--- Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
>
>
> [WS:] Perhaps my analogy was a bit too farfetched.
> The point I was trying
> to make was that Polish nobility was not homogenous
> - and that the great
> majority of them were not that wealthy, albeit they
> enjoyed a much higher
> social status than peasantry.
>
I don't know about Poland, but some of the Russian dvoryane (nobility) were pretty fucking poor. For them it was a title, social status and not much else. Some even sold themselves into slavery IIRC.
Certainly in Russia most peasant uprisings were of the sort of the Pugachev Uprising (Pushkin's great -- snd short -- _History of Pugachev_ is a great account of this event) or the pogrom. Short, bloody and pointless.
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