GOVERNING RUSSIA'S PROVINCES 229active years his contacts with local administration had been indirect,
only through the official papers that came to the Chancery of the
Senate or to the Ministry of the Interior. As State Secretary, his concern
with provincial matters had been purely theoretical and strictly from
the point of view of the central administration. And during his exile,
as we have noted, he had lived in relative isolation without entering
into the life of the provinces where he resided.
Provincial life, however, was a world apart from that of either St.
Petersburg or Moscow. The conditions and way of life of the serfs,
the most numerous class of the population, are known well enough
from the descriptions of numerous contemporary writers and publicists.
The daily routine of the small landlord has been admirably sketched
by S. Aksakov, Gogol, and Turgenev. But the political conditions
under which the governor and local administration had to work have
not inspired the descriptive powers of litterateurs, and therefore need
some explanation.
While intellectual, artistic, social, and even political interests
dominated life in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the countryside continued
in its century-old sleep. Compared to the brilliance and elegance of
the two capitals, the provinces seemed bleak and dismal indeed. On
the local level, Peter the Great's revolutionary reign had brought
about a double cleavage: culturally between the peasantry and the
nobility, politically between the noble landlords and the bureaucracy
(in spite of the common origin of these two groups). Peter's reforms
were not welcomed with any enthusiasm by the provincial nobility.
The average nobleman was very reluctant to go to St. Petersburg to
serve in the modern armies, navies, and administration of the Reformer.
Mter the death of Peter, the provincial nobility strove to liberate itself
from the duties and obligations he had imposed. The majority of the
provincial nobles looked upon military and state service, and in partic-
ular on the educational requirements for it, as a burdensome duty to
be avoided. 1 Their striving found additional stimulus in the rule of
foreigners and personal favorites under Empresses Anne and Elizabeth.
In these reigns, state service was fraught with danger and insecurity
while its rewards were often quite small, as everything tended to go
to only a few favorites. Throughout the 18th century the nobles fought
1 I wish to emphasize that I am speaking only of the nobility who lived on their
estates in the provinces. The description is not at all applicable to the nobility that
lived and served in the capitals. When a nobleman left for the capital to take up
service. he usually broke with his former group and became a part of the city
bureaucracy and military aristocracy.