Hereditary nobles........652,887
Personal nobles..........374,367
Clerical classes.........695,905
Town classes...........7,196,005
Rural classes.........63,840,291
Military classes.......4,767,703
Foreigners...............153,185
----------                      77,680,293*

* Livron:  “Statistitcheskoe Obozrenie Rossiiskoi Imperii,” St. Petersburg, 1875.  The above figures include the whole Empire.  The figures according to the latest census (1897) are not yet available.

Armed with these materials, the traveller goes to his Russian friends who have assured him that their country knows nothing of class distinctions.  He is confident of being able to convince them that they have been labouring under a strange delusion, but he will be disappointed.  They will tell him that these laws and statistics prove nothing, and that the categories therein mentioned are mere administrative fictions.

This apparent contradiction is to be explained by the equivocal meaning of the Russian terms Sosloviya and Sostoyaniya, which are commonly translated “social classes.”  If by these terms are meant “castes” in the Oriental sense, then it may be confidently asserted that such do not exist in Russia.  Between the nobles, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasants there are no distinctions of race and no impassable barriers.  The peasant often becomes a merchant, and there are many cases on record of peasants and sons of parish priests becoming nobles.  Until very recently the parish clergy composed, as we have seen, a peculiar and exclusive class, with many of the characteristics of a caste; but this has been changed, and it may now be said that in Russia there are no castes in the Oriental sense.

If the word Sosloviya be taken to mean an organised political unit with an esprit de corps and a clearly conceived political aim, it may likewise be admitted that there are none in Russia.  As there has been for centuries no political life among the subjects of the Tsars, there have been no political parties.

On the other hand, to say that social classes have never existed in Russia and that the categories which appear in the legislation and in the official statistics are mere administrative fictions, is a piece of gross exaggeration.

From the very beginning of Russian history we can detect unmistakably the existence of social classes, such as the Princes, the Boyars, the armed followers of the Princes, the peasantry, the slaves, and various others; and one of the oldest legal documents which we possess—­the “Russian Right” (Russkaya Pravda) of the Grand Prince Yaroslaff (1019-1054)—­contains irrefragable proof, in the penalties attached to various crimes, that these classes were formally recognised by the legislation.  Since that time they have frequently changed their character, but they have never at any period ceased to exist.