112 schools was not sufficiently advanced to meet the special needs of the new, more complicated method of administration. As S. M. Troitskii put it, both noblemen and prikaz officials were unwilling to send their sons to these schools, since they viewed such schooling as one more “burdensome obligation to the state.” Nor was the Russian nobleman’s general attitude toward civil service conducive to the development of a nobiliar civil service class, since administrative work was considered an unworthy call for a nobleman. Marc Raeff illustrated this attitude very vividly when he pointed out that: the average noblemen felt ill at ease and thought it beneath his dignity to deal only with papers and to rub elbows with low-born clerks who were more efficient, experienced, and aggressive than he. As a result, most of the paperwork was left to commoners, and this in turn fed the nobility’s dislike for the administration and its officials. The most important positions within the administration were reserved for the nobility, of course, but the Table of Ranks of 1722 opened the way for non-noble officials to attain even the more important posts in the state, since it prescribed automatic ennoblement upon attainment of a certain position in the service hierarchy. Noblemen did not appreciate the idea of having to begin their service careers in the lowest positions, nor were they happy more generally with the burdensome obligation of state service during Peter’s reign, addition, there were those who argued that coercion was not the best solution to the administration’s problems when it came to recruiting personnel. Heinrich Pick, who in a number of instances emphasized the importance of having an organized system of administrative training, felt that an inflexible obligation to serve the state could have an unfavorable effect on the economic development of the country. Once again he compared the Russian situation to that of Sweden, noting that: the Swedish kings have never, neither heretofore nor during absolutism, demanded that all youth should generally be employed in actual positions, but rather they have always demonstrated concern for the maintenance of the estates of the noble families, the mines, and other factories, so that the private eonomy of the realm should not deteriorate, and thus when a nobleman who has an actual (administra299 300 i,^ 301 Revolutionary (Boston, 1963), 61—67; N. A. B.\klanova, “Shkola i prosveshchenie,” Ocherki (1954), 665—66S. Troitskh (1974), 270. Marc Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nohility (New York, 1966), 65. The position of the Russian nobility during the Petrine period is a broad problem of social history, which has only begun to be studied more extensively by Soviet historians in recent years; see Troitskii and the works he refers to in his book. TsGADA, f. 370 delo 18 1. 12. 298 299 300 301
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