Kniazes - Princes
In the midst of all these families of doubtful origin and date, the kniazes, the lineal descendants of the ancient Russian rulers, occuppied a separate place. In the state, founded and so long governed by their forefathers, these scions of the house of Rurik represented a native aristocracy, which, in virtue of its secular glory, claims high consideration. No aristocracy in Europe boasted a loftier and longer pedigree. "In Russia," once said M. de Talleyrand, "they are all princes." This opinion was widely spread in Western Europe. Yet nothing can be falser.
Setting aside the foreign intruders, and the families deriving their nobility from all sorts of sources, the number of national princely families, in that immense empire, scarcely exceeded sixty. This includes ouly the genuinely Russian families, not those who, by their nationality, belong to the alien dependencies of the empire, especially the Caucasus, where Grilzia (Georgia) alone has contributed quite a bevy of native princes.
Nearly forty wrote themselves from Rurik, the founder, and from Vladimir, the apostle of the empire; they are the representatives of the dynasty which reigned from the ninth down to the end of the sixteenth century. This house, probably the most prolific sovereign race known to history, had as many as two hundred different branches a in the 18th century. By the end of the 19th Century, many had no living scions left; others, the Tatishtchefs for instance, had dropped or lost the title. Another group, composed of four Russian and four Polish families, came from a no less illustrious stock and nearly as national in the eyes of the Russians: they are the descendants of Guedimin and the ancient sovereign house of Lithuania, known in Europe under the name of the Yagellons, and which, before it ascended the throne of Poland, at one time ruled the whole of Western Russia. From Rurik and the first Russian dynasty are descended the Dolgorukis,the Baridtinskys, the Oboldnskys, the Gortchakbfs, the Mossalskys ; from Guedimin and the Lithuanian dynasty, the Khovanskys, the Galitsins, the Kurdkins, the Trubetskbys in Russia, the Czartoryskis and the Sanguszkos in Poland. To this double line, issued from the oldest native rulers, should be added seven or eight families descended from Tatar, Tcherkess, and Gruzin chieftains, formerly admitted into the ranks of Russian kniazes, and most of whom - the Tcherkasskys, the MeshtcheYskys, the Bagrations - had historical names. A mere roll-call showed that these Russian kniazes were not behind any nobility in Europe in antiquity and renown ; there was none that could show more men of distinction.
Nevertheless, in all of these houses of quasi-royal blood, by whose side rank many old boyar families - in all this brilliant national nobility, there was not the elements for a political aristocracy, there were not the materials to make, say a House of Lords, a house of hereditary boyars. There was a twofold reason for this disqualification : one lay in the historical constitution of Russian society ; the other and main reason lay in the constitution of the Russian family itself.
Equality among all the children - equal rights, title common to all - was the law of the Russian family, as well that of the plain dvoriarian as that of the kniaz, the merchant, and the mujik. This democratical principle, always staunchly maintained by the Russian nobility, stifled in the sprouting such germs of aristocracy as sank here and there into the soil. In these princely houses, the recipients of the blood of Rurik and Guedimin, as in the poorest nobleman's house, there was no "eldest son," no "head of the family," as far as any special rights go. The father's possessions were divided equally among the sons ; the ancestral title is transmitted to all without distinction, and, as it is the only property that is not impaired by successive partitions, it frequently was the only inheritance that remained to them. Hence the frequent debasement of a title which, while belonging to but few families, could at the same time belong to many individuals. By dint of branching and ever more branching out, many of these princely families - and sometimes the most illustrious - end by forming a bushy shrub, the boughs of which are so intertwined that they hide and choke one another.
Some of these houses of kniazes, the unity and fortune of which are secured neither by primogeniture nor by the entrance of the younger sons into the Church, became veritable tribes or clans, with no bond between them but the name and the title. Thus there are some four hundred princes and princesses Galitsin by right of birth. In these huge families grown out of the same trunk, there were naturally, by the side of limbs that spread in the sun, blossom-crowned and overflowing with sap, branches pining away for want of air and nourishment and bare of foliage. As early as in the sixteenth century, when Rurik's dynasty still ruled, many kniazes owned no inheritance save their title, with nothing to support it. There were so many of them in this position, that these titles did not amount to much. Accordingly there were princes only too happy to serve a man of no account for a salary of five or six roubles a year.
Matters did not much improved with time and the multiplying of more families. One would meet in Russia descendants of Rurik and Guedimm following more than modest pursuits. Such things account for the fact that several families issued from Rurik dropped their title. With such division, such crumbling away of families and fortunes, it were vain to look for family feeling or esprit de corps in the high nobility.
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