The 1874 “Statute on General Military Service Duty” in the Russian Empire and the County Liberalism of Northern Ukraine

Abstract

The publication is devoted to the little-known and underinvestigated aspect of the modern program of the county liberal movement in the northern Left-Bank Ukraine – the oppositionists’ view upon the social essence of the transformations taking place in the army and navy of the Russian Empire. In a concise form, it shows the viewpoints of the liberation movement leaders on the main issues during the preparation of the last phase of the military reform. It is established that the social essence of the Fronde’s representatives’ position was to replace the peasants’ natural provision of recruits with a single military payment (a monetary transaction), thereby improving the solvency of the peasant class and reducing the fiscal burden on their holdings. The responsibility for accumulating funds and transferring them to the imperial state budget was to be shifted to the county governing bodies. Since the ruling strata of the empire were generally exempted from paying most taxes, the opposition insisted on the inclusion of military duty in the general fund of county institutions’ expenditures. It is determined that state authorities approved the crucially important principle of converting the natural military tax into the cash equivalent and shifting the expenses for the provision of recruitment from peasant communities to the county (zemstvo) budgets. The author comes to the conclusion that not all proposals and initiatives of the opposition had been heard; therefore the transformation of the armed forces of the Russian Empire was progressive solely from the viewpoint of the institutional state’s interests.