Lebens-, Mentalitäts- und Kulturwelten des russischen Adels zwischen Tradition und Wandel: Am Beispiel der Gouvernements Moskau, Tver' und Rjazan' 1762–1861 by Lilija Wedel (review)

Were the nobles of pre-reform Russia rootless, alienated, and quasi foreigners in their own country? This old historiographic trope has inspired lively debate in recent years. To challenge it, scholars have, for example, tried to show that the nobility was not estranged culturally from the general Russian population, and they have studied nobles in specific geographic spaces to show that they did indeed have local attachments.

Lilija Wedel's book, a revised version of her 2016 dissertation at the University of Göttingen, is intended as a contribution to this literature. The feat it attempts is not easy. It has a regional focus, but one that is quite broad, encompassing the provinces of Moscow, Tver, and Riazan, and it seeks to address a wide range of facets of noble life over the full century from 1762 to 1861. After the introductory section, the first half of the book is a chronological history of the nobles' relationship with the Russian state; the second half is a thematically arranged study of their private and family life.

The book sets itself an ambitious goal. Wedel argues that only a few monographs make use of diverse bodies of sources to study the culture and mentality of the various dissimilar strata that made up the nobility. Western scholarship in particular, she writes, remains insufficiently grounded in local sources and continues to represent Russian nobles as politically feeble, uninterested in education and economic progress, and generally anomalous among European nobilities. Her book aims to remedy this situation by examining the lives of different strata of nobles living in the city of Moscow and in rural areas and towns of various sizes in three surrounding provinces. Her sources are above all archival lichnye fondy of various noble families, but also legal and literary sources, provincial newspapers, material artifacts, and texts by foreigners. I will first summarize her argument, and then offer some thoughts on the book's strengths and weaknesses.

After the introduction, the book starts with a background chapter on the nobility before 1762. Wedel highlights two long-term patterns: native Russian cultural traditions remained stable in the provinces even as the elite in the capitals grew more Westernized, and state service continued to play a central role in noble life even after Peter III's reform of 1762.

These opening chapters are followed by the two sections that make up the core of the book. The first concerns the nobility's relationship with the state from 1762 to 1861, specifically the nobles' conception of their legal rights vis-à-vis the monarchy and their experience and attitudes in state service. Wedel finds changes over the period under discussion, particularly the deepening of the sense of national identity after the 1812 war and the broadening of the nobility's conception of public service under Nicholas I, when some nobles entered the medical profession and other fields of activity outside the traditional state service. More prominent, though, are the continuities: throughout the period, the nobles in general valued charity, hospitality, and generosity; they insisted on their own estate's supremacy over the rest of society; they took their duties as state servitors seriously; they relied on patronage to advance their careers; and they never questioned either the supremacy of the tsar or the legitimacy of serfdom.

The section that follows deals with the private world of the nobility. The range of topics covered is vast, and in discussing them, Wedel constructs a rich portrait of life among different noble strata in cities and rural areas. She examines family finances, interactions with estate managers, relations of patronage and mutual aid among richer and poorer nobles, the material lifestyles of different noble strata, education at home and in schools, personal relationships within families, and many other topics...