51 and even treated, as hereditary on terms that were equal to those attached to the patrimonial votchina estates. Juridical confirmation of the equal status of patrimonial and service estates came in 1714.®^ By the end of the seventeenth century, therefore, the former service nobility had been transformed into an estate-owning gentry which had acquired the right of ownership to the extensive lands distributed by the Muscovite state as compensation for military and civil service.®- Eventually the old antagonism between the magnates and the service nobility over the peasants’ status as serfs also died out. Instead, the two groups came to share a common interest in preserving serfdom, which, according to Richard Hellie, “developed to such an extent that the autocracy felt serfdom to be its ‘twin pillar’ upon which the whole political and social structure was based.” ®^ The background of this common stance was that the nobility, as a more or less monolithic social class, had, together with the church, acquired a virtual monopoly on the ownership of land and serfs. In 1682 the old Muscovite system of ranks, the mestnichestvo, was finally done away with. The government was now completely free to appoint any individual it found suitable to any military or civilian position without having to take into account the individual’s “place” {mesto) or “honor” {chest') in the hierarchical service structure, which was based to a great extent on considerations of birth. Furthermore, the rank relationships between officers in both the army and the civil service were to be based on the offices they held rather than on the circumstances of their birth. The decision to abolish the mestnichestvo must be viewed against the background of the new military organization introduced in 1680,®^ of course, but, as M. la. Volkov has pointed out, the reform also reflected “the mood of the nobility, and especially of those of its representatives who had attained high posts and ranks thanks to service, but who were unable to find position (or ‘honor’) corresponding to these posts and ranks because of the custom of mestnichestvoAn example of this is provided by A. L. Ordin-Nashchokin, one of the leading statesmen of the reign of Aleksei Mikhailovich, who, after making important contributions to the P52, V, no. 2,789, pp. 91—94. ®- For the extent of the nobility’s landholdings at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, see Ia. E. Vodarskii, “Sluzhiloe dvorianstvo v Rossii V kontse XVII—nachale XVIII v.,” in V. I. Shunkov et al., eds., Voprosy voennoi istorii Rossii XVII i pervaia polovina XIX vekov (Moscow, 1969), 234—237, and Rex Rexheuser, “Adelsbesitz und Heeresverfassung in Moskauer Staat dcs 17. Jahrhunderts,” ]ahrbiicher fiir Geschichte Östeuropas, 21 (1973), 1 —17. Hellie, 248—249. Shmidt, 199. M. Ia. Volkov. “Ob otmene mestnichestva v Rossii,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 2 (1977), 55
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