Okolnichy
Okolnichiy (
Окольничий in
Russian) was an old rank and a position at the court of Russian rulers from the
Mongol invasion of Russia until the government reform undertaken by
Peter the Great. The word is derived from the
Russian word for "close," "near," meaning "sitting close to the Tsar."
The duties of first known okolnichies included arranging the travel and quarters of grand princes and
tsars and accommodating of foreign
ambassadors and presenting them to the court.
Initially their number was very small, but it grew over time and they acquired more duties. An okolnicny could head a state office (
prikaz) or a
regiment, could be an ambassador or a member of the state
duma.
Initially the rank of okolnichy was the second highest after that of
boyar, while often they performed similar duties. According to the system of
mestnichestvo, a person could not be made boyar, if someone else in his family hadn't recently held a boyar/okolnichy rank. Consequently, a position of okolnichy was a step towards granting the boyarship to a non-noble. Even Prince
Dmitry Pozharsky, though a
Rurikid knyaz by birth and the "Saviour of Fatherland" by royal mercy, could not secure a position higher than "okolnichy", because neither his parents nor uncles had ever held a rank higher than
stolnik.
Under the
Romanovs, 18 noblest families of
Muscovy were given the privilege of starting their official career from the rank of okolnichy, skipping all the lower ranks, such as stolnik. At the same period, the positions of okolnichy were differentiated and some of them (
quarters okolnichy or
close okolnichy) were of higher rank than that of
non-close boyars. The terms derive from a semi-formal ranking based on the closeness of the seat to tsar by the tsar's table.
