Serving the Tsar: Life Courses and Career Patterns of the Administrative Elite in Late Imperial Russia (1855-1914)

该研究项目涉及19世纪末和20世纪初在沙皇省级行政机构工作的高级国家官员的帝国生活过程。两个核心领域将进行调查，根据典型的帝国传记。首先，该项目涉及帝国行政精英的专业和空间流动模式。为此，该项目详细阐述了沙皇政府内部晋升和调动的标准，并重建了其工作轮换制度。这一制度是沙皇后期地方行政的特点，导致地方频繁变动，在一个职位上的任期很短，国家官员的职业生涯中有帝国范围的任务。该项目探讨了这些行政实践对国家建设进程的影响，对官员在当地施加影响的机会以及对不同地区的跨地方整合的影响-这是由官员的流动性所实现的。其次，研究项目将这些结构模式与沙皇官员的自我认知联系起来，调查他们如何看待帝国，他们的忠诚模式和身份特征得到了发展。尤其是这种对个人生活历程的关注和相应的个人叙述，使我们能够透彻地理解官员的知识视野。他们的个人自我概念不仅反映了官员们在帝国背景下如何看待自己，而且还显示了沙皇政府的主角们如何试图扩大他们的行动范围，如何根据他们的专业背景和流动性要求专业化，以及如何参与当代关于改革帝国的辩论。因此，移动的精英的职业生涯提供了对国家官僚结构背景的深入了解，这也使我们能够阐述这些人的自我概念imperii。受新帝国历史和传记转向的启发，该项目调查了帝国和专业框架的相互作用，个人的影响范围和指导的自我概念的那些主角在省级行政工作的已故沙皇帝国。这一观点允许采取一个新的视角对沙皇国家机器，其行动路线和制度变革。此外，该项目从根本上拓宽了我们对俄罗斯帝国晚期的理解，因为它对国家建设的相互依赖性、流动模式、帝国范围内的交流和个人观点进行了深入的描述。

The research project addresses imperial life courses of higher state officials working in the tsarist provincial administration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two core areas will be investigated, based on exemplary imperial biographies. Firstly, the project deals with patterns of professional and spatial mobility among the administrative elite of the empire. To do this, the project elaborates the criteria of promotion and relocation within the tsarist administration, and reconstructs its system of job rotation. This system was characteristic for the late tsarist provincial administration and led to frequent changes of location, short tenure of service in one position and empire-wide assignments in the careers of state officials. The project explores the consequences of these administrative practices on state-building-processes, on officials’ opportunities to exert influence locally and on trans-local integration of different regions – made possible by the officials’ mobility.Secondly, the research project connects these structural patterns to the self-perception of tsarist officials, investigating how their conceptions of the empire, their patterns of loyalty and features of identity developed. It is especially this focus on individual life courses and corresponding personal accounts that allows a thorough comprehension of the officials’ intellectual horizons. Their individual self-conceptions do not merely reflect how officials view themselves in an imperial context, but they also show how the protagonists of the tsarist administration tried to broaden their scope of action, to claim expertize based on their professional background and mobility, and to take part in contemporary debates on reforming the empire. Thus, the careers of mobile elites provide an insight into the structural context of state bureaucracy, which is also enabling us to elaborate the self-conceptions of these homines imperii.Inspired by the new imperial history and the biographical turn, the project investigates the interplay of the imperial and professional frameworks, of individual scopes of influence and of guiding self-conceptions of those protagonists working in the provincial administration of the late Tsarist Empire. This view allows taking a new perspective on the tsarist state apparatus, its line of action and institutional change. Furthermore, the project fundamentally broadens our understanding of the late Russian Empire because it offers a thick description of the interdependency of state building, patterns of mobility, empire-wide exchanges and individual perspectives.