A Servant of Two Masters?

Abstract

This paper examines the early stages of the career of Aleksei Fedorovich Malinovskii, who became Head of the Moscow Archive of the State College of Foreign Affairs in 1814. The Archive’s records and diverse correspondence from the 1780s – early 1800s reveal his connections to aristocrats such as Aleksandr Romanovich Vorontsov and Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev, as well as others among the highest officials of the Empire (vice‑chancellor Ivan Osterman). These nobles were willing to extend their patronage to this low‑level clerk at the Archive, a son of a Moscow priest. The career strategies he pursued in the domain of patronage went parallel to and were no less important than those he pursued in the domain of formal hierarchies. He sought to obtain noble status in order to acquire estates and serfs to gain a symbolic foothold in the elite; to become its full member, he married Anna Islen´eva, a niece of the Vorontsovs who became a rich heiress in 1810. Later in life, he gave his daughter in marriage to Prince Dolgorukov, a distant relative of the Sheremetevs, thus formalizing his relationship with both of his protectors’ clans. A detailed examination of Malinovskii’s rise demonstrates that while changing one’s estate was a legal option in Imperial Russia, only due to his ability to negotiate the “woven web” of patronage based on mutual services and benefit did he actually succeed in climbing the social ladder.