STATES OF OBLIGATION YANNI KOTSONIS 3 States of Obligation Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London 4 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. 5 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 8 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 9 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 10