from Muscovite gentry (deti boiarskie) and other social groups from Cossacks to
runaway serfs who manned steppe garrisons in the seventeenth century in black
earth provinces of Kursk, Orel, Tambov, and Voronezh. Here the state awarded the
gentry among them (and often others as well)pomest’ewith right to own serfs. But
labor was so difficult tofind that over time many farmed their own plots. As the
steppe was pacified and the frontier pushed south and east, these“single house-
holders”moved with it and struggled to retain historical privileges and status. Many
impoverished gentry families fell into this status as Peter I assembled garrison
troops. The state saw them in essence as state peasants: in the household tax of
1679 they were included with taxed peasants and under Peter I were counted in
poll tax and recruitment levies.
Odnodvortsy, however, claimed quasi-noble social status based on their historical
right to own serfs and land. Since they were valuable as a border militia and cheap
since they supported themselves with farming, the state gradually accepted their
claims, recognizingodnodvoretsas a legal category that connoted a taxpayer who
could own serfs (if they could afford them) and could buy or sell their land. By mid-
century when men were recruited from lesser groups (soldiers, artillerymen) into
garrison service, they aspired to this transitional status. The state responded by
trying to create a cohesive social group: it forbadeodnodvortsyto sell their lands to
outsiders and to fall into dependency to large landlords. Over the century these
small farmers cultivated a corporate identity, which they clearly enunciated in their
reports to the Legislative Commission in 1767. As noble status became more tightly
defined and advantageous with the 1775 administrative reforms and 1785 Charter
to the Nobility, manyodnodvortsytried to move up in military ranks to be declared
full noblemen, but few succeeded. In the 1780s, approximately 750,000odnod-
vortsyowned only 22,000 male serfs and many were in fact landless. They endured
on the uneasy edge between peasant and servitor well into the nineteenth century.
TAX AND LABOR: PEASANT OBLIGATIONS
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Odnodvortsyresented paying taxes, a marker of low status as well as a real burden for
the majority of the empire’s subjects. At the end of the century about 89 percent of
the empire’s population was peasants, all of whom, regardless of legal status, paid
taxes. After thousands of peasants were taken from church ownership in 1764,
about 56 percent of peasants were serfs belonging to the nobility, while the rest
were various categories of state peasants. All peasants paid poll tax to the state,
quitrent to the state or landlord, and cash payments to communes for collective
responsibilities, and by far the lowest burden on the peasant community was direct
taxation.
As we have seen in Chapter 15, the poll tax stayed the same (70 kopecks per
head) from 1724 to 1794, the state deferring to the nobility. Quitrent (obrok) rates
did, however, vary, as did landlords’application of this fee. In the early eighteenth
century the rate of quitrent for state and landlord peasants stayed about even, but
360 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801