Alison K. Smith. For the Common Good and Their Own Well-Being

In an observation that also underscores the significance of her work, Alison K. Smith notes that, in the eyes of nineteenth-century critics of Russia’s social order, “the internal workings of sosloviia were ‘a secret matter,’” and that “soslovie societies had developed in large part out of public view” (175). The goal of Smith’s excellent book on social estates in imperial Russia is precisely to uncover these “internal workings” and to explore the changing meanings of soslovie for the state, local communities, and individuals from its emergence early in the eighteenth century until the demise of the autocracy in 1917. Using an approach that is both thematic and chronological, Smith charts the legal evolution of a paradigm that dominated imperial Russian society and documents the social history of mobility within the Russian Empire, while addressing the significance of soslovie as a source of identity. Although historians have dedicated significant attention to the meaning and implementation of soslovie, Smith’s work stands out for her meticulous reading of the records of town magistracies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and six provincial capitals. From the outset, she acknowledges the difficulty of translating the term soslovie, much less pinning down its meaning, which was continually in flux as the borders of the empire and the interests of the state evolved. In her work, soslovie is defined as “social categories that governed the rights and duties” of individuals in the Russian Empire, and also “located” them geographically, juridically, and culturally (5–6). Smith goes on to develop three overarching themes: the use of soslovie by the state as a means of ensuring social stability and allowing the empire to “see” its population (122); the process in which individuals managed to move, often by their own initiative, from one social estate to another; and the ways in which social categories shaped individual identity. As the soslovie system became more complex and contradictory, Smith argues, the emergence of new social categories “not only allowed new behavior but also created it” (118).

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