Pedagogical experiment of the first rector of the Ural state mining institute P.P. Von Weymarn as an effort to reform the higher education institution in 1917-1920

Abstract

Based on sources recently discovered and included in the database of scientific publications, the article analyzes the pedagogical activity of the scientist-chemist, the first rector and founder of the Ural Mining Institute in Ekaterinburg Petr Petrovich von Weymarn, whose name is now almost forgotten. The article shows that this activity can be evaluated as a pedagogical experiment on reformation of the higher education institution system, which could have been adopted in Russia if Bolsheviks lost the Civil War. Pedagogical activity of von Weymarn has a theoretical basis that he developed under the influence of Wilhelm Ostwald, the Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and the idealist philosopher, as well as the example of the Petrograd (Petersburg) Mining Institute, which for von Weymarn was not only an alma mater but an example of a reformist attitudes toward the scientific and pedagogical process in higher education.The article gives a detailed analysis of the currently available philosophical and pedagogical essays of P.P. von Weymarn, known as «Essays on the Energy of Culture», as well as the practical application of these theoretical works on the basis of the Ural Mining Institute in Ekaterinburg and in Vladivostok.With the advent of Soviet power, von Weymarn's pedagogical experiment was forcibly interrupted, and he became «persona non-grata» in the Soviet Union, but now his name is being restored. Unfortunately, he is known either as a chemist or as the founder and first rector of the current Ural State Mining University, but not as a teacher who offered his view of reforming the higher school system. This article fills this gap, revealing not only the work of von Weymarn, but also describing the difficult period of changing the old scientific school system, which could have taken a completely different development path.