Education in early modern Russia has been traditionally described as imported from the West; secular; imposed by the state – or more specifically, by Peter I himself – from above on the unwilling population; driven by the military needs, and therefore, technical. This chapter seeks to...

This paper is an attempt to reconstruct the social and cultural life of young aristocrats in mid-eighteenth century St Petersburg by focusing on one aristocratic circle, one that revolved around Prince Nikita Trubetskoi, the procurator-general. In particular it traces the ways on which sociable...

This article explores the policies pursued by the key "German" ministers of Empress Anna Ioannovna (r. 1730-1740). This period has been traditionally presented as a "reign of Germans" who allegedly acted in ways that were oppressive, ill-conceived, and detrimental for Russia's true interests....

In this paper we use the records of the Heraldry and the Noble Land Cadet Corps to explore the career and educational choices made by Russian nobles in the 1730s and 1740s. We make use of the fact that after the 1736-7 reform of noble service, young members of the elite were allowed to express...

This paper reconstructs the origins and the meaning of the “Most Illustrious and Incomparable Order of Antisobres,” that was to be instituted in 1728 in St Petersburg by Duke de Liria, the Spanish ambassador. While this unusual fraternal society might have never taken off the ground and...

This articles uses the account records books from a variety of Golitsyn estates in the late eighteenth- early ninetieth century to assess the level of "routine corruption" in Imperial Russia. The data from these books allows us to identify individual cases of unofficial payments made by the...

This article explores the notion of discipline in Russia since the late 17th century and up to the accession of Catherine II. Discipline and disciplining occupy a central place in our thinking about early modern state, and the reconstruction of debates about school building helps to illuminate...

Radical “Westernizing” transformations in extra-European countries, from Peter I’s Russia to Meiji Japan, are traditionally presented as a response to threats from the more militarily and technologically advanced European powers. This corresponds to the general tendency to view war as the...

This study employs a unique database covering 2,293 cadets who graduated from the Noble Land Cadet Corps in St Petersburg from 1732-1762 to investigate the role of cultural capital in early modern Russia. Our analysis suggests that within this sample cultural capital was negatively correlated...

V. K. Trediakovskii’s translation of Paul Tallement Voyage de lisle d’amour occupies a special place in the history of Russian 18th-century literature: it is often credited with creating a new vocabulary of love and amorous intercourse, an innovation that would pave the way for much of the...