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The Formation of Russian Bureaucracy -On The Table of Ranks in 1722.-

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2009, (43), pp.107-131
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : June 28, 2008
  • Accepted : February 12, 2009

Oh, Dooyoung 1

1강남대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

Peter the Great in 1722 introduced an entirely new system of ranking for the government service. His system embodied two marked departures from former practice. It provided for the separation of civil from the military service and it promised ennoblement to any commoner who attained a sufficiently high level of ranking. Thar is, the Table of ranks (Tabel’ o rangakh) provided a system for establishing equivalencies of ranks among the various branches of service in Russian army, navy, guards, civil service and court bureaucracy. Scholars have long considered it important recognizing, for instance, that with its promulgation the status of the Russian upper classes, the structure of Imperial bureaucracy, and even the ideas of merit and service inherited from the Muscovite post were changed. Its importance, however, has been generally assessed in terms of how it helped or hindered the transplanting of western influences into Russia. The Table of Ranks certainly had a positive important on the nobility, but the long-term impact of Peter’s reforms on the nobility was also very mixed and remarkably durable. This law was quite carefully prepared. The principal collaborator on this project was A. L. Osterman. He took as the basis for this classification the ranks of the court establishment and gave them precedence over those from the civil service as was customary up to that time. No decree of Peter’s reign was given such thorough preparation as the Table of Ranks. Western states as Prussia, Sweden and Denmark were also examined from the point of view of their system of nobility and claims of military, civil and court command, had been of greatest fluence. In february 1722 Peter gave the amended draft for discussion to the Senate, the War and Admiralty colleges. After some final discussions, the Table was published in its final version on 14 february 1722. peter the Great had been capable of even desirous taking the process of the consolidation of absolutism. Employing the principle of personal merit as strictly laid down in the Table of Ranks, where a ladder of ranks from ensign or clerk at the bottom, was provided which even the highest official had to climb, Peter converted the rather amorphous mass of servicemen by inheritance into a military bureaucratic corps tottaly subordinate to, and completely dependent on himself.

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