The impact of Peter the Great's introduction of the poll tax on the peasant has been widely debated. The emperor wanted to introduce a new and reliable source of revenue, but at the same time he was very conscious of the need not to antagonise the peasantry by making severe financial demands on them. Despite this, it has been argued, most notably by P. N. Miliukov in his writings before 1917, that the burden of taxation increased very substantially during Peter's reign and that, in particular, the poll tax generated 260 per cent more in revenue than the taxes that it replaced.[92] This argument is based on analysis of the total tax yield, rather than looking at the burden faced by each Russian household and does not take into account the increase in population over the period and has thus been challenged by more recent commentators. It has been argued that the state's tax revenues increased partly because there were more tax-payers, but that this was also due to inflation and that the real tax burden on individuals remained more or less steady. It has even been suggested that the introduction of the poll tax represented a reduction in the level of taxation, after the government's need to increase taxes to pay for the Great Northern War.[93]As has been widely acknowledged, however, there is insufficient evidence to come to definitive judgements about the burdens of taxation in the early part of the eighteenth century. The Russian state did not have the bureaucratic capacity to maintain accurate records of its finances during this period and the budget-making process was still rudimentary. While complete evidence for the actual financial burdens faced by the peasantry during and immediately after Peter's reign is lacking, the perception produced by the introduction of the poll tax is much clearer. The population as a whole believed that the poll tax had resulted in significantly increased taxation. But this belief was related to the circumstances of the tax's introduction. The early 1720s were hard years for Russian farmers. Poor harvests and resulting high prices for grain helped to reduce the peasants' standard of living: many peasants were compelled to become purchasers of grain, rather than being able to sell their own produce. At the same time, the government moved to requisition grain, paying only very modest prices to the peasantry, to try to alleviate famine. The methods by which the new poll tax was collected also served to generate antagonism: the task of tax-collection was initially handed over to the army and the military sought to collect the new tax in cash. Previously, the work of tax-collection had been undertaken by landowners, and peasants had been able to negotiate to pay their taxes in kind or by performing additional labour services. The combination of the need for the peasants to produce cash to pay the new poll tax, together with the unbending attitude of the army during the process of collection, served to intensify the stress that the peasants were already feeling as a result of poor agricultural conditions. Even though the burden that the newtax represented may, overall, not have represented any substantial increase in the overall level of taxation demanded from the Russian peasants, their clear perception was that the poll tax did represent a considerable extra demand by the government.
The position of the peasantry in the second half of the nineteenth century was also complex. Emancipation had been introduced partly as a response to the apparent growth in peasant discontent during the 1850s. The terms of the settlement had been dictated as much by the Russian state's financial position as by the needs of either peasants or landowners. The government was extremely unsure of the likely peasant response to emancipation, both in the short term and as the real effects of the reform became clear. It was, therefore, very wary of making significant changes to the tax system until emancipation had bedded down. The system of redemption payments introduced a new financial burden for former serfs and, even though the state's need for extra revenue was considerable during the 1860s and 1870s, it was reluctant to embark on a radical restructuring of the tax system. The perception that gripped the Russian establishment after emancipation was that the peasantry were becoming more and more impoverished,[94] and that this was not unrelated to the growth in revolutionary activity in the 1870s, culminating in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. The government came to believe that it needed to try to alleviate the financial situation of the peasant if it was to prevent widespread rebellion. Alongside this, in the last part of the nineteenth century the state wanted to promote industrial growth in Russia. As minister of finance, Bunge wanted to reduce the level of direct taxation on the peasantry, but the increases in indirect taxes in the 1880s and 1890s clearly had a significant impact on the rural population. The argument turns on the extent to which the reductions in direct taxation were balanced by increases in excise duties and other indirect levies. It has been suggested that in the first halfofthe i880s the overall tax burden on the peasantry was reduced: even though indirect taxation increased by some i0 per cent, this was more than compensated for by significant reductions in direct taxes. Urban residents paid more in taxation during this period, but the rural population saw its overall tax burden reduced by some 8 per cent.[95] This analysis is short-sighted, since it considers only the first part of the 1880s and fails to take into account the new impositions that were levied during the late 1880s and 1890s. There has also been considerable debate over the overall standard of living that the Russian peasant enjoyed after emancipation, with historians arguing that the supposed 'crisis of Russian agriculture' at the end of the nineteenth century was a chimera.[96] The role that taxation played in the peasant economy has formed part of these discussions, with the increases in indirect taxation being taken as evidence to support the view that the peasant standard of living declined at the end of the nineteenth century. While indirect taxes do bear more heavily on lower-income groups, the peasantry could also purchase less of the taxed goods, should they find themselves in straitened circumstances. Even the excise duty on vodka could be avoided by the age-old practice of the peasantry distilling their own illegal spirits.
92
P. N. Miliukov,
94
See A. I. Engelgardt,
95
See S. Plaggenborg, 'Tax Policy and the Question of Peasant Poverty in Tsarist Russia i88i-i905',
96
J. Y. Simms, 'The Crisis of Russian Agriculture at the End of the Nineteenth Century', SR 36 (1977): 377-98 is the starting point for this discussion.