At one point, I had decided that language was a lovely, useless thing for a young gentleman to study, and so if it could be studied at university, then one of the boys, probably Combeferre or Jehan, had to be studying it.

Here's what I've been able to find at short notice, from a very nice series of pages on the St Petersburg State University website.

In 1758-1765 the Academy's University and Grammar School were headed by Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711-1765). His multi-faceted work as Rector resulted, among other things, in more democratic admission procedures, as well as in strengthened relations with foreign universities and academies of sciences, particularly with German and French universities and the Paris Academy of Science.

I consider this bit important because it shows a desire to link with Paris before the Revolution and I believe allows one to consider that all later developments in Russia came about as a result of developments in the German principalities and in France.

On 8 February 1819, St Petersburg University was re-created by an edict of Alexander I: the Institute of Education (founded in 1806 in the wake of the closure of the Academy School) was transformed into a university. Initially, it consisted of three faculties: those of History and Philology, of Philosophy and Law (afterwards, of Law), and of Physics and Mathematics.

This is probably somewhat typical of European universities of the period. The Russians rarely showed strong innovation at this time, and the university in the 1820s was a battle between Europeanised Russia and "traditional" Russia (cf. Vissarion Belinskii, Francis B. Randall, Oriental Research Partners, 1987).

The early nineteenth century saw the establishment of the Faculty of History and Philology, which included the Department of Russian Philology, later renamed the Department of the History and Literature of Slavonic Languages, as well as the Department of Comparative Linguistics and Sanskrit. In 1835 both these departments were incorporated into the Faculty of Philosophy as part of its Department of History and Philology.

And:

The teaching of Oriental languages was instituted in accordance with the first Statutes for All Russian Universities adopted on 5 November 1804, classes in Persian and Arabic starting in March 1818.

Possibly related to the contemporary German obsession with India, possibly related to the border disputes with Persia and the Ottoman Empire (arabic was used for all written communications, though the ruling class was turkish and used that language for non-religious speech).

And then there was always philosophy, though not always in Russia:

The idea of creating a faculty of philosophy was contained in Peter I's historic ukase dated 28 January 1724, regarding the establishment of St Petersburg University. Yet it was not until 1835 that the Faculty of Philosophy proper was formed within the structure of the University. Prior to that - in the 18th century - philosophical subjects (logic and metaphysics) were taught by visiting professors, including I.Braun, G.Bilfinger, and C.Martini. The Faculty of Law and Philosophy was created in the nineteenth century and existed until 1835, when it was reorganized into the Faculty of Philosophy, which was later closed.

The philosophical circle of Nikolai Stankevich existed because philosophy as such had been politicised and banned by the government (cf. Stankevich and his Moscow Circle, Edward J. Brown, Stanford University Press, 1966). France wouldn't have had such a problem, and they probably would have had a functioning faculty of philosophy.

To return to Paris proper: mathematics, physics, and chemistry had been pushed out to the Ecole polytechnique at its founding during the revolution, and subsequent regimes kept them there with the engineers (http://www.polytechnique.fr/infoEcole/historique/brevehistoire.html). However, there were later science classes at the Sorbonne itself -- Marie Curie attended the Sorbonne in the 1890s, not the Ecole polytechnique. The school was civilianised (if that's a word) in 1817 by the restored monarchy. It was technically civil service, and that may be why there remained some scientific faculty at the Sorbonne -- to separate the private individuals from those who had to depend on the state for their education. Interestingly enough, these students who were studying engineering and chemistry in order to serve the state were highly revolutionary and Enjolras probably could have sent Grantaire to them, they were itching for a fight. Louis Philippe had tried to return it to military status, and students certainly took part in the riots of '32. But it doesn't appear suitable for the type of family from which our boys came. I think it was more of a lower middle class institution, like the National Guard when one could still buy deferments of service (as opposed to the upper middle class, the bourgeoisie from which our boys most likely came).

So what was Combeferre actually studying? I'd suspect that his friends didn't even know. If courses were arranged at all as they are now, he could have been auditing anything he wanted to. I wonder if Blondeau would notice if there were extra people in the room *g*.

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