The paper analyzes the features of formation of bourgeois class on the territory of South-Western Siberia in the pre-reform period. Drawing the archival sources, the authors give a description of the legal status of the Siberian tradesman, legal conditions for charge-ability in philistinism. The paper also gives statistics on such parameters as the dynamics of the middle class social mobility in pre-reform period. The article considers the statistics on dynamics of social mobility burghers in the pre-reform period. The paper also considers the features of the middle class movement in various cities of Tomsk province, as well as in the Altai mining district. In the cities of South-Western Siberia the backbone of the emerging middle class was made up mostly of townspeople, old-timers, who due to the reform changed their status and name. Detailed characterization is given to the process of entering the philistinism of natives, peasants, exiles, settlers, impoverished merchants, retired military, and members of the clergy. Special attention is paid to the problem of moving of impoverished merchants to the bourgeois class, and back. The authors identify the fact that Siberia was the place of exile, so the formation of middle class had in the region its own peculiarities. The exiles were a major source of recruitment of middle class during the XIXth century; their numerous attributions to the class negatively affected its material and moral condition.