Dym

Dym 

(household; literally, smoke), an ancient unit of tax assessment in Rus’ from the ninth century to the 18th, in Macedonia and other areas of the Balkan Peninsula in the 13th and 14th centuries (where it was called the dymnina), and in the Transcaucasian region and in Poland, where it was retained until the early 20th century.

The dym was levied on a single household (“courtyard” or “hearth”). The size of the tax depended on the number of commune members obligated to bear tiaglo (the sum total of obligations and duties). In Rus’ the dym was the basic unit of taxation until the 14th or 15th century. With the introduction of other tax assessment units (such as the vyt’ [a plot of land of varying size] and sokha [a type of plow]), the significance of the dym decreased. In Transcaucasia in the 19th century, the size of the levy varied from 50 kopeks to 14 rubles; in the Kingdom of Poland there were several different kinds of dym: the house-servant dym, the peasant homestead dym, the dym levied on all the dwellings of the posad (merchants’ and artisans’ quarter), and the dym levied on houses in the cities. In Macedonia and other regions of the Balkan Peninsula, feudal immunity guaranteed exemption from the dym. The Byzantine kapnikon apparently corresponded to the dymnina mentioned in South Slav documents.

REFERENCES

Lappo-Danilevskii, A. S. Organizatsiia priamogo oblozheniia v Moskovskom gosudarstve so vremen smuty do epokhi preobrazovanii. St. Petersburg, 1890.
Svod materialov po izucheniiu ekonomicheskogo byta gosudarstvennykh krest’ian Zakavkazskogo kraia, vols. 1-2. Tiflis, 1887.