Classroom and Empire tells the story of the politics of alphabets, languages, and schooling in the eastern empire of Russia from 1860 to 1917. Wayne Dowler presents an intriguing cast of characters, including Nikolai Il'minskii, whose method of schooling non-Russian children lay at the heart of nationalist controversy; Ismail Bey Gaspirali, whose new method schools attempted to reconcile Islam with modern secular philosophy and science; Konstantin Pobedonostsev, procurator of the Holy Synod and éminence grise of the reigns of Alexander III and his son Nicholas II; and Sophia Chicherina, feisty defender of the Il'minskii school. Dowler shows us that the problem of schooling non-Russians was unresolved by the fall of the Romanovs in 1917, smouldered through much of the Soviet period, and has re-emerged today as a major source of divisiveness in the Russian Federation.

Wayne Dowler is a professor of History at Scarborough College, University of Toronto.

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"Dowler recovers for us the ideas and intentions if Il'minskii and the "method" that shaped the efforts to educate non-Russians in eastern borderlands. His general knowledge of Russian history allows him to describe effectively the general Imperial context shaping Il'minskii and expansion in the east. I learned much from Classroom and Empire." Austin Jersild, Department of History, Old Dominion University