Taxes and obligations

From Tables 10.5 and Tables 10.6 it is obvious that the burden of taxes and obligations increased for all categories of taxable population, though in varying degrees. Landlord peasants suffered most of all.

Table 10.5 Changes in the burden of taxes and dues on seigniorial serfs in eighteenth-century Russia (per capita)

‘ In money and kind.

^b Index A does not take into account price changes; index B has been deflated to reflect changes in nominal prices.

^c Complete cultivation of a certain number of desiatins of land per year; the desiatina was equal to 2.7 acres or 1.09 ha.

^d Pud=16.38 kg.

Source. L. V. Milov 1965: 208, 269, Miliukov 1905: 489, Mironov 1985: 54-5, Rubinshtein 1957: 156-7, Semevskii 1903: 52-3, 59, 82-3, 584-5, Chechulin 1906: 122-3, Tikhonov 1974: 294, 298.

Table 10.6 Changes in the burden of taxes and dues from state peasants (T), Appanage peasants (II), church (from 1764 Economicheskie) peasants (III), seigniorial peasants (IV), and burgers (V) in eighteenth-century Russia (per capita)

‘ Index A does not take into account price changes; index B has been deflated to reflect changes in nominal prices.

Source: See Table 10.5.

of payments peasants sometimes had to sell produce they needed themselves for their own consumption and this substantially undermined their biological status. To discharge payments in 1700—9, a landlord peasant had to sell 250 kg of rye, while in 1790—9 it was 289 kg and in the 1770s even 325 kg. During this century the payments of burgers rose the least—nominally by 80%. Burgers, however, suffered not only from an increase in taxes and obligations but also from a rise in the prices of foodstuffs. They had to buy a considerable part of their food in the market since their own households could not provide all necessary supplies, as was the case with peasants. The comparison of the stature of recruits from various social groups vividly supports the conclusions made on the basis of the analysis of the tax and rent dynamics (see Table 10.7).

The biological status of burgers suffered most of all: their stature decreased by 2.3 cm from 1700—59 to 1760—99. The stature of Appanage or court peasants (who belonged to the tsar's family) decreased by 2.1 cm, of landlord peasants by 2 cm, of state-owned peasants by 1.9 cm, of clergy by 1.6 cm, of manor serfs (house-serf peasants who were in landlords' service) by 1.1 cm and of church peasants (who were confiscated from the Church in 1764) by 0.7 cm. The biological status of non-Russian peoples of the Volga region (Tatars, Mordovians, Chuvashes, and Bashkirs: the ethnic origin of recruits of other nationalities was not defined in the sources) suffered least of all. By the end of the eighteenth century landlord peasants had the lowest biological status, while non-Russian peoples and clergy had the highest. It is notable that on the scale of stature, social groups are arranged in accordance with their position on the scale of payments that they made to the state and to their masters. Unfortunately, nobility serving in the army were never measured.

Table 10.7 Height by social groups, 1700—99 (in cm)

Source: See Table 10.2

The stature of their manor serfs indirectly testifies to that. Manor serfs were among the tallest in the various categories of peasant and were 1 cm taller than other landlord peasants.

What made the state raise taxes and landlords increase rent? Years when the tendency for a fall in the biological standard of living was replaced by a tendency for its rise are very indicative and suggest an answer to this question. First of all let us note 4 five-year periods when short-term and insignificant rises in biological status set in: 1725—9, 1740—4, 1760—4, and 1775—9. In my opinion, in three cases these rises were connected with the accession to the throne of a new emperor. Each time, the accession was accompanied by the remission of arrears and a temporary weakening of the state machinery pressure on the taxable population. This was a substantial concession, since annual arrears on direct taxes made up 4—5% of the total amount of payment (Chechulin 1906: 143—4; Troitskii 1966: 134—44). The rise of the biological status in 1775—9 can be linked with the peasant uprising in 1774—5, which raged over a vast territory for two years and after which rent payments were decreased for some time.

In 1700—24, when we first observe a decline in the biological status of recruits, Russia was waging a difficult and exhausting war with Sweden for the Baltic lands, which ended in 1721 with Russia's victory and the Nishtadt peace. During intervals in fighting in the West, Russia also fought against Turkey (1700—13) and Persia (1722—3) and simultaneously carried out serious political, economic, social, cultural, and administrative reforms. Formation of a regular army, prolonged wars, building of towns, canals and roads, construction of a fleet, of factories, and reform of management required enormous funds from the state on whose initiative all these were going on. The state obtained these funds through tax increases, the use of state regalia within certain areas (monetary, salt, alcohol drinking, etc.), and the emission of inferior money (the so-called coin spoiling). In 1701—21 state revenue grew by 2.9 times at the expense of direct taxes, regalia, and various kinds of dues and duties (Kafengauz and Pavlenko 1954: 391).⁵ Despite this, revenues did not defray state expenses completely.

of horses and carts for the transportation of military cargoes, etc.), the total tax burden was increased since conversion of the recruitment obligation to money raised direct tax by 23% (Kahan 1985: 348). If we also take into consideration the devastation of war-struck areas, asynchronies of variations in taxes, rent, and prices, and also the fact that in reality more taxes were collected than were noted on paper (part of them collecting in the hands of officials from the local and central administration), the well-being of the population in the first quarter of the century was generally lowered, and this was reflected in the lowering of the biological status of the taxable population.

With the end of the military operations in 1721 and the death of the tireless emperor in 1725, a certain easing set in. The biological status of the population began to rise gradually and within twenty years exceeded the pre-war level. A second fall in the biological standard of living which went on for fifty-five years (the fall halted only in 1760—4 and 1775—9) began in 1745—9 and was also largely due to wars. During this period Russia fought several wars with: Prussia (1757-62), Turkey (1768-74, 1786-91), Poland (1768-72, 1792, and 1794-5), Sweden (1788-90), Persia (1795-6), and France (1798-9). In 1763-1800 military expenditure on the army and navy absorbed 67% of the state budget revenue (Chechulin 1906: 256-7). The most difficult was the war with Turkey. In expenditure and manpower losses it outstripped even the northern war. Military fatalities alone were 215,000, 2.2 times more than in the northern war (Urlanis 1960: 54-8, 261-70, 340). During the first war against Turkey, in 1769, Catherine II had to turn to foreign loans and the issue of banknotes threw the country's money circulation into confusion. By 1800 the rate of exchange of a banknote rouble had fallen to 66.3 kopecks in silver and in 1796 the state debt, from the issue of banknotes, was 216 million roubles, which exceeded the budget revenue by 3.9 times (Chechulin 1906: 256-7; Liashchenko 1952: 415-18). Finally, the spoils of war in the form of new territories, the northern Black Sea lands in particular, required considerable investments on the part of the state infrastructure, defence, settling, and development.

The second important reason why state taxes increased was the fact that, in the years of the fall in the biological standard of living, the state was carrying out extensive structural reforms in the country. Earlier we mentioned the reforms of Peter I. The reforms of Catherine II were no less significant and intensive and they also absorbed considerable funds. The empress carried out major administrative and legal reforms, and she also encouraged the development of industry, science, literature, education, journalism, book-printing, theatre and art, opened foreign markets for Russian agriculture, extended contacts with West European countries in all spheres of life, and founded hospitals for orphans, among many other things (Riazanovsky 1984: 254-75).

The process of westernization that had begun in Russia in the early eighteenth century was one of the main causes of the nobility's desire to increase their income to the level required for leading a luxurious life in European style. This desire was encouraged by a favourable economic situation, which developed in

Russia as a result of the price revolution. In 1700—99 the general level of prices, in silver, rose by 5 times and grain prices by 5.7 times (including 2.7 times between 1760 and 1999) (Mironov 1985: 169—75, 1986: 228). The phenomenal price rise had no connection either with economic depression or with overpopulation. It was caused by the fact that Russian prices were denominated in silver, which in the early eighteenth century meant that average prices were approximately seven times lower than those in western Europe. During the eighteenth century, Russian prices caught up with the European prices as a result of Russia's entry into the European market as an important supplier of primary commodities, mainly grain, hemp, flax, furs, and also iron (Mironov 1985: 110—11). As compared to 1690—9, by 1726 foreign-trade turnovers in silver had risen by 2.5 times and by 1791—1800 by 26.5 times. The role of foreign trade in the country's total revenue increased. In 1724 nearly 25% of the country's aggregate commodity output was traded in the foreign market and by 1800, this share increased to 41% (Mironov 1985: 113). The catch-up of Russian prices as well as the rapid growth of Russian exports of agricultural produce that started in the 1760s after the liberalization of grain exports (before that time grain exports were limited and depended upon the price level) created an extremely favourable economic situation most of all for landlords. In pursuit of money by any means, they expanded the area under cultivation, and increased the corvee to meet the growing requirements for manpower. Where it was unprofitable to expand cultivation they increased quitrents for their peasants, forcing peasants to expand crop area or to engage in non-agricultural trades.

The landlord peasantry (7,057,000 of both sexes or 51.5% of total population in 1719 and 19,585,000 or 57.3% of the population in 1795) (Kabuzan 1971: 59—118) was the common source of income for both landlords and the state. Naturally they competed for a greater share of the income. Under Peter I a compromise had been reached—the income was shared equally. Peter I's successors, however, became strongly dependent on the nobility and gradually let them almost completely appropriate the state's share. This was due to the fact that the increase in the landlords' rent, as a rule, outran the rise in grain prices while the increase in taxes lagged behind the rise in prices. The share of income from landlord peasants acquired by the state fell gradually from 50% to 12.1% over the eighteenth century. As a result the state budget lost enormous funds, which were re-appropriated by the landlords and spent on their personal whims (see Table 10.8).

The nobility also laid claim to state-owned and former church peasants. Here too, the empresses made concessions, transferring nearly one million of the state-owned peasants to the possession of the nobility. This brought considerable losses to the treasury as rent slipped away from the treasury and into the pockets of landlords (Semevskii 1882: 153—92; Semevskii 1906: 1—71). The nobility's claim for former church peasants (1,626,000 of both sexes in 1719 and 2,610,000 in 1795) was rejected and income from these allowed the government to patch up holes in the state budget.

Table 10.8 Losses to the state treasury from the gap between the increase in the poll tax (in 1,000 roubles) and grain prices, 1725-1800

^a The direct taxes received by the state treasury are depreciated in proportion to the rise in prices. Source: See Table 10.5.

5.