300 on the Swedish local adminstrative organization, Pick had pointed out, among other things, that: the surveyor {landmesser Hi zanlemcritcl’) has the task of drawing up maps and setting up mileposts and boundaries all over the province, and of carrying out divisions and that which goes along with them; he is to survey the fertility and barrenness {plodonosie i nedorodie) of the soil and the holdings for each estate, homestead, and land, and to mark with large symbols on special maps and in geographical registers the size and nature of the meadows and the existence of lakes and rivers. 310 In 1722, Pick also submitted to the Senate a special memorandum on the surveyors office in Stockholm.'^** The land registers described in the instruktsiia for the kamer-kollegiia were never drawn up, and, indeed, a survey and registration of the land became superfluous when the soul tax was introduced as the basic form of taxation. Not only that, but the introduction of the soul tax, combined with the quartering of the soldiery on the peasantry, led to the growth of a parallel administrative apparatus, which pushed the provincial administration aside. The lack of a means for surveying the land and the subsequent inability to assess it for taxes was thus an insurmountable obstacle to any Russian adoption of Swedish techniques of local administration. Contemporary Russian political literature was not entirely devoid of examples of clear insights into the problems of tax assessment dealt with above. In his book Kniga o skudosti i bogatstve, I. T. Pososhkov dealt with the taxation of the peasants in detail. He sharply criticized both the taxation of homesteads (podvornoe oblozhenie) and the soul tax {podushnaia podad). Of the former, he claimed that noblemen: do not understand how one is to count homesteads, but some only count the gate or the fenced enclosure, and others count the smoke from the cottage. And in the same way that the smoke disappears into the air, their accounting is turned into nought. Not only that, but according to Pososhkov the taxation of homesteads allowed the “rich and mighty boiare" to have up to ten homesteads recorded as one, which led to a reduced tax base. On the smaller and poorer lands, however, all the homesteads were registered as complete tax units, for which reason “these peasants end up in total poverty from the unbearable burdens.” The degree of exploitation, in other words, diminished as the size of the landholdings grew. 312 3'» TsGADA, f. 248 dclo 58 11. 15v—16. Ibid., 1. 319. Pososhkov, 179. Ibid., 180. 312
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