Heavy taxes and burdens under Peter the Great

To cover the state budget deficit under Tsar Peter many new taxes were imposed and many ways were devised to increase the revenues. A tax was placed on private bathhouses, and all the public baths were taken possession by the Government and farmed. This arrangement not working well, the baths were returned to their owners, and taxed according to their revenues. By similar laws and changes in laws, a considerable sum was obtained from inns and places for the accommodation of travelers. Taxes were levied from mills, bridges, ferries, and horse fairs. Mills were taken possession of and rented out; proprietors were allowed to build new mills on payment of one-quarter of the revenue to the Treasury. A rhubarb monopoly was established. A tax was placed on the registration of wills. A tax was laid on the sale of wheat and provisions. The sale of salt was made a Government monopoly and the price was fixed at double the cost. The monopoly of selling tobacco was taken from the English merchants and retained by the Government. The flax monopoly of the English merchants was abolished; the trade in flax became free, but an export duty was placed on the article. A still heavier tax was placed on the wearing of beards and moustaches. Measures were taken to obtain a revenue from the sale of tallow, pitch, and tar. A tenth part was assessed on the receipts of public carriers. Duty was laid on horses and horsehides. A weighing tax was instituted. A tax was laid on sales. Merchants were ordered to be registered and to pay a duty. Houses in Moscow were registered and taxed. Efforts were made to collect the excise on liquor with more exactitude. A tax was placed on beehives, and a temporary tax of 4 altijns, for the support of the artillery, was placed on the houses of merchants and peasants. It was ordered that all oak coffins be seized at a specified price, and kept in the monasteries and there sold at four times their cost. Coffins of other kinds were not taxed. Although the tax on oak-tree coffins was difficult, rich people were proud of making them made.

Most of the business of Peter’s government concerned war and taxes. Peter’s decrees, like his constant traveling through the country, almost invariably dealt with enrollment of recruits or the collection of revenues. The Tsar’s demands for money were insatiable. In one attempt to find new sources of income, Peter in 1708 created a service of revenue officers, i.e. men whose duty was to discover new means of taxing people. The leader and the most successful was Alexis Kurbatov, a former serf of Boris Sheremetiev. The investigations of Alexis Kurbatof and the other “revenue-finders” were not without result. However, the revenue should not be increased to any great extent except with the growth of trade and industry. In spite of the reformed currency and the opening of a port on the Baltic, such a growth could be but gradual and was not to be produced by decrees. Peter had at one time ordered the Moscow merchants to form themselves into companies and trade in the same manner as foreigners. The Dutch were alarmed at this, and Van der Hulst, their Minister, asked for instructions to beg the Tsar to change this decree. However, he soon saw that his fear was groundless, and wrote: “As concerns the trading business, this matter has fallen through of itself. The Russians do not know how to set about and begin such a complex and difficult business. If I receive the instructions I asked for, I shall delay acting on them, for the Tsar will give up the project, the impossibility of which has already been demonstrated.”

Not the taxes alone weighed upon the industry of the country. There were many other burdens. The many contributions in kind; the stones and sand hauled to Moscow to pave the streets where the old wooden pavements were worn out; the restrictions placed on the cutting of timber, and on the use of wood as the Russian peasant has always been prodigal. The prohibition of felling certain trees useful for naval purposes under pain of death without excuse; the forced labour everywhere, but especially at Azof, Voronezh, and St. Petersburg, and more than all the constant drain of men for recruits; all these brought both peasants and proprietors to the verge of ruin.

A few measures show a certain amount of solicitude on the part of the Government for the popular welfare. A hospital was established in Moscow. It was forbidden to kill newborn infants who were deformed or idiots. The sale of poisonous herbs and drugs, except by apothecaries, was prohibited. The sale or wearing of sharp pointed knives was forbidden, and in 1702, an order was made against duels, especially between foreigners, for the Russians had not the habit of fighting them.

New laws were made to protect Moscow against fire. Although a decree was issued once a year that all new houses and shops in Moscow should be built of brick or stone, yet the revenue agents were allowed to place such a tax on bricks as to double their price and thus counteract these decrees.