The “Flip Side” of Peter the Great’s Reforms

Under discussion the question if Peter the Greats reforms were truly revolutionary. The author focuses on two aspects: the extent to which his innovations altered the patrimonial system that had dominated Muscovy over the previous three centuries, and the role arbitrariness, bribery, embezzlement and other kinds of corruption played during his reign. She examines the first Russian emperors changes that most affected Russias various estates, including the introduction of a poll tax, the conversion of peasants on state lands into state serfs, as well as the intensification of the nobilitys service obligations and the reduction of its privileges. The author concludes that Peter not only did not destroy Muscovys traditional patrimonial system, but intensified it and even used it to impose his reforms on a reluctant population. Meanwhile, although the emperors initiatives in the sciences, arts and secular education were important, they only affected the upper class. In other respects, Peters efforts to westernize his realm were only superficial. The author also considers how Russians regarded the notion of freedom. She argues that there is a connection between seemingly opposite phenomena - the popular desire for freedom and arbitrariness of the service nobility. The author pays particular attention to corruption, which she considers to have had a major impact on the governments relationship with the elite, and was tolerated both to maintain the latters loyalty but also to manipulate it.

Norms, Enforcement, and Tax Evasion

This paper studies individual and social motives in tax evasion. We build a simple dynamic model that incorporates these motives and their interaction. The social motives underpin the role of norms and is the source of the dynamics that we study. Our empirical analysis exploits the adoption in 1990 of a poll tax to fund local government in the UK, which led to widespread evasion. The evidence is consistent with the model's main predictions on the dynamics of evasion.

Discourse of the father with his son about the water of life in the masnavi “Ilahi-Nameh” by (Farid ad-Din)

This is the line-by-line commented translation into Russian of the chapter (maqaleh) 14 from the masnavi “Ilāhī-nāme” by Abū Ḥamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (Farīd ad- Dīn, ʿAṭṭār), the Persian Sufi poet (1145–1220 AD). The chapters in the Ilahi-name are in fact answers given by the King to his six sons. Chapter 14 deals with the water of life, which, according to the legend, Alexander the Great once unsuccessfully tried to find. The answer to the King’s son includes 24 stories about historical and legendary characters, such as Iskandar (Alexander the Great), Namrud (the Biblical Nimrod), the righteous caliph ‘Umar, Majnun (in love with Layli), Sultan Mahmud and his beloved slave Ayaz, as well as nameless ones, including a collector of the poll tax from the Jews, a beautiful youth and an old man in love with him, a fox caught in a trap, a rogue salesman and a thief at the foot of the gallows. These stories are used to discuss and illustrate the key issues of Sufism. Among them: the desires of the nafs (“lower self” or “animal soul”), material and spiritual immortality, independence of divine actions from material causes, love, which requires the renunciation of one’s “self”, and knowledge as the true water of life. The stories are not related to each other, however, the set of Sufi ideas illustrated forms a conceptual unity.

A Poll-Tax Receipt from Hermopolis

Edition of a poll-tax receipt from Hermopolis in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München. The receipt is dated August 6, AD 195, and is one of the few poll-tax receipts from Hermopolis.

Revolution in the Chesapeake, 1675–1679

This chapter places Bacon’s Rebellion in the context of political developments in the surrounding colonies. In Virginia, Governor Berkeley had recently disenfranchised many of the poorer farmers. This allowed his elite supporters in the assembly to pass a high poll tax. Dissatisfaction became violent in the summer of 1676, in both Virginia and in an area of Maryland known as the Clifts. The rebellions were eventually suppressed, but when a new governor tried to tax the Albemarle settlers, he was met with Culpeper’s Rebellion, which successfully saved representative government in North Carolina.