Russia under the Old regime

DVORIANSTVO

solidified the English nobility's hold on the land. Under 'strict settlement' a proprietor could alienate an estate only for as long as he was alive. By the eighteenth century, an estimated half of England was subject to this arrangement, which had the effect both of keeping this much of the country's territory in perpetuity in the hands of the same noble families and out of those of the nouveaux riches. Ample opportunities to earn a living outside agriculture, of course, made such practices feasible. Over the centuries, the richer English nobility steadily expanded its holdings at the expense of the smaller proprietors, causing land ownership to become heavily concentrated. It is estimated that in 1790 between 14,000 and 25,000 families owned 70 to 85 per cent of the cultivated land in England and Wales.12 Even the least affluent in this select group drew from their properties incomes large enough to lead the life of gentlemen.

Elsewhere in western Europe the economic position of the nobility was perhaps less brilliant but still throughout the west the application of entail and primogeniture assured at least the wealthier landed families of a strong economic base. The meshing of this landed wealth with administrative functions enabled the western nobility to resist royal absolutism in its most extreme forms.

As the following statistics will show, in Russia the situation was diametrically the opposite; land was not accumulated but relentlessly cut up into ever smaller lots, with the result that the overwhelming majority of dvoriane lacked economic independence and could not afford to live in the style of landed gentry.

In 1858-9, there were in the Russian empire approximately one million dvoriane of both sexes. Of this number, slightly more than a third belonged to the category of non-hereditary ilichnoe) dvorianstvo legally barred from owning serfs (see above, p. 124). The number of hereditary dvoriane of both sexes is estimated at 610,000.13 More than half of this number - 323,000 - were Polish szlachcice who had come under Russian rule following the Partitions. These can be ignored for our purposes, since they directed their political aspirations towards the restoration of Polish independence rather than reform in the internal government of Russia. There were also Turco-Tatar, Georgian, German and other non-Russian nobles who must be set aside. After these exclusions, there remain approximately 274,000 hereditary dvoriane, male and female, residing in the 37 provinces constituting Russia proper.* The ratio of

* These are the gubernii of Archangel, Astrakhan, Vladimir, Vologda, Voronezh, Viatka, the Region of the Don Cossacks, Ekaterinoslavl, Kazan, Kaluga, Kostroma, Kursk, Moscow, Nizhnii Novgorod, Novgorod, Olonetsk, Orenburg, Orel, Penza, Perm, Poltava, Pskov, Riazan, Samara, St Petersburg, Saratov, Simbirsk, Smolensk, Taurida, Tambov, Tver, Tula, Ufa, Kharkov, Kherson, Chernigov and Iaroslavl.