Estate interest vs. state service: the (un)easy integration of the Bessarabian nobility into the Russian imperial system

Abstract

This article discusses the process of the integration of the regional local elite of Bessarabia into the Russian imperial estate system during the first half of the nineteenth century. Presenting the Bessarabian case in a comparative perspective, this case study examines two sets of problems. The first deals with the question of social identification and the specific pattern of centre–periphery relations that emerged in the Russian Empire by the early nineteenth century. The local noble elites were not just passive recipients of central policies, but attempted to articulate a political autonomist agenda that was frequently at odds with the centralist designs of the government. These attempts amounted to an alternative project for the province's organisation. The corporate identity of the Bessarabian nobles was rather fluid and uncertain due to the incongruity of the traditional Moldavian social hierarchy with the orderly structure of the Russian ‘first estate’. Centre–periphery relations were determined by the willingness of the empire to rely on a model of indirect rule in the borderlands. The nobility was viewed as an indispensable intermediary stratum carrying out administrative functions at the local level, but it frequently did not correspond to the model of imperial dvorianstvo elaborated by the government. The second block of issues focuses on the mechanisms of cultural interaction that determined the outcome of the negotiation between the centre and the regional elite, causing the failure of the autonomist experiment in Bessarabia. Using the concept of ‘cultural misunderstanding’, the article suggests that differing interpretations of social and cultural categories were at the root of the conflict that prompted the centre to curtail the previously granted privileges of the local elite. Finally, the article proposes a more complex approach to issues of resistance and mutual influence that are often interpreted in simplistic and dichotomous terms.