The Russian Empire
In-Depth Article

Social Classes in Imperial Russia

On 1 May 1905, the Moscow Bulletin of the Okhrana’s Special Section reported that the population of the Russian Empire was 146,800,000 — 50.7 percent Great Russians, 22.9 percent Ukrainians and Belarusians, 6.1 percent Poles, 4.2 percent Jews, 3.6 percent Tatars, 1.9 percent Germans, 1.8 percent Armenians, 1.6 percent Georgians, 1.6 percent Uzbeks, 1.4 percent Lithuanians, and 4.2 percent of other groups. The 1897 Pervaya vseobshchaya perepis’ — the first general census of the Russian Empire — counted 125,068,231. The peasantry of all categories was 77.1 percent of the total. The dvoryanstvo (hereditary nobility), 1.5 million persons, was 1.2 percent; the meshchanstvo and kupchestvo (townspeople) of both guilds were 12.7 million, or 10.2 percent. The remainder was clergy (about 0.5 percent), Cossacks (2.3 million, 1.9 percent), and the non-taxable indigenes of Siberia and Central Asia (about 1.5 percent) (Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History, 2001; Freeze, Russia: A History, 3rd ed., 2009; Hosking, Russia: People and Empire, 1997).

The legal categories were codified in the Svod zakonov of 1832 and revised by the 1864 reform statutes and the 1897 census.

The Romanovs

The Imperatorskii dom — the imperial family in the strict Romanov sense — numbered about 65 persons in 1900, with annual udel’noe (appanage) revenue of about 16.5 million silver roubles and estates of about 1.2 million desyatins (about 3.3 million acres). The senior members of the family — the Tsar’s brothers Grand Dukes Alexander, Vladimir, Alexei, Sergei, and Pavel — held the komendirnye posts of General-Admiral, General-Adyutant, General-Feldtsikhmester, and General-Inspektor Kavalergardskogo; each had a gosudarev household of 30–250 persons and a separate dvorets (palace) in St Petersburg or Tsarskoye Selo. The Romanovs’ financial position was guaranteed by the Udel’noe vedomstvo — the udel (apanage) — created in 1797 by Paul I; the udel’ held about 1.2 million desyatins of land and was administered by the Ministr Dvora (Minister of the Imperial Court). The Romanov family’s place in the imperial system was abolished by the decree of 25 December 1917 (O.S. 12 December) of the Council of People’s Commissars, signed by Lenin and Trotsky (Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 1995; Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1990).

The dvoryanstvo

The dvoryanstvo (hereditary nobility) was 1,252,000 persons in 1897 (1 percent of the empire). The 14-grade Table of Ranks of 24 January 1722 (in force until 1917) gave service entry to the dvoryanstvo from the 8th grade. The 1831 law of 13 June required the noble to be a Christian and to hold a commission in the state service until the obshchee pensionirovanie of 1856. The dvorianstvo owned 101 million desyatins (about 280 million acres) of land in 1861 — about 65 percent of the land of European Russia. The 1861 emancipation transferred about 33 million desyatins to the peasantry at a state-mediated cost of 1.7 billion silver roubles. The 1861 kulak indebtedness of 6.2 million peasant households was 47 percent of the 1860 chernosoi krest’yane revenue. The Russian dvoryanstvo was the largest landholding class in Europe; the 1905 sale of estates by the Bank Dvoryanstva (the Nobles’ Bank, founded 1885) put about 8.5 million desyatins on the market in 1906–1914. The principal concentrations of the dvoriane were the Central Agricultural Region (Tula, Orel, Tambov, Ryazan) and the Oka provinces of central Russia (Levin, The Making of the Russian Slasher, 2003; Freeze, 2009; Wcislo, Catering for the Tsars, 2012).

The clergy

The dukhovenstvo (Orthodox clergy) was about 137,000 in 1897. The white clergy (belyi dukhovenstvo) — the married parish priests (popy), the diakony, and the psalomshchiki — held about 49,000 parishes and 1,500 monastyri (monasteries) in 1913. The black clergy (chernyi dukhovenstvo) — the monks, nuns, and ieromonakhi of the Lavra (the four great monasteries of Russia: Trinity-Sergius, Kiev-Pechersk, Pochaev, and Alexander-Nevsky) — numbered about 95,000. The black clergy were under the ober-prokuratura of the Holy Synod, an office created by the 1721 Spiritual Regulation. The income of the white clergy in 1900 averaged 390 silver roubles a year (the zemstvo povarny plat’ of the obshchina). The clergy were the dukhovenstvo of the Tserkovnye Staroobryadtsy (the staroobryadtsy — Old Believers — about 2.5 million in 1897, treated as a separate social estate after 1883). The 1764 secularization had transferred about 9.1 million desyatins and 1 million male serfs from the Church to the state. The most important institutional features were the starets tradition (the opty of St Seraphim of Sarov, 1754–1833), the dukhovnaya shkola (the dukhovnye seminarii of the Holy Synod), and the Gosudarev control of episcopal elections (Freeze, Russian Levites, 1977; Pospielovsky, The Orthodox Church in the History of Russia, 1998).

The kupechestvo and the meshchanstvo

The kupchestvo (merchant estate) of the gildii (guilds) numbered 225,000 in 1897. The first-guild merchants (40,000) had a capital of 50,000 silver roubles and the right to trade abroad; the second-guild (96,000) had a capital of 5,000–20,000 and the right to gostinodvorskii gostinyi dvor (wholesale market) trading. The third guild, abolished in 1863, was the small-trade guild. The major families — Savva Morozov (the textile tycoon, 1862–1905), Pavel Tretyakov (the art collector, 1832–1898), the Stroganovs (the gornyi industrialists, 2.5 million desyatins in 1890), the Shanyavskys (the railway financiers, 600,000 desyatins in 1910) — were the core of the kupry. The meshchanstvo (townspeople, about 10.6 million in 1897) were the artisans, the petty tradesmen, and the meshchane of the gostinyi dvor and the bursak. The 1870 Gorodskoe polozhenie (Municipal Statute) of Alexander II set up the gorodskie dumy (city dumas) and the gorodskie golovy (mayors). The 1785 Zhaluyonnaya Gramota (Catherine the Great’s Charter to the Towns) was the basis of the gorodskaya estate (Becker, Merchants of Moscow, 1979; Owen, The Corporation under Russian Law, 1991).

The intelligentsia and the proletariat

The intelligentsia — the 70,000 students of the higher schools, the tsenzovoe (qualified) liberal professions, the chinovniki of the kollegia of the ministries — was about 0.5 percent of the imperial population. The Russian industrial proletariat grew from 700,000 in 1860 to 1,400,000 in 1890, 3,000,000 in 1900, and 12,000,000 in 1914 (the Prikaz chislennost’ includes the zemledelcheskii proletariat — the rural labour force). The Putilov works in St Petersburg, the Morozov works in Moscow, the Sormovo works in Nizhny Novgorod, the Yuzovka (Yuzovka) works in the Donbas, and the Baku oil works were the principal concentrations. The first soutine fabrika-inspektor (factory inspectorate) was established in 1882 by the Zavody-Fabriki of the Ministry of Finance of Ivan Vyshnegradsky (Hosking, 1997; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 1996; Engelstein, Moscow, 1905, 1982).

The peasantry and the Cossacks

The krest’yane (peasantry) of all categories were 96 million in 1897 — 77.1 percent of the empire. The categories:

  • Pomestnye (private-serf) — 23.5 million in 1861; freed by the 1861 Polozhenie.
  • Gosudarstvennye (state) — 19.5 million in 1861; under the Ministry of State Properties until 1866 and the Ministry of Internal Affairs after 1866.
  • Dvorovye (household) — 1.5 million in 1861; freed on the 1861 Polozhenie with two-year dvorovye obligation.
  • Udel’nye (appanage) — 0.85 million in 1861; freed on the 1863 Udel’noe Polozhenie.

The Cossacks (the Kazachestvo of the Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Orenburg, and the Trans-Baikal) numbered 2,933,000 in 1897. The 1861 Polozhenie (the Nakaz 19.ii.1861) gave the serf personal freedom and a half-allotment of 2.8–3.4 desyatins per household, with a state vykupe (redemption) of 1.7 billion silver roubles, payable in 49 annual obroki (quit-rent) instalments. The obshchina (commune) administered the peredely (land re-allocations) of 1882–1906. By 1916, 2.5 million households (28 percent of European Russia) had withdrawn from the obshchina under the 9 November 1906 ukaz (the Stolypin reform). The kosak was the voisko of the stanitsa (Cossack stanitsa), the okrug (military district), and the voisko (the Voiskovoi krug) — the Cossack assembly (Levin, 2003; Moon, The Russian Peasantry 1600–1930, 1999; Holquist, Making War, Forging Revolution, 2002).

The non-Russian nationalities

The Russian Empire was, in 1897, a mnogonarodnaia (multinational) state with about 100 languages and 165 distinct national groups. The legal regimes of the non-Russian estates were as varied as the languages:

  • The ostzeyskie gubernii (the Baltic German governorates of Estland, Livland, and Courland) had their own Bürgerrecht until 1885.
  • The Khalifato-Byuro (the Tatar and Bashkir mazhlis of the Volga and the Crimea) had their sharia (Muslim law) courts until 1917.
  • The Polsha (Congress Poland) had the 1815 Konstitutsia until 1831 and the 1867 Zakon o pol’skikh until 1915.
  • The Sionisticheskoe naselenie (the Jewish population of about 5.2 million) was concentrated in the cherta postoyannoi evreiskoi osedlosti (the Pale of 25 governorates) from 1791 to 1917.
  • The kazaki (Cossacks) had their voiska (Cossack hosts) of the 7 voiskov (Don, Kuban, Terek, Astrakhan, Orenburg, Ural, Siberian) of 1.5 million persons in 1897.
  • The okrainy (borderlands) of Finland, the Caucasus, Siberia, and Central Asia had their own governorates-general, with the viceroy of the Caucasus at Tiflis, the governor-general of Finland at Helsinki, and the governor-general of Turkestan at Tashkent.

The russifikatsiya (Russification) programme of Alexander III (1881–1894) and Nicholas II (1894–1917) — the language decrees of 1881 and 1895, the 1887 tsenzovoe university admission, the 1904 zakaz on the Jewish chekan — was the central feature of the late-imperial nationality policy (Kappeler, 2001; Lieven, The Cambridge History of Russia, vol. II, 2006; Slocum, Who, When, and Where, 1998).