Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

by Robert K. Massie

In 1762, the Russian population of roughly twenty million consisted of hierarchal layers: the sovereign, the nobility, the church, merchants and townspeople, and, at the base, up to ten million peasants. Some of the peasants were partially free; a few completely; most not at all. Serfs were peasants in permanent bondage to land owned by the crown, the state, the church, private owners—almost all in the nobility—or to a variety of industrial and mining enterprises. According to a census taken between 1762 and 1764, the crown owned five hundred thousand serfs who worked on land owned by the ruler and his or her family. Two million eight hundred thousand serfs were classified as state peasants, owned by the state and living on land or in villages belonging to the state but allowed to meet their obligations by paying money or labor dues to the state. One million had been the property of the Orthodox Church; these were the serfs Catherine had taken from the church and transferred to the state. The largest number of Russian serfs—five and a half million, or 56 percent of the total—belonged to members of the nobility.