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Portrait of an Elite: Russian Marshals of the Nobility, 1861-1917
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
Extract
In his short sketch, “Hamlet of the Shchigrovsky District,” Ivan Turgenev imagined the provincial marshal of the nobility to be “a man of unrestrained and dignified expression entirely in keeping with his starched shirt-front, infinitely broad waistcoat, and round snuffbox full of French tobacco.” For Turgenev and many contemporaries, the marshal's studied pomposity and ostentatious cosmopolitanism signified the overweening social pretension and thin veneer of Westernism which constituted the worst features of the Russian nobility. The marshal of the nobility was a frequent target for social satirists through most of the nineteenth century.
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References
1. Turgenev, I. S., Sketches from a Hunter's Album, trans. Richard Freeborn (Baltimore, 1967), p. 186 Google Scholar. I use “signify” in the technical sense suggested by Roland Barthes in Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York, 1972), p. 109–58.Google Scholar
2. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin made fun of marshals in his Istoriia odnogo goroda, Sobranie sochinenii, 20 vols. (Moscow, 1965-77), 8 : 368-70. Dostoevskii indirectly attacked the untoward liberalism of marshals in his stinging portrait of the local marshal's wife in The Possessed. The marshal's wife wanted to erect a marble slab with gold letters in honor of Karmazinov, the Turgenev figure in the novel (see Dostoevskii, F. M., Sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. [Leningrad, 1973-], 10 : 357 Google Scholar). Tolstoi in Resurrection pictured a marshal as a liberal-minded man, who studded his letters with elegant French, but who was so caught up in local politics that he did not notice that his wife was conducting an affair with the young Nekliudov ( Tolstoi, L. N., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 90 vols. [Moscow, 1930-58], 32 : 15 Google Scholar). In Anna Karenina Tolstoi described the liberal marshal Sviazhskii through Levin's eyes as a “living enigma” (see Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 18 : 344-62). And what could be more devastating than Tolstoi's long section on elections of the provincial marshal in which the ineffectual incumbent is described as a “kind man, honest in his way, but quite unable to understand present-day requirements” and the future marshal (supported by Vronskii) is depicted with a “youthful, dogged, and venomous look” on his face (Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 19 : 222-42).
3. There is an excellent discussion of the 1785 charter in Baron Korf, S. A., Dvorianstvo i ego soslovnoe upravlenie za stoletie 1762-1855 godov (St. Petersburg, 1906), pp. 136–88Google Scholar. Two solid treatments of the background to the charter are : Jones, Robert E., The Emancipation of the Russian Nobility 762-75, (Princeton, 1973)Google Scholar and Ransel, David L., The Politics ofCatherinian Russia, The Panin Party (New Haven, 1975)Google Scholar. Robert D. Givens has shown recently that Catherine's decision was influenced by instructions (nakazy) drafted by the Russian nobility on the eve of the 1767 Legislative Commission. Givens stresses the moderate character of instructions favoring creation of provincial marshals. He also notes that out of 119 instructions he analyzed, only 16 argued for “an ongoing organization for the resident nobility, ” and a mere 7 wanted a noble leader elected on a regular basis (see Givens's article, “Supplication and Reform in the Instructions of the Nobility, ” Canadian-American Slavic Studies, 11, no. 4 [Winter 1977] : 493).
4. A. D. Gradovskii, Kurs russkogogosudarstvennogoprava, vol. 3 : Mestnoeupravlenie (St. Petersburg, 1883), p. 127.
5. Korf, Dvorianstvo, p. 181.
6. I have followed a list of responsibilities made by the Soviet historian A. P. Korelin, “Rossiiskoe dvorianstvo i ego soslovnaia organizatsiia (1861-1904 gg.), ” Istoriia SSSR, 1971, no. 5, p. 73. For an exact legal reference see Svodzakonov, vol. 9 : Zakon osostoianiiakh (St. Petersburg, 1899), pp. 382-84.
7. Oznobishin, A. A., Vospominaniia MenalV-i Gosudarstvennoi Dumy (Paris, 1927), p. 155–56.Google Scholar
8. This story, originally published in 1896, has been translated into English (see Chekhov, A. P., Seven Short Novels, trans. Barbara Makanowitzky [New York, 1963], p. 319 Google Scholar).
9. After the Polish rebellion of 1863 the nobility in the nine western provinces was deprived of many corporative privileges. Consequently, the tsar appointed marshals in those provinces. The most famous appointed marshal was probably P. A. Stolypin, who served in Kov'no province in 1902.
10. Terpigor'ev, S. N., Sobranie sochinenii, 6 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1899), 1 : 120–21Google Scholar. Tolstoi gives a similar description of the colorful atmosphere of an assembly election in Anna Karenina (Tolstoi, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 19 : 222-42). Evidently, informal politicking commonly took place in restaurants, bars, and smoking areas.
11. Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv (hereafter cited asTsGIA), fond 1284, opis' 223, god 1893, delo 101, “O dvorianskikh vyborakh po Samarskoi gubernii, ” list 4.
12. Ibid., 1. 24.
13. Ibid., 11. 31-33.
14. Quoted in Terence, Emmons, The Russian Landed Gentry and the Peasant Emancipation of 1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 408.Google Scholar
15. Ibid., p. 410.
16. Ibid., p. 411.
17. TsGIA, f. 1282, op. 2, d. 1125, “O dvorianskikh vyborakh po Riazanskoi gubernii, ” 11. 20-24.
18. Ibid, 1. 24.
19. This letter was undated and unsigned, but textual evidence suggests that it was written by Stremoukhov (ibid., I. 25).
20. Ibid., 1. 106.
21. For all 83 families the arithmetic mean equaled 2, 344; the standard deviation equaled 3, 935. For the least wealthy 72 families, the mean was 1, 045 male souls; the standard deviation was 1, 068 (TsGIA, f. 1343, op. 16-36, 46, raznye dela).
22. Jerome, Blum, Lord and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1961), p. 369.Google Scholar
23. P. A. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparat samoderzhavnoi Rossii v XIX v. (Moscow, 1978), p. 92. Zaionchkovskii's sample is based on a study of 174 officials of rank III in the year 1853.
24. 1 bid., pp. 152-53. Only twenty-eight of the forty-eight governors whose service records had been preserved were pomeshchiki, and only twenty-six were serfowners. This sample of governors was also made in 1853.
25. For all 37 marshals, the arithmetic mean was 74, 193 desiatins. but the standard deviation was 243, 182. For the least wealthy 25 marshals, the mean number o(desiatins owned was 3, 990; the standard deviation was 2, 575 (TsGIA, f. 1343, op. 16-36, 46, raznye dela).
26. For the least wealthy 21 owners, the arithmetic mean equaled 5, 512 desiatins; the standard deviation was 4, 097. This excluded the largest estate (75, 719 desiatins). Vsia Rossiia, Russkaia kniga promyshlennosti, torgovli, sel'skago khoziaistva i administratsii. Adres'-kalendar’ rossiikoi imperii (St. Petersburg, 1895).
27. The arithmetic mean was 3, 478; the standard deviation was 4, 882 (ibid.).
28. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparat, ibid., pp. 205-206 on senators; pp. 214-15 on governors.
29. N. M. Pirumova, Zemskoe liberal'noe dvizhenie. Sotsial'nve korni i evoliutsiia do nachala XX veka (Moscow, 1977), p. 86. More precise comparison is impossible because Pirumova does not give a detailed breakdown of landownership.
30. Officials listed in successive volumes of Adres'-kalendar'. Obshchaia rospis’ nachal'stvuiushchikh i prochikh dolzhnostnykh lits po vsem upravleniiam v Rossiiskoi imperii na [1885-1916] g. (St. Petersburg, 1885-1916). Mortgages to the bank are listed by province and district in TsGIA.f. 593, op. 3-26.
31. My opinion is that the marshals were seriously concerned about the economic health of their own estates and about the fate of noble landownership in general; this judgment is based on a study of petitions written by the marshals between 1883 and 1905.1 have not found enough detailed information on the way the marshals ran their own estates to make a definitive argument on economic grounds. See G. M. Hamburg, “Land, Economy, and Society in Tsarist Russia : Interest Politics of the Landed Gentry during the Agrarian Crisis of the Late Nineteenth Century, ” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford, 1978), pp. 80-288; see also G. M. Hamburg, “The Russian Nobility on the Eve of the 1905 Revolution, ” Russian Review, 38, no. 3 (July 1979) : 323-38.
32. For all private landowners in Russia in 1914 the rate ofindebtedness was higherin the black earth provinces than in the non-black earth provinces (see A. M. Anfimov, Krupnoepomeshchich'e khoziaistvo Evropeiskoi Rossii. [Konets XlX-nachalo XX vekaj[Moscow, 1969], p. 320). The low rate of indebtedness among provincial officials in Vil'no (see table 4 above) is an anomaly.
33. Ministerstvo vnutrennikh del, Spisok chinov Ministerstva vnutrennikh del 1903 goda, ispravlennyipo 1 maia, chast’ II (St. Petersburg, 1903), pp. 5-793. In four provinces the position of provincial marshal was vacant in 1903.
34. Over 28 percent of the nobility in the Russian empire spoke Polish as a first language. Most of these Polish nobles were, of course, Catholics. On the legal disabilities suffered by nobles in the western provinces from 1863 to 1905, see A. P. Korelin, Dvorianstvo v poreformennoi Rossii 1861-1904 gg. Soslav, chislennost', korporalivnaia organizatsiia (Moscow, 1979), pp. 46-47.
35. Of these, fifty-six were graduates of Moscow University, twenty-eight of St. Petersburg University, and fifteen from Khar'kov University. The rest were graduates of the other imperial universities or a handful of foreign institutions.
36. Pirumova, Zemskoe liberal'noe dvizhenie, pp. 85-86.
37. Zaionchkovskii, Pravitel'stvennyi apparal, p. 214.
38. See the account of this meeting in Solov'ev, Iu. B., Samoderzhavie i dvohanstvo v kontse XIX veka (Leningrad, 1973), pp. 219–20 Google Scholar. See also Manuscript Section, Lenin Library, fond 126, kniga 12, Dnevnik A. A. Kireeva, list 48. The entry is for January 31, 1896.
39. The average tenure in office for marshals was two three-year terms; sixty percent of provincial marshals between 1861 and 1917 served two terms or less. Since the average age at first election to the post of marshal was forty-eight, the average provincial marshal would have had several years of productive life left for service in other offices or for work in the private sector. For a more detailed discussion of tenure in office and of service careers, based on archival sources, see G. M. Hamburg, “Land, Economy, and Society, ” pp. 19-22, 32-40.
40. For Oznobishin's firm devotion to the throne, see his Vospominaniia, chaps. 3-5. Incidentally, a fairly large number of marshals ultimately became provincial governors. It may beargued that the marshals’ office was a stepping stone to higher office, maybe even the main one for prospective governors. On the number of governors who had served as marshals of the nobility, see Richard Gardner Robbins, “Guarding the Guardians : Central Control over the Russian Provincial Governors, 1880 1905, ” delivered to a session of the Southern Historical Association, November 10, 1977.
41. For the period up to 1881, comments on the marshals'political role may be found scattered through various monographs. Field, Daniel's The End of Serfdom : Nobility and Bureaucracy in Russia 1855-1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar contains much evidence on the marshals’ involvement in the emancipation settlement, but Field dismisses them as secondary figures belonging to a politically weak nobility. Terence Emmons, Russian Landed Gentry, has a more positive assessment of the marshals' impact, partly because he devotes much attention to A. M. Unkovskii, the Tver’ provincial marshal. Unkovskii was critical of the government and a leading figure in the Tver’ liberal movement. My dissertation ( “Land, Economy, and Society” ) treats the marshals'economic politics from 1880 to 1905, as does Iu. B. Solov'ev (Samoderzhavie idvorianstvo). Leopold H. Haimson argues that the marshals were the key political actors in the countryside after 1905 ( Haimson, , ed., The Politics of Rural Russia 1905-1914 [Bloomington, 1979], especially pp. 7, 296–97Google Scholar).
42. Hamburg, “Land, Economy, and Society, ” pp. 130-94.
43. See B. B. Veselovskii, V. I. Pichet, and V. M. Friche, eds., Material)'po istorii krest'ianskikh dvizhenii v Rossii, vol. 4 : Agrarnyi vopros v Sovete ministrov (1906 g.) (Moscow-Leningrad, 1924), pp. 96-97.
44. Richard Hennessy shows how seriously noble petitions were taken by Nicholas’ advisors, including Witte and Stolypin (Hennessy, The Agrarian Question in Russia 1905-1907, The Inception of the Stolypin Reform [Giessen, 1977]).
45. The only published survey of marshals'petitions over the period 1861-1904 is in A. P. Korelin, Dvorianstvo v poreformennoi Rossii, pp. 234-84. Korelin concludes his discussion by emphasizing the differences in these petitions. In general, the whole activity of assemblies on this [the economic] issue was directed toward the preservation and strengthening of the economic and political position of the nobility, especially of its landowning part. However, on the question of the ways, means, and methods to attain this goal there was among the assemblies no unity of opinion; this is explained both by the differentiated membership of the estate, in its turn conditioned by the unequal social-economic evolution of its strata, and by the lack of coordination [organizalsionnaia razroznennost’] of noble assemblies, and differences in local conditions, and so on. From these factors came the absence of a common program of action, sharp disagreements during the discussion of projects, the compromise character of many assembly statements, and varied interpretations of one or another provision of these statements by assembly participants. See ibid., pp. 282-83.
46. Constitutional advocates like Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolaevich and Minister of Internal Affairs P. A. Valuev were exceptions : they wanted to bring local representatives into the State Council to vote on important issues. Their constitutional projects were debated in 1863 and 1879-80, but rejected (see Zaionchkovsky, P. A., The Russian Autocracy in Crisis 1878-1882, trans. G. M. Hamburg [Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1979], pp. 83–89 Google Scholar). Another exception was P. A. Shuvalov who wanted conservative marshals and zemstvo representatives to discuss vital legislative issues. See V. G. Chernukha's brilliant reconstruction of Shuvalov's activity between 1866 and 1875 in Chernukha, , Vnutrenniaia politika tsarizma s serediny 50-kh do nachala 80-kh gg. XIX v. (Leningrad, 1978), p. 67–118.Google Scholar
47. Zaionchkovsky, Russian Autocracy in Crisis, pp. 274-75.
48. Solov'ev, Samoderzhavie i dvorianstvo, pp. 188 and passim.
49. Zaionchkovsky, Russian Autocracy in Crisis, pp. 247-48.
50. “Zapiska gubernskikh predvoditelei dvorianstva, vyzvannykh s Vysochaishego ego Imperatorskogo Velichestva soizvoleniia, g. Ministrom vnutrennikh del v soveshchanii o nuzhdakh dvorianskogo zemlevladeniia, ” TsGIA, f. 593, op. 1, d. 351, 11. 1-78.
51. See the membership list in Terence, Emmons, “The Beseda Circle, 1899-1905,” Slavic Review, 32, no. 3 (September 1973) : 489–90.Google Scholar
52. There were no marshals on the first council of the Union of Liberation, though several participated in the union's first congress in 1904. A. A. Stakhovich, Orel provincial marshal, helped organize the Orel banquet of December 2, 1904. See Terence Emmons, “Russia's Banquet Campaign, ” California Slavic Studies, 10 (1977) : 51-56 footnotes.
53. See Geoffrey A. Hoskingand Roberta Thompson Manning, “What Was the United Nobility?” in Haimson, ed., Politics of Rural Russia, pp. 142-83.
54. Ibid., pp. 154-56, 177 footnote.
55. Boiovich, M. M., Chleny Gosudarstvennoi dumy, Pervyi sozyv 1906-1911 g. (Moscow, 1906)Google Scholar; idem, Vtoroi sozyv 1907-1911 g. (Moscow, 1907); idem, Tretii sozyv 1907-1912 g. (Moscow, 1909); idem, Chetvertyi sozyv 1912-1917 g. (Moscow, 1913).
56. On the composition of the Octobrists see Michael Brainerd, “The Octobrists and the Gentry, 1905-1907 : Leaders and Followers?” in Haimson, ed., Politics of Rural Russia, pp. 67-93.
57. On the Nationalists see Robert Edelman, “The Election to the Third Duma : The Roots of the Nationalist Party, ” in ibid., pp. 92-122 and Robert Edelman, Gentry Politics on the Eve of the Russian Revolution. The Nationalist Party 1907-1917 (New Brunswick, 1980).
58. Of course, the large landowners tended to cluster in the more moderate and conservative factions, that is, in the Right Octobrist group and in the Nationalist Party. Outside the Duma, conservatives joined the United Nobility or other rightist pressure groups. What is important is that the party system did not reflect in any simple way the social divisions of Russian society. It should be added that some marshals stood outside the party system altogether. A moving example of political radicalization is Aleksandr Ivanovich Novikov, a former marshal in Kozlov district, Tambov province. Novikov rejected his past and embraced egalitarian values : “I was able to kill off in myself the man of high life, the landlord, the nobleman, and the zemskii Tulane University for bringing this source to my attention).
59. TsGIA, f. 1283, op. 1, deloproizvodstvo 1, 1897, d. 231, 1. 159. See also A. P. Korelin, “Dvorianstvo v poreformennoi Rossii (1861-1904), ” Istoricheskie zapiski, 87 (1971) : 138.