Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T13:14:39.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“Face-to-Face”: The State, the Individual, and the Citizen in Russian Taxation, 1863-1917

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Abstract

From the 1860s to 1917, direct taxation provides a window onto the paradoxes of reform in late imperial Russia. The new systems of assessment that culminated in the income tax of 1916 aimed to individualize government in a regime still ordered by legal estate and collective identity; to recognize the autonomy of the individual while disassembling and reintegrating the person by way of comprehensive assessment; and to promote a sense of citizenship, participation, and individual responsibility while still defending autocracy. Yanni Kotsonis suggests that these tensions were borrowed, along with the new techniques of taxation and of government, from European and transatlantic practice, but Kotsonis also locates the distinctiveness of the Russian case in the historical context and the set of ideological premises into which the practices were introduced.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

I thank Kenneth Pinnow, Richard Wortman, Diane P. Koenker, and two anonymous reviewers for comments on this article. An earlier draft was presented at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, Stanford University, and I appreciate the suggestions of those who commented there as well. The research and writing of this article were supported by a Remarque Institute Faculty Fellowship, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and a National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution.

1. Even though peasant collective responsibility in taxation was repealed in 1903, it remained rural practice long after. On the persistence of estate, see Freeze, Gregory, “The Soslovie (Estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” American Historical Review 91, no. 1 (February 1986): 1136 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rieber, Alfred J., Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia (Chapel Hill, 1982)Google Scholar; Haimson, Leopold H., ed., The Politics of Rural Russia, 1905-1914 (Bloomington, 1979)Google Scholar; Wcislo, Francis W., Reforming Rural Russia: State, Local Society, and National Politics, 1855-1914 (Princeton, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On autocracy, estate, and rights, see Haimson, L. H., “The Parties and the State,” in Black, Cyril E., ed., The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 110–44Google Scholar; and Wirtschafter, Elise Kimerling, Social Identity in Imperial Russia (DeKalb, 1997)Google Scholar.

2. For an expression of the assumption that citizenship is necessarily a balance of rights and obligations, see Theory and Society 26, no. 4 (August 1997) (“Special Issue on Recasting Citizenship,” ed. Michael Hanagan and Charles Tilly).

3. For discussions of civic practices that were not dependent on formal rights, see Lehning, James R., To Be a Citizen: The Political Culture of the Early French Third Republic (Ithaca, 2001)Google Scholar, introduction; Somers, Margaret R., “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy,” American Sociological Review, 58 no. 5 (October 1993): 587620 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. For a variety of opinions on the modernization of the imperial tax system, with a shared emphasis on its incidence and unfairness, see Bowman, Linda, “Russia's First Income Taxes: The Effects of Modernized Taxes on Commerce and Industry, 1885-1914,” Slavic Review 52, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 256–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gorlin, Robert H., “Problems of Tax Reform in Imperial Russia,” Journals of Modern History 49, no. 2 (June 1977): 246–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bokhanov, A. N., “Vopros o podokhodnom naloge v Rossii i krupnaia burzhuaziia (konets XIX-nachalo XX veka),” Istoricheskie zapiski 114 (1986): 276302 Google Scholar; Pogrebinskii, A. P., Gosudarstvennye finansy Tsarskoi Rossii v epokhu imperializma (Moscow, 1968)Google Scholar; Michelson, Alexander M., “Revenue and Expenditure of the Russian Government during the War,” Russian Public Finance during the War: Revenue and Expenditure (New Haven, 1928), 145–77Google Scholar.

5. Yaroshevski, Dov, “Empire and Citizenship,” in Brower, Daniel R. and Lazzerini, Edward J., eds., Russia's Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700-1917 (Bloomington, 1977), 5879.Google Scholar

6. Indeed, Russian fiscal experts explored the parallel between absolutist France in the eighteenth century and absolutist Russia in the nineteenth, especially the erosion of estate. See Brzheskii, Nikolai K., Podatnaia reforma: Frantsuzskiia teorii XVIII stoletiia (St. Petersburg, 1888)Google Scholar. Brzheskii, a vice-director of direct taxation, later supervised the repeal of collective responsibility for peasants.

7. On self-realization, see Poulantzas, Nicos, State, Power, Socialism (London, 1978), 73 Google Scholar; Seigel, Jerrold, “Problematizing the Self,” in Bonnell, Victoria E. and Hunt, Lynn, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1999)Google Scholar; Meyer, John W., “Myths of Socialization and of Personality,” in Heller, Thomas C., Sosna, Morton, and Wellbery, David E., eds., Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (Stanford, 1986), 208–21Google Scholar; and Giddens, Anthony, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, 1991)Google Scholar. Historical studies of Russian subjectivity are focused on the Soviet period. Kotkin, Stephen, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar, chap. 5; Hellbeck, Jochen, “Writing the Self in the Time of Terror: The Diary of Aleksandr Afinogenov,” in Engelstein, Laura and Sandler, Stephanie, eds., Self and Story in Russian History (Ithaca, 2000), 6993 Google Scholar; Halfin, Igal, From Darkness to Light: Class, Consciousness, and Salvation in Revolutionary Russia (Pittsburgh, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chaps. 4-5.

8. On the character of the state in theoretical and comparative perspective, viewed through fiscal policy into the early Soviet period, see my forthcoming article, “'No Place to Go': Taxation and State Transformation in Late-Imperial and Early-Soviet Russia,“Journal of Modern History (September 2004).

9. A point used by V O. Kliuchevskii to argue that the state had created legal estates artificially. See Kliuchevskii, , Istoriia soslovii v Rossii: Kurs, chitannyi v Moskovskom Universitete v 1886g. (Moscow, 1913)Google Scholar.

10. Departament okladnykh sborov 1863-1913 (St. Petersburg, 1913), 30-31. On tax reform until the 1880s, see Anan'ich, Nina I., “K istorii otmeny podushnoi podati v Rossii,” Istoricheskie zapiski 94 (1974): 183212 Google Scholar; Anan'ich, , “K istorii podatnykh reform 1880-kh godov,” Istoriia SSSR 1 (1979): 159–73Google Scholar; Stepanov, Valerii L., N. Kh. Bunge: Sud'ba reformatora (Moscow, 1998), 127–52Google Scholar.

11. Collective taxes remained for some time for some populations, especially in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia. Departamenl okladnykh sborov, 115. Redemption payments had been merged into the general tax bills apportioned to peasants. Chernukha, V. G., Krest'ianskii vopros v pravitel'stvennoi politike Rossii (60-70 gg. XIV v.) (Leningrad, 1972), 84 Google Scholar.

12. Bowman, “Russia's First Income Taxes.“

13. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), f. 573 (Departament okladnykh sborov), op. 18, d. 27333 (O podokhodnom naloge, 1904-1916), 11. 569-79; f. 1276 (Sovet Ministrov), op. 2, d. 213 (O reforme sushchestvuiushei nalogovoi sistemy, 1905-1907), 11. 64ob.-67ob., 165.

14. M. Bogolepov, “Voina, finansy i narodnoe khoziaistvo,” Vestnik finansov 36 (1914): 300-303.

15. The system is outlined with the example of business taxes in Bowman, “Russia's First Income Taxes.“

16. The question was first raised seriously in 1893 in connection with the apartment tax. RGIA, f. 468 (Khoziaistvennyi otdel Kabineta Ego Imperatorskago Velichestva), op. 13, d. 390 (O kvartimom naloge).

17. Seligman, Edwin R. A., The Income Tax: A Study of the History, Theory, and Practice of Income Taxation at Home and Abroad, 2d ed. (New York, 1914)Google Scholar; Kaplan, Robert Elliot, Forgotten Crisis: The Fin-de-Siècle Crisis of Democracy in France (Oxford, 1995), 68 Google Scholar; Ardant, Gabriel, Histoire de l'impôt, bk. 2, [Du] XIIIe [au] XXIe siècle (Paris, 1972), 407–8Google Scholar; Stanley, Robert, Dimensions of Law in the Service of Order: Origins of the Federal Income Tax, 1861-1913 (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Sabine, B. E. V., A History of Income Tax (London, 1966), 154–55Google Scholar; and Shehab, F., Progressive Taxation (Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar.

18. Ardant, Histoire de l'impôt; Stephen Walker Owen, Jr., “The Politics of Tax Reform in France, 1906-1926” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1982), 58, 61, 138–43; Schremmer, D. E., “Taxation and Public Finance: Britain, France, and Germany,” in Mathias, Peter and Pollard, Sidney, eds., Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1989), 8:378–80, 391–97Google Scholar; Seligman, Income Tax, 13–17 and chap. 5; Levi, Margaret, Of Rule and Revenue (Berkeley, 1988), 137–38Google Scholar; Sabine, History, 30–31, 62–73.

19. Seligman, Edwin R. A., Essays in Taxation, 10th ed. (New York, 1925), 322, 473–80, 485–87Google Scholar; Daunton, M. J., “Payment and Participation: Welfare and State-Formation in Britain, 1900-1951,” Past and Present 150 (February 1996): 174, 176–77Google Scholar. Discussed by Russian officials and expert advisers in 1910 in RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 2354 (O wedenii v Rossii podokhodnago naloga, 1909–1915), 1. 323; op.18, d. 27333,11. 332, 334.

20. On “economic personality” and “visible personality,” see, for example, Seligman, Income Tax, 495. Though the British income tax was introduced earlier than the Prussian, in 1842, it did not generally involve full personal assessment, but a series of flat levies on separate items of income.

21. Rovinskii, K. I., Podatnaia inspektsiia v Rossii 1885-1910 gg.: Ocherk deiatel'nosti podatnoi inspektsii za 25 let eia sushchestvovaniia v sviazi s razvitiem priamogo oblozheniia (St. Petersburg, 1910), 3335, 97–98, 202–7Google Scholar. By 1916, almost all had higher education. For typical educational and career profiles, see RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, dd. 489, 492, 502, 536, 538 (lichnye dela).

22. See, for example, Materialy o blagosostoianii sel'skago naseleniia, 1861-1900 (St. Petersburg, 1903). On education, health, and food loans, see Rovinskii, Podatnaia inspektsiia, 175–80; Departamenl okladnykh sborov, 100–101, 189–93.

23. Theodore H. von Laue, “Factory Inspection under the ‘Witte System': 1892–1903,” American Slavic and East European Review 19, no. 3 (October 1960): 347–62; Stepanov, N. Kh. Bunge, 210–27.

24. Robinson, Geroid T., Rural Russia under the Old Regime: A History of the Landlord-Peasant World and a Prologue to the Peasant Revolution of 1917 (New York, 1932)Google Scholar; Gerschenkron, Alexander, “Agrarian Policies and the Industrialization of Russia, 1861-1917,” in Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Cambridge, Eng., 1965), vol. 6, pt. 2, pp. 706–99Google Scholar; Simms, James Y. Jr., “The Crisis in Russian Agriculture at the End of the Nineteenth Century: A Different View,” Slavic Review 36, no. 3 (September 1977): 377–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wheatcroft, Stephen G., “Crises and the Condition of the Peasantry in Late Imperial Russia,” in Kingston-Mann, Esther and Mixter, Timothy, eds., Peasant Economy, Culture, and Politics of European Russia, 1800-1921 (Princeton, 1991), 128–72Google Scholar.

25. Richard Pipes, Cf., Russia under the Old Regime (New York, 1974), 294 Google Scholar, where a basic coercive police mentality endures through tlie centuries “irrespective of the nature of the regime.” On the contrasting approaches to government, exemplified by the respective policies of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, see Wcislo, Reforming Rural Russia.

26. A point made by the vice-director of direct taxes, Brzheskii, Nikolai K., in Nedoimochnost’ i krugovaia poruka sel'skikh obshchestv: Istoriko-kriticheskii obzor deistvuiushchago zakonodatel'stva, v sviazi s praktikoiu krest'ianskago podatnago dela (St. Petersburg, 1897)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 6; and Brzheskii, Krugovaia poruka v suzhdeniiakh redaktsionnyhh komissii i Glavnago komiteta (n.p., n.d. [no later than 1903]). For an understanding of arrears as a symptom of overtaxation, see Gerschenkron, “Agrarian Policies,” 776-80; for a challenge to that view, see Simms, “Crisis in Russian Agriculture.“

27. Sushchestvuiushchii poriadok vzimaniia okladnykh sborov s krest'ian: Po svedeniiam, dostavlennym podatnymi inspektorami za 1887-1893gody, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1894-1895). See also Brzheskii, Nedoimochnost'i krugovaia poruka, 162.

28. RGIA, f. 560 (Kantseliariia Ministerstva finansov), op. 22 (1898), d. 215 (Witte's memorandum to Nicholas II). Asked how peasants collected taxes under collective responsibility, inspectors answered that they had no way of knowing or that the methods were so diverse and unregulated as to defy generalization. See palata, Nizhegorodskaia kazennaia, Zhurnaly zasedaniia s“ezda podatnykh inspektorov Nizhegorodskoi gubernii v 1897 g. (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1897), 8084 Google Scholar; and the empirewide compilation of responses, Sushchestvuiushchii poriadok.

29. On the law and its practice before and after 1899, see Assonov, B., comp., Rukovodstvo dlia krest'ianskikh obshchestv, volostnykh starshin i sel'skikh starost po vzimaniiu okladnykh sborov (Kaluga, 1900)Google Scholar; Rovinskii, Podatnaia inspektsiia, 38–39, 69–71, 121–30, 158–59. Meetings of the Nizhnii Novgorod inspectors in 1897 and 1913 made the identical observation: they could not visit peasant taxpayers unless invited by peasant officials, which rarely happened. Nizhegorodskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnaly (1897), 19–23, and Zhurnaly I. Soedinennago s“ezda po krest'ianskomu podatnomu delu II. S'ezd podatnykh inspektorov Nizhegorodskoi gubernii 9-18 dekabria 1913 goda (Nizhnii Novgorod, 1913), 54–56. For similar observations, see palata, Moskovskaia kazennaia, Zhurnal noiabr'skoi 1910 goda sessii s“ezda podatnykh inspektorov Moskovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1911)Google Scholar; palata, Simbirskaia kazennaia, Zhurnaly zasedanii I: Soedinennago s“ezda podatnykh inspektorov i zemskikh nachal'nikov Simbirskoi gubernii 17-19 noiabria 1908 g. II: S'ezda podatnykh inspektorov Simbirskoi gubernii 20-23noiabria 1908g. (Simbirsk, 1909)Google Scholar; palata, Vladimirskaia kazennaia, Zhurnals“ezdapodatnykh inspektorov Vladimirskoi gubernii 4 i 6 dekabria 1916 goda (Vladimir, 1917)Google Scholar; and palata, Amurskaia kazennaia, Zhumal zasedanii s“ezda podatnykh inspektorov Priamurskago kraia 17-go dekabria 1916goda (Khabarovsk, 1917)Google Scholar.

30. Brzheskii, Krugovaia poruka, 10–11, 13.

31. Ozerov, Ivan, “Vozmozhno-li westi podokhodnyi nalog v Rossii?Russkoe ekonomicheskoe obozrenie 5 (May 1900): 30, 33–34, 47.Google Scholar

32. RGIA, f. 1276, op. 2, d. 213,11. 1–81, and f. 560, op. 26, d. 634 (O zapiske v Gosudarstvennuiu Dumu o reforme nalogovoi sistemy, 1907). Russia's ratio of direct to indirect taxes (1:5) was the highest of all the Great Powers. Calculations vary according to how one counts the vodka monopoly: E. Kun, “Opyt sravnitel'nago issledovaniia nalogovogo bremeni v Rossii i drugikh glavneishikh gosudarstv Evropy,” Vestnik finansov 3-4 (1913); Robert Henry Gorlin, “State Politics and the Imperial Russian Budget, 1905-1912” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1973), 102; Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” 148; Bowman, “Russia's First Income Taxes,” 257-58n8.

33. The deficit anticipated for 1907 was 35 million rubles on total revenues of over 2 billion. Small increases in other categories of revenue would have easily covered the deficit. On the budget for 1905, see Gorlin, “State Politics,” chap. 2.

34. RGIA, f. 1276, op. 2, d. 213, 11. 7–8, 105-112ob. See also RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333, II. 439–439ob., and the cabinet's report to the State Duma on 11. 334–35.

35. Rossiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE), f. 7733 (Narodnyi komissariat finansov), op. 18, d. 4745 (Kuder's Soviet service record).

36. Only some non-Russian parties opposed the bill on the grounds of corporate privilege or, in the case of Polish deputies, as a statement of autonomy from the Russian state. Moskovskii ezhenedel'nik 40 (1909): 21.

37. Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 2 (February 1911): 380.

38. Bowman, “Russia's First Income Taxes,” 282; Pogrebinskii, Gosudarstvennye finansy, 80–82; Rech' 278 (24 November 1907); Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 2 (February 1911).

39. RGIA, f. 1276, op. 2, d. 213,11. 8–18ob.

40. RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 300, 11. 40–42; f. 573, op. 20, d. 2354; f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333,11. 616–19, 626ob.–627; f. 1276, op. 6, d. 16,1. 272; f. 1158 (Gosudarstvennyi sovet), op. 1, d. 3 (O podokhodnom naloge), 11. 330–332ob., 337ob., 571, 715ob.–716; f. 1278 (Gosudarstvennaia Duma), op. 6, d. 16 (O podokhodnom naloge), 11. 24–25,187ob.–189, 191ob.;Izestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 2 (February 1911): 4–5 , 8–12;Ekonomist Rossii 47 (27 November 1910) and 1 (8 January 1911).

41. As debated in the State Council in RGIA, f. 1158, op. 1, d. 3,11. 339ob., 370–73, 565–70; in the cabinet commission in 1905 in RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333,1. 453ob.; and among fiscal experts in Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 2 (February 1911). William G. Wagner expertly traces similar paradoxes of sexual equality in Marriage, Property, and Law in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford, 1994).

42. On Russian expressions of the Left Hegelianism suggested by this approach, see Walicki, Andrzej, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Andrews-Rusiecka, Hilda (Stanford, 1979), chap. 7, and 397405 Google Scholar. On the diversity of Hegelian approaches, see Kolakowski, Leszek, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution, trans. Falla, P. S., 3 vols. (Oxford, 1978)Google Scholar; Hamburg, Gary M., Boris Chicherin and Early Russian Liberalism, 1828-1866 (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar.

43. Departament okladnykh sborov, 12.

44. See Kadet comments in the Duma minutes from 1910 in RGIA, f. 1158, op. 1, d. 3; Kutler's comments in RGIA, f. 1278, op. 6, d. 16,11. 159–60; and Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform, no. 1 (December 1910): 4, and no. 2 (February 1911): 5, 19.

45. Officials of the Department of Direct Taxation often made these comparisons. See RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 845 (O kvartirnom naloge), and Departament okladnykh sborov, 60–100.

46. F. A. Men'kov, “Obzor fiskal'nago zakonodatel'stva glavneishikh Evropeiskikh stran s nachala XX stoletiia,” Novyi ekonomist 29/30 (27 July 1913).

47. Reflected in the dualistic rendering of the modern self as both independent and fully committed to the community. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 185 Google Scholar.

48. Kharkhordin, Oleg, The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A Study of Practices (Berkeley, 1999).Google Scholar

49. For a compatible conclusion, see Offord, Derek, “ Lichnost': Notions of Individual Identity,” in Kelly, Catriona and Shepherd, David, eds., Constructing Russian Culture in the Age of Revolution: 1881-1940 (Oxford, 1998), 1325 Google Scholar.

50. RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333,1. 332.

51. The right to privacy was used by British bankers to reject financial disclosure in the 1840s, and by French businessmen to limit reporting well into the twentieth century. Sabine, History, 30–31, 62, 73; Owen, “Politics of Tax Reform,” 138–41.

52. RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333,11. 616ob.–617.

53. RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 310; hvestiia obshchestva ftnansovykh reform 2 (February 1911): 6.

54. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 2354,1. 362.

55. On the corporate income tax, see Bowman, “Russia's First Income Taxes.“

56. RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 300,11. 35ob.–36ob.

57. Rafalovich, Aleksei, Zhelatelen li podokhodnyi nalog (St. Petersburg, 1910), 6.Google Scholar

58. Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 9 (18 February 1914): 6–7.

59. On the differences between equalization as a passive process and participatory citizenship as an active one, see Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), 4243, 61–62.Google Scholar

60. On participation as distinct from support or consent, see Gellately, Robert, The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; Lehning, To Be a Citizen, introduction; and Somers, “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere“; Holquist, Peter, “'Information Is the Alpha and Omega of Our Work': Bolshevik Surveillance in Its Pan-European Context,” Journal of Modern History 69, no. 3 (September 1997): 415–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61. RGIA, f. 1276, op. 2, d. 213,11. 69–69ob., 83,133, 156,126–27.

62. Of 1.2 million men eligible for service in 1907, 403,060 actually served. Ekonomist Rossii 10 (18 April 1909): 12–13. For other parallels drawn between conscription and taxation, see RGIA, f. 1278, op. 6, d. 16,11. 14–16ob.; f. 1158, op. 1, d. 3,11. 575–577ob.

63. See the minutes of the 1893 commission in RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 845; and Departament okladnykh sborov, Gosudarstvennyi kvartirnyi nalog: Istoriia i statistika naloga (St. Petersburg, 1903), 5556.Google Scholar

64. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 3,11. 229–33.

65. palata, Moskovskaia kazennaia, Zhurnal oktiabr'skoi 1911 goda sessii s“ezda podatnykh inspektorov Moskovskoi gubernii (Moscow, 1911), 1920 Google Scholar; Gosudarstvennyi kvartirnyi nalog, 7, 55–56; RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 845.

66. RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333,11. 456ob.–457.

67. As Ozerov told disquieted bankers in 1905: RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333, 11. 607–31.

68. Summarized in a memorandum of the Ministry of Finance to the cabinet in RGIA, f. 1276, op. 2, d. 213, 11. 64ob.–67ob. See also published summaries in Ozerov, “Vozmozhno-li westi podokhodnyi nalog“; and Pokrovskii, N. N., “O podokhodnom naloge,” Vestnik finansov 1 (1915): 46 Google Scholar.

69. Rech'317 (23 November 1914); Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” 168-69; Promyshlennost'i torgovlia 20 (15 October 1910): 407; and Gosudarstvennaia Duma, VI sozyv: Stenograficheskie otchety (August 1915): 556–638.

70. As debated in the cabinet commission of 1905 in RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 300, 11. 37–37ob.

71. Bogolepov, “Voina, finansy, i narodnoe khoziaistvo,” 300–303.

72. RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333, 11. 460ob., 617ob.; and Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 2 (February 1911), comments of I. A. Isaev and O. O. Geiman.

73. RGIA, f. 573, op. 18, d. 27333 (Zhurnal soveshchaniia o sobranii svedenii o dokhodakh), 11. 461ob.–462, 602–606ob.; Izvestiia obshchestva finansovykh reform 9 (18 February 1914): 6–7. The resulting estimates of wealth were notional, ranging from 1.7 billion rubles in 1906 to 2.6 billion in 1909. Also see the calculations of S. N. Prokopovich, who was also motivated by the anticipated income tax, in “Opyt ischisleniia narodnago dokhoda Rossii,” in Trudy Vol'nago ekonomicheskago obshchestva (1906).

74. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 2354, 11. 56–58, as well as the entire delo for examples from other regions. On the “discovery” in 1915, see RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 374 (correspondence with Treasury Offices), 1. 73.

75. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 374,11. 57–58ob.

76. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 373 (correspondence with Treasury Offices), 11. 49–52ob. (report from Baku).

77. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 2354,1. 46 (Khar'kov); f. 573, op. 34, d. 310 (Petrograd).

78. Pokrovskii, “O podokhodnom naloge,” 46.

79. A Treasury Office reporting 257,922 “tax units” in 1915 broke the number down into 256,813 “persons,” 169 noble estates, and 223 villages. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 374, 11. 69–70.

80. V. O. Palechek, comp., Instruklsiia o primenenii polozheniia 23 iiuliia 1899 g. o poriadke vzimaniia okladnykh sborov s nadel'nykh zemel' sel'skikh obshchestv (Novgorod, 1910),bk. 1, p. 7; Rovinskii, Podatnaia inspektsiia, 173–74.

81. Palechek, comp., Instruktsiia o primenenii, bk. 1, p. 21 (art. 79).

82. Nizhegorodskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnaly (1913), 38–40, and appendix (forma 1); Simbirskaia kazannaia palata, Zhurnaly zasedanii, 4–5, 12–17.

83. In the rare case of an inspector who tried to seize the possessions of a delinquent homesteader, the seizure was disallowed by a succession of higher officials. See Nizhegorodskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnaly (1913), 34–36. Others at the meeting (ibid., 30–32) observed that seizures were never practiced. On the inalienability of peasant possessions, see Vestnik finansov 21 (1902): appendix. On the difficulty of seizing peasant possessions in any credit operation, see Kotsonis, Yanni, Making Peasants Backward (London, 1999), chaps. 2–3, 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. Jane Burbank has found ample evidence that peasant legal procedures at the county level were intricate, followed local precedent to a remarkable extent, and were recorded in great detail. See Burbank, Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905–1917 (Bloomington, forthcoming). At issue for officials was the bureaucracy's inability to integrate these practices into the state structure. See, for example, Brzheskii, Krugovaia poruka, 10–11.

85. The precise amount depended on the way it was calculated. See a high estimate in Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure“; and a low government figure in Stenograficheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, col. 357. See also Pogrebinskii, Gosudarstvennye finansy; Rivkin, B. B., Finansovaia politika v period Velikoi oktiabr'skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii (Moscow, 1957)Google Scholar; and D'iachenko, V. P., Sovetskie finansy v pervoi faze razvitiia sotsialisticheskogo gosudarstva (Moscow, 1947)Google Scholar.

86. M. Fridman, “Finansovaia reforma v Rossii,” Vestnik finansov 8–10 (1916). For an admission that the income tax was not a solution to the budget crisis by the prime minister, minister of finance, and most supporters and opponents in the State Council, see Stenograficheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, cols. 83–180, 184–202.

87. Bogolepov, “Voina, finansy i narodnoe khoziaistvo,” 300–303.

88. The income tax had a ceiling of 12.5 percent (up from 5 percent in the 1907 proposal). Along with the war profits tax of 13 May 1916, it meant a potential tax rate of 90 percent for enterprises. Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” 202–3; Vestnikjinansov 21 (1916): 292.

89. Gurko in Stenograftcheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, col. 236; the Duma's report in RGIA, f. 1158, op. 1, d. 3,1. 38ob.

90. Slenograficheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, cols. 83–88. Some of the imperial materials are housed in the Soviet collections: RGAE, f. 7733, op. 1, d. 4487 (on the income tax), 1. 15.

91. Stenograjicheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, col. 83.

92. Again, such estimates are notional and no doubt open to correction, but they are the figures by which officials and legislators deliberated.

93. Duma, Gosudarstvennaia, Doklady opodokhodnom naloge Finansovoi komissii IV Dumy, no. 20, pt. IV:4, pp. 6063 Google Scholar; Novyi ekonomist 10 (1916): 5–8.

94. The phrase “merciless taxation” can be found in Michelson, “Revenue and Expenditure,” 172–73.

95. Stenograficheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, col. 127.

96. On Germany, Peter-Christian Witt, “Tax Policies, Tax Assessment, and Inflation: Towards a Sociology of Public Finances in the German Inflation, 1914–1923,” and Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig, “The Modernisation of the Tax System in the First World War and the Great Inflation, 1914–1923,” both in Witt, Peter-Christian, ed., Wealth and Taxation in Central Europe: The History and Sociology of Public Finance (Leamington Spa, Eng., 1987)Google Scholar. On Britain, Whiting, R. C., “Taxation and the Working Class, 1915–24,” Historical Journal 33, no. 4 (1990): 895916 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On France, Owen, “Politics of Tax Reform.“

97. For a contrasting understanding of the Russian state as “strong” (meaning violent) , see Scott, James C., Seeing Like a Slate: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998), 49 Google Scholar. The issue for Scott is the cadastre, which “as a rule of thumb” was achieved earlier by strong states. Russia did not have a cadastre, which was closely related to the state's inability to “see” this population.

98. Stenograficheskii otchet: Gosudarstvennyi Sovet, 1916, cols. 104–24, 236; and the meeting of liberal party leaders and industrialists recounted in Rech’ 317 (23 November 1914).

99. Bogolepov, “Voina, finansy i narodnoe khoziaistvo,” 303–4.

100. Kievskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnal zasedanii s“ezda podatnykh inspektorov Kievskoi gubernii (3–10 fevralia 1917g.) (Kiev, 1917), 4; and from Petrograd, RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 310,11. 13–14ob. (January 1917).

101. The idea was to assume that all Chinese and Korean laborers earned 425, rather than 850, rubles per year. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 374,11. 21–23ob.; Amurskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnal, 62-67.

102. Kievskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnal, 4; and from Petrograd, RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 310,11. 13–14ob. (January 1917).

103. Kievskaia kazennaia palata, Zhurnal, 4-5.

104. RGIA, f. 20, d. 2354,11. 43–46ob. (minutes of Khar'kov congress of inspectors).

105. Zhurnaly zasedanii Vremennago pravitel'stua 105 (12 June 1917): 6–16. The exemption level was raised to 1,000 rubles, but given inflation it actually fell. The maximum rate was increased to 30.5 percent.

106. Voprosy finansovoi reformy v Rossii (Moscow, 1917). Direct tax receipts fell by onethird for the land tax, 41 percent for urban properties, 19 percent for the industrial tax, and 68 percent for the redemption tax. Pogrebinskii, Gosudarstvennye finansy; Rivkin, , Finansovaia politika; Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii nakanune Velikoi Oktiabr'skoi sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii: Dokumenty i materialy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1957), doc. 556, p. 416 Google Scholar. For yearend results, see Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 130 (Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov), op. 2, d. 381, 1. 24.

107. RGIA, f. 560, op. 28, d. 1223.

108. Speech to the State Conference in August 1917, in Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii, doc. 556.

109. I Vserossiiskii s“ezd podatnykh inspektorov i ikh pomoshchnikov. Moskva, 7—17 avgusta 1917 g. Zhurnaly plenarnykh zasedanii s“ezda (Moscow, 1917), 17–24 (remarks of V F. Zagorskii).

110. For an overview of the collection process and its results, see RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 2925. See the deliberations of the tax commissions in Vologda in 1917, in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Vologodskoi oblasti (GAVO), f. 389, op. 1, d. 53; f. 690, op. 1, dd. 1–9 (individual declarations); and f. 388, op. 4, d. 4267 (deliberations of assessment commissions). In Moscow province in 1917, 261,000 people were assessed in the capital, but only 58,000 people of any estate were assessed outside the city. RGIA, f. 573, op. 20, d. 2912, 11. 3–5.

111. Lih, Lars T., Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921 (Berkeley, 1990), 50, 59, 7173, and 85.Google Scholar

112. I Vserossiiskii s“ezd podatnykh inspektorov, 12,17–24.

113. Personnel record, including autobiography, of I. I. Sapronov, RGIA, f. 573, op. 34, d. 536.

114. Minutes of the Samara congress of inspectors held in May 1917, in RGAE, f. 7733, op. l , d . 4487,1. 103.

115. As suggested in G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to The Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch (Indianapolis, 1988), 42: “The objective and the subjective will are then reconciled, as one and the same serene whole.” See also Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge, Eng., 1975),chap.l6.

116. On the ways in which liberty and citizenship were distinct, see Gauchet, Marcel, “The Declaration of the Rights of Man,” in Furet, François and Ozouf, Mona, eds., A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution (London, 1989)Google Scholar. Gianfranco Poggi intimates that citizenship meant responsibility, but not necessarily rights. Poggi, See, “The Modern State and the Idea of Progress,” in Almond, Gabriel A., Chodorow, Marvin, Pearce, Roy Harvey, eds., Progress and Its Discontents (Berkeley, 1982), 354 Google Scholar.

117. Lenin, V. I., “Gosudarstvo i revoliutsiia,“ Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow, 1962), 33:89, 91,97101.Google Scholar

118. Lih, Bread and Authority, and Yaney, George, The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930 (Urbana, 1982)Google Scholar, consider the problems of enlistment and mobilization, respectively, and explore the strategies used to achieve compliance.

119. Lewin, Moshe, The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History of Interwar Russia (New York, 1985), 18, 43 Google Scholar. This argument is refined in Raleigh, Donald J., Experiencing Russia's Civil War: Politics, Society, and Revolutionary Culture in Saratov, 1917–1922 (Princeton, 2002), 105–6.Google Scholar

120. Two recent works that emphasize early Soviet efforts to forge unity in administrative practice are Gimpel'son, E. G., Formirovanie sovetskoi politicheskoi sistemy, 1917–1923 gg. (Moscow, 1995)Google Scholar, and Leonov, S. V., Rozhdenie sovetskoi imperii: Gosudarstvo i ideologiia, 1917-1922 gg. (Moscow, 1997)Google Scholar.

121. Curiously, this literature usually begins with a discussion of the non-Marxist intellectual legacy of the Old Regime but then explains Soviet Russia as the product of Bolshevism or Marxism alone. Malia, Martin, The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, vol. 1.