“Only in You I Found Support in the Implementation of the Highest Idea”: Correspondence between the Organizer of the First Popular Class of Military Drill Service and Gymnastics A. A. Lutskevich and Minister of War V. A. Sukhomlinov

Abstract

The article is devoted to the activities of the inspector of public schools of the Bakhmut district Antiokh Andreyevich Lutskevich, whose name in historiography is associated with the emergence of detachments of the military drill service and gymnastics (the so-called “poteshnye”) in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. The study, prepared on the materials of the Russian State Military Historical Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Historical Archive, in which A. A. Lutskevich’s correspondence with War Minister V. A. Sukhomlinov was postponed, presents a new look at the personality of the “pioneer” of the “poteshnye” movement. Information about the creation of the first popular class of construction and gymnastics, brought by Lutskevich through the mediation of Sukhomlinov to Emperor Nicholas II, was the starting point for developing a program for the physical development of Russian youth, and at the same time the reason for aggravating interdepartmental disagreements. The actions of an official who served in the Ministry of Education, committed bypassing the immediate superiors, make it possible to characterize his activities as a person who is not devoid of career ambitions, using patriotic rhetoric trying to achieve status privileges through the Highest Disposition.