Vasilii Ivanovich Vodovozov

Born Sept. 27 (Oct. 9), 1825, in St. Petersburg; died May 17 (29), 1886, also in St. Petersburg. Russian pedagogue and specialist in methods of philology. Follower of K. D. Ushinskii.

Vodovozov graduated from the University of St. Petersburg in 1847 and worked as a teacher of literature for almost 20 years. During the 1860’s he took an active part in the discussion of the projects for reforming elementary and secondary schools; he set forth a demand for the general development of a network of schools and for making them accessible to broad strata of the population. Vodovozov was opposed to the drilling, the routine, and the scholasticism then dominant in the educational institutions. In 1866 he was discharged from his teaching post as ” politically unreliable.”

Vodovozov made an important contribution to the creation of a literature of curricular methodology for students and teachers in elementary and secondary schools, as well as to the methodology of teaching Russian literature. Vodovozov’s principal methodological work—Philology in Examples and Selections (1868)—for many years served as a reference manual for teachers and to a considerable degree has not lost its importance to the present day. On the initiative and with the active participation of Vodovozov, a Sunday school was opened at the First St. Petersburg Gymnasium. He wrote a number of books directed at popular readers, including Stories From Russian History (issues 1-2, 1861-64), An Elementary Reader (part 2, 1879), and the popular Sketches From 18th-Century Russian History (1882).