Before the
October Revolution, in the
Russian Empire there was an institute of allegiance, which enshrined the legal inequality of the subjects, in many ways it has developed in the
feudal Middle Ages. By 1917, the subjects of the Russian Empire were subdivided into several categories (classes) with a special legal status: • natural subjects, which, in turn, stood out: •
nobles (hereditary and personal); • clerics (shared by religion); • urban inhabitants (divided into groups: honorary citizens, merchants, tradesmen and shopkeepers); • rural inhabitants; •
Inorodtsy (
Jews and Eastern peoples); •
Finnish inhabitants. Imperial legislation related to the belonging to one or another category of subjects by very significant differences in rights and duties. For example, four groups of natural subjects were divided into persons of taxable and non-taxable status. Persons of non-taxable status (noblemen and honorary citizens) enjoyed freedom of movement and received indefinite passports to live throughout the Russian Empire; persons of the taxable state (burghers and peasants) did not have such rights. Belonging to the estate was inherited, the transition from one class to another was rather difficult. The decree contained the following basic provisions: 1. All the estates and class divisions of citizens that existed before in Russia, the estate privileges and restrictions, the estate organizations and institutions, as well as all civil ranks are abolished. 2. Any titles (nobleman, merchant, tradesman, peasant, etc., princely, county titles, etc.) and the name of civilian officials (secret, state and other advisers) are destroyed and one common name for the entire Russian population is established — citizens of the Russian Republic. According to article 3 of the decree, the property of the noble-class institutions, merchant and petty-bourgeois societies was transferred to the respective local and city governments. ==Characteristic and significance==