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SOCIAL HISTORY
УДК 94(47)«1850/1917»:316.343-058«653»
V.A. Veremenko, I.A. Tropov
The Russian nobility in the context of modernization (2nd half of the XIX - early XX centuries)
Российское дворянство в условиях модернизации (вторая половина XIX - начало ХХ в.)
The article explores the changes in financial position, views and activities of the noblemen in modernization of Russia in the second half of the XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries. It is shown that the «Great reforms» of the 1860s-1870s led to radical changes in the position of the nobility and contributed to the growth of social tension in the country.
В статье рассматриваются изменения в финансовом положении, взглядах и положении дворян в условиях российской модернизации во второй половине XIX - начале XX веков. Показано, что «Великие реформы» 1860-1870-х гг. привели к радикальным изменениям в положении дворянства и способствовало росту социальной напряженности в стране.
Key words: Russia, the nobility, modernization, social changes, "oskudenie", the abolition of serfdom, "Great reforms".
Ключевые слова: Россия, дворянство, модернизация, социальные
изменения, «оскудение», отмена крепостного права, «Великие реформы».
Year 1861 marked the beginning of a new historic era for Russia, named the era of modernization in historic literature [6; 10; 11; 3]. The process of modernization was consisted of numerous reforms in different fields of country’s social life; the aim of modernization was to enhance the imperial status of Russia, as well as to succeed in the competition in economics, military sphere and technology.
That is not to say that the history of the reformist activities carried out by Russian autocracy is neglected by researchers. Nevertheless, the scientists’ investigations were concentrated mainly on studying the special features of public policy in this or that sphere (the role of emperors and central and regional bureaucracy in making the management decisions; the mechanisms of the implementations of reforms, etc.), or on the study of institutional changes, that took place under the influence of these reforms.
© Veremenko V.A., Tropov I.A., 2015
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Such approach enables us to study the specific nature of national administration in The Russian Empire as well as those formal rules and regulations, by means of which the autocratic authorities tried to construct social space and influence the character of social relations. But the question at issue is that such an approach doesn’t allow to explore the people themselves - those citizens of The Russian Empire, who, whether they liked it or not, had to live in conditions of the intensive changes.
Moreover, the habit of estimating the reforms “on their own”, in the isolation from the sociocultural and psychological context, formed a new specific historiographical tradition, the main idea of which was to represent the reforms of the 1860s - 1870s as “halved”, “incomplete”, etc. [1; 26; 16]. Let us take a look at how the life of Russian nobility have been changing during the second half of the XIX - the beginning of the XX centuries, and how we can estimate the character and the consequences of “Great reforms” of the 1860s - 1870s within the framework of this social group.
The aim of these transformations was the modernization of the country, and, in particular, the formation in Russia such society where social classes wouldn’t exist. In many of them - in judicial, municipal, military, etc. “the spirit of capitalism”, as Max Weber put it, was distinctly observed. In this case the point was that the rights and obligations of people were to be determined not just by being a member of a social class, but by owning the property or not owning one.
In accordance with this the whole traditional system of social connections and relations changed: on the one hand, the social mobility of people, previously constrained by social restrictions, increased, on the other hand the special position of previously privileged groups was destroyed. Regarding this we absolutely agree with A. Riber’s opinion, who claimed, that the reforms of the 60s-70s “created new, more complexly organized society” [14, p. 69]. In other words the changes used to happen during a short period of time affected the life of every person and put the representatives of different social groups into completely unusual living conditions.
Perhaps the most striking changes happened in the life of the nobility, whose representatives were found in extremely complicated economic situation just before the abolition of serfdom and “couldn’t live in a way typical for the representatives of this social class” [9, p. 63].
After the reform of 1861 the nobility found itself in new economic conditions: first of all, the landowners couldn’t use the forced labor of serf peasants as before, and second of all, under the influence of inner and outer factors the price of bread significantly decreased in the 1860s [13, p. 45-46]. Also strong damage was caused to the landowners’ economy during the World Agrarian Crisis that struck Russia in the 1880s - 1890s.
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Clearly the noblemen were affected by economic problems to different degrees. Their reaction to impetuous changes in the everyday life also varied greatly. Some representatives of this social class managed to modernize their businesses by means of more effective capitalist production, as it for instance happened in Perm’ undivided estate owned by the Count Stroganov [19, p. 41-42]. A. N. Engelhardt, a famous public figure and agricultural chemist, a member of a noble family, once said that there were “various changes” in the late 1880s, and in some other landlords’ estates “multiple crop rotations were introduced, various kinds of bread, as well as clover were planted” [4, p. 596]. The progressive landowners took a stand for the wide use of civilian labor and even for the future transition to farming. However, they mentioned that “this method is too expensive and doesn’t correspond to the real prices of bread” [13, p. 49].
Many of them aspired to if not the transformation then at least to the preservation of their family estates. S.M. Wolkonsky’s memoirs show that he demonstrated great love and care when it came to the questions of improvement of his estate: “There used to be a desert here that you wanted to be apart from, and now you see beautiful meadows, framed by the wavy lines of a forest edge. We call this territory Alexander Park. From my bedroom windows I look through binoculars at this scenery that I created. A different country. Is it really Tambov steppe? Undulated country, oak, birch and spruce forests; and tilled grain field between the groves... That is the kind of creative work that attaches a man to a place” [25, p. 34-35].
During the post-reform years the tendency of involving the noblemen into the entrepreneurship was distinctly noticeable. Though it suggested serious financial risks, it at the same time provided possibilities for high revenues, that were hard to obtain from landowner’s estate. Some merchants from the nobility were the only proprietors of the industrial enterprises; others were engaged in collective commercial establishments - corporate share enterprises and merchant ventures [2, p. 107-117]. And even though in such large center as Saint-Petersburg noblemen by birth accounted only 18% of the corporate share enterprises management stuff [17, p. 144], this still indicates their active participation in the processes of the bourgeois modernization of the country.
At the same time it cannot go unnoticed that the rationalization and intensification of landowners’ estates, as well as the business activity of the nobility was restrained by many circumstances. For a considerable part of gentry the conditions of the reform of 1861 conducting in fact turned to lead to the complete impoverishment: there was a reduction of the number of real estates in their private ownership, the lack of money became the major problem. Regarding the Penza province, the number
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of land property owned by the nobility from 1861 to 1905 was reduced by a third. A considerable part of the property was put in pledge in private land banks [5, p. 19-20]. A so-called “depletion” of nobility, brilliantly depicted in Terpigorev’s essays, became a commonplace phenomenon [20].
In the sources there are numerous evidences that during the postreform decades the landowners leased the land to peasants on terms of its full cultivation. In fact, such system (called “metayage”) did not differ from those of the times of serfdom, it was characterized by low efficiency, and both the landowners and representatives of scientific community also admited this fact [4, p. 393-397; 21, p. 158].
The economic problems in combination with the preserved mind traditionalism determined the overall picture of the situation typical for the overwhelming majority of the nobility during the post-reform decades.
Under such circumstances the preservation of the way of life typical for noblemen before became extremely difficult or even impossible kep on.
A small part of the nobility accepted this new realia psychologically and ideologically and was engaged in the intensification of their estates or immersed into the entrepreneurship in cities. But for the majority of them such life strategies were unacceptable.
A desire to be free from the new invading and the old unsolved problems, the loss of life guidelines had the largest impact on the middle-aged and aged representatives of the nobility. The alcoholism and card gambling were common among the males. There were numerous cases of mental illnesses and suicides. Under such circumstances many women tried to put up with all the ordeals in life patiently and not wash the dirt linen in public. They became the heads of their families, were actively engaged in doing the house work instead of the “numerous servants” as they could not afford them anymore. The attitude of mind of this part of nobility was accurately expressed by St. Petersburg official’s wife O. G. Bazankur: “God, I wish I could have more money! I don’t even know what I’m ready to do in order to get it - anything, I’ve been starving and suffering for so long! If only I could live the whole month without counting every penny” [7. D. 3. L. 102 ob.].
Undoubtedly, there’s no need to have implicit faith in such “confessions”: not all the noblemen were absolutely impoverished, not all of them truly were “hard up for money”. But still the complaints (part of them is found only in diaries, the other part was sent to the different state agencies, even to the Emperor) weren’t groundless. The life of the nobility during the post-reform years really became more difficult, and what is more important, the noblemen’s ideas of “poverty”, “hardship”, “justice” etc. changed [23, p. 18-21].
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Not only the older generation of the nobles, but also the young people had to get accustomed to a new post-reform reality. Their financial situation seemed to be the most complicated. The illustrative example of this is the moe of life of the Shestakovs', the family of students-spouses, who rented one cheap room and had their meals in the canteen (either in turns or shared one serving). Rarely they “cooked at home, the potatoes with herring mainly” [18, p. 105-106].
Young women from the nobility families had the biggest hardships in their lives. If the parents were able to find some financial resources for the education and training of their sons, helping them to make a career and expecting them to be their breadwinners in old age, the situation with daughters was much more complicated. In conditions of maximum economy they became a serious burden to their families, they had a hard time being dependents and searched for their own employment.
Under the influence of economic problems young noblewomen took a heightened interest of getting higher education, besides they were ready to compete with men on equal terms. In addition to that, their ideas of family and wedlock started to change tremendously. Of course, the marriages of a young noblewoman to a middle-aged man which were typical for that time, still existed. But such phenomena as creating a family without being officially married and even the refusals to create a family started to spread widely [24, p. 57-58].
The changes in public minds affected not only the economic categories, but also moral principles of the nobility. The end of the 1860s -1870s was marked with a serious spike in the number of divorces of noblemen. Among the factors that caused this phenomenon, let us mention two of them: first of all, the crisis of family budgets (in this situation the wife didn’t want to spend the money that she earned herself on her husband incapable of bringing the material wealth to the family and squandering the money); second of all, the increase in the number of divorces was influenced by the liberal ideas spreading in the society, according to these ideas the divorce was considered to be justified and even fair, if one of the spouses fell in love with someone else [22, p. 406-410].
A noticeable phenomenon of that time required the redistribution of family and social duties between a husband and a wife and the formation of new types of a family organization of the nobility -“new ideological” and “new practical” families. It was common not only for a husband, but even for a wife to take part in social and professional activities. In the first case, it happened primarily under the influence of the progressive ideas about sexual equality [8. D. 8-48], in the second case - as a result of economic changes in life of the nobility in the second half of the XIX -the beginning of the XX centuries [12. D. 2; 15. D. 61].
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Thus, the process of modernization, that covered different spheres of Russian society in the second half of the XIX - the beginning of the XX century, had an effect on the nobility, caused serious changes in their lives. The following changes can be considered the main. First of all, it is the considerable aggravation of the financial situation that forced them to search for the new ways of adaptation to the altered conditions.
Secondly, it is a wide range of live strategies of the nobility - from the attempts to draw into a shell to an active participation in the management of commercial ventures. Thirdly, there was an actual breakdown of traditional family-matrimonial relations that was a reflection of profound changes in the public minds of the nobility during the postreform period. Regarding this it’s necessary to take a fresh look at the of Alexander II “Great reforms”, refusing to consider them to be “halved” or issued only for the benefits of the nobility. These reforms accelerated the processes of modernization in Russia, decisively influenced the changes in noblemen’s everyday life, ruined their habitual lifestyle. This very circumstance (not the reforms by themselves) formed a frequently negative attitude to the processes of modernization, increased the level of social instability and became the source of new social disruptions.
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