Ингерманландские «русские бояре» в Швеции. Их социальные и генеалогические корни (The Ingrian «Russian boyars» in Sweden. Their Social and Genealogical Origin) Moscow 2000(Российский родословный фонд, вып. 6) English Summary.This text arose in answer to a request for a review of the section on the Russian roots of the Aminoff (Aminev) family, as presented in a book from 1978 by Berndt Herman Aminoff on the genealogy of his family, by then the most numerous and in modern times most influential among the Russian noble families, who, during the Livonian War and the Smutnoe Vremia, defected from Muscovite Russia to Sweden at the end of 16th and beginning of 17th centuries. It was easily enough to establish that the presentation offered by Berndt Herman Aminoff was fundamentally mistaken. It merely repeated the version found in earlier genealogical manuals, more precisely the one compiled by the emigrant genealogist Nicolaus lkonnikov (La Noblesse de Russie D) in 1933. This again was based on a series of similar gene-alogies reaching back to the works by P. Dolgorukov (Rossijskaia rodoslovnaia kniga. Vol 3, 1856) and G. Anrep (Svenska adelns ättartaflor, vol. 1, 1858). They were the only genealogists who had actually relied on unpublished or genuine source material: Anrep used a version in the Swedish House of Nobility from the 1720s, while Dolgorukov linked the family to the Ratsha filiation in the Russian family registers (rodoslovnye knigi) through the Kuritsyns, where one, Ivan Iurievich, used the byname Amin. As a result the Aminoffs in their Swedish and Finnish context is seen as belonging to the oldest Russian families, related fx. to the Pushkins. Since S. B. Veselovskii had already disproved Dolgorukov's linkage to the Kuritsyns in a note, posthumously published in 1963, which, however, remained unknown to Bernd Herman Aminoff, there seemed little point in simply repeating Veselovskii's findings. However, a closer look at the genealogical material in the Swedish House of Nobility disclosed some interesting similarities between the genealogies, handed in by the Aminoffs and two other Russian families, the Rubzoffs and Peresvetoff-Moraths. Whereas the earliest versions of the genealogies of these families had only vague ideas of even the nearest ancestors of the first «Swedish» member, the later ones could not only name up to ten male ancestors, but they could also list to whom they were married. Furthermore, the three families had intermarried already in the 13th-14th centuries or married into the same aristrocratic families, like the Golitsyns. In addition they knew where their ancestors had had their estates and in which military or administrative positions they had served. Thus they contained a type of information of which we are ignorant even concerning the best known Russian noble families. Obviously these genealogies were fiction. But why were they produced and presented to the Swedish House of Nobility. To answer this a comparative study of the roots of all these Russian families and their later respective positions in Swedish society. From the late 16th century Sweden, then including Finland, with its small population developed an amazing military capacity, which enabled it to expand at the cost of all its neighbours. When Sweden put this military capacity to use in the Thirty Years' War it soon emerged as a major European power, a position it was able to keep until the defeat at the hands of Peter the Great at Poltava in 1709. During this period large numbers of nobles both from conquered regions and from other European countries, seeking military glory, entered Swedish service and were adopted into Swedish nobility. Part of these families were Russian and became known as the «Ingrian Russian boyars», because many at the time had or got links to Ingria. The families in question were the Baranovs, Nasakins, Rozladins (Rosladin), Klement'evs (Clementeoff), Golovachevs (Golawitz), Chebotaevs (Apolloff), Buturlins (Butterlin), Kalitins, Aminevs, Peresvetovs (Peresvetoff-Morath) and Rubtsovs – here listed chronologically according to their appearance in Swedish service. The main task was to link the first members in Swedish service to their or their family's appearance in Russian sources, first of all through the cadastral books (pistsovye knigi) of Russian North-West. This to a large extent proved possible, and the history of most of the families before their entry into Swedish service can be established. With few exceptions all the families turned out to be of lower, provincial nobility, not sufficiently important in Muscovite society to have been included in the rodoslovnye knigi. Almost all of the families had been moved to the Novgorod region during the last hundred or hundred and fifty years, when service nobility from Central Russia replaced the old deported Novgorodian aristocracy; only one family, the Kalitins, could be shown to have their roots in independent Novgorod. The exceptions were the Buturlins (descendants of Ratsha), Rozladins (descendants of Nestor Riabets) and Chebotaevs (descendants of Andrei Kobyla). But although members of these families could fill high positions in the Muscovite state, branches of the families also served in lower capacities on par with other provincial families. But at least the «Swedish» Petr Rozladin did, as the only member of these Russian nobles, marry into the highest Swedish aristocracy, which probably reflects his position in Russia. A third exception was Aleksandr Rubtsov, who had been held prisoner in Marienburg when it was conquered by the Swedes in 1626. In Russian sources he is presented as citizen (posadskij chelovek) of Smolensk, but somehow he must have convinced the Swedes that he was of noble birth. Whereas the exact circumstances surrounding the entry into Swedish service of the Daniel Golovachev and Vasilij Buturlin remain unclear, one group, the Baranovs, Nasakins, Klement'evs and Rozladins, chose to enter Swedish service in the later stages of the Livonian War. While the war had gone well for Russia they had been moved westwards, receiving new estates in Estonia. But when the Swedes conquered Estonia they preferred to retain their estates by opting for Sweden. The remaining families entered Swedish service in the course of Smutnoe vremia and during the Swedish occupation of Novgorod. They all actively supported the election of a Swedish prince as Russian or at least Novgorodian Tsar. Of these the Kalitins, Chebotaevs, and Klement'evs all had their estates in that Votskaia Piatina which after the Stolbova Peace Treaty in 1617, was ceded to Sweden. Thus they both risked losing their estates and be treated as traitors if they remained in the Russia of the Romanovs. The last two families, the Aminevs and Peresvetovs, did not have estates in the region. The Aminevs originally came from the Kostroma region, but had at the end of the 15th century received estates in Novgorod; later, however, they moved on to the Pskov region after it had been laid waste during the Livonian War. In 1609 Fedor Aminev, Commander of the streltsy on Ivangorod, was held prisoner by the Swedes in Narva and had bought his freedom by agreeing to attempt to persuade the commanders of Ivangorod, Jama and Kopor'e to surrender to the Swedes. In this he failed but still he must have gained the confidence of the Swedes. The Peresvetovs had no roots at all in the region but came from Rostov. One Murat Peresvetov was, however, among the Russian defenders when the Swedes besieged the Tikhvin Monastery, but defected to the Swedes during the siege. One reason why the Swedish authorities also after the peace treaty of 1617 wanted to retain the Russian families and even promised to enlarge their estates was that they hoped the Russian families could persuade the Russian peasants to remain in the region after it came under Swedish rule. Otherwise it risked being totally depopulated. While these Russian families in general were not interested in investigating their Russian roots, we have seen that three of the families, the Aminoffs, Peresvetoff-Moraths and Rubzoffs, in the early 1700s composed extensive but quite unrealistic genealogies. Why? What did they have in common compared to the other families? The answer is that they had not had estates in Ingria before it became Swedish in 1617. By the Peace Treaty of Nystad in 1721, however, Sweden lost all its possessions south of the Gulf of Finland. all Because the surviving Russians families were now completely assimilated with Sweden they chose to stay with Sweden, thereby loosing their estates. The question now arose whether they should be compensated for their loss in other parts of Sweden. At first, the Swedish government looked favourably at the matter, but, when it came to the actual recompensation, difficulties arose. During the so-called Reduction in the 1680s the Swedish nobility had lost all its estates in Sweden which – by contrast to patrimonial estates – had been given in return for service. The Russian families had not been touched by the Reduction. But now when the Russian families were to be compensated by estates in mainland Sweden, many Swedish nobles started to question whether the estates the Russian families had lost in Ingria had not been service estates and therefore should have been reduced (lost) anyway. Since it was clear that the Aminoffs, Peresvetoff-Moraths and Rubzoffs had only received their estates in Ingria after it became Swedish, their estates were deemed to be service estates. All the families now could do was to claim that these estates had been given in return for patrimonies they had lost in Russia when they opted for Sweden. Therefore, in the Diet in 1738, they read a petition, in which they claimed to have been in «secure possession» of their estates «from ancient times». Since this in any case was not true, the best the three families could do to substantiate their claim was to fabricate genealogies, which in a Swedish context could not be falsified, showing their illustrious past linked to patrimonies in Russia from the 14th century onwards.
Юрий А . Коловрат-Бутенко
