Social estates in the Russian Empire

Social estates in the Russian Empire were denoted by the term soslovie (sosloviye), which approximately corresponds to the notion of the

1. Nobility was subdivided into Hereditary nobility (
   agnatic) line, and Personal nobility (Russian: личное дворянство) which could, for instance, be acquired by admission to orders of knighthood of the Russian Empire
   . It was transferable only to the wife.
2. Clergy was subdivided into "white" (priests) and "black" (monks).
3. Urban dwellers (Городские обыватели) were categorized into потомственные почетные граждане (hereditary distinguished citizens), личные почетные граждане(personal distinguished citizens), merchantry (
   personal taxes, military service obligation (рекрутская повинность), corporal punishments, etc. Distinguished citizenship was available for persons with a scientific or scholar degree, graduates of certain schools, people of arts and distinguished merchants and industrialists subject to certain conditions. Dependent families were usually included into the estate of the head of the household. Urban commoners included people who had some real estate
   in a town, were engaged in some trade, craft, or service, and paid taxes. Subject to these conditions, a person could assign himself into this category, which was hereditary, and one may be excluded from it in the court of law or by the urban commoner's self-government (мещанская управа). Some of the category of rural dwellers (сельские обыватели) had permanent residence in towns, and they were correspondingly classified as "urban peasants" (городовые крестьяне).
4. Peasantry- Rural dwellers who mainly subsisted on agriculture. This estate made up the great majority of the population and was obliged to provide the state with money in the form of taxes as well as young men to be trained as soldiers.
5. inorodtsy (инородцы) estate, that included non-Russian and non-Orthodox native peoples of Siberia, Central Asia or Caucasus. As the Russian Empire expanded, different indigenous groups were granted privileges that differentiated them from the Russian peasantry, such as reduction or exemption of certain taxation, limited self-administration (including religious affairs), or exemptions from military service. An inorodets who converted to Orthodox Christianity was excluded from this estate and included into one of the other ones, most often peasantry, though sometimes allowed to maintain some of their privileges (such as exemption from military service or poll tax).^[1]

There also existed the military estate, which included lower military ranks (higher ranks were associated with the estate of dvoryans), and