States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic

632 Pages·2016·4.275 MB·English

by  Yanni Kotsonis

STATES OF OBLIGATION
YANNI KOTSONIS
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States of Obligation
Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian
Empire and Early Soviet Republic
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
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University of Toronto Press 2014
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in the U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4354-3
Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kotsonis, Yanni, 1962–, author
States of obligation: taxes and citizenship in the Russian Empire and early Soviet
Republic / Yanni Kotsonis.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4426-4354-3 (bound)
1. Taxation – Russia – History. 2. Taxation – Soviet Union – History. 3. Russia –
Politics and government – 1801–1917. 4. Soviet Union – Politics and government –
1917–1936. I. Title.
HJ2801.K68 2014 336.200947 C2014-902567-X
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for
the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Awards to Scholarly Publications
Program, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing
program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of
the Government of Ontario.
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University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of
Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.
6
For Kate
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Preface
List of Russian Terms
Introduction. A Short History of Taxes: Russia and the World from
the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries
The Analytic Categories: The State, the Economy, and the Person
Taxes and Regimes: Russia in International Context
And Russia in Its Own Context
Historians on Russian Taxation
Part 1. People, Places, Things: The Old Regime, Economic Knowledge,
and the Coming of the New Order
1 The Fiscal Instruments of Regime Change from the Eighteenth to
the Nineteenth Centuries
The Fiscal Idiom of Civic Reform
The Novelty of the State Budget and the New Space of Economics
The Fiscal Reformers
Poll Taxes, State Knowledge, and the Problem of Equivalencies
“And Yet the Arrears Were Never Collected”: The Problem of
Accountability
2 Three Tax Reforms, Three Visions of the Polity
Ignore the Person: The Logic of Property Taxes after 1855
The Making of an Urban-Rural Divide
Indirect Taxation, the Free Market, and Their Discontents
The Excise Inspectors
The Public View of the Private, and the Meanings of Laissez-Faire
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Part 2. The Politics of Visibility, the Technologies of Intimacy: Taxes
and the Remaking of Urban and Commercial Russia
3 Wealth in Motion: New Money, New Taxes, and a New Bureaucracy
Capitalism and Privacy in Russia and the North Atlantic
The Tax Inspectorate, Nikolai Bunge, and Popular Welfare
Dead Souls: The Inheritance Tax and the Economic Personality
Corporations, Personhood, and the Case for Transparency
Enter the Citizen: The Apartment Tax
4 Systematic Intimacy: Business Taxes and the Disciplining of
Commercial Russia
The Laws of 1885 and the Map of Commercial Russia
Disclosure, Exposure, and the Uses of the Norm
Capital Gains, Contracts, Deeds, and Urban Real Estate
Economic Individuation and State Aggregation
5 Mass Taxation in the Age of the Individual: The New Personal
Taxation in Russia and the World
Back to the Person: Russia and the International Debate over the
Income Tax
The Russian Income Tax and the Political Crisis of 1905
The Inexorable Logic of Universalism
6 The Income Tax as Modern Government: Assessment, Self-
Assessment, and Mutual Surveillance
The Mechanisms of Participation
The Individual and the Personality in Fiscal Practice
Evasion and Transparency
The Income Tax and the Great War
Russia and the Modern State
Part 3. The Politics of Obscurity: Peasant Taxes, Excises, and the Vodka
Monopoly to 1917
7 Everyone and No One: Indirect Taxes and the Vodka Monopoly to
1917
Revenue, Per Capita Rates, and the Limits of Social Reform
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From Laissez-Faire to Nationalization
Treasure, Public Order, and Public Health
Prohibition, the War Budget, and the Financial Catastrophe
8 The Peasant and the Fisc: The State Budget and the Persistence of
Collective Tax Apportionment
Peasant Direct Taxes and the State Revenue Budget to 1914
State Policy and the Practices of Uncertainty
9 The Local Practices of Peasant Taxation
Repartition
Arrears and Forgiveness
Collection and Punishment
Taxes in Kind
Was a Peasant a Person? Rural Taxation and the War-Time Crisis
Part 4. The State and Revolution, the State and Evolution: Fiscal
Practices and a New Regime, 1917–30
10 Soviet Russia and the Continuing History of the Russian State
11 The Meanings of Utopia: Taxes, Urban Unities, and the Several
Assaults on Peasant Separateness, 1917–21
Urban Taxes, Nationalization, and the Achievable Utopia
The Peasantry, Limited Government, and Unlimited Force
12 The Economy of Licences: Taxes and the New Economic Policy
Afterword. Russia, Socialism, and the Modern State
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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