TRANSFORMAREA ELITEI BASARABENE ÎN SUBIECT IMPERIAL

Abstract

The integration of the new territories into the Russian Empire involved, as a first step, the assimilation of local elites. The intensity and depth of this process was determined by many variables, from geographical to cultural factors. The assimilation of the elites was important both for the central authorities, in their willing to achieve a political and social stability in the newly annexed territories but also for the exponents of the local elite who, by integrating into the Russian nobility, obtained important privileges. In Bessarabia, this process, which lasted more than 20 years, proved to be extremely exhausting for both the authorities and the candidates. The series of ineffective commissions set up for this purpose in fact obstructed access to privileges that could be obtained with the status of noble. Hence the rivalries between the descendants of the old boyars in the Principality of Moldova, who often had difficulty gaining noble status in the Russian Empire, and those recently ennobled by virtue of their services to the central authorities.