Charter to the Gentry

The Charter to the Gentry, in full the Charter for the Rights, Freedoms, and Privileges of the Noble Russian Gentry, was issued in 1785 by the Russian empress Catherine II. It recognised that the gentry owned their landed estates outright and guaranteed them civil rights, among them freedom from taxation and from corporal punishment, the right of assembly and trial in their own courts. It made the nobles of each province a legal corporate body, with assemblies of the nobility and books of genealogy. Though it mentioned only land, Richard Pipes argues that it turned the serfs, tied to the land and about half of the country's population, into the private property of their landlords.