Author Topic: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?  (Read 5823 times)

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Naslednik Norvezhskiy

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Of course we know that the Russian nobility owned a huge amount of land, especially before the Emancipation of the Serfs, but also afterwards. But I was wondering: Exaxtly what was the relationship between noble status / titles and land? Were the nobles' estates just like any other property or were they bound up in majorats, entails, fideicommissi or fiefs governed by specific rules of jurisdiction, inheritance etc., just as they to a varying degree often were in Western Europe?

Was there in Imperial Russia a distinction between a mere titular count and a substantive count with property attached to his title? If so, was that property referred to as a county?

For comparison:
In ancien-régime France, all noble titles were attached to land. If a titled nobleman sold his land, he couldn't use his title anymore. After the Bourbon restoration, titles were purely titular and had no attachment to land, just as the case had been in Britain for centuries. British peers often had and have family estates that are entailed and thus inherited by primogeniture, but the entail is wholly independent of the peerage title. In Scandinavia and Germany you have a kind of mixed system, were some titles were attached to majorats or fideicommissi (termed fiefs, baronies and counties in Denmark-Norway), some entailed properties (German Rittergüter, Danish-Norwegian stamhus) were not attached to any titles and many titles were merely titular.
« Last Edit: February 21, 2010, 05:59:18 PM by Rœrik »

Naslednik Norvezhskiy

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2010, 08:38:54 PM »
Nobody who knows?
I read that Duke Georg of Mecklenburg, the ancestor of the Counts Carlow, became a Russian citizen in 1912 as Lord of a Majorat (Karlovka in the Governorate of Poltava?), so that indicates the existence of majorats in Russia.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2010, 08:48:57 PM by Fyodor Petrovich »

Offline Mike

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2010, 02:17:42 AM »
Except in the Asian parts of the empire (Caucasian and Turkestan regions), there was no relation between the noble's title and his land property.

Naslednik Norvezhskiy

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2010, 02:58:22 AM »
Except in the Asian parts of the empire (Caucasian and Turkestan regions), there was no relation between the noble's title and his land property.
Thanks, Mike! I presumed that if anybody was to know, it would be you!

So, no relation to the titles, but was the property still tied up in majorats and such, or was it like any other (bourgeois) property?

Offline Mike

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2010, 04:22:16 AM »
Legally, there were various types of land property in Russia, including majorats, but in practice these disctinctions had lost any meaning by the early 20th c. However, in the Baltic provinces with their mainly German landed nobility and in Russian Poland the land ownership was regulated by special legislation stemming from a West European (German) legal tradition.

Naslednik Norvezhskiy

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2010, 04:47:35 AM »
Very interesting, Mike! For a Western European like me the Russian system, both with regards to titles and especially to land, seems strangely fluid, considering what a strictly regulated society Imperial Russia was. It's ironic that Russia had developed the same purely titular, non-proprietary titled nobility as the UK and post-Napoleonic France!
« Last Edit: March 06, 2010, 04:53:41 AM by Fyodor Petrovich »

Offline Mike

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2010, 08:32:57 AM »
The Russian corps of law incorporated civil norms from various parts of the emprire as they were annexed: Ostsee (Baltics), Finland, Poland, Georgia, Turkestan etc. The regime went to great lengths trying to please the local nobility and often assured their traditional feudal privileges even when they contradicted the established law of the Russia proper.

As to the Russian landed nobility, the relation between the princely titles and the former fiefs was already broken by the early 16th c. On the contrary, when a titular prince was granted a new estate for his service, it was never within or even close to his family's former principality. Likewise he was never given a military or administrative post there, and even an occasional visit was viewed with suspicion. Prince Vyazemsky used to joke during the Catherine II's time that he was at last free to come to Vyaz'ma without thinking twice and even to buy a mansion there.

Naslednik Norvezhskiy

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Re: Was the Titled Russian Nobility just Titular or also Proprietary?
« Reply #7 on: March 07, 2010, 02:58:15 PM »
As to the Russian landed nobility, the relation between the princely titles and the former fiefs was already broken by the early 16th c. On the contrary, when a titular prince was granted a new estate for his service, it was never within or even close to his family's former principality. Likewise he was never given a military or administrative post there, and even an occasional visit was viewed with suspicion. Prince Vyazemsky used to joke during the Catherine II's time that he was at last free to come to Vyaz'ma without thinking twice and even to buy a mansion there.
Very interesting! Now I understand better why the Russian titled nobility didn't display such pride in ancestral lands as the Western European nobility did.