First estate: Aristocrats, boyars.

Rights: The upper class in the country. They owned lands, herds of cattle and serfs as personal property. Their power over the serfs was practically unlimited, and often any atrocities were committed against them. The rights of the boyars could be limited only by representatives of their own estate, or the royal family.

Responsibilities: To serve for the benefit of the state. This service consisted in holding public posts, that is, administrative activities, military and diplomatic activities. These are ministers, generals, governor-generals of large regions, ambassadors in major powers. For this they are called "service people"

Estate: nobles and boyar children(lower strata of aristocratic society)

Rights: Similar to the first estate, but they had few lands and lackeys, they obeyed the boyars in everything.

Responsibilities: Serving obligatory (until the 18th century) service for the benefit of the state. "Service people". Most often they occupied managerial positions of a lower rank. This class included officers, ambassadors of small principalities, more often Asian ones, governors and mayors of insignificant provinces.

Condition: Sagittarius

Rights: The lowest class of all "service people" was traditionally called "instrument people" (that is, those who were called up to the army from the outside). They received monetary and food salaries from the state, as well as the right to use land plots. They lived in the streltsy settlements on the outskirts of the city "posads". These are the wealthy segments of the population.

Responsibilities: Military service for the benefit of the state. This is the regular army of Russia. Their commanders were noblemen and boyar children. Sometimes the archers themselves became commanders (they were called "initial people")

Estate: Posad people(lower strata of city dwellers, commoners)

Rights: Minimum. Submit to all the higher classes and work for them. These are artisans called "black people". Personally free.

Responsibilities: To serve the "tax"(a system of duties and taxes in favor of the state), for this they were called "tax people". It was most often quitrent or payment of taxes. For example, a city dweller served for some time in the service of a coachman and brought income from the service to the treasury. They did not have the right to own land, they lived in communities, the community owned the land, obeyed it.

Estate: Peasants

Rights: Minimum. Until the end of the 18th century, the peasants did not even have the right to complain about the cruelty to them of the state. Personally free. Also "Tight people", "black people", "black souls", residents of "black settlements".

Responsibilities: Work on communal land (they did not have private ownership of it), submit to the community, pay a lot of taxes to the treasury.

Estate: Serfs:

Rights: Zero. Full property of the master. They can be killed, maimed, sold or separated from the family by order of the master. The murder of a serf was not considered murder by law, the owner did not answer for it - only the killer of someone else's serf answered with a fine. The lowest class of the whole society. They did not even treat "hard people." They did not answer before the court for theft or other offense, because they were not considered subjects of the law, only the master could punish. They did not pay taxes to the treasury, the master decided everything for them.

Responsibilities: To work for a gentleman, to serve a corvée, that is, the amount of labor in favor of the owner, even unbearable. In general, the rights and obligations of a slave. It was possible to sell oneself into slaves for debts. They did menial work, sometimes handicraft.

19th century table of estates

Class: nobles

Rights: This is the feudal privileged class. A nobleman could simultaneously belong to the clergy. Until 1861, the nobles were mainly landowners in Russia - the owners of land and peasants. After the reform, the right to own people was taken away from them, but most of the lands and lands remained in their possession. They had their own estate self-government, freedom from corporal punishment, the exclusive right in the country to buy land.

Responsibilities: Officers were recruited from among the nobles, but the military and state service has not been compulsory since 1785. Local power - gubernatorial, city self-government in large cities, in the 19th century was exclusively from the nobility. Most of the nobles also sat in the zemstvos. There was a personal and hereditary nobility. The first was appointed for services to the Fatherland and could not be inherited.

Class: clergy.

Rights: They were freed from corporal punishment, taxes and duties, they had class self-government inside. The clergy were only half of one percent of the total population of the country. They were exempted from military service (and recruitment from their abolition during the reform of 1861).

Responsibilities: They served in churches - Russian Orthodox, Catholic or other denominations. Part of the clergy could inherit their estate. Some acquired it only for the duration of their lives. If the priest took off his rank, he returned to the estate in which he had been before taking the rank.

Condition: urban. It was divided into five very dissimilar states. These included honorary citizens of cities, merchants, philistines, artisans and workers. Merchants, in turn, were divided into guilds according to the degree of the number of privileges.

Rights: Merchants have the right to be called the merchant class only as long as they pay the fee to their guild. Honorary citizens, like nobles and clergy, were exempt from corporal punishment. Honorary citizens (not all) could transfer their fortune in the estate by inheritance.

Responsibilities: Workers and artisans (since they united in workshops, they were also called guild people, they had practically none of the privileges. The urban estate did not have the right to move to the villages (as well as the peasants were forbidden to move to the city). The urban estate paid the bulk of taxes in the country.

Estate: peasants

Rights: Peasants received personal freedom only in 1861. Prior to this, there were virtually no free peasants in Russia - they were all serfs. According to the principle of who they belonged to, the peasants were divided into landowners, state-owned, that is, state and property (belonged to the enterprise). They had the right to file complaints against their landowners for ill-treatment. They had the right to leave the village only with the consent of the landowner (or a representative of the administration). Those at their own discretion gave them passports.

Responsibilities: To work for the owner, serve a corvee, or, working outside his household, bring him quitrent in monetary terms. They didn't have land. The peasants received the right to own land or rent it from the landowner only after 1861.

§ 8. Estates in Russia. Their number and distribution on the face of the Russian land.

The class system in Russia is, according to the just remark of prof. N. Korkunov, nothing more than the remnants of those that took place in the 18th century. attempts to instill in Russian life the beginnings of the Western European estate system, in which the entire population was divided in the Middle Ages into four strictly isolated estates: the nobility, the clergy, the townspeople and the peasants, each of which enjoyed special rights and constituted a united whole, opposed to other estates. In modern state life Zap. In Europe, this class division has disappeared; it remained, as a special privileged class, only the nobility, and then significantly changing its character. At present, the nobility in most states enjoys only honorary privileges and does not constitute a united whole¹*. In Russia, before Peter I, there were no estates in the proper sense of the word, and in the language of Muscovite Russia one cannot even find words to express such concepts as “estate system”, “estate institutions”, “estate prejudices”² *. The estate system of Russia is the creation of the last centuries of Russian history. But while in Zap. In Europe, the population is no longer divided into separate estates, Russian legislation still retains a class grouping of the population, a grouping alien to our history, borrowed by us from the West in an era of blind imitation of everything foreign. “The estate system (in the sense of Western Europe), says further prof. N. Korkunov, could never take any deep roots in our life, and the reforms of Alexander II deprived him of his last support. Thanks to this, modern Russian legislation, which still preserves the soil of estates, finds itself in a strange contradiction with the actual conditions of Russian life. The estate principles, stubbornly preserved by Russian legislation, are in fact so alien to Russian life that it is not uncommon for us to meet a person who himself does not know to which estate he belongs. The general provision placed at the beginning of Volume IX of the “Code of Laws” shows that “all the natural inhabitants of Russia are supposed to be divided into four main types of people: 1) nobles, 2) clergy, 3) urban inhabitants, 4) rural inhabitants (peasants, Cossacks , aliens). The law gives them the name of the estates (Article 4), but most of them do not at all form a single whole, even the nobles are divided into hereditary and personal, the clergy - by religion, the urban estate - into honorary citizens, merchants, burghers and guilds; among the peasantry there are also a number of varieties. Further, some of the "estates" are not hereditary, not even lifelong and generally not closed. According to Korkunov, only nobles, honorary citizens, philistines and peasants can be recognized as estates in Russia, but even in these “estates” life has made big gaps. Official statistics paint the following picture of the distribution of Russian inhabitants by class (Finland is not taken into account). The following table, compiled on the basis of the 1897 census, shows the absolute number of persons of different classes. This year there were:

		For every thousand people
Nobles hereditary
Nobles personal and officials not from the nobility
Persons of the clergy of all Christian denominations
Hereditary and personal honorary citizens
Peasants
Troop Cossacks
foreigners
Finnish natives
Persons not belonging to the aforementioned classes
Persons who did not indicate their estate
foreigners

For every thousand of the population there are: 771 peasants, 106 bourgeois, 66 foreigners, 23 Cossacks, 10 nobles, 5 from the clergy, 5 honorary citizens, 8 “others”⁴*. Foreigners and Cossacks are, so to speak, varieties of the peasantry.

Foreigners live mainly in Central Asia and Eastern Siberia, and in European Russia they are found only in the provinces of Astrakhan and Arkhangelsk and in the Caucasus, in the Terek region and Stavropol province. In total, 8,297,965 foreigners were counted, and even those in many places are quickly dying out under the pressure of the conditions created for them by the “development of Russian trade” and the “regulation” of foreign life by the labors of the Russian administration⁵*. As for the Cossacks, they were counted in 1897 2,928,842 people. For every thousand Cossacks, there are 400 Don Cossacks, 228 Orenburg Cossacks, 410 Kuban Cossacks, 179 Terek Cossacks, 18 Astrakhan Cossacks, 179 Amur Cossacks, 291 Trans-Baikal Cossacks, 62 Primorye Cossacks, 109 Akmola Cossacks, 42 Semipalatinsk Cossacks, 30 Semirechensk Cossacks, 177 Ural Cossacks. If we count foreigners and Cossacks together with peasants, then Russia turns out to be a real peasant kingdom: a group of so-called. “rural dwellers” make up 86% of the total population in it, while the group of other classes is only 14%, i.e., almost 7 times less. But even these 14% do not yet constitute the so-called. commanding class - because this number includes, for example, philistines, guilds, etc. In certain parts of the state, the peasant group of rural inhabitants is distributed as follows: the largest percentage of them is observed in Central Asia (97.2%), then Siberia (90%), in the Caucasus (86.7%), in European Russia (86.2%) Privislinsky Krai (73.1%). As for the other estates, they are distributed in different parts of Russia as follows:

1. Nobility . The highest percentage is observed in the Caucasus (24 per thousand inhabitants), then in Poland (19 per 1000), in Europe. Russia (15 per 1000), Siberia (8), Cf. Asia (4). The multi-noble provinces are as follows: Petersburg (72 per 1000), Kutaisi (68), Kovno (68), Vilna (49), Warsaw (41), Minsk (36), Elizavetpol (35), Moscow (32), i.e. All foreign, with the exception of St. Petersburg and Moscow, two central government.

2. Clergy . The largest percentage of it is in the Caucasus (6 for every thousand inhabitants), then in Europe. Russia (5), Siberia (3), Poland (1). Most of all, the percentage of clergy is in the provinces: Kutaisi (22), Yaroslavl (14), Arkhangelsk (12), Kostroma, Moscow, Orenburg (11 each), Tver, Tiflis (10 each).

3. Honorary citizens and merchants. This class is even more rarefied. For every 1000 inhabitants there are merchants and honorary citizens: in Europe. Russia 6 each, Caucasus 4 each, Siberia 3 each, Wed. Asia and Poland 1 each. These figures perfectly illustrate the antediluvian and absurd division of the townsfolk into estates. It turns out that in such an industrial area as Poland, there are extremely few members of the merchant class. Obviously, only other estates are interested in trade, in other words, the estate has nothing to do with it.

4. Philistines. This estate is the most common in Poland (235 people for every 1000 inhabitants), then in Europe. Russia (106), Caucasus (81), Siberia (56), Cf. Asia (20). Particularly rich are the faces of this estate of the lips. Warsaw (330), Petrokovskaya (316), Kherson (274), Grodno (250).

By gender and by locality, the estates are distributed as follows.

	European Russia								middle Asia
Nobles hereditary
Nobles personal
Clergy of all Christian denominations
Hereditary and personal honorary citizens
Peasants
Aliens

From this tablet it is impossible not to see that hereditary male nobles make up only a small group, less than half a million people, but they are still much more than merchants and honorary citizens.

It is interesting to take a closer look at the distribution of persons of the non-peasant class in cities and villages. It turns out that in 1897 more than half of the hereditary nobles (52.7%) lived outside the cities. After the events of 1905‑1906. this distribution changed significantly in many provinces, and many hereditary nobles moved out of their estates. Personal nobles and officials are fairly evenly distributed throughout the Empire, with the exception of Cf. Asia, where they make up only 0.2% of the population. Representatives of this class live mainly in cities (75%), as well as merchants (of which 80% are city dwellers). Most of the townspeople are also townspeople (56%). As for the peasants, only 6.7% of their total number is in the cities, but there are many of them in large, rapidly developing centers: in 1897 there were 745,905 of them in St. Petersburg and 661,628⁶* in Moscow. In recent years, thanks to the landlessness of the peasants under the law on November 9, 1906, in the hunger strike of 1911-1912, in very many cities there has been an unprecedented confluence of villagers looking for work and food.

Let us now see which estates are increasing over time, which are decreasing in numbers? Official statistics give us the opportunity to partly judge this. Compared with 1870, the following changes have taken place: the relative number of the nobility (hereditary and personal - we will talk about hereditary below, especially) has become larger. In 1870, there were 13 people for every 1000 * * and in 1897 already 15. On the contrary, the clergy moved back (from 9 people for every 1000 population in 1870 to 5 people for the same number in 1897). The percentage of nobles personal and employees remained unchanged. The percentage of urban estates (merchants, philistines, honorary citizens) increased greatly by 1897 (from 93 to 111.).

Let us now try to outline, so to speak, a statistical description of the main estates, namely the nobility, hereditary and personal, bureaucratic and military, then the clergy.

¹* Korkunov. Russian State Law. Ed. 7th vol. I, pp. 274, 280.

²* Ibid. Page 274.

³* There. Page 275.

⁴* Yearbook Center. Art. Committee of 1905 and 1909. The same is in the "General Compendium of Census Results".

⁵* For terrible facts illustrating this extinction, see P. Berlin's "Stepsons of Civilization". Ed. G. Lvovich, and N. Yadrintsev “Foreigners of Siberia”.

⁶* This information and the above table are borrowed by us from Art. D. Richter from 4 volumes. to Enz. words. Brockhaus.

⁷* Stat. Vremnik. Issue. X 1875

Estates are a sign of a feudal society, says the Marxist theory of socio-economic formations. Formally, modern Russia is a capitalist industrial and post-industrial state. In fact, the picture looks different. As a result of the liberal "exercises" of the last 25 years, neo-feudalism is taking shape in our country with all the ensuing consequences, among which the formation of estates becomes visible to the naked eye.

It is for this reason that many monarchists propose to legitimize the class division of society. This will make it easier in every way. So it will be more honest and fair to call a spade a spade. The emperor suggested what estates could be in modern Russia, taking into account the historical experience of a hundred years ago.

The closest historical experience related to the class division of society is documented in the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, which are in force on the territory of the Sovereign State of the Imperial Throne.

Analysis of the historical experience of estates in the Russian Empire

The last class structure of society that existed in Russia comes from the 19th century, when the legislation of the Russian Empire divided society into four estates: the nobility, the clergy, the peasantry, and city dwellers.

Nobility

Noble family of the early twentieth century

The nobility in the 19th century, as in the previous period, was an economically and politically active class. The nobles owned most of the land, were the owners of enterprises, infrastructure. The nobles served in the army of the Sovereign Emperor, and therefore were not taxed. Until 1861, they had a monopoly on the ownership of serfs. They formed the basis of the state apparatus, occupying all the key positions in it. During the reign of Alexander I, the nobility received new capitalist rights: to have factories and plants in the cities, to conduct trade along with the merchants. Also, the nobility was obliged to carry the spiritual meaning of their privileges - noble virtues, which was reflected in the Law "On the Nobility" of the Imperial Throne.

Clergy

Clergy at the beginning of the 20th century

The clergy in the 19th century, as always, was divided into black and white. However, the legal status of the clergy finally turned into a service one. On the one hand, the ministers of the church themselves received even greater privileges. On the other hand, the clergy included people directly serving in the church. The church was part of the state, and its affairs were managed by the Holy Synod, headed by a high-level official - the Chief Procurator.

Also in the 19th century, the practice of endowing individual members of the clergy with noble privileges became widespread. The best ministers of the church were given personal and hereditary nobility.

In total for the period 1825-1845. more than 10 thousand representatives of the clergy received noble rights.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the clergy practically did not change quantitatively. His social and legal status did not change.

Peasants

Peasants in the early twentieth century

Until 1861, feudal dependent peasants made up the bulk of the population of the Russian Empire. They were subdivided into landlord, state, sessional and appanage, that is, belonging to the royal family. Particularly difficult and ineffective for the level of development of agriculture in the 19th century was the situation of the landlord peasants, whom the landowners considered their property and disposed of their lives as they wanted.

The state over the years has taken a number of measures to improve the situation of the landowning peasants. On February 20, 1803, a decree on free cultivators was adopted. According to this decree, the landowners received the right to release their peasants into the wild for a ransom established by them. However, in fact, the law turned out to be incapacitated. No more than 1% of the serfs were freed. Since 1816, part of the state peasants was transferred to the position of military settlers. They were supposed to be engaged in agriculture and carry out military service. In 1837, a reform of the management of state peasants was carried out. The Ministry of State Property was established to manage them. The quitrent taxation was streamlined, the allotments of the state peasants were somewhat increased, and the organs of peasant self-government were regulated. In 1842, a decree on obligated peasants appeared. The landlords could provide the peasants with land for use, for which the peasants had to bear certain duties. The work of the sessional peasants was unproductive, as a result of which the use of hired labor began to increase more and more in industry. In 1840, breeders were allowed to release the possessory peasants.

After the peasant reform of Emperor Alexander II, the serfdom of the landlords over the peasants was abolished forever, and the peasants were declared free rural inhabitants with the empowerment of their civil rights. Peasants had to pay a poll tax, other taxes and fees, gave recruits, could be subjected to corporal punishment. The land on which the peasants worked belonged to the landlords, and until the peasants redeemed it, they were called temporarily liable, and bore various duties in favor of the landowners. The peasants of each village who emerged from serfdom united in rural societies. For the purposes of administration and court, several rural societies formed a volost. In the villages and volosts, the peasants were granted self-government.

Urban population

Merchants of the early 20th century

Urban population in the first half of the XIX century. was divided into five groups: honorary citizens, merchants, craftsmen, petty bourgeois, small proprietors and working people, i.e. employed.

A special group of eminent citizens, which included large capitalists who owned capital over 50 thousand rubles. wholesale merchants, owners of ships from 1807 were called first-class merchants, and from 1832 - honorary citizens. Honorary citizens were divided into hereditary and personal. The title of hereditary honorary citizen was awarded to the big bourgeoisie, children of personal nobles, priests and clerks, artists, agronomists, artists of imperial theaters, etc. The title of personal honorary citizen was awarded to persons who were adopted by hereditary nobles and honorary citizens, as well as those who graduated from technical schools, teacher's seminaries and artists of private theaters. Honorary citizens enjoyed a number of privileges: they were exempted from personal duties, from corporal punishment, etc.

The merchant class was divided into two guilds: the first included wholesalers, the second - retailers. As in the previous period, merchants retained their privileges. The group of workshops consisted of artisans assigned to the workshops. They were divided into masters and apprentices. The workshops had their own governing bodies. The majority of the urban population were philistines, a significant part of whom worked in factories and factories for hire. Their legal status has not changed.

in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, which determined the provisions of the estates, continues to operate.

The law distinguished four main estates: the nobility, the clergy, the urban and rural population. A special class group of honorary citizens was singled out from the city dwellers.

The current state of estates in Russia

According to Russian monarchists, in modern Russia there can be three estates - the nobility, the clergy, the Cossacks and the city dwellers. How will modern estates differ from what was in Russia 100 years ago?

The first two estates will most quickly and successfully be able to adapt to the criteria established by the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire. The nobility and clergy in modern Russia are represented by those social groups that are able to pass on a high social status by inheritance. In the case of the Russian nobility, these are big officials and businessmen. The clergy can also be distinguished according to the same criteria of church service as before the revolution.

The Cossacks must become a true service class in Russia. It will be a modern contract army, which is formed on the principles of continuity of generations. The main feature of the Cossacks should be the granting of privileges for the duration of service.

Most of the problems are in the class definition of other categories of Russian citizens, which, as a result of the separation of the nobility and clergy, will remain approximately 80% of the population. The class "City dwellers" should be subdivided into entrepreneurs, the creative class, and employees.

Entrepreneurs should include farmers, as well as small and medium-sized businesses in cities. The social group "Creative class" is represented by people whose income is formed due to the product of intellectual property. Employees are all other workers who sell their labor and time for money.

Estates in the Russian Empire in the 18th century.

In the 18th century, with a significant lag behind the West, in Russia 4 estates finally took shape from the class groups of Moscow society: the gentry (nobility), the clergy, the petty bourgeois (from urban townspeople) and the peasantry .. The main feature of the estate system is the presence and transmission of inheritance of personal status rights and corporate rights and obligations.

Formation of the nobility. The nobility was formed from different categories of service people (boyars, okolnichs, clerks, clerks, children of boyars, etc.), received the name of the gentry under Peter I, was renamed under Catherine II into the nobility (in the acts of the Legislative Commission of 1767), turned over the course of a century from the service class to the ruling, privileged. Part of the former service people (nobles and boyar children) settled on. outskirts of the state, by decrees of Peter I in 1698-1703, formalizing the gentry, was not enrolled in this estate, but transferred under the name of single-dvortsy to the position of state peasants.

The leveling of the position of feudal lords of all ranks was completed by the decree of Peter I in 1714 "On the uniform inheritance", according to which the estates were equated with estates, assigned to the nobles on the right of ownership. In 1722, the "Table of Ranks" established methods for obtaining nobility by length of service. She secured the status of the ruling class for the gentry.

According to the Table of Ranks, all those in the public service (civilian, military, naval) were divided into 14 ranks or ranks, from the highest field marshal and chancellor to the lowest - adjutant under lieutenants and collegiate registrar. All persons, from rank 14 to 8, became personal, and from rank 8, - hereditary nobles. Hereditary nobility was passed on to the wife, children and distant descendants through the male line. Married daughters acquired the estate status of her husband (if he was higher). Until 1874, of the children born before receiving hereditary nobility, only one son received the status of a father, the rest were recorded as "honorary citizens" (this state was established in 1832), after 1874 - all.

Under Peter I, the service of the nobility with compulsory education began at the age of 15 and was for life. Anna Ioannovna somewhat eased their situation by limiting their service to 25 years and attributing its beginning to the age of 20. She also allowed one of the sons or brothers in a noble family to stay at home and take care of the household.

In 1762, Peter III, who had been on the throne for a short time, abolished by a special decree not only the obligation to educate the nobles, but also the obligation to serve the nobility. And Catherine II's "Charter on the Rights and Benefits of the Russian Nobility" in 1785 finally turned the nobility into a "noble" class.

So, the main sources of the nobility were in the XVIII century. birth and seniority. The length of service included the acquisition of nobility through an award and an indigenat for foreigners (according to the "Table of Ranks"), through receiving an order (according to the "Charter of Honor" of Catherine II). In the 19th century higher education and a scientific degree will be added to them.

Belonging to the noble rank was fixed by an entry in the “Velvet Book”, instituted in 1682 during the destruction of localism, and from 1785 by entering into local (provincial) lists - noble books, divided into 6 parts (according to the sources of the nobility): award, military length of service, civil length of service, indigenat, title (order), prescription. Since Peter I, the estate was subordinate to a special department - the King of Arms office, and since 1748 - to the Department of Heraldry under the Senate.

Rights and privileges of the nobility. 1. Exclusive right to own land. 2. The right to own serfs (with the exception of the 1st half of the 18th century, when serfs could be owned by persons of all statuses: townspeople, priests, and even peasants). 3. Personal exemption from taxes and duties, from corporal punishment. 4. The right to build factories and factories (since Catherine II only in the countryside), to develop minerals on their land. 5. Since 1771, the exclusive right to serve in a civil department, in the bureaucracy (after the ban on recruiting persons from taxable estates), and since 1798, to form an officer corps in the army. 6. The corporate right to have the title of "nobility", which could be taken away only by the court of "equals" or by decision of the king. 7. Finally, according to the “Charter of Letters” of Catherine II, the nobles received the right to form special noble societies, to elect their own representative bodies and their own class court. But this was no longer their exclusive right.

Belonging to a noble class gave the right to a coat of arms, a uniform, riding in carriages drawn by four, dressing lackeys in special liveries, etc.

The organs of estate self-government were district and provincial noble assemblies, held once every three years, at which the leaders of the nobility and their assistants - deputies, as well as members of noble courts were elected. Everyone who met the qualifications participated in the elections: settlement, age (25 years), gender (only men), property (income from villages not less than 100 rubles), service (not lower than the chief officer rank) and integrity.

Noble assemblies acted as legal entities, had property rights, participated in the distribution of duties, checked the genealogical book, excluded defamed members, filed complaints to the emperor and the Senate, etc. The leaders of the nobility had a serious influence on the provincial and district authorities.

Formation of the class of philistines. The original name was citizens (“Regulations of the Chief Magistrate”), then, following the model of Poland and Lithuania, they began to be called petty bourgeois. The estate was created gradually, as Peter I introduced European models of the middle class (third estate). It included former guests, townspeople, lower groups of service people - gunners, tinkerers, etc.

"Regulations of the Chief Magistrate" Peter I divided the emerging estate into 2 groups: regular and irregular citizens. Regular, in turn, consisted of two guilds. The first guild included bankers, noble merchants, doctors, pharmacists, skippers, silversmiths, icons, painters; similar." Craftsmen, as in the West, were divided into workshops. Guilds and workshops were headed by foremen, who often performed the functions of state bodies. Irregular citizens or "vile people" (in the sense of low origin - from serfs, serfs, etc.) were classified as all "acquired in hired labor and menial work."

The final registration of the estate of the townspeople took place in 1785 according to the “Charter on the rights and benefits of the cities of the Russian Empire” of Catherine II. By this time, the entrepreneurial stratum in the cities was noticeably “strengthened, in order to stimulate trade, customs barriers and duties, monopolies and other restrictions were eliminated, freedom to establish industrial enterprises (that is, freedom of entrepreneurship) was announced, and peasant crafts were legalized. In 1785, the population cities was finally divided according to the property principle into 6 categories: 1) "real city dwellers", owners of real estate within the city; 2) merchants of three guilds; 3) artisans; 4) foreigners and non-residents; 5) eminent citizens; 6) the rest of the townspeople population.Belonging to the class was fixed by entering in the city philistine book.Belonging to the guild of merchants was determined by the amount of capital: the first - from 10 to 50 thousand rubles, the second - from 5 to 10 thousand, the third - from 1 to 5 thousand.

The exclusive right of the bourgeois class was to engage in crafts and trade. Duties included taxes and recruitment. True, there were many exceptions. Already in 1775, Catherine II freed the inhabitants of the settlements, who had a capital of more than 500 rubles, from the poll tax, replacing it with a one percent tax on the declared capital. In 1766, merchants were released from recruitment. Instead of each recruit, they paid first 360, and then 500 rubles. They were also exempt from corporal punishment. Merchants, especially those of the First Guild, were granted certain honorary rights (rides in carriages and carriages).

The corporate right of the philistine estate also included the creation of associations and self-government bodies. According to the "Charter of Letters", urban inhabitants who had reached the age of 25 and had a certain income (capital, the percentage fee on which was not less than 50 rubles), united in a city society. The assembly of its members elected the mayor and vowels (deputies) of city dumas. All six ranks of the urban population sent their elected representatives to the General Duma, and 6 representatives of each rank elected by the General Duma worked in the six-member Duma to carry out current affairs. Elections took place every 3 years. The main field of activity was the urban economy and everything that "serves for the benefit and need of the city." Of course, the governors supervised local governments, including the spending of city sums. However, these sums, donated by the merchants for urban improvement, for the construction of schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, were sometimes very significant. They, as planned by Catherine II, played an important role in the "profit and decoration of the city." It was not for nothing that Alexander I, having come to power in 1801, immediately confirmed the “Charter of Letters” canceled by Paul I, restored all the “rights and benefits” of the townspeople and all Catherine’s city institutions.

Peasants. In the XVIII century. several categories of the peasantry took shape. The category of state peasants was formed from the former black-mossed and from the peoples who paid yasak. Later, the already mentioned odnodvortsy, descendants of Moscow service people, settled on the southern outskirts of the state, who did not know communal life, joined its composition. In 1764, by decree of Catherine II, the secularization of church estates was carried out, which were transferred to the jurisdiction of the College of Economy. Peasants taken away from the church began to be called economic. But from 1786 they also passed into the category of state peasants.

Privately owned (landlord) peasants absorbed all the former categories of dependent people (serfs, serfs) who belonged to factories and plants since the time of Peter I (possession). Before Catherine II, this category of peasants was also replenished at the expense of clergy who remained behind the state, retired priests and deacons, deacons and sextons. Catherine II stopped the transformation of persons of spiritual origin into serfdom and blocked all other ways of replenishing it (marriage, loan agreement, hiring and serving, captivity), except for two: the birth and distribution of state lands with peasants into private hands. Distributions - awards were especially widely practiced by Catherine herself and her son, Paul 1, and were terminated in 1801 by one of the first decrees of Alexander I. Since that time, the only source of replenishment of the serfs was birth.

In 1797, from the palace peasants, by decree of Paul I, another category was formed - appanage peasants (on the lands of the royal appanage), whose position was similar to that of state peasants. They were the property of the imperial family.

In the XVIII century. the position of the peasants, especially those belonging to the landowners, deteriorated markedly. Under Peter I, they turned into a thing that could be sold, donated, exchanged (without land and separately from the family). In 1721, it was recommended to stop the sale of children separately from their parents in order to "calm down the cry" in the peasant environment. But the separation of families continued until 1843.

The landowner used the labor of serfs at his own discretion, dues and corvee were not limited by any law, and the previous recommendations of the authorities to take from them “according to strength” are a thing of the past. The peasants were deprived not only of personal, but also of property rights, for all their property was considered as belonging to their owner. It did not regulate the law and the right of the court of the landowner. He was not allowed only the use of the death penalty and the extradition of the peasants instead of himself to the right (under Peter I). True, the same king in the instructions to the governors of 1719. ordered to identify the landowners who ruined the peasants, and to transfer the management of such estates to relatives.

Restrictions on the rights of serfs, starting from the 1730s, were enshrined in laws. They were forbidden to acquire real estate, open factories, work on a contract basis, undertake promissory notes, incur obligations without the permission of the owner, and enroll in a guild. The landowners were allowed to use corporal punishment and send the peasants to the chastity houses. The procedure for filing complaints against landowners became more complicated.

Impunity contributed to the growth of crimes among the landowners. An illustrative example is the story of the landowner Saltykova, who killed more than 30 of her serfs, who was exposed and sentenced to death (replaced with life imprisonment) only after a complaint against her fell into the hands of Empress Catherine II.

Only after the uprising of E. I. Pugachev, in which the serfs took an active part, did the government begin to strengthen state control over their position and take steps towards softening the serfdom. The release of peasants to freedom was legalized, including after serving a recruiting duty (together with his wife), after exile in Siberia, for a ransom at the request of the landowner (since 1775 without land, and since 1801 - the Decree of Paul I on "free cultivators" - with the land).

Despite the hardships of serfdom, exchange and entrepreneurship developed among the peasantry, and “capitalist” people appeared. The law allowed the peasants to trade, first with individual goods, then even with "overseas countries", and in 1814 persons of all fortunes were allowed to trade at fairs. Many prosperous peasants who had grown rich in trade bought themselves out of serfdom and, even before the abolition of serfdom, constituted a significant part of the emerging class of entrepreneurs.

The state peasants were, in comparison with the serfs, in a much better position. Their personal rights were never subjected to such restrictions as the personal rights of serfs. Their taxes were moderate, they could buy land (with the preservation of duties), and were engaged in entrepreneurial activities. Attempts to curtail their property rights (to take farms and contracts, to acquire real estate in cities and counties, to be bound by promissory notes) did not have such a detrimental effect on the state of the economy of state peasants, especially those who lived on the outskirts (in Siberia). Here, the communal arrangements preserved by the state (land redistribution, mutual responsibility for the payment of taxes), which hindered the development of the private economy, were destroyed much more vigorously.

Self-government was of greater importance among the state peasants. From ancient times, the elders elected at the gatherings played a prominent role in them. According to the provincial reform of 1775, the state peasants, like the other estates, received their own court. Under Paul I, volost self-governing organizations were created. Each volost (with a certain number of villages and no more than 3 thousand souls) could elect a volost administration, which consisted of a volost head, a headman and a clerk. Elders and tenths were elected in the villages. All these bodies performed financial, police and judicial functions.

Clergy. The Orthodox clergy consisted of two parts: white, parish (from ordination) and black, monastic (from tonsure). Only the first constituted the actual estate, for the second part had no heirs (monasticism gave a vow of celibacy). The white clergy occupied the lowest positions in the church hierarchy: clergy (from deacon to protopresbyter) and clergy (clerks, sexton). The highest posts (from bishop to metropolitan) belonged to the black clergy.

In the XVIII century. the clergy class became hereditary and closed, since the law forbade persons of other classes to take the priesthood. The exit from the estate, for a number of reasons of a formal nature, was extremely difficult. Of the class rights of the clergy, one can note freedom from personal taxes, from recruitment, from military quarters. It had a privilege in the field of judiciary. In general courts, the priesthood was judged only for especially grave criminal offenses, civil cases with lay people were resolved in the presence of special representatives of the clergy.

The clergy could not engage in activities incompatible with the clergy, including trade, crafts, maintenance of farms and contracts, the production of alcoholic beverages, etc. As we have already seen, in the 18th century. it also lost its main privilege - the right to own estates and serfs. Church ministers were transferred "on a salary."

In the Russian Empire, other Christian and non-Christian denominations coexisted freely with Orthodoxy. Lutheran churches were built in cities and large villages, and from the middle of the 18th century. and Catholic churches. Mosques were built in places of residence of Muslims, pagodas were built for Buddhists. However, the conversion from Orthodoxy to another faith remained prohibited and severely punished (in the 1730s, there was a known case of an officer being burned in a wooden frame).

In any society that has crossed the stage of primitiveness and is at the stage of civilization, inequality necessarily appears. Society is divided into different groups of people, with some groups in a high position in society, and others in a low one.

Historians have put forward two ways to distinguish such groups of people in medieval society. The first way is the allocation of estates, that is, such groups of people who have strictly defined rights and obligations in society, which are inherited. Estates are closed: it is very difficult or almost impossible to move from one estate to another. This means that in what class a person was born, in that he, as a rule, lived all his life. In the Middle Ages, there were three estates, each of which had a specific occupation. According to the prestige and importance of this occupation, the estates received numbers. The people of the Middle Ages clearly knew what class they belonged to. The idea of ​​division into estates was supported by Christian teaching: it was believed that God himself singled out three estates (therefore, the number of the estate determined his proximity to God) and assigned each person a place in one of them. Therefore, to strive to move from one estate to another meant to oppose "God's will." Only the first estate was replenished at the expense of people from other estates, although belonging to the estate of those at war and working was considered hereditary. In some rare cases, the right to move from one estate to another was granted by the king.

The closest to God was considered the first estate, which consisted entirely of the clergy (people who served in churches and monasteries: monks, priests, bishops and above up to the pope). It was called “prayers”, because its main merit to society was that it atoned for the sins of people belonging to other classes before God, took care of their spiritual healing. The clergy were to serve as an example of faith and morality for the whole society. The second estate was called "warring" and consisted of warrior knights of various levels: from the richest and most influential (dukes and counts) to the poor, who could hardly find money to buy a horse. The main merit of the representatives of the second estate before society was that they shed their blood in battles, protecting the fatherland, the king and people belonging to other estates from external enemies. Finally, the so-called “third estate” was the furthest from God, which included all other people: the majority were peasants (they were engaged in agriculture and partly handicraft), and the smaller part were townspeople (they were also called burghers, they were engaged in crafts and trade), people of "liberal professions" (wandering artists, teachers, doctors, etc.), etc. The third estate was also called "workers", since the people who were part of it created food and everything necessary for themselves and the first two estates. It was only through the hard work of the Third Estate that the other two could carry out their duties.

But the allocation of estates did not take into account the most important thing for the Middle Ages: who owned the main wealth for that era - land. Therefore, historians have put forward another way to distinguish groups in medieval society - to distinguish classes. Classes are distinguished not on the basis of the rights and obligations of each person, but on the basis of what kind of property a person had. Historians have identified two main classes in medieval society: the class of feudal lords, whose representatives owned land plots, and the class of peasants, who did not have their own land. In order to feed himself, the peasant needed to take land from the feudal lord for rent, but for this he was obliged to bear special duties in favor of the feudal lord. There were two of these duties: either the peasant gave away part of the product received on the rented plot (crop, meat, etc.) (such an obligation was called quitrent), or he had to work on the land of the feudal lord several days a week (on the plot that the feudal lord did not rented out to peasants) - such a duty was called corvée (the word meant that the land belonged to the "master" - the feudal lord). The class of feudal lords included the king, knights and the church (clergy), since it was they who owned the land in the Middle Ages.

Over time, the feudal lords attached the peasants to the land: if earlier the peasant could move from one feudal lord to another when he did not like the growth of corvée and dues, now the peasant, together with his family, was always forced to work for his master. Moreover, the feudal lords received judicial power over the peasants (the disputes of all the peasants living on the feudal lord's estate were resolved by the feudal lord himself) and the right to interfere in the private life of the peasants (to allow or not allow them to move, marry, etc.). This complete dependence of the peasant on the feudal lord (both land, and judicial, and personal) was called serfdom.

Questions:

1. Make a table "Differences between estates and classes", independently choosing criteria from the studied text

criteria	classes	estates

2. Fill in the diagram: "Two ways of dividing medieval society into groups"

class name	who was in	duty in society

class name	relation to property
	had __________, but did not work for it and rented it to _____________ did not have their own __________, but rented it from _________ for two duties - ___________ (cultivating the land of the feudal lord) and ____________ (giving part of the crop to the feudal lord)

3. Why were the estates numbered from one to three?

4. Estates in the Middle Ages were divided into higher and lower: the higher were honorary, their representatives had more rights than duties, while the lower ones had the opposite. Think about which classes belonged to the higher, and which - to the lower?

5. The position of which of the estates was the most difficult? What were the demands of this class?

6. What was considered the main wealth in the Middle Ages? Justify your answer with the available knowledge about the Middle Ages.

7. What classes possessed landed property in the Middle Ages and therefore can be considered a class of feudal lords?

8. What are duties? What were the main duties in the Middle Ages?

9. Why were attempts to move from one class to another considered sinful?

10. Did wealth affect what class a person belonged to?

11. How did relations develop between the classes of peasants and feudal lords?

12. What is serfdom?

13. Remember, from which word did the name of feudalism and the estate of feudal lords come from?

14. In the Middle Ages, the peasants did not own land, but at the end of the ancient era, many peasants had land (in Rome, many released slaves received land, among the Germans the land belonged to peasant communities). Think and name several ways in which the peasants lost their land, and the feudal lords received it.