Income inequality of peasants of a suburban district according to tax assessments: Semiluzhnaya volost of Tomsk county at the beginning of the XX century.

Kirillov Alexey Konstantinovich PhD in History Senior researcher at the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Associate professor at the Novosibirsk State University 630090, Russia, Novosibirsk, Nikolaeva str., 8, of. Institute of History SB RAS alkir.nsk@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Reznikova Mariya Aleksandrovna PhD in History Junior researcher at the Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Assistant at the Novosibirsk State University 8 Nikolaeva str., Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk region, 630090, Russia, of. Institute of History SB RAS sharshova@yandex.ru

The authors are grateful to Anastasia Gennadievna Karavaeva and the team of employees of the State Archive of the Tomsk region, without whose support this work could not have taken place

The modern tradition of calculating income inequality grows out of the revolutionary 19th century, when the gap between the rich and the poor threatened the very existence of society in the form it had achieved. By the end of the first half of the 20th century, the crisis seemed to have been overcome, and the rosy expectations of economists were embodied in the "Kuznets curve". Proposed in the 1950s and widely accepted in the 1970s, this curve expressed the idea that as society progresses along the path of industrial development, the growth of inequality is replaced by its reduction ^[1].

For a long time, this hypothesis, which seemed unshakable, was refuted by the French economist T. Piketty in the 2010s: based on the material of France, and then other Western countries, he proves a new increase in inequality since the 1970s ^{[2, 3]}. It is not only in France that T. Piketty's work has fueled interest in measuring inequality and discussing its fairness or injustice. In Russia, the special flavor of studying the history of inequality is due to the disputes about the Great Russian Revolution and the degree of success of its previous development, in which the works of B.N. Mironov play a key role ^{[4, 5]}.  

It is customary to discuss inequality in economic history using calculated indicators – the decile coefficient as a tool less demanding of the initial data and the Gini index as a more accurate indicator. The works of B.N. Mironov, his supporters and opponents contain a number of digital estimates that tend to rely on data on tens of millions of residents of the country. Such data makes it easier to reach the all-Russian level of generalization, and this is their strength. Their weak point is that they do not notice fluctuations at the micro level, which can play a significant role in people's moods, which is important for discussing issues about people's behavior in a revolutionary year. Works attempting to assess inequality at the micro level relate mainly to the urban population ^[6-10].

The main problem of studying the incomes of pre–revolutionary peasants is the lack of data. We can say that this is not a subjective shortage (they did not think to collect information or lost what they had collected), but an objective one: It was impossible to collect them in conditions when the main part of the peasant income had passed the monetary form (they produced it themselves – they used it themselves). With this in mind, we have to rejoice even in indirect sources, although they give an inevitable error. One of these sources is the "folding sentences" of peasants – the decisions of rural gatherings on the distribution of taxes among members of the peasant community.

Soviet historians approached the study of peasant sentences from two sides. They interested researchers of the peasant community. The layout function of the peasant community was touched upon by the classic of Soviet peasant studies M.M. Gromyko ^[11]. L.V. Kotovich ^[12] (a student of the famous Novosibirsk researcher E.I. Solovyova) has a small article about the sentences of rural gatherings, for whom it was one of the subjects of a dissertation on the history of the peasant community during the period of capitalism.

Researchers who sought to rely on mass sources were also interested in the verdicts. B.G. Litvak in a 1979 book spoke highly of the verdicts of peasant gatherings as a source worthy of study ^{[13, p. 261]}. Obviously, it is no coincidence that at that time G.D. Alekseichenko began his studies at the graduate school of Moscow State University, whose entire dissertation is devoted to the source study of the sentences of peasant gatherings. An article in one of the leading academic journals summarizing the results of this study was published already in 1981 ^[14], the dissertation itself was defended on the second attempt in 1988 (both abstracts are in the RNB – "Saltykovka"). One of the opponents in her defense was the son of the famous source scientist, the young candidate of sciences K.B. Litvak, the scientific supervisor was academician I.D. Kovalchenko (five years before that, he acted as a scientific supervisor for K.B. Litvak).

G.D. Alekseichenko assessed the condition of the sources less optimistically than his venerable predecessor: "the safety of the books of sentences is small," they cover the post–reform period unevenly, and in other counties - and fragmentally ^{[14, p. 118]}. Judging by the abstract and the article, the sentences in general, as a source on the history of the peasantry, did not seem particularly attractive to the author of the dissertation, and in particular he found only per capita layouts in the layout sentences, which he regarded as a tribute to a formality that did not correspond to the actual foundations of the layout ^{[14, p. 122]}.

For a quarter of a century after that, the folding sentences remained without the attention of researchers. It was only in the mid-2010s that A.E. Panova began processing the folding sentences of the Tomsk District ^[15]. Unlike the Tver documents, according to which G.D. Alekseichenko worked, in Tomsk there was a considerable variety of layout bases with a predominance of economic features.

Where historians deal with a full set of documents, the folding sentences are supplemented by folding lists, in which the number of tax units was indicated for each peasant (whether they were suitable workers, cattle, tithes of arable land or other, more rare signs of solvency). This makes it possible to use these tax documents to study non-tax issues at all. But the main highlight of the folding sentences as a source for the study of inequality is that all the signs mentioned in them are converted into rubles. In one village, the same amount is imposed on a horse and a cow, in another it is different; in some places, tithing of crops is considered more profitable than a head of cattle, in some places – less. This is how the very transition from economic characteristics to income takes place, which requires taking into account local conditions and therefore cannot be done on the basis of all-Russian or all-European templates.   The figures obtained in this way, of course, distort reality, and nevertheless, allow us to assess the inequality of peasant incomes.

The Tomsk collection of folding sentences is extensive: it contains about two thousand documents. But not all of them are suitable for studying inequality. Some layouts are incomplete (only part of the taxes), others are devoid of layout lists. Of the remaining ones, the sentences of those villages for which different years are presented are of primary interest. The largest interval covered by the Tomsk collection is the decade from 1899 to 1908. Only four of the volosts of the Tomsk district were noted in the documents of 1899, of which only a seven-line comparison of these data with sentences for other years allows us to obtain a number of values of the Gini index, allowing comparison of different years and different villages. That is why this particular parish has become the object of primary attention.

The results of calculating the Gini index for the villages of the Semiluzhnaya volost are presented in the table.

Table. The Gini index, calculated on the basis of layout lists for individual villages of the Semiluzhnaya volost, in comparison with the share of tax, decomposed "by the number of souls" or by the number of fit employees

Calculated by: State Archive of the Tomsk Region (GATO). F. 200. Op. 1. d. 20. l. 15a–18, 90-99 vol.; d. 176. l. 360-374 vol.; d. 183. l. 264-269, 283-286, 460-464, 489-493, 634-637 vol.; d. 225. l. 128-133 vol.., 232-237 vol., 242-243 vol.

The data in this table should be mastered gradually. To begin with, let's pay attention only to the cells with Gini index indices calculated strictly "according to the folding list". Comparing these figures with global data ^{[16, pp. 787-790]}, we understand that in some cases they are moderate (values in the range from 0.3 to 0.4), in others they are low (from 0.2 to 0.3), and sometimes they are completely low. But before concluding that everything was fine with inequality in Semiluzhnaya Volost, it is necessary to explain the threefold difference between the extreme values of the series (0.125–0.362).

In a recent article based on the layout sentences of the Tomsk collection ^[17], it was already noted that fluctuations in the indices may depend on changes in the basis of the tax layout. It was enough for a peasant gathering to shift part of the tax burden, for example, from livestock to able–bodied workers - and this immediately led to a noticeable decrease in the inequality index (after all, the gap in the number of able-bodied workers should obviously be lower than the gap in the level of prosperity). Just in terms of changing the bases of the layout, Semiluzhnoye provides a wealth of material.

The changes taking place in the foundations of the layout of Semiluzhensk villages are generally great, but in the parish center they are simply amazing. Over the course of some ten years, the layout here has changed radically twice. In 1899, everything begins with a layout only and exclusively according to the number of souls; at the next point (1904) we see more than half of the amount decomposed into economic characteristics (including not only cows, horses and tithes of sowing, but also sheep, trade, inns, apiaries, "use of forest materials", handicrafts), in 1906, economic signs lost part of their share to "fit workers" and decreased in diversity (but instead haystacks appeared, which had not been taken into account before); finally, in 1907 and 1908. the whole amount is again divided into souls.

By itself, this cycle of "reforms and counter-reforms at the rural level" is obviously important for understanding the communal mechanism and the tax system of the early twentieth century, but from the point of view of studying the incomes of peasants, having a heart-to-heart layout looks unprofitable. After all, the point of studying income inequality is precisely that two identical "souls" (the authors of the sentences usually used this concept as identical to fit workers) have different incomes. The calculation of the Gini index when dividing the entire amount into souls, if it has any significance, it is more demographic than financial. For us, the indicators in the corresponding cells are important only because they remind us of the existence of an acute struggle between different groups of payers, whose payment grew or decreased depending on the choice of the basis of the layout. And therefore, the peasants' choice of the layout bases really affects the indices we receive.

In order to get rid of the distortion caused by this influence, it seems logical to calculate the same indices taking into account only the layout of economic characteristics, except for that part of the amount that is spread out for souls (or for fit workers) – what is called in our table "recalculation without taking into account the layout for souls". Familiarity with these figures is surprising: the indices are increasing dramatically, at times. This is especially unexpected in comparison with Bogorodskaya volost of the same county, studied earlier ^{[17, p. 380]}. In Bogorodskaya Volost, the indices increased from about 0.3–0.4 to 0.4–0.5 Gini: by one tenth of a unit, which amounted to from a fourth to a fifth of the initial values. In the Semiluzhnaya volost, even in the volost center, the indices increased by one and a half to two times, adding from one and a half to three tenths of a unit, and in other villages we see an increase with an amplitude of 0.5-0.65 units (2.5–3, 5 times).

The data of the famous agricultural economist of the early XX century A.A. Kaufman helps to understand the difference between the two named volosts. In 1890 He began his professional life by participating in a large-scale survey of a Siberian village. The survey was detailed enough to "distinguish in person" not only individual parishes, but also individual villages with special features. Without repeating here the characteristic of Bogorodskaya volost as agricultural (given in the article already cited), let's focus on the Semiluzhnaya Volost. As a general characteristic of the Semiluzhnaya volost, A.A. Kaufman points out the weak development of agriculture. "It could be plowed, but there is nothing for it – the city feeds us" – he cites such an answer as typical for the peasants of Semiluzhnaya volost ^{[18, p. 78]}. The city that fed the Semiluzhens was Tomsk, at that time the administrative center of one of the four Siberian provinces, the owner of the only university in Siberia, an important node of the Siberian fair network, a major point on the Siberian Highway. The Tomichi "fed" the Semiluzhens in exchange primarily for firewood and hay, and it is no coincidence that the haystacks and "forest materials" are directly spelled out in the sentences of S. Semiluzhny for 1904 and 1906. An essential condition for this trade was the proximity of semiluzhentsev to Tomsk: the center of the parish was separated from the city by 30 versts (the distance of the average day's march of a trading caravan on the Siberian highway), Turuntaevskoye and Andreevskoye were twice as far from the provincial center (but still not as far as Bogorodskoye with its 75 versts).

Understanding the different economic specialization of our two municipalities is useful in itself, since it is a question of studying an economic phenomenon. But this still does not explain the difference in index growth after recalculation. Actually, this difference depends not so much on the initial figures (they are comparable), as on the "purified" ones: there is a clear difference between Semiluzhny (with its 0.595 and 0.438) and two other villages (from 0.869 to 0.929). Since the maximum mathematically possible value of the Gini index is 1, we understand that the Turuntaevsky and Andreevsky indices are exceptionally high. In fact, this expression should be reinforced: they are impossibly high. It is impossible to imagine a society in which the bottom 9 deciles of the population will have no income (only in this case the Gini index can be equal to one). Therefore, the historically possible maximum value of the Gini index is less than one. Milanovich, Lindert and Williamson proposed a range of estimates of the maximum possible Gini index for preindustrial societies. As a rule, this value fits into the range from 0.5 to 0.7 and in no case exceeds 0.852 (for Holland in 1732). The real (and not the maximum possible) indices calculated by the same authors for 52 countries in different years, and do fit into the range from 0.3 to 0.6; and the most the lowest is 0.245 (China, 1880), and the highest are 0.637 (Chile, 1861), 0.635 (New Spain, 1790), and of the newest – 0.573 (South Africa, 2000) ^{[19, pp. 263-264]}.

So, the Gini index recalculated without taking into account the poll distribution for the Turuntaev and St. Andrew's societies contradicts common sense. The reason for this can be understood by comparing the layout lists for these two companies and for the Seven-Letter, whose indicators, although high (0.438 and 0.595), still remained within reasonable limits.

In the folding lists, payers who have zeros in their economic characteristics draw attention to themselves: they do not have cows, nor even horses, let alone other things. We are not talking about adult undivided children, but about independent owners. If the owner has zeros in the economic signs, it is a waste product. In Semiluzhny in 1906, there were 36 otkhodniks with a total number of employees (including "half–timers" - young and old workers) of 214.5 (16.8%). In Turuntaevsky in 1908, there were noticeably more: 59.5 out of a total of 217.5 fit workers (27.4%). And most of the otkhodniks are in Andreevsky: 35% (81 out of 230.5).

Andreevsky's case is particularly interesting in this sense, as long as we have a definite indication of the special qualities of this category of peasants. The absence of a household fits in with the status of "passport souls", which are opposed by "souls are present". A passport in pre–revolutionary Russia is a permission to leave the borders of one's parish, which is not necessary for an ordinary peasant, but it is absolutely necessary for someone who has gone to work in the city. That year, the Andreyevites charged 4 rubles from the "passport showers", and only 2.32 rubles from the "showers". In front of us is an additional taxation of the income of the retiree, who earned, of course, more than the one who remained in the village – otherwise there was no point in going to the city.  And if only singles went to the semiluzhens, then in Turuntaevsky there is a group of taxpayers who do not have a household, for whom 2-3 good workers are registered, and in Andreevsky there are even 4 "passport souls"!

The way in which the peasants took into account the income of these workers – the per capita allowance – is imperfect, but in this case it is the only way to account for waste earnings. One way or another, we have to take it into account. When we see zeros in economic signs among the otkhodniks, we get an idea of their economic squalor, but this idea is wrong. The Andreevsky settlement is especially significant in this sense. Unlike Semiluzhny and Turuntaevsky, it was created by settlers; it was not even on the list of populated places in Tomsk province for 1899; in the list of 1911 it was added last in Semiluzhnaya volost, and on the map of 1911 we find it on a resettled piece of land. This means that the members of the Andreevsky Rural Society are people who have traveled thousands of kilometers in order to start a full–fledged peasant farm. They could have gone to the city in European Russia, but they went to Siberia. And nevertheless, they left the received land for Tomsk. So, work in Tomsk was still more profitable for them than farming, and no matter how poorly they had to live in the city without their own farm, they had an income.

So, the recalculated Gini index for Turuntaevsky and Andreevsky is greatly overestimated, the index for Semiluzhny is overestimated to a lesser extent; does this mean that we can consider the average figure between the indicators of S. Semiluzhny before and after clearing them of the per capita component to be correct? Before answering this question, we need to take a closer look at the Seven-star additionally. In addition to the general factor of the neighborhood with the city, another feature influenced the economy of the village of Semiluzhny.

It was a traktovo village, that is, not just located on the Siberian highway, but acting as a base on the route of trade caravans between Western and Eastern Siberia. True, Turuntaevsky was also involved in the import trade, but Kaufman calls this village a secondary point: if almost all the tractor wagons stopped in Semiluzhny, then in Turuntaevsky the wagons "stop more or less by accident" ^{[20, pp. 192-193]}, earnings on janitorial work are small – and this before the construction of the Transsib; after, of course, It got even worse. Apparently, it is no coincidence that the list of settlements in 1911 does not know a single trading shop behind Turuntaevsky, and in 1899 there were two. And this despite the fact that by the early 1910s Turuntaevsky had increased its status: it became the center of a newly allocated parish. The status had risen, but the economic strength was shrinking.

The village of Semiluzhnoye is another matter: even the lists of populated places mark 7 trading shops here in 1899 and 6 in 1911. According to the 1906 folding list, we see at least 10 shops and 16 inns. To this was added the maintenance of postal, stage and zemstvo persecution by rich seven-year-olds. The influence of non-agricultural factors determined the special, in the words of A.A. Kaufman, "economic and moral physiognomy" of the village, part of which was pronounced inequality: "the big rich are next to the mass of gold" ^{[20, p. 80]}.

To what extent does this formula correspond to the coefficients that we obtained for the Seven-rainbow after clearing the Gini index from the per capita component? Judging by the fact that shops and inns in 1904-1906 were charged, as a rule, no more than three rubles (as well as for 6-10 horses, or for one "soul", or "for craft"), the income of merchants and innkeepers was underestimated, and with more correct accounting indexes could be higher. And it is no coincidence that we see a decrease in indices after returning to the "heart-to-heart" layout in 1907-1908, when payments from many merchants really decreased significantly. And if we assume that this underestimation will balance the overestimation of the index resulting from the failure to take into account the per capita tax, then we can think that the actual Gini index according to S. Semiluzhny was at least 0.438 (as in 1906), and maybe 0.595 (as in 1904).

Summing up, it can be confidently stated that the level of income inequality of the peasants of the Semiluzhnaya volost was definitely not low, but corresponded to a significant or even high level. One of the factors influencing this was the presence of a large city nearby, which created a demand for rural (but not agricultural) goods and opened up the possibility of earning for waste workers. Speaking more generally, it can be said that the presence of a city nearby changed the essence of peasant inequality. Rural-type inequality, more or less accurately measured by economic objects owned by a person, was replaced by urban-type inequality, which is embodied precisely in money, in income from personal work.