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Establishment of the Table of Ranks

When: 1722
Where: Imperial Russia
Part of: Creation of the Table of Ranks by Peter the Great

Peter the Great introduced the Table of Ranks in 1722 to replace hereditary privilege with service-based advancement in the military, civil service, and court.

The decree formally listed positions and ranks, reorganizing the foundations of feudal Russian nobility. It recognized service as the basis for an aristocrat's standing, directly challenging the existing hereditary nobility or boyars. This system defined the gentry class of the Russian Empire and remained until 1917.

Sources

Table of Ranks Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-16

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.