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 out (1718–24), but was immediately
reduced after Peter’s death in February 1725 to 70 kopecks (one ruble 20 kop for
merchants and townsmen), where it remained (despite inflation and growing state
need) through the century. All taxpayers also paid a surcharge of 2 kopecks per
ruble (nakadlye dengi) from 1736 through the century to pay for the costs of
collection. As Carol B. Stevens points out, since villages and town communes
apportioned the tax communally, the net effect was like a household tax, but state
receipts were higher. Poll tax was collected in two installments, during autumn after
harvest and in winter.
While the state raised quitrent on peasants it controlled, it was hesitant to raise
the poll tax on serfs, in deference to landlords’desire to exploit them. In 1769 at the
start of the Turkish War the poll tax for urban groups was raised to 2 rubles. The
1775 administrative reforms substantively changed tax obligations for townsmen:
merchants with certain capital value were released of the poll tax and assessed
instead at a fee of 1 percent of their declared capital, while the poll tax for
townsmen was reduced to 1.2 rubles. In 1794, however, to deal with huge state
indebtedness, the poll tax for all taxpayers rose to 2 rubles.
The poll tax was by far not the only direct tax imposed on rural and urban
taxpayers. Since landlords demanded dues from their serfs, state peasants without
landlords were expected to pay something extra as well, a tax called quitrent (obrok).
State peasants andodnodvortsyinitially paid the poll tax and a quitrent of 40
kopecks, while townsmen paid 50 kopecks. The quitrent rate gradually rose,
although not as fast as landlords’dues did, reaching one ruble in 1760, when
landlords were averaging one to two rubles and the state was dealing with Seven
Years War expenses. (Arcadius Kahan reminds us, however, that landlords’
increases barely kept pace with inflation, driving them to more intensive exploitation
of their estates and serfs.) In 1764 the state’s increase was applied to theodnodvortsy
and Siberian peasants; in that same year peasants living on recently confiscated
church lands (discussed below) were assigned a quitrent of one and a half ruble.
On the eve of the Turkish war in 1768 state quitrent (landlords’serfs did not pay
it) was raised to two rubles (in the next year the poll tax for townsmen was raised),
and to three paper rubles in 1783 as state debt and expenditures rose (at the time
landlords were asking around four rubles). In 1797 quitrent rates were increased
on Treasury peasants to 3.5 to 5 rubles, when landlords’exactions were around
5 rubles. Over the century quitrent became a good source of state revenue,
overtaking the poll tax after 1783, since its rate was higher and more social groups
were being folded into state peasant status.
The poll tax declined as a source of state revenue over the century. In 1724 it
accounted for about 55 percent of state income. Only regular censuses (every
fifteen years starting in 1747) that captured rising population could increase direct
tax revenues; in 1769 the poll tax provided 42.7 percent of tax revenues and
by 1796 33 percent of state revenue, offset by inflation in the last third of the
century and arrears so endemic that the state was often forced to issue amnesties.
Initially dedicated to pay for the costs of the Petrine army, the poll tax proved
328 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801