Skip Navigation | ANU Home | Search ANU | Search ARTS | Contact ARTS

A Seminar in the Monday Series

 

Monday 3 August, 4:00-5:30pm, Room W3.03, Baldessin Precinct Building

 

Dr Linda Bowman, ADFA

 

Situated semantics: Constructing meaning in social interaction

 

In the wake of the Revolution of 1905, the Ministry of Finance proposed radical changes to Russia's direct tax system: an income tax and a modernized business tax system. These reforms elicited strong resistance from the now more politically ambitious and assertive business elite. At the conference of 1908, called by the Ministry to negotiate business tax reform, the business elite rehearsed a heroic rhetoric of progress , citizenship, and modernity to deflect tax increases that would harm Russia's economic development. Business delegates represented themselves, perhaps for the first time, as a bourgeois class. Their narrative was self-interested, but represented the business elite as modern and time-conscious , enlightened and civic-minded – a contrast to Russia's slow, suspicious , wasteful tax bureaucracy. The well-informed, articulate debates underline the increasing confidence of Russian business elite in defining itself and its needs . But the sometimes discordant tone of business representatives reflected resentments that business remained the only sector that paid an income tax; and that business taxpayers were still denied genuine citizenship in the zemstva. The failure of the finance ministries, State Duma and elite interest groups to come to an agreement in favor of tax reform in the Silver Age was inopportune, especially in light of the consequences of Russia's catastrophic fiscal crisis in the First World War.