Beginning in the 1860s, the Russian Empire replaced a poll tax system that originated with Peter the Great with a modern system of income and excise taxes. Russia began a transformation of state fiscal power that was also underway across Western Europe and North America. States of Obligation is the first sustained study of the Russian taxation system, the first to study its European and transatlantic context, and the first to expose the essential continuities between the fiscal practices of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

Using a wealth of materials from provincial and local archives across Russia, Yanni Kotsonis examines how taxation was simultaneously a revenue-raising and a state-building tool, a claim on the person and a way to produce a new kind of citizenship. During successive political, wartime, and revolutionary crises between 1855 and 1928, state fiscal power was used to forge social and financial unity and fairness and a direct relationship with individual Russians. State power eventually overwhelmed both the private sector economy and the fragile realm of personal privacy. States of Obligation is at once a study in Russian economic history and a reflection on the modern state and the modern citizen.

A pioneer in the field of Russian and Soviet studies in the West, Alfred J. Rieber's five decade career has focused on increasing our understanding of the Russian Empire from Peter the Great to the coming of the First World War. The Imperial Russian Project is a collection of Rieber's lifetime of work, focusing on three interconnected themes of this time period: the role of reform in the process of state building, the interaction of state and social movements, and alternative visions of economic development. This volume contains Rieber's previously published, classic essays, edited and updated, as well as newly written works that together provide a well-integrated framework for reflection on this topic. Rieber argues that Russia's style of autocratic governance not only reflected the personalities of the rulers but also the challenges of overcoming economic backwardness in a society lacking common citizenship and a cohesive ruling class. The Imperial Russian Project reveals how during the nineteenth century the tsar was obliged to operate within a changing and more complex world, reducing his options and restricting his freedom of action.

A pioneer in the field of Russian and Soviet studies in the West, Alfred J. Rieber's five decade career has focused on increasing our understanding of the Russian Empire from Peter the Great to the coming of the First World War. The Imperial Russian Project is a collection of Rieber's lifetime of work, focusing on three interconnected themes of this time period: the role of reform in the process of state building, the interaction of state and social movements, and alternative visions of economic development. This volume contains Rieber's previously published, classic essays, edited and updated, as well as newly written works that together provide a well-integrated framework for reflection on this topic. Rieber argues that Russia's style of autocratic governance not only reflected the personalities of the rulers but also the challenges of overcoming economic backwardness in a society lacking common citizenship and a cohesive ruling class. The Imperial Russian Project reveals how during the nineteenth century the tsar was obliged to operate within a changing and more complex world, reducing his options and restricting his freedom of action.

Beginning in the 1860s, the Russian Empire replaced a poll tax system that originated with Peter the Great with a modern system of income and excise taxes. Russia began a transformation of state fiscal power that was also underway across Western Europe and North America. States of Obligation is the first sustained study of the Russian taxation system, the first to study its European and transatlantic context, and the first to expose the essential continuities between the fiscal practices of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Using a wealth of materials from provincial and local archives across Russia, Yanni Kotsonis examines how taxation was simultaneously a revenue-raising and a state-building tool, a claim on the person and a way to produce a new kind of citizenship. During successive political, wartime, and revolutionary crises between 1855 and 1928, state fiscal power was used to forge social and financial unity and fairness and a direct relationship with individual Russians. State power eventually overwhelmed both the private sector economy and the fragile realm of personal privacy. States of Obligation is at once a study in Russian economic history and a reflection on the modern state and the modern citizen.