>>4604204Well I said earlier I'm trying to learn about social structures. There was nobility at the top, merchant classes (very broad term, it included artisans) in the middle, and several sorts of peasants at the bottom. What distinguished the "type" of peasant was mostly who they belonged to. In the Petrine era, if you wanted to rise to nobility, you had a small chance of getting there on merit by enrolling in a military academy and dedicating the larger part of your life to military service. This usually required a lot of money in the first place though.
