy required literate and well-educated employees or, to quote an ukase of Catherine, “people of the third estate.” To this end, Catherine began in practice to establish schools for public education in the late 1770s and early eighties. In 1782 she set up the School Establishment Commission with P. V. Zavadovsky at its head. The activities of this commission made it possible to set up four-class public schools in provincial centers and two-class lesser schools in district centers. Formally, these schools catered to all social groups and were funded by the state.
In 1783 the Commission opened the Main Public School in Saint Petersburg to train teachers for the empire’s provincial and district educational institutions. In 1786 this school produced a spin- off called the Teachers Seminary, which existed up to 1802. In 1786 Catherine II approved the Statute of Public Schools on the basis of which the Zavadovsky commission drafted and published the Rules for Public School Students and the Regulations for Teachers of First and Second Grade Public Schools of the Russian Empire. It was of paramount importance that these documents sealed the establishment of a single system of secular schooling from the small public school to university and with a common system of teaching methods and curricula.
In 1785 Catherine II appointed Zavadovsky principal of the Medical Surgery School. To organize the training of European-level medics in Russia, Zavadovsky studied in detail the system of medical education abroad. He came to the conclusion that the medical school was to be converted into an academy. Pointing out an acute need for doctors, he suggested increasing the number of students.
Among Zavadovsky’s many duties was one of supplying the army and the navy with doctors and paramedics. The commission also dealt with the organization of university level education. In 1787 it drew up a university development plan whereby it was planned to open universities in Penza, Chernihiv and Pskov. The document also set out the status of universities and professors.
(To be continued)
