164 kamer-kollegiia. Instead, these account books are mentioned in the instructions for the Russian local administration. When it comes to the tax burden to be carried by the peasants, the Russian instruktsiia stated that the kamer-kollegiia was to see to it that imposts were distributed fairly among the peasants, so that no one should be taxed more lightly than someone else.^^“ In other words, peasants were not to be burdened with a tax load that would prevent them from supporting themselves after having paid their taxes. Otherwise the peasants would leave their farms, which would lead to a decrease in state incomes. It was a common phenomenon in Petrine Russia, however, that peasants suffering from too great a tax burden ran away.^^^ It is related by one source, for example, that more than thirty-three thousand farms were abandoned by their cultivators under the hard regime of P. M. Apraksin, the governor of Kazan’.**^ When it came to concern for the peasants, then, the most important consideration was to maintain state revenues. The proceeds from the labors of the peasants were necessary for the support of the military and civilian administration. The Swedish kammarkollegium was also responsible for seeing to it that each peasant homestead was able to produce earnings sufficient to pay the predetermined rents, as well as to provide for its occupants’ subsistence.^^® For example, the college was to intervene when a homestead lost its economic viability because: the nobleman has either burdened the peasant with too many days of service, transports of goods, and transports of people, through which [the peasant] has been kept from the requisite care and cultivation of his homestead, or reserved to himself any part of the fields, meadows, pasturage, fishing waters, grazing islands, woods, etc., reduced the size of (the peasant’s) holdings for the improvement of his manor, (or) settled cottages on (the peasant’s) holdings, whereby he might have greater benefit from the use of day labor than from the rents of the peasant homestead. The principle guiding the imposition of taxes was that enough of each homestead’s annual production should be set aside to provide for the bare minimum requirements for the continued existence of the peasant and his household, while the rest should be taken as the homestead’s 11.5 ZA (no. 416, section 8: 2), 562. A. L. Shapiro, “Krest’iane,” Ocherki (1954), 154. B. G. Slitsan, “Reforma mestnogo upravleniia,” Ocherki (1954), 325. N. I. Pavlenko, “Petr I,” in idem et al., eds., Rossiia v period reform Petra I (Moscow, 1973), 66—69. 1687 års instruktion för landshövdingar, artide 31, Instruktioner /, 370—371. Relation, 69; see also 1687 års instruktion för landshövdingar, artide 34, Instruktioner I, 326.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=