Nobles + Landowners

• Emancipation changed a lot for the nobility.
• The emancipation of the serfs heightened the financial difficulties which many of the nobility were already experiencing.

  
  

  They had continued their extravagant lifestyles despite falls in income.
• Many nobles spent compensation received for the loss of land and serfs on repaying existing debts.
• Many noble families did not have the funds to invest in their farms to make them more productive and profitable.
• In some cases, noble families sold their land and moved to towns and cities.

  
  

  A third of all nobles' land was sold like this between 1861 and 1905.
• The decline did not impact on all nobles.
• The nobility retained its social and political dominance throughout the 1855-1894 period.
• All of the Tsar's ministers, advisers and army officers were from noble families.
• The political authority of those nobles who had remained in rural areas was strengthened by Alexander III's introduction of Land Captains in 1889.