Fiscal Pressure and Peasant Impoverishment in Serbia before World War I

It is widely accepted that the expansion of government spending in Eastern Europe was financed during the half-century before World War I by steady increases in fiscal pressure on the peasantry. For Serbia, a quantitative analysis indicates that, relative to their incomes, the fiscal burdens on farmers declined markedly, and that the growing revenue was provided mainly by the nonfarm sector. These trends were facilitated by the political strength of the peasants. A superficial comparison of the Serbian case with those of Bulgaria and Russia suggests that fiscal pressures on farm incomes may have been decreasing throughout Eastern Europe, despite the growth of aggregate taxation.