Why Titular Councilors? A History of Russia's Most Stubborn Literary Type

Motov, Sergei Vladmimirovich

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Why Titular Councilors? A History of Russia's Most Stubborn Literary Type

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/02870w98p

Abstract

The titular councilor plays a special role in Russian literature. Some of the most celebrated works of nineteenth-century Russian authors focus on characters who hold this particular rank within the Russian bureaucratic system of social classification called the Table of Ranks. The question of why this rank was of interest to nineteenth-century Russian writers and readers has scarcely been posed, let alone answered. This thesis aims to determine why Gogol and Dostoevsky introduced and developed the character of titular councilor in Russian literature. The analysis of the structure of Table of Ranks and related documents indicates the paradoxical nature of this rank. Those who held the rank of titular councilor were stuck just one step away from dramatically changing their social status, but this was a very difficult step to make. As a result, most titular councilors remained in this rank forever. Gogol’s titular councilors reflected this social paradox of the titular councilors turning them into “eternal” bureaucratic underachievers. This interpretation of the rank is also to be found in early Dostoevsky’s early works. The mid-nineteenth-century reforms of the Table changed the significance of titular councilors both in Russian society and literature. As a result of these changes to the Table, attempts to move up the career ladder to obtain the highest status of the hereditary nobility lost their meaning; the ranks that gave this status were fundamentally unattainable for the overwhelming majority of officials. At the same time, while still remaining a bureaucratic class bestowing personal nobility, the rank of titular councilor changed its significance. It remained liminal, but it now signaled achievement rather than underachievement since the ranks below it did not give the right to any nobility at all. This social context and resulting “eternal” liminality of the rank of titular councilor explain the fascination it held for Gogol and Dostoevsky. Whereas for Gogol and young Dostoevsky, the titular councilor character represents an endlessly frustrated pursuit of a higher order of nobility, for late Dostoevsky it is an emblem of nobility gone to rot.

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