The Russian Empire 1450–1801

Catherine’s urge to impose an empire-wide standard, to forge an imperial nobility, and to rationalize governance was always temp ...

John P. LeDonne has mastered thefield of eighteenth-century administration:Absolutism and Ruling Class: The Formation of the Rus ...

15 Fiscal Policy and Trade In the eighteenth century money was constantly on rulers’minds, except when it wasn’t. They spent wit ...

to friends and favorites, and state expenditures vastly outstripped revenue. Admin- istrative reform added new costs: in 1763 an ...

and carried out surveying; they oversaw vodka and salt farming contracts and custom houses; they keptfinancial audits; they mana ...

Growth in industry in the eighteenth century responded not so much to indigenous demand, but to the intensity of government need ...

Urals mining continued to thrive in the eighteenth century. Business dynasties such as the Demidovs, Stroganovs, Iakovlevs, and ...

for local needs—small ironware, cutlery, leather goods, furniture. Now a rough division of labor and trade developed: the fertil ...

from Baltic and Volga arteries. Shifting gradually from grain to manufacturing, Moscow’s hinterland became a manufacturing hub f ...

from Arkhangelsk by awarding the new capital favorable tariffs and simply man- dating redirection of goods, even before proper m ...

Russia’s long-term goal of securing direct trade with China advanced in this century. Despite China’s anxiety at foreign traders ...

bringing in foreign specie by forcing foreign merchants to pay customs in silver thalers. Tariff rates skyrocketed twice in the ...

associated with industries that relied upon state provision of labor to produce them—potash, caviar, tar, pitch, blubber oil—or ...

the 1780s of export of surplus grain to the voracious European market, particularly that of wheat since it was not a staple food ...

A poll tax rate of 74 kopecks per adult male peasant became the official direct tax rate in 1725 after a census had been carried ...

increasingly inadequate. Since, unlike France and Britain in the late eighteenth century, Russia did not choose to tax the nobil ...

taxpayers paid poll tax and quitrent at the empire-wide rates. Natives, on the other hand, paidiasak. Throughout the eighteenth ...

Astrakhan-northern Caucasus gubernia population was not subject to direct taxes. The few state peasants there paid poll tax and ...

century. In 1783 here as in the Ukrainian and Belarus’an lands the poll tax and lower quitrent were introduced. Townsmen also pa ...

So also did Russia’s foreign debt. Russia had run a mounting deficit throughout the century, but could not borrow internationall ...