For many centuries, the economic basis of the rule of the privileged estate in Russia has been the right to freely dispose of land. At first glance, it may seem that this resource in the country is more than enough, but for a long time the peasants had a shortage of free cultivated areas, and their serfdom did not create the necessary conditions for the productive use of this resource. The highest of the classes in monarchist Russia was the nobility.
About the roots of the Russian nobility
The word "nobility" itself comes from the root "court" and means people belonging to the princely court. Originally arising in the XI century, the nobility was the lowest step, having the sources of its influence in the favor of the prince, which he sought through military service and maintenance of his court.
This was not the case with the boyar estate, which appeared even at the time of the decomposition of the tribal system in Russia. Unlike the same boyars, the nobles had to serve for the right to own land and the peasants who cultivated this land.
In the fourteenth century, however, the displacement of the nobility by the new nobility and service people began. But this process lasted several centuries before the boyars were completely destroyed by Peter l.
Nobility in the Russian Empire
Landowners who received land for their service appeared in the country as early as the fourteenth century, but only Peter brought this system to perfection by prohibiting anyone from owning the land, carrying out service for it. Thus, it turns out that in the 18th century the economic basis of the privileged estate in Russia was not so much the land as the loyalty of the ruling monarch, and the land was only a way to feed while performing public service.
However, even under Catherine the Great, the nobility began to receive more and more rights and privileges, which allowed him to enslave the peasants even more strongly, deriving incredible profits from this. Some landowners owned tens of thousands of serfs.
Summing up, it is worth saying that the history of the privileged estate in Russia, the basis of economic dominance of which was the land and loyalty of the emperor, consists of long centuries of oppression of the peasants and exploitation of the labor of the peoples of the empire.