Yanni Kotsonis. States of Obligation

To Yanni Kotsonis, the fiscal order of late imperial Russia and the early Soviet state served not only to raise revenue, but also to provide the state with a fundamental understanding of the nature of the economy, imbue the people with a sense of obligation, and turn them into citizens: “modern citizenship began in the fiscal realm of obligation rather than in electoral politics and government by consent” (14). The gradual movement away from taxes based upon legal estate to those imposed on property and income redefined civil status. The state hoped those impacted would be instilled with a greater sense of fairness and equivalency. The formal declaration of property, profits, or income was intended to give all of those affected a civic life, forcing a commitment to the state as an individual and citizen. With a clarity and interest the subject belies, Kotsonis carefully analyzes an endless series of studies, proposals, and laws drafted by the Tax Commission and Ministry of Finances as they used the fiscal system to redefine the nature of autocracy, citizenship, and obligation. In a series of seemingly progressive tax reforms begun in the 1860s and 1870s, the urban and commercial sectors of the economy were increasingly subject to direct taxes. The ministers of finance and the leading architects of these fiscal reforms, Nikolai Kh. Bunge and Sergei Witte, expected that forms of direct taxation—apartment, income, estate, capital or business taxes—would eventually replace tax collection practices of arbitrariness, compulsion, and secrecy with discipline, objectivity, and openness.

Citizenship · Economics · Law and economics · Obligation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · European Political History Analysis · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies