Research into the history of Russian education has been primarily concerned with the sociopolitical dynamics of the educational field?concretely, with government policies on education and science, with the social composition of the teaching and academic corps, and with the broadly ideological attitudes and activities of government officials, teachers, scholars and students. What has especially been neglected is the vital role that these subjectspecific concerns played in the professional self-understanding of Russian educators. The article explores this issue through the concrete example of literary studies in Russian secondary education in the period between the 1860s and the 1900s. It focuses mainly on debates surrounding the study of literature in Imperial Russia?s male Classical gymnasia?the leading secondary schools that prepared the elite minority for university. The article emphasizes one particular issue in the conceptualization of Russian secondary-school literary studies in this era?namely, the interaction between secondary and higher education.