Alexey Konstantinovich Kirillov,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Housing Tax and Low-Income Urban Women in Siberia During the First World War (Based on Materials from the City of Tomsk)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2026-1-19
The article combines the study of the continuously evolving tax system of the late imperial Russia with the history of the city dwellers’ everyday life, which changed especially rapidly during the years of World War I. Despite the fact that the housing tax would be presented as a tax on the rich, and despite the small amounts of tax bills for the lower categories of taxpayers, the archives contain complaints from taxpayers about overtaxation and requests for tax write-offs. Due to these complaints and their thorough verification by tax offices, not only is it possible to have formal indicators of taxpayers’ wealth (such as the price of housing), but to study the living conditions of the least wealthy payers of the apartment tax as well. To accomplish this, four cases of single mothers raising children have been chosen from a 1917 documental collection of the Tomsk Regional Housing Tax Office, stored in the archival fond of the Tomsk Treasury Chamber. Their documents include the tax write-off applications, police reports of their apartment inspections, decisions of the tax office. The families lived in obviously cramped conditions, and had to take in tenants for the sake of even a small income. However, not all of them managed to obtain an exemption from the payment from the regional authorities. The officials deliberately taxed even poor families if they found grounds to believe that they were able to pay the tax. Thus, the housing tax, designed as an easy tax on the rich, began to turn into a heavy burden in the lives of the poorest city dwellers.
Publishing: 28/02/2026
The article has been received by the editor on 09/07/2025
How to cite: Kirillov A.K. Housing Tax and Low-Income Urban Women in Siberia During the First World War (Based on Materials from the City of Tomsk) // Historical Courier, 2026, No. 1 (45), pp. 233−241. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2026/ISTKURIER-2026-1-19.pdf]
The article was made on the topic of the state assignment “The Siberian Society as a Factor of Russia’s Territorial Growth and Unity (Late 16th − Early 20th Centuries)” (FWZM-2024-0007).
Links: Issue 1 2026
Keywords: history of taxes; city taxpayers; income taxation; tax office; tax inspector