Из казаков во дворяне

Overview & Synopsis

The article tells the story of the rise of four generations of the Shagarov family from low-level service status (cossack) in a Muscovite borderland to noble status in eighteenth-century Russia. The text focuses of key moments and events in the family's rise. In addition to questions of social (and geographical) mobility, the authors discuss the connections between service, economic entrepreneurship, personalized authority relationships, networks of patronage and protection, the salience of local conditions and relationships (and how they related to the center), the development of the Muscovite bureaucracy (especially questions of professionalization and the relationship between provincial and Moscow service), administrative effectiveness and corruption, and finally the ongoing motif of regular government. On the whole, the reader will see how an ambitious family navigated the "system", what they did to survive and thrive, how they struggled, how social mobility more broadly could be achieved, how crucial economic success was to success in service and to the process of ennoblement, and how servitors experienced the Table of Ranks and other Petrine reforms. The authors show that upward mobility did not depend entirely of statist or tsarist mechanisms. By highlighting the multiple mechanisms and pathways to mobility that the Shagarovs worked and experienced, this article demonstrates how individuals and/or families (in this case family solidarity was a critical factor in success) could take charge of their own future and take advantage of the changing conditions and opportunities that arose.