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After the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, most of the Lithuanian nobility came under Russian rule. The nobility in the Russian Empire had priority for promotion in the army and clerical service, exclusive rights to hold landed estates with their subjects, exemption from poll tax and personal military service, and numerous privileges in other areas of life. Still, although the nobility in Russia was of great importance, but its privileges were much lower than in the Polish-Lithuanian state. The nobility in Russia was also relatively sparse; after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it emerged that the newly annexed lands were home to the majority (66.2%) of the Russian Empire's nobility. However, the majority of these were the so-called petty nobles; it is estimated that in the lands of the Grand Duchy about 75 per cent of the nobility did not have a single serf. Many of them also didn't own land, which was problematic because a person who did not own land could not be a nobleman in Russian Empire.

In Samogitia, which was a border land in the Middle Ages, so-called "environs" (Polish: okolice) were common, i.e. whole villages inhabited exclusively by nobles, settled there for defence purposes. They owned small estates, with few servants, and often cultivated their land with their own hands. In Belarusian lands, on the other hand, very popular were nobles, who received land from the magnates in return for paying rent. The land-owning nobility predominated in Lithuania proper, regions of Novogrudok, Grodno and Polesia.

Over the course of the 19th century, a division of the nobility into two groups took shape in the language:

• first group including owners of big estates with peasants was called ziemianie (lit. 'landowners') or obywatele (lit. 'citizens'), Russian administration was calling them dvoryanin or pomeshchik
• second group including landowners without serfs or no land at all was called szlachta, the term that in Polish also encompassed entire noble estate, Russian administration assimilated this term into the Russian language in the form of шляхта (šlâhta)

This division did not exhaust the diversity of this group. An important group was the nobility dependent on the magnates, who held land in exchange for rent, or performed service at the magnate's court. A separate group was made up of free people who owned land in exchange for service in the magnate's army, but only some of them were of noble origin, the rest were boyars or simply plebeians, but because of their actual status they often regarded themselves as nobles. Members of this group did not have ownership of the land they cultivated. When the Russian government banned the existence of private armies, the legal basis for their use of land disappeared. As a result, a significant proportion of this group fell to the role of serf peasants, but some managed to retain their noble status and land ownership in return for rent. Pressure from the Russian administration only accelerated the process of forming rent-paying nobility that began to take place in the 18th century.

After partition, the Russian administration maintained the institution of the sejmik, a key institution of the nobility's self-government and the basis of its mentality. The sejmiks had powers such as the election of judicial, police and local government officials and the distribution of the tax burdens. In 1805, however, nobles who owned less than 8 "hearths" or 25 "souls" were excluded from participation. The reign of Nicholas I strengthened the effort to liquidate the petty nobility. Their tax burden was increasingly similar to that of peasants. In 1829, nobles farming their own land were required to perform 8 years of military service.

Another tool used by the Russian administration was the imposed requirement to prove noble origin. It was aimed especially at the rent-paying nobility, into which other groups of the free people have infiltrated. They were initially planned to be resettled in to the southern provinces, which did not materialise. Nonetheless in 1816 it was decided to carry out their registration with the requirement to prove their noble origin. This procedure was carried out by the self-governments of the nobility, which had no interest in excluding fellow nobles from the noble state. The later introduced control of the St Petersburg Heroldry did not fundamentally change the situation. The procedure itself was carried out inconsistently, and the lack of proof of nobility did not make much difference in practice, so many nobles did not make the effort. As a result there was no complete purification of the ranks of the nobility before the November Uprising.

Despite the efforts made, the number of nobles in the western governorates of the Russian Empire did not change significantly, it was still a large group of several hundred thousand.

Post November Uprising period (1831-1863)

The position of the nobility in Russia was generally lower, so the process of equating the Lithuanian nobility with the Russian nobility led to a restriction of the rights of the former. The second problem was the existence of landless nobility, a state that did not exist in Russia proper. Despite initial plans to remove this group from the ranks of the nobility immediatelly, this process did not begin until after the November Uprising. In 1833, an order was issued by the Tsar ordering the removal of nobility from all those who would not be able to produce royal privileges or who did not own land with the peasants. This process continued until 1863. Those who failed to prove nobility were counted as odnodvortsy, while if they lived in towns they were counted as citizens. They still had personal freedom, but had to serve in the army and pay regular taxes.