The Career Strategies and Patronage Networks Inside and Outside the Archive of the College of Foreign Affairs in the Late 18th Early 19th Centuries

Abstract

This paper examines the early stages of career of Aleksei Fedorovich Malinovskii, since 1814 Head of the Moscow Archive of the State College of Foreign Affairs. The Archive's records and diverse correspondence from the 1780s – early 1800s reveal his connections to the aristocrats – Vorontsov and Sheremetev – and to some of the highest officials of the Empire (vice-chancellor Ivan Osterman) who willingly patronized this son of a Moscow priest and later a petty official in the Archive. The career stretegies he pursued in the field of the patronage went parallel to and were no less important than those he pursued in the formal hierarchies. He sought to obtain noble status in order to acquire estates and serfs. To gain a symbolic foothold in the elite and to become its full member, he married one Islen'eva, a niece of the Vorontsovs, who became a rich heiress in 1810. Later he gave his daughter in marriage to Prince Dolgorukov, a remote relative of the Sheremetevs, thus linking himself up with both clans of his protectors. Malinovskii's relationships with his patrons were based on mutual services and benefit which are discussed in the article