Social Hierarchy of the Russian Empire

The merchants (kupechestvo) were enrolled in three guilds according to the capital they declared, under Catherine II’s rules of 1775, each guild with its own trading rights. Membership was paid for and not simply inherited: a merchant registered with the state for a fee, his relatives could trade on his behalf, but his grown sons had to qualify on their own, so a family that could no longer meet the requirements fell back among the townspeople. Rich merchants founded factories, and the law let them buy serfs to work in them from 1721 to 1762 and again from 1798 to 1816; in 1825 about half of all factory workers were serfs. From 1832 the most distinguished could become honorary citizens, ranking between the merchants and the nobles, free of the poll tax, the recruit levy and corporal punishment. Yet the merchants had little political weight and were looked down on by the nobility, though only the nobles were more literate.

Moving in or out. Anyone who could declare enough capital and pay the fees could enrol in a guild, and some merchants began as townspeople or even serfs: Savva Morozov, a serf, bought freedom for himself and his sons in 1820, and the family went on to found the Morozov textile companies.

How many? Estimate: the merchants of the three guilds with their families; as late as 1851 only 8 per cent of Russians lived in towns.

The Cossacks, once free frontier communities of runaway serfs, adventurers and steppe warriors, had become a hereditary military estate of the empire by the end of the 18th century. They lived in hosts, the Don, the Black Sea, the Ural, the Terek and others, settled in villages (stanitsas) along the southern and eastern frontiers, and kept a degree of self-government. Every Cossack family held land free of taxes, and in return its men owed military service for many years, bringing their own horses and equipment; they were spared the ordinary recruit levy. Cossack regiments scouted, raided and patrolled the frontiers for the army: in 1812 Matvei Platov, ataman of the Don Host, led his Cossacks against Napoleon’s retreating army. The elite of the hosts was admitted to the nobility, and some rich Cossacks owned serfs. Many Cossacks of the Ural and the Terek were Old Believers. The government remembered the risings of Stenka Razin and Yemelyan Pugachev and kept the hosts loyal with land and privileges.

Moving in or out. Cossack status passed from father to son, and the officers of the hosts could be admitted to the nobility.

How many? Estimate: the Don Host alone, the largest of ten, had 425,000 male members in 1884, and the Cossacks numbered 4.5 million at the start of the 20th century, about 3 per cent of the empire’s people.

The army’s rank and file were recruits drawn from the estates that paid the poll tax, above all the peasants. Each levy demanded a quota of men aged about twenty; village elders or landlords chose whom to send, often by lot, and landlords used the levy to rid themselves of troublesome serfs. From 1793 a recruit served for 25 years; in 1834 the term was cut to 20 years with 5 more in the reserve, and in 1855 to 12 years with 3 in the reserve. A serf taken as a recruit left his master’s power, and a soldier who survived his service was a free man, but the service was long and harsh, far from home. Literate recruits might become clerks, and good soldiers non-commissioned officers, while officers’ commissions went overwhelmingly to nobles: in the Crimean War nine officers in ten were noble. Some villages of state peasants were turned into military settlements, where the men were soldiers and farmers at once.

Moving in or out. A few soldiers of humble birth rose to officer’s rank, which brought nobility under the Table of Ranks.

How many? Over one million men under arms in the decades after the Napoleonic Wars (E. Willis Brooks’s figure), roughly 1.5–2 per cent of the people.