Ruling families in the Russian political order, 1689-1825 : I. The Petrine leadership, 1689-1725; II. The ruling families, 1725-1825

摘要

John P. Le Donne, Ruling families in the Russian political order. I : The Petrine leadership, 1689-1725 ; II : The ruling families, 1725-1825. The purpose of these two articles is to identify families related to the Romanov house which constituted the leadership of the Russian Empire for more than a century. These families are seen to form two groups, and the origin of these groups is traced to the two wives of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich, Peter the Great's father. The politics of the Russian Empire is presented as a struggle between these two groups over the distribution of the spoils, i.e., appointments to important administrative positions from which their holders were in a position to develop patronage networks. It is then suggested that the Russian political order in the eighteenth century was held together by the general acceptance of the autocratic principle, by serfdom, and by the extension of patronage networks, both within Russia proper and between Russia and its borderlands.