Nobility and charity in the Stavropol region in the 19th – early 20th centuries
Authors:   North-Caucasus Federal University, Pokotilova T. E. , Shebzukhova T. A. ,   Pyatigorsk Institute (branch), North-Caucasus Federal University
Published: February 2025

Introduction. The article studies the problem of participation of nobility in charity in the Stavropol region in the 19th – early 20th centuries. It is noted that the content and features of the process of formation and evolution of the class structure and the nobility, in particular, in the region, along with the existing normative framework that consolidated its class status, were largely determined by a number of features. Those were the peculiarities of Russia advancement on the Caucasian borders, the history and peculiarities of colonization of the steppe preCaucasus, the special military-administrative and geopolitical status of Stavropol during the period under consideration.
Materials and Methods. The principle of class structure in the regulatory framework for the charitable process in the Russian Empire and the problem of the history of noble charity in the context of the emergence of new social communities and the inevitable leveling of class differences logically predetermined special attention to clarifying the characteristics of classes. The list of characteristics of classes proposed by M.I. Lavitskaya and A.V. Melnikov was chosen as the basic one. It says that 1) each class has specific rights and social functions that are legally enshrined in custom or law; 2) class rights are inherited; 3) the presence of class corporate organizations that carry out class public administration; 4) a specific mentality and self-awareness of classes. The study was conducted using materials from the State Archives of the Stavropol Krai. It preconditioned the use of historical-genetic, periodization, typological and narrative methods.
Analysis. Based on specific historical facts, it is shown how the relatively late entry of the region into the Empire predetermined the small number of hereditary nobility on its territory, and the active events of military colonization became the main source of formation of the local nobility. Nobles from the inner provinces of Russia, the Kingdom of Poland and western provinces began to move here, and that few of the nobles of Stavropol region had land holdings and the main source of their income was the civil service. In the course of modeling the features of subject-object relations in the charitable process on the territory of the region, limited capabilities of the Stavropol nobility for large and frequent charitable events as well as the relatively small scale of the base of potential objects of charity in relation to the inner provinces of Russia were taken into account.
Results. Specifically, the historical picture, created on the basis of a wide range of sources, showed a relatively weak involvement of the nobility of the region in charitable practice in comparison to the all-Russian one. First of all, this is the popularization of the charitable participation of the population in the creation and care for the activities of educational institutions and the lives of poor students, the creation of rare medical and social institutions by those in power and by their own example. If there was no active expected response, the Stavropol (Caucasian) public charity order could be used to accumulate charitable proceeds for the solution of the above-mentioned problems over a long period of time. This is also one of the longest-lasting practices of leisure-time, caring, but not very wealthy representatives of the Stavropol nobility (usually women) visiting the poor with the aim of collecting and transmitting information about them to the provincial registers, as about individuals and families “whose pathetic situation deserves special attention.” This is the initiation and active participation of representatives of the nobility in the creation and work of charitable societies, expanding in scope and directions within the framework of bourgeois modernization processes launched by the reforms of the second half of the 19th century, when the prestige of the idea of public benefit, introduced into the ethics of the noble class back in the 18th century, is gradually gaining a new meaning in Russian culture, not bypassing the Stavropol region.