Structures of SocietyA category of persons best defined by what they were not, the raznochintsy"people of various ranks" or "people of diverse origins"inhabited the shifting social territory between nobles and serfs in preindustrial Russia. Neither merchants nor clergy nor military servicemen, they may have been by occupation administrative clerks, teachers, artists, retired soldiers, or street vendors. In official society, they were outsiders. In this first major study