Chapter 7 - Nobility and the Russian Class System

Summary

This chapter situates Lev Tolstoy’s life and work in relation to the social and political context of the estates (meaning, soslovie) system in imperial Russia. Although the Russian nobility was a social estate distinguished by a high degree of heterogeneity when it came to such matters as scope of property (including income and debt), modes of sociability, access to power, relationship to the provinces, and connection to the cultural and political centers (e.g., Moscow, St. Petersburg), the nobility remained a corporate body of subject-citizens united through a necessarily uneven but reciprocal relationship with the autocratic state, a relationship that was articulated as a set of privileges and obligations. In addition to offering a brief historical survey of the noble estate in Russia, this chapter explores a selection of moments in Tolstoy’s life and career in relation to the meanings that accrued to noble status as a demographic designation, a political experience, and a social performance. At times, I turn (briefly) to Tolstoy’s major works of fiction (notably, War and Peace and Anna Karenina) to illustrate how the period’s definitions of nobility found expression in the novelist’s artistic imagination.