EXPENDITURES IN CURRENT PRICES

Local government in the Russian Empire consisted of a confusing interweaving of organizations, which makes the analysis of local governmental expenditures a complicated matter. For a summary description of the organization of local government, the reader is referred to the works of Yaney and Gribowski. The highest level of local government, the gubernia, was administered by the gubernator. A parallel representative governmental body, the zemstvo, existed in 34 gubernia, but this representative body was lacking in 40 gubernia (Siberia, 2 Caucasus, the Baltic). The Polish territories were administered separately by a governor-general. Moreover, the Don Cossack, Turkestan, and two Siberian provinces were under the direct administration of the War Ministry.

At the local level, there were the municipal governments of towns and cities and the local administration of agricultural collective organizations. In the latter case, individual mirs belonged to volosti, and the expenditures of tax revenues collected from the mir organizations were subdivided into volost' expenditures if expended for all volost' activities or mir expenditures if expended for the benefit of a particular mir.

Local government expenditures are not too difficult to estimate as rather substantial information on zemstvo and non-zemstvo expenditures and on municipal government expenditures is available. Less information is available on the volost' and mir expenditures, especially for the period after 1905. The greater difficulty involves the netting out of intermediate expenditures of municipal and mir and volost' expenditures.