"Fruit of Hope" : recruitment of Kyiv Academy students to the hospital schools in the mid-eighteenth-century Russian Empire

Abstract

The article examines the choice of medical career as a way of social mobility by students of the Kyiv Academy, focusing on the first recruitment campaigns to hospital schools in Saint Petersburg and Moscow in the mid-eighteenth century. Researchers have long noted that students from the Hetmanate and Sloboda Ukraine were a valuable source for imperial domestic physicians. Lesser is known about possible motivations of the volunteers to study medicine in view of their social background. The article argues that a medical career was an active choice for social advancement made not only by clergy students, but Cossacks and commoners as well. Among those who wished to pursue a medical career were also towners. It was rarely attractive to representatives of the Cossack elite at the time under consideration. The article illustrates the process of educational integration of many students from the lower social ranks on their way to becoming participants in imperial project. First, the article examines how this trajectory of social advancement was shaped by the recruitment policy of the imperial medical administration, both declared and implemented. Then, it discusses the students’ travels to the capitals in light of the challenges they faced and the decisions they made on their way to join the medical ranks. The final part examines the social background of the students and their academic performance to understand what the choice of medical profession meant for different social groups and how inclusive this path of social mobility was.