11
The elites
DOMINIC LIEVEN
Throughout the imperial period Russia's political and social elites were drawn overwhelmingly from members of the hereditary noble estate (soslovie).[1] Even in 1914 the core of the social elite were members of great aristocratic landowning families.[2] This group overlappedto a still considerable but ever decreasing degree with the political elite, whose core were senior civilian and military officials. The aristocrats were all from hereditary noble families, these families usually being both old and titled, as well as rich. Most of the military and bureaucratic elite were also by birth from the hereditary nobility, the majority still coming from well-established though not usually rich land-owning families of the provincial gentry, or sometimes from well-entrenched service noble 'dynasties'. The still relatively small minority of senior generals and bureaucrats who were not noble by birth had acquired this status automatically by reaching senior ranks in the civil and military service.[3]
There were really only two relatively minor exceptions to the rule that the imperial elite was made up of hereditary noblemen. During the whole period senior clerics of the Orthodox Church, all of them drawn from the celibate monastic clergy, played a significant role in tsarist government and society.[4] Since the Church was firmly subordinated to the secular ruling elite and enjoyed limited status in aristocratic society, perhaps the senior clergy is best defined as a sub-elite. The other non-noble sub-elite worth mentioning is the new Russian business class which had emerged since the middle of the nineteenth century and whose national centre was Moscow. Whereas before the 1850s most great business fortunes either were founded by the nobility or were absorbed into it by marriage or ennoblement,[5] this became much less true in the last three generations of Imperial Russia, when a distinctive Moscow business elite and subculture emerged and came to dominate Muscovite society. In 1914 this group was still of distinctly second-class status within the tsarist political and social world, and this was a source of weakness for the tsarist regime. By contrast, the Petersburg business and financial elite was less Russian than its Muscovite peers and its financial barons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were closely linked to the Ministry of Finance.
Although members of the imperial social and political elite were almost all hereditary nobles, the hereditary nobility as a group was not a class, let alone a ruling class. It was not a class above all because of its enormous heterogeneity in terms of wealth, culture, lifestyles, economic interests, ethno-national allegiances and careers. Even its aristocratic core was not a true ruling elite because it lacked the political institutions which would have allowed it to define and defend coherent policies and interests, choose its own leaders and control the government machine.6 One way to illustrate these points is by reference to England, whose aristocracy and gentry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a ruling class in the full sense of the word. Through Parliament in the centre and the justices of the peace in the counties the English aristocracy and gentry itself governed the country and developed the skills and mentalities of a political ruling class. Though, except for the tiny group of peers, the English elites had no legally defined status or privileges, the English 'gentlemen' were far more coherent in values, culture, lifestyles and loyalties than the Russian hereditary nobility. This was because to acquire the values and live in the style of an English gentleman required a substantial income. By the nineteenth century almost all gentlemen shared a common experience of socialisation through the expensive Public School system.[6]
The hereditary nobility was not a class nor a political elite but rather a group (estate/soslovie) defined by law whose members shared certain privileges and institutions. These were largely set out in legislation enacted under Peter I and Catherine II.[7] This legislation established who was or was not a noble, how one acquired nobility, what rights and obligations noble status entailed, and what common institutions united the nobility. The most famous piece of Petrine legislation was the 1722 Table of Ranks which stressed the link between service to the crown and noble privilege, and created the rule that officers and civil servants acquired noble status automatically upon reaching defined ranks. Peter's imposition of lifelong state service on male nobles was unique in European (and Russian) history and did not long survive his death. Nevertheless the service ethic remained very important. Until the middle of the nineteenth century even wealthy young nobles usually served some years in the army (or more rarely the bureaucracy) before retiring into a private life of marriage and estate-management.
The eighteenth-century legislation also confirmed the nobility as a property-owning class, with absolute possession of their estates and the subsoil, and exclusive rights to ownership of serfs. Catherine Il's son, Paul I (17961801), attempted to infringe her Noble Charter of 1785 which had confirmed that noble property could under no circumstances be confiscated by the crown and that noble honour entailed an absolute exemption from corporal punishment. Paul's (actually rather limited) assault on the nobility's sense of its rights and dignity was a key factor in his overthrow and assassination by members of the Petersburg aristocracy.[8] Catherine II also established noble corporate institutions in each province (guberniia) and district (uezd). These gave shape and identity to the local nobility, and the elected provincial and district noble marshals became key figures in local government and society. Nevertheless these noble corporate bodies never enjoyed anything approaching the power of provincial estate institutions in Central and Western Europe and it was only after 1905 that the nobility was allowed to create a central overarching body (the Union of the United Nobility) through which it could unite and lobby the government in defence of its interests.
One fundamental point about the hereditary nobility was that it was a relatively small group when one considers the governing, modernising and civilising role which the state expected it to play in Russian government and society. According to Isabel de Madariaga in 1700 the (still not fully defined) nobility entitled to own estates and serfs came to little more than 15,000 men, 'who had to carry the whole military and administrative burden of the new empire'.10 Over the next two centuries the hereditary nobility grew enormously in size, by 1897 numbering 1.2 million people, or roughly 1 per cent of the total population.11 Though this sounds formidable, one has to remember that until well into the second half of the nineteenth century most of the professional class was in state service and thereby ennobled, as were almost all the leading businessmen. Even in 1897 there were two-thirds as many hereditary nobles as there were members of the non-noble professional, clerical and merchant estates combined. European comparisons underline the point that Russia's educated and ruling cadres remained small. In pre- partition Poland 8 per cent of the population was noble, in Hungary in 1820 the figure was 4 per cent. In pre-revolutionary France 1.5 per cent of the population was noble but in addition a large and relatively well-educated middle class also existed. When Russia confronted revolutionary and Napoleonic France its lack of educated cadres put it at a serious disadvantage. Even most officers in Russian infantry regiments of the line in 1812 were not much more than literate, whereas even the French royal army of the 1770s already required literacy of senior non-commissioned officers.12 This helps to explain the warm welcome that the tsarist regime gave to foreigners willing to enter Russian service.
1
On the soslovie/estate system: G. L. Freeze, 'The
2
In D. Lieven,
3
On the official and military top elite, see D. Lieven,
4
Between 1701 and 1763 most bishops were Ukrainian, many ofwhom claimed to be Polish nobles: I am grateful to Paul Bushkovitch for this information.
5
E. P. Karnovich,
6
My comparisons with English (and German) aristocracy are drawn from Lieven,
7
On Peter and Catherine's legislation, see respectively: S. M. Troitskii,
8
On the conspiracy which overthrew Paul I, see H. Ragsdale (ed.),