„PRIVILEGIAŢII” ÎN STRUCTURA SOCIALĂ A BASARABIEI (1812–1871)

Abstract

In the present study, the author discusses the status of being privileged in Bessarabia after the annexation of this territory to the Russian Empire. Showcasing the boiernași, mazils and ruptasi, the author notes that belonging to the status of the “privileged” was of a hereditary nature. By their very name, the boiernași, as well as the mazils, preserved the “memory of being a boyar” and always opted for maintaining their ancestral privileges, as did the other privileged people. The imperial administration did not approve of these social and fiscal categories of society and granted them privileged status only temporarily, preserving, for a certain period of time, the particularities that existed in Moldova. The tendency to standardize the social structure and liquidate the social conditions specific to the Moldavian society was continuous in the sights of the imperial institutions. In accordance with the Regulation on the rights of belonging to the social estates of the inhabitants of Bessarabia of March 10, 1847, the Tsarist authorities made the Bessarabian boiernași equal in rights with the personal nobles of Russia (if the boiernași did not hold administrative positions, they were passed, compulsorily, in the category of mazils), calling them personal nobles from then on, and the mazils and ruptasi in the category of Russian odnodvortsy.