Nobility in the reign of Peter I- nobility (Russian nobility) in Russia of the tsarist and imperial periods, during the reign of Peter I (Peter the Great).

As a legacy from his predecessors, Peter I received a service class that was greatly shaken and did not look like the service class that the heyday of the Russian state knew under this name. But Peter I Alekseevich inherited from his ancestors for resolution the same great state task, on which the people of the Muscovite state have been working for two centuries - "collecting Russian lands" lost from the aggression of Russia's neighbors. The territory of the state was supposed to enter its natural boundaries, a huge space occupied by an independent political nation, was supposed to have access to the seas - Russian and Baltic. This was required by the state of the country's economy, and the interests of all the same security. As executors of this task, previous epochs gave him a class of people who were historically brought up in labor over the task of collecting all of Russia. This class fell into the hands of Peter Alekseevich, not only ready for those improvements that life had long demanded, but already adapting to those new methods of struggle with which Peter I began campaigns. The old task and the old familiar task of resolving it - war - left neither time, nor opportunity, nor even need, since the latter can historically be accepted, much concern for innovations, a new structure and a new appointment for the service class. In essence, under Peter I, the same principles continued to develop in the estate.

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✪ Boris Megorsky about the new army of Peter the Great

✪ Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna (says historian Sergei Vivatenko)

✪ Russian Tsar Boris

✪ Russian Empire. Peter I. Part 1

✪ Russia and Europe in the age of Elizabeth Petrovna

Subtitles

Hello! We've talked quite a lot around this table about military history. And we gradually got close to something interesting, to the history of the army of Peter I. For what an expert on the Northern War, the army of Peter I, a reenactor with great experience, a member of the military-historical club “Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment”, Boris Megorsky, came to us. Boris, hi. Thank you. And then somehow you and I have been in reconstruction for a long time, but we have never crossed paths at this table. We will have a series of videos. Because the army of Peter the Great is a big phenomenon. Therefore, there will be a whole series, which will be called "Troops of Peter I". Today we have part one, which will be devoted to the new army of Peter I. Quite right. The army with which Peter waged the Northern War, and as a result won it, was partly inherited by him. There were so-called old services that deserve a separate discussion. Today I would like to talk about the result of Peter's military reforms. That is, about his new army, which he created before the start of the Northern War, and which won this war as a result. I must say that what we are going to talk about today is pretty well researched. A large number of archival materials have been published, a lot of rather sensible research. Therefore, I do not act here as an expert who invented all this himself. I refer to the researchers who worked it all out. Therefore, it is impossible not to mention the most productive researcher of the last hundred years, Moisei Davidovich Rabinovich. Which from the 1950s to the 1970s worked very fruitfully, published a lot of papers. What is one reference book "Regiments of the Peter's Army" worth, which lists more than 600 regiments. Naturally, like any work of this magnitude, it is not without some flaws, it is inevitable. Nevertheless, his handbook is still the most valuable material for all those involved in the Petrine history. I would say that if you have been doing military history for a little over 10 years, then this guide will definitely catch your eye. If only because you are looking for any military in catalogs in libraries. And, of course, you see this book, it's inevitable. And if we talk about the topic of our today's conversation, then his article is important here, which was called "The Formation of a Regular Russian Army on the Eve of the Northern War." This work does not describe at a sufficiently modern level how the new army of Peter I was created. And we need to tell when we talk about the recruitment of the army, about our modern researcher, this is Vyacheslav Anatolyevich Tikhonov. Who in 2012 published a work on the recruitment system under Peter the Great, we will also refer to it. It needs to be said right now. This topic turned out to be so important in its time that behind it, like behind a huge rock, one cannot see what was before. Because for a long time it seemed to everyone that from Alexei Mikhailovich to Ivan the Terrible it was not clear what. And only Peter I with his new army took a step forward in European military affairs. We will not go to such extremes. Moreover, now a lot of respectable researchers are engaged in the Moscow armies of the 17th century. Good. The end of the XVII century, Peter returned from the Great Embassy. He went to the great embassy in order to negotiate an alliance in the war against the Turks. In fact, the war with the Turks by that time had already been fought for a long time and by many European states. But it was by the end of the 1690s that the next war, the European one, which would be called the War of the Spanish Succession, became relevant. Nobody was interested in the war with the Turks. With this realization, Peter returned home. By that time, the Streltsy uprising had also been crushed. Gradually it became clear that there would be no war with the Turks, but with Sweden ... It was necessary to prepare for a war with Sweden. Sweden is a European country, with a European army. With European generals, officers. And against them, Peter did not have adequate strength because the entire Russian army consisted of archers, who were dispersed relatively recently. Of the residential soldier regiments, which mainly sat on the southeastern borders, they were, in fact, garrison units. From irregular local cavalry, from various Cossacks. From a small number of elected regiments in Moscow and the future guard. There were two regiments. Yes. Butyrsky and Lefortovsky. But the fact is that all these troops, whatever they were and no matter how many they were, they had absolutely no relevant experience. Because it is one thing to fight the Tatars and the Ottomans. It is another matter to fight with a modern European army according to the principles of regular tactics. Here, completely different principles of management, principles of training, and different experience were needed. All this was not in Peter's army. Therefore, it was necessary to create an army from scratch. Most likely, after the European trip, it was decided to create an army according to the European model, on the principles that were adopted in Europe. In particular, the first tsarist decree, which announced the recruitment of new troops, called for joining the ranks of the tsarist army, the “freemen”. That is, it was, in fact, a set of volunteers who would serve for money, would receive a salary. This decree promised that the new soldiers would receive a salary along with the Preobrazhensky and Semenovtsy. This is 11 rubles a year. Grain salary, uniform allowance. I must say that this was a revolutionary phenomenon in the national military history. Because until then it was not given to form an army of volunteers. As a rule, these were the sovereign's service people, either subordinate or serving in the fatherland. Or on the device. Yes. Or on the device. So that a person of his own free will come to military service, this was not the case. So it was unusual. Volunteers began to flock to the first decree of November 8, 1699, which was announced in Moscow. At some point, it became clear that among these volunteers there were many runaway serfs. On this occasion, in the film "Peter I" everything is shown as clearly as possible. There was such a moment, I remember exactly. Therefore, the next decree, in November or already in December, announced the collection of data. That is, they were serfs who belonged to the landowners, but they were courtyard people. This principle was strictly observed until 1705. They took dachas, but did not take the peasants who were directly engaged in agriculture. This says a lot about the Russian government, which, for the time being, tried to protect the core of the economy from the effects of military kits. Therefore, they began to recruit both freemen and slaves. Decrees were repeated, in Moscow they began to form two divisions. One of which, Golovin's division, was almost completely recruited from freemen. About 10 thousand people. Another division, the division of Adam Weide, was recruited from subordinate divisions. At the same time, in the Volga region, in the lower cities ... These are Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, and other Volga cities. General Nikita Repnin was sent there, who also recruited his division, which consisted of 95 percent of freemen. I must say that a small set was also announced in Novgorod, Smolensk, and Pskov. But, in total, no more than 3 thousand people were recruited there. There is a version that in the western, northwestern regions they did not conduct a large recruitment in order not to make it clear to the Swedes that something was being prepared against them. However, the army was gathering from the very end of 1699. Let me remind you that war was declared in August 1700. Less than a year has passed since the moment when, in principle, they began to form an army, until the moment when this army, dressed to the nines, armed with new weapons, trained according to new regulations, entered into hostilities. Which is impressive because it's a big organizational effort. What was the approximate strength of this new army at the start of the Great Northern War? It was three divisions. Each, on average, 10 thousand people. New regiments, a total of 29 regiments, that's 30 thousand people. Here you need to tell how the recruitment system developed. We know that they took freemen, which was unheard of for the Russian troops at that time. They took subordinates, which always happened before. The Narva defeat, November 1700, led to some losses ... Who does not remember, we tried to fight the Swedes near Narva. The deblocking garrison came and smashed the army of Peter I literally to smithereens. There, only some regiments were able to retreat in order. Well, to smithereens, not to smithereens. If you count the losses, they were not very large. Retreated in disarray, yes. We lost all the generals and many officers, which we will say more about. But the bottom line is that the first battle of the war was disastrous. The army retreated, suffered some losses. And it was necessary to make up for these losses. Therefore, in December 1700, another set of freemen was announced, which gave several thousand more people, who were distributed among the regiments. But already in the following years it became clear that the resource of volunteers was gradually drying up. We turned to the next most massive resource, this is data. They continued to take yard people. As before, they did not take plowed peasants. We have data bases, it’s practically recruits. There are no clear differences between data and recruits. "Recruit" is a European word that came into use around 1702-1703. At some point, it became clear that the resource of data bases was running out. They began to resort to extraordinary measures. They announced a set of townspeople, that is, the urban population. Posadskys were chosen on the principle that they should have an income of less than 30 rubles a year. The fact that these citizens were taken into the army had little effect on the city's economy, but in general this contingent was not the best as soldiers. These were people who were not always of the best health, not always of the best moral principles. There could not have been many of them due to the fact that the urban population was very small relative to the peasant population. Nevertheless, in conditions when there were practically no volunteers left, it was necessary to take at least someone. In 1704, every second coachman was taken into the army. Consider half of the drivers of the entire country, which could not but affect the transport system. And it became clear that resources had already been exhausted. Because there are practically no yard people left. There was also an emergency recruitment in Moscow, when they began to rake out peasants and courtyards from all the estates. It became clear that only the resource of the plowed peasantry remained, these are 95 percent of the country's population, those people who form the backbone of the economy. For the time being, for the time being, they were not taken into the army, but here they had to. It must be said that by that time the European general Ogilvy, hired for service, proposed to take a recruit, according to the Austrian model, one person from 20 yards every year. It is the plowed peasants. This provided an inexhaustible resource. Naturally, this laid a heavy burden on the peasant community. People who were taken away from their families deserted in huge numbers. Nevertheless, this resource made it possible to maintain the army in the required numbers and, as a result, led to the fact that the troops carried out all the tasks assigned to them. We have not practiced this at all since the end of the 11th century. Such kind of military contingents. This is how much time has passed, a little less than 700 years, from the moment when the peasants fought for the last time. It was not supposed to, the peasants had to work. Actually, therefore, the government tried to the last not to attract peasants. But in the end I had to. Accordingly, from the beginning of 1705, recruiting began. The first set was announced in February 1705. And the second was announced already at the end of the same, 1705. The next one was announced already in 1707. So, on average, recruiting sets were announced once a year. They were numbered. Over time, this recruiting burden eased a little. In particular, due to the fact that after 1711 the need for manpower decreased somewhat. Already there were not such big losses in the army. That is, after Poltava. After Poltava, there was still the Prut campaign with heavy losses. Well, after Prut, there have already been years when recruiting was not carried out. However, it was still a great disaster for the peasants. Large percentage of deserters. In 1712, they thought of stigmatizing recruits, putting a cross on their left hand, then instead of a cross they began to put dots. Nevertheless, somehow they tried to deal with desertion. The conditions were quite tough. The landlords were supposed to supply the peasant with everything necessary: ​​clothes, some kind of lifting money, provisions. Obviously, each recruit was followed by a cart with sacks of flour and cereals. At some point, they even abandoned it. And the recruits who came from some distant provinces were no longer required to provide food because it was rotting somewhere at the assembly points. Wasted inefficiently. And what effect did it leave on the economy? Because, understandably, the peasants plow. This is the basis of what is in Russia, probably from the 6th century. Yes. One can imagine, in addition to giving people to the army, they pay taxes. They are collected for some construction projects. After the end of the war, this was the construction of canals, work at shipyards, and the construction of fortresses. These were rather heavy duties, and all of them fell on the peasantry. It should be mentioned here that all those recruits who became soldiers were the backbone of the army of 1700, they needed some kind of management, leadership. Here we need to talk about the officers. Because in the old Peter's army there were quite a few senior officers: colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors. Almost all of them were foreigners who had served in Russia for more than 20 years. That is, they were people under 50-60 years old. These were Europeans who left for Russia, they were called “foreigners of the old departures”, who came to Russia under Alexei Mikhailovich. But they did not have the necessary experience of European wars. Well, or was, but he belonged to the European wars four decades ago. This was completely irrelevant to the wars of the early 18th century. And these senior foreign officers were even in abundance. They mainly served on the southern borders: Belgorod, Sevsk ... At the same time, there was a shortage of junior officers, company-level officers: captains, lieutenants, warrant officers. Ensign then was also an officer rank. The foreign order was in charge of foreigners who occupied officer positions. In 1700, they began to look at which of these foreign officers could be recruited to serve in the new regiments. And almost all were sent back because they were deemed unfit for field service. They were either old or didn't know anything. Therefore, a serious problem arose. Colonels, lieutenant colonels, majors were more or less staffed. Almost all of them were foreigners. What to do with company officers? Some of them were foreigners. It was necessary to take the Russian people, and it was proposed to take the Moscow nobles. These were the most privileged, the most distinguished nobles. Probably, in this regard, the most educated. May be. It is unlikely that the level of education played any role here. First of all, we looked at wealth. Established a property qualification, at least 40 yards. And those nobles who had at least 40 households, they were appointed officers in these new regiments. At the same time, they were not paid salaries because they already have an estate. Thus, the army ended up with soldiers who were taken into the army less than a year ago. And the same officers. And the same officers who had no experience. Both of them were taught according to the new charters, which were developed by 1699. But neither of them had any practical experience. One could count on the fact that the lack of qualifications among officers is compensated by non-commissioned officers, sergeants. But where do you get them? Non-commissioned officers, captains, corporals, sergeants were appointed from the same recruits. They were selected according to some criteria, probably, they were more intelligent. But these were people without any special training. And with such a wonderful composition, the Russian army entered the war. We are talking about regular infantry. And what about the cavalry? The cavalry is interesting. There was local cavalry. Then it was called "old service". A new type of cavalry - dragoons. The first dragoon regiment was formed in Moscow in Preobrazhensky in 1698. It was even called at first the Preobrazhensky Dragoon Regiment. Not to be confused with the Preobrazhensky Regiment, which later became the Guards. And the second dragoon regiment was already assembled in 1700. These were the only two dragoon regiments with which the army entered the war. And what about the dragoon regiments that Alexei Mikhailovich inherited? They did not live up to this time. They ceased to exist. And those two dragoon regiments that were formed in Moscow were staffed by noblemen. Because horse service has traditionally been considered more prestigious. The nobles were quite willing to go there. The difference from the local cavalry of these dragoons was that they served for a salary. They received equipment and weapons from the treasury. And they received money for uniforms. And a horse. Accordingly, the local cavalry, she lived from the estate and each nobleman had to provide for all this himself. I see that the dragoons, according to the principle of configuration, did not differ from the reiters of Alexei Mikhailovich. Essentially, yes. There was a noticeable number of Reiter regiments. Also old service. Which in the first campaign, in 1700, practically did not take part. In addition to the Smolensk landowners. But already in 1701, it was decided to form new dragoon regiments. To begin with, nine, then their number gradually increased. And they were recruited from the Reiter. These were the nobles of the central, southern regions. Accordingly, they were trained in the dragoon formation, they began to receive weapons and equipment from the treasury. It is believed that the dress began to be issued centrally from 1706. But, it is obvious that some centralized blanks existed even before that. And all the dragoon regiments, it was the noble cavalry, where the nobles occupied all positions from private to all officers. The situation changed with the start of recruiting in 1705. When yesterday's peasants began to be delivered both to soldier regiments and to dragoon ones. It turned out a curious situation when the nobles served in ordinary positions along with the peasants. And this situation... What a disgrace, shame. sovereign will. Actually, until the end of the war, it turned out that the nobles continued to serve as privates along with the peasants. And the percentage of nobles in the dragoon regiments was higher than in the infantry. About 70 percent of the officers were nobles in dragoons. And in the infantry about 50 percent. But it could have happened that an intelligent peasant boy would curry favor and become, albeit a junior, but a commander, and a nobleman would be subordinate to him. Theoretically it can. You can even look for such cases. We have a wonderful array of "officer's tales", these are autobiographies that were collected in 1720 by the Military Collegium. Kirill Tatarnikov published them, this is an absolutely amazing amount of very valuable information for us. There you can find completely different life stories. Surely there is one there as well. Well, and not to be unfounded. The mentioned Moisei Davidovich Rabinovich wrote the article “The Social Origin and Property Status of the Officers of the Russian Army at the End of the Northern War”. He processed more than 2 thousand officer tales and compiled some statistics. From which it can be seen that at the end of the war, of the officers of all infantry and dragoon regiments, 62 percent were noblemen. At the same time, from the “old services”, these are former reytars, former from the city Cossacks, about 10 percent. Other estates, in particular taxable, and peasants, and townspeople, and merchants, about 10 percent. Foreigners made up about 12 percent. We see that during the war the proportion of foreigners was at some point higher, especially among senior officers, but at the end of the war the proportion of foreigners was not so large. Despite the fact that Peter established the border, foreigners could occupy no more than 30 percent of all posts, but this quota was not reached. Why such a quota? Because of the Narva defeat, when foreign officers en masse fled to the Swedes as prisoners? Not at all. Because if we look at what happened near Narva, then after Narva, it becomes clear that a certain number of officers were captured by the Swedes. A certain number, in an atmosphere of turmoil and lawlessness, which the lower ranks perpetrated, preferred to surrender rather than die at the hands of their own soldiers. But these, whatever one may say, were qualified officers, whom the tsar lacked so much. We talked about officers. From the very principle of manning, it is clear that all the soldiers came from, as they say, from the Great Russian provinces. That is, they were ethnic Russians, all Orthodox. Muslims, Finno-Ugric peoples were excluded from the recruiting sets. Residents of Cherkasy cities, that is, Ukrainian ones, were excluded. Because they had their own army, Zaporozhye. The Russian army was quite homogeneous in its composition, ethnic and religious. In all rules, of course, there are exceptions. It happened that non-Russian lower ranks got into the army. First of all, we are talking about the Swedes who were captured and preferred to go to the Russian service. There were many. They tried to transfer them to serve in those garrisons that were away from the Russian-Swedish front, in particular in Azov, in Taganrog there were many Swedish lower ranks and officers. Which, during the Turkish War of 1711, made attempts to go over to the Turkish side, but nothing happened. There were officers and generals who transferred to the Russian service. Probably the most famous is General Schlippenbach. A Swedish general who served in the first half of the war with the Swedes and the second half with the Russians. And there is an interesting, almost curious moment. The regiment, which, starting from 1713, was called the Vyborg Infantry Regiment, and before that was called the Soldiers' Regiment of Colonel Inglis, participated in the capture of Vyborg in 1710. After the capture of Vyborg, a significant number of Swedes chose to go to the royal service, these were the soldiers of the Vyborg garrison. And they ended up in the regiment of Colonel Inglis, who was later called the Vyborg regiment. And it turned out to be a rather interesting situation that the Vyborg regiment consisted of Vyborg residents, but Swedes. Which leads us to talk about the names of the regiments. Because all these regiments that were created in 1700, they were called exclusively by colonels. Soldier's regiment of Savva Aigustov. This is still a tradition from Alexei Mikhailovich. Naturally. As I said, they were all foreigners. Savva Aigustov is the only example of a Russian colonel. All the rest, one way or another, were Germans, often they were relatives. Therefore, to say that this regiment was Reeder's regiment is not enough. The name needs to be corrected. Then, probably, it was somehow tracked, but for modern researchers it is a big headache. To some extent, Rabinovich in his reference book reflected some transitions of colonels in the life of the regiment, but by no means all. Therefore, it is quite problematic to make a chain of how the regiment was called during the Northern War. A new colonel, the same regiment suddenly begins to be called ... It was Petrov's regiment, it became Ivanov's regiment. Yes. It's very confusing when reading the docs. In 1706, the dragoon regiments were the first to be given geographic names. They became dragoon regiments with territorial names: Terek, Nizhny Novgorod, and so on. Which was convenient because when changing the colonel, the name of the regiment was preserved. In 1708 the same system was applied to infantry regiments. Let's make a footnote that the infantry regiments were originally called "soldiers' regiments". Soldier, this is an infantryman meant. Then the question arises: “And on what basis were the names given to these regiments?” And we don’t have a clear answer to it, because nowhere is the principle fixed, according to which Peter called one regiment “Moscow” and the other “Kazan”. All we can say is that there is no connection between the name of the regiment and the place where it was formed, to the place where they took recruits, to the place where the regiment stood up. There is no connection. There were rare exceptions, the same Vyborg regiment. Because the Kazan regiment was formed in Moscow. Well, most of the other regiments were also formed in Moscow. The researcher Smirnov dealt with this issue, he suggested that most of the names were taken from the Sovereign's title. Accordingly: “Tsar and Grand Duke of Moscow, Vladimir ...” Therefore, the regiments of Moscow, Vladimir, Novgorod ... But there were more regiments than names in the title. Therefore, they began to use the names of smaller settlements, freshly conquered, like Shlisselburgsky, Yamburgsky. One case when the dragoon regiment was called "Nevsky". That is, not by the name of the city, but by the name of the river. "Siberian", as the name of the whole kingdom. Basically, these were the names of cities. And a rare case when a regiment was named after a foreign geographical name is the Saxon regiment, which was assembled from the remnants of the Russian corps, which was sent to the aid of the Polish king and the Elector of Saxony, Augustus. In the battle of 1706 at Fraustadt, the corps was defeated. Its remnants heroically retreated, and as a result returned to Russia under the command of Colonel Renzel. These remnants were consolidated into a regiment and it was called that, either the Renzel regiment or the Saxon regiment. All other regiments, one way or another, were called by Russian toponyms. If we talk about soldier regiments, you need to show what the soldiers of 1700 looked like. They looked like this. And the structure of the regiments was very dependent on where they were formed. The regiments of the Moscow formation, the divisions of Golovin and Wade, consisted of 12 fusilier companies. While Repnin's division, formed in the Volga region, had 9 companies. Of these, one grenadier and eight fusiliers. Fusiliers, who are they? Arrows. Fuzeya - a gun. Well, rough, yes. Then “gun” was a general term. Small arms were then called either a musket or a fusee. "Fusea" is a French word. Accordingly, this is a muzzle-loading, smooth-bore weapon with a flintlock. Therefore, people armed with such weapons were called Fusiliers. Musketeers were already less used, mostly Fusiliers. Therefore, the companies were fusilier. In the lower regiments there was also a separate grenadier company. Interestingly, and then these infantry regiments were called musketeers until some time. Yes, they were also called that, but this is already later. If at the beginning of the war the structure was different, somewhere 12 companies, somewhere 9 companies, then gradually the whole structure was unified. As a result, 9 companies, that is, one grenadier and eight fusiliers, this became the standard staff structure. Accordingly, the regiments were subdivided into companies. An intermediate link, a battalion ... Accordingly, if this is a 12-company regiment, then these are three battalions. 9-company regiment, these are two battalions. Over time, it became the standard, as part of an infantry regiment - two battalions. Guards regiments, which we will talk about separately, had a different structure. Several infantry regiments, which were called generals because generals were considered their colonels, they also had a reinforced structure, three battalions. But, as a rule, these were 2-battalion regiments. If we talk about dragoons, they had 10 companies in their regiments, which were reduced to 5 squadrons. This structure, which was preserved, with rare exceptions, throughout the war. Images by which one could judge the appearance of the Petrovsky soldiers are offensively few. And what was the number of regiments? An infantry regiment ... After the already mentioned Field Marshal Ogilvy brought everyone to a common denominator in 1705, this is 1300 people. Dragoon regiment, it's about 1000 people. We get 200 people in the squadron. We will talk separately about the actions of squadrons, companies, battalions. Yes, you can talk about tactics, about training for a long time. There are many interesting things. We mentioned the grenadier. A grenadier is a man armed not only with a gun, but also with a hand grenade. These were selected soldiers because to throw a hand grenade ... Let me remind you that this is a cast-iron ball, empty inside, filled with gunpowder, an ignition tube is inserted into it, which must be set on fire, when it burns out, the grenade will explode. The ball is heavy, it needs to be set on fire in time, thrown in the right direction. Therefore, the grenadiers, these were not at all necessarily tall people, they were, first of all, strong and intelligent people who could do all this without harming others. That is why the grenadiers were selected soldiers. Therefore, it became a tradition to select the most lanky grenadiers. Not necessarily the most intelligent soldiers. At the beginning of the Northern War, the grenadiers performed their direct function, they had to be able to throw grenades, these were selected units. Gradually, it became a tradition to collect the grenadier companies of individual regiments into consolidated grenadier battalions. Let's say, within the framework of one division, grenadier companies were assembled, of which a certain combined battalion was given, they gave him an officer. Well, at the end of this year's campaign, the companies dispersed to their native regiments. This system had its pros and cons. Plus, this is such a strike formation, a whole regiment of more or less well-trained soldiers who can perform some kind of strike mission. At the same time, there were problems with the administration of such connections. The officers of individual companies preferred to receive orders from the commanders of their native regiments, and not from the commander of this grenadier formation, to whom they were temporarily subordinate. There were problems with unification, they came from different regiments in different uniforms, with different calibers of guns. So the question arose as to what should be done about it. There was such a grenadier officer Yefim Buk, who in 1707 submitted a proposal addressed to the sovereign, where he described how the grenadier business was set up in European armies. He suggested how to improve the condition of the grenadier units in the Russian army. This led to the fact that his consolidated grenadier battalion was disbanded anyway. But in 1708, permanent grenadier regiments began to be created. Not all of them lasted long. For example, one regiment survived for the duration of the 1709 campaign. He was then disbanded. But the same companies were assembled the following year, and the regiment continued to exist precisely with this composition. These regiments were called either by the names of their colonels. Or these regiments were called by the names of the generals who commanded the divisions in which they were recruited. Generals, division commanders, changed less frequently, but nonetheless. In rare cases, they were also named by numbers. The army that operated in Finland in the 1710s, there were two grenadier regiments, they went like this: the First Grenadier and the Second Grenadier. Nevertheless, starting from 1708, grenadier regiments, as selected units, existed on a permanent basis in the Russian army. The cavalry, the dragoons, also had their own grenadiers. The first grenadier dragoon companies appeared in 1705. Massively they began to appear in the shelves in 1707. But they were also taken and separated in 1709. They made three consolidated grenadier dragoon regiments. They threw a grenade from the saddle? History is silent on this. However, they were men armed with broadswords, pistols, fuzes and hand grenades. There were three regiments, which were also named after their colonels. They successfully existed until the end of the war, performing their functions. Was the fusee for the dragoons, as expected, shortened? That is, a carbine, speaking in our language. No, not a carbine, it was no more than 10 centimeters shorter. That is, it had to be used by standing on foot. Not necessarily. The dragoons, we will talk about this in detail, fired from a horse. This was the basic principle of the Russian cavalry at that time. If the Swedish cavalry, according to the precepts of their king, professed shock tactics and attacks with broadswords. That Russian dragoons fired, fired and fired. And they were taken for broadswords only after they fired a volley. This was probably due to the very lousy quality of our horses and the more acceptable quality of horses from the Swedes. There are quite a few nuances related to the horse composition and how the attacks were carried out, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Still, the cavalry regiment, one cannot fail to mention the horse. What is cavalry without a horse? There was also such a cavalry. What about artillery? With artillery, too, everything was not bad in its own way. If we talk about the beginning of the war, 1700. A large siege park was brought near Narva, and it remained there, captured by the Swedes. After that, the artillery began to complete almost anew. What have been the successes. If the formal Feldzeugmeister General, that is, the general who leads the artillery department, Alexander Archilovich Bagrationi, he was captured by the Swedish, and died there 10 years later. Then the leadership of the Pushkar, then the Artillery order was taken over by the clerk Andrey Vinius, who was mainly involved in production issues, well, in general, he did not achieve great results. Beginning in 1704, the Novgorod Governor, Major General, Yakov Vilimovich Bruce, became responsible for artillery. A Scot who was already born in Russia. He had a brother Roman Vilimovich. Yakov Bruce led the Russian artillery throughout the Northern War. If we talk about the material part, then the foundations of standardization were laid. The artillery pound standard was introduced. The nomenclature of guns was introduced. If, under Alexei Mikhailovich at the end of the 17th century, regimental artillery was quite universally armed with 2-pounder cannons, which have been preserved in large quantities. Then under Peter the regimental artillery became 3-pounder. In addition, there were 6-pounder guns. There were howitzers that were put into service with the dragoon regiments. But this can be separately told how the regimental artillery was organized, according to what principles. That is, those guns that were supposed to go in the ranks of the advancing, maneuvering troops. There was field artillery with larger-caliber guns, these are 6-12 pounds. Well, there was siege artillery, that's 24 pounds, 18 pounds. Well, of course, mortars. 3-pood mortars were the most common. The direct artillery personnel was reduced to an artillery regiment. The only one. Its staffing structure has changed. It was one bombarding company. It was the scorers of the artillery regiment, the most qualified artillerymen who worked with mortars. Because mortars shoot explosive projectiles. There must be sufficient qualifications to fill these same bombs, prepare combustible compounds, load and fire these mortars. So that she still does not bang in the trunk. Yes. There were many pitfalls. The scorers had assistants, since 1712, according to the artillery staff, they were called gondlangers. If at first they were gondlangers, they were people to perform auxiliary tasks in the gunner companies, then later they were people assigned to the bombardiers. The gunner companies were gunners, the most qualified artillerymen, who were engaged in loading and servicing the guns. There were Fusiliers who were on the sidelines. They had fusees so they could provide some sort of cover. If we talk about regimental artillery, then two 3-pounder cannons and six artillerymen were sent to some infantry regiment: two gunners, then gunners became known as gunners, and four fusiliers. Three qualified gunners per cannon, and soldiers were also attached to them. Well, since we mentioned the bombardiers from the artillery regiment, it must be said that there was another bombardment company. Which was part of the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment. They were two completely different companies. Because artillery scorers are pure artillerymen who were engaged in their tasks. And the bombardiers in the Preobrazhensky Regiment were qualified soldiers who performed the functions of artillerymen. They had engineering training, but in general they were soldiers belonging to the Preobrazhensky Guards Regiment ... That is, they had their own artillery there, guards. It was regimental artillery. Guards bombardiers also served siege batteries. In general, these were the most qualified and trusted soldiers in the army, since, as you know, Peter went through the ranks in the ranks of the bombardment company, was its captain at some point. And even ordinary scorers or non-commissioned officers, they often performed some administrative tasks of a fairly high rank. Since we started talking about the Preobrazhensky Regiment, what is the Petrovsky Guard. Everyone knows that the Petrovsky Life Guards descended from amusing ones. Amusing appeared around the king in 1683. Actually in the village of Preobrazhensky. Actually amusing are those who entertain the young prince. They could entertain in completely different ways. Someone liked hunting, young Peter liked any military. The funny ones in the village of Preobrazhensky were just funny. They did not have any clear structure, they were not called a regiment at that time. Who was there? These were palace servants, room sleeping bags, who had their own green palace uniform. As a result, it turned out that the uniform of the future Preobrazhensky Regiment became traditionally green. That is, they went out in their palace liveries. Liveries can not be called, this is a Russian dress. Since 1688, in the neighboring village, Semenovskoye, other palace officials in blue caftans began to be attracted. Thus, the amusing Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky became. They were still not called regiments. Approximately in 1690-1692, the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments began to be called the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments. Well, and the famous portrait that needs to be shown is the portrait of the soldier Bukhvostov. It is traditionally believed that this is the very first person who came and enrolled in the Preobrazhensky Regiment, but this is at the level of legends. Until now, we do not really know anything about this portrait. When it was written, in connection with what. But in fact, Sergei Bukhvostov appeared in the Preobrazhensky amusing in 1687, was enrolled in the artillery. At that time he was quite an adult, he was 27 years old. Not all funny ones were boys. At that time, a person at a respectable age. Yes. In the mid-1690s, the Preobrazhenians and Semenovtsy were already called the first and second thousand of the Third Elected Regiment. We mentioned that there were two elected regiments in Moscow. In fact, it was the most European infantry of the Moscow kingdom at that time. The first Lefortovsky, the second - Butyrsky regiment, they were commanded by Patrick Gordon, a Scot. At some point, these guards were considered the Third Elected Regiment. There is no official decision to call these regiments guards. Just in June 1700, for the first time in Peter's correspondence, they are mentioned as the Life Guards. Gradually they began to call them that. These were the only guard regiments. There were no other guards regiments in the Petrine reign. Neither infantry nor cavalry. But these were not the “parquet” parts that shone in parades. These were truly shock regiments, which, especially at critical moments, Peter threw into battle. They suffered quite serious losses. Be it the assault on Noteburg in 1702. Naturally, they began to gain their reputation earlier. And they took part in the Azov campaigns, and in the suppression of the streltsy uprising in 1692. Well, and, faced with the Swedes, they put up stubborn resistance. It is believed that on their flank they held the offensive of the Swedes and in the future the guardsmen were quite actively used in some critical areas. Gradually, when the rest of the army became more experienced, the guards began to be protected. Peter ordered the guards not to enter into battle without his direct order. There was a scandal with Field Marshal Sheremetev when he led the guards into battle in February 1709. It was in Ukraine, it was necessary to occupy a certain village. At hand were only dragoons, who had many recruits, and there were guards, whom Sheremetev threw into battle. They completed the task, the point was captured. But at the same time, the commander of one of the battalions, Fedor Bartenev, one of Peter's favorites, died. Peter strongly blamed Sheremetev. Sheremetev was forced to justify himself. Preobrazhensky and Semenovtsy were infantry, they fought on foot. At some point, it became necessary to constantly follow the sovereign, who quite actively moved between theaters of military operations. In 1707, at first, one Preobrazhensky battalion was transferred to the dragoon position. That is, they were provided with riding horses, saddles, and all the necessary equipment. Then the remaining battalions of the Preobrazhenians and Semenovtsy were also transferred to the dragoon position. This does not mean that they fought as cavalrymen. They simply moved from place to place on horseback, and for battles they dismounted and acted like infantry. That is, they were dragoons in the sense of the 17th century. Well, rough, yes. Moreover, all the other dragoons were not riding infantry, but rather shooting cavalry. And the guardsmen in such a dragoon position existed from 1707 to 1712. In the Preobrazhensky Regiment, in addition to the bombardment company, there was one grenadier company, which was always with the regiment, and 16 fusilier companies, which were divided into 4 battalions. It was the strongest regiment in the entire army. The Semenovites had three battalions. One, also not detachable, grenadier company and 12 fusilier companies. Guardsmen, as a rule, acted together. At some point, the Guards Division was formed, which included not only Preobrazhensky and Semenovtsy, but two more regiments, which can, with some degree of convention, be called elite infantry regiments. The first is the regiment of the Ingrian governor, Alexander Danilovich Menshikov, who was called the Ingrian. It was created in 1703 from the best soldiers of other regiments and was in the position of guards. That is, the same salary, the same allowance. In fact, it was the personal guard of the royal favorite. Ingria, this is the Leningrad region. Yes. Naturally, the soldiers of this regiment were not from Ingermanladia, since they were elected soldiers from the Moscow or Volga regiments. And at some point, the Astrakhan Infantry Regiment, commanded by the son of the boyar Sheremetev, Mikhail Borisovich Sheremetev, received the status of a selective unit. How this regiment is so distinguished, I honestly do not know. But the fact remains, these four regiments acted together, they were all transferred to the dragoon position. Accordingly, they moved around the theater of operations on horseback. The guardsmen were not subordinate to the Military Collegium. Therefore, according to them, we do not have so many regimental tales. However, there is also some material on them. The mentioned researcher Smirnov wrote an article about the features of the social composition and recruitment of the Russian guard at the end of the Northern War. And we can find out who the guardsmen of the Semenovsky and Preobrazhensky regiments were. Not only officers. Here we can talk about all ranks, both lower and officer. Nobles were 43 percent of all guardsmen. Some of them were officers, some were in ordinary positions. The percentage of children of soldiers and Reiters was quite large. These were representatives of the old services, 16 percent of them were. And 34 percent were representatives of the taxable population. These are peasants, townspeople, merchants. The percentage of foreigners, churchmen, and monastic servants was rather small. Well. We talked about infantry regiments, dragoons, artillerymen, guardsmen. But there are still many categories left outside the scope of today's conversation. These are the old services, these are irregular troops, marines, who appeared under Peter along with the fleet. Then you can tell quite a lot about the materiel, uniforms, weapons, equipment. The material part is very important. Tactics, combat use, training. Both field tactics and the participation of soldiers in naval battles, in battles on rivers and lakes. I will try to give a list of references in the comments to the video. This will not be in the comments, we will hang it under the video. Good. Because this story is in any case an overview. Who cares to figure it out on their own - there is a lot of literature. Most of it is available online, read and enjoy. Well, and who wants to really go deep, will have to deal with the sources. Mass published, and even more not published. But even with the published ... For a deep understanding, you need to study the sources. If you have a goal of self-study, always refer to the sources. Historiography will help you only in the sense that we will know what your colleagues were talking about before you. To complete the topic on sources. First of all, “Letters and Papers of Peter the Great”. This is an ongoing edition. The first volume appeared in 1883. It covers the period from the beginning of the Petrine reign to 1700. At the moment, materials up to 1713 inclusive have been published. That is, almost half of the Northern War is not covered. A very large array. It is interesting not only because it is Peter's outgoing correspondence, where he gives instructions to his generals, but also because it is a large number of incoming materials. That is, these are reports, letters of generals, officers, officials. Lots of valuable information. This is a working documentation, in which many interesting details can be gleaned. A large number of period documents have been published since the end of the 19th century. Collections of military historical materials, works of the Russian Military Historical Society. Many regimental stories that were created in the last reign. Some of them were written rather superficially, but some were written by historians using a large amount of archival material. Well, and from the most recent, these are the same regimental tales published by Tatarnikov. There are materials for more than one generation of researchers. Cool. What will we have next time? We can talk about the uniform. We are reenactors. About the uniform is important. We just talked about how the new army came about. And next time we'll talk about what she was wearing. Thank you. Will wait. That's all for today. All for now. Till.

Attachment of the service class to serving military service

Preoccupied with war almost all the time of his reign, Peter, just like his ancestors, if not more, needed to attach the estates to a certain business, and under him the attachment of the service class to the affairs of the state was the same inviolable principle as in the 17th century.

The measures of Peter I in relation to the service class during the war were of an accidental nature, and only about a year, when the tsar came to grips with "citizenship", began to become general and systematic.

From the “old” in the structure of the service class under Peter, the former enslavement of the service class through the personal service of each service person to the state remained unchanged. But in this enslavement, its form has changed somewhat. In the first years of the Swedish war, the noble cavalry was still serving military service on the same basis, but was not the main force, but only an auxiliary one. In the year, sheremetev's army continued to serve as stolniks, solicitors, Moscow nobles, tenants, and so on. In 1712, due to fears of a war with the Turks, all these ranks were ordered to equip themselves for service under a new name - courtiers. Since - years, expressions have gradually gone out of circulation in documents and decrees: children, boyar, service people and are replaced by the expression gentry borrowed from the Kingdom of Poland, which, in turn, was taken by the Poles from the Germans and redone from the word "Geschlecht" - clan. In Peter's decree of 1712, the entire service class is called the nobility. The foreign word was chosen not only because of Peter's predilection for foreign words, but because in Moscow time the expression "nobleman" denoted a relatively very low rank, and people of senior service, court and duma ranks did not call themselves nobles. In the last years of Peter's reign and under his immediate successors, the expressions "nobility" and "gentry" were equally used, but only since the time of Catherine II the word "gentry" completely disappears from the everyday speech of the Russian language.

So, the nobles of the time of Peter the Great are attached to serving the state service for life, like the service people of Moscow times. But, remaining attached to the service all their lives, the nobles under Peter carry out this service in a rather altered form. Now they are obliged to serve in the regular regiments and in the navy and to perform civil service in all those administrative and judicial institutions that have been transformed from the old ones and arose again, and the military and civil service are separated. Since service in the Russian army, in the navy and in new civilian institutions required some education, at least some special knowledge, school preparation for service from childhood was made compulsory for the nobles.

A nobleman of the time of Peter the Great was enrolled in active service from the age of fifteen and had to begin it without fail with a “foundation”, in the words of Peter, that is, an ordinary (soldier, reiter, dragoon, and so on) in the army or a sailor in the navy, non-commissioned schreiber or collegium Junker in civilian institutions. According to the law, it was supposed to study only up to fifteen years, and then it was necessary to serve, and Peter very strictly monitored that the nobility was in business. From time to time, he arranged reviews of all adult nobles who were and were not in the service, and noble "undergrowths", as noble children who had not reached the legal age for service were called. At these reviews, held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the tsar sometimes personally distributed the nobles and undergrowths into regiments and schools, personally putting “wings” in the lists against the names of those who were fit for service. In 1704, Peter himself reviewed in Moscow more than 8,000 nobles convened there. The discharged clerk called out the names of the nobles, and the tsar looked at the notebook and put his marks.

In addition to serving foreign teachings, the nobility carried a compulsory school service. After graduating from compulsory training, the nobleman went to the service. The undergrowths of the nobility "according to their fitness" were enrolled alone in the guards, others in the army regiments or in the "garrisons". The Life Guards Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments consisted exclusively of nobles and were a kind of practical school for officers for army regiments. By decree of 1714, it was forbidden to make officers "from noble breeds" who did not serve as soldiers in the Life Guards.

Attachment of nobles to civil service

In addition to military service, under Peter the civil service becomes the same obligatory duty for the nobility. This attachment to the civil service was big news for the gentry. In the 16th and 17th centuries, only one military service was considered a real service, and servicemen, if they occupied the highest civil positions, then performed them as temporary assignments - these were “cases”, “parcels”, and not a service. Under Peter, civilian service becomes equally honorable and obligatory for a nobleman, like military service. Knowing the old dislike of service people for "sprinkling seed", Peter ordered "not to reproach" the passage of this service to people of noble gentry families. As a concession to the swaggering feeling of the gentry, who disdained to serve next to the clerk's children, Peter the Great decided in 1724 "not to appoint secretaries not from the gentry, so that later they could become assessors, advisers and higher", from the clerk's rank to the rank of secretary they only made in case of exceptional merit. Like the military service, the new civil service—under the new local administration and in the new courts, in the colleges and under the Senate—required some preliminary preparation. To do this, at the metropolitan chancelleries, collegiate and senate, they began to start a kind of schools where they handed over noble undergrowths to pass them the secrets of clerical office work, jurisprudence, economy and "citizenship", that is, in general they taught all non-military sciences, which are necessary for a person to know "civilian » services. By the General Regulations in 1720, such schools, placed under the supervision of secretaries, were deemed necessary to establish at all chancelleries, so that each had 6 or 7 gentry children in training. But this was poorly realized: the gentry stubbornly shunned the civil service.

Recognizing the difficulty of achieving a voluntary attraction of the gentry to civilian service, and on the other hand, bearing in mind that subsequently an easier service would attract more hunters, Peter did not grant the nobility the right to choose the service at their own discretion. At the reviews, the nobles were appointed to the service according to their "suitability", in appearance, according to the abilities and wealth of each, and a certain proportion of service in the military and civilian departments was established: only 1/3 of its cash members could consist of each surname in civilian positions enrolled in the service. This was done so that "the servicemen at sea and on land would not be impoverished."

1. general nominal and separately;
2. which of them is suitable for work and will be used and for which and how much will then remain;
3. how many children and how old someone is, and henceforth who will be born and die male.

The fight against the evasion of the service of the nobles

In 1721, all the nobles, both in the service and those dismissed, were ordered to appear at the review, those who lived in the cities of the St. Petersburg province - to St. Petersburg, the rest - to Moscow. Only the nobles who lived and served in remote Siberia and Astrakhan were spared from appearing at the review. All those who had been at the previous reviews and even all those who were in the provinces were supposed to appear at the review. So that things would not stop in the absence of those who appeared, the nobles were divided into two shifts: one shift was supposed to arrive in St. Petersburg or Moscow in December of the year, the other in March of the year. This review allowed the king of arms to replenish and correct all the previous lists of nobles and draw up new ones. The main concern of the king of arms was the fight against the old evasion of the nobles from service. The most common measures were taken against this. In the year it was announced that the nobles who did not appear at the review in Moscow by the specified date, as well as the voivodes, “repairing their disgrace”, would be executed without mercy. However, there were no executions, and the government, both this time and later, took away only estates for failure to appear. In a year, a fine was taken from those who did not show up for service, setting a deadline for appearance, after which those who did not appear were ordered to “beat the batogs, exile them to Azov, and write their villages to the sovereign.” But these drastic measures did not help.

In the years the names of those who did not appear at the review in St. Petersburg in the previous year were ordered to be printed, sent to the provinces, cities and noble villages and nailed everywhere on poles so that everyone knew who was hiding from service, and knew who to inform on. Fiscals were especially diligent in detecting. But despite such strict measures, the number of nobles who knew how to evade service by distributing bribes and other tricks was significant.

Table of ranks

By decree on January 16 (27), Peter declares service merit, expressed in rank, as a source of gentry nobility. The new organization of civil service and equating it with the military in the sense of obligation for the gentry created the need for a new bureaucracy in this area of ​​public service. This was achieved by establishing the "Table of Ranks" on January 24 (February 4). In this table, all positions were distributed in three parallel rows: land and sea military, civilian and courtiers. Each of these ranks was divided into 14 ranks, or classes. A number of military positions begin, going from above, with field marshal general and end with fendrik. These land posts correspond in the fleet to the general-admiral at the head of the row and the ship's commissar at the end. At the head of the civil ranks is the chancellor, behind him is the real Privy Counsellor, and below him are the provincial secretaries (grade 13) and the collegiate registrars (grade 14). The “Table of Ranks” created a revolution not only in the official hierarchy, but also in the foundations of the nobility itself. Having placed the position as the basis for the division into ranks, which was replaced by merit according to personal qualities and personal suitability of the person entering it, the Table of Ranks abolished the completely ancient division based on generosity and origin and eradicated any significance of aristocracy in the Russian state system. Now everyone, having reached a certain rank by personal merits, became in the corresponding position, and without going through the ranks from the lower ranks, no one could reach the highest. Service, personal merit become a source of nobility. In the paragraphs that accompanied the Table of Ranks, this was expressed very clearly. It says that all employees of the first eight ranks (not lower than major and collegiate assessor) with their offspring are ranked among the best senior nobility. In paragraph 8, it is noted that, although the sons of the most noble Russian nobility are given free access to the court for their noble breed, and it is desirable that they differ in dignity from others in all cases, however, none of them is given any rank for this until they they will not show services to the sovereign and the fatherland, and they will not receive them for their character (that is, the state position expressed in rank and the corresponding position). The table of ranks further opened a wide path to the nobility for people of all classes, since these people got into the military and civil service and moved forward by personal merit. Because of all this, the end result of the action of the Table of Ranks was the final replacement of the old aristocratic hierarchy of the breed with a new bureaucratic hierarchy of merit and seniority.

First of all, well-born people suffered from this innovation, those who have long constituted a select circle of the genealogy of the nobility at the court and in the government. Now they are on the same level with the ordinary nobility. New people who came out of the environment not only of the lower and seedy service ranks, but also from lower people, not excluding serfs, penetrate under Peter to the highest government posts. Under him, from the very beginning of his reign, A. D. Menshikov, a man of humble origin, becomes in first place. The most prominent figures of the second half of the reign were all people of humble origin: Prosecutor General P. I. Yaguzhinsky, Peter's right hand at that time, was from the serfs, the manager of the Moscow province Ershov was also. From the ancient nobility, the princes retained their high position under Peter.

In order to elevate the importance of his unborn associates in the eyes of those around him, Peter began to favor them with foreign titles. Menshikov was elevated in 1707 to the rank of His Serene Highness Prince, and before that, at the request of the Tsar, he was made Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Boyarin F. A. Golovin was also first elevated by Emperor Leopold I to the dignity of a count of the Roman Empire.

Together with the titles, Peter, following the example of the West, began to approve the coats of arms of the nobles and issue letters to the nobility. Coats of arms, however, as early as the 17th century became a big fashion among the boyars, so Peter only legitimized this tendency, which started under the influence of the Polish gentry.

Following the example of the West, the first order in Russia, the “cavalry” of St. Apostle Andrew the First-Called, was established in the same year as the highest distinction. Since the noble dignity acquired by service since the time of Peter the Great is inherited, as granted for long service, which is also news, not known to the 17th century, when, according to Kotoshikhin, the nobility, as a class dignity, "was not given to anyone." "So, according to the table of ranks,- said Professor A. Romanovich-Slavatinsky, - a staircase of fourteen steps separated each plebeian from the first dignitaries of the state, and nothing forbade every gifted person, having stepped over these steps, to reach the first degrees in the state; it opened wide the doors through which, through the rank, the "vile" members of society could "ennoble themselves" and enter the ranks of the nobility.

Decree on unanimity

The nobility of the time of Peter the Great continued to enjoy the right to land ownership, but since the foundations of this right had changed, the nature of land ownership itself also changed: the distribution of state lands to local ownership ceased by itself, as soon as the new nature of the noble service was finally established, as soon as this service, having concentrated in regular regiments, it lost its former militia character. Local distribution was then replaced by the granting of populated and uninhabited lands to full ownership, but not as a salary for service, but as a reward for exploits in the service. This consolidated the merging of estates and estates that had already developed in the 17th century into one. In his law “On movable and immovable estates and on single inheritance”, issued on March 23 (April 3), Peter did not make any difference between these two ancient forms of service land ownership, speaking only of immovable estates and meaning by this expression both local and patrimonial earth.

The content of the decree on single inheritance lies in the fact that a landowner who has sons could bequeath all his real estate to one of them, to whom he wanted, but certainly only to one. If the landowner died without a will, then all real estate passed by law to one eldest son. If the landowner did not have sons, then he could bequeath his estate to one of his close or distant relatives, to whom he wanted, but certainly to one alone. In the event that he died without a will, the estate passed to the next of kin. When the deceased turned out to be the last in the family, he could bequeath real estate to one of his maiden daughters, a married woman, a widow, to whom he wanted, but certainly to one. Real estate passed to the eldest of the married daughters, and the husband or groom was obliged to take the last name of the last owner.

The law on single inheritance, however, concerned not only the gentry, but all "subjects, of whatever rank and dignity they may be." It was forbidden to mortgage and sell not only estates and estates, but also yards, shops, in general, any real estate. Explaining, as usual, in a decree the new law, Peter points out, first of all, that “If the immovable will always be for one son, and only movable for others, then state revenues will be more fair, because the master will always be more satisfied with the big one, although he will take it little by little, and there will be one house, not five, and it can better benefit subjects, and not ruin”.

The decree on single inheritance did not last long. He caused too much dissatisfaction among the nobility, and the gentry tried in every possible way to get around him: the fathers sold part of the villages in order to leave money to their younger sons, obliged the co-heir with an oath to pay their younger brothers part of the inheritance in money. In a report submitted by the Senate to Empress Anna Ioannovna in the year, it was indicated that the law on single inheritance causes among members of noble families "hatred and quarrels and lengthy litigation with great loss and ruin for both sides, and it is not unknown that not only some siblings and neighbors relatives among themselves, but the children also beat their fathers to death.” Empress Anna abolished the law of single inheritance, but retained one of its essential features. Decree, abolishing single inheritance, commanded “From now on, both estates and patrimonies, to name equally one immovable estate - patrimony; and the fathers and mothers of their children to share according to the Code are the same to everyone, so it’s the same for daughters as a dowry to give as before ”.

In the 17th century and earlier, service people who settled in the districts of the Moscow state lived a rather close-knit social life, created around the case that they had to serve "even to death." Military service gathered them in some cases in groups, when each had to arrange itself in itself, so that everyone could serve a review together, choose a headman, prepare for a campaign, elect deputies to the Zemsky Sobor, etc. Finally, the very regiments of the Moscow army were made up of each of nobles of the same locality, so that the neighbors all served in the same detachment.

Corporatism of the nobility

Under Peter the Great, these principles of social organization in some respects ceased to exist, in others they were further developed. Neighborly guarantees for each other in proper appearance for service disappeared, the very service of neighbors in one regiment ceased, the elections of “payers” who, under the supervision of a “big man” sent from Moscow, collected information about the service of each nobleman and, on the basis of this information, made a sweep of local dachas and monetary salaries, when it was due. But the old ability of service people to act together, or, as they say, corporately, Peter took advantage of to entrust the local nobility with some participation in local self-government and in the collection of state duties. In 1702, the abolition of the labial elders followed. After the reform of the provincial administration in 1719, the local nobility elected commissars from the land from 1724 and supervised their activities. The commissars had to report every year on their activities to the county noble society, which chose them, and for noticed malfunctions and abuses could bring the perpetrators to justice and even punish them: a fine or even confiscation of the estate.

All these were pitiful remnants of the former corporate unity of the local nobility. It now participates in local work far from being at full strength, since most of its members serve, scattered throughout the empire. At home, in the localities, only old and small ones and very rare vacation pay live.

The results of the estate policy of Peter the Great

Thus, the new device, new ways and methods of service destroyed the former local corporate organizations of the nobility. This change, according to V. O. Klyuchevsky, "was, perhaps, the most important for the fate of Russia as a state." The regular regiments of the Petrine army are not one-class, but heterogeneous and have no corporate connection with the local worlds, as they consist of persons recruited at random from everywhere and rarely returning to their homeland.

The place of the former boyars was taken by the "generals", consisting of persons of the first four classes. In this "general" personal service hopelessly mixed up representatives of the former tribal nobility, people raised by service and merit from the very bottom of the provincial nobility, advanced from other social groups, foreigners who came to Russia "to catch happiness and ranks." Under the strong hand of Peter, the generals were an unrequited and submissive executor of the will and plans of the monarch.

The legislative measures of Peter, without expanding any significant class rights of the gentry, clearly and significantly changed the form of the duty that lay on the service people. Military affairs, which in Moscow times was the duty of service people, are now becoming the duty of all sections of the population. The lower strata supply soldiers and sailors, the nobles, still continuing to serve without exception, but having the opportunity to more easily pass through the ranks thanks to school training received at home, become the head of the armed masses and direct its actions and military training. Further, in Muscovite times, the same people served both military and civil; under Peter, both services are strictly demarcated, and part of the gentry must devote themselves exclusively to civil service. Then, the nobleman of the time of Peter the Great still has the exclusive right to land ownership, but as a result of the decrees on uniform inheritance and on revision, he becomes an obligated steward of his real estate, responsible to the treasury for the taxable serviceability of his peasants and for peace and quiet in his villages. The nobility is now obliged to study and acquire a number of special knowledge in order to prepare for the service.

On the other hand, giving the service class the general name of gentry, Peter assigned the title of nobility the meaning of honorary noble dignity, bestowed coats of arms and titles on the nobility, but at the same time destroyed the former isolation of the service class, the real "nobility" of its members, revealing through length of service, through the report card ranks, wide access to the environment of the gentry to people of other classes, while the law of single inheritance opened the way from the nobility to merchants and the clergy for those who wanted it. This item in the table of ranks led to the fact that in the 18th century the best surnames of old service people were lost among the mass of noblemen of a new, official origin. The nobility of Russia, so to speak, has been democratized: from an estate, the rights and advantages of which were determined by origin, it becomes a military-bureaucratic estate, the rights and advantages of which are created and hereditarily determined by the civil service.

Thus, at the top of the social division of the citizens of Russia, a privileged agricultural stratum was formed, supplying, so to speak, the command staff for the army of citizens who create state wealth with their labor. For the time being, this class is attached to the service and science, and the hard work that it bears justifies, one might say, the great advantages that it has. The events after the death of Peter show that the nobility, replenishing the guards and government offices, is a force whose opinion and mood the government must reckon with. After Peter, the generals and the guards, that is, the nobility in the service, even "make the government" through palace coups, taking advantage of the imperfection of the law on succession to the throne.

Having concentrated the land in their hands, having the labor of the peasants at their disposal, the gentry felt themselves to be a major social and political force, but not so much a service one as a landowner. Therefore, it begins to strive to free itself from the hardships of servitude to the state, while preserving, however, all those rights with which the government thought to ensure the working capacity of the gentry.

Nobility in the reign of Peter I

As a legacy from his predecessors, Peter the Great received a service class that was greatly shaken and not like the service class that the heyday of the Muscovite state knew under this name. But Peter inherited from his ancestors to solve the same great state task, on which the people of the Muscovite state have been working for two centuries. The territory of the country had to enter its natural boundaries, the vast space occupied by an independent political people, had to have access to the sea. This was required by the state of the country's economy, and the interests of all the same security. As executors of this task, previous epochs gave him a class of people who were historically brought up in labor over the task of collecting all of Russia. This class fell into the hands of Peter not only ready for those improvements that life had long demanded, but already adapting to the new methods of struggle with which Peter started the war. The old task and the old familiar task of resolving it - war - left neither time, nor opportunity, nor even need, since the latter can historically be accepted, much concern for innovations, a new structure and a new appointment for the service class. In essence, under Peter, the same beginnings in the estate, which were put forward by the 17th century, continued to develop. True, a closer acquaintance with the West than in the 17th century and the most famous imitation brought a lot of new things to the conditions of life and service of the nobility, but all these were innovations of the external order, interesting only in those borrowed from the West forms in which they were embodied.

Attachment of the service class to serving military service

Preoccupied with war almost all the time of his reign, Peter, just like his ancestors, if not more, needed to attach the estates to a certain cause, and under him the attachment of the service class to the war was the same inviolable principle as in the 17th century.

The measures of Peter the Great in relation to the service class during the war were random in nature, and only about a year, when the tsar came to grips with "citizenship", begin to become general and systematic.

From the “old” in the structure of the service class under Peter, the former enslavement of the service class through the personal service of each service person to the state remained unchanged. But in this enslavement, its form has changed somewhat. In the first years of the Swedish war, the noble cavalry was still serving military service on the same basis, but had the value not of the main force, but only of the auxiliary corps. In the year, sheremetev’s army continued to serve as stewards, solicitors, Moscow nobles, residents, etc. In the year, due to fears of a war with the Turks, all these ranks were ordered to equip themselves for service under a new name - courtiers. Since - years, the expressions are gradually going out of circulation in documents and decrees: boyar children, service people and are replaced by the expression gentry borrowed from Poland, which, in turn, was taken by the Poles from the Germans and redone from the word "Geschlecht" - genus. In the decree of Peter the year, the entire service class is called the gentry. The foreign word was chosen not only because of Peter's predilection for foreign words, but because in Moscow time the expression "nobleman" denoted a relatively very low rank, and people of senior service, court and duma ranks did not call themselves nobles. In the last years of the reign of Peter and under his closest successors, the expressions "nobility" and "gentry" are equally in use, but only since the time of Catherine II the word "gentry" completely disappears from the everyday speech of the Russian language.

So, the nobles of the times of Peter the Great are attached to serving public service for life, just like the service people of Moscow times. But, remaining attached to the service all their lives, the nobles under Peter carry out this service in a rather altered form. Now they are obliged to serve in the regular regiments and in the navy and to perform civil service in all those administrative and judicial institutions that have been transformed from the old ones and have arisen anew, and the military and civil service are separated. Since service in the new army, in the navy and in new civil institutions required some education, at least some special knowledge, school preparation for service from childhood was made compulsory for the nobles.

A nobleman of the time of Peter the Great was enrolled in active service from the age of fifteen and had to begin it without fail with a “foundation”, in the words of Peter, that is, an ordinary soldier in the army or a sailor in the navy, a non-commissioned schreiber or a college junker in civilian institutions. According to the law, it was supposed to study only up to fifteen years, and then it was necessary to serve, and Peter very strictly monitored that the nobility was in business. From time to time, he arranged reviews of all adult nobles who were and were not in the service, and noble "undergrowths", as noble children who had not reached the legal age for service were called. At these reviews, held in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the tsar sometimes personally distributed the nobles and underage into regiments and schools, personally putting “wings” in the lists against the names of those who were fit for service. In the year Peter himself reviewed in Moscow more than 8,000 nobles convened there. The discharge clerk called out the nobles by name, and the tsar looked at the notebook and put his marks.

In addition to serving foreign teachings, the nobility carried a compulsory school service. After graduating from compulsory training, the nobleman went to the service. The undergrowths of the nobility “according to their fitness” were enrolled alone in the guards, others in the army regiments or in the “garrisons”. The Preobrazhensky and Semyonovsky regiments consisted exclusively of nobles and were a kind of practical school for officers for the army. By decree of the year, it was forbidden to make officers "from noble breeds" who did not serve as soldiers in the guard.

Attachment of nobles to civil service

In addition to military service, civil service became the same obligatory duty for the gentry under Peter. This attachment to the civil service was big news for the gentry. In the 16th and 17th centuries, only one military service was considered a real service, and if servicemen occupied the highest civil positions, they performed them as temporary assignments - these were “cases”, “parcels”, and not a service. Under Peter, civilian service becomes equally honorable and obligatory for a nobleman, like military service. Knowing the old dislike of service people for "sprinkling seed", Peter ordered "not to reproach" the passage of this service to people of noble gentry families. As a concession to the swaggering feeling of the gentry, who disdained to serve alongside clerk's children, Peter decided in the year "not to appoint secretaries not from the gentry, so that later they could become assessors, advisers and higher", from the clerk's rank to the rank of secretary they were made only in the case exceptional merit. Like the military service, the new civil service - under the new local administration and in the new courts, in the colleges and under the Senate - required some preliminary preparation. To do this, at the metropolitan chancelleries, collegiate and senate, they began to start a kind of schools where noble undergrowths were handed over for them to pass the secrets of order office work, jurisprudence, economy and "citizenship", that is, in general, they taught all non-military sciences, which are necessary for a person to know "civilian » services. The General Regulations of the year found such schools, given under the supervision of secretaries, to be established at all offices, so that each had 6 or 7 gentry children in training. But this was poorly realized: the gentry stubbornly shunned the civil service.

Recognizing the difficulty of achieving a voluntary attraction of the gentry to civilian service, and on the other hand, bearing in mind that subsequently an easier service would attract more hunters, Peter did not grant the nobility the right to choose the service at their own discretion. At the reviews, the nobles were appointed to the service according to their "suitability", in appearance, according to the abilities and wealth of each, and a certain proportion of service in the military and civilian departments was established: only 1/3 of its cash members could consist of each surname in civilian positions enrolled in the service. This was done so that "the servicemen at sea and on land would not be impoverished."

1. general nominal and separately;
2. which of them is suitable for work and will be used and for which and how much will then remain;
3. how many children and how old someone is, and henceforth who will be born and die male.

The fight against the evasion of the service of the nobles

In order to elevate the importance of his unborn associates in the eyes of those around him, Peter began to favor them with foreign titles. Menshikov was elevated in 1707 to the rank of His Grace Prince, and before that, at the request of the Tsar, he was made Prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Boyarin F. A. Golovin was also first elevated by Emperor Leopold I to the dignity of a count of the Roman Empire.

Together with the titles, Peter, following the example of the West, began to approve the coats of arms of the nobles and issue letters to the nobility. Coats of arms, however, as early as the 17th century became a big fashion among the boyars, so Peter only legitimized this tendency, which started under the influence of the Polish gentry.

Following the example of the West, the first order in Russia, the “cavalry” of St. Apostle Andrew the First-Called, was established in the same year as the highest distinction. Since the noble dignity acquired by service since the time of Peter the Great is inherited, as granted for long service, which is also news, not known to the 17th century, when, according to Kotoshikhin, the nobility, as a class dignity, "was not given to anyone." "So, according to the table of ranks,- said Professor A. Romanovich-Slavatinsky, - a staircase of fourteen steps separated each plebeian from the first dignitaries of the state, and nothing forbade every gifted person, having stepped over these steps, to reach the first degrees in the state; it opened wide the doors through which, through the rank, the "vile" members of society could "ennoble themselves" and enter the ranks of the nobility.

Decree on unanimity

The nobility of the time of Peter the Great continued to enjoy the right to land ownership, but since the foundations of this right had changed, the nature of land ownership itself also changed: the distribution of state lands to local ownership ceased by itself, as soon as the new nature of the noble service was finally established, as soon as this service, having concentrated in regular regiments, it lost its former militia character. Local distribution was then replaced by the granting of populated and uninhabited lands to full ownership, but not as a salary for service, but as a reward for exploits in the service. This consolidated the merging of estates and estates that had already developed in the 17th century into one. In his law “On movable and immovable estates and on single inheritance”, published on March 23, Peter did not make any difference between these two ancient forms of service land ownership, speaking only of immovable estates and meaning by this expression both local and patrimonial lands.

The content of the decree on single inheritance lies in the fact that a landowner who has sons could bequeath all his real estate to one of them, to whom he wanted, but certainly only to one. If the landowner died without a will, then all real estate passed by law to one eldest son. If the landowner did not have sons, then he could bequeath his estate to one of his close or distant relatives, to whom he wanted, but certainly to one alone. In the event that he died without a will, the estate passed to the next of kin. When the deceased turned out to be the last in the family, he could bequeath real estate to one of his maiden daughters, a married woman, a widow, to whom he wanted, but certainly to one. Real estate passed to the eldest of the married daughters, and the husband or groom was obliged to take the last name of the last owner.

The law on single inheritance, however, concerned not only the gentry, but all "subjects, of whatever rank and dignity they may be." It was forbidden to mortgage and sell not only estates and estates, but also yards, shops, in general, any real estate. Explaining, as usual, in a decree the new law, Peter points out, first of all, that “If the immovable will always be for one son, and only movable for others, then state revenues will be more fair, because the master will always be more satisfied with the big one, although he will take it little by little, and there will be one house, not five, and it can better benefit subjects, and not ruin”.

The decree on single inheritance did not last long. He caused too much dissatisfaction among the nobility, and the gentry tried in every possible way to get around him: the fathers sold part of the villages in order to leave money to their younger sons, obliged the co-heir with an oath to pay their younger brothers part of the inheritance in money. The report submitted by the Senate in the year to Empress Anna Ioannovna, indicated that the law on single inheritance causes among members of noble families "hatred and quarrels and lengthy litigation with great loss and ruin for both sides, and it is not unknown that not only some brothers and neighbors relatives among themselves, but the children also beat their fathers to death.” Empress Anna abolished the law of single inheritance, but retained one of its essential features. Decree, abolishing single inheritance, commanded “From now on, both estates and patrimonies, to name equally one immovable estate - patrimony; and the fathers and mothers of their children to share according to the Code are the same to everyone, so it’s the same for daughters as a dowry to give as before ”.

In the 17th century and earlier, service people who settled in the districts of the Moscow state lived a rather close-knit social life, created around the case that they had to serve "even to death." Military service gathered them in some cases in groups, when each had to arrange itself in order to serve the review together, choose the headman, prepare for the campaign, elect deputies to the Zemsky Sobor, etc. Finally, the regiments of the Moscow army were composed of each of nobles of the same locality, so that the neighbors all served in the same detachment.

Corporatism of the nobility

Under Peter the Great, these principles of social organization in some respects ceased to exist, in others they were further developed. Neighborly guarantees for each other in proper appearance for service disappeared, the very service of neighbors in one regiment ceased, the elections of “payers” who, under the supervision of a “big man” sent from Moscow, collected information about the service of each nobleman and, on the basis of this information, made a sweep of local dachas and monetary salaries, when it was due. But the old ability of service people to act together, or, as they say, corporately, Peter took advantage of to entrust the local nobility with some participation in local self-government and in the collection of state duties. In 1702, the abolition of the labial elders followed. After the reform of the provincial administration in 1719, the local nobility elected commissars from the land from 1724 and supervised their activities. The commissars had to report every year on their activities to the county noble society, which chose them, and for noticed malfunctions and abuses could bring the perpetrators to justice and even punish them: a fine or even confiscation of the estate.

All these were pitiful remnants of the former corporate unity of the local nobility. It now participates in local work far from being at full strength, since most of its members serve, scattered throughout the empire. At home, in the localities, only old and small ones and very rare vacation pay live.

The results of the estate policy of Peter the Great

Thus, the new device, new ways and methods of service destroyed the former local corporate organizations of the nobility. This change, according to V. O. Klyuchevsky, "was, perhaps, the most important for the fate of Russia as a state." The regular regiments of the Petrine army are not one-class, but heterogeneous and have no corporate connection with the local worlds, as they consist of persons recruited at random from everywhere and rarely returning to their homeland.

The place of the former boyars was taken by the "generals", consisting of persons of the first four classes. In this "general" personal service hopelessly mixed up representatives of the former tribal nobility, people raised by service and merit from the very bottom of the provincial nobility, advanced from other social groups, foreigners who came to Russia "to catch happiness and ranks." Under the strong hand of Peter, the generals were an unrequited and submissive executor of the will and plans of the monarch.

The legislative measures of Peter, without expanding any significant class rights of the gentry, clearly and significantly changed the form of the duty that lay on the service people. Military affairs, which in Moscow times was the duty of service people, are now becoming the duty of all sections of the population. The lower strata supply soldiers and sailors, the nobles, still continuing to serve without exception, but having the opportunity to more easily pass through the ranks thanks to school training received at home, become the head of the armed masses and direct its actions and military training. Further, in Muscovite times, the same people served both military and civil; under Peter, both services are strictly demarcated, and part of the gentry must devote themselves exclusively to civil service. Then, the nobleman of the time of Peter the Great still has the exclusive right to land ownership, but as a result of the decrees on uniform inheritance and on revision, he becomes an obligated steward of his real estate, responsible to the treasury for the taxable serviceability of his peasants and for peace and quiet in his villages. The nobility is now obliged to study and acquire a number of special knowledge in order to prepare for the service.

On the other hand, giving the service class the general name of gentry, Peter assigned the title of nobility the meaning of honorary noble dignity, bestowed coats of arms and titles on the nobility, but at the same time destroyed the former isolation of the service class, the real "nobility" of its members, revealing through length of service, through the report card ranks, wide access to the environment of the gentry to people of other classes, while the law of single inheritance opened the way from the nobility to merchants and the clergy for those who wanted it. This item in the table of ranks led to the fact that in the 18th century the best surnames of old service people were lost among the mass of noblemen of a new, official origin. The nobility of Russia, so to speak, has been democratized: from an estate, the rights and advantages of which were determined by origin, it becomes a military-bureaucratic estate, the rights and advantages of which are created and hereditarily determined by the civil service.

Thus, at the top of the social division of the citizens of Russia, a privileged agricultural stratum was formed, supplying, so to speak, the command staff for the army of citizens who create state wealth with their labor. For the time being, this class is attached to the service and science, and the hard work that it bears justifies, one might say, the great advantages that it has. The events after the death of Peter show that the nobility, replenishing the guards and government offices, is a force whose opinion and mood the government must reckon with. After Peter, the generals and the guards, that is, the nobility in the service, even "make the government" through palace coups, taking advantage of the imperfection of the law on succession to the throne.

Having concentrated the land in its hands, having the labor of the peasants at its disposal, the gentry felt itself to be a major social and political force, not so much serving as landowning. Therefore, it begins to strive to free itself from the hardships of servitude to the state, while preserving, however, all those rights with which the government thought to ensure the working capacity of the gentry.

Literature

• Romanovich-Slavatinsky A."Nobility in Russia from the beginning of the 18th century to the abolition of serfdom". Kyiv: Ed. Legal. fak. University of St. Vladimir, 1912
• Pavlov-Silvansky N.I."State's servants". M., 2000.
• Klyuchevsky V. O."Course of Russian history", part IV.
• Klyuchevsky V. O."History of Estates in Russia"
• Gradovsky A."The Beginnings of Russian State Law". St. Petersburg: Type. M. M. Stasyulevich, 1887
• Solovyov S. M."History of Russia from ancient times", volume XIV-XVIII

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

• Maximilian Transylvanus Wikipedia

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V. O. Klyuchevsky on the position of the nobility under Peter I

We now turn to a review of measures aimed at maintaining a regular formation of the land army and navy. We have already seen the methods of recruiting the armed forces, which extended military service to non-serving classes, to serfs, to hard-working people - urban and rural, to free people - walking and church, which gave the new army an all-class composition. Now let us dwell on the measures for the device of the command; they most closely concerned the nobility, as a commanding class, and were aimed at maintaining its serviceability.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MILITARY REFORM. Peter's military reform would have remained a special fact of the military history of Russia, if it had not been imprinted too clearly and deeply on the social and moral make-up of the entire Russian society, even in the course of political events. She put forward a double cause, demanded the search for funds for the maintenance of the transformed and expensive armed forces and special measures for maintaining their regular order. Recruitment sets, extending military service to non-serving classes, informing the new army of an all-class composition, changed the established social relations. The nobility, which made up the bulk of the former army, had to take a new official position, when its servants and serfs became the ranks of the transformed army, and not companions and servants of their masters, but the same privates as the nobles themselves began to serve.

POSITION OF THE NOBILITY. This position was not entirely an innovation of the reform: it had been prepared long ago by the course of affairs from the 16th century. The oprichnina was the first open appearance of the nobility in a political role; it acted as a police institution directed against the zemstvo, primarily against the boyars. In the Time of Troubles, it supported its own Boris Godunov, deposed the boyar tsar Vasily Shuisky, in a Zemstvo sentence on June 30, 1611 in a camp near Moscow, declared itself not a representative of the whole earth, but a real “whole earth”, ignoring the other classes of society, but carefully protecting its own interests, and under the pretext of standing for the house of the Most Holy Theotokos and for the Orthodox Christian faith, proclaimed himself the ruler of his native country. Serfdom, which carried out this camp undertaking, alienating the nobility from the rest of society and lowering the level of its zemstvo feeling, however, introduced a unifying interest into it and helped its heterogeneous layers to close into one estate mass. With the abolition of parochialism, the remnants of the boyars drowned in this mass, and the rude mockery of Peter and his noble associates over the noble nobility dropped her morally in the eyes of the people. Contemporaries sensitively noted the hour of the historical death of the boyars as the ruling class: in 1687, Princess Sophia’s reserve favorite of the peasants, the duma clerk Shaklovity, announced to the archers that the boyars were a cold, fallen tree, and Prince B. Kurakin noted the reign of Queen Natalia (1689–1694 .) as the time of “the greatest beginning of the fall of the first families, and especially the name of the princes, was mortally hated and destroyed”, when gentlemen “from the lowest and wretched gentry”, like the Naryshkins, Streshnevs, etc., disposed of everything. was already a muffled cry from beyond the grave.

Absorbing the boyars in themselves and uniting, the service people "according to the fatherland" received in the legislation of Peter one common name, moreover, a double one, Polish and Russian: they began to call him nobility or nobility. This class was very little prepared to carry out any kind of cultural influence. This was actually a military estate, which considered it its duty to defend the fatherland from external enemies, but was not accustomed to educate the people, to practically develop and implement any ideas and interests of a higher order into society. But he was destined by the course of history to become the closest conductor of reform, although Peter snatched suitable businessmen from other classes indiscriminately, even from serfs. In mental and moral development, the nobility did not stand above the rest of the masses of the people and for the most part did not lag behind it in lack of sympathy for the heretical West. Military craft did not develop in the nobility either a warlike spirit or military art.

Their own and foreign observers describe the estate as a fighting force with the most pathetic features. Peasant Pososhkov in a report to the boyar Golovin, 1701 About military behavior, recalling recent times, weeps bitterly about the cowardice, cowardice, ineptitude, complete worthlessness of this estate army. “Many people will be brought to the service, and if you look at them with an attentive eye, you will see nothing but a gap. The infantry had a bad gun and did not know how to wield it, they only fought with hand-to-hand combat, with spears and reeds, and then blunt, and exchanged their heads for the enemy's head in threes and fours and much more. And if you look at the cavalry, then it’s not only foreign, but it’s shameful for us to look at them: the nags are thin, the sabers are blunt, they themselves are scarce and unclothed, they are inept at owning a gun; some nobleman doesn’t even know how to charge a squeaker, let alone shoot at a target well. They have no care to kill the enemy; they only care about how to be home, but they also pray to God that they get a light wound, so that they don’t get sick much from it, but I would complain from the sovereign for it, and in the service of that they look so that where in time fight behind a bush, and other such prosecutors live that they hide in whole companies in the forest or in the valley. And then I heard from many noblemen: "God forbid to serve the great sovereign, but do not remove the sabers from the scabbard."

CAPITAL NOBILITY. However, the upper stratum of the nobility, according to their position in the state and society, acquired habits and concepts that could be useful for a new business. This class was formed from service families, which gradually settled at the Moscow court, as soon as the princely court started up in Moscow, even from specific centuries, when service people from other Russian principalities and from abroad, from the Tatar hordes from Germans began to flock here from different directions. and especially from Lithuania. With the unification of Muscovite Russia, these first ranks were gradually replenished with recruits from the provincial nobility, who stood out from among their ordinary brethren for merit, serviceability, and economic solvency. Over time, by the nature of court duties in this class, a rather complex and intricate officialdom was formed: they were stewards, at the ceremonial royal dinners served food and drink, solicitors, at the exits of the king they wore, and in the church they held him cooking a scepter, a hat and a scarf, which carried his shell and saber on campaigns, tenants,“sleeping” in the royal court in regular batches. On this bureaucratic ladder below the stewards and solicitors and above the tenants were placed Moscow nobles; for tenants it was the highest rank, to which it was necessary to rise, for stolniks and solicitors - a class rank, which was acquired by stewardship and soliciting: a steward or solicitor was not from the boyar nobility, having served 20–30 years in his rank and becoming unsuitable for the performance of a united with him court duties, lived out his life as a Moscow nobleman.

This title was not connected with any special court position: a Moscow nobleman is an official of special assignments, who was sent, according to Kotoshikhin, “for all sorts of things”: to the voivodeship, to the embassy, ​​the initial man of the provincial noble hundred, company.

The wars of Tsar Alexei especially increased the influx of the provincial nobility into the capital. Moscow ranks were awarded for wounds and blood, for complete patience, for the death of a father or relatives on the march or in battle, and these sources of the capital's nobility never beat with such bloody force as under this tsar: it was enough to defeat 1659 near Konotop, where the best cavalry of the tsar died, and the capitulation of Sheremetev with the entire army near Chudnov in 1660, in order to replenish the Moscow list with hundreds of new stewards, lawyers and nobles. Thanks to this influx, the metropolitan nobility of all ranks grew into a large corps: according to the list of 1681, it numbered 6385 people, and in 1700 11,533 people were assigned to the campaign near Narva. Moreover, having significant estates and patrimonies, the metropolitan ranks, before the introduction of general recruitment sets, took their armed serfs with them on a campaign or put up tens of thousands of recruits from them. Tied by service to the court, the Moscow ranks huddled in Moscow and in their suburbs; in 1679–1701 in Moscow, out of 16,000 households, over 3,000 of these ranks, together with the duma ones, were registered. These metropolitan ranks had very diverse official duties. It was actually yard king. Under Peter, in official acts, they are called that. courtiers in contrast to the "gentry of every rank", i.e., from the city nobles and boyar children. In peacetime, the nobility of the capital formed the retinue of the tsar, performed various court services, and appointed from among their midst the personnel of the central and regional administration. In wartime, the tsar's own regiment, the first corps of the army, was formed from the capital's nobles; they also formed the headquarters of other army corps and served as commanders of the provincial noble battalions. In a word, it was the administrative class, and the general staff, and the guards corps. For their difficult and expensive service, the metropolitan nobility enjoyed, in comparison with the provincial and elevated salaries, monetary salaries, and larger local dachas.

The leading role in management, together with a more secure financial position, developed in the capital's nobility a habit of power, familiarity with public affairs, and dexterity in dealing with people. It considered public service to be its estate vocation, its only public appointment. Living constantly in the capital, rarely looking into the wilderness of its estates and estates scattered across Russia on short-term vacations, it got used to feeling at the head of society, in the stream of important affairs, saw closely the foreign relations of the government and was better than other classes familiar with the foreign world, with which the state touched. These qualities made him, more than other classes, a handy conductor of Western influence. This influence had to serve the needs of the state, and it had to be carried into a society that did not sympathize with it, accustomed to dispose of hands. When in the 17th century innovations began with us according to Western models and suitable people were needed for them, the government seized on the metropolitan nobility as its closest tool, took officers from their midst, whom they placed next to foreigners at the head of regiments of a foreign system, from which they recruited students to new schools . Comparatively more flexible and obedient, the metropolitan nobility already in that century put forward the first champions of Western influence, like Prince Khvorostinin, Ordin-Nashchokin, Rtishchev, and others. It is clear that under Peter this class was to become the main native instrument of reforms. Having begun to arrange a regular army, Peter gradually transformed the capital's nobility into guard regiments, and the officer of the guard, a Preobrazhenets or Semenovets, became his executor of a wide variety of transformative assignments: a steward, then a guard officer was appointed overseas, to Holland, to study maritime affairs, and to Astrakhan to supervise salt production, and to the Holy Synod as "chief procurator".

THE TRIPLE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NOBILITY. City service people "in the fatherland", or, as the Code calls them, "the ancient natural children of the boyars", together with the capital's nobility, had a threefold significance in the Moscow state: military, administrative and economic. They constituted the main armed force of the country; they also served as the main instrument of the government, which from them recruited the personnel of the court and management; finally, a huge mass of the country's fixed capital, land, was concentrated in their hands. even with the serfs. This triplicity imparted a disorderly course to the service of the nobility: each meaning was weakened and spoiled by the other two. In the interval between "services", campaigns, city service people disbanded on their estates, and the capital either also went on a short vacation to their villages, or, like some city people, held positions in civil administration, received administrative and diplomatic assignments, visited "at deeds” and “in parcels”, as they said then.

Thus, the civil service was merged with the military, sent by the military people. Some deeds and parcels were also exempted from service in wartime with the obligation to send for themselves on the campaign data for the number of peasant households; The clerks and clerks, constantly employed in orders, were listed as if on a permanent business leave or on an indefinite business trip and, like widows and underage, put up for themselves a tributary if they had inhabited estates. Such an order gave rise to many abuses, facilitating evasion from service. The hardships and dangers of camp life, as well as the economic harm of constant or frequent absence from the villages, prompted people with connections to achieve things that freed them from service, or simply “lie down”, hiding from the camp call, and remote estates in bear corners made it possible. Sagittarius or a clerk will go to the estates with a summons for mobilization, but the estates are empty, no one knows where the owners have gone, and there was nowhere and no one to find them.

REVIEWS AND DISCUSSIONS. Peter did not remove compulsory service from the estate, universal and indefinite, did not even make it easier, on the contrary, burdened it with new duties and established a stricter procedure for serving it in order to extract all the available nobility from the estates and stop harboring. He wanted to get accurate statistics of the noble reserve and strictly ordered the nobles to submit to the Discharge, and later to the Senate, lists of underage children, their children and relatives who lived with them at least 10 years old, and orphans themselves to come to Moscow for recording. These lists were frequently reviewed and reviewed. So, in 1704, Peter himself reviewed in Moscow more than 8 thousand undergrowths, called from all the provinces. These reviews were accompanied by the distribution of adolescents to regiments and schools. In 1712, the minors, who lived at home or studied at schools, were ordered to come to the office of the Senate in Moscow, from where they were sent to St. the same goal, and the elders were enlisted as soldiers, “in what numbers beyond the sea and I, a sinner, in the first misfortune is determined,” V. Golovin plaintively notes in his notes, one of the middle-aged victims of this bulkhead. Nobility did not save from review: in 1704, the tsar himself dismantled the undergrowths of “the noblest persons”, and 500–600 young princes Golitsyn, Cherkassky, Khovansky, Lobanov Rostovsky, etc. wrote as soldiers to the guards regiments - “and serve,” adds Prince B. Kurakin. We also got to the clerks, who multiplied above the measure in terms of the profitability of the occupation: in 1712 it was prescribed not only for the provincial offices, but also for the Senate itself to review the clerks and take the extra young and fit for service into soldiers. Together with undergrowths, or especially, adult nobles were also called up for reviews, so that they would not hide at home and were always in good working order.

Peter severely persecuted "absence", failure to appear at a review or for an appointment. In the autumn of 1714, all nobles aged 10 to 30 were ordered to appear in the coming winter for registration at the Senate, with the threat that anyone who reported on the one who did not appear, whoever he was, even the disobedient’s own servant, would receive all his belongings and villages . Even more merciless was the decree of January 11, 1722: those who did not appear at the review were subjected to “defamation”, or “political death”; he was excluded from the society of good people and outlawed; anyone with impunity could rob him, injure and even kill him; his name, printed, was nailed by the executioner with drumming to the gallows in the square “for the public”, so that everyone would know about him as a disobedient to decrees and equal to traitors; whoever caught and brought such a netchik was promised half of his movable and immovable estate, even if it was his serf.

LACK OF SUCCESS OF THESE MEASURES. These drastic measures were of little success. Pososhkov, in his essay On Poverty and Wealth, written in the last years of Peter's reign, vividly depicts the tricks and twists that the nobles resorted to in order to "shirk" from service. Not only the city nobles, but also the courtiers, when attired for a campaign, were attached to some “idle business”, an empty police assignment, and under its cover lived in their estates during the war; the immeasurable multiplication of all sorts of commissars and commanders facilitated the ruse. A lot of people, according to Pososhkov, are in the business of such idlers, good fellows, that one could drive five enemies, and he, having achieved a bait business, lives for himself and profits. Another eluded the call with gifts, feigned illness or foolishness on himself, climbed into the lake to the very beard - take him to the service. “Some nobles have already grown old, they are tenacious in the villages, but they have never been in the service with one foot.” The rich shirk from service, while the poor and old serve.

Other couch potatoes simply scoffed at the cruel decrees of the king on the service. The nobleman Zolotarev "at home is terrible to his neighbors, like a lion, but in the service he is worse than a goat." When he could not shirk one campaign, he sent a wretched nobleman under his own name, gave him his man and horse, and he himself drove around the villages in six and ruined his neighbors. The close rulers are to blame for everything: with wrong reports they will pull the word out of the king’s mouth and do what they want, their peace. Wherever you look, Pososhkov despondently remarks, the sovereign has no direct guardians; all the judges drive crookedly; those who were to be served are set aside, and those who cannot serve are forced to. The great monarch works, but does not have time; he has few accomplices; he himself pulls ten up the mountain, and pulls millions downhill: how will his business be successful? Without changing the old order, no matter how hard you fight, you will have to give up. The self-taught publicist, with all his pious reverence for the converter, imperceptibly draws from him a ridiculously pitiful image.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION. Such an observer as Pososhkov has the price of an indicator, how much the real value of the ideal system, which was created by the legislation of the converter, should be taken into account. We can apply this account to such details as the procedure for serving the noble service established by Peter. Peter kept the former service age of a nobleman - from 15 years old; but now the obligatory service was complicated by a new preparatory duty - educational, consisting of compulsory primary education. According to the decrees of January 20 and February 28, 1714, the children of nobles and orders, clerks and clerks, should learn tsifiri, i.e., arithmetic, and some part of geometry, and “a fine such that they would not be free to marry until they learn this »; crown memories were not given without a written certificate of learning from the teacher. To this end, it was ordered to open schools in all provinces at bishops' houses and in noble monasteries, and to send there as teachers students of mathematical schools established in Moscow around 1703, then real gymnasiums; the teacher was given a salary of 300 rubles a year with our money. The decrees of 1714 introduced a completely new fact into the history of Russian education, the compulsory education of the laity. The case was conceived on an extremely modest scale. Only two teachers were assigned to each province from among the students of mathematical schools who had learned geography and geometry. Tsifir, elementary geometry and some information on the Law of God, placed in the primers of that time - this is the entire composition of elementary education, recognized as sufficient for the purposes of the service; expanding it would be at the expense of the service. The children had to go through the prescribed program at the age of 10 to 15, when the teaching was sure to end, because the service began.

According to the decree of October 17, 1723, secular officials were not ordered to keep people in schools for 15 more years, “even if they themselves wished that under the name of that science they would not hide from inspections and definitions in the service.”

But the danger threatened not at all from this side, and Pososhkov is again recalled here: the same decree says that the bishops' schools in other dioceses, except for one in Novogorod, until 1723 "have not yet been determined", and the digital schools that arose independently of the bishops and apparently destined to become all-classes, with difficulty existed in some places: the inspector of such schools in Pskov, Novgorod, Yaroslavl, Moscow and Vologda in 1719 reported that only 26 students from churchmen were sent to the Yaroslavl school, “and in there were no students in the other schools," so the teachers sat idle and received their salaries for nothing. The nobles were terribly burdened by the digital service, as if it were a useless burden, and tried in every possible way to hide from it. Once a crowd of nobles who did not want to enter a mathematical school enrolled in the spiritual Zaikonospasskoe school in Moscow. Peter ordered that lovers of theology be taken to St. Petersburg to a naval school and, as a punishment, forced them to beat piles on the Moika. General Admiral Apraksin, true to the ancient Russian concepts of tribal honor, was offended by his younger brethren and expressed his protest in an ingenuous manner. Appearing on the Moika and seeing the approaching tsar, he took off his admiral's uniform with St. Andrew's ribbon, hung it on a pole and began to assiduously hammer piles together with the nobles. Pyotr, approaching, asked in surprise: “How, Fyodor Matveyevich, being an admiral general and a cavalier, do you drive in piles yourself?” Apraksin jokingly replied: “Here, sir, all my nephews and grandchildren (younger brother, in parochial terminology) are driving piles, but what kind of person am I, what kind of advantage do I have?”

PROCEDURE FOR SERVICE. From the age of 15, a nobleman had to serve as a private in a regiment. Young people of noble and wealthy families were usually enrolled in the guards regiments, poorer and thinner - even in the army. According to Peter, a nobleman is an officer of a regular regiment; but for this he must certainly serve several years as a private. The law of February 26, 1714, expressly forbids the promotion of officers to people "from noble breeds" who have not served as soldiers in the guard and "do not know the fundamentals of soldiering." And Military charter 1716 reads: "The Russian gentry has no other way to become officers, except to serve in the guard." This explains the noble composition of the guards regiments under Peter; there were three of them by the end of the reign: in 1719, the dragoon "life regiment" was added to the two old infantry, which was then reorganized into a horse guard regiment. These regiments served as a military-practical school for the upper and middle nobility and breeding grounds for officers: after serving as a private in the guard, a nobleman became an officer in an army infantry or dragoon regiment. In the life-regiment, which consisted exclusively of "gentry children", there were up to 30 ordinary princes; in St. Petersburg, it was not uncommon to see some prince Golitsyn or Gagarin on guard with a gun on his shoulder. The nobleman-guardsman lived like a soldier in the regimental barracks, received a soldier's ration and performed all the work of a private.

Derzhavin, in his notes, tells how he, the son of a nobleman and a colonel, having entered the Preobrazhensky regiment as a private, already under Peter III lived in the barracks with privates from the common people and went to work with them, cleaned the canals, was put on guard, carried provisions and ran on orders from officers. So the nobility in the military system of Peter had to form trained personnel or officer command reserves through the guards for all-class army regiments, and through the Naval Academy for the naval crew. Military service during the endless Northern War itself became permanent, in the exact sense of the word, continuous. With the onset of peace, the nobles began to be allowed to go on visits to the villages in turn, usually once every two years for six months; resignation was given only for old age or injury. But the retired did not completely disappear for service: they were assigned to garrisons or to civil affairs by local government; only the unfit and insufficient were set aside with some pension from the "hospital money", a special tax on the maintenance of military hospitals, or sent to monasteries to live from monastic income.

SERVICE SPLIT. Such was the normal military service career of a nobleman, as outlined by Peter. But the nobleman was needed everywhere: both in the military and in the civil service; meanwhile, under more stringent conditions, the first and second in the new judicial and administrative institutions became more difficult, also required training, special knowledge. It became impossible to connect the one and the other; part-time work remained the privilege of guards officers and senior generals, who for a long time after Peter were considered fit for all trades. The service "civilian" or "civilian" by personnel was gradually separated from the military. But the choice of this or that field was not left to the estate itself: the nobility, of course, would have pounced on the civil service, as it was easier and more profitable. An obligatory proportion of personnel from the nobility in one or another service was established: the instruction of 1722 to the king of arms in charge of the nobility ordered to look, “so that more than a third of each family name is in citizenship, so as not to impoverish those serving on land and sea”, not to damage staffing the army and navy.

The instructions also express the main motivation for the division of the noble service: this is the idea that, in addition to ignorance and arbitrariness, before there were sufficient conditions for the proper administration of a civil position, some more special knowledge is now required. In view of the paucity or almost absence of scientific education in civil subjects, and especially economics, the instruction instructs the king of arms to “set up a short school” and in it to teach “citizenship and economy” to the indicated third of the noble and middle noble families enrolled in the service.

CHANGE IN THE GENEALOGICAL COMPOSITION OF THE NOBILITY. The departmental separation was a technical improvement of the service. Peter also changed the very conditions of service movement, thereby introducing a new element into the genealogical composition of the nobility. In the Muscovite state, servicemen occupied positions in the service, first of all, "in the fatherland", according to the degree of nobility. For each surname, a certain series of service levels, or ranks, was opened, and the service man, climbing this ladder, reached the height accessible to him according to his breed with more or less speed, depending on his personal fitness for service or dexterity. This means that the service movement of a service person was determined by the fatherland and service, merit, and the fatherland much more than merit, which served only as an aid to the fatherland: merit in itself rarely raised a person higher than the breed could raise. The abolition of parochialism shook the ancient custom on which this genealogical organization of the service class was based; but she remained in morals. Peter wanted to oust her from here and gave a decisive preponderance to the service over the breed. He repeated to the nobility that service is his main duty, for the sake of which “it is noble and excellent from meanness (common people)”; he ordered to announce to all the gentry that every nobleman in all cases, no matter what his surname may be, would give honor and first place to each chief officer. This widely dissolved the doors to the nobility for people of non-noble origin.

The nobleman, starting service as a private, was intended to be an officer; but by decree of January 16, 1721, even an ordinary member of the non-nobles, who had risen to the rank of chief officer, received hereditary nobility. If a nobleman by class vocation is an officer, then an officer “in direct service” is a nobleman: such is the rule laid down by Peter as the basis of official order. The old bureaucratic hierarchy of boyars, courtiers, stewards, solicitors, based on breed, position at court and in the Boyar Duma, lost its meaning along with the breed itself, and there was no longer the old court in the Kremlin with the transfer of the residence to the banks of the Neva, nor the Duma from institution of the Senate.

List of ranks January 24, 1722 ., Table of Ranks, introduced a new classification of employees. All the newly established positions - all with foreign names, Latin and German, except for a very few - are lined up according to the report card in three parallel rows, military, civilian and court, with the division of each into 14 ranks, or classes. This founding act of the reformed Russian bureaucracy put the bureaucratic hierarchy, merit and service, in place of the aristocratic hierarchy of the breed, the genealogical book. In one of the articles attached to the table, it is explained with emphasis that the nobility of the family in itself, without service, means nothing, does not create any position for a person: people of a noble breed are not given any rank until they show merit to the sovereign and the fatherland "and for these character (“honor and rank”, according to the then wording) they will not receive. The descendants of Russians and foreigners, enrolled in the first 8 ranks according to this table (up to major and collegiate assessor inclusive), were ranked among the "best senior nobility in all virtues and advantages, even if they were of low breed." Due to the fact that the service gave everyone access to the nobility, the genealogical composition of the estate also changed. Unfortunately, it is impossible to accurately calculate how great was the alien, non-noble element that became part of the estate from Peter. At the end of the XVII century. we had up to 2985 noble families, containing up to 15 thousand landowners, not counting their children. The secretary of the Prussian embassy at the Russian court at the end of the reign of Peter Fokkerodt, who collected thorough information about Russia, wrote in 1737 that during the first revision of the nobles with their families, up to 500 thousand people were counted, therefore, one can assume up to 100 thousand noble families. Based on these data, it is difficult to answer the question of the amount of non-noble admixture that entered the nobility by rank under Peter.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHANGES SET FORTH. The transformation of the noble local militia into a regular army of all estates produced a threefold change in the noble service. Firstly, two previously merged types of service, military and civil service, were divided. Secondly, both were complicated by a new duty, compulsory training. The third change was perhaps the most important for the fate of Russia as a state. The regular army of Peter lost the territorial composition of its units. Previously, not only the garrisons, but also parts of long-distance campaigns serving "regimental service" consisted of fellow countrymen, noblemen of one county. Regiments of a foreign system, recruited from service people from different districts, began the destruction of this territorial composition. The recruitment of hunters and then recruitment sets completed this destruction, gave the regiments a heterogeneous composition, taking away the local composition. The Ryazan recruit, for a long time, usually forever, cut off from his Pekhlets or Zimarov homeland, forgot the Ryazan in himself and remembered only that he was a dragoon of the fuselery regiment of Colonel Famendin; the barracks extinguished the feeling of fellowship. The same thing happened with the Guard. The former metropolitan nobility, cut off from the provincial noble worlds, itself closed into the local Moscow, metropolitan noble world. Constant life in Moscow, daily meetings in the Kremlin, neighborhood estates and estates near Moscow made Moscow for these "court officials" the same district nest that the city of Kozelsk was for nobles and children of boyar goats. Transformed into the Preobrazhensky and Semenovsky regiments and transferred to the Neva Finnish swamp, they began to forget the Muscovites in themselves and felt like only guardsmen. With the replacement of local connections by regimental barracks, the guard could be under a strong hand only a blind instrument of power, under a weak one - by Praetorians or Janissaries.

In 1611, during the Time of Troubles, in the noble militia, which gathered near Moscow under the leadership of Prince Trubetskoy, Zarutskoy and Lyapunov, in order to rescue the capital from the Poles who had settled in it, the idea of ​​conquering Russia under the pretext of defending it from external enemies had some kind of instinctive lust. . The new dynasty, by establishing serfdom, began this work; By creating a regular army and especially a guard, Peter gave him an armed support, not suspecting what use his successors and successors would make of her and what use she would make of his successors and successors.

CONVERGENCE OF ESTATES AND ESTATES. The complicated official duties of the nobility required better material support for their serviceability. This need brought about an important change in the economic position of the nobility as a landowning class. You know the legal difference between the main types of ancient Russian service land tenure, between an patrimony, hereditary property, and an estate, conditional, temporary, usually lifelong possession. But long before Peter, both of these types of landownership began to converge with each other: the features of the local property penetrated into the patrimonial property, and the local acquired the legal features of the patrimonial. In the very nature of the estate, as a landed property, were the conditions for its convergence with the patrimony. Initially, under the free peasantry, according to his idea, the subject of landed property was actually land income from the estate, quitrent, or the work of its taxable inhabitants, as a salary for service, similar to feeding. In this form, the transfer of the estate from hand to hand did not create any particular difficulties. But the landowner, of course, acquired a farm, built himself an estate with inventory and work serfs, started a manor's yard arable land, cleared new land, and settled peasants with a loan. So, on state land given to a serviceman for temporary possession, economic articles arose that sought to become the full hereditary property of their owner. This means that law and practice pulled the estate in opposite directions. The peasant fortress gave precedence to practice over law: how could the estate remain a temporary possession when the peasant was forever strengthened by the landowner through loans and assistance? The difficulty was eased by the fact that, without touching the right of ownership, the law, yielding to practice, expanded the rights to dispose of the estate, allowed the purchase of the estate into a fiefdom, filing a lawsuit, bartering and surrendering the estate to a son, relative, fiancé for a daughter or niece in the form of a dowry, even to a stranger with the obligation to feed the deliverer or the deliverer, or to marry the deliverer, and sometimes directly for money, although the right to sell was strongly denied.

Layout in withdrawal and allowance a rule was developed that actually established not only heredity, but also uniform inheritance, the indivisibility of estates. In verstal books, this rule was expressed as follows: “And as soon as the sons are in time for the service, the eldest should be assigned to the branch, and the younger one should serve with the father from the same estate,” which, after death, coped entirely with the son-colleague. In decrees, already under Tsar Michael, a term appears with a strange combination of irreconcilable concepts: family estates. This term was formed from the orders of the then government "not to give away estates beyond kinship." But a new difficulty arose from the actual heredity of the estates. Local salaries rose according to the degree of rank and merit of the landowner. Hence the question arose: how to transfer the father's estate, especially a large one, to a son who had not yet completed his father's salary? The Moscow clerk's mind resolved this slander by a decree on March 20, 1684, which prescribed large estates after the dead to be managed in a descending straight line for their sons and grandchildren, who were laid up and made up for service, above their salaries, i.e., regardless of these salaries, in full without a cut, but do not give a cut to relatives and strangers, in the absence of direct heirs, give it to the side on certain conditions. This decree reversed the order of manorial ownership. He did not establish the heredity of estates either by law or by will, but only strengthened them by family names: this can be called familiarization estates. Local layout turned into a distribution of a vacant estate between abundant cash heirs, descending or lateral, therefore, single inheritance was canceled, which led to the fragmentation of estates. The formation of a regular army completed the destruction of the foundations of local ownership: when the service of the nobility became not only hereditary, but also permanent, and the estate had to become not only permanent, but also hereditary possession, merge with the estate. All this led to the fact that manorial dachas were gradually replaced by grants of populated lands to the patrimony. In the surviving list of palace villages and villages distributed to monasteries and various persons in 1682–1710, dachas “on the estate” are rarely, and even then only until 1697; usually the estates were distributed "to the patrimony". In total, during these 28 years, about 44 thousand peasant households with half a million acres of arable land were distributed, not counting meadows and forests. So, by the beginning of the 18th century. the estate approached the patrimony at a distance imperceptible to us and was ready to disappear as a special type of service land tenure. This rapprochement was marked by three signs: estates became ancestral, like estates; they were divided in the order of apportionment between descending or lateral ones, as estates were divided in the order of inheritance; local typesetting was supplanted by patrimonial awards.

DECREE ON UNIFIED HERITAGE. This state of affairs caused the decree of Peter, promulgated on March 23, 1714. The main features of this decree, or "points", as it was called, are as follows: 1) "Immovable things", estates, estates, courtyards, shops are not alienated, but into the genus." 2) Immovable spiritually passes to one of the testator's sons of his choice, and the rest of the children are endowed with movables by the will of their parents; in the absence of sons, do the same with daughters; in the absence of spiritual real estate goes to the eldest son or in the absence of sons to the eldest daughter, and the movable is divided among the other children equally. 3) A childless person bequeaths real estate to one of his surnames, “to whomever he wants”, and transfers the movable to his relatives or outsiders at his own discretion; without a testament, the immovable passes to one in the line of the neighbor, and the rest to others who are due, "in an equal way." 4) The last in the clan bequeaths immovable property to one of the female persons of her family name under the condition of a written obligation on the part of her husband or fiancé to take over and on his heirs the family name of the extinct family, adding it to his own. 5) The entry of a disadvantaged nobleman, a “cadet”, into the merchant class or into any noble art, and upon reaching the age of 40 into the white clergy, is not dishonored either to him or his name. The law is thoroughly motivated: the sole heir to an indivisible estate will not ruin the “poor subjects”, his peasants, with new hardships, as the divided brothers do in order to live like a father, but will benefit the peasants, making it easier for them to pay taxes regularly; noble families will not fall, “but in their clarity they will be unshakable through glorious and great houses,” and from the fragmentation of estates between heirs, noble families will become poorer and turn into simple villagers, “as there are already many of those specimens among the Russian people”; having free bread, albeit small, a nobleman will not serve without compulsion for the benefit of the state, he will shirk and live in idleness, and the new law will force the Cadets to “seek their bread” by service, teaching, auctions and other things.

The decree is very frank: the almighty legislator confesses his impotence to protect his subjects from the rapacity of the impoverished landlords, and looks at the nobility as at the estate of parasites, not disposed to any useful activity. The decree introduced important changes in service land tenure. This is not a law on primacy or "primacy", allegedly inspired by the orders of Western European feudal inheritance, as it is sometimes characterized, although Peter made inquiries about the rules of inheritance in England, France, Venice, even in Moscow from foreigners. The March decree did not assert the exclusive right for the eldest son; primacy was an accident that occurred only in the absence of a spiritual one: a father could bequeath real estate to his younger son past the eldest. The decree did not establish a major, but unanimity, the indivisibility of immovable estates, and went towards the difficulty of a purely native origin, eliminated the fragmentation of estates, which intensified as a result of the decree of 1684 and weakened the serviceability of the landowners. The legal structure of the March 23 law was rather peculiar. Completing the convergence of estates and estates, he established the same order of inheritance for both; but at the same time, did he turn estates into estates, or vice versa, as was thought in the 18th century, calling the March points the most elegant beneficence to which Peter the Great granted estates to property? Neither one nor the other, but a combination of the legal features of the estate and the estate created a new, unprecedented type of land ownership, which can be characterized by the name hereditary, indivisible and eternally bound, with which the eternal hereditary and hereditary service of the owner is connected.

All these features also existed in ancient Russian land ownership; only two of them did not combine: heredity was the right of patrimonial land tenure, indivisibility was a common fact of land tenure. The estate was not indivisible, the estate was not hereditary; obligatory service equally fell on both possessions. Peter combined these features and extended them to all noble estates, and even put a ban on alienation on them. Servant tenure is now more monotonous, but less free. These are the changes made to it by decree on March 23. In this decree, the usual transformative method, assimilated in the restructuring of society and government, was especially clearly revealed. Accepting the relations and orders that had developed before him, as he found them, he did not introduce new principles into them, but only brought them into new combinations, adapting them to changed conditions, did not cancel, but modified the law in force in relation to new state needs. The new combination gave the transformed order a new, unprecedented look. In fact, the new order was built from old relationships.

OPERATION OF THE DECREE. The law of March 23, allocating a sole heir, exempted the Cadets, his landless brothers and often nephews from compulsory service, leaving them to choose their own way of life and occupation. For military service, Peter did not need all the service cash of noble families, which previously made up the mass of the noble militia. In the sole heir, he was looking for an officer who had the means to serve properly and prepare for service, without burdening his peasants with requisitions. This was in accordance with the role that Peter assigned to the nobility in his all-class regular army - to serve as an officer team. But even in this law, as in his other social reforms, the reformer had little understanding of mores, everyday concepts and habits. When strictly enforced, the law split the nobility into two layers, into happy owners of their father's nests and into destitute, landless and homeless proletarians, brothers and sisters living as freeloaders and freeloaders in the house of the sole heir or "dragging between the yard." One can understand the family grievances and strife that the law was supposed to cause, and besides, it did little to facilitate its application. It is poorly processed, does not foresee many cases, gives vague definitions that allow for conflicting interpretations: in the 1st paragraph it strongly prohibits the alienation of real estate, and in the 12th it provides and regulates their sale as needed; establishing a sharp difference in the order of inheritance of movable and immovable property, does not indicate what is meant by one and the other, and this gave rise to misunderstandings and abuses. These shortcomings caused repeated clarification in subsequent decrees of Peter, and after him the decree of 1714 in new paragraphs on May 28, 1725 was subjected to detailed casuistic development, which allowed significant deviations from it, which made its implementation even more difficult. It seems that Peter himself saw in his decree not a final provision, but rather a temporary measure: having allowed important deviations from it, prescribing in an additional decree on April 15, 1716, the allocation of the fourth part of the undivided property of the deceased spouse to the survivor in eternal possession, the king marked on the decree: "Until the time to be according to this."

Compulsory service for cadets was not abolished: as before, all the underage were taken into military service and both the first-born and the cadets were equally strictly called to the reviews. Moreover, until the end of Peter's reign, litigious divisions of estates continued between relatives, which they inherited even before the "points" under the law of 1684, and, apparently, Pososhkov speaks about these divisions in his essay On Poverty and Wealth, describing with vivid features how the nobles, after their dead relatives, divide the residential and empty lands into fractional parts, with quarrels, even with “criminal action” and with great harm to the treasury, crushing one wasteland or village into insignificant shares, as if the law on unity did not exist. These sections were also recognized by the clauses of 1725. In a word, the law of 1714, without achieving the intended goals, only introduced confusion and economic disorder into the landowning environment. So, an officer of an army regiment trained and provided with indivisible real estate or a secretary of a collegiate institution - such is the official appointment of an ordinary nobleman, according to Peter.

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1.1 Nobility under Peter I

The reign of Peter - 1682-1725 - can be described as a period of transformation of the nobility into a full-fledged estate, occurring simultaneously with its enslavement and increasing dependence on the state. The process of forming the nobility as a single class consists in the gradual acquisition of class rights and privileges.

One of the first events in this area was the adoption of the Decree on uniform inheritance. In March 1714, a decree "On the order of inheritance in movable and immovable property" was issued, better known as the "Decree on Uniform Succession". This decree was an important milestone in the history of the Russian nobility. He legislated the equality of estates and estates as forms of real estate, i.e. there was a merger of these two forms of feudal landed property. From that moment on, land holdings were not subject to division among all the heirs of the deceased, but went to one of the sons at the choice of the testator. It is quite obvious that the rest, according to the legislator, having lost their source of income, should have rushed to the state service. In this regard, most researchers believe that the involvement of nobles in the service or some other activity useful to the state was the main purpose of this decree. Others believe that Peter I wanted to turn part of the nobility into the third estate. Still others - that the emperor took care of the preservation of the nobility itself and even sought to turn it into a kind of Western European aristocracy. The fourth, on the contrary, are convinced of the anti-noble orientation of this decree. This decree, which had many progressive features, caused discontent among the upper class. In addition, like many normative acts of the Petrine era, it was not well developed. The ambiguity of the wording created difficulties in the execution of the decree. Here is what Klyuchevsky notes about this: “It is poorly processed, does not foresee many cases, gives vague definitions that allow for conflicting interpretations: in the 1st paragraph it strongly prohibits the alienation of real estate, and in the 12th it provides and normalizes their sale as needed; establishing a sharp difference in the order of inheritance of movable and immovable property, does not indicate what is meant by one and the other, and this gave rise to misunderstandings and abuses. These shortcomings caused repeated clarifications in subsequent decrees of Peter. By 1725, the decree had undergone significant revision, allowing significant deviations from the original version. But anyway, according to V.O. Klyuchevsky: "The law of 1714, without reaching the intended goals, only introduced confusion and economic disorder into the landowning environment."

According to some historians, the Decree on Uniform Succession was created in order to attract the nobles to the service. But despite this, Peter was constantly faced with an unwillingness to serve. This is explained by the fact that service under this emperor was not only obligatory, but also indefinite, for life. Every now and then, Peter received news of dozens and hundreds of nobles hiding from service or study on their estates. In the fight against this phenomenon, Peter was merciless. So, in the decree to the Senate it was said: "Whoever hides from the service, will announce to the people, whoever finds or announces such a person, to him give all the villages of the one who was guarded." Peter fought not only with punishments, but also by legislatively creating a new system of service. Peter I considered the professional training of a nobleman, his education, to be the most important sign of fitness for service. In January 1714, there was a ban on marrying noble offspring who did not have at least a primary education. A nobleman without education was deprived of the opportunity to occupy command positions in the army and leadership in civil administration. Peter was convinced that a noble origin could not be the basis for a successful career, so in February 1712 it was ordered not to promote nobles who did not serve as soldiers, that is, who did not receive the necessary training, as officers. Peter's attitude to the problem of the relationship of various social groups between themselves and the state was fully manifested in the course of the tax reform that began in 1718. Almost from the very beginning, the nobility was exempted from taxation, which legally secured one of its most important privileges. But even here problems arose, since it was not so easy to distinguish a nobleman from a non-nobleman. In the pre-Petrine era, there was no practice of awarding the nobility with the accompanying legal and documentary registration. Thus, in practice, the main sign of belonging to the nobility in the course of the tax reform was the real official position, i.e. service in the army as an officer or in the civil service at a fairly high position, as well as the presence of an estate with serfs.

Another important event of Peter I was the adoption on January 24, 1722 of the "Table of Ranks". Peter personally took part in editing this decree, which was based on borrowings from the "schedules of ranks" of the French, Prussian, Swedish and Danish kingdoms. All the ranks of the "Table of Ranks" were divided into three types: military, civilian (civil) and courtiers and were divided into fourteen classes. Each class was assigned its own rank. Chin - official and social position established in civil and military service. Although some historians considered the rank as a position. Petrovskaya "Table", determining a place in the hierarchy of the civil service, to some extent made it possible for talented people from the lower classes to advance. All those who have received the first 8 ranks in the state or court department are ranked as hereditary nobility, "even if they were of low breed", i.e. regardless of their origin. In military service, this title was given at the rank of the lowest XIV class. Thus, Peter I expressed his preference for military service over civilian. Moreover, the title of nobility applies only to children born after the father has received this rank; if, upon receiving the rank of children, he will not be born, he can ask for the grant of nobility to one of his previously born children. With the introduction of the table of ranks, the ancient Russian ranks - boyars, okolnichy and others - were not formally abolished, but the award to these ranks ceased. The publication of the report card had a significant impact on both the official routine and the historical fate of the nobility. The only regulator of service was personal length of service; "father's honor", the breed, has lost all meaning in this respect. Military service was separated from civil and court service. The acquisition of the nobility by the length of service of a certain rank and the grant of the monarch was legalized, which influenced the democratization of the noble class, the consolidation of the service nature of the nobility and the stratification of the noble mass into new groups - the hereditary and personal nobility.

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"At Petre, in the first half of the reign, when there were still very few schools, the main way to education was the sending of Russian nobles abroad in masses for education. Some, voluntarily or by decree, wandering around Europe, already being family people, in their years, recorded their observations abroad, showing how difficult and unfruitful this educational path was.

Unprepared and indifferent, with wide-open eyes and mouths, they looked at the customs, orders and atmosphere of the European hostel, not distinguishing the marvels of culture from tricks and trifles, not putting aside any thoughts in their minds from unusual impressions.

One, for example, an important Moscow prince, who remained unknown, describes in detail his Amsterdam dinner in some house, with female servants completely undressed, and when he saw the church of St. Peter in Rome, did not come up with anything better to study it, how to measure its length and width in steps, and inside describe the wallpaper that hung the walls of the temple. Prince B. Kurakin, a man experienced in Europe, who studied in Venice, having arrived in Holland in 1705, describes the monument to Erasmus in Rotterdam as follows: and to that it was done as a sign. In Leiden, he visited the anatomical theater of prof. Bidloo, whom he calls Cattle, saw how the professor “teared apart” the corpse and “provided” parts of it to students, examined the richest collection of preparations, embalmed and “in spiritus”. All this work of scientific thought on the knowledge of life through the study of death led the Russian observer to advise everyone who happens to be in Holland to definitely see the Leiden "coryusites", which will bring "much amusement".

Despite the lack of preparation, Peter had high hopes for sending abroad for training, thinking that the sent ones would take out as much useful knowledge from there as he himself gained on the first trip. Apparently, he really wanted to oblige his nobility to study naval service, seeing in it the main and most reliable foundation of his state, as it seemed to people who had relations with the Russian embassy in Holland in 1697. From that year on, he drove dozens of nobles abroad young people to learn navigational sciences. But it was the sea that aroused the greatest disgust in the Russian nobleman, and from abroad he wept with his own, asking him to be appointed at least the last ordinary soldier or to some kind of “land science”, but not to navigation. However, over time, the program of foreign training has been expanded. From the notes of Neplyuev, who, unlike his compatriots, cleverly used his study trip abroad (in 1716-1720), we see what the Russians then studied abroad and how they mastered the local science.

Parties of such students, all from the nobility, were scattered around the most important cities of Europe: in Venice, Florence, Toulon, Marseille, Cadiz, Paris, Amsterdam, London, studied in the academies there in painting, carriage, mechanics, navigation, engineering, artillery, drawing dreams, how ships are built, boatswain, soldier’s article, dance, fight with swords, ride horses and all kinds of crafts, copper, carpentry and ship buildings, ran from science to Mount Athos, visited “redoubts”, gambling houses, where they fought and killed one another, the rich learned well to drink and spend money, having squandered, they sold their things and even their villages in order to get rid of the foreign debt prison, and the poor, inaccurately receiving meager salaries, almost died of hunger, others entered foreign service from need, and all generally poorly supported the reputation acquired in Europe as "good gentlemen."

Upon returning home, foreign customs and scientific impressions easily shone from these conductors of culture, like a patina of road dust, and foreigners were brought home with a mixture of foreign vices that surprised foreigners with bad native habits, which, according to one foreign observer, led only to spiritual and bodily corruption and hardly gave place to real virtue - the true fear of God.

However, something stuck. Peter wanted to make the nobility a breeding ground for European military and naval equipment. It soon turned out that the technical sciences did not take root well in the estate, that the Russian nobleman rarely and with great difficulty managed to become an engineer or a captain of a ship, and the acquired knowledge did not always find application at home: Menshikov climbed yards with Peter, learned to make masts, and in the fatherland he was the most land-based governor-general. But the stay abroad did not go unnoticed: compulsory education did not provide a significant stock of scientific knowledge, but nevertheless accustomed the nobleman to the learning process and aroused some appetite for knowledge; the nobleman still learned something, even if not what he was sent for.

Klyuchevsky V.O., On Russian history, M., Enlightenment, 1993, p. 451-453.