To the Issue of Primary Education in the Amur Region in 1859–1917

The article considers primary education in the Amur region in the period 1859-1917.There were used as sources the documents of the Russian State Historical Archive (St.Petersburg, Russian Federation) as well as various statistical information from official materials related to the Amur Region.Among the archival materials of the Russian State Historical Archive, the diagram of the number of school-age children (8-11 years old) and the number of students as of January 1, 1915, which is stored in the fund 733 (Ministry of Public Education), is of great importance.The work relies on the basic historical principles of consistency, objectivity and historicism with the use of a social approach aimed at a comprehensive study of the problem.In conclusion, the authors state that the example of the Amur region of the Russian Empire is almost a unique case, when by 1916 more than 90 % of school-age children were at a desk in the region.The reasons for this were the sparsely populated region (in 1909 there were only 275 settlements in the region) and harsh climatic conditions (sub-zero temperature values were typical for almost the entire school year from September to May, which excluded children from attending schools outside their locality), and the joint work of the Ministry of Public Education and the Holy Synod in the development of the primary education network (the ministry opened its own schools in villages with a large population, and the church -in sparsely populated).All this in aggregate has yielded results and primary education has become almost ubiquitous in the Amur region.