Middle Ages The nobility arose in the 12th and 13th centuries as the lowest part of the feudal military class, which comprised the court of a
prince or an important
boyar. From the 14th century land ownership by nobles increased, and by the 17th century, the bulk of
feudal lords and the majority of landowners were nobles. The nobles were granted estates out of State lands in return for their service to the Tsar, either for as long as they performed service or for their lifetime. By the 18th century, these estates had become private property. They made up the Landed army ()—the basic military force of Russia.
Peter the Great finalized the status of the nobility, while abolishing the
boyar title.
Early modern era in Russia: westernization Overview The adoption of the fashions, mannerisms, and ideals of
Western Europe by the Russian nobility was a gradual process rooted in the strict guidelines of
Peter the Great and the educational reforms of
Catherine the Great. While cultural
westernization was mostly superficial and restricted to court, it coincided with the efforts of Russian autocrats to link Russia to Western Europe in more fundamental ways – socially, economically and politically. However, Russia's existing economic system, which lacked a sizable middle class and which relied heavily on
forced labor, proved an insurmountable obstacle to the development of a
free market economy. Furthermore, the lower classes (an overwhelming majority of the Russian population) lived virtually isolated from the upper classes and the imperial court. Thus, most of the nobility's “western” tendencies were largely aesthetic and confined to a tiny proportion of the populace. As different rulers ascended the throne in the 19th century, each figure brought a different attitude and approach to ruling the nobility. Yet, the cultural impact of Peter I and Catherine II was set in stone. Ironically, by introducing the nobility to political literature from Western Europe, Catherine exposed Russia's autocracy to them as archaic and illiberal. While the nobility was conservative as a whole, a liberal and radical minority remained constant throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, resorting to violence on multiple occasions in order to challenge Russia's traditional political system (see
Decembrist Revolt,
Narodnaya Volya).
Before Peter the Great Although Peter the Great is considered to be the first westernized ruler of Russia, there were, in fact, contacts between the Muscovite nobility and Western Europe before his
reign.
Ivan III, starting in 1472, sent numerous agents to
Italy to study
architecture. Both
Michael Romanov (1613–1645) and his son
Alexis (1645–1676) invited and sponsored European visitors – mostly military, medical, and building specialists – who came to Moscow in foreign dress, speaking foreign languages. When the boyars began to imitate the westerners in dress and hairstyle,
Tsar Alexis in 1675 and then
Tsar Feodor in 1680 restricted foreign fashions to distinguish between Russians and outsiders, but these were not effectively enforced until the 1690s.
Under Peter the Great Peter the Great was, first and foremost, eager to do away with Russia's reputation as an Asiatic land and to propel his new empire onto the political stage of Western Europe. One of the many ways he hoped to achieve this was by changing the upper-class culture; he believed that forcing selected features of western fashion, education, and language onto the nobility would hasten Russia's rise to international prestige. In 1697, he began to send nobles on compulsory trips abroad to England, Holland, and Italy. While the Tsar primarily designed these expeditions for naval training, he also encouraged the noblemen to learn about the arts of the west. Furthermore, Peter prioritized sending Russian natives as opposed to foreign expatriates; he was intent on “breeding” a new nobility that conformed to western customs but represented the
Slavic people as a whole. When the travelers returned to Moscow, Peter tested them on their training, insisting on further education for those whose accumulated knowledge was unsatisfactory. By 1724, he had established – for the purpose of scientific study and discovery – the
Academy of Sciences, which he modeled after “the ones in Paris, London, Berlin, and other places”. Peter's westernizing efforts became more radical after 1698 when he returned from his expedition through Europe known as the
Grand Embassy. Upon arriving Peter summoned the nobility to his court and personally shaved almost every beard in the room. In 1705 he decreed a
beard tax on all men of rank in Moscow and ordered certain officers to seek out noble beards and shave them on sight. He only allowed peasants, priests, and
serfs to retain the ingrained and religious Russian tradition of wearing beards, which the
Orthodox populace considered an essential aspect of their duty to convey the image of God. He also reformed the clothing of the nobility, replacing the long-sleeved traditional Muscovite robes with European clothing. Beginning in 1699 the tsar decreed strict dress requirements borrowing from German, Hungarian, French and British styles, fining any noblemen who failed to obey. Peter himself, who usually wore German dress and had a trimmed mustache, acted as a prime example. While the nobility universally followed Peter's fashion preferences at court, they greatly resented these styles, which they saw as blasphemous. Away from
St. Petersburg, very few noblemen followed Peter's guidelines and enforcement was lax. Peter also demanded changes in mannerisms and language among nobles. To supply Russians with a basic set of “proper” morals and habits, he ordered publication of manuals on Western etiquette. The most popular of these was
The Honourable Mirror of Youth or A Guide to Social Conduct Gathered from Various Authors, a compilation of rules of conduct from numerous European sources, initially published in St. Petersburg in 1717. He also encouraged the learning of foreign languages especially
French, which was the foremost political and intellectual language of Europe at the time. For the nobility, these changes felt even more forced than fashion regulations. As with clothing, there was uniform acceptance of Western mannerisms at court but general disregard for them outside of St. Petersburg. Furthermore, when Westerners visited Peter's court they found the image and personality of the courtiers to appear forced and awkward.
Friedrich Christian Weber, a representative of Britain, commented in 1716 that the nobles “wear the German Dress; but it is easy to observe on many, that they have not been long used to it”.
Between the Greats While none of the rulers in power from 1725 to 1762 focused as strongly on cultural westernization, Peter sparked a transformation that was now unstoppable. Through their education and travels, some members of the nobility began to understand the extent to which Russia lagged behind Western Europe in the complexity of their political and educational systems, their technology and economy. By 1750, the ideas of
secularism,
skepticism and
humanism had reached sects of the elite class, providing some with a new worldview and giving Russia a taste of
the Enlightenment, of which they had experienced little. While even the most educated of the nobility still supported the autocracy that upheld the
feudal system on which they depended, some considered how to make it more representative and to improve the bureaucracy. The period between Peter I and Catherine II represents gradual yet significant developments in western culture among the nobility.
Empress Anna gave many privileges to the nobility. In 1730 she repealed the
primogeniture law introduced by Peter the Great allowing the sub-division of estates. In 1736 the age at which nobles had to start service was raised from 15 to 20 and length of service was changed to 25 years instead of life and families with more than one son could keep one to manage the family estate. In 1726
Catherine I and in 1743
Empress Elizabeth further regulated noble dress in a Western direction. In 1755 also during Elizabeth's reign, advanced secondary schools and the
University of Moscow were founded with curricula that included foreign languages, philosophy, medicine and law; the material was chiefly based on imported texts from the west. Most significantly
Peter III freed the nobility from obligatory civil and military service in 1762, allowing them to pursue personal interests. While some used this liberty as an excuse to lead lavish lives of leisure, a select group became increasingly educated in Western ideas through schooling, reading, and travel. As before, these changes applied to few and represented a gradual shift in noble identity rather than a sudden or universal one.
Marc Raeff in
Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia has suggested this was not a noble victory but a sign the state didn't need them as much now that they had plenty of trained officials.
Catherine the Great When Catherine II ascended the throne, she quickly made her political and philosophical opinions clear in the
“Instruction” of 1767, a lengthy document which she prepared for the nobility, drawing largely from and even plagiarizing ideas from the west, especially those of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The point she emphasized first and foremost was that Russia was a truly European state, and her reforms of the court and education reflect this belief. While Catherine was primarily preoccupied with impressing westerners (especially the
philosophers, with whom she corresponded in writing), in doing so she also made significant efforts to educate the nobility and expose them to western philosophy and art. She designed an imperial court in the style of
Louis XIV, entertaining the nobility with performances of western theatre and music. She encouraged the understanding of French, German, and English languages so that nobles could read classic, historical, and philosophical literature from the west. For the first time in the history of the Russian court, “intellectual pursuits became fashionable”. When foreigners visited the court, Catherine expected the noblemen and their ladies to flaunt not only their western appearance but also their ability to discuss current events in western languages. Catherine also made specific reforms in institutional education that pushed the nobility's culture further westward. She based Russian education on that of Austria, importing German textbooks and adopting in 1786 a standardized curriculum to be taught in her newly created public schools. While many members of the lower classes were allowed into these schools, Catherine hoped that they could become educated enough to rise through the meritocratic
Table of Ranks and eventually become nobles themselves. Catherine also established the Society for the Translation of Foreign Books, “to bring enlightenment to those Russians who could not read either French or German.” It is clear that, like Peter I, Catherine the Great desired to construct a new nobility, a “new race,” She also gave away 66,000 serfs in 1762–72, 202,000 in 1773–93, and 100,000 in one day: 18 August 1795. Thus she was able to bind the nobility to herself. From 1782, a kind of uniform was introduced for civilian nobles called
uniform of civilian service or simply
civilian uniform. The uniform prescribed colors that depended on the territory. The uniform was required at the places of service, at the Court, and at other important public places. The privileges of the nobility were fixed and were legally codified in 1785 in the
Charter to the Gentry. The Charter introduced an organization of the nobility: every province (
guberniia) and district (
uezd) had an
Assembly of Nobility. The chair of an assembly was called Province/District
Marshal of Nobility. In 1831
Nicholas I restricted the assembly votes to those with over 100 serfs, leaving 21,916 voters.
Late modern era By 1805 the various ranks of the nobility had become confused, as reflected in
War and Peace. In the era of the
Napoleonic Wars, there were
counts who were wealthier and more important than
princes and noble families whose wealth had been dissipated partly through lack of
primogeniture, partly through extravagance and due to poor estate-management. Young noblemen served in the military but did not thereby acquire new landed estates. Tolstoy reported later improvements: some nobles paid more attention to estate management, and some, like
Andrey Bolkonsky, freed their serfs even before the
tsar did so in 1861. Of Russia's nobles, 62.8% were
szlachta from the nine western gubernii in 1858 and still 46.1% in 1897.
Obrok or cash rent was most common in the north while
barshchina or labor rent was found mainly in the southern Black Earth Region. In the reign of
Nicholas I (1825–1855) the latter brought three times the income of cash rent (though this needed less administration). In 1798 Ukrainian landlords were banned from selling serfs separately from land. In 1841 landless nobles were banned also. Descended from the gentry, the landholding, but not serf-owning,
odnodvortsy were between peasants and nobles. They emerged as frontier settlers recruited from the class of
boyar scions. The status of the odnodvortsy changed gradually from singleholding farmers to taxed state peasants. The nobility was too weak to oppose the
Emancipation reform of 1861. In 1858, three million serfs were held by 1,400 landlords (1.4%) while 2 million by 79,000 (78%). In 1820 a fifth of the serfs were mortgaged, half by 1842. By 1859, a third of nobles' estates and two-thirds of their serfs were mortgaged to noble banks or to the state. The nobility was also weakened by the scattering of their estates, lack of
primogeniture and the high turnover and mobility from estate to estate. After the
peasant reform of 1861 the economic position of the nobility weakened. The influence of the nobility was further reduced by the
new law statutes of 1864, which repealed their right of electing law officer. The reform of the police in 1862 limited the landowners' authority locally, and the establishment of all-estate
Zemstvo local government did away with the exclusive influence of nobility in local self-government. These changes occurred despite the nobles keeping nearly all the meadows and forests and having their debts paid by the state, while the ex-serfs paid 34% over the market price for the shrunken plots they kept. This figure was 90% in the northern regions, 20% in the black-earth region but zero in the Polish provinces. In 1857, 6.79% of serfs were domestic, landless servants who stayed landless after 1861. Only Polish and Romanian domestic serfs got land. Ninety percent of the serfs who got larger plots lived in the eight ex-Polish provinces where the Tsar wanted to weaken the
Szlachta. The other 10% lived in
Astrakhan and in the barren north. In the whole Empire, peasant land declined 4.1% - 13.3% outside the ex-Polish zone and 23.3% in the 16 black-earth provinces. Georgia's serfs suffered the loss of of their land in
Tiflis province, in
Kutaisi province. These redemption payments were not abolished till January 1, 1907. The influx of New World grain caused a slump in grain prices, forcing the peasants to farm more land. At the same time, despite their efficiency, large peasant households split up (from 9.5 to 6.8 persons per household in central Russia, 1861–1884). The resulting land hunger increased prices 7-fold and made it easier for nobles to sell or rent land rather than farm it themselves. From 1861 to 1900 40% of noble land was sold to peasants (70% of this went to the
Commune and by 1900 two thirds of the nobles' arable land was rented to the peasantry). According to the 1897 census, 71% of the top 4 ranks of the civil service were nobles. But in the civil service as a whole, noble membership declined from 49.8% in 1755 to 43.7% in the 1850s and to 30.7% in 1897. There were 1.2 million nobles, about 1% of the population (8% in Poland; compare with 4% in Hungary and 1 to 1.5% in France). Their military influence waned: in the
Crimean War 90% of officers were noble, by 1913 the proportion had sunk to 50%. They lived increasingly away from their estates: in 1858 only 15 to 20% of Russian nobles lived in cities, by 1897 it was 47.2%. By 1904 of noble land was mortgaged to the noble bank. During the
1905 Russian Revolution 3,000 manors were burnt (15% of the total).
Non-Russian nobility in 1863 in Helsinki, Finland. The Russian Empire's nobility was multi-ethnic. Native non-Russians, including
Poles,
Georgians,
Lithuanians,
Tatars, and
Germans, played a significant role within the noble class. According to the 1897 census,
hereditary nobles accounted for 0.87% of Russians, compared to 5.29% of Georgians and 4.41% of Poles, however Russians had one of the highest shares of non-inheritable noble titles. The Russian economy was based on agriculture. The abolition of serfdom in Russia - except in Finland, where serfdom did not exist - transformed the economic landscape and led to the emergence of new social classes, which affected both the Russian and non-Russian nobility. Later, many of the impoverished or déclassé Polish and Georgian nobles became leaders of nationalist and radical political movements, including
Bolshevism. Quoting historian
John Armstrong, Andrei Znamenski describes the Baltic Germans as a "mobilized diaspora" who acted as the Russian Empire's cultural and diplomatic envoys. ==Abolition==