52 Russian peace talks with Poland in 1666—67, was elevated to the rank of boiar and named chief of the PosoVskii prikaz with the impressive title “keeper of the tsar’s great seal and the great diplomatic affairs of the state.”®® In view of his relatively low birth, however, Ordin-Nashchokin only had the “honor” of a dumnyi dvorianin^'^ and thus it was considered dishonorable for any person of higher birth to serve under him, even when that person did not hold Duma rank.®® Thus, the abolishing of the mestnichestvo system was primarily in the interest of the new service elite of “low birth.”®® The goal for the service nobility was that uniform rules for promotion and rank in the state service should be established for all noblemen without regard to the circumstances of their birth. In other words, the reform was another expression of the internal integration of the Russian nobility as a monolithic privileged class. This integration would be completed during the reign of Peter the Great.'® 2. Plans for a Collegial Keforifi During the last decades of the seventeenth century, the sharply rising cost of the army had led to reforms of the Russian tax system and the fiscal administration. At the same time, the tsar and his government were demonstrating more obvious tendencies toward absolutism, and this development was intimately connected with the internal integration of the nobility as a closed and privilegedestate. In the absolutist state, the nobility saw a political guarantee for the promotion of its social and economic interests, and it is possible, as A. A. Preobrazhenskii has pointed out, “to trace in the domestic politics of the strengthened absolutism [an effort] to give the nobility a corporative, caste character. A constant aim of the emerging absolutist state was to reinforce its power in the administration. Thus it is possible to see in Peter’s domestic policy a clear line, the goal of which was to weaken and disband the Duma and the prikaz administration and to replace them with an administration which would give him total control over the state apparatus and ”71 “Tsarskoi bol’shoi pechati i gosudarstvennykh velikikh posol’skikh del oberegatcl.” Kliuchevskii (1904—1910), III, 435. See p. 33. Volkov (1977), 55. ** Hellie, 222. Concerning the remnants of the "mestnichestvo system,” which still survived during Peter the Great’s regime, see S. M. Troitskii, Russkii absolintizm i dvorianstvo XVIII V. Formirovanie biurokratii (Moscow, 1974), 40—41. ’’ Preobrazhenskii, 71. 66 6d
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=