Raznochintsy

in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries, a category of the population consisting of individuals who did not belong to a particular class, or estate. It included members of the clergy, merchant class, petite bourgeoisie, peasantry, minor officials, and impoverished noblemen who had received an education and had left their former social milieu. The razno-chintsy stratum emerged because of the development of capitalism, which created a large demand for educated specialists.

From the 1840’s on, the raznochintsy had a considerable influence on the development of culture and society, and after the abolition of serfdom they were the main social stratum out of which the bourgeois intelligentsia arose. The democrats among the raznochintsy, who had produced a number of outstanding leaders of the emancipation movement (V. G. Belin-skii, the Petrashevtsy) before the peasant reform of 1861, played a prominent role in the post-reform revolutionary movement (revolutionary democrats; Narodniks, or populists). V. I. Lenin called the bourgeois-democratic stage of the liberation struggle in Russia, lasting from about 1861 to 1895, the raznochintsy stage (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 25, p. 93).