{"title":"State Power, Social Life, and Russian Nobles in the 18th Century","authors":"E. Wirtschafter","doi":"10.1353/kri.2023.0020","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The Europeanized elite, the Russian nobility, the provincial nobility, the court nobility, elite and lesser nobles, hereditary and service nobles, landowning and landless nobles, educated society (obshchestvo or publika), and “people of various ranks” (raznochintsy)—these familiar terms illustrate the multiplicity of social realities that defined Russia’s educated and service classes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Historians and literary scholars long have understood that the Russian elite cannot be equated solely with the service and/or landowning nobilities. Merchants and educated non-noble servicemen, though bounded by institutions such as serfdom and the Petrine Table of Ranks, also aspired to the legal and cultural status of hereditary noble. Whatever the economic circumstances and cultural accretions attained by upwardly mobile individuals, hereditary nobility writ large remained the primary embodiment of the state-initiated project of Europeanization. The significant number of unrequited claimants to noble status illustrates the dynamics of aspiration: 560 out of 1,000 petitioners seeking to enter military service with noble rights in 1820; 3,215 petitioners seeking confirmation of noble status by the Ministry of Justice in 1845 (compared to 3,332 who were","PeriodicalId":45639,"journal":{"name":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2023.0020","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
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Abstract
The Europeanized elite, the Russian nobility, the provincial nobility, the court nobility, elite and lesser nobles, hereditary and service nobles, landowning and landless nobles, educated society (obshchestvo or publika), and “people of various ranks” (raznochintsy)—these familiar terms illustrate the multiplicity of social realities that defined Russia’s educated and service classes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Historians and literary scholars long have understood that the Russian elite cannot be equated solely with the service and/or landowning nobilities. Merchants and educated non-noble servicemen, though bounded by institutions such as serfdom and the Petrine Table of Ranks, also aspired to the legal and cultural status of hereditary noble. Whatever the economic circumstances and cultural accretions attained by upwardly mobile individuals, hereditary nobility writ large remained the primary embodiment of the state-initiated project of Europeanization. The significant number of unrequited claimants to noble status illustrates the dynamics of aspiration: 560 out of 1,000 petitioners seeking to enter military service with noble rights in 1820; 3,215 petitioners seeking confirmation of noble status by the Ministry of Justice in 1845 (compared to 3,332 who were
欧化的精英、俄罗斯贵族、地方贵族、宫廷贵族、精英和下层贵族、世袭贵族和服务贵族、拥有土地和无土地的贵族、受过教育的社会(obshchestvo或publika)和“不同阶层的人”(raznochintsy)——这些熟悉的术语说明了18世纪末和19世纪初界定俄罗斯受过教育和服务阶层的社会现实的多样性。历史学家和文学学者早就明白,俄罗斯精英不能仅仅等同于服务和/或拥有土地的贵族。商人和受过教育的非贵族军人,虽然受到农奴制和Petrine Table of Ranks等制度的限制,但也渴望获得世袭贵族的法律和文化地位。无论向上流动的个人所获得的经济环境和文化积累如何,世袭贵族仍然是国家发起的欧洲化计划的主要体现。大量要求获得贵族地位的人没有得到回报,这说明了渴望的动力:1820年,1000名请愿者中有560人希望以贵族权利服兵役;1845年,有3215名请愿者要求法务部确认贵族身份(相比之下,有3332名请愿者要求法务部确认贵族身份)
期刊介绍:
A leading journal of Russian and Eurasian history and culture, Kritika is dedicated to internationalizing the field and making it relevant to a broad interdisciplinary audience. The journal regularly publishes forums, discussions, and special issues; it regularly translates important works by Russian and European scholars into English; and it publishes in every issue in-depth, lengthy review articles, review essays, and reviews of Russian, Eurasian, and European works that are rarely, if ever, reviewed in North American Russian studies journals.