Grazhdanstvo Obychaev Detskikh

Grazhdanstvo Obychaev Detskikh

 

(Code of Children’s Behavior; also Grazhdanstvo nravov blagikh—Code of Good Manners), a manuscript document of Russian pedagogy from the second half of the 17th century, containing 164 rules of children’s deportment. In prerevolutionary historical literature such writers as V. O. Kliuchevskii and A. I. Sobolevskii erroneously considered the Grazhdanstvo obychaev detskikh a translated work. In fact it was written by Epiphanius Slavinetskii and was a product of Russian pedagogical thought, modeled on a work by the Czech educator J. A. Comenius—Rules of Deportment, Collected for Young People in 1653.

The Grazhdanstvo obychaev detskikh contains detailed rules for the behavior of children at table, during a conversation, when meeting adults, in school, at church, and when playing games. There are several copies of the manuscript at the Lenin State Library of the USSR, the Historical Museum in Moscow, and other repositories of old Russian manuscripts.