Patronage and informal relationships in present-day historiography

The paper deals with the present-day literature on patronage and informal relationships, published in English, German and Russian languages. M. Leonov argues that the theory of patronage enables us to reveal some things in the history of Russian bureaucracy of the XIX - XX centuries, which are hard to be discovered by means of concentrating only at studying the formal state organization, such as: strategies and mechanisms of influence based on personal links, the personal network itself as well as communicative practices of network participants. The article is prepared with the support of the Russian Humanities Fund, Project №06-01-00445a.