124 The Warrior Tsar, 1689-1725
as a logical outgrowth of earlier Russian practice in harnessing the elite to state
service.
Consideration of Peter's reform has been bedevilled by two factors. First,
some of the most important provisions were not actually mentioned in the
decree, presumably be~ause they were deemed to hi:'! "elf-evident. Second, the
phraseology was very confused, such key terms as chin and rang being used in
several different senses;^35 (in the following remarks they are given their
generally accepted meaning).
The Table, as is well known, established^14 grades in all branches of state
service: military and naval, civil, and court. (In reality there were only^13
grades, but this number was thought unlucky!) These grades, officially known
as klassy, were arranged hierarchically, the most senior (I) at the top and grade
XIV at the bottom. Servitors had the opportunity to climb the ladder from
grade to grade, or to transfer from one branch to another at the appropriate
level. Since the grades were listed in parallel columns, this seemed to imply that
service in any branch at a certain level carried equal status. This was not actu-
ally so. Military and naval officers continued to enjoy precedence (here termed
rang or predsedatel,'stvo) over civilians in the same grade-unless the latter
happened to be princes of the blood. For example, in Grade III a lieutenant-
general had precedence over a privy counsellor (tayniy sovetnik), his equal in
rank; he was senior both in status and in rank to a major-general in Grade IV.
So too was his wife: there were some complicated rules about daughters' status
that need not detain us. ~
One might have expected the offices or posts (do/zhnost1) in the various
branches (for example, quartermaster-general) to be listed and placed in some
relationship to the classes of persons who were to fill them. This was done in the
original draft, based on a Danish model,^36 but in the final version these offices
were not even mentioned. Instead office-holders themselves were given a rank
(chin) appropriate to their class. The significance of this was that it gave the
monarch (or whomever else assigned men to_ jobs) ample freedom of choice.
Normally posts at a certain level would be occupied by persons already holding
the requisite rank: a brigade commander would be a brigadier. If a vacancy
occurred and no other brigadier was available for transfer, a colonel would be
appointed and would rise from Grade VI to Grade V on promotion to
brigadier. Posts might be occupied temporarily by men of inappropriately high
or low rank, but in general promotion was strictly governed by hierarchical
principles. One had to possess the requisite seniority (starshinstvo).
But how was seniority to be measured? Here the same ambiguity arose as
had occurred under the mestnichestvo system. There were two kinds of senior-
ity, which in bureaucratic jargon came to be called vysluga and zasluga. The
former carried the connotation of seniority earned by steady service over
35 Shepelev, Otmenennye istoriyey, p. 12; Bennett, 'Evolution', p. 6 n.
36 Troitsky, Absolyutizm, p. 66.