Where do clean institutions come from in a corrupt environment?

The idea of 18th-century Russia as a thoroughly corrupt country does not correspond to reality. These are the very preliminary and completely raw results of one unpublished study. Against the backdrop of everything that we know about Russia of that era - the era of Menshikov and Biron, who was executed for theft by the Siberian governor Prince Gagarin and minor officials who were officially ordered to “feed from business” - the discovery of an institution free from bribery is a bit of a sensation. .

The essence of the plot is this: in the course of studying the Land Noble Cadet Corps for the period from its foundation in 1731 to the accession of Catherine II in 1761, I accumulated a database of graduates of this most elite school of its time - about 2,500 people in total. The data, of course, is very incomplete, but for approximately 800 young nobles we know the level of well-being of the parents (measured by the number of “male souls”), the rank of the father - and the rank with which the son was released from the corps. Theoretically, this rank was assigned to graduates based on their academic success, assessed during special exams and certification conducted by teachers. How important it was at that time for a young nobleman to receive a higher rank is not worth talking about - enough has been written about this in classical literature. Note also that at the beginning of the 18th century the army was relatively small by the standards of later times, most nobles served as privates, and the rank of lieutenant (which a successful graduate of the Corps could count on) carried much more weight than a hundred years later. The question is how much the father's wealth and high official position increased the son's chances of receiving a higher rank.

My colleague from NES Salavat Gabdrakhmanov kindly agreed to carry out the necessary calculations - and the result, surprisingly, is that the rank received by a young nobleman upon graduation from the most elite educational institution of post-Petrine Russia did not depend at all on either the wealth of his father or from his position on the career ladder. In other words, even if parents used corruption or administrative weight to provide their son with a more advantageous starting position in the service, this phenomenon was not systematic.

There are different possible explanations here. It can be assumed that what was more significant in that period was not wealth or rank, but connections (although what kind of connections are these if they do not correlate in any way with wealth or position on the career ladder?) It is also possible that our data is not complete enough. In addition, work with the data continues - we have not yet worked out all the options for their preparation, and our conclusions may eventually be revised. Finally, no matter what we count here, it is obvious that mass corruption took place in Russia in the 18th century - too many of its episodes are recorded in official documents of that era.

Perhaps, however, here is another explanation: the founder of the Cadet Corps was a German, Field Marshal von Minich. Most of the officers and teachers were Germans. Perhaps at least the Germans, at least within the framework of one individual educational institution, managed to create a meritocratic system that is not subject to the influence of corruption? If so, then it turns out that corruption in Russia is not inevitable - you simply need to select honest people, even if they are Germans. A very seductive version.

The author is Director of Applied Research at NES

The German is the engine of progress