Abstract

Abstract:

This article explores the role of formal schooling in the social mobility and social reproduction of the elite in the early modern context of post-Petrine Russia. An analysis of career and educational choices made by Russian nobles in the 1730s–1740s and recorded in the registers of the Heraldry and petitions for enrolment into the Noble Land Cadet Corps demonstrate that the members of the post-Petrine elite had very clear preferences regarding their service trajectories. As the choices made by noble families were shaped by the specific combinations of resources and threats each of them faced, there emerged deep cleavages within the elite in terms of the attitudes towards schooling. While wealthier nobles tended to join state schools, especially the Cadet Corps, the poorest nobility overwhelmingly ignored educational requirements and service registration rules imposed by the government, avoiding schools and preferring instead to enlist directly into regiments as privates. Despite numerous attempts, the government failed to force these poorer nobles to follow the new rules for entering schools and state service, codified in 1736–1737, and had to regularly issue collective pardons to the offenders. While wealth was one crucial factor shaping the nobles’ service trajectories, their social connections and cultural endowments were no less important in channelling their educational and career choices and pushing them to embrace or reject the post-Petrine educational regime. As a result, the early modern “Westernization” of the Russian elite emerges as a dynamic social process driven by the choices made by the nobles themselves.

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