47 1663. The major portion of that sum, about 800,000 rubles, went to the new regiments. The new military organization was paid for to a large extent by tax revenues from the town populations, which largely explains the reforms in the tax system and the fiscal administration of 1679—80 described above. Indeed, the taxation of the Russian urban population almost doubled between 1652 and 1722,“*' a fact that testifies to the increasing importance of merchant and manufacturing groups for the state finances. In order to pay the steadily rising costs of the armed forces, the government became increasingly concerned with finding cash-producing sources of revenue. It is against this background, too, that one should view the reform of the financial administration introduced in 1699, immediately preceding the final formation of a regular standing army in Russia. It was in 1699 that a new administrativ organ, the Ratusha, or Burmistrskaia palata, consisting of elected members of Moscow’s wealthy merchant elite, was established. Assuming the task of collecting taxes previously collected by thirteen different prikazy, the Ratusha accounted for the collection of 1,300,000 rubles during its first real year of operation (1701) and thus gained a leading position within the central administration. All tax incomes from the cities were sent to the Ratusha. Of the million and a half rubles submitted annually to the Prikaz BoVshoi kazny in previous years, there now remained just something over 700,000 rubles—mostly Income from the reminting of coins—since 800,000 rubles had been transferred to the Ratusha. The establishment of the Ratusha, whose tax incomes were allocated for the support of the army, thus constituted a further refinement of the reforms of 1679—80. Once the old cavalry of noble servicemen had become obsolete and the old martial nobility had lost its role in the defense of the country, one would expect that the service estates would have been recovered by the crown in order to help finance the costly new military forces. And, indeed. Ibid., 227. According to Pavel Miliukov’s calculations, military expenditures rose during the period 1680—1701 by more than 150 "/o. In 1680, the cost of the military accounted for 62 ”/o of all state expenditures, but by 1701 that figure had risen to 78 ®/o. See Miliukov, 119, 121. Hellie, 258. A. A. Preobrazhenskii, “Ob evoliutsii klassovo-soslovnogo stroia v Rossii,” in V. T. Pashuto et al., eds., Obshchestvo i gosudarstvo v feodal’noi Rossii. Sbornik statei v chest' 70-lctiia akademika L. V. Cherepnina (Moscow, 1975), 83. Concerning the economic developments of the period, see M. Ia. Volkov, “O stanovlenii absoliutizma v Rossii," Istoriia SSSR, no. 1 (1970), 92—93, and the literature referred to there. Miliukov, 92, and V. O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii (4 v., Moscow, 1904— 1910), IV, 200—202.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjYyNDk=