Imperial Commercial College
Imperial Commercial College is an educational institution founded in 1772 as part of the Moscow Foundling Home for teaching merchants' children.
In 1904 it received Imperial status and officially ceased its existence in 1918 but de facto it continued working.
In 1772, Prokofi Akinfiyevich Demidov turned to Catherine II with a suggestion to open as part of the Moscow Foundling Home an "Educational School for Children from Merchant Families for Commerce."
Merchants considered it unprofitable to send away their children for 15 years when could have spent that time teaching them at their own companies.
[2] Students were divided by age, and each group had its own set of classes with a different number of allocated hours: In 1779 by the order of Catherine II the school was renamed after Demidov and bared its name up until its move to St. Petersburg in 1800.
[4] After the death of Catherine II in 1796, Pavel I named his wife Maria Fedorovna "Head of the Society for Education of Noble Maidens" and on 2 May 1797 she took over supervision of Moscow and St. Petersburg Foundling homes.
Each graduate also was awarded 100 roubles to get started – these moneys up until 1828 were funded personally by the empress Maria Fedorovna.
The members were expected not just participate in management but also invest their own funds in repairs, books and general student upkeep.
Parents signed an agreement that their children would stay in merchants forever, no matter what class they belong to previously.
In 1811, the Council turned to Emperor Alexander I with a petition to allow graduates to determine their own choices but only in 1822 the life-long commitment was abolished and changed for a 10-year term for mandatory involvement into any kind of commerce.
[11] The College kept in close contact with the Home, provided boarding for students, but many parents had reservations about letting their children out of their sight for too long.
Some of that was because of persisting class differences: as a somewhat charity establishment, the College couldn’t provide any social guarantees for its graduates.
[15] Under the patronage of the state and mostly working with its support, the College was tasked with training business people for the betterment of the country.
The first trustee (only for a year) was Prince Oldenburgsky, while patronage remained with Empress Aleskandra Fedorovna, wife of Nikolai I.
Admissions criteria and curriculum changed once again: now the College accepted 9-10-year-old boys, and the course lasted eight years.
During the War, the budget decreased and there were no more students from the most militarized area of the country – the Don Host Oblast – by January 1917.
Vladimir Lenin and other Bolsheviks were convinced that specialized commerce education wasn't necessary,[14] The number of commercial establishments was reached 370 by the end of 1917, including schools, trade schools, classes and courses, but the College survived and never stopped classes.
It was said that that year the College seized its existence, but the St. Petersburg Central Historical Archives have documents citing admissions in 1919, 1920 and 1924.
[29] The building for the plant was a nod to the old Commercial College, which was among the few institutions in pre-revolutionary Russia to train specialists in refrigeration.
