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The Costs of “Westernization” in Russia: The Gentry and the Economy in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Arcadius Kahan
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I leave my inheritors in extreme poverty, since my debts, most illustrious Madam, exceed half a million rubles—[they accumulated] during my thirty years of service in the Admiralty, where, particularly in the beginning, I was compelled to entertain many guests, to feed almost everybody, and to get them accustomed not only to high society but also to affluence.

Count I. G. Chernyshev to Catherine the Great (1794)

Historians have Described the gentry as the most powerful and influential social group in eighteenth-century Russia. The gentry developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a social class, or estate, from the fusion of the old feudal aristocracy with the younger military and administrative service class. The view that the gentry was the pillar of absolutism and of the Russian state was virtually unchallenged during the eighteenth century. The special status of the Russian gentry derived principally from the fact that its members constituted the first social group that could not be treated arbitrarily by the state. The Russian state recognized certain rules of conduct in respect to the gentry, and by and large observed those rules, at a time when other social groups possessed no safeguards, as individuals or collectively, in their dealings with the state.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1966 , pp. 40 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1966

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References

1 The assumption of pressure applied in imposing“Westernization” is realistic in terms of the historical record. It does not exclude the likelihood that a taste for“Westernization“ was subsequently developed and that some features of it (conspicuous consumption, for example) grew at a rate that exceeded the original intentions of the state.

2 This can be estimated on the assumption of, let us say, three males per gentry household, which would give us the following results, derived from Table 1: (image) (The rate of population growth of the gentry in the eighteenth century given in Table 1 indicates a family size of two to three males per family. The use of three males per gentry household does not determine the results of our analysis.)

3 Strumilin, S. G., Istoriia chernoi metallurgii v SSSR, I (Moscow, 1954) 273 Google Scholar; Indova, E. I., Krepostnoe khoziaistvo v nachale XIX veka (Moscow, 1955), pp. 30, 186–87 Google Scholar; Sivkov, K. V., Ocherki po istorii krepostnogo khoziaistva i krest'ianskogo dvizheniia v Rossii v pervoi polovine XIX veka (Moscow, 1951), p. 146.Google Scholar

4 Not all serfs paid money rent; many rendered labor services on the estate or paid rent in kind or were liable for a combination of the two. For our calculations we use the money rent as an approximation of the value of the other types of service. Depending upon the period, locality, and other conditions, the value of other types of rent fluctuated above or below the level of money rents.

5 For the portion of imported goods consumed by gentry and by nongentry we must rely on indirect evidence. The group closest to the gentry in terms of income was the upper merchant class, which presumably participated in the consumption of foreign goods if only for the status symbol thus provided. Some contemporary documents, however, clearly indicate a lag of the“import tastes” of merchants behind those of the upper gentry. In 1793 a government committee appointed to investigate the causes of the depreciation of the ruble on foreign exchanges and to recommend remedies included representatives of the Russian merchant class among those invited to testify. The merchants regarded most of the imported wines and foodstuffs, textiles, and leather goods as“luxuries” either totally superfluous or replaceable by satisfactory domestic products. Two merchants—Nikolai Rezvoi, head of the St. Petersburg merchant guilds, and Mikhail Samoilov, member of the first merchant guild, consisting of the richest merchants—listed in detail the imported commodities which, in their view, ought to be forbidden or restricted. Most revealing as a reflection of the consumer attitudes of the upper group of Russian merchants are the reasons given. The following is a composite selection from the catalogues submitted by the two men (the explanations were given by Samoilov): fine woolens (domestically produced, can do without them); beer and porter (a delicacy, a whim); fine linens; socks and stockings (some domestically produced, one can do without others); fresh fruit (a great deal domestically produced); wines and liquors (unnecessary); furs (domestic of good quality available); foreign tobacco (imported for fashion, not for quality and usefulness); cheeses (a delicacy, anyone can make it for himself); sweet vodkas (a whim); syrup (sufficient from domestic sugar refineries); coconuts, Greek nuts, etc. (a delicacy and bad for health); gloves (some domestically produced, one can do without others); exotic birds (for no good reason); blankets (can do without); macaroni (a delicacy); chocolate (a delicacy). Apparently keeping in mind that one ought not to deprive the gentry and rich merchants of all“luxuries,” Samoilov proposed“heavy import duties” for 33 additional commodities. See N. N. Firsov, Pravitel'stvo i obshchestvo v ikh otnosheniiakh k vneshnei torgovle Rossii v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny H-oi (Moscow, 1901-2), pp. 181-89.

6 In 1793-95 the“luxury” goods imported into Russia through the European border averaged annually (in rubles): (image) Not included in the list is the share of“luxury” items in the import of woolen and cotton goods, the value of which amounted to 6, 585400 rubles, and the duty assessment to 955, 900 rubles. The gentry's expenditures which will be used in our calculations include all items listed in the table, except one half of the sugar. It includes also one quarter of the imported cotton and woolens. Altogether the declared value of luxury imports consumed annually by the gentry would be 11, 411, 500 rubles, the duty payments 1, 145, 500 rubles, or a total of 12, 557, 000 rubles. See Heinrich Storch, Supplementband zum fiinften, sechsten und siebenten Theil des Historisch-Statistischen Gemäldes des Russischen Reichs (Leipzig, 1803), pp. 53-54.

7 The direct costs of tuition for gentry education in the later decades of the eighteenth century amounted to about 100 rubles per male pupil, or, including room and board, to about 150 rubles per year. However, a part of the expenditures was borne by state subsidies to various educational institutions. Costs of educating gentry females—salaries to governesses, tutors, etc.—were smaller. Obviously, estimates of the costs of education to the gentry involve a substantial margin of error, and ought not to be undertaken in this essay. For our purposes, it is sufficient to realize that even a cost of 100 rubles for educating a gentry male imposed upon the gentry household an expense equal to the rent derived from 20 serf-peasants.

8 Primogeniture provisions were decreed by Peter the Great in 1714; see Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, Vol. V, item 2789 (St. Petersburg, 1830). They were, however, repealed in 1730 (PSZ, Vol. VIII, item 5653) on the overwhelming demand of the gentry itself. In addition, primogeniture provisions could be effective only if many opportunities existed for gentry activity outside agriculture.

9 The Soviet agricultural historian L. V. Milov recently called attention to the existence of this reserve of long fallow land outside the three-field system. By using primary sources he was able to correct the errors of Rubinshtein and other historians and provide the explanation for the operation of the three-field system in Russia. See L. V. Milov,“O roli perelozhnykh zemel’ v russkom zemledelii vtoroi poloviny XVIII v.,” in Ezhegodnik po agrarnoi istorii vostochnoi Evropy 1961 g. (Riga, 1963), pp. 279-88.

10 The earlier land survey during 1754-55 had actually provided the gentry with ownership titles to state lands previously held and occupied by the gentry without title. PSZ, Vol. XIV, item 10, 406.

11 PSZ, Vol. XVII, items 12, 474, 12, 570, 12, 659.

12 A desiatina equals 1.0925 ha.

13 Derived from Rubinshtein, N. L., Sel'skoe khoziaistvo Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XVIII v. (Moscow, 1957), pp. 323–24, 444-52.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 An interesting case in point was the recruitment of 92 peasants in Livonia and Kurland to teach the use of the scythe instead of the sickle in grain harvesting to peasants in ten provinces in Russia proper. In five years (1721-26) they trained 13, 299 peasants, and 16, 210 scythes were introduced in four of the ten provinces. PSZ, Vol. VII, item 4, 912.

16 Sivkov, K. V.,“Voprosy sel'skogo khoziaistva v russkikh zhurnalakh XVIII v.,” in Materialy po istorii zemledeliia SSSR, I (Moscow, 1952), 613.Google Scholar

17 PSZ, Vol. XI, item 8, 619.

18 Rukovskii, L. P., Istoriko-statisticheskie svedeniia o podushnykh podat'iakh (St. Petersburg, 1862), p. 193.Google Scholar

19 According to data for the estates of Prince A. M. Cherkasskii, during the 1730s 11, 467 fugitive peasants, or 16.4 percent of his male serfs, were recovered in the eastern and southern regions. Istoriia SSSR, No. 6, 1963, pp. 127-29.

20 Peasant flights also occurred frequently as a result of army recruitment by the government

21 The price index used is particularly ill-suited. During periods of rising prices grain prices tend to rise faster than other prices. Therefore, the reader is cautioned with regard to the results of the real burden of taxation that emerge in Table 6.

22 According to the same procedure as that used in Table 6, the burden upon the stateowned peasants, in comparison with that of the gentry's peasants, was as follows: 1730s—

23 Count Sheremetev, the owner of the villages, derived from them a very large share of the income from his total estates, which included up to 80, 000 male serfs by the end of the eighteenth century.

24 I have omitted the attempts of Aleksandr Menshikov (not of gentry origin, but one of the richest land- and serfowners and the favorite of Peter the Great) to set up industrial enterprises in the 1710s. The joint-stock silk manufacturing company of the Counts Apraksin and Tolstoi and Baron Shafirov, established in 1717, was a clear example not of gentry entrepreneurship and initiative but of government action to set up gentry in the field of industrial activity (see Zaozerskaia, E. I., Razvitie legkoi promyshlennosti v Moskve v pervoi chetverti XVIII v. [Moscow, 1953], pp. 297.Google Scholar). This case, too, is therefore omitted from the general discussion.

25 There is the interesting, though little explored, case of Prince Khovanskii, who tried to create a huge woolen mill based solely upon serf labor, expanding output and scale of operations in a daring fashion (Strumilin, I, 278). Needless to say, risk-taking without knowledge of the market ended in financial disaster for the noble knight-errant striving to master the dragon of industry with antiquated weapons.

26 The recipients of the iron and copper works were A. I. and P. I. Shuvalov, R. I. and M. I. Vorontsov, I. G. Chernyshev, S. P. Iaguzhinskii, A. G. Gur'ev, and P. I. Repnin. Of these the Shuvalovs owned the enterprises for nine years, Gur'ev ten years, Chernyshev thirteen, Repnin fifteen, and the Vorontsovs and Iaguzhinski over twenty years. Eventually they all either returned the enterprises to the state or sold them at a profit to other entrepreneurs. N. I. Pavlenko, Istoriia metallurgii v Rossii XVIII veka (Moscow, 1962), pp. 327- 86.

27 “Opyt khozhdeniia po prisutstvennym mestam.” Ibid., p. 435.

28 Peter the Great for a short while even allowed the owners of iron works to keep fugitive serfs and to pay a nominal price to the owner for a serf who was already trained in the iron works. Later on the acquisition was made more difficult. N. I. Pavlenko, Razvitie metallurgicheskoi promyshlennosti Rossii v pervoi polovine XVIII veka (Moscow, 1953), p. 353; and PSZ, Vol. VII, item 4533.

29 PSZ, Vol. XV, 11, 490; Vol. XVI, item 11, 638.

30 Artamenkov, M. N.,“Naemnye rabochie moskovskikh manufaktur v 40-70kh godakh XVIII v.,” Istoriia SSSR, No. 2, 1964, p. 142.Google Scholar

31 The Revenue Collegium estimated in 1753 an existing over-all output capacity of 3, 962, 471 vedra of alcohol, while the actually purchased and delivered output in 1752 was 1, 534, 818 vedra (a vedro contained about 12.3 liters). See the article by N. I. Pavlenko in Voprosy genezisa kapitalizma v Rossii (Leningrad, 1960), p. 63.

32 According to the estimates of the Revenue Collegium, the gentry owned 1295 distilleries, of which 264 were classified as commercial suppliers. The rest were producing alcohol for their own household needs. Ibid., note 33.

33 Pavlenko, Istoriia metallurgii, p. 446.

34 See note 2, above.

35 Pavlenko, Istoriia metallurgii, p. 446; Svedeniia o piteinykh sborakh v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1860), I, 38.

36 Pavlenko, Istoriia metallurgii, p. 446.

37 PSZ, Vol. XIV, item 10, 486.

38 The decree of 1754 (PSZ, Vol. XII, item 9401) had not specified the distance from the cities, and the urban merchants were able to impose restrictions upon peasant trade even at a distance of 20 versts and more from the cities. See M. I. Volkov,“Tamozhennaia reforma 1753-1757 gg’ in Istoricheskie zapiski, LXXI (Moscow, 1963), 152.

39 If we nevertheless engage in the exercise of estimating (on the basis of the information provided in Tables 2 and 3), assuming the highest possible number of serfs for the lowest group (i.e., 9 serfs for the“below 10” category), continuing at the same proportion for the other categories (for example, 27 for the“10-30” category, etc.), and distributing the estimated number of 16, 592 gentry households in the 1760s among the various categories, we arrive at the following curious percentage distribution of serfs among the various household groups of Table 8: (Image) Obviously the above distribution is biased in favor of the lower groups and underestimates the share of the highest serfholding group. The estimated numbers of serfs (male) held by the major serfowners during the eighteenth century in the Great Russian provinces were: P. B. Sheremetev 60, 000-100, 000; K. G. Razumovskii 45, 000; A. S. Stroganov 33, 870; D. G. Orlov 27, 000; S. R. and A. R. Vorontsov together 27, 605; A. A. and L. A. Naryshkin together 22, 000; N. M., M. M., and D. M. Golitsyn 14, 000 each; S. S. Gagarin 13, 982; B. A. Kurakin 13, 000; M. A., B. A., and A. A. Golitsyn together 13, 000; B. G. Shakhovskoi and F. S. Bariatinskii 11, 000 each; G. I. Golovkin, N. A. Golitsyn, Georgii Vakhtangeevich (Prince of Georgia), G. A. Potemkin, D. Iu. Trubetskoi, and E. A. Chernysheva 10, 000 each. V. I. Semevskii, Krest'ianie v tsarstvovanie Imperatritsy Ekateriny II (St. Petersburg, 1903), I, 23-35.

40 Distribution of Gentry Serfs Owners by Size of Holdings in Great Russia, 1834*(Image) * Territory comparable to that of the third reviziia (as in Tables 2 and 3); data derived from table in P. V. Köppen,“ Über die Vertheilung der Bewohner Russlands nach Ständen, in den Verschiedenen Provinzen,” in Mimoires de ľAcadémie Impériale des Sciences de Saint-Piiersbourg, Sixth Series, Vol. VII (St. Petersburg, 1847), pp. 420-21 (table in source covers 45 guberniias of European Russia; data above, for Great Russia only, obtained by excluding 17 guberniias).

41 It is of interest to note that in 1765, of the 157 gentry suppliers of alcohol, only 8 delivered quantities of over 50, 000 vedra, their combined contribution consisting of 44 percent of the total. The 1765 top eight suppliers were Andrei Petrovich Shuvalov (257, 824 vedra), A. I. Glebov (179, 421 vedra), Agrafena Leont'evna Apraksina (80, 000), P. G. Chernyshev (70, 215), Matvei and Sergei Kantemir (61, 000), I. S. and Gavriil Ermolaev (59, 106), N. A. Korf (58, 778), and E. D. Golitsyn heirs (55, 111). Among the major suppliers in 1779-83 we find Senator E. A. Shcherbinin (125, 586 vedra), Senator N. B. Samoilov (110, 000), Field Marshal K. G. Razumovskii (84, 697), the widow of P. G. Chernyshev (70, 000), and other representatives of the aristocracy and top bureaucracy. Pavlenko, Istoriia metallurgii, p. 440; Svedeniia o piteinykh sborakh v Rossii, I, 38.

42 The identity of the serfowning aristocracy and the ruling elite was established by this writer by examining the membership of the Senate and the Supreme Council, as well as the identity of the heads of collegia and the holders of court offices, during the eighteenth century, on the one hand, and the available lists (incomplete) of major serfowners (over 1000 serfs), on the other. What has so often been described by historians as favoritism on the part of the ruler in bestowing either power or wealth upon individuals was in essence a method used under absolutism to provide some mobility for the rich into the elite, or to provide wealth for the politically powerful, or to provide both mobility and wealth for the talented whose services were sought by the ruler.

43 A widespread view in Russian historiography is that the“king-making” capacity of the guards regiments demonstrated the decision-making role of the gentry (including the lower gentry) as a social class. This view is based upon the experience of 1741 and 1762. It is my impression that the guards regiments had as much voice in internal or foreign policy decisions as did the praetorian guards in ancient Rome:“king-making” and policy making are two separate categories. The actual pay-off of the guards regiments by the successful contenders for the throne indicates the“price” that the ruling oligarchy had to pay to the lower gentry for the support rendered on such occasions.

44 Semevskii, II, 254.

45 This point of view was represented even by such a conservative political thinker as Prince Shcherbatov. He argued that since most of the Church serfs had in the past been donated by the landowners, this would constitute a rightful and legitimate return of property previously owned by the landowning class.

46 The private debts of serf owners to the various government-established credit institutions (except private) were estimated for the year 1800 at 45.5 million rubles, which corresponded to 708, 000 mortgaged serfs. See S. Ia. Borovoi, Kredit i banki Rossii (Moscow, 1958), pp. 76-78. Memorandum by Dirksen, Sept. 19, 1927, K281/K09754-60. The documents used in this essay will be cited in the following manner. The files of the Alte Reichskanzlei, deposited in the Bundesarchiv of the Federal Republic of Germany, Koblenz, will be identified by the file serial number, L617 (Alte Reichskanzlei, Russia, 1924-33). The files of the German Foreign Ministry are deposited in the Political Archives of the Foreign Ministry of the German Federal Republic, Bonn. They are of two kinds: those not microfilmed, which will be identified when cited; and those microfilmed, which will be identified by the following microfilm file serial numbers: 1841 (German Embassy in the Soviet Union, Political Relations between Germany and Russia); 2860 (Reich Foreign Minister, Russia, 1924-30); 4562 (State Secretary, Russia, 1924-30); 4829 (General Consul Schlesinger, Personal Correspondence, 1924-28); 5265 (Direktoren, Wallroth Papers: Trade Pact Negotiations, Politics, Economic Relations); 5462 (Direktoren, von Dirksen Papers: Russia, Border States, Political Memoranda, Various Secret Reports and Agent's Reports, Secret Reports of Rantzau, 1925-29); 6698 (Geheimakten, Russia, 1925-30); 7129 (Stresemann Papers, Political); K281 (Department IV, Russia: Political Relations between Russia and Germany, Secret, 1927-28); L337 (German Embassy in the Soviet Union, Secret). All of these files were used in the original. The microfilms are on deposit in the National Archives, Washington, and the Public Record Office, London.