States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic by Yanni Kotsonis (review)

States of Obligation provides a detailed examination of the development, reform, and implementation of the taxation system in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia. Focusing primarily on the post-Great Reforms era, Yanni Kotsonis explores both the intellectual and ideological objectives of taxation policies and the results of their practical application. He illustrates the shift to personal tax assessments and highlights the difficulties of establishing a system of direct individual universal taxation in a state where such obligations had been communal and determined according to privilege. In doing so, Kotsonis argues that the development and evolution of taxation policy was part of a broader modernization project that sought to redefine the very understanding of citizenship and the relationship of individuals to the state.

Kotsonis situates taxation within the larger modernization project of the Russian Empire and Western Europe as a whole; indeed, he suggests that fiscal policies lay at the heart of the modernizing state. He places Russia squarely within that broader context, comparing Russian developments to those in Western Europe at the time. In order to implement a universal tax regime, the Russian government found it increasingly important to obtain knowledge of the individual and of corporate financial transactions. Collecting this information necessitated greater surveillance of the population and essentially made individual or corporate transactions the concern of the state. This knowledge, Kotsonis argues, led to a shift in the relationship between the state and the individual as new tax policies attempted to make tax bills more proportionate to income, subjecting the individual to assessment. Through taxation, the government established a new model of citizenship that emphasized civic-mindedness and responsibility in place of rights. Ultimately, taxation became the marker of citizenship rather than estate status, minimizing collective relationships in favour of a direct bond between the individual and the state.

Kotsonis provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the taxation system reforms in the late nineteenth century, describing the bureaucratization and professionalization of tax collection, as well as the changing definition of the person (corporate and individual). Corporations, encouraged to write off expenses that could be documented, reported the details of their business dealings, which allowed commercial transactions to be traced, recorded, and taxed to a greater extent. Urban areas saw the imposition of new taxes, for example, the apartment tax, which made use of both universalistic and individual principles by establishing an individual assessment that could potentially be applied to any taxpayer. Rural areas as well, while bearing the brunt of tax obligations, faced changes in assessments as tax policy moved away from communal responsibility and corporal punishment for arrears and toward the economic accountability of the individual peasant. Although the state did not always know with accuracy the amount of an individual’s tax obligation, and was not always able to collect full (or any) payment, by the time of World War I Imperial Russia had redefined citizenship as based on individual responsibility; this shift undermined old social hierarchies and established a new, modern individual/state relationship.

Finally, Kotsonis briefly explores taxation in the immediate aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, arguing that tax policy under the Soviets resembled, more than differed from, that of Imperial Russia. Upon taking control of Russia, the Bolsheviks used the existing tax structures, personnel, and objectives to extract revenue from the population, but did so with more efficiency and often more ruthlessness than had the Imperial regime. Ultimately, Kotsonis emphasizes the commonalities between Imperial and Soviet taxation, noting that both tax systems had the same goal: to affirm “universal belonging and civic obligation” (311).

States of Obligation contributes to a growing literature that addresses the modernization of states and the concept of citizenship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that Imperial Russia, like its counterpoints in Western Europe, fully engaged in the project of creating a modern state. In so doing, it...