Peter the Great's "Mental Government": Bureaucracy, Unification, Taxation

11:32, March 31, 2022

Dmitry Redin told how the Tsar created the optimal model of government

This year marks the 350th anniversary of the birth of Peter the Great, the last Tsar of Russia and the first Emperor of Russia. For this date two years ago the Russian Foundation for Basic Research launched a large research program dedicated to the study of various aspects of the history of Peter the Great's reign.

According to the results of the competition, about 40 research teams were formed in the country, which won grants from the Foundation and began to solve this problem. Among them is the research team from Ural Federal University with the project "The "Mental Government" of Peter the Great and Experiments in Regional Administration. The First Quarter of the 18th Century".

University historians investigated the administrative reforms of Peter to find out how he was looking for the optimal model of government, how the ideas of building a single unified empire were implemented in practice and what foundations of the modern state Peter laid. Dmitry Redin, head of the research group and head of the Laboratory of Primary Sources Research at Ural Federal University, talked about what conclusions the scientists came to and what the next stage of the work will be.

Money is the artery of war

It is thought that Peter had an early idea of how the ideal state should be arranged. This is not entirely true. What is commonly referred to as the first period of administrative reforms - the first regional reform, the establishment of the Senate in 1711, and a number of other institutions - were not purposeful reformatory actions, but rather situational activities related to war and the organization of the armed forces, the researchers of the UrFU believe. Engaged in a heavy war with Sweden, which was then one of the strongest powers in the world, Russia needed a huge mobilization, which, according to Peter, the old apparatus could not implement. So the tsar converted the state apparatus to a military track.

"If we take the documents that show how and for what purpose the provincial or senate apparatus worked, for example, we see a demand on Peter's part - as much money as possible. In the first decree of the establishment of the Senate in 1711 in the third paragraph, the main task of the Senate is to give as much money as possible, because money is the artery of war. In addition, no other tasks were set before this state apparatus by the supreme power. Remarkable intensions, typical of the later decrees of Peter, that the power should patronize the people, develop science and art, equip the provinces with hospitals, take care of the morals of the people, do not exist before 1718," says Dmitry Redin.

Another widespread opinion is that Peter, when Europeanizing Russia, appealed in many ways to foreign experience. However, the so-called great reforms, which were built on the basis of a deep systematic study of the normative documents of various foreign countries, are characteristic of the last years of the reign of Peter, researchers say. He wrote the regulations, created a system of collegiums, reformed the Senate, the local government system according to Swedish models in 1718-1724 years.

A collection of bureaucratic wisdom

The bureaucratization of administration was a product of Peter the Great's reforms. It was formed during the years 1700-1719, when a series of decrees issued by the Senate and the tsar personally. In 1920, the General Regulations appeared, detailing how chanceries should be arranged, which employees should work, when to come to work, what functions to perform, how papers should circulate, etc.

"Peter was guided by good intentions - this is control over the financial sphere, properly organized document management, which, as he believed, was not inherent in the former - the command-and-control - system. Prompt decision-making and implementation of decisions. All this he tried to achieve through strict regulation, unification of documentary forms, setting deadlines for documents," explains Dmitry Redin.

Bureaucracy was inherent in the former - pre-reform - order system. However, if the old model was more aimed at resolving issues on the merits, say the researchers, the new model forced the administrator not to solve the issues, but to prove the competence of their actions.

"We still do not have exact data, but the famous historian of the Petrine era Evgeny Anisimov made calculations on the example of the document turnover of one of the collegia, that is, the central authority. I did these calculations on the basis of a study of the document flow of one of the lower administrative structures - the Zemsky Chancellery of the Uktusky District. We came to roughly the same conclusions: the document flow has increased by times and orders of magnitude, compared to what it was before," states Dmitry Redin.

The number of papers increased the requirement for constant reporting. For example, there appeared such samples of external document flow as a "decree on receipt of a decree" or a mandatory report on receipt of a decree. As historians note, often decrees were addressed to all government agencies, but in fact concerned only one or a few, but all were forced to report on the measures taken.

"They were sent to all the chanceries, those were to report that they had received this decree, and to answer what they had done by this decree. But the content of the document did not concern them. That is why at that time it was not uncommon to hear the phrase: "This Decree has been received. There is nothing to execute by this decree. Nevertheless, it was a paper, it went back to St. Petersburg or Moscow," says Redin.

Per capita tax

In 1719, to replenish the treasury Peter introduced new principles of taxation - the capitation tax. Prior to that there was a household system of taxation, which by that time had exhausted itself.

"The new system of taxation encountered a lot of difficulties. Money had to be collected per capita of the male sex, and how much was unclear. The tax reform, the calculation of the amount to be collected, and the census started at the same time. Despite his tremendous administrative experience, Peter thought that everything would be over within a year. His naivety, his bureaucratic romanticism is sometimes striking: he overestimated the capabilities of his apparatus and circumstances and, conversely, underestimated the geography of the country, its vast spaces and the poor state of communications," says Dmitry Redin.

The process of census-taking was delayed, and Peter resorted to a proven resource - the army: he created census offices headed by senior army officers and generals, which competed with the civil authorities and hindered in practice the implementation of a correct, "regular" administration model. At the same time it turned out that the first census abounded with inaccuracies; it was deemed advisable to conduct an audit of its results. Hence the name of all subsequent censuses - revisions. There were ten of them in all, with different intervals.

The money from the per capita tax was supposed to go mainly to support the army: after the war something had to be done with it. It was decided to build regimental yards (military camps). Peter assigned the collection of money for their needs to the military administration - offices for the collection of per capita money, which were headed by colonels. Another center of authority was formed.

The position of the governors

Governors under Peter had extremely modest financial resources. They could not spend the money of the provincial provincial coffers. Without a decree from the Tsar or the Senate they had no right to spend a penny. For each item of expenditure they had to write a report or a report. As a rule, they were not paid a salary. For paper, ink, firewood for heating offices, provision of couriers, governors had to ask for money through the permission of the relevant central institutions, the Senate or the Tsar.

"During the second reform they were initially given very small quotas. For example, for the Siberian province for 1726 - already post-Petrine, but the realities remained the same - there are calculations: for provincial needs, especially for transport, required 10 times more money than was given out. The Siberian governor Knyaz Dolgorukov counted about 26 thousand rubles a year, and he was allowed to spend 2,700. I think there were such scissors in all the provinces," Dmitry Redin describes the situation.

There were no regional budgets at the time. The governors got out of it as best they could. Personal connections, influence at court, friendship with the Tsar were used. For example, Knyaz Alexander Menshikov, as governor, of course, was in a unique situation. But the line between the state "wool" and his own was very shaky, and Peter regarded all of Menshikov's money and real estate as his own, state-owned. For example, he used Menshikov's palaces as places of official receptions.

"It is also known that Alexander Menshikov spent half his life under huge fines. The prince was very worried, he fought for every penny, bringing petitions, asking not to ruin him and to reduce the fines. The total sums accrued on his investigation cases amounted to 1.5 million rubles. These are gigantic amounts if we consider that the revenue items of the treasury - what we may call the revenue part of the budget at the time - ranged in different years from 3 to 10 million rubles," says the historian.

The Government Procurement System

The rampant abuse of public procurement was in the years 1700-1713, when the procedure was practically unregulated in any way. At that time it was called contracts - contracts with the treasury for the supply of goods and services. There were different schemes. On the one hand, it was possible to take contracts through subcontractors (since 1713 civil servants are prohibited to participate in contracts). On the other hand, it was also possible to engage in assortment through fictitious persons: low-grade products were supplied at high prices. Access to the subcontracting system, in other words, the budget money was free: anyone, of any social status with any government agency - provincial chancellery, Military, Admiralty, Proviant Office and other central agencies - could conclude a contract for the supply. And the rate of profit was not defined, as well as the rate of prepayment. In practice, a contractor in collusion with an official could get a contract to supply bread for the needs of the army in force for a certain amount, which was calculated on the basis of customs valuation of a particular type of goods for a particular area, get a two-thirds prepayment and disappear. In the Russian Archive of Ancient Acts there are untouched volumes of such cases.

In 1715, the Contracting Chancellery was created, and in 1722 the tendering procedure was more or less systematically prescribed in the "Regulations of the Admiralty and Shipyards". Thus under Peter the Great the legislation aimed at regulating public procurement began to take shape.

"It is clear that later there were different schemes, but there was not such a total lack of control. Peter even equated corruption schemes with state crimes. He introduced it as the so-called third point in the formula of political investigation - "sovereign's word and deed. The first point is encroachment on life, honor and health of the monarch. The second - high treason: rebellion, treason, surrender of the city, espionage. The third was embezzlement of the treasury. These crimes were punishable by death and/or civil penalty (deprivation of all rights, life imprisonment) and confiscation of property," says Dmitry Redin.

To be continued

The reconstruction of specific forms and methods of reform implementation, their regional specificity, and the assessment of their effectiveness is only one of the areas of research of the UrFU research group. In 2022, the work will continue. The plan is to study the specifics of the management of territories with a special status. These are foreign-ethnic provinces, which at that time became part of the empire relatively recently, such as Little Russia, the Baltic states (former Swedish Livonia), and regions like the Urals, which during those years also did not fit the general model of government. This information will help historians to reconstruct the process of state administration and create a model of similar processes in Russia in the next centuries, scientists believe.

"Imperial diversity is a big problem. The supreme power had to search for optimal management models, taking into account balanced relations between the center and the regions, the ratio of the powers of public administration and self-government, taking into account the factor of multi-ethnicity and heterogeneity of Russian statehood, etc. On the one hand, a vast country requires unification, because this is an issue of governability. On the other, it is very risky to overdo it, because it might result in the growth of separatist sentiments and civil conflicts, something Russia went through in the 18th century. A balance was eventually found, but at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. And then the logic of development led the country to an increasing unification, and led to an extreme: the strict Russification of the national outskirts, prohibitive measures in relation to national elites. But this is another era," concludes Dmitry Redin.

The results of a large-scale study historians plan to present in scientific articles and a final monograph with the publication of a significant layer of previously unpublished documents.

The news article was translated by UrFU International Marketing Office
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