century. In 1783 here as in the Ukrainian and Belarus’an lands the poll tax and
lower quitrent were introduced. Townsmen also paid taxes according to their
merchant or shopkeeper status. Finnish peasants in the Vyborg area, on the other
hand, even in 1783 were given a lesser poll tax, and their traditional brewing
privileges were maintained. All these reforms were rescinded by Paul I, but reforms
of 1784 that established uniform weights and measures on the Russian standard
were maintained.
Finally, in the annexations of 1793–5 in Right Bank Ukraine and the Grand
Duchy,fiscal homogeneity was an immediate goal, but not at the Russian standard.
A poll tax of 1 ruble was imposed. Production and sale of vodka were put under
provisions of a law of 1784 for Left Bank and Belarus’an lands in the Grand Duchy,
which was more generous than for Russia: while there gubernia institutions oversaw
local alcohol contracts, in Belarus’an lands the nobility kept its monopoly on
distilling and selling, for a small fee, plus the ownership of taverns where they
could sell. Prices werefixed locally by landowners and the governor’s representatives.
Towns could produce and sell vodka in return for paying a lump sum to the state.
Completefiscal homogeneity, therefore, was never a goal of Russian policy. Even
when the poll tax was extended to non-Russian lands, terms were adjusted tofit
local circumstances.
CURRENCY, FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS, AND DEBT
Since all this effort to raise income through direct and indirect taxation and fees
proved insufficient, rulers used one more strategy to increase income, one that had
proven volatile in Muscovite times. That was currency manipulation. By the end of
Peter I’s reign Russia’s economy was primarily monetized. Tax obligations had been
commuted to cash everywhere except in those areas where landlords found it
profitable to demand labor services. The primary currencies were silver for large-
scale exchange and copper coinage, both of which retained solid value through the
first half of the century. Elizabeth’s government sparked what became a steady
trend of raising prices by devaluing copper coins in 1757; in 1763 Catherine II
devalued the silver ruble and minted more coins, such that the next decade saw
prices (particularly grain) rise by 50 percent.
Catherine II compounded the growing inflation of herfirst years by embarking
on a riskyfiscal policy with paper money (assignats) in 1768. Initially used as a
substitute for silver, issued in cautious amounts with ample reserves,assignats
maintained parity with silver until 1788. Then the government slipped into issuing
vast amounts without reserves, using them to subvent loans to the chronically
indebted nobility and primarily to pay for Swedish and Turkish wars in the late
1780s. Inflation was the predictable result; by the end of the 1790s paper rubles
were worth only two-thirds their face value. Grain prices rose fourfold between
the 1760s and 1790s; salaries to civil officials and soldiers paid inassignatslost
value, as did the direct and indirect taxes paid in them. The situation reached crisis
point in the 1790s.
332 The Russian Empire 1450– 1801