The Rights and privileges of the Polish-Lithuanian nobility: a benchmark for the Russian empire’s legislation of the latter half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century?

ENThe reforms carried out in the second half of the eighteenth century marked a caesura in the history of the Russian nobility (дворянство/dvorianstvo). Russian historiographers emphasize the importance of two reforms: relaxing the bonds between the state and the nobility by the publication of the Manifesto of 18 February 1762 granting freedom to the nobility (hereafter, ‘[the] Manifesto’) and the consolidation of estate-bound rights and privileges set forth in the Charter of the Russian Nobility (Gramota-, hereafter, ‘[the] [Noble] Charter’) of 21 April 1785 (dates according to the Julian calendar). Importantly, the former statute emancipated nobles from obligatory state service, whilst the latter granted them personal and corporate rights. All this was meant to modernize the relationship between the state and the upper social class, which was a social group no less dependent than serfs—as described by Alexander Romanovych-Slavatinsky, a nineteenth-century researcher of the history of the Russian nobility. They were burdened with compulsory military or civil service as well as participation in a variety of commissions or similar bodies; noble youth were expected to study and be trained in order to join the ranks of clerks and officials. A nobleman could be instructed to settle down in the capital city. He was subject to caning for shunning his duties. The system once instituted by Tsar Peter I offered no legal way to free oneself from these obligations. [Extract, p. 292]

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