… established in 1869 on the initiative of the reactionary Minister of Public Education of the tsarist government, D. Tolstoy, to monitor and control the activities of public schools and the reliability of teachers. Inspectors of public schools carried out administrative and control functions of supervision of zemstvo, parish, city and county schools. At first, one inspector was appointed to the province, since 1874 the number of public school inspectors in each province was increased to three. The directors and inspectors of public schools were obliged to fight against ‘criminal political and moral propaganda’ in the public school. The inspection <…> existed until the October Revolution of 1917.

In terms of the number of schools, the Simbirsk province, in comparison with other provinces, occupied not the last place; but <…> only 89, or 19 percent of the total number of institutions belonged to more or less organized schools: all other schools were either only listed on paper, when in fact they did not exist, or if they really existed, they did it in the most pathetic form. Thus, during my first inspection of public schools in January 1870, there were actually no girls’ schools in the village of Mostovoy Sloboda and in the village of Karlinsky in the Simbirsk district, although these schools were registered. In the villages of Sobacheyevka, Zhdamirovka, and in the village of Poretsky in the Alatyrsky district, schools were found in the following condition. In the first of these villages, the school was located in the church guardhouse, which was literally frozen through. There I found 3 boys who were reading by syllables. They were alone because the local priest-teacher had gone to a nearby village for urgent work. In another village, Zhdamirovka, a school was hardly found with the help of a volost foreman. In a cramped, dark, snow-covered hut, a local peasant teacher taught 24 boys whose knowledge was found unsatisfactory.