Subordinate classes - estates, paying taxes(submit) to the state. In our country, legal inequality continued until the end of the XIX century. Some paid taxes, others were exempted from them. About what groups of people were included in the taxation estates, this article will be discussed.
The concept of
Estate is a group of people whose membersdiffer in their legal status. As a rule, it is fixed legislatively. Estates are found only in precapitalist states. The difference of estates from classes is that it is a legal status that is inherited. A person can not move from one to another. The state clearly monitors this by means of legal norms, since in preserving the legal status it feels safe. That is why the estate system is found only in the estate-representative monarchy in the feudal states, and it disintegrates when capitalism appears.
The monarch (emperor, tsar, sultan, etc.)) is at the head of the state only because it comes from a noble family. His personal qualities and abilities do not depend on anything. Therefore, the transition from one class to another was always perceived extremely negatively: everyone saw this as a threat to the existing system. The elite tried to maintain its position everywhere and at all times. The transition from the class system to the class system was always accompanied by social explosions, civil wars, revolutions.
Kinds of estates in Russia
Integrity of the Russian state and authoritymonarchical power depended on the preservation of the estate system. In general, they can be divided into two large groups: tax and privileged classes. The first was called "black", the second - "white". For example, "white settlement" is a village exempt from taxes; "Black-eared peasants"-peasants who paid taxes, and so on.
Transformation of Peter the Great
The very concept of "taxable estates" appearsonly under Peter the Great. Before that, everyone who had to pay taxes was called "tax". Peter the First, for the first time, applied the tax system in Russia, which exists today: he introduced a per capita tax. Before him, no one was copying the population. Elites even had no idea how many people are in the state. The tax was placed on the village, village, village, etc. Such a system was extremely unhealthy and unfair. Peter all equated in rights within his estates. Now everyone had to pay the same tribute, which the state will establish.
Before the reform began, an audit was carried out -population census. Documents with lists were called "auditory tales". The term "fairy tales" is best suited to this document, since it was not possible to verify the reliability of the information. By the way, in our time after the population census there are various "Pokémon", "Teletubbies", "Jedi" and other nationalities that do not exist in classifications.
Russia's Subordinate Classes
The entire mass belonged to the taxation classesrural inhabitants, petty bourgeois, shop workers. They could be attributed to persons who missed the audit and did not enter into the "revision tale", as well as the fugitives. Also to the taxes were equated:
- foundlings;
- people who do not remember their kinship;
- illegitimate children, despite the legal status of the mother.
Each of the estates was divided into categories and groups.For example, under Peter the First merchants began to divide into guilds. The first consisted of "noble merchants who have a big auction", as well as pharmacists, doctors, doctors. They could not be separated into a separate class from the merchant class, since the legal status was determined by the birth, not by the occupation. The second guild of merchants included small craftsmen, small traders, as well as "all the mean people who are in hiring, in black jobs and so on." The merchants did not pay the per capita tax. The state charged them for "entering" the guild. This system resembles modern licensing: you pay money - you get the right to engage in certain activities.
Sources for good reason called some merchants"Mean people". There was a loophole in the law: some of them were not engaged in trade, which irritated the state. They could not be charged with a capitation tax, nor could they be transferred according to the laws of the feudal-estate system to another class.
Circular security
Society vigilantly made sure that people do notcould deceive the state during the audit tales. A pillow file did not mean that every resident was obliged to come to the fiscal authority and pay for itself. To build such a system, huge funds and a lot of time are needed. The state made it easier: it put people on the lists of “revision fairy tales”, charged the tax on the tax-paying classes, depending on the amount of the tax-paying population, and billed the whole society. This was called circular bail. If someone decides to deceive the state, other residents paid for it. Such a system resembles a modern payment of utility bills for general home counters in apartment buildings: the total debt is divided into all residents.
Taxes of the 19th century: a class estate crisis
The estate system itself becomes obsolete in the period of developmentcapitalism. A bright example of the crisis was described by A.P. Chekhov in The Cherry Orchard. Former peasants and merchants had huge financial fortunes, but were limited in their rights, while semi-impoverished noblemen had legal privileges before them. In Russia, the crisis is most acute from the middle of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. However, up to 1918, the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, which retains the estate system, is in effect in the country.
May 15, 1883 Emperor Alexander the Thirdcancels the capitol file manifest. Russia is the only European country that exempted its citizens from personal taxes. Therefore, it was absolutely wrong to say that the “tsarist regime” squeezed “all the juices” from the unfortunate subjects before the revolutions of the 20th century.
