The article examines the transformation of schooling in Russia at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the lens of state needs and the emerging civil service. Drawing on normative measures and administrative practice, it traces the establishment of professional schools (naval, engineering, artillery, elementary numeracy, and clerical), early attempts at cross-estate access and elements of compulsory schooling, and the institutional linkage between education and service rank codified by the Table of Ranks. The study argues that this period forged the foundations of a state educational policy as a legal-organizational institution serving public interests, including the creation of the Academy of Sciences and the training of national scientific personnel. These developments formed a durable framework of Russian education that underpins the country’s contemporary modernization and sovereign priorities.
A. A. Nikitenko (Thu,) studied this question.