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For generations of Russians and Westerners in the 18th and 19th centuries, Russian nobles were lackeys of the autocracy and imitators of foreign cultures. This view shaped much of the scholarship of the second half of the 20th century. The last three decades, however, have seen a backlash against this gloomy assessment. Several studies have concluded that nobles were not culturally rootless or psychologically alienated. In this historiographical panorama, this essay aims to be a discussion of Lapo Sestan’s recent book on the Russian nobility and to reflect on the confrontation between the crown and the nobility by looking at the latter’s difficulties in competing on the political stage.
