re severely limited to a select group.
Still, until 1761 the Imperial demand for compulsory service by the nobility justified maintaining the institution of serfdom. In that year, however, Peter III (died 1762) abolished such service. The whole theory on which serfdom was based broke down: now nobles were exploiting the labor of the serfs without discharging a duty to the state for which this could be considered a compensation.
Peter III's wife-successor, German-born Catherine the Great (died 1796), was in a position both politically and by reformist-inclination to revamp or remove the institution of serfdom. She did neither. Rather, while speaking of serfdom with distaste and granting more freedom to the state peasants under Imperial administration, as a matter of power politics she took to rewarding the nobility for favors with grants of large areas of land - complete with state peasants attached. Thus Catherine transferred 800,000 state peasants into serfdom; her son, Czar Paul I (died 1801) transferred an additional 600,000. Ironically Pa
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