195 have mentioned above, the fiscal system developed in Sweden after 1680 was adopted, in the form of the so-called normal budget of 1696, as the model for the Swedish state budgets the Age of Liberty (1719—1772). Once again it is appropriate to turn to a statement by Heinrich Pick, this time one in which he emphasized the need always to meet salary payments: When revenues diminish in Sweden or in other states because of war or because of plague {morovoe povetrie) and crop failures, it is normal to hold back and not pay all such expenditures that are not of the first necessity and urgency, and to strive especially to see to it that the salaries and the very important expenditures and maintenances have been planned ahead of time, and, in order to pay these, some of the state treasures are pawned and then usually redeemed during good times. The manner in which the statskontoret formulated the state budgets during the reign of Charles XI is described in detail in the report that college submitted to Charles XII in 1697. Since the college was unable to commence work on the fiscal plan for the coming year until information concerning revenues and expenditures was received fromall the provinces. 238 necessary for the support of recruits. At that time, a single infantry regiment cost 90,000 riksdaler, or 270,000 dsmt, per year; Heckscher (1936), 1:2, 270. Simultaneously, attempts were made to pay all of the ordinary costs of the administration out of cash receipts from the customs duties and excise taxes. It is understandable that the peasants opposed these attempts to eliminate the crown’s need for agrarian rents, and Heckscher noted that; “Thus, it was a purely feudal conception that was hereby introduced in Sweden, and one is not surprised at the declaration of the estate of the peasantry that it realized how peasants had become serfs in other countries and feared the same fate for themselves.” (Heckscher [1957], 136.) These plans failed, however, for the acute financial crisis of the seventeenth century' showed that the cash incomes were insufficient and too uncertain to cover the salaries paid out to military officers and civil servants. This must be considered against the background of the country’s general economic development; the means of production necessary for a fully established cash economy, i.e., the production of goods based on wage labor, had not yet reached a sufficient stage of development. The absence of a comprehensive production of goods and a widespread circulation of cash meant that the surplus production of the peasants had to be taken over by the state and the nobility in the form of produce. This explanation was also presented by Heckscher when he wrote that “even if [the long transports] could cause the peasants to want the taxes in kind altered to money taxes, their own economy was still based on incomes in kind—and thus hampered by difficulties in making cash payments—to such an extent that they often preferred taxes in kind.” (Heckscher [1936], 1:2, 281.) Cf. Lars Herlitz, Jordegendom och ränta (Lund, 1974), 161. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 58 1. 96. It should be pointed out that Pick was speaking in his own interest here, since, as head of the foreigners remaining in Russian service, he made representations to the Senate on other occasions about the payment of back salary'. See above, p. 135. 288
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