Baikal

Manuscripts

Fraternity

FRATERNITY – weekly pupil’s journal.
Notebook, 21 pages. Typed, without bookbinding.

Title of the manuscript

Irkutsk male gymnasium had deep traditions of literary creativity of its pupils. For example, in 1836 under the guidance of a Verbal Studies instructor Ivan Polivanov, the gymnasts prepared the first collection, called “Literary experiments of Irkutsk guberniya gymnasium pupils.” (S-Petersburg, 1836). Later at the beginning of the XX century small books were published, called “The first snowdrop”. The gymnasts under the guidance of instructors prepared these editions and of course had teachers’ censorship. It has different by a higher level of thought, more elaborate composition than those experiments the pupils did by themselves.

Nevertheless, independent attempts of pupils’ periodic issues are interesting for the specialists because it shows the way of living the gymnasts had without instructors’ surveillance. For example, issue 4 (Jan, 20, 1903), kept in the library fund, was opened with a poem hymn “To a free word”. Then there were newspaper abstracts about Russian and world events. A good story cover was about an accident in the mines near Yuzovka of Ekaterinburg guberniya and Dreifus’ case in France. Next section “Critical articles, thoughts aloud and etc” contains a story “Vomura’s gentlemen” (it meant a family of Ivan Nikiforovich Rumov, who was a director of Irkutsk gymnasium at that time). A story author (and he was, perhaps, an editor under a nickname “Utis”) changed the names of the main characters by writing them the other way round. He compared the representatives of this family with parasites and fleece. But it was hard to understand the author why this family provoked so many negative feelings. This issue of the magazine also contained poetic “Call”, dedicated to “real Zionists” and then a story about fallen women. Everything was signed by a nickname “E. Angarskaya”. Supposedly, men and women equality was an important problem for readers and magazine compilers because there were many opinions about previous publications.