Elena KorchminaNational Research University Higher School of Economics | HSE · Faculty of History, Moscow
Elena Korchmina
PhD
Marie Curie Fellow, University of Southern Denmark
About
19
Publications
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Introduction
Elena Korchmina is currently an Assistant Professor at History Department, HSE (Moscow). Elena researches in History of Elites, Economic History and Econometrics. Their most recent publication is 'Extralegal payments to state officials in Russia, 1750s-1830s: assessing the burden of corruption: EXTRALEGAL PAYMENTS TO STATE OFFICIALS IN RUSSIA'.
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (19)
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...
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...
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Project (1)
How can developing countries successfully implement income taxes, which are generally desirable but costly to collect? This paper analyzes the income tax compliance of elites in a developing country with a low administrative capacity, drawing attention to the role of either voluntary or quasi-voluntary components of tax acquiescence. In 1812, the Russian government introduced the progressive income tax, with the highest tax rate of 10 per cent. After Britain, the Russian Empire became the second country to adopt this levy—under the threat of Napoleonic invasion. Unlike the widely known and deeply investigated British case, the history of the Russian income tax suffers from a lack of detailed research. I use a self-compiled unique dataset for estimating the level of tax compliance of the Russian noble elite at the individual level. The dataset is based on the self-reported tax returns of approximately 4,000 Russian aristocrats who had real estate in the Moscow region. Using narrative sources and crosschecking with official bank documents, I reveal not only that the Russian nobility declared reliable income information but also that the share of aristocratic evaders was relatively low (from 30 to 10 per cent). I argue that this surprisingly high level of tax compliance was achieved through a unique mechanism of tax collection involving the channels of social sanctioning and group identity, boosted by the national threat of Napoleonic invasion. This case could be considered as extremely important, insofar as the state could not achieve its fiscal aims due to coercive tools in the hands of bureaucracy but had to rely on subjects’ goodwill.
