Social estates in the Russian Empire were denoted by the term soslovie (sosloviye), which approximately corresponds to the notion of the estate of the realm. The system of sosloviyes was a peculiar system of social groups in the history of the Russian Empire. In Russian language the terms "сословие" and "состояние" (in the meaning of the civil/legal estate) were used interchangeably.

Estates

The Code of the Law of the Russian Empire of 1832, vol. 9, "Laws about Estates" (Законы о состояниях) defined four major estates: dvoryans (nobility), clergy, urban dwellers and rural dwellers (peasants). The two former estates were non-taxable, the two latter were taxable estates (податные сословия), i.e., which had to pay the personal tax. Within these, more detailed categories were recognized: There also existed the military estate, which included lower military ranks (higher ranks were associated with the estate of dvoryans), and discharged and indefinite-leave. A separate category, not assigned to any of the above estates were raznochintsy (literally "persons of miscellaneous ranks", but in fact having no rank at all). Finally, in Siberia, the estate of "exiled" was officially recognized, with the subcategory of "exiled nobility". With the development of capitalism and the abolishment of the serfdom in Russia in the second half of the 19th century the estate paradigm no longer corresponded to the actual socio-economical stratification of the population, but the terminology was in use until the Russian Revolution of 1917. At the same time the legal and governmental system gradually became estate-independent, with the property grade (имущественный ценз) of a person playing the decisive role.

Ranks

A separate stratification existed for governmental bureaucracy, who were classified according to the Table of Ranks. The higher ranks belonged to the sosloviye of dvoryanstvo, while the indication of a lower rank of a person was comparable to that of the indication of a soslovie for various formal purposes (e.g., for the Russian Empire Census).