Russia under the Old regime

176

men to women in this group may be set, following data obtained in the 1897 census, at 48 to 52, which yields a figure of 131,000 men.

According to the 1858-9 census, in these 37 provinces lived approximately 90,000 serf-owners of both sexes. Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing the ratio of males to females among the serf-owners. But if we assume the ratio to have been two to one in favour of the males, we arrive at the figure of 60,000 hereditary male dvoriane owning estates; if the ratio is assumed to have been 1:1, the number of male serf-owners drops to 45,000. In the former case, one out of two male dvoriane (60,000 out of 131,000) had a landed estate worked with serf labour; in the latter, only one out of three (45,000 out of 131,000).

Setting aside the two-thirds of hereditary dvoriane of both sexes who had no serfs (184,000 out of 274,000) let us inquire into the condition of those who did. In imperial Russia, the possession of 100 'souls' was regarded as the minimum which a dvorianin needed to qualify as a gentleman. This criterion, employed already in the eighteenth century, received official sanction from Nicholas 1 in an edict of 1831 which decreed that only dvoriane with 100 or more 'souls' had the right to a direct vote in the Assemblies of the Dvoriane. Following this standard, landlords with fewer than 100 male serfs can be defined as in varying degrees impoverished. Those with more can be subdivided into the moderately wealthy 'gentry' (100-1,000 'souls') and the grand seigneurs (over 1,000). With these criteria in mind, let us look at the distribution of serf-ownership in Russia proper during the imperial period: TABLE 1 Serf-owning Landlords, Male and Female, in European Russia1* Category in terms of male 1777 1858-9 serfs ('souk') owned Percentage Number Percentage Grand Seigneurs ^

(over 1,000 souls) 1