MarkinK Time 345formal training while in the regiment, and the little knowledge they had came
from their pre-service schooling. Finally, there were the 'bourbons', likewise
NCOs promoted from the ranks.^136 These were generally former cantonists
and tended to keep apart from their comrades; they comprised 7 per cent of
infantry offir~ro; and 5 per cent of those in the caval1 y. !~'
It is not possible to estimate precisely how many entrants to the officer corps
came from non-noble backgrounds, which included the category of rozno-
chintsy, or 'men of various ranks'. One estimate for the 1850s puts it at 15 per
cent, the remainder being either hereditary (50 per cent) or 'personal' (35 per
cent) nobles.^138 Personal nobility was conferred on volunteers or (non-noble)
officers' sons. The high proportion of officers in this group can be partly
explained by a decree of 1845 which was designed to purge the state service
generally of men with lower-class backgrounds and inadequate education.^139
Ostensibly prompted by the great expansion that had taken place in the
bureaucracy and the armed forces since Peter I's day, this edict made an
important change in the Table of Ranks. Henceforth hereditary noble status
was conferred only on those who reached 'staff officer' rank, that is major to
colonel, instead of on mere ensigns as hitherto. However, the Crimean War
mitigated the socially select character of the officer corps which the govern-
ment was so eager to foster. In 1853-5 12. l per cent of new officers were pro-
moted from the ranks, while another 60 per cent or so were former volunteers
or yunkery.^140 In this way a significant number of raznochintsy certainly did
enter the officer corps.
Did this influx have a political impact? It is tempting to assume that it did,
but the radicalization of officer opinion characteristic of the first years of
Alexander 11 's reign seems to have been most evident among men who had
been through (or even were still in) the cadet schools. The same was doubtless
true of covert dissenters during the Nicolaevan era. Such individuals had a
social weight and intellectual potential denied to ex-commoners, who for
understandable reasons tended to be politically timid, since they did not want
to risk the privileged status they had so painfully acquired.
The cadet schools were entrusted to the charge of Nicholas's younger
brother Michael, a stern disciplinarian, aided by the unpopular General Ya. I.
Rostovtsev. Even in the General Staff Academy. founded in 1832 and sub-
sequently named after the tsar, which was so to speak the piece de resistance in
the machinery of elite military education, the teaching was uninspiring.
Dmitriy Milyutin, who studied there in 1835-6, wrote later that the director,
136 Neizvestnyy, 'Za mnogo let', p. 120.
137 'K isl. voyenno-uchebnoy reformy', p. 354.
1 JM Neizvestnyy, loc. cit.; Floyd, 'State Service', p. 247.
IJ9 11,fSZ xx. 19086 (I I June 1845); Floyd, 'Slate Service', p. 272.
140 'K ist. voyenno-uchebnoy reformy', p. 355, where the ~ccond figure is put at 69.2 per cent;
but this is too high, since the total for both ca1egoric~ i~ 72 per rclll: Bogdanovich, /st. ocherk, i.
app. 20.