RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS: TRANSFORMATION OF A PROFESSIONAL GROUP UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HISTORICAL EVENTS OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The article presents some results of the analysis of the features of the formation of a diplomats professional group in the context of social transformations in the process of historical development of Russia in the first half of the 20th century. The purpose of the study is to refute or confirm the hypothesis that social changes on the Russian soil (objective and subjective) do not have a decisive impact on the trajectories of intergenerational social mobility. The information base of the study is the biographical and encyclopedic reference books published in recent years about the last tsarist diplomats, the first diplomats of the Soviet era, career diplomats of the post-war years and modern representatives of the foreign ministry, publications on the problems of the formation of diplomacy in Russia, memoirs and interviews in the media of domestic diplomats. The relevance and novelty of the comprehensive study (in total, more than 4000 personalized data on domestic diplomats were analyzed) is associated with insufficient attention to the research devoted to this closed, small, elite group of professionals with significant educational, cultural and political capital, high status position and role in society. An original author’s approach to the study of the information array was used. The author analyzes educational and professional trajectories of different generations of diplomats, as well as the national, class and class composition of the Foreign Ministry, and vector of social mobility.