The Russian ruling elite under Nicholas II [Career patterns

Abstract

Dominic Lieven, The Russian ruling elite under Nicholas II. Career patterns. The article studies the route taken to high governmental office by members of the Russian ruling elite under Nicholas II. Specifically, it looks at the career patterns of the 215 men appointed to the State Council in the first twenty years of Nicholas II's reign. The article is based on the service records of these 215 men in the Central State Historical Archive in Leningrad. It shows that by 1894-1914 those holding top governmental positions were almost always career civil servants. The only major exception to this was the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where senior posts were sometimes filled by members of the landowning gentry who had formerly served as marshals of the nobility, or by generals. Officials of the domestic departments very seldom transferred into the "organs of national security" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, War and Marine). The domestic government and senior civil service was dominated in particular by jurists (i.e. by men with a legal education who had served in the judicial department), who very often held the top posts not only in the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, but also in the State Chancellery and Chancellery of the Committee/Council of Ministers. The departments of education, control, agriculture and state properties, communications, Synod, and Emperor's Own Personal Chancellery were of very little importance as breeding grounds for the bureaucratic elite. The article shows that each department had its own typical career patterns and that these differed greatly from ministry to ministry. It also contrasts the careers of "generalists" and "specialists", and illustrates how differing social origins and educations can be closely linked to different types and patterns of careers.