“Gvardeyskaya” paradigm of establishing of “nobleman rule” from Peter I to Catherine II (views of V.O. Klyuchevsky and modern historiography)

Abstract

Vasily Klyuchevsky pay a special attention to the regular army on his concept of 18th century Russian history. He considered army as the phenomenon which detemined the the course of social processes and as an autonomous force that had a profound impact on the destiny of the country. He started analyse from the creation of the Russian Guard by the Peter the Great and later concentrated in two separate topics: the place of military reform in Peter’s transformations of society and the role of the Guard in the “Epoch of Palace Coups”. Klyuchevsky’s ideas of the war as the mainspring of Peter’s transformations often has faced criticism, his explanation of the reasons and consequences of palace coups is more widely accepted. According the Klyuchevsky’s “Guard Paradigm”, Guard members, being nobleman, acting as the defenders of the whole nobility’s interests and obtained a privileges for them during the palace coups of the 18th century. However, the records from regiment’s archives and modern historiography indicate that the Guard was not homogeneous. The approving mechanism of the “noble monarchy” was more complicated than “Guard paradigm”.