Russia under the Old regime

THE PARTIAL DISMANTLING OF THE PATRIMONIAL STATE

on the satisfactory performance of state service and also subject to many legal restrictions. Nor did the dvoriane enjoy any safeguards to protect them from the arbitrariness of the state and its officials. As one might expect, their foremost desires were to transform their conditional possession of land and serfs into outright ownership and to acquire guarantees of personal inviolability. They also wished for greater business opportunities than they had under a system of rigid state monopolies. Finally, to the extent that they became educated and curious about the outside world, they wanted the right of free travel and access to information. Most of these wishes were granted to them during the four decades which followed Peter's death (1725); the remainder, before the century was over. The climacteric was the reign of Catherine the Great; for although Catherine is mainly remembered for her love affairs it was she, rather than Peter, who revolutionized the Russian system and set it on its western course.

The dismantling of the patrimonial structure occurred with astonishing rapidity. Unfortunately, historians have paid much less attention to its decline than to its origins with the result that much of that history is covered by obscurity. We must confine our explanation to several hypotheses, the validity of which only further study can determine:

1. In the imperial period, the dvorianstvo grew very impressively in numbers; between the middle of the seventeenth and the end of the eighteenth centuries its male contingent increased nearly threefold, and from the end of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth, once again more than fourfold; from approximately 39,000 in 1651, to 108,000 in 1782, to 464,000 in 1858.12

2. A number of Peter's measures bearing on the dvorianstvo had had the effect of consolidating its position: a. By regularizing procedures for service promotion, the Table of Ranks helped to free the dvorianstvo from total dependence on the per sonal favour of the tsar and his advisers; it made the service establish ment more autonomous, a development which the crown was unable subsequently to reverse; b. Compulsory education required of young dvoriane brought them together and tended to heighten their sense of class solidarity; the Guard Regiments where the elite of dvoriane was schooled and given military training acquired extraordinary power; c. The increase in the authority of the landlord resulting from the introduction of the soul tax and conscription transformed dvoriane into virtual satraps on their estates;

3. In 1722, after his conflict with Tsarevich Alexis, Peter abolished the regular law of succession, based on primogeniture, and empowered every monarch to pick his own successor. The Russian monarchy for the