Tyragetia (Dec 2020)
The social status of Bessarabian boierinaşi in the first half of the 19th century
Abstract
In this study, the author explores the issue of the social status of boierinaşi in Bessarabia under Tsarist rule. The author notes that after the annexation of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire, the imperial authorities equated the boierinaşi with Russian personal nobles, granting them various privileges. The Regulations of the administrative organization of the Bessarabian region of April 29, 1818 says that “under the name of boierinaşi is meant a social class that is not of noble origin and has not reached the highest boyar posts, but who received the lowest ranks below the vel şătrar”. Paying attention not only to holding senior positions, but also to the role in the administrative institutions of the region, the Russian authorities from the very beginning did not approve of this social status, despite the fact that although the boierinaşi had not performed important administrative functions until that time, some of them belonged to very old families. In accordance with the Regulation on social status rights of the inhabitants of Bessarabia of March 10, 1847, the tsarist authorities equated the Bessarabian boierinaşi with the personal nobles of the Russian Empire, later calling them personal nobles. Consequently, the number of Bessarabian boierinaşi gradually began to decrease. If they did not perform any administrative functions, they were required to enter the category of mazili. Small boierinaşi were often seen as a kind of patriarchs of the peasant community. However, with the disappearance of the generations that witnessed the annexation of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire, their descendants replenished the ranks of mazili, and after the elimination of mazili as a social stratum and rutaşi as a fiscal category in 1847, they were considered odnodvortsy. Thus, the tsarist authorities, trying to eliminate the dissimilarity or inconsistency with the Russian social system, unified part of the Bessarabian social categories with the Russian ones, which led to the disappearance of the boyars as a social category.
