I am doing a paper on the Russian Revolution of 1917 and am trying to figure out, how the russian nobility lived up until that point. I managed to find many sources about the peasants and serfdom but very little, almost nothing, about normal nobility (not just the tsar and his family) and how they lived. Does anyone know?
Russian life in the early 19th century was drastically different than in the late Imperial era, so the answer depends on when you're interested in. It also depends on how you want to consider 'nobility' - commoners could attain nobility through service after the Petrine Reforms, and many had neither land nor titles. Another consideration is urban nobility vs rural nobility - many thousands of country manors were destroyed in the 1905 revolution. I'll sketch a few things to look into per the homework rules!
Gogol's Old World Landowners, for example, is an ironic portrayal of early-19th century landed gentry. One of the major considerations prior to 1861 is the institution of serfdom; certainly even in the 18th century there are challenges to this, but it's really in the 1830s and 1840s that emancipation becomes a major intellectual concern. A rather enduring motif here is the 'superfluous man' in works like Oblomov, Diary of a Superfluous Man, and Eugene Onegin; similarly, the notion of poshlost, a peculiar negative cultural mindset, is quite important for the 'literary' nobility. Post-emancipation nobility coincides with increasing urbanization [for earlier portrayals of urban life, look at Poor Folk and Nevsky Prospekt].
Some references to look into are Between Tsar and People (Princeton 1991), Russia in the Age of Modernisation and Revolution, 1881–1917 (Routledge 1983), and Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia (Northern Illinois, 1985).
The first social history is chiefly concerned with the middle class, but should be helpful in understanding the social landscape more broadly. Rogger is an excellent text but a little outdated.
Most related to your question is Nobility and Privilege in Late Imperial Russia, which attends to the question of the 'declining nobility' and the rapidly changing world of the belle epoque. This is a short work that should be a great starting point. It's worth keeping in mind, too, that many of these revolutionaries come themselves from noble backgrounds.
The two central threads you'll find in these texts are the 'static nobility,' who espouse unwillingness to change, preservation of an imagined and idealized past, and rejection of moderate change that explodes in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. A parallel narrative places the nobility at the forefront of change, deeply invested in the Russian state, and well-educated on contemporary issues. Neither, of course, are completely true - there is a lot of gray (or, pink!) when it comes to the late Empire. I would look into Pyotr Stolypin's reforms to understand the Tsar's response to these various groups, though they never quite make it.
There are some more primary texts that you may find helpful as well. Maxim Gorky's play Enemies is directly concerned with the merchant class, while Mother and The Lower Depths are more famous examples of revolutionary literature. This, for example, is a Civil War era painting by Boris Kustodiev representing the provincial merchant class; he was raised in Astrakhan, and very active from 1905 to 1916 in the liberal circles of Saint Petersburg. Alexander Blok, primarily a poet, has a fascinating essay entitled "The Intelligentsia and Revolution." War and Peace delves deeply into interpersonal relationships among the nobility, and is probably the finest literary treatment of the question. If you have any follow up questions please ping me and I can direct you to further resources!
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