classical curriculum; in the capitals and in regional centers they spoke common
languages (French, German, Russian) and engaged in the same diversions (cards
and dancing, theater, Masonic lodges). Their most fundamental common denom-
inator was service to the Russian ruler, who in turn rewarded them generously as
an estate.
ECONOMIC DIVERSITY IN THE NOBILITY
An element that would seem to militate against corporate solidarity, however, was
economic diversity. There were tremendous economic inequalities among those who
claimed to be nobles in the eighteenth century. When owning fewer than 25 male
adult serfs connoted poverty, 100 serfs was the threshold of living comfortably, and
500 serfs was the bridge between middling and wealthy, perhaps half the nobility was
impoverished. Empire-wide statistics for 1762 suggest that 51 percent of nobles
owned fewer than 21 serfs; 31 percent owned 21–100, and 15 percent owned
100 – 500; only 2 percent owned 500 to 1,000, and only 1 percent owned more
than that. Even as the economy was booming, a study of 1777 showed that in some
gubernii more than half of the noblemen owned fewer than 21 serfs—Chernigov and
Poltava recorded 65 percent impoverished nobility, Kursk 60 percent, and Kharkiv,
Smolensk, Novgorod, and Voronezh gubernii about 50 percent. Those who could
really live the life of a noble—dressing, entertaining, and frequenting the capitals for
the social season—were only 1.1 percent of nobles in 1720s, 3 percent in 1762,
4 percent in 1777. These were the men like Count N. P. Sheremetev, who owned over
185,000 male and female serfs and was famous for his lavish estates, entertainments,
and private serf opera and theatrical troupes.
One culprit here was the age-old practice of partible inheritance, which persisted
despite Peter I’s 1714 legislation to restrict landed inheritance to a single heir.
Nobles simply ignored the law (a sensible economic choice, inasmuch as there were
few other avenues to earn income), and Empress Anna abolished it in 1731. Sons
had a claim to equal shares of an estate; daughters and wives received smaller shares
for dowry or widow’s bench. As noble families thusly divided property, fortunes
eroded. As a rule Russia’s nobles lived beyond their means, struggling to maintain
proper households, acquire European educations and dress in style. The result by
the second half of the eighteenth century was widespread indebtedness. The Noble
Bank established in 1754 provided mortgages guaranteed with serfs and estates;
other lending institutions—the Moscow and St. Petersburg Foundling Homes, an
Auxiliary Noble Bank, Boards of Welfare in gubernia capitals after 1775—also
became active lenders in the last decades of the century. Loan terms were generous
(6 percent interest) and foreclosures were rare—it was in the state’s interest to keep
its officer and administrative class viable. But the tide of debt simply mounted.
Turning to government service offered little resort, as state salaries were low.
The role played by women in property ownership was probably a contributing
problem here, but also a form of solution. Women’s status in families arose across
the century, not only because of Europeanized culture and some efforts Peter I had
Nobility, Culture, and Intellectual Life 431