The chief practical result of the efforts made by Peter and Catherine to create a bourgeoisie was that the inhabitants of the towns were more systematically arranged in categories for the purpose of taxation, and that the taxes were increased.  All those parts of the new administration which had no direct relation to the fiscal interests of the Government had very little vitality in them.  The whole system had been arbitrarily imposed on the people, and had as motive only the Imperial will.  Had that motive power been withdrawn and the burghers left to regulate their own municipal affairs, the system would immediately have collapsed.  Rathhaus, burgomasters, guilds, aldermen, and all the other lifeless shadows which had been called into existence by Imperial ukaz would instantly have vanished into space.  In this fact we have one of the characteristic traits of Russian historical development compared with that of Western Europe.  In the West monarchy had to struggle with municipal institutions to prevent them from becoming too powerful; in Russia, it had to struggle with them to prevent them from committing suicide or dying of inanition.

According to Catherine’s legislation, which remained in force until 1870, and still exists in some of its main features, the towns were divided into three categories:  (1) Government towns (gubernskiye goroda)—­that is to say, the chief towns of provinces, or governments (gubernii)—­in which are concentrated the various organs of provincial administration; (2) district towns (uyezdniye goroda), in which resides the administration of the districts (uyezdi) into which the provinces are divided; and (3) supernumerary towns (zashtatniye goroda), which have no particular significance in the territorial administration.

In all these the municipal organisation is the same.  Leaving out of consideration those persons who happen to reside in the towns, but in reality belong to the Noblesse, the clergy, or the lower ranks of officials, we may say that the town population is composed of three groups:  the merchants (kuptsi), the burghers in the narrower sense of the term (meshtchanye), and the artisans (tsekhoviye).  These categories are not hereditary castes, like the nobles, the clergy, and the peasantry.  A noble may become a merchant, or a man may be one year a burgher, the next year an artisan, and the third year a merchant, if he changes his occupation and pays the necessary dues.  But the categories form, for the time being, distinct corporations, each possessing a peculiar organisation and peculiar privileges and obligations.