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

Abstract

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.

The Enlightenment as determinant of accounting change: The case of royal estate bookkeeping during the reign of Catherine II

“…The new idea of the Enlightenment and the traditional Russian autocracy combined in the notion of the enlightened monarch. Historians differ in their interpretation of the reasons behind Catherine’s ambition to present herself as an enlightened monarch : her personal characteristics (high intelligence, curiosity) (Gribovskiy, 1864; Klyuchevskiy, 1910); the influence of her supporters N. Panin, I. Betskoy and E. Dashkova (Rancel, 1975); the questionable way of her coming to power (d’Encausse, 2002; Madariaga, 1981; Solovyev, 1879); and popularity of European ideas (Bartlett, 1979; Kahan, 1966). The analysis of these reasons is outside the scope of our study.…”

Politics and Technology in Eighteenth-Century Russia

“…The efforts of a few enlightened nobles to introduce rational methods on their estates through scientific agriculture and mechanical equipment were doomed from the start by the serf system. The activity of the landlord was so closely integrated with that of the peasant, who held and cultivated his own land according to traditional practices, that exploitation of the estate remained dependent on the technical level of the peasants (Kahan 1966;Confino 1963,177 and chap. 3 passim).…”

In Search of Hidden Information: Some Issues in the Socio-Economic History of Russia in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

“…Interior towns were often bypassed by the landlords themselves, their stewards, and the peasants during this period when the domestic agricultural market expanded. The nobility received the lion's share of profits from exports of grain and other raw materials, and they used these revenues unproductively, chiefly on consumption of imported luxury items (Kahan, 1970). * Barshchina is the name for the labor services exacted in place of money dues (obrok).…”