States of Obligation

Yanni Kotsonis is an associate professor in the Departments of History and of Russian and Slavic Studies and founding Director of the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University.

• Introduction. A Short History of Taxes: Russia and the World from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First CenturiesPart 1. People, Places, Things: The Old Regime, Economic Knowledge, and the Coming of the New Order1. The Fiscal Instruments of Regime Change from the Eighteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries2 Three Tax Reforms, Three Visions of the PolityPart 2. The Politics of Visibility, the Technologies of Intimacy: Taxes and the Remaking of Urban and Commercial Russia3. Wealth in Motion: New Money, New Taxes, and a New Bureaucracy4. Systematic Intimacy: Business Taxes and the Disciplining of Commercial Russia5. Mass Taxation in the Age of the Individual: The New Personal Taxation in Russia and the World6. The Income Tax as Modern Government: Assessment, Self-Assessment, and Mutual SurveillancePart 3. The Politics of Obscurity: Peasant Taxes, Excises, and the Vodka Monopoly to 19177. Everyone and No One: Indirect Taxes and the Vodka Monopoly to 19178. The Peasant and the Fisc: The State Budget and the Persistence of Collective Tax Apportionment9. The Local Practices of Peasant TaxationPart 4. The State and Revolution, the State and Evolution: Fiscal Practices and a New Regime, 1917–3010. Soviet Russia and the Continuing History of the Russian State11. The Meanings of Utopia: Taxes, Urban Unities, and the Several Assaults on Peasant Separateness, 1917–2112. The Economy of Licences: Taxes and the New Economic PolicyAfterword. Russia, Socialism, and the Modern State

‘This book opens the door to new questions related to the means by which state, population, and economy intersect in Russia and elsewhere. The author and press are to be congratulated for blessing us with these intellectual provocations.’- David W. Darrow (Revolutionary Russia November 2015) ‘As a study of both reformist and revolutionary state fiscal policy, an important area that has been much neglected, this is an intellectually sophisticated and stimulating work.’- Steven Hoch (American Historical review, December 2015) ‘Kotsonis’s work offers much food for thought. For specialists or fellow travelers in Russian business history and economic history, this book is required reading.’- Steven Nafziger (EH.Net January 2016) "Yanni Kotsonis has written an original and magisterial work that will change the way we understand and teach Russian and Soviet history … Like all great books, it will be read and referenced by generations of historians … This is a superb work of scholarship – comprehensive, meticulously researched, illuminating, and humane."- Golfo Alexopoulos (The Russian Review) ‘Yanni Kotsonis provides a stimulating and important history of the transformation of state obligations in nineteenth and early twentieth century Russia.’- John Randolph (Slavic Review vol 75:02:2016) ‘States of Obligation is destined to emerge as a classic not only for historians but also for political scientists and economists with an interest in imperial and Soviet Russia.’- Scott Gehlbach Kritika (Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History vol 17:03:2016) ‘With its unique focus on taxation, States of Obligation makes an important contribution to the field of Russian and Soviet studies… It should be of interest to those examining issues concerning the modernizing state and definitions of citizenship.’- Sharon A. Kowalsky (Canadian Journal of History vol 51:02:2016) ‘Yanni Kotsonis has given us an erudite book, rich with insight. It is well worth reading.’- Frank Wcislo (Journal of Modern History vol 89:01:2017)