The other classes were even more apolitical. So little did
the several classes aspire to domination that they missed many golden
opportunities to seize and hold a share of the political power. In the
seventeenth century, when the government was exceptionally weak after
what is known as the "period of troubles," it convoked periodical
"assemblies of the land" to help administer the country. But, as a
matter of fact, these assemblies considered themselves ill used because
they were asked to take part in government and not once did they aspire
to an independent position in the Russian body politic. Another and
perhaps even more striking instance we find a century and a half later.
Catherine the Great voluntarily turned over the local administration to
the nobles and to that end decreed that the nobility organize themselves
into provincial associations. But so little did the nobility care for
political power and active class prerogative that, in spite of the
broadest possible charters, the associations of nobles were never more
than social organizations in the conventional sense of the word.
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