The Service Estate In the Reign of Peter the Great: History of Creation and Mechanisms of Constructing Community

Abstract

Peter I reforms aimed at the construction of a regular state required creating a special service estate. He initially needed to destroy the old nobility for this purpose. The first step in this direction was the creation of the Guard, a small corporation that was loyal to the tsar personally. Joining the Guard required neophytes to perform certain initiation rituals aimed at the pointed break with tradition. After that, a larger community, whose main task was military service, began to be formed on the basis of the Guard. Education was a prerequisite for joining this society, and social mobility within it was based solely on individual merit. The final stage was the extension of the service principle to civilian service. As the result, the nobility as legally implemented as new service estate. At the same time, there remained preserved mechanisms of both replenishment of this society from outside and exclusion from it of the people who were not ready to serve. However, the sudden death of Peter I did not allow his ideas to be entrenched, due to which the nobility subsequently ceased to perform its main function – serve the empire.