You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (November 2023) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,015 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Помещик]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Помещик}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

In the history of Russia pomeshchiks (Russian: помещик) were the class of Russian nobility who owned a pomestye (Russian: поместье), i.e., an estate.^[1] The term pomeshchik is commonly translated in English as "landlord".

It terms of land ownership there used to be two major categories of land ownership. In pomestye system [ru], a sovereign (tsar or knyaz) could grant a piece of state-owned land to a person for his service (usually military) into personal ownership, for the term of the service or for life.^[1] Its temporary and conditional character constituted the differencer from the votchina system, whereby land ownership was hereditary. Over time the two systems blended into one under the term pomestye ownership. This was finalized by Peter the Great in his 1714 Decree on Single Inheritance [ru], whose main rule of law was inheritance of the real estate regardless its type by a single son, hence the name. The "single inheritance" clause was amended in 1730 by Empress Anna of Russia, and the only consequence of Peter's decree left was unification of pomestye and votchina types of ownership.^[2]).