concept
Soslovie (legal social estate)
soslovie
also: сословие, звание
The formal legal social-estate category (peasant, gentry, clergy, merchant, and so on) recorded on every Imperial Russian internal passport and central to how the state classified, taxed, and policed its subjects; a person's inability to be pinned to one soslovie was itself grounds for suspicion.
Reading notes
- Dreams §12 Мужик -- не мужик, барин -- не барин
Ptakha is groping toward the tramp's soslovie (legal social estate) -- peasant, gentry (barin), clergy, merchant, and so on -- the formal caste category recorded on every internal passport and central to how the Imperial Russian state classified, taxed, and policed its subjects. The tramp's inability to be pinned to a single estate is precisely what makes him suspicious and, later, precisely what he refuses to resolve.
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