A "chinovnik" is a bureaucrat with an official rank or "chin". Typically, chinovniki were drawn from the "pomeshchik" estate (nobility or aristocrats).

Peter the Great introduced the "Table of Ranks" in 1722, during which time he engaged in a struggle with the existing hereditary nobility, the boyars. Peter the Great felt that he had to modernize Russia along the lines of Western Europe. This table of ranks would regularize the civil service, military and the court. Civil servants of the fourteenth class would be conferred with personal (non-hereditary) nobility (dvoryanstvo). Higher classes of rank (varied with time, such as the fifth class with Tsar Nicholas I) received hereditary nobility. These classes or ranks were called "chin" (<<чин>>), and the bureaucrats were called" chinovniki" (<<чиновники>>). The majority of these bureaucrats were of low rank or class, often were impoverished, usually were illiterate, and if they performed any duties, primarily did things the way they had always been done, and if called upon to make a report, their reports said what the chinovnik thought his superior chinovnik wanted to hear. That most chinovniki were illiterate should come as no surprise, considering that the Tsar's closest ministers were often illiterate as well.

The writer Gogol wrote about chinovniki, in the story "The Overcoat", made into a film: "Shinel" (or <<Шинель>>), with the famous actor Rolan Bykov (<<Ролан Быков>>).

The writer Aleksandr Nikolaevich Radishchev was an eye-witness to the evils of serfdom. Evil not only morally, but economically as well. Radishchev compared sefdom in Russia to the slavery of Black people in America. Catherine the Great (perhaps not so great) sought to punish Radishchev for his "revolutionary" thinking and sent him to Siberia. A few random comments from Radishchev's "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" appear below. The overall plan of the book is what Radishchev observed as he traveled through different celos (towns) between St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Aleksandr Nikolaevich Radishchev, "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow", Harvard University Press, 1966

• Immoral Activities of Pomeshchiki
• Forced Marriages
• Slavery and Serfdom
• Auction of Serfs
• The Destructiveness of Serfdom
• Censorship
• Beatings of Serfs

Celo "Edrovo" (Concerning Immoral Activities of Pomeshchiki, p. 134):
    "In everything else he was a good and charitable master, but neither the wives nor the daughters of his peasants were safe from him. Every night his emissaries brought him his chosen victim for that day's sacrifice to dishonor. It is known in the village that he had dishonored sixty maidens, robbing them of their purity."

(p. 135):
    "They were going to marry me off into a rich house, to a ten-year-old lad, but I didn't want that. What could I do with such a child? I could not love him. And by the time he was grown up, I would have been an old woman, and he would have been running after others. They say his father sleeps with his young daughters-in-law until his sons grow up."

Celo "Khotilov" (Concerning Forced Marriages, pp. 240, 241):
    "Can the terms of this agreement be satisfied if the ages are unequal? If the husband is ten years old, and the wife is twenty-five, as often happens among the peasantry, or if the husband is fifty and the wife fifteen or twenty among the gentry, can there be any mutual satisfaction of desire?"

Celo "Vishny Volochok" (Concerning Slavery and Serfdom, pp. 156, 157):
    "It has been no small source of pleasure for me to watch the Vyshny Volochok Canal full of barges carrying the grain and other goods as they got ready to pass through the locks for the rest of their voyage to Petersburg. Here one could see the true wealth of the soil and the agriculturist's superabundance, here one could see in its full glory the mighy mover of human actions, self-interest. But if at first glance my spirit was delighted at the sight of this prosperity, at second thoughts my joy soon waned. For I remembered that in Russia many agriculturists were not working for themselves, and that thus the abundance of the earth in many districts of Russia bears witness only to the heavy lot of its inhabitants. My satisfaction was transformed into indignation such as I feel when in summer time I walk down the customs pier and I look at the ships that bring us the surplus of America and its precious products, such as sugar, coffee, dyes, and other things, not yet dry from the sweat, tears, and the blood that bathed them in their production.
    "'Remember,' my friend once said, 'that the coffee in your cup, and the sugar dissolved in it, have deprived a man like yourself of his rest, that they have been the cause of labors surpassing his strength, the cause of tears, groans, blows, and abuse. Now dare to pamper your gullet, hard-hearted wretch!' the sight of his disgust as he said this shook me to the depths of my soul. My hand trembled, and I spilled the coffee."

Celo "Mednoe" (Concerning the Auction of Serfs, pp. 188, 189):
    "[T]he same story is published in the newspapers. It runs like this: 'At ten o'clock this morning, by order of the county Court, or the Municipal Magistrate, will be sold at public auction the real estate of Caption G., Retired, viz. a house located in — Ward, No. —, and with it six souls, male and female. The sale will take place at said house. Interested parties may examine the property before the auction.'
    "There are always a lot of customers for a bargain. The day and hour of the auction have come. Prospective buyers are gathering. In the hall where it is to take place, those who are condemned to be sold stand immovable. An old man, seventy-five years of age, leaning on an elmwood cane, is anxious to find out into whose hands fate will deliver him, and who will close his eyes. He had been with his master's father in the Crimean Campaign under Field Marshal Münnich. In the battle of Frankfurt he had carried his wounded master on his shoulders from the field. On returning home he had become the tutor of his young master. In childhood he had saved him from drowning, for, jumping after him into the river into which he had fallen from a ferry, he had saved him at the risk of his own life. In youth he had ransomed him from prison, whither he had been cast for debts incurred while he was a subaltern of the Guards. The old woman, his wife, is eighty years of age. She had been the wet-nurse of the young master's mother; later she became his nurse and had the supervision of the house up to the very hour when she was brought out to this auction. During all the time of her service she had never wasted anything belonging to her masters, had never considered her personal advantage, never lied, and if she had ever annoyed them, she had done so by her scrupulous honesty. The forty-year-old woman is a widow, the young master's wet-nurse. To this very day she feels a certain tenderness for him. Her blood flows in his veins. She is his second mother, and he owes his life more to her than to his natural mother. The latter had conceived him in lust and did not take care of him in his childhood. His nurses had really brought him up. They part from him as from a son. The eighteen-year-old girl is her daughter and the old man's granddaughter. Beast, monster, outcast among men! Look at her, look at her crimson cheeks, at the tears flowing from her beautiful eyes. When you could neither ensnare her innocence with enticements and promises nor shake her steadfastness with threats and punishments, did you not finally use deception, and, having married her to the companion of your abonimations, did you not in his guise enjoy the pleasures she scorned to share with you? She discovered your deception. Her bridgroom did not touch her couch again, and since you were thus deprived of the object of your lust, you employed force. Four evildoers, your henchmen, holding her arms and legs — let us not go on with this. On her brow is sorrow, in her eyes despair. She is holding a little one, the lamentable fruit of deception or violence, but the living image of his lascivious father. Having given birth to him, she forgot his father's beastliness and her heart began to feel a tenderness for him. But now she fears that she may fall into the hands of another like his father. The little one &mdash . Thy son, barbarian, thy blood! Or do you think that where there was no church rite, there was no obligation? Or do you think that a blessing given at your command by a hired preacher of the word of God has established their union? Or do you think that a forced wedding in God's temple can be called marriage?"

Celo "Khotilov" (Concerning the Destructiveness of Serfdom, pp. 151, 152, 153):
    "Man, motivated by self-interest, undertakes that which may be to his immediate or later advantage, and avoids that from which he expects no present or future gain. Following this natural instinct, everything we do for our own sake, everything we do without compulsion, we do carefully, industriously, and well. On the other hand, all that we do not do freely, all that we do not do for our advantage, we do carelessly, lazily, and all awry. Thus we find the agriculturists in our country. The field is not their own, the fruit thereof does not belong to them. Hence they cultivate the land lazily and do not care whether it goes to waste because of poor work. Compare this field with the one the haughty proprietor gives the worker for his own meager sustenance. The worker is unsparing in the labors which he spends on it. Nothing distracts him from his work. The savagery of the weather he overcomes bravely; the hours intended for rest he spends at work; he shuns pleasure even on the days set aside for it. For he looks after his own interest, works for himself, is his own master. Thus his field will give him an abundant harvest; while the fruits of the work done on the proprietor's demesne will die or bear no future harvest; wheras they would grow and be ample for the sustenance of the citizens if the cultivation of the fields were done with loving care, if it were free.
    "But if forced labor brings smaller harvests, crops which fail to reach the goal of adequate production also stop the increase of the population. Where there is nothing to eat, there will soon be no eaters, for all will die of exhaustion. Thus the enslaved field, by giving an insufficient return, starves to death the citzens for whom nature had intended her superabundance. But this is not the only thing in slavery that interferes with abundant life. To insufficiency of food and clothing they have added work to the point of exhaustion. Add to this the spurns of arrogance and the abuse of power, even over man's tenderest sentiments, and you see with horror the pernicious effects of slavery, ...
    "Do you not know, dear fellow citizens, what destruction threatens us and in what peril we stand? All the hardened feelings of slaves, not given vent by a kindly gesture of freedom, strengthen and intensify their inner longings. A stream that is barred in its course becomes more powerful in proportion to the opposition it meets. Once it has burst the dam, nothing can stem its flood. Such are our brothers whom we keep enchained. They are waiting for a favorable chance and time. The alarum bell rings. And the destructive force of bestiality breaks loose with terrifying speed. Round about us we shall see sword and poison. Death and fiery desolation will be the meed for our harshness and inhumanity. And the more procrastinating and stubborn we have been about loosening of their fetters, the more violent they will be in their vengefulness. Bring back to your memory the events of former times. Recall how deception roused the slaves to destroy their masters. Enticed by a crude pretender, ..." (Emiliyan Pugachev).

Celo "Torzhok" (Concerning Censorship, pp. 181, 183):
    "Madmen, look about you! You are trying to support truth with falsehood, you seek to enlighten the peoples with error. Beware lest darkness be reborn. What advantage will it be to you to rule over ignoramuses who have become the more coarsened because they have persisted in ignorance of nature or, rather, in natural ignorance, not for lack of aids toward enlightenment, but because, having taken a step toward enlightenment, they have been arrested in their progress and driven back into darkness? What advantage is it to you to struggle against yourselves and pull up with your left hand what your right hand has planted? Look at the priesthood rejoicing over this. You have already become its slaves."

Celo "Gorodnya" (Concerning Beatings of Serfs, p. 207; Forced Marriage, p. 207):
     "The least, imaginary remissness in my duties led to my ears being boxed, beatings, and the cat-o'-nine-tails.
    "A nephew of my mistress, a youngster of eighteen years, a sergent of the Guards, educated in the fashion of Moscow dandies, became enamored of a chambermaid of his aunt's, and, having quickly won her ready favors, made her a mother. Although he was usually quite unconcerned in his amours, in this case he was somewhat embarassed. For his aunt, having learned about the affair, forbade the chambermaid her presence, and gently scolded her nephew. She intended, after the fashion of benevolent mistresses, to punish the one whom she had formerly favored by marrying her off to one of the stable boys. But since they were all married already, and since, for the honor of the house, there had to be a husband, my mistress informed me of this as though it were a special favor. ... "... 'I know full well that no one can be forced to marry.'"

Celo "Klin" (Concerning Beatings of Serfs, p. 218):
    "I saved her father from a beating such as passing soldiers often give to peasants. The soldiers wanted to take something from him; he resisted them."