secretaries (a rank awarding nobility) were of noble background; the rest had risen
from non-noble status. Some achievements automatically put non-nobles on the
Table of Ranks, such as education. Graduating university gave rank 12, higher
degrees gave higher rank; teachers fell just below that threshold with those at
gubernia level at rank 9, district teachers at rank 12.
Open to men of lesser birth, the Russian nobility by definition was always open
to empire. In the latefifteenth century grand princes of Moscow had welcomed
prestigious clans into the boyar elite from conquered East Slavic principalities, the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Kazan. Muscovy, for example, created the Kasimov
khanate to support diaspora Tatar princes hoping to vie for the Kazan throne; in the
meantime they and their entourages receivedpomest’elands and served in their own
units in the Russian army. A few converted to Orthodoxy, notably including Kudai
Kul, who converted as“Peter”and married Vasilii III’s sister in 1506, and two
generations later, Sain Bulat, baptized as Semeon Bekbulatovich. After Kazan was
conquered in 1552, some of the highest Tatar princes andmirzyjoined service in
Moscow without having to convert. As Russia expanded, substantial groups of non-
Russian nobles joined service, including Baltic Germans and Ukrainian Cossacks
and noblemen, some of whom won high regard. Catherine II’s close advisors Jacob
Sievers and A. A. Bezborodko represent these two communities. The partitions of
Poland brought so many nobles into the empire that Russia required proof of
nobility with family and landholding records. Even so, their addition nearly
doubled the number of noblemen by the end of the century.
Russia did not insist on conversion to rise in status and service; Baltic Germans as
a rule remained Lutheran and Polish noblemen stayed Catholic. As Andreas
Kappeler points out, however, Muscovy welcomed only the elites of communities
with formalized religions such as Islam, Lutheranism, Catholicism, not those
deemed animist such as Siberian tribes and some Middle Volga peoples. Some
non-Russian noblemen became Russified in culture, such as some Ruthenian
nobles, Left Bank Cossacks, and Polish noblemen from Smolensk. But many did
not, creating an imperial nobility of Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Tatars, and others
as the empire expanded in the eighteenth century.
Russia’s imperial nobility was a wonder to behold, quite literally. By the time of
Catherine II, military uniform and formal dress had been devised for each group
that bespoke its national heritage, presenting a glittering array for foreign visitors to
the St. Petersburg court. Europeans marveled at what they considered exotic
Russian, Tatar, Cossack, Romanian, Greek, Kirgiz, and other honor guards sur-
rounding the empress, all bedecked resplendently with arms, swords, and colorful
dress. Andreas Schönle argues that Catherine II aggressively displayed her subject
peoples to visiting dignitaries, such as Count Louis Philippe de Ségur and Austrian
Emperor Joseph II during her visit to Crimea in 1787—subjecting them to native
dances, Cossack trick-riding spectacles, Dervish dancing—as a way to demonstrate
to European visitors steeped in Enlightenment disdain for Russia that such exotic
peoples could be orderly and“civilized.”Diverse in dress and heritage, Russia’s
imperial nobility developed cohesion and unity. They rose up the same Table of
Ranks; many served across the realm; they were educated in an Enlightenment and
430 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801