2. The social structure

The feature of the social structure in the period of formation absolutism was the trends of legal regulation of the position of each class. Society at that time was divided into four classes:

1) nobility,

2) clergy,

3) townsmen,

4) peasantry.

The legal status of “nobility” was enshrined in legislation. The Law Code 1649 and “The Decree on Single Inheritance” (March 23, 1714) was virtually equalized the legal status of manors and ancestral lands under the general term “real thing”, with right of inheritance. According with these documents noblemen had a monopoly on land ownership.

By the decree of the poll census of 26 January 1718 was enshrined in law the position of the nobility as an exempt class, unlike other classes.

Significant role in strengthening the aristocratic dictatorship played “The Table of Ranks” of January 24, 1722.

The Table of Ranks recognized three fundamental types of service: military, civil and court, dividing each into 14 ranks (grades). It determined position and status of everybody according to service (sluzhba) rather than according to birth or seniority, as mestnichestvo did. Thus theoretically every nobleman, regardless of birthright, started at the bottom and rose to the highest rank that his native ability, education and service devotion to the state's interests would allow. Everybody had to qualify for the corresponding grade to be promoted; however grades 1 through 5 required the personal approval of the Emperor.

Despite the initial resistance from noblemen, many of whom were still illiterate in 18th century and shunned the paper-pushing life of the civil servant, the eventual effect of the Table of Ranks was to create an educated class of noble bureaucrats.

Achieving a certain level in the Table resulted in acquiring that or another grade of nobility. A civil servant promoted to the fourteenth grade was endowed with personal nobility (dvoryanstvo), and holding an office in the eighth grade endowed the office holder with hereditary nobility. Military men first enjoyed the lowest (14th) grade. In 1856, the grades required for hereditary nobility were raised to the fourth grade for the civil service and to the sixth grade for military service.

Under Peter I by his decree nobles began service with the rank of the soldier, and served for life, and from 1730 - 25 years beginning from 20 years.

Classes of Ranks

Addressing Form

Classes I and II

Your High Excellency (Vashe vysokoprevoskhoditelstvo)

Classes III and IV

Your Excellency (Vashe prevoskhoditelstvo)

Class V

Your Highly Born (Vashe vysokorodie)

Classes VI, VII and VIII

Your Right Highly Born (Vashe vysokoblagorodie)

Classes XI, X, XI, XII, XIII and XIV

Your Wellborn (Vashe blagorodie)

According to the manifesto of Peter III “Manifesto Freeing Nobles from Obligatory Service” in 1762 nobles were exempted from compulsory military and civil service.

By decree of 1760 nobles were entitled to banishing of guilty peasants to Siberia, and from 1765 - to hard labor.

The most important act was adopted by Catherine II, which recognized the privileges of the nobility, was “The letters patent to the nobility” in 1785.

According to this charter the nobles:

• exempt from the binding service;

• acquired in the ownership bowels of their land;

• had the right to trade and to be owner of factories;

• exempted from taxes, and corporal punishment;

•  got the right to establish Class meetings in each province.

Nobles had a number of personal advantages. Noble rank could be transferred to the wife and children (and husband had a right to transmit nobility to his wife but the wife to her husband – couldn’t). The nobles had the right to enlisting to other countries. The noble court was created (an elected judicial authority). The nobles had family coat of arms, they compiled an ancestral noble books.

The nobles were divided into the following categories:

•  real noblemen who have descended from royalty;

• military aristocracy;

• eightclasses nobility;

• foreign nobility;

•  titular nobility (the princes, counts, barons);

•  ancient nobles (with a genealogy of over 100 years). However, the nobleman could be deprived of noble titles in the following cases:    -  the violation of the oath;

•     the treason;

•     commiting robbery, burglary, crimes for which deprived the honor or corporal punishment, as well as incitement to commit a crime;

•     committing other deceitful acts.

The clergy in Russia for a long time remained a closed estate. However, at the end of the beginning of the XVII-XVIII centuries had increased the legal regulation of the clergy, and there was a process of subordination to the State.

The Russian clergy are divided into monks, or so called black clergy, from among whom are selected all the higher dignitaries of the church: bishops, archbishops and metropolitans, and parochial, (married) or white clergy.

In course of time the rights of the clergy were considerably extended: thus, during the reign of Peter they were exempted from the poll tax and military conscription, and subsequently from corporal punishment. At length, in the reign of Paul I, the clergy commenced to receive decorations an important privilege, inasmuch as an order conveyed with it hereditary nobility, and consequently the right of owning estates and serfs.

The Law Code of 1649 restricted the right to purchase the estates, to have a white suburb and commercial establishments in the posads. From XVII in wartime, one in five of the peasants from spiritual estates called up for service in the foot.

Since 1722 were established strict rules of entry into the spiritual class from the nobility (only the youngest son of a nobleman on reaching 40 years).

According to the Decree of 1764 (February 26) was carried out the secularization of church and monastic lands, and the diocesan bishops and monasteries were transferred to regular salaries. As a result, more than 800 thousand peasant moved into the category of state.

Townsmen (urban inhabitants) -were the majority of the urban population and in accordance with the “Deed to the rights and benefits of the cities of Russia” from 1785 were divided into 6 categories (parts).

1. These real people (have land and buildings in the city, bankers, etc.);

2. Merchants in their turn were divided into three guilds (the first - with capital from 10 to 50 thousand rubles. The second - from 5 to 10 thousand rubles; the third - from 1 to 5 thousand rubles.)

3. Artisans which were entered in guilds;

4. Foreign visitors and foreign persons registered in the burgers;

5. Eminent citizens.

6. posadsky population, which were not included in the first 5 categories.

Merchants, according to their grade, have the right to engage in trade; those of the 1^st guild-wholesale, and the 2^nd guild -retail. But these guilds are now open to persons of all classes excepting the clergy, if they provide themselves with the necessary licences. In each town the merchants form a special mercantile community, which has its Assembly and Board, consisting of an Elder and 2 assistants.

The burghers, personally, do not enjoy any special rights, and those, residing in settlements, are amenable, in respect of police and courts of law, to the same regulations as the peasants. In each town the burghers form a corporation, which elects a burgher Elder and his assistants.

The peasants formed the bulk of the dependent population and they were the primary productive force in society.

The peasants were divided into the following categories:

- State farmers, whose numbers decreased significantly (especially under the Catherine II ruling), paid dues to the state and carried duties;

- Serfs (privately owned) carried the obligations: the quit-rent (obrok) and corvee.

- The monastery and church

- Palace (the king's estates peasants);

- Possessional (attributed to the factory);

- Odnodvortsy (descendants of the servants, settled on the outskirts of the state).

Simultaneously with such an extension of the rights of serfdom, the rights of the peasants were limited. They were interdicted from owning real estate, undertaking contracts and monopolies, and giving bills of exchange. The authority of the land proprietors over the serfs increased. The cause of this augmentation of authority consisted in the fact, that the landowner was responsible to the government for the due payment of the poll tax; and in demanding payment from the proprietor, the government had no ground for interfering in his affairs. In 1742 the right of the peasant to leave the landowner for military service was rescinded; in 1747 the landowners were permitted to sell their peasants as recruits; in 1760 they were allowed to deport their peasants for settlement in Siberia, and in 1765 to hard labour; while, in 1767 the peasants were deprived of their last means of protecting themselves against their owners the right of petitioning. The penalty prescribed by law for lodging petitions was the knout, and deportatation with hard labour without term.

As the result of such a policy very serious agitations arose amongst the peasantry. Even Catherine II commenced to issue Ukazes, directed towards restraining the licence, which the landowners permitted themselves.

Very significant was the Manifesto, promulgated by the Emperor Paul I, under date of the 5^th April 1797, which prohibited the compulsory labour of peasants on Sundays, and divided the remainder of the week equally between the proprietor and the peasant, i. e. the latter was bound to work for his master only three days in the week.

On the accession of Alexander I a strong reaction set in against the right of serfdom in general. It was expressed in the famous law of 1803 respecting freeholders; which law allowed the landowners to free their peasants with the allotment of a plot of land. The success, however, of this Ukaz was not great: down to the year 1855 the number of free-holders amounted only to 116,000 men, freed by 384 proprietors. Besides the Ukaz of 1803, Alexander I emancipated the peasants of the Baltic Provinces, but without any allotment of land.

In the reign of Nicholas I some measures were also taken for the limitation and control of the landowners' authority. On the proposal of Count Kisselieff, who established rural communities in Moldavia and Wallachia, the government subjected the State peasants to a special department and special laws. With this object, in the year 1837, the Ministry of Imperial Domains was created. Nor were the peasants of landed proprietors left without attention. In 1841 and 1843 an Ukaz was promulgated, prohibiting the sale of serfs apart from their families and without land; and in 1848 peasant serfs were allowed to purchase real estate with the sanction of the landowners.

The Crimean war of 1853 56 retarded for a time the further progress of government measures with regard to the rural condition. But this was only a temporary interruption. As early as 1856 the Emperor Alexander II expressed to the Marshal of the Nobles of Moscow his unswerving determination to abolish serfdom. In 1857 a special Committee on peasant affairs began to sit, under the personal presidency of the Emperor.

Earlier, during the coronation (in 1856), the Minister of the Interior entered into negotiation with the Marshals of nobility respecting the impending reform.

The most satisfactory of the propositions submitted were those of the Marshals of nobility of the Provinces of Kovno, Vilno and Grodno. In consequence of this by a Mandate, dated the 2oth November 1857, the nobles of the enumerated provinces were permitted to elaborate projects for the improvement of the condition of the peasants. In each province preparatory Committees were formed, and the labour of all the Committees had to be submitted to the Commission in the town of Vilno. At the same time the Committees were furnished with general instructions to the effect, that the landowners were to retain proprietary rights over the whole land, and the peasants over their holdings, which they could subsequently buy out. The arable land was to be utilized by the peasants in consideration of a certain tax or of labour for the benefit of the landowner. Before a month had passed, copies of the Mandate of 1857 were sent to all the Governors, in view of any of the nobles in their respective provinces expressing a desire, similar to that of the nobility of Vilno. An application in this sense was soon received from the nobility of the province of St. Petersburg. Subsequently came the answer to the summons of the Emperor from the nobility of Nijni-Novgorod and Moscow, and later, in 1858, from all the other bodies of nobles.

The peasants paid a poll tax (introduced by Peter I in 1719), carried corvee and quit-rent, recruit, Postojna and mostovaya duties.

Workers called the impoverished peasants and townspeople. In the XVIII century, they represent an entire social group [1].

Women in Society

Prior to Peter the Great's Westernization of Russia, Russian women lived in relative seclusion. When women appeared in public, they traditionally wore garments that covered their bodies entirely, except for the face. Russian women of upper classes even lived in separate sections of their families' houses. Peter the Great started a girls' educational academy, encouraged Western fashion sensibilities (including low-cut dresses and corsets), and brought women into society by popularizing balls and other social events.

Reforms enabled centralization of the state apparatus and consolidated tsar’s autocracy, having unequivocally subordinated all the organs of the state authority and state institutions to the czar's will. Implementation of such tendency did not leave even the Orthodox Church aside, the more so that the clergy, and especially the new patriarch Hadrian (1690-1700), openly sabotaged the reforms.

In local government, in January 1699, towns were allowed to elect their own officials. Three years later, another law decided that towns would be governed by an elective board, which replaced the old system of elected sheriffs, and in 1724 the tzar decided that towns could govern themselves through elected guilds of better citizens.

Women were allowed to take part at social events, and the engagement became compulsory. After seeing the customs in England Peter decided that women should be allowed to attend social gatherings and mingle with men.