State Power, Social Life, and Russian Nobles in the 18th Century.

The article reviews two major scholarly projects focused on the Russian nobility in the 18th century, emphasizing their social, cultural, and political transformations. Andreas Schönle and Andrei Zorin's *On the Periphery of Europe, 1762–1825: The Self-Invention of the Russian Elite* examines the Europeanization of a cultivated noble elite, highlighting their moral self-development, emotional identification with the monarchy, and eventual ideological diversification leading up to the Decembrist Rebellion of 1825. In contrast, Olga Glagoleva, Ingrid Schierle, and collaborators' multi-volume *The Culture and Lifestyle of 18th-Century Provincial Gentry* offers an extensive empirical study of the provincial nobility's everyday life and participation in the Legislative Commission (1767–74), providing rich archival documentation and a biographical dictionary that illuminate local social dynamics and the gap between provincial and capital elites. Together, these works contribute significant methodological and empirical insights into the complexities of noble identity, social stratification, and state-society relations in imperial Russia, while also raising questions about the interplay between emotional experience and historical discourse in understanding elite transformations.