The Noble Servitor and the Petrine State 133The collection of information, or 'revision' of census data (the word
reviziya was destined to pass into the language), continued through 1722 and
1723; the terminal date again had to be put off.^63 Not until August 1724, after
a number of false starts, could the order finally be given for the troops to move
mto their 'permanent quarters',^04 and only in the following year were they
actually maintained from the poll tax. This was fixed at a rate of 74 kopecks
(reduced to 70 kopecks as a public relations gesture on Peter's death). Peasants
without private landlords paid an additional 40, and townsmen 50, kopecks.
The proceeds accounted for about half total state revenue and went almost
wholly on the army.
Each regimental district contained as many taxpayers as were thought
necessary to meet its requirements .as officially established. For an infantry
regiment this worked out at 21,863^7 / 8 souls, for a cavalry one 60,2681/ 8 (at the
original 74-kopeck rate).^65 The arithmetical precision was misleading, for it
was impossible to delimit the area in which this number of individuals resided,
still less to administer it. The regimental districts did not accord with the
administrative ones established by the 1719 local government reform, so that
there were two overlapping sets of authorities, one military and the other
(ostensibly) civilian. In 1722 the War College drew up a schedule setting out
the areas where each regiment was to be stationed and which were to maintain
it. The officers entrusted with the task of distribution (rask/adka) were to call
on the local gentry to provide assistance, notably in building regimental and
company headquarters as well as huts for the men, one izba for each two
soldiers. (Nothing was said about payment for the materials and labour sup-
plied.) The troops were to be settled in such a way that the soldiers of each
company lived within 5 to 10 versts of each other and those of a regiment
within 50 to 100 versts. If they had no specially built accommodation, they
were to be quartered directly on the peasants.^66
For this operation the gentry were to elect so-called 'land commissars'
(komissary ot zem/1).^61 These were successors to the landraty and had much the
same function-except that, having collected the poll tax, they were supposed
to hand it over to a military official, also termed a commissar. To add to the
confusion, the 1719 reform had set up similarly-named land commissars (zem-
skiye komissary), so that there were actually three types of commissar working
side by side.^68 Not surprisingly, they came into conflict over access to scarce
resources. The civilian officials, who collected dues other than the poll tax,
63 PSZ vi. 3873, 3899, 3901 (I I Jan., 5 Feb. 1722); vii. 4139, 4145, 4294 (9, 19 Jan., 3 Sept.
1723).
64 PSZ vii. 4542 (6 Aug. 1724); Bogoslovsky, Obi. reforma, pp. 376-8.
65 Each infantryman cost 28.40 or 28.5225, and each cavalryman 40.17 or 40.5 roubles.
Klyuchevsky, Soch., vii. 327; Milyukov, Gos. khoz. Rossii, pp. 664-5.
66 Bogoslovsky, Obi. reforma, pp. 365-7.
67 PSZ vii. 4332 (23 Oct. 1723).
68 PSZ v. 3295 (Jan. 1719), §§ 2, 9; cf. Peter I to Senate, 26 Nov. 1718, in S/R/O xi. 374-5.
Bogoslovsky (Obi. reforma, pp. 404-5) insists on the terminological distinction, but this was prob-
ably of. little significance in practice.