Number of Protestants in the Russian Administrative Apparatus under Peter the Great

The aim of the article is to elicit the number and proportion of Protestants among civil servants in the Russian Central government under Peter the Great. The author determines a circle of officials who could potentially profess the Protestant faith (whose families came from Western and Central Europe countries) and verifies their confessional status. For this purpose the author used a genealogical method, which consists in finding and systematization of unique biographical data, as well as in ascertainment of family ties (including the data of Lutheran and Catholic metric books). The results revealed that Protestants were concentrated in the upper level of the State apparatus in the initial period of Russian Collegiums’ development. The number of Protestants in the composition of civil servants in the Central apparatus in 1720 was in the range of 59–73 persons. Among responsible officials of 1–8 classes (106 persons) the Protestants were no less than 20, 8%. However, by the end of the reign of Peter I the proportion of Protestants in this category of servants has decreased to about 8–10%.