101 S. M. Troitskii studied the adjustment of civil service salaries to the military salary levels that accompanied the introduction of Peter’s Table of Ranks, basing his conclusions on a memorandum issued by the Senate ill 1721 in response to the tsar’s proposal for a table of ranks. Troitskii wrote that: the senators and the members of the three “foremost” colleges—war, the admiralty, and foreign affairs—expressed the opinion that the lower group of civil servants, especially the office staff, should receive sufficient support, for among the members of these staffs the vast majority were “landless” (bespomestnye) and “without private means” (besprozhitochnye). In consideration of these recommendations, Peter I issued on January 11, 1722, an ukaz “On the setting of salaries for civil servants in accordance with the military ranks.” In Troitskii’s analysis of what occurred when the tsar adjusted the salaries of the civil servants to the level of military officers the impression is given that Peter had accepted the Senate’s advice, which was designed to increase the salaries of the civil servants. But, although he had cited it correctly earlier in his book, Troitskii misconstrued the Senate’s memorandumin this instance. The passage in the memorandum Troitskii referred to states that: from the rank of major general and down to the lower ranks it is impossible, in our view, to equalize the salaries for the civil and court servants with the military ranks, since this salary would be too small for the lower officials and it would be impossible for them to support themselves on it, for they are almost all landless {bespomestnye) and in some chancelleries they receive no income other than their salaries. It is clear from the memorandum that the adaption of the salaries of civil servants to those of military officers would involve a reduction of the former. For this reason, the Senate recommended that a special salary scale be set up as before for the civil servants, who, in contrast to the military officers, usually had no income from private property. The fact is that about half the Russian military officers owned serfs and land at this juncture.-'^® When Peter decreed that the same salary schedule was to 180 rubles 120 „ 84 „ 84 „ 120 „ 60 „ 84 „ 50 „ 7,000 rubles 3,600 „ 2,160 „ 1,800 „ 840 „ 600 „ 360 „ 300 „ Captain Lieutenant 2nd Lt. Quartermaster Adjutant Auditor Commissary Master of Provisions Field Marshal General Lt. Gen. Maj. Gen. Brigadier Colonel Lt. Col. Major Troitskii (1974), 254. TsGADA, f. 370 delo 17 1. 18; Troitskii (1974), 86. M. D. Rabinovich, “Sotsial’noc proiskhozhdenie i imushchestvennoc polozhenie ‘J.ll 205
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