RB 29

98 With the establishment of colleges in Russia, the Swedish example of a uniform salary structure for the entire administration was adopted. In addition, the regulations for the kamer-kollegiia and the shtats-kontorkollegiia projected the adoption of the Swedish fiscal system; by means of a state budget, the revenues of the realm were to be allotted to meet specific expenditures.-'*'* Heinrich Pick had much to say to the Senate regarding the salaries that were to be paid to the staffs of the colleges. Above all, he emphasized the importance of staff members receiving sufficiently large salaries, pointing out that: first and foremost, each realm must support its officials in an honorable manner and according to need, as we can see happen in all Christian realms, [and] Russia has received from the highest grace in nature greater advantages with which to support her officials than has Sweden; secondly, it is better to give 100 rubles in salary than to allow 200 or 300 rubles in fraud; thirdly, there is no realm which loses a single ruble by paying a million rubles in salary if all this money is expended within the realm again; fourthly, we can never convince clever subjects to accept service in this state unless they are driven to it by the hope of salary and promotion. Among Pick’s arguments, the Senate must have found the last one the most compelling. As long as administrative positions were poorly paid, Russian noblemen would plan for military careers, which paid better and brought higher social status. Low administrative salaries, especially when they were lower than comparable salaries in the military, thus presented an obstacle to the development of a cadre of qualified native administrators. Pick’s argument was to reappear after Peter’s death in connection with the reorganization of the collegial administration. The personnel and salary budgets for seven colleges were presented to the tsar on June 11, 1718. They had been drawn up on the basis of the materials Pick had brought over from Sweden, and at the behest of the tsar comparisons had been made between the costs of the old prikaz administration and those proposed for the colleges.-*^ In establishing norms for the salaries in the colleges, it was decided that foreign officials would be paid in accordance with the Swedish salary scale, while a distinction would be drawn among the Russians between those with military ranks and those who had only held civilian posts in the past. While Russian collegial officials with military ranks were to receive salaries according to the military salary scale, a special scale was to be drawn up for those 246 See p. 192. TsGADA, f. 248 delo 58 1. 33. See p. 302. 2^7 ZA (no. 270), 225.

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