Indeed, it is important to look at the social limits of westernisation. It is questionable whether most peasants, by the end of the eighteenth-century, were westernised. They represented almost ninety-percent of the population, and most of them were not affected by Peter's decree on Western dress. Additionally, more than half of them were serfs.1 Considering that serfs were the largest demographic group in eighteenth-century Russia, it is clear that the West directly influenced only for a minority of the population, and that this élite, however westernised it was, still profited from serfdom. But even amongst the remaining ten percent of the population, western influence can be questioned. Only eighty-four percent of nobles were able to read
