Upon his return from France, Peter decided to approach the problem differently, replacing the household tax with a version of the individual head tax he had observed in France. The tax-paying unit of this new poll tax was to be the "soul": that is, every male from infant to grandfather in every village, town or peasant commune. But before the new tax could be levied, a new census was required. On November 26, 1718, a decree ordered that every Russian male except noblemen, churchmen and certain privileged merchants (all of whom were taxed differently) be inscribed Again, opposition was intense but by 1722, a census had been compiled, listing 5,794,928 male "souls" and in 1724 the soul tax was collected for the first time. Peasants were assessed at 74 kopeks or 114 kopeks per year, depending on whether they worked on private or state land. In terms of revenue, the tax was an enormous success, producing half of the state income that year and continuing in use through most of the nineteenth century until 1887, when it was abolished, by Alexander III.
The soul tax solved Peter's problem of revenue, but at the cost of placing an even heavier burden on the peasants and strengthening the bonds of the serfdom that tethered them to the land. In earlier times, Russian peasants had been free to move where they wished, a right that made it difficult and sometimes impossible for landowners to meet their needs for labor. This crisis intensified in the middle of the sixteenth century when Ivan the Terrible conquered Kazan and Astrachan, opening to Russian colonization vast regions of virgin black earth previously inhabited by nomads. By the thousands and hundreds of thousands, Russian peasants abandoned the forest to the north and poured into this flat, rich country. Farms and villages in central Russia were left uninhabited; whole provinces were semi-deserted. Landowners, threatened with ruin, appealed to the state, and the state, unable to collect taxes from empty villages, reacted. Beginning in the 1550's, decrees forbidding peasants to leave the land were issued. Runaway peasants were pursued, and in 1649 it was declared that any person who harbored them was liable to their landlord for his losses. In Peter's time, over ninety-five percent of the people were serfs; some were state peasants and some belonged to private landlords, but all were bound for life to the land they worked.
Peter's new soul tax placed the peasants even more firmly in the hands of the landowners. Once the population of a district had been counted by the census, the landowners and local authorities were responsible to the state for producing the tax revenue based on that population; actual collection of the money was left up to them. To assist landowners in keeping track of their peasants and extracting these taxes, Peter decreed in 1722 that serfs could not leave a landowner's estate without his written permission. This was the origin of the internal-passport system which continues in use in the Soviet Union today. Eventually, the power placed in the hands of the landowners—to collect taxes, to control movement, to dictate work, to punish infractions—made each landowner a little government unto himself. Where his ability to enforce was threatened, he was supported by the intervention of army regiments permanently billeted throughout the countryside. In time, to increase the controls on peasant movement, any serf wanting to leave the land was required to get not only the landowner's written permission, but written permission from the army as well. The result was a hereditary, all-embracing system of permanent servitude.
Most Russian serfs were bonded to the land, but not all. One great obstacle to persuading Russian noblemen and merchants to open new factories had been the difficulty of finding labor. To overcome this, Peter decreed in January 1721 that factory and mine owners could have factory serfs—that is, laborers permanently attached to the factory or mine in which their labor took place. Underscoring the key importance of building new industry, the Tsar also waived the strict rules about returning runaway serfs. Those serfs, he declared, who had fled their landowners to find work in factories should not be returned, but should remain where they were as permanent industrial serfs.
In the end, Peter's tax policies were a success for the state and a massive burden for the people. When the Emperor died, the state did not owe a kopek. Peter had fought twenty-one years of war, constructed a fleet, a new capital, new harbors and canals without the aid of a single foreign loan or subsidy (indeed, it was he who paid subsidies to his allies, especially Augustus of Poland). Every kopek was raised by the toil and sacrifice of the Russian people within a single generation. He did not float internal loans so that future generations could help to pay for his projects, nor did he devalue the currency by issuing paper money as Goertz had done on behalf of Charles XII of Sweden. Instead, he laid the entire burden on his contemporary Russians. They strained, they struggled, they opposed, they cursed. But they obeyed.
60
SUPREME UNDER GOD
In matters of religion, Peter was an eighteenth- rather than a seventeenth-century man, secular and rationalist rather than devout and mystical. He cared more about trade and national prosperity than about dogma or interpretations of Scripture; none of his wars was fought over religion. Yet, personally, Peter believed in God. He accepted God's omnipotence and saw His hand in everything: life and death, victory and defeat. His letters are studded with the phrase "Thanks be to God"; every victory was promptly celebrated with a Te Deum. He believed that tsars were more responsible to God than commoners were, as tsars were entrusted with the duty to rule, but he did not enshrine the role of monarchy in anything so theoretical or philosophical as the Divine Right of Kings. Peter simply approached religion as he approached everything else: What seemed reasonable? What was practical? What worked best? The best way to serve God, he believed, was to work for the strength and prosperity of Russia.
Peter enjoyed going to church. As a child, he was thoroughly drilled in the Bible and the liturgy, and as tsar he made an effort to spread accurately written Bibles throughout his realm. He loved choral singing, the only music of the Orthodox Church, and it was his lifelong habit to push his way forward through the standing crowd and take his place to sing .with the choir. Orthodox congregations are less disciplined than those of other faiths: People stand through the service and move about, coming and going, signaling, whispering and smiling among themselves. Peter accepted this, but he would not tolerate people talking openly during a service. When he heard such an offender, he immediately collected a fine of one rouble. Later, he erected a pillory in front of a church in St. Petersburg for those who spoke during the service.