Practice and Performance in the History of the Russian Nobility (Reaction) (Essay‪)‬

Though reluctantly prepared to admit that his history of the Russian nobility, published in 1870, might be marred by shortcomings of execution--it was, after all, a product of imperfect human nature--Aleksandr Romanovich-Slavatinskii found it hard to imagine that he could be charged with errors of conception: "We permit ourselves to think that in a formal sense, we have more or less correctly embraced the subject, bringing out all its essential aspects." (1) Few in a postmodernist age would risk such an obvious hostage to fortune. Yet it is a tribute to the longevity of Romanovich-Slavatinskii's self-confident positivism that so many of his fundamental preoccupations should have been reflected, as much amplified as amended, in the most recent synoptic survey of the subject, published in 1995. (2) Like him, its author, Isabel de Madariaga, was concerned mainly to explore changes in the relationship between state and nobility and to trace their implications: for the security of noble property, for the pattern of noble service obligations, and for the social status of the noble estate. Her essentially legal inquiry, based on the fruits of more than a century of research carried out in the wake of the pioneering Romanovich-Slavatinskii, served to consolidate the now familiar image of a heterogeneous social group whose members varied significantly not only in the degree of their political influence but also in wealth, status, and educational attainments. (3) Seven years later, Michelle Marrese added a further dimension to the complexity by revealing in unprecedented detail the social and economic role of Russian noblewomen, in particular the unusually extensive property rights that stemmed, in part, from the nobility's attempts to assert its corporate rights vis-a-vis the monarchy. (4)