Yasak: what is it, and who paid it?

The traditional mechanism of taxation in the states operates on the basis of the taxpayer's link to the land allotment. To those peoples who were engaged in hunting and gathering, other types of taxes were applied - including the so-called yasak. What is it and how was formed yasaknaya submit - you can learn from this article.

The emergence of the fur tax

The times of Ermak and the expansion of Muscovy far to the east brought the state a lot of specific problems, which had to be solved by unconventional methods. The indigenous peoples of Siberia had no land, and therefore could not be enslaved. So the term "jasak" arose. The word came from the Bashkir "yahya", which meant tax or file. Usually this tribute was taken by furs from hunters of small nationalities who settled each area (area) of the eastern outskirts of the Moscow principality.

Taking yasaka

One of the most common taxes in the Russian Empire was yasak. What is it - knew firsthand the peoples of Siberia, the nomadic people of the Yenisei, Irkutsk, Tomsk provinces, as well as the inhabitants of Transbaikalia and Yakutia. The collection process had much in common with a similar collection of taxes in Central Asia. Thus, yasak in history has remained as one of the most uncivilized methods of exploitation of the local population.

Yasak payer was assigned to each hunter aged 18 to 50 years. In each region, the amount of the tax was set differently. The surviving accounts of the Yenisei uyezd of 1621 indicate the collection of yasak from the population of these areas in the amount of 12 sables per person. Of these, 11 skins were the yasak itself, and the twelfth was a "sovereign remembrance". The Yenisei fur tax was one of the highest in Siberia. For comparison, in Tyulkino uyezd in the same year 1621 only 99 sables were collected, at the rate of 0.4 sable per person. One of the reasons for this gap was the servitude of the people who paid the yasak. What is it for the captive small nations, which several times a year were raided by the prieneisi Kirghiz and the Angara Tungus, can now only be surmised. Perhaps the protection of small nations from the raids of warlike neighbors and was the main reason that the process of hitching itself proceeded fairly peacefully, and there were no significant military clashes on this soil.

Replacing the yasak with a tax

The annual shooting of fur-bearing animals for two centuries significantly impoverished the animal world of Eastern Siberia. Decrees of Catherine II in 1763 and in 1782 allowed part of the yasak to give away money, but preference was still given to the natural tribute. For the clear definition of the list of peoples who paid furs to file, even the post of the manager of the jasak gathering was established. At the end of the XIX century, the register of peoples was revised, which had to be paid to the treasury of the yasak. What it is and what kind of people were supposed to pay this kind of tax was indicated in the law, which replaced the natural tax with a monetary tax. Finally, the yasak ceased to be charged only after the 1917 revolution .