chanceries and important provincial governorships. Some amassed multiple posi-
tions for power and income: in the 1620s, for example, Prince I. B. Cherkasskii
simultaneously headed the Land Chancery, the Treasury, the Chanceries for
Musketeers and New Model army, and the Apothecary. Some developed expertise,
such as Prince V. V. Golitsyn in foreign policy and A. S. Matveev and A. L. Ordin
Nashchokin in economic policy. Over the course of the seventeenth century at least
afifth of men in the conciliar ranks combined military with civil service, usually
adding the latter to the end of a long military career. Half of them spent their
careers only in military roles, and a tenth of the boyar elite did nothing but
chancery service. In all, as Crummey shows, 60 percent of all boyars served in
chanceries at some point. Chancery service was attractive because its location in
Moscow kept men in close contact with family factions and networks, because
chancery service offered bribes and gifts, and because it could involve real power.
This did not mean that the military elite transformed itself into a civil service. Lines
of status and economic privileges still separated these spheres. These military men
in high chancery leadership continued to lack training in bureaucratic techniques,
contributing instead“a tradition of leadership.”
Starting in the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich (1645–76), and particularly as a
response to military reform and bureaucratization sparked by the Thirteen Years
War (1654–67), the number of men in conciliar rank expanded quickly, particu-
larly at the“conciliar gentryman”level, a door through which new families could
join the elite. In Aleksei Mikhailovich’s reign, the number of men in the four
conciliar ranks rose from about 45 to about 70. In the last quarter of the century
political pressures subverted gradual expansion: tsarist succession was hotly con-
tested from 1676 through the 1680s, resulting in weak rulers who distributed ranks
to curry favor. The number of men in conciliar ranks after 1676 ballooned to a high
of about 160 in the early 1690s, devaluing the status and utility of these ranks.
Many of the recipients were mere“courtiers,”in Crummey’s term. In response, the
rank of boyar became more honorific than policy making, the process of consulting
and advising became unwieldy, and reforms in the 1680s were suggested (but never
implemented) to streamline the elite.
Parallel to such innovation, old traditions at the center of power endured. Aleksei
Mikhailovich’s inner circle, for example, was shaped around his brother-in-law
Boris Ivanovich Morozov, who had been his tutor and who had married a sister
of the tsar’s Miloslavskii wife. With Aleksei Mikhailovich’s second marriage to
Nataliia Naryshkina, her clan and its broader clientage came into prominence, includ-
ingA.S.Matveev,whohadbeenNatalia’s guardian. The marriages of subsequent
contenders for the throne—Fedor, Ioann, and Peter Alekseevichi—were similarly
orchestrated to build their respective factions, as discussed in Chapter 6.
By the end of the seventeenth century the boyar elite had changed from a small
warrior band of aboutfifteen clans to an expansive elite of well over a hundred
eminent families and a devaluation of boyar status. In the seventeenth century,
central government was carried out by expert bureaucrats and some expert“noble
officials,”as well as by specialized commissions and, as always, the tsar’s trusted
inner circle of friends and in-laws.
212 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801