Whatevertheir ultimate ethnic origin, all these families were ethnic Russians by the eighteenth century though the cosmopolitan and frequently French- speaking world of Petersburg high society was often seen as alien, even disloyal, by nineteenth-century Russian nationalists. Nevertheless it was one of the strengths of the tsarist regime that it was able to incorporate the aristocracies of most of its non-Russian peripheral regions into the imperial nobility and even into the Petersburg aristocracy. This was particularly crucial as regards the Ukraine. The raw Cossack elite of the Hetmanate may have regretted some of the freedoms it lost upon assimilation into the empire, but the status, careers and privileges it acquired through membership of the Russian nobility made it easier to bow to the inevitable.19 Some of the most famous names of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Russian political history (Razumovskii, Potemkin, Bezborodko, Kochubei) were minor nobles of the Western Borderlands transformed by imperial favour and their own ability into core members of the Petersburg elite.
The same process occurred with a few families of ultimately Tatar or non- Christian origin, for example the Yusupovs, but in these cases entry into the Russian aristocracy meant complete sundering of ancestral roots. This was true to a much lesser degree of the leading Georgian families, the Bagrations, Immeritinskiis, Orbelianis and Dadianis. The regime's relationship with the Polish aristocracy was more troubled, though for obvious reasons the great magnates were much less inclined to radical nationalism than was the case with the Polish gentry as a whole. The Baltic German gentry on the contrary was very loyal, at least until the 1880s when tsarist administrative centralisation and support for Russian nationalism began to alienate many of its members. Although Baltic noble agriculture flourished throughout the imperial era and countless Balts made outstanding careers in the Russian service, very few big Baltic landowners also acquired great estates in Russia or joined the Petersburg aristocracy. As Haxthausen noted, the list barely extended beyond the Lievens and Pahlens, though in the nineteenth century the Benckendorffs were also fully-fledged members of Petersburg aristocratic society.[13]
By the end of the first half of the imperial era (i.e. roughly 1815) these families and their peers had been consolidated into a relatively homogeneous aristocratic elite. Though this aristocratic core of the Russian nobility to a very great extent survived down to 1917, in the interim it had been forced to concede much of its political power and role in government to the rapidly expanding bureaucracy. This was an inevitable concomitant of the modernisation of state and society, and had its parallels throughout nineteenth-century
Europe. Bureaucracies grew in scale and professionalism in order to regulate and modernise increasingly complex societies. No aristocracy could provide recruits for all the new posts and skills that an expandingbureaucracy required. Even had it done so, these recruits' professional skills and career experience would still have differentiated them from each other and from the bulk of the land-owning elite.
The Russian bureaucratic elite which developed in the nineteenth century drew some of its recruits from the aristocracy and many more from the sons of the provincial land-owning gentry. In its initial period of growth, and especially under Nicholas I (r. 1825-55), its senior ranks were often dominated by generals, very many of whom were also aristocrats. By the second half of the nineteenth century most ministers were former civil servants, though right down to 1917 almost all governors-general, many provincial governors and a few other senior officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were military officers. All officers of the Gendarmerie (i.e. the political police) had previously served in the army and still to some extent came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of War.
By the reign of Nicholas II the army was dominated by military professionals, often of humble origin, who were usually graduates of the General Staff Academy. Senior officers serving in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in the Ministry of the Imperial Court or as regional governors and governors-general on the contrary were usually former Guards officers from well-connected families who had often abandoned professional military careers at a relatively early age for more rapid and sometimes easier careers in the civil administration. Governors by definition were 'generalists' and in addition even in the twentieth century benefited from an ability to move comfortably in provincial landowning society. Not at all surprisingly, and in a way that had many Prussian and English parallels, governorships were very frequently held by aristocrats and members of prominent gentry families. Some of these men were former Guards officers but even more had previously served as district and provincial marshals of the nobility.
If the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and in particular its top provincial official, remained gentry nests in the bureaucracy, the same was even more true ofthe Foreign Ministry and diplomatic service, which were packed with aristocrats. Once again, in this Russia followed the usual European pattern of the era. Indeed in a monarchical Europe where the political world and high society were still intertwined, it was relatively easy to justify the continuing domination of the Foreign Ministry by scions of the aristocracy and prominent gentry families.
The most spectacular examples of aristocratic military and naval officers who held key positions in government were some of the Romanov grand dukes, all of whom served in the armed forces but some of whom played important roles in domestic politics and administration even in the reign of the last emperor. The values, lifestyles and social circle of these men linked them much more closely to the aristocracy than to the professional civil servants who increasingly dominated the government, and for whom in general the Romanovs had little sympathy. On the other hand, most of the Romanov family, and above all the last two monarchs, also had no sympathy for aristocratic political pretensions. Nicholas II in particular was a populist who far preferred the peasants (or at least his own conception of the peasantry) to Petersburg high society, in which he (not to mention his wife) felt increasingly ill at ease. By January 1917 Nicholas II had succeeded in alienating himself from almost the entire Russian elite, whether aristocratic, bureaucratic or military.
The civil bureaucratic elite of the nineteenth century was mostly educated in one of four higher educational institutions: the Alexander Lycee and the School of Law, both exclusively noble boarding schools, and the universities of St Petersburg and Moscow. These institutions were on a par with the best schools and universities in Europe. As its name implies, the School of Law existed to train judicial officials, and most graduates of the two universities had also studied in their law faculties. The Alexander Lycee, on the other hand, offered a broader humanitarian curriculum. Its graduates packed the top ranks of Nicholas II's Foreign Ministry, just as graduates of the School of Law dominated the Ministry of Justice and the Senate. On the whole by the last quarter of the nineteenth century senior and middle-ranking officials in Petersburg were intelligent, incorruptible and professionally competent bureaucrats with a strong commitment to the state and to Russia. As in many bureaucracies, the ablest officials were often those serving in the key coordinating central institutions: in Russia's case that meant above all the State Chancellery and the Chancellery of the Committee of Ministers. Also very able were most officials of the Finance Ministry. Some top Finance Ministry officials by the twentieth century had considerable experience in running private investment banks. Although most senior officials saw themselves (by no means necessarily wrongly) as more competent than any other group to govern Russia, their authoritarian and paternalistic proclivities were often tempered by acute awareness of the state's need to hold the allegiance of key social elites, who in many cases remained their own friends and close relations.
13
For example, 'scarcely any (Baits i.e. my addition) have acquired their fortunes in Russia. It would be easy to enumerate those who, like the Lievens and Pahlens, owe a part of them to the munificence of the tsars': A. von Haxthausen,