Dvoryanin

The Russian nobility (Russian: дворянство dvoryanstvo) arose in the 14th century. Its members staffed most of the Russian government apparatus until the February Revolution of 1917.

The Russian word for nobility, dvoryanstvo (дворянство), derives from the Polish word dwor (двор), meaning the court of a prince or duke (kniaz) and later, the court of the tsar or emperor. A nobleman is called a dvoryanin (plural: dvoryane). Pre-Soviet Russia shared with other countries the concept that nobility connotes a status or a social category rather than a title.

The nobility arose in the 12th and 13th centuries as the lowest part of the feudal military class, which composed the court of a prince or of an important boyar. From the 14th century land ownership by nobles increased, and by the 17th century the bulk of feudal lords and the majority of landowners were nobles. The nobles were granted estates out of State lands in return for their service to the Tsar, for as long as they performed service, or for a lifetime, but by the 18th century these estates had become their private property. They made up the Landed army (Russian: поместное войско)—the basic military force of Russia. Peter the Great (reigned 1682-1721) finalized the status of the nobility, while abolishing the boyar title.

The assimilation of the Russian nobility to the fashions, mannerisms, and intellectual ideas of Western Europe was a gradual process rooted in the strict guidelines of Peter the Great and the educational reforms of Catherine the Great. While cultural westernization was primarily an aesthetic court phenomenon, it coincided with the efforts of Russian autocrats to link Russia to Western Europe in more fundamental ways – socially, economically, and politically. However, Russia’s existing economic system, which lacked a sizable middle class and which relied on forced labor, was an impassable obstacle to the development of a free market. Furthermore, the lower classes – the overwhelming majority of the Russian population – lived virtually isolated from the upper classes and the imperial court. Thus, most of the nobility’s “western” tendencies were largely superficial and confined to a tiny portion of the populace.

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