Engraving of a Tatar family in their home. © JAIME ABECASIS/SUPERSTOCK through Moscow’s proclamation of a Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic in March 1918 and suppression of anti-Bolshevik Tatar factions. Throughout the civil war, Tatar leftists such as Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev supported Soviet power in part because of its positive attitude toward ethnic federalism, though many other prominent Tatar leaders, such as the writer Ayaz Iskhakov, sympathized with the Whites. Moscow’s decision to create a Bashkir republic in 1919 lead to abrogation of the Tatar-Bashkir republic and promulgation of a separate Tatar republic in 1920.
Tatarstan experienced all the economic trials of the Soviet period, including famine in 1921 and 1922 and the collectivization of agriculture, but also notable industrial development with the emergence of an oil industry since the 1940s, construction of the immense Kama automobile factory (KAMAZ) in Naberezhnye Chelny (1970s), and significant urban growth. Cultural policies were similarly inconsistent: The Tatar language was shifted from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin in the 1920s but then Cyrillicized in 1938; and elements of Tatar history and culture that were celebrated in the 1920s were vilified under Stalin’s rule, only to be carefully rehabilitated in Tatar journals in the 1960s and 1970s.
During the Gorbachev years, new Tatar political organizations raised concerns about the survival and perpetuation of Tatar national culture, both within Tatarstan and in the extensive Tatar diaspora, where assimilation was more common. The governing circles of Tatarstan responded by declaring the republic’s sovereignty and unilaterally raising its status to union republic (1990), writing a new authoritative constitution (1992), and signing a treaty (1994) and other agreements with the Russian federal government that delineated division of powers, responsibilities, and resources in a form widely studied as the Tatarstan model. There was relatively little interethnic violence in the republic, in part because Russian residents (43.3% of the population in 1989, compared to 48.5% Tatar) benefited from many of these steps as well.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1521
One continuing political problem in the 1990s was concern over the status of Tatars living in neighboring Bashkortostan. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; ISLAM; KAZAN; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
Bennigsen, Alexandre, and Lemercier-Quelquejay, Chan-tal. (1967). Islam in the Soviet Union. New York: Praeger. Broxup, Marie Bennigsen. (1996). “Tatarstan and the Tatars.” In The Nationalities Question in the Post- Soviet States, 2nd ed., ed. Graham Smith. London: Longman. Bukharaev, Ravil. (1999). The Model of Tatarstan: Under President Mintimer Shaimiev. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bukharaev, Ravil. (2000). Islam in Russia: The Four Seasons. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Frank, Allen J. (1998). Islamic Historiography and “Bul-ghar” Identity Among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Rorlich, Azade-Ayse. (1994). “One or More Tatar Nations?” In Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, ed. Edward Allworth. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Rorlich, Azade- Ayse. (1986). The Volga Tatars: A Profile in National Resilience. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. Zenkovsky, Serge A. (1960). Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
DANIEL E. SCHAFER
Taxation of the population is the basic way governments raise the revenue necessary to carry out their functions, including administration of justice, defense, and construction of infrastructure, such as canals, roads, and public buildings. When taxes are inadequate, as they often were in Russia, they were supplemented by domestic and foreign borrowing (possible after the 1770s), confiscations, or disposal of state property. The various modes and objects of taxation also clearly demonstrate the level of economic development of Russia through the centuries, as well as the shifting class basis of state power.
1522
Prior to the establishment of the Russian Empire, most taxation came from the revenues of the tsar’s estates. As a major serf owner, he collected rent from them. Following the reduction of the independent boyar class, the Russian state demanded service from pomeschiki, nobles and gentry, in exchange for their property in land and serfs. The state also monopolized the export of certain commodities, such as grain, farmed out the sale of alcohol, and minted silver and copper coins. Where deficits persisted, the Muscovite princes simply defaulted on state obligation. Quantitative estimates are, however, nearly unavailable until the eighteenth century, when some quantitative studies of the state budgets were written, most notably those by Paul N. Milyukov and S. M. Troitsky.
The main taxes in the 1700s were the fixed poll (soul) tax, excise taxes on alcohol and salt, revenues from the export monopoly of certain commodities, tax on iron and copper, customs tariffs, and mint revenues. During emergencies these were supplemented by special taxes (such as on beards of religious dissenters), debasement of the coinage, or printing paper money (assignats). The last two, which caused an inflation tax on holders of cash, occurred mostly during the frequent wars of those times. All peasants paid the poll tax according to population estimates, except during periods of natural hardship or on the accession of a new ruler, when rates were temporarily reduced. Throughout the century the government increased the rate of indirect taxes on alcohol, as well as demanding customs duties in hard currency. On the other hand, burdens on miners and iron-masters appeared to slacken in the post-Petrine period.
To collect net fiscal revenue the Russian state employed either tax farmers, agents who paid for the privilege of collecting levies, or direct distribution of salt and alcohol. For these monopolized commodities the tax was simply the difference between the retail price and the cost of production. In 1754 the state granted gentry and members of the aristocracy its former monopoly in the sale of alcohol, from which incomes increased steadily, unlike those on salt, a prime necessity. The salt tax was actually abolished in 1881. Despite these measures, tax payments were frequently in arrears (nedoimki), particularly during wars or famine. Peasants would try to avoid taxes by emigrating to the frontier areas of Siberia and the southern steppes, but the system of joint responsibility meant that fellow villagers would try to prevent their leaving. Little seemed to change in the tsarist
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
regime during the more than half a century from Catherine’s rule to the Crimean War and the subsequent Emancipation. Exemptions from taxation and a stagnant industrial economy meant that tax revenues did not increase much. Transcaucasia began to supply customs revenues from the 1830s, but the new areas of the southern fringe were expensive to conquer and hold. Fiscal inadequacy became painfully clear when Russia’s poorly supplied troops were defeated at Sevastopol by English, French, and Turkish forces. That the Russian roads and river routes were so obviously inadequate for mobilization led to great interest in expensive and extensive railroad projects, requiring both more money and new industries.
The late nineteenth century was a period of rapidly rising governmental outlays, doubling between 1861 and 1890, and again between 1901 and 1905. Railroad building in this vast country accelerated, primarily for military purposes; debt service, health, and education also increased their share in state expenses, though the latter two were still small by international standards. To meet these expenditures, the government was able to increase indirect tax revenues, chiefly on vodka, but also by its monopoly on the sale of sugar, tobacco, kerosene, and matches. As was understood, reduced peasant net incomes meant more grain for export. Royalties and transportation tariffs on coal and iron also increased. Customs duties rose significantly, both as a result of higher rates and larger import volumes. Tax policy protected industry at the expense of agriculture, as direct taxes on company profits and capital plus redemption payments hardly increased at all between 1890 and 1910.
Despite some discussion of this possibility before World War I, most individual incomes were not taxed, but apartment rents and salaries of civil servants and joint-stock company employees were. This pattern points to the strongly regressive nature of tsarist taxation. According to estimates by Albert L. Vainstein, the tax burden on peasants averaged 11 percent of their total income in 1913, but probably more than one-quarter of their cash
