336 CODIFYING RUSSIAN LAWThe method used for compiling the Digest led not only to innovationsand creations of norms and concepts, it also brought about the simpli-
fication or destruction of existing legal relationships. The most in-
teresting instance (and apparently the only one to have been examined
by jurists so far), involved the definition of personal legal status or
membership in a legally recognized estate. Starting from the premise
- historically quite correct - that in Russia the legal status of a person
was a function of the nature of his service to the state, the Digest
recognized four estates: nobility, clergy, inhabitants of towns, and
inhabitants of the countryside. The nobility had been an estate since
Muscovite times, and very much like a corporation (in the Western
medieval sense) since the 18th century. The clergy and the townspeople
had become corporations (also in the Ancien Regime sense) in the 18th
century. As far as these three classes were concerned, the Digest only
fixed and elaborated the legal implications of their status. The great
innovation, however, concerned the rural population, the overwhelming
majority of the Russian people. In Speransky's time, the rural settlers
were not an uniform and homogeneous group, class, or even estate. The
Digest disregarded this situation completely. It failed to distinguish
between serfs and non serfs (prob ably a reflection of the belief or hope
that it would be only a temporary distinction). More important still,
Speransky and his assistants overlooked completely the great social and
legal complexity of the peasantry, a complexity which was the result of
an important and interesting historical development. The peasants in
Russia enjoyed a great diversity of status and rights, a diversity that
might be useful in bringing about a fundamental reform of the peasant
class (along the lines of equa1.ization of status contemplated by Spe-
ransky in his projects for the local administration). As in the case of
the other classes, peasant status, too, was determined by service to the
state. By 1830 the peasantry comprised not only the original tillers of
the soil, but also various types of servicemen. There were personally
free peasants whose status and livelihood depended entirely on services
they rendered to the state (for example, the maintenance of postal
relays). In border regions, there were groups of free peasants, often of
non-Russian ethnic origin, who possessed their land in return for
military frontier service or the payment of a special tribute (not a tax).
In the Western provinces, there existed also some individuals who lived
on the land, paid taxes like ordinary peasants, but enjoyed personal
freedom and special legal privileges, as they were descendants of the
local service nobility.
Speransky's Digest made a clean sweep of this variety. The historical