Russia. A History полностью

The ‘semi-privileged’ social orders included the clergy of the Orthodox Church—the parish clergy as well as those serving in monasteries and convents. Although the Great Reforms had endeavoured to improve their status and material condition (indeed, publicists spoke of an ‘emancipation’ of the clergy, not unlike that of the serfs), in fact the reforms had catastrophic consequences. Above all, the reforms failed to improve the material condition of clergy, for neither the state nor the people proved willing to change the form or amount of material support. The parish statute of 1869, which proposed to amalgamate parishes into larger and more viable economic units, likewise proved a dismal failure: while it did reduce the number of clerical positions and hence increase the ratio of parishioners to priests, it failed to generate greater income, as parishioners pronounced traditional sums sacred or even reduced them. The seminary reform of 1867 may have improved the curriculum, but it also shifted much of the financial burden of seminaries to the parish clergy. At the same time, the reform gave the clergy’s sons new opportunities to leave the clerical estate, and they did so in vast numbers (comprising 35 per cent of university students in 1875, for example). As this mass ‘flight of the seminarians’ gained momentum, the Church suddenly encountered an acute shortage of candidates and had to ordain men of inferior education. By the 1880s observers could already discern an absolute decline in the educational level of the clergy, a process that would continue unabated until the end of the ancien régime and indeed beyond.

Another semi-privileged stratum consisted of the new professions, which gained markedly in numbers, status, and self-awareness in the decades after 1855. Previously, most professions had not even enjoyed legal recognition or, at most, simply comprised a subordinate unit of the civil service (for example, doctors and surveyors). After 1855 their number rapidly proliferated, in no small measure because of the rapid expansion of institutions of higher learning and specialized training. As a result, between 1860 and the end of the century, the total number of university and technical-school graduates increased from 20,000 to 85,000; beyond these graduates were many more who failed to graduate or who had an élite secondary-school education. Many of these discovered greatly expanded opportunities for employment not only in state service and the private sector, but also in the new organs of local self-government—the zemstvo and city council, which became a major employer for teachers, doctors, statisticians, agronomists, and the like. By the 1880s, for example, the zemstvo employed some 23,000 white-collar professionals, including 15,000 teachers, 1,300 doctors, and 5,000 registered ill-trained medical practitioners (fel′ dshery). Some, most notably lawyers and doctors, raised their corporate juridical status by establishing a professional organization, with the right not only to regulate but also to represent their profession. Because of their growing size, importance, and organization, the new professional intelligentsia was rapidly becoming a major force in Russian society and politics. It would play a central role in the liberation movement from the 1890s.

The rank-and-file ‘burghers’ (meshchane) constituted a highly variegated group in the towns, ranging from petty merchants and skilled artisans to the unemployed, unskilled, and unwanted. Certainly their number was increasing sharply, as the cities themselves grew rapidly in size, even more rapidly than the population as a whole. It remained more protean than powerful; while wielding little influence in state and society, it did absorb the steady influx of migrants from the countryside and also became a major source of the upwardly mobile into the new semi-professions and civil service.