of fourteen ranks each; below these ranks were, of course, dozens of lesser civil and
military roles. Ranks 1–3, for example, were Senators, state ministers, and the like;
ranks 4 to 6 were majors-general and colonels, presidents of Colleges, heads of
gubernii, and major managerial positions in the civil service. Ranks 7 to 8 were
senior officers and district governors; below that werefield officers and lesser civil
officials. Service in all these hierarchies led to privileges, but the Table’s commen-
tary hastened to clarify that“Military are higher than the others”: all fourteen
military ranks automatically conferred hereditary nobility (for the servitor and his
descendants); in the civil and court ranks hereditary nobility was conferred only
starting with rank 8 (over time, the Table was modified to award hereditary nobility
even less generously).
The Table’s commentary attempted to instruct Russians on the proper meaning
of nobility. Its articles acknowledge that some people have it by birth:“Princes,
Counts, Barons, distinguished Nobility”and others of“aristocratic birth”should be
accorded deference in public occasions (art. 8), but insist that nobles serve and will
be joined in noble rank by others advancing from below.“We do not allow
anybody rank [as defined by the Table], until they have rendered service to Us
and the fatherland”(art. 8);“all Russian or foreign servants”in thefirst eight
ranks and their posterity“are considered equal to the best ancient Nobility in all
honours and advantages, even though they are of low birth”(art. 11). The necessity
of service is underscored repeatedly (“The children of the Nobility must be
promoted in the Colleges from below,”art. 14), but an office of Heraldmeister
was also established to determine legitimate claims to“the honour of Nobility”(art.
16). The Table of Ranks, thus, presents the Russian elite (which had historically
been required to serve anyway) with an amorphous award of status and prestige for
their service. For the rest of the century, nobles pressured rulers to specify and
expand their privileges and to limit the openness of their estate created by the
Table and by Russia’s imperial expansion.
A clear intent of the Table of Ranks was to open access to newcomers according
to merit. Like all elites and particularly elites in empires, the nobility’s vigor
depended on its ability to absorb newcomers, from lesser social classes and from
different ethnicities, while maintaining social cohesion and exclusivity. They suc-
ceeded: Russia’s nobility was always a tiny proportion of the population, averaging
about 0.5 percent from the 1680s through the eighteenth century, but nevertheless
it was always socially and ethnically diverse. Near the end of Peter’s reign (1721),
for example, 62 percent of high military officers came from the Muscovite gentry
and higher ranks, but 11 percent had been less privileged military men (Cossacks,
artillery) and 14 percent townsmen and peasants. Clerks marched towards nobility
in the Table of Ranks by service in the Colleges and local government. Almost
constant warfare in the eighteenth century, the huge standing army, expansion of
the empire, and administrative reforms of the 1770s that multiplied civil offices—
all opened opportunity for military and civil leaders. Non-commissioned, non-
noble officers in the army were promoted on merit or favoritism to officer rank;
similarly in the civil service, talent, skill, experience, and/or bribes and patronage
created social mobility. In 1752, for example, only four of thirty-one gubernia
Nobility, Culture, and Intellectual Life 429