Administrators despite their wish: the professors of botany and zoology of Russian universities and creation of laboratories in the 1860–70s

The creation of laboratories and the introduction of practical training in botany and zoology at the universities of the Russian Empire took place in the 1860s and 1870s and was the result of professorship fellows at foreign universities at the period of the late 1850-s and the 1860-s. But after returning home the professors faced problems, the result of which in some cases was the impossibility of putting their ideas into practice. In this article, the author analyzes information about fellowships in the late 1850–1860s, considering the main vectors of movement of scientists, and talks about the difficulties faced by university professors in organizing classrooms and laboratories and compares their efforts to supply microscopes in relation to the number of students of the natural sciences departments.