Georgian Aristocracy in the Politics of the Russian Empire: Mechanisms and Stages of Integration

Abstract

This article examines the process of integration of the Georgian elite into the social and political space of the Russian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century. In this case, integration should be understood as confirmation of the class rights of the Georgian nobility. This process lasted for half a century. The first part of the article analyses the efforts of the Russian authorities aimed at finding an optimal format for confirming the class rights of the Georgian elite. The class guarantees of the Georgian aristocracy were recorded in several documents, most notably in the Treaty of Georgievsk in 1783 and the Manifesto to the Georgian People in 1801. In addition, the rights of the noble Georgian class were guaranteed in several official proclamations of the regional Russian administration. However, the “nobilisation” of the Georgian elite encountered several legal obstacles and was delayed. Another problem of the Russian government was the unauthorised issuance of princely and noble letters by Georgian princes, who, after the liquidation of the royal house of Bagration, were resettled to Russian capitals. The government was not immediately successful in stopping this illegal practice. All these difficulties led to the fact that by the middle of the nineteenth century, most representatives of the Georgian nobility had not received recognition of their class rights at the imperial level. The second part of the article examines the activities of the first Caucasian Viceroy, Mikhail Vorontsov, aimed at completing the process of the “nobilsation” of the Georgian nobility. In 1846, at the proposal of the Viceroy, two special temporary commissions were created in Tiflis and Kutais to examine the class rights of the Georgian nobility. The commissions consisted of representatives of the Georgian nobility and Russian officials. The work of the commissions was completed in 1849, and a year later the lists of Georgian princes and nobles received the approval of Emperor Nicholas I. The Confirmation of rights made the Georgian nobility part of the imperial elite and motivated Georgians to take an active part in empire-building.