States of Obligation
Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic
Published on 27. July 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
504 pages
978-1-4875-2165-3 (ISBN)
Description
Beginning in the 1860s, the Russian Empire replaced a poll tax system that originated with Peter the Great with a modern system of income and excise taxes. Russia began a transformation of state fiscal power that was also underway across Western Europe and North America. States of Obligation is the first sustained study of the Russian taxation system, the first to study its European and transatlantic context, and the first to expose the essential continuities between the fiscal practices of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
Using a wealth of materials from provincial and local archives across Russia, Yanni Kotsonis examines how taxation was simultaneously a revenue-raising and a state-building tool, a claim on the person and a way to produce a new kind of citizenship. During successive political, wartime, and revolutionary crises between 1855 and 1928, state fiscal power was used to forge social and financial unity and fairness and a direct relationship with individual Russians. State power eventually overwhelmed both the private sector economy and the fragile realm of personal privacy. States of Obligation is at once a study in Russian economic history and a reflection on the modern state and the modern citizen.
Using a wealth of materials from provincial and local archives across Russia, Yanni Kotsonis examines how taxation was simultaneously a revenue-raising and a state-building tool, a claim on the person and a way to produce a new kind of citizenship. During successive political, wartime, and revolutionary crises between 1855 and 1928, state fiscal power was used to forge social and financial unity and fairness and a direct relationship with individual Russians. State power eventually overwhelmed both the private sector economy and the fragile realm of personal privacy. States of Obligation is at once a study in Russian economic history and a reflection on the modern state and the modern citizen.
Reviews / Votes
'This book opens the door to new questions related to the means by which state, population, and economy intersect in Russia and elsewhere. The author and press are to be congratulated for blessing us with these intellectual provocations.'- David W. Darrow (Revolutionary Russia November 2015) 'As a study of both reformist and revolutionary state fiscal policy, an important area that has been much neglected, this is an intellectually sophisticated and stimulating work.'
- Steven Hoch (American Historical review, December 2015) 'Kotsonis's work offers much food for thought. For specialists or fellow travelers in Russian business history and economic history, this book is required reading.'
- Steven Nafziger (EH.Net January 2016) "Yanni Kotsonis has written an original and magisterial work that will change the way we understand and teach Russian and Soviet history ... Like all great books, it will be read and referenced by generations of historians ... This is a superb work of scholarship - comprehensive, meticulously researched, illuminating, and humane."
- Golfo Alexopoulos (The Russian Review) 'Yanni Kotsonis provides a stimulating and important history of the transformation of state obligations in nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia.'
- John Randolph (Slavic Review vol 75:02:2016) 'States of Obligation is destined to emerge as a classic not only for historians but also for political scientists and economists with an interest in imperial and Soviet Russia.'
- Scott Gehlbach Kritika (Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History vol 17:03:2016) 'With its unique focus on taxation, States of Obligation makes an important contribution to the field of Russian and Soviet studies... It should be of interest to those examining issues concerning the modernizing state and definitions of citizenship.'
- Sharon A. Kowalsky (Canadian Journal of History vol 51:02:2016) 'Yanni Kotsonis has given us an erudite book, rich with insight. It is well worth reading.'
- Frank Wcislo (Journal of Modern History vol 89:01:2017)
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
590 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4875-2165-3 (9781487521653)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Yanni Kotsonis is an associate professor in the Departments of History and of Russian and Slavic Studies and founding Director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.
Content
Introduction. A Short History of Taxes: Russia and the World from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries
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
2 Three Tax Reforms, Three Visions of the Polity
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
4. Systematic Intimacy: Business Taxes and the Disciplining of Commercial Russia
5. Mass Taxation in the Age of the Individual: The New Personal Taxation in Russia and the World
6. The Income Tax as Modern Government: Assessment, Self-Assessment, and Mutual Surveillance
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
8. The Peasant and the Fisc: The State Budget and the Persistence of Collective Tax Apportionment
9. The Local Practices of Peasant Taxation
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
12. The Economy of Licences: Taxes and the New Economic Policy
Afterword. Russia, Socialism, and the Modern State
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
2 Three Tax Reforms, Three Visions of the Polity
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
4. Systematic Intimacy: Business Taxes and the Disciplining of Commercial Russia
5. Mass Taxation in the Age of the Individual: The New Personal Taxation in Russia and the World
6. The Income Tax as Modern Government: Assessment, Self-Assessment, and Mutual Surveillance
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
8. The Peasant and the Fisc: The State Budget and the Persistence of Collective Tax Apportionment
9. The Local Practices of Peasant Taxation
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
12. The Economy of Licences: Taxes and the New Economic Policy
Afterword. Russia, Socialism, and the Modern State