Elena Korchmina

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Bologna

Luxury has always been an intrinsic part of world history, but the words “luxe” or “luxury” in the conventional sense are quite new, entering the French and English languages only in the seventeenth century. It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that the core of this phenomenon came up for discussion in Europe against a backdrop of deve...

How can developing countries successfully implement an income tax in the absence of a strong state? Recent theoretical research has suggested a possible solution: relying on voluntary compliance with tax demands can avoid the need for costly enforcement. This article provides empirical evidence for such a mechanism by investigating the introduction...

Luxury has always been an intrinsic part of world history, but the words ‘luxe’/’luxury’ in the conventional sense are quite new, entering the French and English languages only in the 17th century. It was only at the end of the 17th century that the core of this phenomenon came up for discussion in Europe against a backdrop of development of intern...

The article deals with one of the key resources for peasants of Eastern Europe, wood pastures. Relying on new archival material, we demonstrate that peasant communities, in the spirit of James Scott, consistently sabotaged state efforts to ban livestock pasturing in the forests. The state, over the long nineteenth century, strengthened control over...

We propose that the “historically relevant” comparison of the Danish and Russian Empires from the early eighteenth century until the First World War presents a useful starting point for a promising research agenda. We justify the comparison by noting that the two empires enjoyed striking geographical, political and institutional similarities. Beyon...

This article uses the records of expenditures from a set of estates that belonged to the Golitsyn family to assess the level of ‘routine corruption’ in Imperial Russia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The data from these books allow us to identify individual cases of unofficial facilitation payments made by the estates and by...

This article considers the formation of the contemporary notion of profit (Rus) Contrary to the well-established idea that profitability was the main motive of the economic activity of the nobility, the author argues that "profit" was conceptualised among the nobility as late as the second half of the 18 th century, mainly due to the use of forest...

From the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century Russia was transformed from a moderate-sized, land-locked principality into the largest empire on earth. How did systems of information and communication shape and reflect this extraordinary change? Information and Mechanisms of Communication in Russia, 1600-1850 brings together a range of contri...

This articles uses the account records books from a variety of Golitsyn estates in the late eighteenth- early ninetieth century to assess the level of "routine corruption" in Imperial Russia. The data from these books allows us to identify individual cases of unofficial payments made by the estates and by peasant commune to the district-level offic...

Russian Abstract: В данной работе на основе широкого круга источников, в том числе впервые вводимых в научный оборот, проанализированы законодательные нормы, административные механизмы и практики, касающиеся сбора подушной подати в России XVIII в. Выявлены специфика работы административного аппарата в городе и в деревне, восприятие подушной подати...

Russian Abstract: Настоящий препринт составляют разделы по трем проблемам:А) Подушная подать в России как показатель эффективности государства.Б) Описание данных и оценка общего уровня недоимочности в послепетровский периодВ) Факторы, влияющие на собираемость подушной подати в послепетровский период English Abstract: This preprint is divided on thr...