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Passions and Institutions: The Notions of Human Nature in the Theories and Practices of Administration from Peter I to the Emancipation of the Nobility
The willingness of the Russian imperial government in the 18th century to grant “freedom” to its servitors was premised on assumption of their newly acquired – thanks to Petrine transformative policies – capacity for self-discipline and self-motivated action, of their “ingrained ambition.” “True nobles” should not be subjected to coercion because no coercion was required, as they would be moved to willingly contribute to the public good by their unfailing love for the monarch and the Fatherland. In other words, the recognition and even legitimation of the servitors’ autonomous subjecthood did not imply their estrangement or alienation from the state, but on the contrary, presupposed full immersion of their personae in the general atmosphere of patriotic zeal; theirs was not so much an “emancipation,” as a new, affective form of engagement with the state, to which they now owed not only service, but also emotional attachment. Yet, this new form of engagement was also becoming increasingly crucial for the post-Petrine elite’s claims for its privileged status within the society. It was the ability to be motivated without coercion, to experience ambition and to be moved by honor - and by extension, to make decisions motivated by concern for public good, rather than their own base passions - that supposedly sharply distinguished the “true nobles” not only from the other social classes, but also, perhaps, from the lower, unreformed sectors of the nobility. By the mid-18th century this ability was becoming central for the elite’s public identity and justified its assumed right to speak on behalf of the society and, perhaps, even to view itself as something of a stakeholder in Russia’s modernization project.