The textbook on elementary algebra by Andrey Petrovich Kiselyov was the main algebra textbook of pre-revolutionary Russia.

Andrey Petrovich Kiselyov was a Russian and Soviet teacher, a key figure in teaching mathematics at school. He was born into a poor middle-class family in Mtsensk, Oryol Governorate, on December 12, 1852. He went for a year to a parish school, and then spent three years at a district school. After that, Andrey Kiselyov went to Oryol to enter the grammar school. In Oryol, he stayed with a distant relative, a wealthy merchant, who helped him enter the school. While studying at the grammar school, Kiselyov lived with his relative and paid for food accommodation by teaching his relative’s six children during six years. Being hardworking, self-motivated, and smart, Kiselyov became the first student at school, which he finished in 1871 with a gold medal.

Using the money earned by tutoring and proceeds from the sale of the gold medal, Kiselyov headed to St. Petersburg and in 1871 entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics at the university. After graduating from the university, Kiselyov was appointed teacher of mathematics, mechanics and drawing at the Voronezh secondary school. After 15 years of work at the Voronezh Real School, Kiselyov was transferred to the Kharkov Real School as a teacher of mathematics and physics. In 1892, Kiselyov returned to Voronezh again as a teacher of mathematics and physics in the cadet corps. After working in Voronezh for 25 years, Kiselyov retired in 1901 to devote all his energy to writing textbooks.

At the beginning of Kiselyov’s teaching career, the textbooks of arithmetic by Malinin and Burenin were used to teach mathematics, and the textbook by Davidov was the one to use for teaching algebra and geometry. These textbooks had a few shortcomings: the explanations were often unclear; the definitions were inaccurate and vague and the important information was not clearly separated from the unimportant one. Kiselyov set himself the goal of creating a textbook without those shortcomings. He began his writing career with a textbook on arithmetic, “Systematic Course of Arithmetic for Secondary Educational Institutions”. He spent about four years writing it and published it in 1884. While still teaching, Kiselyov wrote the textbook “Elementary Algebra” in two parts, which was published in 1888.