The Fruits of Enlightenment: How the War in South America Helped to Found Kyiv University

Kyiv University is the largest educational institution in Ukraine. And this year it celebrated the 190th anniversary of its official opening. However, the history of its creation can be traced back more than two hundred years earlier... to South America. Where, at the turn of the XVI and XVII centuries and at the junction of Spanish and Portuguese colonial possessions, unusual settlements - reductions - appeared. 

They were created by the Jesuits for the Guarani Indians, who were seeking refuge from European ‘slave hunters’. Life in the reductions was arranged in such a way that the natives avoided the ‘temptations of civilisation’ - primarily money and property. In other words, a kind of ‘communism’ reigned - but only for the subjects, as like other communist experimenters, the ‘fathers’ of the Society of Jesus managed the reductions in their own, including commercial, interests. 

The existence of the Jesuit ‘alternative’ did not suit the neighbours, the Spaniards and Portuguese, however, as their colonists needed land and slaves. In 1750, the two states signed an agreement to divide the Jesuit lands between them. The ‘fathers’ themselves, and even more so the Indians, were ‘forgotten to be asked’. For some reason, they did not want to surrender without a fight. A war broke out that lasted four years. And which the metropoles eventually won.

However, the victory in South America was not enough for them. In 1758, the head of the Portuguese government, Sebastião de Carvalho, also known as the Marquis of Pombal, accused the Jesuits of involvement in an assassination attempt on the king. Under this pretext, he banned the Society of Jesus from Portugal and its overseas possessions around the world. He also demanded the dissolution of the Jesuit order in other countries. He printed and distributed propaganda literature, threatened Rome with war... and succeeded. 

In 1773, Pope Clement XIV issued a special decree announcing the termination of the Society of Jesus and explaining the reasons for this decision. According to the pope's decision, the order's property was to be transferred to secular authorities. And most Catholic monarchs did appropriate it.

But the Rzeczpospolita decided that it was better not to ‘pocket’ the unexpected wealth. Instead, they decided to use it for a really important cause - public education. Especially since the Jesuits had long been involved in education in this country. In the same year, 1773, at the suggestion of King Stanisław II August, the Sejm created the Educational Commission, the first institution in Europe to perform the functions of the Ministry of Education. The property of the dissolved order was transferred to it.

The Commission's policy was actually determined by a group of intellectuals led by Hugo Kollontaj. A coherent system of three-level educational institutions was created, with the universities of Krakow and Vilnius at the top. The language of instruction was Polish, and special attention was paid to the study of the exact and natural sciences, economics and law, as well as physical education - all in the spirit of the Enlightenment. 

However, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was soon divided among its neighbours - Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The division was initiated by Catherine II, who hated Polish revolutionaries.  Her grandson, Alexander I, on the contrary, flirted with the Poles, hoping to annex their entire country to his possessions. That is why he allowed the leaders of the Educational Commission to continue their work within his empire. And even to establish a new educational institution in the Ukrainian lands - the Volyn Lyceum in Kremenets.  

The tsar's dreams came true, but only halfway - only part of Poland with Warsaw was annexed to Russia. But even there, the empire's authorities were not happy. In 1830, the Poles deposed Nicholas I, the brother and successor of Alexander I, from the ‘Warsaw’ throne. These events went down in history as the November Uprising. Russian troops suppressed the uprising with maximum brutality. The tsar punished the ‘rebels’ in his own domains by, among other things, closing both the University of Vilnius and the Volyn Lyceum. The property, the library, the greenhouse, and even the lyceum's teachers were transported to Kyiv and turned into... a new university. Yes, the current Kyiv University.

Nicholas I hoped to turn it into a bastion of the ‘Russian world’ in the lands annexed to the empire. But the Polish movement soon revived within its walls. And then Ukrainian political organisations appeared at the university. However, this was a completely different story. It had nothing to do with South America.