Dr Zachary MAZUR, Research Fellow in the European Civilization Chair at the College of Europe in Natolin, recently published the article "The Grabski Tax Reform and Jewish Merchants: State Building in Interwar Poland".
The article, published in the Anglo-American journal East European Politics and Societies, traces how the Polish state expanded its power through direct taxation. Through the narrative, Dr MAZUR shows that taxing the society necessitated state building in the institutional sense, and the execution of these policies led to an expansion of state power in the minds of citizens as they were compelled to comply without a direct threat of coercion. But this was not without consequence. Citizens, especially Jewish merchants, reacted negatively to what was perceived as an unfair process of tax assessment and an outsized tax burden.
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The article is a welcome contribution to the broad history of the modern state, and specifically to Jewish and Polish histories of this period. You can read the full article here.
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