42 arbitrariness which provoked general discontent among the socially diverse groups which had to seek the services of the prikazy?^ A certain systematization of tax collection and the administration of finances was introduced in 1679. The old land tax (soshnoe pis'mo) was abolished and replaced by a tax on households {podvornoe oblozhenie) which was more advantageous from a fiscal point of view, since it established the principle that the tax-paying potential of the peasants could be made use of much more than it had been in the past. The point was that the land tax had not covered incomes which the peasants had from trade and from sales of their handicraft products and services. This state of affairs might eventually lead to a situation in which the peasants would spend less time pursuing agricultural activities and more time pursuing activities which were not taxed.^' Almost all of the old direct taxes were discontinued in 1679 and replaced by a unitary tax, the so-called strcletskaia podat', which varied from 80 kopecks to two rubles per household per annum. Significantly enough, the new tax was imposed upon merchants and other tradespeople in the towns and on the so-called black soil peasants {chernososhnye krest'iane) of the northern coastal region, who had long before been put in the same tax category as the city dwellers. A much lower tax, the so-called iamskaia podat', was imposed upon the serfs. The church was to pay ten kopecks per household per annum for its peasants, while the state rent imposed on the peasants of the noble estate owners was set at five kopecks per household. In addition, the towns were made responsible for collecting the most important indirect taxes, that is, the customs duties and the tax on alcohol (tamozhennye i kahatskie sbory), which accounted for about forty-five percent of the state revenues.^'^ All in all, then, the artisans and the merchants bore the heaviest tax burden. M. Ia Volkov, “Monakh Avramii i ego 'Poslanic Pctru I,’" in N. I. Pavlenko ct al., eds., Rossiia v period reform Petra I (Moscow, 1973), 326. Hellie, 229. The term “black soil peasants” comes from the expression “black soil” {chernaia zemlia), that is, the state lands that were cultivated. The black soil peasants, who were the descendants of peasants who at one time had owned their own land, had hereditary rights of possession to their land and could both sell and mortgage it. The outstanding feature of the black soil peasant’s social status was the fact that he was a taxpayer; see A. A. Novosel’skii, "Krest’iane i kholopy,” Ocherki (1955), 192—194. The serfs {krepostnye krest’iane) owned by the nobility and the church were in a different position and had to work for their landlords. In time the serfs came to be counted as part of the value of the estates and were included in the sales of these estates; see Hellie, 145. M. M. Bogoslovskii, Petr I. Materialy dlia biografii (5 v., Leningrad, 1940—1948), III, 241. 30
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