Leaving out of consideration those persons who happen to reside in the towns, but in reality belong to the Noblesse, the clergy, or the lower ranks of officials, we may say that the town population is composed of three groups: the merchants (kuptsi), the burghers in the narrower sense of the term (meshtchanye), and the artisans (tsekhoviye).

These categories are not hereditary castes, like the nobles, the clergy, and the peasantry.

A noble may become a merchant, or a man may be one year a burgher, the next year an artisan, and the third year a merchant, if he changes his occupation and pays the necessary dues.

But the categories form, for the time being, distinct corporations, each possessing a peculiar organisation and peculiar privileges and obligations.
Of these three groups the first in the scale of dignity is that of the merchants.

It is chiefly recruited from the burghers and the peasantry.
Any one who wishes to engage in commerce inscribes himself in one of the three guilds, according to the amount of his capital and the nature of the operations in which he wishes to embark, and as soon as he has paid the required dues he becomes officially a merchant.