3. In 1722, after his conflict with Tsarevich Alexis, Peter abolished the regular law of succession, based on primogeniture, and empowered every monarch to pick his own successor. The Russian monarchy for the
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remainder of the century becamie an elective office; from Peter's death until the accession of Paul I in 1796, Russia's rulers were chosen by high-ranking officials acting in collusion with officers of Guard Regiments. These groups favoured women, especially women with frivolous reputation, thought unlikely to take more than a perfunctory interest in affairs of state. In return for the throne, these empresses made generous presents of serfs, landed estates and various privileges to those who had helped them gain it.
4. The military reforms of Peter and his successors gave Russia an army second to none in eastern Europe. Poland, Sweden and Turkey no longer counted, the more so as each was in the throes of an internal political crisis; it was now their turn to fear Russia. During the eighteenth century, the nomads of the steppe were finally brought to heel as well. With increased power and external security came a growing desire for enjoyment oflife and a corresponding de-emphasis on service.
5. The same reforms, by shifting the burden of military service onto conscripts, reduced the state's need for dvoriane whose main function henceforth was to officer the troops.
6. It has been said that under Peter Russia learned western techniques, under Elizabeth western manners, and under Catherine western morals. Westernization certainly made giant progress in the eighteenth century; what had begun as mere aping of the west by the court and its elite developed into close identification with the very spirit of western culture. With the advance of westernization it became embarrassing for the state and the dvorianstvo to maintain the old service structure. The dvorianstvo wished to emulate the western aristocracy, to enjoy its status and rights; and the Russian monarchy, eager to find itself in the forefront of European enlightenment,, was, up to a point, cooperative.
In the course of the eighteenth century a consensus developed between the crown and dvorianstvo that the old system had outlived itself. It is in this atmosphere that the social, economic and ideological props of the patrimonial regime were removed. We shall discuss economic liberalization in Chapter 8 and the unshackling of thought in Chapter 1 o, and here outline the social side of the process, namely the dismantling of the service structure.
Dvoriane serving in the military were the first to benefit from the general weakening of the monarchy which occurred after Peter's death. In 1730, provincial dvoriane frustrated a move by several old boyar families to impose constitutional limitations on the newly elected Empress Anne. In appreciation, Anne steadily eased the conditions of service which Peter had imposed on the dvorianstvo. In 1730 she repealed Peter's law requiring landowners to bequeath their estates to one heir (p. 176 below). The next year she founded a Noble Cadet Corps,
THE PARTIAL DISMANTLING OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE
reserved for dvoriane, where their children could begin to soldier among their peers, unsullied by contact with commoners. An important edict issued by Anne in 1736 raised from fifteen to twenty the age at which dvoriane were required to begin state service, and at the same time lowered its duration from life to twenty-five years; these provisions made it possible to retire at forty-five if not earlier, since some dvoriane were inscribed in the Guard Regiments at the age of two or three and began to accumulate retirement credit while still in their nurses' arms. In 1736 dvoriane families who had several men (sons or brothers) were permitted to keep one at home to manage the property. From 1725 onwards it became customary to grant dvoriane lengthy leaves of absence to visit their estates. Compulsory inspection of youths was done away with, although the government continued to insist on the education of dvoriane children and required them to present themselves for several examinations before joining active service at twenty.
These measures culminated in the Manifesto 'Concerning the Granting of Freedom and Liberty to the Entire Russian Dvorianstvo', issued in 1762 by Peter in, which 'for ever, for all future generations' exempted Russian dvoriane from state service in all its forms. The Manifesto further granted them the right to obtain passports for travel abroad, even if their purpose was to enroll in the service of foreign rulers - an unexpected restoration of the ancient boyar right of 'free departure' abolished by Ivan ill. Under Catherine n, the Senate on at least three occasions confirmed this Manifesto, concurrently extending to the dvorianstvo other rights and privileges (e.g. the right, given in 1783, to maintain private printing presses). In 1785 Catherine issued a Charter of the Dvorianstvo which reconfirmed all the liberties acquired by this estate since Peter's death, and added some new ones. The land which the dvoriane held was now recognized as their legal property. They were exempt from corporal punishment. These rights made them - on paper, at any rate - the equals ot the upper classes in the most advanced countries of the west.*
* The scheme given here according to which, yielding to the pressures of dvorianstvo, the Russian monarchy emancipated and transformed it into a privileged and leisured class, is the view held by most Russian historians before and since the Revolution. It has recently been challenged by two American scholars, Marc Raeff (Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth Century Nobility (New York 1966), especially pp. 10-ia, and an article in the American Historical Review, LXXV, 5, (1970), pp. 1291-4) and Robert E.Jones (The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility, 1762-1785 (Princeton, N.J. 1973)). These authors argue that it was not the dvoriane who emancipated themselves from the state, but, on the contrary, the state that freed itself from dependence on the dvoriane. The state had more servitors than it needed, it found the dvorianstvo useless in administering the provinces, and preferred to bureaucratize. The argument, while not without merit, appears on the whole unconvincing. If indeed the monarchy had too many servitors (which is by no means demonstrated) it could have solved its problem by demobilizing them temporarily and provisionally instead of 'for ever, for all future generations'. Furthermore, since salaries were rarely paid, no major
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In the eyes of the law, these provisions applied equally to the landowners serving in the military and the salaried personnel holding executive posts in the civil service because all persons holding positions listed on the Table of Ranks were technically dvoriane. In practice, however, in the eighteenth century a sharp distinction came to be drawn between the two categories with their vastly different social backgrounds. It became customary to reserve the term dvorianin for landowners, officers and hereditary dvoriane, and to call career civil servants chinovniki (singular chinovnik), i.e. holders of chin or rank. A well-to-do landowner, especially one of old lineage, appointed to a high administrative post, such as a governor or the head of a ministry in St Petersburg, was never called a chinovnik. On the other hand, an impoverished landlord's son forced to take a clerical job would lose in the eyes of society the status of a dvorianin. The distinction was accentuated by Catherine's creation of corporate organizations called Assemblies of Dvoriane which allowed only land-owners to vote. The growing gulf between the two categories of dvoriane ran contrary to Peter's expectations. Fearing that many dvoriane would seek to escape military service by enrolling in the bureaucracy, he had imposed quotas on the number of persons from each family who could choose such a career. In fact, dvoriane shunned office work, especially after they had been freed from obligatory state service and no longer required a loophole to escape it. Always short of competent bureaucrats, the government was forced to fill the ranks of the civil service with sons of clergymen and burghers, thus further lowering its social prestige. Sometimes, when the shortage of bureaucrats grew acute, as happened during Catherine's provincial administration reforms, the government resorted to forceful drafts of students attending religious seminaries.