Ivan Yakovlev (educator)

Ivan Yakovlevich Yakovlev ( _ru. Иван Яковлевич Яковлев) (April 4 (N.S. April 25), 1848, a village of Koshki-Novotimbaeyvo, today's Tatarstan - October 23, 1930, Moscow) was a Chuvash enlightener, educator, and writer.

In 1875, Ivan Yakovlev graduated from the Kazan University. While he was still a gymnasium student, he invested his own capital and private donations into the establishment of Simbirsk Chuvash School in 1868. Thanks to the efforts of Ilya Ulyanov (Vladimir Lenin's father), this school would be funded by the government starting 1871. In 1877, the school was transformed into Simbirsk Central Chuvash School. After his graduation from the university, Ivan Yakovlev worked as an inspector of Chuvash schools in the Kazan School District (until 1903) and headed the Chuvash School for Teachers (until October 1919). Ivan Yakovlev contributed to the establishing of Chuvash and other national schools in the Volga region. He was the one to create special instruction methods based on Konstantin Ushinsky’s pedagogical legacy. In the early 1870s, Ivan Yakovlev put together a new Chuvash alphabet, wrote several primers and textbooks based on the Russian alphabet. He is also known for having translated some of the Russian writers into the Chuvash language (Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Krylov, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Nekrasov and others).

The Chuvash State Pedagogical Institute bears Ivan Yakovlev’s name. There’s a monument to and a museum of Ivan Yakovlev in Cheboksary.